♫ I applied for a rescue dog,
But if I get you dog,
You're rescuing me ♫
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2021 -- beyond.
Transition Phase.
A new financial year, and I stitched up all my tax info already for the last one and sent it off; win. The latest I’ve ever put in my tax is 11 months late, and with an average of me taking about 6 months, I think, so to have it all set and out of my head is a true blessing.
All I can say for freelancing creators is: keep that spreadsheet of money in/out up to date, and then just pull the trigger on whatever email you’ve gotta send.
Beyond that, it’s also school holidays, so I’ve been setting the brain into a daily broth of relaxing salts and herbs. The result is me feeling pretty stress-free right now. I have no massive shoulder/neck ache, I’m waking up with a clear head, and the first half of these holidays has felt like it’s gone at a languid pace. It’s not racing by, slipping through my fingers, and it’s not been boring for a single second.
I remember, as a kid, being bored. As an adult, aside from sitting in some meetings, I can’t think of a time where I’ve been bored recently. I’m either teaching, which is engaging, or writing, which is very engaging [otherwise, honestly, why the hell would I do it?]. My commute has either a chat with the kids, or a podcast for my ears. At home the kids keep me busy with board games, or other games, or Lego, or we go outside for a bike ride or a backyard goof around. I exercise with a podcast, then wake the wife with a coffee and a chat; later we walk and talk around the neighbourhood. Even when doing jobs like laundry or prepping food, I don’t think I’ve ever felt boredom.
Then, if I’m ever left alone, I have so much I can occupy myself with that I’ve never been sunk into any feeling of misdirection or apathy. I can read a book/comic, watch a movie, keep working on my table project, or garden.
I can’t imagine sitting down and whining “I’ve got nothing to do.” I wonder if other adults get bored. I know we espouse the benefits of boredom, especially in children, because it gives their brain something to overcome and be creative in the ways to become productive. I see it in my kids sometimes, and then they unlock some new activity or game, but I don’t see it for myself. Probably because I never feel like there are enough hours in the day to get through the things I want to do, so there’s always a waiting list of stuff to dive into.
I hope that’s a good thing. I’m assuming it is.
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Classic pincer movement.
I’m breaking story this week, for [THE 36 HOUR PROJECT] and it’s coming along well, but that’s also hard to tell because there’s no set word limit or set of hours that can see me tick it off as complete.
I’ve written a synopsis. Then I’ve tweaked something, and when I do I have to then go back and tweak other things to make that something feel set up and established in the story/world. It usually sets something else off, so then that needs to be realigned in the plan. Do that enough times, you suddenly feel like a character’s core might be changed, so I have to analyse all of their choices, see if they make sense anymore.
It feels like a neverending set of balancing scales, moving forward through the story, then moving backwards through it, readjusting little elements, grains of sand, until it’s all just right. Then just grabbing a fistful from one side and scattering it away into the wind and seeing what the disturbance causes.
Again and again.
I’ve written the plot of this one out, by hand, around a dozen times now. Usually, between each plot remap, I have 1-2 pages of me asking myself questions, or reanalysing a character and their motivations/backstory/choices.
It feels never ending, like a treadmill run, but one where I don’t know when I’ll be satisfied enough to turn it off and move to the next exercise.
It’s both the most fun part of the process, and the most scary. There’s a thrill in just pure worldbuilding and finding possible threads for the story to move through, but it’s also akin to sprinting in the dark and hoping to find a hole in the wall in front of you that’s shaped exactly like your outline so you will fit through. There’s a lot of stepping back, turning 3.5 degrees, and then sprinting again.
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ASD&D.
I recently bought a bunch of solo journal-style RPGs and I’ve been reading them to see which ones I can bring into the classroom. It’s online-made content, so some are pretty average, and some have good ideas, but a few have been absolute barnstormers. For example:
This one sees you play as a truck driver. You drive one morning across the country and discover the landscape empty. You then unpack a few things: what’s gone wrong with this world you are in [pandemic, alien invasion, other, etc] and to whom are you trying to return [a partner, an old forgotten friend, a shaman with a cure, whatever, etc] and what might be after you [a creepy child with powers, a government black ops team, an eldritch monster, go crazy, etc].
With that set up, each day you roll the dice to see how you and your truck are holding up, and what you find in the landscape and how close to you the thing that’s after you is coming. At the end of each day, you make a phone call, on a payphone [how quaint] and you leave a message for the person to whom you are travelling towards. There’s a rough structure to the calls, certain starter prompts, but they don’t have to be too long. Mostly, you discuss the day, but then you discuss how you are feeling about everything.
It’s brilliant.
At the end, you might make it, you probably won’t, but you get to forge this personal connection between your driver and their destination person, and it sounds really beautiful and haunting, to be honest. I’d love to give this one a crack, but would also be interested to see what other writers/students would make of it.
I’ve graded this RPG zine an A - and hopefully I’ll have a solid little armada of A-B grade ones I can use in the future.
Note: The link above takes you to a place where you can buy the game, but it should also feature a link on that page to a bundle that’s much cheaper and includes many many other RPGs, too. There are 24 days left, I suggest you take the special sale. There’s some other cool stuff in it.
