Tabletop Troublemaker

It's a bit delayed but I have not given up on my Blog Buddies endeavor! I'm happy to announce that for the most recent Blog Buddies post, I had a chance to dig into the work of Tanya Floaker! Tanya is a game designer and consultant based out of Edinburgh, Scotland, and has worked on seven different self-published games, as well as made contributions to games such as a|state 2e, Terminal, and Undead Paradise. This is the first half of a conversation with them.

Hello Tanya!

Thank you so much for agreeing to trying out this Blog Buddies experiment with me!

I've come to really appreciate the ethos that is subtly behind your work. Most of your games eventually get put into various charity bundles, from the Bundle for Reproductive Rights, to TTRPGS for Trans Rights - Ohio, to TTRPGS for Palestine. You put your artwork in spaces that that are making statements about what the world is like, and what we want to do about it. As a side effect, your games are highly accessible, and it feels like while you do like to charge for your artwork, you see your work as also a way by which you can better the lives of other people. This is something that resonates with me, and I deeply appreciate it.

I looked over three of your past games in preparation for this chat: Mum Chums, The Connection Machine, and Be Seeing You. I also read through the demo version of The Thunder Perfect Mind, which you recently crowdfunded, and which folks can still back late, if they so desire!

There's a number of overlapping elements that I find in your games, which I expect speak to the style of games you like to play, and the elements of roleplay that really connect with you, specifically.

The first thing I noticed is that all of your finished games appear to have very specific end points. Mum Chums, your game about guardians of small children, ends when the school term ends. The Connection Machine, which is about a fourth-dimension exploration that depends on wrestling with personal trauma, ends when your dimension reaches a Singularity, and your group has to attempt to escape. Be Seeing You a game about surveillance, control, and compliance, ends after four episodes, when the actions of the town you narrate culminate in a Fallout. You also structure these games so that there are very clear phases that the group moves through, from character creation & world building, to the bulk of the scenes, to a clear transition into the end of the story.

This kind of game setup is really good for groups who likely can't commit to continuous game sessions, but I think it also makes sense considering the themes that you like to weave into your games. Though the tone varies between your work, there's very real elements that make themselves fairly clear in the CATS you put at the beginning of many of your games. When talking about mental health, or the stresses of childcare & family life, or the coercive control of governments and corporations, these realities can weigh on players, and we need time to sit back, and breathe, and maybe pick up something more light-hearted in between. I'm curious if there are any other reasons as to why you prefer a compact, clearly structured format, other than the ones that I could think of above. I'm also wondering if The Thunder Perfect Mind will follow the same format, or if you're attempting to do something a little different with the structure of this game.

Another overlapping theme that I'm noticing across all of your work is how deeply the game relies on having a conversation. So much of your work asks the group to engage in play through description, and collaborative creation, whether that be constructing characters, or the setting they live in. This is something that I typically appreciate at my table as well, but I don't think it manifests quite as thoroughly in the games I usually pick up to play.

This doesn't mean that your games are less structured. In fact, the detail with which you guide the reader through each phase of the game gives the GM and the players an extensive amount of guidance, including procedures for determining who should speak next, and what role each person at the table plays in each scene. Conversations are also moderated through various mechanics, from the Gnosis tokens in Thunder Perfect Mind, which are spent to allow you to introduce new Truths to the game or compel another character to pursue a line of action, to the Cuppa mechanic in Mum Chums, which allows you to interrupt a scene and allow your character to engage in a personal monologue. These boundaries give players the kind of restriction that forces us to think carefully about what we can say, and when we can say it, and the mediums used (tokens, a cup of tea, marking tracks on a clock) also give us a physical 'toy' to interact with, reminding us that this is still in fact a game.

I'm curious as to why this form of structured conversation is so prevalent in your game design, and whether there's influences from previous games that have directed you to making these choices in your work.

Another overlap that is not unique to you, but is so clearly emblematic of the way you design, is the clear and intentional use of safety tools introduced at the beginning of your games. CATS is used to communicate the purpose of playing your games, as well as the tone that players should expect. You take great care to highlight subject matter that is likely going to come up in a typical session of your game, which not only warns players about content that might spark complicated feelings, but also does a great job of letting us know the genre and tone we should try to bring to the table. This is layered with the style of the layout. Mum Chums uses a lot of light colours and earthy tones, with photos and doodle-like images, which accurately depicts the slice-of-life moments and mundane themes that saturate the game. Meanwhile, The Thunder Perfect Mind uses a lot of black and contrasting red to communicate the darkness of the setting. The text is angular, rather than softened, represnting the harsh edges of the characters and the setting they find themselves in. I'd love to get a bit of a peek into the journey you embark on when determining how to communicate a game's style, and how you match tone to theme when moving from the idea stage to the product stage.

