Malice: Not just scary dolls

I have been working on Malice, the game formerly about scary dolls. Now it's a game that celebrates the low special effects and high character development horrow movies from the late 60's to the early 80's. Before the obvious thing to be feared could be seamlessly and realistically featured onscreen. I'm thinking of movies like The Omen, The Brood, and The Shining.

I just happened to misplace my handwritten notes from the last time I worked on the game. This has turned out to be a very good thing. I have the bare bones, the pieces I really like, and I've been able to look at the game from a fresh perspective. A few nights ago, we playtested character creation, which is done in character, and in conjunction with establishing a plot. That was really fun. We ended up with the beginning of a story set in the summer of 1972, Michigan, with a cast of four teenagers who witness "Mark" die at a party, from excessive drinking. They call the police and an ambulance (after a lengthly discussion), but when they arrive, Mark's body and any evidence he was ever there are gone. That's about as far as we got. In subsequent scenes, the GM would play Mark--the Malice--of the story. I'm still working on the dice mechanics, and how exactly how to propel the story.

Another fun thing is the character sheet, which looks like a smudgy mimeograph of an Intake Form for therapy, institutionalization, etc. You fill this out in character as well, and talk about who your character is while you create her. The GM acts as a Case Manager to help the dialog along, and players establish which character (a PC) is their character's nemesis. It was all terribly fun, and I look forward to seeing how this story unfolds.

And I should be finishing Tales of the Fisherman's Wife by June, so if you ordered a handbound ashcan, it will arrive as a finished game. Hope it's been worth the wait!

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

Almost two years ago, I wrote here about an experience I had at the Y. I mentioned being an unclothed woman sitting amongst other women in a room where such activities are appropriate (at the Y, in the women's locker room). It was one of those typical day-in-the-life observations. According to Sitemeter, I get more hits to that post than any other, and given the keywords that send people to the post, I have a feeling people are looking for some kind titillation. I'll bet they're disappointed, but they keep coming, from all over the world.

For the time being, I'm taking the post down. It probably won't help my site's traffic, but oh well.

I have nothing against people looking for titillating photos of unclothed women. This is just not the blog for that. If you want to read about my rather uneventful life, adventures in role playing game design and other creative endeavors, kombucha, cooking, pets, octopuses, tattoos, midwifery, religion, spouses, and offspring, then welcome! Read on. If you're looking for images of the female body sans clothes, perhaps sitting with other unclothed beauties, there are zillions of other websites out there that offer that kind of fun.

If you're the traveling type, you might consider a vacation to Finland, where the activity I described is very popular.

Anyway, thanks for visiting!

I lost my superpower!

And I'm okay with that! I've been nursing an infant, toddler, or preschooler since May 29, 1999, with a 1 year hiatus during pregnancy. Ingrid is my last child and my last nursling. Now we are on to another era. My body is once again my own.

So there's some bittersweetness here. A few months ago we came to the conclusion that our family was complete with two kids. No third or fourth baby. I'm a little sad about that, but now I'm Auntie (or Tia) Julia! How cool is that? I'm an only child, so I never really thought about the prospect of being someone's aunt until my sister in law got pregnant.

I'm a bit of a breastfeeding evangelist. I'll hold back for now, except to say that I loved breastfeeding and at times I hated breastfeeding. Plugged ducts, thrush that wouldn't go away, nursing strikes, night nursing, nursing while sick, nursing a sick baby, nursing in public, nursing in front of people who made their disgust apparent, nursing while walking down the street, I've been there, done that. I have heartwarming breastfeeding stories, and stories that would make me (and you) blush. I wouldn't trade any of it. I won't judge any woman who cannot breastfeed and I am a firm believer that breast is best. Period. The more encouragement women get from their families, care-givers, and the rest of the world, the more healthy a nursing relationship she and her baby will have. (stepping off the soapbox now.)

The best thing about weaning is that now that Ingrid is older, I can see that goal of being a midwife with much more clarity.

The thing I'll miss most is that I never got a tee-shirt that said, "I make milk! What's your superpower?"

While we're on the subject...

This is a tangent from a conversation happening elsewhere online.

The African American Woman's Headwrap: Unwinding the Symbols

Terry Howcott: Ravaged Cultures Spark a Cultural Revival.

Dreamation Drama!

See this from Stone Baby Games (which is me, in case you didn't know). I mean drama in a good way!

I'm really looking forward to Dreamation this year! I'm also going to bring Werewolves of Miller's Hollow to play, inspired by the awesome story that was created in the Knife Fight Werewolf forum game. I'd like to play this bluffing and strategy game with lots of character development and story.

