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void-knights · 3 years

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The Arcana Review* Edited!

[ID: Banner image featuring the text "The Arcana Review" along the bottom. In the background images of the six romanceable characters in this game.] (TL;DR at the end)

So it has been a while since I have written a review about a game. However, "The Arcana" had been recommended to me so many times, I finally decided to try it out. This is just my opinion, of the game. [Edit 1. It has been brought to my attention that all my issues could be fixed by modding the game. Yes. Yes it could. But I do not like these sorts of workarounds because these sorts of workarounds should not have to exist.] Pro: ✔ The Art is incredible, it's such a pleasing and cohesive style. ✔ The music is wonderful. ✔ The writing is good, I do truly love the world that they have built and the characters living within the world. ✔ The theme of the Tarot Cards is wonderful, it's not just a one-off gimmick like I had assumed it would be. ✔ Choose your own pronouns, She/Her, He/Him, They/Them. ✔ LGBT romances. ✔ Free to play Cons:

❌ Gambling mechanics exist in this game for you to earn premium currencies. Wish somebody had warned me (an addict) about that in this "visual novel". ❌ The cost of the premium currencies (keys and coins) of this game ❌ The sheer time investment if you cannot afford to pay. ❌ The fact that you have to watch thirty-second plus advertisements to get 50 coins (which isn't a lot). ❌ If you can't pay the price of the currencies or have watched five advertisements for 250 gold coins (which isn't much) and have used up all your keys for the day (yes twenty-four hours) then you either have to wait until the next day OR hope that Nix Hydra (the company) is doing a special social media event for you to earn even more coins/keys.

The company in response to other people's complaints (reviews on Google Play Store) actually suggests looking on their social media for these special events or doing "daily events" which is gambling. Which as an addict is not good!

I need to point out how expensive this game is! It infuriates me!

I am more used to visual novels that I can pay a flat rate for. I pay £20 and I get the complete the story, maybe there will be paid DLC for a further £5 but even then that is fucking cheaper and less time-consuming than this game. Unless you are willing to spend obscene amounts of money you cannot sit down with this visual novel/game and play through an entire romance route in one day. You cannot play it on your time, you have to wait if you cannot pay. To give an example: I played Lucio's route. To unlock "Special events" that I thought were just standard romance moments between you and the character in these types of visual novels you can pay anywhere between 150-275 coins per event. I calculated the cost of Lucio's route (only his route there are six routes each with a good/bad ending) and his two endings. (This does not include paid bonus content and additional content. Just the main story romance story route) 6975 gold coins. For one route. One character. Once you paid for it you have it. To "Save money" you can "buy a book" (which is essentially a chapter of this story) for 350 gold coins, that permanently unlock that book. This means you spend 4900 gold coins to permanently unlock all the chapters of this story. (This rate do not include the ending, but I cannot afford to pay for keys, so I am waiting for more free keys. I do not know if you need to pay anything in the endings.) But what does that mean? To put in context, if you do buy gold coins, you would have to pay for a bundle of coins.

7500 coins would cost me £93.99 3000 coins would cost me £35.99 1500 coins would cost me £18.49 750 coins would cost me £8.99 375 coins would cost me £4.59 150 coins would cost me £1.79 This is for one character. There are six characters. Six. On top of that, you get (I assume) 3 free keys in a 24-hour period by waiting 3 hours for each key to be given to you. You might get more in a 24-hour period. I don't know. But you need a key to unlock a "book" and yes you can buy keys with money. 5 keys would cost me £1.59 14 keys would cost me £4.29 30 keys would cost me £8.49 65 keys would cost me £16.99 If you want to unlock all the books at once, you would need to buy the 14 key package. All the keys do is let you progress the story. But once you have read through a route, I believe you can go back and re-read it for free. So no, you do not have to spend that money again if you want to re-read the character route. So let us say I buy 5250 gold coins plus the 14 keys that would cost me £67.76. For one character route, if I want to unlock all the romantic moments/memories. Otherwise, I can just plough through with the basic bare-bones romance. I did actually pay for 1500 gold coins to unlock some of these romantic moments, and they are significantly better than the free stuff. I would have to spend in excess of £400 to unlock all the character routes in their complete form, If i wished to experience this game like a visual novel and read over the weekend. OR I could wait for those 5 adverts to return, earning 250 gold coins for the cost of maybe 3 minutes of my time and wait 3 hours for each new key or hope that Nix Hydra is doing a sale on keys/coins. To put this in context, I was also recently recommended "When the Night Comes" by Lunaris Games. While I prefer the art of "The Arcana" When the Night Comes allows me to play a complete game. I paid £9.47 (the base rate, you can offer to pay more if you wish) for a complete story which included bonus side stories. As for the gambling mechanics THAT NOBODY WARNED ME ABOUT!!! Though I should have expected it from a free game, I never expected to see it in a visual novel! It just pisses me off that so many people recommended this game. It truly is a good story/characters/world and I love Lucio. But fuck! Don't give me that "You don't have to spend money" crap. I know that. But do you seriously expect people to invest so much time and wait just to unlock the next chapter of a story?!!!

[Edit 2. So I time travelled! I do not know if this affected the outcome for my daily 'spin the wheel' results. But it took me almost three months to collect enough free coins. You earn the least amount I think 70 coins on day 1 and 240 coins on day 7 after day 7 it resets to 1. It took me over 2 months to collect enough coins to permanantly unlock all of Lucio's chapters. Including the coins I bought with actual money. You also earn 1 key every three hours. So yeah.] TL;DR | No I do not recommend this game. Fuck this expensive shit. Great art, story and characters though.

#the arcana #the arcana review #the arcana game #thearcana #My review #Visual novel #gambling #montag morgasson #lucio montag #the arcana game lucio #Asra Alnazar #count lucio #Nadia Satrinava #julian devorak #muriel the arcana #muriel the hermit #Muriel #Portia Devorak

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themonotonysyndrome · 4 years

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Time of Realisation

Happy New Year, everyone! May 2021 be everything you ever wanted. Since I just finished writing for part 8 of this series, I wanted to post this one a bit earlier than the usual Fridays as a New Year’s Treat. So here we go! Part 7 of the ‘Successors of the Future’ is here.

(My Premium Grammarly account disappeared all of the sudden so please excuse any stupid grammatical or spelling errors you might find. I’ve edited this chapter thrice now and it should be ok??)

Before we start, we must do our ritual and give thanks to the ever amazing @tri3tri for letting us all expand on her Draconia Family series. Hope you’ll have a great year as well, Tri-senpai!

“To be honest with you Ren, I don’t remember much about Sebek. Just his voice. I still remember how loud his shouts were.”

“Eh, don’t sweat it too much. Take it as a blessing.”

Renata and Sherrie are in her room. The underwater aesthetic of Octavinelle is so beautiful to take in from the inside. It almost makes Renata wish that she’s a mermaid. Or a killer whale type of mermaid. Now that is a badass merfolk.

Just like Renata, Sherrie was given a room all to herself instead of sharing it with a dorm member due to her gender.

And her little sister did not waste time transforming her room just like her old one back at their home. Already her gaming computer has been set up on her study table, cosmetic sets of well-known brands - Nyx, My Pretty Zombie, and Fenty Beauty - are organised neatly on her shelves beside the standard textbooks and stationeries. One of the open drawers beside her cupboard full of her school uniforms as well as her Pastel Goth clothes display tins of green teas and stacks of instant foods.

Clearly, Sherrie has made herself right at home in Octavinelle. And less than a week too!

Actually, how much luggage did Sherrie brought from their home?

After the Entrance Ceremony, Renata waited two days for Sherrie to acclimate herself to Night Raven College, letting her talk to some of her dorm members, get a feel on the teachers before slipping into her bedroom to catch up. It was a mild surprise to see the state of her room after her little sister told her to plant her ass on the bed while she prepared a pot of hot green tea for them.

While she’s busy with the kettle, Renata wasted no time to explain what Ace told her during Winter’s Break when she inquired about Sebek. It was good to know that due to the dense magic in the Country of Thorns, technology is almost non-existent in the land due to magical interference. It also helps that despite being in the First-Year Forever group chat, Sebek barely checks his phone at all. Over time, Ace and the rest of their group forgot that Sebek is even in the group chat!

“Still, it’s good to know that Mama’s friends drifted away from Sebek over the years. That’ll help us a lot in the long run.” Sherrie commented after Renata wraps up her report. She handed a cup of tea to Renata and lean against her study table, facing the bed where her older sister is cooling her hot tea by channeling ice magic onto her fingertips. “What about the student body here? What are they like?”

“Everyone walks around as if they got a twelve-inch dick.” Renata’s sarcasm is as thick as the kelp forest outside of Sherrie’s bedroom window.

Sherrie couldn’t help but laugh at her deadpan tone; she had to put her cup of tea on the table before it spilled everywhere. “That bad, huh?” She giggles helplessly, wiping the tears from the corner of her eyes.

Renata was about to roll her eyes but stop herself and ponders. Despite their flaws, Hoyle and Rex are good friends. Hell, even Bakari vibes with her. Not quite friendly, but he hasn’t yet turned her away when she scurries over to intrude herself in whatever he’s currently doing. That, and she secretly enjoys finding little treats and snacks in her backpack after hanging out with him. “Ok, some of them aren’t so bad once you can get past their ego. Remind me to introduce Hoyle and Rex to you soon.”

Sherrie raises an eyebrow. “And what about that one guy who keeps giving you food?”

“You’ll see him around.”

“...Right.” Sherrie eyed her older sister with a knowing look when Renata nonchalantly shrugs. She’ll get back to that little topic later. “Have you prepare the little surprise for Mama?”

“Yup.” Renata affirmed and took a sip of her tea. She lets out a happy, little sigh when warmth travels across her body. “We’ll do it this weekend. That’s the only time that they’re free.”

The two talk a little more until Renata had to leave when curfew looms. The passing Octavinelle students gave her a side-eye for a few seconds but otherwise, no one batted an eye at seeing a Diasomnia student walking about their dorms. The whole school is aware that Renata and Sherrie are siblings by now. Renata wonders if her sister will receive the same cold politeness because of their horns.

Meanwhile, as Renata made her way to her own dorm, Sherrie is scrutinising the lock on her door with a frown. The previous used cups and teapot are all washed up and the lights are dim slightly since she’s planning to hit the bed right after she figures out how to secure her room thoroughly. There are just too many sensitive and important information about their family and plans against their father kept here. She straightens her back and tosses a glance at the computer and tablet lying on the table beside it. Sherrie had made sure to cultivate a habit of not storing the complete set of important materials in a single device - one can never be too careful after all. Especially when there’s a dorm here dedicate to Technomages. Hmm... perhaps she should befriend one of the students of Ignihyde to help her with the security of her electronic devices?

Though there’s still an issue with the simple lock of her door. Anyone can just force it open with a pick. Sherrie made a mental note to consult with her sister for some sort of spell that can solve this problem.

And with that, she quickly changes into a simple loose shirt and a pair of shorts before slipping under the duvet and turns in for the night.

Life as a halfling and an Octavinelle student quickly proves to be unlike anything Sherrie has ever experience.

Renata offhandedly advises her to shrug it off when her dorm members stare at her horns a little too long; they’ll get used to her soon enough. Sherrie cursed under her breath when her sister left and wondered if she could attend her classes virtually instead, but when she brought that up to her Dorm Leader, the shark merman raised an eyebrow and simply asked her if she’s an Octavinelle student or Ignihyde’s. Needless to say, Sherrie set on digging any dirt she can find on her Dorm Leader ASAP.

Other than the uncomfortable stares and shady Dorm Leader - Sherrie quite enjoys the scarf that comes with her uniform - as well as her dorm leader, tend to keep it to themselves. Underneath the polite offers of tutelage in classes and tours around Mostro Lounge, Sherrie can blatantly pick up the insinuation underneath those favours.

A favour for a favour - that’s how life in Octavinelle works. Information is worth more than Madols and dealings under the table is practically the norm.

Sherrie adapts in Night Raven College faster than Renata ever could.

Speaking of Madols, Sherrie needed to do something about their financial situations in Twisted Wonderland. Currency exchange is not a thing here so their dollars are practically worthless. Fortunately, Octavinelle expects its dorm members to pull their weights in Mostro Lounge. By the second week she’s in Night Raven College, her Dorm Leader already distributed the First Year’s schedule of their shifts around the café. The pay might not be much but it’s a good start.

There’s got to be a Twisted Wonderland equivalent of Youtube. She made mad revenue as a Youtuber and game streamer back home.

Today, Sherrie is working at Mostro Lounge with several other First Year students from other dorms. Customers flooded in during lunchtime and kept her busy manning behind the bar, preparing drinks and desserts.

“Presentation my ass...” Sherrie mumbled under her breath as she struggles to beautify the ice-cream sundae. She had to redo the whole thing when one of the staff - her Third Year senior - saw how plain her work was and taught her to make an art out of the dessert.

She was in the midst of deciding how many cherries would be enough to make the sundae look prettier when a rich, baritone voice broke her concentration. “Has the ice-cream offend you in some way, MC/S-san?”

Sherrie moves her face away from the towering glass to see a fellow dorm member smiling at her. How curious, his eyes are like hot, molten gold.

“No. I was just adding some finishing touches.” Sherrie reply, her voice remained neutral. She hasn’t seen this one around before.

Her dorm member continues to smile. It comes across as calculative instead of genuine. Renata would’ve spat fire at him already. “My, it looks wonderful. I’ll be sure to inform the customer that his sundae is prepared by your meticulous hand. I’m sure he’ll forgive you for the time he had to wait.”

Sherrie promptly turns around to store back the cherries into the fridge to hide her smirk. This nobody came forward trying to pick a fight with her? This could be fun. “I’m more than happy to receive our customer if he has any complaint with his sundae.”

“I’ll be sure to inform him.” He nods once and place the sundae on a tray and left the bar. Sherrie made sure to keep an eye on him after that.

He’s tall, taller than her, and play the perfect part of a waiter with ease. As if he grew up in this sort of environment. The way how he balances two heavy laden trays of food and drinks on his palms while weaving in between tables, greeting the customers with an impeccable smile is telling. This guy mastered the art of customer service for sure.

“Who’s the hotshot?” Sherrie asked her partner as she carefully wipes the clean glasses. Her shift partner - a Second Year manta ray merman, who was kind enough to introduce herself to her without any subtle jeer - glances at Sherrie’s line of sight, and his mouth made a small ‘o’.

“That’s Amber Leech. He’s one of the promising First Year students we got, according to the Vice Dorm Leader. You’re more of a wild card, though. Dorm Leader still doesn’t know what to think of you.”

Sherrie ignores that titbit about herself; she just hums. Didn’t Mama mention that she knows a Leech? “He’s good at handling the customers, I’ll give him that.” Sherrie admits, stacking the last dry glass onto the rack before her attention is capture by a server with a list of orders. Sherrie was too preoccupied with her job to scrutinised Amber any further after that.

Later when a Scarabia student relieved her of her shift with a quick exchange of pleasantries, instead of leaving, Sherrie decided to stick around and enjoy some free food in the kitchen. As long as she stayed out of the way, no one really minded her presence.

“Good job today, Leech-san. You can join MC/S-san in the kitchen if you’re hungry.”

“Thank you very much. I’ll be taking up on your kind offer then.”

Sherrie paused, tilting her head up from her small tub of ice-cream to see none other but Amber Leech step into the kitchen. Their eyes met and his calculative smile greeted her.

“Is this seat taken?” He politely asks her, gesturing to the vacant chair opposite her. The round table at the back of the kitchen is a bit small, barely enough to fit more than three people but it was far enough away from the kitchen staff so that they won’t be a bother.

“Knock yourself out.”

“Very well then.”

By the time he took out a red bento from the fridge, heat it up and takes a seat near the table, Sherrie has already polished the tub of ice-cream. When Amber noticed the empty tub, he frowns. It was so sudden that Sherrie couldn’t help but defensively blurted out, “What?”

“Is that all you having for lunch?” There’s a disapproving tone in his voice and Sherrie doesn’t know what to make of it.

“That? It was a snack. I had my lunch before my shift.”

For some reason, her dorm mate nodded, strangely pleased at her answer before he tucks into his lunch. By the looks of it, his bento is artfully made with a variety of colourful foods.

