#lgbt urban fantasy

[lou-wilham]

My co-author and I worked with @oblivionsdream to have her do up artwork of our characters from Sanctuary of the Lost and they are SO beautiful.

When I say Christis and I have lived with these characters rent free in our heads for probably close to a decade, I'm not joking. So to put pen to paper, and then to see an artist bring them to life in this way, means so much to both of us. And they truly did come out just how we imagined them!

Sometimes, love finds you anyway. Burned by her first love, Mab has spent the last several years content with her brother, their club, and her Miami beach front property. The last thing she wants, or needs, is for the arrow cast by Erotes—god of love—to rear its ugly head. But trouble disrupts Mab’s hard-earned peace in the form of a dead inanimi washed up on her private beach. Not wanting to disturb Ander and his newfound bliss, Mab calls the only person she can think of—Quintus Schields. Life for Quin used to be simple. Second in command to his brother Maximus, Quin has always been a hardworking and dedicated creature of few words. He wants nothing to do with the owners of Inferno or their drama. Especially with his new responsibilities as caregiver to an ignis youngling. So, when Mab Duchan asks for help, he has to decide if he wants to keep his world as is, or accept there might be more to life than he expected. As Miami’s criminal underground returns to sink its claws into them, Fate forces the four to face old demons, and question just what they’re willing to do for happiness.

GoodReads | Purchase

[find-your-wings]

"Your petty problems seem so small now... don't they?"

[anim-ttrpgs]

A quickly doodled fan comic from @umbraldame featuring a thing from beyond A.K.A. "The Blanket" and her ability to absorb not only nutrition but information from the people she digests! That would be pretty handy for investigating a mystery, if you could get past the question of morality.

This is one of the five playable monster types in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, and a fan favorite around here!

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is still crowdfunding on kickstarter from now until 2:00 PM CST on Friday, May 10th! Back it before it's too late!

If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!

Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[karlmarxmaybe]

The Purge but everyone stays at home bc they're scared except Gen z who go out bc they have no will to live and when they notice it's all empty they take the chance to party in the street and be queer in public spaces

(Fourteen-year old boys ransacking Gucci and running around the street in stolen 5000 dollar dresses)

(Trans kids taking over the deserted malls and cheaply recreating 90's music videos)

(The autistics climbing buildings)

(Older teen lesbian weddings in the empty church)

(The Minecraft kids make makeshift spears and go hunt boars. They manage to hunt zero boars but have a hell of a good time)

(Teen girls forsake gender-imposed dress code and wear whatever. Some people are just naked cuz it's warm)

(At least 1 mormon church is set ablaze)

[animentality]

You can't be an assassin and straight.

It's too homoerotic of a profession.

What do you mean, you're hunting other men?

You're bathing in their blood and hiding your identity from the world and you have bad relationships with your parents?

You're fighting other assassins who are holding their knives to your pretty throat and hurling chairs at your head and stabbing you in the thighs? You're bleeding and dying in each other's arms? Your dying breaths are commingling and your life force is dwindling, and all you can do is clutch each other tightly as you spiral into oblivion, but at least you're not alone, in the end?

This is the queer experience.

Diversity win, that man who tried to kill you is pansexual.

If you agree, check out my new novel series.

But if you don't, it's ok to be wrong.

Full description below, and it is free for download on the free kindle app from now until July 4th.

All hail homoerotic fights to the death.

Transcribed if the graphics don't load:

Twenty-three-year-old CEO Don Francisco wants one of the richest women in the world dead. Which one? Daphne Oakland: actress, model, heir to the Oakland financial empire, and unbeknownst to the general public, talented demon summoner. But since Francisco isn’t nearly as rich as the established Oakland family, he hires the only assassin he can afford: Sebastián Monterey, a down-on-his-luck, struggling demon summoner, the cheapest and lowest ranking one there is.

But Monterey is nothing like Cisco expected. He’s high-spirited, reckless, relentlessly cheerful …and worse, he’s a bit of a slut. The CEO is horrified to find out that Monterey has not just one, but seven angry exes in the killing business, who will stop at nothing to get in the way of an already impossible hit. Not only do they have personal reasons for wanting to see their former lover dead, they also have professional reasons: they are all currently employed by the Oakland family members!

