I’ve had some recent changes in my personal life, and they’ve reflected some changes in my professional life, too! As some people know, I have multiple romantic partners (I’m polyamorous), and that I work on game stuff and play games with my partners a lot. One of my partners is Thomas Novosel, who is a brilliant artist and game designer I met through Google+ a few years back. We’re dating, and we’re also working on some super rad game stuff.
Thomas Novosel, photo by Brie Beau Sheldon (c) 2019.
Thomas is in upstate New York, and he’s consulting with me on Turn’s border towns stretch goal that replaced the Mormon towns goal. This stretch goal is going to take a little longer to complete, but Thomas was part of the inspiration – I visited him in his town, on the northern US border, and realized there are a lot of stories to tell. He’s helping me get in touch with the local indigenous center (Akwesasne natives). This is hugely useful.
(P.S.: I’m still looking for a southern border consultant, preferably a person of color, from either side of the US southern border! Please use the contact page if you’re interested.)
Thomas and I have also made our own little game collective, called Assembludo (a mashup of assemblage+ludo for artistic mashup of game stuff, basically). It’s been really fun to work on so far, and we’re nearing having some projects ready to release! It’s hard figuring out how to fund projects, but in the meantime I’ve been helping Thomas get some game jam products out like The Heaven’s Prophet’s Tomb for the Pamphlet Dungeon, and he’s run his game Runaway Hirelings for me so I can get a better feel for his design sense. (Unsurprisingly, Runaway Hirelings was SUPER fun, very creative and adventurous, and plays in like 2 hours! It’s worth way more like $10!)
The other new projects we’re working on are even more exciting!
The first project we’re hoping to release as a joint effort as designers is called The Magic Hour, and it’s a short adventure for general fantasy campaigns with some custom creatures. It’s set in a small town in a rural fantasy land with a variety of characters in the town, where a mystery is occurring! People in the town have been disappearing, and no one can seem to figure out what’s happening!
The description I gave to John one of the creatures is “okapi with condor wings” and I’m excited to see them realized in the game. We’re both obviously working on this while juggling our regular jobs, freelance work, and individual projects, so it’s taking a little bit of time. But, we’re making good progress, and I think it’s a cute game adventure that encourages nonviolence, explores a small town, and has a little bit of silliness baked in. We’re both capable of seriousness and spookiness, but I think that’s something really wonderful about what Thomas and I have been working on – there’s just a little lightheartedness in every bit!
We have a few other ideas bouncing around. Like, Thomas is working on a King Arthur and the Round Table inspired knight game, A Knight Rode at Dawn, which looks absolutely fantastic and has been fun to follow and contribute to as he needs. I’m working on Flicker, something I started writing inspired by Thomas’s art before we started dating, which is a game about hope where you burn down tiny paper houses as you, a living flame, travel the darkening world to relight the sun. I love the game a lot, and it’s reignited by Thomas’s gentle encouragement.
Our big project, which could take a long while, is Little Green Dot, which is a game about a world populated by animals that live on little islands. It’s a world touched by folk legend and there’s a lot of thinking about our actions, what they mean now, and what they’ll mean years from now to our community, our family, our party, and ourselves. Animals are sometimes bigger or smaller than they’d be in our world, but they’re also able to use leaf-swords and acorn-caps and travel to become legends in their own right.
One of my favorite things that Thomas has written in our draft notes is this, about one of the character types that I wanted to have.
The squids and the turtles children would grow together but would always be upset and miss each other and grow apart as one went towards land. The Whale saw this and kissed the squids mantles, giving them a soft membrane of water from home to follow them onto land. Allowing them to go as far as they want, with their friends, while also taking their home with them.
Thomas Novosel, draft notes for Little Green Dot, 2019
There is a section below it where he elaborated that I read as he typed, and it made me cry!
Specific Feeling: Taking a stone from the farm with you into the city. A stone that you looked at and liked. But someone put it in your hand so that you didn’t have to pick it up.
Thomas Novosel, draft notes for Little Green Dot, 2019
This is the weirdest thing about designing with Thomas. He still is quite technical and focused on mechanics, like John is. And he’s highly artistic, like John is. But Thomas is much more of a feelsy person like me! So when he wrote this, especially as a farm kid who moved to the city and no one gave me something to carry with me, just punched me in the heart forever. It was one of our first design sessions and it remains one of my favorite things I’ve ever seen a person write about something they were designing.
We recently went to Lake Placid and had a picnic looking at nearby mountains. Few things make me miss living in rural areas more than spending time in the wilderness!
I think my work with Thomas has made me reflect on how I design a lot! Like, maybe I need to start putting myself first, and the game after. And maybe, I should not tell myself it’s stupid to think about how mechanics feel. We ignore it so often, how games feel, what they do to us emotionally when we take action or don’t, and how we feel when we roll a die or flip a card or enforce a mechanical rule. Feelings aren’t stupid. And just because we have to work at understanding them sometimes does not mean that we should dismiss them in design. Needless to say, I can’t wait to show you more from Assembludo in the future!
One last thing I wanted to mention about my work with Thomas is something he put in the Little Green Dot document. It sounds simple, but it’s really important:
The Love Contract If this game affects our relationship negatively, or starts hurting us. We will stop working on it, because we love each other very very much. And being in love is more important than fighting over work.
Thomas Novosel, signed by Beau and Thomas both in the Little Green Dot documents.
I look at it and I think, my gosh. How many of my relationships would be less rocky around our design experiences if I’d put this in there? What if I had put in a Friendship Contract or a Respect Contract in my projects I’ve worked on? How simple of an idea is it to just stop doing something that’s hurting you, or hurting the relationships that build up the game in the first place? It smacked me right in the forehead with its sense. So I signed it!
I love all of my partners very much. And I work with them all, to varying degrees! I think what I was missing this whole time wasn’t the right person to work with, it was the right attitude to go about working with. Considering that Thomas and I, and John and I, are very aware of how fickle the game market is and how we can’t ever expect success. I think we also know how precarious relationships can be when you’re working together. Like, yikes. With that in mind, I think prioritizing love is worth it.
Beau & Thomas at Lake Placid, by Brie Beau Sheldon (c) 2019.
Find out more about Thomas at thomas-novosel.com and find him on Twitter at @thomasanovosel. His itch.io hosts a number of his games & game materials as well (including fonts!), and is a good place to follow!
P.S. I go by Beau now, tho the full name is Brie Beau Sheldon. 🙂
P.P.S. – My work with John continues on Roar of Alliance – check him out on Twitter as @johnwsheldon and on Pluspora to follow his progress. He is also still my husband, thankfully. 🙂
P.P.S. I’m still with Dillon long-distance, too, and he is running some really cool games as an awesome DM, and makes some awesome creatures for his games! Keep up with him on Twitter as @Damn_It_Dillon!
I’m supposed to start this post with a fired up enthusiasm about all the projects I’m working on and how I’m gonna be awesome and do a great job! But today? Today I do not have that for you.
Here’s what I have for you, in the immediate.
I’m working on interviews with Epidiah Ravachol on Wolfspell and Becky Annison on Bite Me! so once those are finished up we’ll have something to howl about. I don’t actually have further interviews on the docket, but I’ll work on it. I always do.
(As a reminder, the best way to get interviews here is to encourage your favorite creators to go to my contact page and send me an email with the info! That cuts out like three emails worth of information exchange and shows me they’re excited to be interviewed. Plus, it makes sure that you – my readers – see what you want to see. You can also help me do more interviews and posts of all kinds by supporting via Patreon and sending tips via PayPal or ko-fi! Note: I don’t think I’m charging for this post, even though it took a while.)
I have some other posts in mind, like one talking in detail about the updates I’ve done to Script Change, reviews of a product or two, and so on. It would be cool to know if you have interest in anything, as a lot of the time I’m running on my own ideas here and I don’t even know if you’re enjoying the posts sometimes! With the ending of G+, this will get even harder for me to gauge. Please comment, share and tag me, and so on!
