Online Safety My Arse – Why Some Pictures Have Disappeared

Posted on 17/03/2025 by ValeryNorth

The UK government passed a grotesque censorship law, the “Online Safety Act” requiring strict age verification using methods that seem to be dangerously enticing to blackmailers, ID theft and suchlike hackers. (GirlOnTheNet mentions this is not going to stop young people accessing porn on her page explaining how it impacts her site. The OSA is such a misguided and damaging approach to the issue.)

I cannot afford to put age verification in place, because I make no money from my lewdness here. (Honestly, I wish I did, I’d love to be able to afford my own domain & hosting for a start!)

The written word is not affected by the ban, so my sex/kink stories can stay, but all the 3d art renders I did of sexy poses, naked people, etc, have had to go. I’ve also deleted some of my photos of myself in sexy poses and garments.

Creating these images was one of the most fun things to do for my blog, and knowing that this day was coming is perhaps a part of my lack of motivation to post in recent months. I Really do intend to write more about my various game design things – tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), video games, and so on. Maybe a bit more about the sci-fi stories I’m dreaming up. And even, some more sexytimes stories, for as long as the written word is still (relatively) safe.

I will absolutely remain a gloriously kinky, queer, non-binary and filthy socialist.

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Creating Pivotal Destinies – TTRPG Design

Posted on 10/12/2024 by ValeryNorth

I don’t use this blog enough to promote the creative works I’ve done elsewhere, so I thought I would try to change that by making a series of posts discussing the design and inspirations for the tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPG) I’ve released so far. Today, we’re going to look at Pivotal Destinies, and the System Reference Document (SRD) for “Balanced Integrated Attribute System” (BInAS), the abstracted version of the system intended for others to build games using the same core mechanic.

Pivotal Destinies is the first original TTRPG I came up with. Before that, I was struggling with an idea for a d20 sex & BDSM game (that I still haven’t got to a state I’m satisfied with, and I’ve abandoned the d20 part to chase other mechanics that suit it better) but as far as making a system from an original basis, this is the first.

I say, “From an original basis”, but the elevator pitch reveals there’s not a lot that is genuinely original about it: “It’s the exact midpoint between D&D and Lasers & Feelings, using ideas from both.” And that really does sum up where it sits. D&D relies on a d20 base roll, Lasers & Feelings uses a d6. Pivotal Destinies uses a d12. And steals the core ideas for attributes from each.

So much for originality, huh?

Something Quick And Simple

It all began with having a friend who wanted a solo campaign outside the main group we were playing with at the time. I didn’t feel confident trying to learn a published system, so I tried to write something very simple and easy for me to understand. I wanted to keep it from being broken by making a “solve everything” character type, and the simplest way of doing that was to have one attribute being strong automatically make another one weak. (Hence, the “Balanced” part of BInAS.)

I remembered that that’s the core of Lasers & Feelings, but I wanted more than two attributes. So I simply paired things off into scales – “Integrating” the attributes with one another (as I rationalised it later to come up with the system name).

I chose a combat/powers pair, a defence pair, a social pair, a psychological pair and an aptitude pair. Being good at one side automatically meant you were bad at the other. For instance, combat was either “physical” or “psychic” (magical), so a wizard would struggle to hit anyone, but a warrior would often fail when trying cast a spell. The defence pair similarly gave stronger or weaker defence against magical or physical attacks.

It was simple enough to start running adventures for my friend, and I made difficulty classes require more or fewer abilities to be used at once. For instance, trying to get out from under a heavy tree trunk might involve both physical combat skill, and physical defence skill. From this came a mechanic I’ve returned to in several other of my games: the idea that which rolls you succeed or fail on shapes the roleplay outcome of a failed roll.

Building A World And A Philosophy

For various reasons, that friend drifted away from the group and we lost contact. But as our roleplay group moved on, the suggestion came up that I should run a game and use the system I’d invented. With that came two things:

First, for a longer campaign I needed character progression, and this was a group who liked loot and modifiers. I also added in some proper hitpoints and damage rolls so their weapons had more purpose and advancement.

Second, worldbuilding. What had been just a quick and dirty dice rolling mechanic was now a core system, and the choices I’d made were shaping the way the game world around it could function.

