Tag: fiction

The Pursued and the Pursuing by AJ Odasso (Fiction) Review

Hey all, this is a fiction review because I got a copy of this awesome queer retelling of the Great Gatsby and I would LOVE to see more games with this energy (like Bro, Is It Okay to Dock? and such!) so I figured I’d share it here.

The cover for The Pursued and The Pursuing by AJ Odasso including a blue and off-white cover with yellow and white text and a stylized image of a fancy car from the early 1900s driving past trees.

AJ Odasso’s The Pursued and the Pursuing, an alternate ending and retelling of The Great Gatsby, is one of the first books in months that I couldn’t bear to put down. It has been a while since I read the famous original text, but my memories of me definitely left me wishing for something different, something distinct, and this satisfied that among other things! Before I give any details, I will say that I haven’t seen the related film, but I didn’t feel I needed to. There are spoilers in this review, but the significant ones will be spoiler tagged!

Even as someone who hasn’t recently read the book, I felt like Odasso’s natural skill in establishing character notes shone through. We start in media res, a hiccup before the official end of The Great Gatsby, where Jay Gatsby himself has been shot. Instead of him dying, he’s rescued by Nick Carraway and while publicly Jay Gatsby dies, Jay Gatz has new life. They go on to have a life together in love, finding their passions in both their professions (Nick as a writer for the Boston Globe and novels, Jay in restoring boats – something I appreciated because after his injury, he’s established to be disabled, but nonetheless gets to live a life doing labor that he enjoys, and as a disabled person, I rarely see disabled characters get to go on to happily do physical jobs!), and later, become the caretakers for Daisy Buchanan’s daughter Pam when it becomes clear that Daisy’s wishes for Pam do not match up with Pam’s desires.

The story itself is largely about finding love and family in places that you may not expect, while also experiencing the reality of being people who are not accepted by others. I appreciate that Odasso is very clear that these characters are benefitting from financial privilege throughout most of the text, and how that privilege does allow them not only the means to live well and travel, but also to remain private in their “proclivities” as queer people. There are historical references & geographical references that help to structure the story, as well as provide context for the nature of their private identities. It feels almost like a wishful story, a dream that if queer people had financial security and privilege, and if we had the privacy granted by a world before the internet (which since I was a teen has been the nightmare of doxxing, stalking, & zero privacy), perhaps, in some spaces, we could live happy lives without the interference of the world and its cruelty. However, it does not ignore that there are bad things happening around them.

It references various concerns of family rejection, as well as detailing some of those events, as well as societal risk. Later in the book, time has passed and Odasso does address World War II,

<spoiler>
including the Holocaust. While I think that it would be possible to look at this and think it’s unusual to bring up, since the main characters don’t engage, I felt that it was actually a really good way to highlight the privilege that these characters have in the book, residing in the United States, as white people (aside from Pam’s girlfriend at this time, Sylvie, who has Jewish family in Europe & is Creole) who can do little more than express how they wish they could help. Sometimes, marginalized people with some degree of privilege (but not necessarily the kind that can do things like change public policy or rescue refugees) like these characters are framed as being able to just like, rescue others in need, but it’s not often that simple, but the text presents it as just as frustrating and irritating as it feels to me. Rich queer people, with all your money, can’t you do more? In today’s world, maybe. In the era this is set, possibly not, not without immediately risking their lives and becoming ineffectual going forward. I also, having followed Odasso’s work for over two decades, know that they are not as distant from the history of the Holocaust as readers might think, so I see the importance of including this reflection on both the encroaching horror and how little was done. If they had written in this time period and not mentioned it, I think it would have done the story and the history a disservice.
</spoilers>

Jay and Nick are largely presented as flawed people who are just trying to recover from a traumatic event and find some sort of life in a world where people like them aren’t accepted. They do find others like them, and have fun parties, but those parties are like blips on the domestic path they experience. One of the reoccurring themes is alcohol, obviously, as well as alcoholism, and trying to reduce the negative and harmful behaviors of their past, learn to moderate, and moderate their tendencies to fight with people they love as well.

Daisy is part of the story, and frankly is presented in the only appropriate way I felt she should be. She’s a difficult cousin to Nick, and a mother with uncaring expectations for her daughter. In Gatsby, she’s established to be someone who is a product of her environment – a desire for financial security and financial privilege, and a degree of selfishness. While Gatsby’s original presentation of Daisy may be flawed because of his own perception, the rest of the characters largely carry on the same characterization of the original text, so it makes sense that it continues with Daisy as well.

She is also characteristic of the high class, wealthy attitude towards eugenics & societal expectations in America, as characterized in her treatment of Pam when

<spoilers>
Pam, in her teens, is revealed to be intersex, or the closest understanding of intersex at the time that they had. It’s a complex revelation and importantly executed. Daisy wants to have Pam medically examined through surgery, concerned that she won’t be able to have children because of her lack of a menstrual cycle & therefore won’t find a husband. Nick & Jay object, supporting Pam’s own objection, and take her in to protect her. Daisy does continue financially supporting Pam, keeping her privileged and protected and able to pursue the education she wants, but essentially (like in the Gatsby novel) she’s not concerned about having a close relationship, especially once it’s clear that Pam loves women and wants to be an educated writer. Odasso does regularly ensure that there are large elements of Daisy’s behaviors that are influenced by her difficult husband, Tom, who is bigoted and active politically, including the fact that Daisy keeps almost everything about Pam’s life after her teens veiled to Tom. There is a positive, though fraught, scene at Pam’s graduation where Tom learns of Sylvie & Pam’s relationship, & it is shown that Daisy also recently met Sylvie. It feels like a genuine presentation of privileged, conservative parents having a queer, intersex child that they don’t understand, don’t truly accept, but don’t want to feel like failures for not having gotten the child they expected or wanted.
</spoilers>

The way that Odasso has Nick and Jay accept Pam as she is feels, in a way, a dreamlike, wishful thing of what it could be to have family who you love and identify with accept you and give you a safe space to exist. It made me wistful.

