#who is going to crowdfund me to buy the full book?

[cruyffista]

Alessio Tacchinardi, Kakha Kaladze, Massimo Ambrosini and Rui Costa for Dolce & Gabbana, 2003 (photos by Mariano Vivanco for the book Calcio, x).

[aaronsrpgs]

A Worksheet Manifesto (Rough Draft)

The Worksheet Manifesto is an attempt to explain why I'm moving my game design toward something I can print for free at the public library and give away. It's not a scold or a call to action; I buy full-color zines and hardcover books, and I support people charging for their work. This is a personal manifesto—an exercise in self-exploration.

The first reason I pursue this is ACCESS. I want people to be able to find and play my games. (Accessibility is maybe a better word for this, but I don't want it confused with the process through which something is made easier to use for people with disabilities.)

Some of the main barriers I've seen are financial (someone can't afford my games), technological (lack of computers and/or printers makes it more complicated to read my games), and international (shipping to someone outside the U.S. is prohibitively expensive).

Combining these three elements, I realized I wanted my games to be cheap or free. The common "community copies" solution on itch.io is much touted, and for good reason, but as I tried explaining the process to friends who weren't familiar with the site (or who flat-out aren't tech savvy), many responses were confused or frustrated. So I've set most of my games to pay-what-you-want with a suggested price.

Going from computer tech to printer tech, my most recent games were laid out in black and white, without ink-sucking textures (although some still have large spots of black in the art--something I continue to consider). Many American libraries offer limited free printing, and I always hope people will "utilize" the printers at their jobs or schools. I want people to be able to easily print out my games and share them at the table or pass them to friends.

And more selfishly, I hate dealing with fulfillment and shipping. It's stressful for me, it requires money up front to print things, and I'm bad at it, which means shipments go out slow, or not at all if someone lives outside of the U.S. Creating a file that's easy to print hopefully encourages people to create their own copies.

These cheap print copies also hopefully contribute to a feeling of DISPOSABILITY. I grew up with comic books, magazines, newspapers, and mass market paperbacks, and I think these cheap, short slabs of culture helped them feel like someone could engage with them without having to be fancy or educated or in the know. (A lot of us gatekeep ourselves!)

Prices for RPGs, like so many nerd collectibles, have steadily risen at least since the start of the pandemic. Crowdfunders often capitalize on FOMO, encouraging people to go all in on deluxe hardcovers with fabric bookmarks or whatever. And if my experience working at a used game store is anything to go by, lots of those fancy editions go right onto the bookshelf, unread. Don't want to break the spine or get fingerprints on it!

And I guess I'm just against consumerism? If someone wants a nice thing, I hope they get it, but a culture of games as luxury items and status symbols is not something I'm interested in.

So if someone has a game of mine and they don't want it anymore, I hope they pass it on, put it in a little free library, or recycle it.

And those dirty little printouts of my games? I want people to touch them and write them. I want TACTILITY. This is partially a usability issue: 300-page hardcovers are hard to find information in, and they're heavy if you have to lug them to a friend's house.

So I try to design games where everything a player (including the GM) needs is on, at most, three sheets of paper. I want them to be able to spread a couple pages out and take in the shape of the game they're about to play. I want them to circle things and make notes in the margins. Moving a pencil around does wild things to your brain, the same way that picking at a guitar or molding clay does. It focuses attention in interesting ways.

And in the end, you hopefully have a personalized article of play. And if you spill beer on it, no one's worried about replacing that $50 hardcover.

Speaking of beer, I want my games to be available to and contribute to COMMUNITY. As the pandemic started, I retreated into lots of online spaces, and those were absolutely vital to my survival. But I lost touch with lots of my friends and acquaintances in my city. I want to reconnect with them.

One of my favorite cartoonists, Mark Connery, is known for drawing little zines and just...leaving them all over. Coffee shops, art galleries, bathrooms. And when I think of him, I think of an artist responding directly to the places around him. Is it sad that some of this work is probably "lost" to all readers other than the person that happens across the zine? A little bit. But I think that comes from a bad part of my brain, the part that wants to own things.

I certainly don't want the entirety of my own work collected and widely distributed. Some of those things were specific responses to specific times that I've moved past. Some were bad! But I want to keep responding to my specific times and my specific place. I want to give things to friends (even if they just pass them on or recycle them). I want to give a game to someone at a zine fest and have them recognize my name from a zine they read in a coffee shop bathroom. And maybe they'll give me a zine in return.

My last hangup is MODULARITY. First, similar to tactility, I want to be able to give a player only the rules that matter to them. Character creation and basic rules? Here's a page. And once you're familiar with that and we've entered a downtime phase, here's a page with those options. You want to start a farm? Here's a page. I want it to feel like printing coloring pages for kids or ripping out my favorite magazine articles. These are the parts that matter. And if they stop mattering, you can get rid of them.

But I also want modularity on a system level. I want to add a subsystem to game as I think of it. I want to throw in an adventure pamphlet when it comes to me. I can keep them all in a little box, like a care package from my past self, and when it's time to run a game, I can dig around like a verminous animal and build my nest out of the best bits.

In CONCLUSION, I want to reiterate that this is a personal practice, and I'm not criticizing people who work differently. I used to work differently, and in the future, I'll probably work differently again.

This is simply the way I've identified what's important to me, set that up against the things that cause me to stumble, taken advantage of the privileges I have, and tried my best to bring that all together in a way that keeps me excited about my own work.

[queerbauten]

Your Blixa Bargeld/EN iceberg is really obscure! It would be great if you could share any links or sources of what you included! Thanks :)

Howdy, ‘non! Here’s some explanation of things. I didn’t include anything above or at waterline—I assume I don’t need to. ;)

Note: I don’t have the mental wherewithal to warn for every possible trigger, but know that this post will contain talks of violence, homophobia, drug use, and death. There’s also some NSFW in there.

alright let’s go

Andi: a play by Peter Zedek in which Neubauten performed. Blixa openly hated the project from the get-go, only taking it to pay his phone bill and avoid potential homelessness. (Source)

The Supporter Projects: the crowdfunding projects for Neubauten’s (and, currently, Blixa’s solo) works. Check out neubauten.org and blixa-bargeld.com for more info. Liebeslieder: a 1994 documentary about Neubauten. It’s available for purchase on most major streaming platforms.

Nihil: an Uli M Schueppel film scored by Alex and featuring Blixa. anbb: a music project between Alva Noto and Blixa. Wolfgang Müller: one of the many men Blixa has kissed over the years. Wolfgang’s also the founder of Die Tödliche Doris (a band that were very close to Neubauten, with Blixa executive-producing one of their albums) and the author of Geniale Dilletanten, a book about… the Geniale Dilletanten.

The female Neubauten: Gudrun Gut and Beate Bartel, who were part of Neubauten early on before leaving for other projects. (Bettina Köster and Blixa recorded together for an *album* called Einstürzende Neubauten; however, that was released as “köster / bargeld”.

Die Haut: Jochen’s (and later Rudi’s) former band. They collaborated with numerous Neubauten-adjacent musicians, including Nick Cave, Kid Congo Powers, Anita Lane, and Blixa.

Automat: one of Jochen’s current bands.

"straight wretches": an Andrew quote from a fan translation of No Beauty Without Danger. For context: Alex had said “Blixa and Mufti [had fallen] in love with each other”. He called it a “true love story”, running it parallel to his romance with Christiane F.. Andrew did not like Alex’s assertion, saying:

“The thing with Blixa and FM was no love story at all. Nonsense. No. We are straight wretches. We are heterosexual. It was not a love story. It was a friendship that lasted 16 years. That doesn’t make it a love story. But actually, even if it was, what difference would it make? Of course we know and love one another.”

The official translation does not use the phrase “straight wretches”; it opts for “real men” instead. It also includes a line where Andrew concedes he doesn’t know for sure that Blixa and Mufti didn’t have something.

Hackedepicciotto: a musical act consisting of Alex and his wife, Danielle de Picciotto.

the Alles in Allem press release: what it says on the box. The link’s giving me a 404 error right now, but it was up until quite recently. Among other things, it affirms that Blixa meant it when he said “nonbinary”.

The Dschungel sheets: an art piece Blixa made for the Dschungel, a gay bar in West Berlin. The piece consisted of real semen on bedsheets. It got taken down not long after it was erected. (If you join Blixa’s solo Supporter project, you can get the full story behind the piece. 👀 👀 )

Members of the Ocean Club: an album by Gudrun Gut, featuring collaborations between her and her friends. Blixa appears on “Die Sonne”. According to the liner notes (I have a physical copy of the album), Blixa was deliberately the only non-woman on the album.

The Supporter singles and albums: singles and albums released exclusively for Neubauten’s Supporters over the years. Some elements of these releases (for example, most recently, “La Guillotine de Magritte”) have been released to the general public. However, most of them remain exclusive. (Check out their Discogs profile for more info.)

Desire Will Set You Free: a 2015 indie film by Yony Leyser exploring queer Berlin. Blixa and Jochen have cameos.

The post-88 lyrics to "Seele brennt": so, “Seele brennt” was released in 1986. It contains a verse where Blixa says he’ll be dead in two years due to his drug use. When that didn’t happen, the verse was rewritten to say he would have been dead in two years’ time. The earliest footage I know of featuring the reworked lyrics is from the Moers Festival of 1990 (which you can see in Liebeslieder).

Jever Mountain Boys: a ‘90s country band featuring—among others—Alex, Jochen, and Mufti.

Mufti beating up Blixa: Rowland S. Howard (who performed on “Durstiges Tier”) explained that “Blixa had his body miked up and they [Neubauten] were punching him to get a bass drum beat” for the song. Rowland doesn’t specify which member(s) did it. However, the Kalte Sterne liner notes list Blixa as “body” and Mufti as “body drumming” for that track.

"Presence": members of Neubauten will sometimes get “presence” credits. Mark got one on “Durstiges Tier”, and Andrew got one on “Beauty”. Presumably, it’s a way for these members to get performer credits, even if they didn’t contribute.

The Some Bizzare row: Some Bizzare are Neubauten’s former record label. They have consistently withheld royalties from the band. neubauten.org has disclaimers on parts of their website discouraging fans from buying records that were released by Some Bizzare.

The Headcleaner U-Bahn schematic: Headcleaner is a book of Neubauten’s lyrics up to and including Ende Neu. It includes a U-Bahn-style schematic by Blixa that shows how various Neubauten songs are connected to each other.

firefighter Rudi: Rudi was a firefighter before becoming a full-time musician.

Long-haired teenage Blixa: what it says on the box.

Grandmother Cash: a pseudonym Blixa used for 2-Kut’s Rock That!

The exact story of the firebombing: for context, “the firebombing” refers to the time Blixa firebombed his high school before being expelled (and prohibited from attending public school anywhere in West Germany). Blixa tells the full story of what happened in 233 Celsius - Ein Feuerbuch, which is only available in German (and not widely available in German, at that). (As with the Dschungel sheets, you can get the full story if you join Blixa’s solo Supporter project. 👀 👀 )

Toni Kater: a German musician with whom Rudi has collaborated.

Blixa actually has parents in fact there is photo evidence: the most obscure fact of them all here ya go :)

[debwalsh]

Stucky/Marvel Artbooks for sale! Each of these artbooks were crowdfunded by artist Kaitlin Wadley (@dorkbaitart on IG and Tumblr) on Kickstarter.  All are out of print now, and only Anagnorisis is available to buy as a PDF from the artist's store - https://www.etsy.com/listing/472123026/anagnorisis-an-mcu-artbook-digital-pdf I pledged for four copies each time, and my inscribed copies are precious to me. But it's time to let the other 3 copies I have of each book go to someone else who can cherish this amazing art. Besides, I own prints of a lot of this art, and quite a few originals - this is how I spent my money before I discovered pins! If you're interested in prints, Kaitlin's Society6 store can be found at https://society6.com/dorkbait.  It looks like a lot of pieces have been retired over the years, sadly, but there are still some stunning pieces available. Each copy is signed by the artist (only mine were personalized). I'm asking for roughly my Kickstarter pledge per copy, plus postage. Shipping to US addresses only, and postage will be calculated based on your location and the total weight. While these are not hardcovers, the paper is a heavy quality stock, so the books aren't light, either! The series includes 5 titles. The Inktober volumes each have a running narrative thread throughout the month, framing the stunning art. * Anagnorisis - MCU 2014-2016 artbook, 64 plates (full color) - $60 plus postage * Recapitulation - Bucky Barnes Inktober 2015 artbook, 35 plates (black and white/grayscale) - $30 plus postage * Saudade - Inktober 2016 artbook, 35 plates (black and white/grayscale) - $30 plus postage * The Sublimation - Inktober 2017 artbook, 35 plates (black and white/grayscale) - $30 plus postage * Miegakure - MCU artbook, 48 plates (full color and black and white/grayscale, floral theme) - $40 plus postage Comment to claim here on IG. Payment by PayPal F&F Only, due within 24 hours of me giving you your total. Thanks for looking! #stuckyart #buckybarnesart #marvelart #fanart #artcollections https://www.instagram.com/p/CcRyllEOf7j/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[exosmutfactory]

(3/4) the story is SO good that it feels like I should pay for it!! Like seriously I can see an actual book! Authornim if ever you get noticed and published I’ll buy it for sure!! Anyway I have to read chapter 5 ASAP so I can be up to date with the story! I was a little discourage to read when my messages didn’t get through and I was missing the interactions… It’s always so much more interesting to know what the author has to say about the story…

Thank you so much lovely 🥺🥺🥺 actually, I have a little dream/secret to share...