Speaking of comments, I’m looking at a move to WordPress since G+ is dying and I have no idea what will happen with comments here, plus the site has been kind of wonky. It’s gonna cost money and time, like a lot of it, so it may be a while.
On the games front, I’m currently working on a number of projects. Some of them are personal, some are professional, and all of them have unique challenges. The issue is, few are having successes, at least by my count.
First and foremost is Turn, my game I Kickstarted in October, which I’m in the production phase for. Now that the Kickstarter is done and we’re into production, aside from a few blips on the radar, all positive feedback has ceased. I’ve also had to deal with a ton of financial stuff that’s very hard for me, our beast artist had to step down so we had to replace them, and my own experience going through the editing process has been rough. Some of this was expected, some of it was not!
This is hard! It’s also exhausting. Especially when I have to dig into my work each day and I find myself questioning all of my decisions, my ability to do my job, and my ability to make this work.
Second, I’m working on Leading with Class. It’s not a game, but it’s about games, and we have a ton of work to do on it. We can always use more support over on Patreon to help us reach our goals, and some enthusiasm for the project would be something nice to see. I want to do more with it! Or, at least meet our base goals!
Third, I’m also working carefully or not-working-right-now on a number of other games of varying sizes:
Posers – This is currently at a halt as I can’t figure out the right form factor, which has locked up my design. It’s a game about performing masculinity, and has a weird knot-tying/untying resolution mechanic. No idea when I’ll be working on this in earnest.
At the Lake by Morning – This is a game inspired loosely by Annihilation and is supposed to use water and a mirror in the mechanics, which is going to take some fiddling. I want to explore some feelings I got from the film, significantly looking at self-forgiveness and change. It’s new.
The Unhurried Pursuit of Sloth – This I have all the ideas for, just gotta start digging into the mechanics. It won’t start in earnest until Turn’s finished. It’s a game about taking it slow and self-communion.
Laser Kittens Octopus Hack – I’ve been signed on with Glittercats Fine Amusements to write an octopus themed Laser Kittens hack, which involves the octopus being brought into a marine science lab and (perhaps!) escaping. I’m putting down the first bits of it soon. Glittercats awesomely chose to keep the lights on, so my energy can be more easily directed at this. I’m gonna do my best.
Eldrich Inkling – This is a two-player investigation game where one player sets a cosmic horror story for another, played by mail. It mostly requires research, which takes time, especially with my brain.
Tribute – I recently decided to withdraw Tribute from the Gauntlet Codex as the game is based largely in processing loss of love, and my grief (related to my grandmother’s death) won’t allow me to publish it through someone else, and won’t let me finish it until I resolve some things. It’s strong, but there is something missing. It may have to wait until spring – if it does happen at all. I hope it does.
And that doesn’t touch my home projects – specifically, the be-a-better-person & be-healthier projects. Which, you know what, are just as important as my deadlines! I’m currently doing physical & speech therapy for my concussion recovery, plus diving back into psych therapy to help treat my bipolar disorder, PTSD, anxiety, and various related troubles. The PT+speech takes up a minimum of 10 hours of appointments, home work, and recovery from those appointments and home work each week – that’s not counting the normal days I have symptoms from my concussion, or dealing with insurance. With my existing disabilities on top… yeah.
Psych therapy is going slower, but is a lot of emotional work. When you go through cognitive type therapy, you can find you get stronger while simultaneously becoming more sensitive and delicate. Those aren’t words I like for myself, but there they are. I’m working on myself as much as I can, while trying to avoid the daggers that are the world – and they are such sharp daggers, and so many! I wish they were something softer.
I guess where I’m at right now is like, yeah, 2019, lots of plans. Loads of things I have to do, things I want to do, things I’m struggling to do. And hopefully more on the way. I want to be more successful, to help provide for John and me to have a happy life. I just feel like I keep hitting setbacks, and Thoughty can be a casualty of that – it is hard to do this and do everything else and survive. You can bet your bottom I’m trying to reinvest all of this struggle and pain into games and Thoughty – just gotta filter it, refine it, and find a place for it.
I hope that you’ll stick with me as I keep making things and keep asking questions. I also hope you’ll do those things, too!
And hey, take care of yourselves. It helps me believe that I can make it when we aren’t all falling apart together! Let’s build each other up, and build a better year.
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/thoughty. Tell your friends!
Today, on the Twitters, Adam Savidan posted something that just really hit me.
I had a good weekend, but I seem to be fighting with this big empty hole feeling in my chest after I release any content, like I’m instantly irrelevant after it’s been finished.
– Adam Savidan @WakeUpSuper
One, I want to state that Adam is awesome and absolutely still relevant. His current showSpectator Mode is an amazing celebration of eSports and is infused with Adam’s enthusiasm. I love that! I don’t even watch eSports, but I watch Spectator Mode. Two, I totally get this, and I get how even after making something a-maaaaaayzing, Adam might feel a little like… bad.
Here I’ll talk about the bad feeling – what I’ll call the suck, some of what I do to try to fix it, and some of where I think it comes from.
The Suck
I just finished a Kickstarter, the most funds I’ve raised in a month through any means in my whole life, for a project that I deeply and passionately care about. But the truth is, for me, Turn has been done for a while – the minute I sent it to the editor, I felt like the main project died. The Kickstarter just performed some necromancy, and the next eight months are just riding on that wave of lich-love.
And right, I’ll get some bursts working on The Confidante (which is actually pretty much done) and a Moose, and doing dev work alongside the stretch goal writers. But like, I will be real with you, the editing process is basically hell for me, I will hate every minute of it ten times more than you hate gum on your shoe. But I’ll do it, cuz it’s what’s necessary to make a product, and yeah.
But when the stuff that keeps me going is done, like my design bits, that suck comes in like
“You’re not a real creator” “You’re not making anything useful” “No one cares about the work you’re doing” “Everyone’s already forgotten about you” “Nothing you make will last or be memorable”
And just. I can’t tell you how! much! I! HATE! IT! And I feel like I can’t do anything about it, and maybe, most of the time I can’t. I can try, you know? Like poke at it and make an effort. The alternative is to wallow negatively and agree with it and be like yeah, yeah, I super suck and I’m not good at anything. And ugh, gross. Gross.
@that_MAZ also tweeted this video of Wentworth Miller, a gay actor who is super inspiring to me for many reasons, talking about how we talk to ourselves:
It’s real good, and I’m grateful for the words. It’s also challenging, because man, I can’t imagine talking good about myself on a regular basis – I even did a semester-long mindfulness meditation dedicated to reducing negative self-talk. It helped, but it didn’t fix it – probably only constant vigilance would make a difference, and that’s…a lot.
I pretty aggressively beat up on myself for not doing well enough, not succeeding enough, not constantly working. It doesn’t matter how hard I work, there is not enough work done, and the minute the project stops, it’s the suck. This kinda one-two punch of things talking about how we feel about ourselves (that we are irrelevant if we are not creating) and how we talk about ourselves (hurtfully) really hit hard. So, I wanted to talk a little about how I fight the suck, both the better ways and the worser ones, and ways I am gonna try in the future.
Fighting The Suck, Part 1, AKA the Bandage Over the Void
One way I try to circumvent the suck is by lining up new projects of varying sizes and by working on projects alongside the main project. I worked on Ears Are Burning during the Kickstarter, worked on projects for Turn like The Confidante and The Opossum during the Kickstarter, and I announced my new project, The Unhurried Pursuit of Sloth (more soon) at the tail end of the Kickstarter. And I have work to do immediately after, too, like my project forOrun, a sensitivity read, Leading with Class, blog posts to prep, starting a Scion streamed game (as player), supporting the stretch goal writers & doing that dev work, edits for Turn, and a project I just signed on for with Glittercats Fine Amusements (signing the contract probably tomorrow).
Of these, only a couple of them seem like I’ll feel that creative filling for them, and a lot of the others are either different brain space or just not as satisfying as one of my own projects. And even so, even if I get that burst for them, each will end in turn. There’s a lot of fear here.