While there's certainly a lot to work with in the current demo version of The Thunder Perfect Mind, the version we find on itch.io is still a demo version, with the full game to be released sometime in the future. I'm curious about what elements you've chosen to carry forward into the full version of this game, and what elements you might change or leave behind.

To wrap up this episode's conversation, here are the questions I'm posing to you:

Why do you find your games so tied to structured procedures and definitive end points? Where do you think you got this style of design from? -Your games are very focused on conversations and talking through scenes. Do you feel this connects to the way you personally roleplay? Why do you think a structured conversation is so prevalent in your work?

Your safety tools discussions and layout style choices go a long way in communicating tone, genre & theme. How do you do this? What is the process of identifying tone and figuring out how to communicate it?

Do you consider The Thunder Perfect Mind to be an extenuation of your current design style, or do you expect it to be a divergence in some way? Can we expect much of the patterns I noticed through my deep dive to resurface, or will there be a marked evolution?

Why do you find your games so tied to structured procedures and definitive end points? Where do you think you got this style of design from?

There is a place for stories/narrative with no big wrap-up, just an end to the moment or events frozen in time. There is also a place for stories with a strongly defined beginning, middle and end. Some games I played in the past rambled on, or went past what should have been the ending into a shaggy dog story. Those which got an ending, and better than that stuck a "good ending", have a special place in my heart.

With this in mind, an important part of game design, for me, is thinking about the structure I present for the game. How long are we playing for? How is the narrative guided/shaped? How does the game part of the RPG make most people feel? These questions are not fixed in the same way as D&D, or it's trad and later OSR ascendants, structure things. This, for me, is all of game design.

As for where I got this from, I reckon having Advanced Fighting Fantasy and WFRP 1e as my first ttRPGs was important. This gave way to the 90s game boom (with Vampire and much else besides), and then early-to-mid 2000s indie boom.

In particular, The Forge, Storygames and The Collective Endeavour forums were abuzz. I am also very fortunate that Scotland has a wealth of great RPG designers who are generous with their time and a good laugh to hang out with. Being able to have a beer with folks like Dave Allsop and Jared Earle (SLA Industries), Gregor Hutton (3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars), Malcolm Craig (Hot War), Joe Prince (Contenders), Jon Hodgson (Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland), Aleksandra Brokman (Wise Women)... so many other designers - apologies to everyone I've not mentioned - I could be here all day! Such a blessing, one and all.

Along with that, having Glasgow Indie Gamers and later Edinburgh Indie Gamers as dedicated spaces to tryout out games which have been historically marginalized at RPG clubs has had a huge impact.

Your games are very focused on conversations and talking through scenes. Do you feel this connects to the way you personally roleplay? Why do you think a structured conversation is so prevalent in your work?

All RPGs are structured conversation, whether this is formal or informal. Consciously deciding how choices are likely to guide the emotional landscape is the act of game design. Even in games where things are woolly, I'm looking for ways to make scenes the best they can be. This can be through making scene framing suggestions, voicing when to cut scenes, picking up the threads other players are putting down, or a host of other tools to make a game session feel good for everyone.

This is how I play. By making conscious decisions about to structure my games, I can help those who are less confident feel they have guidance which improves their experience of play, and for those with more experience to know the lay of the land so they can make the whole experience shine for all.

Your safety tools discussions and layout style choices go a long way in communicating tone, genre & theme. How do you do this? What is the process of identifying tone and figuring out how to communicate it?

I hope I have a fairly consistent authorial voice in my games, and present the material as if I were at the table with you. Depending on the game, I'll present things with the kind of conversation tools I'd be bringing along myself. I usually structure the layout so you encounter things in the same way you would if making a flowchart of what you do at the table to play.

In short, I try to clearly communicate the holistic experience of how I play games.

How I find the tone, well, it comes right at the beginning. I know what a game is about and how I want it to feel before almost anything else. Mum Chums came from my experience as a parent in parenting spaces. Solstice is my reflection on the process of growing up queer in the very hostile surroundings of Perth, Scotland. BE SEEING YOU has my feelings about the surveillance state and dystopian sci-fi ingrained. I could go on through all my games this way. The key point is tone and feeling and emotion all come first. I think about it, and start with a blank canvas in terms of mechanics, then add things which support the tone, and later weed out things which are incongruent.