I was never comfortable with the binary idea of good at X means bad at Y, but a corollary of that statement was that everyone could do both X and Y to some degree. Specifically, in the combat abilities, even the most musclebound meathead imaginable in this world, still has a basic “magic missile” attack available to them, even if it doesn’t often hit its target. And similarly, even the most magic-focused weakling nerd can throw a punch and actually land a blow once in a while. In that regard, it felt like a rebuttal of the binary, or at least, a statement of the idea that everything contains a seed of its opposite.

And out of that thought came an extension that, if you did lose that “seed of the opposite” by moving your attribute balance all the way to one end of the other, you would be incapacitated. For example, someone who lost any psychic ability was unable to form thoughts at all, while someone who had no physical ability at all was unable to take actions in the world. Similar justifications for the psychological, social and aptitude abilities stated that reaching any extreme meant losing the ability to function. If clothing, weapons and equipment gave bonuses to certain rolls,then equally they could push attributes to the extreme point – so as the adventurers got better gear, they would also need to move their attribute balance point more towards the centre of the scale. It turns out, that with these concepts, character progression is intrinsically pushed towards achieving greater balance in mind and body. For example: on a scale of 1 to 12, if your physical ability is 10 and your weapon gives you a +2 – suddenly you can’t use your weapon without also losing your mind. So, when you get the opportunity to change your attribute, you might choose to make it a 9 instead, and become slightly better at spellcasting at the same time.

Some attack spells could also work by adjusting the target’s ability towards an extreme, both making certain abilities harder for them, and potentially pushing the mall the way into crisis. So having an ability that’s close to one extreme or the other could make you vulnerable to a powerful enemy whose spell affects that one ability.

Fixing Incentives

Speaking of spellcasting, many kinds of spell effects could be allowed, but now that I needed character progression,I needed a way for them to learn new spells (or improve the ones they already knew) when they levelled up. The “aptitude” abilities were “Learning” and “Fixing” so it seemed like being good at learning would mean new spells were easier to acquire.

Which gave a strong incentive to players to lean more towards Learning than Fixing. So to balance that, I made Fixing allow progression in a crafting skillset instead. In the published book, crafting takes the form of a skill tree, but I hadn’t worked out the details clearly when I came up with the idea. But this was the final piece of the puzzle. We playtested the game over a campaign that lasted more than a year, had a lot of fun with it, and during that time I wrote up the game, got Eden to make me a logo and character sheet (the need for a well-designed character sheet was the biggest feedback from the playtest!) and uploaded it to Itch.

Conclusions

For a game that started as a quick improvised system to get playing and see where we went, Pivotal Destinies ended up having a clear and distinct philosophical worldview wrapped up in the way the system works. I would hesitate to draw comparisons with specific world religions (I know some people might be tempted, for instance, to claim similarities with Daoism, based on Western interpretations) but the implications for the worldbuilding fascinated me. It certainly helped me flesh out the setting for the playtest campaign, and intrigued the players when they got the idea that magic is possible for any character.

While overall I felt as soon as I’d written it, that I wanted to get away from binary relationships between attributes (several other systems I’ve designed reflect that in various ways), I’m still very proud of how this game turned out.

If you’d like to express interest in playing Pivotal Destinies with me, please find details of how to sign up on the “Play with me” page.

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A Game Of Trust, Deception And Demonic Deeds

Posted on 17/10/2024 by ValeryNorth

Last night, I had an experience that left me buzzing for hours, and I’m still feeling it today. Alas, not a great BDSM scene with hot, kinky sex. That would have been even better, but it’s been along while since I had the opportunity for that particular pleasure.

No, this was a rather less physical and more social sort of play. Indeed, it falls into the category of “social deduction”, sometimes called “traitor games”.

Over the summer, I went down a YouTube rabbit hole of Actual Play videos of the social deduction game Blood On The Clocktower, which is like an advanced form of Werewolf. I haven’t seen another game which gets the balance between the “social” and the “deduction” side of the genre like Blood On The Clocktower does, and I quickly became hooked – there’s even a call for people to play it with me on my “Play With Valery” page (I have a cool ident for streaming it already designed!).

About a month ago, I took the plunge and joined a community called Imp In The North (which I’m told is a Game Of Thrones reference), who are based in the north of England but members hail from as far afield Scotland, mainland Europe, and even the continent of North America. And since then, Wednesdays are my Clocktower days.

So, last night’s experience that I am so excited about was one of the games I played with Imp In The North. And I really wish I could explain the roller-coaster ride of emotions without having to go into a huge amount of specifics about a bunch of in-game terminology and such. I shall nevertheless attempt to do so.