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PERHAPS YOU'D CARE TO SAMPLE
A comic about rewilding - this is a smart one, as always from The Nib, and well worth the time to think about. Especially because this one’s from 2019, so it’s something we can continue to learn from and consider for our future.
YOUNG RUFUS ADVENTURES on Kickstarter - a new all ages friendly edition of Killeroo tales!
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GRIST FOR THE MILL
TENET - Oh, boy, was this an experience. There are many moments where it’s completely unclear what exactly is happening in this flick, but in the end I”m still calling it a win. Why? Well, firstly; it’s awesome to see a creative brain swinging for the bleachers. I have no doubt Christopher Nolan knows exactly how all of the time travel stuff works, and that it’s meticulously mapped out. Secondly; the amount of time I now have to think about the movie and discuss it is...huge...endless...let’s just say I’ve been given more than a standard run time of brain fuel, and that’s bang for your buck. Oh, and thirdly; the concept that the future is mad they’ve been ravaged by climate change and so they’re coming back in time to steal a relatively healthy Earth from us is a brilliant concept. And it makes as much sense, logically, as what we’ve got now which is companies getting rich by killing the very planet we live on, but not ever stopping in their ways.
Not to say the flick isn’t also a complete disaster, in many ways. The time travel is very difficult to understand, so that’s gonna turn audiences away. The characters are mostly thin, or clinical, and you don’t understand a whole lot of their motivations or care much for them, mostly. The final action set piece is mostly incomprehensible in what is happening, and not just because of time stuff. It’s just masked soldiers shooting. I’ve heard complaints that the score ruins the voice track, but thankfully I watch with subtitles on, so I skipped that pitfall.
Now, beyond all of that, I still find myself liking the flick. And wanting to revisit it. Knowing a little more about how the time all works, I’m really intrigued to watch it again armed with that knowledge. The characters are thin, but the actors are all still very commanding on screen, so it’s got that going for it, too. Which makes me wonder: can I reconcile my desire for a movie alongside its many flaws?
Well, if people can enjoy absolute trash cinema [I’m thinking of flicks we all know are “bad” but people still want to rewatch - PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, THE ROOM, etc] then we can also watch a movie that’s difficult to understand and enjoy the experience of it. If I need to watch a flick 3 times in order to mentally map it out, what if that’s a feature, and not a bug in the system?
It’s been said I do this with a lot of my own comics, so I guess I have a soft spot for wanting people to engage with something more than once in order to fully grasp it. Not everything needs to be instantly unlockable for the audience. Even if multiple characters do indeed try to do this on screen in TENET.
I’m also just impressed at how Nolan goes about making films as these strange artefacts of his thoughts and ideas. His movies often require a lot of post-discussion, and I’m absolutely here for that. I think MEMENTO is the most successful because it all absolutely works. But it’s also a story that plays with time, and 100% needs time to discuss and debrief afterwards for it all to come together. INCEPTION did this, though with more holes, and INTERSTELLAR played with time on that planet near the black hole, and in the ending. DUNKIRK took a war movie and made it something else by playing with 3 different time periods interlaced - whoever described it as a sentence, a paragraph, and a short story all playing out together, intertwined to make you think they’re all happening concurrently, but they really cannot be, got the nail right on the head for me.
Nolan is clearly interested in how time works. Probably more interested in that than he is the actual characters. But I’m always interested in what interests him because his brain is a completely fascinating tool. I think of Dr Manhattan playing with time and while that’s a grandiose image to conjure for a man who just points a camera at good looking dudes while others explain strange narrative/science concepts around them, I can admit that it draws me in every time.
I wouldn’t call TENET a complete success, or a flick that’s going to land with a vast majority of people, but I am going to give it big ups for the amount of thought it’s given me this week. And I have to applaud a creative brain trying its best to wrestle with a topic it clearly finds fascinating.
No creative person owes the world a perfect story. They do the process for themselves, and they only owe us their care and attention and passion. Anyone can fail in telling a story, but that they stepped up to try with everything they’ve got is all I’ll ever expect.
Be one of the good guys, because there's way too many of the bad.
POST CREDITS SEQUENCE
I don’t know what the comic con landscape is going to continue to look like this year, or even next.
I made two cons earlier in the year, I had another one postponed that should have been this weekend just gone. I fear with the unpredictability of Covid, I won’t be able to guarantee when I can make it to a certain city, or not.
I love selling my comics at shows because most of the time it’s to an engaged reader. Most cities, I even know certain faces to expect because they’re regular readers, excited to see what’s new.
Well, EVERFROST #1 is definitely new, and I have a box of the first issue right here in my office, but I cannot guarantee when I’ll be able to get it into people’s hands, so I’m offering it available to purchase online.
CLICK HERE TO BUY EVERFROST #1
The comic will come directly from me, I’ll sign it, and you are welcome to browse the other stuff I’ve got up in the online store to maximise your postage spend. If you already bought a copy from your local comic shop then thank you! That’s always a great way to support local business and it directly tells the publisher how much of a success we’ve been.
EVERFROST #2 comes out next Wednesday, so I’ll be in touch closer to that date with a preview of the majesty contained therein.