Time to become potato
All right, luvvies? I'm writing this in the past, before I head off on a retreat. Some time in the countryside to recover my health, like they did in Austen times. I'm covid-negative but most days my diaphragm still feels tight as a drum, and it doesn't take much stress to get my heart thudding. I'm hearing that the best thing for it is to become potato for an extended period of time, so that's my holiday plan.
In the meantime!
Coming right up
The Feed
Merely Roleplayers
Project Tallneck: AKA...
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The Feed
continues on Youtube. What's your theory for what's really going on in the house?
Whatever it is, it's wearing down Henry (Josh Yard)'s facade:
I'm wondering whether we'll accidentally have created something feature-length by the time this game is over.
Please welcome back to the stage
the podcast form of Merely Roleplayers! The original! We return ere long!
Soon, that is, not right this second - expect a lot more noise on our Twitter and Insta first - but half of Vigil: Quarry, our next Main House production, is back with me for the final production stages. Plus, we've recorded the Studio production that'll follow Quarry, and I'm in the middle of the edit now. And the first five episodes of the Merely Roleplayers Replay are edited - they just need clips from our old productions selecting and adding. Those are all big milestones.
By the June one of these, we'll either be back on the airwaves, or I'll at least have a relaunch date to share. I just need to puzzle out some timings that will let us get ahead of ourselves again, build up more of a backlog. It's been really nice knowing there's no set deadline for Quarry to start going out, so no one has to rush any part of production. Even once we're back in some sort of rhythm, I want to make sure that remains the case. Merely Roleplayers isn't a job, none of us are making money off it; it shouldn't come with job-like stress.
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Project Tallneck
has a couple of better working titles I'm mulling over:
The Gutter and the Stars
Trickledown City
Neither one is quite feeling exactly right yet, but they're both pointing in the right direction. You've got to roll a title round your mouth for a little while for it to really sit right on the tongue. Another few weeks and one of them might have settled into place for me, or cracked or worn down into a new and more comfortable shape. Close enough to taste. Any more sustenance left in this metaphor? No?
I'm still making progress on the actual script; I think I have roughly five and half scenes left to chisel into shape from draft form, and one brand new (closing) scene to write from scratch, and then it'll be ready for some sympathetic ears (friendly ones that understand the project's still at a tender stage in its life).
Speaking of sympathetic ears, it's been a few issues since I shared any work in progress with you, hasn't it? Here's Olympus, an incompetent executive trying to incompetently escape the company, negotiating with Jack, the company's (and so technically his) oldest employee:
OLYMPUS: How do you imagine Vector might react if they knew about your little side hustle? Compromising the network. Interfering with company records.
JACK: I imagine they wouldn’t be best pleased.
OLYMPUS: That level of infraction … it might even merit a visit from Broom.
JACK: Wouldn’t that be exciting? It’s always nice to finally put a face to a name. And when I’m being horribly tortured or whatever it is the company bogeyman really does, I’ll be sure to blab all about my naughty side hustle’s latest customer…
NETWORK: (CONFIRMATION CHIME)
JACK: …Vice Director of Strategy Olympus Roen. Well I never. Any relation?
Jack is fun to write. I should put her in more scenes.
In other work-in-progress audio drama news, that opportunity I mentioned last issue, to do with In Your Benevolence, didn't end up panning out. But it was positive, as rejections go! They were complimentary about the idea itself, just the format (ten-minute episodes) wasn't what they were looking for right now. And that gives me information I can use to put together a more suitable pitch another time. It's Rusty Quill I was pitching to, did I mention that? They run open pitch windows for podcast projects once a quarter. If you're in that scene, get involved.
I'm with the badge
In the Merely Roleplayers Studio production we recorded recently, we play a rock'n'roll band that's past its prime, gone all bitter and leathery and vengeful. So have some rock'n'roll pins.
Left: Lila Cheney tour pin by Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men. Lila is a rockstar who's also a mutant and pals around some with the X-Men. Her mutant power is teleportation, but with the 'limitation' that she can only do it over ridiculously immense distances, so she also goes to space a lot. Lila's rad.
Right: Kamina from Gurren Lagann throwing the old horns. I think I picked this up at MCM Comic Con one year, years ago?
Play on,
Matt xx