JJJIII asked me about some things.
Dec. 8th, 2015 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kingtycoon1 You described yourself as "saddish" in your first question to me. I haven't really seen this, myself. You seem plucky, happy go lucky, carefree, and confident. Obviously people are more than they appear and life encompasses a spectrum of experiences and responses to them, and I don't think it's possible to be human and intelligent and compassionate and not have some sadness to carry with you always. And I only know you so well, though we've known each other for years. So what's up with your sadness? Whence does it originate and for what are you sad?
Back when I used to go urban exploring with B & C - we wouldn't always go. Once it rained and rained & we knew that the places we wanted to explore would be full up of people hiding out from weather - so we went to the movies. Because it was rainy and I hang out with girls we went and saw a sad movie for girls called Precious - you may recall it as a kind of blaxsploitation R rated lifetime movie. I remember this scene though -
After we'd left and done our crying (I cry in movies, I don't care what you think.) B & C were both saying at me that that bit reminded them of me. "One day I felt like I'm not good enough or I'm a problem. Fuck that day." To them this is an attitude that flips the switch of recognition. Now - me? I had no idea. I think that in the moment there's a lot of sense concerning body dysphoria - especially as it relates to gender identity. Now - I think I probably have an amount of a dysphoria with my physiology - I'm a little weird looking - and I can fall into a peculiar place where in popular narrative the big guy is a dumb guy. I think probably a real physiological representation of my interior self is something like Alfred Jarry, you know. Well, only sometimes, sometimes I'm a huge & handsome man that is strong in the world. Anyhow- I'm pretty disconnected from how I seem in the world vs. how I feel like I seem in the world. That's all of us.
My sadness is based on the fourfold confluence of terrible qualities. 1) I have a really good memory. I remember a lot of bad stuff that I'd like to forget but can't. 2) I have lingering regrets about obvious missteps I've made. 3) I have ceded enough autonomy that I can't actually do the things I want to do. 4) I seriously doubt my abilities.
Generally my lack of control is based upon love- I can't leave cleveland, I can't pursue my true aims, I can't even get a slightly better job because my kid needs me and I... I guess I've covered what it means to be let down by your important parent figure for me - so I am devoted to her but if I weren't - I'd go another way. Anyhow- I'm not free and I know I could have done things that would have helped me and I can't let some of them go. Also, I'm not good enough to do the things I want to do.
And also - I'm really never quite sure what I want to do. I do this thing - automatic response - I think for a while & say - I want to... and then just go with whatever the first thing that comes up is - this is how I see what I want, like, inside. Pretty often I'm automatically saying I want to be dead, and that can't mean anything good. But being dead just means I wouldn't have to deal with things that are a problem for me anymore - so I can see why it seems like a good decision to my brain.
2 Since having a kid seems unequivocally the best thing you've done (and you're doing a great job at it from all indications, seriously) what's the next best thing that you've done in your life?
I sincerely hope I haven't yet done my best thing yet. What I do with my Kiddo - to me, that's her life that I'm trying to help her with. I put in some effort but I'm not responsible for it, well in the sense that I can't accept credit or would refuse credit for what is good about her. By outside standards? That spellbook thing I worked on made the front page of Reddit at one point - that seemed like a validation of sorts. At a dinner party I was complemented by some PD writers about my sandwich blogging. I think that when it comes down to it, I do what I want to do. As much as possible. When it comes down to it, I'm not sure what is best or greatest and I guess I don't quite think in those terms - I mainly think in terms of What Do I Want To Do? Then I do that thing until I don't want to & if it is good that's lucky & if it isn't that's a shame. I sometimes have pride in my work - I think my Book Gleameyes is probably the best thing I've written or made - and really it's only half made.
Probably my Klial Setting - which - hey Thanks!![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jjjiii - you were part of that fateful campaign that ended up capturing my attention for so, so long. I've written 4 books about it - and I'm in the halting process of rewriting them all to be... better/good-ish. I think it'll be my real magnum opus, and really I've set myself up to a place where - in my lifetime - I might not even finish it, or get to halfway with it.
