What Happened To Your Show?
#1: What Happened To Your Show?
I ain’t seen you on the TV lately…
Hello there! (GENERAL KENOBI!) And welcome to the first instalment of what I hope will be an ongoing series. I’ve had people say they’ve looked forward to more writing from me, but I haven’t been able to deliver on that for a good amount of time now. This newsletter is my attempt to get more bite-sized chunks out regularly, while working on practising my writing for video scripts and other such projects. With a bit of luck, it’s going to be fun and a learning experience for both of us.
This week marks two years since my big move. It’s definitely had ups and downs, but overall, mostly ups. Things have really accelerated the last while since I started occupational therapy. It’s been really amazing, a transformative experience. I couldn’t really fault the last team I had, but things have been going much better here. OT is a much more back-and-forth method. You figure out what you want to do, and then the steps toward getting there. I certainly didn’t think I’d be a gym rat any time soon, but I made it a goal for this year with the doctor and we’re almost two months in already. The mental benefits are huge, and it’s pulled me out of the doldrums more than once lately.
For those not up on The Shards Lore, which at this point could be described as Sanderson-esque, I really struggle during the summer months. I have since a young age. It’s made exams in particular quite difficult as they tend to fall around this time. The gym has helped tremendously with that this year. It’s given me something to look forward to and something to really push myself at without fear of judgement. It has created a strange sensation where I have more physical energy than mental at times, but we can work on that.
Streaming and content creation has taken a backseat for sure the last two years. I think I clung to Twitch because between things before, during and after COVID, it felt like a relatively sane place compared to the outside world, which if you’re familiar with streamer culture or streamer Twitter, is a frankly insane thing to say in 2024.
I recently watched an interesting clip from the vtuber Crimson Ruze, in which he talked about streamers needing to figure out what they want to get out of streaming in order to have the most success at it. After pondering it for a bit, it started to make sense to me as a concept. When I started streaming, it was a solo project to work on my presenting skills for my podcast (the much-missed, by me at least, Bull Moose Comics). Then after I became a Twitch Affiliate and during the height of lockdown, it’s taboo to say this, but I actually had a lot of fun. I was daytime streaming, providing connection and human contact for the small community I had. In the nights I was gaming with other streamers, and on the weekends I was running Jackbox and Among Us game nights for the online communities I was involved in. In a time where most people’s social lives stopped, mine was more active than ever.
As the restrictions eased, I found myself fraying at the edges a little bit. I had a lot of pressure due to my living situation. My numbers dipped and never really recovered, which everyone tells you shouldn’t matter, but it did, and it hurt even though looking back I maybe wasn’t working as hard as I could have to make hay while the sun shone. I withdrew into myself a lot, using a PNGtuber as I’d been made to feel uncomfortable about my appearance. I also got COVID twice, the second time of which absolutely battered me and I was lacking energy for months. So when I found out I’d gotten a new place, the relief floored me, even though it took a few days to hit. I actually thought when I got the letter that it was my eviction papers, as it said PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL in huge red font, so I had to steel myself to bring myself to open it.
A few evenings later, I told the news on stream, cried in the process, and then disappeared for six weeks getting ready for everything. I definitely returned too soon after moving. I think I was just happy I didn’t break my PC after shipping it in two boxes taped together like a coffin bought from EuroGiant. I had so much to process and I think it’s taken me up until now to pull myself together. I’ve even found myself getting into stupid arguments over nerd stuff again, which tells me I’m feeling like myself again for the first time in seven or eight years.
So where am I going with all of this? Well, I think in the next few months, I have to decide what success, or better yet contentment, looks like for me. Despite having collector-brain, I am not a money motivated person. Subscribers and all that stuff doesn’t give me the push to be great. Followers are a vanity metric once you’re a Twitch affiliate. Although to be honest if you’re a streamer you are at least a tad vain, you have to be to think you playing video games so others can watch is valuable. If numbers don’t constitute success, then what does? The last while I’ve blithely said “have more fun”, but goals work better when they’re more specific, so I’ve really got to knuckle down and figure that out. It’s great to want to have a good time, but in order to do that, you have to figure out what constitutes a good time.
I think I just really like making stuff I’m proud of and that I know is the fabled “good content”. I get a high from the gym, and I get a similar high when there’s a few comments at the end of a livestream saying “Great stream!” My goal is to flex a bit creatively, be that streaming or something like this newsletter. Make people laugh and maybe even learn from each other along the way.
That’s a brief history of where I’ve been the last while. Now we’re going to move on to Shards’ Short Trips, a smattering of things I’ve been experiencing the last while;
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - My cinema experience was not the best. I didn’t realise my screening was in the fake IMAX screen, and only three other people turned up. Awkward to the max. The film itself was pretty good, though I would definitely say a step down from Fury Road on the whole. I think the recasting from Charlize Theron to Anya Taylor-Joy hurt things a bit. I know Miller is opposed to de-aging tech but given that Mad Max as a franchise has a loose-at-best relationship with canon I don’t think general audiences would have cared.
Marvel Legends - Over the last week I got my delivery of Deadpool and Wolverine from the Deadpool Legacy line, and I also picked up the Super-Adaptoid from the Avengers Beyond Earth’s Mightiest subline on clearance. I’ve no complaints with Deadpool or Wolverine. They’re older figures but that’s fine as I didn’t have either and the old releases were commanding high prices on the secondary market. I do wish they were fully pinless but it’s not a make-or-break thing with me in any way. I’m very impressed with the Hugh Jackman likeness on the Wolverine in particular. The Super-Adaptoid was hugely frustrating for me, especially his version of Captain America’s shield. He’s actually a retool of a 12-inch scale Captain America that was released years ago, and this is where the problem arises. The Adaptoid has new finned gloves which make it impossible to just slide the shield on, and it’s not a c-clip shield so it can’t clip on his wrist like most Captain America bodies. In the end, I had to remove the fist, then the glove, slide the shield up and finally reassemble the arm in place around the shield straps. It works, but god help me if I ever need to remove it. Still tho, he’s huge and impressive. A nice centrepiece for a classic Avengers display! I’m currently waiting to preorder the Doctor Doom/Iron Patriot/Taskmaster three-pack but it hasn’t gone up on Amazon here yet. Soon ™ hopefully!
Also I took this photo of Deadpool on an Owlbear (specifically Doric the Tiefling Druid in Owlbear form from the movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) and it made me smile:
Gaming - Actually not much gaming happening this week as my ears are blocked so I’m limited in what I can play. I really wanted to hop on Destiny 2 for the final expansion but between the cost and being partially deaf, it wasn’t going to happen this week. I’ll be playing some Balatro for the next few days until I can get things unblocked. I haven’t touched it in awhile but I’m eager to go back now that there’s been a balance patch. It’s still my favourite game this year even if I suck at it, but that was once true for Hades too and we know what happened there!
And with that, that’ll do it for week one. I hope to expand things as we go on but I hope you enjoyed it! Tell your friends, and follow me on Twitch for more tangents like these!
I’ve been SeanShards, and I can do this all day.
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