The basics of the game are that there’s an Evil team, whose job is to get the Demon into the final 2. The Good team have to kill the Demon before that happens. There can be other win/lose conditions, but that’s the basics. Good team is split into Townsfolk (who have useful abilities) and Outsiders (whose abilities tend to hinder the Good team). Evil have a Demon (kill players in the night phase, and try to stay alive) and Minions (abilities that disrupt the Good team, protect the Demon etc). Everyone has a different character role, and there’s always some not-in-play characters so you never know for sure who someone might be. The Storyteller(s) adjudicate the game, and aim to keep it balanced between Good and Evil.

The deduction side comes from working out which abilities are causing what effects and what information to be available, and using that to figure out who the Demon must be (if you’re Good) and who to target next to prevent that (if you’re Evil).

And, in the game last night, I drew the Demon token.

I had 2 Minions to help me: one had a role that gave an extra win condition to Evil (this character is the Evil Twin), and we very nearly managed to get a Day 1 win with their ability (didn’t work in the end though). The other Minion had an ability that allows them to change other players’ characters around (without changing their team) – they were the Pit-Hag. Day 1, Pit-Hag and I came up with a plan that I would be changed into a type of Demon who can escape by turning an Outsider into the Demon and dying themselves; then change someone into an Outsider so I knew where I could make that switch.

A brilliant plan, with just one flaw.

The person I was going to jump to announced to the whole circle what had happened, and that they would probably be the Demon the next day. And every time I thought it might be safe again to make the switch, they’d remind everybody that they were being set up to receive the Demon role.

So, it was never safe for me to use the beautiful escape plan. Instead, I just had to hold my nerve somehow and stick it out. This was not easy, and it was an incredibly stressful (in a good way!) second half of the game, because there was a lot of suspicion on me and nearly every day I was nominated for execution.

Fortunately, I and my wonderful Minion protectors, were doing just enough to create confusion and uncertainty, and every day we somehow managed to keep me from being the one put to death by the angry mob. Including one day where I was set to be executed, but it only took 3 votes to tie, and I and my Minions all voted to execute someone else – tied vote, no executions that day. I was terrified because I thought it would be obvious that the 3 votes were the Evil team. Fortunately, people still weren’t sure.

By this stage, it was obvious that if I attempted to shift the Demon role to someone else, it would be obvious I was in fact the Demon and had done so, making the next execution an obvious choice. Unfortunately, it transpired that there were only two types of alive character: Outsiders (which would be obvious kills) and my Minion. So, I decided to frame my Minion as the Demon who jumped, by killing the Minion.

And it worked: with 3 left, the circle executed the wrong person, leaving two alive, including me.

A huge rush of relief and celebration from the Evil Team (me, and my two now-dead Minions) as the Storytellers revealed the story of what had just happened to the rest of the circle.

Blood On The Clocktower is, for me, the apex of the social deduction genre. For one thing, since I’m not great at social reads, the deduction side being a strong element in itself helps enormously. For another, the fact that people killed off during the game still get to participate is great for involvement and it means that death can even be a good thing (especially when some roles can gain more information when people die).

The fact that there are different “scripts” (sets of characters) and there’s 3 introductory scripts designed to ease you into the game’s techniques and mechanics, plus a myriad of custom scripts made by fans of the game combining the available characters in different ways, means this is an immensely varied game. Even in the base 3 scripts, many expert players find enough to keep them interested and bamboozled.

I also can’t express enough how great this game is for a neurodivergent person trying to have a bit more of a social life. The structured nature of the interactions really help, and you always get to chat about life, and the game both before and after. Is great stuff. The app is also designed to allow custom pronouns, and there’s a lot of gender and sexuality diversity in the wider Clocktower community as far as I can tell.

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Why I’ve Just Quit Labour (It’s The Transphobia, Innit?)

Posted on 12/07/2024 by ValeryNorth

With a great deal of sadness, this week I cancelled my membership of the Labour Party.

Sadness, because my local comrades in the Party were great people, and I’m going to miss working with them to campaign for a (slightly) better world. But the move has been coming for at least the last 18 months. Before the election, I wrote a post (but didn’t share it widely) about why I was still voting Labour in 2024. In that post, I acknowledged the transphobia in Labour policy, but considered that the course that offers most hope for the future was to look ahead to 2029. Unfortunately, step one of that plan (reducing the Tories to an irrelevant rump) has not come about. With the local failure to elect a Labour MP on top of that, every reason I had, every argument I had, for staying in the Party has evaporated.

