Dear Insane Children,

The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Hate implies a strong emotional attachment between the subjects and in many cases is a component of love or at least a sort of caring. Hate cannot be related to something or someone for whom you don’t care.

Indifference is the rejection of the value of an individual or object. It is the death of care and concern. And when directed at someone who we once cared for results in resentment, disrespect, pain, and death.

No one deserves your indifference. That is a blade reserved for only the most brutal of enemies. For there is very often no coming back from the damage caused by indifference. The destruction of trust, the violence against an individual’s value.

Everyone and everything has value. Even if that value is to teach you that even Chaos has a purpose.

Omri is working on a beautiful new poster image for Alice: Asylum featuring the Red Queen and King. This preview is only a small sample of the larger image which I’ll reveal to you here exclusively on Patreon. We’ll also make this new poster image available as an art print for those of you at the art print tiers.

Heading Home Soon

Yan and I are wrapping up everything here in Thailand. Chaos (the sailboat) comes out of the water today – heading for the boat yard where she’ll get some summertime R&R. I won’t be back to see her until the next sailing season (October? November? Hard to say just yet). 

We have a busy summer ahead of us! Lots of story, art, design to tackle. And, fingers crossed, we’ll get some positive movement on the business development side of things as well!

My brain is also filling with story ideas for a collection of modern day fairytales. Look forward to sharing those ideas with you all soon. 

How are you? Is it getting warmer where you are? What’s in store for the summer? 

I’ll write again once we’re back home in Shanghai. 

From Tai-?-Land,

-American & Yan & Lili the Littlest Pirate

Dear Insane Children, 

AHOY, ye scurvy scoundrels! We be sailing, coding, swimming, and exploring! Pirate Jam 2019 is in full swing and heading into Day 7 as we make our way around Phang Nga Bay on course for Krabi Boat Lagoon. This year’s event has been absolutely fantastic! We’ve had beautiful weather, great sailing, and are hosting a really awesome group of development pirates from around the world. 

That’s the view from where we’re camped out on shore today. Our pirates are jamming on a nice collection of little games. And later today we’ll upload the first video episode of our adventures. 

Meanwhile our artists continue making progress on Alice: Asylum concepts. Norm sent along a big batch of Hatter sketches where he’s exploring various ideas for hats, hair, and …

Hourglasses? Hey! It’s Wonderland! Anything goes, even timepieces on your head!

Spider Hat, Spider Hat! I’d ride around on a Spider Hat! How about you? 

Speaking of Mechanical Monsters, Joey sends along an updated render of the Jabberwock. Rawr!

Let us know what you think of these concepts in the comments below!

Notes from Font Lord

While I am in Thailand being a Sea Pirate Captain, Font Lord is back in Shanghai taking care of Lulu and holding down the fort. He sends along these notes: 

1. Shipping seems to be taking longer than usual – with reports of people seeing their tracking going without an update for 1+ month, then suddenly updating and being delivered. So… let’s all give those shipments a little more time than usual. If your tracking link isn’t updating, don’t worry! That means it’s in transit. It will eventually update and then you’ll get your delivery. 

2. Waiting for a Survey for your 3x$35 or Chaos Necklace? Font Lord says, “please be patient – those surveys will be sent out soon!” 

Thank you, Font Lord, for the update and for taking care of Lulu while we’re away!

Arg, mateys! It’s a pirate’s life for me… now back to jamming! 

From Thailand with Scurvy,

-Captain American 

Dear Insane Children, 

Thanks to YOUR support  we were recently able to add a new  artist to our team. Norm Felchle was one of the key artists on the original Alice game and his work defined the look of most of the major characters in the Alice franchise. 

These days he’s working on exploring The Hatter as he would appear in the time of Asylum. I’ve suggested that Hatter during this period might not be so mechanically augmented. But I do think we would see him experimenting with the elements which will eventually see him transformed into the character we’re familiar with in the first two games. 

During the events of Asylum we’ll see Hatter’s actions lead to a situation – perhaps an accident or a punishment – which strips him of his flesh and replaces large portions of his body with gears and levers. In either case this is going to be a painful (and meaningful) transformation. One that leaves Hatter changed within and without. 

In Norm’s first illustrations we see Hatter’s hat has a sort-of Inspector Gadget thing going on. This might be an element in the transformation process… imagine an experiment gone wrong which leads to that hat latching onto and “integrating” itself into Hatter’s body. 

