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thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Toussaint Egan
@thesaintoftous.bsky.social
3.7K followers 3.5K following 1.6K posts
Writer, Curator, Cultural Omnivore | 1/3 of http://reframenewsletter.online/ | Author of Amnesia: Design Works @lostincult.co.uk // I mostly retweet games + art. Opinions are my own. He/Him | PFP: Kara Xu (Helium Raven) Header: ECHO (2017)
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thesaintoftous.bsky.social
There should be more games inspired by avant-garde stage design.
Luca Ronconi's production of Niccolò Jommelli's opera "Fetonte" Set design by Mauro Pagano (1951-1988) Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer in 1998. Set design by Ralph Koltai (1924-2018) Jean-Christophe Maillot's production of Faust. Set design by Rolf Sachs (b. 1955) Simon Armitage's production of the Odyssey. Set design by Robert Wilson (1941-2025)
November 26, 2025 at 4:35 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Go watch One Battle After Another.
Epic Handshake meme. The text on the left arm reads, "I have friends everywhere," and the arm on the right reads, "Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damn relevant."
November 14, 2025 at 6:26 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
I Am NOT A CoComelon Parent; You Goin' Sit Down and Watch Son of the White Mare, Fantastic Planet, Future Boy Conan, and Brothers Quay shorts.
Son of the White Mare (1981) Fantastic Planet (1973) Future Boy Conan (1978) Street of Crocodiles (1986)
November 12, 2025 at 12:21 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Look— I don't know if a new Half-Life game is getting announced on Nov. 18th.

What I *do* know is that Valve still needs to publish that new edition of Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar they announced last year, so that's about as much as I'm willing to get my hopes up for.
A New Edition of Raising The Bar Is Coming Back into Print in 2025, Expanded to Include the Half-Life Episodes Nearly two decades since it first went out to print, Raising the Bar is set to return with an expanded second edition— offering a comprehensive look into the creation for Half-Life 2. Originally published in 2004, this book captured the story of Half-Life 2's development but missed the episodic content that followed. This new edition concludes the Half-Life 2 development story, with never-before-seen concept art from Episode One and Episode Two, along with ideas and experiments for the third episode that never came to be.
November 11, 2025 at 2:16 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
The Statue of Extra Liberty as seen in Maniac (2018).
November 9, 2025 at 10:51 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
They're the same picture.
November 9, 2025 at 10:23 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Just realized something.
Clavis Shepherd in Genocidal Organ (2017) Det. Kenichi Takabe holding a lighter in Cure (1997) John Paul in Genocidal Organ (2017) Kunio Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) standing over a woman with his hand on her head in Cure (1997)
November 9, 2025 at 10:22 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Logging on to The Forever Winter like
November 9, 2025 at 1:50 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
"Little Godbrand. Little vampire. Little parasite. Little boot weevil who delights in making noise and pretending he is important and dangerous. Are you going to continue questioning me? Are you going to fight me, little Godbrand?!!!"
SpongeBob yelling at Squidward.
November 7, 2025 at 1:46 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
From Jaron Lanier's "You Are Not a Gadget,"

"You have to be somebody before you can share yourself."
It’s early in the twenty-first century, and that means that these words will mostly be read by nonpersons—automatons or numb mobs composed of people who are no longer acting as individuals. The words will be minced into atomized search-engine keywords within industrial cloud computing facilities located in remote, often secret locations around the world. They will be copied millions of times by algorithms designed to send an advertisement to some person somewhere who happens to resonate with some fragment of what I say. They will be scanned, rehashed, and misrepresented by crowds of quick and sloppy readers into wikis and automatically aggregated wireless text message streams. Reactions will repeatedly degenerate into mindless chains of anonymous insults and inarticulate controversies. Algorithms will find correlations between those who read my words and their purchases, their romantic adventures, their debts, and, soon, their genes. Ultimately these words will contribute to the fortunes of those few who have been able to position themselves as lords of the computing clouds. The vast fanning out of the fates of these words will take place almost entirely in the lifeless world of pure information. Real human eyes will read these words in only a tiny minority of the cases. And yet it is you, the person, the rarity among my readers, I hope to reach. The words in this book are written for people, not computers. I want to say: You have to be somebody before you can share yourself.
October 30, 2025 at 11:48 AM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
The Devil and God are raging inside of me.
Screenshot of a Gamesradar news story written by Ashley Bardhan. The headline reads, "Hideo Kojima says AI could "Play a role" in helping ourselves "truly thrive in the 21st century," thought he admits technology devalues art: "Games and art are no longer considered special" Screenshot of a NPR news story written by Terry Gross. The headline reads, "Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro says 'I'd rather die' than use generative AI" Screenshot of a Variety news story written by Elsa Keslassy. The headline reads, "'Mad Max' Director George Miller Says 'AI Is Here to Stay and Change Things': 'It's Way More Egalitarian ' and Will Make Filmmaking 'Available to Anyone Who Has a Calling to It'" A screenshot of a Variety news story written by Elise Shafer. The headline reads, "Paul Schrader Says 'We're Only Two Years Away From the First AI Feature's — and He Has the 'Perfect Script' for It"
October 29, 2025 at 2:00 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
It is possible to feel two things simultaneously. Bemusement at the likelihood that Schrader's likeness will appear in a KojiPro game, and trepidation at that in light of the recent news wrt: Schrader's alleged behavior and conduct towards an ex-employee.