The book obviously also includes some really lovely, lightly detailed but very intimate scenes between Jay and Nick that are written beautifully and capture a specific sensation of need & fulfillment that Odasso is brilliant at. I have always loved Odasso’s work, but some of these scenes are ones that feel so sweet and yet as though they’ve been snatched from time and memory, like hurried moments drawn out to engage the passions while allowing leisurely return to calm. I really loved every single one, because they entice while not overwhelming or offending, & often have elements of humor (and I love that they recognize the physical limitations and aging of the characters!).

I truly loved the whole story, and I didn’t feel like I needed to revisit Gatsby to reengage with these characters or to enjoy the snippets of their life. I feel like, too often, fiction wants to fill in all the gaps, redevelop characterization or overcharacterize, but as a reader, I truly enjoy having spaces of time between scenes and open exploration of the way the characters act and experience things. I could connect plenty of dots throughout the story to find ways that the characters behaved, even in the first few scenes I knew who they were and how they were very quickly, but there was enough space for me to see pieces of myself, people I love, and elements of fiction that I adore peeking through, whether imagined or otherwise! I feel like more fiction could benefit from such a paced & thoughtful engagement.

Overall, I think that The Pursued and the Pursuing is an excellent retelling of the end of The Great Gatsby, with complex and open characters, truthfulness to the original story in characterization and setting, and queer reinterpretation and exploration that captures a dream of what it could be to have privilege, privacy, and possibilities in a time where maybe that wasn’t really too common for queer people. I can’t wait for what Odasso releases next, because I enjoyed every minute!

A Very Merry Mental Illness to Me

Hey, friends, supporters, consumers, and colleagues. this one is a little important.

I hope the best came for you in major holidays for each culture and religion or lack thereof that came before this post, and the same wishes for you in the festivities (or lack thereof!) to come. Please stay safe in the continuance of COVID-19 and the many dangers all marginalized people face, and seek joy in every moment – even if it’s fleeting, it heals more than all the rest.

That being said, this is me. Beau Sheldon.

Beau in a black and grey hoodie tee with festive makeup.
Me. 2020.
Content warnings for discussion of mental illness, physical disability, financial insecurity, gender identity, gender dysphoria, mention of hallucinations, mention of schizoaffective disorder, mentions of political and social issues in the United States, and details of creative dysfunction.
Continue reading “A Very Merry Mental Illness to Me”

Quick Shot on Big Book of Amazing Tales

I’ve got another great quick interview with Martin Lloyd, this time about the Big Book of Amazing Tales, currently on Kickstarter! It sounds like a great game resource for kids to add to your Amazing Tales collection. Check out Martin’s responses below!

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Two kids sitting at a table with an adult with character sheets and dice in front of them. The one kid has their hand raised triumphantly.

What is the Big Book of Amazing Tales, both as a product and as your vision?

Some of the most fun I’ve had with Amazing Tales has been playing games with the kids while on holiday, that’s when we’ve played out campaigns, and the idea of the Big Book is to make it easy for other families to do the same.   So in the book I’m including four campaigns, one for each of the settings in the book. So you’ll get…

  • A Dream of Trees – for the Deep Dark Wood setting
  • The Quest for the Dragon Crown – for the Magical Kingdoms setting
  • Captain Cadava’s Treasure – for the Pirate Seas setting
  • The Cryptid Conundrum – for the Adventure among the Stars setting

The Big Book of Amazing Tales should be seen as a companion volume to Amazing Tales. Amazing Tales gives you all the tools you need to make up amazing adventures with your kid and get them started on role-playing. The Big Book of Amazing Tales is about providing you with some really great campaigns that can take things to the next level. 

Before I started writing I set myself some goals. One of them was to include elements in the games that would bring the games alive in the real world as well as the player’s imagination. So in the Quest for the Dragon Crown there is a crown for the players to cut out, colour in and put together when they find it. It doesn’t look like a conventional crown, but its form is a clue to what it really does so having it right there in the players’ hands is important. One of the other goals is to include ‘moments of awesome’ for the players, to make sure they have those moments where their characters get to do something amazing. You really will save the kingdom, slay the dragon, stop the alien invasion and so on. 

It’s also a chance for me to answer two of the questions I’ve been asked most frequently since launching Amazing Tales. Namely – ‘How do you use this game in a classroom?’, and ‘Can I use this game to help my kid with some kind of problem?’. Although to be honest I won’t be the one doing the answering. Baz Stevens, who is both a teacher and a game designer will be answering the first question, and Lilly Smith who is a child therapist will be answering the second.  

Dice lying on a character sheet with a character illustration.

As an ongoing product, how do you keep coming up for ideas for Amazing Tales, and keep them fresh?

It really helps that Amazing Tales doesn’t have a fixed setting. So I’m not stuck trying to come up with five different fantasy adventures, or a new twist on space pirates or whatever. If I’m writing a pirate adventure I can make it the most piratey pirate adventure imaginable, a kind of Pirates of the Carribean in RPG form, and try and cram it full of as many pirate ideas as I can. I don’t need to worry about having used all the good stuff and then having to write another pirate campaign next week. * Once a month I publish a set of story seeds in the Amazing Tales newsletter, and those are always a good chance to really interrogate an idea. I pick a simple concept like ‘Temples’ and then try and come up with a set of ideas that do something interesting with that idea – stretching it in different directions. It’s a good practice. 

And then there are the games I hear about people playing with their kids. Often there will be a couple of sentences on Facebook that sound brilliant, but that’s all there is. So it becomes a jumping off point for new ideas. Someone posted the other day about an adventure involving a lost circus in a forest. That’s about all I know, but it’s a great starting point. An adventure about a lost circus in a forest, it almost doesn’t matter what genre or system you’re playing – that’s a great place to start. 

