The Patreon Letter - 15th September, 2019 (Patreon)

Hi everyone, Em here with the latest greatest Patreon letter. I'm saying this to get myself pumped up more than get you hyped, because to be honest energy is pretty low on this side of Abnormal Mapping HQ lately and I've been struggling with writing way more than usual. So thank you for bearing with me, and us, as we continue to try our best. 

I wanted to write a bit about cultivating new interests without turning them into work. This is really hard for me, because my gut response to wanting to do something is to make a podcast to make sure it gets done, but that only works up to a point. These days I'm just too busy to make ANY more shows or generally put any more work on my agenda, as you can tell by the sporadic nature of these letters the last two months. But that doesn't mean that I don't want to get into new stuff, just that I have to find less production-focused ways to explore interests. 

A few months (probably like 8, I'm bad at time) a friend asked me to check out at least the first two episodes of Thunderbolt Fantasy to talk about on GGP, and also because they thought I'd like them. Being me, I dawdled at getting to them until just a few weeks ago, when I put it on on a whim and ended up both really enjoying the show and blowing through it in about two weeks. Part of that was because I spent most of my time with this show gushing about it to my friend over Line as ridiculous turns and reveals and cool moments unfolded, which got them to revisit and we generally had a great time enjoying the show.

This is also how I ended up watching RWBY lately, enough of a different friend group talked about it and I realized I didn't have any context for what it was. Now I'm halfway through the whole thing, and it's nice to be able to react at people about a show you know they like!  

Still chasing this feeling, I've started reading Naruto at the urging of another friend and watching the new Kamen Rider, Zero-One, because both of these two friends are big into Kamen Rider and following along with Zero-One, which is (to date) only three episodes old and still getting established. Which is how I found myself watching my first Kamen Rider, despite having many friends who are into it. It's nice, because there's always someone to talk to about every episode, which is definitely not true with a lot of the anime I watch given how old a lot of it is. 

But Zero-One only comes out once a week, and that's not enough of an enjoying things with friends fix for me, so I ended up asking some friends if anyone would be interested in watching the first Kamen Rider, 1971, along with me. The response was way more positive than I expected, and suddenly I had a group chat with some friends all having a great time with this fifty year old show that nobody ever really seems to get around to going back to see. Even my Kamen diehard friends only know of it through reputation, which has lead to the perfect marriage: me insisting on doing things in order and being able to share stuff with people without turning it into work! We just send messages about episodes as we all watch them asynchronously, and so far it's been really delightful!

Which brings me to my point, I guess. It's very easy for me to turn stuff into work until I'm exhausted because I have an audience and things I HAVE to do get done often at the expense of all the things I WANT to do. It's also very hard to have this built in audience, so saying 'if you love something turn it into a show and there you go' is an extremely privileged position I'm lucky to be in. But this solution, the one that works for me, can also work for pretty much anyone with a friend group online (or even in person, I guess): just ask who wants to get into a thing with you, and see if someone bites. 

All you need in one person, and it can be a great opportunity to grow out your friendship together with someone you might just tweet at from time to time as you get into a thing together. Or if you get more than one taker, maybe your friend groups get to blend a bit as people get to know each other. Whatever form it takes, it kills two or three birds with one stone, as it helps keep you accountable (optionally without a ton of extra work if you're already busy), and gives you a new framework to share and hang out with friends. 

This seems like an incredibly easy realization when I'm typing all this out (hey, do stuff together with friends to have more fun) but also I really do think sometimes it can be hard to conceptualize the possibility of mutually exploring new spaces together. It's easy to feel other people's actions as totally random and yours are totally individual, and those two things impossible to marry. But you can just ask, and maybe get some new Kamen friends who also love this wind powered hero doing his best. Or maybe it's a comic. Or a movie series. Or a games podcast that starts as 'what if Idle Thumbs all played the same game' and turns into a decade of watching Gundam. WHO CAN SAY?

Anyway, maybe this is actually just revealing how little I understand the potential of friendship, but this was a small revelation to me this week when I ended up in a small Kamen Rider watching club by accident. And if it helps someone else, then I'll feel more than justified sharing this tactic with you. You can be into anything you want, and if someone isn't already there you can always ask people to go on the journey with you, and that's the best part of having friends. Truly we are all the shounen protagonists we want to be.

Until next time,

Em