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I don't think I've seen any theatre since 2019 and I've missed it. So when I learned that darkfield radio had an installation nearby, and all the accessibility info looked good, I hiked my way off to Stratford to see some shows.

Darkfield specialise in immersive audio and the shows primarily take place in pitch blackness. There's a built in sequence of taking you into the dark and out again so audience members have a chance to leave safely if its too much.

The shows have trigger warnings. The shows need trigger warnings. All of them deal with dark heavy themes and the darkness leaves you isolated and alone while voices whisper into your ears. I found it a very intense experience. Enjoyable, but walking the line of overwhelming.

Even though you can't see it for most of the show, they've gone to the effort to create seating that puts you into the setting. Plane seats for flight, modified laundry carts for eulogy that is set in a hotel, beds for coma.

Common to the other bits of immersive theatre I've seen, the plots are looser. Go in expecting to come out confused and feeling like you've done a high adrenaline activity.

Onto the shows.

COMA: First up, I managed to miss that medical experimentation was a big part of this one. Oops. Leading to some strange interplay between my experiences with the medical system and the show. I don't think I was suppose to be considering my trust level in the production when asked to take a placebo as part of the performance. I think we were playing around with real versus imagined and the trustworthiness of authority figures as the man in charge took us between worlds that all looked just like this one. Delightfully creepy when I got out of my way enough to focus on the performance.

I think I ruined the ending for myself by getting distracted thinking about how I was going to get out of the bunkbed, but that was probably inevitable.

EULOGY, with its focus on death, was also perhaps not the soundest of ideas. Going through the hotel floors and the way they made the lift movement feel real was intensely satisfying. Having a companion whispering in my ear as she guided me through and listening to conversations taking place at multiple distances was a delight.

I suspect I was supposed to feel anxiety at giving a big speech all unprepared. Sadly, that's happened enough to me in real life that I was distinctly unbothered. They gave me a eulogy that felt like it was read from a co-workers leaving card, bland and insincere. I enjoyed it in a masochistic kind of way, which I'm aware is not entirely healthy. Lots of themes of being trapped in a cycle in this one and a lovely closing note of understanding what you were in the scene.

Overall, I really enjoyed it and I'm contemplating going back for the two shows I didn't see.

I have had a bit of a revelation. For the last six months or so I've been falling down the miniature painting rabbit hole. Watching tutorials and admiring competition winning pieces. Gradually, this has developed a longing to join in and paint my own miniatures, except I have but one miniature and no paint.

Fixable problem, but I do not want to buy miniature paint. Good paint is expensive, miniature paint is designed a specific use case that I'm unsure I'll do more than once and i already have a ridiculous number of kinds of paint. This was an insurmountable roadblock.

Then I saw someone slamming down next to their miniature familiar paint tubes and a very familiar logo. Oil paints. Winsor and Newton oil paints to be precise. Now, that is a totally different story. I have an embarrassing collection of oil paints. There's a tub of black gesso in the artbox. I've got low odor solvent and at least one paint brush in the right size range. Project try out miniature painting is on.

I've been making my way through this essay disfigurement, disgust and the dark side of pretty privilege by Rowan Ellis and it's fascinating. Below is personal musing on the subject matter.

( Read more... )

I think there maybe are different flavours of the experience of being visibly disabled, but with common threads. Possibly, related to roles in pop culture and for sure intersectionality changing the experience. I'd be really interested in others thoughts and experiences on the topic.

After a month and a day without, I have internet in my flat again. Hurray! I should write down the saga, but the quick version is farcical and I may well have to argue about compensation in due course. When you've had five engineers to your house, you know things have gone off the rails.

During this time, I have listened to so many podcasts...

Quick reviews:

Magnus Archives: I get why people love it. It's also odd to live so near some of the locations mentioned. That's one of the appeals of urban narratives, but they are not normally so close to home. I'm at the Librarian episode and please don't spoil me.

Death of an Artist: Raw and powerful. Season one is the true crime story of the death of Ana Mendieta. There's a lot about artistic genius, how that status is almost unclaimable for women and violent death in small communities. Can we make art about terrible things? Can we, really, separate the art from the artist?

