So, this is just a quick post to congratulate myself on having got something creative done over the past month or so. Because I feel like I deserve it for the minuscule amount I’ve achieved. Yay me!
Seriously, though – dayjob keeps me pretty tired by having me be on normal office hours instead of my natural sleep pattern, and also takes away time that I could be using creatively (or wasting playing video games, same difference). Dayjob is less demanding in terms of actual work to do right now, so I’m writing this update.
MUSIC
I’ve written a super-filthy punk song called “Slam My Glam”, all about going out and having kinky oral and buttsex at a fetish club. I’ve recorded all the parts, I just need to settle down and create a mix I’m happy with.
I’ve also come up with a little tune in Dorian mode that feels like it would work well as a scene-setting background music or intro for any fantasy-themed TTRPG session/actual-play. Will need to work out an arrangement to bring out the best atmospheric vibes for the purpose – maybe try a few different moods to give options.
STORIES
In January, I bashed out a pervy porn fantasy into a roughly 10k word story of the type you can find on Smashwords if you turn all the filters off and go looking in the Erotica section. And it is indeed my intention to publish via that platform. Having left it a month or so since I finished the first draft, it’s probably coming up to time I should be launching into the editing process to make sure the work is as polished and ready for market as I can make it. Careful proofreading and editing is not always apparent in other ebooks (though still better and more common than on some sources!) so here’s hoping it makes a difference!
I also wrote a little bit more of my second novel, but now seem to have mislaid the memory stick I saved it on. I am sure I have a save in one of my computers too, I don’t think it’s lost, and I am sure the stick has just slipped into a corner somewhere and will turn up soon enough. But having it available as the primary version helped!
VIDEO GAMES
Rather less sexy filth involved in my current video game development project (there’s a couple of sexy/filthy game ideas I have plans for, but those can wait).
It’s based on a pen-and-paper game Papa taught me to play back when I was small. I don’t know if it has a “proper” name that it’s known by more widely, and I don’t remember it ever having a name that we knew it by. It was a maths/geometry type thing about navigating a boat around some islands and back to the starting point. On each turn you could adjust your horizontal speed and your vertical speed by +1/-1, and the aim was to be the fastest around the course without crashing into land or the other boat.
It seemed like something that should be relatively easy to implement as a 2d video game, although of course it turns out to be trickier than I imagined! I’ve got the basic movement mechanic working now, so I just need to figure out a reasonably attractive GUI for inputting the turn by mouse-click instead of using the arrow keys (although I want to keep that option!) and figure out how to make it work as a turn-based “hotseat” multiplayer game. Creating an AI to pilot the other boats in single-player is also on my to-do list but I have less confidence in my ability to do that.
A naval combat variation might also be doable, I’d need to think about how that would work in terms of how to do attacks.
CONCLUSION
So, that’s what I’ve managed to get done in the last month or so. All of it adds up to a lot of unfinished projects, but at least I have clear goals on each one for what the next step is, and I can progress them somewhat at least.
I have seen various calls on Twitter (aka ‘X’) for a week-long global strike to support calls for a permanent ceasefire in the immediate term, and a free Palestine in the future. The aim of this is to deliver as big a hit to global finance, commerce and economics as possible, to draw attention to the weight of opinion around the world in support of Palestinians’ human rights.
A big part of that is making participation in the Global Strike as visible as possible, and that’s why I’m bothering to write a short blog post about what I’m doing for it.
I am currently a temp worker in a precarious job security situation, and no union representation, so I can’t afford to go without a week’s pay – or even take reduced pay – so I won’t be taking part in the work stoppage aspect of the strike, there are other things I can and will do. Besides, the role I perform and the industry my current employer is part of do not seem to me to be very significant in terms of finance and economics in the immediate term.
On the other hand, I can definitely afford to go without spending money for a whole week. Saturday is my usual groceries shopping day, and I have bought the groceries I need for the week ahead, and enough to see me through a whole day longer than usual, so I can do the shop on next Sunday instead.
The organisers ask people to shut down their social media apart from posts and reposts relating to Gaza, Palestine, and the Global Strike. I will mostly be sticking to this, with the biggest exception that I plan to make being that I will repost several Mutual Aid requests through the week. Some of the situations people find themselves in are time-urgent and cannot wait, and if I were currently feeling secure financially I would also make an exception to send money to at least a couple of those requests. Sadly, I am not secure enough to help that way but I will still encourage others to do so.
I will also take a step back from multiplayer online games, for the most part. The companies who produce and host such games rely on their user base to provide an exciting experience and attract further players, and thus revenue, to their servers. My withdrawal might not mean much, but it is still a gesture I can make towards shutting down global commerce.
I don’t know if I will be able emotionally to stay away from sites like YouTube, because the videos often help me make it through a working day.
But the three things: no spending, online or in person; focussing almost entirely on Palestine (and Mutual Aid requests) on Twitter and Bluesky; withdrawing support from MMOs – these I can and will do, and stick to.
I’ll leave you with this, to the tune of Sweet Caroline’s chorus – the song British Xers and Boomers love to sing at sporting events, for some reason:
FREE PALESTINE (doo doo doo)
From the river to the sea (The sea! The sea! The sea!)
I’d be inclined (doo doo doo)
To say that’s the path to peace…
So, another year over, and that I survived. A new one just beginning, bringing who knows what opportunities, challenges and trials.
It seems like it’s time to look back and look ahead, achievements and plans, that sort of thing.
The big thing that has made the past year different, and positive, for me has been that I’ve been in paid employment for the entire calendar year. This has literally never happened before in my life, and it’s meant I’ve had more money for good things and to help out a few of those in need in my social media circles, than ever before. I have bought myself many nice things and been able to afford experiences and events I wouldn’t have been able to get to otherwise.
I’ve continued creating TTRPGs through 2023, even though I had kind of planned to step back from it. I just kept getting ideas that deserved development. I made 3 new games, plus the SRD one of them is based on: The Goldilocks Dice System.
