Twenty Years of Archives, Ad-Free!

Monday April 6, 2020 • Howard Tayler

Would you like to be reading Schlock Mercenary ad-free? How about being able to read it a week at a time, and in a higher resolution?

Join the Schlock Mercenary Patreon, and for just $2.50 per month, the entirety of the Schlock Mercenary archives will be available to you for week-at-a-time, ad-free browsing¹. And at $5.00 per month, you’ll be reading in retina resolutions².

What does week-at-a-time browsing look like?

Well, it’s hard to deliver the experience via a screen shot.  We had to pull back a quite to show you just how much content is on each page, and from back here it’s kind of hard to read.

You’ll be scrolling down (probably with the mouse-wheel), uninterrupted by ads, and when you reach the end of the page you can arrow-key (or click “Next”) to advance to the next big stack of Schlock Mercenary.

What’s the difference between the regular and high-res versions of the strip? Math says “65% more pixels,” but it’s probably better to show what that will look like. Here’s a side-by-side comparison, using the fourth panel from Thursday, January 23rd.

(NOTE: The blog engine may have up-scaled or down-scaled the sample image, depending on how your browser requested the flow of the page. Click on the image for an exact, pixel-for-pixel version of the screen captures.)

There are other benefits to becoming a patron, like digital goodies³, and front-of-the-line, pre-order access to new merchandise. Head over to patreon.com/schlockmercenary and have a look.

¹ Ad-free, week-at-a-time, and high-res browsing will require you to link your Patreon account to Schlock Mercenary. This is done securely, via the Patreon API. Our privacy policy has more information. 
² High-resolution browsing requires the use of a browser capable of requesting the high-res images. As of this writing that means almost all mobile browsers, MacOS browsers, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge.
³ This blog post serves as a fine reminder to Howard and Sandra that it’s time to put up some more Patreon-exclusive digital goodies.

Streaming Live, Tuesdays at 9pm Eastern!

Monday March 23, 2020 • Howard Tayler

TypeCast RPG, which I haven’t blogged about in a while, is still a thing I’m doing on Tuesday nights. It’s a D&D 5e game set in a world of flying cities which are built on the backs of sleeping alien gods.

Join us! Now that we’re doing it remotely, instead of in the studio, everybody has room to flip open their laptops and participate in chat, so it’s quite the multiple-medium experience.

Oh, and there’s a live art-cam, too. Watch me use Copic markers, and sometimes even the Copic airbrush, to do stuff like this just as quickly as I can:

Follow and subscribe at twitch.tv/typecastrpg, and keep us company while we play an intensely social game while being very socially distant.

Over-Reaction is the Best Reaction

Saturday March 14, 2020 • Howard Tayler

We’re self-quarantining here at Chez Tayler, but the State of Utah and the LDS Church are helping things along immensely by canceling school and church for us. We’re extremely fortunate that we already work from home, and are able to steer clear of public places without seriously impacting the family finances.

Rewinding a bit—my asthma is still on overdrive, but we’re otherwise healthy, and free from any COVID-19 symptoms. We’re doing fine. This social distancing thing is something we’re going to take seriously, though, because the best possible outcome is for us to look back on this and say “maybe we over-reacted.”

You see, the next-best outcome is a terrible one. That’s the one where we look back on this and say “It’s a good thing we did all that, but we should have done more, and sooner.” We don’t get that outcome unless neighbors¹ are dying.

The worst outcome, at least for us, is the one where we discover just how sick this coronavirus can make a 52-year-old asthma sufferer, and exactly how deadly it can be to run out of beds and respirators in the ICU. And if we can get through the next few weeks without that happening, perhaps without that ever happening, we might feel like all our precautions were over-reactions.

And the luxury of being alive to whine about over-reacting is one I plan to cherish.

¹ Maybe next-door neighbors, maybe folks from Samaria. We try to define “neighbor” in broad, New Testament terms when it comes to things like this².
² We narrow the definition quite a bit when it’s time to visit a neighbor to ask whether we might borrow a cup of sugar.