are you still in love with the thrill of the live music experience? a Troika zine review

(there's an audio recording of myself reading this post on my substack)

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Meaningful days are built around concerts.

Do you remember when you used to feel alive?

When you were young and excited about seeing your favorite band play live.

Excited about all the predictable/unpredictable possibilities that might come your way.

• Venturing to the city, or perhaps an urban part of the city, and doing something meaningful that alternative grown-ups probably get to do every day.

• You could find some inconvenience meaningful because you knew you had a purpose for enduring it: seeing your favorite band live.

• Waiting in line but finding it meaningful because you were surrounded by other people who liked the same band as you.

• Being convinced that an opener was meaningful/actually a good band—like you felt you should invest in them because they might replace the headlining band one day.

• Standing in the front at the concert.

• Taking tons of pics.

• Taking a video of the most meaningful song so that people on the internet can appreciate your experience.

• Meeting members of the bands and thinking, Wow. They are so lovely and humble. They are cool, just friendly people. We would get along if we knew one another in real life.

• Walking away from the concert sweaty and satisfied, like you had sex and came.

• Having the unique opportunity to buy authentic band merch so that the show would last forever in the form of a physical product.

Wish I could be young again and connect with a network of hopeful, like-minded people in a live setting.

Maybe everyone goes through a meaningful-core phase from age 13-18, and one band will always captivate this audience, no matter who makes the era's best cheesy, meaningful, emotional, hopeful music.

Some people had Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal Service/Ben Gibbard projects.

Others had Panic! at the Disco or My Chemical Romance.

Maybe some had The Cranberries or Goo Goo Dolls.

Or Sunny Day Real Estate and Cursive.

Meaningful-core has so many different manifestations.

I want to be young again and feel like my whole life is ahead of me.

I want to go to a concert and get the feeling that everyone in the crowd will fulfill their dreams.

I want to feel like the concert I attended was the most meaningful show of the entire tour and possibly one of the greatest live performances in the history of the world.

I'm going to write about a zine now...

I don't know what people do when they're alone.

Many nights, I look at the books or zines I've read a hundred times and flip through a few pages.

I like books and zines; I can open any page and read with the same enjoyment as if I were reading them from the beginning.

I don't know what I'm typing about, really, though.

Last night, I lay in bed and opened Welp Fest.

It's an annual inter-sphere music festival that was undoubtedly better in previous years.

It's got:

• A d6 table of reasons why the party is at the fest.

• A list of all the bands playing (with stats).

• Merch tables.

  • You could learn a new spell if you buy a Welp Fest headband.

• Encounters.

• A timeline to help run the adventure.

This zine was a submission to the Troika City Jam I ran two summers ago on Itch.

My friend [redacted] also had the idea of releasing a zine about a music fest, but when they saw that Welp Fest was submitted, they threw in the towel because they were unaware of the sheer number of music festivals that exist in the universe.

I read Welp Fest on a bus, and the ride went fast and wasn't uncomfortable. It was like I drank a lot of coffee, but I just read a zine. I like Welp Fest a lot.

What was your favorite band of your meaningful-core era?

Does anyone know what concerts are still worth seeing?

What was your favorite part about attending concerts when you were a formative alt?

The last concert I attended was 100 Gecs, with Alice Gas and Underscores.

I remember seeing two guys wearing jean jackets with the same back patch.

It was, like, the Grim Reaper on a horse.

The patch was probably called Death.

They probably unknowingly bought it from the same Etsy shop.

I thought it was funny.

I bought two tickets for the concert months ago because it happened two days after my birthday.

The concert was also two months after my ex and I broke up.

I took my friend Diego with me.

He was the only one of my friends who actually liked 100 gecs.

I remember waiting in line to get into the concert. In front of us was a girl wearing Tripp pants with chains.

I usually wear a chain wallet, but I know better than to wear a chain to a concert.

A cop pulled her aside and said she couldn't get in unless she removed all the chains.

She tried to fight back, but the cop said, "There's a trash can. You can get in if you take them back to your car or throw them away."

It was a great concert.

I saw my ex there with a guy I thought resembled a possum.

Not in a spiteful way.

Some people's faces resemble animals.

(You're probably thinking of someone you know who resembles an animal.)

I'm unsure what animal I resemble.

(If you think my face resembles an animal, comment and let me know.)

I remember waiting in line so Diego could buy Red Bull vodka. My ex stood next to us and made out with the possum man.

The possum man said, "Ey, hassa goin." He pulled out a crackpipe and smoked, rotating the pipe and watching with his eyes crossed.

Diego folded one arm beneath the other, rubbed his chin with the other hand, and shook his head side to side, saying, "Here we go again!"

