#By arc dream publishing

[literalcatpod]

56. Making a Problem Cat and his Guardian Monster Cat in Monsters & Other Childish Things Feat. JackFrostDoll

Tumblr user @jackfrostdoll is a GM and TTRPG hobbyist who came to us to talk about her favorite game, Monsters and Other Childish Things by Arc Dream! This is a game about children and their monster guardians. Or, in our case, a cat child and a cat monster. But hey! We do what we gotta!

Follow the show online: https://badgertrove.com/literalcatpod/

Follow Joel Holland: https://jholland.start.page/

Follow Avalon: https://twitter.com/AvalonAlchemist

We’ve got a Patreon now! https://www.patreon.com/BadgerTrove

Download the character sheets: https://bit.ly/literalcatpod

We’re on Bluesky now! https://bsky.app/profile/literalcatpod.bsky.social

Cover art, midroll theme, and Intro/Outro music made by Joel Holland

Thanks for listening! We’ll Cat-ch you later!

[animatorkg]

A fun idea for a Delta Green module. In a small town called A, mysterious holes in the ground have started appearing, pets and farm animals are acting strangely, and locals claim to have seen a two-legged creature that looks like a rabbit. Special agents Fudd and "Yosemite " Sam, as seasoned Delta operatives, are sent to investigate.

[sforzesco]

I just wanted to ask, I know you said that Trikaranos will always be free to read but along the line, would you consider offering an optional book version of it?

Because I would buy 50 of them.

this is very flattering considering I have only just started shdhfgh

and tbh, I thought about it! I like having physical books when I can afford it, and I’d enjoy having a physical copy of my own work on my bookshelf, but I also hate formatting things for traditional print so so so so much oh my god

(I am about to start complaining about technical nonsense in 5….4….3…..2……1……)

like, I know how to do it because that’s something I went to school for, but boy howdy is it tedious as hell, and there’s a couple pages already where I did not bother to think about bleeds, trims, or margins, etc. heugh.

(the other more pressing obstacle keeping me from thinking that far in advance is that I don’t have a work laptop that can run the software I need (I’m currently borrowing a laptop that’s 10 yrs old lmao) and replacing my laptop is not even remotely close to something I can afford to do 🫠)

it’s still fun to think about, though! I have a cover in mind already if I ever do it, so maybe someday, if I ever get to a point where making comics pays my living expenses!

anyway, thank you for being interested in the idea of a physical copy, anon, it means a lot!

[vintagerpg]

Don’t break the oath! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we’re looking at The Unspeakable Oath, the Call of Cthulhu fanzine from Pagan Publishing (and later, Arc Dream). Debuting in 1990, the zine feel emblematic of its time, while also illustrating a continuity of DIY tradition from the early days of the Amateur Press Associations into the current RPG zine scene. All that plus tentacles!

[bargainsleuthbooks]

Book Reviews: Children's Edition; Simone Biles: Little People, Big Dreams; My Friend LeVar; The Owl Prowl Mystery; Big Jim and the White Boy; From the Early 1900s to the Mid-1900s: Inventors #NetGalley #NewBooks

Time for another round-up of ARCs that I've read lately. This time 'round, it's a bunch of children's books of all ages, including a retelling of Huck Finn, and a book on #Olympian #SimoneBiles #Bookreview #netgalley #newbooks #levarburton

I’m cruising along and getting through all my Advanced Reader’s Copies from NetGalley. In order to keep up with blogging about them all, I’ve decided to do more roundups like this. Most books can be found at the affiliate links below or try your local library when they are released! (Amazon US) (Amazon CA) (Amazon UK)  (AbeBooks) (Barnes & Noble) (Booksamillion)  (Audible.com)…

[walks-the-ages]

OP deactivated, and some of the links were broken/marked unsafe by Firefox, so here's a new compilation post of Leslie Feinburg's (She/her, ze/hir) novels and essays on being transgender:

Stone Butch Blues official free source directly from Author's website:

Stone Butch Blues, backup on the webarchive:

Transgender Liberation: A movement whose time has come, on the web archive:

Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, on the web archive:

Lavender and Red, PDF essay collection:

Drag King Dreams, on the web archive:

(Also, if anyone ever tells you that the protagonist of Stone Butch Blues ""ends up with a man""........ they're transmisogynistic jackass TERFs who are straight up lying)

Please also check out your local public libraries for these books and see if they carry them, to help support public libraries! If you have a library card already you can checkout Libby and Overdrive to see if your public library carries it as an ebook that you can checkout :)

EDIT: another not included on the orignal masterpost-- Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or blue !

annnnnd in light of the web archive losing it's court case, here's a backup of both PDFs and generated epubs a friend made:

5/26/2023: hello! I am adding on yet another book of queer history, this time the autobiography of Karl Baer, a Jewish, intersex trans man who was born in 1884! Please signal boost this version, and remember to check the notes whenever this crosses your dash for any new updates :)

6/24/2023:

Two links to share!

Someone made an Epub version of Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years, which you can find Here , as a more accessible version than a pdf of a scanned book if you're like me and need larger text size for reading--

And from another post I reblogged earlier today, I discovered the existence of "TransSisters: the Journal of Transsexual Feminism", which has 10 issues from 1993-1995, and includes multiple interviews with Leslie Feinburg and other queer feminists / activists of the 90s!