Deep Cover Never Seen Again Season 3: Finding her life unbearable a young woman runs away after the death of her mother and ends up on the FBI's most wanted list. Compelling and a fascinating tale of making choices that make things worse and obession.

Heaven's Gate: I should not have listened to this. Heavy warning for suicide throughout. That said, it is an extremely well done and compassionate look into what Heaven's Gates beliefs actually were, who they were and how it built to the tragic end.

Ludonarrative dissidents: I love this one. Do you want deep, thoughtful discussion on rpg's and rpg design? This is for you. Two industries veterans and one prolific gm/designer consider a different game per episode. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th edition or Pendragon are great ones to start with or pick a name you recognise.

Relatedly, Gehenna Gaming's playthorugh of Masks of Nyarlathotep is a good inclusive one if you also find yourself wanting to know what this campaign is.

In other excellent news, I thought I had broken a toe in September and with deep relief I can de-escalate that to spectacular bruising.

This week has been a return of the quiet desire to write a solo rpg. I was obsessed with them during the lockdown and a few videos showing off some new examples and the nagging ache of wanting a project for Easter has brought back the interest with a vengeance.

Conceptually, I love them. It's a way share a narrative, through the designer's words and rules, without the struggle of finding people to play with. This is why they had a massive boom over lockdown, as one could not "gather the party" for a regular TTRPG.

In practise, I struggle. I have a very specific quantity of structure I find useful for creative exercises. Colouring books drive me up the wall, but I love single word prompts. A chunk of solo rpgs feature heavily constrained worldbuilding and I don't love that. When I want to build a world, I don't like having to follow the rules and I don't need the support.

There's also some crossover with story writing for many of the ones I'm most interested in. Journalling games forever sound so interesting to me, but I quickly end up wanting to do my own thing. Leading to a quiet suspicion I might have more fun making a rule set.

With all that said, they often have great premises. Here's a list of ones I'm intrigued by and need to remind myself acquiring them won't magically make me happier. I've also played exactly zero of these so how well they work I truly don't know.

Starforged: Mechanical complexity in space! The nordic fantasy version of Ironsworn is one of the standouts from the last generation of solo rpgs so the rules will be solid. The visuals in the guide are amazing and space settings are harder for me to develop. I sort of want this to be able to flip through and stare at it for inspiration.

Koriko: Teenage witch goes to town to have their year in the city and grow. This looks gentle and lovely. It's divided up into seasons, which I always appreciate and lately I've been interested in how you tell those softer but still impactful stories.

Colostle: The concept reminds me of Gormenghast in a book and that's enough to make me want to read it. This also seems to be one of the cream of the crop recent entries that has had mainstream success, which means it is doing something well. Think fantasy castle filled with impossible rooms.

Apothecaria: This is a potion making journaling game. I have a deep fascinating with making potions, so the theme hits home. Reminds me in concept of Strange Horticulture, where there is a plot and the day to day is helping people. There's enough follow on materials to indicate the structure is sound.

Also interested in Shing Yin Khor's The Bird Oracle. They make fascinating work that I've actually played and it's always a push of the envelope of what can be done.

Joke is on me, I now need to describe what my novel is about to a friend. The problem is as soon as I am very emotionally invested in something my capacity to succinctly describe it goes out the window. I still think - Marriage, murder and mothers and sons set in a high fantasy world filled with court intrigue - hits the high points.

I'd secretly hoped I'd be done by this point, but we're not there quite yet. I should hate 80K in the re-write today, which in my head turns it into a novel length work and is an emotional milestone. Endings remain tricky and I need to come to terms with this section will take what it takes.

I mildly fell down the rabbit hole of character design the other day and particularly Vtuber design. Lots of focus on why silhouette matters and how you make a character distinctive in an oversaturated market. This might be the thing that makes me finally tackle my fear of drawing people.

I'm also tentatively planning to go to Covent Garden on Friday. This is going to be health/sleep dependent, but the internet tell me they should have a display of pumpkins and I really want something other than a butternut.

Every so often I finish up a book and recognise what I was trying to do in one of my own books. This time it was String City by Graham Edwards, which is a noir playing around with quantum and folklore in about equal measure with an overpowered protagonist. It does the mystery thing of placing an inordinate number of Chekov guns that appear inconsequential and then merrily goes about paying them off one by one, while also refusing to tell the reader what is going on. "That's another story" is the term it uses to hide. There is such elegance to what it is doing with its concepts.