"Dahhhh," the possum man said, knelt by my ex, and looked her in the eyes. "This my baby, I love my baby. I'd do anything for you. You're my heart. I'd go to the gates of hell for you — go inside and close the gates to keep you out. I'd fight the Cerberus."

"Luff you more," she said.

He held up the crackpipe in his tiny paws.

It made my neck itch, and I felt pissed.

“I know I know. I’s just playin, man. Settle down, hah. I’m a fung bum, man. My place smells like dookie and piss for fuck sake. Don’t lissna me.”

You bastard-ass motherfucker, I thought. I almost dropped him, in my mind I jumped back into fighting position and said, “Shing-shing”—but I laughed, took a pull off my 40, and said goodbye.

Thank you for your time.

VIOLENCE, SNAKE-WOLF

Game:

Violence

Luke Gearing. 2021

# Additional Resources:

Terror of the Stratosfiend - Cycle of the Snake-Wolf

Orbital Intelligence. 2020

Terror of the Stratosfiend - Cycle of the Snake-Wolf 2 - Return to the Shattered Woods

Orbital Intelligence. 2022

Terror of the Stratosfiend - Cycle of the Snake-Wolf 3 - The Scales of Hyper-Visor God or The Final Voyage of the Crab King

Orbital Ingelligence. 2023

# Notes:

Using Violence for rules and custom homebrew rulings when needed.

Characters:

1. U.S. Postal Inspecting Service Agent, Stew, just Stew, he is inspecting several charges for illicit drugs or dangerous substances, dealt with a lot of wild animals that are being smuggled

2. Lex Decker (although X refers to them as papa Gino [from 90 day fiance), 5’3”, wears a black suit with a piano necktie that is cut in half and black gloves with tennis shoes (Nike Air Max [all black]). All of his gear

3. Nikki (doesn’t go by Nichole), 65 years of age, an agent of the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms…

2024-02-28 – XXXX-XX-XX

# The Log

1: A state park in North Virginia

Find the Shattered Woods and the village's location within it beyond the state park.

The players roll up in separate vehicles, sticking to themselves and vaping.

Characters rolled a d6 on the rumor table.

Stew, Decker, and Nikki (after all rollings 2s) have interviewed people and heard familiar stories of distant family members healed after talking to *The Enigmatic One* inside the woods.

Two Blackhawk helicopters land in the field near the players in their vehicles. The Characters load their gear into the first Blackhawk and board it.

They fly for 2 hours as the sun begins to set. From a window in the Blackhawk the players see a tree walking through the other trees, seamlessly. 

Nikki says she believes in Ents.

The back of the Blackhawk gets smacked and begins spinning in 360s. The pilots of the Blackhawk tell the Characters they must make an emergency landing. 

The Blackhawk crashes as the Characters roll a d20 to attempt to secure themselves as best they can. 

Nikki 1, Decker 10, Stew 14

Nikki is 75’ off the ground, hanging from a Pine-tree. Decker and Stew  remain in the Blackhwak. The pilot is dead, the copilot is dead, and no one has seen the second Blackhawk which was following them (from behind [to fully support the mission.]) 

Decker says oh shit and Stew asks if the Pine-trees are moving. 

Niki asks Decker and Stew ask if they can get her down from this tree and how she feels like a fish up in the tree.

Nikki sees hawks or eagles nests up here. 

Nikki sees a mud put in the distance. 

The Characters hear guttural sounds in the distance; no Pine-trees move. 

Decker attaches one of his walky-talkies to his drone. 

Deckers fly the drone up to Nikki in the Pine-tree.

Nikki (who is skilled at climbing [rolls with an advantage of 1d6] decides to climb down. She rolls on 1 on the d6 and a 1 on the d20. 

*everyone laughs at that*

Decker says if you die I can just put you in the regeneration tank (heals you 3x faster) and we’ll just use the helicopter battery?

Nikki gets injured.

**(roll for down?)**

Decker stands creeping over her body and goes hehe, and everything said I was a fool for bringing my humanoid cell regeneration tank but here we are.  

The Characters hear guttural sounds in the distance; no Pine-trees move. 

Decker says oh shit quick quick hide back in the helicopter with her broken body, and we’ll use her multitool plier and ugh, i got the battery of the helicopter. 

Nikki is skilled in electrical engineering.  

Decker says he is skilled in jump and the occult and that he can sacrifice her to Satan. She’s the one with medicine, biology, and electrical engineering. 

Decker laughs. 

Decker says a sixty-five year old woman, who’s all fucked up and shit.

Decker says maybe she can just tell us how to use my own regeneration tank. 

Working together, Nikki  and Decker rolled with advantage. They beat the 14 difficulty I set with their 19.

The Characters hear guttural sounds in the distance; Pine-trees are knocked over. 

