Coming Soon: Winning Secrets!

Welcome back to the Wasteland!

I have a bit of a surprise to unveil for readers today. I don't usually post these sorts of things, except that one of the parties involved is Cirsova, the best NewPub publisher out there today, and one of the inspirations for getting me into the Pulp Revolution (as well as the man who wrote the foreword to The Last Fanatics), Jeffro Johnson.

As a consequence there is no way I could let this release go without highlighting and commenting a bit on it myself.

Jeffro and Cirsova's new work will be on Kickstarter next week, but you can look below for a preview of what to expect!

Longtime game blogger Jeffro Johnson earned Hugo nods for his in-depth analysis of AD&D’s Appendix N, in his book Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons, as well as for the work he did as the editor-in-chief for the Castalia House blog.

During the COVID shutdowns of 2020, Jeffro and a group of friends gathered to explore a unique objective: explore the early D&D rulesets as thoroughly as possible. This was the birth of the nascent BrOSR movement, an effort that would take the implied goal of the Old School Revival (OSR) seriously.

The BrOSR coalesced as a group of Christian men who, through hearty ribbing and memes, encouraged one another to become better at playing Dungeons & Dragons and produce a better experience at the table.

The group’s principles included playing the game Rules As Written, eschewing homebrewing or house ruling, in an attempt to uncover what the game was truly like when taking author Gary Gygax’s prescriptions seriously. The game contained in the rules contrasts starkly with the “folk game” that D&D had become. While the OSR movement had largely been a vibe-based focus on the aesthetics of the older games, sometimes trying to rebuild them from the ground up, the Bros took an approach that centered on gathering a deep understanding and mastery of the foundational games of the hobby.

Members of this group radically changed the online discussion surrounding D&D, with a focus on RAW, use of 1:1 time, and re-incorporation of David Wesely’s Braunstein as seen in D&D co-creator Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor Campaign. In to providing extensive public-facing campaign reports, the Bros created Brozer: Island of War and Winter (out now through Cirsova Publishing), a Braunstein adventure product designed to teach other groups how to incorporate these elements, and offered it for free digitally and at-cost in print, moving nearly 2000 copies.

Cirsova Publishing is proud to present Winning Secrets, by Jeffro Johnson, RuleOfThule, and Bdubs1776. Originally conceived as the follow-up to Jeffro’s monograph, “How to Win at D&D,” published by Pilum Press in 2023, Winning Secrets collects the receipts for the style of play that Jeffro and the BrOSR championed. The book chronicles the sessions of Jeffro’s Trollopulous campaign, the first campaign of the BrOSR, and contains essays and commentaries offering insightful examinations of the definitive pillars of BrOSR-style play as well as illuminating the guiding values they champion. 

In Winning Secrets, you will join the Bros in their journey, uncovering the brilliant lost secrets of great campaigns which gave birth to the D&D game rules. You will see the complete story play out of how this arcane lore was won through Jeffro’s paradigm-shattering Trollopulous campaign.

In this landmark work, you will find:

    • A persuasive case for why contemporary approaches to RPGs cannot deliver on the game that was promised by the early D&D rule sets.

    • A thorough breakdown of the four pillars of Real D&D, lore from the dawn of RPGs that will elevate the excitement and engagement at YOUR table!

    • A detailed history of how Jeffro discovered these secrets and how he and his friends developed solutions to the challenges offered by high level play.

    • An explanation of why only Christian brotherhood could break down the barriers that were preventing all of us from experiencing the RPG campaign of our dreams.

    • The recreation of a lost artform and an entire world of gaming knowhow that Jeffro pulled out of complete oblivion.

This book will change the way you think about D&D forever. More importantly, it will show you how the game was intended to be played.

Praise for Jeffro Johnson’s "How to Win at D&D":

"These 30 or so pages of text in this book are the most impactful and important 30 pages I have ever read when it comes to tabletop roleplaying games and wargaming. It has changed the wayIi approach these games. This book put everything into focus for me, why I wasn’t having fun and didn’t feel good about the games I was running and how to run better games. I've bought five or six copies and have given them to each of my players and I recommend it to anyone I know who plays or wants to play D&D." -- Jon Asharan

"For the scholarly reader interested in the history of RPGs, this book is indispensable. It is thoroughly researched and, in my academic opinion, convincing." -- Gabe Mamola

Praise for Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons:

"This book may be the most important thing to happen to science fiction, fantasy, and even horror in the past three decades" -- Jim Fear

"An absolute must-read for anyone wanting to rediscover the forgotten literary roots of fantasy in general, and role playing games in particular. I have already been blown away by some of the authors mentioned here, and look forward to a great deal more excitement as I progress." -- Sam Hart

Winning Secrets will be live on Kickstarter from February 25th through April 1st: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cirsova/winning-secrets

Cirsova Publishing:

www.cirsova.wordpress.com

X: x.com/@cirsova

Jeffro Johnson:

www.jeffro.wordpress.com

Loss & Game Over

Welcome back to the Wasteland! I hope you're having a lovely weekend on this very unimportant holiday. Today, I would like to cover a subject not quite touched on much these days. That would be the remainder of the 2000s.

