Behind the Cardboard, Quarantine Curtain: SU&SD Newsletter #43

Quinns: The newsletter’s always been a place where  we can be candid with you folks about obstacles we’re facing. Well,  here goes. Ever since the threat of Covid-19 took over public life here  in the UK, more than ever before in the site’s history, I’m having a  tough time doing creative work for SU&SD.

This is absolutely not something you need to worry about. SU&SD  will still be providing videos, podcasts, the Monday news, and with a  bit of luck Matt’s soon going to make a triumphant return to streaming.  The site will rumble on as it’s always done. But as I’m scratching  together my scripts, I’m having to fight to stop myself from  procrastinating, and I’m aware of a dank nubbin of guilt at the heart of  me.

Here’s where I’m at: Now more than ever, YouTubers like us have a chance  to do our bit for society. Everybody’s stuck at home and trying to stay  sane, so we /literally/ have a captive audience! The least we could do  is continue to entertain and distract people when they’re bored out of  their minds and need a distraction. Now is our time to shine- to dig  deep, to make videos, to lift spirits, and to unearth the giggles buried  deep inside our fans.

And yet creatively, I feel absolutely flatted by the pandemic. I feel  drained by the endless conveyor belt of news stories that I can’t stop  clicking on, and when I stop clicking on them, I feel isolated and  anxious. And to state the obvious, it’s hard to get excited about  tabletop games when we can’t gather around our friends’ tables anymore!

I’m sharing this not as doom and gloom, but in the hope that putting  this message out there will help me to feel less burdened by it. I’m  also hoping that a few of you reading this will feel less alone in your  own struggles, whether you run a small business, your work is creative  or you’re just struggling to do what you /wish/ you were doing. We’re  all in this together, and it’s not easy in the slightest.

Matt:​  It’s a tough time for sure, but we’re also thankful for the position  we’re in. So many of my friends have lost their jobs in the last week,  and while we’re likely to see the broader impact of that on what /we/ do  in the coming months - for now we’re tremendously lucky to be in a  position where we can carry on as usual, sort of. Now more than ever,  your support means the world.

But for as long as I’m personally managing to evade the temptation  to get lost in a black hole of rolling news, we’ll be doing our very  best to take advantage of the fortunate position we’re in. As the window  of the world I see through social media retreats into a realm of  sourdough and Animal Crossing - I’m so very aware that social distancing  and isolation are both in themself tremendous privileges that many  simply won’t be able to afford.

That’s not to undermine the pain and stress we’re all feeling, but  I’m doing my darndest to turn my relatively small lemons into /some  amount/ of lemonade. My wife’s iffy lungs and medical history mean I  won’t be meaningfully socialising in-person for the foreseeable: as I  alluded to in a video we recently posted on our YouTube channel, what we  do in the coming months is more than likely to dramatically change.

I think more than anything, I’m still shaken by the escalation: it feels  like only yesterday I was musing about how we might have to adapt our  reviewing criteria - now we’re in a position where we might have to have  a hiatus on /reviews/. In the past we’ve drawn firm lines about our  ideologies and practices - if only for ourselves, frankly. Naturally,  much of that now has to change. We’ve been dismissive of digital board  games - zealous champions of /shared physical space./

If you’ve been one of the many, many people sharing your thoughts on  what we should do - be assured that we’ve absolutely been listening:  through all of the daily wobbles you’d likely expect, the team is  adapting, investigating. We’ll be tinkering with all manner of digital  alternatives, Quintin is checking out solo games, I’m currently  wrangling together the tech and people needed to get something RPG-y off  the ground. It’s difficult to develop brand new projects with multiple  people at a point where our wobbles are rarely in-sync, but there’s  stuff being cooked up - and I hope you enjoy it.

In terms of what I can personally immediately do to make the world a  little bit nicer? I’ve spent literally five days wrangling with  cupboards and cables to turn a chunk of my flat into a fixed streaming  studio. I’m hoping to use this setup for a number of Let’s Play-y style  things, and maybe even some more traditional videos - but I’m also  seriously considering the idea of frequently just streaming myself  doing… stuff? Gosh, I don’t know - I might even play a VIDEO...GAME? Is  that full-on cardboard heresy, or a reasonable reaction to difficult  times?

Either way, for as long as I’m healthy and relatively cheerful - I’ll be  doing what I can to beam that out to you as frequently as I can, even  if that means the stuff we’re producing is less sharply focused or as  well-produced as I’d personally prefer it to be. As ever though, I’d ask  you to be patient: with us, as much as with each other. This month I’m  not struggling too much, and I’m hopeful I’ll be able to provide you all  with at least a little sprinkle of fun. Next month, who knows! We’ll be  taking it all one day at a time - take care of yourselves, and each  other. See some of you soon for some silliness on Twitch.

What are we watching? 📺

Matt: I chewed through Succession with incredible pace -  easily one of my all-time favourites. This month though I’ve been having  a great time with Kingdom: Korean period drama with zombies and  politics, with some absolutely superb camera work and incredible  costumes. It’s the first time I can say that a show is worth watching if  only for THE HATS.

