words in the key of me

It's hard to believe that it's been a year of Small Wonders Magazine being a real thing, putting amazing words out into the world, but it has! And as we approach year two, we are fundraising to keep paying industry standard rates ($.10/word for original fiction, $.01/word for reprint fiction or $10 whichever is higher, $60 for poetry, $125 for art), pay for our fabulous art director, and to keep the lights on. I don't like asking for money, and asking in all the corners of the internet is especially hard (I so prefer lurking). But! I want everyone to have a chance to see what we've done with year one and be part of year two. So here we go!

We have some absolutely AMAZING loot this year - lots of handmade stuff, a drop-dead gorgeous patch and pin, stickers that are based on specific stories, and a backer-only mini-issue with some really stellar pieces. Check it out.

The Kickstarter for Year 2

Borrower is out now at Strange Horizons!

This one is chock-full of my feelings about superheroes, and about the way we envision a world where such people thrive. It was very nearly a short story instead of a poem - sometimes when I sit down to write stories I commit wanton acts of poetry instead, and that's what happened here. I hope you like it.

Speaking of Strange Horizons, they're in the very last days of their annual fundraiser. They've got some really nifty goodies over on kickstarter, and an incredibly worthy goal of increasing their pay rates to $.10/word. I support them not only as a writer, but also a reader and a listener (yep, there are podcasts of all their work - including my poem!)

You should check them out and support the kickstarter while you still can!

I can tell I need to write, but I don't know what to say.

My friend Kate, kathrynrose, died today.

And then I sit and stare at the white space, because what could possibly follow those words, to make them make sense or give them context? What could I possibly say?

I don't know what to say. I haven't known what to say all day, sending emails, sending texts. I didn't know what to say when Allison called to tell me this morning, and I'm afraid I didn't say anything coherent. The word "fuck" might have happened. Maybe more than once? I honestly don't remember. I keep not knowing what to say and then saying something - anything - anyway. And hoping like hell it's sufficient to the task at hand.

I don't know what the task at hand is right now. Which is probably why I'm floundering.

I've been thinking a lot about found families lately. Partly because I've been reading books for a discussion club about it, and partly because it's just an idea which has a good kind of weight on my heart at the best of times. Kate was part of my found family. She was my sister. My unexpected, found, sister.

Here's a thing I learned early on about Kate: she couldn't abide a lie - she told me once that a lie would hurt her more than anything else. So I didn't lie to her, not even for politeness sake. She could take criticism well (though she was more likely to attribute that to my skills at giving it than hers at receiving - I dispute the charge) and it was nice knowing I could just speak my mind. And gosh, did we speak our minds. As soon as we got to talking, we found out that we were so alike (and also so different - she thought I was nuts for eating pineapple on pizza, for instance). (No, no I am not. :P )

She was stubborn. She was opinionated. And she was tactful... right up until she wasn't. I've never met anyone else who had the exact same social limits as me - which was a problem from time to time, as we'd both just be DONE at the same time. Heh. But never with each other. And it took a while.

She was quick to say "I love you" - and she meant it, every time. She was insightful and sweet and sharp and wicked and she got me, in a way that's hard to explain, and I got her.

She hadn't been writing much, these last few years - she said she liked having written something more than writing it, and it wasn't worth the pain to get to the product - but she'd been reading. She was one of my first readers, for almost every thing I wrote. A silly poem snippet? Off to Kate - I bet it'll make her smile. A short story? Kate should see this. A flash piece where I'm not sure if I'm clear enough? Well, if Kate doesn't get it, then I'm definitely being too obtuse. (Far more often, Kate would get it and then other folks would be confused. *shrugs* The perils of sending stuff to a sister to read for clarity is that she's maybe a little too familiar with the way you see the world).

I showed her things I never intended to show anyone else (except maybe Todd) just because she loved reading my words - all of them, even the bad ones (and oh, believe me, there are lots of those), and she always, always had something insightful to say. If not about the words, then about me. "So, feeling a little angry lately?" Yeah. Yeah, I am, Kate. Good catch. I hadn't actually noticed it myself yet.

And when she did write, oh, she had such a way. She could capture a moment, a mood, a whole scene, in so few words. You would swear she'd put in all these details, about the scents, the textures, the emotions... but every word was precise and every word was deliberate and she was just evoking those things, like a freakin' summoning spell. It was magic.

She knew how to be quiet. And she knew when to be loud. She was fierce and she was timid and she was messed up and she was neurotic and she was nostalgic and she was complicated and she was silly and she was serious and she was awesome.