Back at the end of the '90s, things were changing, the overall culture was becoming more connected. Windows 95, especially, broke open the dam that allowed people beyond the tech literate into computer ownership and then onto the internet. This was happening the same time the Telecommunications Act of 1996 consolidated the music industry, the ACT finally managed to whittle cartoons down to edutainment garbage and specialty channels, and the comic book industry was flatlining. In other words, the digital world was broadening at the same time the wider culture was shrinking in scope and in possibilities.

While this was happening, the younger generation was being raised on the only remaining wild west left: the early internet. This mysterious place allowed them to pretty much say and do anything they wanted after the rest of the culture had been slowly gutted to the point Bowling Alone no longer looked like a prophecy but the aim of those in charge.

Physical communities and spaces vanished, and new identities were being forged away from tradition, community, and art and creation. These new identities were formed online and they were centered on consuming corporate products.

If you're of a certain age, you might remember the explosion of "Geek Culture" in the early 2000s. This was an invention of megacorps created by feeding internet scenes their products and rewarding them with baubles and warm feelings. The era of the message board and community manager. Stop by the forums, wear your badge in your avatar or sig with pride, and endlessly talk about our Product. It is part of who you are, after all. This is what Geek Culture was, and why it would later be so easy to weaponize it against their customers when they changed their approach.

That this happened right after every offline entertainment sector was gutted by events like the above was not a victory of Pop Culture as a valid identity and goal, but that all those crippled industries could be now folded into one umbrella and make its users part of the Lifestyle Brand cult. You no longer like the Smashing Pumpkins and enjoy playing Quake III: you were now an "alternative rock fan" who was also a "gamer" and that was z very important part of your identity. What you enjoyed then became who you were.

As these identities grew, so did parodies and and mocking. The ever-hated Big Bang Theory TV show epitomized this new Geek Culture identity, and how good nerds all liked "nerdy" things and behaved and thought the same way about every topic and issue. The show was laughed at when it was on, but is it that much different when you visit a random Pop Culture livestream on YouTube in 2026? How different is it? Proudly antisocial, acceptable and safe political views, endlessly snarky and sarcastic like their teenage years ever ended, and still dressed and wearing the same pop culture shirts and showing off the same shelves they did decades ago, the stereotype the show presented wasn't made up: it was based on real behavior.

And that is what hurt the most.

All this preamble is to explain why the above video exists. For the Millennial Geek, G4 was a beacon of Geekdom and an important memory that defined their childhood. For anyone outside of that group, G4 was a cynical cash grab wrapped up in a made up corporate identity. Now, there is truth to both these views, but the full picture is that it was a network that made its mark appealing to a burgeoning socially acceptable Geek identity and it did that very well.

The cracks in what that identity was and how those who helped fashion it for that young generation are both in said above history of X-Play. At the heart of it is a level of seething hatred and anger for the audience that, while not everyone involved felt, is palpable in retrospect, especially in the atmosphere of today's dead pop culture institutions being constantly skin-suited for spare change. They've never really liked their audience, because they never knew them, and their idea of who their audience was never actually existed in the first place.

This attitude spins out into modern day. Why does it seem like there's so much contempt and hatred for the audience thinking the Wrong Things and why are they not falling in line like they once used to? Why shouldn't I be allowed to selfishly slaughter the works of Tolkien or even the creation of the Hasbro corporation whenever I want to? Why should I give the audience anything they want? Don't I matter most of all?

The fact of the matter is that there was never any real connection between us and them, it was always smoke and mirrors. The old adage that someone's always selling you something extends to TV networks: what exactly were they selling their audience? Not just products, but what was the deeper worldview they were selling? What was acceptable at the time was acceptable because those in charge deemed it so.

Just like a YouTuber who was throwing gamer words around in 2013 at the age of 27 pretending they were "ignorant" at how acceptable it was: it's all a pose. Back then it was simply a way of weaving through what was culturally acceptable to profit off of at the time . . . which is no different than how it works right now. There was never any "edge" it was all just selling an image, and now the image is no longer profitable. It was never real, it was always fake, and at no point was genuine connection the point of what was being done. That is why it is so easy for such people who do this to hate their customers: they never cared to begin with. And this is the hard lesson those who grew up with the fake Geek Culture back then had to learn.

