Prepare yourselves, people of the internet, for the August 2022 issue of Defenestration! How are you all doing? Good? Staying hydrated?

This month’s issue is totally weird. I’ve mentioned this before, but it seems like writers are all part of the same strange zeitgeist during each of our reading periods, and Eileen and I see very clear themes and subject matter in many of the poems and stories submitted. Sometimes you can chalk that up to what the market’s doing; some magazine or anthology might have just concluded its selections for a themed issue, and now everyone’s trying to find a home for the very niche story they wrote. That’s only sometimes, though. More often than not, writers and poets are just breathing the same inspirational air.

Time to get back to this comic’s roots: Winslow doing weird and horrifying things to his body that are also somehow cute and charming.

Winslow is the kind of gamer that can’t ever take anything seriously. He also knows deep down that no one, not even a fantasy persona of his own making, could ever be more interesting than his real-life self. I imagine this combination of flippancy and narcissism would annoy anyone trying to navigate a role-playing game with him. Especially when he also knows an interesting collection of vocabulary words.

I dare you to find a tabletop gamer that doesn’t have a box, drawer, attic, garage, or basement filled with unpainted miniatures. It can’t be done.

Creating a character for an RPG is arguably the best part.