Shores of Night

 Hi, Welcome back to the Shores of Night, or welcome if you're new. My name is Grim, a nonbinary, autistic human who writes about a lot of things here.  As you know, I've been pondering work and earning money lately. Right now, I'm wondering what I can do to create a bit of passive income, a little trickle of money to help out. I think roleplaying material would be a better focus, probably in the form of small settings, interesting NPCs and the like. Starting with generic pieces, I thought I'd create a series of short supplements detailing women NPCs, treating them as both allies and potential antagonists. The initial focus would be historical. I'd detail Medieval, Victorian, and modern women, then expand into specific genres, like Fantasy, Cyberpunk and so on. Initially, I'd want to avoid clichéd figures, like witches and princesses, to avoid more obvious concepts and plot seeds. The point is to present rounded women with real concerns and inner lives for GMs t...

 Hello, Welcome to the Shores of Night, or welcome back if you are new. My name is Grim, a nonbinary, autistic human, and I talk about too many things here.  This time, I wanted to write about one of my characters, explaining a bit about his world and his origins in our world.  His name is Markov, and his world is meant to be a weird mix of Sword and Sorcery, Post-Apocalypse, and the sort of fantasy you find in video games like Skies of Arcadia , Tales of Symphonia , and films like Princess Mononoke and  Nausicaä Valley of the Wind .  His story began back when I was trying to commit to writing - which you may have gathered is a recurring activity for me. I'd created the basics of a roleplaying setting called Ironbound, using ideas around states modelled on ancient Greece, Persia, and other things. I'd determined that in the past - I've no idea how far into it - there'd been a magical war which had resulted in all the magic vanishing because the energy that...

 Hi, Welcome back to the Shores of Night, or welcome if you're new. My name is Grim, a nonbinary, autistic human, and this blog covers far too many things.  Content Warning: Abuse, Bullying and Mental Health This is a bit of a memoir I'll never write. Some pieces from my past which, sadly, still inform who I am. I've been in therapy since 2022, and a lot of that has been dealing with this shit.  I've never fit in anywhere. One of my first memories is being bullied on the playground because I didn't watch the He-Man cartoon (I know, the nerve ! How dare I?). It doesn't get much better after that. My childhood was a patchwork of bullying and abuse. At the second school I attended, things got so bad that I'd burst into tears at the start of the school year, and I threw up in the back of my Dad's car at least once. It didn't help that the teachers were also picking on me, and I'm pretty sure that this was the start of my developing depression and anx...

Hi,  Welcome back to the Shore of Night, or welcome if you're new. I'm Grim, a nonbinary, autistic person who blogs about too much stuff.  In a world where blog advice is to focus on one subject, Shores is more like a walk along the beach, discovering what the sea's washed up. A place of flotsam and jetsam, if you will.  Photo by Jason Mavrommatis on Unsplash I'm trying to blog more, so you'll hopefully see more entries... but that does mean you'll be getting quite a few small pieces about my life, which you may actually like.  Anyway, today, I'm thinking about work... again.  Partly, that's because my annual review is coming up, and one of the questions was about my career goals. I've been going back and forth on this for ages, but when I had that question, I suddenly knew. Slightly annoyingly, it wasn't anything new but a confirmation of the things I'm interested in.  Neurodiversity advocacy, particularly in universities. Since I discovere...

 Hi, Welcome, or welcome back if you're new, to the Shores of Night. My name is Grim, an autistic, non-binary person, and I talk about too much stuff here.  You know how it goes.  Photo by Igor Kasalovic on Unsplash I'm sort of just trying to keep going with the blog, and -help! - I'm blogging without a plan! Danger, danger, Will Robinson!  I usually at least have an idea of what I'm going to write about beforehand, but today's subject literally came to me as I sat down to write.  So, this post will be a catch-up about writing and how that's going.  Or more accurately, how it's not going at all.  I started this year with big plans. I was going to write ten short stories, get them published, finish a setting for gaming (at least to the point where I could play it with my group), and plan a novel to start next year.  Looking back in September (as in... now - sheesh, where has this year gone?) I have achieved almost none of this. I got a story publ...

 Hey,  Welcome, or welcome back, to the Shores of Night. I'm your host, Grim, and I talk about far too many things.  I'm conscious that I'm pretty bad at updating the blog. This is really a proof-of-life blog piece. I have a few essays/think pieces on the back burner, waiting to be finished. One's about human nature and the other about fantasy and history, and I'll try to get them published soon... ish.  After that I'll see what I can start writing about. I'd quite like to do something fairly big, perhaps a deep dive into a roleplaying game like The Wildsea or Vaesen , or a Chapter and Verse series for the Definitive Edition of Ars Magica, going through it chapter by chapter. I also want to talk more about mental health and the odd things I find interesting, because let's face it, I'm interested in some odd things.  That, though, is for the future. I feel like I have to get through this month first.  September Honestly, this time of year is exhaus...