The two said nothing, simply enjoying the clatter of cooking utensils, sizzling fire on the stoves and the cooks hum under their breath. Here in the back of the kitchen, the chatter of customers outside is almost muted.

It was peaceful. So peaceful in fact, Amber Leech feels like it’s his sworn duty to shatter it.

“I suggest consulting either Aeacus Shroud or the other students in Ignihyde’s Basic Magical Technology group as your solution. Shroud-san is the only First Year student in that group but I heard he’s the most approachable of the lot.”

Sherrie’s heart froze. “What?”

Amber took his time to put away his now empty bento, dab the corner of his lip with a folded napkin that was on the table before replying, “For security of course.”

His answer is vague. Purposely so as he levels a stare at Sherrie.

“...How do you know that?” Sherrie all but demanded under her faux, indifferent voice.

Amber dared to smile and point his eyes, no word escape his lips.

A Unique Magic then. It has to be. Are his similar to Renata’s?

Sherrie’s mind races, for once, trying to decipher this strange student beside her.

And suddenly, Sherrie realises who this boy really is. The eyes were a give away.

“Amber Leech. Jade Leech’s son, I presume?”

“Mama, I’m home!”

“Welcome back, sweetie. How was cheer practice today?”

“It went really well, Mama. We nailed down the new routine without anyone falling off.” Lucien shuts the door close with his feet. He’s sweaty and still in his cheerleading uniform with a duffel bag sling over his shoulder. Seeing that his Mama is nowhere in the living room, Lucien padded into the kitchen.

The house is, unfortunately, a lot quieter now that his sisters are off at Night Raven College. Before Sherrie left, she and he talk about how their Mama would feel lonely now. Even more so when it’s his turn.

Lucien assured her that he’ll keep an eye on their Mama closely.

His friends would playfully tease him that he’s such a Mama’s boy; constantly texting her of his whereabouts, what she and his sisters want from the convenience stores and Mama always make his favourite desserts more often compare to Renata’s apple pies and Sherrie’s matcha cupcakes.

And Lucien has no shame in being spoiled by their Mama.

However, when he steps into the kitchen to witness their Mama re-arranging the dishes in the cupboard for the second time this week, it’s time for Mama to be spoiled in return.

Lucien can’t wait to see her reaction when they spring the surprise tonight.

“Mama? Do you need some help with the plates?” Lucien asked instead of pointing out the fact that Mama has been restless lately. Without waiting for a reply, Lucien has already dropped his duffel bag to walk around the island counter towards her.

“It’s alright, Lucy. I’m nearly done here anyway.” MC wave Lucien’s waiting hands away as she pushes the last stack of plates into the lower cabinet and got up. She shot him a smile but it’s wobbly. “Are you hungry, sweetheart? We still have some leftover dinner from last night that I can heat up real quick. Hang on, just give Mama a second to take it out - ”

“Mama, it’s alright. I know. It doesn’t feel the same without Ren and Cherry.”

MC froze before she got up and smile sadly. The sight made Lucien’s heart clench painfully. “The three of you have always been close to me ever since you were born. Your Father was... many things,” MC grimace but she soldiers on. “But he would never separate your sisters away from me. I’m not sure what to do with myself now that Ren and Cherry are away...”

Sherrie’s voice suddenly pops in Lucien’s head like how Renata enjoys busting through his door without knocking: “Mama needs a distraction. ASAP! Go, go, go!”

Renata interjects after her: “Psst! Try something calming yet engaging. That’ll do.”

Distraction. Right. Lucien can do that for Mama. At least until the surprise tonight.

“Would Mama help me with my origami? I could use some help with filling up my new empty glass jar.” Lucien suggests.

MC blink; didn’t expect Lucien to suddenly ask for an extra pair of hands with his hobby, but she took it in stride. “Uh, sure thing, honey.”

Lucien beams like a blooming sunflower. “I’ll go shower first then. Be right back, Mama!”

“Don’t run in the house, Lucy!” MC reminded him but lets him went upstairs with a small smile. She needs to get out of this funk. While Lucien is freshening up, might as well finish up her chores for the day.

By the time Lucien came back down carrying an empty glass jar and a stack of colourful scented papers and they didn’t waste time to clear the dining table of the bowl of fruits and their cups so they could get to it.

Lucien is remarkably patient. More so than MC or his older sisters - he made sure to slowly show how to fold the paper into stars to his Mama and when she’s confused, he would show her some videos online to help her. As the mother and son gradually fill up the glass jar, Lucien talks about anything and everything under the sun. How everyone in his team at school is helping him ease to the role as the captain of the cheerleading squad, how he’s getting a hang on the new subject material taught in Math class and who’s dating who in his circle of friends.

MC hums and would give an appropriate reply in-between Lucien’s story. Typical teenage shenanigans, albeit, a lot tamer than what she went through but she’ll never get tired of listening to her children’s school life. Yes, even when Renata and Sherrie tried their best to hide whatever blunder they did at times.

It was when Lucien threw a purple star origami into the jar that he suddenly changes the subject. “Oh yeah! By the way Mama, Ren and Cherry said that she has a surprise for you tonight!”

“Oooh, a surprise? I wonder what your sisters are planning.” MC murmurs a bit absentmindedly, too focus on folding the papers. Her eyebrows scrunch in concentration and she would beam proudly when one star came out perfect before tossing it into the jar with a happy hum.

Lucien is relieved. Looks like the distraction works.

They had a simple dinner once the glass jar is filled and once the dishes are done, Lucien hurriedly ushers his Mama into the living room. On the sofa, MC watches Lucien draws the rune on the mirror, bemused at the grin on his face.

When the rune vanishes, MC opens her mouth to greet her daughters. Her open mouth gapes and she could feel the corner of her eyes are suddenly wet when she saw the people on the other side of the mirror.

“Ow! Deuce, you idiot! I told you not to shove me with your elbow!”

“Who are you calling an idiot!? And quit hogging the mirror already!”

“I’m not hogging the mirror! You’re the one who keeps pushing me!”

MC couldn’t help it. She laughs, tears now freely running down her cheeks. Lucien quietly excuses himself to fetch a box of tissue for her.

Her laugh shuts both Ace and Deuce up. “Oh geez, what are you crying for, hah? It’s just us.” Ace said, supporting a bittersweet smile. At that moment, seeing his best friend releases the tension festering inside of him all these years.

“We miss you, Prefect!” Deuce shouted with a sniffle, his eyes are teary as well. He hurries to wipe off the tears with his knuckle. “Miss you so, so much! I’m so glad you’re OK!”

“Are you really though?” Ace interject, he doesn’t even bother to conceal his blatant check on MC’s body. Looking for any sign of injuries or illness.

MC guessed that one of her daughters have told them what happened to her...

But she refused to let thoughts regarding Malleus damper her happy mood. Not when she could finally see her best friends again.

“I’m ok now. We’re... we’re ok.” MC honestly reply with a lightened heart.

The three of them have grown; each of them has their own children now, at this moment, it feels as if they have been transported back to their teenage years all those years ago.

MC realises that she’s truly no longer alone now.

And we’ve reached the end of this chapter! I hope you guys enjoyed it!! MC finally meet Adeuce once more, even if it’s just through a mirror. With the three of them together again, there’s nothing they can’t do.

Here are some titbits about Amber Leech’s background:

1. His Unique Magic is called ‘Witness of the Past’

2. His Mum is a beautiful mer Sea Lamprey (if you don’t know what a Sea Lamprey looks like, uh, prepare yourself before you google search them.)

Speaking of Unique Magic, I’ve compiled a list of all the kids with their UMs already. Haven’t decided yet when I’ll post it, but I’m thinking of posting the names as a sort of teaser? Meh, we’ll see how that goes.

#twisted wonderland #fanfic #malleus draconia #ace trappola #deuce spade #yandere malleus draconia #yandere malleus x mc #Draconia Family series #Second Wive AU #tri3tri

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rpgsandbox · 4 years

Link

‘I do believe in fairies! l do! I do!’

Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie

Experiencing visions of a mythical land throughout your childhood, you are suddenly transported to the Inspirisles, a kingdom ruled by the fey. Responsible for a pact made long ago by your ancestors, you must now earn Belief and the respect of their gods or find yourself trapped there forever.

INSPIRISLES is a completely original tabletop RPG aimed at teenagers. It will promote empathy, life skills and deaf awareness with an emphasis on teamwork and creativity.

Play as teens gifted extraordinary powers.

Meet famous characters and fearsome monsters from Celtic folklore.

Work together to heal a crumbling land and restore a fractured kingdom.

Learn British/American Sign Language as you cast spells and solve puzzles.

Become apprentices to the gods.

Offer Belief to earn your tickets home.

This project came about after running my teen Dungeons & Dragons group Hatchlings for over a year. I wanted to create something for them. Something they could have a hand in building. And something I could take beyond the group to use in schools and communities as a workshop model. Inspirisles is the result of this, a game for young players that reflects my interest in folklore and my ongoing work with the deaf community.

Though Inspirisles is aimed at children, it can be enjoyed equally by adults and we are especially encouraging parents, educators and tabletop beginners to invest in our game. Many of us have fond memories of 80s fantasy classics such as The NeverEnding Story & Labyrinth. Inspirisles aims to capture some of that nostalgic magic and transport its older participants back to a more carefree and imaginative time.

Standard & Limited Edition book mock-ups

A5 premium-colour hardback with over 150 pages of material, including...

History of the islands and their Friends.

Creating your Foundling character.

Collection of spell, ability & item cards and the tools to invent your own.

A host of worldbuilding ideas & mechanics to breathe life into your quests, including using the arts in roleplaying, creating challenging environmental puzzles, alternative ways to earn Belief, rules for Inspired apprenticeships, exploration, downtime & Doom.

Scriv’s Tour: Follow the famous bard as she journals the key locations & personalities you will encounter during your adventures.

Scriv’s Story: Fiction retelling the moment our bard met Athelyn for the first time (Limited Edition only).

Menagerie of monsters from Celtic folklore & the tools to invent your own.

Starter adventure: ‘Duster Trials’.

Stunning art from cover to cover, including maps for locations and encounters.

Two page spread of Josh Somerville’s spectacular knot art (Limited Edition only).

Dyslexia friendly fonts throughout to prioritise accessibility.

Handouts: Blank character sheet, Shaping alphabet (BSL & ASL), milestone certificates & Grail template.

* terms in bold explored below.

Page sample by Anna Urbanek of Double Proficiency

Belief is the keystone of the Inspirisles. The energy binding all things. In its absence, the land and its children would fade from life and from memory.

If Belief were to run dry, it would have terrible repercussions. Imagine something calamitous like Earth’s polar caps suddenly melting or electricity disappearing from the globe overnight.

Though Belief is generated through such things as exploration, the arts, work and even battle, these pale in comparison to the amount collected from human children.

As children believe in magic less and less, the inhabitants of the Inspirisles must come up with new and increasingly creative ways to convince them otherwise.

Belief gathered from Earth is taken to the World Tree and released over its roots. This energy then spreads throughout the land, healing the foundations of the islands.

Shaping

A place where the gods walk freely, where dragons are hunted for hoarding Belief, where a war rages between Friends, where reforging an ancient sword can reforge a kingdom, where sign language is used to cast spells, where there is no death, only Disbelief, and where heroes rise and fall together.

It is also a setting to reflect the struggles of our own world. You’ll find environmental calamity, political greed and social injustice to name but a few. Making Inspirisles relatable to our future generations was an ambition from the very start. However, we would never want to push an agenda, so building a platform for whichever stories need to be told has been our sole responsibility.

Hibernation

Our system and its mechanics are entirely built around the theme of Belief. Players must work together to collect this wondrous commodity, reaching the heights before deciding whether to stay and enjoy the renown or return home and reunite with their true families.

Moving away from systems found in many popular tabletop RPGs, Inspirisles is largely aimed at young adults and does away with traditional mechanics such as racial bonuses, class systems, ponderous combat and even death.

Though our players should expect an open, sandbox experience, it’s nice to have an overall goal in mind. As such, the concept of healing the land as a team for rewards and progression is at the heart of Inspirisles.

As with any roleplaying game, Inspirisles will throw challenges at its players. As well as social and environmental encounters, Foundlings (players) will inevitably come across familiar monsters of Celtic legend, such as the Questing Beast who will stalk them across the land. Within the book, you’ll also discover many nasties of our own invention and the tools to invent your own.

Don’t go it alone!

Attributes

Foundlings will have six attributes: sword, shield, speed, smarts, social & survival. When facing obstacles, they can lay down up to three cards representing spells, abilities or items. These cards display unique properties that will have an impact on their attribute bonus. Players then roll 2d6, adding the attribute bonus plus any additions from the cards. If the obstacle they are facing is truly perilous, they may turn to their Grail Pool as a last resort, a resource only carried by Foundlings.

Sample obstacle resolution

Obstacles can include social interactions, puzzles, environmental challenges and battle. Whether the obstacle is resolved through roleplay or combat, if it requires a check, it is always contested between player and Grail Guide (Game Master).

With every failed encounter and instead of suffering injury or death, Foundlings will instead experience Disbelief. If too much Disbelief is accumulated as a group, players must pull together to reduce it using the Belief they may be saving for a rank or new cards. This balancing act encourages empathy between participants, but also prevents Doom from affecting the islands.

Puzzles & predators

Guinevere & Arthur, our Grail Guide choices

Our version of a Game Master is called the Grail Guide (GG). A participating adult or teenager will take on the role of GG and become the spirit of King Arthur Pendragon or Queen Guinevere. It will be their task to guide the players on their journey, making decisions on the rules, lending voice to the citizens and fangs to the denizens, and encouraging everyone to work together, share the limelight and have fun.

As the GG, you also have the unique opportunity to gift your players their Grail Pool, a set of polyhedral dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 & d20). Foundlings are the only beings able to carry this water poured from the Holy Grail. Even a sip will offer them an edge when facing the greatest of challenges and most dangerous of foes.

Talking of the Grail, with the book will be a template for the holy vessel that GG’s can cutout before sessions. This prop is then placed in the centre of the playing space and can be flipped whenever a player finds a theme or scenario too difficult. The GG can then move on swiftly without disrupting the overall session.

Safety tool

It is also the responsibility of the GG to add tension and peril to the experience. If their players accumulate too much Disbelief, they can consult a Doom chart. This will change the Inspirisles in dramatic ways, such as causing a volcano to erupt, introducing the Questing Beast to hunt Foundlings, having Excalibur seized by an enemy or building a troll bridge on the outskirts of a city.

Spelunking

As a player, you take on the role of Foundling, a human teen drawn by fate to the islands. Instead of selecting a race or class, Foundlings are trained by one of eight fey clans, otherwise known as Friends. The Knockers, Glow, Wyrmbitten, Capra, Piskies, Giantheld and Bucca populate distinct locations from city to forest, tin mine to tundra. Seven of these races work tirelessly to restore Belief and prevent the collapse of the Inspirisles. Whilst the eighth, an exiled people known as Glimmers refuse to help, sheltered far beneath the surface where the cracks go unseen and the tremors unfelt.

Friends

As a Foundling, once Belief is gathered, it can be used in 3 distinct ways...

Pilgrimage to Avalon where the World Tree sits. Belief is offered to its roots in exchange for training.

Patronage to the Inspired. Belief is offered in exchange for spells.

Provide for the community they were embraced by. Belief is offered in exchange for items.

Regardless of how Foundlings offer Belief, they will earn the favour of the ruling houses and feel their reputation and power grow.

Foundling character sheet

The Inspired are the closest thing the islands have to deities. Their influence can be felt across the kingdom at all times and ultimately players will need to impress them if they are to return home.

As well as being great teachers of magic in the form of Shaping, they have trades in their homelands, allowing Foundling players to become apprentices and earn Belief through hard work and dedication.

Kilna of the Fire has his forge.

Egrain of the Earth has her vinyard.

Athelyn of the Water has their bath house.

Vorm of the Air has his skyship.

The Inspired

Travelling via All’s Well, a mysterious portal leading to the British Isles, on their 15th birthdays, the brightest and bravest Foundlings are sent Earthwards to collect Belief. These elite are known as Dusters.

With the help of a Wellwisher, a common mammal transformed by Athelyn to be more like you and I, Dusters will be guided to a child without Belief, a teenager struggling to feel magic in their life.