I have been thinking about self publishing Six Phases. I got papers full of original character names, I downloaded a kindle book program, and I've always wanted to have a physical copy of it in my hands. If I actually get the balls to do it, I'll show you the pretty book cover 😢🥺 its so beautiful and I feel that it represents the main characters well. Call me too independent but I don't want no one touching my story - except in real life Jenny who helped me edit chapter 6 😂 She's a dear - and has a newfound dislike for the word "orbs" HAHAHA

I also am a part of the crowdfunding program with her on Asianfanfics since I plan to be writing many stories for years to come. (Between my daily things, since I'm always doing something now). I'd link my paypal me link here but I'm hella shy LMAO and nothing is mandatory or anything. I just have the option there.

I also think you will like the future plans I have for Six Phases 🙊😇 no major spoilers but! I can't let a good thing go hehehe💫📝🔥💨 Thank you so so much, that means the world to me 😢 I'll keep you updated on those plans, hmm?

You need to read chapter 5 asap~ but take your time because its 22.6k and a lot goes down (down, baby - I had to, I'm sorry 😳🌸). I have just one warning for that chapter:

🎧🎶🔊

I missed interactions with you too. Feel free to talk my ear off at any time, it's nice having someone to "be loud" (aka my talkative self poppin' out 😳) with 😊💗💗💗 You are always welcome here - and to hear my long ramblings about this story, gosh, I'm sorry 😂😂😅💖

[jackie-talks-about-starkid]

The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals (Rewatch #11, 11/20/2020)

YouTube publish date: December 23, 2018

Number of views on date of rewatch: 4, 394, 741

Original Performance Run: October 11 - November 4, 2018 at the Matrix Theater in Los Angeles

Ticket price: General Admission - $37, Priority - $69      Digital Ticket: $15      Rush Ticket via TodayTix: $18

Director: Nick Lang

Music and Lyrics: Jeff Blim

Book: Matt Lang and Nick Lang

Cast album price and availability: $9.99 on iTunes      Release date: December 23, 2018

Parody or original: original content, slightly inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Funding: $127,792 by 3,419 backers via Kickstarter (x)      Original Goal: $60,000

Main cast and characters

Paul - John Matteson

Emma - Lauren Lopez

Ted - Joey Richter

Charlotte - Jamie Lyn Beatty

Bill - Corey Dorris

Professor Hidgens - Robert Manion

Sam/General McNamara - Jeff Blim

Alice/Greenpeace Girl - Mariah Rose Faith

Musical numbers

     Act I

“The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals” Characters: Ensemble “ La Dee Dah Dah Day” Characters: Ensemble “What Do You Want, Paul?” Characters: Mr. Davidson and Paul “Cup of Roasted Coffee” Characters: Nora, Zoey, and Emma “Cup of Poisoned Coffee” Characters: Nora, Zoey, Hot Chocolate Boy, and Ensemble “Show Me Your Hands” Characters: Sam, Police Woman, Police Man “You Tied Up My Heart” Characters: Sam and Charlotte “Join Us (And Die)” Characters: Charlotte and Sam

     Act II

“Not Your Seed” Characters: Alice and friends “Show Stoppin’ Number” Characters: Professor Hidgens “America Is Great Again” Characters: General McNamara and Ensemble “Let Him Come” Characters: Ensemble “Let It Out” Characters: Paul and Ensemble “Inevitable” Characters: Paul, Ensemble, and Emma

Notable Notes:

The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals won 12 2019 BroadwayWorld Los Angeles Awards (x)

Best Musical - Local

Choreography - Local: James Tolbert

Costume Design - Local: June Saito

Director of a Musical - Local: Nick Lang

Featured Actor in a Musical - Local: Robert Manion (Joey Richter and Corey Dorris were the other two nominees in this category)

Featured Actress in a Musical - Local: Jaime Lyn Beatty (Mariah Rose Faith was also nominated)

Leading Actor in a Musical - Local: Jon Matteson

Leading Actress in a Musical - Local: Lauren Lopez

Lighting Design - Local: Sarah Petty

Musical Director - Local: Matt Dahan

Scenic Design - Local: Corey Lubowich

Sound Design - Local: Ilana Elroi and Brian Rosenthal

Cultural Context: 2018

The #MeToo movement originated by Tarana Burke gains international popularity on social media

The revival of Queer Eye premiers on Netflix

Beyoncé headlines Coachella (#Beychella), becoming the first black woman to do so for the music festival

Megan Markle marries Prince Harry

Avengers: Infinity War opens in theaters on April 27th

Content Analysis:

The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals has the most original concept of a musical I can think of for any piece of musical theatre, on Broadway or off. It is a musical that is focused on Paul, a guy who, believe it or not, doesn't like musicals, but due to a mysterious zombie-like infection brought to his town, Hatchetfield, finds himself stuck in an apocalyptic scenario in which anyone can be infected by a hive-mind that forces anyone it infects to behave as if they were in a musical. Because of this, the only people who actually perform musical numbers in the show are those around Paul who are infected with this musical disease, which makes each musical performance all the more dramatic, as well as allows for the acting of the main characters to be much more at the center of attention than they would normally be if the characters were expected to sing out their feelings as if the audience were watching them develop through the lens of a traditional musical.

The strong book and emphasis on the characterization of the small main ensemble highlights the incredibly strong performances by the actors. The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals is an interesting work in StarKid's repertoire in that the characters represented onstage are the most 'normal' characters the audience has seen in a StarKid universe. By now, the Starkid audience is used to seeing either parodies of well-known works, such as Harry Potter or the DC comic universe, inventive imaginings of other universes or periods of time, such as Starship or Firebringer. Yet, this production emphasizes the kind of characters and settings one sees in everyday life rather than the characters one sees in a sci-fi novel or fantasy world. The characters are played to represent a specific type of character often seen in media, and specifically mimic horror movie tropes with a comedic twist. For example, Professor Hidgens represents the off-kilter scholarly type, Paul is the everyday man dragged into the evil schemes of an unknown being's plot, Emma is the relatable final girl, etc. Yet, these character types and what they represent mirror the kind of everyday people we see in reality. Sure, they are written and played with comedic intent but their lives and place in the plot are human enough that the audience does not need to make the make-believe leap of connecting with non-human or glorified human characters-these people ARE human. Emma is an intelligent woman whose adventurous life turned into one full of grief for her sister and finds herself stuck in a terrible job in the hometown she tried so hard to get away from. Paul is a simple man playing the reluctant hero, but whose heart and genuine care for the people he is close to reminds us of the best of humanity when our society is constantly filled with examples of our worst behaviors. Bill just wants a relationship with the daughter he's drifting away from, Charlotte just wants her husband to love her, and Ted is there because, let's be honest here, we all know a Ted.

The characters also happen to be played by actors the audience would not expect to play that specific character type. For example, Joey Richter is known for playing lovable, funny, and relatable characters in StarKid's works, yet in The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals, he plays the most morally repugnant yet incredibly hilarious characters in the show and he plays that part so well and so convincingly that it's hard to believe he's actually playing against his type. Jaime Lyn Beatty, like other StarKid works, performs a strong, comedic character type as she always does, yet her performance as Charlotte has the most dynamic internal life of any character the StarKid audience has seen her play.

The most notable performance comes from Jon Matteson who plays Paul. His role as the protagonist, who is onstage nearly the entire, time holds the piece and the universe of the story together so perfectly. His dry delivery and incredible comedic timing work so well for the character that it feels as though you can go up to Matteson right after the finale and expect to talk to Paul himself because he embodies the role so well. Matteson’s performance feels so natural and honest that it's heartbreaking, even for the most fanatic musical theatre nerd, to watch him realize that he's fallen victim to the Apotheosis and turns into the thing he hates the most-a musical theatre character.

A horror-comedy musical is a hard thing to pull off, especially on a budget that was almost entirely crowdfunded, and even harder to execute successfully, which is why the only few commercial horror-musical comedy staples I can think of at the moment art Little Shop of Horrors, Sweeney Todd, and to a certain extent, Heathers. Yet the consistent hard work that goes into creating a StarKid musical and the unique environment that process produces makes anything seem possible and destined for success. The level of creativity going into this production company and the work they create as a team is something that just cannot be done with traditional musical theatre as seen on Broadway because of such large overhead and emphasis on creating a profit rather than creating art. There have been and will continue to be many different creative teams making unique musicals for the general public, but taking into account global accessibility for all demographics and concept originally, The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals proves StarKid continues to take the lead and doesn’t need the exclusion of any demographic in order to do so.

P.S. Happy Black Friday! Don’t forget to get in line to buy your Wiggly dolls ;)

[rustbeltjessie]

Five years ago, I began putting a book together—a collection of my writings themed around punk music/punk subculture. They were all written between ‘99 and 2014, and had previously appeared in my own zines that had since gone out of print, or other zines or online magazines that had gone out of print/gone dark; style-wise, they ran the gamut from CNF to lyric essay to music criticism. I decided to crowdfund and self-publish the book, but at that point I didn’t really know what I was doing in regards to either crowdfunding or publishing full books. The book was almost ready to go but the artist I’d commissioned never finished the cover art, and my crowdfunding campaign hadn’t been entirely successful, and I wound up not having enough money to publish it.

About a year after I realized I couldn’t do it the way I’d initially planned, the book was picked up by a small press. My plan was to buy enough author copies to fulfill the initial crowdfunded preorders, and hopefully sell even more than that. With the help of an editor, I partially rewrote some older pieces and wrote some new ones to flesh it out a bit more. They found someone to do the cover and interior art, and put up a preorder page; I got blurbs from some of my favorite writers. It was all basically ready to go. But shit happened, and the press folded, and the book was once again dead in the water. (I’m not naming the press here, because my intention here is not to call anyone out. The people involved in all that are friends of mine, and as a small press owner myself I understand that shit happens. The saddest part about that whole thing is that I don’t get to use the cover and interior art we had, because it was amazing.)

