Kihō no Monogatari

Had a nice week-long trip up to East Boothbay, Maine with Sarah's aunt. Pretty chill and relaxing, mostly stayed at our place which had a dock in a little harbor, watching the fog and the sun. Got some fried clams and a lobster roll, got some ice cream and farmstand stuff, did a lot of grilling. I worked a fair amount on my translation project, the others did a lot of reading. Watched Christopher Robin and Red, the latter of which is relevant to my brain percolations about heists vs action movies in reference to Thief Game and my countless other vaguely DitV-inspired ttrpg ideas I seem somewhat stuck on lately. It was good to get a solid break.

Read another of the old The Best from Fantasy and Science Fictions I picked up, this one from circa 1959. It's a good way to read a lot of dated and/or bad and/or sexist stuff from authors whose other works have aged much better! It is fun to encounter conceits and themes that are no longer in the genre, and get a taste for how things have changed. I did like "Captivity" by Zenna Henderson; I feel like I might've read something of hers before, but if so I'm not sure where.

Now I'm reading Elatsoe, a YA urban fantasy from a Native perspective that has some really fun/compelling worldbuilding for a masquerade-less urban fantasy setup which focuses familiar urban fantasy elements more explicitly on colonialism. I'd definitely recommend it.

A morning talk, as given by Marelle.

Civilization, fundamentally, separates the true from the false.

That's not to say that everyone in a frame agrees on everything. Of course people argue all the time, and much profit is made on conflicts of perspective.

But underneath those peaks of disagreement is an iceberg of shared assumptions that no one notices because that's just "how the world works".

Assumptions about what's true, and what's false. How much things should cost. What has value. What someone deserves. What is normal, what is just.

You might think that, out here in the wastes, we're not defined by civilization. But it's not something you can escape by just walking. We can't but live in relation to civilization.

Some of this is good. Without civilization we wouldn't have medicines, we wouldn't have screws, clean water would be harder to come by.

Some of it is unhelpful. We bring our old angers, our unhealthy desires, our biases. And we live amidst others' trash.

And we bring these assumptions of true and false with us, too. They're tied in with the way we think.

They're baked into our stories.

We come from different places, from different frames. That helps, some.

Yet how can we escape the duality of true and false if we're still entangled in the places we came from?

But thinking of it as an escape is wrong. Fleeing something is just chasing a contrast.

And pursuing nonduality in these terms is like asking a stone to fly.

 You approach Meda one evening, after the circle's done but with the fire still glowing. Marelle had pointed her out to you, one of those early days, but you haven't spoken and she's never told her story, at least when you've been around.

"Don't say it," Meda says without looking, before you've even opened your mouth. "People only ever say two things, and I'm sick of both of them. And your face tells me it's not some architectural emergency."

"Sorry," you say. "I'll leave you alone."

She doesn't respond, just keeps staring out into the darkness.

***

It's a few nights later before Meda comes and sits next to you as you're finishing your soup. She's not apologetic, but she's at least less harsh. "It wasn't about you at all, really. I don't get on well with people."

You gesture broadly at the crowd around the fire. "Why live here, with the camp, then?"

She shrugs a little, looks off to the side. "I lived off by myself for years. But even then people saw me as a monster to fight or a weapon to use."

"And it's better here?"

"At least sometimes, they leave me alone when I ask." She pauses. "It's not that they don't know I'm useful, but at least I'd still be welcome here if I weren't."

You nod. "You help with maintenance, right?"

She laughs. It's not unkind, but you feel like you're missing the joke. "Occasionally, yes."

You're not sure how to respond, so you change tack. "I notice you listen to the stories a lot. Do you at least enjoy that?"

Meda considers, her gaze flitting between the others in the circle. "It's something to do, at least. It reminds me that I'm not the only one who got a raw deal. But it feels pretty pointless after a while."

The nightly circles, the openness people show here, still feels pretty alien to you. That's hard to say out loud, though. "Marelle thinks it's important."

Meda shakes her head. "Marelle thinks it's still possible to fix the world. But I think the world was always broken. I just wasn't always someone who got cut by its edge. And how do you fix something that's never been whole?"

You nod slowly. "Yeah, it seems hard enough just to build something stable for ourselves out here."

"Well, if there's one thing I'm good at, it's stability. But stability isn't happiness."

"You're not happy here?"

"Trying not to be what I am certainly wasn't helping. I've gotten it through my head to stop doing that. Doesn't mean I don't still feel like a monster or a tool. And I'm not sure I even know what happiness would be."

You remember times you felt happy, so long ago they feel like dreams. And more recently, a quieter form of happiness. But not really one you know how to share. "Well, what do you want?"

She doesn't respond for long enough that you're surprised when she does. "I guess for what I am to mean something that's not just my reflection in others."

There's nothing really you can say to that.

(reposting because I want to be able to link to this somewhere other than Tumblr)

I don’t really write or talk about being genderqueer or queerness in general. It’s hard to talk about things I haven’t really figured out, I guess. I don’t really have self-consensus on much.

But in some ways, the story I’m the right person to tell should be based on who I am, I guess. (Technically I’ve written more with DID representation than genderqueer representation, but that just sorta happened.)

