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I’ve just drowned myself in the October Daye series and thought I was fully caught up when I saw mention of some short stories for your patreon supporters? How do I become one of these so that I may read these additional stories because I need everything I am so obsessed now. The Luidaeg is simultaneously my fave and the one I’m most terrified of. I ship Tybalt and Toby like it’s my job. There are at least sixteen mysteries I need answers to. And the found family of allies is everything!

knitmeapony:

vaspider:

seananmcguire:

WHY HELLO THANK YOU FOR PUTTING A QUARTER IN THE “WHY PATREON IS AWESOME MACHINE.”  Now sit back, relax, and let the kitchen proudly present for you…

…my Patreon.

Most people already know this part, but I’m going to include it for the five folks in the back who don’t: Patreon is essentially a micro-transaction platform geared specifically at allowing people to support artists and creators directly, rather than going through the usual middlemen.  It’s a tip jar writ large, and it’s a gamechanger.  Because see, one of the biggest trials of being a creative professional is being unable to estimate, month upon month, what your take-home pay is going to be.  Imagine having a part-time job which, you know, pays $24,000 a year.  No matter how many hours you put in, that’s what you get.

(This is a sort of unrealistic analogy already, because even that degree of confidence in your income is unlikely for most creative professionals.  Just work with me.)

Now, logic says “$24k a year, that’s $2k a month, I can budget with that.”  Sadly, logic is wrong.  Maybe you don’t get paid for six months, and then in month seven, you get $14k just handed to you.  And that feels like a lot of money–that is a lot of money–except you haven’t paid any bills in six months, so mostly it feels like a lot of screaming and buying toilet paper.

Patreon smooths out that disconnect between estimated numbers and actual numbers.  If you pledge $1 a month to someone, they will get $1 a month (minus minor handling fees, which we are happy to pay so you don’t have to), and can budget accordingly.  Even as pledges come in/people reduce or cancel their pledges, we can see our estimated totals.  It’s magic.

My Patreon is here: https://www.patreon.com/seananmcguire

I charge for short stories; I charge once a month; all patrons, regardless of level, get access to the short stories.  If you become a patron today, you’ll have access to all prior stories.  (You can find them by choosing “posts” and then “paid by patrons.”)  Higher levels get access to additional rewards, like the advice column ($3), the Poetry Project ($5), and the Positivity Email ($10).  They do not, at this time, get access to additional fiction.  Patrons are also the first to know when we find something unusual, like a box of out-of-print CDs or short run T-shirts.

Patreon has honestly changed my life, and not just mine: I know quite a few creators, both independent and traditionally published, who are using this wide, shallow well to keep themselves afloat.  And it’s magic.

My Patreon money pays for my cellphone bill, my medication, and my pups’ dog food.

Also for me to get a pedicure once a month because self care is a human thing.

Without my Patreon money I would have a lot more financial uncertainty. It also lets me try out things with fiction that I might otherwise not.

I’m kind of restating the above, but can I list ways that Patreon is awesome for me from the opposite perspective, as a reader and patron?

1) The obvious: I get new stuff from the author.  I get short stories or snippets or previews early or all the stuff that you think that you are paying for.  That’s the obvious thing.  Here are Cool Arts that would not exist with out the Patreon. Rad.  But also….

2) I get better stuff from the author.  When someone isn’t worrying about where they’re getting this month’s food or tp or heating bill from, when they’re relaxed and comfortable, they do more and better work.  This isn’t something that’s measurable, but I fully believe that even if all this stuff was created for free on the internet before, since my money makes someone’s life better, their creativity is free-er and they can spend more time on making better stuff.

3) I get unusual/interesting stuff.  Patreon lets artists experiment!  I’ve gotten poetry from prose authors.  I’ve gotten music from poets.  I’ve seen 2-D artists try sculpture, and digital artists try traditional methods.  I’ve seen artists who might not have found an audience for their specific collaboration get to collaborate and share with both of their patreons.  I get wild, weird, experimental stuff!  Even if it would have existed before Patreon, it probably would have been shoved in a box under a bed.  Now it’s published, and I get to enjoy it!

4) It comes to my in-box!  I don’t even have to think about going to a store or to Amazon, I don’t have to show up at specific locations or go to specific concerts or anything.  I have a Patreon filter in my gmail.  Most weeks, I get 8-10 emails there.  MOST of those emails are awesome, exciting things to read!

5) I get to conversate with some artists in a quieter space!  Most of the artists that I pledge to hold AMAs and answer comments and discuss processes and take suggestions and because it’s a quieter space without All Of The Internet shouting at them, they sometimes give longer, more thoughtful, more complicated responses!  Not always, of course, and you’ve still got to be a decent, polite person, but it’s a kind of social media they can curate and prioritize a little bit which leads to better brain space for the artists which leads to cooler interactions in general.