I’ve recently realized that I need to get the book out in some way, because I need to put it behind me. For one thing, I feel badly that the people who crowdfunded or preordered never received anything. For another, I just need to move on, and I can’t fully move on until I get it out into the world. So I’ve decided to self-release it. For right now, I’m only making a digital version. I know, I know, print is way better, but I don’t have the funds to print it right now, and I’m certainly not going to ask people to pre-pay for it a third time. I’ve redone it somewhat—took out some of the weaker pieces, added in some others I’ve written in the past three years—and I’ve used my own artwork for the interior and done the cover in a zine-y/Xerox art style. I’ve uploaded it to Payhip, for a sliding-scale, pay-what-you-want price. This way, people who already paid for it (or just can’t afford it otherwise) can download it for free, and other people who can/want to throw a few $$ my way can do that. Most importantly: finally, finally, five years later, What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk will be released unto the world. — Here’s what some rad people had to say about WWTAWWTAP in its original incarnation: Love letters to way-too-late whiskey-drunk nights, stolen hearts and stolen kisses, small- town parking lots and bad decisions and even badder girls, WWTAWWTAP is a gritty and gorgeous series of riffs on living and loving punk. Like your very first show all over again, it'll set your blood on fire. —Sarah McCarry, author of the Metamorphoses trilogy and editor/publisher of the Guillotine series What We Talk About When We Talk about Punk distills wild nights of loud music, cheap whisky, and fugitive romance into a pure tonic. Jessie Lynn McMains’s voice is as indelible as a stick-and-poke tattoo and her autobiographical stories vividly capture the highs and lows of punk-rock youth. Pull on your leather jacket, grab a bottle of something, climb up onto the roof, and read this book. —Jeff Miller, author of Ghost Pine: All Stories True Wearing music like a jacket, that’s one of the things Jessie says about herself in these pages. I find that very admirable and inspiring. It gives a wonderful perspective to not only observe oneself in the moment, and in the past, but to feel the effect of that topic of study and passion on you, pressed against your skin. Jessie’s very subjective approach succeeds, and doesn’t fall into, impenetrable in-crowd self absorption, because she is smart enough to allow an adequate amount of objectivity and analysis to let her audience vibrantly see and feel her own experiences as if we are there with her. Music is a good reference point because lyrics, rhythm, and melody hit deep beyond the intellect into the emotions. You can always put on a CD, or vinyl record, or cassette and be transported to other places and times. These personal essays did this very thing to me, like listening to music. She becomes the jacket that we put on as we hear the lyricism of her stories. We are always with Jessie in her writings. The hyper-awareness that she uses to capture her memories to be pondered again and again, as we read on, immersing ourselves in her writing, is crucial. We are reading something that is alive and learning it’s own lessons. We can picture her being transformed by her own documenting of her experiences, becoming a complex being, a well informed member of humankind. She is infused with the playfulness and philosophy found in music and she demonstrates the frightening willingness to view oneself through a microscope. I find this fascinating. Therefore, because of this heart-on-her-sleeve writing style, when we allow ourselves to engage with her words on the page, to be as vulnerable as she has allowed herself to be, we too are transformed. Her words have gone from jacket to skin. We are there feeling her sexually charged reaction to Rock and Roll. We experience the sensual allure of the human body. With her we dive head first into decadence, decay, nostalgia, and hope. Her bouts of loneliness and need for community are palpable. We are bruised by the violence, the drugs, the suffering. We are stifled and also warmed by the dying and the regenerating of a constantly changing musical style. We witness the passing of friends and idols. We share in her understanding of what it means to be an outcast, and more specifically, how it feels to be a female outcast, to be a mother and a rebel. Through the willingness to wear this book like a jacket, like a skin, we not only see who Jessie is but we learn about the daily life behind the music, of people, inspired by their own creativity and the creativity of others, trying to simply be, to live a life worth living. This isn’t just a collection of diary entries, a memoir, it is an opportunity to look at oneself. Why are you a punk? Or perhaps even more importantly, why aren’t you a punk? —John “Jughead” Pierson, podcaster (“Jughead’s Basement”), musician (Even in Blackouts, founding member of Screeching Weasel), author Jessie Lynn McMains weaves the threads of her own life with a typewriter ribbon on a loom fashioned from melted records and empty 40's. The end result is fascinating, an ultrapersonal look at a life shaped by punk, forged by punk, fired by punk. What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk has music at its core and surrounding it on all sides, but its main muscle is the reaction to that, the response. Thoughts thought while listening to a perfect mixtape that takes you far away from the blah street you've found yourself living on (and a secret peek at the science behind that perfect tape), the thrill when a cute girl comes into your crappy job and gets why the 1" button on your jacket is so important. Notes scrawled on diner napkins and on the back of show flyers, now compiled into book form! —Ocean Capewell, author of The Most Beautiful Rot and High On Burning Photographs zine At 16 I cut my hair with a razor and dyed it black, looking at my reflection in the mirror that night I was convinced I was the spit of Richard Hell. When I think back through my own punk history, the bands, the friendships and the crushes; the obsessions that took over my life, led me to zines and the community I was desperately searching for, I can see with perfect clarity how I arrived at this point. As an adult woman these things are intrinsic parts of me. And that’s what Jessie’s writing does, it kicks you in the gut then hands you a cold beer. She knows. Jessie is the real deal; she is the girl Cometbus, one of the great zinesters of our time. If you want me, I’ll be in my room listening to my tapes. —Cherry Styles, writer, editor/publisher of The Chapess — You can download it here. Then listen to the official soundtrack here. (Pretend it’s on a tape, okay?) xoxo, the writer formerly known as Jessica Disobedience

[dykedteach]

Black nail polish, oil paints, overalls, and space

black nail polish: do you have a bucket list? if so, what are the top three things?

I didn’t really, but I’ve developed a “prison list” since lockdown - as soon as all of this is under control, my top three things are to go home and see my family, take my mum out to her favourite greek place, and then head across to wales to go and see my bestie’s new place.

oil paints: what would you title the autobiography of your life so far?

maybe something like, “wait what?” just to really hammer home how often i need to double triple check things with people because of my attention span/auditory delay/who i am as just like a person

overalls: what would you do with one billion dollars?

okay so that’s roughly £800 mil. I give my two adult siblings £1.5 mil each and put £1m into locked high interest rate accounts for my kid brothers. Help my parents to buy a decent house, family cars for each of them, enough for them to start their own small businesses from home to keep them busy and keep my mum from having to do physical work, and then enough for them to go on holidays and pay the bills and never have to worry about financial security again. Let’s call that £5m. Sort my grandparents and uncle out with nice places to live, and enough money to securely live there. Drop half a mil on each of my closest friends heads, enough so that they can all buy property or set up a business or travel the world or chase their passions, whatever. So far, I’m down a whole £15 million, and I’ve taken care of everyone in my immediate circle.

Donate a million to directly fund my old workplace. Donate another two to my current workplace. Donate a million to the UK hospital that kept my younger brother alive when he had cancer, donate another to the US hospital that did the same. £20 mil down.

I buy up a few properties in areas I’d like to travel to, New York, Paris, London, Athens, Amsterdam, Rome, etc. Cute flats, nothing too fancy. I make arrangements in most of them (definitely not the London one, as I’d use that too often, and maybe one or two others I’m not sure) to have a few local students stay in them to keep them from being empty, and then have them free for me to stay in during the summer. Let’s be very generous and give that another £20 mil budget. So I’m at £40 mil. 

I’d want one real nice base home somewhere near my family in England. Maybe somewhere coastal, too. I’d learn to drive, get a nice mid range electric car. Buy a shop and turn it into my dream florist-bookshop-cafe. Hire a florist, get them to teach me bits on the job (I’d mostly be doing the book bits until I learn the ropes, I feel). Hire servers. Paint the whole place bright yellow, inside and out. Have little tables outside. Buy local, make everything in house, learn how to make excellent bread, pay staff and local suppliers a generous wage, and sell as cheaply as I possibly can.  Keep it as a passion project. Have my nice home, full of books and postcards and dying flowers from the shop, a nice big kitchen with a standing mixer and an island, a wild garden with stepping stones and a pond and overgrown flowers, room for friends to stay over, and a huge bed for me. Buy myself nice things, do a style overhaul, pay for cooking lessons. Let’s say £60 million to live on, with all these things. Keep a small business surviving, nice house, car, money in case I have a family, in case I need to pay for IVF, plenty to live on. Bank most of it, live off of the interest. Drop into that money on the daily when I see crowdfunding projects, or struggling local businesses, or if some kids are having a cake sale outside Tescos and I feel like paying five grand for a cupcake.

that still leaves me with £700 million. that’s the money i’d spend recklessly, throw at every fund and charity i can think of, try and help the most vulnerable where possible, the kind of dumb shit that real billionaires out there could be doing, paying off student loans and medical debt and all that cool shit, and still being rich enough myself that i can live a happy secure life and still be able to donate almost all of it when I die

this....got a little long winded. oops

space: do you have a desk/workspace and how is it organised/not organised?

I have a workspace right now, it is....my bed! I’ve been working from my bed for the past five weeks! it’s been! yeah! I have a broken ikea lap desk, and i pile cushions up behind me, and i try to make sure i don’t get under the covers when i’m in work mode, but that’s it. in theory, i’m supposed to clear my bedside table each morning to make way for notebooks and pens and folders, but i don’t.

thanks for the ask! sorry it ran away a little!

[planetoban]

Savin’s Answers from Twitter, Part 5!

Pretty much done with the backlog; this post covers tweets from November 2018 through May 2019

As always, tweets are in order from most to least recent, and answers may not 100% true/canon since things are bound to change during production of the sequel. Text is unedited save for formatting; in a few places I added [comments] for context.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Also: If you’re going to ask Savin something, please be respectful and appropriate. He’s a person just like you and me.

-

@NekoItoi: Will the bluray be released for Region A or solely region B? As I really want to finally own Oban in hd

@EiffelSavin: The bluray will be crowdfunded and region free

(x)

@Helloworld1012: Maybe U could get a adventures of young Aikka series funded

@EiffelSavin: Actually we're developping both a sequel and a spinof, which would reveal a lot about Aikka's past...

(x)

[talking about rick]

@Antarasis: Pretty metalhead.  👍 And losing your ability to pursue your #1 passion is such a heavy hitting topic. Was interesting to see a character confronted with it. Especially to see an admirable character give in to anger because of helplessness and make him act unpleasant/unlikable.

@EiffelSavin: I agree. Characters that are not just plain black and white are very interresting to follow.

(x)

@Helloworld1012: out of curiosity, Do U [Savin and Thomas] prefer the Eva & Jordan romantic pairing and prefer that Eva & Jordan be a couple or the Eva & Aikka romantic  pairing & prefer that Eva & Aikka become a couple? I heard from a discord chat that U both have different views in

‏@Helloworld1012: who Eva should end up with. And do Romantically pair Eva with one of them.

@EiffelSavin: I don't remember disagreeing with Thomas over this and would rather leave the choice to the audience - both relationships are important ! This being said, the question of who Eva likes most may resurface in the sequel, if we get to make it...

(x)

@Xanidos43: is it still possible to get the newsletter? i would love to support and buy the blu ray upon release.

@EiffelSavin: There will be more newsletters to come. For now just register on the bluray page of the http://obanstarracers.com  website

(x)

@Helloworld1012: Hey I’ve noticed for quite a while, that Aikka and Eva in the concept art physically look to be about the same age, please give us this one hint. Is the fact that Eva and Aikka look physically the same age in the concept art have something to do with the plot or OSR

@Helloworld1012: 2? Or is it just because you and @Thomasintokyo just wanted to show what Eva and Aikka could possible look like when their older?

@EiffelSavin: One possible direction for the sequel is for it to take place a few years after the original show. Hence the concept art. But this is still under discussion and would also depend on who finances the series

(x)

@Antarasis: Can we have a show about poor Muir, haha? Oh god, if I'd have the time I'd so make a parody show about Muir. There should be Muirs in Skyrim instead of mudcrabs. And Muir should get a skin in FightCrab. x'D Aaah, the potential of Muir. Please don't commit suizide, little crab.

@EiffelSavin: I could easily imagine a series about the adventures of "young muir"(!) Not sure we could get it funded though ☺️

(x)

@AldrenMcneal: Hi there! i recently watched an Oban Star Racers video and found out a potential sequel was in the works. i found your twitter and realized it was announced back in 2017. How much progress have you made since then? Do you have the story planned out? Thanks!‏

@EiffelSavin: The story is planned out but we need investors - and time as well, since we're all involved in other projects too. Hopefully a successful bluray release we'll help refocuss everyone's energy

(x)

@Bfahome: I heard rumors in the past that there's a "full" version of Oban's English opening, "Never Say Never".  Are those rumors true and, if so, who would be the ones to have it?  Would it even exist still?

@EiffelSavin: I'm not sure about this. I think the only version I ever heard was the opening version. For your info our US partners felt very strongly about using that song.  I gave my OK because it was pretty catchy, even though the op credits were created to match Yoko Kanno's title song.

(x)

@EiffelSavin: Thanks a lot to the 1000+ #obanstarracers fans who took the time to answer our little survey. Here's what you answered to one of the first question asked. Among the alien racers, it seems Spirit made quite an impression #animation #anime #surveys #jetix #nhkbs #toowam

@MattGiusti: The lack of Sul on this list is very sad.

@EiffelSavin;: Sul came right after and would certainly have fared better if the question was who's your favorite alien character. Bear in mind that the list of choices here included some of the main characters of the show, like Jordan and Aikka and that one could only give a single answer.

@rhodanum: I'm quite surprised at how high Spirit ranked (higher than Stan, Don and Maya!) and that Jordan ranked higher than Aikka. The latter is especially surprising, given the gigantic number of fanworks (fanart, fanfic) featuring Aikka or Aikka x Eva, compared to Jordan or Jordan x Eva

@EiffelSavin: Aikka ranked first in some territories but overall Jordan came first - among the voters at least. I would be interesting to see if female and male voters voted equally - or predominantly - for one or the other...

