Hello, dear reader. My name is David Carcasole, and this is my Folly. There’s a whole quick blurb about what this newsletter/blog is on the “About” page, but I thought having a longer, more personal post on the home page was worthwhile as well.
If you didn’t read the about page, then very quickly: I’m a games journalist by day and this will be a place where I can write about more than just games. I want to cover music, movies, TV, books, theatre and art through this Folly to the best of my ability. I want to do more than video games, is the even quicker explanation.
But what does that mean, and more importantly, who the hell am I? Well, the answer to both questions is a lot of things.
Starting with me, I’m from Toronto, Canada. I was born here, and I still live here, 27 (almost 28 at time of writing) years later. Neither of my parents have creative careers, but they both love arts and culture, and raised me and my sister to love them as well. Perhaps to their chagrin they did too good of a job teaching us to love creative fields, because when it came time for us to start laying down the groundwork for our lives, choosing our paths at the ripe age of 17 (the perfect age to decide the trajectory of your life) by way of picking what to study at university, we both chose theatre.
The first time I took the stage in what felt like a significant way was at 15, in a production of the musical Guys n’ Dolls at my high school. The first time I knew I wanted to act at all however came when I was much younger, around the age of 8 or 9, if I’m rembering correctly. I’d been reading and watching the Harry Potter movies and books as they arrived, and was making use of my prepubescent voice to do what I stand by was a pretty good Hermione impression. So when my teacher sprung on us a script reading we would be doing for some sort of school assembly, I had unknowingly prepared myself. The role I played was scripted to be a girl, but my teacher thought the voice I did worked so well, it went to me. I felt so cool - I mean I was the lead, why wouldn’t I feel cool? It was even more joyous learning that acting could supply more to me than just making me feel cool, the older I got. Fast-forward six or seven years, and I needed to get onstage. I had watched my sister do it, she being four years my elder and already through high school and her first productions by this point. I wanted to audition the year before, but talked myself out of it, scared I wouldn’t make the cut. I was even late to audition when I finally did, and I needed the support of a good friend at the time to convince me to ask the teacher if I could still try out.
I was lucky enough to be auditioning in the year my high school was celebrating 50 years of musical productions, and the director thought it would be a good idea to honour that by casting 50 students. Almost no one who auditioned got cut, and my path to becoming a full-flegded theatre kid began.
Writing ran parallel with my desire to act. My Dad being an English teacher most of his career, he instilled in his children a love for the written word, and a respect for good writing wherever it can be found. Acting was what I wanted to study though becuase in many ways, it felt like the easier option. Writers and everyone else who tries to write knows that writing is hard. I know acting is hard too, but it’s easy to see why anyone might find acting to be a smoother path. Just remember a bunch of words, where to walk, and try to be convincing about it.
I spent years of playing Zip-Zap-Zop, learning how to breathe and doing roll-downs to know for a fact it’s a lot more than that - but at the same time, it’s actually not much more than that. You can’t coax writing in the same way. As the rockstar Shakespeare of Something Rotten bluntly sings, “writing’s demanding, it’s mentally challenging, it’s a bore, such a chore to sit in a room by yourself, oh my god I just hate it." I often think about this song when I have any minor writers block, his tangent about not being able to find the right word helps remind me that even Shakespeare probably had days where he couldn’t write anything.
However Shakespeare also sings that being a good writer, being ‘the Bard’ is “sexy but hard.” Couldn’t agree more on that front. Being able to write well is so goddamn sexy. My wife is beautiful and amazing in a million ways, and she’s a good writer. She’s truly my dream woman.
Partly due to writing’s sex appeal, and the growing negative impact rejection would have on me in regards to my acting, I turned to writing as my full focus when I really didn’t have time or space for anything else. I had time to write, and I had time to play video games. When lockdown hit in 2020 and the theatre world died, I felt free to pause my acting endeavours because there just wasn’t any acting to be done. With my artistic background, a degree in theatre, a love for games and all art, and love to analyze it all, it almost felt like I was meant to go into games journalism next. I saw it as a way to write about this industry and artistic medium that I’ve always loved. To cover the industry in a meaningful way because I saw then and now that we need to pay attention to games more than ever. It’s why I love writing news, something I’m grateful I get to do in my current position at PSU.
I approach my work as a games journalist with the intention to be accurate in my reporting and passionate with my criticisms and analysis when it comes to features, interviews, reviews, and everything else I write, because I have such a reverance for games and game development as an art. It’s the same reverance I have for all artistic endeavours, and it’s why I needed to create this Substack for myself to explore this work across more than just video games.
I care a lot about art, and I care a lot about writing, so you can always trust that what you read here in this blog/newsletter/Folly comes from a place of love and care for what I’m writing about, through words intentionally chosen to convey something to you, dear reader.
I think that answers both questions.
If you think a Folly/blog/newsletter written by me with this backing sounds cool, please consider subscribing to make sure you can read something from me each month. If you think it’s worth some of your hard earned dollars, then I’m grateful for your support. I hope I can keep providing you with words that are deserving of your time and money.
To quote another musical, just call me Newsies reporter Katherine Plumber, doing their best to “write it good.”