I run a lot of games though - and the best game I've run is probably the Fabulous Unknown City - that got to be... Pretty amazing. We'd play at the game store & after an hour or two all the other tables would go quiet (I didn't notice this, my players pointed it out to me) they'd go quiet because they'd all be caught up in seeing what we were doing. It got pretty nuts.
3 You also are a a game developer, and by my measure a successful one. When you were doing your world building project, what were your sources of inspiration? How much did you outright steal, and how much did you make it your own? How did you come up with the names for all your things? Are you still working in that world? What's it like now? Are the novels based on the game campaign? Or are they backstory wholly of your own creation?
They are fractionally based on actual games. I use the PCs as characters - but not usually the main chracters, they're present & very extensively modified. I've gotten kind of past that - principally because I don't always trust my setting to players the way I once did. Anyhow - the setting itself, I'm extremely, extremely devoted to the principle of 'originality'. I know that's a foolish effort - but where I do feel like I'm falling into obvious derivation - I tend to excise those things. Original thought & original ideas & original presentation is important to me - but it's like being a good person - it's not something you are or ever will be, rather it's a fleeting inaccessible goal that you pursue for its own sake.
I do work on Klial as a book, or series of books - but no longer much as a game. Maybe again later - as a game designer - I'm caught up now principally with the Game of the North - http://www.lulu.com/shop/jeremiah-methuseleh/the-game-of-the-north-ludum-praecepta/hardcover/product-22000925.html - Hey get yours today! Largely this is presented as a whole-cloth OSR clone that is intended to be an avenue for developing... Well entire campaign settings & playable scenarios. I have probably excessively ambitious goals concerning where I'd like to go with the GotN. Mainly into the realm of module/adventure design. I realized that coming up with rules is easy - coming up with a lot of adventures - that's harder. I can explain this in detail another time I guess. I think the easy way to put it is - I remembered there being a lot of adventure modules for the old Red Box version of D&D - I remembered there being hundreds. I got nostalgic and started to look back and really... There's not that many. Which is crazy -DMs make a lot of content - A LOT and it's always for an audience of 3-7 people - that's a real shame - I wanted to try and make a way to get that work, that effort out there - come up with a way of letting people get their content out there for everyone.
4 I realized I packed a lot of questions into the last one, which maybe isn't strictly speaking fair, so consider this Free Parking. Say whatever you'd like to here.
Yeah man - that was rough. I guess I want to kind of tie your other questions together and say effectively - I think it's up to you find those things that you need to be happy & to chase them down. I think it's important to kind of demand them from yourself. And if you don't have something to look forward to you've got really make it for yourself.
5 I really enjoyed your hand painted modern tarot series, and the thoughtful write-ups that you did for each piece. Did you ever finish with the tarot paintings? How happy were you with the deck once it was completed? I'd love to see them collected together and published. Do you aspire to go beyond self-publishing for the stuff you've created? What's that process like, and how rewarding is it to go through the effort (whether financially or spiritually)?
I aspire to make my own publishing company. Why The Fuck Not. Anyhow. Here's a funny story. I started painting those because I wanted paintings, didn't have a lot of money and was tired of bare walls. I had some paints so I thought- maybe I'll do this thing. Yeah, I will! And it was gratifying - really interesting to think about and consider - I dug it. And after 60 or so paintings - really! A lot of them! I got kind of dissatisfied because I actually did improve as a painter. Anyhow - I thought I'd start again from the beginning and try for more thought & uniformity - really get my mind right about what those things all meant - and that's where I kind of fell off of wanting to do it. There's back story there- about heartbreak & thwarted magical works & secret personal projects that had to be left unfinished. Those original paintings all hang in my house and I think about returning to the project often. But when I get out the paints to paint I just have no feeling that I want to paint - it's just what happened and I can't tell you why. I hope it comes back.