Goldilocks came about through a Twitter discussion about dice mechanics and roll high vs roll low. In Goldilocks, you want to hit the middle two values on the dice you’re rolling. The extremes (1 or maximum value) are total failures and the values in between mid and top/bottom are various levels of “success with complication” or “failure with less cost”. The key thing is, a failure too high should be different from a failure too low, because if you overdo something it generally doesn’t have the same consequence as not doing it enough. Why Goldilocks? Because you want to be not too hot, not too cold, but just right!
The game based on it is Dinosaur Sleuths In Rural England, in which you are undercover dinos but also private detectives based on the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s famous creations, and so on. Your rolls to investigate the horrendous crime that has befallen the little quaint village can be too enthusiastic, too timid, or just right.
I also made a horror movie themed game (Iron Taste Of Blood) using the Iron Core SRD, in which your party find themselves in an isolated region with a mysterious killer hunting them. It plays into classic horror tropes, and requires a certain lack of genre-savvy from the characters to get things started, but relies on the player choices to prioritise between time spent, effort expended, and quality of work – if your attempt to escape depends on your making the thing work, but you have to spend too long fixing it, then the Killer might strike before you’re finished…
The last game I made was another new system, but I haven’t worked out how to make it into a generalised SRD yet. This time, you’re using a wheel of fortune approach, with different skills arranged around the wheel – rolling the dice determines where the spinner lands for each roll, with some results more probable than others (where you place each skill determines which is most likely). The game is Our Deeds Worthy Of Song (Honest!) – or ODWOSH for short. It’s inspired by the card game Braggart, in which players compete to tell the greatest tale of derring-do, but can fall foul of having the truth revealed by another player altering their story to make it less heroic.
In ODWOSH, the players are the whole party, while the GM is more of an interested audience for their tale. The party clearly succeeded and survived whatever feat they’re telling of. The game is all about how epic or farcical the adventure turned out to be, and how will the story be told of the adventurers’ amazing or otherwise deeds? That makes it a very nice zero-peril type of game if that’s your speed, when the worst that can happen to your character is that they had an embarrassing accident on their way to victory.
In 2024 I really do hope to step back from writing and creating TTRPGs. What I want most of all is to get people to play them on livestreams or Actual Plays – with or without my involvement. I’d also like to do a bit more performing or joining in on people’s livestreams and generally being more active as a roleplayer.
Speaking of – In 2023 I was also hugely involved in the Cybertopia Actual Play podcast created by Ben Newbon (writer of the game of that name). My new-age lover of big explosions who may (or may not) have imbibed some mind-expanding substances just prior to being kicked out of the police SWAT team applied cosmic philosophy and forced entry techniques to solving the various problems facing the teams on which they found themselves. There are too many great characters to mention but the whole first season is out now, and it is well worth the listen.
I wasn’t just a performer in Cybertopia in 2023. I also wrote the theme music and intro sting for the podcast. I’ve been getting more into electronica, and combining synth and synthwave styles with more natural instruments. This came together best for the “Finale” version of the theme, which isn’t currently available online. You can listen to the main version, Cybertopia Horizons, on Soundcloud.
Also available on Soundcloud, early in the year I created a synth-y set of tracks exploring the “Axis progression” or “4 chords of pop” by applying the sequence to other scales and modes than the usual major or minor key versions, as an entry in a challenge on one of the discord servers I’m signed up to. “Projections In Multiple Axes” hopefully creates a journey as well as being linked by the same underlying chord relations.
The main thing I did musically was just acquire more instruments and things to help me create the music that I love. From synthesisers to new guitars (an electro-classical guitar, a 3-string cigar box guitar and a fantastic single-coil Squier), and most recently an electric double bass (upright bass). But all of them have expanded my possibilities in recording and hopefully performing. I’m really excited to make more music in 2024, maybe even accepting commissions to write more themes and stings for performers out there to give them unique sonic signatures.
The big reason I want to take a break from TTRPG writing is so I can focus a bit more time on some other areas of creativity. I want to write and publish more stories, and have set myself the goal in 2024 of publishing some utterly filthy porn short stories on Smashwords, alongside my more feminist-themed BDSM relationship drama. I’d also like to finish one or two of my stalled WIPs in the video game creation area, and maybe finally create a 3d game that is actually playable. In 2023 the only game I made was a very short “explore the map” type game for a Game Jam with the theme “Brief Respite”. My game was called Safe For Tonight and features a top-down line-of-sight mechanic executed in a different engine than the previous game with a similar mechanic, that I made back in 2019. (One of the WIPs I’d like to finish uses the same mechanic, so it seemed worth revisiting!)
So there it is.
My 2024 goals:
Write MOAR PORN – although new legislation may make that troublesome as far as artwork is concerned.
(Sorry, not sorry, for two Doctor Who posts in a row)
Before I get into the topic in the title, I just want to take a moment to celebrate the return of Doctor Who, the final reveal of Tennant2Doc and Donna Noble’s return, and a fabulous reworking of the Star Beast comic originally printed in Dr Who Weekly, for the television series. I really (no, REALLY) enjoyed the latest episode, aired on Saturday night.
Apparently, Twitterverse Who fandom is up in arms about a 5 minute skit on Children In Need on Friday night in which the newly-regenerated Doctor crashes into Davros’s laboratory at the moment he reveals the “Mk III Travel Device” to his subordinate. The crime? That Davros is depicted as an able-bodied man, rather than the wheelchair user “half-Dalek” he was portrayed as in Genesis of the Daleks and every other appearance since (with the exception of his Emperor Dalek form in Remembrance of the Daleks, where only his head remains).I want to get one thing cleared up straight away, since there is also some discussion of whether this is “retconning” (retroactively changing continuity), by contradicting Genesis of the Daleks.