Here's a link to all 10 issues of TransSisters, plus a 1996 "look back at" by one of the writers after the journal ended, you can find all 10 issues on the Internet Archive Here !

------

8/28/2023:

"Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out", can be found on the web archive Here, for the 25th Anniversary Edition from 2015,

and also Here, for the original 1991 version.

Each of the above can be borrowed for one hour at a time as long as a copy is available :D

This is a living post that receives sporadic updates on the original, if you are seeing this on your dash, click Here to see the latest version of the post to make sure you're reblogging the most up to date one :)

------------

October, 25th 2023:

"I began to dawdle over breakfast during shift changes, asking both waitresses questions. After weeks of inquiries, they invited me to a demonstration, outside Kleinhan's Music Hall, protesting the Israeli war against Egypt and Syria. I was particularly interested in that protest. The state of Israel had been declared shortly before my birth. In Hebrew school I was taught "Palestine was a land without peo-ple, for a people without a land." That phrase haunted me as a child. I pictured ears with no one in them, and movies projected on screens in empty theaters. When I checked a map of that region of the Middle East in my school geography textbook, it was labeled Palestine, not Israel. Yet when I asked my grandmother who the Palestinians were, she told me there were no such people. The puzzle had been solved for me in my adolescence. I developed a strong friendship with a Lebanese teenager, who explained to me that the Palestinian people had been driven off their land by Zionist settlers, like the Native peoples in the United States. I studied and thought a great deal about all she told me. From that point on I staunchly opposed Zionist ideology and the occupation of Palestine. So I wanted to go to the protest. However, I feared the demonstration, no matter how justified, would be tainted by anti-Semitism. But I was so angered by the actions of the Israeli government and military, that I went to the event to check it out for myself. That evening, I arrived at Kleinhan's before the protest began. Cops in uniforms and plainclothes surrounded the music hall. I waited impatiently for the protesters to arrive. Suddenly, all the media swarmed down the street. I ran after them. Coming over the hill was a long column of people moving toward Kleinhan's. The woman who led the march and spoke to reporters proudly told them she was Jewish! Others held signs and banners aloft that read: "Arab Land for Arab People!" and "Smash Anti-Semitism!" Now those were two slogans I could get behind! I wanted to know who these people were and where they had been all my life! Hours later I followed the group back to their headquarters. Orange banners tacked up on the walls expressed solidarity with the Attica prisoners and the Vietnamese. One banner particularly haunted me. It read: Stop the War Against Black America, which made me realize that it wasn't just distant wars that needed opposing. Yet although I worked with two members of this organization, I felt nervous that night. These people were communists, Marxists! Yet I found it easy to get into discussions with them. I met waitresses, factory workers, secretaries, and truck drivers. And I decided they were some of the most principled people I had ever met..." Transgender Warriors (1996) Leslie Feinberg

[keystonepublishing]

Under The Brine by bonesandthebees

Wow, it's really been nearly two months since I posted! Besides the usual life stuff, I also took the plunge and bought Affinity Publisher just so I could control the typeset to a greater finesse than clunky Microsoft Word. And this is my first result of that!

This fic, Under The Brine by @bonesandthebees is one of my favorite Crimeboys fics, and I had so many ideas to try out to visualize the situations and vibes of the plot. As you will see, the result was a mix of established layouts and new experimentation. The cover itself is made using Affinity, printed onto paper to give a papery feel on the hands!

The chapter pages are designed with voluminous double-spread images because I wanted the reader to "fall in" to the story. I want to bring the feel of unnatural uncertainty, fear, and dread into a visual form; if a picture tells a thousand words, the right one can convey the mood of an entire arc. Having the opening paragraphs shifted to the side accentuates the visual feel.

As per usual, I have my layouts for pre-fic notes along with an appendix section for end notes and author comments to curious readers (albeit this time on Tumblr). But I also diverged by adding a playlist, curated by the author for this fic, along with a Spotify code if typing the song names onto YouTube is too much.

With Affinity, I also took the time to lay out the fic's dream sequences. I wanted a complete opposite to a normal page to convey the act of dreaming, and so made the pages all-black. However, the volume of needed black ink did confuse my printer and created a number of paper jams, so I don't think this style is going to be used much.

Additionally, I formatted the phone-text-messaging part of the fic so it actually looks like a text message convo! This was one of the most fiddly parts of typesetting as I had to balance not only the text messages, but the error alert symbol and words as well.

And lastly, I experimented with putting last paragraphs and the ending image together, instead of putting them onto separate pages as per my other binds. I do this because I wanted to visualize the moody feel of the ending... and because I was running out of paper and wanted to save pages.

Full thanks to @bonesandthebees for writing this fic!

[nkjemisin]

Hello! I’ve been seeing a lot about your work on social media lately and would love to read your books. What series do you recommend I start with?

Thanks ☺️

That depends on your taste/interest. I don't really write the same kind of thing from series to series, because I get bored easily and often want to try new subgenres/styles/etc. So I'll just briefly list my series and you can pick the one that appeals the most.