Just for fun these are the projects I'm actually working on that have some motion that could be viewed as the progress bar advancing:
The War of the Kliali succession - my 22 volume series of novels (I'm revising the first 5 books now - which is all I've written)
The Game of the North - which is an OSR clone - the players' guide exists- the Referee guide will probably be completed sometime in January. The magic spellbook (which uses a lot of my spellbook art stuff) will most likely be completed in February or march & the 3 settings/campaign guides that I'm doing for it - which will most likely be done & in some kind of boxed-set form this time next year. I'm trying to get enough done that I can go and try and sell some of this stuff in the 2017 con circuit. We'll see.
Tarot for Cleveland - I've got probably 50 paintings out of 68 done. If I return to the project I'll put out a deck of cards and a book about them sometime. I don't know when.
Space-Opera-Game of undecided title- using a novel & interesting d12 based mechanic - it's meant to fill a gap in the RPG market that I see where there is not a great space-opera game that isn't attached to a bunch of licenses - StarTrek/StarWars etc... I'm aiming at Sword & Planet with a 5/10 on the Sci-Fi hardness scale. This one is especially challenging because I'd need to probably buy real art to use. I need to have more money for an illustrator.
The King of The Fairies - I really, really need to work on this thing. It gets a lot of hits on my other blog every day. Really, I want it as a gift for young Agatha. I really think if she put in some effort on it - she could get some mileage out if - I think it'd make a solid pixar movie, for example. I want her to have it and for her to try and develop it. Still - I need to do a lot of the work.
... And that's it.
Back when I used to go urban exploring with B & C - we wouldn't always go. Once it rained and rained & we knew that the places we wanted to explore would be full up of people hiding out from weather - so we went to the movies. Because it was rainy and I hang out with girls we went and saw a sad movie for girls called Precious - you may recall it as a kind of blaxsploitation R rated lifetime movie. I remember this scene though -
After we'd left and done our crying (I cry in movies, I don't care what you think.) B & C were both saying at me that that bit reminded them of me. "One day I felt like I'm not good enough or I'm a problem. Fuck that day." To them this is an attitude that flips the switch of recognition. Now - me? I had no idea. I think that in the moment there's a lot of sense concerning body dysphoria - especially as it relates to gender identity. Now - I think I probably have an amount of a dysphoria with my physiology - I'm a little weird looking - and I can fall into a peculiar place where in popular narrative the big guy is a dumb guy. I think probably a real physiological representation of my interior self is something like Alfred Jarry, you know. Well, only sometimes, sometimes I'm a huge & handsome man that is strong in the world. Anyhow- I'm pretty disconnected from how I seem in the world vs. how I feel like I seem in the world. That's all of us.
My sadness is based on the fourfold confluence of terrible qualities. 1) I have a really good memory. I remember a lot of bad stuff that I'd like to forget but can't. 2) I have lingering regrets about obvious missteps I've made. 3) I have ceded enough autonomy that I can't actually do the things I want to do. 4) I seriously doubt my abilities.
Generally my lack of control is based upon love- I can't leave cleveland, I can't pursue my true aims, I can't even get a slightly better job because my kid needs me and I... I guess I've covered what it means to be let down by your important parent figure for me - so I am devoted to her but if I weren't - I'd go another way. Anyhow- I'm not free and I know I could have done things that would have helped me and I can't let some of them go. Also, I'm not good enough to do the things I want to do.
And also - I'm really never quite sure what I want to do. I do this thing - automatic response - I think for a while & say - I want to... and then just go with whatever the first thing that comes up is - this is how I see what I want, like, inside. Pretty often I'm automatically saying I want to be dead, and that can't mean anything good. But being dead just means I wouldn't have to deal with things that are a problem for me anymore - so I can see why it seems like a good decision to my brain.