And yes, it does pretty much contradict major plot points and backstory established in the original Genesis of the Daleks episode.
On the other hand, “Dimensions in Time” (which included more than one past or present Doctor at the time), and “The Curse of Fatal Death” (which didn’t), were also charity telethon segments,and I don’t think anyone seriously argues either of those were ever canon. This is a joke. A skit. A piece of humorous entertainment. It doesn’t seem like it is intended to be taken seriously, and why should it be?
So, it makes no sense to treat this as canon, and that’s okay, it doesn’t have to be. It can be its own thing. The Dr Who Magazine comics are their own thing too, and even though the current run is being coordinated with the Specials soon to be broadcast, I don’t think most fans would insist they had to be treated as canon either.
So that brings us to the debate over whether it’s okay for Davros to be able-bodied now.
As far as story is concerned, Davros pre-disfigurement was an ordinary able-bodied scientist. The amazing “Second Empire” webcomic completely re-imagines the origins of the Daleks, as well as telling a compelling (and outrageously non-canonical) tale of a great schism across the Dalek ranks. (It’s a fantastic comic, go read the whole lot, after you’ve read this!) In Second Empire, Davros is a relatively young and gifted scientist, and creates the Daleks with more noble intentions.
Equally, as some on Twitter pointed out, we’ve seen Davros absorb some of the Doctor’s regeneration energy and became revitalised. It’s easy enough to imagine a new, fully-healed, body being the eventual consequence of that later. Or of Dalek science reaching the point where they can give him a fully-humanoid body again (though it seems against Dalek principles to do that). Or maybe some other highly-advanced race, not knowing who Davros is, does this feat for him.
What it comes down to is the inclusiveness question. Which is the justification that Russell T Davies has given for the change.
The “disfigurement = evil / evil = disfigurement” trope has been a harmful one, present in literature at least as far back as Shakespeare. And Doctor Who is not immune in other episodes and examples of buying into it. (That said, it also has subverted the trope on many occasions). At the heart of the Davros question is whether his appearance has been a part of the same trope.
I never really viewed it that way. I viewed Davros as this megalomaniac genius who was somehow Joseph Mengele and Stephen hawking rolled into one, with the politics and biological sciences of the former, and the disability tech and physics knowledge of the latter. And crucially, his politics preceded his disfigurement/disability. He was canonically the Kaleds’ lead scientist before being injured in the war, pursuing the same goal of extermination of the enemy.
Crucially, all the other (able-bodied) figures in the episode have similarly fascist views and goals, and are eager followers of Davros in his Dalek project. The idea that being disabled made Davros evil doesn’t seem reflected anywhere in the canon – nor is his disfigurement depicted in any way as being a consequence of his evilness. When the Doctor challenged him, trying to convince him to abandon the creation of the Daleks, on whether he would use a weapon that would wipe out all life in the universe, Davros’s answer was not that of a bitter or vengeful disabled person, but of an absolute megalomaniac. “Yes. Yes, I would. To have that power would be everything.”
(At this point, I feel like I should add that, having watched the clip in question, I feel like this version of Davros is still a depiction of a disabled person. He is clearly hunched and claw-handed, so that some people saw a parallel between this depiction and Despicable Me’s Gru character.)
It’s worth mentioning on the counter argument that canonically, Davros was inspired to create the Daleks in his own image, after his disfigurement. Using the same tech as his wheelchair/life-support/communication device, and pushing the mutations and genetic changes to their ultimate conclusion, he envisaged a race exactly like himself.
But even this, I felt, was subverting the usual tropes around evil and disability. Rather than reject his disability, and his assistive technology, he saw them as part of himself. There is a potential argument that Davros depicts a positive view of disability, at least, in how he relates to his own disability. To make that argument would leave aside all the other aspects of the character, of course, but I mention it to show that Davros is a much deeper and more complex character than the tropes would allow.
The final consideration I bring is that there is a tendency to see villains as intrinsically negative. In order to avoid excluding minority or oppressed groups, the argument seems to go, we can never have a villain who is a member of that group. Only “good” guys can be disabled, BAME, gay, trans.
I’ve heard it said that the measure of feminism’s success is not having a woman to vote for, but being able to vote against a woman (because there’s more than one woman on the ballot). In the same way, I feel like inclusiveness is having myriad depictions of Black people, gay people, trans people, etc. And that includes disabled people. We absolutely do need more positive depictions, both in Doctor Who, and in wider media. One of the big reasons why the “disfigured = evil” trope is such a problem (and also “gay-coded villain”, for example) is that these are so widespread that they can be the only depictions people see.
A story that I would love to see would be a contemporary of Davros whom Davros saved using the same technology that gives Davros his life and mobility. This contemporary, however, instead of embracing Davros’s Nazi-like obsession and megalomaniacal desire to see his creations rule the universe, rebels and attempts to sabotage it, maybe even seeking a peaceful resolution to the war that has all-but annihilated life on Skaro. This character was perhaps buried in the research station along with Davros and the Dalek facility, in some deep, hidden prison cell. Centuries later, the Doctor could turn up and meet this pacifist-Davros-parallel and help them escape. All manner of ways that story could result in climactic tension.
The logic is not so much “good-Davros balances out bad-Davros” but rather to show and to explore the nuances and other possibilities. There are, after all, several other good guy disabled people in fiction, from Ironside and Lincoln Rhyme to Professor “X” Charles Xavier. I’m not saying any of those cancel out the many baddies. I’m just saying that, rather than erase a villain, maybe introduce a heroic figure as well?
All of which is all very well, and might give the impression that I think Davros should remain in his wheelchair.
But there’s one thing that outweighs all the above.
Disabled people are saying this is a positive thing for them. And for all the reasons why I might prefer to see some other approach, I don’t (yet) have lived experience as a disabled person. If they’re saying this undoes harms, and makes things better, then all my theorising means very little.
