WORM MONTH 2 IS OVER: SU&SD Newsletter #53

Matt: After weeks of wrangling cables and digital  pipes, we were almost ready for AwSHUX, last weekend? I must admit that  it hasn’t always been a great deal of fun learning to adapt to the  restrictions over the last year - but the tools and skills I’ve  developed are certainly... interesting? Rather than manually creating  tons of assets for the weekend of AwSHUX, I developed a little pipeline  of scripting that would take a completed spreadsheet and turn it into an  EvEryThiNG. Unfortunately, this process meant that  (aside from hand-baked tests I’d done in the run up) as of the morning  of the Friday of AwSHUX, literally nothing actually worked?

It’s a bit like when you paint a canvas with acrylic paints: you build  up from the darks and nothings with broad strokes, but it isn’t until  you add the final spots of bright sharpness that the finished piece of  work actually comes together. The only difference being that if you  don’t finish it up in time, you’ve still got a slightly ugly painting:  with code, you’ve got literally nothing until the moment it works?  Having the whole thing break on me 10 minutes into Saturday’s show and  then having to fix the code - live - while sleep deprived and slightly  sunburned? Probably the most professionally challenging patch of time  I’ve had for a very long time. Special thanks again to the on-side  community who kept my spirits up, as I think the slightest criticism at  that stage could well have turned me into eight pints of jelly.

Thankfully I’m now just about wrapping up the complicated tech that I’d hoped would be in place for last weekend, and I’m sure will serve us very  well again in the future - cutting out the fiddly bits and allowing us  to focus entirely on fun. And gosh, this weekend I had an awful lot of  fun. It took a chunk more of me than I was expecting, if I’m honest -  and almost a week on I’m still recovering - but the love we poured in  was reflected right back: thanks so much for everyone who joined us.

Tom: I don’t want to get ‘a bit too much’ about it all, but my goodness the support radiating off the SU&SD community before, during, and  after AwSHUX was deeply, deeply appreciated. See; you’re all just nice -  which is great for someone like me, for whom the idea of 'just talking  to people' is quite nerve-wracking, let alone in front of a thousand-odd  other people, who I'm also kind of talking to.  Luckily, you’re all there being supportive and not-at-all-bothered when I  steal your jokes; what a joy! I feel like this is a sentiment I repeat  often - and my fear of being a bore about it is offset by the debt of  gratitude I must repay. Please, accept my gift, even if it’s dull!

I’m also super excited to get the next video out in the  wild to the community - it started off with the goal of being  laser-focused and streamlined but has since sprawled outwards like a  wobbly word octopus. Either way, I’m happy with it, I’m ecstatic about  the game and we’ve got some exclusive news to share in the video. I’ve no idea when it’ll emerge, but when it does, I’m hoping it’ll be rather fun.

Ava: I’m still recovering from AwSHUX, the late  nights and high energy really knock my fatigue problems for six, but you  know what? It’s absolutely worth it. I had a wonderful weekend, and I  ended up nearly tearful in awe at just how much work and time is put in  by so many people to do literally my favourite thing: ‘making a space  for people to come together’. It’s proper magic.

This AwSHUX in particular felt like me crashing through a  threshold. That utterly manic, over-excited, but hopefully still  somewhat sharp live podcast felt like the culmination of all my learning  as a presenter, podcaster, thinkerer and daftmonger. Was it too chaos?  Probably. But it is also something I would’ve been far too anxious to  come close to even just one year ago. It’s like something impossible  made possible through practice, training, advice from wonderful people,  and an audience who I know cares about games as much as I do. The  weekend was magic for that. I hope you had as wonderful a time as I did  (and a less stressful time than Matt did) and if you didn’t catch it,  there should be bits and pieces rolling out on youtube and podcasts over  the coming months. It was fun!

Ava, springing

Quinns: After more than a year of team SU&SD  being almost totally separated by the pandemic, I am super excited to  say that we’ll soon be playing some board games at the same table. Can you imagine?!