What are some of your favorite things in the Big Book and what are they like for players?

I’m really looking forward to some of the special extras. So in the Cryptid Conundrum, where the heroes need to crack the alien codes, there’ll be a decoder ring for the players to cut out and make. Now a lot of kids will probably make something like that at some point while growing up, but how many of them will get to use it to rescue the victims of an alien kidnapping? In a similar way that bit of research about kids being better at identifying logos than trees really bothers me. So A Dream of Trees will definitely include puzzles that require learning about trees, leaves, nuts and the like. Hopefully that will be enough to make kids a bit more excited by being outdoors, because playing outside is almost as important as role-playing 🙂

* Thinking about it, this is probably one of the reasons the Pirates of the Carribean sequels ended up the way they did…

Two pirates dressed in fancy pirate regalia discovering treasure inside a seaside cave.

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Thank you so much Martin for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out the Big Book of Amazing Tales on Kickstarter today!

Five or So Questions on Visigoths vs. Mall Goths

Hi all! I’ve got an awesome interview with Lucian Kahn today about Visigoths vs. Mall Goths, which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds super cool and I’m personally looking forward to playing it at Big Bad Con. Check out Lucian’s responses below!

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Tell me a little about Visigoths vs. Mall Goths. What excites you about it?

Visigoths vs. Mall Goths is a tabletop roleplaying game and dating sim about the conflicts and romances among the warriors who sacked ancient Rome and 20th century spooky teens, set in a shopping mall in a Los Angeles suburb in 1996. There are a lot of bisexuals.

The plot structure of Visigoths vs. Mall Goths resembles an open-world videogame RPG. Designed for either one-shot or campaign play, each adventure episode offers several quests that you may choose to pursue (or ignore), and the mall setting is packed with many strange retro marvels to discover. Or you can just replay the game over and over to kiss all the kissable clerks.

Imagine a surreal combo of The Craft, Empire Records, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Clueless. In addition to all that, I’m thrilled to be working with an incredible array of artists and writers on this project. The famous, talented, and extremely nice Robin Eisenberg has done an incredible job on the cover. We’ve got illustrations by Lluis Abadias Garcia, who did all the art for the Retroverse D&D 5e expansion. Vee Hendro, the graphic designer for Good Society, is doing the graphic design. We’ve got guest adventure modules by a very cool bunch of game designers, including Liz Gorinsky from Goth Court, and Maja Bäckvall who was the runes expert on Civilization VI and God of War. I could go on. The artists on this project rule.

A Latex-wearing goth with red and black hair, eyeliner, shoulder length gloves, big boots, a sleeveless shirt, and pants with cutouts that show off pentagrams stands over a Visigoth in red, golden, and steel armor with long golden hair with their foot on the Visigoth's chest.

What are some of the challenges and more exciting aspects of combining ancient Visigoths and 90s mall goths?

The only real design challenge I faced in the goth-on-goth arena was figuring out exactly how disoriented I wanted to make these time-traveling Visigoths. This could have gone very Encino Man, but I didn’t really want the game to be about ancient warriors staring in awe at escalators, so it took some work to get the narrative framing right, where the Visigoths are historically displaced but we’re assuming they’ve somehow learned English and know what a computer is. Fortunately, this game is completely surreal and absurd anyway, so this extremely fast learning process doesn’t have to be plausible to buy into the premise and have fun.

Part of what’s exciting for me about throwing together these 2 types of goths is that they’re both outsiders. The Visigoths are outsiders for 2 reasons: first and most obviously because they’ve been displaced from their original historical context and dumped into a ‘90s mall, but they were also oppressed outsiders in Roman culture before the time travel. The Mall Goths are also outsiders in 2 directions: they’re too weird to fit into mainstream teen culture, but they’re also both too young to get into goth clubs and too commercial to be accepted by the avant garde. So the scenario I’ve set up pits these 2 groups against each other, but both groups are outsiders within the context of the mall and the suburbs. This makes for a weird and fascinating array of potential social dynamics that the players can mess around with.

It’s weird to think of it, but a 90s game is now a period piece! What’s it like writing a near-history piece and how did you make the game feel totally 90s?

I was a bisexual grunge-rock teen in Los Angeles in the 90s and started goth clubbing as soon as I turned 18, so the aesthetics of this game are very close to my heart and my personal experience. Honestly, this entire design process has been extremely heartwarming, partially because I’ve gotten to indulge my nostalgia, but also because the past year of playtesting at cons and stuff has brought me into so many cute conversations with other people who still carry a torch for 90s counterculture. People who were there at the time will find a lot of Easter Eggs that refer to real stuff that was going on back then, and at the same time, I’ve made the world vivid enough that it’s still fun for younger players or people who weren’t in the USA at the time, etc. I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but the mall has a salon for humans and pets called Gerbil Essences.

Gerbil Essences is amazing! It sounds like you had a lot of fun with the project. What was it like in playtesting – how did the design choices you made come to fruition with different diverse groups?  

I playtested this game for over a year, which is a long time for me, and it definitely evolved a lot over that time. One constantly recurring theme was the balance between structure and freedom in the game rules. I wanted this game to accommodate the needs of some very different types of players, from Dungeons & Dragons fans, to indie storygamers, to LARPers, to total newcomers. Based on player feedback in the past few months, I think I’ve struck a fun balance that lets a lot of different people enjoy the game.

How are the Visigoths and Mall Goths represented mechanically in the game, and how do their mechanics interact with each other?

There are 3 types of Visigoths (Conqueror, Charlatan, and Runecaster) and 3 types of Mall Goths (Theatre Tech, Witch, and Cyber Pet). Each character type comes with 3 skills that get bonuses on dice rolls. For example, the Theatre Tech has bonuses to costumes, pyrotechnics, and rappelling. They also each have a special skill they can use once per day without rolling dice. For example, the Cyber Pet can put on cute animal ears for a half-price discount at any store. 

