Shores of Night

 Werewolf is occupying my thoughts a bit at present, and I thought I'd dive a little into the different parts of the setting I like and how it manifests in the game. This will include setting information, Tribes, Auspices, Breeds, and Gifts, as a bit of  a tour de force for the things I think are cool. I want to say before I begin, I don't have a beef with any part of the setting (aside from some of the totem spirits, particularly those that are a bit... stereotypically New Age), so these are a) my opinions and b) just because I don't love something doesn't mean I hate it.  I must admit that I'm assuming that the reader knows the setting but if you don't, here's a wee glossary for your information: Garou - Werewolf (derived from the French, Loup Garou) Gifts - Magic powers Pentex - Big nasty corporation Umbra - Spirit World Renown - Divided into Glory, Honour and Wisdom, Renown is the earned through behaving properly and can be lost as easily as its gaze.  R...

I first encountered Werewolf: the Apocalypse in 1994 after playing its sister game, Vampire: the Masquerade . As a keen tree hugger and cynic about the modern world (who'd already toyed with the absurdity of humanity by scribbling notes for something where green politics were rejected because implementing them meant the toilet paper wasn't soft enough) the game caught my imagination, though sadly I haven't played it as much as Vampire. I loved the Tribes and Gifts, and the way that the werewolves (known as Garou in the game) interacted with the world around them. The sense that they were outsiders in the modern world which with how I saw myself seemed fascinating and like it could build into something really powerful. The world building in the line transformed the werewolves from "cool antiheroes" to something far more problematic. Books like Book of the Wyrm and Umbra: the Velvet Shadow , suggested that the Garou were more like a cult than a nation, relying on ...

 Today sees the next episode of  Shadows of the Past: The Unkindness of Birds  being published on Wattpad. The episode ends the second act and leads into Act 3.  I wrote this scene in a different form as part of the original form of the story, and got adapted when I rewrote it. Initially, it followed on from the fight in the bedchamber, with "Gertrude" performing the actions she takes at a much earlier point in the original. The whole thing I wanted to emphasise initially was the way that Lady   Ella-Dýr was being manipulated and was more or less helpless to stop the changeling from doing anything. The rewrite changed that to make her more formidable, and to introduce more problems for Elna in the process - which is really what the rewrite was all about. Other changes crept their way in, for example I changed the birds that "Gertrude" changed into - to make her a literal cuckoo in the nest. I also wanted to play around with Fergus' apparent inability to understa...

 So... let's start with the good side of this. It's pretty, the art is amazing and its coloured really nicely. The artists brought their A game and the character design is great. For the most part, the characters feel well written and there's a solid core to the storytelling. Wynn, our protagonist is the representative of "The Powers That Be" - or magic, and those are opposed to "The Natural Order Of Things", or Science. So far, so cliched, right? It's a hoary, too well ridden track, that has a well established history. Thankfully, what we receive in the stories doesn't really reflect this conflict too much and instead we get to read about a Babylon Event (basically a big scary thing that requires everybody unite and fight together, which is rather convenient). It also allows for Hickman to pick up some of his previous toys, the Black Swans, from before Secret Wars and play around with them a little more which is quite nice. In all honesty though...

 Part eight of my novella, Hearth Not Home is now up on Wattpad. It finds Elna in a reflective mood after the raid on the besiegers' camp.  Shadows of the Past: Hearth Not Home This part of the story was added at a later stage and it gave me a chance to do a touch of world building around the faiths present in Torvenland. I was very conscious that the official religion, the Church of the Five was male dominated and patriarchal and that made me feel uncomfortable. I know that in real life, more women than men are believers even in religions which don't give them any grace for being female (the Madonna/whore issue is proof of that, as is the idea of Eve committing the first sin). I was also conscious that - even though I haven't introduced the identities of the Five gods - there wasn't a deity allied to the domain of death or luck and that didn't seem right. Death is a fundamental part of life, after all, and you don't just dismiss it as nothing because you want t...

 My name is Grim and I'm a recovering  people pleaser . For most of my life, I put myself last to make other people happy, self sabotage for approval, and do my damnedest to avoid conflict because I don't believe I'm worthy of love, attention, or happiness. I've sat through conversations, being talked at, because I don't dare to say I don't care about the subject being talked about, or that I find my conversation companion incredibly boring or rude. Only recently I had a meeting with someone and it was more like attending a piece of theatre (albeit a highly repetitive one), because it felt more like other person was monologuing instead of conversing. It's incredibly frustrating and I've lost so much time to this need to fawn and please other people.  On the other hand, being a people pleaser also means that I'm a manipulator, always doing my best to appear happy and compliant so you won't get angry or upset with me - because that will send me int...