Where The Suck Comes From
Part of me fears that if I end one project without another lined up, I’ll feel worse, and another project won’t come. This is scary for me financially, too, because I do rely on a lot of this work for income to keep my lights on and ensure we eat. John works, so so much, but maintaining me as a functioning human is expensive. Like, without my income from Thoughty, we get very close to a scarier spot than we’re already in.
And the other part of me fears two things:
that I have nothing left to create – I am no longer a creator
that I am not valuable to anyone anymore – I am no longer valid
I have this deep and terrifying anxiety about not being useful? As a disabled person, as a person who has lost their usefulness time and again in varying ways, I am so afraid of the day I stop being useful to people entirely. To the day I am put in the corner to die. That is a full-on constant fear. And not creating anymore would make me much less useful, too much less, in part because of how hard not-game-design work is, and I die a little inside every time I realize how easily it could happen (see also: my brain is broken and some days I can’t words).
And the valuable thing? It’s just the other side of the coin. It’s where I’m nicer to myself about the reality and allow myself that people might see good in me, might benefit from being connected to me. But what if it is just because of what I create? What if they don’t see me creating stuff and being present and being a non-stop content creator every single day and they decide I’m not valuable anymore? There’s nothing good left to see in me? I’m no longer a valid investment of their time and energy.
And I get worried they’re gonna go away. That the people, they will leave me. It’s not like building an audience is easy, like, it’s fucking hard. I’m an entire person on this here internet and I’ve worked hard to make content that brings people to me so I am not alone in this universe, in appreciating the work I’ve done, and so on. And when a project ends it’s like, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh, I gotta try to keep them here. Losing your audience is a hard hit. I’ve had hits like that, where I fucked up or I was just not what people wanted and I bled followers like so bad. It can mean death to future projects, and it definitely means tons of work rebuilding, networking, trying to be enough. Sometimes finding whole new audiences. It ain’t easy. And that’s part of the fear: even if I manage to recover, if I ever make anything again, I have to redo all of what I’ve done and more, and it may never be enough.
This is even more complicated when you are friends with a lot of your audience, like I am, and like many creators are – you know they’re your friends, but what if someone makes a better, cooler thing while you’re sitting here, unable to create something amazing right now? Wouldn’t you rather they be happy?
Sometimes I wanna dump pudding on my brain for how easily it digs in to try to hurt me like this.
I think part of the resolution of this is identifying what our root fears are that cause this sucking feeling. Looking over them, mine are clear: safety based (wellbeing, financial security), purpose/identity based (usefulness, ability to be creative), social based (losing my social support net which directly impacts the others). And you know… those aren’t illegitimate fears.
And I’m feelin’ them while I look at my planned December break (more on that in a sec).
Fighting the Suck, Part 2, AKA Using Your Words
Sometimes, I turn to Mr. Rogers. See, Mr. Rogers wouldn’t have ever given me shit for not constantly working. He’d probably ask me to work a little less! Or just as much as I felt like was right for me.
And like…one thing I need to learn is that a lot of my audience is there for me as I am, even right after I finish a project, even when I haven’t worked on a project for a while. They care about me more than they care about what I produce. This is contrary to my brain, and fights against my fears.
So let’s start with that. Slam down some affirmations, right? Use the words that work for you. Try to address each of your fears.
It’s okay to be afraid of all the things that could go wrong.
It’s okay to want to feel useful and creative.
It’s okay to feel lonely when all the good words slow.
Next step is to chase away the lies. I try to avoid absolutes and stuff when I do this, but your language might work better for you, as usual.
Your creativity isn’t unlimited, but breaks are okay, and reinvigorate you.
Usefulness is not based on constant productivity.
Your friends and audience aren’t here purely because of what you create.
Then I think it’s important to put some good in. Go wild, be generous.
You can think up new projects when your brain and body have rested!
You look productive when you have completed projects!
Your audience can enjoy your work at their own pace if you take some time!
And now we can do the more action-y part. Here’s where I’d make a plan for how to fill the void.
What Fills Me?
This part is a pain because you have to think of like, the way you feel satisfied as a person. I’m going to talk mine out here.
Obviously there’s trying to do new projects. That helps! Ish. But there’s also like, getting positive comments from people that have nothing to do with my work, like, focusing on me as a person and their feelings about our relationship (or on my selfies & appearance, which is still kind of a bandage instead of stitches but ya know). Loving time with my partners or friends, and fun activities (actually playing games and stuff) help to offset the suck. Other creative activities than design like drawing, photography, and so on help me both distract myself AND keep me creatively satisfied.
Fighting the Suck, Part 3 AKA Filling the Void
If you have a project ending, it’s a good thing to set up a schedule for how you’re going to deal with the suck. Using a bandage like in part 1, and using your works like in part 2, both are steps to deal with it. But the final step is filling that void!
What I chose to do right after the Turn Kickstarter was to schedule the Kickstarter to end right when we get a paycheck so our bank account doesn’t feel so starkly empty, schedule & go on a photography trip with John for both love & creative time, make sure I post selfies and stuff to social media within a couple of days so I could get some positive comments from friends, and have a plan in place for the work I’ll be starting. I also did some stuff like drawing (I bought some new colored brush pens) and setting up for the Scion game. And I took some time off the Kickstarter! Like I haven’t sat and did emails or comments or anything, just like I promised. BUT I have been available on social media and interacting.
This can’t be it, though. The recovery has to be proportionate to my productivity, honestly. I did grad school, then did a Kickstarter, then did a Kickstarter. So, I’m also officially taking off the second half of December – from everything. I’ll be making sure I do photography, draw, and spend time with my partners. I’m allowed to work on game design if I really feel like it, so only when I have inspiration and enthusiasm, but no big project work. To facilitate this, I’m doing a two-week period where I’m resolving all my loose ends (edits for Turn, Orun work, pending paid work, etc.), and then I’m going to work on filling my void with something other than productivity.
It’s like a sucking chest wound, right, the suck? You gotta wrap it up and keep an eye on it, be ready to unwrap it if things get yikes inside.
To break down what I am doing, I’m addressing:
safety fears – scheduling of the Kickstarter near payday, arranging to get paid work done, maintaining my health by taking time off, separating myself from the Kickstarter so it’s no longer my whole life
purpose/identity fears – doing other creative things and spending time with partners, getting validation through selfies, allowing myself to be creative in games when I want
social fears – connecting with social media and getting engagement on selfies and my tweets from my audience, planning social things that prioritize my deep relationships, ensuring I’m still being “public”
It sounds like a lot but it’s challenging to take care of yourself, to fight your fears, and to find a pathway to deal with the suck! It’s also important to remember how much you can do during a project to ensure it doesn’t become all-encompassing. Like I didn’t do enough, but I tried to balance it by having a consultant do some of the work, not responding to Kickstarter comments when I was supposed to be in bed (this died eventually), and being thoughtful with my scheduling. The initial part 1 with bandaging by doing some design work alongside and ensuring I’d have design work post-Kickstarter was part of this.
One last of these kind of things I’ll be doing is I’ll be letting my audiences know that I’m dealing with this (in part through this post), so that if they’ve got some free energy, they can send good vibes my way.
There’s one more thing.
Fighting the Suck, Part 4, Unsuck Yourself
This is, I think, the hardest part – and it goes back to the Wentworth Miller video. We need to be kinder to ourselves. We need to not slide into telling ourselves we suck, and we need to speak to ourselves lovingly. So when our brain starts those bad things I talked about earlier, and like he says in the video, we gotta refocus. Talk to ourselves out loud, and make them good to us.
“If you do talk to yourself out loud… make sure that the words are loving, supportive, and nourishing. Start the work of being your own best friend.”
– Wentworth Miller
You aren’t the suck. You’re just a person who is done with a thing. An AWESOME thing! And you’ll have the chance to do more things, you just gotta remember that you need a break, too.
—
P.S. – Maybe this will not be useful to anybody, but it might be useful to somebody! I just tried to think of all the things that are helpful for me and that I’ve been working on to deal with this problem that is really hard for me.