To make matters worse, Monterey finds out the Oaklands are each protecting a demon ritual artifact for Daphne. When brought together, all 7 can be used to summon a demon more powerful than any currently contracted on earth. If he is to carry out this hit at all, he’ll have to interfere with the summon by stealing every artifact, and maybe even summon the demon before Daphne can.

But that's only if none of his exes kill him first!

[thenightfolknetwork]

So, i was supposed to be an arcane nexus. The 7th son of the 7th son, my birth was supposed to 'bring about the restoration of my clans magical talents'. Only it didn't happen, and kept not happening for 20 years. My family thinks they got the math wrong and its gonna happen when i get my magic. But i recently figured something out Im trans. Meaning i was never the 7th son, im never going to get magic, not my dad's anyway. How do i tell him. I don't think he'll have a problem with it. But basically having to tell him he's gonna have to go make me a little brother, because i found the math error is gonna be really awkward.

First of all, congratulations! I hope you can find time to celebrate this moment of self-discovery and to delight in all the wonderful things yet to come as you embark on your life as a trans person. I understand that this throws your family's plans rather into disarray, but it's also rather affirming, in its way. The magic you “ought” to have inherited recognised your true gender before you did!

How you handle this really depends on your relationship with your parents. You said you don't think your dad will have an issue with your gender identity, which certainly makes things easier. There is plenty of advice out there on the matter of coming out to one's family. If you're not sure where to start, your local library will likely have some helpful resources to get you started.

On the magical side of things, I'm afraid you're quite right in thinking you probably won't be blessed with magical ability any time soon. If the inheritance calls for sons then sons it must have. However, as your own experience aptly demonstrates, magic responds to reality in a far more holistic sense than the merely biological.

You are not a man. You know this of yourself, and while your biology may have caused some confusion on the matter up to this point, it was not the whole story. Magic responds to the whole story.

As such, your parents need not scrabble around trying to have another child biologically. They might adopt a seventh son instead – and that son need not even be a child. In fact, there are some individuals who offer themselves up for adoption for a fee, fulfilling prophecies or magical inheritances to whoever makes them the best deal.

If your parents are considering that avenue, I recommend they secure the services of a solicitor with plenty of experience in liminal contract work. Look for any firm that advertises themselves as “good folk”, “honest neighbours” or similar.

You aren't responsible for the expectations other people place on you. Concentrate on celebrating your new identity, and leave the rest to your parents. After all, it was their failure of imagination that got them into this situation. Being trans is hardly as unusual as all that, and if they'd really wanted to secure the family's magical future, they could have given you a little brother as a fail-safe.

[For more creaturely advice, check out Monstrous Agonies on your podcast platform of choice, or visit monstrousproductions.org for more info]

[poopraven]

Hello! I'd like to tell you about a book I wrote. It'll be coming out on Friday the 26th of May 2023.

I'm extremely proud of this one. I'm proud of them all, of course, but I think in this one I let myself get angry for, well, pretty much the whole book to be honest. Previous books in the series have bursts of queer rage, but this one definitely sustained it.

At its heart, it's a book that demands to know just how long we're supposed to do nothing while fascists kill us.

Now, fair warning, it is book 9 in an ongoing series. It won't make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read the previous eight books. I'll get to that at the end of the post, but for now I want to stick with Runes of Fall.

No storm bows to reason.

Quentin's trip to the desert with his chosen family is supposed to be two days of testing the limits of their powers. Instead, a violent storm looms on the horizon, and nothing will alter its course.

The storm has a name: Nate Anderson. Demigod, supremacist, leader of a neo-Nazi Übermensch cabal... and father to Quentin's latest ward, Mel. He means to take her home, and won't let a ragtag group of "inferior" psychics get in his way.

Besieged and outgunned, Quentin is trapped in a no-win scenario. No matter which way he turns, one fateful night will change him forever.

Inheritance is a series best read in order, so if this is the first you've heard of it I strongly recommend that you start with Jack of Thorns, but keep going and I'll let you know how you can grab that for free. First, let me tell you more about it.

