# Frontier Scumming It in the Acid West tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/frontier-scum ![[Frontier Scum (cover).jpg|200]] Sometimes when you're out and about poking through your feeds and looking for new interesting things to experience, something will surprise you. Something will jump right out of the shadows by the side of the path, throw its arms around your neck, and say something unwholesomely intimate. Despite yourself, your ear will perk up, you'll turn your head to look, and you'll find yourself saying, *"Come again?"* That's how I felt when I saw the *[Shut Up and Sit Down](https://www.shutupandsitdown.com)* video for **[[Frontier Scum]]**, and in particular, when I heard the description, *"acid Western."* I like to think of myself as fairly genre-savvy, both in tabletop RPGs and in cinema, but that was a term that caught me unawares. So did the review, because it is entirely of a style unlike anything else that SU&SD does in terms of their reviews.  > [!quote] Wikipedia on **[Acid Western](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Western)** > Acid Western is a subgenre of the Western film that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s that combines the metaphorical ambitions of critically acclaimed Westerns, such as Shane and The Searchers, with the excesses of the spaghetti Westerns and the outlook of the counterculture of the 1960s, as well as the increase in illicit drug taking of, for example, cannabis and LSD. Acid Westerns subvert many of the conventions of earlier Westerns to "conjure up a crazed version of autodestructive white America at its most solipsistic, hankering after its own lost origins" I've got to be honest, I've never heard of Acid Westerns, but now I feel as though I need to go dig into the genre and learn more. I strongly suspect that there are members of that class of film that I have already consumed and enjoyed. In fact, I think it's inevitable,[^1] though I suspect that my enjoyment of the niche is entirely different than that derived by the author of the Wikipedia entry. Likewise, I suspect it's inevitable that my enjoyment of **Frontier Scum** is likely to differ from the way the author perhaps intended it to be enjoyed, though perhaps not, judging from many of the reviews and actually considering the text. This review—this particular video review—was the reason that I went out, hunted up where I could buy it, and threw down the money to add it to my library. I was very close to buying the hard copy because it is very deliberately a physical artifact which is intended to be enjoyed in a different way than most books. It's constructed differently. The covers are a couple of pieces of hardback book, but the spine is lacquered rather than covered. It is, according to what sources I could chase down, a handcrafted artifact. Take this as a reminder that reviews make a difference, not just from the perspective of the creator being reviewed, but from the perspective of the reviewer. You're not just shouting into an empty hole and hoping someone will hear it. Take chances. Experiment. Play with the format. Do things that you don't normally do. Play a different game. Present things in a way you wouldn't ever have considered doing so before. Make the review its own thing, because if you enjoy something enough to want to reflect it as a reviewer, that means something to the people who believe in you as a reviewer, who trust your opinion as a reviewer. Anybody can page through a book and read what's on the screen. A good reviewer, a good curator can talk about the text and make you feel something more than just the text. They can make you want to be part of it. [^1]: Though perhaps not as many as expected. - Lemonade Joe (1964) - The Shooting (1966) - Ride in the Whirlwind (1966) - Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! (1967) - El Topo (1970) - Zachariah (1971) - Captain Apache (1971) - Greaser's Palace (1972) - Bad Company (1972) - Dead Man (1995) - Wild Bill (1995) - Blueberry (2005) Of this lot, I've seen **The Shooting**, **Django Kill**, and **El Topo**, but now I have some more movies to put on my hunt-down list.