2 Since having a kid seems unequivocally the best thing you've done (and you're doing a great job at it from all indications, seriously) what's the next best thing that you've done in your life?
I sincerely hope I haven't yet done my best thing yet. What I do with my Kiddo - to me, that's her life that I'm trying to help her with. I put in some effort but I'm not responsible for it, well in the sense that I can't accept credit or would refuse credit for what is good about her. By outside standards? That spellbook thing I worked on made the front page of Reddit at one point - that seemed like a validation of sorts. At a dinner party I was complemented by some PD writers about my sandwich blogging. I think that when it comes down to it, I do what I want to do. As much as possible. When it comes down to it, I'm not sure what is best or greatest and I guess I don't quite think in those terms - I mainly think in terms of What Do I Want To Do? Then I do that thing until I don't want to & if it is good that's lucky & if it isn't that's a shame. I sometimes have pride in my work - I think my Book Gleameyes is probably the best thing I've written or made - and really it's only half made.
Probably my Klial Setting - which - hey Thanks!
jjjiii - you were part of that fateful campaign that ended up capturing my attention for so, so long. I've written 4 books about it - and I'm in the halting process of rewriting them all to be... better/good-ish. I think it'll be my real magnum opus, and really I've set myself up to a place where - in my lifetime - I might not even finish it, or get to halfway with it.I run a lot of games though - and the best game I've run is probably the Fabulous Unknown City - that got to be... Pretty amazing. We'd play at the game store & after an hour or two all the other tables would go quiet (I didn't notice this, my players pointed it out to me) they'd go quiet because they'd all be caught up in seeing what we were doing. It got pretty nuts.
3 You also are a a game developer, and by my measure a successful one. When you were doing your world building project, what were your sources of inspiration? How much did you outright steal, and how much did you make it your own? How did you come up with the names for all your things? Are you still working in that world? What's it like now? Are the novels based on the game campaign? Or are they backstory wholly of your own creation?
They are fractionally based on actual games. I use the PCs as characters - but not usually the main chracters, they're present & very extensively modified. I've gotten kind of past that - principally because I don't always trust my setting to players the way I once did. Anyhow - the setting itself, I'm extremely, extremely devoted to the principle of 'originality'. I know that's a foolish effort - but where I do feel like I'm falling into obvious derivation - I tend to excise those things. Original thought & original ideas & original presentation is important to me - but it's like being a good person - it's not something you are or ever will be, rather it's a fleeting inaccessible goal that you pursue for its own sake.
I do work on Klial as a book, or series of books - but no longer much as a game. Maybe again later - as a game designer - I'm caught up now principally with the Game of the North - http://www.lulu.com/shop/jeremiah-methuseleh/the-game-of-the-north-ludum-praecepta/hardcover/product-22000925.html - Hey get yours today! Largely this is presented as a whole-cloth OSR clone that is intended to be an avenue for developing... Well entire campaign settings & playable scenarios. I have probably excessively ambitious goals concerning where I'd like to go with the GotN. Mainly into the realm of module/adventure design. I realized that coming up with rules is easy - coming up with a lot of adventures - that's harder. I can explain this in detail another time I guess. I think the easy way to put it is - I remembered there being a lot of adventure modules for the old Red Box version of D&D - I remembered there being hundreds. I got nostalgic and started to look back and really... There's not that many. Which is crazy -DMs make a lot of content - A LOT and it's always for an audience of 3-7 people - that's a real shame - I wanted to try and make a way to get that work, that effort out there - come up with a way of letting people get their content out there for everyone.
4 I realized I packed a lot of questions into the last one, which maybe isn't strictly speaking fair, so consider this Free Parking. Say whatever you'd like to here.
Yeah man - that was rough. I guess I want to kind of tie your other questions together and say effectively - I think it's up to you find those things that you need to be happy & to chase them down. I think it's important to kind of demand them from yourself. And if you don't have something to look forward to you've got really make it for yourself.