Do you consider The Thunder Perfect Mind to be an extenuation of your current design style, or do you expect it to be a divergence in some way? Can we expect much of the patterns I noticed through my deep dive to resurface, or will there be a marked evolution?

My games have not been designed in the same order they have been released. Some have been sitting on hard drives and gone through several versions as the years pass, only to be released after games which I created in the past year or two.

The first seed of The Thunder Perfect Mind is about 15yrs old, though I didn't know that's what it would be! It sat for a lot of that time gathering dust until the Summer of 2024, when I read the poem which the game title was taken from. I knew exactly how the game I wanted to make would feel, what it was about, and started working on it for that year's NaGaDeMon. I dusted off some of the old ideas and made them new.

Spiritual influences that didn't get listed due to space are Undying, Bite Marks, and Solipsist (or the indie versions of Vampire: the Masquerade, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and Mage: the Ascension, respectfully). The Thunder Perfect Mind is my strongly worded letter to Kindred of the East. However, as part of that, the framing is less strict, and hopefully more suited to the unfolding occult action thriller side of the old WoD games. It is out now, so you can judge for yourself whether I've succeeded or not!

It's a bit delayed but I have not given up on my Blog Buddies endeavor! I'm happy to announce that for the most recent Blog Buddies post, I had a chance to dig into the work of Tanya Floaker! Tanya is a game designer and consultant based out of Edinburgh, Scotland, and has worked on seven different self-published games, as well as made contributions to games such as a|state 2e, Terminal, and Undead Paradise. This is the first half of a conversation with them.

Hello Tanya!

Thank you so much for agreeing to trying out this Blog Buddies experiment with me!

I've come to really appreciate the ethos that is subtly behind your work. Most of your games eventually get put into various charity bundles, from the Bundle for Reproductive Rights, to TTRPGS for Trans Rights - Ohio, to TTRPGS for Palestine. You put your artwork in spaces that that are making statements about what the world is like, and what we want to do about it. As a side effect, your games are highly accessible, and it feels like while you do like to charge for your artwork, you see your work as also a way by which you can better the lives of other people. This is something that resonates with me, and I deeply appreciate it.

I looked over three of your past games in preparation for this chat: Mum Chums, The Connection Machine, and Be Seeing You. I also read through the demo version of The Thunder Perfect Mind, which you recently crowdfunded, and which folks can still back late, if they so desire!

There's a number of overlapping elements that I find in your games, which I expect speak to the style of games you like to play, and the elements of roleplay that really connect with you, specifically.

The first thing I noticed is that all of your finished games appear to have very specific end points. Mum Chums, your game about guardians of small children, ends when the school term ends. The Connection Machine, which is about a fourth-dimension exploration that depends on wrestling with personal trauma, ends when your dimension reaches a Singularity, and your group has to attempt to escape. Be Seeing You a game about surveillance, control, and compliance, ends after four episodes, when the actions of the town you narrate culminate in a Fallout. You also structure these games so that there are very clear phases that the group moves through, from character creation & world building, to the bulk of the scenes, to a clear transition into the end of the story.

This kind of game setup is really good for groups who likely can't commit to continuous game sessions, but I think it also makes sense considering the themes that you like to weave into your games. Though the tone varies between your work, there's very real elements that make themselves fairly clear in the CATS you put at the beginning of many of your games. When talking about mental health, or the stresses of childcare & family life, or the coercive control of governments and corporations, these realities can weigh on players, and we need time to sit back, and breathe, and maybe pick up something more light-hearted in between. I'm curious if there are any other reasons as to why you prefer a compact, clearly structured format, other than the ones that I could think of above. I'm also wondering if The Thunder Perfect Mind will follow the same format, or if you're attempting to do something a little different with the structure of this game.

Another overlapping theme that I'm noticing across all of your work is how deeply the game relies on having a conversation. So much of your work asks the group to engage in play through description, and collaborative creation, whether that be constructing characters, or the setting they live in. This is something that I typically appreciate at my table as well, but I don't think it manifests quite as thoroughly in the games I usually pick up to play.

