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Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing

@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social

Artist, TTRPG designer, AnCom, Queer as in fuck you She/Her, Elle/Ael (French), trans woman discord: wendyribstonofpippin https://linktr.ee/curatrix_ribston

2977 Posts918 Follower2008 Folgt
Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social · 19h ago

i wish i could engage with drag as an artform, appreciate its history and its modern iteration, but being a trans woman just makes all of that pretty much impossible as most of the time i'm so fed up with being compared to drag queens that i straight up don't want to hear dick about it

Dr. Kill Everyone (Eclipse)@eclipse.gay · 5d ago

This stream will have a ton of guests, both folks dropping in and out and folks I invited specifically for an hour or so. We've got some really great stuff lined up, including some live actual play. [This arguably means there will be breaks, but, you're not the boss of me 😝]

Dr. Kill Everyone (Eclipse)@eclipse.gay · last wk.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10TH at 10 PM EST, it's Dragon's Dogma II Dark Arisen, all day and all night! Tune in for an entire day of one of my favorite games, and toss me a couple bucks to deal with some end-of-year expenses. There'll be guests, incentives for donations and more! twitch.tv/darlingdemon...

Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social · 6d ago

one thing i appreciate about mechsplo is the ways that it is downstream of the USian war movie about how killing children made US soldier sad. mechsplo very earnestly explores the seductiveness of fascism, of a clarity of purpose and a perfectly aestheticised society.

Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social · 7d ago

i like that we've moved on from calling rape survivors "victims" but the thing is that after ten years i'm done surviving. now i'm living, i'm thriving almost, and the ways that i'm struggling have much less to do with this one instance of sa ilived thru than with, y'know, the global rise of fascism

Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social · last wk.

i actually desperately want a cyberpunk game whose ost is solely composed of Kool & The Gang covers. it'd prove a very important point

Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social · last wk.

it's simple if your cyberpunk game's soundtrack is nothing but understated beep boops and syths that go wheeeeee it is bad. how are you less imaginative than cyberpunk 2077. get some industrial stuff in there. some punk. some metal. some rap. shit throw in some satin shirt RnB too. be distinctive.

Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social · last wk.

it's simple if your cyberpunk game's soundtrack is nothing but understated beep boops and syths that go wheeeeee it is bad. how are you less imaginative than cyberpunk 2077. get some industrial stuff in there. some punk. some metal. some rap. shit throw in some satin shirt RnB too. be distinctive.

Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social · 2w ago

ultimately it comes down to the fact that AAA games used to be all about violence against minorities and now it's slightly less often about that and sometimes you even play a minority. they're not stupid or hypocritical, they're correctly identifying social progress however slim and they hate it.

Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social · 2w ago

it really pisses me off when a lefty video essayist makes a piece about the fasc being mad that X is woke now, and they go "aahahaha, it was allllways wooooke" and then you look at the thing and it really wasn't that woke and there are in fact clear reasons why the fasc liked it then

Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social · 2w ago

it really pisses me off when a lefty video essayist makes a piece about the fasc being mad that X is woke now, and they go "aahahaha, it was allllways wooooke" and then you look at the thing and it really wasn't that woke and there are in fact clear reasons why the fasc liked it then

Wendy, Were-rat Spiderthing@curatrix-ribston.bsky.social · 2w ago

seeing as i've put the final nail in the coffin of my third draft of Doll.House today, sent it to all the very generous folks who've offered to give me their thoughts and proofreadin', i'd like to give you a taste of the other artworks that have influenced me.