It's a slow start, it took me a year to get past the 12% mark and 24hrs to read the rest. The disorientation is extremely high to begin with. Interestingly, it is also "floaty", which I've had people use to describe some of my pieces - so I think I understand better what that means. To me at least, it doesn't read like a standard structure. I'm not sure if that's intentional or if I'm reading it wrong, but there is so much in and out of characters and plotlines and even the main goal when it appears is much more scattered.

It's also exceptionally bloody, though I didn't find it particularly visceral, which I suppose makes it a true noir. I suspect I'm going keep thinking about this one and the tricks employed.

Let's not talk about why, but I've spent a lot of the weekend researching fountain pens and I'd like to preserve some of it for later use. Also, I could do with not subjecting anyone else to the one hour monologue I gave to my parents on Friday, which I'm embarrassed about in retrospect.

First off, fountain pens have many more nibs than I was aware of. In standard pointy nib, you've got Broad, Medium, Fine and somewhat available Extra-Fine plus Coarse and Ultra Extra Fine as much rarer options. None of these sizes are standard with the Japanese companies (Pilot, Platinum, Sailor) tending to produce a sharper line than their European equivalents (Mont Blanc, Monteverde, Pelican and more), but it all depends on who makes the nib. Twsbi, is a Chinese company and a notable name in pens and uses European nibs. Pelican is apparently a gusher and Kaweco is sharper than a typical European. Different pen models within the same brand will use different nib sets and so not all of a brands nib sizes will go with every pen, while this is deeply disappointing to me personally it is a fact of life. I'm probably looking for extra-fine if at all possible, with a Japanese fine an acceptable compromise because my handwriting is so small. This does mean the pens are sadly likely to clog and some cleaning solution would be wise.

Next most common is stub nibs which have squared off ends and look like the dip pens you use to do gothic lettering. These are measured in mm's describing the thickness of the line, 1.1 to 2.7 is approximately the range and also involved much less guesswork to figure out what you are getting. Beyond that and you are into Pilot's parallel pens, which are more of an art supply and for use for headers. There's also the Kaweco twin tip, which is a line and its shadow in parallel, entertaining but utterly impractical. Due to the form factor, if you are going to write regularly with one of these, smaller nibs are a better idea and I suspect it helps if you are disciplined about your letters forms. That said this has got to be the most reliable way to get line variation in a fountain pen.

Then you've got the category of "trying to be a flex nib but also not". Apparently, the only true way to get a flex nib is pick up a vintage waterman or the like (Andy's pens was the only site I ran into that had vintage pens online, but I also wasn't looking) - otherwise you are stuck with pseudo-flex that often doesn't work the way you want. Pilot's Music and Falcon nibs fall under this category, with Falcon being the more "flex"-like. Pineider's Omniflex or Quill is gorgeous looking but not that flexible. Platinum also has a music nib and Sailor has a Music and Zoom, I'm not sure what the Zoom does. Noodler's has the closest to an actual flex with Ahab and Triple Tail, but I've heard weird things about the founder and they apparently smell, so I'm discounting them.

Gold nibs are considered better than steel nibs. For gold nibs, I liked the Platinum 3776 (though very tempted to compromise on model to allow for cool shell work on the barrel) and the Sailor's Pro Gear (possibly the slim version as my hands are small and these are often sized for men's hands). I didn't find a pilot I really liked, so, that will boil down to the nib. Taccia's Winter's Breath is stunning and has a sailor nib but is one to admire from afar given the price tag. For steel nibs, Kaweco has an intriguing calligraphy set which gives you a range of the stub nibs to play with and there now is a converter to let you use bottled ink with it. The TWSBI Eco is probably the best idea for starting to play around with bottled ink, as it has a range of nibs and is actually designed to do that well. Plus, clear versions mean you can admire the ink while it is in the pen.

I'm feeling awkward and unmoored so let's have a roundup of media I've enjoyed lately. For a value of enjoyed that encompasses states like reading most of, enjoying the demo or watching others play and commentary.

