Wyrmworks Publishing Okay, but seriously, can tabletop roleplaying games positively impact your life and bring about transformative changes? Welcome to Gaining Advantage. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We are using tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons to help you make lives better. We finished up the Limitless Champions Kickstarter, and most of the rewards are available on our website. We did just barely fund, and the minis are coming soon. We're just finishing up some last touches, little repairs on things to give you the best possible options that you can have, and we have some exciting announcements coming, but we're still working out the details before those come out. So keep following us. Wyrmworks Publishing Before we get to our interview, a little content warning. This episode covers real life experiences with depression and includes the following: depression and mental health struggles, bullying and mistreatment, mentions of suicide, references to violence and death, sensitive topics related to discrimination, and discussions about past traumatic experiences. It's about overcoming those things, but if those discussions are hard for you then just go ahead and hit the subscribe button or subscribe using your podcatcher and then just come back next month. Thanks. Wyrmworks Publishing Now let's get to the interview. Wyrmworks Publishing We talk a lot around here about making lives better with tabletop roleplaying games. Today we have a guest who has a firsthand story of what that looks like. I'd like to welcome Bill Lemond. Bill Lemmond LeMOND. It's okay, we spell it one way we say it another way. It's our fault. But so yes. Wyrmworks Publishing How long have you been playing TTRPGs? And what games do you play? Bill Lemmond Oh, boy. Well, let's see. I played three evenings of first edition D&D back in 1977. And if I knew then what I know now which is what I thought I wouldn't have time for fun, I have school. The fun is what made it possible for me to go back to college in 2000 and succeed for a change. But I started regular weekly roleplaying back in December 96. Because a couple of my friends—they became my friends—came to a nice but boring meeting of a fan club and invited us to come join the VCU science fiction and fantasy guild. Their object was they were going to alternate Saturdays with gaming and planning a convention for the Richmond area. The convention never happened because you needed pre-registration money to attract special guests. You needed a special guests to attract pre-registration money. And that's when I made up my mind that I would volunteer for any and all local events. So I can't afford to travel. But I would support them and I've been a convention volunteer and staffer for that long. But I had been still gaming with that same group of people with a few additions and only a couple of people who've moved to other areas and it took a couple years, but one night in around 1998, I realized, "Hey, I don't feel bad!" My next thought was, "Don't jinx it!" And I proceeded to not feel bad, because for the first time in my life, I had a few hours every week where I could completely forget about the rest of my life and just have fun. That ability to mentally and emotionally relax. also gave me something to look forward to all during the rest of the week. And I added a second group and was playing during the week, on an evening. And there would be there was a local convention that happened once a year and I think they added a couple other weekends now and then. So I hit critical mass around 1997, 1998 and my case manager at the Virginia Department of Rehab Services noticed before I did that I was ready to go back to college! Wyrmworks Publishing Wow. That's amazing. So what aspects of of the roleplaying games and what what really do you feel? made the difference? Bill Lemmond Well is definitely not the, "And now we will…the game will come to a screeching halt and we will spend an hour looking through the books." No, it was the jokes. I remember one time well into my recovery—it's now going on 24 years. They they took timeout for an hour to figure out in gaming terms what it would cost to make beer and whiskey because that's what the local peaceful kobolds were getting as gifts to maintain the peace in their area. And we were restoring that. The the old kobold who had been the driving, Guiding Light had passed away. Some hotheads decided, "We don't need peace!" Well of course they got themselves killed, because that's what happens to violent people. Bill Lemmond And as I've just I've always been glad to always bring something to work on—drawing, schoolwork. I did all of my calculus homework for two terms during tabletop roleplaying sessions, superhero roleplaying, because it used a different part of my brain. I could be doing my homework, and it's like, "Bill, it's your turn." I put down my pencil. I do my turn. I look back. I see exactly where I left off. I had an average of over 100% both terms counting extra credit work. And I enjoyed it. It's the jokes really. It's like one of the…there are a couple of standout people: Mark and Donald. Donald was the first very funny person I've met in gaming. There are a couple of Star Wars jokes. It's like, "Okay, we have I have a friend who's really turned over a new leaf, but he used to be the laziest GM. He would show up an hour late for his own game and keep us waiting for another hour while he prepared. And there was one