📝 Since its October 🎃 I’m going to be posting some of my horror fiction on this blog. Watch out, things are about to get spooky!

Since the last time I posted on my blog, the serial project has fallen through. I am repurposing some of it for a new project, a short piece of interactive fiction, the main purpose of which is for me to learn Twine and the secondary purpose of which is to scare the crap out of people. Because its a scary story, and also metafictional. But even that is in the very begining stages of planning and plotting.

However, that doesn’t mean that I’ve sat idle. I compiled a poetry chapbook and submitted a query for it to a publisher. They did not accept it, but having a completed draft of a chapbook is a tremendous accomplisment given how I’ve struggled to write. And its one I can turn back to whenever I get bogged down in depression about how “I never write things anymore.”

Since the chapbook is in fact finished, I am going to turn it into an ebook and sell it on itch.io. I will post a link on here when the book is published. My hope is that I can use funds from the sale of the book to become more financially independent and able to physically transition (hormones aren’t cheap). I’m also opening commissions on my ko-fi page as well as adding some membership and discord benefits. Donate $3 a month (USD) for an exclusive poem every month and $5 to join a ttrpg club (slots are limited on that one).

I know that I haven’t posted a lot, but I sincerely hope you will consider supporting me as work towards making my dream of being a published write a reality. I would really appreciate it.

I’m gonna be late on my first post of my horror serial, Dear Nightmare Journal (also I changed the title to Dear Nightmare Journal) but since its my serial and my own schedule I guess that just means I’ll update every (insert day of the week I post first here).

I guess if I compare my micro blog and my new tumblr then what we can determine is I have a thing for blogs that look like they are printed on paper except not really.

Honestly, “word counts are scary” is 90% of why I always end up starting long form writing projects but never finishing them. 📝

Every time I try to do Camp NaNoWriMo or start a long form project, I get bogged down in my own expectations. I become convinced that the project isn’t good enough, and that leads to anxiety, and that in turn leads to me not writing. And this year has so far not been any different. I haven’t been able to get any work done on my story, and new ideas keep popping up in the meantime which leads me to comparison, and more stalling. So I have to set the project down for the time being and try and find a way to get myself to write on a regular basis without getting bogged down in the “is this good enough” and “god that writing goal seems impossible to hit.”

With that in mind, I’m thinking of doing a “found fiction” experiment on this blog. Tentatively titled My Nightmare Journal, the idea is that the narrator of each story is writing down a cavalcade of nightmares in which they take the role of different people. Meanwhile strange stuff is happening in their waking life which blurs the line between what is real and what isn’t. There would be no set word count or minimum lenght for any of the entries. There would, however, be a goal of one story per week, posted Wednesdays so that people would know when to come back to the blog for a new story. I’ve already gotten some work done on a “prologue,” so the first entry should be up by tomorrow.

I think this will be a fun experiment in online serialization, and a great way to write without the “it must be good enough for publication” thing drgging me down.

New writing project idea: A low-level clerk at the Ministry of Culture reads a poem marked for censure and becomes convinced that the reality she perceives has been fabricated and maintained by the very organization whe works for. 📝

Time travel is a science fiction trope that is overused to the point of cliche and almost impossible to do well, and yet it still remains one of my favorite tropes. When it works, it really works. Some of the greatest science fiction stories ever told are time travel stories. Heck, Doctor Who, the seminal science fiction show of my teenage years, has time travel woven into the main premise. And yet I’ve never written a time travel story. Until now, that is.

Camp NaNoWriMo is just around the corner and intead of finishing an existing project, I’ve come up with a new one. The basic premise is that a transgender anthropomorphic dinosaur (I’m calling them “Anthrosaurs” in universe) travels back in time and tells their younger self that they don’t need to be beholden to their society’s gender roles. The story follows the main character’s personal chronology, from them as a child meeting their future self, to growing into their gender-nonconfirming identity, to becoming an adult time traveler and eventually back where the story started, but from the other direction. Its basically a mobius strip in terms of plot structure and its not a very action-heavy science fiction piece. The idea is to create science fiction with a deeply personal story that mirrors my own discovery of my gender identity.