P.P.S. – The title of this is in reference to Linkin Park’s “In The End” which I’ve listened to constantly during periods of depression, which normally accompany the suck. Since Chester Bennington’s death, I’ve been trying harder to fight my depression than I ever have, because it has been super hard for me to cope with losing him – and I was just a fan who identified with his music. It made me wonder who would care if I was gone, and not want to hurt them. It matters.
P.P.P.S. – I looked up sucking chest wounds for this. There was an autoplay video. I suffer for my art.
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/thoughty. Tell your friends!
Hi all! I have a Patreon spotlight today and it’s on the designer and creator Kira Magrann, who makes some queer, experimental games that explore intimacy and cyberpunk themes, among other things.
Kira Magrann
Bio via Kira:
Kira is a tabletop roleplaying game designer, queer NB cyborg, and snake mom living in Columbus, Ohio. She currently has a Patreon where she designs experimental games, a YouTube channel where she talks about game design, and she blogs a few times a month at Gnome Stew. With the support of her patrons she recently released a game about Lesbisnakes in wintertime titled A Cozy Den.
Tell me about yourself and your work. Who are you, and what does your work do?
I’m a queer cyborg game designer living in Columbus, Ohio. I’m a horror movie lover, snake mom, and I’m working on making my hair look like Major Kusanagi’s. My work, my game design work anyway, aims to educate, titillate, and inspire. When people play my games I want them to feel things and have learned something they didn’t know before. Hopefully the designs and concepts are also accessible enough to reach a diverse audience which is something I work hard at doing.
The identification stats for lesbisnakes in A Cozy Den, featuring a range from High Femme to Stone Butch.
Descriptions of the various stats in A Cozy Den, including presentation.
You’re a known activist and queer designer. How does your perspective regarding these things affect your design work and the work you do for your Patreon?
Gosh, well, being an activist and a queer designer means that basically all my work will have some aspects of those two parts of me in them. Everything I make is queer, or cyberpunk (emphasis on the punk), or related to queer or feminine monster metaphors. It’s a huge pool of inspiration to pull from, which means I can make games that are kind of like, combinations of these things, and maybe not like, 100% just one of them. So A Cozy Den, my game about lesbisnakes, is about half snake half lesbian mythical monster creatures who are trying to live together during the winter. It’s also a non-violent game and focuses on cozy stories and mechanics. It also uses lesbian terminology, your stats being derived from a scale of High Femme to Stone Butch. So that’s easily like, all three of my main interests in one game. This is how all my games go! I basically draw from what’s important to me in my personal life, and also the genres I’m inspired by and care a lot about.
Three lesbisnakes from A Cozy Den.
Tell me a little about A Cozy Den. What inspired you to write the game? What about it speaks to your design and you as a person?
A Cozy Den came about because I’ve been obsessed with snakes since I adopted my 8 year old corn snake Sol about a year and a half ago now. I basically read about them daily and am in all these FB groups in the snake community and just love them so much. I’ve actually loved snakes since I was a child but never really owned any until now (I’m 37!). I had recently learned that snakes den together, and it really humanized them, painted them in a more communal and cozy way.
I like finding ways that make snakes less scary for people, because I think that removing fear even in a small way toward an animal can make huge changes in a person’s life and in removing fear in the world in all kinds of ways. I’d also been really into lesbian lifestyle history at the time and watched this short documentary on lesbian communes, and suddenly it clicked… snake dens and lesbian communes are so similar in all these ways like, culturally. They’re outsiders, American culture is kind of afraid of them, and the communes in the 70s and 80s in particular were very purposeful outsider ways for lesbians to live outside of the norm in America.
“What’s a Den?” section of the A Cozy Den text.
So I basically just combined the two and was like, I can make a game that can teach simultaneously about two things I love: snakes and queer history. That is so typical of my design style. I’ll basically find all these connecting points with the many genres and things in the world I love, combine them into an interesting genre game setting, and somehow teach about them in the game. I’m queer and a snake lover too, so this game is very personal, very much about me and the things I love. I also wanted to experiment with mechanics, to see if I could make a pbta game without physical conflict as the main driver. I’m more and more interested in games that don’t have violence, and instead create different types of feelings or situations. So in A Cozy Den all the conflict is inter personal… can the characters get along with each other during the winter in a closed space? What does cozy look like in a tabletop game vs a video game? There’s a lot going on in this tiny weird game, and its very much how my design brain and personal brain work. I could talk about it for awhile lol.
The “Healing” section of A Cozy Den.
Your new videos have been well-received! How do you decide what to do videos about? What is your process for creating the videos?
So, my videos, basically I recently got obsessed with YouTube (you’re probably seeing a pattern here with my creative obsessions) and I was like, shit, I could do this. I’ve always wanted to learn more about video making and a lot of my personal media on my insta has been drifting toward video too. Whenever I want to get better at something, I get obsessed with it and do it until I get better. It’s worked ok so far although I wish I could stick with one thing it’d be easier lol.
My videos are about my design process and thoughts, so while I’m working on things throughout the week I try to note particular issues I’m having while writing or designing, or thoughts another youtube video or article made me have, and then I write those down. Then I pick one, and make a word document with a bunch of bullet points stream of conciousness style what I might like to talk about in that video topic. Then I’ll step away for a few hours or a day, come back to it and clean it up.
I’ve cleaned up my extra bedroom office so that the space behind me looks decent and I have windows in front of me for natural light, and I just use a very cheap tripod from amazon and my iphone for recording. Then I’ll record in about 50 second pieces (I’ve found smaller ones are easier to upload to dropbox for whatever reason), upload them to dropbox, download them to my computer (this usually takes hours) then edit them in a free editing program I have on my ubuntu computer called kdenlive. I don’t do anything fancy with the editing, just add music and text. Once that’s done I’ll upload to youtube!
A video from Kira’s YouTube on Playtest Process and Design Iteration.
There’s lots of tricks on youtube to get more traffic and stuff in like, the way you tag things and name stuff and put ending credits in… all those I learned from watching videos on youtube about how to do it. I want to get a little more vloggy with my videos in the future, play with cinematography more, but for right now I’m trying to get a rhythm and skill set to just make them regularly. I think of my youtube channel like a blog basically, like, what would I write about to the community on g+ or gnome stew, then instead of writing I just film it. I’m getting better! It’s still mostly an experiment.
What are some goals you have for your Patreon and your design practice in general?
My Patreon is helping me become a better designer while simultaneously putting out content that I can’t make anywhere else. It’s a really unique opportunity to be able to explore whatever kinds of games my heart desires and not worry to terribly about the “sellability” of it, y’know? I think a lot of creators know what types of content really sells, something with fantasy fighters, something grimdark, something with skullduggery… basically new takes on the typical rpg stuff.
In order to create something truly new and different, it means that you’re taking a huge chance as a creator that no one in the rpg community will be interested in playing your weird stuff. So having this patreon to support me even a little monetarily helps me make those unique and innovative games. Also it is paying my bills! I’d love to get it up to 1500 a month, cause then it’d legit be like a part time job! But until then I’m scrambling to fill the extra money in with freelance work which to be honest is kind of overwhelming. It’s a dream to be able to live off my patreon. I think it’ll get there.
The Actions from A Cozy Den with some handwritten markup.
When do you experience the most joy, and the most satisfaction, while creating?
Wow this is a spectacular question and I’m not sure 100% how to answer it lol! The whole process for me is very joy inducing. I’m a hyper creative person and my imagination is always on overdrive, so coming up with the ideas is really fun. I also love to be critical, and I think editing is a critical skill, so basically the part where you’re taking the ideas and narrowing them and sculpting them into something more specific is also really satisfying. The act of writing is sometimes a little tedious, but when I get a flow going I disappear into the document for hours at a time and that flow feels really good, creatively.
I do really love collaborating, especially when I’m in charge of a project and can choose who else is on my team. I’m very proud to work with other marginalized creators and hire them to create art or other work like in A Cozy Den or RESISTOR. Sharing creative work is definitely scary, but I love creating artwork that people use or wear, so when people are getting the game and playing it I feel very accomplished and get this feeling of sympathetic joy. So I guess those are my favorite parts of creating, and the things that give me the most satisfaction in the process.