We only knew each other for... six years? Seven? Ish? It feels like longer. In an email, back in 2013, I wrote "I am SO in need of more awesome people in my life, and you totally qualify. Let's be buddies. :) Also, hey, we could be some sort of weird time and space separated twins! That there sounds like a story premise... *grins*"

I feel like I've known her my whole life. I've certainly told her enough stories about my life for that to be true. I didn't hear nearly as many of hers as I wanted - there was always "remind me later to tell you the story about..." and then, well, sometimes later gets shuffled into other things. Because we could be silent for stretches, and then rapid-firing 20+ emails to each other in a day. We could text each other entirely in emoticons and then just bust out with paragraphs. She was part of my heart and my head and... and well here we are.

Lesson learned: sometimes you find your family when you're not looking. Maybe always? I don't know. But there she was, and there we were. For some very hard and very weird years.

And I've just been so very, very, very lucky to know her.

And I am so, so, so not ok with her being gone.

Ok is what there is to be - eventually. But that's eventually, and this is now. I don't know how those two ends meet in a middle that makes sense. I don't know what kind of alchemy has to happen in the world for that to even be meaningful.

One lie at a time, I suppose.

I'm ok.

Sorry, Kate. Love you, Kate. Miss you, Kate.

Today, I'm 40 years old.

There are a lot of narratives about getting older, a lot of stories we tell ourselves collectively about what it means and what it's like and what's expected and how it goes. Bunches of them deal with regret. Time is marching on, you're not who you used to be and time is running out to be that person again (for some reason) or to be someone else, someone more awesome. Pretend you don't have a birthday, have a midlife crisis, create a bucket list and yearn and yearn and yearn.

I'm not really into that.

I find myself here, smack dab at 40, exceptionally happy with who I am, and with what my life looks like. I'm really, really, really lucky. And I'm doing pretty ok - I could do better, in lots of small and big ways, of course, but that's how life works. There's always room for improvement, for growth. I could be better at so many things, and a better person in so many ways. I don't feel a sense of loss, though, for being where I am and being who I am now. I don't feel I wasted time or that I'm running out of it, either - I spent time, and sometimes unwisely, sure. But not wasted. I don't feel regret. And it's pretty great.

Today I'm feeling lots of things, but the most easily identifiable emotion is gratitude. I'm happy to be here, in the world. I'm grateful for the awesome people in my life. I'm grateful for the opportunities I have, and have had, and for all the good stuff. I love that I'm creating things. I have amazing people in my life, up close and far away and all manner of in between. My cats are fluffy and adorable, and my home is filled with games and weird things and books and I have the chance to make stuff and have great conversations and read nifty stories pretty often. I'm lucky.

It's silly, but I don't really feel like 40 is a number that applies to me - maybe that's because in my mind 40 means something Stolid and Dependable and Seriously Adult and Having a Career and all sorts of other macros which I should probably expunge from my mental space, because they're really very ridiculous and I know better. Or maybe it doesn't feel like a fit because I can remember so many other birthdays so very clearly. I remember running around with friends from school in my grandparents' living room with construction paper unicorn horns on our heads. I remember birthday parties that were girl scout sleepovers in Mrs. Simon's living room, with cupcakes and popcorn and root beer. I remember skate parties and quiet dinners out and apple pies and so many things. I remember my 16th and I remember my 21st and I remember my 27th and 35th.

And every time a birthday rolls around I tentatively pick up the new number and tilt my head and squint at it a bit and say "nah, doesn't really feel like me." Every time. I'll be 80 (I hope!) and looking at that number and shaking my head, saying "eh, doesn't really fit me, you know?". I don't know if any number ever really feels like it fits. I've always been better with words than numbers, anyway.

My thirties, as a whole, were great. I figured out a lot of who I am and who I want to be, met some of the most wonderful people, and started getting so much better at the things I love. I learned stuff, and I made stuff. May the next decade also be one where I grow in unexpected ways, and meet amazing people, and do my part to make the world around me a better place. Hello, forties! Let's be friends.

I've been hinting at a Sooper Sekrit Project the last little while - today is unveiling day! I present to you, CC: Otherworlds!

CC: Otherworlds is a collaborative project I'm doing with my friend Claire. She's a visual artist who does really nifty work. Together, we're going to make stories and art on a regular schedule, and send them in the mail (and also email!), because strangeness and wonder are meant to be shared and we all need more than junk mail and spam in our inboxes.

We'll be pulling a prompt from a hat fortnightly - and we've got some really great prompts in there. Then we each go off and make a thing separately, document our processes, and then get together and mail things off. The stories are printed on high quality paper, signed, and sealed with a red wax seal. The pictures are signed and mounted on black backing, with a little blurb on the back about the inspiration for the image. We write a letter to our patrons, seal everything up, and send it off! Oh, and we video ourselves doing to prompt pulls from one of my many silly hats, and brainstorming briefly about what to create. Our eventual plan is to pick our favorites and make a book out of them, after a full year of this.