We'll have to see what the courts bear out.
Collage of screenshots from First Reformed starring Ethan Hawke as Reverend Ernst Toller. "wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously. Hope and despair. A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself."
October 29, 2025 at 1:40 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Oh. my. God.
A Screenshot from Paul Schrader's Facebook page. "HIDEO KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS. Got the tour. Got scanned. What a trip." Hideo Kojima (Left) and Paul Schrader (Right) standing side-by-side a life-sized statue of Ludens, the mascot for Kojima Productions. Paul Schrader seated in Kojima Productions" full-body scan room.
October 29, 2025 at 1:40 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Four Thassalophobia-inducing horror games I'm looking forward to 🤿💀🌊

• Full Fathom (@daemonhouse.bsky.social)
• Cold Abyss (Studio [notes.], @neondoctrine.games)
• Meganaut (@rubeki.bsky.social)
• Crathos Deep (@hitboxgames.bsky.social)
Full Fathom | Release Date: 2025 Cold Abyss | Release Date: To Be Announced Meganaut | Release Date: To Be Announced Crathos Deep | Release Date: To Be Announced
October 28, 2025 at 10:14 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Most anticipated 2026 games atm
Resident Evil Requiem | Release date: February 27, 2026 Hunger | Release date: 2026 Valor Mortis | Release date: 2026 007 First Light | Release date: March 27, 2026
October 27, 2025 at 1:35 AM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Four paintings I've enjoyed recently 🧪🪞🐒⛰️
"The Alchemist" (1663) by Cornelis Pietersz Bega (Dutch, b. 1631-1664), oil on panel “The magic mirror (alt. The Earl of Surrey ‘beholding the Fayre Geraldine in the magic mirror’)” (1853) by Edward Henry Corbould (English, b. 1815-1905), watercolor “The Monkey Who Had Seen the World” (1827) by Edwin Landseer (English, b. 1802-1873), oil on panel “Mount Elbrus Covered by Clouds” (1894) by Nikolai Yaroshenko (Ukrainian , b. 1846-1898), oil on canvas
October 26, 2025 at 12:13 AM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Not my home, but I know my way around.
Haven City from Jake II (2003)
October 25, 2025 at 1:32 AM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Thinking about the state of things.
Jeff Daniels as Abe from Looper (2012), seated and leaning forward with his fingers laced over a pile of papers. The subtitle text reads, 'I'm from the future. You should go to China."
October 22, 2025 at 12:46 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Movie time 🍿
A hand holding Blu-ray copies of The Shrouds and Eyes Without a Face A hand holding Blu-ray copies of A History of Violence and Altered States.
October 20, 2025 at 11:46 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Thiel, who does not believe freedom and democracy are compatible, does not believe in climate change (ex. 1) and that regulations on technology — be it A.I., biotech, etc. — should not exist (ex. 2).