There's the Inheritance Trilogy, (link goes to the first book) my first published novels. A secondary world that has enslaved its own gods deals with the repercussions of that, from the POVs of three mortals. There's an overarching plot arc for all three books -- and there are some side-stories for this trilogy, too -- but each has a different narrator and takes place at different times. First person past tense, if you care about that sort of thing. (I don't, but some people seem weirdly attached to/repulsed by particular persons/tenses, so I'm including that info here.)

Then there's the Dreamblood Duology, which were actually written before the Inheritance books but I couldn't get them published at first because publishing in the 2000s was hella racist, basically. (I know, it hasn't changed much... but that little bit of change was enough for me to break in.) These books are as close to traditional fantasy as I'm probably ever going to get, except that they take place in faux ancient Egypt instead of faux medieval Europe. The story follows priests of the dream goddess as they're forced to deal with a conspiracy that threatens to inflict horrors on their society. Third person past tense for both books.

Next up is the Broken Earth trilogy. That's my experimental one, with first, second, and third-person POVs, present tense, a completely non-Earth world, and some heavy themes. All three books form a single story spanning, oh, forty thousand years or so, but mostly they're centered on one incredibly angry middle-aged mother who is on a roaring rampage of revenge/revolution. Features earthbenders, anti-magic groomers, magic statue people, and the apocalypse (again). Lots of "dark" themes and horror moments (harm to children, systemic bigotry, people-eating bugs, more).

My most recent books are the Great Cities duology. Urban fantasy set in modern-day New York, third person multiple POV ensemble cast. Turns out cities come to life once they hit a certain point, and then they claim a human avatar to represent and protect them. New York turns out to have six. It's also got some very unwanted tourists in the form of Lovecraftian entities that are trying to destroy it, along with reality as we know it. I meant for these to be lighthearted and silly and I think they kind of are, but there are still some notable political elements in them. (I mean, it's set in modern-day New York, and I started them the year Trump got elected, so...) It's lighthearted for me, anyway.

So, pick your poison!

[neil-gaiman]

hi how are you? i wanted to ask you about a sandman story arc that you didn't publish, the one about the dreaming baby. is it possible that this story was replaced by A game of you? or was it a short story?

It would have been a short story, and I didn't write it. It wasn't an arc but a 24 page story.

[autisticandroids]

free space: medium-sized destiel

so in my reclists for @spnficrecfest i haven't been including many fics that are very "big destiel."

this is partly because i've been trying to keep the kudos count lower (though obviously this hasn't been absolute), and also because i actively did not include any "post empty destiel fix it" type fics in the dabb era reclist because they're kind of a genre unto themselves. nor have i intentionally made space in other reclists for fics that have a particular destiel romance novel vibe. obviously there's some, but those tend to dominate reclists, and i wanted to highlight smaller fics.

so this is my "big destiel" reclist, except i still did not include anything that had >2k kudos, because those are generally speaking pretty well known already.

some of these fics are small and just have the big destiel vibes, but a lot of them are more in the 1k kudos range than the hundred kudos range, on account of being big, or medium-sized, destiel.

in order of word count:

ain't that the worst thing you ever heard? by everytuesday, 1k

a couple of takes on the confession scene. very special to me.

rot and grace by extemporaneous, 3k, violence warning

cas watches dean murder the world. corruption kink.

some dying star looks dull in the light by sp8ce, 4k

heaven angst with a happy ending, post-empty.

one step closer by rhinestoneangels, 4k

an empty rescue. i love the empty geography in this one.

i didn't feel it on the first day, and now i got it in the worst way by wintertree, 6k

meg pov on a post-widower arc destiel.

the doorway to a thousand churches by sonatine, 6k

cas and the deans from goodbye stranger.

if you try sometimes, well you just might find by jenthesweetie, 9k

cas pov on dean's wants.

godot ain't got nothing on me and my baby by ilovehowyouletmefall, 10k

post empty, cas became death. the only way dean could see him is by dying.

before and after breakfast by spocklee, 10k

a silly little case where cas and dean realize how they see each other.

solitudes by ilovehowyouletmefall, 21k

cas sees dean see cas die. a wonderful little melodrama. i actually really liked how it handled dean's alcoholism (not really as something to be solved but just as a... reality to be dealt with) and i'm OBSESSED with the director's commentary. if this had been published in 2021 instead of 2023, every heller would have read it three times over.

powerless in dreams by calicoyak, 24k

a post-empty fic. i really liked some of the cas stuff in this one.

between a rock and a hard place by amidsizefrog, 24k

dean's dick doesn't work. also cas is dead. maybe the two are related.

every single thing by thestoryinsideme, 37k

a charming and goofy season nine fic. dean is a shitty little man in a very canonical way that is also deeply sweet and adorable.

a light above descending by hedderstheowl, 38k

a mark of cain fic with chefkiss angel stuff. a recent favorite of mine. really put this author on the map for me.

with understanding by apokteino, 427k, chose not to warn and noncon warning

yeah it's with understanding. you've heard of it. go read it now chop chop.

and if your wondering which fics (that you've probably read) got the axe for having too many kudos: it was on labor, the bee movie fic, time has come today, and r/supernatural. that's my taste. if you were curious.