Neo: The world ends with you: This is a sequel to The World Ends With You, which is a game that belongs to the personal category of games I would play except that the controls are impossible for me. The original had a lot to say about ennui and creativity under the skin along with the thrumming heartbeat of a place. The full game isn't out, but the sequel is still impeccably stylish and seems to still care about fashion and art in a way games, weirdly, often don't. I'm hopeful that it'll be a wild ride.

Disco Elysium: I'm still thinking about this grimy messed up world, where there are no easy choices but nihilism is among the worst. The idea of a mental closet of ideas, where unlearning is as hard as learning and lingers and there are consequences to doing the easy thing merely for the sake of "progress". Set in a world that isn't here to reward you for cleaning up your act, sometimes it needs to be for you. Yet, sometimes, the impossible quest, after you are tired and exhausted and everything has gone dire comes this moment of transcendence. Only possible because you care.

Honestly, I love games with worlds that are a little unimpressed with the protagonist. Morrowind is my favourite Elder Scrolls game at least in part because of it. Failbetter games also tend to give me a similar vibe, though not in the same way. Bloodborne also has similar elements played in a different key from Disco Elysium.

A Mending: This is a solo RPG with a cloth map that you embroider. During the lockdown, I've kept buying solo RPGs out of a weird sense that this would be fun and I suppose a longing for the interplay of play. It basically hasn't worked for me, most of them end up being journalling games that fail to stick for me, which is intensely frustrating. A thousand years a vampire is an amazing piece of work though and I like what artifact and a field guide to memory are doing with experimenting with form, I just don't want to write under those constraints. Whereas, when A Mending tells me to sew a constellation I cheerful make terrible gold stars with embroidery floss stolen from a cross-stitch kit I've had for twenty years. There's something soothing about making something where the skill of the execution is not the only value.

I also enjoyed a tutorial on how to make shoes and an examination of a Victorian tea dress. I'm reluctantly certain for at least one current project I could do with at least a fashion mood board and possibly ideally with some fashion sketches, but that is a problem for another time.

So, inspired by

naraht's recent book meme I realised I had different book questions I wanted to ask. Pick a number and I'll give it a go. Or even better, pick a number and tell me your answer. (I also reserve the right to add to this list when I think of more)

1. A book that haunts you

2. A book that was an interesting failure

3. A book where you really wanted to be reading the "shadow" version of the book aka there are traces of a different book in the work and you would have much preferred to read that one

4. A book with a worldbuilding detail that has stuck with you

5. A book where you loved the premise but the execution left you cold

6. The most imaginative book you've seen lately

7. A book where you were dubious about the premise but loved the work

8. A book that feels like it was written just for you

9. A book that reminds you of someone

10. A book that belongs to a specific time in your mind, caught in amber

11. A book that came to you at exactly the right time

12. A book that came to you at the wrong time

13. A book with a premise you'd never seen before quite like that

14. A book balanced on a knife edge

15. A snuffed candle of a book

16. The one you'd take with you while you were being ferried on dark underground rivers

17. The one that taught you something about yourself

18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion

19. A book that started a pilgrimage

20. A book you cannot recommend but love

21. A book written into your psyche

22. A warm blanket of a book

23. A book that made you bleed

24. A book that asked a question you've never had an answer to

25. A book you adore that people are surprised by

26. A book you recommend but cannot love

27. A book that answered a question you never asked

28. A frigid ice bath of a book

29. A book that lead you home

30. A book you detest that people are surprised by

I've been listening to a really good podcast on MLMs, their history and how they rope people in. It's called "The Dream" in case anyone else is curious. I'd also missed how ubiquitous they are, aka Tupperware, which my mother never sold but did host a party for once.

I wasn't expecting this to sync up with my earlier listening on Cults* but it turns out a lot of the mechanism are similar as well as what they offer up to the lost and the lonely. Really sobering to realise that all of these things are targetting similar pockets of people with one of the standout lines being "it is easy to give hope to the hopeless" and the explanation about what people get out of the company socially. I find it alarming how easily I could see getting sucked into such a scheme when you are lonely and desperate, and how compelling that love and dignity would have been when I was at my lowest point.

*The one I was listening to is called Cults. Content warning for everything you can think of on that podcast.