Players will then roll a six-sided Dusting Dice (d6), revealing the target child’s particular sensitivity. 1: Fear 2: Joy 3: Wonder 4: Help 5: Story and (6: Other - determined by GG). Through roleplaying this sensitivity, Foundlings must convince the child that magic exists before collecting their Belief to take back.

Wellwisher

BSL alphabet by british-sign.co.uk

As well as speaking the common tongue for the sake of interactions with humankind, the fey use a form of sign language they believe communicates right to the heart.

The technique is known as Shaping, a term derived from the hand and finger movements used and a deeper meaning of shaping the world around them. Spells are solely expressed through Shaping, with gestures building energy before being released from the fingertips.

Spells are taught only by the Inspired. Only they know the deeper intricacies of the language necessary to harness magic.

Though optional, we are introducing British Sign Language (BSL) and Sign Supported English (SSE) into our game. We are using it as part of the spellcasting process and to solve some of the setting’s most challenging puzzles, encouraging our young players to learn the alphabet and more as they play.

When you back our core book, whether digitally or physically, you will gain access to a video workshop on the art of Shaping produced by our friends in the deaf community. Whilst not a comprehensive introduction to British Sign (see Stretch Goals), it will teach participants enough to encourage them to pursue the language beyond the game.

The core book will also come with an American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet sheet. The video tutorial unlocks through a stretch goal.

Kickstarter campaign ends: Mon, August 17 2020 12:00 AM BST

Website: Hatchlings

#RPG #kickstarter #Inspirisles #Hatchlings #sign language #BSL #ASL

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christinaengela · 4 years

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Hello friends and fans!

Welcome to my 45th newsletter – September 2020!

On A Personal Note

August was a blurry month – it really doesn’t feel like September, it feels more like March the 342nd! Know what I mean? Anyway, between work and everything else I have going on the side, the last six months or so have literally disappeared! For most people, this year has been a complete loss, for me I’ve at least published 7 new titles. Not to brag, but this brings my tally up to 30 books!

On the home front, my workshop is where I indulge my creative side in wood and metal work. Some years ago however, I got sick and tired of sharing my workspace with the rest of the garage! When it rained, it meant I couldn’t run my vintage bug outside, and the small space available meant I wouldn’t be able to work in there that day! About two years ago, I built a greenhouse against the side of the house across the alleyway between the house wall and the boundary wall, bordering on the back garden, which in the end my love convinced me to use as a workshop space instead! For the past two years, this has been where I worked on various projects, regardless of the weather. The only problem with that was again, space. While I had more permanently accessible space to keep my tools and to work, quite a lot of my tools were actually kept in shelving under the work benches. I needed more space – or to be more specific, a broader room to work in.

So, finally, last week I finally gave up on the bar area. It was where we entertained friends and it consisted of an actual bar room with an adjoining dining area with casual benches and a table for when we had barbeques etc. It’s been a considerable amount of time since we’ve entertained anyone who drinks, and neither of us actually drinks much more than a brandy now and then – scarcely enough to warrant wasting the useful premium real-estate on a bar! It would be far better to just dedicate a cupboard inside the house to housing the drinks, glasses and accoutrements – and all my collectibles, antique cameras and telephones etc. on the walls could be redistributed around the rest of the house.

That said, Wendy could have her greenhouse back – and so last week I relocated my workshop to the larger space where I have more room to work on projects and store and organize my tools and materials! For the first time, I feel I actually have the right space to indulge my creativity! The adjoining stoop will still be reserved for chats, game nights and barbeques – should they ever arise again.

Aside from that little personal ramble ,I also have some very good writing-related news to share with you this time – another two of my books have come out as audiobooks, and I’ve also published a new novelette called “Lifetime”! Moon Books also released an anthology I was the Editor for, so it’s really been a productive year for me so far!

Art

I also indulge in painting from time to time – and no, I don’t mean walls! The following paintings are in my portfolio:

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“Human Nature” 2017 A4 acrylic canvas

“Balancier” 2020 A2 acrylic canvas

“Rescuer” 2020 A2 acrylic canvas

“The Awakening” 2020 A2 acrylic canvas

“The Earth Wept” 2020 40x40cm acrylic on canvas

You can read more about my art projects on the Art page.

What do you think of them? Feel free to let me know!

Music

Yes – I also make music from time to time!

A selection of music tracks I made using eJay and other similar apps between 1999 – 2008 are available on my YouTube channel.

You can read more on the Music page on my website!

Activism

For those of you interested in my activism-related posts and activities, you can follow them at “Sour Grapes: The Fruit Of Ignorance“.

Current Writing Projects

On a suggestion of Brandon Mullins from Moon Books, I agreed to a combined edition of “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room”, to replace the two novellas published in February this year. The new book is novel length at over 46000 words, and I also wrote a short foreword and an introductory portion to precede the first part of the story.

As I mentioned several times previously, I have still a lot of work to do! I have a number of part-way completed stories awaiting my loving attention! Unfortunately, life and work have a nasty habit of getting in the way!

Also, thanks to Lulu.com’s spite in throwing their entire publishing platform into a mincer and expecting users to just shut up and like it, I have left the platform entirely – but aside from the immense amount of work that precipitated on my side with having to relocate all my books from there to other platforms, it also means I’ll have to rebuild one of my books entirely from the ground up! “The Pitfalls of South African Self-Publishing” is now out of print thanks to Lulu. Why? Because the second half of the book details the ease of self-publishing using Lulu’s old platform – the one they entirely scrapped and replaced with a vague, useless monstrosity – and gives a step-by-step example with screenshots, and is practically a love-letter to Lulu! I will now have to redraft that entire portion of the book, thanks to them!

In the past week or so I’ve been working on an editing project for Moon Books, and you can read more about that in the next section.

Editing

I completed editing an anthology for Moon Books in mid-August entitled “Moon Books Horror Anthology V”. This book contains 7 short stories filled with pure dread – and it was released on 20 August. It’s already available in eBook and paperback.

Currently I’m close to finishing the edit of a sci-fi tale for Moon Books. “Avenging Aranis” is by UK writer Steve McElhenny, and it’s the first part of a trilogy!

Marketing – The Dreaded “M” Word!

Portfolio 2020!

I thought it would be nice if I could produce a neat, organized catalog of all my books that interested parties could download and browse – a free, distributable and shareable catalog, and so I created “Portfolio 2020!” – a listing of all my currently available titles!

Portfolio is more than that though, because it also contains a biography as well as synopses for most of my titles – and I have a plan to update it regularly, perhaps on an annual basis! Portfolio 2020 is available as a free download from my website.

Videos

In August, Nigel Peever made this amazing audiobook trailer video for the newly released “Demonspawn” – have a look, isn’t it beautiful?

https://christinaengela.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/demonspawn-video-by-nigel-peever.mp4

Sales

Let’s start with the good news! Audiobook sales over July were truly amazing – with a massive (by my previous standards) 42 copies of “Blachart” sold from Audible during that month! This frenetic surge in sales didn’t last very long, just to the end of July, with just 3 sales of that book in August. I realize a slowdown is inevitable as a new title stops being new. In fact, August proved to be rather dull in comparison, with just 3 sales of “Blachart“, and 3 sales of a new audiobook title, “When Darkness Calls“. This of course led me to formulate a new personal theory regarding sales, popularity and choice of narrator when publishing an audiobook – one I will probably explore later in the second edition of “The Pitfalls of South African Self-publishing”, which I am working on as time allows.

But I digress! Ebooks sales on Ebooks2go have picked up a bit over August since I transferred my titles there at the start of the month, culminating in three whole sales (sarcasm definitely intended). To give you an idea how writers get ripped off by some distribution channels, just check out the screenshot below:

The three top-most entries show three eBook sales via Hoopla – and each of those titles sold for $2.99. What do I get out of it? 14 US cents out of $2.99 per sale! It’s positively downright bloody criminal! For comparison, the one beneath that – a sale via B&N at least gave me $1.64 out of $2.99 – but only one of those from July. No wonder so many writers give up!

Over-all though, I’ve got the idea that sales have been dwindling globally and not just for me, so I’m by no means feeling picked on. I realize that with economies teetering on the brink of disaster – and so many of my contacts on Facebook posting the sad news that they will be homeless and sleeping in their cars or on the streets within days – how very, very lucky I am. I may not be raking it in as an author – but at least I have a secure job, for which I’m very thankful indeed!

Publishing

These are the books I’ve released so far this year!

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Between January and September 2020 I released eight new titles! Of these, two – “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” have been replaced by one combined title, “Mirror, Mirror” which includes both of them. Of course, this reduces my count back to 30 again – but when you already have 30 or so books to your name, what’s one here or there?

New Releases:

“Lifetime”

On August 07 Moon Books Publishing released a novella of mine called “Lifetime“, bringing my title-count up to 30! Here’s a look at the back cover blurb for the book:

“An entrepreneurial couple, happily married, run their deep-space prospecting company together. They are unexpectedly separated when the ship one of them is aboard is lost during a prospecting voyage. The other spares no effort in an attempt to find her, and immediately sets out on another ship to find her. Meanwhile on a remote planet, surrounded by wreckage and the bodies of her crewmates, she has survived and treated her injuries, and fights to stay alive while she awaits rescue…”

Buy now: eBook Paperback Audiobook (coming soon)

“Lifetime” is available in ebook and paperback and will be coming out in audiobook format soon, narrated by Miciah Dodge.

“Mirror, Mirror”

This was shortly thereafter followed by another new title “Mirror, Mirror”, on August 11, which repackages “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” into one single novel-length book. “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” are also now out of print – being henceforth exclusively available in “Mirror, Mirror”.

Buy now: eBook Paperback Audiobook (coming soon)

Here’s a look at the description:

“Things aren’t always as they seem. Neither was Charlie Branson – or Andy Niksn.

Outwardly, Charlie appeared to be the successful, respected, somewhat over-paid Captain of a commercial space liner.

In truth, it was 2025 – space liners did not yet exist, and the space liner Freedom was really just a very expensive set – a fancy simulator for wealthy clients the company took on simulated cruises into deep space to forget the real world for a while, to get away from it all – and they loved them for it!

In an atmosphere where people were locked away from reality for weeks at a time, and cos-playing and roleplaying redefined ‘normal’, telling fact and fantasy apart became more complicated than expected. For those who preferred the pleasant escape from the harsh realities of life outside, like Charlie, wishing it could all just be real became something almost like a prayer.

Andy Niksn, by contrast, was the very successful respected and somewhat over-paid Captain of an actual commercial space liner in the year 2773. Trouble was, Andy felt trapped! He was in a relationship – a dead-end partnership that had no future and promised both even less happiness. On top of that, his friend Jim had died recently, leaving Andy in the darkest place he’d ever been – and he didn’t mean space!

Andy wished he could just wake up to a different reality where everything could make sense again! For Andy, this too became something almost like a prayer!

As it turned out, someone heard them.

The answer wasn’t quite what they expected.”

Audiobooks

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“All That Remains” JEA (2019)

“See Them Aliens” MBP (2019)

“Blachart” MBP (2020)

“When Darkness Calls” (2020)

“Demonspawn” MBP (2020)

On August 7th I received the completed audiobook of book 2 in the Galaxii series, “Demonspawn“, narrated (and dramatized) by Nigel Peever! The audiobook was finally released on August 31, and it was worth every minute I waited for it!

Nigel has also committed to narrating book 3 in Galaxii, after the five or so other books he has waiting in the queue, so he should only get round to that one somewhere around January ’21. In the meantime, that gives me time to work on Galaxii book 4! 😉

On August 20, “When Darkness Calls“, narrated by Miciah Dodge, was released via Audible! You can read more about it here.

Coming Soon

In the meantime, here’s a look at the covers for hot new audiobooks currently in the pipeline:

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“Malice!” (2020) COMING SOON!

“Lifetime” (2020) COMING SOON!

Stay tuned for updates!

Reviews

You can see all my previous reviews here.

Currently Available Titles

I now have 30 unique titles available in 4 series (not including books I’ve been the editor for, and my 16 free promotional items)! My books are available in three different formats: EBooks, Paperbacks and Audiobooks. Click the links or images below to view titles available in these formats.

Communication

Below are links to a few of my most recent posts and articles since my last newsletter:

New Release: Demonspawn Audiobook

New Release: When Darkness Calls Audiobook

New Release: Horror Anthology V

Sinotec SJ86C LED Projector Review

New Release: Lifetime by Christina Engela

New Release: Mirror, Mirror by Christina Engela

“Demonspawn” Audiobook Now In For Review!

New Release: Lifetime by Christina Engela

Some Great Resources For Writers

Another Round At The Crow Bar #44 August 2020

If you want to see more articles, just click on the category links below:

Elements of Horror

FAQ Answered

Fun Facts

LGBT Heroes

The Tech Side

Secret Weapons of the Resistance

Writing Advice

Guest Writers

Newsletters

Interactions

Fan Mail, Reader Reviews & Honorable Mentions

I found the following awesome items to show you this month!

Great Book July 20, 2020 review on Audible for “Blachart” (audiobook):

Excellent story! “This is a very well written Sci-Fi tale that is told by an awesome narrator. I can’t wait to hear book 2!” – D. Sturgeon, Aug 13, 2020 on Audible for “Blachart” (audiobook).

Epic!!! “Another great tale told by narrator Nigel Peever. I look forward to the continuing Adventures of Blachart and Michael.” – Justin Bradley, Aug 16, 2020 on Audible for “Blachart” (audiobook).

Great Narrator “The story is pretty creepy, it takes place in South Africa. I’ve never heard haunting stories from this area. It’s a fun little story if you’re doing a drive on a dark night. The narration sounded excellent, and the protagonist in the story wasn’t taking no crap from the evil dead!” – Jeff Spencer, Aug 21, 2020 on Audible for “When Darkness Calls” (audiobook).

I display my Fan Mail, Reviews & Compliments with pride, gratitude and humility. You’re always welcome to have a look.

Hate Mail & Horrible Mentions

I’m rather proud of my hate mail, and you can review my collection here – but be forewarned, don’t do it while eating or drinking, or you might choke while laughing!

Interviews

All my interviews are linked to from this page. If you would like to do an interview with me about my work, please do get in touch!

In Closing

Well, that’s all for this time, folks! 🙂

Thanks again for all your support, friendship and interaction!

Feel free to email or message me via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn if you have any comments or questions!

Until next time, keep reading!

Cheers! 🙂

Catch me on social media!

If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.

If you’d like to send Christina Engela a question about her life as a writer or transactivist, please send an email to [email protected] or use the Contact form.

Show your appreciation for Christina’s work!

Another Round At The Crow Bar #45 September 2020 Hello friends and fans! Welcome to my 45th newsletter - September 2020!

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this-lioness · 5 years

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A Question for Any Fellow Witches

(I know this is long, I swear there’s a point).

So yadda yadda yadda I’m an artist. I do not make any secret of the fact that while I do art for fun, I am also trying to make some money with it. We originally started doing conventions and art events as a means of selling my books, but because books tend not to draw people over I tried doing live commissions, and eventually selling prints, original art, etc. It’s a good way to bring people over to the table, who then might also pick up both artwork and a book.

Last year we made an investment into this and started to do a bit of woodworking.

This summer we tabled at an event geared toward the goth / pagan crowd, the latter of which I am a part of. We did surprisingly well. A lot of the art I do doesn’t really appeal to the typical “Christmas craft fair” crowd, and for once people were enjoying my work instead of warily side-eyeing it, which was nice.

With the exception of prints, I tend not to “mass produce” designs. I might make one item of a particular design, or variations on the same general design, but by and large I sell items that are pretty unique. I have a couple wands that are all different, for instance, and the deer skulls will never get replicated. It’s really great to me when someone sees something that speaks to them personally, and are like, “I need to have this, this was made for me.” That’s the best feeling.

A little while ago I got the idea to do custom altars.

Basically, small, somewhat portable desktop altars that the end user can essentially decorate as they like, but it provides a small, compact place that is uniquely their own.

They wouldn’t be just empty boxes -- they would have carvings, inlay, small shelves and recesses for things, etc. I’m thinking they would mostly have a base, a back, and two sides (so they wouldn’t be either fully open or fully closed). Eventually I’d like to do ones with hinges for doors and lids, so they would be sealable and portable.