A year ago, I still felt there was enough hope that Labour was using weasel-words to conceal a trans-friendly position in the hopes of not annoying the GC types. (A wasted effort, for sure, only the extermination of transness would satisfy them.) I still hoped that there was scope for the grassroots membership, whom I still believe to be more trans-accepting than the Party leadership, to influence policy and push Labour back onto the track of social justice.

The National Policy Forum process, the absolute protection Rosie Duffield enjoys, the continued centralisation of power and marginalisation of the membership, all served to disabuse me of those notions. There is no longer any mechanism for the membership to influence policy in the way I hoped. While trans allies do exist in the Parliamentary Labour Party, and can speak up for us, their influence seems weak.

Conclusion: Labour is institutionally transphobic, and certain to remain so unless pushed from the outside.

Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves were among the people who put their names to the appalling Red Shift strategy document, which advocated appealing to transphobes. Streeting is an out-and-out transphobe, and I have long been outraged that LGBT+ Labour list him as a patron. Reeves, I feel, is an opportunist who sees nothing wrong with pushing a victimised group under the bus to serve her political ambitions. Starmer is not quite as bad as these two,and I think he genuinely believes it is possible to have respect for trans people while also restricting their access to public spaces and vital healthcare. His whole attitude (including, ironically, his claim of not coming from a privileged background) screams middle-class well-off cishet White dude. To him, it is all an academic debate and the real, lived, consequences of the ideas he hums and haws over are just hypothetical. He just doesn’t understand that the language he uses and the policies he’s putting forwards are transphobic. And I think he’s not willing to hear the truth of that.

Again, Labour is institutionally transphobic, and it is the leadership of the Party that is driving this transphobia.

The transphobia is enough to make me feel unwelcome, even unsafe, in the Labour Party. But the continued contempt for the rank-and-file membership, the repeated purges of the Left (often under accusations of anti-semitism), and the more general centralisation of power and policy-making in the Party all make me feel very unwelcome. I’m pretty hard Left, and never under any illusions that Labour was actually socialist in terms of changing the fundamental power relations in society. But for a while it at least had potential as a decent stop-gap in the here-and-now to protect the worst-hit under capitalism. My views on social justice, economic justice and collective government generally, all seem to have fallen far out of favour, and Starmer says he’s made sure Labour can never go back on that.

There is no reason left for me to stay, and the transphobia is a pretty big reason to go. So, I’m going to feel much more free to criticise and attack Labour from here on.

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Why, Despite Everything, I’m Still Voting Labour In 2024

Posted on 25/06/2024 by ValeryNorth

I have been utterly dismayed by the Labour Party leadership’s descent into transphobic rhetoric over the past 18 months. Just during the election campaign, I have heard Keir Starmer and members of his shadow cabinet make blatantly transphobic statements (although I suspect Starmer at least, doesn’t realise how transphobic he sounds, I believe he thinks he is making a nice,centrist, compromise position that should be acceptable to both transphobes and trans people.)

It began longer ago than just 18 months, of course, but it was less blatant, and policy hadn’t changed yet. I still believed, 18 months ago, that the majority of the membership were more pro-trans rights, and that through Conference and policy consultations, we could influence the Party and its direction. I don’t think the membership have shifted, but my faith in the Party process has been crushed.

The constant drip of dog-whistle rhetoric (and sometimes outright hate speech) from senior members of the Shadow Cabinet, and our leader Keir Starmer, since then, has steadily and consistently undermined every argument I could find to try to persuade LGBTQ+ folks that Labour were worth voting for.

A year ago, I was still able to find enough in Labour’s official policy proposals language to argue that Labour had not yet abandoned trans rights as an issue, and campaign for Labour in good faith at my local Pride in 2023. This year, I could not, and refused to represent the Party there.

Following the National Policy Forum’s finalised policy documents last year, with their wholly inadequate amendments to gender recognition processes, and following the Labour Together report “Red Shift” endorsed by (among others) Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves, which advocates appealing to transphobes in order to win in 2024, I could no longer argue that Labour will be genuinely supportive of trans rights.

So, why do I still feel like Labour is my best vote?

I’m Not Just Trans

I’m not enthused by any of the Labour Party manifesto, if I’m honest. It lacks ambition on the economy, on the welfare state, on anything, really.