A character sheet from A Cozy Den.
Patterns and colors for the various lesbisnakes in A Cozy Den based on their stats.
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Thank you so much to Kira for stopping in to talk about her Patreon,A Cozy Den, and her design! Please check out Kira’s work and share around this spotlight to show off the cool work she is doing.
You can find Kira on Twitter as @kiranansiand on YouTube, as well as through Patreon where she designs experimental games, and sometimes at Gnome Stew. Make sure to check out A Cozy Den, too!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Hi all! Thanks to friends on G+, I was able to get in touch with Juhana Pettersson to interview him about Chernobyl, Mon Amour, which is now on IndieGoGo! Chernobyl, Mon Amour is the English translation of Tšernobyl, Rakastettuni, which was published in 2016 by Juhana. The themes of the game sounded haunting and beautiful, and I wanted to hear more! Check out Juhana’s answers below.
BCS Note: It’s so odd but I never realized how beautiful Finnish is! Lovely to even read over without knowing the meanings.
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Cover art of a couple in front of a ferris wheel, with their skeletons highlighted in red. By Joel Sammallahti.
Tell me a little about Chernobyl, Mon Amour. What excites you about it?
It’s a very personal game for me, in some ways that are obvious and others less so. I visited Chernobyl with my wife and that certainly affected how I saw it. It was in the early summer, and the quiet, the light were beautiful. At the same time, the history of Chernobyl is horrible. I remember when I was a child, five years old, when the news of the radioactive cloud hit Finland. My parents were watching the tv news. I didn’t understand very much, but I sensed the fear and the panic. If you look at a visualization of how the radioactive particles traveled in the atmosphere after the accident, it seems as if they were almost willfully zooming straight for Lapland.
Something in that combination, the peace of Chernobyl as it is now and the terror of the story seemed like it could form the basis of an interesting roleplaying game.There’s also a book by a Belarusian journalist called Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl, which had an enormous effect on me. It collects the stories of individuals who were involved with the accident or its aftermath.
I like love stories in roleplaying games, but they seem very underrepresented in the games that have been published so far. The Romance Trilogy of games by Emily Care Boss is obviously a huge inspiration, but I think the roleplaying field could take more than what we have now.
As a less obvious thing, the game is also an attempt to communicate the specific roleplaying game culture in Helsinki, Finland, where I discovered roleplaying and still play. Through international contact I’ve come to believe that the community has some unique and interesting ideas about roleplaying, and I’ve struggled to express some of them here, especially relating to very freeform-style character based social play.
Juhana Pettersson
What struck the romantic tone in Chernobyl, and how do you bring it to forefront in the game?
I’ve always liked love stories in roleplaying games, both as a player and as the GM. I think they’re fun to play and very well adapted to the social situation of a tabletop game. A lot of a real life romance consists of talking, and talking happens to be the one thing that we can do in a tabletop game with minimal or no game mechanics.
I played my very first roleplaying game romance scenes when I was sixteen years old and just starting with Vampire: the Masquerade. Because we didn’t actually have much real life experience with love and relationships, these scenes tended to be kinda awkward and heartfelt. In retrospect, it almost feels like we were using the game to practice for real life. Later in life, there’s been a shift in content on what kind of relationship roleplaying works in the games I play in. They’ve become more about exploring things we don’t necessarily want to experience in real life and fictionalizing actual experience either for fun or to come to terms with it.
Because of this experience, I knew for a fact that romance in roleplaying games can be very good stuff. Since the selection of published material was so sparse, I figured it would work for a game book like this one. However, I also felt that when it came to pushing the theme, subtlety was not going to work. This is why I tried to put romance front and center and have everything orbit around it. The game has two themes, radioactivity and romance. The radioactivity theme is much more perverse, involving an essentially self-destructive impulse. Yet my intuition was that it would come easier to a lot of players.
Aged and detailed map of nuclear zones. By Miska Fredman.
How does the game work mechanically? Does romance interact with the mechanics?
In terms of game mechanics, Chernobyl, Mon Amour is an attempt to broaden the scope of what we consider game design. It has no real mechanics to speak of in the traditional sense. No stats, xp, combat rules. Instead, I’ve attempted to code the design into the world description, the character creation guidelines, the preparatory workshops and so on.
Fundamentally, I think the goal of game mechanics is to create a definite kind of experience. Following the rules you experience what the game wants to convey. Chernobyl, Mon Amour follows a similar kind of logic in that by doing what the book says you should do, you’ll have the experience. It’s just not facilitated by mechanics but instead by the other guidelines. In this sense, it shares a lot of the same thinking as Nordic Larp does. Instead of designing a game, the goal is to design a very particular social situation.
Because of this, I suspect that it’s also a little harder to run than most roleplaying games, and perhaps more limited in who can play it together. However, I’ve also found that this style can be appealing to many people who find more mechanics-oriented roleplaying games difficult to approach.
How did you playtest Chernobyl, Mon Amour, if you did playtest? If you did not, what makes you feel confident about the game succeeding?
I ran playtest games before and during the design and writing process. When I first had the idea, I wasn’t sure of its viability, so I ran games to try it out. After those, I felt more confident that I was able to make a game out of this. From a playtesting perspective, this is an unusual game. Often playtesting means making sure that the mechanics of the game work robustly, but this time there isn’t really any of that. Rather, playtesting is about the ideas and concepts, as well as the functionality of the exercises for creating the right social atmosphere with players. These are much more subjective in terms of whether they work or not, and more prone to confusion created by differences in basic cultural assumptions.
In terms of success, I see this as an experimental game. It’s an attempt to convey a culture and style of roleplaying in a format that should make it possible to replicate it. I hope people will find it interesting, good and worth trying but I have a suspicion that I will be surprised by what people will do with it. Which is of course great, and a part of the appeal of roleplaying games in general.
Kuva, a person with long brown hair and dark skin in a hoodie. By Joel Samallahti.
What kind of workshops do you include with the game, and what sort of content and safety mechanics do you have to help players in the intimate scenario?
At least in the Finnish roleplaying scene, using workshops in tabletop games is highly unusual. I’m not really aware of anybody else even suggesting it. However, in Nordic Larp they’re routine and extremely useful. I figured that if these social tools work in larp, why not in roleplaying games? And I’m under the impression that in other countries, there’s been successful experiments with this.
The goal of workshops in Chernobyl, Mon Amour is get the participants aligned with the subject matter of the game and become more comfortable with each other. Because of Finnish cultural characteristics, the exercises as they are now are pretty talky, and I was planning of adjusting them a little for the English version to take into account the fact that in my experiences, international players are better at this than Finns are.
As for safety, I take it seriously. I’ve had experiences in tabletop roleplaying games myself where I’ve felt that my personal boundaries have been crossed in a negative way. Roleplaying based on intimacy and trust is powerful stuff, and it means that sometimes things can go bad emotionally even if all the participants are doing their best to accommodate each others’ limits. The game as it exists now has some simple safety mechanics to help with these situations, but this is another thing I wanted to adjust for the international version to give participants more tools.
Perhaps the simplest and most important safety technique, if you can call it that, is to make sure that everybody really wants to play it together, that everybody wants to play a roleplaying game about romance and death in an emotionally raw way. Sort of “enthusiastic consent” of roleplaying games, if you like.
“Valokuva 2,” distant image of buildings and industrial structures. Juhana & Maria Pettersson.
Earlier today I tweeted about a tweet by John Harper on the subject of loving your work and how it impacts others. For ease of access, I’m going to include the thread here, and then write the rest of the post. This is… a long post. John’s post:
Hey, creative friends. No matter what you feel inside, go ahead and tell everyone that you love your work and you’re excited to share it. Lie if you have to. Your enthusiasm will shine though and others will pick it up. Don’t do the bs self-effacing shit. It’s kind of awful.
I don’t think that it’s best to lie about how you feel about your work. My suggestion, to meet some of this ask, is “I’m working on something that I want to love and be proud of, but I’m struggling with that. Can you help me find good things in it?”
I’m not great at this yet!
