I feel much better about toymaking today than I have any day since last week.
We still don't have the bodies for our action figures ready, but I think we have a technique that will get us some tomorrow.
I finished cleaning the keshi figures and getting them ready. I haven't packaged them yet, but we've got several dozen that look good. 15 - 20 that look okay, and 20 or so that I'll end up shredding and reusing.
We have 25 gameboy cartridges with packaging. I have 40 in universe newspapers about sky pirates. I have posters on canvas, and cheaper posters on cardstock.
I still have about 25 resin cast toys in packaging left over from the last show.
We're making new action figures. I have good heads and good legs for our action figures. We should have bodies soon. We have boats for the playsets, and we've started painting them. The paint looks really good.
Tomorrow, we should have bodies and arms, and then we'll start to work on accessories. Swords, gliders, grappling hooks.
We're doing good! It's going well!
Now, if we can't get torso's figured out tomorrow I'm going to start resorting to wacky measures. There are some alternative ways that we can go about making the bodies.
I think what we're planning right now is our best option. It's the one I've been the most confident about one of our mold designs.
But, if it doesn't work, there are some techniques that I've used in the past that do work. I don't think the results will be as good, or as fast but I know it'd work, so if I have to go that route I will.
Either way, we'll have some action figures by Monday and they'll be great!
(I'm real grateful to @djsundog for his design work, printer wrangling, and moral support. I absolutely would have thrown my hands in the air and given up several times over without him egging me on.)
So the toy stuff is going well, and we're thinking about the future.
Let's talk about the present for a second, and then we'll talk about the future.
US POL
Things in the US are bad right now. I haven't talked about it much recently, and I won't talk about it much for a while.
Not here anyway.
If you want to engage with politics, I am writing a *lot* of political stuff, but it's mostly going up on New Ellijay Television.
Healthcare, for example: https://vod.newellijay.tv/videos/watch/6dd820e1-0b52-427b-bcbc-e40690073715
But there's a lot more coming down the slopes. I don't write all of it, but I write a lot of it.
Right now I'm talking politics elsewhere.
Here, I'm focused on revolutionary joy.
Revolutionary Joy
I make things! I help other people make things. I let other people help me make things.
The act of making things is, by itself, radical.
But I'm trying to take it step further.
I'm centering my values and I'm focusing on joy, on things that bring me joy, on things that create joy for others.
I'm focusing on replacing the things in my life, in the lives of other people, that enrich billionaires or promote harmful ideologies or wreck the planet with things that don't.
This is why I make toys! It's why I run New Ellijay Television.
Revolutionary Joy (economics)
I went looking for ways to give my energy, attention, and money to real people instead of billionaires.
To keep that money, energy, and attention in my community, rather than letting it be exported.
And ...
Well, I found some ways to do that! But they were small. I was still mostly dependent on Google or Netflix or fucking Amazon for entertainment (and even when no one was getting paid, I was giving my time and energy and attention to things that were produced to reinforce ideologies that I find repugnant. Copaganda is a problem, and it's everywhere!) I was still mostly dependent on some big box retailer for books. I was still eating at corporate owned restaurants.
It was hard.
So, you know, be the change you want to see in the world.
Now I run a bookstore, and I stock a *ton* of self published books (hell, I even published a few myself!) I run a record label, and I help people release music. (People like @DoctorDeathray who's music you should listen to), I make food for our community, I run a television network, and I make toys. I run a pottery studio, I host a market for local artists. I buy my stuff used when I can.
I do these things because it means that other people can spend their time and attention and energy and money on the things I help to release instead of enriching a billionaire or spreading their ideology.
(It's not perfect! Some of the things I use still come from billionaires. No ethical consumption under capitalism, right? But I'm doing my best to provide more ethical alternatives.)
Revolutionary Joy (ideology)
A lot of what we put out through our various channels is from the public domain. A lot of what we put out through these various channels is original stuff we made. Some of what we put out through these various channels is stuff that other folks have worked with us to make.
Any act of creation or consumption that doesn't happen under the control or at the behest of a billionaire is a radical act.
Existing here on the fediverse is a radical act.
But I do my best to take things further, and to bring revolutionary ideology in to my work.
Which brings us back to toys.
Most of the toys we're making right now are #skypirates
Why Sky pirates?
Because Sky Pirates are full of revolutionary joy!
In the 1910s and in to the 1920s, in the build up of to and the wake of the first world war, the air was full of revolutionary energy. Anarchists and socialists were tossing bombs and setting fires. Against that backdrop, man was heading for the skies.
From Zeppelins to The Wright Flyer, everyone was racing in to the skies.
And those two ideas got mixed up in people's heads. Suddenly literature and film were full of stories of anarchists bombing from zeppelins, of Great Men flying to Mars in their blimps.
So we're making Sky Pirates, and we're publishing Sky Pirate literature and films. (Things like #filibus and The Pirates of 1920)
And we're making Sky Pirate toys.
And we're writing stories, and computer games, about people who fly through the skies smashing factories and living free.
Okay, that's now. Time for the future.
I want to keep making more sky pirates. I want to make new, and more, and different sky pirates. We'll make some billionaire bad guys, and a mountaintop hideaway.
We'll make video games, and maybe comic books. Hell, maybe I'll just do a Skypirate TV show.
@ajroach42 I'm here for ALL of this!
@ajroach42 Have you tried doing any stop motion animation with any of your creations? I think that could be really fun!
@ajroach42 imagine a travelling anarchist kitchen on a blimp, stopping here and there to pick up some vegetables or dish out some soup
@jn @ajroach42 Get some sky-cycles for quick stops and lighter loads. Easier to slip away down an alleyway that way!