We've got a backlog in case either of us has a case of Real Life come up and bite us (and they were all produced on the same fortnightly schedule!), but we've also practiced this process and have it down pretty well now, so we're not predicting a lot of problems. Our very first official prompt pull will be next week, September 1st. I'm super excited about this, and also nervous in a sort of silly way. No matter what, though, we're going to have a lot of fun doing this project. I hope a few of you will follow along and join in the fun.

In silence

I have a belly full of stones that are words
heavy down in my gut
two dozen or more “I’m sorry” pebbles
a broken fragment of “that could have been me”
a handful of weighty “yes” and “no” and “I am too”
jostled next to jagged edges of “I wish”
though acid and time inside
have removed the rest
(but I remember that falling star).

It isn’t a curse -
if I were cursed I’d speak
and no one would listen,
or the stones would come out
click clacking past my teeth, maybe chipping a few
wet and raw into the world
whenever I spoke.

I know how curses work.
Curses change words
to jewels, to frogs, or maybe insects
like butterflies lifting into the air on lettered wings
or crickets hop-scurrying across the carpet
hoping to get away.
No, I’m not cursed. I just swallow my words
unable to find any that matter
that change things
that can move
unable to express depth with shallow syllables
and so, down in the deep they harden.

Morbidly, I imagine that when I die
they will cut me open
and find a quarry
a love letter to the world
in simple sedimentary sentiments,
igneous ideas cooled now in the darkness inside,
and metamorphic thoughts pressed together over time
into the hardened hollow places
I carry in the softness of self.
Until then
the words sit in my stomach
waiting to see light
and I cannot speak
even when I want to
even when I want to say
(something, anything, what what what)
so very, very much.

I’m not dead, though
and I do not intend to lie down
anytime soon
so, in lieu of inadequate mineral conversation
which I can’t quite manage to produce
I move my hands
making something soft
in bright and shifting colors
a rainbow to wrap around the shoulders of a friend
a gift
and I remind myself
when the world seems cruel and dangerous
that I am armored inside with rock
that change can be geologic and slow
but it happens
inevitable
inexorable
unavoidable
and that there are many, many ways to speak


What you can do to help in the wake of the Orlando shooting

I recently (as in, a couple of days ago, in a quick rush of a few hours) read The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer. It's a good, solid read. It's kind of hard to classify this book (which is part of why I like it) but it is, in large part, a memoir. And Amanda Palmer is pretty good at pouring herself out onto the page, one way and another. It's also sort-of kind-of a book about fundraising, about the arts, about figuring out how to make art your 'job' in a capitalist society, and so on and so forth.

I have some complicated feelings about it.

It's no secret that I suck at asking for help, while simultaneously really enjoying and sincerely hoping to be able to help others. I was kind of hoping this book would help me figure out how to make those two feelings line up a little better, would help me untangle some of my contradictory feelings about 'help' in general. It, uh, didn't really do that. Though it did get me thinking.

It was an interesting read, and I could definitely tell by the end of the book that the author had come a long way down that road herself - but she started out in a position of generally being more than able and willing to ask for help, and it was only with some of the really big stuff that she struggled. The day-to-day? She had that down, and expressed a bit of confusion and befuddlement that anyone could feel ashamed or conflicted or weird about asking for, say, a tampon when surprised by their period. Yeah. Honey. That's a lot of people right there. For stuff that I feel I should have handled on my own? I generally don't ask for help if I can get away with it. I don't want to put anyone out.

And I feel like there are these... I don't know, kind of like lines in my head? They delineate Asking Too Much and Asking Not Enough and Asking Just The Right Amount. Part of that is just plain being judgey, I'm sure. But you have to make judgement calls, you have to decide when and how much and how often to give, or you'll give too much away.

Confession: I... had a problem with charities in college. And also not charities, but just people who asked for help in any kind of way, but particularly financial. It's not like I had money to spare, but, hey, I reasoned with myself, I probably had more to spare than they did. I had more than many people. And so I repeatedly put myself into tight spots and got stressed because I wasn't able to say "I'm sorry - I can't right now, and probably shouldn't later". To this day, walking past folks on the street asking for money - especially if they're persistent or follow me - is incredibly hard. I want to just empty my damn wallet. Another good reason not to carry cash. I just want to help. I always want to help. Even when I know I can't.

And I feel like in a lot of ways we're living in the age of the ask. Patreon and Kickstarter and Gofundme and YouCaring and IndieGoGo and and and... and sorting through those is hard. It's really hard. All of it is hard.