The wild west days of the internet are gone, and there is no equivalent today. Younger generations are moving away from entertainment sectors into their own worlds, whether it be to short form internet videos, old entertainment detached from the modern complex, or creating their own spaces. There is no younger generation with any ties to the way things once were. There is no uniting aspect of culture today except that there is no culture.

All of this comes together to show why the relaunch of G4 was such a disaster: it had no place left and no one to connect with except to cynically reach out to the audience they "wish" they had, which is the same story with every failing part of every industry these days. Having to rely on an audience they never liked to begin with makes them bitter and resentful, wanting desperately to be seen as Good by the designated Good Guys, instead of fading away into irrelevance due to the complete lack of humility and gratitude that got them there in the first place.

I've seen it myself, too. I've personally had the creator of Twisted Metal and God of War tell me directly straight out how much he dislikes Gamers, the very audience who gave him a career. So seeing a host of a G4 series do the same is not surprising. The hatred of the ones who made them and the desire to appeal to those who hate them is a spiritual sickness that defines the back half of the 20th century so very well and why it lead to where we are now.

There is no future resurrecting these old crusty time capsules, because they aren't what we got out of them. They are always going to be what they wanted to be, first and foremost. The same goes for ancient IPs and companies. They're over and done, and they're not coming back, not even if you put the "right" person in charge. This is the last hurdle those older than Zoomers have to finally understand. We can't go back to that. It's finished.

So we should treat it as just that.

Anyway, here is a bonus video from the above creator on Loss, a meme from the same era which reveals much about that era in turn.

Have yourself a great weekend and I will see you soon.

Check out this crowdfund from Pilum Press and support some of the best writers in NewPub today!

World of Pulp

Welcome back to the wasteland!

It's been a crazy decade+ since the pulp revolution first kicked off in earnest way back on those initial blog posts (since collected in one book here). No one would have guessed way back then that so much of what was being said would become standard advice in the NewPub world after over half a century of slander and libel against them proved so effective. At the time it felt like an uphill battle to even give the pulps are fair shake at all.

Back when I first published in 2016, no one was talking about the pulps as anything but either a problematic punchline, or something you had to scrub clean if you wanted to take advantage of what they created. In the time since that era, however, things have changed 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Now saying that you are inspired by the pulps is a selling point to just about anyone looking for something to read.

The pulps have gone from persona non grata into being the belle of the ball. It's still a bit hard to believe for anyone who has been around that long.

The above video is just one example of many in how newer writers are no longer told to tiptoe around the idea of the pulps, especially in a market hungry for something exciting and outside of OldPub's safe boundaries. You can do anything, and all writers and readers need to know that: the dusty old formulas are done and finished. The best example we have are the pulps, and now everyone knows it. Go big or go home.

This is now considered mainstream advice to read and learn from the pulps, without even considering any "problematic" elements, and that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. Even those in more normie adjacent spheres and platforms say the same thing.

Here is another example from not so long ago of someone praising the pulps from an angle no one would have considered before recent times:

If you haven't noticed, the "problematic" nature of pulps was either barely mentioned or not even talked about at all, which would have been unthinkable post-1940 before now. This is the shift I mentioned way back in the Pulp Mindset: the writing world is different now and the future is in NewPub where the rules have radically changed.

And as things change, so to does how we print and acquire our books. There is more to discuss outside of the stories themselves.

You probably noticed, for instance, how bad Amazon has gotten recently. The downgrade isn't just for general consumers but also for writers and readers as well. It's not only harder to reach customers or gain any momentum on a dead algorithm, but it's also difficult to find a price balance that matches the quality writers want to deliver and readers want to pay for. The options are not exactly getting better any time soon.

This also ties into the recent death of the best available print option for books, the mass market paperback. With OldPub ceding the field and giving up on reaching normal people, what can those in NewPub do to change this?

Here is a report from NewPub maverick Kristen McTiernan, the "No-Nonsense Editor", on some of the new publishing options going forward due to Amazon's collapse, her focus on using pulp as the guiding light.

Not only do we have to consider changing our stories, but now the very formats they are being distributed into may very well change in the near future as well. Whatever is left of the old 20th century OldPub model is slowly crumbling away.

And, to be honest, it is more than overdue.

We're a quarter of a century into the 21st. That's 1/4 of the way into a new era and one rapidly escaping the clutches of a dead time and place. It was never going to stay the same forever.

As can be gleamed, there is much to ponder going forward into the Unknown, but it is more than clear that the status quo will not be so for very much longer. What we thought we knew turned out to be not as much as we figured, and now it's time to correct course. And it looks as if what that entails will be revealed sooner than later.

Whatever happens going forward from here, should be very interesting to see.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you for the next one!

Check out Cirsova's second Mighty Sons of Hercules campaign! Close to funding and with many cool surprises inside!

"Do You Understand?"

