hey there! i'm wendi yu, a travesti monster from Northeast Brasil who makes trouble out of words and images.

i make ttrpgs and have released 3 of them so far:

here, there, be monsters!, a punk response to monster-hunting Urban Fantasy media from the monsters' point of view. available in print and pdf from SoulMuppet;

Marvelous Mutations and Merry Musicians, a weird fantasy about mutated musicians touring the post-post-apocalyptic not-wastelands and getting in trouble. available in print and pdf from Exalted Funeral and as a pay-what-you-want pdf here;

and Apotheosis Janitors, a satire about creating a cult and getting rid of the evidence that your deity was once mortal. available as a pwyw pdf here.

i've also worked as a freelance writer, sensitivity reader, artist and designer for other games. i'm currently available (and looking) for work, so hit me up if you're interested!

i have a master's in contemporary media and culture, and i'm currently doing a phd in the same area. other times, i've been a screenwriter, poet, filmmaker, designer and editor.

1) a lot of job opportunities with upward mobility in non-Anglo countries require a mandatory level of English proficiency

2) demonstrating this proficiency is usually done through internationally certified english assessment tests, which are offered by institutions from anglo countries, and which you usually have to pay hundreds of dollars to take

3) the results for the vast majority of these tests are only valid for two years, after which you have to pay to take them again

1. The United States creates dollars, which costs them essentially nothing.

2. Over time, US military power compelled the biggest oil producers (starting with Saudi Arabia in 1974) to trade exclusively in dollars.

3. When a company needs oil, it needs dollars to buy it. You can obtain dollars in a number of ways: you can take a loan or you can sell shoes to the US or teacups to Europe. Notice that the factory has to ship actual shoes to the US or to third markets in order to obtain, basically, a bookkeeping entry that took the US microseconds to create.

4. The oil company receives the shoe factory's dollars in exchange for oil. It invests these dollars into US treasury bonds or securities, which is really the only sensible thing they can do --cash deprecates in value over time, and there are virtually no other risk-free places to park your billions of dollars worth of oil earnings.

5. The US puts part of the investment it received into military use, so that it can keep anyone who would dare to detach from this dollar hegemony in check. The rest goes to enrich the US. Return to step 1.

Note that this mechanism is essentially an obfuscated tax on the rest of the world. An Iranian shoe factory has to obtain dollars if it wants to buy oil, and the oil company is incentivized to store its dollars in the US treasury. This means that part of the value that foreign capitalists would otherwise pocket actually ends up in the United States.

To obtain a million dollars, the US government pushes a button; to obtain the same million a Bangladeshi factory has to sew 500 000 T-shirts.

Because the oil bill comes in dollars and the only deep, liquid, politically safe asset is a US Treasury bond, value flows to Wall Street.

In other words: The US creates money, manufactures a need for everyone to hold some of that money, and then incentivizes them to return that money to the US.

The petrodollar was only ever the beginning. Many things are gated behind the dollar: Shipping, aviation, SWIFT transactions, etc. Everyone needs dollars; if you can't get any you're going to struggle in the global capitalist economy. This is why the US gets to create seemingly endless dollars and have them still hold value, it's why the US can bend anyone reliant on the dollar to their will via sanctions; the dollar itself acts as a weapon. Of course, the status quo is maintained at gunpoint, and the dollar's value is ultimately backed by US military might. The United States exports death.

Because of all of this, the US has an enormous material incentive to keep oil flowing, to keep its military spending high, and to topple any and all projects that would endanger this system. To stop the flow of unequal exchange, to stop the coercive taxation over the rest of the world, would be to destabilize the US empire. Anyone who would provide an alternative must necessarily be seen as an adversary.

Want to nationalize your oil? Want to deal in another currency? Are you another military superpower? No? Too bad, here's one million drone strikes and a new *democratic* government for you.

the implication alone, that the median yanqui would actually care more about their country doing what it always does than an internal scandal, is unreal - as exemplified by this cartoon itself, since framing it like this is distracting from Venezuela.

reminds me of this bullshit i stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago. the self-centeredness and racism from all possible angles is incredible i'm still livid about it

Cinco siglos igual.

