Category Archives: Hopeless

Weaselgrease Wednesdays

June 2, 2024 Nimue Brown Leave a comment

We’ve had a lot of shifts here on the island in the last year. With the final graphic novel out, island life has changed in terms of what might happen – and you’re seeing some of that reflected in stories here on the blog.

We’ve had a lovely influx of islanders – thank you to everyone who has contributed themselves, that’s been wonderful.

Both Steven C Davis and Mark Hayes have become regular contributors, and we’re seeing frequent tales from both Keith Errington and Roz White – a huge thanks to them for getting more involved.

Martin Pearson has been doing a top job keeping The Squid and Teapot going, and I’ve been in the weird position of being the illustrator regularly as well as writing. I am what we’ve got, and I am very open to getting more visual artists involved.

This summer, James Weaslegrease has taken on some of the social media work, covering me for patches I can’t do due to my gallivanting about. You can find Hopeless on Facebook, Twitter and Bluesky. The aim going forwards is to have Weaslegrease Wednesdays where James is unleashed upon these sites to do whatever strange things he feels compelled to do. Although I note with interest that he’s been tone-matching so well that it might not have been obvious when it was him, and when it was me.

Hopeless continues to exist because it’s a community, and because enough people care about it to want to keep it going. If you’re ever tempted to have a go, please do get in touch and jump in. The water is cold, but the tentacles are lovely.

Hopeless

Hopeless people – Keith Healing

February 18, 2024 Nimue Brown Leave a comment

Keith Healing was the first person to have a go at making a Hopeless, Maine roleplay game. In doing so, he brought a number of key things to the wider project as well.

Keith made a major geographical contribution to the island. He placed the bridge of bottles at the end of Gaunt Street, where it crosses the Gaunt River (also his) beyond which lies Gaunt Town. Gaunt Town is the oldest part of the main town on Hopeless, and it haunted and abandoned. You’ll have seen those ruins in the graphic novels, while Gaunt Street is where Owen sets up his household. Keith pinned down this part of the island, in terms of its history and making sense of how these parts of the town fit together.

I’ve taken this geography and worked with it in a novella that most of you haven’t seen yet!

Given the nature of roleplay games, Keith wanted to figure out the mechanics of how things work. ‘Very nicely thank you’ doesn’t cut it when people want to role dice. This led to a lot of thinking about the way in which magic shows up on the island. For most people, the available magic is folklore derived.

Keith gave us the concept of demon devices – objects that have a demon trapped in them. Being Hopeless there’s every scope for this to go either hilariously or horrifically wrong. Sometimes both. James Weaslegrease picked up the concept and wrote a really cool song about it. It’s something I started incorporating into stories as well – partly to tie the games development into the wider project and partly because it’s such an excellent idea. This is how Lilly May came to be working with demon devices and why Mark Hayes took a photo of a demon he had shoved into a blunderbus. I love the way these things develop.

During the game project it occurred to Keith that he really wanted to write novels – he’s gone on to do just that. I heartily recommend that you check out his Burnt Watcher books out, which you can find on Amazon and also here – https://www.rogueanimalbooks.com/book/the-burnt-watcher/ These aren’t Hopeless projects, but if you enjoy terrible, Lovecraftian things or a touch of King in Yellow then these are for you.

Hopeless

Hopeless people – Susie Roberts

February 11, 2024 Nimue Brown Leave a comment

Without Susie Roberts, there would have been no Ominous Folk and no stage shows.

I first met Susie through environmental activities in Stroud, and we were both regulars at Piranha Poetry. When I started putting together a Stroud mumming side I asked if she might be interested, and she was. There was some singing involved, and Susie expressed an interest in doing more of it.

At that point, Hopeless, Maine music was a trio called A Cup Full of Tentacles (Nimue Brown, James Weaslegrease, Tom Brown). There had been some singing at events, but there was no momentum and it wasn’t that strong a sound. Adding Susie to the mix changed everything.

Susie is an excellent harmony singer, and her innovative arrangements brought new life to the material. As a consequence of her involvement I felt emboldened to have a go at writing a show, and it rolled out from there. It helped considerably that Susie drives and was willing to drive to events. Prior to that, Hopeless, Maine had been dependent on public transport and there are a lot of places it isn’t easy to get to without a car. Her driving also made it possible for me to keep doing events during the years when I was very ill. Unreliable blood pressure and public transport do not mix well.