5 I really enjoyed your hand painted modern tarot series, and the thoughtful write-ups that you did for each piece. Did you ever finish with the tarot paintings? How happy were you with the deck once it was completed? I'd love to see them collected together and published. Do you aspire to go beyond self-publishing for the stuff you've created? What's that process like, and how rewarding is it to go through the effort (whether financially or spiritually)?
I aspire to make my own publishing company. Why The Fuck Not. Anyhow. Here's a funny story. I started painting those because I wanted paintings, didn't have a lot of money and was tired of bare walls. I had some paints so I thought- maybe I'll do this thing. Yeah, I will! And it was gratifying - really interesting to think about and consider - I dug it. And after 60 or so paintings - really! A lot of them! I got kind of dissatisfied because I actually did improve as a painter. Anyhow - I thought I'd start again from the beginning and try for more thought & uniformity - really get my mind right about what those things all meant - and that's where I kind of fell off of wanting to do it. There's back story there- about heartbreak & thwarted magical works & secret personal projects that had to be left unfinished. Those original paintings all hang in my house and I think about returning to the project often. But when I get out the paints to paint I just have no feeling that I want to paint - it's just what happened and I can't tell you why. I hope it comes back.
Just for fun these are the projects I'm actually working on that have some motion that could be viewed as the progress bar advancing:
The War of the Kliali succession - my 22 volume series of novels (I'm revising the first 5 books now - which is all I've written)
The Game of the North - which is an OSR clone - the players' guide exists- the Referee guide will probably be completed sometime in January. The magic spellbook (which uses a lot of my spellbook art stuff) will most likely be completed in February or march & the 3 settings/campaign guides that I'm doing for it - which will most likely be done & in some kind of boxed-set form this time next year. I'm trying to get enough done that I can go and try and sell some of this stuff in the 2017 con circuit. We'll see.
Tarot for Cleveland - I've got probably 50 paintings out of 68 done. If I return to the project I'll put out a deck of cards and a book about them sometime. I don't know when.
Space-Opera-Game of undecided title- using a novel & interesting d12 based mechanic - it's meant to fill a gap in the RPG market that I see where there is not a great space-opera game that isn't attached to a bunch of licenses - StarTrek/StarWars etc... I'm aiming at Sword & Planet with a 5/10 on the Sci-Fi hardness scale. This one is especially challenging because I'd need to probably buy real art to use. I need to have more money for an illustrator.
The King of The Fairies - I really, really need to work on this thing. It gets a lot of hits on my other blog every day. Really, I want it as a gift for young Agatha. I really think if she put in some effort on it - she could get some mileage out if - I think it'd make a solid pixar movie, for example. I want her to have it and for her to try and develop it. Still - I need to do a lot of the work.
... And that's it.
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no subject
Date: 2015-12-09 05:04 pm (UTC)The creativity thing, in terms of pursuing what you want at the time, and maybe stopping and then not wanting to go back or whatever. Both of those things are something I can relate to. I think it takes dedication to really complete works and it's fucking hard, especially, to go back, revise, edit, refactor, remake, etc... The only sort of thing I think is fun in that regards is "remix" type work. Music or art - you don't need to start from scratch you still have the base, but then you can just use tools to cut and paste it all in different forms, which is different from needing to redo a project from scratch or the lesser sort of thing which is refining/tweaking what's already there.
I dunno. Kinda rambly today, sorry.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-09 07:15 pm (UTC)The worst thing, for me, has been being in the situation you're in now - unemployed - it seems like you'd have all the time to finally get things done - but the insecurity of it all makes me crazy - I can't even get back to it.
When I think that I want to be dead I guess - doing some self exploration - I think it's just that I really, really don't want to be doing anything at all - but life is too distracting - just being conscious & awake is too much anymore - it's all the things happening and I'm having to look at them. Demands. That's what I need less of.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-15 04:27 am (UTC)