As someone with mental health disorders, it’s really freaking hard to not speak negatively of my own work, especially when my work rarely succeeds or gets recognition and ESPECIALLY when I try to speak well of it and instead it gets trashed or I lose followers because of that.
It is far more encouraged for men, typically cis men, to praise their own work. The rest of us can get called egotistical, or have people say we’re over promoting/praising work more than it deserves.
I want to speak well of my work but I struggle with it constantly.
I get what John is saying here and I appreciate the intent, but I also know that lying about your feelings can hurt you so you should work on how you express them more than how to hide them, & that being positive about your work doesn’t always bring good returns and that hurts.
John’s method can work for many people, probably. But for me, that would be painful & harmful to me, with my past luck as example, & would not be successful as an exercise.
Just saying: nothing bad about John’s words for many people, but it’s okay if it’s not right for you.💜
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So, let me get the hard parts of this out of the way:
I’m not mad at John. I think he’s great and he’s been kind and honest with me in the few bits of time we’ve had together talking. We just don’t always agree, which he has always seemed to be cool about. I’m not arguing with him over this because I don’t see a point, it’s not like he’s bad or something.
I don’t personally think lying about your feelings is healthy. Some people can fake it to make it, and that’s great! But not all of us can, so I suggest if you do John’s method (which is totally fine!), be careful and respect your own needs. Performing self-love publicly sometimes needs to take a backseat to living and functioning, and I know that’s not a popular thing to say. It’s still true.
I know not all men benefit from the things I’m talking about here. I have many men I care a lot about who have struggled intensely with receiving recognition with their work, who struggle for people to value their work, and who have received negative responses to their promotion of their work. I know and love them, and I am not trying to belittle their experiences. Please understand that.
It’s okay, even though it sucks. It’s hard to look at your hard drive at your projects, or down at your drawing tablet, or whatever your work happens to be, and feel that sinking disappointment in yourself. It can be related to success, or completely unrelated. It can be in spite of the love of your fans and friends, or it might be related to trying to meet their standards. It’s okay. I’m going to say something that you’ve probably heard before, and I’m sorry to be repetitive. But let me try.
Your work is not what gives you value. There is no amount of work you can do that will make you valuable. You don’t deserve things based on what you’ve made, and it’s not about deserving in any case. You are valuable because you are. You are part of all of this world and your work may never be recognized but you mean something, you matter, and you are bigger in the scheme of things than your work ever could be.
Van Gogh could not have made Starry Night if he did not exist in the first place. You must be for any of your work to be, and you make your legacy, not the approval of other people.
I get it. I do. I look at my work sometimes and I scream inside (or sometimes outside) about its inadequacies. It’s failure. I lament loudly on Twitter that no one wants to interview me. I whine that I haven’t sold much of my work, and that no one posts about my work on social media or reviews it. I hurt. I hurt so much. I pour hours into my work and I hurt, and my work is no good. Nope. I hate it.
I bet you think that too, sometimes. And that’s okay.
The idea that you have to love your work for others to love it is probably not entirely what John was referring to, but I bet some people took it that way. Loving your work is not the only way to succeed and to make others love your work. It’s not! But there are things you should do. You know I love questions, so I’m going to give you some questions to ask yourself to make hating your work useful. (click thru for more!)
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Sorry, this is my favorite quote and is appropriate. Description: Andy Samberg as Jake Peralta saying “Eyes closed, head first, can’t lose.”
This is an exercise to try to find out what you can do to solve your negative feelings about your work, or at least move past them. This is something I’ve actually done, and I found it helpful, so I’m not just bullshitting you. You’ll need at least 5 minutes per piece of work, potentially more like 10.
Go to look at a few pieces of your work that right now, you feel bad about. Yeah, it’ll suck. Just go. Take something to record your thoughts. Ready? Ask these questions about each piece of work, briefly. You can go back with details later.
How am I feeling while I look at this work?
Do I feel disgust?
Do I feel sad?
Do I feel angry?
Do other people tell me they feel this way about them?
How do other people feel about them?
If you haven’t shown them to anyone, show them to someone after the exercise.
Why do these pieces make me feel this way?
Is it because of their structure?
How should they be structured?
Can I change their structure?
How?
Do they look bad?
How do I want them to look?
Can I make them look that way?
How?
Do they not function?
Can I make them work?
How?
What tools do I need?
Do they relate to something negative in my life?
Can I talk to someone about that?
Can I change it to ease that connection?
How?
Has someone said something bad about them?
Were their complaints valid?
Can I solve any valid issues the person presented?
How?
Are they unfinished?
Can I finish this?
Do I need to?
Can I set it aside officially and return sometime?
Are they not what I planned for them to be?
What did I plan for them to be?
Can I make changes to make them that?
How?
Did they not give me the success I wanted?
What was the success I wanted?
Do I need to rely on that success?
Can I ask for help to find it?
Have I been too busy to work on them?
Do I want to make time to work on them?
Can I make time to work on them?
How?
Look back at your “how?” responses. Which of these is 1) something you want to do, 2) something you can do (by yourself or with the help of others), and 3) something you think will make any difference in the way you feel about those pieces of work? If you have multiple things for one piece of work, put them as a bundle together.
Description: Taraji P. Hensen taking a picture with a phone camera captioned “you’re doing amazing, sweetie.”
Once you’ve figured a few out, look at your calendar and your current to-do list. Set aside a half hour in three days and then another half hour in a week to look at one of the items you think you can address, focusing on one set of questions and responses at each of these scheduled times. So maybe you think, “this drawing sketch doesn’t function the way I want, it doesn’t convey the emotion I’m looking for, but if I take it into Illustrator maybe I can strip out this section and draw in a new one.” You work on that.
Even if you just think about it for a while and write some notes, that’s okay! Keep setting aside just brief 15-30 minute appointments to address these questions, and work forward on execute the “how?” If you reach a hiccup or feel frustrated, seek support. Choose one or two people – only one or two – whose opinions on this project would be valid and you would trust. Tell them, “I’m struggling with solving this problem. Can you talk with me about it and tell me your positive and constructive thoughts?” Work from there to see if you can complete what you said you could do.
If you find that a piece of work doesn’t answer yes on any of those “something you want,” etc. questions, set it aside. Unless it is paid work, step away.
With other people’s projects, remember you’re satisfying them, not you. Contact the person you’re working with, and explain some of what you’re seeing, ask if they feel the same way. If they do, ask what options there are to address it (“someone said the draft of this NPC sounds like nonsense, can we look at it together and consider rewrites?”). If they don’t, just finish the project to what they ask. It might be hard or frustrating, but sometimes, we do paid work for no satisfaction. But, don’t hate that work – it’s over when it’s over. Archive the files, put it away, whatever you need to do: put it out of your mind. You’re done.
Description: Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple saying “Okay, I’m done.”
Here’s the thing: you might not love the work after you’ve worked on this. Make an effort to execute your “how?” and ask for help when you need it. After that, you might feel better. But, you might find out it’s not what you wanted. You can return to the questions, or with your own projects, you can set it aside until you want to jump back on that boat. Or you can toss it out. You are in control of it.
Now you know why you feel bad about it, and can try to do something about it. Just disliking your work and not knowing the reason can burn you up inside. And the best part is, sometimes, figuring out the why and whether you can fix it and how is the path to liking something, or for getting rid of something. Asking these questions and thinking about it practically puts more power in your hands to either do something or not do something, and neither decision is morally or ethically wrong.
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You might hate that exercise more than you hate your work, so that’s something. But really, friends, think about why you make things. Creation is power. Creation is beauty. When we make something, we put something into the world that otherwise wouldn’t exist. It’s amazing! So why wouldn’t we work? Why wouldn’t we make?
And we are the biggest part of that. We control the work, as much as is realistic. We control how we market it, we control how we consume it, we control how we engage with our work. This is a choice we make.