And what that really comes down to is this: our relationship to money is difficult. And that's not going to go away anytime soon.

There's shame tied up in there, and guilt, and obligation, and all kinds of other heavy emotions. We all have different notions about what's Appropriate and Right when it comes to money - it's Appropriate and Right to make money, of course. And it's Appropriate and Right to share some of that - but only some, and our ideas about when and how and under what circumstances are all a little different.

Some small group of people might come to consensus that "no, that's tacky" or "that wasn't right" or "that's begging" or "that's fine so long as..." (fill in the blank with any number of different pre and post conditionals - as long as the money is all spent on these specific things, as long as there was literally NO other way to get by, as long as the person asking feels appropriately lousy about having to ask, on and on). But even with those things, you'd be hard pressed to get consensus on Right and Appropriate among a wide audience.

And I'm sure what most folks do is just muddle through, you know? This is an intuitive things for many people - you know what sets off your "nuh-uh" radar, what activates your "oh damn, I should put something into that hat" spidey sense. And we all know - and perhaps fear? maybe the right word there is 'anticipate' - at some level, being in a position to ask ourselves. "That could be me." Oh hell yes it could. That could be me. For some people that sense ends up translated into "I Would Never". For others it comes down to "I am my brother's keeper, in all things". It goes different ways, humans being different and all.

I think that's one of the biggest motivators for many who do give. They see themselves in the asker, or some facet of their situation. And that applies not just to asking out of desperation, or deep-down need, but asking out of want. Creators on patreon are trying to recreate the artist-patron relationship, trying to decouple funding from a specific product and delivery timeline (though there is still some of that). Wouldn't it be great to be that artist? To be that writer? To be that creator? And hey, what they make is cool. That could be me.

But only if we ask.

So, circling back to the book, one of the things touched in there over and over again is this - if you're going to ask, you have to believe. You have to believe you deserve to get whatever it is you're asking for. Whether that's help moving a couch or $5 / month to keep doing some thing you do, or $500k to build some specific large thing. You have to believe you deserve that help. It's not about the culture, about society, about the stuff you're asking for even - it's internal.

And I see her point, I do. Fundraisers presented with shuffling apologies and downcast eyes and long lead-ins about how it really sucks that this is necessary but, well, you see... those are everywhere. And it ties back to that shame. If only to stand out from the crowd, it's a good idea to leave that behind, to try to present not with pride but with at least a lack of shame. (Ah, but how hard is it to be truly 'shameless'!)

But when you're asking for help with things other people will claim you 'should' be able to handle on your own? How do you get over that? Is it really a matter of deserve at that point, a matter of stance and attitude? Does it help when you're fundraising for personal life stuff to present it as "I am completely awesome and I'd like to keep being completely awesome, so please help me keep on keeping on and paying my bills"? I dunno. I suspect that kind of position could (maybe even inevitably would) backfire.

Certainly, a deep down belief in the awesomeness of your offerings is necessary if you're asking for help with them - if you're promising to deliver a thing, or continue making stuff, or whatever. Help with a project? Sure. But when the project is surviving the daily grind of capitalism that pushes us all down (though certainly some of us more than others), it gets a lot trickier, and that's a lot of what's out there these days. And asking for help with those things? It's still fucking hard. And often, for so many, so fucking necessary.

So, you know, no big surprise - Amanda Palmer's book is written from a particular perspective and from a particular kind of privilege. Which is fine. Like I said, it's mostly memoir, and pretty well written memoir at that. But the premise that if you just ask people will give you the world, well... not quite. Not quite.

I'm going to keep poking at my tangled feelings regarding money, regarding asking, regarding help. I will say this - sometimes, the ask is not the hardest part. Receiving the help itself is. Asking for help is a huge hurdle, but part of why is that feeling of shame, that sense of obligation and debt, the resultant feelings of inadequacy and failure. Having to ask means you failed to do it all yourself, after all (which hey, we none of us really do it alone, but I know how powerful the urge is to try) and accepting the help after there's been an ask (maybe not even by you! Maybe by a friend, or just a stranger who noticed the need somehow) is having to face the reality of that failure.

There are some self-descriptor words which we value pretty highly and view positively - "independent" is one of them. And finding it hard to ask for and harder to accept help is a huge amount of the cultural baggage tied to that word. I don't really feel it for myself - but I have aspired to it, in many ways.

The autumnal equinox is coming up - I like looking at the shifting of the seasons as a good time to try to shift things inside myself. The world is moving, and change is a constant. It might be a good time to try to figure out if some of these self-descriptors are really worth keeping around. I've already gotten rid of "selfless" (without self? Really? Yeah, no thanks. "Selfish" I'm still not embracing, but I'd be happier to be called that than selfless). Perhaps it's time to shed my nascent aspirations toward "independent" too.

