July: No Breeze

Hello sweets and savories.

Sadly, no breeze, so it has been a scorcher.

So, how was our July? We put out finishing touches on the Revolver Chapstick alpha and the Mustaqbal solarpunk setting, which many of you checked out last week.

There has been a lot of art work, some of which will come to you soon as a special XII-themed artbook. There has also been a lot of training, editing, and organizing for a special project. We will tell you all about it when it launches its pilot in a few weeks.

Leaving just a name as a hint: The World Is A Flat Disk.

We have also been going through intense internal reorganizing, trying to eliminate some stress points in our work, reviewing bylaws and trying to maneuver grant and credit lines. Fun (not!) but it is eating a lot of work time in the co-op.

Now, for what has really been eating a lot of our work: writing and research for writing. On three different books.

First, is the sequel to Autumnal Conductor and Wintry Squama, which already has seven chapters when I was supposed to be laying down a few notes—after all, I am still going through Wintry Squama rewrites; this can be a problem. Tentatively named Vernal Gambit, it follows right where Wintry Squama ends, and has us abandon our three protagonists to see the world through our six villains and the much expanded cast. I really should not be talking about this; I cannot even discuss it properly without spoiling Wintry Squama.

Second, is the mecha thing I been working on and off since last December, for which I will prepare a demo package next month, and will talk at length about it. In a nutshell: have you noticed how a lot of trans feminine mecha stuff is all about being unperson’d, being reduced to an object (sexual, weapon on otherwise) is a source of fulfilment to cope with being part of an invincible imperial machine of impression? A point of view that you can only have if you are imperial and a person in the first place (read: “white”). Well, this project is about the opposite: for when you are un-person’d, less than an object, becoming a violence-thing can be a way of getting that personhood that has been denied to you.

Yeah, you can say there has been a theme across our works lately.

The third one is still very early conceptually, but is a queer, plural, trans take on romantasy. A girl has her identity erased and becomes the toy and emissary to a bunch of fey. It is giving a lot of “Flower Painter-lite and focused in you-know-what,” but we hope it develops its own identity over the next months.

Oh, and we also finally got Split/Party free from Substack. We have been having trouble finding a solution that would not leave us with an expensive subscription plan that we are supposed to out-earn our way through—impossible when we just don’t want to paywall content. We found a solution that may kinda work, even if it makes co-authorship a nightmare, but hey, at least it is not Substack. I also think we will move away from just doing TTRPG critique exclusively. I think, at this point, and feeling more confident as writers, if you are reading Split/Party you will read whatever we write about.

Let’s try to get through this summer together!