But the most important mechanic is probably Embarrassing Traits. Each character has 1 or 2 of these, and the options are different for Visigoths and Mall Goths. For example, one Visigoth embarrassing trait option is “Fear of Animals,” which gets especially dicey if you’re a Conqueror with the “control animals” skill, and another is “Allergic to Metal,” which sucks if you’re wearing chainmail. The way these work is that you can embarrass yourself to make your friend look cool in comparison or draw attention away from them, giving one of your fellow Visigoths or Mall Goths a bonus to their roll. 

Finally, while most games only track physical damage, Visigoths vs Mall Goths only tracks emotional damage. That’s right, physical combat only has emo outcomes — and if you get too emotionally overwhelmed, you can’t fight anymore until you talk about your feelings with a friend!

The cover of Lucian Kahn's Visigoths vs. Mall Goths, subtitled " a tabletop roleplaying game and dating sim." On the cover the background is a deep purple in varying tones showing mall store fronts. In the foreground, a Visigoth with light blue skin and pink hair in an ornamented helmet and scaled armor in blue and gold wears a fuschia cape and holds a sword while staring down a goth with short curly blue hair and light purple hair and a spiked choker, who is wearing a fishnet shirt under a vampire smiley face crop top and a belted skirt.

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Thanks so much to Lucian for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Visigoths vs. Mall Goths on Kickstarter today!

Five or So Questions on The Sword and the Loves

Hi all, today I’ve got an interview with Antonio Amato from Mammut RPG on The Sword and the Loves, an Arthurian legends inspired game using mechanics adjusted from Archipelago, one of my favorite games, to fit the themes. It’s a lovely read and I wanted to let you all learn more about it! Enjoy Antonio’s interview below.

Full disclosure: I edited the English translation of the text.

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The cover and example of the Sword and the Loves cards and map, illustrated in black & white.

Tell me a little about The Sword and the Loves. What excites you about it?

I think that “The Sword and the Loves” is the game I wanted to play when I was a teenager and I discovered the Arthurian cycle and the stories of the knights of the Round Table. During the summer vacation, I read a book about King Arthur and his knights, and I instantly fell in love. Then a couple of years ago I discovered “Archipelago” and I immediately thought it would be the perfect game to tell those stories. I then started writing my Archipelago hack.

​​What are the key aspects of the mechanical structure in ​​The Sword and the Loves that you think carry the emotional impact of the Arthurian legends?

Undoubtedly, the hopefulness and the bleakness. These are typical themes of the Arthurian legends that serve as a starting point for players to make the story more dramatic and to emphasize the role of the protagonist. This is a mechanic that I borrowed in part from “Love in the time of Seið”, a game that I always recommend to play.

A black and white illustration of a knight lying in bed, ill, while a femme person looks at them, dismayed.

​​How did you approach an era and themes that had complex perspectives regarding gender and agency?

It was not easy, I have to admit it. Through hopefulness and bleakness, I tried to give thickness to the archetypes (especially those most penalized by a vision of the women that was a product of its time). I also thought the game needs a change in perspective because I believe that embracing those stories (contextualising and renewing them) is a pure act of love. That’s why I decided to devote an archetype to a figure that owes much to Tolkien’s re-reading of the female figure: the wandering damsel.

Do you think you could elaborate just a little to the last question to explain some of what the wandering damsel is? I think that would be useful.

The wandering damsel is a homage to all those brave and free women we can read about on modern and contemporary novels. However, I didn’t want just to create a “female version” of the wandering knight, then I choose to develop a different type characterised by a strong connection to adventure, exploration, and freedom. While the wandering knight has a special relationship with his family, the “positive themes” of the wandering damsel are the valour and the gravitas, two virtues particularly appreciated in leaders. The archetype is inspired by Éowyn and Joan of Arc.

Illustrated cards representing the character archetypes, with the wandering damsel enlarged.

What about Archipelago and Love in the time of Seið fit with The Sword and the Loves so well mechanically and fictionally?

Archipelago (as well as Love in the time of Seið) is a story game in which the destiny of the characters is at the heart of the gaming experience. From the very first moment, I thought that The Sword and the Loves had to rely on such a structure. This allowed me to remain faithful to the literature of reference, while giving me sufficient freedom to change the game in the direction chosen by me. For example, the idea for the roles of guide and misleader come from Love in the time of Seið, even if with some little modifications.

A detailed black and white illustration of someone pulling a sword from an anvil.
You spoke of the hopefulness and the bleakness. How did you come up with these for each archetype? What do you think they will contribute most to play?

Hopefulness and bleakness are flags for players. You can use it to corroborate and consolidate the narration of other players or to play with the “dark side” of their characters. I based hopefulness and bleakness on the chivalric tradition related to the respective archetypes. So, for example, the hopefulness of the Wise Old Man is the tradition, while the bleakness is the hubris. I think that hopefulness and bleakness convey the right atmosphere among the players because they are seeds for the fiction.

The cover of The Sword and the Loves, which features an illustration of a femme person wearing a crown and holding up a sword, in front of a detailed landscape background. 

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Thank you so much to Antonio for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed learning about The Sword and the Loves and that you’ll check it out soon!

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Whose Stories We Tell

If you are making a thing about people who are not like you, you should talk to people who are like that.

I can’t count how many game ideas or fiction ideas I’ve dropped completely because I couldn’t do the research, didn’t have the time to interview, or couldn’t read accurate accounts. People’s stories matter so much. We should not fly off the cuff. We should not make assumptions based on media.

If you’re working on something about people other than you that those people could be emotionally affected by,* pause and 

Consider whether you should do it at all. 

If you’re still determined to do it, look for the people you are writing about or people similar to them. Ask them if they will share their experience. If they will not,

Consider whether you should continue.

If you’re still determined to do it, look for accurate and complete personal accounts. If you can’t find them, or they seem unreliable, or they are confirmed to be inaccurate,

Consider whether you should keep going.

