lady of the two rivers

@mythratica

side blog for ttrpg posting including my little world im making called Khemut. play mythras im serious

256 posts

Lotus

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i do think it's important to realise even if you like the books that when white supremacists really like LOTR they aren't mistaken about the work or misguided or foolishly failing to comprehend the text. they are identifying something very much present in the work that aligns with and expresses their beliefs about the world and connecting with it

every elric story follows more or less this basic structure:

FIRST 90%: elric is the coolest guy ever. he does tons of drugs and has lots of epic sex and kills everyone with his sword, which is an awesome black hellblade, and his sweet magic nobody else can do.

LAST 10%: elric is the most pathetic squirming wretched man alive. he loses badly and has to get dragged away crying and whining while women laugh at him for being a dumb freak

so you can see how he formed the template for an entire generation of characters

I honestly can't believe Moorcock had the balls to have beef with Tolkien, Like you just had your two chief characters shout the names of their swords like they're battling Pokémon and you're going to shit on Tolkien?

moorcock's writing is vastly superior and everything he said about tolkien was dead-on so i think he was completely justified

[Elf] - Foxy 2 (PC-98)

new slayyyter album on repeat 🔂

an old map i produced for Khemut. a lot of the stylings and ideas here are outdated, but i think it's still quite stylistically effective. i'm especially proud of the little icons, which are meant to represent local deities.

here's the isolated icons plus the associated script. my favourite as is probably evident from my blog icon is miss Mytra with her lotus-flower.

#khemut #fantasy art #ttrpg

an old map i produced for Khemut. a lot of the stylings and ideas here are outdated, but i think it's still quite stylistically effective. i'm especially proud of the little icons, which are meant to represent local deities.

#khemut #fantasy art #ttrpg

khemut is in part my attempt to construct a matriarchy from reasonably materialist principles that does not rely on a speculative fiction premise fundamentally altering biology or societal formation, and does not simply invert the division of labour between men and women. it's a fairly interesting project for interrogating my own understanding of the formation of gender relations

Many are calling it the matriarchy post of all time.

#khemut is about this

if you're going to make a ttrpg that emulates genre tropes- particularly if it advertises itself as 'creating [genre] stories'- it behooves you to have at least a passing familiarity with the most important entries in the genre

as in: if you make a magical girl ttrpg and you dont have the most influential work in the genre listed in your inspirations im not going to take your work very seriously

so I actually would like to push back against this a little bit.

I think I'd rather a game be specific with its inspirations rather than simply listing off the greats. It's not about giving a broad overview of the genre, it's about pinpointing which snapshot of that genre (and which things outside that genre) your game specifically is taking its influences from.

If you list off inspirations that aren't actually present in your work, that will result in people having a worse understanding of what your game is intended to do.

And, tbh, if I pick up a genre ttrpg and it lists off every notable work in the genre (many of them wildly different to each other) then I'm gonna assume that the design is as unfocussed and generic as the inspo list.

For example, there's a game I put out recently (The Yellow Curtain) that's got elements of magical girl in the mix. So the inspirations page lists the specific shows I was drawing on; revolutionary girl utena and review starlight. Because those shows - with their surrealism, emphasis on performance, structure based around duels, and fun queer readings - are what I made the game about. If I listed, say, card captor sakura then - no matter how beloved ccs is as a magical girl show - i'm doing the reader a disservice, because then they might try to use the game to create a ccs like experience, and that's just not something TYC is equipped to do.

Now, I think there's a sperate issue where people are making ttrpgs about genre fiction where they think that the genre is entirely about the section of that genre thats popular with white nerds in the west. So, you get magical girl games that list sailor moon and madoka magica and nothing else, because that's the entry-level slice of the genre that a basic western nerd knows, right? And this is a problem, particularly when every magical girl ttrpg lists the same two shows and fuck all else.

It's like, if I see a cosmic horror rpg that lists lovecraft and little else as its inspiration, I assume it's some basic shit by somebody with only a surface level knowledge of the genre, mostly filtered through nerd culture. If I see one that only lists Arthur Machen's The White People as its inspiration, I assume that the author is familiar with the wider genre and has chosen this specific deep cut on purpose.