 Hi,  Welcome to the Shores of Night, or welcome back if you're new. I'm Grim, and I write about far too many subjects for one blog... I think I'm used to it now.  I wanted to talk about my own personal cosmology in terms of spiritual beliefs. My main belief is in Mother Earth, Gaia, the Anima Mundi - whatever you want to call her- with occasional dips into acknowledging a sea god and believing in Bast, the Egyptian cat goddess. They form an eclectic mix, and I'm not applying much logic to them. I believe in Gaia because without a planet, we wouldn't exist, and because if we don't protect the Earth, we'll suffer a dramatic change in lifestyle, at the very least. My faith in a sea god is because I live by the coast and there are times when the sea can be awe-inspiring, both in its beauty and its violence.  I believe in Bast because I still maintain the closest thing I've seen to divinity is looking into a cat's eyes. I associate cats with beauty and c...

Photo by Luke Jones on Unsplash  Hi,  Welcome back to the Shores of Night, or welcome if you're new here. My name is Grim, I'm a nonbinary, autistic person, and I usually write about fantasy, writing, paganism, roleplaying games, and whatever else takes my fancy.  Today I want to swerve into my mental health journey and talk about some of the things I'm wrestling with. I've already talked about some changes, which I believe are deep work paying off.  I've been in therapy since 2022, and learned I'm autistic in 2024, so the past few years have really helped me learn to like, and possibly even love, myself. It's allowed me to reframe a lot of my experiences into something more manageable and encouraged me to have more self-compassion. I feel like a lot of the places I've struggled with sit in the space between what I feel I should have experienced and what actually happened, as well as the various double binds we humans are so good at creating. I guess it...

 Welcome back to the Shores of the Night, or welcome if you're new. My name is Grim, and I talk about more things on this blog than I probably should.  Today I'm thinking about friends. Specifically, the issues I have making them. One of my earliest memories is being shunned on the playground because I didn't watch He-Man after school. It didn't improve. Most of my childhood was spent learning that people I liked tolerated or downright disliked me, and that's also been a feature of my adult years. In most social settings, I feel locked out, either because my interests don't align with most people's or because the environment's too loud, too bright, or too crowded. I find myself more comfortable in quiet spaces, libraries, book clubs, roleplaying games, that sort of thing. The worst thing I can imagine is going to a nightclub or something like that - which isn't to say that I never went to nightclubs when I was younger and I didn't know I was auti...

 Hi,  Welcome back to the Shores of Night, or welcome if you're new. My name's Grim, and in this piece I'm going to talk about why I still call myself a Pagan.  When I moved to Bournemouth, I was still wobbling. I wasn't sure if I believed in anything, really, but at the same time I felt there had to be something. I was still drawn to the esoteric, but I wasn't sure what spoke to me any more. What I suppose was curious was that I wasn't tempted back to Christianity, and nor did I think about becoming a Muslim or joining any of the Western faiths.  One of the things I wanted to do when I moved down here was to reconnect with myself on an authentic level. That meant, for me, therapy and facing my trauma. As anyone who's gone through that knows, it's a slow process, not a wonder drug. There's no moment where you click your fingers, and everything's suddenly better. Even four years in, I struggle with the narratives other people had bestowed upon me,...

 Hi,  Welcome to the Shores of Night, or welcome back if you've trodden the black sands before. Today I want to talk about something quite personal: why I became a Pagan. I know I usually waffle on about a huge number of other subjects, but I wanted to see about putting something a bit more heartfelt out there, partly because it feels like the right time.  I was raised Christian, my family attended a Church of England broad church and for a long time I think I believed in Jesus. Admittedly, that wasn't a nuanced belief. It was childish and accepting, the sort of faith most of us start out with. Mum and Dad say this is true, society says it's true, so what else do you do? You go along with it, usually without thinking. It was just another part of life, or if I was to be cynical, another part of indoctrination into British society.  I was also terrified of witches and I still believe I saw a woman fly past my window one night, while on another I thought I heard a voice...

Hello, It's great to see you here, on the shore. The sun's sinking and the night's rushing in. If you're new to these parts, I'm Grim. I talk a bit too much about too many things, everything from comics, roleplaying, politics and even philosophy. I love history; I'm a nerd, though I fear I'm becoming that terrible thing, a nerd who's bored of a lot of the familiar nerd things.   This piece is a follow-up to a previous piece, in which I expressed discontent with the general gaming model of "jobs" - clearing out ruins, fetching MacGuffins from dangerous places, hunting down monsters and so on. Missions that PCs perform and then slip away into the night. One reason I dislike this model of gaming is that it can easily turn towards a hard-edged, cynical, and violent tone. Worse, it can do so without there being any real consequences. The last piece ( here)  focused on Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse  because for a long time the...

Hello,  Welcome to the Shores of Night, where I talk about too many things. Welcome back if you've walked this beach before; at least you know where the half buried skull is (be careful, it bites). To stretch the metaphor, you know what sort of flotsam and jetsam washes up here: comics, roleplaying games, a bit of politics, a bit of philosophy (though that seems too fine a word for what I talk about). Add in some interest in history, paganism, and religion in general, and whatever the tide drags in, and you know what litters the shore.  Or just life updates and complaining, which is all very much grist to the mill. Today's flotsam takes the form of something I'm rolling around in my mind: roleplaying. I've been involved in the hobby for a long time - over 30 years - and it's ebbed and flowed around me. There have been times when I've loved it and times I've hated it. I've never really felt indifferent towards it and ever since 1994, it's felt like a ...