If you’re still determined to do it, review the available media regarding those people or their experiences. If you can’t find them, or they seem unreliable, or they are confirmed to be inaccurate,

Stop.

That’s right. Stop. Take a break, return to it later. Think about why you want to tell these stories.

Ask yourself:

  • Are you willing to tell stories without people’s permission?
  • Are you willing to tell stories without accurate information?
  • Are you willing to tell stories that could be inaccurate or misleading?
  • Are you willing to tell stories that could damage reputations, risk people’s jobs, or their lives?
  • Are you willing to tell stories that ignore people’s identities, stereotype them, or marginalize them? 
  • Are you willing to lie?

If you answer yes to those questions, I say to you: Look at your life. Look at your choices.

Walk away.



*Sex, wars, religion, gender, queerness, identities, trauma, politics, etc. – all of these are important. Imagine if someone wrote a story about something you consider personal and emotional, like about your life personally, and told it wrong, and maybe even lied or misrepresented you in a way that stereotyped you or made you seem dangerous, evil, or just simply wrong. If it’s a topic like that? Think about it.


Note: When you consult people, compensate them fairly for their time and experience.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Women with Initiative: Emily Griggs

This month’s Woman with Initiative is Emily Griggs, an artist, writer, and geek creator! Emily was kind enough to let me look over her work and ask her a few questions. One of the things that intrigued me most about Emily’s projects is her geeky cards – She has wall art and cards with geeky and often gaming-related designs and I love that kind of thing. Her various shops have plenty of cool products to check out!

Emily has a cute and fun style that really strikes me. There is a prevalence of artists in gaming and geek circles, and I love many of them! Emily’s art stands out to me because of the color palettes that appeal to me and the stylized looks that I think capture her characters really well.

Her webcomic, Heartless, is a Victorian action/adventure comic, featuring an LGBTQIA+ cast, which is really exciting! Even moreso, her main character, Clara, is asexual. The comic is currently funded through Patreon, and had a successful Kickstarter last year to produce print editions. Also, I love that on her website, there’s a button to take you straight to the beginning of the comic – it’s weirdly rare. I asked her a few questions about her work and current projects, and I’m happy to share her answers below!

What importance do you place on having your main character in Heartless an asexual character?

Clara being ace kinda plays double duty, in that it’s important both for the story and for me as an author. The idea for the Heartless setting predates Clara, but while I had lots of cool ideas for the world and the supporting cast and how my vampires’ “Allure” power would work, I needed a protagonist. She needed to be a young vampire, so the audience could learn about the world through her eyes, but she also needed to be special in some way so I could justify the plot revolving around her actions. I remember vividly walking home one autumn afternoon, thinking about the story, when the solution hit me: she’s immune to the Allure, because she’s asexual! The rest of the story fell into place around that one twist, including the name.

Besides all that, when I started writing Heartless I had several ace friends, but I was resisting the idea that the label might apply to me. I had all sorts of exciting internalized fear and anxiety about it, and came up with every excuse in the book to try and ignore all the obvious signs. Developing Heartless and Clara as its protagonist helped me get over that, and by the time the comic launched I was quite happily identifying as a part of the ace community.

That whole experience was part of why I decided to turn Heartless into a webcomic, rather than seeking traditional publication: I wanted to make the story available to as wide an audience as possible. It makes my day every time a younger reader finds me at a convention and tells me how happy they are to see someone like them as a main character, and I hope I’m helping some of them feel as positive about being asexual as I feel now.


While looking for inspiration – for your cards and comic – where do you go, and how do you decide what “fits” for you?

Strangely enough, my approaches to cards and comics are almost the exact opposite. For Heartless I do piles of research: history books and articles, historical fashion resources, landscape and architecture studies, etc. I’m not married to historical accuracy, but I try and stay relatively true to the setting of the comic, and the Victorian era has plenty of wonderful, awful stuff to draw inspiration from. Figuring out dialogue, background, and costumes usually involves a lot of bouncing back and forth between references, taking what I can from them before filling in the rest with my own style.

For new card designs, I just sit down with a pencil and paper and doodle until something makes me laugh. I’m kind of my own target audience, in that a lot of the designs are things that I’d either love to receive, or to give to specific friends. I try to listen to customer requests and design things that other people will love too, but in the end the Sweet Ingenuity card line is always going to be pretty heavily influenced by my own nerdy obsessions: creepy-cute girly things and a whole lot of tabletop RPG references.


What are you looking forward to in your work and in Heartless over the next few months?
Heartless chapter 4 is almost complete (it should be 29 pages once it’s all done) so I’m starting to gear up to crowdfund the next printed volume. I can’t say I’m exactly looking forward to the Kickstarter campaign (so much paperwork D: ) but I am really excited to see how everyone reacts to the completed volume, and to get to hold it in my hands. There’s also a bit of a twist at the end of the chapter, so I’m holding my breath waiting to see how people will take it.

For my Etsy store, I’m taking the next few months to focus on creating more big illustrations. I’ll keep adding cards as new ideas spring to mind, but expect to see some new posters over the next few months. Most of my large illustrations lately have been commissions, so taking the time to get back to big fully-rendered original pieces has been a lot of fun, and I’m excited to show off the results!

Thanks to Emily for the interview and for sharing her creations with me! I’m excited to share this with everyone, and look forward to next month’s Women with Initiative post as well! 

—
Emily Griggs (sweetingenuity) Contact:

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Heartless Comic
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(Note: While I am mostly focusing on women working in game design, I also want to promote other women doing design work and who are creators in geek arenas, so having Emily as one of the interviewees was just sensible!)

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Supernatural Evil vs. Real Evil: When Reality Bites

As a fan of many varieties of fiction and genre books, films, television shows, and games, I have seen a fair share of villains. Bad guys are, actually, one of my favorite things. Without villains, where would be heroes? Without evil, is there actual “good”? It’s a big question. The one thing that keeps coming back to me, however, time and again is the question of what is more frightening, more evil: supernatural villainy, or villains who could step out of the next corner shop?