(x) (x)

@GabrielAubry2: What happened to Prince Aikka after he returns to Nourasia? Won’t the Crogs on the planet be angry at what he did on Oban?

@EiffelSavin: Good question indeed but bear in mind their leader crashed on Oban and that there were fierce rivalries between the rest of chiefs. This must have slowed them somehow. Plus there's a new Avatar! 🙂

(x)

@RakkuBoi: ust took the survey. It's probably asking for too much but one idea I expressed was the possibility of including autographes. Maybe on the art cards that might be included? Your's or @Thomasintokyo would be AMAZING.

@EiffelSavin: Point noted 😉

(x)

@kueekueeng: from a fan who's been waiting for years, is "The 2 Queens"  movie ever going to be released?‏

@EiffelSavin: Finding funding on the French market as proven more difficult than anticipated but we haven't given up and have also started working on an animated series adaptation, possibly with a more "radical" artistic direction. More news hopefully soon...

(x)

@SonicMrgame2017: Which program you guys used for animation?

@EiffelSavin: Here are the programs the team used for the animation: Pencils (well sharpened), large and thin Erasers, and most important: thousands and thousands of sheets of Paper 😉

@SonicMrgame2017: Yeah, but, the animation was done in cels or you guys used some kind of digital ink? PD: Respects!!!! I love handrawn animation

@EiffelSavin: Oban used digital paint and compositing. When we produced the series it was the very last days of painted cells in Japan, where it lasted longer than in other countries. I think the last series that used painted cells was "Sazae-san". 🙂

(x)

@quantum_cuboid: QUESTION. Can you give us any insight as to which characters will make a return in the OSR sequel? There were many good characters, and a few that make me wonder whatever happened to them!

@EiffelSavin: I'll give you one: Eva (!) 😉 For the rest I prefer to keep quiet for now but feel free to make suggestions ☺️

(x)

[note: this thread is originally in French and I used Google Translate]

@supalinocelosu: So it was the authors directly who led the # ObanStarRacers

@ EiffelSavin: I think that should be the norm but apparently no ... I was also present during the English dubbing in Vancouver. But this time there was a director of English voices. I was commenting but not directly the direction of US actors

(x)

@theinmaskedboy: Could you clarify a doubt sir? 1) What happened with him when he arrived on the earth, because at the end of the galactic race he did not mention again .. 2) There are some loose ends in history, like the crow .. Was he eliminated from the race? or just leave?

@EiffelSavin: Spirit did not make it to the final 3 so he was eliminated & returned to his home planet. Regarding Rick, his job was done so he went back home too. We had crazy plans of making a sequel with him starring as a private PI (!)  Who knows we may reuse that in 1 form or another

(x)

@Taibhse_Designs: Now this is a beauty to see, any concept art for the whizzing arrow or other paint job ideas other than the bunny exist that never made it to print?

@EiffelSavin: yes. We did more than 10 paint job tests before going for the actual ones :) That certainly could be something for the new art book.

(x)

@Taibhse_Designs: I have the original DVDs still in good condition with the cardboard sleeve, I atleast rewatch the entire series once a year and would love a Blu-ray version. Would love to see some stats on the ships like actual scale, measurements, or official heights of the characters.Taibhse Designs added,

@EiffelSavin: That could be a cool extra actually, or something to add to a new art book. If you join the Oban Bluray Project newsletter on http://obanstarracers.com  we'll soon ask you about the type of features and goodies you'd like to have.

(x)

@TheRealZentron: The 1080p 4:3 version is the most crisp out of the three, but I like the cinematic scope of the 16:9, I just wish it was as crisp! Still, can't wait until the Blu-Ray comes out, hopefully it will be available to and playable in the UK!

@EiffelSavin: The bluray will be, for the first time, in the original rate of 24f/s and will be zone free‏

@TheRealZentron: That's great to hear Savin, thanks for the info! I'll sure to place my order once available, it'll sure be good watching OSR HD on my 70" 4K TV! Will the set also include the original Molly Star-Racer trailer in HD or the regular SD?

@EiffelSavin: I'm working on this. The pb is to get the rights to the music. In all cases it will be sd as it was produced that way but we'll try to upscale it in the best possible way from the best source available.

(x)

[Original question deleted]

@EiffelSavin: That was my notes, yes: Maya cut off from her family because of her choice to become a racer with Don, and Don having old parents that died early. Thus no grand parents for Eve to turn 2. But since we never go beyond that in the story, U can make up your own idea on backstory 🙂

(x)

@LovesOban: Please tell me because I’ve been obsessing over this, but even though he wouldn’t be as skilled as Aikka, Cannan or a Nourasian knight in martial arts, & Even though in 2082 DW isn’t the most athletic & even though DW is more brains than brawn & doesn’t have brute strength, in

@EiffelSavin: Don Wei is not a "big man" but he's determined and has grown quite tough, at least since Maya's death. Do you remember the first time he meets Rick and his biker buddies in the middle of the desert?  He stands up to them pretty well, doesn't he?

(x)

@HG_Alsmyr: are you going to have Thomas Romain join you for the Ōban sequel by chance?

@EiffelSavin: Yes. We've already started to collaborate on the sequel and spinoff projects. Working together again was very touching actually 🙂

(x)

[misscecil]

How To Be A Great Art Ally to your Creative Friends.

Slightly tweaked from my 2015 post How To Be A Great ART ALLY

I’ve been having a lot of heart to hearts lately with my friends who are authors and artists and we’re all saying the same thing: It is getting harder and harder for everyone who isn’t in the top 5% of their industry to get the word out about work they are doing.

Because of the way the industries are now, many artists are not getting the marketing and push that they deserve or need. Much of that promotion and publicity now falls on the artist’s shoulder. Your artist friend may have a good career, but unless they are crazy lucky, or have the “it” thing of the moment, your artist friend is probably really struggling.

“What. But they have so many books out! They are on tour all the time! They are always doing some wacky play!”

Sadly, about 90% of artists are struggling and barely making a living wage. According to the NY Times (1/5/19) The median wage for most authors is $20,300 

Most of your creative friends have full-time day jobs on top of their full-time art careers. Or they are taking a lot of side speaking gigs, lecturing or school visits and other supplemental work to add to their income to meet basic needs. 

Remember, every new project that they do is like starting from scratch. 

For example, many of the people who I know who are not artists see all the stuff that I am doing and think that it’s going so great for me that I don’t need their help to get the word out about my books. But I do. All of your artist friends (even the most famous ones) need your support all the time.

To be a great Art Ally for any of your author/artist friends I’ve drummed up a list of things that you can do. I’ve focused on books, since I’m an author, but I’ve added helpful tips within to give you ideas on how to help your music, performer, filmmaker, comic book, visual artist and indie game maker friends.

1) Pre-order their stuff. Seriously. If your friend has a book (or CD or DVD or indie game or comic book) coming out pre-order it. Pre-orders give the publishing company an indication of interest and can help with print runs. Good pre-orders sometimes help a book because the publishing company may give a book a little push with extra marketing money and publicity based on those numbers.

2) Show up. If your friend has a reading or something, go to it. “But I went to it once for another book!” That’s great! You are a supporter! But, every book is a whole new thing! (Go to their rock show! Play! Art gallery opening! If your friend is in a film/made a film go opening weekend, that’s when the box office counts. Or order it on VOD the week it drops. Or buy the game the week it comes out. You get the idea.)

3) When you are there, buy the book. “But I already pre-ordered it!” Yeah, I know. But buying it at the store or the reading helps the bookstore and the numbers and will help your friend do another reading there the next time. This is especially important if your friend is doing a reading not in their hometown. (If your friend is a musician, buy merch because that might be how they are paying for gas. If your friend is an artist, buy a piece of art because that might equal a bag of groceries.) (comics peeps put your pals book on your pull list) (etc)

3a) “But argh! This is not my kind of book. I don’t read that genre. It’s not for me. I’m not a kid/teen.” Sure, that’s fair. The book might not be for you. But I bet you one million dollars that you know somebody that the book (or other thing) would be perfect for. Maybe a strange aunt? Maybe your weird nephew? Maybe your co-worker? And remember the holidays are always just around the corner! Why not get it signed? Think of it as a back up present. You can give it at a white elephant exchange. If all else fails, get a copy and donate it to your local library or if it’s a kids book, to the school library nearest you.

4) Signal boost their work. While it may look to you like everybody knows about your friend’s book, they probably don’t. Remember that we are all kind of in a bubble when it comes to social media. Authors (and artists of all kinds) are always looking for new readers/audience and you totally have a bunch of friends that your author/artist friend doesn’t know. And those friends might have never heard of your friend’s book, movie, game, music and it might be right up their alley. And those friends have friends that you don’t know. And so on. And so on. So every once in a while, if you like and in a way that you are comfortable with, an easy Art Ally action is to Tweet, Instagram, Pintrest or Facebook (or repost) something about that person’s art thing on the social medias! This signal boosting helps to get new eyeballs on the book (or art thing) that your friend is doing.

5) Review it / Rate it. Perhaps you are on Goodreads? Or perhaps you frequent Amazon or B&N or Powells? If you really are a fan of the book (or art thing), a simple way to help boost your friend’s work is by giving it a star rating or a review. (For musicians you can do this at those places as well. Also you can add their album to your streaming site and rate it! For films rate it on Netflix if it’s there! For games there are places to do this too!)

5a) For books, on Goodreads it’s also helpful if you add it to your to read shelf. It’s both helpful before the book comes out and when the book comes out. So if you haven’t done it already, go to it! Add all your friends books to your to read shelf. It’s not too late!

6) Make sure that it is in your local library branch! Libraries are the biggest purchasers of books! An author wants their book to be read! Libraries help with that! Maybe you are librarian? Or someone super close to you is a librarian? This is where you can really help to get it on the library radar by making sure that it is on the order list for your branch or for your system. Sidenote: Many libraries are too poor to purchase books this is a great place for you to donate that extra book!

7) Consider using it in your class! Many books have reader guides or teacher guides. Are you a teacher? Or is someone super close to you a teacher? If you love the book, Or if not that, you can donate the book to your (or your teacher pal’s) school library or classroom library for students to enjoy.

8) Book Club it. If you have a book club, suggest your group read your friend’s book. Or maybe just have a one-off book club and get a group of your friends together to read your friend’s book. If your friend writes for kids, do a mother/ daughter or father /son book club with a group of people. I’m 100% certain that your author friend would be delighted to come over (or if they live far, Skype) to discuss their book with your book club. (for musicians you could host a living room show at your house)

9) Ask your art pal to come in and speak! Maybe your school or library has a budget to bring in a variety of guest speakers for classrooms or assemblies? Your friend would be perfect for this. If your institution has no budget, you can still ask your friend to come and speak! Lots of authors have sliding scales and can organize a way to sell their own books and that can offset a pro bono visit. Also, it will help them to get new readers. Being an art ally is all about getting new audiences for your arty friends. (Your other artist pals would make great classroom / assembly visitors as well.)

10) Vote and Nominate. It’s possible that there are lists that you can vote on or nominate your friends for that they may be eligible for and deserving. This could be anything from your local publicly voted on thing to a list that is for professionals which you might be. It’s easy for everyone to remember to nominate the big best sellers of the year or the debut books that are getting the big pushes. But there are many midlist books that are wonderful and get lost in that shuffle. Make sure to champion the midlist! They really need help to be seen! (This is the same for all of your artist friends. There is always a thing that is going on where they can use your vote or nomination. You’ve gotten those emails / updates.)

11) Hand sell. Maybe you are a bookseller? Make sure that the book is on the shelf. And then, when and if you love it, hand sell it! You can also help by making sure that the book is still on the shelf once it’s sold. Many stores don’t automatically re-order a book if it doesn’t sell more than a certain amount. If you are not a bookseller, you can still hand sell by just talking up the book to people. (Talk up their music, game, comic, play, and movie.)

11a) If you work in retail anywhere and your pal is a musician and you like their music: Try putting their album on at work! Who knows? Maybe someone will ask you who that swell band is? Your pal may gain a new listener!

12) Be a Microphilanthropist. Support their Patreon/Kickstarter/Go Fund me.  It really helps to get that support whether it be a small patreon contribution or a small contribution to getting that dream project done. Support their Indiegogo or Kickstarter or Patreon. For your other artist friends who are making movies, plays, albums, comics, indie video games support their crowdfunding or patreon effort. Really. You can totally afford the $5-10 level (even if you think the project is lame.) for a crowdfunding and $1 for patron. And it will really help them and boost morale.