[literalcatpod]

This Month on the Literal Cat Podcast (09.2024)

Hey guys! Hope you liked Herding Cats Pt. 2! That's just the beginning of what we have to offer this month! Check it out!

On September 4, we've got a 2-for-1 special! Monsters and Other Childish Things by Arc Dream Publishing lets us give you more cat per cat! Special Thanks to @jackfrostdoll for joining us this episode!

Then, on September 18, we make a cat in the newly-released Break!! RPG! Luckily, @break-rpg made it easy for us with a convenient freebie! (they also made the rest of the game but we know why you're all here)

[bluestrawberrybunny]

Made a cover for the SMG34 arc because I am trying to figure out the composition of the Apprenticeship AU covers that can give some… hints to what I’m planning for the AU moving forward >:3c

Literally just gonna make this thing 5 chapters long, so… yeah.

Also gonna be adding gmod stuff I’m gonna be doing for this silly little dream AU to the WattPad version.

This is something I won’t be publishing for a while though since I am also working on the Schmigadoon and Apprenticeship AUs and am working with some friends on the A Drop of Death AU.

Plus I wanna work on the Psychonauts Puzzlevision Type-Deal AU (I’m titling the fic Journey to the Center of the Puzzles because why not??) which is a collab with @squid-ink-on-toast and I have been writing down ideas and shit on a notepad for a few weeks trying to organize my thoughts on the plot and am finally gonna start actually writing the fic sometime next week (hopefully if life doesn’t kick me in the ass and if things actually go as planned then)

But yeah. Also trying to design Mario, Mr. Puzzles, SMG4, and SMG3’s outfits for the Schmicago fic that is gonna be coming in a few weeks if I remain on schedule too.

Before anyone asks, no I am actually not overwhelmed by all the stuff I’m doing, actually. I am a master at planning out my time. It is the only thing keeping me from lying around all day in bed. So… yeah.

Got some stuff planned :3

[writing-for-life]

The Portrayal of Womanhood in A Game of You

I’ll be honest with you: Writing about The Sandman with a focus on (queer) women surely feels different in light of the recent allegations.

This meta has been languishing in my drafts for a long time, and since I’m currently clearing the pile, I will still publish it. Mostly because these views are mine and not someone else’s. And also because they’re critical to a degree. However, if you feel that these are topics that you currently find hard to engage with, this is the exit sign (I totally get it).

With that out of the road, let’s talk about the women of A Game of You (and why it was always one of my least favourite arcs, despite the fact that my literary and thematic preferences should have made it one of my favourite ones)…

Gender roles are a central theme in A Game of You. Before the arc even moves into these themes on a deeper level, we already get this:

Barbie tells Wanda that she wasn’t allowed to read comics when she was a young girl. And that immediately struck a chord with me upon my first reading as a teenager: I was allowed to read comics, but I still remember getting the side-eye, especially from boys. Somehow, you didn’t belong to their club (even if you arguably knew more about Batman than they did 🤣). The reason Barbie gives us is that reading comics supposedly rendered her “unladylike” (yes, comics were considered “boyish”, at least when I was a teenager, and this is exactly the time we’re talking about here). But it’s not just about how a girl is supposed to act—it’s also about actively excluding her from something that’s only for men/boys. And while the topic of, “What’s a girl supposed (and allowed!) to be like?” isn’t something either particularly dwell on in that moment, Wanda faces the struggle of having to define and fight for her womanhood daily: As a trans woman, she feels resistance on a constant basis. When she talks about Weirdzos from the Hyperman comics, this is actually a nod to DC’s Bizarro, who could be described as Superman’s shadow (there’s a whole story why they were called Weirdzos instead of Bizarros in The Sandman, but that’d lead too far here. You’ll probably find it on Google).

Close enough to the “real thing”, but always “slightly off”

And Wanda carries the shadow of her biology. All the time. There’s no escape for her, no respite, no true support.

We also see this in a scene with Hazel, one of Wanda's neighbours who lives in a lesbian relationship with her girlfriend Foxglove. Hazel noticed that Wanda has "a thingie." Despite the fact that a lot of “weird” things are happening in those panels, part of that is definitely that Wanda has not fully (in Hazel’s eyes) transitioned:

What is she, exactly (not who)?

And that question gets answered very painfully when Wanda, Hazel, Foxglove, and Thessaly come together to free Barbie from being trapped in the Dreaming. Thessaly is sure she can defeat the Cuckoo that holds Barbie captive. However, she needs menstrual blood to perform a ritual that will allow them to traverse the Moon Road into the Dreaming. During this process, Thessaly insensitively refers to Wanda as a man and prevents her from joining the journey with Foxglove and Hazel (and no, this isn’t about “Thessaly the TERF”—I already made my position on that clear and think that whole discussion needs a lot more nuance than fandom is often willing to engage in).

Maiden, Mother and Crone

Thessaly's statement, "This isn’t your route. It can’t be," further highlights the discrimination Wanda faces on a daily basis. She “isn’t” seen as a woman now, and she “can’t” ever be, even if she had reassignment surgery—Wanda would still be seen as a man by the ancient powers that be.