Starting with my earliest exposures to the good vs. evil storylines, I watched a lot of cartoons. Cartoons are, for the most part, about unreality. The characters are not supposed to be super realistic or like anything you might encounter. In Disney alone, there are Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty), Ursula (The Little Mermaid), and the Evil Stepmother (Snow White) – they are all frightening to children and adult understanding of their motives definitely show that they are fucked up and evil, but for me, they are not nearly so frightening as Frollo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame). There is a supernatural element to the Hunchback cartoon film, but Frollo is all too real. He is a man very dedicated to his religion, who sees beautiful women as vain and condemns their sexuality, and he considers himself better and more pure than those around him (which, imo, is terrifyingly real).

I was around 4 or 5 when I saw my first Stephen King films. Thank you television for doing re-runs, and thank you parents for leaving me alone with the television. I saw, in a sweet double-feature, IT and Carrie. They are both pretty well-done films, and completely compelling for a kid who loved ghost stories. I still have nightmares about those movies, but they are two very different types of nightmares. With IT, it is the standard “holy crap evil clown”, teleporting, monster-morphing scary that is easily expected. With Carrie, it is so much different. For me, the villain of the movie is not Carrie, or even the cruel teenagers. It’s Carrie’s abusive mother. See, in IT, the clown is a scary villain, yeah, but even at that age I knew that those things weren’t real. Abusive parents, though, were something I could definitely imagine (and had been witness to).

Further on we go – scary movies with werewolves and vampires and ghosts, right up next to Law & Order, CSI, and the serial killer shows and documentaries I latched on to. No matter how many nightmares I had about monsters, it never compared to the constant anxiety I felt day after day knowing that there were real people out there who were, from my perspective, far more evil than their paranormal peers.

One of my favorite book stories is, no surprise, Harry Potter. In the books, the biggest villain, the embodiment of evil, is Voldemort (Or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named for those of you who like to use extra words). He’s a torturer, murderer, son of a rapist (love potions are not consent, FYI), and straight up asshole who is willing to murder everyone who doesn’t fit his ideal concept of humanity. There are multiple descriptions of the shitty stuff he does, and the shitty stuff his followers do. And yet, they do not scare me anywhere near as much as Dolores Umbridge. Anyone who has read the books knows how awful Umbridge is. She constantly, as a human who is not supernaturally altered in any way, chooses to do harm and induce suffering on anyone she doesn’t deem worth or doesn’t like. She’s racist (and advocates for awful things against half-human or non-human species), and revels in the pain of others. Torturing children is shown to bring her actual pleasure and satisfaction. She is, in many ways, the perfect example of someone who would claim to have “just been doing their job” when all shit hits the fan, but who secretly really got off on doing awful things in the name of her cause – and the cause, in this case, seems to just be a convenient excuse.

I think that it is easy to see why realistic villains are more terrifying than supernatural villains (in most cases! There are always exceptions!). Bellatrix Lestrange is pretty fucked up and terrifying, but there is no way she compares to the Bitch of Buchenwald (Ilse Koch, from the Buchenwald concentration camp during WWII, Google with great care). Knowing that there are real killers, torturers, and rapists out in the world is way worse to me than the fantastical idea that vampires might suck my blood.

In games, we can always use fantastical monsters. That’s something that is super common in RPGs – hell, in a lot of games we play the monsters! But when running a horror game, the choice between real horror and fantastical horror is a very careful decision. Some GMs might know their groups well and be able to run it without a question. Others might need to really talk to their players and make sure it’s okay.

If you want to run a horror game with a realistic villain, but you don’t want to spoil the whole plot for your players, there are a lot of ways to get the information you need. The first is to have a boundaries discussion. Ask your players, “If you were playing a realistic game, what kind of bad guys, type of violence, and other content are you comfortable with and not comfortable with?” Give them the floor, and then feel free to bring up specific items, including ones you specifically don’t plan to use in the game. Examples of stuff that might come up: rape, harm to children, domestic abuse, torture, sexualized violence, stalking, harm to animals. None of these are things people should feel bad about vetoing, and it’s important not to shame players or try to bargain or bribe them. It’s more fun when people want to play the game without caveats.

Other options that are great are, like I mentioned in my previous post, using consent and content tools like the X-Card and Script Change. The biggest thing to do, though, is to talk with your players and ensure that they’re cool with moving forward.

It isn’t a bad idea to talk about this with your players when you are using supernatural villains as well. While we have seen that in the Netflix TV show, Daredevil, Wilson Fisk is an amazing villain without any supernatural ability, the new show on Netflix, Jessica Jones, the character Killgrave (known as the Purple Man in comics) has supernatural abilities and he’s simply chilling to see on screen, and his abilities are truly some of the worst.

There is a lot to gain by finding what really makes your heart pound, and your hair stand up on end, and it’s often fun to pursue it. Still, there is no reason that a person should be put in a place in a game where they can’t escape or stop the source of their distress. Players deserve to have a good time, even if that means they’re quaking in their boots!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Interview with Whitney Beltrán – Tinker Kickstarter

I interviewed Whitney Beltrán about her upcoming work on Tinker, a steampunk web series production currently Kickstarting with a few days left. 

Tell me a little about Tinker – what’s it about? 

Tinker is a steampunk adventure themed web series show. It is about a father-daughter duo, Sho and Kimi Tinker, who are savvy inventors in Victorian era alternate history San Fransico. Sho has built a reputation for himself as an incredibly clever engineer, and Kimi is a sort of genius tomboy. Together, they are swept up into a world of intrigue and turn of the century Machiavellian power struggles as old empire and emergent capitalistic entities fight over resources and technology.   
Their adventures range all over, from their native San Fransico to Hong Kong to the British mainland. There are air ships and giant robot fights and organized brothel gangs, spies, assassination attempts (and successes!), romance, action, and needless to say, a lot of danger. There is never a dull moment in Tinker.