What do you think of “normal” Hatter? Any thoughts on the transformation process – how it happens and the underlying meaning contained within it? 

Get the discussion going in the comments below! 

—

Arg, Matey! 

Just a quick reminder that I am in Thailand until April 10th. I’ve spent the last couple of days prepping my boat to sail for Phuket. I leave this afternoon and will spend a night (alone!) at anchor on Kao Yao Yai before completing my journey west. 

Pirate Jam 2019 kicks off on the Friday, 29th. We have nearly 20 guests from around the world coming to sail aboard 6 boats over 10 days from Phuket, across Phang Nga Bay, and finally winding up in Krabi. 

You can follow along via my usual social media channels and with the hashtag #piratejam2019

Always a bit nervous at the start of these things… huge amount of planning and thinking goes into each year’s event. Fingers crossed for fair winds and happy pirates. 

From Thailand with Arg, 

-American

Dead Insane Children, 

One of our inmates wrote and asked, “When are you releasing Off With Her Head as an art print?!” And I realized… Hey! We’ve not released that image as an art print! A shame too, because it’s one of my favorite poster images from Omri. 

So, thanks to her gentle reminder we’ve decided to make “Off With Her Head” what you’ll get for March if you’re at the $75 Tier. Or if you’re doing the 3/$35 Tier you can select this as your next art print. Either way, more tentacles for everyone! 

Have I ever told you how much I love tentacles? 

When I was a wee lad, maybe 8 years old, my mother dated a grumpy guy who had a boat. He wasn’t a very nice guy and also wasn’t particularly fond of children. One day we went out on his boat to explore some big ol’ Texas lake. We stopped offshore for some swimming and fishing and lunch. 

I was an excellent swimmer but also a bit nervous when it came to encounters with creepy crawlies of the deep. Grumpy guy knew this and decided it would be funny to throw me from the boat into a patch of lake grass. Lake grass sounds harmless enough when you’re sitting on shore reading about it. But when you’re a kid in the water it feels like a million slimy tentacles wrapping themselves around you just before you’re pulled down to a watery grave. 

My mom broke up with grumpy guy but the horror of the lake grass tentacles stuck with me until a few years ago. This is a useless, even dangerous fear to carry around. Especially when owning a sailboat, diving in the ocean, and being in constant contact with the sea.

So I started throwing myself into the ocean. Hundreds of meters off shore. At night. Naked. 

And I’d just float there waiting for tentacle-monsters to rise up from the depths and bite me in half. Or at least nibble my bits.

But nothing ate me. And I learned to relax and love tentacles.

The moral of the story is that you have to run towards your fears. Or maybe even jump into them – naked! 

From Shanghai with Tentacles, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Heeee’s Baaaack! Joey sends along a render of The Jabberwock with changes made to reflect the narrative in Alice: Asylum. The idea is that we show him in a more “natural” state – prior to being mechanized. 

 The 6 Million Dollar Jabberwock! 

I suggested to Joey that we might want to see a stage prior to this in which he’s badly damaged and in need of repair. One idea floating around in my head is that the Jabberwock is the secret weapon the Queen of Hearts of forcing The Mad Hatter to repair. Alice could be sent out to collect bits and pieces necessary for this resuscitation. 

Omri also shares a new poster image he’s working on. This is a scene from within the Chess Kingdom. Omri says,

Alice and shadow Alice will be featured in the frame as you can see.. not sure on What they will do, i liked the idea of the concept of Sacrifice.perhaps they will try to merge or stop the war.

Quite a bit of artwork in the pipeline at the moment. Can’t wait to share all of that soon!

Crowd Design – Episode 6

Yesterday we hosted another Crowd Design sessions over on Discord. 

Did you miss it? Hit THIS LINK and have a listen!

We’re discussing a pretty important topic – the management of Alice’s dress wardrobe. As with all important topics we’re seeing a 50/50 split between the two primary options. Tough one! 

(NOTE: That link won’t work until the upload completes! Upload is going VERY SLOW due to Internet problems in China. If you click and it doesn’t work, wait an hour and try again. Thanks!) 

Livestreaming Over The Great Firewall

Well, I honestly don’t know how well this is going to work… But we’ll give it a shot!

