AGE OF PETTY STATES ~小国時代~
Previous: Sword Maid ~剣術メイド菊田舞~
Next: Enemy at Blood River (Part I)
So, expanding this party scene we've got going on is going to become necessary as we get more and more successful. By that, I mean finding our counterparts that work in other media. Eventually we're going to want to look into the world if film and television, but for now it's wiser to look at two areas we're already dealing with as it is: artists and audio production people. We deal with artists for book covers and promotional posters; we deal with audio folks for podcasts, audiobooks, and radio plays. That's why I say that we are best off looking there first to find our common-cause kin: we're already there.
What are we looking for? What we already seek ourselves:
(Daddy Warpig did a nice rant on it here)
That leaves a lot of room, and that's intentional. We're able to tell tragic stories of people undone by their flaws, just as Shakespeare did, and still thrill and delight audiences without lying to them about life and how the world works. We're able to tell stories of all sorts of heroes and villains, at every scope and scale imaginable, as fantastic or mundane as can be, without feeding them mind-poisons of unreality. John Carter may be our common place or origin, but where we go from there varies widely and wildly. Yet we seek to entertain our audiences, and we refuse to lie to them. This is what sets us apart. As it is did for our predecessors.
So, if you know of like-minded artists and audio people or crews, you know what to do: scroll down, get into the Comments, give us their names and link to their site (whatever it is). Let's give these people our money, and our business, as best we can. Let's get them to come over, and we can talk about how we can all work together to Make Entertainment Great Again!
Brian Niemeier's post at Kairos regarding Superversive v. PulpRev got me thinking that we should take some time to look ahead and start talking about where we want to go- what we want to build towards, in concrete terms.
It's good that we have a small (and growing) cadre of authors publishing independently and via friendly small publishers such as Silver Empire, Castalia House, and Superversive Press. It's also good that we have friendly magazines that welcome our short stories and slightly longer works. I would like to see a few more of each, and if I had the capital I would do it and not merely talk. The same is true for audiobook production; we have some, and I welcome more.
But we should not limit our sights to the bookshelf and the magazine stand, real and virtual alike. The embrace of audiobooks is a good decision on multiple levels, and from that it's a short step to producing original radio plays like the Golden Age of Radio. Razorfist's recreation of a lost Shadow radio episode is Proof of Concept that it can be done.