Mailbags and memories

Hi folks,

Wow… what a week last week was! Writing this, we’ve barely recovered from our celebration with you all yesterday… but we’ll get to that.

First, on Wednesday, we closed the main campaign of Rusty Quill Gaming. We’re so glad you enjoyed the ending and so thankful that you’ve taken this (long) journey with us. Because of some particularly dedicated fans, RQG trended on Tumblr for three days, and our social media feeds were filled with messages of farewell. We actually received so many comments from Patreon alone that we’re going to continue to share them over the next few weeks as the epilogues (yes, you read the plural correctly) air. So, if you didn’t see your comment appear on our Twitter last week, it may still be posted sometime in the future. We also shared an anonymised copy of all of your comments to the whole of the RQ team, and I wanted to pass on their heartfelt thanks for your kind messages.

After that ending (and no spoilers in the comments!), we’re sure that you have plenty of questions – so you’ll be pleased to hear that there are three RQG epilogues. One is being released this week, and the next two in the new year, after three holiday specials. And, if you’d like to put your questions to the cast and Alex, I’m pleased to announce that the RQG mailbag is now open! The mailbag will be open until 2nd January 2022 and Patreons are getting early access – we’ll open it to the public later this week. To send us your questions, simply fill in this form. We know it’s been a really long time since we last opened the RQG mailbag, so we know you have a lot to ask!

Next up, this weekend, it was our annual charity event Gaming & Giving. Writing this, we’ve barely recovered, but we are so grateful to everyone who watched the stream and everyone that donated, meaning we exceeded our target of £20,000. This money will be split between three incredible charities, Mermaids, ActionAid and Centrepoint. We had so much fun this year and hope you did too. The money you’ve raised will make a real difference to people’s lives around the world. If you missed any of the stream, you can still watch the VODs over on our Twitch account.

Something you might have missed in all the RQGG excitement was that we launched our Instagram account! We’ve had the account for a while, but it’s been very quiet over there until now! We’ll be posting there more regularly from now on so if you’d like to follow us, you can find us here, or by searching the username rustyquilluk on Instagram.

Finally, last week we launched so much merch! If you need any last-minute gift ideas, we should now have you covered! The new designs included a commemorative ‘but we respect his craft’ design, by the talented Mike Jefferies, featuring a certain pug, a ‘brorb’ and some mechanical tentacles. We’ve got more RQG designs to be released as the epilogues come out, so watch this space!

[Image description: bold yellow serif text reads: “But we respect his craft”. Blue tinged cogs, pipes and mechanical tentacles are in the background, as well as a small pile of books and a d20 dice. In the foreground sits a distinguished-looking pug in a barrister’s outfit.]

Mike was also kind enough to create some highly-requested Stellar Firma merchandise – if you now want to advertise everyone’s favourite slurry-based café or show your allegiance to the other Stellar Firma Inc. A.I., A.L.E.X., now you can!

[Image description: Two designs laid out on a white rectangle. The left-hand one is the words “Ooh Tickly” in a cursive, brush font, and the Stellar Firma logo in the top right. The design on the right is a pixelated hermit crab with a teacup for a shell. Bold, pixelated lettering says “David’s Place”.]

We also finally completed the set of tarot-inspired Magnus Archives fears, designed by the brilliant artist, Grace Holsten. These have been regularly requested since we released the first three back in March, so I’m so glad Grace agreed to complete the set for us.

[Image description: 12 tarot inspired designs laid out on a white background. On the top row, left to right: The web (a green design featuring a tape cassette and a many-fingered hand), The stranger (a pink design featuring a calliope, puppets and a faceless monster), The spiral (an orange design featuring endless twisting staircases, a door and fractal patterns), the slaughter (a purple design featuring a many-faced soldier and a heart with three daggers inside it), The lonely (a blue design with an astronaut sits in an empty manor house with fog pouring through the windows), The flesh (an orange design with a giant pig and monstrous plants). On the bottom row, left to right: The buried (an orange design with a coffin and two hands reaching for each other), The extinction (a purple design where a body made of garbage hangs upside-down from a metal tower), The dark (a blue design featuring a broken light bulb and an eclipse), The Hunt (a pink design where a monstrous hand holds a cup of spilling liquid), The corruption (a purple design with a masked feature and a syringe), The vast (a green design with a giant hand reaching towards a small diver).]

Some of these designs will be exclusive to Teepublic for a short while, however they will all come to Redbubble in the near future.