I’ve already explained how there are so many ways you could make Davros able-bodied and not ruin continuity. Exploring Davros’s relationship to the Daleks after such a change could be extraordinary writing and development. I would love to see that handled with respect and complexity.
And Doctor Who has survived bigger changes than this, after all. So ultimately, why shouldn’t Davros walk?
It’s a hard time to be a LGBTQAI+ activist within the Labour Party these days. During Pride Month I was defending the role of the grassroots and local party branches in determining policy via Conference and other means, but events since have somewhat spiked the guns of such an argument, as we watch the parliamentary leadership of the Party increasingly turning their backs on previously trailed positions.
In particular, in the last week three significant events or utterances from shadow cabinet members (including our Dear Leader) have dismayed and demoralised those of us who think that being trans doesn’t make one a lesser human being.
Wes Streeting offering an apology to Rosie Duffield for “bullying”.
I’ll start with the simplest of these
“Adult Female”?
On the surface, looks like a simple, dictionary-definition statement. But there’s a crucial point about this, and it’s that Starmer used “female” as a noun.
Dictionary definitions typically use three words,in aparticular order: “Adult female human”, which is important because it places “female” as an adjective, describing the human, and distinguishing this human from other humans.
By contrast, anti-trans “gender criticals” (GC) have adopted the fake dictionary definition “Adult human female”. Here, “human” is the adjective. The underlying implication is that women have more in common with hens or sows than they do with men.
But the significance in Kier Starmer’s statement is notto do with the linguistic niceties. It’s simpler and more straightforward than that. He’s echoing the language of the anti-trans groups. It’s dogwhistle territory, to be sure, but we hear it just fine, and it signals that our Dear Leader is accepting of and leaning towards the GC ideology.
It’s just a big old red flag to say that the leadership does not take trans rights, and by extension, LGBTQ+ rights in general, seriously.
Dodds And The New Policy
There have already been a couple of really good responses from within the Labour LGBTQ+ activist community. Pink News writes “Labour ‘placating gender critics’ with latest U-turn”, quoting several activist members. Alex Maguire for What The Trans? spells out the good and the bad in pretty good detail, and offers thoughts on the responses from both sides (GCs are also very unhappy that the policy makes anything even slightly easier for trans people) and the political calculus that seems to have gone into this policy structure.
Maguire goes into way more detail and understanding than I can realistically offer, although I reached similar conclusions about the political calculus and so on. That said, here’s a short summary of the key points.
THE GOOD: While the retreat from self-ID is far from ideal, what we have is a halfway house, in keeping with the “civil partnership” compromise that New Labour pushed through when they realised they couldn’t get full gay marriage through Parliament. The calculation is that this is inching us towards where we want to be, and while it may not be ideal,itis at least progress from what we already have. Once people get used to this idea, then the full deal of self-ID might be closed by a future Parliament, having seen that society did not, after all, collapse with trans people having a slightly easier time getting ID documents that reflect their gender.
THE BAD: Apart from the things omitted entirely (trans access to healthcare, for example), there are several glaring signals that say that Dodds, and the people she’s writing on behalf of to present these ideas, is not on the side of trans people.
We’ll start with the way she characterises the Scottish Parliament’s legislation for self-ID. She says, “Last year, the Scottish National party’s cavalier approach to reforming gender recognition laws seemed to be more about picking a fight with Westminster than bringing about meaningful change.”
The Scottish Parliament’s legislation was the result of a cross-party process to draft the legislation,over a 6 year period,nvolving two public consultations. There was nothing “cavalier” about the process. It passed with massive public and MSP support, the most controversial thing was a GC woman acting in a crazy way by exposing herself (wearing a pubic wig, for some reason) during the debate.
Far from “picking a fight with Westminster”, it was the Tory government alone (a government that currently does NOT enjoy the support of the general public, as every poll shows) that used this to pick a fight with the Scottish Parliament.
This vicious slandering of the SNP and the Scottish Parliament seems to be a deliberate attempt to imply that self-ID is “unreasonable” and even “dangerous”.
But the most significant and frightening aspect of Dodds’s article is less what is included in it, and much more the language in which it is couched.
It’s not great that she starts by suggesting that “Both sides argue – rightly – that they advocate for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.” I won’t talk about the types of people that the GC activists seem to be okay associating with, or what that implies about their real attitude towards “the most vulnerable people”. It is enough to point out that you don’t protect the rights of one vulnerable group by insisting another vulnerable group should be excluded from society.
But “both sides” language is actually the least alarming language choice in the article.
Dodds talks about “predators who might abuse the system”; uses the term “biological women” (as opposed to using the inclusive and value-neutral term “cis women”); she writes that, “Requiring a diagnosis upholds legitimacy of applications and confidence in the system.”
“Predators”. “Biological women”. These are the language and terms pushed over and over by the GC movement. The whole article feels like it was written in their language, and that sends a strong and powerful signal to trans people and our allies (which includes the vast majority of LGBTQ+ community who aren’t trans) that our voices are not going to be acknowledged. The most generous interpretation is that the article was written to persuade GCs that a sliver of trans acceptance might be okay actually. The strongest implication, however, is that the Leadership is broadly accepting of the GC viewpoint and perspective on trans rights. That their concerns have a legitimacy beyond the rights of trans people.
On top of which, we have the language of “legitimacy” and “confidence”. Combined with “predators” and “biological women”, and other nuances of phrasing in the article, there is the underlying insinuation that trans women are fakes, frauds, lying about their gender and their identity. That when we talk about our own lives and our own experiences, what we say is only valid if some cishet with an expensive education agrees with them.
There is no wonder that this article felt like a stab in the back and a kick to the gut for trans people in the Party.
How can we trust a Party that couches its policy in the terms and language of our enemies, the people who want us excluded and eradicated?
Apologising To Rosie Duffield
If ever there were a case of Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender (Darvo) in Labour politics, then Duffield claiming she has been bullied for her beliefs on gender must surely qualify.
