Newsletter 3, Dec 2025

WELCOME TO THE TERRORDROME. It is lovely to have you.

TERRORDROME DISPATCHES are sent out once a month, and are a great way to keep up with my most recent shenanigans.

(I’m also on Bluesky as @cyborgurl.)

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ANNA ANTHROPY PATCH NOTES: DECEMBER 2025

• I wrote this month’s “exceptional story” for Fallen London subscribers, The Stolen Soirée, about a wiley old Zee-captain’s last party and the troubling events that will not have occurred there.

• The Hard Wire is a new zine collecting over 50 queer personals from a cyberpunk dystopia and a small, light rpg that allows you to play them. Adults only!

• If you missed the Art & System BackerKit campaign, good news! You can now pre-order the Princess with a Cursed Sword bound edition along with Dog Eat Dog and The Mountain Witch!

• Speaking of Princess Sword, I wrote a piece for this month’s Back Alley Games mag on the games, the crowdfunding campaign, and the strangeness of having your work validated when the world is on fire around you.

• Finally: for the next few weeks I am maliciously complying with itch.io’s Winter Sale by putting my TTRPGs on anti-sale for an extra 50% cost. I need the money!

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MEET MY TERRIBLE DAUGHTER, the Self-Declared Heiress, in this month’s Fallen London exceptional story. Art by Paul Arendt.

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• SLIME!
  Viscous, inquisitive and bright pink. We haven’t found a commercial application for this chemical byproduct. Maybe there’s an erotic one?? Test subjects earn gift cards. Inquire at NuTek Labs.

• CAN YOU KEEP STILL?
  Wealthy offworlders require human furniture for corporate dinner. Payment in Chyron microshares. Furniture doesn’t speak. You will not be fed.

• MIXED REALITY ROLE-PLAY
  I’ll provide the skins. Me: Melodie T-Ara. You: Melodie’s boyfriend, esports star Gravis Gamepad. I don’t want to see you out of skin.

  — The Hard Wire

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R.I.P. ENCYCLOPEDIA FROWN

My feline companion of 14 years, Encyclopedia Frown, died earlier this month after several years of chronic sickness. I’ve been keeping my grief mostly offline, but you can just glance at my body of work to see how much of an impact she had on my creative process. You might start with Princess Space Queen, a postcard rpg about and featuring her.

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WHAT HAVE I BEEN PLAYING CORNER: SOLO TABLETOP EDITION

• Lok: There’s a digital version of Blaž Urban Gracar’s little puzzle book but the beauty and simplicity of the rules just hits in a different way when it’s just you, the page, and a sheet of acetate. I almost reached the end, but I got perma-stuck on Puzzle 72.

• Spine: I described the premise of this to my boyfriend while xe was high and xe became scared I was going to get eaten by a book. I love the way this game uses involuntary mechanics like reading too far on a page.

• The Last Lighthouse: This is what the kids call a “lane battler,” I think. It has a great mix of very scary moments and clever-feeling solutions, as well as great spooky art by Anastasia Khmelevska.

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THE UNKNOWABLE FUTURE

2025 was the year I lost my job after almost a decade of teaching game design. It has been a pretty difficult time to be unemployed and disabled in the games industry. When you’re in survival mode, living a day at a time, it’s difficult to make any kind of long-term plans. There’s a name for this phenomenon which my boyfriend recently told me and which I subsequently forgot.

Here’s what I can give you: I’m planning on running another of my multi-week interactive fiction workshops early in 2026. It will most likely be announced a month in advance, and if you’re subscribed to this newsletter, you’ll be one of the first to hear when sign-ups are live.

In the meanwhile, here’s hoping for a year that sucks a little less. From our terrordrome to yours: Stay soft, stay strong, stay nasty.