Squirrel Moon, 4/16/26

Posted on by Henry
From over a month ago

Today is a day for being behind.

Rotavirus, congested sinuses with modestly colorful snot, yet more interrupted sleep, being on sick-baby duty: not a few of my favorite things, but certainly a list of things I’m experiencing this week. The pictures on my phone are ever-more full of baby, and less and less full of flowers. Perhaps spring will change that balance a little bit. Maybe I’ll have pictures with both baby AND flowers.

There are no extended analyses for you today. Instead, I’ve got a few random thoughts.

First, I’ve crammed in a few episodes of Harley Quinn and I’m loving the show. It’s been a good thing to watch while slightly addled. I admire the ways in which the writers are layering on additional depth as the episodes progress and I’m excited to see where (and how far) they take it.

Second, I can’t help but continue to see the parallels (and diachronic threads) between the genres of classical questing fiction, portal fantasy, middle grade adventure, isekai, and now LitRPG. They’re not all the same thing, but… they kind of are all the same thing. At the very least, they’re playing Mad Libs with each other.

Third, I’m tired. I’m going to call it here and go rest my eyes or something until nap time is over.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

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I’ve finally seen Kubo and the Two Strings, and I loved it.

Yes, the story’s themes are well-trodden classics. Yes, I could see the twists before they arrived. No, I didn’t care—Kubo and the Two Strings knew what it was setting out to do, and it delivered that with skillful and focused storytelling. Plus, it’s gorgeous, and its presentation is stylish as hell.

This is not a perfect movie. I feel a little weird about it. But it is an excellent reference for how to write a good all-ages adventure story with heart. That feels especially true when I compare it to the writing of K-Pop Demon Hunters.

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Project Hail Mary (book and movie)

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I have read the book. I have seen the movie. I love both. Despite this, I find the movie a more appealing piece of art.

Why?

It comes down to emotion.

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Eat your candy! Finding the fun in your games

Posted on by Henry

Eat your candy. ASAP.

I don’t mean your literal candy.

Heck, I don’t eat much candy. When I do eat candy, I eat it in small amounts. Even ice cream, which I love, I eat sparingly.

But when it comes to RPGs I think everyone should eat their (figurative) candy right away, even if that means sharing your character’s “secrets.”

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The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal

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“To put this into perspective… The Sirius has 5,600,000 parts and close to a million systems, subsystems, and assemblies. Even if everything was 99.9 percent reliable, that would still be 5,600 defects. It wasn’t a question of if something would go wrong on the way to the moon, it was a question of when and what.”

Page 329, The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

This book has been on my to-read list for years. I somehow never picked it up. That paragraph above is the perfect encapsulation of why I love this book so much. I will try to explain. But honestly I was hooked upon reading the first page.

I found a used copy at Boskone. I knew that the title and author were familiar, that I’d been meaning to read the book, but then I thumbed the thing open and… here, try this for your first two paragraphs:

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Collaborative worldbuilding cont., deferred exercises 3/12/26

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I’ve deferred my Love/Hate connection experiment for at least one more session. I could do this differently; I could use that experiment now to improve my players’ understanding of their own PCs, as well as bettering my understanding of their relationships with the rest of the setting. I deferred that experiment yesterday because I wanted to get a session of play under our belts, whet my players’ appetites, that sort of thing. That went well. I think it was a good choice.

Now I’m holding off because I suspect…

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A more secure basis, 3/5/26

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Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government, and feudal lords tossing coins to the poor when they feel like it is no basis for an economy.

If you’ve been listening to economic news…

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Collaborative worldbuilding for a new game, 2/26/26

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I started a new game this week.

Our prior GM is a freshly minted parent. He’s currently in the land of absolute sleep deprivation. Having been there not too long ago myself, I’ve offered to take over with a new game (at least for some of the time).

I’m taking the opportunity to experiment with new ways to build connections between PCs and the setting. I’ve written about at least one of those ideas before. I’m taking things a step further by starting the group even earlier in the world creation process.

We began with a collaborative setting creation session. We’ll be playing Worlds Without Number from Kevin Crawford, and I want to use WWN’s general setting concept… but I want the players to have a hand in how our particular slice of the world feels. I want them to influence what direction our Latter Earth takes.

Alongside that…

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Crit group, 2/19/26

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I have been away from my regular crit group for about a year. Caring for a new baby will do that. I recently started back up again with a smaller group of people who are more narrowly focused on my preferred genres. I love the difference.

In the previous group, there were long lulls between my submissions. We had enough people that taking turns meant there could be a month or two between any one person’s submissions. That delay made it harder to stay in the ‘excited creation’ phase of making progress on a project. It wasn’t the only thing pushing me that way (mental health and caring for other duties distracted me just fine) but it didn’t help.

Now I’m submitting smaller pieces more regularly. This feels like a positive feedback loop rather than simply treading water. I’m still juggling my writing alongside everything else in my life, but it’s amazing what a difference feeling excited after a critique session makes.

This smaller group’s composition makes a big difference too. While the larger group had plenty of good insight and good questions, there was enough friction between the genres I was writing and the comfort zones of the other writers to derail my enthusiasm. This smaller group is composed solely of genre fiction writers with overlapping genre expertise and familiarity with more recent genre fiction. I’m no longer asked to explain a genre, or to explain a secondary world in great detail at the start of a story. This has made the difference between feeling uncertain about a piece after submitting it to the larger group, and feeling excited to improve the same piece after receiving precise and knowledgeable feedback from the small group.

I miss the social space of the old group. I enjoyed the people, and I did receive some useful responses. But this smaller group is so much better at delivering what I want from a critique group, there’s no way I’d go back.

It’s a good enough group experience, in fact, that I’m tempted to invite another writer whose critique has been transformative for me previously. At the same time, I fear adding more people—every additional writer dilutes our ability to respond to everyone every session. I’ll have to talk this over with my friends and see how they feel.

Little circles, big circles 2/12/26

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Little circles, big circles.

I’ve mentioned before that I have family all over. I don’t remember if I’ve been clear about how widespread that family is. I don’t know if I’ve thought through how much that has shaped my worldview.

I grew up with family in the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, the UK (in both England and Scotland), and the Netherlands. Family friends came from Uganda and India and Tibet. These days, I have family…

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