Hullo

No Filter (Many filters)
Bundled
Cave In
Links
Bye

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Before I dive in, last week had a much lower read rate than usual – apparently it ended up in a lot of spam filters, so you should check yours. I haven’t had a chance to look into it, but the best guess for a reason is it included a bit of Australian slang (as used in a kids TV show) in the subject line, and that’s too raw for Gmail filters. Clearly “Too raw for Gmail filters” would be the subject line, but I suspect that would also be too raw for Gmail filters.

Anyway – here’s last week, if you want to catch up. In short – The Power Fantasy 14 and DIE: Loaded 2 our, and the DIE: MetaDungeon announced. Signs ups for announcement alerts on that have been great too.

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This launched last night, and is a bit of a nerd thrill for me. You’ll have likely seen me link to Bundle of Holding a bunch of times, with its PDF deals for RPG materials. So to be one, is a bit of a delight.

Until January 12^th there’s a DIE: RPG deal running.

For $14.99, you can get the DIE: RPG core book, plus the three adventures modules and the quick start. The pack also includes a 15% off voucher if you want to buy physically from RR&D.

If you’ve been intrigued about the multi-award winning (no, really) DIE: RPG, this is a great chance to try it out. Plus, if you’re sitting there, having no idea what to give as a present to an RPG loving chum, this is right there for you.

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Last newsletter before Script Club! On the 31^st of December we’ll be sending out out…

Once & Future #13! See how I write for Dan (i.e. mainly get out of the way, because he’s Dan.) The first of the three (I think) scripts of O&F which are set around New Years, so this may be the start of a tradition.

Details on Script Club here (TL;DR: $5 a month, I sent you a script/other bit of writing, to support the list)

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This made me laugh. This is the year I cancelled my Spotify, and moved my streaming to Tidal in December. However, I’ve had it for the whole year – it’s an app which actually integrates with the DJ software we use when doing our club night. The full spotify move actually only happened in December.

So, when Tidal dropped their equivalent to Unwrapped, it was solely songs that we played in the club nights (or Tbubz), making it a little capsule of what Al, Sarah, Dan and myself have been dropping (plus the guest DJs).

This is what the great machine in the cloud thinks our club plays.

Which is hard to argue with, really.

This is the playlist it generated.

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• Ink on Paper Studios’ 2019 Documentary on Kelly Sue and the Origin Of Captain Marvel is a lot of fun. I’d forgotten that I was interviewed for it, so you get a startlingly younger looking me briefly talking about how awesome Jamie is. I wonder what things could have happened in the last six year to age me so?

• Aditya linked to this in their last newsletter – The Goon Squad, which Aditya notes it is a bit VICE-y in its approach but just an interesting subculural nose. Also, oddly naive (“None… could have predicted the formation of an international pornography cult.”). Really? I like to think it’s fairly natural for masturbators come together. Anyway – sentences like this did make me smile: “The Gooneral’s attendees didn’t care that Malone was, from all available evidence, not a gooner at all but rather an unaffiliated, lone-wolf pervert.” This world.

• Shelfdust republishing pieces hit this one by Seb Patrick on just jumping into random issues, which did make me start when I saw his byline. He’s missed.

• Aaron over at Cannibal Halfling applies the Onion-OSR-model to Burning DIE and DIE RPG. Honestly, with DIE RPG being out there for a while it does make me happy to see folks who’ve played it actually properly map what it’s doing.

• Needlessly mean final line, but this on whether or not Classical Statues were painted terribly is a really fun. I’m not an expert, but “in paintings they didn’t paint them like the reconstructions” seems really strong evidence, and anyone who’s ever painted a warhammer mini knows that just taking paint from the base coat isn’t going to give you an idea what it looks like.

• This was good to see too – Spencer Ackerman interviews Aubrey Sitterson about FREE PLANET, his and Jed Dougherty’s revolutionary-sci-fi comic. I suspect Spencer’s audience is exactly the sort of people who need to be told that Free Planet exists.

• Another strong interview: Alex Segura interviews Ed Brubaker about Criminal.

• Just arrived in my Inbox as we speak – the Silence to Astonish panel from Thought Bubble, where Al Ewing, John Allison, a bemused Megan Huang and myself answer questions. I have no idea how Al donning a S&M cap repeatedly will work in an audio medium, but I guess you’re going to find out. Also, my high kick! Everyone was hugely funny on this. I laughed more than a panelist should.

• I don’t think I’ve linked to Matt Write About Comics’ head-to-head conversations about TPF before – they take various angles on the book, and normally lag a month behind, and have their own smart angles. Here they are on 13.

• I have completely failed to gather mentions in folks end of years lists. Man! Here’s two though – Fluxblog on their fave stuff of the year, turning up TPF and me turning up in the Sktchd creators of the year.

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Christmas looms. Most the people I work with have signed off already. The exception is Caspar, who wants to wrap The Power Fantasy 16 off tomorrow, so he can have time off until early January. Pages are coming in great. We’ve talked about how hard it has been recently, but you can see his joy in just landing all the things. He did say that this is the first issue that had no surprises for him, which is born of that – between the initial vision and everything we’ve set up, this is just pay off, and he’s had his mind working on these problems for the last two years.

I want to talk more, which means I better not. Nearly there.