 There's a scene in Sandman 's Kindly Ones story where Rose Walker says how much she hates love. She talks about how it robs you of dignity, autonomy, how it takes hostages and makes you vulnerable. It hollows you out and makes you into someone new, because you fall under someone else's influence even if you never wanted to be. It snatches you away from your own life and integrates you into someone else's. Love, in other words, is a parasite. I wish I hated love just because of that.  I mean, I get it. The obsession at the start of a relationship where all you can do is think about the person is so frustrating. It's not a peaceful, happy, thing. Rather it makes me anxious and unsettled to have those thoughts, to be continually thinking about the other person. Perhaps that makes me selfish - a recurring theme with my internal monologue - but I don't want to be so focused on someone else I lose myself, and that's what it feels like to me.  That infatuation - t...

  The Raid , part 7(!) of Shadows of the Past is up! Wow, I didn't realise this was so long before! I certainly didn't think it had nearly 2 months worth of parts (and more). This is very much an action part, though it is a pivotal turning point in the story. I don't really have anything else to say, except I hope you enjoy the story. 

 So, October. Another year almost gone with very little to show for it. I'm trying not to beat myself up about it as I'm pretty sure I have various forms of executive dysfunction at play, but all the same it's hard to think that another year has almost gone and I'm no nearer to my goals. The Knot, which I've talked about before, seems more pressing in some ways and it's hard to feel like they're getting resolved. I'm honestly tired of it all and just want to be able to get a house, put down some roots, and get some cats. It's not quite vanish into the woods, live in a cottage and never come out again, but it feels pretty close.  On the plus side, I have a date for the two parts of my autism assessment - one incredibly soon on Wednesday next week, the second part in November. A touch of imposter syndrome is kicking in but at the same time, I'm in no doubt that I'm autistic. It will be a relief to get a diagnosis and I hope it will help me unde...

 Exploding onto the DC universe's reset in 2023 after the Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, King's Wonder Woman is a strange beast, picking up one of the oldest superheroes in the world and using her to weave a shockingly contemporary narrative that relies on talking about the real world and modern America. Which, of course, means he's annoyed much of the fanbase who don't think politics shouldn't be part of comics. It's well written, as you might expect from King, though his obsession with PTSD seems to be mercifully off the table for this book. It's also extremely brave, tackling patriarchy head on and leaning into the ideas that constitute a revolt against that. The book is obviously actually about the rise of the Right in America, and the lack of value placed on women's lives and freedoms as a consequence of that, and King is relentless is his pursuit of it. The story opens with the introduction of a new character, Trinity, who appears to be Wonder Wom...

 I'm increasingly concerned that we don't actually know what gender means anymore. People seem to think it's a political thing and talk about how gender was invented in the 1950s by  John Money . However if we take the meaning of gender from the dictionary - in this case Merriam Webster  - we can see that it isn't anything new. In fact, although it was potentially only identified during the 20th Century, we can see that it's probably existed for so long we accept it without thought. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most of us have a gender before we have a sex, at least in chronological terms. By that I mean that we are slotted into male or female, boy or girl, from the moment of birth or even before with the improvement of ultrasound technology and the creation of things like gender reveal parties. We expect certain behaviours from people based purely on their physiology, and in many cases use it as a straightjacket. A study from 1976 conducted by  John a...

 I first heard of this book in 2012, when the tutor for a module on the MA in Creative Writing I undertook recommended it for the Creative Non-Fiction module. I didn't get hold of it then, but it lived in my brain and eventually I sought it out, started reading it and stopping because I wasn't really enjoying it and then starting up again when I learned Vincent had committed suicide in 2022 (albeit suicide at an assisted dying clinic in Switzerland). On an unrelated point, the other reason I started reading it again was because I started to see the book being referred to by incels and manosphere commentators as a way to denigrate women and talk about how tough men have it. I can't remember the wording but the gist of it was that men's lives are so hard that trying to live as one caused Vincent to check herself into a mental institution. We'll come back to this later on.  The basic idea of the book is that Vincent disguised herself as a man called "Ned" for...