I thought this would be good for people for whom space is at a premium, because it would be an attractive “starting place” upon which they could build their altar and move it quickly if necessary, and it would be in a sort of compact, contained space.

So the first question is: Is this something people would be interested in?

The second question is: What would you expect to pay? At the largest these would probably be about 18″ wide by 10″-12″ high and about 8″-10″ deep.

Because I can do my designing digitally, materials are going to be the biggest expense in creating these. Obviously I want to use less manufactured woods (no MDF or plywood), and real wood is not cheap, but knowing what people would reasonably pay could help me figure out how and where I need to source it.

EDITED TO ADD: I also had the idea of repurposing old curiosity boxes and jewelry boxes in a similar fashion, that might be available at a smaller price point, because then I’d only be customizing them, not designing and building them from scratch.

#witchcraft #paganism #pagansoftumblr #witchblr

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fedoraduck · 4 years

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I need to rant about Ikoria and how I’m feeling about MtG rn

I��m about to stop fucking playing magic again cause i keep thinking about mystery boosters and how awesome it was to draft with some magic history and how good it used to be, then i look at ikora and it’s stupid yugioh/hearthstone bullshit and the actual goddamn Godzilla alternate arts. the limited is trash, the flavor is trash, i am actually getting chest pains at how angry i am at this cardboard paper game. Yugioh kaijus are at least an interesting way for the game to have interactivity, and even though they are obviously Godzilla, they didn’t print versions that were in like $20 boosters that just had their name changed into Godzilla. Companions just feel like the yugioh extra deck, but you only get one card in it. And sure they’re restrictive now, but yugioh went from super specific fusions, to less specific syncros, and even less to xyz, until it was finally with links and it’s just... eeeeeh, whatever just put those fuckers in there. and at least old fusions and such sucked ass. some of the companions are already pushing into top 8s in all of the fucking formats. and this STANDARD set is going to be a part of the game forever now, touching every format. and of course this is one of the first sets where they’re looking at commander.

Small tangent, I hate commander. I hate its politics part of the game and I don’t like how you can’t 1 for 1 answer threats. Sadly it’s the “fun casual way to play” so unless pauper actually gets players I’m stuck in the ramp until swing punches game. Pioneer was kinda fun when people were brewing, but now it’s completely answered with inverter taking up about 20% of the meta so it’s gone south real quick. I’d play modern but it’ll take me a while to get the pieces i need, primarily thoughtseize that went up because of pioneer.

But back to Ikoria, the actual Godzilla crossover is just too much. the dungeons and dragons sword was funny, but that was ONE card in the UNset. There are 18 fucking cards that are just actual Godzilla monsters, all playable in standard and every eternal format that could have them. Am I the only one who doesn’t like this precedent? How long until marvel walks up and is like, “hey, the gatewatch is superheroes, why not make Jace into Captain America? return to Eldraine Disney princess edition?” I say, “hey, why is this crossover stuff in mtg?” and all I get as a response is “why does it matter? do you just hate fun or something?” Maybe I just want my fantasy card game that has been going on for 27 years to stand on its own and not just be push the power level to get spikes to play and sell the premium products to the Timmys, make sure it’s something they recognize to make sure they fork out all their money cause that’s all this corporate tie-in shit is. “But I like Godzilla... yeah, I like Godzilla too and I get my enjoyment of him FROM HIS FUCKING MOVIES NOT IN MY FANTASY CARD GAME.” I get that WotC is a corporation under Hasbro, but there’s a point where I can’t honestly take this set seriously, like the power level and flavor are both like a 12 year old kid was like, “I want my big monster to do this, this, and this, also be playable from outside my deck cause that’s awesome”, screw card advantage, restrictions build diversity unless the card is so good the restriction becomes the norm thereby shrinking potential deck building choices, and it will restrict them because it’s a FREE EXTRA CARD IN HAND. Also mutate just gives me a headache every time I remember it exists.

But what do I know, I’m just a loser that learned to read playing this card game, why should I have any investment in how it does going forward? Fuck magic, all the commons in this set suck so I don’t think they’ll affect pauper, I just want to play with mystery boosters and go back to when if i bought a 3 dollar draft pack i could pull a cool alternate art, not spend $20 bucks to get a fucking corporate tie-in. Maybe even a corporate tie-in that literally has the words “death corona” as the name.

#I just really needed to type this shit out #I ain't formatting this wall of text so yeah it's gonna be hard to read #I can somehow write over 700 words to bitch about a hobby but get too lazy to do so with my projects i actually want to work on lmao

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scifrey · 5 years

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2019 Writing Round Up

The new year is here, and with it everyone is talking about what they wrote this past year. The last quarter of 2019 was a brutal rollercoaster for me, emotionally and personally, so it’s good for me to have the chance to sit here and reflect on what I accomplished and the good things that happened too.

2019 started with receiving a grant from the Toronto Arts Council for The Maddening Science – said grant went to research materials for the novel, a new computer, printer, and keyboard, and paying off some debts. But 2019 also started in a place of utter burn-out, having slammed through writing, editing, and publishing five big novels in three years, as well as rewriting a feature film and completing the scripts for three seasons of a webseries.

I was also working two dayjobs – one first thing in the morning, for an hour and a half, and then a standard eight-hour shift in the evenings which got me home at around 10pm – so my sleep schedule was a mess and I was having trouble not only making time to write, but concentrating when I did have the time.

I started the year in a place of complete exhaustion and mild frustration that neither of my book series had really caught on, and as my agent once said, “burned out from tried to break out.” I’m not happy to say that I think I still occupy that place a full year later; but I’ve had the opportunity to rest more, and begin to refill my creative well again, and to reclaim my writing space by no longer needing a roommate.

I’m not quite there yet – turns out finishing two series in four years really takes it out of you – but maybe in a few more months I’ll be ready to sit down and begin to spin out a new novel. In the mean time, I’ve got lots of irons in the fire, as you’ll see.

January

The first third of 2019 was dedicated to rewriting The Skylark’s Sacrifice a second time. I’d rewritten it in the last third of 2018 and my editor ended up agreeing that while the rewrite was exactly what she asked for, we should not have gone down that street in the first place. It was what was asked of me, but it didn’t work. So I took it back to the drawing board, and started the re-write all over again.

I also published WORDS FOR WRITERS: The DO-ING Trap.

I finished the edits/polish on A Woman of the Sea, which I had begun in October 2018 and loaded the book onto Wattpad in preparation for serializing it.

February

I spent February rewriting and jobhunting. I tried to write a short story and Did Not Do Well. It’s half done and likely to end up on the Pile Of Unfinished Tales.

At least I got some new words on the page with WORDS FOR WRITERS – Beta Readers.

And I began releasing A Woman of the Sea a chapter at a time on Valentine’s Day.

March

I completed the Skylark rewrites and handed them over to Reuts Publications. I also published WORDS FOR WRITERS – From Signing to Signing.

At this point I tried to start The Maddening Science, the book I received a Toronto Art’s Council Grant for in 2018, and bashed out a few chapters and a few scenes. But something was off about it, and I couldn’t pinpoint why, so I kept going into the file and only put a few hundred words in here and there. I couldn’t really sit down and dig in, and because I don’t believe in Writer’s Block as a mystical magical reason for why people can’t write (there are always reasons), I had to step back to try to figure out why I was struggling. I assumed it was probably because I was in the middle of job interviews and decided to try again later.

April

I started a new copywriting job, leaving my other two dayjobs, and it sucked up all my brainpower and creativity and made it very hard to want to sit down and compose yet more words at the end of the day.

I resumed working piecemeal on The Maddening Science, pecking out what I could one molasses-slow sentence at a time. I realized that the incidents in the news regarding the current political comment and the toxic white supremacist misogyny that is rampant in our society today has made it very hard to figure out how to tell a responsible story about a supervillain as the protagonist.

I’m still working on that. In the mean time, while I figure out how to restructure the tale, the book and the progress blog are on hiatus.

May

Still brain-dead from work, I only managed to bash out WORDS FOR WRITERS: How do social media and writing/publishing work together?

June

There were some final edits on The Skylark’s Sacrifice to be discussed, but I really did nothing this month beyond marketing pushes and watching all the webseries I judged for TOWebfest.

July

The director of my feature film, To a Stranger, was going to start shopping the script around to executive producers, so before he did that I got some actorfriends together to do a table read. The read, and their feedback, revealed some character motivation gaps in the film, and I set about organizing their notes and figuring out how to solve the issues.

I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS – How To Write a Synopsis.

This was also the month of TOWebfest, the festival itself, and I spent a lovely day with fellow creators and spoke to some executive producers about my own webseries to try to garner interest.

I was a guest at Pretty Heroes Con for the first time and LOVED it. It’s great to celebrate strong female leads in SF/F and I loved Sailor Moon as a kid, so I was in nostalgic nirvana. It was lovely to introduce those Girl Power-loving fans to The Skylark’s Saga.

August

I restructured and rewrote To a Stranger, added extra characters and extra scenes to clear up some character motivation in the screenplay. It’s now back with the director and I hope to hear that he’s got a production house and an Exec attached to the project soon.

I appeared at FanExpo Toronto to do some panels, sell some books, and judged the short fiction contest. I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How to Create a Pitch Package.

September

The Skylark’s Sacrifice was published! Yay! I had a wonderful launch party at Bakka Phoenix, and got to simultaneously launch the incredible book trailer for the duology animated by Elizabeth Hirst to a song by Victor Sierra. Friends Adrianna Prosser and Eric Metzloff, and Danforth Brewery made it extra special.

I also got to read at Word on the Street, which was been a career-long dream, reading on the new Across the Universe Stage.

However, September was also the month when I lost the copywriting job. I saw it coming, so I was shocked when it happened and how it went down, but not surprised. I wasn’t fitting in well with the team, the original project I had been hired for had been vetoed by the execs, work was being taken away from me and given to freelancers, and I didn’t have the training they wanted (though that makes me wonder why they hired me in the first place.) In retrospect it’s been a blessing, as the workplace was not at all a good fit for me and was slowly becoming toxic, but at the time it was a devastating blow to my confidence and my coffers.

Just a few days after I was fired, on my 37th birthday, I won a Watty Award for A Woman of the Sea. Happy birthday to me! I was offered a place among the Wattpad Stars program and accepted – and wow, is there a lot of paperwork for that – and I’m still trying to figure out what benefits the program offers. (Though I’m pretty chuffed with my free Canva Premium subscription!) A Woman of the Sea was featured on the home page as an Undiscovered Gem and as of today has about 82k reads. Whoa!

I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How to Plan a Series.

October

I spent most of the month sleeping and crying and working through how I felt about getting fired. When one identifies oneself as a writer, to finally get a job in writing was a thrill and felt like a confirmation that although I was struggling with my next book, I was a writer and I’d get through it. Being fired from the job – even though the reason was an exec decision to eliminate my project and thus my role – felt like a very personal blow. I wasn’t a writer after all. (Or at least, that’s what it felt like).

This had me thinking long and hard. Especially about where I wanted my writing career to go next – as much I’ve been writing in the realm of SF/F the past decade, I’ve begun to realize that was I really am is a Character-Driven Romance writer. Romance set in spec fic and fantasy realms, sure, but Romance and Character Work are my wheelhouse and how I should be selling myself.

This realization has been pretty freeing because it means that the frustrations and roadblocks I’ve been coming up against can maybe be dissolved by reframing my brand and rethinking my career map.

Wattpad added the sample of City By Night that’s on Wattpad to their Halloween Reads list on the homepage and I decided to put the whole novella up on the site for people to read. Read it now, though. It won’t stay up forever as the eBook rights to the novel are signed with an indie publisher. This is just a limited-time promotion.

And knowing that readers were asking what I would be posting next on Wattpad after A Woman of the Sea, I rejigged Triptych for the site and started serializing it from the start. You can read it here. This story also won’t stay up forever, for the same reason.

I also started serializing Words for Writers on Wattpad. I won’t be copying over all 75+ articles I have on my website, just the ones that are specifically useful for Watties.

I also polished a webseries and sent it to a producer with a major broadcaster after our convo at TOWebfest for consideration. I’ve followed up but there’s no reply. I’ll follow up again in January 2020 but I can pretty well assume that No Answer is my ‘No’ Answer.

I am thinking about maybe pitching it as a graphic novel in the future, though I’m going to have to reach out to my friends who write them for publishers to figure out how to put at pitch together.

November

In 2017 I handed over a YA contemporary re-telling of “Northanger Abbey” to my agent, and it was lukewarmly received by both her and the handful of editors she showed it to. It was then shelved for possible future reworking.

In the first part of the NaNoWriMo month, I decided to tackle this reworking, and I was still wrestling mentally with The Maddening Science. This reworking was inspired a lot by reading Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston in October, and realizing that the tone I’d been going for with my narrator hadn’t been irreverent or GenZ-y enough for the story I was trying to tell, and not grounded enough in the technologies and social media that my modern-day Catherine Morland would have access to.

I reworked the Pitch Document for the novel, now currently called “Title TBA”, and got to chapter seven during NaNo. I’ve got some thinking to do about structure for the novel, and how far into using Social Media As A Storytelling Tool I want to go with the idea, but generally speaking I’m pretty pleased with the result of the rewrites.

Partway through NaNo, it occurred to me that there was another story that my Wattpad readers were asking for, and one that would be a lot of fun to write. In A Woman of the Sea, my fictional Regency-era Jane-Austen-analogue authoress Margaret Goodenough writes her debut novel “The Welshman’s Daughters”. As I describe this non-existent novel in A Woman of the Sea, it’s a gothic romance that’s very Elizabeth Gaskell-and-Jane Austen-esque in terms of it being a character study driven romance, with some of the fun high melodrama and gothic tone of Anne Radcliffe. And, in the world of A Woman of the Sea, it’s the first queer kiss in Classic Western Literature.

A handful of readers have asked where they can find this book, or have confessed to going to the library to ask for it, only to learn that it’s not real. I made it up.

And I thought… well, why not make it real?

So I’m working on the pitch doc and the first chapter now, to see if a) this is something I want to pursue and b) this is something that will help me break through my burn-out slump. I hope it will, but I think I still need to take time to rest before I really push into it.

And I still have the “Title TBA” rewrites to complete.

December

I published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How Do I Get An Agent?, and spent the rest of the month just trying to chill. I’ve become a bit of a reluctant reader, so I am trying to push myself to read a little each day, to remind myself why I fell in love with storytelling in the first place.

A Woman of the Sea was turned down for Paid Stories, unfortunately, because of the structure of the romance. The Stars Team explained that romance stories like this one, with one romantic partner in the first half of the book, and a different one in the second (a la Brigit Jones’ Diary) doesn’t tend to do well on Paid because readers are reluctant to shell out for a romance where they don’t meet the HEA partner until later. It’s heartbreaking to hear, because I was really hoping that this might become a viable stream of income for me. At least the team who turned it down were very kind and expressed how much they loved the story in and of itself.

But no matter – onwards and upwards!

What’s ahead for 2020

Well, I’m not sure. This has been a really, really difficult year and I have really, really struggled with trying to figure out who I am and what I want, both in life and as a writer.

Certainly, there will be lot of hard thinking about the future of my writing career. I have ideas that I love and want to pursue, but this post-firing-return-to-the-job-hunt-depression is killing my desire to create. And honestly, the fact that I’ve worked so hard for so many years and haven’t managed to get any sort of break-through or cultural foothold or ability to even really to pay my bills with this job is disheartening. I’m still paying more in marketing every year than I’m making in Royalties.

However, I have some new opportunities on the horizon – conversations happening behind closed doors, as well as Divine Paradox Films still working toward filming To A Stranger, and Alpaca vs Llama shopping The Skylark’s Song as a teens animated series. And the webseries I wrote is under consideration with a new production team, so I can keep my fingers crossed.

Who knows, perhaps the rewritten “Title TBA” might be just the thing to propel my work into a realm where I’m really earning money. Though I had originally envisioned it as the first of a series, the more I work and think on it, the more I feel like it would be best as a stand-alone. I think it would slap a lot harder if it was a one-off.

And I am genuinely liking the plot of The Welshman’s Daughters, and all the research reading and viewing I am doing to get the tone and mood of the book right (please recommend me your favourite Gothic Romances – film, TV, or books!)

