JANUARY 2025

Spit by Angela Quinton | 5 out of 5

A grimy hungover first-person crawl through gender, lycanthropy, body horror, risking detransition, skeptical allyship, guilt, species euphoria, cheap meat, and bodily fluids.

Violent change might break you, but slowly, methodically, you can heal and maybe become more yourself than you were before.

‘A New Age Begins’ for Critical Role. Let’s hope it’s one for actual play and TTRPGs, too by Em Friedman | 3 out of 5

What does Critical Role’s finale say about the state of actual play?

Thinking About Actual Play as Nonfiction by Jeff Stormer | 5 out of 5

NOTE: this article doesn't have a description!

Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang | 5 out of 5

NOTE: this link leads to a PDF!

Our goal in this article is to remind readers what is unsettling about decolonization. Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches that decenter settler perspectives have objectives that may be incommensurable with decolonization. Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, non- white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism. The metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or “settler moves to innocence”, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity. In this article, we analyze multiple settler moves towards innocence in order to forward “an ethic of incommensurability” that recognizes what is distinct and what is sovereign for project(s) of decolonization in relation to human and civil rights based social justice projects. We also point to unsettling themes within transnational/Third World decolonizations, abolition, and critical space- place pedagogies, which challenge the coalescence of social justice endeavors, making room for more meaningful potential alliances

Hunger's Bite by Taylor Robin | 4.3 out of 5

After growing up together on the luxurious SS Lark, Neeta Pandey and Emery Botwright are ready to start their lives. Emery wants to follow in his father's footsteps and sail the Lark forever, while Neeta yearns to travel the world. But neither will have any future at all if the Lark's new owner, Mr. Honeycutt, has his way.

Mr. Honeycutt . . . The first-class passengers adore him, while he makes the ship a nightmare for the crew. Twisted by unnatural appetites, the rich are actually transforming into something less than human, and their insatiable demands soon push the staff toward a--quite literal-- burnout.

Something otherworldly is undeniably aboard the SS Lark, something horribly hungry. But it's not Wick Farley: vampire, secret agent, and paranormal investigator. Alone and at sea, with only Neeta and Emery to help him, he must uncover the truth about Mr. Honeycutt. And fast--before a ravenous craving for power consumes them all.

The V*mpire by P.H. Lee | 3 out of 5

The vampires aren't even the worst part about being a teenage trans girl on tumblr.