Wanda's struggle, more than any other character's, highlights the ongoing conflict between self-identity and societal perception of women. And that’s unfortunately still a struggle most women face. But Wanda’s character is particularly poignant because she is repeatedly forced to reaffirm her sense of self, only to be torn down again and again. Even Barbie, who always supports her and would probably never knowingly hurt her, says this when Wanda reveals her childhood name:

“Alvin? That's your real name?"

Please imagine what it must feel like if even the ones closest to you refer to your dead name as your “real” name, even if it’s without malicious intent (of course Barbie makes good on that later, but…).

Wanda can never truly find comfort in anyone. She is constantly confronted with the disparity between her self-perception and how the world views her. Ultimately, Wanda's exclusion from entering the Dreaming (and there’s more symbolism in that than you can shake a stick at—not just because she’s denied her womanhood, but also because she is denied entering a place of hope and possibility, and not least because she is denied being capable and having agency: Thessaly repeatedly acknowledges Wanda is important, and that she needs her help. But that’s on her terms, not Wanda’s) leads to her tragic death: The storm caused by drawing down the moon destroys the apartment where Wanda remains to watch over Barbie’s body.

And that’s why Wanda’s arc in the comics will always stay problematic to me (I don’t know how optimistic I can be for the TV series, because we’ve already seen her headstone in BTS shots, even if her overall arc seems to have changed): Dream grants Barbie a boon, which she uses to save the women in the Dreaming, but Wanda is not among them. There is no saving her—not in this world, not in any other.

Wanda's conservative parents bury her with her deadname Alvin Mann (and her second name adds insult to injury, because it is the German spelling of “man”, as in “male”. And again, I’m somewhat glad they have changed this for the series, as seen on said headstone, because I never got why choosing that name was necessary in the first place. Or let’s say: I get it, but I don’t think it was needed and was layered on too thick. Sometimes subtle does it, sorry).

Why is Wanda so consistently shamed, while Hazel and Foxglove's lesbian relationship is regarded not a big deal (I’m obviously not insinuating it should be, see my disclaimer at the bottom of this post)? Although I have to admit there are things about that one that always rubbed me up the wrong way, too: The dumbing down of Hazel (honestly, most of us were not that clueless about reproduction in the 80s and 90s, lesbians or otherwise), the play on butch/femme stereotypes to then clumsily try to turn them on their heads (which did not work for me), the still somewhat male gaze applied to Foxglove (she didn’t have to sleep naked with her tits on display, did she?), the implication that all women somehow end up as mothers (if they don’t end up dead), even if just “accidentally”… There’s a whole lot to be said about the topic of motherhood, and how it gets instrumentalised in several Sandman arcs, but maybe that’s for another time...

To explore that question, I want to have a closer look at Barbie, who is a (in my view, often clumsy) stand-in for the gender-identity of many (CIS) women.

A quick throwback to The Doll’s House

The first signs of Barbie's identity crisis don't appear in A Game of You, but rather in The Doll's House. She is introduced as one half of “Ken-Barbie”: They finish each other's sentences, Barbie lacks a distinct personality and is completely overshadowed by being a “traditional wife” (maybe not the type of trad wife we think about today, and yet…). The fact that she and Ken share names with plastic dolls underscores the artificial nature of their identities and their relationship.

Barbie's dream-life always felt more authentic and meaningful to her than her waking reality—that’s why she is only a shell of herself when she can’t dream (after the vortex interlude with Rose Walker). She is passive, conforms to her father's expectations of being "ladylike" and adheres to “good” CIS- and heteronormative behaviour. And then, after her divorce, she feels uprooted, shows little motivation and relies on Wanda for support. Freeing herself from her shackles could have been a story of reclaiming her power without the layer of implied loneliness (I’ll get to that). Instead, she needs to suffer for a bit…

Barbie being trapped in her dream world also traps her in a state of passivity: Dreams are not real. You can make them real, but that’s not what she does—they are a maladjusted escape for her. And yet (or maybe rather “because”), instead of directly confronting and fighting the Cuckoo, Barbie smashes the Porpentine (much to the Cuckoo's delight).

Upon waking…

Upon waking, Barbie's personality hasn't changed much from the woman we first met. When she goes to Wanda’s funeral, she struggles to defend Wanda from her transphobic aunt despite trying.

However, she engages in a small but significant act of rebellion by crossing out "Alvin" on Wanda's headstone with her favourite lipstick and writes her real name instead.

Barbie then recalls a dream she had while traveling to Wanda's funeral. In this dream, she sees Wanda not as she was in life, but as an idealised version of herself—soft, more curved, and wearing a pink dress. Death stands beside Wanda, symbolising that she is recognised for who she truly is.

And I get it: The idea was to say, “She was always a woman, even to the cosmic powers that be. Eat that, Thessaly and everyone else.” But there’s also the part of me that wants to say, “You know what? She was good the way she was. Perfect in her imperfection. We didn’t need to affirm her womanhood by showing her as a stereotypical woman.” The use of “perfect” and “drop-dead gorgeous” always really rubbed me up the wrong way in relation to the way she was portrayed in that panel. Because it portrays a stereotypical woman: That’s what you look like if you need to/want to pass. And this applies, sadly enough, to all women in one way or another, no matter what gender we were assigned at birth. But if that scene holds meaning to people, I also get it. My more critical take on it is maybe down to my own history (again: disclaimer at the bottom of this post).