But I’m not going to rush anything. It’s nice to be able to remember how to putter with a book and have no looming, razor-blade deadlines hanging over my neck.

2020 will be, I hope, a year of renewed creativity, motivation, and the year where I complete at least one of the three novel projects I’ve started.

For now, I think I’m going to go have a nap.

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stereostevie · 5 years

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Jazz musicians have always placed a premium on “saying something.” Technique, training, and theory will only get you so far, and may even lead you in the wrong direction; what matters is the ability to hit on an emotion or an idea that feels at once familiar and revelatory—to speak a common language in a decidedly uncommon way.

From this standpoint, few musicians have said more than the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of a school-cafeteria cook and a city employee, Sanders moved to New York in 1962, at the height of jazz’s postwar avant-garde—also known as “free jazz” or “the new thing”—which was spawned by the late-fifties experiments of the saxophonist Ornette Coleman and the pianist Cecil Taylor. Sanders’s début album, recorded in 1964 for the ESP label, garnered little attention, but his playing caught the ear of John Coltrane. Coltrane invited Sanders to join his band in 1965. The following year, Impulse!, the label that had been exhaustively documenting Coltrane’s evolution, gave Sanders another chance to record as a leader. The result was the surging and expansive “Tauhid,” an album that positioned Sanders as both Coltrane’s foremost disciple and an artist with ideas of his own.

Coltrane died in 1967, and Sanders recorded some with his widow, Alice Coltrane, a multi-instrumentalist and composer, before returning to the studio for Impulse! two years later, with his own group. The resulting album, “Karma,” set the template for a remarkable five-year run. While remaining as fiery as ever, Sanders had developed an interest in soaring, magisterial melodies, and the rhythms of his recordings, while dense and multi-layered, often hewed toward a steady groove. He also incorporated unexpected elements: non-Western instruments, yodelling by the sui generis vocalist Leon Thomas. As the title of “Karma” suggests, Sanders, like Coltrane, felt that music had a spiritual dimension. “The whole musical persona of Pharoah Sanders is of a consciousness in conscious search of a higher consciousness,” Amiri Baraka later wrote.

Subsequent Impulse! releases, such as “Jewels of Thought,” “Thembi,” and “Black Unity,” extended a musical quest that has now, in one form of another, lasted more than fifty years. But for someone who has said so much through music, Sanders has said very little to the press, doing only a handful of interviews in the course of his career. I spoke with Sanders earlier this fall, in Los Angeles, where he had just celebrated his seventy-ninth birthday by playing two shows in the area. Sanders still projects a distinctly Southern brand of soft-spokenness, one that’s equal parts humility and aversion to fuss. Although he is an acknowledged master who has been honored at the Kennedy Center, he speaks of himself—and seems to sincerely regard himself—as just another working musician trying to make a living.

We talked about his beginnings as a musician, his approach to recording over the years, and his collaborations with jazz legends. But Sanders was more inclined to reflect on the challenge of finding a good reed than to dilate on his legacy. What really mattered, it seemed, was his feeling that he could never get it right. Over the course of the conversation, it became clear that he wasn’t being compulsively hard on himself or willfully oblivious. Rather, he was still searching, possibly for something that he knew he would never find.

The interview has been edited and condensed.

You just had your seventy-ninth birthday—happy birthday!

Thank you.

What keeps you going, musically? Why are you still out there touring?

Well, I still try to make a living. I haven’t retired. I’m not working that much, but, you know, jobs come through.

What are you trying to accomplish artistically at this point?

Right now, I don’t even know myself!

Your sets these days touch on all the different things you’ve explored in your career. I saw you play in Portland earlier this year, and you played some standards and ballads as well older, more open-ended material, like “The Creator Has a Master Plan,”1 from “Karma.”

I just play whatever I feel like playing. It’s hard to keep a band together these days, so I never know most of the time who’s going to be in the band. Whoever I decide to use, if I can use them, well, that’s it!

Let’s go back to the beginning. Before you took up the saxophone, you played the clarinet in church?

I started playing drums first.

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Then I wanted to play clarinet. I went to church every Sunday, and there was this memo up in church that someone had a metal clarinet. That person just passed away maybe a few days ago. He was about ninety-three or ninety-four. That’s how I got my first instrument. Seventeen dollars!

When did you switch to saxophone?

Well, in high school I was always trying to figure out what I wanted to do as a career. What I really wanted to do was play the saxophone—that was one of the instruments that I really loved. I started playing the alto. It’s similar to the clarinet—if you can play the clarinet, you can play the saxophone.

Why did you switch to tenor from alto? What did you like about the sound?

Tenor was the most popular instrument at that time to get work. I would rent the school saxophone. You could rent it every day if you wanted to. It wasn’t a great horn. It was sort of beat-up and out of condition. I never owned a saxophone until I finished high school and went to Oakland, California. I had a clarinet, and so I traded that for a new silver tenor saxophone, and that got me started playing the tenor. The minute I bought it, I wanted an older horn, so I traded my new horn for an older model.

I read that you went to Oakland because you were studying art and you were going to go to art school.

I was painting all the time, pictures. I got into music very late. I used to do all that kind of work.

Have you painted at all since then?

No, I haven’t done anything for many, many years. I’ve wanted to go back into it, but I just haven’t.

After just a couple of years in Oakland, you moved to New York. Had you decided to focus exclusively on music?

I had to get it all together. I didn’t know enough about lots of things—basic things. I knew I needed to get some studying in, in order to get into playing saxophone, because I wanted to play jazz. So I had to cut out a lot of activities that I was doing and spend more time practicing scales and stuff like that.

Is it true that you were homeless when you first moved to the city?

I didn’t have nowhere to stay. Everybody was talking about, “You should go to New York.” They said, “That’s the place to go!” So that’s the reason I went to New York. I hitchhiked a ride to New York.

What year was this?

1962.

So, when you get there, the avant-garde—or whatever you want to call it—is in full swing. It’s been three years since Ornette Coleman’s residency2 at the Five Spot.3 Sun Ra has moved the Arkestra4 from Chicago to New York. Were you following all of this?

I didn’t know what was going on. I was trying to survive some kind of way. I used to work a few jobs here and there, earn five dollars, buy some food, buy some pizza. I had no money at all. I used to give blood and make fifteen dollars or ten dollars or whatever. I had to keep eating something.

But you managed to establish yourself as a musician.

I always wanted to work with my own band, so I got some guys together and started working down in New York, in Greenwich Village. I could pick up a few little weekend jobs. You had to do something to survive.

Who was in that band with you, your first band?

I would ask around for some musicians, and we played—I didn’t even hardly know their names.

Was Billy Higgins5 in that band? I read that you two knew each other—and that he was homeless, too.

Billy Higgins, he would come around in that location a lot, in the Village. I met him, and I heard him play. On occasion, we kind of talked a little bit about the music, and I found out how great he was. I started listening to some of his recordings. Like I said, all the time, I was still trying to find some type of job or work—it didn’t matter whether it was playing music or whatever it was. There was one time I got a job being a chef, cooking, in order to survive.

You started working with the Arkestra in 1964, and then, in September, 1965, you joined Coltrane’s band.6 That was a lot of people’s first exposure to you. Do you know why he chose you?

I don’t even know the reason myself. I don’t feel like he needed me or another horn. I think he just felt like he was going to do something different.

What was it like to work with him? There’s an idea of him as this saint-like figure.

His whole demeanor reminded me of a minister. He didn’t act like a lot of musicians that I’ve met in my life. John, he was always extremely quiet. He didn’t say anything unless you asked him something. I never asked him anything about music.

Really?

Never.

But he was making a conscious choice to work with younger musicians.

He always had some kind of a way of looking to the future, like a kaleidoscope. He saw himself playing something different. And it seemed like he wanted to get to that level of playing—I don’t know if it was a dream that came to him, but that’s what he wanted to do. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted me to play with him, because I didn’t feel like, at the time, that I was ready to play with John Coltrane. Being around him was almost, like, “Well, what do you want me to do? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

He always told me, “Play.” That’s what I did.

What was your relationship with him like?

I loved being around him because I don’t talk that much, either. It was just good vibes between us both. We were just very quiet. All the time that I’d been listening to John, I’m hearing something else, just being around him. He would never start some kind of conversation—he would say something, but it wouldn’t last that long. He never would elaborate, or go deep into it. He said a few words, and that was it.

Was he funny at all? Did he ever joke around?

He had a sense of humor about him, I think. One time, Jimmy Cobb was playing with him, and his stick got loose, and it went across to John and hit him, or something. John said, “Yeah, he’s just trying to get back at me.”

His sense of humor was in his music. Sometimes he’d remind me of Monk.7 John would play things Monk would play, but it was a little bit different, faster. I’d turn around and look and say, “Oh. O.K.”

Monk’s music is definitely humorous, but I don’t think many people hear that in Coltrane.

He got a lot of stuff from being around Monk. He didn’t sound like Monk, but he understood the humor.

After John passed away, you continued recording with Alice Coltrane.8

You know, her playing was amazing. I loved what she was doing. But I always felt like what I was doing wasn’t good enough. Maybe I was playing a little bit more dominant than what she wanted—she seemed more intellectual than I was. But I tried to play something close to the concept that she was doing.

At one point, I had told her, “I don’t know if you like the way I’m playing or not. I don’t know whether this fits, or what.” She said, “You’re doing O.K. Just keep on playing. Keep on blowing.”

Around this time you also start leading your own bands, and you start recording for Impulse! as a leader. Did you feel like you knew what you were doing then?

No, I don’t think I was really ready. But I had to go on anyway, and study while I was trying to get it all together. I knew I had to be better than what I was. I had to keep moving. I learned a lot from John. I remember I used to talk to Philly Joe Jones.9 I talked to a lot of different people.

On those Impulse! records, you’re experimenting a lot with non-Western instruments, finding ways to use vocals in a freer context, and getting into more groove-oriented rhythms. Were you thinking through things in advance or just figuring them out in the studio?

We just worked it out while we was there. That kind of spontaneous move.

You started working with some musicians who people didn’t know well at the time, like Leon Thomas,10 Lonnie Liston Smith,11 Sonny Sharrock.12 What were you looking for when you heard them?

I was looking for musicians who played with lots of energy. I wanted to be able to play that way myself. In order to do that, I had to find musicians to work with who had that kind of energy.

You were making incredibly intense music during this period, on albums like “Jewels of Thought” and “Thembi.” Was that just where your head was at that time—constantly in a kind of heightened state?

I don’t know. I was still trying to reach for something, I didn’t know what.

Today people call this music “spiritual jazz.” But it wasn’t like anyone sat down at a table and said, “Let’s invent this whole new kind of music.”

It just happened. That’s the way I look at it. It just happened. I was never satisfied with my playing, for a long, long time. Still sort of have problems like that.

Still? Do you feel like you’ve ever had a moment, or a record, where you’ve been, like, “I got this one right”?

No.

Really?

I used to hear other bands, other groups, when they were making a recording. And a lot of musicians I’d hear would be working on one song maybe for, could be a week, or a few weeks. Make sure everything is right.

You, on the other hand, were recording two or three albums a year with Impulse! Was that how often the label wanted you in the studio?

Well, they wanted a certain number of records a year, being signed with somebody. The thing you don’t want to do is make them too close together, playing the same way as you were before. You’ve got to do something fresh. Some people like to wait for that kind of thing to happen.

But that’s not how you approached it.

I just felt like going in there and doing what I wanted to do.

Would the label give you any direction, or were they hands-off?

They tried to let you know how many songs to play. I just kind of ignored it. Sometimes, I would just play one tune for the whole side. I just kept on playing, like it was a suite. Looking from one thing to another. If you’re in the song, keep on playing.

Did you rehearse?

No, we never rehearsed.

Did you ever do more than one take?

Maybe on a few things we did, something where I didn’t really like the way I first got started up and started out playing. But whenever I heard it back, I kind of liked it, so I said, “Well, I should have kept it.” Anyways, it’s too late now.

It kind of taught me something else. It made me think, Why do I have to do it this way? Let’s keep on playing until it all comes together. That’s what we did. That’s what I always do. You know, try to keep on creating.

You’ve mentioned several times now having not liked how your playing sounded—this seems tied into the idea of your always searching for something new. Is there any recording where you’re happy with your sound?

I haven’t made it yet. Sometimes on my horn, a couple of notes, I’m feeling satisfied with it, but the rest of the notes just is not sounding right. So I’m still working on that.

I have a problem with finding the right reeds, and the right mouthpiece, the right horns. I used to buy boxes of reeds, and if they don’t play right I’d just throw them right on the floor, put them in the trash. Maybe a box of threes, or a box of fours. They never sound the same.

Do you think most musicians think this way? Are you all just perfectionists?

I don’t know. I know when I listen to other musicians, they sound beautiful to me. When I hear myself playing, I sound like… They sound beautiful. I just wonder, what are they all using?

What do you listen to these days?

I haven’t been listening to anybody.

Not even older stuff?

I haven’t been listening to anything.

I listen to things that maybe some guys don’t. I listen to the waves of the water. Train coming down. Or I listen to an airplane taking off.

Have you always been listening for sounds like that?

I’ve always been like that, especially when I was small. I used to love hearing old car doors squeaking…. Maybe it’s something you’re really into, then maybe you’ll get a sound like that. I just wondered, Would that be a good sound?

Sometimes, when I’m playing, I want to do something, but I feel like, if I did, it wouldn’t sound right. So I’m always trying to make something that might sound bad sound beautiful in some way. I’m a person who just starts playing anything I want to play, and make it turn out to be maybe some beautiful music.

When you were first in the public eye, with Coltrane, people didn’t get that.

I don’t know if I got it myself.

Do you go back and listen to your recordings?

Yeah, I look at them sometime. I’ll change it up if I’ve been playing something that I’ve maybe played before.

The goal is to never repeat yourself?

I try not to, but it seems like I do at times. Then I stop playing and catch myself and say, “Let me try something else.” It’s almost like I play one idea and then I just try to look at it, like, “O.K., I’m going to try to see if I can play it backward.”

People still associate you with the kind of music you were making in the sixties and seventies. But over the years you started doing a lot more traditional playing.

Well, I was trying to do a lot of things—like ballads. I was playing a lot of those before I came to New York, before I started recording. Maybe I just kind of slowed down a little bit. A whole lot.

What are your favorite ballads to play?

I like “Berkeley Square.”13 I feel like I haven’t played enough on it. Every time I play it, I try to play something different.

It makes me think of Coltrane’s “Ballads.” People were surprised by that record, because they didn’t think of him as that kind of player.

John always loved to play ballads. He played some ballads when I was working with him, when he kind of opened up more freely. On some jobs I did with him, he played a ballad every now and then. Then he got back in his spaceship and took off again.

That’s where he was. You never knew what he was going to do next until he did it. He just started playing himself, and we all just start coming in. Whatever time we felt like we were needed, we came in.

Do you still feel like that? Like you have no idea where you’re headed and are just going to see where the music takes you?

A lot of time I don’t know what I want to play. So I just start playing, and try to make it right, and make it join to some other kind of feeling in the music. Like, I play one note, maybe that one note might mean love. And then another note might mean something else. Keep on going like that until it develops into—maybe something beautiful.

#alice coltrane #avant garde jazz #free jazz #john coltrane #pharoah sanders

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comicteaparty · 5 years

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January 15th-January 21st, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from January 15th, 2020 to January 21st, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

What sort of merchandise are you most likely to buy for webcomics you read and why?

carcarchu

does a physical copy of the book count as merch? nothing compares to the feel of a real book in your hands and watching my collection grow is so satisfying. i like having a tangible way to show my support. after that is small prints. i rarely see acrylic charms of webcomic characters but those are nice too

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I know I'm particularly weak for enamel pins - which happen to be the first major merch I made for my first time tabling at a con. They're definitely the most common thing for me to consider purchasing from others. I also like small prints and stickers! And if a particularly cute character is somehow made into a plush... I'd be all over that, too.

Cronaj

For me, I love physical comics. So if a webcomic creator made a physical print version of their comic, that would be the best way to entice me to buy something. Comics almost always look better on paper in my opinion, and I'm a weirdo when it comes to book smell I sniff new books like an absolute degenerate. The other thing I would buy is art prints or art books. I have a huuuuge collection of art prints from creators I admire. So keep 'em comin'! I mean, I'll buy any merch that calls to me, but usually if I can't put it on a shelf, hang it on the wall, or wear it, I probably have no use for it.