At the same time, there are some genuinely positive things in there, that I think will actually help in various ways. Ending zero-hour contracts is a good move, for example. And whatever the case, they will certainly be an improvement over the Tories’ plans.

But at this point, policy is not the key factor here. I’m more interested in looking ahead, and planning for when and how we might get our agenda on the table seriously.

Thinking Strategically

At this point, it seems inevitable that the Labour Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, will form the next government. It also seems likely they will have an unprecedented majority.

So, I’m looking ahead to 2029. In fact, I have been for most of the past year or so. I don’t expect to vote Labour in 5 years’ time.

Starmer, and his Labour Together/Labour First allies, think they have the Activist Left vote stitched up, at least in part because our First-Past-The-Post system favours two-party politics and therefore if Labour don’t win, it’s likely to be a Tory government, and no one on the Left wants to see that. In 2010, people forget that the Parliamentary left wing of the Labour Party said they would refuse to sit in government with the LibDems, and some even argued that a period on the sidelines would do the Party good, to push it to the left. That left the LibDems with a choice of sitting in opposition to a minority Conservative government, or forming a coalition with them. And we all know how that worked out. The genuine threat that the Tories might take power again is enough to keep the hard left from being too punitive in choosing someone other than labour to vote for.

But in 2024, we see the genuine possibility of the Tories being demolished as a credible threat. Once that happens (and only after that happens) we can pivot to attack Labour and try to create a genuine and credible threat from the Left instead. It’s the only realistic chance I can see of creating an atmosphere where trans rights might actually be properly on the agenda. 2029 is where we have to fight back.

So, thinking strategically, in 2024 vote Labour in most places, vote LibDem where it’s a genuine two-horse race between them and the Tories, and if you’re in a constituency where the Greens stand a genuine chance, then vote Green (I think it would do Labour a world of good to have more Green MPs in Parliament). I don’t fully trust the Greens, but a lot of their manifesto is what I feel Labour’s should have been.

And as soon as the election is over, we need to start organising to build the campaigning ability to shift the debate back to the left. We’ll have five years to get our agenda out there.

Still Better Than The Tories

Labour’s manifesto isn’t great, as I said, but compared to what the Tories are proposing it is still an improvement. If Labour actually do ban all forms of conversion therapy (it’s in their manifesto to do so) then this is a step in the right direction. Labour has a history of small steps that pave the way for larger and more significant things later: I very much doubt David Cameron’s Tories would have legalised gay marriage if Labour hadn’t introduced Civil Unions as a compromise halfway house measure the decade before. That measure shifted the debate and got us there eventually. It’s not impossible that the fast-track but still medicalised approach to gender recognition could play a similar role in getting us eventually to full legal self-ID.

It might not, and Lord knows, it’s not good enough, but it is at least a tiny step away from banning trans people altogether. It is way better than the Tories’ policy.

My Local Candidate

After speaking with my local Labour Party candidate about LGBTQ+ issues, and trans rights specifically, I believe we would have another trans ally in parliament if she were to be elected. There is a pro-trans rights group within the Parliamentary Labour Party, and if in the following five years we are to have any kind of voice or weight in Parliament to protect our rights and dignity, then we will need Labour MPs who are at least inclined to stand up for us and speak for us.

Not every candidate is going to be as positive for trans folks,and campaigning against them and voting against them, is perhaps a better strategy for trans rights. But if you have the opportunity to speak with your local Labour candidate, and they turn out to be receptive to supporting trans rights, then that is a great reason to vote Labour.

Conclusions

My parents always spoke about in the 1970s they were part of the International Socialists, whose advice at every election was “Vote Labour with no illusions”. That same slogan applies today,in bucketloads.

A weak Labour win leaves the threat of Tory resurgence as a cosh with which to browbeat left-leaning voters into giving Labour their vote in 2029. (I do wonder if some of Starmer’s more questionable pronouncements have been a belated attempt to maintain that threat.)

The Tories are implacably anti-trans, from top to bottom. At least in Labour there is a voice for trans rights, even if it is currently sidelined and lacking force. And some of the actual policies in the Labour manifesto, while nowhere near good enough, are at least a small step in the right direction from where we’ve been under the Tories.

I’m not trying to persuade anyone else to change their minds about not voting Labour, because as I said above, every argument I tried over the last 18 months was subsequently undermined and negated by the Labour leadership. And you may very well think that all of this is just a desperate rationalisation to convince myself it’s okay to vote Labour (but if you do, please keep it to yourself and avoid wasting your time and mine by sharing).