Susie brought her own brand of humour to the project, and a longstanding enthusiasm for goth music. It was thanks to her that Keith Errington ended up writing a song about Annamarie Nightshade. She’s also contributed to Hopeless, Maine theatricals at events and to the online festivals.

Since the autumn of 2023, health problems have meant that Susie hasn’t been able to do gigs. James and I would have tried to keep Ominous Folk going had she been up for it, but it wasn’t viable as a project without her.

For those of you who enjoyed the music, we are exploring a new project that won’t be Hopeless, Maine related – Carnival of Cryptids is shaping up rather well, and is likely to be a larger and more anarchic group. We very much hope that Susie will be able to come and sing with us later in the year.

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Hopeless people – Martin Pearson

February 4, 2024 Nimue Brown Leave a comment

My guess is that Martin is the person who has written most words about Hopeless. He’s done this steadfastly week by week over many years, with The Squid and Teapot providing the backbone of this blog.

Hopeless, Maine was a project started by Tom Brown many years ago. Various people have been involved with it in the past. After I (Nimue) got involved, Martin was the next person to make a substantial commitment to the project, and he’s been here ever since, sharing tales.

What I love about The Squid and Teapot stories is how they’ve opened up island life. While some of the characters from the graphic novels show up here and there, the cast in these tales is huge. We get insight into what living on Hopeless is like for its (relatively) normal citizens. Other contributors who have come in to write stories have expanded on this population, but Martin is the one who initially opened up this territory.

There were long stretches when other work pressures and lack of inspiration meant that I wasn’t writing much for the blog. It made a huge difference having this steady supply of stories to keep the blog alive. That I was able to jump back in with Mrs Beaten tales some years ago, and had the motivation to keep the blog viable is very much down to the existence of The Squid and Teapot.

Being the island’s pub, The Squid and Teapot has become an iconic setting that many other contributors have alluded to in their stories. It’s a key part of island life. Martin is also responsible for the existence of the night soil man and the traditions surrounding that job. He’s responsible for the Gydynap hills, and for developing the history of the island as well.

The Squid and Teapot usually goes out on a Tuesday.

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Hopeless people – Keith Errington

January 28, 2024 Nimue Brown Leave a comment

I first met Keith Errington on a stage at a steampunk event. We hit it off instantly and it was because of him that over those two days I wrote a Hopeless, Maine sea shanty. That was the second song I’d written for the setting – No Hope At All came first. The existence of The Ominous Folk as a project owed a lot to that weekend.

Keith came onboard at some point after then, writing stories for the blog, and getting Hopeless out to events. His Hopeless, Maine radio shows in the style of Garrison Keillor also pre-dated the shows that I wrote and led me towards trying that. Performing at events makes a huge difference to how people see the work and he led the way for us on that.

It was because Keith wrote The Oddatsea and was willing to organise a kickstarter for it that we first got New England Gothic out into the world, too. Those two books have been published in one volume by Outland Entertainment,

Over the years he’s written songs for the settings, enabled us to do online events, supported Hopeless through Patreon, sung with The Ominous Folk, recorded us, and made a lot of things more feasible. He’s done much of this very quietly.

Keith is also responsible for a horribly funny children’s book that mostly isn’t for children – Once Upon A Hopeless, Maine.

Last year when things broke down with Tom Brown – who stopped communicating with me about Hopeless, Keith was the person who kept me going. His love of the setting, and his speaking up for the community of people around this project gave me the reasons I needed not to just give up on the whole thing. That things are still happening on Hopeless now is very much thanks to him.

At this point I am fairly confident that if the story of the island is going forward from here, it will be in Keith’s hands next. I’ve got two novellas set after the graphic novels and I need to figure out how best to get those into the world. Those stories bring in some new elements (thanks to Dr Abbey!) that I didn’t know how to take forward, but Keith has a sense of how things might progress from here. And let me tell you, he’s got some pretty darn exciting ideas.

In the coming weeks I’m going to be doing more posts like this to highlight contributions from the wider Hopeless family. There are a lot of people who have significantly contributed to this project over the years, and I want to celebrate that.

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Festive Frolics

December 24, 2023 Nimue Brown Leave a comment

He sees you when you’re sleeping

He knows when you’re awake

The fog is always watching

Do not run, there’s no escape.