Capitania do Azar

I'm a big fan of physical copies and charms of all kinds! I also appreciate stickers and small prints (big prints are nice, but take up a lot of space). Zines with side stories or related/concept art are also a good choice

keii4ii

Storage is a big issue for me, so I tend to not buy physical books unless like... it's a comic I would love to read but can't do so online easily (e.g. if the website doesn't function properly on my computer) I really like prints that have qualities/features that can't be replicated digitally -- e.g. foil, holo coating, VERY special paper texture, etc. (I've even seen one artist offer lenticular prints which I thought was awesome -- just wasn't into the characters that were on the art) Small to medium sized prints are fairly easy to store, so that's also a big plus for me! Also, clear plastic folders? I've never bought them admittedly, but those can look SO nice with the right type of art (some artworks look so special when printed on that clear material). I wish more people offered them so I could actually buy these, but I understand they can be costly to print.

Tired Programmer

I would buy physical copies as well. About the storage issue... Well, when I understand, that there are too many of them for my humble bookcase, I just sell or give old ones away. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And also stickers. Stickers rock. (edited)

SAWHAND

I agree! If I really like the comic I like to have a physical copy! It feels special since I think a lot of times they're limited printing. I also really like stickers since they can just get put on something I already have and thus not take up extra space. I generally don't get prints because wall space is at a premium and I feel silly not having them hung up, but that's just a personal preference. Other than that it would have to be something really cool or something with function, like a notebook or...I don't know, an apron, or maaaybe a t-shirt.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Printed comics are definitely my go to fav especially if it's a webcomic I've been really wanting to read but haven't had the time to do it online. Sitting down with a book is a lot easier for me that sitting with my phone or pulling my laptop out. I do also like stickers a lot. I've really gotten into covering the inside covers of my sketchbooks with them the last few years X)

kayotics

I usually go for printed books, pins, or plushies. If there’s a Kickstarter happening I’ll usually splurge for a pin tier if it exists. I don’t use stickers that much but I know a lot of people love them? But it’s not my thing.(edited)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Usually printed books and phone charms. I will always buy webcomics that go to print and I collect charms. Other things like stickers and pins are nice, but often too pricey. I will go for them when they're bundled into KS tiers with printed books, though.

varethane

Printed books for me! Sometimes stickers, and sometimes enamel pina

Pins

I dont tend to get prints because I wont really do anything with them

(But my prints tend to sell decently, so there is a market for them out there...)

keii4ii

I just like collecting prints! I don't even put them on my wall, I just stick them in a binder kind of like my own custom-curated artbook

I really like seeing the combination of certain artworks and certain paper textures!

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

omg Kei...why have I not thought of that ?? I will now do that for all the print i've collected gosh!! and I agree with Vare, books are top tier merch I go for (zines included) Prints are a second for me, with charms and pins being the thing i least go for bc of space (though I am seeing pin boards come into fashion and I'm def into doing that as well!)

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I do really love pins too, I'm just really bad at remembering to wear them. I probably should get myself one of those clear back packs con goers wear.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

oh yes ita bags!

varethane

The problem with me wearing pins is that I normally bike everywhere, while wearing a backpack

So if I put them on a jacket, the straps of the bag will rub on most of the good pin locations

And if they fall off while I'm riding my bike they are lost forever

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I tried putting pins on my backpack for a while.... only to come home and realise they fell off at some point during the day.

varethane

Yeah :(

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Ita bag! Yes! Lol I'm always super scared that my pins will just break and I'll loose them X') so when I do remember to wear one I'm constantly checking to make sure it's still on me

varethane

I have one jacket that I've been putting most of my pins on, which I wear to conventions

And it did pretty well except my rice boy pin fell off somewhere in the Seattle airport and is now lost forever :(

Betrayal......

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i have def...super glued pins to my backpack before and the rubber backings are so bad for pins too bc they never hold

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh, patches are another thing, like pins, that I love but usually have to stop myself from getting. I need to find a good patch jacket, because I really love a patch. I've been wanting to make one for my own comic merch for a while too.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ohhh yes same-- i stll have patches that i havent done anything yet with bc i haven't found The Right Jacket

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Same TuT

Eightfish

I've got the Property of Hate tarot postcards up on my wall right now. Also partial to a good enamel pin. What I'd love to see in merch is a well designed, stylish shirt, but haven't really found that so far. I find webcomic shirts tend to be too detailed and illustration-y to look good as shirts, and would prefer something more graphic.

Q @CecilieQMT making WAYFINDERS

I'd love to design shirts! Just haven't figured out how to get them printed properly... ^^'

RebelVampire

For me, it's digital copies. So PDFs and eBooks. Unlike many people here, I can't stand print copies for a myriad of reasons. XD But digital copies I can get behind cause it supports the artist, has some nice bonus stuff sometimes, and generally collects everything nicely so some website hiccups aren't a problem. While this has never come up because it's rare, I would also buy plushies. Cause one can never have enough plushies. But alas, I don't think the market is there for that XD

kayotics

Plushies are just really hard to produce and store, same with T-shirts

Well, T-shirts aren’t that hard to produce, but they’re hard to store and keep a good amount of sizes

Mei

I tend to buy books/physical copies of webcomics I like! I really enjoy the physical reading experience! I also really like buying enamel or non-enamel pins. I enjoy collecting them, but going off what people have already said, I also have an innate fear of losing them :(

AntiBunny

If it has a cute character, and the price is in my budget, plushies are awesome. Unfortunately that's a difficult one to do, because small batches of plush that are build by hand are going to be expensive, and a comic has to be very popular to warrant more economical large runs. And I'll also say physical books.

Mei

plushies ARE awesome

I got the coyote plushie from Tom, the guy who does Gunnerkrigg Court

I just really love it

and also I couldn't decide which of the MANY volumes of comics to buy

(i didn't and still don't have space to stock up on a lot of books so I must be prudent sometimes)

((but my bed always has space for plushies))

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #reader favorites

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am-game-zone · 5 years

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AM:GZ News #10: Fallout 76's Power Armor Helmets Has Health Hazards!

Who knew that the fantasy dangers in Fallout 76 would be brought to the real world! GameStop has recalled the Power Armor Collectible Helmet - Nuka Cola edition due to health hazards. This story and more are part of our news lineup. Let us get into what is happening in the geek and video game world.

Geek News

Kevin Feige and Star Wars

Marvel's Kevin Feige is rumored to produce his own Star Wars project. It seems that he will be part of the new wave of projects to be set in the Disney Star Wars Universe. Feige has met with Kathleen Kennedy and studio co-chairman Alan Horn and Alan Bergman. Feige has also declared that he wants Bree Larson to star in the next Star Wars project where he is the producer.

Wakeen Phoenix's Joker Controversy

Wakeen Phoenix's Joker is just around the corner, and the internet never disappoints in drumming up controversies. Different groups are declaring that the movie will be a rallying cry for different groups to enact violence. Jon and I find the claims ridiculous. This movie is a piece of art and should be allowed to explore important topics. The topics of mental health and how we treat other people are topics that have profound relevance in our society. What pushes a man to the breaking point? What could we do for our neighbors to prevent what happens to Wakeen Phoenix's Joker? These and other questions we should be able to explore in films.

Ninja on Masked Singer

On Masked Singer, the ice cream mask is revealed as Ninja! He performed Old Town Road as he rode out on a lawn mover. An impressive performance from the career video game streamer! It amused us that he was introduced as a prominent Twitch streamer. Either this show's recording was before his transition to Mixer, or they improperly said where he currently hosts his channel. It is nothing major but enough to make us chuckle.

Video Game News

Mario Kart Tour Microtransactions

Mario Kart Tour has released on mobile devices. It is a time for celebration! Or is it? The game is fun and entertaining, but the microtransactions are steep. The 200cc, the game's fastest mode, will cost the player five dollars a month subscription. The subscription also includes gold gifts by racing in tours and badges from challenges. Mario's name is in the game, so he is one of the main playable characters, right? Wrong! He is behind a paywall. There are two ways the player can acquire Mario. The mobile game has a 20 dollar Mario pack. The pack includes Mario, Mario's kart, and other specialty items. The other method to acquire Mario and other characters is through their premium currency. Their top rupees option at 135 rupees will cost the player 70 dollars. The player then pays with the rupees to utilize the "Warp Pipe" to fire off characters, karts, and other items. One fire cost five rupees, and ten fires cost forty-five rupees. Will this monetization model be able to compete with the other options on the market? Only time will tell.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

The next Call of Duty is just around the corner, and it appears that some familiar faces will be greeting us again. This Modern Warfare will be a soft reboot of the 2007 release. The 2019 CoD: Modern Warfare will bring back well-known characters and voices back in the game, but the story will be updated to reflect the times. Every CoD has a core focus on multiplayer, and it looks like the game is here to impress. The developers have put in a new "Realism" mode that removes the HUD. In the match, the player can breach doors for ambushes and utilize night vision goggles on nighttime maps. Two new modes will be coming to this title. A 2v2 mode called Gunfight and Groud Wars, which sets large teams against each other. The developers went out of their way to emphasize that Ground Wars isn't a battle royale and that they had no plans to implement such a mode into the game. As of right now, PlayStation has a year-long exclusive on the Special Ops: Survival Mode.

Google Play Pass

Apple Arcade made a splash in the mobile market by providing premium quality games for five dollars a month. To our surprise, Google is joining in this mobile model. Google is releasing Google Play Pass. The service will be 5 dollars a month, and it will include a wide selection of games. Part of the game collection includes Stardew Valley, Limbo, Old Man's journey, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. If you are interested in trying this service, then their free trial might be a great deal. They offer a 10 Day Free Trial. Then after the trial, the first year is charged at 2 dollars a month.

Hearthstone Pro Caught Playing Two Games At Once

Lihn "Seiko" Nguyen competed in the Grandmasters League match, but he decided to play this game a bit differently. Instead of giving the game his all and demonstrating is real prowess at the game, he tried to play Hearthstone and Auto-Chess at the same time. People on the stream noted that he looked distracted, looking from his lap to the screen regularly. His made a misstep during that game that turned out to be his undoing. He played the Legendary Minion Shirvallah the Tiger which is an excellent source of healing. For the current meta of the game, the proper play is to play Shirvallah and then use the Baleful Banker card to shuffle a copy of Shirvallah back into the deck. He missed this step which sealed his loss. The Hearthstone commentators and communities were upset and outraged that "Seiko" took up a Grandmaster spot from players who would have taken the match seriously. Ultimately, his heart and head weren't where they were supposed to be. The Grandmaster League is the pinnacle of Hearthstone, and it is disrespectful to the Grandmasters, and it is rude to those who want to be in his position. On top of it all, the audience watches these matches to see the top players in the world compete. If Esports is supposed to be taken as seriously as regular sporting events, then these expectations are not out of line. Honestly, at the level, you are a professional and should conduct yourself as such.

Showstopper

Fallout 76 is the gift that keeps on giving. However, this time, it doesn't look as if Bethesda is directly responsible for this debacle. A recall issued for the Power Armor Collectible Helmet - Nuka Cola which was sold by GameStop due to the helmet being a health hazard. Reports say that mold can be present on the fabric insert inside the helmet. This mold can lead to respiratory or other infections with compromised immune systems or damaged lungs. At this time, no incidents have been reported. Though the manufacture was Chronicle LLC, of Irving, Texas, the helmet was manufactured in China. If you have this helmet, then go to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We will also leave the consumer contact information for GameStop.

Consumer Contact:

GameStop at 800-883-8895 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday, email at [email protected] with "Product Recall" as the email subject, or online at www.GameStop.com and click on the "Recall" link at the top of the page for more information.

Thank You For Listening!

If you have an idea for an episode or a person of note in the video game industry, i.e., a developer, influencer, illustrator, etc. then let us know! Email us at:

[email protected]

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Visit us on our website: https://armstrongsmusings.com

We appreciate you listening and hope to hear from you. Stay Strong!

Check out this episode!

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radkassie3048-blog · 5 years

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Converting Flac To Mp3

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Within the Search field type "Free FLAC to MP3 Converter" and you will notice all logs of "Free FLAC to MP3 Converter" within the database suitable along with your Windows Model. Some of the advanced settings in Swap embody deleting the supply audio file after a conversion, automatically normalizing audio, editing tags, and downloading CD album details from the web. This FLAC to MP3 converter has batch processing capacity, so you'll be able to convert a wide range of different audio recordsdata simultaneously to 1 format as an alternative of manually converting each one individually. Also, you can mix and be a part of a number of audio items collectively - just choose audios you wish to be part of and tick the "Merge into one file" field (see bottom right). It is a known downside that FLAC information are normally too large to suit an MP3 player. So, are you on the lookout for software program to convert massive FLAC information to smaller MP3? Free Simple FLAC to MP3 Converter is easy, but quick, flexible and powerful FLAC to MP3 converter. Free Easy FLAC to MP3 Converter permits you to scale back file size of big FLAC, so you can simply ship it to your phone, or by E-mail. This converter is completely freed from cost for any use. With its construct-in latest & superior FLAC codec and Lame MP3 encoder, the output MP3 music will keep premium quality that you may inform no distinction from the unique. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, another audio information compression algorithm. Unlike WMA and MP3, FLAC is lossless. This comes on the expense of bigger file size, in fact. And whereas FLAC is a wonderful compression algorithm for lossless archival storage, players probably require MP3. Enter Codecs: AAC, AC3, AIF, AIFF, ALAW, DTS, FLAC, M4A, M4B, M4R, MP2, MP3, , WAV, WMA, etc. On the right bottom discipline, you'll be able to select MP3 from the checklist. Subsequent, do some customization and choose an output path to your transformed MP3 recordsdata.2. Just select the output information like MP3. You possibly can add as many FLAC files as you want from the native laborious drive, and all of them will probably be batch transformed once you hit the convert button. File names might be retained, only the file extension modifications to the selected format. MP3 stands for Movement Image Experts Group Layer 3, which is a digital compression algorithm for audio file. The mp3 file might be over 10 instances smaller when compared to a uncooked source file. Today, the MP3 file format is the most well-liked musical file codecs on the planet.

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acaseforpencils · 6 years

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Jason Chatfield.

Bio: I grew up in the far flung suburbs of Perth, in Western Australia, and used to spend my paper route money on MAD Magazines (I cheaped-out and stole my dentist’s waiting room issues of the New Yorker. I think I was the only kid who looked forward to going to the dentist).

I moved to New York in 2014 and started pitching to the mag in person. I’m not sure Bob liked me, so I went back to pitching via email. Then I went in on his last day and finally sold my first piece. I feel like it was his final f—k you to the magazine. “Here! Have a Chatfield!”

Find this print here!

The cartoon was a goofy play on Vlad the Impaler.

I didn’t sell to the magazine again until last month, but I’ve had a handful sold as dailies. And I’m published in MAD often, so they’ve clearly done away with any of their standards.

When I’m not drawing gag cartoons I write and draw a syndicated legacy strip called Ginger Meggs which I took over 10 years ago. It’s been around since 1921 and now appears daily in 34 countries. He’s kind of an Australian version of Dennis the Menace, except he predates him by about 30 years.

Tools of choice: For drawing/roughs, I use a Prismacolor Turquoise clutch pencil with a red lead and try to find some paper with a little bit of tooth. The mixed media pads at Blick do the trick nicely.

I ink using a Uni-ball Vision Elite Stick Roller Ball Pen… or a Pigma Micron 03.

DO NOT use the Uni-Ball Vision Rollerball Pens, Fine Point (0.7mm) if you’re traveling. They explode on planes. And ruin your copy of The New Yorker.

For a wash, I just use watercolor and whatever brush is lying around. Nothing fancy. There’s a scanning app on my phone called “Adobe Scan” which does a nice job of scanning line-art into a PDF when I’m out of the studio and need to email in a quick rough.