13) Be a good literary citizen. If you are an author, remember to be a good literary citizen. Promote yourself, but also do stuff for the larger literary community. Participate and include others. There are many things you can do. You can organize events. You can pitch panels. You can show up to things. You can volunteer to be a judge for things or to moderate panels (be a good moderator if you do.) You can write essays about other works. Remember to extend past your own inner circle of friends to include people who you might not know. Being an artist is very hard. There are many ups and downs in a career. At some point everyone goes through a hard time and needs help. Avoid the cool kids table mentality. Be kind. When you are on the top, don’t forget to keep helping your community. Diversify your literary and artistic world. (Other artists, you know what this is in your own field. Art citizens for the win!)

14) Invite your friend over to dinner. Or buy them dinner. Or have a potluck. Everyone could use a good night out with friends and conversation. It’s a spirit booster. No lie.

[feelbadorgan-blog]

Journal Entry #1: Draw My Life

           I would like to think that I’ve always been a reflective person even my childhood memories are full of solitary moments, me left alone to my perceptions and creations. I find it almost addicting going back to my childhood memory of playing in our sandy garden alone. This reflective peculiarity will prove valuable to me in the later years up to the present. It helped me grow and develop my definition of my identity, although more of identities. It brought me to the world of self-help books, journaling and constant self-evaluation. My days are full of questions and ambiguous answers to life. This time a year ago, I have decided to write them into journals. My journal typically starts with a question and continues freely, most of the time irrelevantly, to where writing takes me and it may be observable in this entry. I hope not. It is also written as if it is someone else’s so I can be more objective and harsh on myself.   

           Ever since I arrived here in NCR, I haven’t written anything yet so this will serve as my first entry. I literally write in journal notebooks, but I have discovered that I can use technology, prove myself as a gen-Z and use the softcopy format a.k.a. “.docx” and even “.txt”.

           I have filled three different journal notebooks ever since I started a year ago. Although majority of my writing are on my laptop now, I still write on paper and my fourth journal notebook is almost halfway filled with whatever this mind encounters. Journaling is a very soothing and liberating process for me.

           This is how I journal now, and I’d like to call it “E-journal” as if putting an E in the beginning of any word makes it sound better. I typically write anything I can think of and anything that intrigues me. Although, my writings are hindered by my writing skills because I don’t know a lot about forming sentences, using punctuation and selecting words from a narrow and shallow vocabulary. I love English because I think it is a very creative and inclusive language but sadly, I’m not that good yet to create and enjoy it to its fullness.  

I think I am exposing myself too much already but what’s life without a little vulnerability. I personally have struggled with vulnerability and insecurity. This basically became the story of my high school life and pretty much of my life because I can hardly remember events before high school. Peer pressure got the best of me and it made me do things I would regret but I can do nothing about so let’s move on.  

This is the grade 7 me, too naïve about the world around him and on the things about to come. He feels very insignificant and is peer pressured a lot. He has grown and he’s very different now but it humbles him to know where he started. Reminiscing how we grow through time always lead to smiles. 

“Beast”

In high school is where you find inevitable to be grouped to the same people with the same interests. For our group named “BST”, we found each other through sports and cutting classes to play sports. They saw and guided my growth from the one on the picture above to who I am today. The day after graduation transforms high school friends to lifelong family.

“Megs”

           Megs is the Bisaya term for friends. This my wholesome and nerdy squad. It may seem contradicting belonging to two squads with different nature but it’s not. I found that one squad completes and balances the other so that I stay right in between my academics and my passion. I am not swallowed by academics nor do I sacrifice my future for playing sports.

“Do your thingsss”

I have loved a few things and formed a few passions in my life and this picture shows it all.

The Wipcap, official cap of Fliptop which is the Philippines’ Rap Battle League and is the last Rap Battle League in the world, for my love of the hip-hop and culture.

The rifle for my love of service and to my three years membership of our school’s CAT.

Kyrie 5 “Husky” shoes for my passion in The Game and my homage to passionate players.

“Orchid in a bottle” for my love of biology, laboratory work and simple science.

The Innovators book for my love of technology, great people, great work and cooperation.

 This is the product of my six years in high school. When I heard we were allowed one creative shot for our yearbook, this image of me popped into my mind. I have unconsciously viewed myself this way and I can say this has been my self-image as a product of my high school life. High school has been productively transformative for me. It gave me the chance to redefine myself through reflection. I have known myself deeper. This probably is the most “me” picture of my life.

 I believe that a man is defined by how he uses much of his time. This is where majority of my time goes and majority of where my self-concept comes from. These are my mentors and my hobbies.

THE HIP-HOP CULTURE

“BLKD”

A UP-Diliman graduate Fliptop pioneer who is considered now a Legend and the best lyricist of the game. He takes pride in his timeless content, intricate flow and crafty use of rap elements like anagrams, personals, quadruple meanings, metaphors and bars. These are a few of his lines.

“Tanggap ko kung wala ako sa top 5 niyo, nasa Top 5 ako ng nasa top 5 niyo”

He may not always be the fan favorite, but he surely is feared among fellow emcees.

“Kaya kong magpaka-street, magsalit ng pa-slang

Kasi pen-game ko perfect, sa iyo pass lang

Puro galaw wala namang puntos, puro pass lang

Ako puro tirang sharpshooter na pumapaslang”

A quadruple meaning of the homophones paslang/pass lang with street, school, basketball and battle references.

“Hindi titulong pangdakila tinutukoy ko pangratrat

kapag sinabi kong si Bonifacio ay ginamitan ko ng Gat”

Personals spat in a game against Marshall Bonifacio referencing the Bonifacio vs Rizal argument through the “gat” double meaning as a pistol and as Jose Rizal.

 BASKETBALL

“The Alchemists”

This was taken after our exhibition game. I have only known basketball in high school and from that day onward I still have the same passion from when I started. The summer after my first year, I then enlisted to a basketball camp. All the free time I have after that we then spent playing the game. I am very passionate about the game. Although I don’t play as often as I once did, deep inside is the same fire.

DOTA

“The Internationals 2019 bracket”

The internationals more commonly known as “TI” is the most prestigious and largest tournament in e-sports. It’s prize pool is crowdfunded by the Dota 2 community and is now at US$33 million. Today is actually the first day of the main event. I have played Dota 2 for 4000 hours already, all on the internet cafe. I know I shouldn’t be “that’ proud about it but it’s not all negative. I know that I have developed some of my skills and besides, I don’t play anymore in fact I only had 30 games last year. The best part about ti9,The Internationals 2019, is that there is an all-Filipino team in the upper bracket, TNC. They are representing the Philippines and all the Filipino players. They have cemented their name along with the best teams worldwide and now they have the chance to win The Aegis of the Immortal, the trophy of the champions ever since 2010.

“TNC Predator”

This is our team fighting for the Aegis of the Immortal.

The SCIENCE of LEADERSHIP            

“The Golden Circle”

This is a concept by Simon Sinek in his book “Start with Why”, one of the first books I have read and reread. I love the book as much as the man who wrote it. It demonstrates the difference between good and great leaders based on their conduct. Good leaders lead from the outside in starting from what they do, how they do it and why they do it making the “what” aspect clearest for their followers. Great leaders do the opposite, they talk most of the time about why they do it and they assure that this be the clearest aspect for their disciples. It is even manifested in their advertisements. TiVo is a good television company with good leaders. One of their advertisement says “We can pause, forward and rewind your favorite shows for you”, focusing more on the what. Apple, a great company with a great leader - Steve Jobs, would have an advertisement that would sound like “The ones crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who actually do”. This advertisement doesn’t even mention any of their products but it does mention why they make their products and it being clear to their followers is one of the reasons why people line up for hours in Apple stores to get their new Iphones even if they can buy it without hassle the week after. 

I love leadership and cooperation especially the the value they bring to the world. It has brought us movements to question what the world is doing, great products and most of all it bring faith back into humanity. This interest in leadership forced me to read leadership, business, self-help and personal development books. You’ll find a lot of these people in these.

Another fascinating aspect of this circle is its accordance to the layers and structures inside our brain. The “what” represents the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for, you guessed it, what we do. The “how” is where the limbic brain starts representing the basal ganglia - responsible more on how we conduct thing. Lastly, the “why” represents the primitive amygdala which answers all the question to why we do and it sets out our priorities from food, reproduction and finding meaning. 

SERVICE of the CAT

 “Legions of Pisay”

We are the Legions of Pisay, a club created and organized by students. Our advocacy is the Citizenship Advancement Training. We trained volunteers, we serve the student body as manpower for events and we are directly under the disciplinary officer in imposing the laws of the school. My three years of service in the CAT is all about service. We arrange the venues, direct the audience and clean up after the event. We are the first to prepare and the last to clean. All of this for service. In three years, we have created a bonding from all the sacrifices we’ve made together for the student body. I have served and I hope soon I will be able to serve again. 

INTERSECTION OF TECHNOLOGY and PASSION

“Steve Jobs”

Steve Jobs. The great man Steve who founded apple at his parents’ garage with Woz, brought great products to the world, exiled by the very company he founded, created another company “NeXT”, created Pixar, sold NeXT and himself to Apple and saved apple from oblivion. This is how I simplify the life of Steve. He founded Apple, Apple kicked him, out but Apple bought him back just to save themselves and to bring back their visionary. I am a total fanboy. He has nothing but passion. He gave his all even his health for the world to enjoy great products and to bring us great experience. He placed a thousand songs in our pocket when all there was is a Walkman through iPod. He didn’t commercialize his software. He created the best animation movies. He thought he can change the world, he did. Apple is now US$1Trillion in valuation and in fact if it were a country it would’ve been the 27th richest. We don’t know when we will get another Steve or another Apple but I’m sure it’s trying to change the world with passion.  

MOVIES and The NERDWRITER

Evan Pushack aka “The Nerdwriter” creates videos about everything he can think of but mostly about people, art and movies. We share the same interest and his youtube channel has become a haven for me. I indulge in his content. With this platform he tries to help people. His K.I.N.D. “Kids In Need of Desks” video raised US$3 million for the school children of Africa. That’s worth 62 000 desks in 4 000 classrooms. He himself is struggling to make money from his videos but he never forgets to help. The world needs more of these people and those who can’t be them can at least support their causes.

I really talk a lot and mostly not about myself as much as my self-concept which is hugely not about me at all. I like talking about topics I love and consequently they become intertwined with my self-concept.

I don’t remember much before my high school life and I don’t rely on them so much for my self-image.  As far as I can remember these are where my personal life revolves around, outside the relationships I’m keeping and building. These are where most of my time is spent. I like that I have a lot of mentors and passions. I can and have tried doing these for consecutive hours without getting even bothered. I hope that I would be able to keep most of these. 

I have probably crafted, maybe stolen, my self-image around these people and activities. If they crumble, so as my self-image. They have contributed a lot to my ever-expanding self-concept as well as to the self I strive to be. 

Knowing about people is my thing. Writing about them fuels me. I like to write more about people especially those who touch me. If I’d be given another chance to draw my life, I would still make this kind of piece.  

credits/follow:@dotesports @startwithwhy​ @cultofmac @nerdwriter1@danicamarie

 p.s. reading this entry proves how much i need to improve on the canon of disposition

[theradioghost]

reply to @podsandpuppies under the cut

podsandpuppies replied to your post “me quietly in my corner: much of the fiction podcasting community and...”

I feel like maybe it's the lack of easily accessible platform? There are a whole bunch of podcast apps out there where you can listen to just about anything that's been made after 2010. Stuff that's older may need to be purchased and/or may not be as readily available. I'd love to get into OTR but I have no idea where it can be found in a way that's organized.

I’m not really talking about the listening audience so much -- there are a variety of what I think are perfectly understandable reasons why people haven’t been as exposed to older stuff, and not just OTR because even in America, people didn’t completely stop making fiction in audio between 1960 and 2010, and obviously in the UK there’s a ton of audio fiction on the radio even now that’s much more a part of the cultural consciousness than in the US (or Canada AFAIK). I think it’s a shame, but a shame that there are pretty clear reasons for. Beyond the easily accessible and functionally infinite catalogs of podcatchers, there’s the fact that radio broadcasts aren’t always accessible everywhere even in this age of internet radio; the fact that podcasts are available on demand while radio isn’t; the fact that many of those influential older programs like the Firesign Theatre or stuff by ZBS are now only available if you buy them; or the simple and very understandable angle that for many of the people I know who listen to fictional podcasts, the primary make-or-break reason they got into the medium was because podcasting as a distribution medium is easily accessible to marginalized creators and there are consequently a lot of diverse stories which are definitely harder to find in older audio media or traditionally produced radio (although I’d argue that there’s more than people seem to think; I actually don’t know of any modern fiction podcasts that center on Maori culture or star Maori actors the way Claybourne did in the 90s, for example. although if anyone does know of one, PLEASE let me know).

