First Party has returned, and we're back with the 2.0 version of the polo. What does that mean?

As occasionally happens, our conversation continued after the previous strip, nourished by the rich loam of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. You can get pretty far out there and still remain canonical. I had a bit in there about the pungent natural oils a wookiee paw might secrete, but I removed it because it couldn't be supported by the text. I can't be titillated fully unless my erotic fantasy realms are internally consistent. I've had to disentangle myself from a Trandoshan 3-way ("hrokk'nos") because there was something seriously wrong with their bandoleers.

for a "Han Came First" shirt, which is COMPLETELY YUCK

Word that something called the Florida Family Association had imagined some alternate universe version of Star Wars: The Old Republic was simply too juicy a vittle to resist. They're clearly obsessed with RuPaul, I know that much. Presumably, being a Florida Family Associater involves a tremendous amount of Ru-search. A nontrivial portion of their conceptual argument is grounded in the mental image of a cyborg drag queen version of Darth Vader rendered in such excruciating detail that it is clearly an act of erotic worship as opposed to moral outrage.

You have almost certainly heard of "Retake Mass Effect" by now. One of many grassroots efforts to get a new ending to Mass Effect 3, it’s part community, part online petition, and part (here is where things get complicated) Child's Play Donation Drive. They have stopped taking donations now partly because they basically won and partly because we don't know how to feel about this use of the charity.

You almost certainly know about Draw Something already - like Words With Friends or Hanging With Friends or Inadvertent Castration With Friends, it is an asymmetrical nod to some absolutely commonplace entertainment which modern life has made difficult.

Like any other "interactive experience" from thatgamecompany, it doesn't take a long time to "consume" Journey. This sort of thing used to bother me a lot. I think it's valid to assess how much entertainment you get out of something per dollar, but if it's the only metric it privileges a very specific type of genetic in our discourse. Dear Esther might be a "bad investment" on this classic and utterly pragmatic axis, but it must exist. And we can ensure that it does exist, by being the kind of ecosystem out of the way ideas can grow in.

We got lots of 'em. Lots and lots.

1. Erika and Kenneth redid the PAX Site, and it's awesome. Check it out.

It occurred to us that, like the Council of Elrond, we had the power to unite the mortal races against a common foe. We could just make our own new ending everyone could rally around.

I will be discussing my thoughts on the ending of Mass Effect 3.

Gabriel's Windows Phone started a kind of chain reaction whereby Microsoft slowly began to repossess all of his apostate computing. You come to realize after awhile that you've been taking a kind of half-breath each time, and suddenly all those crazy/interesting/free experiences that were out of your reach can be accessed through the equivalent of a mystic portal right on your desk.

As my Mass Effect conversations with Gabriel became more and more detailed, it became clear that even if someone or something showed up in both our games the particulars could have radical distinctions. Radical really is the word: there are scenes, thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of work, I will never see. The same is also true for him.

To be fair I don’t honestly expect to be killed by a psychopath anytime soon. But the tweets from Mr. Paul Christoforo have certainly been...interesting. I think that anytime someone says they are excited to meet you and that “the police will not stop me.” you should probably pay attention. Honestly as someone who truly enjoys making people angry, the fact that I have now driven another human being to say those words is sort of an achievement.

He's really done it, or perhaps I should say he's done it again: driven a person so absolutely crazy that the weird threats and even disparaging nicknames are free-flowing.

You would think that, after doing almost nothing but play Mass Effect for a week, I would know how to spell the name "Shepard." After the shame of the last strip, I pored over every word in the script with my full consciousness, discovered errors and resolved them; I felt like I was truly at the tiller of my life. But no! I maintain that it is they, they who have spelled Sheperd wrong (they!) but that might not be a strong play rhetorically.