I just wanted to use this. Description: Pink text reading “baby bok CHOICE”
Speak up when you feel dissatisfied with your work if you want, but try to do it with purpose. I felt upset with Turn because people kept on calling it Powered by the Apocalypse, so I thought it through, and I made the changes I needed to do to make myself stop being angry and disappointed with it. A few word changes and it bloomed. I felt frustrated with Shoot to Kill, but after I realized it was because I felt ethically strained about it, so I am making changes to fix it. It sucks to think about why you dislike your work, why you’re frustrated, but it makes it possible to change it and feel better about it!
People will see your enthusiasm over your work, or even your constructive discussions and growth, and want to enjoy your product with you. It will encourage them and it will benefit you. It is hard to do, but I think it is a challenge any of you are up for.
Hating your work won’t make work better, and yeah, it might not make it worse either. But couldn’t loving it make it great?
Description: Terry Crews saying “You know Terry loves love.”
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
This is a diversion from games but related to my typical work and my current look into masculinity with Posers, and is as-of-now an unpaid post.
Mike Rugnetta wrote twoposts on the subject of the McElroy Brothers and the use of the term “boy.” I found it by a shared Twitter thread by @RowanGayle who I don’t know but said some cool stuff. And reading these things brought me to tears, because I want to talk about why I, personally, consider myself a boy…and why I don’t agree that boy must be or necessarily is gender neutral.
My coming out story is freely available on the internet so I’ll just say simply: for technical terms I use genderfluid nonbinary-masculine to define myself, but casually I refer to myself as a boy. It started jokingly, but then I felt it more significantly that the word fit me better than anything else, and it ties into these things that Mike and RowanGayle are saying. It is not necessarily about gender, but it is about identity, and it interweaves with gender for me.
When I first became a viewer of the various McElroy properties, Griffin’s voice really stuck with me (as a synesthete, to me it is the exact color and feeling of slipping on a banana peel, which makes me giggle). I liked how he talked about the characters they made on Monster Factory, and his enthusiasm. I also appreciated the not-entirely-but-pretty-damn-wholesome vibe the McElroys have thus far been some of the least problematic internet entities I’ve seen (along with Rugnetta and Mikey Neumann), and fuck if I didn’t feel the positivity and enthusiasm pouring out into the world from their media. Even when things were at the point where they could be problematic, they didn’t go there, or if they did, they apologized. That is important to me, so much, and that’s part of what “boy” is to me because of how it reflects in both the speakers and the subjects who are just trying their damn best – not necessarily good, but trying to be, always trying to be.
I see boy as inherently trying. Trying to be better, which is a common refrain for me, be better, and to be what you want to be. Hopeful is not something I am, but something I think translates well to boy-ness, and I don’t talk about how much I want to be hopeful, but I do want that, and I know that’s part of why I cling to boy. In the times Griffin used it in Monster Factory, it stuck in my head as this loving “our boy can do anything!” vibe and I loved that these boys, these no-middle-sliders boys who fumbled were still seemingly loved even though they’re characters in a damn video game. I have struggled so much with feeling okay with who I am, but every time I heard “boy” it poked a little at me, and I finally just let it in. Griffin doesn’t know me and neither do any of these other internet people but boy, boy stuck with me.
There is a playful, loving, hopeful, enthusiastic vibe in the idea of these boys that try so fuckin’ hard to just do the thing and to just be boys. That’s what I love about it, I think.
I’m not a man and have no desire to be, but the soft masculinity that sits in boy suits me. It’s not about men or women, and I think here is the flaw. Not everyone has to be a boy, and it is evident to me by the McElroy use of it that it is not necessarily gendered man or woman, but instead likely an androgynous space where some boys could be – it feels that it could be a soft masculine, but it doesn’t have to be.
My complication with the analysis thus far is more that we are only considering man, woman, and agender identities. It isn’t destroying the gender binary to take gender away entirely – expanding gender and understanding the complexities and variances of gender identity is what destroying the gender binary is.
What is a person who has a gender that is not necessarily binary but it does exist?
I dunno, I guess what I’m trying to say is, when Griffin used boy, it gave me a simple word for what I am. And that’s pretty cool, whatever people end up saying it is later.
This post isn’t presently supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs, but you can support me there – I know Patreon is presently sketchy, so feel free to just tip below if you want. Tell your friends!
FYI, Some of my photos are a little shaky. I was in the middle of an allergic reaction for half of it, and honestly, no tripod when I’m not feeling well makes it lousy. I tried though!
This is, I think, the last installment about my experience at Big Bad Con 2017! —
Gif of selfies and friends <3 (featuring Tanya DePass, Misha Bushyager, and Nathan Black
My experience on Sunday at Big Bad Con was really great. I had a lot of positive experiences, and some really good emotional ones. The morning was mostly socializing – Tanya picked up some Jack in the Box for me, I visited people and talked about all sorts of stuff, and in the afternoon, I got to play games! (I know, gaming at a gaming con, who would have thought?
The first game I played was from my upcoming collection, Let Me Take a Selfie. The game is called Who Made Me Smile? and I played with Tanya DePass, Nathan Black, and Misha Bushyager. It was so fun! The general play is that we each write some three-sentence stories with different mood themes, and then take selfies after we read a selection of them.
Our stories and some selfies. 😀
After that, we talk about it, and take a “neutral” selfie. The most fun part for me is after that, when we look at other players’ selfies and the stories they read to guess which story was associated with which selfie. It’s fun to see how my friends express their emotions!
Google made this.
After that, you match up who guessed which selfie right, and everyone gets the chance to take selfies or write more stories. We didn’t have any need to write more stories, which you do if anyone doesn’t match anything right with another player, so instead we just took selfies together! I loved it so much.
It’s important to note that none of us see each other outside of the internet very much, so being able to share these stories and see the emotions people expressed in their selfies – including people who don’t normally take selfies – was such a great experience! I think everyone else had fun, and it’s something I really enjoyed. Also, it was so cool seeing people play my game!
LOTS more here, including Dialect!>>>
I got to play Dialect in the afternoon with Hakan Seyalioglu running, alongside Vivian Paul, Vera Vartanian, and Kristine Hassell. I honestly can’t get over how amazing this game was. Vera cried a hecka lot, in a positive feelsy way, so we must have been doing okay. 🙂 Dialect is a game about language, specifically the death of it, and to make that happen, you need to build it. It is fascinating to me how integrated the language is with the cultural and emotional development of the characters, honestly.
Dialect table setup.
We played a group of artificially intelligent robots left behind after humans departed from earth known as EIPS (Earth Inter-Planetary Surveillance, “eeps”). The general vibe ended up being that the planet was One Hot Mess and environmentally trash. So our job, we decided, was to do surveillance on the planet so that the humans could someday return. We were there a while, and as time passed, we got better at our jobs, so we ended up with idle time to do less rote things. One of the first words we made was a filler word – ona – that we often said while thinking, interrupting our own speech, and so on. We also developed friendship. These three things are the aspects in the game that we would go on to tie words and explanations to, as well as ourselves.
To me, Friendship was the most important aspect of the story. It came up constantly because our relationships were really deep. EIPS took friendship seriously, and were grateful for those they connected with. Initially, the connections were for maintenance – the EIPS bots would repair each other by linking to each other and doing updates and repairs. During that, they learned about each other, about compassion, and about caring. This is where they made friends – synckeeps. Their synckeeps were bots they really cared for – and our bots were all synckeeps.
I mean, seriously, just thinking about the game has me tearing up, jeez.
In Dialect, you have a character of your own which a card that guides the character’s identity. I was the Explorer, and I associated myself with Friendship – in the game, I tried to explore the breadth of human emotion with my limited artificial intelligence, and got quite far, I think. I played 244-L, known as Leon. Leon was a “life emulator” designed to replicate human existence with the safety of robotic structure. He looked …approximately human, and had human-like skin that could regenerate from pretty much any chemical or environmental exposure. He was the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. Leon’s creator had loved the idea of Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth, and Leon was the realization of that – his body would keep regenerating, regardless of what happened. That was the plan, anyway.