Now that rapid Covid tests are available in the UK and the lockdown  is steadily lifting, we’re currently planning a MicroSHUX, or  StaffSHUX, or SecretSHUX? Look, the name isn’t important, what matters  is that the four of us will soon (hopefully) be descending on an AirBnB  to play some dang games for a few dang days.

Obviously, this has sent us into conniptions as to what games from  our enormous to-be-tested piles we’re going to bring. My personal  shortlist includes Rapa Nui, The Loop, Summoner Wars 2nd edition, and maybe Dream Crush? Don’t judge me, it’s been a long year and I am in desperate need of a bit of silliness.

Matt: Honestly at this point I’ll play bloody anything. Tiddlywinks?

Tom: Only 4.0 on BGG. Shocking.

Ava: It’s such a tricky question, what I want to  bring to that secret table. On the one hand, I just want to do the  things I’d always want to do, dive into something enormous (but the gang  playing Twiilight Imperium with the expansion is probably best saved for a stream?) or something deeply familiar (The Crew, Tigris and Euphrates and a big bundle of Quacks),  but surely the responsible thing is to try out something that needs  testing for podcast or review? But what if it’s bad! I’m famously bad at  actually deciding what to play, so I’m likely going to leave it up to  the rest of the team (while stuffing The Crew in my bag and trying to  convince Tom to bring Oath maybe).

Tom: I'll need no convincing! I've oscillated on  my Oath opinions - going from 'this is not going to be good' to 'this  might be the best game ever' at lightning speed... all from just reading the rulebook. I think I'm going to be playing my first game very soon, so expect opinions on the beast to start percolating!

What are we video games!  🎮

Quinns: Is Blaseball a videogame? Not really, but it’s probably closer to a videogame than anything else.. ?

We’ve mentioned it in the newsletter before, but Blaseball is  basically a site that simulates a baseball league but with endless  helpings of extra cosmic horror. It’s totally bonkers, but the fans who  follow it do so with a tremendous amount of love- some people draw  fanart of their favourite players, some co-ordinate with other fans to  try and help their favourite team, and some people doggedly study the  game’s systems to try and understand exactly how they work (even as the  developers add more mysterious features every single week).

Blaseball has loot now. As I type this one athlete  is wearing an item called “Metaphorical Shoes” and another is wielding  something called a “Slimy leg bat”. For a taste of the chaos you can  check out the official Blaseball YouTube channel where you’ll find me doing (attempting to do?) the monthly roundup videos.

Tom: During October’s AwSHUX, I had Spelunky 2 open almost all of the weekend, to just dip into while I was in-between  shows or trying to keep myself awake for some of the later stuff. This  year, the game that’s filled that role is Dicey Dungeons - a real snack of a game that’s light and breezy but with enough  choices to keep you turning over each possibility as they arrive. It’s  packed with content, beautifully presented and incredibly engaging -  well worth the price of admission if you ask me.

I’ve also been craving ‘games that move very fast’ - so I played GhostRunner - which for the most part is fun enough.  It’s the schlockiest action movie of a game - dismal plot-points and  drab worldbuilding supported by moment-to-moment gameplay that’s buttery  smooth and packed with dopamine. It’s good for that, and little else!  Oh, and Monster Hunter Rise - which, yknow, is Monster Hunter!

What are we reading? 📖

Ava: Ooooh, have I had a good bundle of reading  over the last months! First off I dived into the weighty, occasionally  traumatising but also shockingly readable ‘Ministry for the Future’  by Kim Stanley Robinson. Part polemic, part near-future sci-fi, with a  central narrative interspersed with vignettes, fourth wall breaking  explanations of economics, and just a lot of stories, KSR manages to  make the next century more terrifying and more hopeful than I thought  possible. Essentially laying down a fictitious roadmap of one way  (almost certainly not the best way) out of the current climate  catastrophe, this book feels sharp, timely and genuinely scary. The  first chapter is tough reading, make sure you’re sat down and ready for a  bumpy ride, and I don’t know if I agree with everything in there (I’m  significantly less keen on blockchain solutions, and don’t want quite so  many people to die to get there), but this is very good reading if you  want to get your head around the state of things, and the ways we might  get better. It’s also got something that I now want a lot more books to  have, which is incredibly short chapters. Makes the whole thing  addictive and readable and gives you time to take in one shock before  the next one comes.