Duffield has liked holocaust denial tweets by vicious transphobes, posted transphobic tweets of her own, and had credible claims of abuse towards trans and nonbinary Party members and people working for her. She has a history of blocking those who challenge her on her transphobia and attacking trans people with her replies turned off, so they cannot respond and defend themselves against her viciousness.
For Wes Streeting, who is listed as a patron on LGBT+ Labour’s website, to offer an apology to her for bullying she has supposedly received, is an astonishing act of dismissal to the concerns and feelings of trans people in the Party and beyond.
It’s not surprising from Streeting, though: he’s a key member of pro-Starmer thinktank “Labour Together”, who presented a strategy document suggesting that Labour should pander to transphobic “Disillusioned Suburbans” in order to win the next election.
Conclusions and Going Forwards
With these three statements coming so quickly after each other, is it any wonder that LGBTQ+ people feel betrayed and abandoned by the Labour Party. I went to Pride in June to say that the Pary as a whole should not be judged by the Leadershipalone: that the grassroots were far more pro-trans than Starmer and his coterie were reflecting, and via local activism and feedback through Conference, we play a crucial role in fighting for trans rights.
To be fair, on Twitter there have been statement after statement from organisations such as Labour Students, Scottish Labour, various affiliated Trade Unions, and more, to declare fiercely their support for self-ID and willingness to continue fighting against the Leadership’s position. My CLP has already mandates our delegates to vote in favour of full legal self-ID.
But I have to be realistic: when the leadership group makes this many transphobic dogwhistles and seeks conciliation with a known transphobe (instead of following the rulebook and taking action against transphobia in the Party), it sends a very strong signal that their commitment to trans rights is virtually non-existent. Simplifying the medicalised process under the GRA feels less like a strategic move towards self-ID in the future, and more like throwing a scrap to our community in the hope that will keep us onside.
Two words:
FUCK. THAT.
Nevertheless, I will stay in Labour for the time being. I will vote Labour at the next general election, and I will try to persuade people to do the same.
You may very well ask “why?” Let me explain.
The best hope for Labour not moving farther to the right is to have a rock-solid majority, meaning they do not fear losing their rightwing voter bloc and can act boldly to actually do good things on social justice. That’s one reason.
The other reason is that, if the Tories get wiped out as a credible electoral force, reduced to well below 200 seats total (current predictions range from as low as 89 and as high as 236, with around 140 as the midpoint), that leaves the best opportunity for an alt-left political party to make genuine progress and win seats in 2029, providing a much-needed credible force to the left of Starmer, and encourage movement in the right direction from Labour.
I will therefore fight the 2024 General Election on behalf of Labour. Depending on what comes out of 2023 Conference, and the policies that we fight that election on, I may be looking for a new political home after that. I will be watching developments among the various parties and initiatives (such as Breakthrough Party, “Transform Politics”, etc) to see if they can actually convince me that they are serious about trans rights, and have a proper and credible plan to do more than their predecessors.
June, Pride Month, is nearly over. At the start of the month, I saw a lot of people doing “what does Pride mean to me?” posts and I wanted to join in, but was a bit busy at the time. So I put it off, and eventually decided it would make more sense for me to approach the question at the end of the month, a bit of a retrospective, and a bit of a declaration, all at once.
I started out with high hopes for the month, wanting to bring a bit more optimism, a bit more joy, about being me, being bi, enby, genderfluid, and about queerness in general. I told myself I wasn’t going to retweet negativity and fights with GCs for the whole month. I would focus on the positive stories instead.
Dear sweet Jesus, I was not prepared for the extra violence in word and deed that LGBTQAI+ people would be facing in June, the levels to which the rhetoric not only from hate groups but even from our own government and NGOs, would be ramped up to try to justify Fascist-level persecution of trans people in particular, but in some cases, already extending that to nonbinary, lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
It felt important not to hide from this shit and so, reluctantly, I did share news stories showing new developments, and new violence, directed at us. The hatred isn’t new, but it seems bolder and more obvious than at any time during my adult life, I would say.
I have been badly disheartened as a Labour Party member by the past few months of mealy-mouthed utterances from our Dear Leader, expressing a position apparently walking us back from supporting trans rights, and particularly, from supporting trans youth. The Party has not dealt with transphobia from MPs and members, and the Shadow Cabinet has been woeful on these issues.
Nevertheless, I believe the fight has not yet been lost: Labour’s rank and file are generally much more supportive of trans rights than the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), and even the transphobic “Labour Together” thinktank had to admit that much when they recommended moving towards a “biological definition” of sex, to appeal to the “socially conservative” voters they see as key to the next election. Conference remains the sovereign policy-making body within the Party (however much Starmer wishes otherwise,and tries to pretend and claim it isn’t), and as much as our proposed policy platform’s statements on LGBTQ+ rights are hedged about with caveats and conditions, they still represent better than we can expect from the Tories. Conference motions may yet be tabled that push for more definite and supportive positions.
Ultimately, I fear that if trans folk and our allies abandon Labour now, and leave it to the transphobes, then it’s game over: as things stand, the next government will either be Tory or Labour led. I’m already looking towards 2029 – and I really feel Starmer (and Labour Together) are setting up Labour to lose then. But the landscape is changing, and maybe there will at last be a viable alternative from the alternative-Left, or maybe Starmer and co. will realise their centrist-authoritarian instincts are out of tune with the population (as evidenced by the rapid fall of their vote since the heady highs of just 6 months ago). But these are desperate times to be on the Left, or to be any part of the trans umbrella.
It’s not all been bad, or desperate, or fighting the rearguard action. Eroticon 23 took place in June, and was the perfect chance to be out and proud, with my new fabulous gown. I’ve had some wonderful conversations online with other queer and transpeople. The Gender Census (a survey of “all those who do not identify 100% all of the time with either male or female”) report came out, which is always fascinating reading, not just the statistics, but the analysis and methodology discussion that the author puts in.