(And I don’t love to say “podcasts are free” as a reason because, well, podcasts aren’t free, not really, but that’s a different discussion and the fact remains that because of 1. crowdfunding models and 2. a lot of very talented people putting huge amounts of work into something that is costing rather than earning them money, podcasts are generally accessible without a paywall, which is also a fine reason to listen to a lot of podcasts)

I’m mostly talking about podcasters, I guess? It’s definitely been a minority, but more than once I’ve had people point blank tell me they are totally uninterested in fictional audio that is on the radio or which is pre-podcasting, or to blanket insult it at the same time as saying that they’ve never listened to it, which is IMO an absolutely bizarre way to treat the medium you’re working in & kind of a terrible way to go about improving your craft? I know that respecting the medium is a dead horse I beat regularly around here but like to put it in another way, I feel it would be pretty weird for a novelist to walk around saying that every book written before 2000 was totally irrelevant to their own writing/ability to write. Like......... nobody’s gonna stop you from doing that, and it’s not exactly something that I would hold against someone, but I really just don’t get it. And that attitude often appears in conjunction with the idea that podcast fiction is essentially a cheap back door into convincing someone to fund your creation of Real Media (books, TV), which is an attitude that I tend to hold against people a little bit because that’s ... rude, honestly.

Then again, I’m a cranky half-deliriously sick woman who came into audio fiction from what is apparently an unconventional place for podcasters (I grew up with the old stuff -- my dad actually used to write audio drama for the CBS), and also the kind of person who willingly spent years reading many terrible old books to get an English degree with the logic that even books I don’t like have something to teach me about writing. I know full well that’s not something that works for everyone, however important it felt to me. My perspective is, as all perspectives are, a subjective one, and it’s not like I’m an expert on any of this. I love the fiction podcasting community & what it creates with my whole fucking heart and honestly my main investment in this is seeing the ways that we can grow and learn and take inspiration not just from each other, but from the long and (I think) very cool history that the audio medium has beyond podcasts. I don’t think anybody has to listen to the radio. But I do think it would be cool if more people would and also I think that fiction podcasts would be better for it.

anyway, apologies for this long, literally somewhat feverish ramble; I’m gonna stop yelling about the medium now and go have some hot chocolate and watch Venom.

(Incidentally, if you are interested in OTR, there are quite a few databases out there that collect and curate it since it’s largely in the public domain, and I put together a list of a few of them a couple of years ago. Also, a surprising number of people have hosted the complete archives of various OTR shows as podcast feeds; the first podcast I ever subscribed to was actually just a bunch of episodes of Gunsmoke.)

[krixwell-liveblogs]

Check out this post. Wildbow talks about his life on reddit. This explains so much about Taylor’s school experience. No Worm spoilers

This sounds interesting. I’ve frequently wondered about how Wildbow’s life shaped this story.

Let’s take a look.

Redditors who have opted out of a standard approach to life (study then full time work, mortgage etc), please share your stories. What are the best and worst things about your lifestyle, and do you have any regrets?

Well, the title is already intriguing.

Hermit writer here.

Born hard of hearing, went to a regular school. Struggled in middle school. Struggled in high school. Kids who were in my class in kindergarten were in my classes all the way through to grade ten, with the elementary/middle school and high school being a stone's throw from one another.

I kind of knew about the hard of hearing bit already. I can’t find the ask that told me about it, though (it was probably before I stopped using screenshots for asks).

So far this sounds relatively normal, except for that part. But I’m guessing he’s going to elaborate a bit on the struggles surrounding his school life and hearing problems?

In grade 10, after years of bullying and a peer group that had established who was 'in' and who was 'out' when I was knee-high, tired of struggling, I was walking down the halls and I found myself wondering when the last time I'd even opened my mouth in school was.

Oh wow.

I stopped dead in my tracks, just paralyzed by loneliness. I asked myself what the point was, couldn't come up with an answer, resumed walking, went out the side door of the school and went home.

This clearly parallels a few of the last times we saw Taylor at Winslow High.

The start of me just not going to school for that entire year. Nobody noticed.

Damn. He really did write all that from experience. It took a while for Taylor’s absence to get noted, too.

Taylor’s absence getting noted at all actually seems like a fantasy compared to this.

I got caught at the end of the year, did the same thing the next year, got caught only at the end.

What the hell sort of attendance routines did this school have? Clearly not good ones.

Ended up going to an Alternative school (Self study), proved to myself that I had it in me when I got 3 years of studying done in 8 months, won two awards... and then had to go back to my old school for what was essentially grade 13, where I struggled.

Huh. Well done.

People learn in very different ways. Some people can do this much more effectively than learning in a group. Some people are like me and can’t make themselves keep up the effort required to self study, or learn better from lectures than reading.

Some people learn by observing their surroundings while flying.

I worked retail and found it fine. But family wanted me to go to University and figure myself out.

I’m currently working retail, taking a break from the educational system and buying time to figure out what to study.

I went to University and I struggled.

Guys, I’m sensing a theme here.

I spent a long, long time trying to figure out why I struggled, why I was tired all the time, and it took a kind of confluence of events before I realized what should've been obvious. I found the social stuff hard and I was exhausted after a day of listening because I'm severely to profoundly deaf.

Oh yeah, that makes a ton of sense. It’s like how focusing is exhausting when you have trouble doing that, how reading without glasses you need tires out your eyes and brain, etc.

Honestly, it’s a little surprising that I haven’t (explicitly) met a hard of hearing character in Worm yet. Maybe later? Oh wait, there was that deaf waitress at the villain pub in Hive.

Beyond that, the 'path' just isn't for me. The systems and institutions just grind me down. The idea of a 9 to 5 is death to me. These things are built and streamlined for the average person, and between disability and a fairly extreme degree of introversion, I'm far from that average.

That is very fair. There’s definitely a brand of ableism in that system.

In the end, I stepped off the path. I'd been writing a thing online as a side project and the reception was good, so I decided to leave school earlier than planned, use the savings I had, stretch things as far as I could, and work when I could (with a family friend when he needed the help and had the cash to spare, doing some landscaping, drywall installation, house painting, all prepping houses for sale in a boom market) to stretch things further.

This would be too early for that thing online to be Worm, right?

It just occurred to me that I have no idea how old Wildbow is.

And I wrote as seriously as I could while people close to me told me that I didn't deserve to 'get lucky' and have the writing work out because I hadn't seen University all the way through, or openly expressed doubts and disappointments.

Yikes.

Fuck that noise. Writing is tons of effort!

But you know, it worked out in the end. I wrote the equivalent of 20 books in 2.4 years, wrote another 10 for my next series in the ensuing 1.2 years, and I've kept up a similar pace over the last 7 years and two months.

Especially when you’re this coddamn productive!

That’s 8.33 books a year!

I started writing mid- 2011, left school at the start of 2012, went full-time-paying-the-bills in 2014 with an income around minimum wage. I moved to a small town (no car, nothing fancy) that same year. I'm now closer to the average Canadian wage. It's been two chapters a week (2.5 if crowdfunding money is enough) since the beginning.

Oh, I suppose that means it would be Worm after all.

When was this written... huh, yesterday? Well, that explains why this hasn’t been sent to me before.

Writing being Wildbow’s only/main income makes me feel even more right about my decision to set things up so that some of the money from my Patreon goes to Wildbow. It’s not that big a portion of his income (apparently average Canadian wage is 986 CAD or 755 USD per week, and I chip in with about 3.26 CAD or 2.50 USD per week), but it’s something.

My reality: I can go a week or two without really talking to anyone that isn't a cashier.

Sounds a bit lonely in the long run, but as a fellow introvert (or maybe I’m an ambivert, in the systems where that’s actually a thing), I get it - it also does sound pretty good. Especially if you’ve got internet people to casually interact with at your own leisure.

Every two months or so I go to a relative's to dogsit while they're on vacation or to see someone for their birthday, and that gives me most of my fill of socialization and companionship.

Nice!

I don't have a car, so it's usually walking or taking the train to another city, and using public transpo there. I subsisted on a rice and beans diet for a good stretch, one $15 video game bought in a year, and my level of expenses hasn't really risen that much from that point. I eat better and buy a couple more things, but nothing major.

So I guess this would be somewhere between average and reserved?

I don’t know. Being Norwegian spoils me on these things.

60%+ of what I earn goes to savings, which gives me security when my income could fluctuate or disappear at any time.

Oh, that’s smart. I suppose writing would be a bit of a risky business, what with writer’s block, audience fluctuations, sudden drops in popularity because something you wrote didn’t go over as well as you thought it would, etc.

My schedule is entirely my own, which usually amounts to 2.5 15+ hour workdays a week and another 5-10 hours a week spent managing community, finances, and exchanging emails with tv/movie studios, publishers or startups.

I was going to talk about the long but few workdays, but tv/movie studios excuse me what

Is a TV series version of something Wildbow wrote (Worm or otherwise) a serious possibility right now?? :o

Best things - I love what I do. I love creating, I love my reader's tears, I love my readers being horrified.

This is really important. You gotta enjoy what you do.

I get to make monsters and be surprised by what my characters do. Many of my fans are just the absolute coolest people - people I'm now insanely glad to have met and include in my life. There's amazing fanart of my work out there, music, people have gotten tattoos. Tattoos. That's insane.

People have permanently, painfully painted their appreciation of your work into their bodies, Wildbow!

The bad- I'm an online content creator, and it's impossible to convey just how toxic the toxic elements of a fandom can get and how negative the negative aspects can get, and how much it can affect you.

That is true. There will always be a toxic side, and I can imagine works like Worm would attract a lot of the edgy sort.

I've seen 20 online content creators either break down or remark on the effect it has, and it's wholly accurate- and my audience isn't even ~that~ large.

Yeah, it doesn’t take that many people to start brewing fandom sides like this.

This is multiplied by the fact that writing is lonely as a profession (I know too many writers who can't even talk to their life partners about their work) and it can be hard to find perspective or balance as you take it all in, when you don't have people to communicate with.

Robert Jordan used his wife as a beta reader or editor of sorts. She was there to tell him when something he wrote didn’t quite come across, to make up for the fact that he couldn’t tell. After all, he knew what he meant by that one line.

On a similar note, some casual dating would be nice, and living in a small town for economical reasons doesn't leave me with a large dating pool, and at this point I'm not even sure if I could or should inflict myself on someone.

Oof.

There are way too many people who think like that. I hope you find happiness with someone who sees you for the good bean you are, Wildbow.

I'm healthy, groomed, I can hold a conversation, I'm just pretty set in my introverted ways.

...relatable, though.

But still, I’m pretty sure there are people out there for us, who not only tolerate but appreciate the introvert lifestyle.

Hell, both of my crushes have been very introverted, even compared to myself, so I know those people exist because I’m among them.

On another, less social note, there is the fact that as an online content creator, you can't really take breaks. Or you can, but it costs. Consistency and frequency of updates are god, and a hiatus is a death knell.

No wonder he criticized me on this that one time. In his situation, it matters a lot.

I don't even know what an effective vacation would entail, because I feel like finding my stride again would cost more than I gained from having the break. So it's been seven years and two months without a vacation, writing a short book every month.

Damn.

You deserve so many props, Wildbow.

...at some point here I started talking to Wildbow, just like I do to Taylor and other Worm characters. Well, at least this time there’s actually a chance he’s going to read this sometime, if he hasn’t dropped my blog.

I just hope he doesn’t think it’s weird that I’m liveblogging his life story.

It makes for a very strange sort of burnout, when I love it so much, I can still regularly put out some great work to acclaim and praise, but am nonetheless worn down around the edges.

That does not sound healthy.

No regrets. This is me. This is what I'm built for.

As long as you feel it’s right for you, this is good. :)

I could do with less negativity from some fans and getting regular good nights of sleep (the deafness comes with insomnia by way of terminal tinnitus), but both of those just come with the territory.

Ouch.