I use a Wacom Mobilestudio Pro for finished artwork. I like to get out of the studio and work from a bar or restaurant, so it helps that I can take that with me. I use a little glove that I got on Amazon so I don’t grease up the screen, and the felt-tip nib that comes in the pen-holder makes the friction between the stylus and the screen more like pencil on paper. Unfortunately, they’re not waterproof, as I found on a recent vacation…

youtube

My wife plays piano and sings at bars around the city so I’ll often sit at the bar during her sets and draw. Digital/Traditional depends on what deadlines are most pressing. (She has a weekly residency in Astoria —if anyone’s interested in going, let me know!)

A lot of people email me for advice about tablets —I’ve been trialling/demo-ing Wacom products for 15 years— I think they’re great. If you’re married to doing stuff by hand but want to colour digitally, you can get a decent tablet without going broke. Depends on your workflow.

Writing Desk: My wife and I were living upstairs in 5A when my neighbour in 4B died. He was a brilliant poet and had an incredible old writing desk. It’s the only thing that was left in the apartment, so I’m looking after it ’til his grandson moves in at the end of our lease. I work for countless hours at this old thing. It’s beat up, but I’ve patched it together enough that it won’t collapse and bury me mid-brushstroke. I’ve stuck a few of my favourite toons on the top of it.

Tool I wish I could use better: My brain. It really is a sack of cats. Whenever I want to sit and do work, it clocks off. Then it comes up with a pearler of an idea at 3 in the morning when I’m trying to sleep. I write it down in my phone, but autocorrect makes it indecipherable by morning.

I like working with my writer friend, Scott. We both do comedy at night and have developed a nice short-hand. We also seem to have the same library of references and can build on each others’ premises, which tames my sack-of-cats.

Tool I wish existed: The Deadline Extender.® I’ve never missed a deadline, but that said… an extra 3 or 4 minutes to allow for a terrible wifi connection, or a errant scanner wouldn’t go astray.

Also: The Deadline Extender® PREMIUM: Let’s you go back in time to when you were procrastinating and slap yourself in the face. $30 p/month.

Tricks: Ok, well. This is going to sound a bit Dalton Trumbo, but bear with me: I do my best work…in the bath.The most productive 3 hours of my week are during Scotchbath Sunday; an immoveable chunk of time on Sunday evening whereby I lock myself in the bathroom, run a bath, lug my drawing stuff onto a bit of wood that sits over the bath, and just write and draw. Nothing else. I write weeks worth of my syndicated comic strip (Ginger Meggs), I write New Yorker cartoons, scribble up roughs for dailies— and when I feel like I’ve earned it (usually 2 hours in) I tap the side of the bath three times, and my wife peels herself from her piano and I unlock the door to a nice big glass of scotch. It’s a hell of a carrot on a stick to work towards when you’re stuck. (PS. Lest you think I’m some kind of Don Draper-era misogynist; the scotch reward part was her idea. I think she realized it keeps me in the bath and out of her way.)

Anyway. It’s a great way to switch gears creatively. It’s like being on an aeroplane. No wifi, no phones — just the work you need to get done. Get involved. #ScotchBathSunday.

Oh! And if I get my deadlines done for the week, I have a small budget for a solo lunch somewhere where I can eat cheese and draw. I really didn’t know cheese ’til I moved to America. (And yes, I’ve already been to Wisconsin. Good Lord.)

Tips? I always tell younger artists to not even think about touching a drawing tablet until they’ve learned to draw by hand first. Otherwise they’ll always be drawing away, knowing they have the insurance of the CTRL+Z key at their disposal if they screw up a line. That’s not a good habit to have when you’re working to a deadline. But, once you do know how to draw, by all means dive head-first into the digital realm. It’s incredible. Procreate, Sketchbook or Photoshop are all great.

Misc: One of the hangovers from working in advertising illustration is that I’ve had to be a bit of a chameleon style-wise for the last 15 years and haven’t allowed myself to just settle into one style. Lately, I’ve just decided to say “Bugger it!” and try and find a loose, consistent style that I’m comfortable with, that’s an apt conduit to my silly ideas.

I always loved George Booth’s line, and his ability to create a scene with so much movement but just at the right moment in time. Also Sam Gross’ dark, hilarious cartoons with perfect line-economy. And I’d give my left arm (I draw with my right) to know how Barry Blitt has so much control with his washes…

Chatfield’s portrait of Sam Gross

While I’m geeking out, I love seeing younger cartoonists find their feet and thrive in a style that just feels like they’re speaking to you— Ellis J. Rosen, Sofia Warren, Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell, Jason Katzenstein, Amy Kurzweil, and a seemingly endless list of talented younger artists who are putting in the work are a big inspiration.

I know it should be Steig or Thurber or Addams, but my favourite cartoonist is Sergio Aragones.

I was always so enamoured of MAD growing up and studied the lines of Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee and the Usual Gang of Idiots. I remember being so frustrated I couldn’t even come close to getting my work to look like theirs, but I think I found a style somewhere in between when I fell short.

I think Wil McPhail’s poses are masterful, and I wish I knew how how the hell he did that. One day I’ll trudge up to England and knock on his door to ask him. I find myself doubled-over at John Cuneo’s Instagram, and Ed Steed’s absurdly funny gags. I have a slew of toons I’ve torn out of years’ worth of magazines and taped to my studio wall, or my zillion year-old writing desk. I’m constantly humbled by how generous and welcoming the existing crop of New Yorker cartoonists have been to a goofy Aussie immigrant — Joe Dator, Matt Diffee and Pat Byrnes, Mort Gerberg and an ever-growing list of prolific, talented cartoonists who make the 99% weekly rejection tolerable.

I’ve made some of my closest friends and have been lucky enough to meet my cartooning heroes through the National Cartoonists Society. I got to spend a lot of time with Sergio at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in the UK last year which made my year. We were signing together for a whole afternoon and I spent more time geeking out with him than signing.

Okay. Enough drooling. Sorry.

I’m a fan of cartoonists.

Website, etc. I have a weekly podcast where I throw around ideas for New Yorker cartoons with a fellow comedian and writer, Scott Dooley. It’s called “Is There Something In This?” It’s a bit of fun. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the art of writing gags very seriously. It’s an extremely difficult skill to master, and we’re virtually zygotes at it. We have lots of listeners now, which is bewildering. Talking about drawing is like dancing about architecture, but here we are. Anyway you can find it on iTunes or wherever you waste time listening to podcasts.

My website is jasonchatfield.com and my comedy stuff is up at jasonchatfieldcomedy.com ( I’ve been doing stand-up comedy for 11 years. If anyone wants to come see a show, hit me up! I’ll put you on the door). My instagram is @jasonchatfield. I’m still trolling the British chap who has the @jasonchatfield handle on Twitter to no avail. To that end, I’m @jason_chatfield on Twitter.

If you want more art supplies in your life, A Case for Pencils is on Instagram and Twitter. You can also find me, Jane (the person who created/edits this blog), on Twitter here, which is where I stick the paintings that I’ve been doing instead of interviewing people consistently (I needed to balance working on other people’s work and my own work!). Oh, and If you’d like to support this blog, which is always very appreciated, there are many different ways to do so, which you can find here!

#Jason chatfield #how to draw New Yorker cartoons #artists on tumblr #art supplies #drawing process #artist interview

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lilacskyent-blog · 6 years

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Breakfast with Alex Wex

People have a million opinions and false facts about the digital world we live in today, and even more about social media. For a lot of people, they use platforms like Instagram and Twitter to follow celebrities, and some use it to bully celebrities. Most forget that that connection can also be used for good. We live in a world of amazing accessibility and, when used properly, could foster a wonderful connection between people. A prime example of this is the Will Smith Jump event that took the internet by storm, that all started with a video message. It’s incredible what can happen when you reach out to people. That was the main thought in my mind before sitting down with Alex Wex yesterday. Alex Wex is an amazing Twitch streamer, and until recently, was a producer for FBE and REACT on Youtube. As of this interview, Alex Wex has fostered a wonderful community through Twitch and Discord known as the Jank Squad, and recently broke his view count record at 210 viewers for his birthday stream, also hitting close to 600 subscribers. Given that I was in Atlanta and he was in LA we couldn’t actually meet for breakfast like I usually do so we had an amazing video chat instead.

So for starters, I just want to thank you for sitting down with me. I’ve been following your work since I first saw you on FBE and I think you’re an awesome dude so thanks. I wanna start at the very beginning because I’m really interested in your story. So, I know you went to high school in Atlanta, GA. What can you tell me about that?

I was actually born in Manhattan, my family moved to Atlanta around pre-K and I lived there up until I graduated from Riverwood High School. All my friends wanted to go to UGA or Georgia Tech but I was really interested in traveling and branching out, so I went to Ohio for college, and now I live in L.A. I made some truly amazing friends in Atlanta, and having this kind of east coast, south culture mixture has made life pretty interesting.

When did you know you wanted to work in entertainment, and what led to you becoming a producer?

When I was a kid, my family liked to record family videos, and I always wanted to see the recording. I had the eye for production pretty early. Once I started high school I got involved in performing, did Grease, The Wiz, and a few other school plays that got me interested in the performance aspect as well. In college, I majored in video production with a minor in film and sociology so I gained real knowledge of the art that happens behind the camera.

How does one go from school in Atlanta to working at FBE?

As I mentioned before I went to college at Ohio University, what got me was their video production department. I actually still work with the head of the department and speak to the alumni when they come here, advising them on some dos and don'ts. As a graduation gift, my Dad gave me an all expense paid trip to anywhere I wanted to go in the U.S for a few days and I chose L.A. So I was here, hanging out with my current roommate Johnny and we just decided to come out here permanently and live the dream. So I packed up my car and drove from Atlanta to LA and started looking for internships while working at Chipotle.I first joined FBE as an intern, then got hired as a PA and eventually was a writer for some of their scripted shows, and I worked my way up until I was offered the producer position. I loved producing because that involved every aspect of working behind the camera, from writing to filming to editing and seeing the baby from birth to fully grown. Being in front of the camera came back when FBE launched the community team and started streaming on Twitch.

Watching Alex grow on YouTube, putting reactors in hilarious challenges, eat crazy concoctions and brave some insane hot sauces that would make Sean Evans proud, his personality radiates through the screen. His passion for both sides of the camera is clear in the quality of every video he makes. However, taking part in one of his Twitch streams gives you an even more full experience. It’s like the difference between a teaser trailer and a full film.

Freddy or Jason?

Freddy is my favorite in Dead By Daylight but I love Jason, in fact, Friday the 13th was the first game I ever streamed. I’d have to say, Jason.

So, we were in high school in the baby years of YouTube, I mostly used it for music videos and anime, I think back then I only followed Phil Defranco and Timothy Delaghetto consistently. Back then, did you ever look at YouTube and think “this is going to revolutionize the world and turn traditional media on its head?”

Yeah, it’s changed everything. Almost every network has a YouTube channel now. Late night shows and things like SNL upload segments that get massive amounts of views. YouTube is still growing, testing out its premium service and channel enrollment and things like that, but it’s exciting to see where it’s going to end up.

It’s even crazier when you think about how much Twitch has already changed the game.

Definitely, I mean we’ve seen what happens when some of the top YouTube creators come over to Twitch and realize that it’s completely different from what they’re used to. It’s more like an improv radio show, you have to be on for two or three hours and avoid dead air, rather than being able to edit something together. It’s hard to be constantly entertaining when you're used to delivering a finished edit rather than a live audience. For example, Logan Paul had over 100,000 people in his first stream but after that, the numbers dropped just cause that’s not his world. Live Streaming is a constant conversation. It’s the opposite of YouTube.

I remember seeing YouTubers flood to Twitch after the adpocalypse and feeling like it made no sense. A lot of vloggers and creators who never expressed any interest in video games were all suddenly obsessed with Fortnite. However, when people like Alex Wex came to Twitch they brought genuine love of gaming, skill, and a great sense of community.

What insight can you give into the world of a producer? Especially on the internet, how to figure out what videos are gonna get views or go viral?

It’s a case by case basis depending on what you make. With Challenge Chalice, we made it during the high point of internet challenges and we had consistent challenges to make content with constantly, but this past year challenges have kinda quieted down so that got more difficult. We revisited and revised a lot of earlier challenges to make them more interesting, and that has to do with being present during every step of the process. You can’t slack off on anything, from script to editing. Being organized is key, and definitely take on the ideas and criticisms of the people working with you. Be flexible and open-minded. It’s not about balance, it’s about harmony.

3 Breakfast must haves?

Bacon

Grits

Belgian Waffles are incredible

Hack-n-slash? RPG? Or FPS? And why?

That’s complicated. Overwatch is one of my favorite games but it doesn’t play exactly like an FPS. For me, hack-n-slash for games like Dead Cells, Rogue Lights, I love games with massive replay value. I’m playing Diablo 3 on switch right now and I love it.

What games are best for streaming? Does the game you play matter?

A little, but it shouldn’t be everything. You want your audience to gravitate towards your personality. Never play something you don’t enjoy playing. I love Overwatch and it’s not one of the current hot stream games but I love playing it. Story games are complicated. If people miss parts of story mode games they tune it out cause they won’t know what’s going on. More than anything put your own spin on what you’re doing. For example, when I do Dead By Daylight I do stream vs chat where my chat helps the survivors escape if I’m playing the killer. In fact, chatting streams are starting to really blow up. It’s more about the person playing than the game they play.

What game has you hype for 2019?

That’s tough, but probably Kingdom Hearts 3. I’m excited for Smash Bros for my last game of 2018 too.

What led you to Twitch?

I’d seen some of it, but Tom had been doing it for 6 months and kept suggesting it until one day I finally did. I had a decent setup with an ultra-wide monitor and Tom’s old video capture device and I started streaming Dead by Daylight. We actually came into the name Jank Squad because of how janky the streams were in the beginning.

What led you to leave FBE and what are you working on now?

I wanted to focus more on my Twitch, and it was exhausting streaming at work on the days when I’m also streaming at home. I wanted to give my audience the most energy I could and be more involved with them as a community. I’m creating new ways to interact with my audience, more active in my Discord, and after working there for 5 years I felt stuck. There wasn’t any new learning experience and things felt a little sour and monotonous with the new direction things were going in. I’m actually getting a new camera and a green screen to upgrade the stream quality. I’d love to make partner with Twitch.

What’s the dream?

I take things to step by step. I’m definitely in a transition right now. I’m looking for another good full-time job at the moment. I’d love to be a full-time streamer but I’d also love to produce my own stuff and then stream after work. Streaming is probably one of the most consistent things I’ve ever done. Funny enough, that’s part of what got me into it cause Tom knew my leisure activity was video games, and streaming just takes that to another level. It definitely takes work, but the community you foster on this platform is unlike any other with the rating system and how everything is set up.

Alright so the zombie apocalypse is upon us and you can have 1 mortal character, one god tier video game character, and one Reactor in your survival squad, who you got?

Kratos from God of War 2 causes his chain blades would tear through everything, my regular would be Leon from Resident Evil 4 cause his aim is amazing and he’s used to zombies, and my Reactor would be Chelsea cause she knows so much about The Walking Dead. That’s my squad.

East Coast or West Coast

East, it’s where I was born and bred.

Top 10 songs or artists on your playlist right now?

Meek Mill- Intro with the amazing Phil Collins sample

Tyler the Creator’s Grinch is great for the holidays

The Cool-Lupe Fiasco

Chance The Rapper’s new songs

Paramore- Ain’t It Fun

You come from the same city I did with only a two year age difference, and you’re the first brown face I saw in relation to FBE and now you’re killing it on Twitch. Do you know how dope you are?

I appreciate that. I like to think I’m dope in some ways but I also do my best to keep it real, keep myself humble, and not letting the numbers get to my head. I hope everyone thinks they’re fucking awesome, cause they are. I have my good and bad days but I like to look at what has been built and keep grinding. Everyone is on a different time stream. I don’t want to rush things, I’m on my own path, and right now I just wanna build this community.

I for one, am excited to see what comes next from Alex Wex, including his stream later this week. You can find him @ItsMrWex

-Strawberry Smirk of Lilac Sky Entertainment

#twitch #fbe #stream #gaming #producer #lilacsky #alex wex #digital #media #breakfast

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mcmansionhell · 7 years

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Looking Around: On Moving; or, The Story of a Little Old House

Author’s Note: This article consisted of two weeks of intense research, involving scouring over fire insurance maps, tables of wages, census records, Sears catalogs, and atlases. Before I begin, I owe some mad thanks to those who helped provide their resources and advice: preservationist Jackson Gilman-Forlini, furniture history guru Susannah Wagner, the nice folks from the Maryland Historical Society, and the research library staff at the Johns Hopkins University.

