J Curcio – Medium

Apr 25

Spring 2022

Updates on music, art, and publishing — via public post on my Patreon — It’s been a little while since I’ve done a rundown of what I’ve been working on… I’m not sure if “process and objectives” is interesting to those of you who aren’t artists … a majority my time is spent either thinking about it or doing it, so clearly it is…

Announcements

5 min read

Published in Modern Mythology

·Mar 25

“Nothing Is True”

Reflections on the Race to the Bottom — I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the manic, feverish excitement I’ve read about amongst Russian journalists and artists in the early days of the fall of the USSR feels very familiar, or at any rate congruent with how I now view the times I lived through, particularly in…

History

3 min read

Published in Modern Mythology

·Mar 24

The Future is the Past

Introduction to Narrative Machines — Written 2015, published 2017 “Reality itself is material for artistic construction, and they therefore naturally demand the same absolute right to dispose of this real material as in the use of materials to realize their artistic intent in a painting, sculpture, or poem. Since the world itself is regarded as…

Philosophy

8 min read

Published in Modern Mythology

·Mar 13

Investing in the Unknown

Author’s Endnote for Tales From When I Had A Face — I just typed up final words for this book that’s been shadowing my steps for almost eight years now. What seemed a somewhat untimely story when I began now seems very much of the times… in particular, of the times that are so quickly slipping away from us, a world…

Occult

3 min read

Mar 5

Roleplaying In The Future

Fictional Visions of 2054 Geopolitics — I wanted to share some of the world development that we did in 2020 for the BLACKOUT 2054 RPG campaign, which was the first we ran in the Fallen Cycle setting. For this first foray, I wanted to jump far enough ahead of the two existing novels and play in…

Geopolitics

12 min read

Mar 1

They Got Us All Good

A comment of mine to a friend and fellow artist, commiserating about what it's like right now. Thought it may have some broader salience. For any artist who isn’t in the top %, The Algorithm is not our friend. (Maybe even then, but that’s a slightly different story a think.) …

Being An Artist

2 min read

Feb 25

Geopolitics and Myth (recap)

The Map is the Idea of the Map — This article ran today on The Guardian. I am citing it here more as an example of a type, rather than to pick on it in particular. …

Putin

15 min read

Published in Modern Mythology

·Feb 16

Mental Heuristics

I haven’t done much longform writing lately, between getting Tales From When I Had A Face out the door and really just overall shifting gears mentally. (And the pandemic). …

Philosophy

4 min read

Jan 19

Vampyr (Game pre-review)

Vampyr gives you the experience of being a vampire. Which is not necessarily so pleasant as you might assume. — This isn't a full review, though I may get around to one later. Especially since I’ve been putting a lot more thought to game design the past couple years, specifically RPGs, and I really like some of the choices they made to re-enforce a specific experience. (Which is to one…

Videogames

2 min read

Jan 1

D&D Is A Doppelganger

I am just woolgathering here on RPGs or rather, D&D in particular, but hopefully it is of interest to some of you. This train of thought is really a continuation of an earlier off-the-cuff post on my portfolio site a couple months back, that was ostensibly about “what 5E is…

Rpg

6 min read