(In passing, seeing sites report it ends at 16 is weird. We haven’t said that.)

The family arrives today, as we’re hosting for the first time. I took a break from writing this to go set up a Chilli slow-cooking. After this, I’ll be walking into town to get a couple last presents, and clear my head for the arrival of the extended Gillen clan. It will be fun. All the children are close enough in age that it’s going to be like seeing a little gang filling the place. I’m also aware that this is the first year that Iris is clearly very aware of what Christmas is, and exactly what she wants (presents).

It’s been a weird year, it feels. As the last non-Script-Club newsletter of the year, I suspect I should try and sum it up. I don’t really want to. It doesn’t feel there yet. The holiday gap normally gives me some perspective on things, so perhaps I’ll do it next time. It’s also partially as I suspect to write honestly would actually be angrier than I like, and not in a fun, cool angry way either. I am not happy with a lot of things, but chief among them is myself.

But I think I should see clearer by the next time we talk. Looking at how 2026 can be different is very much on my mind.

Regular readers will also know that I often write a new project over this period, and send it off as the midnight chimes. This year is different – I will have something to send off, but I’m not sure I will be sending it off. Deciding whether or not to do so will be the first, and probably most important, decision of 2026. In the year I turned 50, it seems I haven’t entirely lost my taste for melodrama.

It seems I’ve done a little of summing up anyway. One thing I’ve been frustrated at is not finding time to do extra writing here - when people like Charlie Jane do a newsletter as regular as mine, but more novel stuff, I’m a little embarassed.

(That said, when you do 2 comics, each with multiple essays in the back. It’s not that I don’t do the writing - just not here. Stop setting foolish demands, Gillen.)

Anyway - I wanted to do some kids TV reviews again, but I’m not feeling funny and want to give it more time, so instead you’re going to get a little chain of thoughts about Elsa and the Minotaur.

Iris was playing with a friend, running around firing (imaginary) blasts of ice at things while he flapped around as a fire dragon. I asked Iris who she was, knowing full well who she was. He answer got me thinking.

“An Elsa,” she said.

It’s a slip. She meant Elsa, but the idea is there, and I started imagining what that would look like. What would it mean in a world if you could be “an Elsa” and Elsa was not a name, but a type. It could happen. Elsa is arguably the most definitive kids media character emerge in the last decade and change. She is a derivative work, from Hans Christian Andersen’s the Snow Queen, but she has been supercharged, and let go from those boundaries. She’s hugely popular. Who knows how long a shadow she could cast? Would all snow queens be “Elsas?”

Perhaps most likely, it could end up as a joke, like Dracula and Vampires.

When someone calls a Vampire “A Dracula” it’s someone making a joke, or a writer trying to imply the character is under-educated. That the assumed audience know they’re not called “Draculas” is why it works as a joke.

It’s not always that simple though – think of Medusa and the Gorgons. A character saying “it’s a Medusa” isn’t a joke. It’s a prompt for another character to say “Well, Actually, Medusa is a person, and Gorgons are the group”. It signals the ignorance of the original character, but is a prompt for a trivia correction. You have to be in a special kind of geek circle to say “We’re being attacked by Medusas!” and expect a laugh. Admittedly, if you’re reading this, that’s probably you.

But then there’s the further level lower than that. We have to go deeper to find the Minotaur.

Now, we know his story – the labyrinth, the tithe of children, the string, the big bulled headed guy - but Minotaur is firmly a type of monster. Fantasy worlds name their bull-headed creatures “Minotaurs.” We even forget that the original Minotaur had his own name – Asterion or Asterius, depending.

(If you like this stuff, btw, I gesture at DIE RPG – we’ve got more Minotaur musings in there.)

Point being: there was one Minotaur, and now there’s many, so many we don’t remember that poor child trapped in a dungeon by its parents with nothing but its power and rage for company.

You may see where I’m going here: the Minotaur and Elsa, and their similarities. Both were born to parents who, ashamed and petrified by their monstrous, dangerous child, hid them away from the world in a prison. The Minotaur leaned more physical prison, Elsa more emotional, but it’s not even that clear-cut. Elsa’s recurring childhood image is the door with love on the far side. The Minotaur’s physical isolation speaks to its emotional distance. Hell, both even have a sister who tries to untangle the trap – though it does make you wonder how it would have turned out for the Minotaur if it had Anya rather than Ariadne.

This makes you consider these different routes, and how that – when passed over by so many hands – we forget the actual pain in the core of the story. The Minotaur was a child his parents feared and abused. You’re not thinking that when playing one. Imagining a world where “An Elsa” becomes a generic idea of a type rather than a specific individual reminds of what we forget stories when we move from the specific to the generic.

Which is a chilly end to this line of thought. I started imagining Elsa running free of the specific and a future where it was just a type, and ended up considering how upsetting that would be, and untether the power of the fantasy from its actual fantastical reality.

This is also clearly the parent speaking. As my family gather together, I’m sitting here, thinking of the world we live in, and all the Minotaurs and Elsas out there and just wishing for their dungeon doors to be opened.

This is a hard season for a lot of folk. If you’re in a dungeon, I’m sorry. My love is nothing, but you’ve got it.

Speak soon.

Kieron Gillen
Bath
23.12.2025