Looking ahead to this week, as well as the first RQG epilogue, on Enthusigasm we’ll be discussing Opera! This is a lovely, informative episode featuring host Helen Gould, Anil Godigamuwe, Lowri Ann Davies and Katie Seaton. Then on Friday, if you enjoyed the Magnus trivia crossword (or the Rusty Riddles from RQGG!), we have a Stellar Firma treat for you! Check back on Friday to find out more.

To continue our series of interviews from our around podcasting, I’m delighted that we spoke to Stephanie Resendes and Micah Rodriguez, co-creators and directors of How it Ends. You can listen to How it Ends at this link, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Tell us who you are and a bit about your podcast.

Two years ago, Micah Jones set out to record a podcast about her recurring nightmares. All she wanted was to finally get some sleep. Instead, unnerving coincidences began to pile up and someone from her past resurfaced to recount a story that upended her world. Now she and her friends are determined to discover the truth, even if it costs them everything. They soon find out… sometimes dreams are not dreams at all, they’re memories.

While the story is completely fictional, we put a lot of ourselves into the details of the story. The main characters all live in Providence, Rhode Island where Stephanie was raised and where both of us currently live. The town in New Jersey that Micah the character is from (and that gets referenced and visited throughout the course of the show) is where Micah grew up.

Certain parks, bars, restaurants, and anecdotes are also taken from our lives, though all the actual events in our story are fictionalized or used in a fictional manner. And we’ve asked our super talented voice actors to help inform their characters as well. So, essentially, not only is our podcast a slow-burn mystery/thriller, it’s also a love letter to our home cities and the people we care about.

What got you into podcasting?

We’re both writers and early in our friendship one of the things we connected over was audiodrama podcasts. One day we were talking about how a lot of the stories dive right into the mystery or horror elements of the story, but we never get fully introduced to the characters.

We were left wanting when it came to connections with the characters—we wanted to know them, understand their motives, their strengths, their flaws. We want to root for them when something great happens, worry when they are in danger, and yell when they are making a bad decision. So we wrote the story we hoped to hear.

Without any spoilers, what’s something you’re most proud of within your podcast?

Stephanie: Honestly, the fact that we were even able to make it at all. We are as indie as it gets and have hit many bumps in the road, but it has also been a really fun creative outlet. We’ve DIYed and scraped together a lot of things behind the scenes, yet have still managed to put together a really great story with the help of our amazing voice actors and audio engineer.

Micah: I am most proud of the fact that the friendships we dreamed up when creating Micah, Elia, and Devon translate when listening. I’m proud of how real they feel, how natural their laughter sounds, and how we are able to demonstrate that friendships are complicated but so worthy of the time and effort they take to maintain.

If you could hang out with any cartoon character, who would you choose and why?

Stephanie: Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus. I know wherever we’d go or whatever we’d do it would be a good time, educational, and she’d be dressed on theme.

Micah: It’s tough to narrow it down so… I’m not going to. I’d like to hang out with Sokka and Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender and Ezran and Rayla from the Dragon Prince. I feel like that whole group would get along well.

Finally, here is our weekly transcript update. As always, this is available on our website.

Here is our Eleventh weekly transcript update.

Update 06/12/2021

Enthusigasm continues to release on time with transcripts.

Our chosen transcription company now has all 218 episodes of Rusty Quill Gaming, and over 160 are completed and received. Whilst these transcripts are generally good, we do want to take the time to let you know that there are likely to be some small errors, particularly related to gaming jargon and confusion over who is speaking (especially during cross talk).

We will be releasing the transcripts in January but we will endeavour to make amendments and improvements after the initial public launch as errors are identified. However, the transcripts are high-quality, and the error rate is still well within the generally accepted range for paid transcription work on complex improvised speech of this kind.

We’ll publish another post on transcripts next week, and as always, we really appreciate your support.

Here is our full schedule for this week:

Tue 7th December

RQG – Epilogue Part 1 (Patreon) (4pm GMT)

Wed 8th December

RQG – Epilogue Part 1 (Public) (4pm GMT)

Thu 9th December

EGSM 18 – Opera (Extended Cut) (Patreon) (4pm GMT)

Fri 10th December

CITIZENS+ Bonus – STL Hidden Trivia Puzzle (4pm GMT)

EGSM 18 – Opera (Public) (4pm GMT)

Have a good week all!

The Rusty Quill team