But, I’ll see you on 5th July and we can start to plan for 2029 then.

Posted in Gender, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Doctor Who 2024 – What Did All That Mean?

Posted on 23/06/2024 by ValeryNorth

Another amazing season of Doctor Who has come to an end, and oh boy, is it a joy to have RTD back at the helm, with some of the more sensitive and radical writing the modern show has been graced with. He’s not perfect, and every so often there’s a misstep, but we get to see again the Doctor as challenging the system, not merely tinkering at it, the way he was at his best in the Classic Who era.

Speaking of which, there were several neat little nods to Classic Who throughout this season, which fans of the original show (like me!) are sure to have enjoyed.

That said, there were one or two moments where things fell flat or my writerly instincts were left dissatisfied. Or just things that I really had to get my teeth into in a bigger way. I’ve left things to the end of the season rather than responding to each episode for two reasons. The first is just that I’m lazy and didn’t get around to writing up my thoughts. The second (the one I claim is the real reason) is that there was a possibility of a pay-off in the finale. More on that later…

Spoilers abound in the following, so click through only if you’ve already watched the first full season with Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor.

Continue reading →
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Quick Reaction To The “Progressive” Manifestos

Posted on 13/06/2024 by ValeryNorth

In this post, I take a quick look at the Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat manifestos on workers’ rights, unemployment benefit, and LGBTQ+ rights, as these are the matters closest to my heart this time around.

Starting with the Party of which, for the time being, I remain a member, and continue to campaign for in the General Election.

LABOUR

“Labour has been transformed from a party of protest to one that always puts the interests of the country first. Now we are determined to do the same with our politics, returning government to the service of working people.”

Two points here. The first is that if you are in opposition,you SHOULD be a party of protest. You SHOULD be standing firmly against a government that is destroying human rights protections. You can’t actually put the interests of the country first UNLESS you are a party of protest!

Second: I deeply resent the implication that government should not also serve those who are excluded from work, either by disability or temporarily by injury, illness or just not being hired by employers.

“Government is at its best when working in partnership with business, trade unions, civil society, faith groups, and communities.”

One of these is not like the others.

“Government is at its best when working in partnership
with business” sounds a lot to me like “Law enforcement is at its best when working in partnership with organised criminals.”

“Sustained economic growth is the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people. It means being pro-business and pro-worker. We are the party of wealth creation.”

No. Being “pro-business” invariably means being opposed to workers. You cannot rationally claim to be both “pro-oppressors” and “pro-rights”. You must pick a side. As it turns out, if you start with a position to enforce workers’ rights and restricting businesses’ ability to abuse them, then you often find it makes workers more productive in the long-term, with less burnout, less turnover, less wastage. But it is in the nature of capitalism to try to take more and pay less. A Labour government worthy of the name should be there to restrain the predatory instincts of business.

Labour does offer some protections for workers that were eroded or removed under the Tories, so there are some good points – things like ending zero-hour contracts, fire-and-rehire and things like that. But this perpetual desire to be friends with everyone risks allowing those gains to be undermined. Labour needs to put workers (and workers’ safety nets when unemployed) first, and it doesn’t. The venal and exploitative logic of “those who can work, should work” that drove the Tories’ approach to unemployment support and eroded the Welfare State, is repeated in this manifesto, too.

“…sustainable growth requires government to be a strategic partner with business – that markets must be shaped, not merely served.”

The second clause here, I kind of agree with. But describing the way to achieve it as being “a strategic partner” with business seems a little bit too subservient. Government should not be a soft partner, but an enforcer and director, creating the regulations and circumstances to steer business where it is needed. Ideally, business would be owned by the people, and in service to the nation. They never have (as witnessed in how they sought to bring down the Attlee government), and as a pretty hard socialist or left-communist, I believe they probably never truly will be unless the capitalist class are expelled from power and replaced by direct worker ownership of the means of production. But in terms of what’s achievable through parliamentary democracy, a strong will to restrain and mitigate the capitalists’ instincts to profit from everything is what’s needed to reach the goal of shaping markets, not serving them.

LGBTQ+ Rights

“So-called conversion therapy is abuse – there is no other word for it – so Labour will finally deliver a full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices, while protecting the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity.”Obviously a full ban on conversion therapy is excellent news. Unfortunately, I suspect that freedom to explore gender identity is not really supported by some of the other policies.