I feel you on the sleep front (ADD has its ways of messing with your ability to fall asleep too), but tinnitus sounds like a particularly annoying way to be inflicted with it.

I've been telling family for the last year that I'll move to a city with more going on than (as my elderly neighbor phrased it) drinking and meth, where there's classes to take, a possible dating pool, and/or activities that could break me out of my hermit shell... but my current apartment is amazing and cheap, with the nicest landlords ever. It's just in a do-nothing town. I haven't found anything remotely competitive, even taking 'cheap' off the table.

I’ve lived in small-ish towns all my life. It’s pretty nice, especially as an introvert.

So that's where I'm at.

Thank you, Wildbow. This was an interesting read. I feel like I know you a bit better now. :)

(Again, if you’re reading this, I hope it wasn’t too weird to see me liveblogging this.)

[jaimistoryteller]

Anon Answer

[ID: two anon questions: hi, saw you were looking to purchase a building through crowdfunding, and I was wondering why you didn’t just try to get a small business loan instead? it’s pretty selfish to use others’ money to fund your business without giving anything back. . . and no, a place where they can continue to throw money at you is not giving back to the community]

So, Anon, rather then post both of them, I just took a screen shot. Now I am going to gather that you are one of two types of people. 

Type 1. a flaming asshole troll who likes to cause shit, at which point you can go to hell in a handbasket. 

or

Type 2: someone who is too lazy to through my history. 

I’d like to say you were Type 3: someone who missed my general update, didn’t actually read the GFM page (because OMG one of the questions I answered in it is: who does it benefit besides me?), and was asking out of curiosity, but alas the fact both came from the same IP address according to when I blocked you it said I already had with the second, and the tone in the second, I’m going to politely tell you to Fuck Off. 

Now for others who might be wondering why, I will recap the last decade of my life plus my last update.

I was in a car accident, I now have permanent nerve damage, some days I can walk fine, other days not so much. But what about a wheel chair for those days you can’t walk? That’d be great, if I A. could use it with my house (I have steps between my room and the rest of my house, not counting the door to outside with even more steps) and B. if my hall was wide enough. So not a thing. Then there is the fact on those days all I can do is curl in bed and try not to cry from the pain, it’s something I wouldn’t wish on 99% of the world (I’m leaving space open for those people who really deserve pain, like mass murderers and what not). 

I tried working for three years following the accident, that just made things worse. I mean a lot worse. I stopped eating most the time, had a tricky time bathing, was in and out of the hospital for falling related injuries. It wasn’t good. 

So I decided, I tried the adult thing, I tried to work through the pain, even though all that did is make my pain worse and caused more physical damage, it didn’t do it. Let’s try applying for disability. 5 years worth of paperwork and court, just to have a panel of perfectly healthy judges tell me “You have a disability, we don’t think you are disabled enough to qualify for disability however.” 

Yep, they said that. I even took it to my therapist (yeah, I see one twice a month for depression, to go with the physical disability, I have annoying brain chemistry), and asked him to read it to make sure I wasn’t misreading. I wasn’t. 

Right. Well, I do commissions and ghost writing, but there are a lot of people who do both. Some months it pays the bills, others not so much. Then there are the months where things go wrong. I mean massively wrong. Like when I had to ask for help catching up the bills because I had spent 4 months sick and fell way behind, or when Sota got ill. 

I also sell my book Tales of Identity: Memories & Reflections.

Okay then. So, I haven’t been able to find a job in the area I can physically do, I can’t afford to move, I can’t travel to bigger cities because how would I get there and back since the pain would make it impossible to work or I would work and the pain would make it impossible to drive, but this living on commissions, ghost writing, and book sales in between working on my books isn’t providing enough money to survive healthily. 

So I did what I do, I went into figure-this-shit-out mode. The answer? Open a business of my own. Sweet! Except, I haven’t worked in 7 years, my credit is in the shit, and I have no one I can turn to as a cosigner. Well fuck. Now what? 

Oh! I know! GoFundMe and KickStarter! 

As I had used GFM before, it was the easier one to set up, so I set it up and began the sharing process. Do I expect to actually raise all the money on there? No, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. I am working on the KickStarter, but it’s a lot more detailed and takes more time to set up. Particularly when other things keep going wrong. 

If anon didn’t want to donate to GFM, they could have waited for the KS since that comes with various rewards based on money amount.

Now then, back to the anon’s question of who else benefits.

Well because of my disabilities, I included in the amount of money I am trying to raise, the money for a person to work there to do the lifting, stocking, and moving of stuff. That gives at least one person a full time job. If it works out the way I think it will, there will actually be three other people besides me working there, so that’s three people with full time jobs. Who will be able to pay bills and spend money in the community.

Then there is the fact I said an Indie Bookstore. Wait, why is Indie bold? Because my in pain self would like to point out that indie authors only get paid when their books are bought. Now with a traditional book store the book store goes to the publisher and says “I would like these books” and in a lot of cases they are fronted, aka the author gets nothing till they leave the shelf. In the case of an Indie Bookstore, at least with the ones I was talking to owners of, the owner buys the book, so the author gets the money then, and then it’s on the owner whether they sell or not. If the book does well, more of that book is bought. So, that gives any Indie Authors I know about (and yeah, I will be doing a call for indie authors to stock up on y’all’s books because lets support each other) at least a little bit of money. 

Then there is number three, if I am no longer having to ask for money because I have a stable or reliable source of income I can give back to the community by helping others. What a concept, if not needing help, can actually help other people. 

Which leads to number four, I also said market. Right now the farm market peeps are in whatever space comes open that week, which means their sales are not persistent because who knows where they will be. It will give them a place to sell their stuff from. But wait! There’s more, rather then having only one day a week they can sell stuff, they will have the option of ‘renting’ an area to sell stuff every day. So, it’s like they almost have a way to make a little extra money. Geez, what a concept. 

I apologize for the overwhelming snark and I appreciate each and every one of you people who have helped me in any way. You all are awesome, I hope you have a good day. 

GoFundMe for Cosmos Market - Indie Boostore, Arts & Crafts Market

[jessaadventures-blog]

Week Six: Chillin’ Out

Under the Lobitos pier.

This week was nice and chill, which was much needed after the craziness of last week! Nothing too crazy happened, but there were still some fun times with the EcoTeam. I’m already two-thirds through my time in Lobitos, and it feels both like I just got here and I’ve been here forever. I’m sure these next three weeks will fly by, and I’m excited to see what they hold!

The EcoHouse

My banana and strawberry compote crepe!

We only had one addition to the EcoTeam this week. Claudia arrived on Tuesday from the UK! She goes to Bristol University like Jack, but is a year ahead of him in the same geography program  (going into her third year of uni). Claudia is great, she’s always really enthusiastic and funny and we’ve had fun pointing out differences between British and American slang (it’s her and Jack and Joris against the rest of us usually). Claudia is doing research for her dissertation while she’s here, so she isn’t directly involved in any of the existing projects. She’s been interviewing local fisherman about overfishing and illegal fishing, which is really interesting! She’ll be here for three weeks total, so her, Seth, Orianna, and Chris (who comes tomorrow for two weeks) all leave the weekend before me. We have eight volunteers right now, with two people staying at Nacho’s hostel. Jenny leaves tomorrow and Chris comes to replace her, and we have one more guy, Anthony, coming on Sunday so we’ll have nine volunteers! That’s a super full house.

Diego (the Director) and his girlfriend, Nai Ana, are arriving tomorrow as well to replace Michael leaving for a week, and then Andres leaves when Michael gets back. It’ll be a big crew for my last few weeks!

We cooked a lot this week in an effort to reduce the money we’re spending by going out to eat so much. The four girls were almost always the chefs, and the four guys were the clean up crew! We did our classic Taco Tuesday, which everyone always enjoys, and on Wednesday we made two amazing vegan pot pies! Still my favorite food I think :) On Thursday we had a sweet and savory vegan crepe night with homemade strawberry compote, bananas, avocados, tomatoes, chickpeas, veggies, and more. This was a big hit; I definitely want to make crepes again before I leave. We also had some pisco sours to go with our fancy crepes! On Friday we made our famous veggie burgers (the guys were all extremely hungry though, so they went for starters at Tranqui’s and then  came back and demolished the rest of the burgers). By Saturday we were getting low on homemade dinner materials (it’s hard cooking for ten people, six of whom eat for two or three people each), but we made a big batch of pasta and stir fried some squash and veggies to go with it and the remade pasta sauce we buy. Last night we gave up and went to Tranqui’s for dinner, which was as good as always!

A slice of vegan pot pie :)

Other than food, we had some fun nighttime activities this week! We had two game nights, one where we played BS (the card game) and Seth, who worked as a gondolier in Indianapolis, gave a wonderful performance of a famous Italian song that he would have to sing while he rowed tourists down the river so Claudia would take some of his cards (he’s quite talented). For the other game night we played the name game, where everyone writes down names of famous people on pieces of paper, and one person on each of the two teams has to get the rest of the team to guess what name they have (similar to taboo or charades), and we played some vary intense rounds of spoons, one of which was spoons hide-and-seek and we had to get up and run around the house trying to find the spoons. It was a blast!

The other big event we had was a Lord of the Rings marathon! We watched all the extended editions (each is four hours or more) over the course of four almost-consecutive days. We watched the first movie on Wednesday, split the second movie between Thursday and Friday, and watched the third (4.5 hours) on Sunday because it hadn’t fully downloaded on Saturday. Because I just finished the books, it was interesting to rewatch the movies and notice all the things they left out and little plot changes in the movies that weren’t in the books.

This weekend was really chill for me, all of the newer volunteers went to El Ñuro to swim with the turtles on Saturday, so I just hung out and read Harry Potter (I’ve just started the fifth book and I started the first one a week ago) and laid in the sun and did a big load of laundry. On Sunday everyone was tired but I got outside for a while and went for a swim (the waves were too big for me to surf) and a walk.

Overall a fun week in the EcoHouse getting to know the new interns, playing games, and cooking!

Work

Chipping paint in the sunrise!

This week was a little frustrating work-wise. I found a bunch of big cracks in the basin of the distiller that have opened up again (they originally were formed because the volunteer that built the actual wood structure of the distiller didn’t let the wood dry long enough and it warped) and the seawater was just leaking straight out of the bottom of the distiller. We got more silicone from Seth, and I did my best to fill all the gaps and create a seal between the window and the basin, but when I went to test the distiller again on Saturday morning there was still a big crack that I had missed, so all the water drained out again. Now I have to let the distiller dry again and then fix the cracks again and let it dry before testing it again hopefully on Friday. I think the seal is working a lot better, but the warping is definitely slowing down progress and making it difficult to get the distiller to perform at its best. But, I guess that’s the point of pilot unit like this one, to try it and make mistakes and learn from them! My main goal for the distiller at this point is to to a fully functional test (with no holes and a good seal) and move it up to the fisherman’s guild, where Joris has just finished building a stand for the distiller, before I leave. I think that’s doable, but I don’t want to rush it and sacrifice functionality like the guy who built the wood structure did. We’ll see how far I get! I also got my first Lobitos sunburn while painting silicone on the distiller this week, but its already faded.

Planting day was more like painting day this week. We got up at 6am as usual, and we finally decided to repaint the front outside wall of the house (there were a bunch of big paint chips in it that had been bugging me since I got here), so we spent five hours chipping the paint off the wall and getting covered in paint dust (we had catchy music to work to, so it was fun)! We then had an EcoBrunch, which was our usual big planting day breakfast immediately followed by the lunch that Angelita was already done making by the time we called planting day quits.

I’ve been keeping up with social media posts much better now, so that went well this week! We also launched and completed a crowdfunding campaign in four days, during which we raised $750 for Ale’s wind turbine project!

There’s still a lot to do before I leave, and I hope I can get it all done! I’m still very motivated to get this distiller up and running efficiently and reliably.

Adventures

Surfers jumping into the big waves at Piscinas.

There weren’t too many adventures this week, but we went to Tranqui’s for Saturday dinner and 420 for Monday dinner (we got there early and got the warm inside table and quick service)!

I went surfing a few times this week, though I usually ended up going at low tide when the waves aren’t as great, but I got up on a little green wave (before the wave had curled) which was exciting! I had only been catching the white wash before then.

My swim this weekend was nice, and my walk afterwards took me down to the Piscinas cliffs, where I watched surfers catching the big waves, saw a bunch of crabs, and picked up a bunch of trash (I haven’t talked much about it, but there’s an open landfill nearby and plastic bags and other trash tend to escape and litter the beach and everywhere between Lobitos and Talara, it’s really sad).