I'm not. None of us are. I love my people, scattered and distant and close and silly and serious and the whole lot of them. I love helping them, when and how I can. And maybe it's time to deep-down acknowledge that the ties I've been building for years with people go both ways. Independent? Not so much. The opposite of that isn't dependent. It's loved

I feel like talking about my history with games a little bit today. This will be a ramble. You have been warned.

The very first video game that I played by myself was Moraff's Revenge. I was 11 when Moraff's Revenge came out - my dad belonged to a Shareware of the Month club. He got floppies in the mail, and it was a thing I looked forward to. Most of the programs were nothing I was interested in - there was a typing program I found kind of fun, but mostly I just watched my dad tool around on the computer and used it to write my school papers (I was sort of insanely proud of being able to type my book reports and print them out).

We didn't have any game console systems. No sega or nintendo. No atari. I didn't have any friends who had those things - or at least who let me play on them. We also didn't have cable tv, because we lived way the hell out in the country with my grandparents. When I wanted to play a game, I had board games available. But, again, I was an only child living pretty far out in cow-pasture country. My grandparents were not interested in playing games - they had Adult Stuff to do. My dad would play uno or chess or connect four with me some nights, when he wasn't too tired. Usually, though, I played by myself. I became the queen of parcheesi, happily inventing different people to be the other colors and ascribing different stakes and motivations for the invisible gamers I was playing with. Usually, they were just Me from different timelines or universes.

That's not to say I didn't play some computer games. There were a few educational computer games we played at school - there was the ubiquitous Oregon Trail, and a trivia game which had a Great Awk. Camen Sandiego. That kind of thing. I think there was pong installed somewhere. And I treated the shareware typing program as a game, which goes some way towards explaining my 100+ wpm typing rate. Heh.

And then there was Moraff's Revenge.

Moraff's Revenge is a very basic dungeon crawler. It came out in 1988, so the graphics are very minimal. On one side of the screen is a top-down view map which gets filled in as you explore. On the other side is a 4-panel 3-d kinda view of the dungeon as you explore. As you walk down the dark corridors, you'll see monsters in the distance, and have the choice to run away or go forward and engage them. You could also spot things like doors at a short distance, if I'm remembering correctly.

I loved that game so much.

The computer was in the formal dining room, a room we never, ever used. Not even once. There was this huge big heavy rectangular wooden dining table, and two different cabinets filled with fancy china, and my grandmother always had some sort of big fake-flower arrangement on the table. The chairs were big and heavy. We always ate at the round table in the living room, comfortable and close and informal. The computer desk was shoved up into a corner of the room, up by the door into the kitchen. The printer was down below the desk, a snaky mess of cables. My dad had brought home a small cheap black office chair, and I spent way too much time spinning on it. I called it the Twirly Chair. When my dad was on the computer, I'd pull up one of the formal dining chairs and sit beside him, and my grandmother would stick her head in from the kitchen and frown at us both because she didn't like things to be moved around in that room. My dad showed me Moraff's Revenge the day he got it in the mail and I was literally on the edge of my seat as he rolled a character and got started in the dungeon. He looked over his shoulder at me and laughed a little and said "you want to play?"

Oh hell yes, I wanted to play.

Your choices were warrior or wizard. I chose warrior, and started my career bashing in monster brains and collecting copper coins and turning them into Jewel Pieces and storing them in the bank and gaining experience by sleeping at the inn. And in the back of my head I was already thinking about how this world worked, about an economy based on jewels when all the foes you encountered carried metal coins which weighed you down (gosh, the cheaper ones were heavier) and this dungeon which allegedly contained the fountain of youth. I thought about 'levels' and getting stronger by bashing in monsters, about running a shop or an inn (there were three to choose from - and the fleabag motel had a high likelihood of making you sick and/or getting your stuff stolen). Where did the potions and pills found in the dungeon come from? Who made the armor and weapons? What motivated the monsters to attack me?

I had all these questions, and I loved the game. I was devoted to this game. I pictured dungeon maps in my mind when I went to bed at night. I was helping out at my dad's office some days after school and on weekends, and he let me install it on the office computers too, so I had multiple games to play.

And I realized pretty early on that one of the things I was so fond of was that my character was never pictured.

The representation of the player on the slowly-revealed map is an arrow, pointing the direction you're facing. The views as you're walking through the corridors of the dark dungeon are sort of what your character is seeing. Your character is never in view.

It was great. I could imagine my character to be any damn thing I wanted. I imagined some days that I was one of the pixelated hobgoblins such as those I encountered in the dungeon. I could be female, male, a green slime that could shape itself such that wearing armor and wielding weapons made sense. I could be anything and any shape. There was always armor that fit me, if I had the JP to spend.