Guess who spent several hours last night making a new cover for a book no one wants? *Gestures vaguely at self*

It's a little amateur but I'm proud of it. Voila revised ebook cover, with much more genre-appropriate imagery. Made in Word of all things. Still working on my skills and choosing fonts is the worst, but I'm still proud of it.

I'm wondering if I should just edit this podcast and post it somewhere? I like it, I think I mainly made sense and the audio quality is Okay. It is not as glorious as I would like, but this is very much podcasts as amateur hour. It would be a little weird as a first episode but honestly, that's fine. Maybe I can call it pilot or something? This only sort of real project has so many pilots it's not funny.

I'm trying to convince myself to leave the house and failing drastically. I even have on actual trousers I could go into town in, and yet the motivation is missing. All I feel up to doing is staring blurrily into the distance and waiting for my brain to come back online.

In my spare moments, I've been doing a lot of fantasy clothing shopping, partly because I realised I'm sort of light on clothing I should be taking out in public. Plus, I'm needing to appear vaguely reasonable in front of many more people lately. That's not what I've ended up looking for though. Instead, I've been looking at post-apocalyptic beanies and selvedge denim trousers. Neither of which would necessarily improve my options for dressing like a sensible person, but they would give me more clothing where I felt like myself. I miss wearing aggressively denim jeans. After two hours of frustration and research, I think I've found quite possibly the only pair of selvedge jeans that will likely fit and do what I want. Full-on flat out Iron Heart IH-634S with 21oz Selvedge. The price tag is deeply unsettling, so I'm trying to persuade myself it would be an art project which makes it feel more reasonable in my head. I am aware that is both a flimsy and an odd argument to make.

One of the things I love in life is paint colours. I was the child who used to collect those Pantone strips of colour references every time we went to the hardware store and flip through them. The first art book I ever purchased was around age ten by an abstract artist who was mainly known for his colour work. Bought for the pictures as this was long before I could competently read Italian.

Thus, it is not entirely surprising that every so often I fall down the rabbit hole of watching paint videos on youtube. Particularly, historic paint videos, as there are trends in paint colours much like everything else in the world. Plus paint is surprisingly deadly, particularly some of the historic colours. This time I got see someone paint in recreations of mummy brown (more descriptive than you might think and apparently texture is key), Paris green (the arsenic paint) and Tyrion purple (the famous royal purple). All really fascinating but it was the last one that sent me off to consult colour charts, as I have a longing for an almost black red purple (often labelled as violet but it is in on of the fuzzy logic bits of the colour wheel).

Fun fact, red-purples are relatively rare. Perylene Violet from the Daniel Smith range might be what I want, though it is hard to tell from a colour chart particularly with dark colours. However, staring at the colour chart is an entire reward on its own, I'm weak to things named shadow violet or lunar violet and it's fun imagining what I could do with those colours. They also have duochromes, which I really wish I could see in person and paint made of crushed up semi-precious stones. From the reviews that last thing might be a better idea than a product, but there is something ever so compelling about something made of bloodstones.

Also, Schmincke Horadam uses honey as a binder, which isn't relevant but every time I think about it I'm intrigued again. Plus, if I write it down maybe I might just be able to remember the right brand name next time.

It's been a weird week and a rather exhausting one. Much more social than I normally am, and my head is still buzzing a bit.

The most accomplished thing I've managed today is sketching an octopus with a rose for a head. I was pleased with that one, though it didn't manage to slake my brain's desire for a very specific kind of visual image. I'm probably going to have to keep drawing octopuses until I figure out what it is I'm trying to do. At least octopuses are one of the few things in my drawing wheelhouse.

I'm trying to avoid drawing an octopus font. Nobody wants it.

Thus far, it's been a poor year for writing in these parts and with July on the way, I'd like to fix that. Lots of projects in that budding but not quite there space. Nothing demanding to be done. Also, I'm just out of practice and it turns out that matters a lot. Still working to conquer chapter 5, still deeply embarrassed by how long editing is taking me.

Went out for free comic book day earlier today, and while I got neither of the comic books I was most excited about I also didn't do too badly. I got a very sweet comic from the how to train your dragon franchise, and I will basically never say no to dragons. Plus a Caspar issue, which is an old favourite. It was sort of fun to join the queue outside of Forbidden Planet and soak in the excited atmosphere.