6) I get to feel helpful!  Artists and authors and the like do not get paid nearly enough, because capitalism.  Small individual one-off fundraisers help, but often folks end up stuck in the same emergency >> broke >> broken thing >> emergency cycle.  By banding together and getting $XX/month to someone, you totally get to watch your love join with other people’s love to make a clear difference in the life of someone you think is awesome.  The art you get on the regular is usually thanks enough, but the occasional ‘hey, I did x thing and it was great and thank you’ email makes you feel like a superhero, even if all you can afford is $1/month.  You’re part of something.  You did A Good.  That kind of hope and optimism and community building should never be undervalued.

Patreon is totally a net good in the universe, and the raw Dollars:GoodThings ratio just can not be beat.

Patreon’s empowered me to provide more value for my Patrons in several ways. Making videos is time consuming and creatively intense, so it requires real focus, and Patreon support bought me that focus over the last year, enough that I could increase my production from once a month to twice, so double the content.

Not to mention the artists its allowed me to commission to innovate and expand the scope of the project, so I can provide a more cohesive and immersive experience.

Or the community aspect! Running a discord that’s partly buy-in but also gives Patrons some leeway to bring friends in through our reward structure has let me craft a unique and interesting community that I’m honestly really proud to call home. There’s not many places out there for homestuck positivity right now, and I’m proud I can say I offer one of the best 🙂

And of course, the more patreon support grows, the more ambitious I get, meaning more and better content for everybody.  It’s really a win/win setup.

Do try patreon, if you’re able. The world is becoming a more interesting place through it.

after watching your videos i’ve become increasingly interested in gnosticism. i feel strongly drawn to the symbolism, but i don’t know where to start in terms of reading. wikipedia articles can only get you so far. where did you learn about gnosticism/what are some introductory readings you’d suggest?

fateoftheundead:

revolutionaryduelist:

Let’s be clear here: I barely know anything about Gnosticism. It’s a spiritual tradition that as far as I can tell has been mostly dead for ages, and it’s roots are tangled with Christianity, so the history we’re dealing here is massive, complex, and often contradictory.

I learned about Gnosticism simply by taking note of thoroughly Modern works that play with its symbols and ideas, and not always in a completely sincere way, or at least not an overtly religious/spiritual one. It’s compelling imagery for worldcrafting! Useful for fiction writing.

And Japan in particular seems to like making God the bad guy in some video games–a suitable threat level for a long campaign, I guess–so a lot of my understanding comes from comparing these modern works and seeing how they use the same symbols the same way, or very very very VERY similarly.

Some of those works are:

-Homestuck

-Mother 3, the sequel to Homestuck’s namesake, Earthbound (and to a lesser extent, Earthbound itself)

-Revolutionary Girl Utena

-The Dark Souls series

-Angel’s Egg (anime movie; it good)

-Persona 5, and generally the Persona series through its Jungian themes.

But when I say Homestuck is a Gnostic work, I don’t mean it’s literally to be understood solely through that particular spiritual doctrine. I just mean it draws from Gnosticism in crafting itself, and deliberately plays off Gnostic themes. Homestuck draws just as much from Greek, Egyptian, and potentially even Judaic myth.

And with most of these works, there’s a lot more going on than just those themes. My other big source here is Carl Jung, a psychoanalyst who was quite influential in the field and in pop culture, too.

RGU, Homestuck, and Persona all explicitly work his ideas into their worldbuilding, and though Jung himself was known to be a Gnostic, he had more to offer than just regurgitating Gnostic ideas per se. He’s probably the biggest source of Gnostic inspiration for modern writing, though. You can find a free compilation of some of his Gnostic writing here.

You might also want to check out Herman Hesse’s Demian, a novel I’ve read (its good) explicitly dealing with Gnosticism set just before the beginning of WWI. It’s a well-known influence on Utena in particular, and reading it illuminated some of the prominent symbolism across all of the works I just mentioned, too.

Hope you have fun with this! I’d probably reccomend engaging with any or all of the more modern works and seeing what comparisons you can draw to Homestuck, rather than trying to force yourself to read relatively dry ancient literature without context. This is all for fun!

Homestuck is terrible, and not every work that uses Mamichaean dualism is necessarily Gnostic in origin. Not trying to take away from the response, just adding to it.

1) I don’t particularly care about your bad homestuck opinion, and it’s hard for me to imagine how that extremely stale take adds to anything. Please don’t add boring drivel to my posts if you’re trying to be interesting or constructive; it makes it really hard to care.

2) I am genuinely interested in your mention of Manichaean dualism because, as I’ve said, I’m no expert. I may well be misidentifying things here, and I don’t want to be inaccurate.

I’ll risk assuming you’re talking about Dark Souls judging by your avatar, so If you’re willing, I’d be interested to know if Manichaean dualism has meaningful things to add to our understanding of:

1. The egg the Ashen One breaks/damages at the end of DKS3

2. The Dark Soul, and the Abyss

3. Gwyn (I don’t think Gnosticism is too directly linked to him, but I do think he takes quite a bit from Zeus, who’s probably the original deity the concept of a Demiurge itself is drawing from, since the idea was Greek before it was Gnostic. And ofc, the mark of Gwyn’s dominion is the Sun, which Yaldabaoth is strongly associated with.)