In Jack of Thorns, we meet Laurence and Quentin, two men with astonishing powers but little to no control over them. They are both adrift, traumatised, and doing what they can to get by one day at a time. Laurence is struggling to escape a toxic, abusive boyfriend who refuses to accept that their relationship is over, and Quentin spends as much of his time drunk as he possibly can.

Do they start out likeable? Opinion varies. But they learn, they grow, and they put in the work to improve themselves. They do their best, and sometimes they make mistakes, but the Laurence and Quentin in Runes of Fall are a world away from the Laurence and Quentin you first meet.

Heads up, there are some content warnings to take note of. In random order, they are: sexual intimacy, addiction, drug use, sexual assault, childhood sexual abuse, incest, gaslighting, bullying, coercive control, kidnapping, domestic abuse, bigotry, classism, torture, post-traumatic stress, therapy, violence, peril, and death.

If you're still here, thank you for reading this far. I'd like to give you some links if you're interested in finding out more!

Jack of Thorns: https://books2read.com/jackofthorns

Runes of Fall: https://discoverinheritance.com/books/runes-of-fall

Discord server: https://discord.gg/reYUyTH9DJ

And, if you'd like, you can get all nine books at once - whether as ebooks, paperbacks (signed or unsigned), or audiobooks - from Kickstarter:

Thank you so much for your time. Please feel free to ask questions if you have them!

- AK.

[eggcatsreads]

𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕺𝖚𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕮𝖔𝖋𝖋𝖎𝖓 and its sequel by D.A. Holmes are fun, campy horror novels that expertly weave the real struggles many of us face within the community, along with the more specific ones faced by our vampiric main character - Vlad Radu.

Faced with the decision to come out - both to his parents and the world at large - while he tries living a "normal" human life with a minimum wage job (and a massive crush on your neighbor) is no easy task. This is made even harder as he keeps getting caught in more and more dangerous (and sometimes ridiculous) situations. Together with his coworker and best friend Alison Grady, they have to learn how to survive Vlad’s new life as a vampire living with humans.

I really recommend these novels if you were looking for a bit of fresh air in the vampire genre with a lot of moments of hilarity - as well as a good dash of danger (and a little romance) thrown in. Both of these books were super fun reads, and I finished them both in like a 2 day span that helped me start to break my most recent reading slump.

(Also, I love the cover art for these books 😍).

[monstrousproductions]

🤩 Episode One Hundred and Ten is live! 🎉

[Image: The Monstrous Agonies logo, teal against a black background. The logo is a complex puzzle cube with M on one face and A on another in a gothic font. End description.]

This week, a listener trying to handle sudden changes in their relationship; and someone finding it hard to communicate…

Listen on our website, on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full transcript available online.

Tonight’s letter was submitted by Darla and this week's advert came from Bug. Thanks, friends 💖

Lots of thanks to get through this week because we have been blessed with a glut of guest voices! First up, the gorgeous Dom Guilfoyle returns as the voice of The CEO! 🥰

Dom is the creator of @the-mistholme-museum, which takes its listeners on a tour of a museum unlike any other, and @tales-from-the-low-city, an anthology series about a strange underground city and the people who call it home.

We also have Elizabeth Plant reprising her role as Mab, and doing it with as much aplomb as always! See more of her work at her website, at www.elizabethplant.com, and find her on Twitter @CelestielleVA.

This week also features a little cameo from everybody's favourite wine ant, The Understudy, voiced of course by Sophie B. When they're not sploshing about in the bath whittering about Cats (1998), Sophie is a fabulous artist and illustrator. Find them on tumblr @aestheticcluttercore and on Twitter and Instagram @trashlordbarbie

Finally, this is the episode you've all (or at least, some of you) have been waiting for, which features the voices of Monstrous Agonies listeners! Thank you so so much to everyone who contributed, it was a surprisingly emotional process and I'm so glad to have been able to include you in the show! 💞

If you're enjoying the show, remember to sign up for a monthly pledge on Patreon, or make a one-off donation at www.ko-fi.com/hrowen. And if you're not in a position to support it financially, it's always a huge help to share your love of the show and help us get more listeners tuning in! EDIT - and in all the excitement, I forgot to say! The inbox is now OPEN for your questions for the end of season Q&A. Send them in via DM on Tumblr or Twitter, by email, through the website, or send an Ask right here on Tumblr - though if you send an Ask, please specify that it's for the Q&A and let me know what your pronouns are! See you next week at the season finale!