Simultaneously, the destruction of the Land in the Dreaming grants Barbie a newfound independence. She is now alone, without her best friend or the friends of her dreams, but these losses have given her freedom. And for a moment, loneliness becomes the ultimate resolution to Barbie's identity conflict. And I found that idea horrible, I’ll be brutally honest with you:

On the final page of A Game of You, Barbie is shown alone, waiting for a bus to an unknown destination. She reflects on her dream of Wanda, where she had the chance to say goodbye to her past life. For a moment, she stands rigidly still, and that moment feels… really long? Separated from her past and facing an uncertain future, she is free from anyone's expectations or desires. And maybe, in that simplicity, she finds freedom.

And maybe, A Game of You challenges the idea that we have full control over our identities. Our self-perception and how others perceive us are always influenced by external factors. And somewhat, I could never quite shake the feeling the story equates the removal of the ties that bind us (in this case: relationships) and/or death with freedom: Wanda only fully realises her identity in death, and Barbie feels most liberated when she is free from past entanglements and future obligations. Whether that notion is truly rejected in the end is probably down to the reader: Barbie turns and runs towards her bus, heading into a future that, while uncertain, maybe also holds a glimmer of hope. Unfortunately, none of the women of The Sandman get off particularly well in that department, and that is a common theme…

Disclaimer: I write this as a CIS bisexual woman in her 40s who has been in relationships with both women and men for 30+ years. Two of them led to marriage/civil partnership: One with a CIS woman, also bi (we were together for 10 years, 3 of them in a CP), one with my now husband (CIS straight man, married for 10 years, together longer, and we have a kid together). I don’t need to tell you this, but I am because I think it is important to disclose my own bias and experiences as a queer woman in the 90s, which include coming out, experiencing bi-erasure and misogyny from both inside and outside the LGBTQ+ community. As such, they will definitely colour the way I read and interpret A Game of You.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hello!

I've always wanted to do a stealth game/campaign, but all my attempts to hack it into DnD have failed. Do you have any suggestions for a stealthy system? Not something as abstract as Knives in the Dark (tbh, I just have never been able to get into it) but something that hits the Assassin's Creed feeling of watching the target, making a plan, and then sneaking through the base taking out guards and hiding their bodies and such. Preferably on a grid map or similar, s we're terrible at theatre of the mind.

Thanks!

THEME: Stealthy Games.

Hello there, so I did some digging and I found plenty of stealth games, although none of them seem to really require a map in order to play. That being said, I don’t think that should stop you from providing maps to your players, even if they’re abstract! Some of these games might ask you to sketch out a rough map of the town or building that you’re in, which may help you provide your players with some visual references as they sneak around, trying not to get caught. When it comes to stealth, I think of three things: horror, heists, and spies.

Delta Green, by Arc Dream Publishing.

Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green opposes the forces of darkness with honor but without glory. Delta Green agents fight to save humanity from unnatural horrors—often at a shattering personal cost.

Delta Green comes highly recommended as a great way to play an X-Files type rpg, mixed in with the Cthulhu mythos. It uses a d100 system and is based in the modern day, casting your characters as former members of government agencies, recruited into a super-secret bureau that investigates supernatural things - and keeps those things hidden from the common public. The stealth of this game is mostly about covering up the eldritch and unnatural, even if it means framing someone else or condemning a beloved building.

Your characters in this game have some familiar pieces to them, such as six stats with the same titles as you’ll see in games like D&D. However, you’ll also have pieces like Bonds, which represent relationships that keep your character grounded, and a Sanity system that I’m personally not crazy about (I do not recommend this game for a group that doesn’t like trite mechanization of mental health disorders), but that gives you a way to incur penalties that aren’t just physical damage.

This looks to be the closest to a traditional rpg on this list, and with all the elements to keep track of, I can see how a physical map would be helpful. However, keep in mind that there isn’t a pace or speed stat attached to these characters, so things like line of sight or distance probably won’t be super granular - if you are shooting things you may have broad range bands to determine how difficult something is, but the final decision will be a GM decision, not something necessarily determined in the rulebook. Because the setting is a modern one, I think finding visual references for locations in this game would be very very easy.

If you want a taste of the game before you put your money down, you can check out the Free Starter Rulebook!

Minutes to Midnight, by Oliver S.

Minutes to Midnight is a game powered by Blades in the Dark about a crew of spies, trying to disrupt the balance of power in a modern cold war. They will have to stand strong in the face of their vicious opposition and handle a fragile web of untrustworthy informants, devious intrigues and deadly lies.

We play to find out if our agents can thrive in the cutthroat world of espionage. While the public may never know about their impact, their actions shape the political landscape and outcome of conflict. Will the players prevent the outbreak of a global disaster and use their influence to create a better future? Will they attempt to send the opposing bloc into a turmoil and establish a lasting hegemony? Or will their actions lead the world down a path of war and nuclear destruction?