I think the big issue here is all the magical girl ttrpgs are just citing lovecraft and none of them are citing arthur machen or k e wagner. They're all only inspired by The Entry Level Stuff and not by a *specific slice* of the genre.

for what it's worth, i don't see this as pushing back per se- it's probably closer to what i was trying to get at but didn't express perfectly. it's just extra baffling when it comes to magical girls that they aren't even listing lovecraft so to speak; what they omit is so foundational (while still listing some obvious basic stuff) that it serves as sort of an ominous marker of their engagement as a whole, particularly because in many cases they very much seem to be angling at the formula that precure perfected. i will admit i was slightly uncharitable to some of the specific entries listed although i stand by others.

magical girl ttrpgs are just sort of so underdeveloped that i basically never see interesting slices; but i agree that this is generally more ideal than a heaping broad swathe. the work i'm doing for eureka's magical girl supplement ultimately ended up focusing on just a handful of series as core inspiration.

it's just like... i get this is because precure never quite struck it big in the west and other series ended up forming the core of western pop cultural understanding, but it's just so weird to see the moderately influential madoka thought of as the entry level series and not the mammoth yearly seasonal series with massive merchandise pushes that has dominated the space for two decades. it's like if every western mecha ttrpg listed Aldnoah Zero but not Gundam.

anyway- this is all to say that I broadly agree, and if i could go back and remake this post before it got a lot more attention than anticipated i would probably frame it in terms closer to yours.

well then! I'm glad I was firmly agreeing with you. In conclusion:

#basically yeah

Ma'am, my condolences for the magical girl post, classical case of "woman writes a reasonable take on some subject and Tumblr weirdos takes it out of context forever"

you know, some replies to that post aren't even taking it out of context, they're just legitimately arguing that you don't need to have any knowledge about something to write effectively about it. although they are interpreting "watching a few seasons of kids' entertainment" as "in-depth study of esoteric knowledge".

it's worth it though for the people in the notes who i've seen take it as impetus to get more into magical girls, particularly off marchenshoujo's excellent recommendations list. if there's any takeaway from it, i hope it's that there's a rich and varied world to this genre (and many others) that's well worth your time to look into beyond the couple you may have already heard of, whether you plan to create in that space or not.

or maybe i should just give the people what they want and start calling for the mass arrest and re-education of madoka fans

Ma'am, my condolences for the magical girl post, classical case of "woman writes a reasonable take on some subject and Tumblr weirdos takes it out of context forever"

you know, some replies to that post aren't even taking it out of context, they're just legitimately arguing that you don't need to have any knowledge about something to write effectively about it. although they are interpreting "watching a few seasons of kids' entertainment" as "in-depth study of esoteric knowledge".

it's worth it though for the people in the notes who i've seen take it as impetus to get more into magical girls, particularly off marchenshoujo's excellent recommendations list. if there's any takeaway from it, i hope it's that there's a rich and varied world to this genre (and many others) that's well worth your time to look into beyond the couple you may have already heard of, whether you plan to create in that space or not.

if you're going to make a ttrpg that emulates genre tropes- particularly if it advertises itself as 'creating [genre] stories'- it behooves you to have at least a passing familiarity with the most important entries in the genre

as in: if you make a magical girl ttrpg and you dont have the most influential work in the genre listed in your inspirations im not going to take your work very seriously

so I actually would like to push back against this a little bit.

I think I'd rather a game be specific with its inspirations rather than simply listing off the greats. It's not about giving a broad overview of the genre, it's about pinpointing which snapshot of that genre (and which things outside that genre) your game specifically is taking its influences from.

If you list off inspirations that aren't actually present in your work, that will result in people having a worse understanding of what your game is intended to do.

And, tbh, if I pick up a genre ttrpg and it lists off every notable work in the genre (many of them wildly different to each other) then I'm gonna assume that the design is as unfocussed and generic as the inspo list.

For example, there's a game I put out recently (The Yellow Curtain) that's got elements of magical girl in the mix. So the inspirations page lists the specific shows I was drawing on; revolutionary girl utena and review starlight. Because those shows - with their surrealism, emphasis on performance, structure based around duels, and fun queer readings - are what I made the game about. If I listed, say, card captor sakura then - no matter how beloved ccs is as a magical girl show - i'm doing the reader a disservice, because then they might try to use the game to create a ccs like experience, and that's just not something TYC is equipped to do.

Now, I think there's a sperate issue where people are making ttrpgs about genre fiction where they think that the genre is entirely about the section of that genre thats popular with white nerds in the west. So, you get magical girl games that list sailor moon and madoka magica and nothing else, because that's the entry-level slice of the genre that a basic western nerd knows, right? And this is a problem, particularly when every magical girl ttrpg lists the same two shows and fuck all else.