It tracks that he would conflate critics of his latter beliefs w/ comparisons to the Antichrist.
There would be a similar gulf between the Founders Fund’s marketing and reality in Thiel’s dealings with Elon Musk. While Thiel had been setting up his investment firms, Musk had set out to create an electric car that could compete head-to-head with the fastest gas-powered vehicles. Improbably, Tesla Motors succeeded, and by 2006, it was giving out test drives in a prototype of its Roadster that could go from 0 to 60 mph in less than 4 seconds. Until that point the company had subsisted, almost entirely, on Musk’s PayPal earnings. But with the car nearing production, Musk needed capital and asked Thiel if he’d be interested in investing. Thiel said no—indicating that he was passing in part because, according to Musk, “he doesn’t fully buy into the climate change thing.” In doing so, and in choosing his own political bias over the audacity of Musk’s bet (not to mention the overwhelming evidence offered by mainstream climate science), Thiel lost out on a chance to own a substantial chunk of a company that would be worth $800 billion by the end of 2020. When a journalist asked about Paul, Thiel could barely muster any enthusiasm—not for Paul, nor for democracy itself. “I’m sort of skeptical of how much voting actually works,” he said, before giving a techno-utopian answer that seemed straight out of Yarvin’s Moldbug. “One of the things I like about technology is that when technology’s un-regulated you can change the world without getting approval from other people. At its best, it’s not subject to democratic control, and not subject to the majority, which I think is often hostile to change.”
October 20, 2025 at 10:42 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
This is far from the first time Thiel has used biblically inflected hyperbole to make an argument.

He predicted the '08 financial crisis in an outlook letter that quoted the Book of Revelation addressed to clients for his former hedge fund Clarium.

From @chafkin.bsky.social's The Contrarian:
Around the same time, Thiel sent an overheated letter to Clarium investors explaining the firm’s economic outlook. Clarium did this regularly, but always under the byline of an analyst; this was Thiel’s first time writing a letter personally, and the result was extreme. In the ten-thousand-word essay, “The Optimistic Thought Experiment,” Thiel argued that the world was heading to end times. Investment analysts often employ religious metaphors, speaking of the “second coming” of bond yields or an equities “apocalypse,” but Thiel was not speaking metaphorically. “The entire human order,” he wrote, “could unravel in a relentless escalation of violence—famine, disease, war, and death . . . Against this future, it is far better to save one’s immortal soul and accumulate treasures in heaven, in the eternal City of God, than it is to amass a fleeting fortune in the transient and passing City of Man.” He made this case with arguments from history and through the liberal use of quotations from the Book of Revelation. Thiel pointed out that because investors couldn’t hope to profit during a future in which everything collapsed, they would continue to systematically overvalue everything—leading to bubbles in housing, tech, and finance. The essay’s title referenced what Thiel regarded as the best-case scenario—an “optimistic” future in which there would be a political backlash against globalization and a catastrophic financial crisis. There were ways to make money on this—Clarium could short stocks, for instance—but Thiel undercut this analysis by focusing on the worst-case scenario, recommending prayer and repentance in lieu of investment analysis. “The agon between globalization and its alternative will be close—at least in the sense that individual choices will prove to be of decisive significance,” he concluded. “In this, we are opposed to the reigning faith in efficient markets. Unlike the faith in efficient markets, however, ours is a faith that seemingly still cannot be named.”
October 20, 2025 at 10:42 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Without downloading anything, where are you mentally right now?
Shaman - The Forever Winter by TigenNas (https://x.com/TigenNas)
October 20, 2025 at 12:08 AM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
The average guys chat vs. an average Young Republicans guys chat
Guys Chat by Alex Krokus Christ in Limbo by Hieronymus Bosch
October 19, 2025 at 8:30 AM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
My reaction to this information:
Redacted
October 18, 2025 at 7:42 PM
thesaintoftous.bsky.social
Reading Max Chafkin's The Contrarian.

Just learned that Peter Thiel was **this** close to being aboard United 93 on September 11th.
As Paypal was preparing to file to go public, Thiel traveled to New York with chief financial officer Roelof Botha for a meeting with bankers from Morgan Stanley. It was September 10, 2001. The meeting that afternoon was a total failure. PayPal confused the bankers—was it a technology company or an unlicensed bank, they wanted to know—and neither man cut an especially impressive figure. Thiel was a thirty-three-year-old conservative political wannabe; Botha was, at twenty-seven, absurdly young and inexperienced for a public company CFO. The Morgan Stanley bankers indicated they weren’t interested, and Thiel and Botha took a car to John F. Kennedy International Airport in the rain, feeling dejected. Their sense of misery grew when their plane, the last United flight of the day, was delayed for hours on the tarmac. Eventually, the crew offered passengers the option to disembark and take a morning flight, but Thiel and Botha opted to sit, grimly, and wait while several passengers elected to get off. They eventually made it home to San Francisco very early the next morning. Hours later, Thiel learned that a San Francisco‒bound United aircraft from Newark Airport—flight number UA 93—had been hijacked and had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. It seemed possible that at least some of the people they'd been with the night before were now dead.
October 18, 2025 at 7:42 PM