[aroacephotographer]

Anxiously Writing

I feel unsure as a writer currently. Which fills me with anxiety. However, it also means I'm paying attention to more things.

Paying attention to what I'm reading and what I want to write especially.

I feel like my first draft (which is a completely different version of my book from a year ago) is a complete mess. I have an outline, but when I write I still feel like I'm pantsing/exploring. It's a pretty tumultuous time for this book I'm getting through.

I've also taken in a ton of writers conferences recently. And I might be part of a writing group that reads/reviews our works. And I'm starting to write short stories (something I've pushed against for the longest time for some reason).

But I've zeroed in on the comics I like the most -- just read the first issue of Spider-Society and I'm really excited with the direction the series is going. As well as the kind of books I like the most -- for whatever reason I've entered the "cozy mystery with a punny title" demographic if you like authors such as Ellie Alexander.

Likely the thing that gives me the most anxiety is that what I'm writing is a queer piece of fiction with a supernatural twist. And I'm most anxious about representing the LGBTQIAA+ Community.

How do you represent a community that's a mix of other cultures?

Not sure in the slightest. But I'm willing to find out. I have story ideas and I want to write them.

The kicker is that I'm averse to some kinds of action violence. For instance a verbal fight between a couple that might turn into a one-sided physical fight. I know all too well how scary that is, and yet I decided to have an abuse victim as one of my protagonists (who survives and gets a good ending).

How does one represent these struggles? How does she move on and make a better life for herself and make new friends?

I'm not sure I can live up to the standards I've set for myself, but this is just the first draft. Hopefully I'll be able to reign things in for the next draft.

[lou-wilham]

If you like these very specific things you might like. . .

Witches of Moondale

What’s a little necromancy between family?

For the Crow Witch, Icarus “Rus” Ashthorne, Moondale seemed the perfect hiding place. But like they always say, you can’t go home again, and Rus finds out quickly that nothing is how she remembered, while at the same time very little has changed. Then she comes face to face with the only woman she’s ever loved, Az Elwood, and... well, things get messier than she thought they ever could.

The Elwoods are a staple of Moondale, respected, feared, powerful, and Azure Elwood was always happy with her place amongst them. Happy to play the part of the good little witch, until Rus Ashthorne. Eleven years ago, Rus got on a bus and left Azure behind, but she’s back, with two little girls trailing her like ducklings, and enough unspoken things between them to drown the town.

Now witch hunters are knocking at their proverbial door, the council of magic is being a real pain in the ass, and Rus wonders how much magic it’ll take to protect the people she loves from herself and the danger following her.

Grab a copy | Goodreads

[aliiveswrites]

Looking for some queer fantasy action-adventure?

I wrote some books, hooray! Let me tell you a little about them.

The Epitome of Science trilogy is an urban fantasy series set in an alternate world, where clockwork technology reigns supreme and magic lurks in unexpected places. Our main protagonist is Mikalai Gloucester, a former bodyguard arrested for a crime he doesn't remember committing. He's released in exchange for helping the very man who destroyed his life, and soon finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of magic, colourful characters, kidnapping and mysterious demigods. And that's just in The Winding!

I wanted to write the sort of books I really wanted to read, with loads of queer characters who have lives and storylines beyond coming out and romance, where their queerness is undeniable but also not always the focus of the plot, since that was a really rare thing when I was growing up (let's be real, books with ANY queerness in them were rare in the 90s).

Here are some things you'll find within The Winding and The Ticking:

If they sound like something you'd be interested in, please check them out!

Where to find them:

They're published through an indie publishing house called Literary Wanderlust, and the ebook is available through their online bookshop. Since tumblr tends to bury posts with links to other sites, I'm not including any, in hopes that this might reach more people, but you can find their site with a quick internet search. The paperback copies are only available from LWL's site if you're in the US, but us non-Americans can order them through other sources, such as local indie bookshops!

Book 2, The Ticking, just came out in January and Book 3 is officially in the works!

[find-your-wings]

"But then I take off, and I'm free."