Anyways, a while back Jennachat folks, largely @geostatonary and @laenan, had some discourse about what a Queer Narrative might be, as distinct from queer representation. I won’t try to present their perspectives; I’m sure I’d get it wrong. But that, in combination with some other stuff like @templeofshame‘s Flying V JoCo show, Where The Water Tastes Like Wine, and my continual desire to figure out what a non-fanfic response to Hitherby would look like, has had me thinking about this stuff a lot.

The way I’m seeing it right now, there are different “levels” a… non-defaulting, or whatever, work can operate on. (I’m primarily thinking about queerness, but hypothetical distinctly queer examples are also hard for me to think of and insert concisely, and I feel like this same analysis also applies to other things like “feminist” gender-role subversions as well as other types of marginalization I’m less well-situated to speak on. I’m gonna mostly say “queer” here and handwave the fact that some of my examples are more properly gay, because it’s my party, but I think the same analysis applies to other forms of non-defaulting to varying extents.)

( Read more... )

Prompted by I Wrote Mr. Tambourine Man by John Craigie, and perhaps Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō.

They say that a calling is a job you'd do even if you didn't need to work.

I guess we all work for different reasons.

Money, of course. Recognition. Satisfaction? The feeling of helping someone? Raw enjoyment?

Does anyone really enjoy a job so much they'd do it just for that, alone?

I feel like wouldn't call that a job any more.

But what do you call this, then?

It's been three years, you reckon.

You were worried about food, at first, but it turns out the ash is good for growing things. You'll run out of cans eventually, but you think you'll be okay.

It's not that no one notices you, of course. There's not so much to talk about as I'd have expected. The weather's more of a constant drain. But you attempt it, now and again. Sometimes there's a basket of zucchini. Sometimes, you offer water or tea.

You don't try to talk about your work.

It's not that it's private, really.

It's more a habit, a compulsive tick you haven't confronted.

It's not like any of them would try to steal it, or have anything to do with it if they did.

But old burns linger.

Most of the daylight, you're quiet and alone. You tend your plantings, listen to the raw breeze. You take short trips, these days more to know the land than to scavenge. You pump water. You hum half-remembered songs.

And then you go back, to your basement beneath a ruined office building surrounded by gourds and apple trees.

Sit in the dark, there, with your guttering lamplight.

Your dusty, heavy, slightly moldy books.

Your binders and binders of notes.

And write briefs for a shattered court that's been empty and ash for three years.

Prompted by Bottomfeeder by Amanda Palmer.

"That's not how karma works," she said. "There's not some Universal Karma Authority that measures how much you tipped your last cab driver and adjusts your expected time to hail your next cab accordingly."

It was raining, of course. I told her to stay in the shade. We didn't have any sunscreen.

"They did an experiment, you know. Goldfish and catfish."

I was halfway in the street at this point, with my arm outstretched. Another cab drove past. Its light was on, there was no one in the back seat. The driver didn't even slow down.

"Goldfish can only remember things for three seconds, and catfish are immortal."

I reminded her the goldfish thing was a myth. I decided against bringing up lobsters.

"So they make the fish play prisoner's dilemma, see."

The woman at the desk had assured me that a cab was on the way, would arrive at any minute.

"Each fish can push two buttons, and they get food based on the result. Then they play again the next day."

I pointed out the foolishness of iterating assuming short memories.

"That's exactly the point."

By now, my jacket was soaked through. A speeding car splashed me up to my knees.

"The goldfish do way better than the catfish."

By playing randomly, I supposed.

"No, dummy. Goldfish have karma."

Another empty cab drove past, ignoring my frantic gesturing.

"See, goldfish can't remember because they're backwards. They pick based on the future."

I told her to get back in the shadow. A cab drove past while I was distracted, but I couldn't tell if it was occupied.

"That's why they don't mind when we kill them, too."

I saw a flash of lightning out of the corner of my eye.

"So, here, your problem is you're going to tip poorly because you're in a bad mood."

I insisted that was none of her concern.

"Lend me $40. I'll pay the tip."

A burst of thunder echoed lazily.

"'Cmon, the sun's getting high already."

I shrugged, pulled my wallet from my sodden pocket, and handed her the money.

"See, it's all about credible intention."

I shook my head, looking down to try to keep the water out of my eyes.

Just then, a cab pulled up, slowing down enough to only splash my shoes.

So, my obsession this week with Dream Askew and some discussions about Valence and GM roles in Jennachat inspired me with a Chuubo’s!Dream Askew hack. The basic concept is that character abilities are simplified into high-valence MP-costing moves, ordinary-valence, and negative-valence MP-generating moves. In addition to playing a character, each player also plays a genre and a region of town, having default control over stuff that happens in that region and characters from that region in addition to events fitting with that genre. (Possibly with some motivation to encourage that genre.)

I sorta want to do the region/genre sheets as folded tent cards so that the other players could see the XP actions and properties, but I don’t know how well that’d work in practice.

I think maybe XP and wounds work like in Chuubo’s? Maybe with XP simplified down into one kind of thing? If so there should be emotion XP somewhere on the character sheets.

I do really like this approach in general. It certainly works a lot better for Chuubo’s than any of my previous attempts.

A Wish Askew

So, I ran Singularity (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/186728/Singularity) last weekend. Five times, in fact. It was my first time running an in-print published LARP, and (depending on technicalities) probably my first time running a LARP I’d neither helped write nor played. It was a lot of fun! It was also a lot different than I’m used to, so I thought I’d write down some thoughts.

( Read more... )