Be Kind

BROOKLYN NINE-NINE (2013 - 2021) Season 2 | Episode 10 "The Pontiac Bandit Returns"

This week, let’s check out some artists whose work has defined an RPG. What do I mean by that? Well, how about we start with Simon Stålenhag.

Stålenhag is the author and illustrator of Tales from the Loop (2014), a dreamy story from an 1980s that never was, filled with strange technology and robots and the occasional dinosaur. I love this stuff. Yes, it is nostalgia in paint, but it is also something else too, something hard to pin down. There is such a deep melancholy here. There’s tension in the dimming blues of dusk, in the way people always seem to stand with their back to us, in the way all these wonders of technology lie abandoned in the fields. There are so many mysteries in the gathering shadows. No wonder Free League developed a tabletop RPG out of it (and Amazon a TV series)!

Meditative TV

Tales from the Loop // Mushishi // Joe Pera Talks with You

“Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life's experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer "to" anyone or anything, but prayer "about" everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.”