The setting itself is a bit of wish fulfilment mixed with a slight distaste for the direction of modern science fiction. A lot of modern science fiction is dystopian to the point of nihilism. It depicts a world that is tainted by its over-reliance on technology, but doesn’t really propose any workable alternative. The message seems to be “wow, everything sucks, too bad that a better world is impossible.” And yeah, in real life, especially with the pandemic and the looming threat of Global Warming, things look pretty damn bleak. But that’s exactly why we need fiction and art that counteracts that tendency, that gives us a better future to work towards, or some kind of example of how we could potentially avert disaster. And that’s kind of what I intend to make this setting into, in a roundabout way.

The Anthrosaurs are a species of theropod with a number of human charecteristics, placing this setting firmly into the “furry” subgenre. Their civilization survived the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs by time traveling to the far future, far after humans have abandoned the earth, leaving it ready to be re-terraformed to support paleozoic life. As such, time travel is normal in the society, primarily as a way to bring specimens from the paleozoic era to the future in order to assist with the reclamation effort. Thus the kind of encounter the protagonist has is not out of the ordinary for the society she lives in, though it may be slightly uncommon. The society is something of a semi-utopia, with the threat of extinction having pushed the Anthrosaurs to put aside differences for a time in order to avert disaster.

Using a species other than humans also gives me an excuse to play around with gender roles and ideas in ways that are unique to the species but can be related to by human protogonists. Anthrosaurs have some degree of binary gender roles that are inspired by the mating behavior and sexual dimorphism of modern birds. For example, the protagonist is picked on early in the story for wanting to play the female role in a game of “nesting” and stay with the stuffed toy eggs as their friend goes out to get snacks. As a response to being picked on, they end up tearing out some of their bright and colorful “male” feathers. What the protagonist will eventually find, though, is that they are far from the only person with this experience, and they will eventually find a community of transgender and gender-nonconformin anthrosaurs.

The story is not all sunshine and dew-drops, of course. If there were no real conflict in the society I’m depicting, it wouldn’t feel real. Beyond that, it wouldn’t be honest or speak to my own experiences as a transgender person, which haven’t all been uplifting. But I do want to make the kind of science fiction story that gives people hope, whether that be for society in the future or for their own personal life. I want people to feel like they aren’t alone, to escape into the pages of a book where they can relate to a character’s struggles and rejoice when they come out on top. Too often transgender people don’t get that in fiction, even science fiction. I want to change that.

My project for Camp NaNoWriMo can best be described as “time travel slice of life starting sentient dinosaurs.” Longer post coming soon. 📝

I have been very frustrated with both social media and blogging. I have had a lot of bad experiences on a lot of different platforms and have really just not had the time, energy or money to put into a self-hosted blog. So I need a space where I can go past the character limit and the quippy spaces that doesn’t cost a lot and can integrate with my main social media hub, which is Mastodon. Micro.blog seems to fit the bill. And holy crap, here’s an account i already had a year ago that I forgot about. Well, maybe this is the way to go, then?

Long form blogging has always been a pain in the butt for me. I have trouble coming up with enough content to make what I’m saying seem like its worth a whole post, and the ability to integrate with social media is extremely limited on most platforms, which makes self advertising and promotion difficult. Shorter, more digestible content has very much been my style, so social media is a very tempting beast. Unfortunatle,y its also one that has a lot of teeth in odd places. I don’t know of anyone who has a “great” experience with any form of social media, and I certainly wouldn’t say that I have it worse than anyone else. But spending all my time on Mastodon has not contributed to my writing. I’ve not finished any projects in a long time. That needs to change.

I need to get in the habit of writing longer things, even if that starts out as just blog posts. I need to get into the habit of blogging every day. I need to write, and write in a place where new people can find me and people who know me can discover easily. Hopefully, this is the place.