Anyone who has made copious trips to U-Haul, rendered their fingertips numb after stringing along line after line of packing tape, or spent hours intimately acquainting ones lower back with an ice pack, knows – and loathes – moving.

Moving is stressful. It is a form of migration, itself an immense change. Despite the momentous effect moving has on us, there is little to be found regarding the history of, well, moving. Plenty has been said about techniques of migration, by boat, by horse and buggy, by rail, and by car.

In novels and movies, from Harry Potter to Doctor Zhivago, there are scenes of train stations, carts with ornamented trunks, and porters donning funny cylindrical hats to haul them. In photographs of Ellis Island complete with their visual narratives of the American Dream, we see thousands of hopeful newcomers cheering gleefully, suitcases in hand.

As time goes by, the railway porters are replaced with truck drivers; the journey implied by the ocean liner morphs into bucolic images of a smiling suburban family on the island-lawn of their poorly-shuttered idyll.

Family Moving to their New Home. Washington State, 1935. via Library of Congress.

Why am I writing about moving? Over the last two weeks or so, I, myself, moved. I moved from a dingy (yet immensely charming) self-constructed room in what used to be a Cork and Seal Factory, to a little 812 square-foot Baltimore rowhouse.

Each of the times I’ve moved from apartment to apartment (and finally, on this move, to an actual, full-sized house), there have been great difficulties loading and unloading all of my crap – difficulties innate to the houses themselves. These were usually small hardships, involving the clever rotation of a sofa or armchair in order to wrestle it out the door.

This time, however, I came to a horrifying revelation: None of my existing furniture would be able to A.) fit within the cramped dimensions of the narrow staircase or B.) make it around the corner in the shallow hallway to my room.

I solved my problem the same way as any reasonable millennial:

Photo by Rainchill. (CC BY-3.0)

Yet, as I loaded up my cart with brown box after brown box, I couldn’t help but wonder: What did people do before Ikea? Why were the stairs so narrow, and more so, what went up them before my trendy flat-packed furniture?

The Little Rowhouse

According to two days of scouring archival newspapers and other primary sources, I could gleam a few interesting things about the little brown rowhouse into which I’m currently schlepping my stuff.

The Little Brown Rowhouse (center). Via Google Maps.

The rowhouse was built sometime between 1900 and 1902. A Baltimore Sun record from 1898 shows the auction of parcels of land where the house would soon be built:

EDIT: My colleague, Jackson, has found out that the house was built by a pair of builders named John S. Kidd & William A. Davidson.

However, the first mention of any of the houses on the row (that is to say, even-numbered houses, as the houses on the opposite side of the street are of a different design), comes later, in 1902, in a divorce notice:

In 1905, the house next door to mine was for lease:

Unfortunately, no searches for C.W. Webb pulled up anything of note.

I learned some other interesting things during my newspaper dig, (most notably that the folks who once lived a block south from me got busted during Prohibition) - but ultimately, came to a dead end on my original topic: what kind of person moved into my rowhouse first, and how they did it.

The Process

In order to glean how working people moved back in the early 1900s, I decided to focus on a few key areas of research:

What kind of wages the family would make, what they would spend it on and what kind of local industry they might have participated in.

What kind of stuff was being moved; (AKA what kind of furniture these folks bought and how much it cost)

What the costs were of moving services during this time, and whether they were affordable for the family in question.

Potential Jobs, Wages, and Expenditures

The best way to look for what kind of industry existed in a certain area at a certain time is through a series of maps by the Sanborn Fire Insurance Co. These maps were used for evaluating fire risk (and therefore how high the premiums should be for fire insurance.)

In the index of a Sanborn Map, there are two parts. First is the list of streets, with a number, corresponding to a plate number. The second is a list of industries along with larger businesses, schools, orphanages, and churches, along with their plate numbers. To find out what kind of industry was near the street you’re looking for, simply look for industries relatively close to the plate number of your street.

It’s likely that the folks who lived in my house worked in one of two places: as a railworker (at the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad, The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad; The United Railroad & Electric Company) or in the stone quarry (Sisson Marble Works, not shown in screenshot). Working class women often worked as well, most likely in the nearby textile mills lining the Jones Falls River.

There are a few smaller industries these folks could have worked in as well, such as the Columbia Motor & Manufacturing Co., The American Can Factory, J. Stack & Sons Lumber, or the Schier & Bros. Dairy. However, it’s most likely that the person who first lived in my house was a stone or rail worker, as the house used to be mere blocks from both the quarry and a massive rail yard:

Image from a 1905 Map. House is in top-right corner, in red.

Okay, so we know where the head of the household likely worked. How much did they make doing it?

Were the head of household a worker in the nearby marble quarry, he (women did not work in the quarry in 1900) would have made around $813 a year.

Source: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008319974

Were they a railworker of some sort (the average workweek of railway workers in nearby Pennsylvania was around 62 hours/week in 1901) they would have made somewhere between $420/year as a day laborer and $1350/year as a senior engineer. Source.

What would these folks spend these wages on? Here are some more statistics (average expenditures) from Pennsylvania (a neighboring state with similar industries.)

Source.

Now that we know what these folks might have made (on average), let’s see what kind of goods they possibly purchased.

Furniture

It’s difficult to know what kind of furniture most working class folks had in their houses. According to my sister (Hi Suz!), who studies furniture history at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, it’s possible that a family working in 1900 bought some pieces of mass-produced furniture, like that sold by Sears Roebuck & Co.

Page from a Sears catalog c. 1900.

The truth is more difficult, because much of the mass-produced, inexpensive furniture of the time was made out of cheap materials such as basswood and has not survived. It’s also possible that the family had some pieces passed down from generation to generation, which wouldn’t be accounted for in primary sources from the time. What is true, is that there is a certain amount of furniture most folks need for their homes.

Fortunately for us, there are photographs in the Library of Congress of tenement and other working class interiors, enabling us to get a better picture of what folks had in their homes:

Kitchen of a Railway Worker. New York, 1911. Library of Congress.

Living area of a NYC Tenement. 1912. Library of Congress.

Small interior bedroom of a tenement. NYC, 1912. Library of Congress.

Descriptions of working class housing from the book Working Class Life: The “American Standard” in Comparative Perspective, show some common similarities between how working class homes were furnished; the most important being that average expenditure on furniture rose when folks were paid more. Often, according to the book, almost $13 per year was spent simply replacing cheap linens, curtains, and cutlery alone, so there was little room left over for additional pieces. (204)

Typically, there was a shared living and dining room, centered around a table, surrounded by Windsor or ladder backed chairs, perhaps a sofa and chest-of-drawers, a few trinkets and photographs, and perhaps a rug.

Most of the time, upstairs rooms were almost unfurnished, having only an iron bed frame and felt mattress.

Those who made a little extra had more frills: a rocking chair and china cabinet in the front room, and in the bedrooms, mirrors, and bathroom fixtures like chamberpots and washbasins. (203)

This description perfectly coincides with the Baltimore rowhouse, which has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a basement (likely unfinished until much later). The bathroom, like most bathrooms in dwellings built before 1910, was a more recent addition. Therefore, It’s likely that the folks who first lived in the little rowhouse had furniture and rooms like those described above.

Which brings us back to...

Moving

As far as the answer to the initial question of “how stuff got up the stairs”, the answer is that, frankly, not that much had to go up the stairs in the first place.

Most mass-produced iron beds could be dismantled and taken upstairs in parts. Felt mattresses were extraordinarily thin by todays standards, and, because they’re stuffed and pliable, the family would have little trouble navigating the tricky corner at the top of the stairs. As for the more luxurious items, mirrors, basins, and chamberpots, all are also easily portable.

The answer to the second question, which was how would a family move from one home to another is, sadly, we’re still not sure. What is certain is that, if they came from another city, they probably didn’t take much with them, as shipping or transferring things by train was extraordinarily expensive by working class standards: the Pennsylvania railroad charged 75¢ per piece (not counting oversized items) - to move one item alone was about a full day’s work for a common day laborer.

If the family were moving within the city, it’s highly unlikely they used a moving company, as the prices for such were hefty as well at 25¢/piece, as advertised in 1898 by this local furniture mover:

A local anonymous opinion from 1904 corroborates this price range, bemoaning the techniques the moving company used to transfer items:

What’s more likely is that the family either had some way of bringing what existing furniture they had to the new house (usually by horse & buggy in 1900) or they bought furniture either by local/national catalog, secondhand or from one of the myriad small dealers or manufacturers in the city itself, seen here in the 1905-1906 edition of Polk’s Business Directory:

As it turns out, the folks who first moved into this house did so in a way not that different from me. They probably called up some folks to help haul what they could (if they were moving within the city) and what they couldn’t, they bought.

Besides, what’s Sears if not the Ikea of the past?

If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon! Also JUST A HEADS UP - I’ve started posting a GOOD HOUSE built since 1980 from the area where I picked this week’s McMansion as bonus content on Patreon!

Not into small donations and sick bonus content? Check out the McMansion Hell Store ! 100% of the proceeds from the McMansion Hell store will go to help victims of the recent hurricanes.

Copyright Disclaimer: All photographs are used in this post under fair use for the purposes of education, satire, and parody, consistent with 17 USC §107. Manipulated photos are considered derivative work and are Copyright © 2017 McMansion Hell. Please email [email protected] before using these images on another site. (am v chill about this)

#history #architecture #baltimore #moving #american history #working class #1900s #victorian era #sears #sociology #looking around #furniture

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howaminotinthestrokesyet · 3 years

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Behind The Album: A Moon Shaped Pool

Radiohead‘s ninth studio album was released in May 2016 through XL Recordings. Many of the tracks on the album had been written much earlier. The song “True Love Waits” goes all the way back to 1995, while it was also included on their live album, I Might Be Wrong. The band first conceived of “Burn the Witch” during their recording sessions for Kid A, while Thom Yorke actually performed the song “Present Tense” during a solo appearance in 2009. They had begun performing some of the tracks for this album as early as The King of Limbs tour in 2014. On that tour, they recorded two songs in Nashville, Tennessee, but the group eventually discarded both recordings deeming them too mediocre to keep. They began recording the actual album in September 2014 in Oxford with long time producer Nigel Godrich. The following year Radiohead moved to a studio in the south of France, La Fabrique. The facility had once been an art pigment mill, but now hosted the world's largest vinyl record collection. The band did not rehearse any of the new material at all before recording as Ed O’Brien said in an interview. “We just went straight into recording ... The sound emerged as we recorded." Rather than relying on computers, Godrich actually utilized analog equipment which meant they had the limitation of having to erase any previous take in order to record a new one. As Colin Greenwood observed, “It forces you to have to make decisions in the moment; it’s very much the opposite of having your album stored on a terabyte hard drive." Although analog was used, the group edited almost every track digitally. For example, Jonny Greenwood did so on the track “Piano Eyes” using the programming language Max. The song “Identikit” was created by manipulating several loops of Thom Yorke’s voice during The King of Limbs sessions. The song “Ful Stop” saw the group bring in an additional drummer Clive Deamer, who had previously worked with the band during the King of Limbs tour. The use of an orchestra was all arranged by Jonny Greenwood with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hugh Brunt. On the day they recorded the string arrangement for “Burn the Witch,” Nigel Godrich’s father passed away. The producer would have this to say about his death. “I literally left him on a fucking table in my house and went and recorded. And it was a very, very emotional day for me. He was a string player as well so it was one of those things where it felt like he would want me to go and just do this." Around the same time, Thom Yorke would announce his separation from his longtime wife, Rachel Owen. She would die from cancer several months later. Yorke would later tell Rolling Stone, “There was a lot of difficult stuff going on at the time, and it was a tough time for us as people. It was a miracle that that record got made at all." Upon its release, A Moon Shaped Pool would be dedicated to Godrich’s father Vic and stagehand Scott Johnson, who had died in a 2012 concert accident. In the middle of recording the new album, Radiohead took a break to do a song for the James Bond movie, Spectre. The song of the same name would be rejected by the makers of the film as being too dark. Nigel Godrich would say, “That fucking James Bond movie threw us a massive curveball. It was a real waste of energy ... In terms of making A Moon Shaped Pool it caused a stop right when we were in the middle of it.” Jonny Greenwood would say that the actual itself was probably recorded in about two weeks.

The music On a Moon Shaped Pool puts together aspects of art rock, folk music, chamber music, and ambient music. As with their previous album The King of Limbs, they relied heavily on electronic music, but also included many more string arrangements than ever before. The Guardian would comment that the record represents a very stripped down sound from the band. The lyrics on the LP focus on love, forgiveness, and regret, which many critics believed was related to Yorke’s recent separation from Owen. Spencer Kornhaber of the Atlantic said that A Moon Shaped Pool "makes the most sense when heard as a document of a wrenching chapter for one human being.” Other themes include the climate on “The Numbers,” while “Burn the Witch” takes a look at the dangers of authority. Yorke would mention that he really disliked using clichés like the system is a lie, but would observe, "How else are you supposed to say 'the system is a lie'? Why bother hiding it? It's a lie. That's it." The Guardian would write that A Moon Shaped Pool may have accidentally become the official soundtrack to the Donald Trump presidency, even though Radiohead had no intention of doing so. On “The Numbers,” Yorke sings, “One day a time, mate, you will be impeached shortly, mate. You are not a leader, love … You can't sustain this. It's not gonna work. One day a time. We ain't stupid." Once again, Stanley Donwood did the artwork for the cover of the album as he first began creating it while in France listening to the band playing in another room as to inspire his work. The final product represented a new approach, where he kept his canvases outside, so the weather could affect the finished product.

A Moon Shaped Pool was originally released as a download directly from the Radiohead website, iTunes, Amazon, and other outlets. Physical CDs and vinyl would come out a month later in most countries. The album was made available on Spotify, which emerged as noteworthy because Nigel Godrich had criticized the streaming service for not supporting new artists in 2013. The band did have discussions with the company about possibly making this album available for premium users earlier than the general public, but nothing ever came of it. Very little promotion of the album took place after its release including no interviews and no tour previewing the material. Ed O’Brien later said, "We didn't want to talk about it being quite hard to make. We were quite fragile, and we needed to find our feet." In April 2016, the band would remove everything from their website and social media profiles to be replaced with blank images. The move was meant to symbolize that Radiohead would be returning. On the day of its release, BBC6 Radio played the album in its entirety throughout the day. A Moon Shaped Pool would go on to become the band's sixth number one album in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the record would debut at number three on the Billboard 200 charts. The record would be certified gold in both countries becoming their most successful album since Hail to the Thief. Most critics applauded the new album. USA Today would say that it had been “well worth the wait.” Rolling Stone would write that the record was both beautiful and “haunting”at the same time. New Musical Express would call the album eerie , while Allmusic said that it was a “melancholic comfort” record. Like many of the other reviews after its release, Pitchfork noted the terrible sadness within the music. The New York Times would go so far as to call the LP the darkest one Radiohead has ever released. Entertainment Weekly said that the record represented the band's most epic release since Kid A. Other reviews would often mention the excellent arrangements done by Jonny Greenwood for the tracks using strings. Not all of the reviews emerged as glowing recommendations of the record. Mike Diver of Quietus would have this to say, “Certain tracks feel less than fully fleshed out, really given the treatment that their age warrants ... There's simply so little spark here, barely glowing embers and blackened dust where once Radiohead blazed a fascinating, furious trail for others to attempt to follow." Ryan Kearney of New Republic would write an even harsher assessment of the album saying it is “no coincidence that the only moving song on the album, 'True Love Waits', was written two decades ago.” The Guardian remained highly critical over the fact that A Moon Shaped Pool seemed even more sad, then it really needed to be. The saving grace of the record is that it emerged as an improvement over The King of Limbs. The record would be nominated for a Mercury Prize at the end of the year marking the fifth album with that designation for the group. The album would also be nominated for a Grammy as Best Alternative Album, while “Burn the Witch” would be nominated for Best Rock Song. Many end of the year best of lists included the release like Entertainment Weekly, AV Club, Stereogum, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and more.

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