Welcome back to the wasteland!

We're finally in 2026 and the new year. Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long!

As you can see, things are a little different around here these days. Posts will come out when they come out, and will be about whatever I can make them about. However, most of my writing energy is focused elsewhere this year so it'll probably be a light one for posts. Regardless, here I am, and here is the first post for 2026.

Today's subject is not entirely related to the video above, though it is included in the subject. I realize what a controversial topic the AI thing is and how there are so many triggerwords that set emotions off in different directions when heard or read, but I'm hoping we can bypass all of that to talk about it from a different angle. Instead of talking about "real" or "fake" I want to talk about the future and how we're going to process information. 

The Second Story's video is specifically on how AI is coming about at a bad time for literacy and making it worse, which no one really denies, and she is very thorough in her argument. Whether you are all-in on or staunchly against AI, the truth of the matter is that there are positives and negatives to it neither side wants to acknowledge in order to keep their position pure and just. We can admit that. That is fine and all, but that means there are angles that can't be discussed without a portion of those involved in said argument flying off the handle in a fit or rage or smarmy sarcasm. This isn't exactly a productive use of anyone's time.

None of that will help with today's subject. I want to talk about a part of this whole debate that is never really addressed at all.

Now I know how divisive or tiring the topic might be, but I want to specifically point out one part in the video itself to focus on today. This is on how AI affects not art or even writers or artists, but on cultivating readers.

The clip is here:

 

For as long as I've been alive, and maybe for yourself as well, we've been very busy trying to automate the world to make it easier. The question might be to ask "easier for who?" but even that is not necessarily the subject for today's post.

The end goal of modern society for at least as long as HG Wells was talking about "The World Brain" and what "we should do with ourselves" has been a conscious effort from a gaggle of late 19th/early 20th century materialists to create Eden on Earth. All we had to do was train human beings with the right keywords and phrases and eventually they will become like algorithms themselves, endlessly operating until they fall apart with age to be replaced with new cogs in the machine. Heaven on Earth for those in charge.

However, without any theory of what human beings are beyond meat puppets on strings, they also hold no value of them as living beings because "living" is a vague term that can mean whatever you want. In essence, human beings are nothing but pawns on the board that get instantly replaced with new ones, because that is how those in charge think the world works. They don't actually have any theory in mind for groups or individuals, they don't care who anyone is or what they're apart of, all they want is new pieces to constantly replace old ones.

What's worse is that they don't even remember why they're playing this game in the first place. To them, it's just How It's Done, because that's how their father and grandfather and great-grandfather operated, oblivious in the knowledge that the period they live in is an anomaly in human history, not the advancement of it, and that it is very clearly coming to an end. Whether they realize that of not is irrelevant aside from the fact that they are clearly losing control.

This doesn't mean they will be "overthrown" or "destroyed" or any fancy buzzwords they taught us from the fiction and fictious accounts of history they allowed to be spread, but that they are decayed along with everything else. They might think they're winning, and in a material sense they probably are, but in the end they will also be a cheap mockery of what came before. They do know this. The question is if they can gather the strength to avert from the iceberg before it's too late and they end up like every other era in history they pretend never happened.

So what does all this have to do with literacy?

The point is that we were never taught to actually process information or learn. We were taught to react to key words and phrases to guide is into our slot to keep the factory chugging along, even as it falls apart around is due to misuse. "Literacy" has never actually existed to make us smarter or to build anything new, because that would go against the Spirt of the Age. Those were always just buzzwords to keep us in line and to puff our chests out. Remember the Kid Who Reads archetype from the '90s? The "reading is magic" and "imagination is everything" hokeyness? Those weren't done to make anyone more imaginative or to be better readers. If they were, and if everyone remembers that happened, because it did, why do less people read than ever before in human history?

And no, this isn't about the younger generations, because I can see the technological excuses coming a mile away. I'm talking about the older generations, the ones that were reading Harry Potter while playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or Goosebumps while playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time decades ago. Why don't they read anymore? They indulged in Reading Rainbow like everyone else, and they read when they were younger. So why not now?

We might be "busier" but every generation was busy and yet they all found time to read. One could also point out OldPub's complete collapse and failure to create readers (In truth, their job is to pass on the "correct" knowledge and behaviors, not teach creativity or spread imagination), but that wouldn't also explain the aversion to indie spaces or classics. At some point, literacy changed focus to relying entirely on catch words and social pressure at the expense of even understanding regime propaganda. They don't even want us to think that much anymore.

Perhaps that should be the question we ask when the fading culture of today drops things on our laps: how will this help us escape the trap we've been stuck in for so long? Will this get us out of the failed utopia of HG Wells and his World Brain? If not, then how is it designed to keep us there and what can we do differently?