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, and Themes of Disability, Mental Illness, and Criminality.

Back Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy on kickstarter before May 10th if you want to help a disabled person with limited ability to work pay his bills.

Verisimilitude, What Would a Person Do?

To understand Eureka’s themes regarding disability, mental illness, and criminality, you first have to understand its verisimilitude.

“Verisimilitude” is defined as “the appearance of being true or real,” and it is a big part of the core design ethos behind Eureka. It is a very realistic game.

We aren’t necessarily of the opinion that “realism” is a better design choice than stylization overall for RPGs, but it is a better design choice for Eureka, because we want the PCs to be very normal, believable people who make believable, organic decisions in extraordinary situations. No matter what anyone says, the mechanics of a TTRPG strongly influence what kind of stories are told with it, and what characters do in those stories. So if we want characters to make realistic decisions, the world they inhabit and interact with must be constructed of realistic rules.

Even though there is a small chance that they may be a supernatural creature, PCs in Eureka are still not fearless action heroes, chosen ones, or anything of the sort. They’re normal people with jobs, friends, and families who get mixed up in mysterious and/or dangerous situations, often against their will. They are fragile, vulnerable, imperfect, and they, largely, know it.

“Composure” is a mechanic that helps you know it too. I’ve given a deeper explanation of the Composure mechanic in the post linked here, but I’ll give a very very very condensed version in this post. Composure can sort of be thought of as “emotional/fatigue HP,” (and no, it is NOT “sanity”) it acts as a guideline for how well your character is handling the situation, and when it gets low enough, it starts to have serious mechanical effects as well, because a character’s stat modifier can never be higher than their current Composure level. Fear, hunger, and fatigue all lower Composure, and eating, sleeping, and bonding with one’s fellow investigators can all restore it, at least for normal people. More on that further down. All you really need to know for now is that when Composure gets below zero it starts eating into HP, so characters can even pass out or die from loss of Composure, and also one single bullet is enough to permanently cripple a character, and the rate of Composure loss during combat reflects how serious that is for the characters.

Grievous Wounds

It isn’t too uncommon for RPGs to have some sort of “flaw” system, whereby in character creation you can give your PC “flaws” or some kind of penalty, and usually get that balanced out by being able to add extra bonuses elsewhere, and these “flaws” may take the form of disabilities.

Critical Role’s Candela Obscura, the whole document of which is one of the most egregious examples of liberalism and toxic positivity I’ve ever seen in the TTRPG space, takes this beyond just character creation, and makes it so that if a PC receives a “scar” in combat that reduces their physical stats, their mental stats automatically go up by an equivalent amount, and proudly asserts that to make any mechanic which functions otherwise is ableist. I think you can probably tell what I think of that from this sentence alone and I don’t need to elaborate. Getting bogged down in all the failures, mechanical and moral, of Candela Obscura would make this post three times as long.

I actually do think that as long as you aren’t moralizing and patting yourself on the back this hard about it, “flaw” systems in character creation are a pretty good idea in most cases, it allows for more varied options during character creation, while preserving game balance between the PCs.

But in real life, people aren’t balanced. The events that left me injured and disabled didn’t make me smarter or better at anything—if anything, they probably made me stupider, considering the severity of the concussion! Some things happened to me, and now I’m worse. There’s no upside, I just have to keep going by trying harder with a less efficient body, and rely more on others in situations where I am no longer capable of perfect self-sufficiency.

Denying that a disabled person is, by definition, less capable of doing important tasks than the average person is to deny that they need help, and to deny that they need help is to enable a refusal to help.

This is the perspective from which Eureka’s Grievous Wounds mechanic was written.

When a character is reduced to 1 HP, which by design can result from a single hit from most weapons, they may become incapacitated, or they may take a Grievous Wound, which is a permanent injury with no stat benefits. Think twice before getting into a shootout.

Grievous Wounds don’t have to result from combat, they can also be given to a character during character creation, but not as a trade-off for an extra bonus.

“But then doesn’t my character just have worse stats than the rest of the party?” Yes, didn’t you read the above section? There is no benefit, except for the opportunity to play a disabled character in an TTRPG, and this character will probably have to be more reliant on the rest of the party to get by in various situations. Is that a bad thing?