Hit THIS LINK to set a reminder for tomorrow’s YouTube Livestream.

And brace yourself for VPN sadness. Stuttering, LAG, and all that fun stuff. 

I look forward to seeing you all there! We have a TON of your SUGGESTIONS and QUESTIONS to get through. Yay! 

Additional Rabbit FAQs

Now that we’ve explained shipping things from China and why there’s an extra eye-button with every rabbit we have a NEW QUESTION being shouted from the mountaintops: 

“Where’s my G.D. DLC Code for Early Access to the in-game dress!?!!?!”

Well, let’s think about that… Since we’ve not yet made the game we can surmise that we’ve not yet made the DLC dress and that would logically lead to safely assuming that we’ve not yet made a DLC Code for accessing the dress. 

Right? Right!

So… when we have a game, a dress, and a DLC Early Access system in place…

We’ll email the code to you using the address you provided here on Patreon or over on Mysterious. Either way, you can expect the code, sent by email, in about 2+ years time. This was actually mentioned in the BackerKit survey email 😉 And it’s on the Mysterious product page. Anyway… 

Start your clocks!

(Note to Font Lord: Expect a flood of “Where’s my code?!” emails roughly 17,520 hours from now). 

Progress and Coming Days

We’re nearly finished with the PPT we plan to put in front of potential financiers and publishers. I hope we might get that sent out this week or early next week. 

On Sunday I fly to Thailand to start prep work leading up to the start day of Pirate Jam 2019. Myself and Yan will be there working on the event from 25th of March until 10th of April. The core event dates are 29th to 8th. 

You can follow along on our adventures via my Facebook and Instagram accounts. We’ve also set up an itch.io page for any of you interested in submitting game content to the jam. 

From Shanghai with Lurg,

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

LOTS of people sharing comments on my Instagram, on our various Facebook pages, in the Community Section here on Patreon, and in all the most random places one can imagine saying essentially the same thing: 

“My rabbit tracking hasn’t updated since March 5th. What’s going on?!?!?!“

Captain American here to provide the answer: Rabbits on the High Seas!

That’s right! Your rabbit takes a ride on a cargo ship on its way to most locations around the world. And while it’s on that ship in the middle of the ocean the tracking will not update.

The post service we use is called “EUB” and is provided as a function of China Post here in China – which then “converts” to your local postal service upon arrival in your country. There’s more info on this topic HERE. 

Our shipping partner says that shipping from China to the US takes 8~22 working days. We usually see things delivered in ~2 weeks. But deliveries can AND DO take longer. Especially if you’re in a remote part of the world or if there’s bad weather along the way. 

So, please, be patient. Your tracking will update once your rabbit arrives on the shores of your country.

Tracking links were sent to Patrons via email from BackerKit. You can head over there to grab your tracking link if you are unable to find the email. 

Extra Eyes

Another comment I’m seeing more and more is: 

“There’s an extra eye button in my bag. My rabbit is defective! Compensation!!!”

No, your rabbit is not defective. The buttons are two different colors: black and brown.

The extra one is provided in case you’d like to change your rabbit’s eye color. This was decided on during our Crowd Design sessions when we were developing the rabbit. This is not a defect. 

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PM US 

Between myself and Martin it’s not easy staying on top of all the messages, comments, Community Posts, tweets… Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Patreon, YouTube, etc. Arg, matey!

Posting a customer support issue on a 6-month old Instagram post is not, I know it’s hard to believe this, the best way to get your issue resolved. 

If you have a question related to a Patreon reward, payment, etc: 

PM US <—- Click that link and learn how to send a Private Message.

I LOVE YOU ALL 

Really, I do. And I appreciate the community effort many of you have put into helping to answer questions and guide people towards help across all the insane places they post their questions and issues. 

So… let’s all work together to get the word out: Rabbits on the High Seas! And extra eyes are not defects. And … PM US! YAY! 

Oh, you can also always email myself and Martin here:
mysterious@americanmcgee.com

I really appreciate any effort you can put towards trying to keep all the customer service stuff in one location. Thank you! 🙂 

Great Firewall Update

Seems our VPN situation is stabilizing. If things still look good tomorrow then I’ll post a link for this week’s livestream. Look forward to seeing you all there. 

From Shanghai with Rabbit Eyes, 

-American