It's like, if I see a cosmic horror rpg that lists lovecraft and little else as its inspiration, I assume it's some basic shit by somebody with only a surface level knowledge of the genre, mostly filtered through nerd culture. If I see one that only lists Arthur Machen's The White People as its inspiration, I assume that the author is familiar with the wider genre and has chosen this specific deep cut on purpose.

I think the big issue here is all the magical girl ttrpgs are just citing lovecraft and none of them are citing arthur machen or k e wagner. They're all only inspired by The Entry Level Stuff and not by a *specific slice* of the genre.

for what it's worth, i don't see this as pushing back per se- it's probably closer to what i was trying to get at but didn't express perfectly. it's just extra baffling when it comes to magical girls that they aren't even listing lovecraft so to speak; what they omit is so foundational (while still listing some obvious basic stuff) that it serves as sort of an ominous marker of their engagement as a whole, particularly because in many cases they very much seem to be angling at the formula that precure perfected. i will admit i was slightly uncharitable to some of the specific entries listed although i stand by others.

magical girl ttrpgs are just sort of so underdeveloped that i basically never see interesting slices; but i agree that this is generally more ideal than a heaping broad swathe. the work i'm doing for eureka's magical girl supplement ultimately ended up focusing on just a handful of series as core inspiration.

it's just like... i get this is because precure never quite struck it big in the west and other series ended up forming the core of western pop cultural understanding, but it's just so weird to see the moderately influential madoka thought of as the entry level series and not the mammoth yearly seasonal series with massive merchandise pushes that has dominated the space for two decades. it's like if every western mecha ttrpg listed Aldnoah Zero but not Gundam.

anyway- this is all to say that I broadly agree, and if i could go back and remake this post before it got a lot more attention than anticipated i would probably frame it in terms closer to yours.

if you're going to make a ttrpg that emulates genre tropes- particularly if it advertises itself as 'creating [genre] stories'- it behooves you to have at least a passing familiarity with the most important entries in the genre

as in: if you make a magical girl ttrpg and you dont have the most influential work in the genre listed in your inspirations im not going to take your work very seriously

thats just the thing: this is about almost every single english language magical girl game i have ever encountered. this is about princess: the hopeful, this is about girl by moonlight, this is about starlight burnout, etc etc etc. just look at these inspiration lists:

there are seven listed inspirations here. of them, two are magical girl shows, in a game purporting to replicate the dynamics of the genre.

nine listed inspirations; two magical girl shows, one magical girl 'deconstruction' fic.

nine inspirations, three magical girl shows. noticing a pattern with which two shows get featured every time?

glitter hearts is the first to finally list a season of precure as an inspiration, so congratulations are i suppose in order. and no madoka, shockingly! anyway, you see the pattern- its very hard to take these games' claims of genre emulation very seriously when the level of engagement with the genre is so shallow. its kind of impossible not to link this with a general contempt amongst a lot of western audiences for magical girls. there's a sort of arrogance at play here, an assumption that there's really nothing to investigate- what's to understand? they're just stupid girl shows (except, of course, madoka magica, which is a Real show). you can do it much better than they can. and of course, you can just fall back on your own favourite (often western) media to fill any gaps. everyone wants what magical girls have, no one wants to watch magical girls!

That's exactly the problem.

A lot of people are wistfully nostalgic about Sailor Moon but allergic to touching any other mahou shoujo... especially works actually geared at young girls.

I totally get disliking PreCure, I don't like it either! Only the very first Futari wa Pretty Cure looks appealing to me. But, it's really not the only magical girl anime out there. You loved 90's Sailor Moon? The same cast went on to make the only shoujo demographic adaptation of Cutey Honey, Cutey Honey Flash! It's even in the same art style as Supers and Stars. (The original Cutey Honey of the 70's, while concieved as a girl's show to sell clothes-changing dolls, wound up only securing a late night time slot and was reworked into more of an ecchi show for older male viewers, although some young girls still enjoyed the stories! Go Nagai would later go on to make another mahou shoujo series, Majokko Tickle, for a shoujo demographic.)

You like idol anime and magical girls? Creamy Mami! Magical idol anime are their own genre too.