4. The Primordial Serpents, and the duality they present

Lastly, if you’re willing, I’d like to understand why you’d make the case that Dark Souls is specifically drawing on Manichaean dualism in distinction from Gnosticism. As in, how is it different?

And if you’re aware of the symbolism here, I’m kinda curious–do you have any clue why I haven’t seen it in the wider analysis sphere? This seems like the sorta thing Vaatividya would be all over, but I’ve never seen a wink of it outside of like, the Angels’ Egg video, which is only the tip of the iceberg as far as this stuff goes.

Thanks for your time and thoughts, should you be willing to offer them.

Friendsim vol 2 thoughts real quick before I get back to work

Amisia is pretty interesting. Fairly convinced she’s a Maid of Mind, though she’s got arguably more Void coding than Mind coding, which makes sense since she’s an Indigo blood. Healing you through blank holes in the wall, being a “fake” painter, struggling with the creative/imagination part of art, the super strength, so on.

Cirava strikes me as an Heir. They have some Doom influence, despite being a Hope player–suffering and it’s commiserating acceptance obviously has some resonance with their arc, they even say the word “suffering” dramatically at one point if I remember right.

Reason I say Heir is because their role is pretty much entirely to change you for your benefit. When they try to do so directly, it leads to the bad callout post ending. When they take the more passive approach of letting you change yourself, you end up in the good ending.

Interestingly, Hope with Cirava is all about fashion, and making yourself desirable and interesting to a broad audience. I’ll probably have more to say about the Hope angle later, but honestly the fact that both these trolls are linked to the aspect of their Caste as well as their true sign is the most interesting part of all this to me right now. @wakraya‘s true sign caste theory is going strong.

after watching your videos i’ve become increasingly interested in gnosticism. i feel strongly drawn to the symbolism, but i don’t know where to start in terms of reading. wikipedia articles can only get you so far. where did you learn about gnosticism/what are some introductory readings you’d suggest?

Let’s be clear here: I barely know anything about Gnosticism. It’s a spiritual tradition that as far as I can tell has been mostly dead for ages, and it’s roots are tangled with Christianity, so the history we’re dealing here is massive, complex, and often contradictory.

I learned about Gnosticism simply by taking note of thoroughly Modern works that play with its symbols and ideas, and not always in a completely sincere way, or at least not an overtly religious/spiritual one. It’s compelling imagery for worldcrafting! Useful for fiction writing.

And Japan in particular seems to like making God the bad guy in some video games–a suitable threat level for a long campaign, I guess–so a lot of my understanding comes from comparing these modern works and seeing how they use the same symbols the same way, or very very very VERY similarly.

Some of those works are:

-Homestuck

-Mother 3, the sequel to Homestuck’s namesake, Earthbound (and to a lesser extent, Earthbound itself)

-Revolutionary Girl Utena

-The Dark Souls series

-Angel’s Egg (anime movie; it good)

-Persona 5, and generally the Persona series through its Jungian themes.

But when I say Homestuck is a Gnostic work, I don’t mean it’s literally to be understood solely through that particular spiritual doctrine. I just mean it draws from Gnosticism in crafting itself, and deliberately plays off Gnostic themes. Homestuck draws just as much from Greek, Egyptian, and potentially even Judaic myth.

And with most of these works, there’s a lot more going on than just those themes. My other big source here is Carl Jung, a psychoanalyst who was quite influential in the field and in pop culture, too.

RGU, Homestuck, and Persona all explicitly work his ideas into their worldbuilding, and though Jung himself was known to be a Gnostic, he had more to offer than just regurgitating Gnostic ideas per se. He’s probably the biggest source of Gnostic inspiration for modern writing, though. You can find a free compilation of some of his Gnostic writing here.

You might also want to check out Herman Hesse’s Demian, a novel I’ve read (its good) explicitly dealing with Gnosticism set just before the beginning of WWI. It’s a well-known influence on Utena in particular, and reading it illuminated some of the prominent symbolism across all of the works I just mentioned, too.

Hope you have fun with this! I’d probably reccomend engaging with any or all of the more modern works and seeing what comparisons you can draw to Homestuck, rather than trying to force yourself to read relatively dry ancient literature without context. This is all for fun!

Yo, oD. Sorry if i’m offending you or anything, but have you heard that Hussie said that the two most passive classes are male and the most active was female? It’s in the wiki, just go in the “Passive/Active” part then find the “some hints” link.

I’m not offended at all! And yeah, I was aware of that line. It’s part of the reason I regard Maid as likely to be the most active class, and Bard and prooobably Knight but maaaaybe Page as the two most passive.