I Don’t Know What You Did This Summer…

Back in March, when we all experienced our plans being “Corona-Cancelled,” we re-evaluted what was possible for the spring and summer. Here we are at the start of September, and we wanted to revisit this list and share with you all what we did with our summer and what we are planning for the fall.

Here’s what we had planned back in March:

  • Making a guide for others to make their own FoF and HAZMAT decks.
  • Releasing our development tools for FoF and HAZMAT for free (as in Open Source in the spirit of releasing the means of production). 
  • Hosting a game jam on itch.io for people to make HAZMAT decks. We are thinking about a HAZMAT: Pandemic deck, but others are free to make whatever they want. 😉
  • Making a new game (a dm-less rpg kind of like belonging outside belonging works like Dream Askew) called AnarchoCats (more on this as it forms, but you can follow @anarchocats on Twitter for funny [and radical] cat images for the time being).

Here’s what we actually did:

  • Started working on a new conversation game akin to Death Cafe for people to talk about death, and ‘to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives’.   I know, we are just the cheeriest game devs, right?
  • Worked with Lansing Area Mutual Aid to assist with food distribution. 
  • Built and designed Free Stands, a structure made of recycled pallet wood for no-contact food/resource distribution based on donations and volunteer labor. (Featured on Instructables!)

Going forward:

The pandemic isn’t going away folx. 

It’s unveiled for some and deepened for others the inequality and suffering endemic to our society, which we lay largely at the feet of capitalism and our government for prioritizing profit over people and the planet. While the machine is bent on normalizing Covid cases and Covid deaths as it has normalized so many awful things we ignore or put up with–hunger, loneliness, suicide, systemic racism, eviction, debt, climate change, poverty, pollution, and so so much more–we are dedicated to the marathon that is changing our minds and our world. 

As creators, as artists, as writers, as community members, we have our part that we can play in the greater evolution of our society toward a better, more just and free world. 

What we are planning to do:

  • Casey is working on making his courses available online
  • Figs is working on a creative non-fiction novel/la
  • Revisit HAZMAT: Pandemic and make a “Pandemic: Six Months Later” expansion. 
  • Rework our (loooong) Friendship Games paper, probably break it up into 2+ papers and pursue publishing them.
  • Queer/diversify the art of FoF
  • Make an alpha for HAZMAT: Hazardous Whiteness and send out to Whiteness Studies scholars and authors to review and give feedback.
  • Make an alpha for the Death Conversation game described above, send out to some Death Cafe folx to review and give feedback.
  • Continue research for the animal-themed dm-less rpg we have been mulling on for months and months.
  • Work on Scribus so that the Indesign part of our design process can be totally FLOSS. 
  • Release our development tools for FoF.
  • Make an alpha for a FoF: Kink deck that we can send out to sensitivity readers and those we know of involved in the Kink community to review and give feedback.
  • Make an alpha for a FoF: Community deck that we can send out to sensitivity readers, those well versed in community building such as those as intentional communities, to review and give feedback. 
  • Help make a few more free stands!

We probably wont be able to do it all, and some will get pushed to winter 2020-2021, but its good to make an ambitious list, right?

But, after what we’ve seen of 2020 so far, zombie dinosaurs will probably rise from the ground and eat us all before we can get to any of this. Huuuzaaaah   D:

At least we made a list, right? 

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