This doesn't mean that your games are less structured. In fact, the detail with which you guide the reader through each phase of the game gives the GM and the players an extensive amount of guidance, including procedures for determining who should speak next, and what role each person at the table plays in each scene. Conversations are also moderated through various mechanics, from the Gnosis tokens in Thunder Perfect Mind, which are spent to allow you to introduce new Truths to the game or compel another character to pursue a line of action, to the Cuppa mechanic in Mum Chums, which allows you to interrupt a scene and allow your character to engage in a personal monologue. These boundaries give players the kind of restriction that forces us to think carefully about what we can say, and when we can say it, and the mediums used (tokens, a cup of tea, marking tracks on a clock) also give us a physical 'toy' to interact with, reminding us that this is still in fact a game.

I'm curious as to why this form of structured conversation is so prevalent in your game design, and whether there's influences from previous games that have directed you to making these choices in your work.

Another overlap that is not unique to you, but is so clearly emblematic of the way you design, is the clear and intentional use of safety tools introduced at the beginning of your games. CATS is used to communicate the purpose of playing your games, as well as the tone that players should expect. You take great care to highlight subject matter that is likely going to come up in a typical session of your game, which not only warns players about content that might spark complicated feelings, but also does a great job of letting us know the genre and tone we should try to bring to the table. This is layered with the style of the layout. Mum Chums uses a lot of light colours and earthy tones, with photos and doodle-like images, which accurately depicts the slice-of-life moments and mundane themes that saturate the game. Meanwhile, The Thunder Perfect Mind uses a lot of black and contrasting red to communicate the darkness of the setting. The text is angular, rather than softened, represnting the harsh edges of the characters and the setting they find themselves in. I'd love to get a bit of a peek into the journey you embark on when determining how to communicate a game's style, and how you match tone to theme when moving from the idea stage to the product stage.

While there's certainly a lot to work with in the current demo version of The Thunder Perfect Mind, the version we find on itch.io is still a demo version, with the full game to be released sometime in the future. I'm curious about what elements you've chosen to carry forward into the full version of this game, and what elements you might change or leave behind.

To wrap up this episode's conversation, here are the questions I'm posing to you:

Why do you find your games so tied to structured procedures and definitive end points? Where do you think you got this style of design from? -Your games are very focused on conversations and talking through scenes. Do you feel this connects to the way you personally roleplay? Why do you think a structured conversation is so prevalent in your work?

Your safety tools discussions and layout style choices go a long way in communicating tone, genre & theme. How do you do this? What is the process of identifying tone and figuring out how to communicate it?

Do you consider The Thunder Perfect Mind to be an extenuation of your current design style, or do you expect it to be a divergence in some way? Can we expect much of the patterns I noticed through my deep dive to resurface, or will there be a marked evolution?

Apologies for the late reply; unfortunately I’ve also been delayed dealing with some health issues which took priority. Also, a sincere thank you for inviting me to be Blog Buddies. You’ve been doing so much to match people up with games they would love, no matter how obscure or mainstream it is, which is a massive amount of positive energy for the hobby space as a whole. It is lovely to have this chance to talk about some of my games with you. And wow, you really have looked at my games with a ken eye. Thank you again.

You opened talking about access, something I think about when publishing my games. I have been through periods of poverty and know what it is like to not be able to access your favourite pastimes as a result. My original plan was to submit all my games directly to The Trove.

For those not in the know, The Trove was an online repository containing digital copies of almost every ttRPG the site owners could get their mitts on. This included scans of long out-of-print games, as well as newer books. From what I could tell, it was used exclusively by three groups of people: Those who couldn't afford games, those who wanted to ‘try before they buy’ on games they’d not have considered otherwise, and folks who were never going to buy the games tey downloaded regardless. Was The Trove legal? No. But was it good for the hobby as a whole? Heck yes. The folks who went after it should hang their heads in shame. Anyhow, with that option off the table I considered making my PDFs free. The idea of having a limited number of free community copies to download was popular on itch, and realized that rather than limiting them, you can set the number at one million copies or more! This path has some added benefits. Some people want to chip in for the effort of making a game, and this gives a clear way to do so. Also, in regard to bundles, while I’m not sure if it is still the case, a few years ago you could not add free games to bundles. By adding a price tag, I could help boost fundraising causes I felt were worthwhile.