Kristine played Jesse, the Jester, who was initially a data entry module. I think Jesse was associated with the surveillance of earth aspect. She was connected to data points all over the place until, as time passed, each one shut down and she was left alone with just us other models. While the settlement of bots was in the thousands, she was just herself. Because of this, she had learned sarcasm, which was her way of dealing with stress and isolation. She reviewed our daily reports for errors, and for so many years they had been static – eventually she started to copy and paste.
Next, there was the heart of our group – Spinner. AMZ013 was played by Vivian, who did a spectacular job making a lot of us feel really squishy. Spinner was a utility bot who had a broken wheel and so, obviously, Spinner spun and wobbled instead of going straight. Spinner was an incredibly interesting character who kept us on track, oddly enough, when the story got more challenging. Spinner was one of us who had a lot to do with how we spent our idle time (see later, “Uplink.”
Finally, Vera played IONI, ECR1147-C, a satellite who was never actually launched. IONI was our technical hub, kind of “in charge” of the situation – her archetype was the Ruler. She monitored all of the goings on, and made a lot of the big decisions. IONI, like Jesse, was pretty much the only one. We found out that IONI had been saying she received contact from the humans, but it turned out that for far too long she had been getting radio silence – what we knew as commfail, the word that described our sadness.
The first big event we had was that Jesse uncovered a discrepancy – a variance – in her reports. She couldn’t just copy and paste. She reported it to IONI, and IONI decided to investigate it with an expedition. As Leon was an explorer both emotionally and on the ground, he would go out on the expeditions with other EIPS units to test the environment. It beat him up pretty bad, and there was always a worry he wouldn’t come back. Because of this, we developed a way to say “good luck.”
When an EIPS unit says goodbye to someone, they send a datapacket to them with silly pictures and cute animals (cute cats, otters, etc.). While EIPS don’t entirely understand the point of all of it, the humans who made them were cheered by them, and they learned to enjoy them over time. Along with this, however, we needed an indication of them doing it, so we came through with . The bots with LED screens could simply flash the hearts, while those who were more anatomically human used their hands to make the heart (see picture).
This pic is super old but it demonstrates the point, yo.
(This was actually inspired by RPG_Dante (Bryant Stone) who I met at CONlorado. He signals to me when we part ways. I may have made everyone tear up with this because of how cute and sweet it is, which is a rare thing for a Brie.)
After Leon came back, it was determined that there was nothing evident in the outside that would explain the variance. We moved forward an age. Each age, you take one aspect and move it into the next circle set up on the table that represents the ages in the game. We chose Idle Time, which was changed into Overtime – we were working past our limits, longer than we had planned with no response from the humans, and running out of glint (our fuel). We were working overtime.
Kristine broke my heart with her character’s story and how she dealt with the loneliness and commfail that the characters experienced, as well as how she brought levity to the table. She was the first of us to express worry – known to us as 404. Her 404 was often founded, as Leon and Spinner got into a mess. There was a holiday known as “Uplink” where we would all power down and just socialize and be calm during a big storm that passed over our compound, and it took a lot of time and energy to give this space to us.
After the Uplink, Leon found Spinner. They hid in a closet and – in one of the most dick moves I’ve ever done in a game – Leon suggested that they might save glint if they put some of the others… out of commission. “Not everyone is necessary all of the time” is I think what was said, and the interaction was so painful, but Spinner agreed that it wasn’t an unreasonable plan. They planned to keep it secret, and had hid out of the range of IONIs base sensors, but they couldn’t get away from Jesse.
Jesse showed up and asked what was up, and in the process of trying to hide their discussion, Leon offered Jesse a can of “Pork nnnn beeens?” (Spinner noted it’s only $2.49) while trying to demonstrate that they were just getting rid of old cans. It didn’t work, and they spilled the (not pork and) beans. Jesse demanded answers in her 404, and Leon and Spinner responded. One of the biggest issues was that they suggested powering IONI down, even though she was their synckeep, and things got very complicated. After getting support from other EIPS, they gathered their courage and reported their thoughts to IONI, presenting themselves as in favor of Eco-Mode (which was a label for their faction, including those who agreed with them). IONI wasn’t happy, but was eventually convinced.
The age turned, and they began putting people into Eco-Mode. The first versions – periods of time where they disabled groups and later reenabled them – went okay, but over a lot of time, they ran into an event that made it harder to move forward: The Wipe. A huge sector of EIPS units were powered down, but when they were meant to go back online, there was nothing there. Their AI had been fully wiped. Unrecoverable. The commfail was immense. Going forward, the synckeeps struggled to stay together and powered on, but as those who had pursued Eco-Mode, some of them felt obligated to version.
Spinner was the first to get boxed up – literally – but was so well loved that the entire community came to wish him as he went into Eco-Mode, heavy with 404 that he might not return, and experiencing commfail at not having him near. This hit Jesse especially hard. Still, as Spinner left, he repeated our unity saying, “We are still here.”
Our aspect for Surveillance of Earth, in the last age, was changed to Survival.
Leon continued to do expeditions, and Jesse found another variance, so he pushed out one day to find out what was there. He was walking along with guidance and wishes of from Jesse and IONI because there were no other life emulators with him, just bots without AI doing utility tasks. There was a lot of interference, and he struggled to hear them while his vision was overwhelmed with environmental waste. His last messages repeated until it cut off – “404. 404. IONI? Jesse? 404. 404–“
IONI and Jesse struggled with the loss of their synckeeps, upset they couldn’t recover Leon because of the environment and their limited abilities. Eventually, they were the only ones powered on. In an act filled with commfail, IONI had Jesse power her down and send her last message out to the humans with the full archive. It was truly heartbeaking, honestly, I swear we were all near tears. Jesse, hugging her pork nnnn beeens, was alone.
After time, utility bots who had been surveying the landscape came across the body of Leon, who – after his skin had been burned away by sulfur waves – was now healed, but still deactivated. Jesse had him brought into IONI’s hangar, and then she brought in Spinner and set him up. She arranged little monitors for IONI, Leon, and Spinner, and played messages and videos. We faded to black.
In the dark, a message blinked on IONI’s status monitor.
“Archive received.”
Final table.
—
HOLY CENA MY FEELS, Y’ALL.
This is one of the best game sessions, and games, I have ever played in my entire life. I’m still crying just thinking about it. It was an amazing experience. Great players, great facilitator, great game. I would love to play Dialect like 8 billion more times. SO good. *dies*
Afterwards, I hung out with the aforementioned Dante and had dinner. I told him about being the messenger of in our game, which I think he liked. We also discussed my new mechanic for Script Change, frame-by-frame, and his own project that sounds like a lot of fun. After Dante left, I talked with Kristine, Tomer Gurantz, and a few other people about Brooklyn 99 and The Good Place and it was a great way to finish out. My flight was early and I stayed up late but it was well worth it.
I can’t wait to go back to Big Bad Con! I had such a good time and it was really amazing.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Playlist of muzak, played in the background with random control of the volume. Include at least one song played twice in a row (“Call Me Maybe” is great for this).
Roles
Four players are the cognizant, and control the mind.
Four players are the present, and control the body.
Setting
Players are people shopping at a Target [or equivalent shopping venue] for five things on their list. Each character will experience the dissociation of their mind from their body. When the parts of the character separate, the players will risk failure.
Play
There are ten things in the store as options to buy, and only five of them are on the characters’ lists. Characters must buy exactly those five items. When they enter the store, cognizant players flip a coin. On a heads, the character buys the first item on their list. On a tails, they miss it. After flipping, the cognizant steps one step back, away from the present. They must verbally communicate to the present no matter how far away they are, or how many people are shouting.
As they travel through the store, the players should converse about their day (in character or out). As each character finds an item, the cognizant will flip the coin to see if they buy it and take a step back. The present will pick up the item if appropriate. If the coin is ever dropped, the present will drop an item at random.
Play continues for no more than 15 flips. At the end, the cognizant tears up the list entirely and throws it away. The cognizant and the present come together and look at the items, to see if they matched their list to their remembrance.
Even if they did, they have no means to confirm.
– end –
It’s recommended to use the Script Change tools to ensure all players enjoy the game. It’s highly recommended to have a Wrap Meeting to go over the events of the game and decompress.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
