The Patreon Letter - 08th July, 2018

Hey everyone, Jackson here to bring you The Patreon letter. It’s been, hoooo, it’s been a rough one this week so we’re getting a regular dose of introspection. Apologies for the sadness, it’s just where I’m at right now.

This week sucked. I could say it’s been a bad Mental Health week, and that would be true, but that feels like a clinical kind of understatement. It’s scary when the parts of your brain that usually keep you in the general vicinity of safe just stop working. You get used to it, and sorta train yourself to hope that when it passes you won’t have hurt yourself too bad. And then you wake up, and you haven’t, but none of the things that made you feel that way are fixed. So the pressure builds until it happens again, and so on and so forth, at least until anyone in this country wants to fund the NHS so I can get treatment again.

Unfortunately, this is a fairly ‘relatable’ experience in the spaces I hang out. Everyone’s poor, stressed and struggling to cope. There’s nothing really good to say about it, it sucks, we all know it sucks and we all know why. That doesn’t make the day to day any easier. We’ve still got jobs to do.

Like this letter! I’ve been thinking about what to do with my letters for a while, because I’m proud of the work I’ve been doing within them but they often feel… disposable? Which is fine, they’re often short, informal essays with opinions on something topical. If they’re disposable, then so is the entire internet. But that doesn’t stop me thinking about all the time I put in to these and wondering if there isn’t a better use of my time than fleshing out my thoughts on Video Game #422 to 800 words. 

I’ve been watching a lot of Gundam this last week, catching up on the 0079 movies and cementing my feelings on the series, all while clearing up a misunderstanding that led me to making some assumptions that clouded my opinion of Zeta. Gundam’s a mess. I like it a lot, but it’s a mess. It gives you information seemingly at random, spends whole episodes on dead end plots that go nowhere, then puts crucial worldbuilding in throwaway lines. It has taken the better part of a year watching Gundam to finally feel like I understand its rhythms and how best to approach it. This sounds like I’m being mean but I’m not, it’s got to the point where I enjoy talking about Bad Gundam as much as Good Gundam. Just like with Star Trek, I’m all in, and it being a mess is part of the fun.

The reason I’ve been thinking about that is because I really, really miss writing stories. Am I good at it? No. Probably not. They will obviously be infinitely more of a mess than one of the greatest animes ever made. But cheesy and cloying though this is, while I’ve been dealing with these depressive episodes one of the things I hold onto is that I can’t just go and die without forcing myself to actually finish some. Things being messy and even bad doesn’t stop them from being interesting. I want to make something interesting, but I’m too busy trying to play more video games. Or Coheed and Cambria comics. 

I really enjoyed writing for Capsule Crit recently, it was the second time ever that I’d had an editor and the first time I’d submitted multiple drafts and had conversations about the craft of my work. I didn’t even get that on my writing course at university, for what it is worth. Shout out to Dia Lacina for being invaluable. So long as I have time, I’ll be submitting work their as much as possible, and if I am able to get stable enough to find more time, I’d like to write some actual, good stories before too long. See, now that it’s in writing, I have to do it.

Anyway I don’t actually regret any of the choices I’ve made, I love doing all the podcasts we do, I constantly think about doing more even though we don’t have the time. It always comes back to time. Time, and stability. All the wonderful people I know feel like they’re going to collapse most days, and it makes me so sad because they deserve better. We all deserve better. 

So I hope this week is just a particularly bad spell. I’m excited as hell to record more Final Fantasy podcasts, plus I have a Gundam finale in two weeks so I have to stick around for that. I hope you all find something small to look forward to as well. Here’s to surviving.

-Jackson