As I work on the story portion of my gamebook, I thought I’d write a more in depth look at the modified d20 system I’m using. The basic mechanic is inspired loosely by d20 roll-under rpg systems like The Black Hack or Into the Odd, but modified in a couple of ways.

I use a system of four base attributes and two derived attributes. The base attributes ate Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Focus (FOC) and Influence (INF). STR is your character’s physical prowess, DEX is your finesse and ability to maneuver, FOC is your ability to memorize information and concentrate, and INF is your abilty to persuade, bluff, beguile, charm and intimadate. The derived attributes are Endurance (END) and Power (POW), which represent your ability to withstand damage and your reserve of magical power, respectively. When END runs out you die, and when POW runs out you can no longer use your special abilities.

At different points during the book, you are asked to test your character’s attributes. To do so, you roll a d20 and compare it to the attribute. If the result is equal to or less than the attribute, you succeed, and proceed to the relevant passage. Otherwise, you fail, and are directed to a different passage. Combat is handled as a series of consecutive attribute tests where success means you hit with an attackk while failure means that the enemy hits you. All in all, its fairly straightforward.

The base attributes a generated by rolling 2d6+3 for each stat, in order, than allowing the player to swap any two scores. END is calculated by adding together STR and DEX, while POW is calculated by adding together FOC and INF. So after rolling, your base attributes should be no less than 5 and no greater than 15 each, and your derived attributes should be between 10 and 30 each. I’m hoping that this gives a pretty good “Old School Roleplaying” feel while making sure the player character is fairly balanced.

I came up with this idea while looking for ways to remove references to intelligence from RPGS. My thought was that by using focus and influence instead of INT, WIS, and CHA, not only do you remove reference to intelligence (which is at best a psuedoscience and also a way to promote racist and ableist idealogies), but you also create a system which better reprsents actual neurodiversity. You could roleplay a character with low FOC as having ADHD, or a character with low INF as having social anxiety. This is something that is really important to me as a person with anxiety, autism, depression, and possibly undiagnosed ADHD, as I would like to be able to see myself in my character. I’m personally tired of the all around good at everything protagonist and want someone who reflects who I am.

The Navajo nation has been struck really hard by Covid-19, and has suffered tremendously. Please consider donating to save some lives. www.nndoh.org/donate.ht…

Don’t make me be patriotic today. Setting aside literally everything the So Called Unisted States has done recently I really don’t feel like celebrating the fact that I’m descended from thieves and living on stolen land. I don’t think that’s something to be proud of, really.

I’m working on an adventure gamebook, and I just finished writing the rules section! 📝 I’m using a modified d20 system for dice and coding it using a TWINE format that can be converted to epub.

This is a ton of fun and I can’t wait to get to the actual stoy portion of the book.

Being proud of my idenity doesn’t stop just because pride month is over 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

Don’t mind me, just checking out the twitter crossposter on micro.blog.

Twitter sucks. The “fediverse” isn’t much better. They are designed in such a way that harassment and bullying is common, and even rewarded in terms of social capital. As for me, I’d like to check out a place that is different. That has a handle on harrassment and lets you be yourself, truly yourself, no matter how weird or different you are. Maybe this is the place? Or maybe it isn’t. Only time will tell.

And now for a little bit about me. My name is Xandra Penclaw. Or, well, that’s my pen name. My real name isn’t something I will be posting here. I am 29, a writer and tabletop RPG afficianado, a transwoman, a furry, and a 344ft tall lizard bug monster. Here are some sfw pictures of my character:

Expect some in character posts about being a giant lizard monster. Don’t expect me to be lewd or post porn just because I’m a furry. Do treat me with kindness or respect, and I will do the same with you. Do we understand each other? Good.

Now to get to the fun stuff: I’m currently working on and old school adventure gamebook that uses a modified d20 system. I’m doing this as part of a game jam on itch.io and I’m loving it so far. Expect updates as I work on this, because holy crap this is a fun project!

Anyway, hello to micro.blog, hello to anybody following me from past platforms, and hello to anyone just seeing me for the first time! I’m excited and I look forward to being here.