kewpie doll

Only the best decisions are made.

• First scene opens with Chuubo having tea at Miramie's shop, discussing her anxieties around her dreams, extended metaphors around if she were a giant nasty snake that could accidentally hurt things, and the strange girl she's seen in her dreams. Miramie successfully avoids disclosing that she's that girl, and suggests that Chuubo isn't monstrous and that maybe she should try talking to the Dream-Witch next time she sees her.
• Offscreen, Attaris broke the metaphysical plumbing of dreams in a neighborhood and has worked all week to fix it with the assistance of Leondardo de Montreal, who fell out of his own nightmares during the break. They were talking in Miramie's shop when Chuubo and Jasper came by. Discussion of Leo's professional credentials are had; they discuss whether his heart is also Jasper's heart re: custody; Chuubo asks if him taking out his heart is why they're no longer friends, and Leo reveals that it's [partially] because she didn't believe her back then, either; Leo is very vehement that he could make powerful and delicious nightmare coffees and Attaris invokes tribulations upon him for this; Chuubo and Jasper are cute and cuddly around each other and Leo proposes inventing a breath mint/mite that could keep Jasper's throat cool to enjoy the novelty of cold drinks (and, Chuubo considers, kissing); they all discuss the S.E.E.D. program and the costs of it; and eventually discuss the wish-granting engine and some wishes they may make

In the final scene, Chuubo makes a wish based on the last conversation they had in the teashop:

"the world- if it was really founded on suffering, if there's an element of suffering that pervades every moment of our existence- i wish it wasn't. i wish it didn't. make it stop."

When suffering no longer has meaning,
When the thread between desire and dukkha is cut,
When Rinley is empowered to end the world,
Join us in our next episode:

Chuubo and the Problem of Suffering

With all the talk about Twitter and social media going on, I felt really inspired to do a comic about RSS feeds. This is a really barebones guide but I hope it helps you stay updated with your favourite webcomics, artists and websites.

The nice thing about RSS feeds is that almost any kind of site has one, so if you wanted you could add user feeds from tumblr, twitter, mastodon, etc. here’s some helpful guides on how to add those (1) (2)

I hope you found this little guide helpful. I’m just a simple guy who’s passionate about RSS feeds, comics and staying updated using both. Go forth and make the feed of your dreams!

Topaz Comics | Topaz Comics RSS | Art Blog | Art Blog RSS

> Professor Quackerton in the Locked Birdhouse is a storybook game about grief and loss and community. It also features a lot of queer animals.
> Ranked Choice Dating is a satirical dating sim where you romance NYC mayoral candidates. Yes it is as off the walls as it sounds. This game was so fun to make.
> Map Your Home is a micro-rpg where you make your surroundings strange in order to gain a wider understanding and appreciation of where you live. A friend even taught this game in her class once! I'd like to have a physical run of this at some point in the future.
> And my personal favorite, my Lockdown Writing Sketchbook. This is one of the few things that has a price tag on it, and it's because I am very proud of it. It means a lot to me whenever someone picks it up, so I hope you'll take a look. This sketchbook contains several months of daily writing, and the format is based on the comics artists' and storyboard artists' sketchbooks that I love.

> And there's even more on my itch page! Thank you for visiting!

Thank you for visiting!

I'm dipping my toes into the waters of Hive after many people from tabletop Twitter headed over there. There's a feature in the app that lets users answer questions from other users, and since I posted a reflection on tabletop, ritual, and spirituality here a couple days ago, I thought I'd share a Hive question I received and the answer I gave.

Alyssa Visscher asked me: "...I would love to know a bit about how you view and approach the embodiment of significance and meaning in ttrpgs!?"

My response, slightly edited for cohost:

I love this question so much. I'll take a pass at an answer knowing I have much more to say...

One of the most impactful lessons I took from my time formally studying ritual and communal practices of meaning-making is that we do them, in part, to form group connections through storytelling. I know I'm not the only person to think about ttrpgs through the framework of ritual -- but for me, rituals and tabletop often share rhythms. There's a sense of anticipation, a time of initiation or introduction, the sense of crossing over a portal into a kind of liminal space, and then a winding down and conclusion followed by processing and integration.

And I think that many of us come to tabletop to have this kind of rhythmic experience of telling stories that matter to us, and to have fun as we explore our own values, desires, questions, fears, and joys. One of the beautiful things about ttrpgs is that we can find systems that support us in doing this individually and as part of larger groups. I love that. And I think that the format of a game - of something that takes place a little outside ordinary time and space - is so significant. It can give us permission to be, well, more playful, more willing to open ourselves up to experiences and possibilities that seem intimidating in our everyday lives.

I think meaning-making can often be frame in solemn terms. There's nothing from with that, but when we only talk about it in those terms, we lose something. One of the things I love so much about tabletop is that it very explicitly makes room for playfulness as part of telling stories that matter & of encountering and exploring concepts and experiences that matter. It very explicitly centers play as meaningful. And I think that's beautiful.