For now, we can only ask questions, but if we aren't allowed to ask them, or even teach others how to ask, then we'll be stuck in the loop, destined to decay with the system that created it. And maybe that's the lesson in all this.

Anyway, thanks for reading and welcome to 2026! I'm not sure when the next post will be, but I will thank you for reading for so long. It's been a blast.

Have yourself a good week and I'll see you again.

Cirsova's second volume of The Mighty Sons of Hercules is halfway to being funded! Jump in to get yourself some exciting tales of peplum adventures from the best writers of weird and action today! And grab volume 1 while you're at it!

Goodbye 2025!

Welcome once again to the Wasteland!

We finally made it to the end of 2025! It's been a long and bumpy ride with a lot of surprising twists and turns (especially if you were me), but now we can finally close this one off for good. It's the end of the year!

For this last post of 2025 I merely wanted to thank everyone who stuck with me through it all. It's been a strange one, and next year promises to be even stranger, so you will definitely have much to look forward to from me. However, it probably won't be as much on the blog.

You probably already noticed less posting this year, with a shift to the weekends, and those posts will still continue, but there will be less of them. I need to refocus my efforts on writing stories, especially after everything that has happened in my personal life. Of course I'm going to keep posting here, but it will just be much less of a focus in the near future. That said, I do thank you for every post you've read this year. I am still surprised that anyone reads these at all, since back when I first started writing posts a decade ago I didn't think anyone would be reading them, never mind a full ten years out. It's been a crazy experience.

In 2025, I put out a story in Cirsova Magazine, a new novel serial on the Patreon, and had tales in two different anthologies outside of that. All of them are some of my best work, so please check them out! It's been a weirdly productive year, though not in the way I am used to. Perhaps that's just a sign of the changing times.

That aside, there is still the Patreon where you will get the most bang for your $5. There you will get over 40 episodes of 2 ongoing podcasts, two serials (with a third in planning stages), exclusive posts and updates, and more to come. In fact, there is an end of year episode of the podcast up today about the future! Check it out here.

There are multiple projects in the works for 2026 still to be revealed. I have a story coming in Cirsova Magazine in 2026 (a new Galactic Enforcer tale!), a full-on book that will be released, and a large project that is not mine to reveal yet but is currently deep in the works. On top of that there was a huge shift in my personal life outside of writing that will definitely change how I operate going forward, though I will have to wait and see just how that will happen. Until then I will do my best to continue as I have been.

Regardless, I am not going anywhere.

2025 was also the 30th anniversary of the events in Y Signal, as I've mentioned before. In fact, right now we're living through the 30th anniversary of "Snow Out", the Christmas story in the book. I actually did an entire podcast episode both reading excerpts and talking about it here. But next year will also be the 30th anniversary of the conclusion of the book, which took place in summer of 1996. All that to say is that it will also symbolically be an important year as well. One of the projects I hope to be able to start on is the follow-up to that very book. No, not a sequel: Y Signal has a pretty definitive ending, but a follow-up to it. You can learn a little bit about the background of all of this on the podcast, if you desire.

These specific stories are meant to be both a reflection of a specific era currently being (perhaps deliberately) forgotten and a document of the people who lived there and what they were like and thought at the time. I've mentioned before, but part of the reason these tales came to fruition was due to how the mainstream and Hollywood have been attempting to dilute that period, if they ever address it at all, and are attempting to rewrite it for their own ends. There has been a concentrated attack on the past, and I will not have it. As a consequence, there is nothing like Y Signal or this upcoming project, and there likely never will be.

But beyond that, what do we have to look forward to in the wider culture? The wild west days of the internet are over, Hollywood is bottoming out, video games are shifting away from AAA, and publishing is still a complete mystery. Nothing is solid, especially publishing.

While OldPub is dying, NewPub is still in growing pains. Amazon is quickly fading out and the crowdfunding model is becoming more common, but then what comes after that? We're still trying to figure that out. There are a lot of question marks ahead and there still has yet to be a clear path forming in the haze. We'll just have to see where 2026 takes us from this point on. I can't even begin to guess where we're heading.

The world is a very different place from when I first published the first post on Wasteland & Sky over a decade ago to now. It certainly doesn't feel like it if you only look at the surface. Most of the buildings and sights in every day life are the same, if not rusting and falling apart from a lack of maintenance, but compared to previous decades the stagnation on the surface is obvious. Underneath, however, much has shifted and will continue to shift until the outside matches the current state of the interior. We've got much to look forward to after that.

Once again, I wanted to thank everyone reading my posts, or anyone who has ever read my posts, my stories, my books, or whatever I've put out there. It means a lot that I was able to reach anyone at all from my obscure position on the fringes of life and this scene. I hope to continue for as long as I am able to.

Thanks again for a wild 2025, and let us all look forward to the 2026 ahead. May it shine bright and show us the way forward.

