338: what if a Disney Princess was also Azathoth?
Hullo
Love in the 90s
Mindful Mindlessness
No Dice Wives
Links
Bye
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I was going to skip this week, and then I remembered… wait, it’s the orders for The Power Fantasy #11, so I should do a teaser to remind them to order the book if they haven’t and jump aboard this monstrous locomotive.
Details? I can do.
THE POWER FANTASY #11
We said this is a comic where fighting was the lose state. We’ve kept that promise. We didn’t say anything about murder.
Out: August 13
Order by: July 21st
Lunar Code: 0625IM366
Admittedly, we really are going to try and make it easier to jump aboard this month too. Or just act as a reminder– I’m aware that a book like The Power Fantasy, there’s a bunch of moving parts, and folks may need a jolt to prod their memory across a month. So we’ve been doing some thinking – basically, working out a way to get a general purpose data page that can be hacked into shape to provide specific information we want to re-introduce at any point in the story (or just have fun). Basically, a design where you can turn on and off elements as needed.
Let’s do a bit of process stuff to show how we cooked it up.
Worth noting – the further we get in, the more contemporary the details is. If you’re not up to date with The Power Fantasy you shouldn’t actually read the final data page.
Here’s my original doodle, when trying to work out how things could be.
Which does look like a bit of a nervous breakdown, I know.
Here’s the next step, where I went to Affinity Photo to create a rough idea of one way to do it, to show where the various bits of information could go.
This is basically with everything turned on. My idea that individual lines could be turned on and off, and the subheaders removed, and the various bits of text turned off, etc. The trick, of course, was not making it look bobbins.
Then Rian stepped in, and we iterated a few times, and this is where we ended up.
This is the datapage for Issue 11. You can see, as well as some basic re-cap, we’re also making very clear the actual set up of psychic vulnerability. As those who are following the plot knows “who is vulnerable to Etienne, and how?” is very much at the heart of what’s going on. It’s also just fun stuff to show.
You’ll see a bunch of implementations made – Rian suggested colour coding the symbols so I can show the groupings. Katie suggested adding the rings to the supporting cast. That kind of thing.
We’re also using this for the new intro page to the trade (and I suspect we will, when we go through the first printing, update the one that should have been there to this design). In that case, I’m using the colour code to introduce the actual origins of each character – Atomic, Magician and whatever else, etc.
Perhaps best of all, as this is something that can be edited our side rather than designed bespoke each time, we can just use it when we need it, without worrying too much about production speed. We won’t overdo it, but it’s good to have a tool like this. As I said, if you want to jump aboard, this does make it easier.
That said, with the trade out next month, I suspect if people jump on, it’ll be there. Though I suspect if anything is to make you jump from trade to singles, it may be what happens at the end of the trade – as in, next issue.
Pre-order trades. Pre-order singles. Hail Mammon.
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I’ve been enjoying the Mindless One Newsletter, so was lovely to be asked to do a microinterview with them. Perhaps surprising no-one, despite editing huge chunks away, it was not micro in any way. There’s a chunk in the newsletter, where I stay stuff like...
Power is the ability to make reality align with your preference. As such, all power is suspect. A lot of my work has circled back to the soft power of art, specifically to be suspicious about it - writing stories about stories fucking us up, writing the equivalent of the warnings on cigarette packets. I've concentrated on that aspect of power as it's my neck of the woods - but also as it's the one which is the first, necessary step to any other abuse of power. One needs to tell themselves a good story to be happy to kill someone. The power of art is to aim the gun of most other forms of power.
…and the rest is over on the old site, touching on power, fantasy, ambition, my plans for the future, and Guy Debord. I’ve read the Mindless Ones since before I was a comic creator, and so it’s a different tone than you normally see from me. If you want a fragment of what’s going on in my noggin’ in 2025, this is a good one to take aboard.
Also, sub, as it’s a strong newsletter.