Which brings me to what Pride means to me now.
So much of the above dwells on scary, bad shit that’s happening to trans people, and to our basic human rights – and trans people are just the first to be targeted, we can be sure of that.
More than ever, I feel the significance of the adages, “Pride is a protest” and “Stonewall was a riot”. The statement, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” is not a passive one, it’s not simply stating a fct of existence, it is nsisting on our right to exist in the same space and same world as cis, straight, middle-class, “respectable” society – without having to conform to their view of respectability.
It’s the same reason why bikers remove their mufflers, and why metal music has to be loud (as explained in this video by 12Tone):
Pride should be fucking LOUD! It should be intrusive, it should demand attention, it should be openly resisting every force and every pressure to just keep quiet about who we are, what we are, how we behave and how we look. It should be impossible to ignore.
Pride, to me, should absolutely be the ultimate “Up Yours” to heteronormative, cisgendered, vanilla-sexual, allosexual, “normality”.
I refuse to dress ‘cis’ for a Pride event. I aim to put on at least a bit of glam, of drag, of fab-u-lous, a bit of SLUT. I’m still pretty low-key compared to some of the people I see, but that’s by the by.
And you know what? I feel scared making my way to a Pride event, wearing my outfit. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Homophobic and transphobic slurs were everywhere in my surroundings. The threat of violence from peers was everywhere. I still feel the fear of being out and nonconforming, of being bisexual, that instilled in me. I feel the fear and do it anyway, because Pride is also a big FUCK YOU to the fear, to the people who created it in me, the people I still fear today. At least one day in the year when I will absolutely face down that fear and be openly, visibly, audibly, loudly, “Queer, as in ‘fuck you'”.
I want a world where I don’t have to feel that fear, and I’m not going to get that world by pretending I don’t want to wear fabulous gowns, or tight leather or latex bodysuits, or slutty fake-leather miniskirts with nothing else, or get fucked in the arse then spanked on it (or fuck someone else’s arse after spanking them!)
We are not here to be nice. We are not here to comply. We are here, we’re queer, and we’re going to fuck up your comfort zone until you let us have ours.
This is why police have no place at Pride – it’s not so much that All Cops Are Bastards (although they are, and that’s reason enough) – it’s because they are there to defend the rich, cishet, middle-class from people like us. That’s what the police exist for.
Heck, if (as a certain Labour Party leader claims) MPs from a government-in-waiting don’t belong on picket lines, then political parties probably don’t belong at Pride either – although I would argue that an MP who won’t stand on a picket line probably shouldn’t be in the Labour Party anyway. I want politicians to see us as who we are and understand that, as disruptive as this is, it is not going to tear down their lives – it is only establishing the right to ours.
For me, Eroticon 2023 did not begin on Friday night with the Meet & Greet. It didn’t even begin that morning as I caught the bus for the first leg of my journey. It began the Friday before that, with a notebook (one I got from the 2019 Eroticon, I believe – it’s Fetish dot com branded, anyway).
Neurodivergent gotta neurodiverge. In my case, making sure I had planned everything I needed to bring with me for the weekend, and creating a long list of everything I would pack, to be ticked when packed, and (crucially) crossed off when it was packed on Sunday night, ready to bring home again.
I was also ordering a few things from Amazon, in the hope they would arrive in time…
The quickest thing to get here was a body hair clipper, which at least halved the time it takes for me to get the bits of my body I can reach fully smooth. The other thing only arrived on Thursday, and that was for reaching the rest of my body – a back trimmer! My body hair is my most dysphoric part of my appearance, and now I feel powerful and sexy because I can shear myself. So Thursday evening, once everything else was packed and the battery had charged fully, I gave that back trimmer a whirl.
I wanted to be smooth for Saturday night.
The week’s build-up involved making sure I had everything where I wanted them, and could fit a reasonable amount of stuff in. No room for my boobs, but my unenhanced moobs do quite well anyway, so that was a compromise I was comfortable with.
I made sure I had booked a 5-day weekend from work, Thursday through Monday. Ramp up the social energy, guarantee everything gets packed, print and guillotine the business cards and discount cards, also print and crease my “Friendly But Shy / Please Say Hi” and “Introvert Introverting” signs, so when Friday came, and I ticked off the final couple of items on the list, I could be confident I was ready for a Big Adventure in the Capital City.
What I Did On My Holiday
I was ready, I was willing, and I was able – but would I rock’n’roll all night?
Friday Night Meet & Greet
People did say “Hi” in response to the sign, so that bit of autistic social hacking actually worked. Cool! Quite a few gender nonconforming and neurodivergent folk were there (almost as if a sex nerd conference attracts such people…) so plenty of talking about our various experiences of life, and fucking. I gave myself permission to drink alcohol and got ratarsed on 3 half-pints of the only beer that was either a pale ale nor a lager. I handed out several of the discount cards, and thus got to meet lots more people than I would do normally.
Meeting a few familiar faces, and familiar names, was great. GirlontheNet remains an amazing person, and her fond greeting warmed me a lot, because I am never sure how well or positively people will remember me, especially after a 4 year gap – but I guess it helps that we’ve talked a lot online and via blogposts and such. She’s understandably a very popular person, so was being dragged off in different directions for much of the evening, but we did get a quiet moment towards the end, once most people had met and gret already.
Saturday Sessions
So many people have already talked about the difficulty in choosing which presentations in the various streams they would attend on Saturday. The late morning options were particularly hard to choose between. First, Topher Taylor’s “Forgetting Shame and Remembering Your Slutty Self” versus Dee’s “The Importance of Inclusive language Around All Things Sex”, then Blogger On Pole “Keeping content creators safe from platforms’ gaze” versus GotN’s “How To Perform Your Work”.