Anyhow, that ended up more of a ramble than I expected do I'll pause for now, and go into answering the three questions in their own reblog. Expect that to drop later today :) Much love,

i have no idea where you get this idea from, I play a bunch of different games - including freeform text rp, fest larps, parlour larps, regular tabletop campaigns, longform play-by-post games and narrative wargames - and I have a lot of fun doing it. I wouldn't be a game designer if I didn't actually enjoy games. The thing is, if you study game design and ttrpg theory seriously, you think about the intent behind design decisions. Game design doesn't just happen by accident, the designer put a given rule in for a reason. So, you ask yourself why the designer made the game the way it did, and what they were trying to achieve.

A significant tool for game design is considering the feedback the game provides; what behaviours that ruleset rewards and what it discourages. (You can apply this analysis to other games, too, like video games). When I'm talking about a bribe, it's in that context; how does the game reward you for doing things, and what things does it reward. (For example, 'scrabble' rewards you for playing words with weird letters in them by making those letters worth more points.)

The thing is, ultimately, every game relies on a simple proposition; that if you volunterily use its rules, you will have fun. You don't need to follow the rules, and you can have fun without them, but the idea is that using the rules will let you have more fun, or a different type of fun, than if you didn't. (For example, throwing a ball around is a bit fun, but if everybody agrees to follow the rules of basketball, you get a different experience that a lot of people prefer). So, the only bribe you're making on the interpersonal, out-out-of-game level (unless something weird is going on) is "if we play this game it will be fun". When I talk about bribes and incentives, it's *inside* the game, after we've all agreed to the game's proposition of "if you use the rules, you will have fun".

Now, what counts as an incentive varies by game. Some, like Warhammer 40k, are challenge-based, and have ways to keep score of success and victory; here, things that signify overcoming the challenge are your incentives; how you get a high score, how you win, etc. Others, like most ttrpgs, are creative-based. What constitutes an incentive within the game's structure is less precisely defined. By and large, though, these incentives tend to be things like increased agency within the game fiction, space for creative expression, and experiencing and learning about more of the game fiction. (In this structure, 'being more mechanically powerful' can be thought of as a way of granting a player more agency, because their actions are more likely to succeed and result in the outcomes that they want. If the mechanical growth is lateral as well as vertical, then how to get more powerful is - itself - a venue for creative expression in what to prioritise, which is also a reward).

PSYCHODUNGEON is a workplace fantasy action drama, played with No Dice and No Masters. Play poor cityfolk working as psychoplumbers, who delve into clients traumas made manifest as monstrous dungeons.

It's coming to Kickstarter sometime next month! Please follow the pre-launch page and please spread the word to all of your friends.

Within an individual delving job there are three asymmetric roles in the game; the Dungeon itself, the Client it hass manifested from, and any number of Psychoplumbers who will delve down. The game uses a token-based system built on the Belonging outside Belonging framework, and suits 3-7 players. Players work together to shape the world, set the mood and tone, create trouble and look for solutions.

In PSYCHODUNGEON we delve into nightmarish psychostructures, battle monsters, navigate a hostile domain, and help the mind the dungeon sprung from gain closure. We do this for a meagre paycheck. On the surface we try to get by living our lives in a busy city that wouldn't miss you if you fell off the face of the planet.

It's a game about mental health, it's a game about struggling to survive under late-stage capitalism, it's a game about the fear of losing yourself to a job. (It's also a game where the Werewolf playbook is ultimately an allegory for chronic pain but I didn't realise that until after I wrote it.)

South Korea’s government began steps Monday to suspend the medical licenses of thousands of striking junior doctors, days after they missed a government-set deadline to end their joint walkouts, which have severely impacted hospital operations.

Nearly 9,000 medical interns and residents have been on strike for two weeks to protest a government push to sharply increase the number of medical school admissions. [...]

On Monday, officials were sent to dozens of hospitals to formally confirm the absence of the striking doctors as the government began steps to suspend their licenses for at least three months, Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told a briefing.

Park said authorities will later notify the striking doctors of their expected license suspensions and give them a chance to respond. He suggested the license suspensions would take weeks to go into effect.

South Korea’s government earlier ordered the striking doctors to return to work by Feb. 29. South Korea’s medical law allows the government to make such back-to-work orders to doctors when it sees grave risks to public health. Anyone who refuses to follow such orders can be punished with a suspension of his or her license for up to one year, and three years in prison or a 30 million won (roughly $22,500) fine.

Last month, the South Korean government announced it would raise the country’s medical school enrollment cap by 2,000 starting next year, from the current 3,058.[...]

Officials say South Korea’s doctor-to-population ratio is one of the lowest among developed countries.