This is why the Latin American identity is based not only in shared culture, but a shared historical struggle against oppression. It's not only fiesta and carnaval and stuff, it's not all cultural exchange and utopian harmonious communities living in peace, it's also a shared consciousness of our place in the world, among the oppressed nations, the Third World. This is why people of so many different backgrounds consider themselves, and thus are, Latin American, which is a concept hard to grasp for Usamericans used to separate communities in discrete units, while our main identity as members of our many nations is this, Latin American. Some people identify more strongly with it, others don't, and everybody has different ideas on how to deal with this, but it is a pervasive "ghost" that hangs over our heads. The pain of the open veins, if you want to get all poetic.

hey, everyone! my name is wendi yu, i’m a travesti writer and researcher from Brasil. I make tabletop games (you can find them here), I have a Master’s in Contemporary Communications and Culture, and I’m currently doing a PhD in the same area, researching the possibilities of trans life in Brasil in audiovisual performances by trans people.

i just got a letter of acceptance to do a semester of my PhD studies at Bayreuth University in Germany. This is going to make a huge difference in my education and future work possibilities, and studying abroad has always been a dream of mine. The problem is that I have no funding to go, and my currency (Brazilian Real) is worth more than 6 times less than the Euro.

My girlfriend’s going too, and she’s got a scholarship funding, so part of the living costs are thankfully covered, but I still need:

165 euros (around 191 US dollars) for the semester fees;

230 euros (~266 US dollars) for visa-related costs;

90 euros (~104 US dollars) a month for the health insurance (that I’m officially required to get), for a total of 540 euros (~626 USD);

780 euros (~900 US dollars) for plane tickets;

210 euros (245 USD) for the english profiency test (yeah, even if I’m a published author with original works in english, i still gotta pay for a piece of paper proving that);

11.904 euros (~13.800 US dollars) for living costs (proof of financial stability for a year required for the visa, even if I’m staying less than a year);

In total, that means I gotta figure out a way to get 13.829 euros (~16k US dollars) – 11.904 euros (~13.800 USD) just for proof that I can finance myself there and 1.925 euros (~2230 USD) for the other costs.

My current income as a PhD student is around 460 euros (540 USD) a month. That’s how big the difference in currencies is.

The worst and most urgent part is proving I can have those 11.904 euros (13.800 USD) all at once for the visa, so that’s my primary goal. If I take out my income (which I still don’t know if they’ll accept as part of the proof), there’s still around 7.200 euros (~8.350 US dollars) I need to find. Maybe if I get the right visa I can make it so I only need proof for 6 months instead of a whole year (I'm still trying to understand the laws), but even so that'd still be around 5952 euros AND the other 1925 euros for all the other costs. It's a lot, anyways.

But you can help with all that!

here is a link to my ko-fi, where you can donate to me: https://ko-fi.com/wendiyu

For any donation, you get the files for my 2 PWYW games, Apotheosis Janitors and Marvelous Mutations and Merry Musicians (you can already get them anyways on itch.io, but I thought it’d be more organized if I put them here as well).

For any donation above 12 euros (14 US dollars), you get the files for all my games, including the Award-winning here, there, be monsters!.

Above 30 euros (35 US dollars), I’ll throw in the posters I’ve made for them in high printing quality as well.

Above 50 Euros (58 US dollars), I’ll also write a short little monster description for you to throw in your games as a thank you (no stats).

But no donation is too small (nor too big!), everything and anything helps, especially considering the disparity in our currencies (if you donate in European or USAmerican money). So I’m truly grateful to anyone who donate any amount.

Since I can’t figure out a way to send the thank you perks automatically through ko-fi, just send me a message after donating or wait until I get the notification and I’ll send them to you ASAP.

Those were all the things I could think of as thank yous, but feel free to send me suggestions if you think of something else. Unfortunately, I’ll be a little busy in the following months with the whole bureaucracy of getting the visa, finding an apartment etc, for anything too elaborate, but I’m open to ideas!

once again, here's the link: https://ko-fi.com/wendiyu

If you have a project and want to hire me as a writer and/or artist, hit me up as well!

PS: there’s the risk that I don’t raise enough funds, or have my visa denied, and cannot go. Since I cannot use platforms like GFM and I’m doing this through ko-fi, I have no clear way of returning the donations in case that happens. I will then use whatever money is raised to pay my rent and bills without having to do freelance work and study at the same time (which I’m currently doing), and then try and finish my next project as soon as possible, in which case I’ll send everyone who donated a free digital copy when it’s done.

Thank you again,

so if you have any writing gigs, hit me up!!! I'd love to have some work while turning into a popsicle!!!