Thank you for reading!

Find out what really happened 30 years ago in Y Signal! The end of the world came sooner than everyone realized!

Weekend Lounge ~ Are You Smiling?

Welcome to the weekend!

It's the last weekend of the year, and boy has it been quite the 2025. I'll talk about that in one last post on New Year's Eve to close off the year, but not right now. Today I wanted to focus on one last straggling topic I've wanted to cover but could never quite figure out how to. As you can tell I wanted to talk about a more recent phenomenon.

Today's topic is simple: Why is Smiling Friends popular? This might seem like a silly topic but it's one that's been at the back of my mind for a while now. This random show has seemingly taken the internet by storm in a way we haven't seen since probably Rick & Morty's initial explosion, and that was a while back now. Where did this show come from?

Now in case you don't know what Smiling Friends is, I'll try to go a bit into the background of it. The first thing to know is that this is a cartoon they debuted on Adult Swim with a pilot way back in 2020. Season 1 premiered in late 2021 with 8 eleven minute episodes (and one special), season 2 in 2024, and season 3 just this year, with two more seasons to come. The show was created by Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel, animators with a past on Newgrounds and YouTube, and an understanding of older internet culture and humor divorced from current trends. As a consequence, its comedy and animation style has managed to connect with not only older audiences but younger adults as well. Smiling Friends has a strangely universal appeal despite its very niche existence.

The series itself is about a pair of friends named Charlie and Pim who work for the titular company. Their job is to do what the title implies and bring joy to their client's lives no matter what it takes. The universe is a sort of a Roger Rabbit-like one where both people and weird animated races live side by side, and all the chaos that would unfurl from such a place. As a consequence the show also experiments a bit with character designs and animation styles, making its visual style very dynamic and adding to the unpredictability of the series itself.

You never really know what each episode will bring.

[Counterclockwise from Top: Mr. Boss, Alan, Charlie, Pim, and Glep]

All of these factors help contribute to what it is that makes Smiling Friends such a success. Its budget is also miniscule, an entire season purportedly being less than a single episode of Family Guy or The Simpsons, and its odd tone and sense of humor also sets it apart from the tidal wave of Adult Animation that we've been inundated with since the 1990s. That being that it has a truly original sense of style and execution the industry has been lacking for ages.

To understand how this is, I should explain with a comparison. Let me give you an example using a recent animated film I saw.

Back during the summer I viewed Genndy Tartakovsky's Fixed, an animated film about a dog that was about to get fixed by his owners for, well, being a dog. The film is animated extremely well in 2D, some great designs and shots, and some scenes (the one with the cats in the alley, specifically) are extremely well done. All in all, it has all the makings to be a good cartoon.

That said, I didn't quite enjoy the movie. The reason? Oddly enough, it's entirely centered on the writing. The writing was been there done that and dated '90s shock humor I've seen a million times with no new wrinkles. It's hard to be shocking when you've been outdone by things the writer himself did (A Simpsons writer from the classic era wrote this movie, by the way) a quarter of a century ago. As a result, the film is hard to recommend unless you literally don't care about seeing the same thing you've seen a million times just animated really well this time.

That is my controversial opinion on this controversial movie, and that's that there isn't anything here controversial. It's just tired. I guessed everything that was going to happen before it did, because I've seen it before. Even the "moral" is straight out of the 1990s. Good animation can't save boring execution, and this movie is boring.

The problem is that western animation is still stuck in the 1990s irony-poisoned cynical and depressive mode its been since that time. Something like Fixed compared to Smiling Friends reminds us that Fritz the Cat wasn't well received for being shocking, but because it was literally doing things in animation we hadn't seen before. It is nice seeing an animated show with a unique identity trying to aim for something actually interesting for once. No therapy writing or pointless nihilism as a punchline, no reliance on shocking through tired gags to get by, but an identity that is uniquely built for the series itself.

The above video describes it more in depth, but what makes animation such a great medium is the expressiveness in drawings you can't get with other mediums. We've spent so long watering down what makes every medium what it was for the past 30 years we've gotten to the point that being the medium itself is considered criticism (see the terms "videogamey" and "overanimated" that did not exist back in the 1990s) because something dares to do what the medium does best and was always built to do. It's all backwards.

It's as if we've been taught that abandoning the medium itself for some kind of blob of non-identity, of generic Content, the kind that fills the corners of modern corporate slop, is the highest aspiration. How long can a medium keep itself locked into a time that is a quarter of a century old without dying? That's the question. And I think we have our answer via the current stagnant state of things.

And it's part of why the creators of Smiling Friends created their own studio. ZAM Studios was made in order to combat what the founders deem a stagnancy in the medium and in the industry itself. They are hoping to bring back some of the spark the industry has been lacking for some time. You can read the linked article to learn more.