But but but. That’s not even the best book I’ve read in the last  two months! That honour goes to the final part of Becky Chambers’  Wayfarer series: 'The Galaxy and the Ground Within'.  This last piece of the Wayfarer’s extended social network is an  absolute wonder. Just a small, kind story about aliens helping each  other and learning about each other. It’s intensely kind, incredibly  perceptive, and manages to finish off a series that I want to go on  forever on such a hopeful, important note that I don’t resent the fact  that we still aren’t really getting more of the crew of the Wayfarer.  The middle two books were both tougher reads than 'The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet',  and while I loved them, they didn’t quite land as well as that first. I  am calling it now that this last book is as good, and probably sharper  than the first. It is more purposeful. It only made me cry the twice,  but it left me feeling like I had a new family, like I understood the  world better, and understood myself better. Is there anything more you  can ask for from a book?

Quinns: I’m picking making my way through Sticky Fingers by Joe Hagan, which is a long and colourful history of Jann Wenner and  Rolling Stone magazine. When I was younger I read just about everything  Hunter Thompson ever published, so I’m enjoying Sticky Fingers as  another angle on ‘60s and ‘70s counterculture (Thompson got his start in  Rolling Stone, after all). But I’m actually enjoying it most for its  parallels with games and gaming today.

Basically, when Rolling Stone was founded it immediately lurched  upwards in status through the simple act of taking the rock’n’roll that  the new generation were listening to and treating it as the most serious  thing in the world. Today, games are treated as similarly disposable by  wider culture, even as they become the defining medium of the next  generation, moreso than music or TV. My entire life spent writing about  games has seen them struggling with these growing pains, so it’s fun and  rewarding to read how the staff of Rolling Stone tried and often failed  to navigate similar pitfalls.

Tom: Folks! I’ve started to enjoy reading again!  Just two short years after the rather spicy  four-novels-a-week-plus-critical-reading took each of the “bones used  for reading” out of my body until I was but a bag of skin and phlegms.‘The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again’  from M.John Harrison is bleak, unnerving and incredibly watery - but  well worth a read if you fancy all the alienation and claustrophobia of  post-brexit Britain to be dropped into your brain just before you go to  bed. Enjoy!

What are we music!  🎵

Ava: I’ve spent an unsettling amount of April stuck deep into People’s Pop’s world cup of songs with placenames in the title. Everything has now  settled into a big pile of familiar favourites that leave me rooting for  Waterloo, but those early rounds introduced me to such an enormous  wealth of weird, wonderful music from all around the world. Of  particular note for me was Budapest,  by Poni Hoax, a kind of deconstructed disco track that sounds like it  was written specifically to press my buttons. I’d seriously suggest that  if you have eclectic tastes, and like stumbling upon new things (with a  healthy smattering of classics, pop hits and some real bad stuff) I’d  highly recommend digging into to those original playlists. Here’s one of my favourites.

Tom: Speaking for the whole team, I think each of us have listened to the new Floating Points/Pharoah Sanders/London Symphony collaborative record in various stages of pre-AwSHUX panic, and it has been what people in  the biz called ‘a right bloody soother’. Gently circling, slowly  expanding, and continually rewarding as a listen. It’s worth checking  out if you’re in need of a soundtrack to your bath/walk/big lie down.

Outside of that, my listening this month has essentially been a  revelation that Steely Dan are rather good? Who knew!? Certainly not I.  I’m busy plodding through the discography and being rather charmed by  each album in turn - and i’m deeply thankful to past Tom who bought ‘The Royal Scam’  at a record fair because it was very cheap - and promptly never  listened to it. It’s a lovely surprise to find an artist you’ve been  enjoying is already in your collection. And outside of that, I’ve been  really digging the new Dry Cleaning record and Kelly Lee Owens’ record from last year - both utterly brilliant, if in quite different parts of the tunesphere.

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