The NationStates Improviser: Spring 2014 (A&F Reissue)

[The New World Oceania]

The NationStates Improviser: Spring Edition 2014

Full Publication: http://issuu.com/nsimproviser/docs/the_ ... er_spring_
PDF: Download
NS Improviser Thread: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=270357

A letter from the editor:
Welcome, and thank you for viewing the first edition of The NationStates Improviser! We are NS's only literary magazine, and work to exhibit the very best artwork not only from our local Arts and Fiction community, but the entirety of Nationstates. Now publishing our second issue, we're glad to say that the NS Improviser is moving towards its goal to disseminate the visual and literary arts across a site namely concerned with hypothetical scenarios and ever-lasting conversation.

No artist becomes an artist in a moment, regardless of how, precisely, that moment is defined. Often it is relative to other moments, or the expanse of time which they cover. Thus, no one has ever become an artist in a day, nor in an hour. No one has become an artist in the decade, or the year, or the century (rightfully insinuated, artist of the century is a bullshit term). None could be artists in their lifetime, save that they have not died come the end of eternity, yet none are simply born artists. The Enlightenment thinkers, Renaissance men, from the ancient poets and through the pamphleteers to the post-modernist economic philosophers, da Vinci nor Di Caprio, neither Rand nor Marx, Christ and Nietzsche both, and not those even within this literary magazine: none are artists. We will always be aspiring.

So here's to our second, NSI: Spring 2014, the Aspiration Issue.

---

Table of Contents

Fiction
One Way or Another
Occupied Deutschland
Very Definitely Evil
Forsher
George and the Dragon
Respubliko de Libereco
Familiar Souls, Unfamiliar Territory
StellarGate

Poetry
Paradelle for a Ruined House
Respubliko de Libereco
It Comes
The Nuclear Fist
Abnegation
Page
Red Lines
Respubliko de Libereco

Visual Art
Mushroom Cloud
Aelarus
Peacock
Nazi Flower Power
City Street Samba (Silver Distinctions)
The Merchant Republics
Stargazing
The Merchant Republics
Generic Soldier
[i]Aelarus
Foil
Nazi Flower Power
The Abyss Gazes Also (Cover)
Nazi Flower Power

---

Highlights

Though cannons crash, these crimson­coated souls
still dare to do their duty, driving north.
Through gore, unglorious gashes, gaping holes,
their courage, crown and country calls them forth.

Above it all though, was the tunnel at the center of the rainbows in her vision that the colors danced around. The tunnel that seemed to lead everywhere at once, but snaked its way back around to where it began eventually. Like the rainbows it underwent an endless cycle of folding in and over itself, but unlike the rainbows it didn't seem to stop there. Instead, it branched off. The branches intertwining and peeling off, with their own rainbows surrounding them, with branches from them and rainbows around those, and branches around those, leading off to an infinity of branching tunnels.
All from the same point, and yet connected at every point. They were stuck in one, but the others sat to the sides, waiting. They seemed to be beckoning with the same siren song of white-noise that Marie could hear now.

George smiled, this was exactly as they'd prepared. "Now, about this deal with the Devil you mentioned, has he contacted my lawyer yet?"

A single cell survived,

In a land of purest ash,

A fatal, brutal surprise.

Thick moss and grasses grow here, where they should,
Where hidden flowers show within the cracks.
Where hidden flowers show within the cracks.
Where here should hidden moss and flowers show?
The cracks, where they within thick grasses grow.

---

[Respubliko de Libereco]

I've yet to see any evidence that this magazine actually has any readership beyond its contributors.

[The New World Oceania]

I've yet to see any evidence that this magazine actually has any readership beyond its contributors.

The Scribd PDF has at least 23 unique views on the Spring 2014 Edition, plus of 100 on the Winter 2013 Edition.
Our full publication of the Aspiration Issue, found on Issuu, has 25 unique reads, which is defined as a given amount of time spent viewing the publication full screen.
Statistics from Issuu show that 378 arbitrary readers were suggested the magazine: 1 in every 15 viewed the magazine. The average Improviser reader spends about 4 minutes and 30 seconds reading.
The Winter 2013 Edition has received 85 full publication reads with 1094 arbitrary suggestions. Since January, the average reader has spent 5 minutes on it.

The Spring 2014 thread and reissue have 173 views, composite, as of March 24th.
The Winter 2013 thread and General issue have 365 views.

We were recently featured in The Rejected Times, a spotlight given to the Visual Arts Distinction.

How? We improvised.