You mostly liked the filler expanding on the characters in the 90's? You liked the slice of life scenes best of all? You like bittersweet anime with elements that make you cry your heart out? Full Moon o Sagashite, about a 12 year old with terminal cancer who gets to be older with the help of the reapers tasked with claiming her soul in one year, which she learns in the very first episode... the manga a little more than the anime, as it goes more into depth into their lives and the soul reapers' past lives, but the anime expands on her idol career and has a different ending from the original author, so it feels true to the characters and satisfying.

You want to see a magical girl anime that's inspired by Sailor Moon, but Takeuchi Naoko also greatly enjoyed it and made fanart of it? Wedding Peach!

You want those early cute witch magical girls without any big enermies to face? Just dealing with everyday things? Marvelous Melmo (an orphaned girl gets the ability to change her age with the help of red and blue candies from Heaven given to her by her dead mother's spirit, but she also later learns she can shrink back into an undifferentiated zygote and turn into whatever creature she was thinking of beforehand! It's sex education for girls in the 70's, but with a lot of comedy and heart too), Sally the Witch (the original! .... I did not see this one, but it's inspired by the 60's show Bewitched!), Minky Momo (although, Minky Momo can get heavy sometimes, it's usually fun, about a princess from the land of dreams trying to bring her planet back in orbit because it's drifting away due to humans losing faith in their dreams... it's also the one where Shudo Takeshi, head writer of the Pokemon anime, famously gave a toy company that wanted to pull the plug on the successful anime that just wasn't selling toys, by having the first incarnation of Momo KILLED BY A TRUCK FULL OF TOYS... she revives in the same episode, but it sure was a loud and clear message... second Momo stars in her own season and is reborn as the biological daughter of the earth couple the first Momo brainwashed Chibiusa-style into believing they were her family.)

You like cute and colourful characters and care a lot about the environment and endangered animals? Tokyo Mew Mew! I didn't watch this one yet, but I really do wanna see the reboot and it was super popular back in the day. ^^ All the designs look so cute.

If you want more modern magical girl anime that are on the cute and chill side, but actually geared at girls and it's not just PreCure, Cocotama is full of magic and adventure, while being very cute... I caught some fun episodes with witches and dragons and quests, but also some Hamtaro-esque episodes where it's just the cute mascot characters navigating a much bigger world and interacting with each other, it's fun!

The sadly short Mewkledreamy (just two seasons, Mewkledreamy and Mewkledreamy Mix) from Sanrio is so sweet it'll give you cavities. A sleepy, kinda lazy, but good-hearted girl receives a sentient plush kitty from the land of dreams and must save people's dreams (so, in a way, kind of like Minky Momo!), while an equally adorable bunch of sentient plush kitties try to corrupt people's dreams and make them act more selfishly by exploiting their weaknesses (so, also kind of like Onegai My Melody--which is what Kuromi was created for!) The art is SO cute and this show seems popular with both male and female viewers, it has something for everyone! There is a magical boy too, later on. ;3;

The situation is so dire, I've bumped into multiple unconnected indie tabletop RPGs which purport to genre-blend magical girls with mecha whose authors had genuinely never heard of Magic Knight Rayearth.

deadgenerations

the TTRPG space is just full of people trying to make TTRPGs that emulate genres they dont actually like or respect at all - especially if that genre is Oriental and its been that way for a few years. Magical girls get it the worst but Lancer is an example of something similar with mecha and Wuxia is going through a similar moment.

legendaryvermin

I think in the case of Lancer at least, they aren't really attempting to do Genre Emulation. It's a 4e style wargame trpg that wants to give you MechWarrior meets og Marathon

theinstagrahame

Every time I see this post, something about it grates on me.

I think it starts with the inclusion of Girl by Moonlight as the first example, which I think is a misrepresentation of how those touchstones are presented in the book. "Brink of the Abyss" etc are the playsets within the book, that's not a list of overall touchstones for the entire project. It's "if you are trying to play a game like this, use this playset", which is different from "these are the media I referenced when making the game". A subtle difference, I'll grant, but one that I think makes a difference. GbM doesn't have that overall list, so it is the closest we get, but that's still not interchangeable.

Beyond that, it feels a little gatekeeping to me, but I think framed more academic than usual. I don't really think you need a Complete Historical Education of a Genre to write about it. You just need to be excited and interested enough. You can learn genre conventions without consuming the entire genre.

It feels like the post makes a lot of assumptions about why things were or weren't included. I can't speak to the intents of the designers making these books, but I know that touchstones are usually selective. Half of the time, I feel like I end up including ones that I'm worried people will accuse me of cribbing from if I didn't call them out. The other half, I'm picking my favorites.