The Forged in the Dark system uses a cycle in between missions and downtime, sinking your characters into the heart of the action as they pursue clandestine missions in locations built by the group in a session 0. Since the game takes place in the real world, using maps of real cities might be a great way to keep they players visually engaged, and using a city that the group has been to or is familiar with might also make it easier for the group to visualize the kinds of buildings and streets where their spies may be sneaking, scheming, and sleuthing.

Madstones, by xiombarg.

Those who know magic exists at all are the rich and teams of breakers like yourself that go into the jartowns for the Archons. Jartowns are created by burning folk alive in a wicker man, in a ritual known only to the oldest jet-setting Archons.

A jartown is an isolated area of spacetime that was cut out of our reality. Most jartowns consist of a small amount of space (enough for a suburb or town) and a loop of several years. Jartowns become more magickal and horrific with each loop, creating madstones. 

Madstones are small things, from actual stones to human organs, infused with concentrated, distilled magic. They're secretly coveted by the wealthy.

In this tiny 24XX-based tabletop RPG, players are breakers, desperate folk from the occult underground who find a way into the jartowns, hothouses for magick, to perform errands for the ultrarich Archons.

Play as a variety of roles, from sawbones to sinner to spook, and choose to hail from one of four origins, including jartown native.

24XX games are another toolbox that you can pick up and play around with to help you get started with creating your own experiences. Your character consists of a few skills and gear packaged together in a character class. In Madstones, these classes are various specialists, trained to deal with different elements that might pop up when you go delving into eldritch pockets of reality. There is both a stealth and a combat specialist in this game, but there’s also classes for things like a getaway driver, a hacker, and an occult specialist.

24XX games also exist because of their OSR predecessors, meaning that combat is risky, and often deadly - and therefore finding other ways to solve the problem is implicitly encouraged. However, the openness of the system means that your players don’t necessarily need to resort to stealth - they might prepare an elaborate ritual, create a unique piece of technology, or just decide to run away as fast as they can. In regards to maps, I think you could probably use a typical dungeon framework: leading the characters through various rooms or sections of the pocket dimension, and throwing horrors and weird environments their way.

Night’s Black Agents, by Pelgrane Press.

The Cold War is over. Bush’s War is winding down. You were a shadowy soldier in those fights, trained to move through the secret world: deniable and deadly.

Then you got out, or you got shut out, or you got burned out. You didn’t come in from the cold. Instead, you found your own entrances into Europe’s clandestine networks of power and crime. You did a few ops, and you asked even fewer questions. Who gave you that job in Prague? Who paid for your silence in that Swiss account? You told yourself it didn’t matter. It turned out to matter a lot. Because it turned out you were working for vampires.

Vampires exist. What can they do? Who do they own? Where is safe? You don’t know those answers yet. So you’d better start asking questions. You have to trace the bloodsuckers’ operations, penetrate their networks, follow their trail, and target their weak points. Because if you don’t hunt them, they will hunt you. And they will kill you.

A combination of modern spy fiction and vampire intrigue, Night’s Black Agents uses the GUMSHOE system, which is an investigative roleplaying system that provides your characters with resources they can spend to get into secret locations, compete against vampiric agents, and pick up information to help you put together the details of a conspiracy. In Night’s Black Agents, finding clues isn’t left up to chance - you will always get information as long as you tell the GM that you’re using a relevant skill. The obstacles in this game are more likely going to involve getting in and out of sticky situations - and if your opponents are vampires, well, stealth is likely going to be a more appealing than trying to slit their throats.

GUMSHOE games don’t need grid maps either, but a rough map of the city or country is probably very helpful, and it might be fun to draw the floor plans of various buildings that your players investigate in order to help them determine what areas may be the most interesting places to search for clues.

The Breathing, by Fistful of Crits.

You reside in The Archive, an unending and depthless structure spiralling deep into the dark and misty depths, devoid of life and presided over by a being known only to you as The Archivist.

The Archive is made up of windowless rooms and halls that vary greatly in their height, size and danger. All these spaces house numerous shelves containing the collected knowledge of the world outside of The Archive; a place you have been told you must earn your access to. The price of your freedom comes from the discovery of new or forgotten knowledge that can be found in the deepest parts of the structure. 

You, and a few others, are known as The Breathing, in a place full of creatures who were once like you but ultimately failed in their bid for freedom; now known as The Breathless. 

The Breathing is just an example of a broader style of game, using a system called Breathless. Breathless games use a series of polyhedral dice that deteriorate as you use them, with different dice attached to different skills. Throughout the game you pause to “take a breath”, and re-set your skills, bringing your dice back to their threshold. However, pausing to take a breath also gives the GM a chance to introduce a new trouble or complication, creating a cycle of mission, rest, mission, rest, etc.

As a game system, Breathless is pretty light and is fairly easy to hack. But the lightness of the rules also allows for creativity and add-ons, which could include rules for movement or placement. Since the game rewards finding ways to solve problems without having to resort to direct conflict, I can see games like this encouraging characters to think carefully about when to use their resources and when to just… sneak around the problem. If you want to include maps and a grid, you could provide a blueprint of a room inside The Archive and watch the players try to navigate it using their limited resources, with designated “rest areas” that they would have to get to in order to take a Breath.

This certainly isn’t a solution in a box, but it might provide some interesting tools to help you build the experience you’re looking for.

