Jordan Thomas

mer-cops with nictitating membranes and sea-shell bras (whether masc or femme, standard issue)-

-burst into my office to cuff me for using my 99th nautical metaphor in this script. They don't even say anything to me in case I utter another one in my defense

I don't even resist, I need to be jailed

Frame grab from Real Ghostbusters depicting a red-haired winged woman with a fake Latin description and the name "Makoveris Lotsabucks"

Excerpt From Becoming Superman by J. Michael Straczynski: “Eager to repair the show, my first script up was “Janine, You’ve Changed,” about a demon who, unbeknownst to the rest, had been posing as Janine’s fairy godmother the last two seasons. Feeding off her insecurity about her appearance, the demon convinced Janine to keep changing her look to be more appealing to others. The Ghostbusters help her accept that she’s beautiful just as she is, which banishes the demon and restores Janine to her original appearance. The censors and consultants who had pushed for a softer Janine hated the story, but there was nothing they could do to stop it. They were particularly furious that the story equated them with a hellborn demon. Interestingly, the Union of Hellborn Demons Local 666 voiced similar complaints in the other direction.”

The season 6 episode that addresses Janine's makeover pokes fun at the consultants behind it: the creature that's changing Janine is named "Makoveris Lotsabucks." In his 2019 memoir, screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski said the network censors and consultants hated the story.

YOU 🫵

HIRE ME TO MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS

DOESN'T MATTER WHAT STYLE IT'S IN

I came into that stream very late and was confused by your lore, so ... maybe we're even now

Embed with Games, my gonzo style travelogue from 2014 covering Blendo Games, @ellaguro.bsky.social, @harvey1966.bsky.social et al is available for pay what you want in this bundle!

We're hiring a Combat Designer! Level Designer! UX/UI Artist!

Kate Bush and crocodile from “Walking the Crocodile,” 1979, photographed by Claude Vanheye

Kate Bush, with a crocodile, in 1979. Coincidence? Yes. It’s a very cool coincidence. #TheLastDriveIn

You must do this.

Hey writer folks: do you know anyone who covers the indie country music scene? Asking for my PR co-worker at my day job. Thanks (shares would be helpful too!) 🖤

a picture of a man surrounded by pink hearts with the words i love you on the bottom ALT: a picture of a man surrounded by pink hearts with the words i love you on the bottom

I have come to the sobering conclusion that apparently this whole project is just a barely-veiled cover letter for my pitch to Larian - to write the Withers spin off game.

O, well-

I 💖 u, dust daddy

Sat in a hospital waiting room listening to a man in his 80s telling a very tall story which appears to be Fight Club as reimagined by a fanciful West Country octogenarian. "We 'ad a pint, an' then we 'ad a wrestle in the garden!" His audience nodding along politely.

I just wanted somewhere to post my weird gay video games. Why can’t they leave us alone

There’s no chill way to say this so uh—

I’m Aidan.
I’m the voice of the main character in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival.

Wishlist the game, and believe me when I say: They have such sights to show you.

(Continuing to rant in front of a completely arbitrary skyscraper)

Hear me out, it’s a remake AND a new ip because not nearly enough folks played it…

And though unsung and ripped off many times there’s still nothing like it! Follow your rapacious nature!

Plunder, you bastards, plunder the past!

I am a remake skeptic…

But here is my heresy.

Remake Darklands, late capitalist game industry, I know you are permanently desperate. And it’s too hard for most modern gamers to find.

Are you afraid because it’s mainly about stabbing robber barons over and over?

Your game could stand to be more romantic

Heh I think about this constantly, it’s always true

sometimes it is very easy to forget that despite the fact that lot of massive corporations try to make the royalties I don’t from my work, I am still making videogames every day, and 12 year old me would not believe that and would be overjoyed that I am making stories for a living

A still from The Seventh Seal. Personified Death plays chess with a road-weary knight.

Soon...

tv static was liminal time in media. it held a weird power bc it indicated that “there was something here, but it’s gone now” or “there is nothing here… yet.” the backrooms wield the same ambiguous menace of an empty stage, but now we get ads when we pause a video. god forbid our minds wander

(sorry all my Skies are the color of developer brainrot lately, we're shipping, and it's either this, or I make a poor attempt to lament ... material reality.

Likely via some primitive, glossolalian keening)

Text from what is probably a chunk of behind-the-scenes game writing in an outline. It is probably a cry for help, and reads: "3.5.4.3 "S_Act1_BlackMilk_Guide". The subheading description is just, "As above, but now, with Cat"

game writing is grave, spiritual work done by uniformly serious people

i just saw a genuine "artists can't be trusted because they deal in abstraction and abstraction is reactionary" take on here. we're definitely reaching the realm of encountering takes i need to immediately log off and go to sleep after seeing

Screenshot of Eldritch 2: the first-person player faces a fishperson in a dungeon.

Screenshot of Eldritch 2: the first-person player faces a cultist leader in a dungeon.

Screenshot of Eldritch 2: the first-person player attacks a fishperson outside a dungeon.

Screenshot of Eldritch 2: the first-person player sneaks near a cultist in a dungeon.

I've been talking openly about it for almost two years, but it's a bit more real now...

Eldritch 2 is coming! Please wishlist it on Steam, and share this post.

store.steampowered.com/app/2279280/...

I take some bloody-minded, duncecap form of pride in the idea that if I tried to tell an AI to write the rest of this game for me, given the parameters- it would Simply refuse.

It'd ask if I was okay, and refer me to a small array of therapists that don't exist.

FALSE KINGDOM, our PWYW game of serving a doomed and horrible monarch, while desperately vying to be his favourite, is ENNIE 2025 nominated!

Tomorrow is Indie-Penance Day on Kotaku! If you have an indie game in development, or a recent release that's been ignored, email me: botherer@gmail.com, with the subject line "INDIE PENANCE 2025".

Please include a store link and a YT link (if possible).

Rules next...

My condolences to every person affected by today's mass layoffs. Just sitting here imagining how nice it would be if the c-suite ever had to pay for the damage they do to people's lives

😭!!!!!!!!!!!