Here is the work they did on the Billy Idol song from his recent documentary:

So what comes next? Well, it seems like underground animation has been making a lot of strides over the past few years. Perhaps the medium will soon dislodge itself from this stuck rut its been in for much too long and start delivering uniqueness again. We can only hope.

Until then, we have at least two more seasons of Smiling Friends to look forward to (probably more than that, honestly) and hopefully a new direction for the western industry that tries to take after its success. It would be nice to have an actual good trend spring up for the first time in ages. I sure hope it happens.

Animation is a greatly unique medium that deserves its respect. Not in the sense of making it "mature" or "serious" or whatever warped perception we have of art divorced from reality, but in the sense that it offers a way to communicate differently than any other one, and that is one that should be cherished and cultivated. We do not need anymore subversions or inversions of what makes the medium what it is: we just need to want to have it at its best. No more Peggy Charrens or endless subversions of her disastrous work as the be-all end-all of the medium.

We need to build, not tear down. And to do that, we need a new perspective on how we got here in the first place, and how to move on from it.

That's also what art is supposed to be: a celebration of life, of being alive, and what we're all capable of doing and being. We don't need crusty, dated 20th century principles and subversion to guide us anymore. We can finally aim for something better than that dead era.

And we can also have fun along the way.

Some examples of the show in action

For documentation on another medium that was subverted and gutted, check out the eternally controversial The Last Fanatics!

Merry Christmas!

The Y Signal gang from L to R: Danny, George, Ray, Andrew

Merry Christmas!

I wanted to thank you all for another great year here. The longer I'm around the longer I'm thankful I even have the chance to do it at all, even if it's not much. It's been a very chaotic year behind the scenes here, as many of you know, but at least I will be leaving it in the dust soon enough with more to look forward to ahead.

Next year will be the 30th anniversary of Cultural Ground Zero, a sign that much has changed in ways we didn't even imagine as little as five years ago. To celebrate both this milestone and the holiday season, I've done a read through of the second part of Y Signal, "Snow Out", on the Patreon. For those who don't know, this is my secondary podcast called The Drifter Mindset dedicated to both reading my own stories and talking about them in a conversational style. This is also the longest episode so far at two hours(!) long, so tune in if you want something relaxing to listen to on this sacred day of celebration.

"Snow Out" is the middle of Y Signal which itself takes place on the Christmas of 1995, making it the 30th anniversary of that in-story event. Check it out for yourself (as well as 40 other podcast episodes and various serializations and written pieces) by signing up for the Patreon. I'm going to be stuffing it with a lot of good stuff in the year ahead.

On top of it, Cannon Cruisers has put out our usual Christmas Special episode this year! We decided to cover the 50 year old horror classic (Yeah, it's that old now), Black Christmas! Check it out for yourself and see if this film holds up. We most definitely do.

That's it for this short update! See you soon for one more Weekend Lounge post to close out the year before one last update on New Years. Thanks for the support, and have yourself a great Christmas season!

Check out Y Signal, a story of what really happened in 1995 when nobody was looking!

Weekend Lounge ~ The End of Fanfiction

Welcome to the weekend!

The year's almost over, so let's settle in with a good topic today. It can't decide if it wasn't to be snowy or cold where I am, so hopefully it's been steadier for you. Regardless, we've got less than a week until Christmas and less than two until the end of this very strange year. Let's get into it with a topic we've touched on before.

We're going back to the well again with the topic of fanfiction. Particularly we're going to discuss the fanfic mindset and what it has led to doing to creativity. The recent above video by The Second Story on topic blew up, as it usually does with this channel, because it hit on an industry taboo that has been choking the scene for over a quarter of a century at this point. Some of the backlash has been expected, but the larger point needs to be addressed: how did we get to where we are? It didn't fall out of the sky, and one of the sources of fanfic brain comes from the idea that nothing new can really ever be made, which explains a lot about today's climate.

So while we all know the weaknesses of fanfic (and even fanfic writers themselves know it), we still insist on dragging it into everything creative we do as if we need to. Why is that? Why do we insist on fanfic brain over using creative muscles to make something new? Why do we even glorify our inability to fashion originality? It is strange.

And why do we continually reward the lowest common denominator while we also admit it is also the lowest common denominator? This seems obviously destructive, and yet we persist in insisting it is the way it needs to be.

Part of this is due to the IP-heavy way we think about creativity and storytelling. We think about storytelling like children think about toy boxes. "I will have my own Star War", "My MC is just like Goku", "my setting is similar to Asimov but with a twist", and so on. It's "toyboxing": insisting on playing in someone else's world while simultaneously seizing control of it for your own gain. It's using someone else's work as a crutch while also trying to turn it into a strength at the same time. Fanfic brain at this stage has become terminal.