Monsters

Just like mundane people in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, monsters are playable, because they are regular people. I’ve gone over this in other posts and also you can just read about it in Chapter 8 of the Eureka rulebook, but the setting of Eureka doesn’t have a conspiracy or “masquerade” hiding or separating supernatural people from normal society. They exist within normal society, and a lot of them eat people.

Most RPGs consider monsters to just be evil, they do evil for evil’s sake. RPGs that seek to subvert this expectation often instead make monsters misunderstood and wrongfully persecuted, but harmless. Eureka takes a wholly different approach.

There are five playable types of monsters in the rulebook right now, and it’ll be seven if we hit all the stretch goals, but for simplicity’s sake this post will just focus on the vampire. Despite them applying in different ways, the same overall themes apply to nearly every monster, so if you get the themes for the vampire, you’ll get the gist of what Eureka is doing with monsters in general.

I mentioned Composure above, and how it can normally be restored by eating food and sleeping. Well, vampires can not restore their Composure this way. They don’t sleep, and normal people food might be tasty as long as it isn’t too heavily seasoned for them, but it doesn’t do anything for them nutritionally. Their main way to restore Composure is fresh living human blood, straight from the source. To do what mundane PCs do normally by just eating and sleeping, vampires have to take from another, whether they’re happy with this arrangement or not. They do not, of course, literally have to, and a player is not forced to make their vampire PC drink blood, just like you don’t literally have to eat food, but they do and you do if you want to live in any degree of comfort or happiness, or else they’d eventually just sit at 0 Composure and not be able to effectively do anything.

There’s a reason that this is a numerical mechanic and not simply a rule that says something like “this character is a vampire and therefore they must drink blood once every session,” and that is to emphasize and demonstrate that the circumstances a person faces drive their behavior. In America, there is a tendency to think of criminality and harmfulness as resulting from something of an intrinsic evil, but in my experience and observation, people do not just wake up at like age 16 and decide “I think I’ll go down the criminal life path.” Through their life circumstances they have been barred from the opportunities that would have given them other options. People need food, food costs money, money requires work, work requires getting hired, but getting hired requires a nearby job opening, an education, an impressive resume, nice clean clothes, a charismatic attitude, consistent transportation, and so on. For people without, criminality is something they are funneled into, which becomes harder to avoid the longer they go without consistent access to their basic needs. The choice will be between taking money from others by force or trickery, or running completely out of money.

As the Composure counter ticks down, a vampire, or other playable monster, is going to encounter much the same dilemma. There is little to no “legal” or “harmless” way for them to get their needs met, even if they do have some money. Society just isn’t set up for that. And no your kink is not the solution to this, trying to suggest every vampire get into sex work is like one step removed from telling every girl she should just get an OnlyFans the minute she turns 18, or that women should just marry a man and be a housewife that gets taken care of if they want their needs met.

Playable monsters in Eureka are dangerous, harmful people. They were set up to be.

“Oh well then the vampire should just eat bad people!” You mean those same bad people i just described above? See this post for answers to all the other arguments people are going to make to try and absolve vampires of causing harm.

Society not being set up for that brings me to next reading/theme: Monstrousness as disability, and monsters as takers.

Mundane human characters restore 2 points of Composure per day just by eating food and sleeping, but vampires do not, they can’t. To restore their Composure they have to take from others a valuable resource that everyone needs to live and the extraction of which is excruciatingly painful and debilitating (blood). No one knows what happens to blood after a vampire drinks it, it’s just gone. Vampires are open wounds through which blood pours out of the universe.

This is a special need, something they have to take but cannot give back. Their special needs make them literally a drain on society and the world.

Even in so-called “progressive” spaces, there is a tendency to consider takers, people who take much more than they give back, such as disabled people, as something that needs to be pruned, with the mask over this being the aforementioned total denial of the fact that disabled people take more than they can give.

In this way, vampires and other playable monsters are, inarguably, “takers,” but in positioning them as protagonists right beside mundane protagonists, Eureka puts you in their shoes, and forces you to at least reckon with the circumstances that make them this way, as well as acknowledge their inner lives. You have to acknowledge two things: That they are dangerous, harmful people who take more than they can give, and that they are people. Because they are people, Eureka asserts that they have inherent value, a right to exist, and a right to do what they need to do to exist.