What do you think is the most interesting part of Tinker?
I’m biased. I will always go gaga over the costuming on a project like this. Our costume designer is extremely talented and is currently putting the finishing touches on a hand tooled leather corset that is to die for. I basically want to run away with it. However, in reality, probably one of most interesting things about Tinker is its exploration of morality in the face of Western expansion and globalization. Tinker does not take itself too seriously. It’s more of a romp than a thinker, but the undertones are there. 

How did you get involved in Tinker?

Well, I tend to have my fingers in a lot of cookie jars. I was NPCing for a LARP that was going on as part of a fundraiser benefit that an education non-profit, Seekers Unlimited, was putting on in L.A. I made friends with one of the other NPCs, who happened to have a role onTinker. At the time they were looking to fill a number of roles, so she arranged for me to visit the studio. I read some sides for the producer, and I landed the role of Elmira Perkins, who happens to be one of the nefarious spies!  

Do you enjoy working on indie productions? If so, why?
Absolutely. I do a lot of script work and setting development as well as acting, and big Hollywood is awful about crushing creative sovereignty. At the major production houses pretty much everything is decided by a committee of business school graduates. It’s very frustrating. Working with smaller studios is more like working with a family, and negotiating with creative ideas becomes a lot more enriching.    

Do you think the diversity of Tinker is important? Do you think it was a conscious choice?
The racial diversity of the cast of Tinker is off the charts. It’s one of the things that makes me most proud of being a part of this production. I am of biracial Mexican-American heritage. I often struggle to find roles. It is common that the roles I am suited for call for white women. I constantly have to think to myself, “Am I white enough to get away with this?” Sometimes I am, and sometimes I’m not. Being on the set ofTinker is a breath of fresh air. I don’t have to worry about the color of my skin and whether or not I stand out.
It’s also really significant to me that the main characters are Asian and not white. It is the norm in Hollywood that racial minorities are relegated to supporting roles. This is especially significant because this is a steampunk production, which necessarily carries strong elements of imperialism and colonialism. It would have been really easy to stick with a homogenous cast. Instead, our executive producer, Micheal Taglianetti, insisted on a racially diverse cast. So yes, it was a conscious choice. 

What are you looking forward to most in the project?


I don’t know if I should tell you this! There is going to be an episode that involves live zebras. I am really looking forward to hanging out with zebras. I’ve never gotten closer than being at the zoo before. I just hope they don’t bite. 


Thanks, Whitney, for your interview and time! Go check out Tinker’s Kickstarter if you want to learn more!




THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2010-2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

The Song of My People


The leather wraps scraped across the callouses on Lilylen’s palms as she twisted the wraps around her hands. She tied them tightly. The wraps served as good protection from the wooden sticks she picked up and spun through her fingers. It was time to go, and she was nearly ready.


Lilylen stared out from the window of the holding, counting the rows of soldiers. There were near a hundred, armored and standing at the ready. Those were her chosen enemies. Chosen, yes, because there were so many different men to fight, so many threats to her home and in this case, her soul. The lord in command of these soldiers was a dark mage who had stolen the souls of his soldiers to bring himself more power. Lord Niccen, ruler of the city of Donwyn, what he called himself.


Untrue, though. She stood in the halls of Donwyn now, ready to protect it from his army of soulless men. If her side lost, then he would take over and hold the small city under thrall. This was not what she wanted. Donwyn was not her home now, but it had been for many years. She had no home, and her family had all aged away and left for the northern lights. Still, she wished to protect Donwyn, and her magic was strong.


She adorned herself with her armor now. Silver tips on her pointed ears, twisted and pierced through the skin, were enchanted to protect her from the raucous sounds of battle and hone her hearing. She pulled on a chain shirt and belted it with a leather strap that shone bright when she cinched it – her protection spell activating and spreading over her body in a shield. Finally, she raised her only weapon: her drum.


The drum was a gift from her mother on the day of her turning. Her mother had promised her the moon, and true to her promise, the large drum was made with the whitest of leathers stretched tight and it played the deepest rumbling. Her turning was a celebration of her sixteenth anniversary of birth, and marked the day her magic came true.


Now was no time for reminiscing, though.


Lilylen joined the warriors below in the great hall who all were armored and ready after enjoying midnight feast. There was a small party of adventurers standing in the center of the hall. Her companions were the fighters Dor and Leaf, the magician Wend, and trickster Fig. They had come with her to Donwyn, excited for the prospect of battle and as true friends. She would owe them everything if they won this battle. She raised her voice loud.


“Friends!” She clapped Dor on the shoulder. “It is time for the cries of battle and the victory! Let us feast our eyes now that we have feasted our bellies, and take down Lord Niccen and his thralls!”


Her words were met with a roar of approval from the crowd. Some warriors banged swords against shields in echoing clangs while they shouted and she cheered back at them.


“That’s the spirit, my good men and women! Join me now on the field!”


The warriors began to pour out of the hall, taking their places on walls and near gates. The battle was not long off, and Lilylen’s blood began to rush in her ears.


“Dor, Leaf, Wend, Fig – you are all my companions through battle again.”


“Lilylen, we fight for you as much for glory.” Dor’s eyes were bright behind her raggedy bangs. “Once we finish this, we will go back to the road and beyond.”


Fig slipped something sneakily into Lilylen’s hand. She looked down to see a small jeweled dagger, sheathed in shadow. She looked at Fig, raising one eyebrow in question. Fig just smiled and crossed his fingers.


“To war, to win!”


—


The adventurers made their way to the head of the warrior’s ranks, and Lilylen called for the gates to be opened. There was a loud creaking and clamoring as the large double gates opened, revealing the battlefield ahead. The warriors and Lilylen’s companions poured out onto the field, readying for the first light of dawn.