Decker says we gotta get the hell out of this forest folks, we gotta get clear of these trees!

Nikki says because theres Ents?

Decker says Ents yes Ents.

Stew says I would have never have thought about that, getting attacking, mainly mauled by anything, any beast, and right now, now it’s trees, I would have never thought about that but, damn I prefer right now the tigers. 

Nikki says I don’t it is trees, I think it’s people, the thing about it is, I would rather it be trees.

Decker says I just know Korean. 

The party is given 1 round to ‘plan’ before combat. 

Decker says the tree-man is coming. 

Decker asks if the military helicopter has attached guns on the back.

It only has forward facing guns for the pilots.

Decker says so what we’re gonna do…

Nikki asks if her e-echo absorption banlges can help her heal faster in the pod.

Decker takes four of Nikki’s pink smoke grenades and hands Stew two.

Decker gives Stew a walky-talky (they each have one now).

Decker says we’re gonna have the walky-talkies.

Stew says O.K.

Nikki says she longs for the fight.

Decker says yeah so we’ll leave you your useless ugh echo absorption bangles and multitool pliers for the giant tree-man to kill you with and ugh Stew do you wanna ugh head North and I’ll head out west or do we wanna head out in the same direction together, We’ll head out in the same direction together, but we will go North, yes Nikki you’re in the iron lung and we need the tree-man to not be here, but we gonna run for it, we’re gonna run for it, we’re running for it, but the tree-man is also gonna come to the iron lung.

Nikki says they’re leaving me for dead. 

Decker talks over; Nikki doesn’t stop talking.

Decker says we’re gonna try to get the tree-man to chase us someplace different.

Nicki says you’re jealous and you’re leaving me for dead because of how pretty I am. 

Decker says yes we’re not even gonna leave you a walky-talky to talk to you when you come back. 

Decker says just kidding we’re gonna leave you a walky-talky and me and Stew will staying together. 

Decker sends his drone out from within the helicopter to see where the tree-man is at. 

Tree-man can’t be seen. The Sounds have been coming from the south side of the helicopter. 

Nikki says is it a tree-person, I’m so fucking confused?

Decker says it could be a fiddy foot treet man. 

Nikki says it could be the Wizard of OZ or it could be a man in a ghillie suit, he’s a fifty foot man in a ghillie suit.

The feed from the drone’s camera displays to Decker a Dryad moving through the pine-trees like holograms. One of it’s legs have been cut off at the knee cap. 

Stew says I’m wondering what did it.

Nikki says from the helicopter. 

Nikki says I hope you guys are happy that I can’t help.

Decker says he knows marital arts and throws a pink smoke grenade at the Dryad (he rolled a d6 plus a d20 for advantage [he got a 4 and a 1]).

The pink smoke bomb isn’t thrown in a good enough position to conceal the character’s movement out of the iron lung (formerly known as the Blackhawk helicopter). 

Stew throws a pink smoke grenade (rolls a d20 [he gets 19]).

The Characters are concealed by the pink smoke grenade and the sounds of the Dryad hopping closer are heard.

Decker says he is going to run away until he get’s tired and then take out his lighter and start a forest fire.

Stew says I think it’s good that we don’t have some guy from the E.P.A.  right now, he would turn on us.

Decker says domestic agriculture can bite it, ya know, just kidding.

All Decker has is his lighter and he runs out and starts trying to light a forest fire to piss off the Dryad. Pine needles everywhere and shit.

The pink smoke is going off at the rear of the chopper. The blades have ceased movement but you still hear the motor. The pilot and copilot have been impaled. There was a second helicopter but yall haven’t seen them and lost contact with them since the crash. The characters still have a lot of gear in the helicopter at the moment. Lots of heavy pelican cases, mostly belonging to Decker. 

Stew begins collecting everything that he can carry. 

Stew grabs the laptop and the satellite phone. 

Stew uses the last cover of the pink smoke grenade and flees towards Decker. 

We rolled intitative.

Nikki is alone in the iron lung. 

For a moment it’s silent.

the entire iron lung is tossed 30 feet into the air.

Nikki managed to roll well enough to wedge herself into the iron lung and remains good. 

Nikki’s gets out of the pod and hides. She makes it looks like is still in the pod though.

Nikki sees the dryad as the pink smoke grenade fades.

Nikki shoots her gun at the dryad; shooting at the roots.

She misses.

Nikki says she thinks she will die.

Niiki says she jsut embrassed herself infront of a tree person.

Decker says he’s been training his whole life for this moment. he runs 50 feet towrdas the dryad and busts out his fingerless telekinetic amp gloves and within 10 feet of the dryad Decker crouches down and pucnhes at the dryad’s balls area, like hadouken hadoken. 