For a young lady becoming increasingly annoyed with and aware of her own shape and form this was amazing. I could be an adventurer. That could be me, leveling up. Making poor choices about where to spend the night. Getting new goodies and going deeper into the dungeon. There was nothing that said it couldn't be me. It could be me.

My dad subscribed to the shareware thing for a long time. There were other games that came across that little desk in the formal dining room. Commander Keen. Tetris. Once my dad realized how much I liked playing games on the computer (and how much he enjoyed it too) he started scouring the sales racks at stores and came home with Ultima games. Wing Commander. SimCity. Populous.

I started figuring out what I liked and what I didn't in games. And as much as I enjoyed a strong story element - good writing, good characters - what I found really engrossing were games where I could make up my own story. Where I could decide where I, the player, fit into the narrative. What was my character? What was I doing? Why was I doing it? And that was always easiest when there really wasn't much of anything representing the player on the screen. The Sim games and Populous were favorites - it was great fun to be able to play around with wide concepts, to build things. But Moraff's Revenge remained my favorite game, despite all its problems. Despite the fact that really it was quite tedious. Despite the fact that there wasn't much variety in monsters, equipment, dungeon levels, any of it. Despite the fact that 'winning' the game and finding the fabled Fountain of Youth at the bottom of the dungeon just gave you the chance to start it all over again with a slightly more powerful character.

I didn't care. I kept playing. Because it was minimal and allowed me to tell the widest range of stories. Because there was nothing keeping me from seeing 'me' in some version on the screen. Because dungeon crawling is damned fun, and it was fun to imagine ways it could be more fun, to mentally stretch and say "this game would be better with" and play with game design concepts. Its failings were its strengths and kept me engaged for years, sneaking out of my bedroom at the back of the house to tiptoe into the formal dining room and turn on the computer late at night, muting all the sound and playing when I couldn't sleep. Braving my grandmother's tsks and frowns to sit down in the Twirly Chair at the computer after I finished my homework (or at least after I said I did) to play just a few more levels before dinner.

I was in highschool, a senior, before I ever played a game on a gaming console. It was space invaders, and I blew away my boyfriend's score in one sitting. He was more than a little surprised, since I'd told him I'd never played any games on an atari before (I think it was an atari. Please don't revoke my geek license if I've got it wrong. I only played it, like, twice). I kept playing the things I liked, and had resigned myself to nobody having heard of Moraff's Revenge, or enjoying it if they had heard of it. I figured it was just one of those things. I played more games. I branched out a bit.

And then, a few years later, I discovered rogue-likes. This was everything I'd been looking for in Moraff's Revenge, and more. My character was represented with an @, and I loved it. When Todd showed me nethack for the first time, he was a little apologetic about that, saying that the graphics weren't fancy but... and I just nodded. I got it. No problem. And it was a dungeon crawl. Yes indeed. I've played a lot of roguelikes - a LOT of roguelikes - over the years, and found something to like and love in almost every one of them. Even the ones with fancy tile sets or graphics that put a representation of the player on the screen that's a little more sophisticated than an @. But what drew me in was being able to imagine whatever I damned well pleased. A D was the biggest, baddest, most intimidating red dragon I could imagine. And hey, y'all, my imagination is pretty great. I didn't have to rely on a graphic artist laying out, pixel by pixel, just what should intimidate me. I could see the monsters however I pleased, my character could be a chubby sorceress flinging fireballs (why don't we ever see any overweight mages? They're all skinny, I swear. At least the ladies are - I've seen a portly mage dude or two, complete with bushy beard over a gut, but I guess if you're a femme magic user you've just GOT to swank, for some damn reason) or a turtle person slowly trundling along in heavy armor or a bird-headed spirit waving around a staff. Anything I pleased.

I've seen a lot of conversations about representation in video games these days - well, in all kinds of media, honestly, but video games is getting the most pushback, from what I can see. I think about these games, the ones that showed me the world of possibilities inherent in games on a screen. I think about the text adventure games I played, the numerous dungeon crawlers (Mordor: Depths of Dejenol, I'm looking at you. Sooooo many hours sunk in that little game), the RPGs. The long conversations about story structure, about game design, about inventory management and what do levels really mean and the power-balance of magic versus brute force.