The EcoTeam at Tranqui’s!

This was a nice, chill week with a lot of fun nights! I’m looking forward to the next three weeks, and I’m definitely getting excited for Patagonia (we have some readings to do now, and I’m starting to read up on Patagonian energy issues) and the mountains and beauty there. I’m also missing my friends and am excited to be back on campus soon and move into my new house!

Miss and love you all as well, I hope all your summers are going well and are full of fun adventures!

[webcamfox440]

Fruit Of Grisaia Steam Restoration Patch

Grisaia No Kajitsu Game

The Fruit Of Grisaia Steam Restoration Patch

The Fruit Of Grisaia Uncensored

The Fruit Of Grisaia Steam Restoration Patch

Fruit Of Grisaia Restoration Patch

The Fruit of Grisaia Steam Restoration Patch Adds back adult content from the 18+ release (r37934) to the Steam version (r34972). Is there anyway to patch the steam game so that the unrated version will play instead? I've played through Grisaia no Kajitsu steam version, and honestly I'd say it's pretty good even when people say the H-scenes are important. Though i do want to buy the game on a steam sale and also be able to get the 18+ content.

FAQ: A Grand Entrance for Visual Novel Grisaia: Phantom Trigger

For the most up-to-date information about the status of our project, check our project updates on Kickstarter!

The Fruit of Grisaia 18+ Steam Patch I already know, that such a patch does not exist, wich means, this isn't my question in particular. But I informed myself about this topic and found the 'Imouto Works Patch' wich was taken down.

R18 patch:: The Fruit of Grisaia General Discussions. Content posted in this community. May not be appropriate for all ages, or may not be appropriate for viewing at work. Don't warn me again for The Fruit of Grisaia.

Does Grisaia: Phantom Trigger have H-scenes? Will there be an 18+ patch?

Grisaia: Phantom Trigger was created and designed as an all-ages game, and therefore features no sexually explicit content. Accordingly, no restoration patch will be necessary, as the digital and physical versions will contain the exact same content. That being said, the manga adaptation features more adult-oriented content, as do many of the supplemental items we are offering (i.e. the artbook and tapestries).However, please do note that the series does feature scenes of intense violence and language.

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:06

Will Phantom Trigger have dual language support?

Yes! Just like the Corona Blossom series, Phantom Trigger will support display of both English and Japanese game text, as well as the display of both languages simultaneously.

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:06

How many volumes will Phantom Trigger have?

Phantom Trigger is an ongoing series, with each volume comprising of a largely self-contained story. Currently the first four volumes of the game are in development, but the total final number of entries in the series is yet to be decided.

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:06

Will one of the stretch goals be a PS Vita port of Phantom Trigger?

We’re very aware of the size and passion of the Vita fanbase here at Frontwing, and would love for Phantom Trigger to come to the Vita. However, as Phantom Trigger is an ongoing series, we feel that the possibility of a Vita port would best be considered once the series can be delivered as a single complete package (and indeed, it wouldn’t be feasible for us to release episodically on Vita for a number of reasons). We’ll absolutely revisit this topic when the series comes nearer to completion, so be on the lookout for that!

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:06

Do I need to play the original Grisaia trilogy before I play Phantom Trigger?

While Phantom Trigger does make reference to characters, events, and concepts from the original Grisaia trilogy, and knowledge of these will certainly enhance the Phantom Trigger experience, the series is designed to be enjoyed by longtime Grisaia fans and newcomers alike. The Fruit of Grisaia and The Labyrinth of Grisaia are available on both Steam and Denpasoft from Sekai Project, and the Steam version of The Eden of Grisaia is scheduled for a March 2017 release.

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:06

Who is the main character of Phantom Trigger?

Aoi Haruto is the main protagonist of the Phantom Trigger series. However, some portions of the story may also be told from the perspective of other characters.

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:06

Will physical English copies of Phantom Trigger and other goods be available outside of Kickstarter?

We currently do not have any plans to offer Phantom Trigger goods outside of this campaign, and the localized items funded by the campaign will be exclusive to it.

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:06

Will there be crowdfunding campaigns for future volumes of Phantom Trigger?

Grisaia No Kajitsu Game

We are still undecided on this topic, but we have found that platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are the best and most convenient way for us to make physical copies of our games (as well as other goods) available for purchase from fans outside of Japan. We’ll have more to announce in the future!

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:06

How will shipping be handled for the campaign? Why does it cost the amount it does?

The default shipping method for the campaign is international SAL shipping from Japan. This is the most affordable method that will still get your rewards to you in a reasonable amount of time. Albino 3 free download mac. Ffdshow. If you wish to upgrade to EMS, please contact us directly and we can help you out with that.The shipping costs are based on the actual SAL shipping charge plus the cost of packaging and labor for shipping. The shipping charges are not inflated in any way.

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:06

How do I purchase add-ons?

Add-ons will be purchasable in BackerKit after the campaign! You can increase your pledge by the cost of the add-on and you will be able to use that money in BackerKit for add-on purchases, or you can pay for the add-on directly on BackerKit after the campaign.

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:15

Can I pay with PayPal?

Unfortunately, Kickstarter does not support PayPal as a payment method. However, if you make a pledge at any tier, you can upgrade to a higher tier on BackerKit after the campaign, and use PayPal on BackerKit to cover the difference. Please do keep in mind that if limited rewards sell out during or after the campaign, you will not be able to upgrade to those tiers in BackerKit.

Search Torrents Browse Torrents Recent Torrents Top 100 All Music Audio books Sound clips FLAC Other Movies Movies DVDR Music videos Movie clips TV shows Handheld HD - Movies HD - TV shows 3D Other Windows Mac UNIX Handheld IOS (iPad/iPhone) Android Other OS PC Mac PSx XBOX360 Wii Handheld IOS (iPad/iPhone) Android Other Movies Movies. Fraiser complete series download torrent. Search Torrents Browse Torrents Recent Torrents TV shows Music Top 100 Audio Video. Frasier Complete Series. Uploaded, Size 69.35 GiB, ULed by Anonymous: 3: 5: Video Frasier Season 1 DVD Rip. Uploaded, Size 4.11 GiB, ULed by Ickle-Stu: 2: 0. Frasier is a psychologist in Seattle who has a call-in talk show for helping listeners with problems. His brother, also a psychologist, but with a more traditional practice, also lives in the city. Their father, a retired policeman, lives with Frasier in his somewhat upper-middle class ('The Elliot Bay Towers, on the Counterbalance') high rise.

Last updated: March 06, 2017 18:47

What about physical copies of the original Grisaia trilogy/spinoffs in English?

UPDATE: A stretch goal for this has been added! Check here for details: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frontwing/a-grand-entrance-for-new-vn-series-grisaia-phantom/posts/1846833

Last updated: March 31, 2017 07:58

The Fruit Of Grisaia Steam Restoration Patch

I didn’t back the campaign, can I get the discounted Grisaia Complete Box? If you are a backer of the original Grisaia Kickstarter campaign from Sekai Project, or if you purchased the Japanese version of the Complete Box from J-List, we can add you as a backer so you can have access to the discounted price. Please email proof of contribution or purchase to contact@frontwing.co.jp. Can I switch my pledge level? If you backed the campaign on Kickstarter, yes! However, you cannot switch into limited-quantity pledge levels. How much is shipping for add-ons? BackerKit has a new system which allows us to set shipping costs based on the actual amount and weight of add-ons ordered! This means that your shipping charge will depend on what add-ons you have in your cart and how many. Please note that the Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Manga and the Grisaia Complete Box ship separately from other items and therefore have their own separate shipping charge which does not stack with other items.

Every route in The Fruit of Grisaia has a different length and structure and follows a completely different path. Even events that are seemingly independent of any route happen differently, such as the summer festival only happening in Amane and Makina’s routes, and everyone going on their own vacations in Michiru’s story. While the common route leans very heavily on comedy and rarely shifts to a more serious tone, the individual stories shift quickly into the darker tone, although even this varies between the characters. The biggest thing that all of the routes have in common is that they all have at least one flashback, and although the flashbacks are always important, the length and nature of the flashback also varies wildly from one route to the next. Amane’s flashback is the longest by far, making up the majority of her route, while the others’ are mostly there to fill out their backstories, with most of the route then focusing on how Yuuji plans to redeem them. Each route contains a single choice between a good end and a bad end, often close to the end; however, Michiru’s choice happens unusually early in the route, with an early bad end or a much lengthier good ending.

The Fruit Of Grisaia Uncensored

Some scenes, mostly flashbacks, use a full-screen text box.

The translation job is outstanding in its own right. Conversations flow smoothly, without any lines coming out as awkward, unnatural or translated too literally from Japanese to English. I noticed a single typo in the entire script, in the form of a single incomplete sentence. There’s also a few small, scattered sections with voices and no text, which is a problem considering the voices are all Japanese. Generally, these are single lines that I can understand with my basic understanding of Japanese, but there’s one particularly nasty sequence near the end of Michiru’s route which has what amounts to entire monologues without text, with only Japanese voices and an empty text box. It seems to me like a somewhat glaring oversight in an otherwise stellar showing.

The sex scenes are some of the better ones I’ve seen. They don’t seem particularly forced, and they are actually somewhat important to the game, primarily for Amane’s route. Even if the dialogue surrounding them is somewhat cheesy (and it is), their presence doesn’t detract from the overall experience. More specifically, Amane’s route would be definitely lacking something important in the all-ages base Steam version, especially in one particular scene which would lose a lot of its impact if the sex was off-screen.

The music is generally good, and the tracks are used to fit the situations well, but none of them particularly stood out to me. The exception is the opening theme, “Shuumatsu no Fractal”, or “The Final Fractal”, by Faylan (also known for singing the openings for the console versions of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend, Chronophantasma and Chronophantasma Extend, as well as the BlazBlue: Alter Memory anime series, among other things). Every character gets their own ending theme, and much like the rest of the soundtrack, while they’re all good, none of them stood out to me in particular. As for the voice acting, it’s the same problem as with other visual novels; since I don’t speak the language, I can’t tell if it’s particularly good or bad.

The sprites can move freely around the screen, to great comedic effect.

The Fruit Of Grisaia Steam Restoration Patch

The visual presentation is unusually good for a visual novel, as well. The sprites freely move around the screen, expressing the action remarkably well for static images. This is used to great comedic effect and is particularly funny to watch while the auto-skip is active. In addition to standard CGs, there are also super-deformed ones (SD, or “chibi”, in case you don’t know the term), also with slight animation, used for humour. Even in regular scenes, when the ocean can be seen in the background, there’s a very slight animation in the light hitting the water – something very easy to miss, but a show of attention to detail that I appreciate.

If you want to read The Fruit of Grisaia, prepare for a major commitment; when I finished, my playtime was just under 70 hours, and that was me reading quickly. Download epanet 2.0. If you want to listen to the full voices, or read through the entire common route more than once, your playtime can easily go much higher than that. However, there’s no need to, since the three choices before the routes branch off have no bearing on the story, and the heroines’ route present themselves one at a time; if you refuse the first route, the second choice will branch off into another route, and so on. Since everything is based off of single choices, it makes it very easy to not miss anything once you’ve seen everything in the common route. The text skip is also one of the fastest I’ve ever seen.

The Fruit of Grisaia will run you $39.99 USD for either the 18+ version direct from the Denpasoft website or the all-ages version on Steam. Somewhat on the pricey side (although still less than CLANNAD), the relatively high price is worth it if you have the time to invest. At times the story is lighthearted and funny; other times, it’s sad and depressing; and sometimes, reading it can be downright stressful. This isn’t a visual novel where a walkthrough is needed – be sure to save on every choice, and you’ll be able to see everything the game has to offer no problem. This is a nice change from the overbearing complexity of others like Little Busters and CLANNAD (and don’t even get me started on Fate/Stay Night), though it doesn’t change the fact that it’ll likely run close to 70 hours, if not more, to finish all of the routes. If you don’t like visual novels or romance stories, you can probably figure out that The Fruit of Grisaia isn’t the game for you; as is the norm with visual novels, the format itself, as well as the sheer length, makes it impossible to recommend to everyone. However, if you do like visual novels and romance, I see no reason not to check out The Fruit of Grisaia if you haven’t already.

Step through the gate into a new, meaningful life.

Fruit Of Grisaia Restoration Patch

Review copy provided by publisher; fan-made restoration patch used