Essentially, we want to make "our own" versions of something else more than we want to make something original or say anything new. In essence, we want to endlessly replicate the feelings we experienced when we were kids experiencing this New Thing for the first time, and while there is nothing wrong with that on a surface level, there is a certain mentality that comes along with it that has very much become harmful. We would rather keep toyboxing than actually create or build anything at all.

As has been said relentlessly, there is no such thing as anything truly original, just reiterations on old ideas. This is true. It is the main reason modern genre checkbox obsession has become so limiting and heavily outdated, because we've been expected to rehash the same corporate IP ideas for over half a century at this point.

However, when one is inspired by something, it is usually because it means they have something they themselves wish to express influenced by that original source. To be honest, this is how we get all the best art and entertainment. This chain of influence is what makes it all so fascinating and all so human at the same time. This is what creation is.

Fanfic is the opposite of this. It is the equivalent of playing toys with your action figures to invent new scenarios alone in your room. The thing is, this is supposed to be done as a child when the imagination is still in development, when you still don't know what it is that speaks to you about these things. At the same time, fanfic is this process but with writing. It is a launching pad for younger people to help understand what it is that truly matters about what they love and either move on from it as they get tired of it, or move into writing original works inspired by what they love and contribute to the culture they grew in. The point is that this stuff is a starting point, not an end point.

"Toyboxing" 

But that isn't how it works anymore in our industries.

Now the mainstream is filled with people who see storytelling as little more than toyboxing and writing rooms as little more than fanfic factories to push their own head canon onto an audience that either must except it or go away. They don't really want to create: they want to usurp and become that thing that first inspired them in the first place by wearing its skin and commanding respect. They don't actually want anything new, they don't truly want to express anything, and they aren't at all looking to entertain. They just want their immature selfish desires validated, their fanfiction to be the new canon, and the obvious worship that follows.

It is a poisoning of the relationship between not only art and artist but between audience and artist. It is twisting the good to be purely in the service of selfish consumption. Everybody is an island, after all! Either get on mine, or get out. That's just where we are.

The issue isn't that any of this fanfic process exists at all, after all it pretty much always has and always will. The problem is that this is almost the entirety of not only the mainstream entertainment industry and a large portion of the independent one to. It's the baseline instead of a fringe, like it once was. Which medium is this description referring to specifically? That's the fun part: it's every single one of them. This is everything now.

Musicians wanting to be Led Zeppelin is nothing new, but they used to discover their own original sound along the way to becoming their own band. That doesn't happen anymore. Being inspired by the Simpsons meant something when it was the wittiest show on television, but not when it equates to being another clone with nothing to add to the conversation except cruder jokes and dumber dads with evens stiffer animation. What is the point of such a show, and what does it add to the conversation? Then there is the recent process of taking an old IP you might not have even grown up on and "updating" it for Modern Audiences while gutting it of everything that gave it that character in the first place. Toyboxing at the expense of the audience? That's just cultural vandalism, the obvious endpoint of fanfic brain. None of this aspires to grow anything, leaving the culture stagnant.

It doesn't aspire to be anything except either a thumb in the eye to enemies or a pat on the back from allies. That isn't art. It's junk. And it's the climate we operate in now.

The entire point of creating is to put something of your own out there into the world, to make your mark while simultaneously honoring what came before. The current way it is done of perverting the past while spitting on it and sneering at those you are meant to be communicating with is completely backwards. That is why it does not resonate. That is why the divide between audiences and artists and entertainers only seems to widen.

Until we move on from mocking while stealing from those who came before, the fissure will only widen. Not to say all fanfiction does this, but those with fanfiction brain definitely do lean in this direction in how they worship one part of the whole. It isn't everyone who writes fanfic, but the seed of the mentality is still very dangerous to where it should not be as widely spread as it has been over the past few decades. It cannot be the majority of art and entertainment, because when it is it becomes today's climate.

Nobody wants that, not even those currently in charge of these industries and doing this exact thing right now. It's all just a big mess of half-formed ideas couched with relationship drama that doesn't ever lead anywhere. No one can seem to write a happy ending anymore if they can't ever actually put their toys away for good.

So we must move on from this mentality into better things. It is the only way we can finally leave the mistakes of the past century behind. What else can we do but move on, and try for something a bit more satisfying than that which lead us to where we are?

Let's just hope that next time we remember what it's all for, and it's not ourselves and our own ego. There is more to existence than playing with our toybox while forcing others to watch, and we need to start showing it once more. We need to tell stories again.

And we will. The era of fanfiction is over. What comes next is to be seen. We still have to build it, after all.

Speaking of new, the latest issue of Cirsova just dropped! Check it out for some new stories of thrilling adventure and daring suspense!