One final point is that of monstrousness as mental illness. Mental illness is a disability, one pretty comparable to physical disability in a lot of ways, so all of the above about disability can apply to this metaphor as well, but there are a few unique comparisons to make here.

It’s not the most efficient, but there are a couple of loopholes deliberately left in the rules that allow vampires to restore Composure without drinking blood. Eureka! moments can restore Composure, and Comfort checks from fellow investigators can restore Composure.

When I was writing the rules for how monsters regain Composure in accordance to these themes, I came to a dilemma where I wasn’t sure if it was thematically appropriate for them to be able to regain Composure in these ways, but ultimately I decided that yes, they can. It works with themes of mental illness, which is mental disability.

People with mental illnesses may have the potential to be harmful and dangerous, but study after study, including my own observation, has shown that mentally ill people with robust support structures and agency allowed to them to handle tasks are much less likely to enact harm, be that physical violence, relational violence, or violence against the self. So that’s why I kept that rule in for playable monsters. Being able to accomplish goals, and having friends who are there for them, makes the harmful person less likely to cause unnecessary harm.

I couldn’t really figure out where to fit this paragraph in so I’m sticking it here right before the conclusion: Vampires are especially great for this because they’re immortal, and because they always come back when “killed.” They can’t be exterminated, they aren’t going away, there will always be problem people in society, no matter how utopian or “progressive.” They’re a never-ending curse, who will always be a problem. The question is how you will handle them, not how you will get rid of them.

In conclusion,

Eureka is as much a study of the characters themselves as it is the mystery being solved by the characters. It is a harsh, but compassionate game, that argues through its own gameplay that yes, people do have needs which drive their behavior, many people do have special needs that are beyond their ability to reciprocate, and failure to meet the needs of even a small number of people in a society has high potential to harm the entire society, not just those individuals whose needs are unmet.

And Candela Obscura sucks.

Back Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy on kickstarter before May 10th if you want to help a disabled person with limited ability to work pay his bills.

If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!

Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[problematicraccoon]

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ hi !

i've never actually posted anything on tumblr before as i'm mainly just an observer, but i figured i should probably join the public at some point- so hi! i'm Alyssa, or Aly, or AJ, or Lisle, or whatever you wanna call me. my pronouns are she/they, my mbti is infp, i'm 19 (and i never fuckin learned how to read), my birthday is January 7th, i'm a Capricorn, i'm Polish-American, i'm a reality shifter, i'm an impassioned aspiring writer of pretty much any genre i can get my dingy little hands on, i'm obsessed with Stray Kids and TXT, Breanna Casey enthusiast, overly fixated on quantum jumping/meta physics/quantum mechanics/spirituality/numerology, i'm fascinated by human behavior, im a member of the LGBT+ community, angry little feminist, and my dms are always open to anyone who feels they have no one to talk to or are in pain :) i will always reply and you can vent to me about anything if you need to <3

my current wip is a sapphic romance/urban fantasy entitled "I'll Be Quiet When I'm Dead" and i'm gonna be posting a lot about my lil made up people for that book because i love those stupid little fucks like my own children and i hope you all will too <3

i love to write little short stories to practice writing and work out the kinks before actually hunkering down to work on a full length novel, so if anyone has any short story (or one shots as the kids are saying these days) requests, feel free to contact me and request <3

✿⋆.˚⋆₊ ⊹ some of my favorite musical artists + favorite song...

Stray Kids - "Winter Falls"

Melanie Martinez - "Death"

Ashnikko - "Miss Nectarine"

Girlhouse - "Concussion"

TV Girl - "Lovers Rock"

LE serrafim - "Perfect Night"

RM - "Wild Flower"

Lilyisthatyou - "Intimacy Issues"

✿⋆.˚⋆₊ ⊹ some of my favorite movies...

Renfield (2023)

Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Megamind (2010)

Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (2011)

✿⋆.˚⋆₊ ⊹ you can also find me on...

Discord: gayanarchist222

AO3: soobzgyu

Pinterest: problematicraccoon