And I remember Moraff's Revenge, and how thrilled I was as an 11 year old girl to be given the freedom to imagine anything I pleased. Representation matters. What those games did for me - what nethack and other old-school roguelikes and many other games still do - is give me a chance to see myself in the game world, if I want to. I didn't have to rely on a programmer to think of me, to get it right. I didn't want to play 'games for girls' inasmuch as there were any available back then. I didn't want things branded pink, and I found bikini armor and half-naked ladies kind of laughable and sad in these worlds where violence was the answer to every problem and just about everything you met was going to try to impale you with something sharp and pointy. I don't mind level grinding. I really like dark dungeons. And if I ever make a game (and I've been talking with a good friend about doing just that thing) I hope I can make something that has even half the impact that Moraff's Revenge had on me. Something that gives people room to think, to imagine. To see themselves. To see a world where they could be the one who saves the day, or even just the one who completes the quest and levels up. It could be you. Why not?

I've been playing the Atelier series for a while now. These are, undeniably, my games. Todd got Atelier Rorona for me for one of my birthdays, and it's been a tradition ever since to grab up the latest game in the series when it becomes available. They're cute, casual, fun little games. They almost universally have a female protagonist, a complex crafting/alchemy system, turn-based battles, and a slowly-widening set of areas to explore and play in.

I think Atelier Shallie, the latest game in the series, is an interesting experiment. It's kind of a frustrating and failed one, but interesting, and in a better written game it could work really well. It takes the idea of control of a character and turns it on its side a little bit. You're playing this alchemist, Shallie, and so of course you have to complete goals and do tasks and blah blah, as Shallie. Nothing radical there. You have the choice of two Shallies to play - Shallistera, or Shallotte. I chose Shallistera.

There's no time limit, which is a radical departure from previous games in the series, and in theory there's no pressure to do anything in particular. But the truth of the matter is that when you're doing the 'main' parts of the story, that's all you can do. Shallie has a happiness meter, and it drops drastically as soon as you deviate from the proscribed course of action, and the lower her happiness the less able she is to do things at all. She's slower, she's less powerful, and the play experience is less fun. All other goals and quests are hidden during the main plot, so you can't see if you're making any progress, or if the things you're doing 'count' towards any of your goals.

And the brilliant thing is they've done all this by putting it inside Shallie's head. There's this little representation of her in profile, and when she has free time, her face will flip to the left, and multiple sections open up in the "life goals" menu. All of a sudden, you can explore lots of different ways to progress and lots of different goals - there are interpersonal goals, alchemy goals, goals for getting tougher in battle. In the middle are her 'main' goals, which are, in theory, most of what she's thinking about, but at this point they'll be vague: "get stronger", "go exploring". Things like that. And as you complete the things she's thinking about there, her head will slowly fill up with color. When it's full, she flips back and wants you to progress with the plot again.

It's ingenious, because hey, you want the experience of controlling another person, a human being with her own desires and goals and objectives? Well, ok. That means sometimes she's not going to want to do the things you want to do. Her goals don't necessarily really line up well with the play experience of a game, of a player controlling her. It forces you to care about what she cares about.

And it fails. It fails hard. Because they failed to make Shallie a character I actually care about. Like almost all the alchemists in the dusk portion of the series, she's shallow, young, naive, and stupid. Oh, SO stupid. I find it incredibly frustrating to play dumb characters who have no real dreams, motives, or desires.

Most of the time when it's time for the plot to progress the 'thought' in her head that blocks out all the other things I'm actually interested in doing is "I'm tired. Let's go back to the workshop and rest." Really? There's this whole world to explore, and all these things you cared about just a second ago, before I smashed that last barrel or killed that last monster and completed the objective which tipped you over the edge, and now all you've got is "I'm tired"?

If the role she was playing made more sense, or the world itself was deeper and more interesting, or the story writing better, then it would be a brilliant system, because it would jolt me out of my player's position and into the position of the character I'm allegedly interested in. I can see how it could work. It just... doesn't.

Add on top of that other minor frustrations and the game ends up being a very disappointing experience. When you complete an objective, or do some portion of it that nudges up the progress bar, it displays on the screen to let you know what's going on. Nice? Not actually. It displays the prerequisite for the task you just completed, and not the task itself! Your task is to gather three times in this region and you just completed it? Oh well. You get to know that what led to that was "Smash 20 barrels". That's a minor quibble that becomes a major one when so much of the focus is on these tasks, and it makes no sense in the context of it being Shallie's mind-state. Why on earth should she be thinking about Y, which led her to want to do X when she just managed to finish doing X? It comes across as random and it's just a really odd design choice.

The game setting itself is potentially interesting - there's this long, slow apocalypse happening, a world-swallowing drought that could be really interesting. And the game touches on it, but after playing the other two games in the series, I admit that I have no faith in the world-building. I like the slow, inevitable feel to it all, but I know better than to expect it to make a ton of sense, or to expect a complex ecological disaster to be handled well.