Decker says he is karate chopping him in the throat and balls (with advantage for knowing martial arts).

Decker and the Dryad are injured and they both go down. 

Both of Decker’s gloves are broken (by range or broke broke? [it’s unknown at the moment]).

Nikki says OMG it broke your telekinesis gloves, that’s the only cool thing you had. 

Decker says I throw these gloves away like trinkets.

Decker says he’ll figure something out.

our new adventure for liminal horror has been released!

 

The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Smogg

Dr. Smogg is a rich bitch industrialist who made his fortune in heavy manufacturing. Still, his methods are wasteful and produce many toxic by-products, which he disposes of in environmentally irresponsible ways. His next scheme is to pump massive amounts of toxic smog into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of his factory. Once airborne, the pollution will condense into solid waste particles and rain down upon the unsuspecting countryside. 

Fortunately, Professor Rusty Sauernoggin is on the case! Rusty Sauernoggin has dedicated his life to finding ways to transform toxic waste into good and useful products. One blast from his rooftop "Smog-o-matic" ray gun and the cloud will rain down delicious sour candy balls... an outcome Dr. Smogg is less than pleased about!

unpublished blog post

in an attempt to declutter my ttrgp space at home i've decided to burn some old campaign books and transcribe some bits i may reuse. 

the following is from a small thousand thousand islands campaign. i'd link to their zines online but i'm pretty sure everything has been removed by the creators.

The zines require a lot of preparation to run smoothly so here's some shit I prepped for the sessions I ran.

Late Feather Scale Village NPCs:

1. Wet Beak (Snipe, Bird-folk) - red tattoos, avoids moonlight because it makes their feathers glow with cult like runes, they are here to establish bleaching hexes, they're a saboteur of the "Ingido God"

2. Paw Dew - dancer (Man-folk) - missing a hand, harassed by a trio

3. Twelve Roaring Tooth - artist (Monitor-folk) - toothless

4. Ear Wall (she/her) - girlfriend ran off with the drummer Paw (Man-Folk) 

5. Rum What - clammer (Man-folk) - covered in suck marks (like from octopus tentacles I guess, "suck marks" is straight from the zine), bleeding, wants revenge (this part was from the zine too, I guess they want revenge for the octopus sucking on them).

I started to write number 6 on the table here but then thought "i don't really care about any of this" and now I'm going outback to burn some notebooks.

the signalwave series part two: Top "Signalwave" Albums to "Liminal Horror" to (2024)

 

My best guess is that the album cover is a YouTube screenshot.

tracking by antenna decay (released February 21, 2024)

Is there a constant beeping in the background, or is it tinnitus? I take my left air pod out, and the beeping stops, but now track two is playing, and I still hear the beeping. I checked my surroundings and removed the air pod again, and I realized it was the album’s heart monitor.

The first two songs are piano and nice and short, but track 3, “found,” is where the album begins to shine. It sounds like a slowed-down oldie with a full band (strings, winds, drums, etc).

Track 4, “slow,” has big Weather Channel vibes (a staple of the genre) with its piano tones, electric guitar riffs, and jazz flute! It also begins what I’m going to call The Trilogy, which, if you put all the single-word song titles together, makes “Slow Days Fading.” The album is also tagged as “Sentimental Transmission.” I recommend that fans of the soft rock bands Chicago and Bread start here, as well as anyone limited to time. The album sounds like a tragic love affair, good times and bad. It felt like the pace of the beeping varied at times.

Track 7, “worn,” is a melody I know from somewhere, and research is still ongoing.

Track 8, “gone,” I recommend to fans of dunegon synth and cottagecore.

The whole time, I was waiting for the beeping to cease or remain in the steady drone of death you see in the movies, but it never came. Which is fine; you live another day.

The album description is like the gray text box from an adventure:

viewing the memories of a soon-to-be-gone tape.

---

you walk into the attic.

the dust dances in the air around you.

there it sits, in the exact spot where you once stood, sun-bleached.

you feel a sense of familiarity.

you walk into your bedroom.

the smell of your past greets you.

there it lies, as if it were waiting for you, wishing for your return.

you choose to face yourself.

you walk into the living room.

the carpet feels softer than usual.

there it lies, gone in a moment, never to be seen again.

you watch as it all passes.

Many artists will write some micro-fiction, or poetry.

I love that the artist is Floridian and works for a government space agency.

***

I’ve battling a bit of scope creep with finishing the next draft of my submission to the Liminal Horror Twisted Classics Jam.

Writing and sketching the writing and sketching writing.

I drew this after writing, “Her Bible is white, and she holds it in both hands, like a big sandwich.” When I need a break from the writing and frustrations and it's too hot to skateboard, I’ll draw the writing.