(Happy whatever you’re celebrating from James Weaslegrease, Nimue Brown and Keith Errington who are collectively to blame for this blog post)

Hopeless

Hopeless News

December 17, 2023 Nimue Brown Leave a comment

First up, huge thanks to everyone who commented or got in touch by other means to talk about what’s going on with the Hopeless project. I’ve got some long term offers on the table that are going to make a huge difference, and some short term ones that will help me get to that point. I’ll talk more about that as we go along, but expect to see more of Mark Hayes and Steven C Davis here. If you’re inclined to throw a story or image into the mix, that’s always a great help.

I’m going to cut back where I need to, so I might be a bit quieter with the Hopeless accounts on social media, (Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon) and we may be down to a blog post a week at some times, but there will be something every week, I’m confident about that.

We won’t be doing an online festival this year. The previous two have depended on the technical resources and skills of Keith Errington. He’s not well, and isn’t going to be able to do it this year. If you know him personally there are details on his Facebook page, and he’ll see anything that gets posted here. There’s every reason to think he will eventually be ok, but he’s not going to be in a position to run a large project in the immediate future.

Thank you for your support, your kindness and your understanding. It’s meant a great deal, especially in this last week or so.

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Where do we go now?

December 8, 2023 Nimue Brown 2 Comments

I’m struggling when it comes to Hopeless, Maine and I need to talk about it. I got involved with Tom as a consequence of working on this project, and it defined our relationship in many ways. I wrote the scripts for him, I coloured for him, and he was my inspiration and my reason for doing all of this. If I’m going to keep this project going at all, I’m going to need input from other people. At the very least I’m going to need prompts. I could do with creative content as well to help keep this site alive.

I can keep Hopeless going as a community project if there are a few people who want it. Otherwise, I don’t think I have it in me to keep doing this.

Since we broke up, Tom has barely talked to me and he hasn’t talked to me about Hopeless at all. I didn’t even know when he’d handed Survivors in – the publisher had to tell me what was going on there. With Susie ill, Ominous Folk has fallen by the wayside because both James and I have found working with Tom impossible. We tried into July, and could not bear any more of it. The last few Ominous Folk gigs were actually Jessica Law and the Outlaws with different hats on.

It’s not the breaking up that’s caused the problems, from my perspective. That’s one of the best things we’ve done. This was never a good relationship and I was utterly miserable for most of the time. There’s not much incentive for me to try and reconnect with someone I failed to meaningfully connect with in more than a decade of trying. But, Hopeless Maine was something we mostly made between us, and I don’t know if it’s viable without Tom. He’s offered nothing for the site in many months, the social media is all me – and always was. He’s shown no signs of interest and I just don’t have it in me to keep running after him trying to get him to engage with things any more.

It’s possible that Hopeless, Maine as a project is bigger than Tom Brown and can survive his lack of interest in it. It’s also entirely possible that this isn’t the case and that without Tom contributing the project isn’t viable. I don’t actually have any idea which it is. So I’m putting this out here, raw and messy as it is because if we’re doing this, I need to do it honestly and if we’re not, I need to know so that I can let it go and focus my energy on other things.

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See inside the survivors

December 3, 2023 Nimue Brown Leave a comment

It’s not quite as horrific a post as the title may suggest! I now have hard copies of Survivors (people who support me as Glass Herons over on Patreon now have books on their way in the post).

This video involves me waving pages at the camera, talking a little bit about what’s in the books and my involvement. I wrote the scripts for the graphic novels, and as the series progressed I became involved with the colouring side of things, as well as coming up with concepts for some of the images. The cover for this one was my idea, and it says a lot about Salamandra’s relationship with the island.

You can get or order Survivors from many paces that do books. Here it is on the WH Smith website https://www.whsmith.co.uk/products/hopeless-maine-5-survivors/tom-brown/nimue-brown/paperback/9781908830227.html

Blackwells – https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Hopeless-Maine-Volume-5-Survivors-by-Tom-Brown-author-Nimue-Brown-artist/9781908830227

Waterstones – https://www.waterstones.com/book/hopeless-maine-5/tom-brown/nimue-brown/9781908830227

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Hopeless Star Signs

November 19, 2023 Nimue Brown Leave a comment

What I’ve tried to do here is combine the elegance of traditional images for star signs with the what-even-the-fuck-is-that-supposed-to-be of traditional star signs.

If you aren’t familiar with Hopeless Horrorscopes and do not know what your star sign is, you can find more about that over here – https://hopeless-maine.co.uk/2021/01/17/new-hopeless-maine-horrorscopes/

(And yes, there’s a reason for doing this, but I’m just going to tease rather than tell you what’s going on, because it amuses me and I’m a bit evil).

The Bemused Starfish