The picture above is of the character in Brotherhood of the Wolf who was the inspiration for my NPC Parthenia, who was the twin sister of my PC William Christian Ellsworth the Printer. Wrong time period, but I imagined her wearing red. How could an unmarried woman named "Parthenia" not wear red in a story about werewolves? Poor Will, by the way, was the next to last character to be hanged.

Parthenia's Dad

My parents visited us from December 18 to the 28th. It was a fun visit, except I spent the better part of their stay concerned about my dad's health. The last time I saw him was in March in Atlanta (see above) and he was almost 6 months post recovery from congestive heart failure. This time he did not look well. Apparently he wasn't feeling well.

Without getting into the particulars, he was admitted to the hospital on Saturday, and has been in ICU since then. He was a blockage of the large intestine. They performed a sigmoidoscopy Monday and biopsied a section. We'll know more tomorrow.

My dad will be 66 in about two weeks. I am very concerned about him.

I want to be on that guest list!

If God Invited you to a party
And said, "Everyone
In the ballroom tonight
Will be my special Guest,"
How would you treat them
When you
Arrived?
Indeed, indeed!
And Hafiz knows
There is no one in this world
Who Is not upon
His Jeweled Dance Floor.
-Hafiz

We started zikr with this poem last night. This past year has been the year of suck for in the realm of social circles, and I'm trying hard to see the silver lining, the light at the end of the tunnel, and all the other happy and optimistic cliches I am oh so well at espousing.

First there's the ongoing oddness of generally being the only person of color in any given room at any given moment 'round here. Sometimes I can feel being the other more than other times. Like at GenCon 2007, I felt like I had a sign on my back that said, "Negress Writes RPG's to Scare You." Ouch. You have it all wrong folks! This year the sign read, "Tentacle Sex", and I didn't feel as othered. Go figure. Even still, I took a break from game design and the online social network. I'm getting back on the horse now, and am happy and excited to do so. No real story there, except maybe the one about the vicious name calling from a misogynistic twit that I apparently pissed off for having and offering an opinion. That and he was made of crazy. Actually there were a few attacks from said twit, which ultimately clouded the rest of my gaming on-line social circle in suck.

It was that Othering feeling that broke the deal with church and me. That and not feeling the churchy Jesus Christ Superstar vibe any more. It's meant that where I found a new spiritual community, it will be some time before I've cultivated it enough to bring my kids in. My heart still aches every time I pass the building, though.

Meanwhile, there was the ongiong drama in my real life gaming (and otherwise) social circle. In some ways, I think it relates to being Othered. In some ways the drama makes me feel Othered. At a party last week, I wasn't the only person of color, but I was the only person that one other person has spent the entire past year compartmentalizing me into a box of deliberate misunderstanding. Things were less awkward and ugly than they've been in months, but after a year of feeling excluded from the much of Club Fun of Once a Friend, the smoldering non-engagement still burned. Ouch! You have it all wrong!

That's about 1/4 of the story, only half of my point of view, and all I have to offer. Can I even say that? Well, I did, and I'm not taking it back. Someone's treating me like shit and has built up a good year's worth of justification, and it sucks. On my end. I don't presume to know what the other side feels like, and it's been made clear to me that I'm not allowed to know. Okay.....

I used to think I was pretty good at standing up for myself and cutting losses quickly and efficiently, but I've spent too much time this past year declaring that I was being treated unfairly, and when nothing changed, I held out hope that people would figure it out and play nice, and I stuck around or came back. In the big and less personal circle of game designers it's easier to brush myself off and move on. We can't like everyone we meet at GenCon. I have more stories to tell, and I think somone will enjoy them. In the small and intimate circle of local friends, I don't have anywhere else to go. Can I realistically break ties with people I love and care about because of one person? No. That's like gouging out one's eye to remove a fleck of dust.

On the upside (here's my perennial optimist shining through! Welcome back, dear!), I've had a year of affirming and strengthening the relationship with my bestest friend, Mr. Ellingsgard, who has listened to me whine from start to finish about how things have sucked this past year. He is my strongest and favorite circle.

Hafiz's poem resonates with me because I am a perennial optimist who really believes that we, me included, are all one of God's special invited guests on the Jeweled Dance Floor. Perhaps it's what put me in this predicament in the first place. I love a good party, and if God's in charge of the guest list, I want to be there, and I want everyone to feel welcome and invited (yeah, even the misogynisitc twit and Club Fun of Once a Friend). Including the folks who don't share this view of humanity on a macro or micro level. And perhaps I am the Other for only as long as I see myself as the Other. Yeah, that's a good one. I hope I start believing it this coming year.

Picture of Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, my Sufi namesake. ("Your what?" For another time.)