331: flirting with working
Hullo
Bookplate
Mothers Too
Dark
Luggage
Links
Bye
****
You know we’re doing a launch for the Wicked + the Divine compendium at GOSH on May 30th, right? Well, we’re also doing a bookplate edition for GOSH. That’s it above. Honestly, any time Jamie draws any of the WicDiv cast now, it feels like a gift. I always think “is this the last time>?”
You can grab an edition with the bookplate on the night or mail-order from GOSH.
****
Nothing new from me this week, but emerging from this house is Golden Rage: Mother Knows Best #2, wherein the Witch gets all manipulative, the big meanie.
More details about Golden Rage over here.
****
Launched this week is the Kickstarter for Cosmic Dark, the weird-sci-fi horror RPG from the maker of the (excellent) Cthulhu Dark. Think Ballard, Tarkovsky, VanderMeer.
It’s funded, and working through the stretch goals. I’m actually the next one, where I’ll write a scenario called Umbilical, which is basically Superman’s origin meets Annihilation.
****
I must have been slacking this week, as I posted two things on Old Men Running The World, and clearly was giggling a lot.
Firstly, Where I Review My Gencon 2024 Haul From A Photo As I Had My Luggage Stolen On The Way Home.
Reviewing role-playing games is a controversial business. There’s some people who believe you can make a meaningful judgment about a game by careful consideration of its manual, and there’s other people who understand that’s nonsense.
You don’t need to read a game to review it. You can just look at its cover and make all the judgements you want. Of course, some people say you shouldn’t judge anything by its cover. Those people sound like the sort of people who didn’t have all their games stolen on the way home from Gencon on the train back to my home.
That’s me, by the way. That person is me.
Secondly, The Skim: Mythic Bastionland, which is a new feature, so we set it up...
It is this organ’s firm and unyielding belief that one cannot review an RPG from reading it. You can review a manual, certainly, but you’re not reviewing the game in any meaningful way.
However you can skim and see what pops out.
This is the Skim, and this is what we got from skimming Mythic Bastionland.
IN A SENTENCE
Kieron: It’s OSR1 hexcrawl2 Pendragon3 in miniature4 (complimentary5).
...and I suspect we’ll run that text every time or never do it again, as Jim and I got distracted, as is our wont. Read the rest here.
****
* Laurie Penny writes about her autism diagnosis, and the impact on their life: “Critics bemoan an “epidemic” of “overdiagnosis”, but over time, the number of people with autistic traits has stayed pretty consistent. What has changed is how many of us know. So many that there’s now a standard way to tell the rest of this story. I’m supposed to reassure you with an upbeat tale of self-acceptance. Instead I’m going to make things awkward and tell the truth.”
* Oh, while we’re on them, Laurie on TERF Island. This was behind a paywall, but Laurie’s popped it outside it now.
* Want a copy of DIE or DIE RPG in German? Pre-order DIE or DIE RPG in German!
****
I’m writing this well past the point where the conservatory turns into an oven, so I’ll write it short (again). I wasn’t planning on doing one this week, but I realised there was enough time sensitive stuff to make me think it a good idea.
Basically, I’ve been working, or at least flirting with working. My main thing (which I hope to wrap in a draft zero form over the weekend) is issue 5 of the new thing for Stephanie, whose shape has absolutely warped in the process of writing it, which seems characteristic about this book. I talk about my longer comics having two things – a larger structure and material. The larger structure is basically “roughly what happens in each arc” and the material is “all this stuff I want to use at some point.” Basically, what’s happened here is elements that I thought would be in the second arc have just been brought in here, as hard as I can. I haven’t told Stephanie what it is yet, as I don’t want to steal the gasp from her.
Sitting in the heat trap, I’m reminded of something else I wanted to mention. While it’s quotidian, it’s really disturbed me, so if you’re not in the mood for something thrumming with horror, skip to the end. It also features Spiders so arachnophobes, get with the page down button.
Anyway – this Conservatory? It has spiders. Big spiders. They nestle up in the top corners, waiting.
The Conservatory often has its door open, creating a through draft in the house. Specifically, it goes from the door on the left, upwards, and towards the webs. Which, of course, is why the Spiders have put them there and presumably why the Spiders are so big.
Things get caught. A bee or a fly are the ones you notice.
You know this, because the noise goes from a normal buzz to a scream. It’s the only word I have for it. It ululates, harder and harder, ever more desperate.
The first time I saw one fly in and heard it, I just shouted NO! and ran around trying to find something to save the Bee. I managed to do it, cutting the webbing and escorting the bee outside, and leaving the Spider giving me side-eye.
Chrissy is similarly wired as me, and she spent a good five minutes trying to get a seemingly suicidal Damsel Fly to not just fly straight back into the web.
So that’s what my Summer looks like – protecting insects from Spiders, while also refusing to move Spiders, as it’s their home too.
I just had to stop writing this, as it happened again.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
15.5.2025