Ava: Like everyone in the world, I’ve been dipping  back into Studio Ghibli as they start reappearing on Netflix, and my  word, it’s easy to forget just how weird, scary, beautiful and strange  Spirited Away is. You think you remember, but every watch pours a whole  new layer of wonder into your (no-)face.

Quinns: We’re in sync! I was going to write exactly this. The bathhouse in Spirited Away is such a wonderfully imagined place.

Other than that, I’ve been watching Tiger King on Netflix. You’re  all watching Tiger King, right? I’m worried that there are a few people  out there that might not have seen it yet, and that cannot stand.

What are we reading? 📙

Quinns: Hark by Sam Lipsyte is the funniest novel  I’ve read in years, and this week it has made self-isolation a lot  easier. Easier for me, anyway. I’m not sure my wife appreciates the  noisy, randomised barks I make from the corner of our living room when  I’m laughing at a book.

Ooh, and if you’re a fan of my recommendations for fantasy novels,  last month I had an amazing time with the award-winning The City of  Brass by S.A. Chakraborty. It’s about a girl from Cairo who gets wrapped  up in a world of genies and demons. The world-building is spectacular,  the plot never lets up, and the characters all but glitter on the page.  Better yet, the next book in the trilogy, The Kingdom of Copper, is  already available!

Ava: I’ve had a surprising run of actually  finishing books, which is pretty unusual for me. Ninth House by Leigh  Bardugo is a pleasingly noiry, faintly feminist, unusual take on urban  fantasy/horror focussed on the secret societies of Yale university. On  the non-fic front, The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan is a pretty  gripping assessment of psychiatry and anti-psychiatry through the lens  of David Rosenhan’s famous study that involved sending people into  psychiatric wards with fake symptoms. It’s not quite as shocking as it  wants to be, but a little bit of sensationalism makes a good (if bleak)  read.

What are we music!  🎵

Matt: I’ve been listening to far too much Alex  Cameron, whose song ‘Divorce’ caught me off-guard with a lyric that had  me bursting into laughter. His second album Forced Witness is incredible  in many regards, but I can’t help but feel like listening to it has me  put on some sort of government list: the songs are all in-character  stories about mostly-awful men, but I’ve got some serious qualms about  the combination of abhorrent lyrics with jaunty, catchy pop that gets  stuck in your head. I’ve personally put that internal conversation on  hiatus, but I think it’s probably overall ‘BAD’ but currently makes me  happy. This isn’t really a recommendation, more just a semi-appropriate  venue for me to express an unusual guilt I’ve been harbouring for ages.

Tom: As spring slowly seeps its way into the UK  I’m listening to a lot of music that’s brighter and more buoyant than my  noisy, claustrophobic winter outings. Crumbling from Mid-Air Thief is a  shimmery, wobbly mess of texture and structure that’s loose and  unstable but continually full of purpose, and the new Moses Sumney  album, grae: Part 1, is an ambitious and continually rewarding departure  from the sound of his debut. More than anything, though, I’ve been  really enjoying the latest Dan Deacon album, Mystic Familiar, which is  as much an album as it is an extended, kaleidoscopic fever dream of  thundering synthesisers from start to finish. I’ve had a real soft spot  for weird synthesiser music since I got into the more experimental,  knotted ends of chiptune a few years back, so it's nice to sometimes  bask in something that’s quite as sugary sweet as this.

Quinns: Late to the party, I’ve been hooked on  Ctrl by SZA. Quite the moody soundtrack when I’m walking around my  shuttered city. It’s one of the advantages of things being “a bit  depressing,” I find lots of music sounds *so* much better.

What are we video games!  🎮

Tom: Like everyone and their dad and their dad’s  cat i’ve been playing a healthy amount of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.  It’s bewildering how this game literally landed at the perfect time, as  being stuck inside all day means that a game where you get to bounce  across rivers and catch bugs is thoroughly welcome. I’ve seen a lot of  complaints online about how the game has a ‘slow start’, but personally I  find the way it drip-feeds its content early on as reinforcing the  essence of the game itself - checking in on your village every day to do  some menial chores and pay off your ever-mounting debt. Wahoo! I’ve  also really enjoyed seeing people online take issues with Blathers, who  initially won’t accept the huge shipments of museum gubbins players  bring to him, so instead they opt to pile huge jungles of crates outside  of his tent/construction site. It’s beautiful.

Quinns: This time, I feel very lucky with the  animals living in my town. The last Animal Crossing game I played I  ended up living between an unbearably pompous horse and a parrot that  I’m pretty sure was hooked on meth. His name was “Jitters”, he ran huge,  looping circles around the island and the roof of his house was a sheet  of corrugated iron.

Matt: Ahahahah!

Tom: The horror! I’ve also, on Matt’s  recommendation, been sinking my teeth into the extensive games lineup  offered by Xbox Game Pass, starting with Metro Exodus - an  ultra-immersive and atmospheric game about keeping all your guns out of  bogs. A spot of Sea of Thieves has also been good fun, and has kept  people in contact during the quarantine.

Matt: It’s A POUND for the first three months. A POUND. If you’re bored and skint and own a PC, get on it.

View in browser