I wasn’t able to create a quantum superposition of myself, so I had to choose. I deeply regret missing Topher’s session but I chose the inclusive language session because I always want to improve my writing in that regard, if I can. And while GotN’s session I am sure would have been great, I feel confident in being able to perform (read for an audience) my writing (at least, when I’ve written it for that purpose), so the ever-present threat of platform-level censorship is something I thought I should catch up with.
Blake’s opening session on “Why Do We Like This Stuff?” was largely familiar territory for me, although there were plenty of new sources and new framings of theories that filled my sex-nerd theory brain with glee. The most fabulous bit for me was when my game design world for a moment completely overlapped with my sex-nerding world.
As part of their presentation, Blake condensed a key point into the formula, “Attraction + Obstacles = Excitement”. It’s a phrase that is definitely familiar to people working in video games, if not in exactly this wording, then in meaning and outcome. I also recognised it from various permutations of Pick-Up Artist theory (particularly expressed in Clarisse Thorn’s deep investigative dive, “Confessions of a Pick-Up Artist Chaser” – a great book, worth reading!)
Definitely going to think a lot more about that formula, and how to apply it to my games, especially when they have something to do with sex!
The highlight of the whole day was in the afternoon – @letzoespoilyou gave a fabulous talk on monster fucking – the fantasies that revolve around non-human entities with various appendages (tentacles, horns, teeth, claws, extra limbs, and so on) and having hot, filthy sex with them – either willingly or (at least to start with) somewhat reluctantly.
I don’t have a huge amount of notes from the session, but I do remember the absolute delight and lust with which Zoe talked about the subject, and not gonna lie, it’s not like I haven’t had plenty of extreme and extremely wild monster-porn fantasies myself, either being or being victim of. I did, naturally, make a note of all the recommendations (legal to buy and own in the UK) of manga people curious about (or already into) the kink might want to check out:
MADK (content note – guro/gore) Monster & The Beast (tender, romantic style) Merman In My Tub (starts with merman, soon all his friends come round too!) Chainsaw Man (Slightly more mainstream – pacts with demons, giving monster abilities, and people fighting each other) Heart Pounding Excitement At Mononoke Girls Academy (human girl accidentally ends up at a college for monster girls) Psycho Goreman (80s movie and/or Power Rangers style) Helluva Boss (series on Youtube) Monstress (has a cover quote from Neil Gaiman, lots of beautiful character designs, very queer-positive)
I couldn’t choose at all between “Stay Organised Without Burning Out” on the one hand, and “Why Sex History Matters” on the other, and might have been a bit burned out already at that point. SO I went off to the other room to chill.
That was where the rope workshop session was taking place, and. Since I’ve always been much more the top in my relationships, finding someone I trust to truss me up has been hard. So after a bit of humming and ah-ing, I got myself tied up and that was fun!
Me, arms tied together in front of me, harnessed around my back. I’m wearing a facemask and obviously grinning behind it.
Saturday Night Social
I was excited to have an excuse to buy a fabulous and sexy velvet evening gown from MoonMaiden Gothic Clothing, and Eroticon 23 was what I chose to be my excuse.
The catch: the social event wasn’t close to my hotel, but a 20 minute walk away, in the hot evening sunshine across Camden to Kentish Town. I bit the bullet and hitched up my skirt away from the filthy London streets, and boldly sashayed my way to the venue where, at last, I could strike a pose and announce my majestic presence!
I was nervous, but really the only negative reaction I was aware of was, I heard derisive laughter and “Oh, Maaaan!” From behind me as I struggled up the incline. Fuck whoever that was, once I was there, I was feeling sexy and magnificent. Many thanks to everyone there who admired the gown and me in it: you know class when you see it! I was so glad I’d been able to get rid of my body hair to wear the gown, I felt so much more confident than my other times “out”.
Me wearing my gown, it’s claret velvet with black mesh sleeves. I am basking in the glorious sun, arms spread in an angelic pose
Handed out a few more discount cards, spoke with a few more people, although it turns out I missed the opportunity to speak with Blake directly (I learned this when they replied to my tweet about the gown saying I should have said hi! Dammit, that was the job of my “Please Say Hi” sign that I made especially!)
Wondering when I’ll next get to wear the gown now – possibly for some kind of cosplay would be good.
Me reclining in a wicker chair, showing a bit of leg in the slit of the gown’s skirt
Sunday Sessions
The sessions to attend for Sunday were easier to choose, just because there were slightly fewer, and because generally there was a clear relevance to one of them, that I didn’t have for the other.
First, Violet Grey’s “Erotica: Balancing Fantasy And Reality” – breaking down the relationship of characters, audience and fantasy, and the elements of reality that help readers relate. Some of the ideas to consider included what you want to achieve with the story’s destination, where you can find inspiration (just about anywhere, naturally!) and so on. Research is always good (an another source of inspiration!)
The Other Livvy’s session on sex in Hollywood movies, with the history of US movie censorship and how it eroded (thanks to capitalism, baby!). Highlights including how kisses were for a long time used as a substitute for fucking, meaning you got incredibly hot, drawn-out “romantic” kisses, and the role of the femme fatale as first, the woman destroying a good man, and later, as a woman seeking her own desire.
A lot was familiar to me from my own research, but again, there’s always something new to learn and discover (the sequence of Tarzan and Jane’s apparel as censorship evolved, was fascinating!) I had a quick chat with Livvy after the session, about how the vastly different regimes in UK and Europe helped shape (and were shaped by) society there. There’s just way too much to cover in one session!
In the afternoon, Lou Kane ran a session/workshop on “Writing Bodies That Don’t Follow The Rules”, which was a highlight of the whole event for me. Themes included finding dichotomies and then breaking them, such as “real”/”fake”, “external reality”/”internal reality” and so on.