day where our group of Star Wars characters is going through an Ice Cavern. Okay, it's ice that has a lava river flowing through it. This is so that we have to walk along the narrow, slippery ledge with water melt but on the other side is this wide open field so all the hovering battle droids can maneuver to get shots on us. So we're moving along single file. The lava river is, we're told, too wide for the Jedi to jump across it. Can't do that." So we're very carefully moving along. Nobody falls into the lava. And at one point Donald says, "Hey, I know what this reminds me of. It's a shooting gallery, and we're the ducks!" So I actually created a comic strip of that joke for the volunteer comic strip I made for the VCU student newspaper for five years. So it's just stuff like that—countless jokes. There was another sci fi game where we're whatever place we'd gone to, they just did a lot of genetic engineering in the in the natural way by crossbreeding. They crossed peas and corn. I won't say what they came up with. But you could probably figure out. Wyrmworks Publishing You know, been talking…it's been a topic of conversation in my house that the D&D movie. Bill Lemmond I haven't seen it. I've got to see it. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay, well, I won't spoil it. It's one Bill Lemmond Oh, no, don't worry. Spoilers do not bother me. Okay. Not bother me at all. I've heard them all. Wyrmworks Publishing So well. I mean, this was just we've talked about how, you know, some people sort of complain that there's too much comedy. It feels like Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Yeah, and I said, "You know what, I was really hoping for it. And I understand why they didn't do it. And I don't disagree with their decision. But I was really hoping for sort of a Princess Bride kind of thing where it's mostly focused on what is going on in the game world, but every once in a while, it kind of takes you out or you know, something happens and then all of a sudden you get the DM breaking in: Are you sure you want to do that?" Bill Lemmond Kid and the grandfather? Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah Bill Lemmond Scenes…oh yeah, the host segments sort of, Wyrmworks Publishing but I mean, Bill Lemmond I think I realized what it is. I used to used to be the only people where if I heard the sound of laughter I can move towards them and feel safe was my dad's fighter pilot buddies. It used to be that I just didn't trust people who were laughing and telling jokes, because I…my experience was at some point I would become the joke. And I used to be drawn towards kind of dystopic stories because it made me feel like I was I was being observed, that I was being acknowledged, sad stories for my sad life. And now, for health reasons. I stay away from news. I stick to happy funny, I mean, happy, funny content. Because I've discovered that's what I need. That's what made me mentally and emotionally healthy. And I can acknowledge that there's other stuff that's very well done. It's just not for me. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, know, and that's a really good point. You know, it may be that, you know, I think about this with my kids. My daughter was complaining about having nightmares, and then she always likes to listen to a different song right after I tuck her into bed, and and she goes Bill Lemmond She wasn't listening to a lot about Mr. Bear,. was she? Like, I think that's what is her stage name? The birthday clown for all ages. What does she call herself though? It's it's such a funny song. It sounds so nice and cute. And suddenly Mr. Bear is scary. But Mr. Bear can't protect you for the scary things. It's like but go ahead. I'm sorry. Wyrmworks Publishing Sure. So she says, so Dad I. I discovered this song and I was wondering if I could you know, listen to it as I go to bed. And it was "What's This" from Nightmare Before Christmas. And I said, "No." "Why?" Because you're, like, it has the word nightmare right in the in the name of the movie. And, and the whole song is pretty gruesome. And you're not going to listen to that and have that be the last thing you hear before you drift off to sleep! Bill Lemmond To wake up to maybe to wake up to when you're fully recharged, you've got lots of energy and you've got the rest of the day to just contemplate it. and process it. Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing So yeah, I found that I mean, when I'm am designing. I, I enjoy I get a lot of ideas for horror stories. And, and it seems like undead are just really easy to incorporate. But at the same time, I know that I have to, if I spend too much time working on a story like that,. It starts to affect me and and so Bill Lemmond Oh, I created a character from my comic strip, Count Veto the Cat Vampire. He, he's introduced walking along, and some teasers saying like, "Oh, what do you took out of Kitty vampire?" and he says, "Oh, go jump in a lake," and the guy jumps in the lake, and like, "Darn it. My mind control powers are out of control." So he goes to the pizza place, which is what the comic strip was originally about. Pizza from scratch. Scratch about cats running a pizza place he orders garlic pizza. Garlic doesn't hurt him. It just controls his mind control powers. So you say, "More! More! More!" And finally the waitress says, "Have you Haven't you had enough?" "I guess I have!" And another time he takes Altoids to boost his mind control power so he