And I'm still always learning about media I simply had never heard about until after the book was written.

I'll admit to not knowing the Magical Girl Genre particularly well, but to my mind the prime example is Sailor Moon. It's likely the go-to for most people because that's what was available. Whether it's The Most example of the genre is pretty subjective, and the older shows were much harder to find.

I don't think that a lack of deep, esoteric knowledge hampers my ability to write about a subject. I'm one person with a limited amount of time. I can still write about things that excite and interest me without putting a full college Syllabus in the Appendix. I'll try to research what I can, but the world is a huge place and I've got only so much time. I'll do my best, and hopefully leave room for people to add what they like.

And I'll do it in the same way I can like a band from the '70s without knowing their discography in order off the top of my head.

I agree with you that the original perspective can be gatekeepy, but I feel it's not a problem of "You need to have watched the entirety of the genre to write about it", rather one of "You cannot realistically write about a genre when your only experiences about it are subversions of it or works which hold animosity towards the genre".

Going on with the Magical Girl Genre, I wouldn't even consider writing a game emulating it because the only shows I've watched about it are Madoka, Utena, She-Ra and DoReMi when I was a kid. These are excellent works, but they exist in conversation with previous works that I am woefully unaware of like those presented by previous posters. This does not mean I can't write about the genre, but I should be aware of my own shortcomings within that genre. That should at least make me ponder whether I am equipped to create a work within the genre.

Furthering deadgenerations' point about the subtle orientalism of this problem, this whole conversation changes drastically when you swap "genre" with "culture". We can all agree that orientalism has been a huge problem in the ttrpg hobby and it still is for the most part. It is extremely easy to see that it's not ok for a western person to write about samurai without having previously put at least some degree of effort towards understanding japanese culture. Because otherwise that hypothetical author risks falling in tropes and stereotypes that fail to properly represent the historical period they are trying to write about. Roughly paraphrasing Asians Represent discussion about this kind of behaviour, the problem is not the writing in itself, it is the lack of self-awareness about an author's own lack of knowledge paired with some type of audacity that makes them feel entitled enough to disregard that knowledge in the first place.

Genres, of course, hold less weight to most people than whole cultures. But that doesn't make genres simple or lacking their own structures, communities and expectations. And thus we should approach them at least with a minimum of respect and curiosity before asserting we are equipped enough to participate in it.

(Especially so when that genre is usually related or comes from a cultural minority of some sort as, again, deadgenerations very aptly puts it).

yall love to use "gatekeeping" to mean "having any standards or expectations whatsoever for what art you engage with or spend money on."

theinstagrahame says:

"I'll admit to not knowing the Magical Girl genre particularly well, but to my mind the prime example is Sailor Moon."

Yeah, of course you do. Because you don't know the genre, and you don't know what you're talking about. theinstagrahame makes the comparison, later in the post, about liking a band without being able to list their discography. Buddy, that's not even comparable. These game designers want to make magical girl RPGs without knowing Precure. That's like being a black-and-white filmmaker who makes suspense thrillers and never having watched a Hitchcock movie.

I love how "if you write about a genre you should be familiar enough with it that you can list a dozen or so inspirations that are part of its canon" got turned into "you must know Every Example Ever" because it makes it abundantly clear they were just upset about being told they shouldn't write uninformed stereotype slop, and to make themselves seem reasonable they had to willfully misrepresent the argument.

@mykindofgeeky

i do want to note i personally do not consider madoka magica a "deconstruction" in particular. it's just an entry in the genre with a particular tone and set of themes, some of which are unusual, others of which are actually fairly typical. funnily enough, princess tutu could probably more convincingly be called a "deconstruction" although i still don't really think of it in those terms. the widespread understanding of madoka as a "deconstruction" is in my opinion itself borne out of lack of engagement with the genre

every elric story follows more or less this basic structure:

FIRST 90%: elric is the coolest guy ever. he does tons of drugs and has lots of epic sex and kills everyone with his sword, which is an awesome black hellblade, and his sweet magic nobody else can do.

LAST 10%: elric is the most pathetic squirming wretched man alive. he loses badly and has to get dragged away crying and whining while women laugh at him for being a dumb freak

so you can see how he formed the template for an entire generation of characters

thecollectibles

Art by Jingyu Wen

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