Shallistera herself is a sort of diplomat, chief-to-be of a small village threatened by the Dusk (the in-game name for this creeping desert doom), and she's come to a larger city seeking aid. And is anything interesting done with her status as a foreigner, a diplomat, and effective leader in training? No. Not at all. Not even a little bit. The city she travels to is ruled by a corporation, which seems to basically just be one rich guy. There's no mention of what the corporation does, who it employs, or how it's the governing body of this city. The actual engaged leadership of the city which Shallie mostly deals with is the "Union", lead by a younger more charismatic fellow who hands out all your quests. And to whom "Central" has sent a bureaucrat, Solle, to deal with. Solle "does reports" and "conducts investigations." Or rather, he tells other people to. The actual structure of the government of any of these places is completely nonsensical, and Shallie's status as a representative of a foreign power - even a minor one - is just completely overlooked. Solle hands out "assignments" to her and tells her she'll have to wait for Central to do things. The Corporation and Union alike basically order her around and commandeer her ship and resources. She doesn't care. It makes no sense.

Shallotte, the other playable character, comes from a poor family and is scraping by to make ends meet. I haven't played her story yet, but I have even less confidence in the game writers to tackle class issues than I do for them to tackle politics. I expect they'll just avoid it with some hand-waving, much the way they have with the political and sociological implications of Shallistera's position.

One of the things I've always liked about the Atelier series is that it tends to focus on the smaller, more personal stories. You're encouraged to care about your relationships with the NPCs - there are in-game rewards to be had for maintaining higher 'friendship levels', though the different games in the series have handled this in different ways. The main plotlines are almost always about small, personal things. Atelier Rorona was about an apprentice alchemist who wanted to get good enough at her craft to run her own shop, and had to navigate the bureaucracy of a city to prove she could do this. Atelier Totori, my favorite game in the series, was about a girl whose mother was an adventurer (just, you know, a valid career choice in that world) and disappeared. Totori wanted to become strong enough to be an adventurer herself, to follow in her mother's footsteps literally and figuratively, and figure out what had happened to her. The fact that she had alchemical talent was a thing she used to further that goal.

I fear that Atelier Shallie's plotline is ultimately not going to be about saving Lugion Village (which the voice actors pronounce inconsistently - one of a number of really irritating things about the English voice acting), or about Shallistera gaining enough confidence to be a leader and make hard choices, or even Shallotte overcoming the poverty she's mired in and the low expectations of everyone around her. It's going to be about saving the world. And actually, that's disappointing. There's not enough character here to sustain a character-driven story, and not enough world here for me to want to save it. I've never seen Lugion village and I doubt I ever will. What I have seen are constant references to the Dusk and how it needs to be fixed in order for things to be ok. I'd love to be invested in that, but I'm not. I don't believe an apocalypse can be solved by a girl with a staff and a big cauldron and her adventuring pals.

I will probably keep playing the game, hoping against hope that it will surprise me with some depth, with some twist. Against all odds, the gameplay itself is fun and fairly consistent. The battles are scaled well and there's enough variety in them that I find them fun. The alchemy system is nuanced enough that I actually like making stuff and experimenting with different combinations. I appreciate that I can just go out and gather stuff or fight monsters or make things without having to budget my time, but I do end up perversely hoping against hope that I won't do anything that Shallie cares about, because then I'll be forced to go on with the plot, and the interesting battles and gathering and free time I have will be taken up with inane conversations (she has a terrible habit of just repeating phrases from things people said - I've dubbed her Shallistera the Parrot) and cameo appearances of characters I didn't like from other games in the series. Oh hi, stereotype of the drawling cowboy. Gosh. You... sure do exist. Can I go make some stuff again yet? Nope? Ok. On with it until I can.

I'm still enjoying the things I enjoy in a game like this. I just wish... well, I wish for a lot of things. It would be super great if one of these days they made a game about a character who isn't basically a kid, for instance. Someone discovering a talent for alchemy when they're already an adult and having to make choices about what to do with that would be really interesting. The goal system in Shallie - with a few tweaks - could also be pretty great, if employed in a story that's well-written and for a character I really care about, with any depth of emotion or experience. I'm hoping that next year's Atelier game (because these things come out like clockwork) will incorporate some of the positive changes from Atelier Shallie. I'd really love to love one of these games again. I haven't in a while.

Thing 1: The Best Of Electric Velocipede, featuring my poem "Melt", is debuting right now at World Fantasy Con. Woohoo!

Thing 2: I just signed the contract for my very first pro sale, to Flash Fiction Online! When I have more details, I will share them with you. I am suuuuper thrilled about this!

Today I feel like I crossed some invisible threshold. I have leveled up. I am now a Real Writer, and I feel pretty damn fancy.