“We will remove indignities for trans people who deserve recognition and acceptance; whilst retaining the need for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria from a specialist doctor, enabling access to the
healthcare pathway.”

And there it is. While this claims to be removing indignities, they are going to leave in a few indignities because it wouldn’t do to let trans folk believe we are actually equals. Requiring a medical diagnosis and thus retaining the gatekeeper and medicalised model of transgender identity is fundamentally degrading and disgraceful. It is a rollback of Labour’s position of 5 years ago, and a serious source of the distrust for the Party I encountered at Pride last year.

This is, again, Labour trying to appease the transphobic “gender critical” movement and still claiming to be pro-LGBTQ+.

“We will work to implement the expert recommendations of the Cass Review to ensure that young people presenting to the NHS with gender dysphoria are receiving appropriate and high-quality care.”

The Cass Review did not include expert recommendations. It was a hack job driven by ideological opposition to trans rights. Implementing it is an insult and declaration of hatred for trans people. It certainly does not speak of recognition and acceptance; and it certainly does not lead to appropriate and high-quality care.

This is just one more reason why trans people have lost any sense of trust in the Labour Party.

None of this recognises the existence of non-binary and genderqueer people (hello, that’s me, by the way!) and indeed, the gatekeeper model proposed in this manifesto definitely excludes us and minimises our reality.

GREEN PARTY

The Greens are roughly where I think a left-of-centre Labour Party should be on social justice and workers’ rights. I distrust their dedication, especially on workers’ rights and the economy, because of their strong emphasis on the environment and my suspicion that they will not pay sufficient attention to the short-term costs for workers of pursuing those goals. This is not tosay that I believe the two are incompatible, but rather that I don’t think the Greens have put enough thought and care into that side of things, which a genuinely socialist party would have done.

Nevertheless, there’s a lot I like here, and given my current disaffection with the Labour Party, the Greens look like a possible lace for meto give my vote in 2029. But for now, I am Labour and genuinely believe the best course right now is a huge Labour victory and wipeout for the Tories. And who knows, maybe circumstances and protests will persuade Starmer to do better.

” Repeal current anti-union legislation and replace this with a positive Charter of Workers’ Rights.
Introduce a maximum 10:1 pay ratios for all private and public-sector organisations.
Deliver equal rights for all workers currently excluded from protections, including ‘gig economy’ workers and those on ‘zero hours’ contracts.”

These three points are interesting. The first one is pretty vague, and I didn’t pick up much detail about it. The second is a pretty solid regulation of profiteering, and nice, solid commitment. The third is a match for Labour’s equivalent policy, as far as I can tell, but less specific in how it will be done.

“Elected Greens will campaign to:
Increase Universal Credit and legacy benefits by £40 a week.
End the unfair five-week wait for benefits which is pushing people into debt.

…

In the long term, Green MPs will push for the introduction of a Universal Basic Income that will give everybody the security to start a business, study, train or just live their life in dignity. This major change to our tax and social security system is the work of more than one parliament. In the meantime, we will end benefit sanctions and challenge the punitive approach to welfare claimants, instead recognising that that all of us might need extra support or a safety net at different points in our lives. Elected Greens will take every opportunity to advocate for the most disadvantaged in society.“

The long-term commitment to UBI is good to see, although the claim that it will take longer than one term in office to achieve is frustrating. But the whole tenor of this passage is to provide proper support, the way it was intended to be when the Welfare State was established. This is stealing Labour’s traditional ground.

LGBTQ+ Rights

“We will ensure that tailored and specific [mental health] provision is readily available for the particular needs of communities of colour, children and adolescents, older people and Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer and Asexual (LGBTIQA+) communities.“

“The Green Party supports self-ID, so that trans and non-binary people could be legally recognised in their chosen gender through self-declaration. We also support ending the spousal veto so that married trans people can acquire their gender recognition certification without having to obtain permission from their spouse, and to change the law so an X gender marker can be added to passports for non-binary and intersex people who wish to use it.“

“• Decriminalise sex work.“

The Greens are very strong on LGBTQ+ rights generally, but still have a little bit of work to do to convince me that they are committed to these values. Caroline Lucas, when she was my MEP, advocated for the Swedish Model of sex work criminalisation, at odds with the above claim they will decriminalise sex work. Worse, their 2015 candidate in Cambridge was Dr Rupert Read, and he made transphobic statements on Twitter, a controversy that was reported locally and to which I responded on this very blog! His wikipedia page shows that he was the second candidate on the Green Party list for the Eastern Region in the 2019 European elections, and still working in close connection with the Green Party after that. So the Greens did not deal with the issue very well, in my opinion.

