The Dog Also @Inumo@dragon.style

There, now I've got my writing somewhere that *isn't* my Google Drive.

Casey and Jordan: https://inumo.itch.io/casey-and-jordan
The Gender Alignment Chart: https://inumo.itch.io/gender-alignment-chart

Yes, I did turn my trans death SVG into a generic "I don't wanna make a graphic for this" image, sue me. >.>

I don't really wanna call 'em "resolutions" 'cuz obviously those are... fraught. But, might as well put my plans somewhere I can reference easily. Things I Hope To Do This Year, in no particular order:

-Print & deliver the Dimlit Tarot to folks
-Visit Seattle for flirtfriend reasons
-Publish a goddamn research paper, holy fuck I am 6 years into this PhD and I have one (1) review to my name, and I'm not 1st author & it's not even in my field, this sucks shit
-Make a (complete, if not playtested) TTRPG; probably gonna be the Lancer hack since a lotta folks seemed to like that idea, but there was some interest in the weird narrative-first class planning game too. If things come down to the wire, though, I can always just expand TOOL

I think that's it? I legit can't remember if I had other plans, which probably means I didn't (or at least, none worth seriously trying to follow through on). Like, I think maybe there were some thoughts in my head about making some more EiP music, but honestly I just haven't been in a music mood since that burst of energy in 2020.

Y'all have probably seen that I've been getting into making folk punk. I'm happy to announce that I have, at last, Actually Published Folk Punk. https://estrangedinpublic.bandcamp.com/album/quarantined

Special thanks to @BrookeTBigelow@twitter.com for making the cover art! I hope y'all enjoy this sit.

Hey folks,

At MFF I did a presentation on some casual research I did about cyberpunk derivatives, giving just a brief overview of all the different kinds I could find. If you're curious about what's going on with biopunk, seapunk, voidpunk, whatever, this presentation probably has some answers for you. Enjoy! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nlrc7bmU5Y-mcpqCcAvIg__PlytCdgRD/view?usp=sharing

Fun fact: tongs! Not that great at making eggs, but it can be done!

When you worry that a grind-y creaky noise might be a mouse chewing through something, then you realize it's coming from your upstairs neighbors and you're pretty sure they're just having sex.

All right, made it all the way through 2 of Swords, over halfway done with the minor arcana. Slowly but surely, this friggin' book is getting updated, and then. FINALLY. I can start sending out community copies.

Kinda annoying that I can keep getting Unaccountably Peckish even as I really just don't wanna bother with SMEN. Like, maybe I'll make an alt one day to do SMEN, but for now there's way too much shit to do for me to wanna destroy a character like that.

The Youthful Naturalist: "Hey we're kinda on a tight schedule, we should get going on this whole research thing."

Me: "Hang on I gotta go back to London, take a nap, and figure out how to play chess real good."

On the one hand, I gotta do Dimlit Tarot guidebook work.

On the other hand, I kinda wanna try & write a little cloakkink vignette...

So, as a genre adjacent to capekink, I think we can look at the aesthetic & function of capes & compare them to those cloaks, then derive a genre from there. Starting with aesthetic, capes billowing in the breeze serve one major purpose for comic book art: making a character look more dynamic (especially as they hold their "flying pose"). They can also simplify drawing a character's back & add a major swatch of a character's secondary color(s), but that's less of a defining characteristic. Importantly compared to cloaks, a cape adds this dynamism WITHOUT obstructing a character's form; the character is impressive, but remains open & approachable. By comparison, a cloak serves to obscure a character's form (along with anything they're carrying). When a cloak billows in the breeze, it is significantly more imposing; I can't count the number of times I've unintentionally forced someone out of the way on the sidewalk just because of how much space my cloak visually, if not substantially, occupied. So, where the aesthetic of capekink is built around expressing (or subverting) the glitz and glamor of heroism, the aesthetic of cloakkink should focus more on imposing figures that are readily obscured, or at least provide their own silhouette backing.

Now, functions. Capes are largely decorative; a heavy cape can be used to keep the wind off your back and keep you a bit warmer, but cloaks are the real MVPs of coverage. They range from light cloaks that primarily serve to keep the rain off like ponchos to heavy cloaks that're basically glorified blankets. This is to say nothing of the functional benefits of an obscured form mentioned earlier. More than anything, this indicates a cloakkink world should be colder, with people more inclined towards isolation & secrecy until they're in a warm, safe space.

So, put this together, what do you get? I think we're getting kind of a unifying genre between Vampire: the Masquerade, Blades in the Dark, and the era of comics Watchmen inspired. Politics, subterfuge, betrayal, and deep shadows for all involved. Obviously though, the "gritty grimdark realism" aesthetic is a bit played out, so it needs something a bit more to make it into something that's like, a Thing People Could Be Into (For Sex Reasons). With that in mind, I think cloakkink stories would focus more on found family, taboo secrets shared among trusted friends, and the kind of warmth you can only share when you are skin-to-skin beneath a thick layer of wool on a winter's day. Passion is moderated by the tension of possibly getting betrayed, and betrayal is in turn flavored by the love that made such a betrayal possible. In-fighting fractures a community, but it still closes ranks against the bigger threat because better queer than a cop. If it is a capekink derivative, then it is one that disposes of "heroes with a false veneer" to revel solely in the plainspoken selfishness (or at least selective selflessness) of villains.

Anyways if this inspires anyone to make something lmk. :P

I am, unsurprisingly, trying to figure out what cloakkink means. I'll report back with ideas after lab meeting, probably.

Oh, you're into capekink? That's cool, I'm into cloakkink.

N—

No, it's not just "the same thing, but with hoods."

Friends and foes,

it's cloak weather.

Get a fainting couch.

Start a dramatic moment.

Faint in the wrong direction.

Nerd level: using my lab meeting time to talk about statistics...

... and doing a bunch of fake data generation to demonstrate how it all works. >.>