Night Reign, by Sinister Beard Games.

Night Reign is a roleplaying game of stealth, guile, violence and devilry for a GM and one or more players, set in a quasi-Edwardian metropolis perched on an inhospitable peninsula beset by toxic black rain and ruled by a corrupt cabal of Noble Houses.

You take the role of members of The Red Right Hand, a conspiracy loyal to the recently deposed royal family, using your talents in assassination, infiltration and dark sorcery to strike out at your oppressors.

A game all about the things you do in the shadows, Night Reign uses cards to resolve conflict, rather than dice. It also uses a token system to help you overcome obstacles without having to resort to violence - loud, messy, dangerous violence. The Ruled by Night system (which has an SRD that you can download for free) is about balancing the suspicion you’ve already raised against an increasing cost to being stealthy. You spend Shadow tokens in order to be able to attempt to do something, and try to get a hand as close as possible to 21, or at least higher than whatever the GM draws. Your characters will also have powers that can be very effective, but are likely to draw a lot of attention, so using them is risky.

Because of how this game runs, things like movement and speed are not likely to be tracked. However, I don’t think mapping out a location so that the players can understand where things are or what kind of space they’re in is going to hurt the experience. The SRD describes something called City Conditions, which appear to be elements of the fiction that might result from the characters’ choices, or provide obstacles to the players. If you have a map of the city in front of you, you could draw symbols on the map to indicate what’s happening as the story progresses, and even cross out places that have been destroyed.

Heist, by Hark Forsooth Games.

HEIST: Get the Crew Together is a cooperative RPG where you and a group of suave, savvy and slick fellow crooks plan and execute capers, grabbing the fanciest loot from the world's wealthy elite.

Heist is great for fans of shows like Leverage or movies like Ocean’s 11: you’re going to steal something shiny from someone who certainly doesn’t deserve it, and you’re going to do it with style. While combat is an option, your characters will also have to deal with suspicious marks, security systems, laser grids and bank vaults. The characters are composed of special talents and personal flaws, and the GM has the task of designing something the game calls Murphy’s Gun - a major twist that will reveal itself midway through the heist.

It can be tricky to determine what to prep for a game like this, but one thing that you can for sure prep is the location. Design the building, draw the floor plan, and come up with obstacles for the different areas - there’s not really movement tracking in this game but having the layout will certainly help your players come up with ideas about how to get in, get out, and get rich.

Another thing to consider…

Mothership doesn’t have any stealth skills, but what it does have is the incentive to be sneaky. If an alien horror is moving through the ship, you’re more likely to try and stay out of it’s way - and having no stealth skills means that the players have to describe what they’re doing to stay hidden; climb into vents, squeeze yourself into cupboards, and try to wriggle into the space suit. However, this doesn’t mean that you’re not rolling - you might roll to clamber over something or to fit yourself into something, or you might roll to scope out a location to find an exit or suitable hiding place. It’s also excellent in terms of maps - plenty of adventures will provide at least a blueprint of the space station or ship that you’re exploring, which you can use to spook your players with fresh horrors.

[purplecherries]

Things that Happen in my Mystreet Rewrite that just make sense…✨

First of all, Laurance did not discover where Aphmau lived and decided they should move in across the street (bc holy shit that’s creepy). They had already lived across the street and told Aphmau, Katelyn, and Nana about the listing. They agreed bc it was closer to wear they all worked.

Nana DOES NOT HAVE A SHIPPING SHRINE.

Aphmau works as an editor at a publishing company, Katelyn is a teaching assistant going back to college, and Nana is a waitress/baker at a popular bistro in the city.

Garroth and Laurance are very much still in love with her but Aphmau really just doesn’t notice.

Aphmau is an aspiring author writing a fantasy novel. She will get anyone and everyone to look over chapters and read them (Nana is a current victim of this)

Speaking of Nana I’d like to start her backstory early. We’d meet some of her siblings and we’ll see her ignoring calls from her parents. The secret is that the Ashida’s are a crazy rich family and Nana wanted to make a name for herself without the Ashida name. So much so that she started going by K.C. instead of the matriarch grandmother’s name she shares with her.

Nana is a chronic overworker, she’s so sweet but she does not know how to take a break.

Katelyn is the pseudo mother to her 3 brothers (Kacey, Kaden, and Kenneth.) She will call them to make sure they are alright as well as her father, who assures her that she can live her life without worrying about them so much.

Since there are a LOT of love potion hijinks in the series, the neighborhood play they put on will be A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

In that arc, the relationships of Garroth, Laurance, and Aphmau will be explored, but also the drama of Nicole, Dante, and Nana.

Zane is more of a businessman with the whole suit and everything. He can talk great business but never make him form actual connections with people bc he has no clue how to do that.

Aphmau and him do still become very good friends and they stay like that for the rest of the series.

Travis is just some very awkward guy who makes up for it with a lot of confidence. If someone flirts back he starts to silently panic.

Most of the relationships like Garlaurmau/Zana/Travlyn will be slow burns in their own way. At the end of the first “season” Aphmau will open up to the idea of dating them both.

Man I didn’t realize how much I rewrote until I typed this out lol