The sun rose slow and lazily, peeking through behind the holding and shining light on the thralls. Lilylen spun her drumsticks and rolled them on the drum, creating a deep, low rumble. A light mist fell down from the sky and settled over her fellows, providing cover from the soldiers and putting a protective shield around her fellows. The thrum thrum thrum echoed across the grass, and with that, the soldiers lurched forward, the warriors began to run, and they reached each other in a glorious crash.


The warriors had the strength of their heart and home pulsing through them, and all who heard the sound of Lilylen’s drum were given more power to resist their enemies. She strode forward, slowly, between the fighting, ducking and dodging while Dor and Leaf cleared her path. She had one responsibility only: to get to Niccen.


Dor and Leaf before her ran into the broken ranks of soldiers. The soldiers were technically powerful – precise in movement – but they lacked the intuitive skills of the warriors and adventurers, which failed them. In essence, they were strong only in numbers, just landscape to trample.


Wend walked behind her, casting bolts of mana into the surrounding crowds of soldiers and calling down fire from the sky. Fig was nowhere to be seen, but that was best. His tricks were not to be noticed until they had already been done.


They were nearly through the soldiers, pushing through while the warriors battled against the twice-strong army. At the back of the ranks was Niccen, not even fearful enough to be on a horse, standing proudly as though he were untouchable. He caught Lilylen’s gaze and there was no emotion in his eyes but sneering cruelty. She quickened her pace, leaving Wend behind unknowingly.


She was pressing forward and focused on Niccen, continuing to drum the slow rumble, when she felt a sudden sharp pain in her back. Her breath caught, she felt something within her go empty, and she struggled to breathe. She looked around behind her only to see Fig jump out from behind a soldier and land on another man – a man holding the jeweled dagger she had been carrying. Fig slashed the man’s throat with one sharp swipe, then he collected the dagger and returned it to Lilylen’s pocket.


“Be more careful!” He shouted, and the noise rang in her ears as she gasped for air. She began to lose her footing. Fig’s eyes widened and he placed his hands on her back, whispering an incantation. She felt her heartbeat pumping throughout her body, and slowly felt the pain ease and the air fill her lungs again. The battle pressed in close to them, and there were soldiers moving to attack. Lilylen braced herself.


Suddenly, a clap of thunder sounded and lightning struck, spreading through the bodies of the soldiers, turning them into crisp wastes. Lilylen sighed in relief and doubled her speed, trying to make up for lost time. She reached Niccen quickly.


He didn’t even move. She stood ten feet away from him and all he did was stand there, unafraid, undaunted. She gritted her teeth, and began to pound her drum faster, harder. She opened her mouth, and the sound from inside her was a deep bellow.


“Long we fight and long we live,
we do not fear the dark.
Strong we are and never gone,
we do not fear the burning light.
Hold back the night,
the night so cold.


We fight so long,
long will we live.”


She sang it again and again, her voice becoming louder and louder. Niccen stood there, quietly at first, then laughing. He did not notice the red light growing behind him, growing larger with each drumbeat.


“This is your plan?” He yelled above the drumming. “Sing me to death?”


Niccen moved his hands, muttering an incantation she couldn’t quite catch, even with her unique hearing. There were corpses around her from the battle, and they slowly raised themselves to their feet. Her breath caught in her throat, straining her voice. She found her voice again as she spun around with her drum, changing the beat and singing faster as she slammed bodily into the undead monsters surrounding her. They pressed in on her, grabbing at her clothes and scratching her face. Her heart was pounding in her head. She knew she didn’t have much longer until she would lose control, so she stopped moving and planted her feet. The song was sung.


Lilylen’s voice stopped mid-verse, and she banged on the drum three times in succession, and from behind Niccen appeared a giant, red, translucent dragon. The dragon was massive, a full-sized red dragon with a long crest on it’s head. Its flesh was nothing more than red light, the body of a spirit of vengeance. Niccen turned in response to its roar, and Lilylen imagined that his eyes grew wide. The dragon devoured him in one bite, and inside the dragon Niccen tumbled into its stomach. Lilylen felt elation welling up inside her, until there was a loud pop and Niccen disappeared. She spun around in panic, running into the corpses crowding around her who toppled over, the incantation controlling them no longer held.


“Fig! Dor! Leaf! Wend!” She called for her companions, who were fending off the soldiers. “He’s gone!”


None could hear her. In that moment, she felt a gust of wind burst against her side and tear through the leather of her drum. She gasped and turned to face Niccen, who was spinning a whirlwind. The wind blew so hard that it wrested the drum from her hands and took the air from her lungs. She felt as though her very soul was being pulled from her, but she staggered towards him, her face contorted with rage.


Blood boiling and rage overtaking her, her muscles grew and flexed, and her eyes tightened as the irises turned to bright red. She felt the dagger in her pocket and pulled it out, pressing her body against the whirlwind, her rage strength allowing her to resist it’s power. She screamed and bellowed at Niccen, at the wind, at everything that was in her way of tearing the mage apart.


“I will eat your soul!” Niccen cried out, and now she could hear the fear. She would always hear the fear when her rage rose within her. She breached the wall of wind and watched him tumble backwards. The look of terror on his face was all she needed to see. She tackled him and stabbed the dagger into his heart, twisting and wrenching it. The shadow of the blade spread out through his skin in a spiderweb, blackness filling his veins. She watched until the light left his eyes, hearing the crunch of cartilage and bone beneath her weight.


Soon, she felt the blood draining from her face. Her muscles weakened, and she staggered, falling to the ground beside Niccen’s blood-covered corpse. Around her, the thralls fell down, slowly but surely being overtaken by death.


She felt weightless as Dor and Leaf picked her up and carried her off the field. The warriors crowded around as she was taken to the hall. As she drifted off into weary rest, she heard the song of her people. The depth of their voices. The love in their hearts.


“For life! For victory! For Donwyn!”





THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.