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As a break from work, I wrote an essay about how companions work in most RPGs (as demonstrated by Conan) and how companions work in 7 Part Pact, and the worlds they imply. As in, their politics and model of self. Let’s pull a bit out…
To head back to what the Conan-esque school’s philosophy: it sees humans as individuals who have a fundamental capacity by themselves. Sure, other people can help them… but they are them, and their victories are their own. Through this filter, it’s one of the tells of the culture where Dungeons & Dragons emerged – American, the country where the all-men-are-an-island libertarian philosophy took root.
Conversely, the Seven Part Pact is interested in modelling a different model of individuals – that, no, we’re really not individuals in that way, and that labour (often unseen, uncredited, under-appreciated) enables whatever these “hero” figures do.
...and you can read the rest here.
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Chris “Mythic Bastionland” MacDowall’s not just an RPG guy. Currently crowdfunding is his mech miniatures game MAC attack, which looks really interesting.
Gustaffo Vargas is just great, and it’s wonderful to see his Chilean Cyperpunk comics being collected. Crowdfunder here.
Lovely article over at PC Gamer about Fallen London – Failbetter’s long-running narrative browser game. I’ve played a little in their universe in the connected game Sunless Skies, where I wrote the Incognito Princess (in short: what if a Disney Princess was also Azathoth?) I think she went down well. By which I mean, I just googled her name and found a reddit thread where someone is asking the fanbase whether she has human genitals.
Il Met By Morsleib is a review site for Warhammer RPG material, both old and new. I’m likely never going to play anything in these systems ever again, but I sometimes do like to just… peer and think.
I smile at a micro-Rock Paper Shotgun blogging revival. Jim and I are, of course, blogging about RPGs. Comrade Meer is writing about his own toy obsessions – focusing on his Transformers, but already spinning over to Zoids. I do imagine Comrade Walker glowering at us. He is the Rorschach of RPS. He never quit.
Emily Freidman’s patreon sidesteps over into the day job, talking about the various Tokens left with foundlings. As paperwork was non-existent, they’d give the founding one half of something, and keep the other half, so they can ID one another. That there’s so many incomplete halves speaks to the tragedy there.
This is a very long interview with Clair Noto about writing Red Sonya. I know nothing about this stuff, so was interesting to see.
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The Power Fantasy #11 is in the machine, ready for its orders to be finalised, so the various little jobs there had to be done. Also, there was hustling over the backmatter for Closer, and working out what to do about editing it (Spoilers: Katie.)
But the main backbone of it has been finishing issue 6 of the new thing with Stephanie before she needs it (which should be Friday, or early next). That we will be working on issue 6 before it’s even out is something I’ve never done at any point in my career, but it does feel terribly grown up. It’s a bleak issue, with an unusual tempo – which they all have so far, which is part of the reason we’re doing it.
Next up, I’m likely bouncing back to The Power Fantasy to write 13, which is an issue I’m ridiculously excited to write. I said to C on Sunday, that I really couldn’t wait to work on Issue 6 of the new Stephanie Thing and this issue of TPF, in terms of feeling on fire about both of them. It’s the sort of thing where you know all these bits you want to execute, and also know assembling them will be transformative.
I also lobbed in a proposal for a six issue work for hire thing. This one crept up on me, and seems an enclosed enough job to say yes to. I’m aware I have to fight my instincts here. After all, my last trip back to Marvel was abstractly only 12 issues of Eternals and the 5 of Warhammer, and turned out like… well, how it turned out. But it’s a property I’ve never written for before, which I have a big chunk of love for. If it’s a go-er, it should be fun, and kind of the opposite of everything I’m writing right now. As in, there’s action scenes.
I also have enough RPG scenarios I’ve said I’ll write for folks, that I need to make an explicit RPG SCENARIOS TO DO list. I perhaps should write something about writing for the form eventually, from the perspective of someone who has a lot of experience in another form, and clearly has far less idea what he’s doing here. I’ll say this: writing game stuff is incredibly demanding, in terms of what one has to generate to fill the space, at least in the stuff I’m writing. It’s the ludic equivalent of poetry – condensed.
I also have just done this, after saying no-one will actually get it.
(Which of course, saying why no-one would get it is set up for folks actually getting it. I’m the best I am at what I do and what I do is absolutely inconsequential in the larger scale of things.)
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
17.7.2025