Lou talked about how we could sometimes create something hotter and more inclusive by not naming or explaining every part of the action. The internal reality and external reality could be blurred, or not distinguished at all, and see where that leads. The story, and the experience, are more important.
The session ended with 10 minutes of writing to a prompt. Either “Name no body part more than 5 times”, “Only name one participant’s body parts” or a third one which I’ve forgotten (most people chose the first two). If you want to know how I did, I made a fully fleshed-out version of my story already.
If Lou’s session was a highlight in terms of the inspiration and writing it already produced for me, then GotN’s final session, “Building For Team: How To Grow On Patreon” is the highlight in terms of being a call to action for me to act on right now.
The other really waken-upping thing was GotN’s advice about things to engage your Patrons (and get people to join in). One in particular stands out as a thing I can definitely do, and that is: monthly content poll!
So here’s the commitment I made to myself (and to you lot, if you start giving me money):
I have a long list somewhere of three-theme story prompts – sex story concepts that were thrown together randomly by a word cloud on a site that is now sadly defunct, and that I thought could be the basis of a story. Starting fairly soon, I will pick three of these three-word prompts and let Patrons decide which of them I should have a go at writing that month.
And also, money helps me do all the creative works (story writing, game design, music, etc) that I really wish I didn’t have to do a day job to support!
(I also have a throne.me and if anyone happened to want to buy me f’rex sexy cosplay clothes, or cool creative gear, or whatnot, it’s right there)
Sunday Evening
Well, after two days of not much sleep and way more social activity than I am built for, I was absolutely out of spoons, energy, social battery charges, etc. So I bade everyone a lovely farewell and crashed out in my hotel room until it was time to come home.
And plan my own presentation for next year!
A pouty kiss to the camera, wearing my fabulous gown
Oh yeah – that discount code is SE26L: use it to get your half-price copy of my BDSM relationship novel Not To Choose, before the end of June!
CONTENT NOTE: “Daddydom” relationship/language, Power dynamics, rough sex, bodybuilding.
This story originated in Lou Kane‘s presentation/workshop at Eroticon ’23 on “Writing Bodies That Don’t Follow The Rules”. In a 10 minute writing exercise, the prompt I chose was to write a sex scene where only one person’s body parts are named. Earlier in the day, my freewheeling mind span some random phrase into the idea of a dialogue prompt, “Fuck me so I forget I was ever strong.” I combined the two,and what I wrote in the session starts with that line. Here, I’ve fleshed it out with some build-up to that moment, and a proper conclusion. I added a second element to the challenge: I’m fairly sure I managed not to mention Father’s pronouns throughout!
* * *
Sonny put down the weights, her sweat glistening. There were times like this when it wasn’t enough to strain against the inanimate. She gave a heavy, exaggerated sigh.
“Finished already, son?” Father’s sculpted, oiled, solid muscles eased round, every inch of the turn an exercise in contempt.
“Yeah.”
“Shower, then.”
As close to sulky as Son dared go, “Yes, Father.” Not for these two the cute terms of Daddy or Little One. No pretence of the caring control and sweet compliance. One dominating, stern and aloof, the other subservient to their authority. Father, and Son.
Son’s breath caught. She could feel Father’s weighty steps behind her. She knew better than totry to turn the shower on.
“Tell me what you need.”
Son faced the wall. To turn would be sacrilege. Would risk everything.
“Fuck me so I forget I was ever strong.”
“I’ll make you regret you thought you ever could be strong.”
Despite everything, she shivered. She could feel it: Father’s touch. Father’s force. Father’s breath, and at last, Father’s cock.
Father’s whisper, hoarse and irresistible: “Spread.”
Son did as she was told, reaching back,offering – weakness.
Father’s hands pinning her. Father’s chest, so hot and so close, Sonny barely able to draw breath in anticipation.
And yet, anticipation fell short. Weaker, less vivid, less powerful, than that cock with still more girt, more length, and more force behind it than she had been able to imagine.
Pinned and subsumed. Skewered and enveloped. Unable to dream that hopeless ambition, “resist”, let alone the fantasy of strength. Father devouring hers, over and over again, nothing so gentle as pounding, or drilling: an ongoing series of detonations to quarry from her core any smallest nugget of will, of self, of control. Time after time, it seemed to Son that Father had taken her last shreds, only to be driven to produce yet more shards.
Until, at last, Father came.
Like a skittering, tumbling scree of shattered stone, Sonny slid into a fragile, feeble heap.
“Thank you, Father.” Water gushed over her, and Father’s hands began massaging suds into her scalp.
It’s time once more to share a few icebreaker answers in advance of the Eroticon 2023 convention, which I am delighted to be able to go to again this year!
Tell us 3 things you are most looking forward to at Eroticon 2023
1. Meeting the people I connected with 4 years ago 2. Meeting people I haven’t met before and finding out what cool things they do 3. Showing off my new spooky-sexy gown!!!
Sadly with a change of venue this year for the Friday night meet and greet we won’t be compiling a play list but I know that everyone enjoys that bit so…. What is a song that always has you turning the volume up?
There’s so many – big metalhead so Metallica often do it for me, but Queen are my all-time favourite band. This absolute banger is a great one to go for: Don’t Stop Me Now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgzGwKwLmgM
What’s the first career you dreamed of having as a kid?
Steam train driver!
What does your joy look like today?
Recently I’ve got a lot out of riding my bicycle for exercise reasons, pedalling my way round the quiet exurb streets where I live. But my forever joy is playing my musical instruments, especially the guitars.
What is your favourite musical?
Got to be Rocky Horror Show.
If you were the captain of a pirate ship, what would be the name of your ship?
Given how long I’ve spent on answering this question, the Dreadful Overthinking would seem apposite. But I’m actually going with The Carmine Courtesan.
Complete the sentence:
I need..
To figure out how to meet people and talk to them!
For game designers who are forever GMing their own games, to swap roles for a bit and run each other's games
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Valery North - Writer 