Books, essays, long-form
The Man Who Blamed Michael Jordan for His Face Allen Heckard looked in the mirror and saw a problem. The Oregon man bore a striking resemblance to basketball…
Berserk Is Still Unfinished Business The 1997 Berserk anime isn’t perfect. The animation creaks in places, the pacing stumbles, and it cuts before the story’s most devastating moments land. But if you want brutal medieval warfare and a friendship that curdles into something monstrous, this is the place to start. Griffith leads his mercenary army…
When Love Gets Genuinely Weird Cupid Parasite kicks things off with a premise that sounds like a fever dream and somehow works perfectly. You play as Cupid — the actual goddess of love — reassigned to a matchmaking agency on Earth. She’s good at her job. Too good. So management sends her to fix the…
New World: Amazon’s Grand Experiment Ends Amazon built New World like it had something to prove. Released for PC in 2021 and expanded to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2024, it was the company’s bid to become a real force in gaming — not just a retailer selling other people’s discs. The launch buckled…
The Games That Respect Your Freedom Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord doesn’t care what you want to be — merchant, warlord, sellsword — because it hands you the tools to become all three. Character creation isn’t cosmetic here. You pick your civilization, answer questions that shape your skills, and the world responds accordingly. Ignore the…
Where Monsters Wrote the Rules of History Berserk’s Midland isn’t medieval Europe with dragons bolted on. It’s a continent where warfare is the only economy that matters, where peasants who aren’t conscripted as cannon fodder simply starve in the mud. Social mobility means picking up a sword and hoping your commanding officer dies slower than…
Pure Muscle, Zero Mercy Gregor Clegane doesn’t fight. He exterminates. Standing nearly eight feet in the show’s production design, the Mountain was less a warrior than a walking execution — a man who crushed skulls with his bare hands the way most people crack walnuts. His strength wasn’t cinematic shorthand. It was the whole point….
A Bean Counter’s Decision, a Fan’s Nightmare The Transformers: The Movie didn’t begin with a creative vision. It began with a spreadsheet. Hasbro wanted to clear the old toy line and push newer, shinier figures — and if characters were being retired from shelves, they’d get retired from the story too. Optimus Prime, the stoic…
The Monthly Payment Trap Walk onto any car lot and within minutes you’ll hear the question: “What kind of monthly payment are you looking for?” It sounds reasonable. Helpful, even. It’s not. The moment you answer, you’ve handed the salesperson a master key to the entire deal. Dealers adjust loan length, interest rate, and buried…
When the Ship Changes Course 1899 opens like a prestige period drama with cheekbones and fog. It’s the titular year. A steamship crosses the Atlantic. Passengers speak six languages, harbor secrets behind locked cabin doors, and stare at each other across the class divide with beautiful, loaded suspicion. The Dark creators, Baran bo Odar and…