can get a bunch of people past the Nazis into Switzerland. "These aren't the people you were looking for." There he goes again. One of my inspirations. Wyrmworks Publishing What's your cat's name? Bill Lemmond He is named Tattoine. He was named by Star Wars fans because he has a light sandy coat. I've had him for about 16 years. His mother was something of a rescue. She was originally supposed to be a cat trade but turned into a cat rescue, so briefly, I had her her surprise two kittens which were born in my bedroom, so that I smell like home and mom to him. And three adult cats. Eventually a former roommate, one of my best roommates, came and got his cat and then, oh, it was for adult cats briefly. One of them passed away then the other one passed away. She passed away last year after a very long, happy life. And finally I'm getting paid decently. It took me 40 years just to rise to lower middle class, but now I can afford his medicine. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, that's always a challenge. So anything else about how roleplaying games have affected you? How you your outlook on life, your just experience, how do you feel? Bill Lemmond Well, it's mostly given me a break from everything else. And since then, I've been I've been able to deal with the rest of my life better. So for instance, I was able to go back to college and do well, and it's good to have finally completed a bachelor's degree, but what really is what I need to do with my life is to create comic strips. I won local, state, regional and national awards for my comics. And I forget who else said that they're they're far more creative when they're happy. I am definitely a lot more creative, being happy. I think the connection between creativity and depression is what we do to keep from going back into depression. I start every day at least an hour earlier than I would have to otherwise. So I can start every day doing something fun. I work very hard to stay in my happy place using what the Wellness Recovery Action Plan refers to as my wellness toolbox. And roleplaying is definitely part of that. I'm not the greatest role player I still struggle to come up with names for characters. Usually I crib from the list of fake staff members for the Car Talk program. I think because of my attention deficit, I tend to forget details about my characters and have to keep consulting my character sheets like my…"What is my background?" Like, "Oh right, I have this." GURPS always included. When Lee was running GURPS, he would also include five extra build points as one point quirks. So you had five quirks. And that was always interesting, and occasionally I can remember them. My friend Donald did a better job of remembering that one of my characters was a prankster. There was one time in game where my Kuo-toan ninja went through a golf club putting smiley face stickers on everybody's backs. Wyrmworks Publishing I think you make a really good point about creativity and happiness. And I find that a lot of times I'll have an idea that may well be a good idea. But my depression kicks in and says, "No, no, everyone's gonna hate that. That's a terrible idea. And so…" Bill Lemmond I had that thought about drawing cats doing things that humans do. I drew up there was a comic shop that I still go to that had an art contest with a theme, "kitty cats in peril." I didn't want to show cats getting in real trouble. So I drew a picture of cats, making pizza and a runaway cart about to run over the tails and a couple of cats who were arguing over a can of anchovies or something like that. And they kept getting fat eating cheese that was being shredded. And I expected people to say like, "Cats can't do that. Why are you drawing stupid stuff like that?" But people loved it. I was shocked that people actually liked this stuff. Of course, now I know better. Yes, of course people like cats and of course people like cats pretending to do things like riding invisible bicycles. So, yeah, that was, I think, was probably my experience of people's negativity in the past that I expected to run into negativity over that. I'm glad I went ahead and tried it anyway. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah. And that's a really important message. It it's something I need to constantly tell myself or I would never get anything done. So if those who are watching and listening Bill Lemmond Always remember that even pet rocks made some people happy. Yeah, that was a really dumb idea. It was totally bogus. But I think it's amazing that somebody actually made money from pet rocks rather than just go out and adopt a rock. You don't have to paint it. It's just a rock. I'm sorry, where's that coming from? That's one of my alarms. I haven't set roughly every half hour to keep me cognizant that time is passing. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright. So you just rescued a djinni from the hands of an efreeti, and it offers you three wishes to make the world better. What do you wish for? Bill Lemmond Hmm, let's see. I've, because I want everybody to get along, I have come up with what I call ruining what you love and like comics, like the Star Girl show they, you know, "I told you we shouldn't have called ourselves the Injustice Society. Nobody understands we're fighting against injustice!" and all they want to do with their giant antenna is to send the message, "You're okay." And they send it through dogs and cats. So it deals with the, what's it called? impostor syndrome and it deals with narcissists. You bring some people, the narcissists, down in their self-estimation, bring everybody else up. Kind of like, "Okay, send that out into the world. send out the message that you're okay." Bill Lemmond Let's see. Getting people to realize that we're all like the blind people with the elephant. where the story ends at the wrong point. It ends with them disagreeing and arguing over what an elephant is. But what should happen in the next few moments as they all realize, "Okay, if we all shift a little bit to one side, oh, now I see what I'm feeling, what you felt. It's the same elephant. We can compare notes. We need different perspectives." Research has found that 30% of everybody's political leanings are genetic. That's a that's not the the majority of it but that's a really big part to be naturally selected. And it's basically saying that nature has selected for liberals and conservatives. Conservatives are really good at spotting threats. Liberals are really good at evaluating threats. So they're, they naturally need each other. Liberals are going along, "La-de-dah, I'm oblivious." Conservative says, "Look at that!" And the liberal says, "Yes, that's serious, but not that thing. That one is much more important than that one." And they go back and forth. And it's sort of like triangulating with a compass. You take a bunch of readings, and the more readings you take, the better approximation of reality we can get. And we should always remember the difference between perception and reality. There's no such thing as an alternative fact. Facts exist apart from human thinking. And maybe we find them and we'll be a lot closer to find them. Solomon's, you can take your pick on translation, he either said there's safety in much council or many counselors. Basically, "Listen to each other." That would be another wish. Really listen to each other and and take to heart what each other says, and people will disagree we should not. I can remember, only got to be in this professor's class for one day because I'd made the mistake of buying the textbook and he wasn't using the textbook and I got transferred to another section but he was telling his class. "Don't get all your information from one source. Get the Washington Post and The New York Times or or the Washington Times and The Washington Post. Read them both," and I find that the political extremes basically tell on themselves. If you compare and you can figure out like, "Oh, they left that out," like saying that those people are wrong and insane is not the same as saying they're wrong and I will explain why I believe that when you say they're "and insane," that's Soviet. That's what the Soviets did to the people who disagreed with them. They they labeled them as crazy, and they they locked them up. And most of people realized, "Oh, they're not crazy, but we're not gonna come out and say so because those people are in charge to lock us up too." So I guess that's two. Tell everybody they're okay. Tell everybody, because everybody's okay, use a lot of sources for advice. Of course, the classic cheat is the third wishes to wish for three more wishes, but probably cheating. I never saw the episode of The X Files because it was too much of a downer show. I love the episodes with the lone gunman. The funny episodes were great. I wish there were more of those. But I didn't see the one where Mulder met up with a genie. He wished for peace on earth and everybody disappeared and I think eventually he wished for the genie's freedom. Well, I've already freed the genie. I guess for the third wish I'd asked the genie, "What would you wish for? Now you've listened to so many wishes. You've heard good bad and indifferent wishes. What would you wish for?" Again, trying. I'm already, the second wish is already working. I'm asking for advice, and I'm genuinely seeking advice. I've been told by my doctor for 20 years I'm unusually good at listening to correction and making recommended changes. Maybe because I experienced so much failure early on. Learn to question myself. I do not have an overdeveloped ego. It's taken me a long time to be impressed with myself. Wyrmworks Publishing You know those, when people say, "If you could, if you could sit down and have lunch and talk to any person, you know, who would it be," or whatever. And, and my thought is always someone who has been very successful and then has had catastrophic failure. And because I wanted to hear from them Bill Lemmond That's an interesting criteria. Yeah. And it doesn't matter so much which order those happened, or if they go back and forth. Wyrmworks Publishing Right. Yeah. And especially if they've had catastrophic failure and then came back from it, you know, because I want to know, "Okay, so, you know, what did you learn how to, how did the failure happen? You know what have you learned to, you know, to avoid it?" And especially if they came back from it, "How did you, how did you deal with that, you know, how are you how are you making sure that doesn't happen again?" you know, things like that. It's, I think that that would be you know, success. To me, success isn't all that difficult to to achieve as long as you you know, really focus on something and have realistic expectations and you're willing to learn and make that your top priority along the way and you know, that there's pretty… tools and I mean, there's certainly an element of luck or chance or whatever term you want to use for it. That's part of it and unquestionably, but boy not blowing the thing up is seems like the real challenge keeping it going, maintaining and so, but I think that you're spot on when it comes to listening to people. And you know, and learning and hearing from different perspectives and and so yeah, no, absolutely. So. So with that in mind, what one message would you like to give gamers who are struggling? Bill Lemmond Right now, I'm thinking something credited to WC Fields. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, then quit Don't be an ass about it." It's important to know when to quit, and it's important to know when to quit quitting. I quit high school at a really good time. I quit quitting a year later. I quit college after one semester, because I had given it everything I had, and I still end up on academic probation. A couple decades later, I quit quitting went back to college at the right time. Maybe not a perfect time, but it was plenty good. I graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's in economics, a minor in Computer Science. I did switch those and the University Honors Program. But back in 78, I had a D average thanks to completely whipping freshman English because I couldn't write anything to satisfy myself. Don't beat your head against a brick wall. Find a way around it. I'm now remembering something attributed to Abraham Lincoln when he was briefly in some equivalent of the National Guard. He was supposed to be directing a formation. They came up to a wall and rather than the thing that you're taught where everybody goes 45 degrees and so on, he said fall out and fall in on the other side of the wall. That was thinking outside the box. That was very efficient. It was a bit chaotic. It was kind of like what one humorous…I love it when people are funny in the military are referred to our group of ROTC Cadets back in 78 as a columnar blob. Don't completely give up. I never completely gave up. I got through 30 years of clinical depression by wishing for terminal illness. I didn't have a terminal illness. It';s like Terry Pratchet talking about how you can keep people going with Jam Tomorrow instead of Jam today. And that kept me going. I actually made a comic strip about how, if I'd been the first school shooter, I would've made the people who cared about me sad and not gotten all the bad guys and then the rest of the bad guys being happy about me being put away or me killing myself with my last bullet or something like that, instead I just wished for a terminal illness. But I didn't just do that. I kept looking around for what would make a difference, what would get me out of being so sad. I kept looking around. I joined a club on the second invitation, like, "OK, they're boring, but they're nice." And that put me in the right place and time to meet the two guys who invited me to come to their roleplaying group. I knew I needed to have more fun. I kept was keeping after the boring group, said, "Could we get together more than once a month? Could we actually do something fun?" And they would just kind of like, "Well, that's nice," and then completely ignore the thought, but this other group, they did not set out to do good. They weren't trying to give people good mental health. They were just trying to have fun, and they invited me along and accepted me. Keep looking for your people. And don't settle for…Just don't settle for feeling bad. You don't have to. I know. It's, it's going to seem just ridiculously unrealistic if somebody says it does get better, but it can. It doesn't do it magically on its own. You've got to work at it to start pulling at the at a thread of the knotty problem and and sometimes you have to turn around and go back the other way if you're if you're getting further lost, going forward is not going to help. Sometimes you have to turn around. Seek lots of advice. But beware of people who are just negative, critical or mean. Stay away from mean people. No matter what else they offer you, it's not worth being around mean people. No matter how many great toys they have, it's not worth playing with great toys with mean people. It's just not worth it. Wyrmworks Publishing So what what message would you like to give gamers who want to help those who are struggling? Bill Lemmond Be welcoming. um, My friends have had to put up with my wandering mind. They let me bring a laptop to gaming or I take notes. I know that some GMs don't want anybody bringing a laptop or anything like that, because they think it's distracting. It's sometimes the only thing that keeps me focused on the game because of my extreme attention deficit. Be welcoming. Be curious. Ask them about themselves. You don't have to ask a lot. Focus on the game. Focus on having fun. Make sure that the new people are having fun. Ask them what they like to do. Ask to let them know that this is chance to be somebody they don't get to be usually. I have actually brought a couple of people. I brought three people into gaming. One I spent the next several years apologizing to the rest of the group for bringing that person. Another liked it well enough but dropped out. He's still a friend. He took a dislike to one of the other group members. But the third person, Rhonda has said she owes me a great karmic debt. She got to live what was a lifetime wish. She got to play Mighty Isis, the Saturday morning live action kids show character. She got to play Isis, and she has loved roleplaying. She has the last year or so been