Lately, I've been slowly and painfully editing a project and painting watercolours. It's made me think about tidbits of advice that long after first hearing them, I keep gnawing away at for substience like a cow chewing on cud. With a bit of phrasing license because this is all heard advice that I've merrily paraphrased in my head..

1. If it doesn't work out the first time you can always draw it again - instructor at my illustration class a few years ago. I think the context for this was drawing hippos and the class was discussing getting proportions right. I won't go into the details, but when we asked about the hippo looking off in the drawing he looked us dead in the eyes and said you can always draw it again.

Somehow, after years of drawing, it had not occured to me that if I didn't like the first result I could do it again. Mind blowing, and slightly ridiculous it was so revelatory at the same time. Almost always if you don't like the first hippo, you can draw another hippo! Plus, you will have learned something from the first attempt.

2. If you were going to give up, you needed to do it before the slope or go a bit further. Not here. - My sister C. while climbing up above a research base in Antartica.

This took place after going up the most difficult and steep slope on a site and I was out of juice. There were a couple of falls on the way, she ended up path making for me and the whole thing was a real struggle, but I had decided in my head I was going up this hill. Quite probably this was the singularly most difficult thing I did while out there. Once up, I suggested she leave me at the top of this hill in the middle of snow out of sight of anything to see in particular.

C pointed out that doing the difficult bit and then giving up and not reaping any of the rewards of the effort was a poor plan. She then helped me over to the rocks so I could look out over the fabulous view of the bay, as opposed to stopping where I was.

It's one of those moment I think about when I'm really tempted to quit after doing 90% of the labour. Don't do the really hard thing and then fail to do the easier thing that will finish the project off. aka. Don't quit right after the steep slope.

3. You don't need anyone else to put you on - Jackie Aina about internet drama. Unlike the last two this one wasn't directed my way, but it is something that I'm still turning over in my head. As someone who's cautious
I tend to feel like I both need permission to do something and I have to be performing on someone else's stage. Particularly now, neither of those things are exactly true and a person can just shove their own ideas and creations out into the world. It's getting up the guts to do it and having a bit more faith in what your doing.

4. If it is going to take five years, then it is going to take five years. It's not suddenly going to get faster if you wait to start. - Mur Lafferty on I Should Be Writing, I think. Very loosely paraphrased. I think about this one a lot when it comes to editing. Both in terms of needing to put the time in, and that things take the length of time they take. Even a very slow process will get you there eventually, and throwing in the towel because it is taking too long does nothing but net you a wet towel. Plus, you cannot wait out a process.

The more I experiment with and listen to other people talk about productivity tools the more convinced I become that it’s about finding a way to hack your individual brain. So, there probably are some things that broadly work, but almost nothing is going to work across that board. Success happens when the person and system connect rather than it being about one perfect system. However, I do have thoughts on bullet journals that I thought were interesting, and I hope you might find them interesting too.

I have been using a bullet journal (with a bit of a break in the middle) since November 2017. In some ways to my intense annoyance, the difference is fairly stark to how well I’m succeeding in keeping up with my goals between when I am using my bullet journal compared to when I am not*.

( Read more... )

I'm having a weird day and words are being particularly slippery, so I'm spending the afternoon drawing alchemical paintings in a notebook that's too small for the task. I've already learnt I'm much more in practice for animals and flowers than building structures. Plus I might need to embrace the ruler life if I'm going to do more of this.

All in all, it's not the worst way to spend a couple of hours.

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aedh

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A step out of synch with reality

do I look like I know what I'm doing?

Recent Entries

Darkfield radio

I think I just want to try out a new hobby

Interesting video essay on visible difference

Taking my small wins all the way home

Solo RPGs

Plugging away at things

Reading: String City

Fountain pens

Calling this reviews would be generous

Aedh's quite possibly unanswerable book questions

Currently listening

Creative pursuits

The hobby that won't quite die and isn't going anywhere.

Fashion

Paints

Idleness

Perambulations

Bits of advice that echo through your head and stick with you

Bullet journals: disconnected thoughts on my use and its value to me

Sunday pastimes