White text on a dark green background reading: Touchstones If you wish to immerse yourself in the art that inspired this game, I will list here some of the major influences that went into it. You may either use it for a better grasp on the universe it describes or to figure out what my deal is if you’ve fallen in hopeless unrequited love with the dream of me that haunts your restless nights. Shadowrun (Catalyst Game Labs, Harebrained Schemes): Shadowrun is the gaming franchise I have devoted most of my time to. It will be a cold day in hell before I invest myself in the tabletop ever again. The game is riddled with flaws, but it also is the first tabletop game I’ve ever played at the tender age of 12, and its many flaws stuck with me, angered me, inspired me to do better. I think a lot of people who’ve worked on Shadowrun over the years have used it to make some of the most sincere art about marginalization and capitalism they could make. They have failed spectacularly at it in many ways, but I do think that they tried, that through this trial and error we got such gaming gems as Shadowrun Hong Kong, and that it crawled so that I could walk, maybe even run. Snow Crash (Neil Stephenson): My proper introduction to cyberpunk literature was this book, which I read as a teen. I was fascinated by its aesthetics, especially by the Kourier girl whom I heavily identified with for reasons I could not quite understand at the time, and I had a great time reading it. I can’t touch it these days, I know what awaits me among those pages. There have been countless better Cyberpunk works of art out there, but this one was my first, and if you wish to understand why I had to do what I did, why I wanted to talk about women, bodies, and women’s bodies, and you want to read some decent YA action schlock, this is a safe bet. white text on a green background that reads: Euphoria 2180 (Lilith Lilac Leviathan): On to art that I don’t have to couch my recs for in acknowledgements of its outdatedness, Lilith is my dear friend and peer, but most importantly she is a designer whom I have long held in high esteem and her body of work tends to get to the meat of the human form with a vicious tenderness that I aspire to emulate in my own work. Many of the cyberware and weapons you will see in this book are inspired if not outright lifted either from Euphoria or the conversations she and I have had over the years. Euphoria is a much different game to this one, and I recommend it over mine without reserve if you’re looking for a more involved combat gaming experience.white text on a dark green background that reads: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table (Yuushi Ukai): As of my writing this, Shiboyugi is only about halfway through its first animated season, and I am not an appreciator of light novels, but the six episodes I have seen so far have approached one of the core themes of this game in ways that I have not seen expressed in as evocative and gripping manner anywhere else: the ways misogyny traps women in endless cycles of violence between one another. The term “toxic yuri” tends to be thrown around a lot these days, and a lot of works of art tend to understand this as “girls fighting”, but what I’m interested in with this specific trope is how it describes women who hurt each other because everything around them would punish anything else, especially cooperation, sisterhood, and love. Faggotization and The Extant Gender Ternary (The Sizhen System): This book is written by a communist and a transfeminist. I believe that greater understanding of politics is derived from conversation and rigorous dialogue between various analyses of the world we find ourselves in. That is why, out of all the various pieces of transfeminist literature I could recommend, I will recommend Sizhen’s first and foremost, as it is the one that has been the most thought provoking to me. One can coast on understanding Gender as a spectrum, but this approach can lead to miss the crucial materiality of gender-based oppression, and the Sizhen System has many things to say on this subject in ways that are very accessible. Faggot Games: An Urgent Warning (Darling Demon Eclipse): When I made doll.bod, the first iteration of what I now call Dollverse, I thought I was making deeply transgressive art. Very sexual stuff. I wasn’t. I thought I was because I was a much younger trans woman at the time, who had recently been burned out of most of her social circles by a callout from an abusive ex. I wanted to make sexy stuff, but I was afraid, and self-censored in a huge way even as I was trying to make art that spoke to my desires, my hopes, my dreams and my fears. Eclipse’s essay on the urgency of such art and the ways it is punished made me realise this, and it is thanks to her support and that of the other faggots at You Are Beheld that I can deliver this to you today. WARHOUND (Kallidora Rho): Even if Doll.House does away with some of the direct mind control aspect to focus on the ways that one’s material conditions put their reason to sleep instead, empty spaces have their hooks in me and my work. Few artists have made me feel more seen as a transgender domme than Callie has, and perhaps the references to her work that pepper this book are indulgent, but they’re also essential to the DNA of this game. Though the Patrons I describe in this book are a very different breed of insane weirdo, it never hurts to look at the likes of Handler to ponder the sort of horror you intend to visit upon your subs.