running Curse of Strahd. And another thing, let the comedy happen. There have been a couple of times where the GM has said like, "We're going I'm trying to run a serious game here." But when we tried to run a horror game, and we turned it into comedy, he didn't try to stop it. He didn't try to rein us in. He's like, "Oh well this is our group." Comedy is good. There may be times when somebody will be crying because something just got opened up. I like the thing that some groups are not doing where people can say there are certain things they just can't deal with. I think some groups have a little card with an X on it where people can just put out their x cards. They're like, "Oh, we got to stop what we're doing here." Maybe consult, "Okay, what is it specifically?" Find out and, Look, we don't do that." I would not want to say see bullying happen between characters in a game where the bullying is not stopped, not punished. Recently we've had a session where our group of characters ran into a group of people who don't keep slaves, but they trade them. We're not happy with it. We don't immediately start fighting these people. It's not fully resolved. We all hate slavery. We can't always do something immediately about it. But we do get to process it. We do get to express ourselves Bill Lemmond Make sure everybody is comfortable. That's important. One thing we've we've done with my main gaming group because of one particular person. It's also one of the funniest people. He's politically cranky. He has kind of dived into one particular political extreme, and he thinks that he he has said, "Oh, I listen to a variety of opinions." It's like this the scene in The Blues Brothers. "We have both kinds of music: Country and Western." Like, so we don't talk about politics when he's around. We can't, because he just gets puffy. It's kind of sad that way. I really wish he would see that. He's been sold the idea that the other people are the enemy, not the other blind people around the elephant. It's unfortunate, but try to make people comfortable. Compromise. Oh, good grief. One time I cited Alistair Cooke, naturalized American citizen from the UK, who said America's three great principles are compromise compromise compromise. And that cranky guy said bullshit bullshit bullshit right away. I was done. What I should have done is I should have packed up my stuff and driven home stranding him in the city, small town where the gaming shop was, like you know the GM can give you a ride home and you can think about yourself. Eventually apologize, but I don't think he ever understood exactly why he was so wrong. Compromise is not an evil thing. It's a result of the different people around the elephant. comparing notes and using the group wisdom to come up with the least bad course. So don't be afraid to compromise. Keep people comfortable. be welcoming, have fun, more than anything else. Make sure everybody is having fun. And there it there are ways for everybody to have fun. It's not going to be like what happened in the NCO Academy where I was the only one who brought all 100 things or whatever you were supposed to bring. And because we had some real cavemen, the only thing we could have is a uniform footlocker display was one pair of rolled up socks. That's the only thing that everybody had one extra pair of rolled up socks. Yeah, it won't be that bad. You won't have to compromise like that. That was the least common denominator, not compromise. But they, what I would have done is like every put up, everybody put up what you've got. And we'll see how we all approach this. And see okay, it is possible to have everything this guy brought everything is possible to be a functional person with only one extra pair of rolled up socks. Let's learn what we each of us has to offer. That's what I would have done. But then again, there were people in the National Guard who would say, "He's so smart, he's dumb," because my disabilities hadn't been diagnosed. But people will come to you in all shapes and sizes, all different mental capacities. You can even make room for somebody who's nonverbal because there's writing. There's one of those little boards with the words on it they can point to. I've been around people who struggle to speak because of cerebral palsy. It's still worth listening to them. They'll come up with stuff that nobody else would have come up with because they've had nothing but their imaginations to feel free in. So be welcoming. Make sure everybody's having fun. Keep the focus on having fun. My gaming groups were never about trying to provide mental emotional healing. They just did it because they were focused on fun for everyone. Yeah, yeah. Don't punch down. Yeah, yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing I say it's a game. So if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong. Bill Lemmond Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, the the gaming police are not going to come after you if you change some things. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so do you have any projects that you're working on that, you want to talk about? Bill Lemmond Projects? Well, I've got a couple of friends working on building a website for my comics. I do want to get back to producing comics on a regular basis. I discovered something called Inktober back in 2019, which is 31 One word drawing prompts, one for each day in October. It got me back to drawing again. I created over 300 comic strips in five years, volunteer cartooning for the VCU student newspaper. And in the next nine years, I might have created 30 drawings because I no longer had a group of kids depending on me for producing something. I never missed deadline in five years. My main project is to get back to cartooning on a regular weekly basis. I've I've only occasionally touched on politics and I've I've aimed at being politically neutral. I want to just inspire people to take advantage of the full range of blind people around the elephant. The extremes on both ends. It's diminishing returns, you get less more from one more and becoming more extreme. You get less good and more bad out of that. So the far extremes, I suspect that they might be sort of like how sickle cell trait protects you from much of the ill effects of malaria. But if you get two copies of the gene, you end up with sickle cell anemia. I suspect racism may be a genetic extreme of the tendency for humans to have an in group and an outgroup. My in group is all the non-mean people, everybody who would not laugh because they made somebody cry. That's my in group, all shapes and sizes, incomes, education levels, just as long as you're not mean, you're my people. So I want to get people to think more. Somebody said they want to comfort the comfortless and discomfort the comfortable. I think that's a pretty good guide. Not for every last effort. I don't want to ever punch down with comedy, but it's important to me to…comedy is very important to me. I have an earned income of only about 17,000 a year thanks to SSDI and help from family and friends. I'm finally lower middle class, and I love the "How to Money" podcast. It's fun. It's informative, and they always talk about the one thing they splurge on, craft beer in their cases. I support the riffing arts, MST3k, Rifftrax, Incognito Cinema Warriors, Down in Front Live out of Chicago, Master Pancakes here out of Austin, Dumb Industries with Mary Jo Trace and Frank, Cinematic Titanic, (Oop, there goes another alarm.) I'm it's it's something that keeps me going, and it keeps other people going too, so I think I probably give about $30 a month in Twitch subscriptions and Patreon payments. Don't forget Josh Way. He is one of the people I discovered through Rifftrax Iris sections. I stay in touch with friends this way. I'm in Twitch chat. I'm in little communities. We kind of riff along there's there's also Mr. Lobo, a horror host of decades of experience doing funny stuff on cinema. Cinema Insomnia on Twitch. I recommend him, and they need your support. Down in Front Live is currently on hiatus because Twitch said, "Ope, you can't do that," to something it was just a little too graphic the the fake looking organ in a horror movie were too much. They've got a one month timeout, but they only get maybe half a dozen people watching them in twitch in their chat. Friday nights at nine Eastern eight Central, they could use your support Down in Front Live. My project is to support those people. I want to get to cartooning. I'm going to keep my part time janitor job because it's excellent exercise. I walk about two and a half miles every workday. I get to listen to podcasts while I'm cleaning buildings, so I'm never bored, and it's a company that's dedicated to helping people with disabilities. So I finally have an employer that I might be able to stick with. Wyrmworks Publishing Nice. Alright, so we will have any contact information you want in the shownotes. Where's the one best place that you'd like people to learn more about you or to contact you? Bill Lemmond Well, let's see. I tend to forget that social media exists. I have a hard time remembering to check Facebook and Twitter, though I do have if you look for some variation on Pastshelfdate in twitch and Twitter, passedshelfdate and Twitter it's PastshelfdateJr because I got hacked because Facebook got hacked and with my attention deficit I was reusing a password. That's Jr not spelled out Jr. So PastshelfdateJr on Twitch and Twitter. I mean, if those mixed up I'm on Facebook as I think it's William B Lemmond or WP Lemmond I'm not sure what. I don't know if it's advisable to give out an email. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, probably not. Bill Lemmond I made the mistake of having just an email address on the first website I built myself. I now understand why sites use email forms, because they're harder to hack and you can build in a Captcha for stuff like that. Every October I post all my completed drawings under the hashtag Inktober and the year. Those are always a lot of fun. Even if I say so myself, I've had lots of people say they really love my drawings. So I'm most active in October. I can be found Down in Front Live, and they come back on every Friday night. I try to be part of Cinema Insomnia. They're on like Saturday nights, Monday nights and Wednesday nights on Twitch. Now, sometimes I'm able to catch Master Pancake Theater out of Austin, Texas. Bill Lemmond I try to go where the the funny stuff is. And I try to contribute. I was told by somebody who runs a Rocky Horror shadow cast that I've come up with stuff that nobody else has. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, well, Bill, thanks for so much so much for coming on the show for sharing your story with us and everyone check out the links in the show notes. Bill Lemmond Bye Dale. Happy to have finally met you. Wyrmworks Publishing That was amazing. 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