But many doctors have opposed the plan, arguing universities can’t offer quality education to such an abrupt increase in students. They also say adding so many new doctors would also increase public medical expenses since greater competition would lead to excess treatments. They also predict newly added students would also want to work in high-paying, popular professions like plastic surgery and dermatology.

Critics say many doctors oppose the government plan simply because they worry adding more doctors would result in a lower income.

The striking junior doctors are a small fraction of the country’s 140,000 doctors. But they account for 30-40% of the total doctors at some major hospitals, where they assist senior doctors while training.

Senior doctors have staged a slew of street rallies supporting the young doctors but haven’t joined their walkouts. Police said they were investigating five ranking members of the Korea Medical Association, a body that represents South Korean doctors, for allegedly inciting and abetting the walkouts.

I'm am so excited to finally share this podcast with you. I'm such a nerd for lyric games and the emotional power and resonance they can have

Come with me and step into this world of weird little games ✨

Find all the places to listen here: https://redcircle.com/shows/lyrical-ludology

Transcripts and links master post: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15yCm8fc6es5rGknD4For0kB6TWhq-dWY7-lSwUoXwIA/edit?usp=sharing

Link to the discord is in the master post!

I would deeply love to hear your thoughts on the pod once it airs. Feel free to @ me and/or use the Lyrical Ludology tag

Episodes will drop Tuesdays and Thursday 8am AEDT

Thank you so much to everyone who has already supported the pod and hyped it up

I can't wait!!!!

They’ve successfully convinced us that the unions are the greedy monsters. For so many years, the companies have painted unions as “we want you to pay janitors three million dollars a year and if you don’t we’ll set your stores on fire”. 

But it’s more like “We want you to take an almost imperceptible fraction of your bountiful profits and use it to make your employees’ live marginally better, and maybe give them medical benefits, y’know, so they don’t die”.

Big companies did not stop hiring ten year olds to work in coal mines because they just woke up one day and said “my god, we’re monsters”. They did it because their workers stood together and said “really, enough of this crap”.

Companies are not going to give people raises unless it’s economically necessary that they do so. Anything they can do to lower their expenses, and raise their profits, they are going to do. And no one person can stop them.

Just another reminder that Walmart Germany was a spectacular fail because of ver.di (which is a national service trade union that has it’s control over almost all trade and service companies in Germany) among other things.

Like, ver.di essentially came up to the CEO of Walmart Germany and was like “Hi, welcome, we wish you the best and that we can work together well :)” and the dude was like “hahaha no” and tried to pull the american concept here so ver.di pulled out a list of all the breaches of german law that Walmart was doing (underpaying workers, trying to avoid paying health care by using part-timers, trying to be open for more than 80 hours per week, firing people on short notice without warning or exit payments, etc) and long story short, they got some massive hefty fines for it. They also set up a list of demands for the workers and organized national strikes to push them through, making the employees of 85 hypermarkets neatly stand in front of the store doors with signs, whistles and chants (and certainly not the “Wallmart! Wallmart!” chant). In the end, that plus other things caused them to bail after 9 years with a gigantic loss (almost a billion just from sales) from one of the best retail markets in the world.

So all those issues like “no healthcare” or “work full-time and need food stamps” or “work on sundays and holidays” and shit? Unions are there to set their foot down against that for you. They are there to keep you safe from the corps wrath while fighting for your rights.

Sooo Cait Corrain (that white author I exposed for review bombing a bunch of debut authors of color) came back with an exclusive tell-all in the Daily Beast insisting she is not racist and was actually in a state of psychosis induced by her ADHD meds.

I didn't even want to bother addressing this at first, but autism, ADHD, and mental health medications are already stigmatized enough without Cait claiming they could cause you to go on a racist rampage against your peers for MONTHS against your will. (And why is Matthew Perry getting dragged into this??)

I also thought this was a good opportunity to address the problem of white people being more motivated by the fear of being called "racist" than the desire to mitigate the harm of racism itself. It leads to this knee-jerk unproductive defensiveness when called out. You can't simply declare yourself "Not Racist." Many racial biases are unconscious and combating them requires an active effort to recognize and resist them. It's not enough to Not Hate whole races of people and not be going around hurling slurs. You have to be aware of the unequal racial dynamics at work in all aspects of society and how your actions may or may not reinforce them.

As always, please check out the books most affected:

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole

The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptise

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X Chang

Mistress of Lies by KM Enright