But going purely on the manifesto policy statements, again, this is what I want to see from Labour.

LIBDEMS

The Liberal Democrats put a lot more into economics and workers’ rights than they do social justice and trans rights. A lot of their manifesto felt like “well-meaning fluff” – tinkering at the edges of problems rather than really getting to their heart – a problem in common with Labour, but for different reasons.

“• Ensure the UK has the highest possible standards of environmental, health, labour and consumer protection, at least matching EU standards.“

“• Placing human rights, labour and environmental standards and protection at the heart of international trade deals.“

These are positive, but quite vague in general. They aren’t things I disagree with, I just don’t know what the LibDems think they mean.

“• Establish a powerful new Worker Protection Enforcement Authority unifying responsibilities currently spread across three agencies – including enforcing the minimum wage, tackling modern slavery and protecting agency workers.“

Obviously, again, these are issues that need urgent attention. Unifying the responsibilities under a new Authority doesn’t sound like the most direct way of doing that, though.

“Establish an independent review to recommend a genuine living wage across all sectors, with government departments and all other public sector employers taking a leading role in paying it.“

The LibDems seem to like independent reviews, going by their manifesto’s frequent mention of them. But I have very little faith in them. The Cass Review was supposed to be independent, after all. This sounds like the LDs would do nothing practical.

“Modernise employment rights to make them fit for the age of the ‘gig economy’, including by:
Establishing a new ‘dependent contractor’ employment status in between employment and self-employment, with entitlements to basic rights such as minimum earnings levels, sick pay and holiday entitlement.
Reviewing the tax and National Insurance status of employees, dependent contractors and freelancers to ensure fair and comparable treatment.
Setting a 20% higher minimum wage for people on zero-hour contracts at times of normal demand to compensate them for the uncertainty of fluctuating hours of work.
Giving a right to request a fixed-hours contract after 12 months for ‘zero hours’ and agency workers, not to be unreasonably refused.
Reviewing rules concerning pensions so that those in the gig economy don’t lose out, and portability between roles is protected.
Shifting the burden of proof in employment tribunals regarding employment status from individual to employer“

These are among the most concrete and definite policies I found in the Liberal Democrat manifesto. It feels very complicated, with contingencies and conditions everywhere. This adds to my impression of the Liberal Democrats as tinkering at the edges rather than going to the heart of a challenge.

“Set a target of ending deep poverty within a decade, and establish an independent commission to recommend further annual increases in Universal Credit to ensure that support covers life’s essentials, such as food and bills.“

An ambitious target, over which the plan appears to be: “Leave it to someone else to handle” – another independent body (a commission, in this case). It would be good to see happen, I’m just left doubting the LDs’ commitment to it.

LGBTQ+ Rights

” Offering asylum to people fleeing the risk of violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identification, ending the culture of disbelief for LGBT+ asylum seekers, and never refusing an LGBT+ applicant on the basis that they could be discreet.“

This is the only manifesto I’ve read that makes direct mention of LGBTQ+ refugees, and changing the rules for accepting them. I have no trust for the LibDems, but this is excellent to see.

” Respect and defend the rights of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, including trans and non-binary people.
Ban all forms of conversion therapies and practices.“

“Reform the gender recognition process to remove the requirement for medical reports, recognise non-binary identities in law, and remove the spousal veto.“

This sounds similar to the Green commitments on LGBTQ+ rights, but the LDs don’t actually say legal self-ID so I’m left concerned that they might not mean it.

ALL THREE ON ISRAEL/PALESTINE

I wanted to make mention that all three of these manifestos mention support for and recognition of, a free Palestinian state. Labour’s language is actually the strongest in terms of support, but then makes the caveat that it would be “a contribution to a renewed peace process”. The LibDems say they will recognise a Palestinian state “with immediate effect”. The Green Party are the only ones to mention any measures to put enforce their support of Palestinian freedom, with a promise to end UK arms exports to Israel, and “an urgent international effort to end the illegal occupation of Palestinian land.”

CONCLUSIONS

I have very little trust in any of the three main “progressive” parties. (I do not believe the Liberal Democrats count as progressive – and Labour are moving ever further away from any claim to that title, too.)

All of them would be immeasurably better than the Tories.

I would be delighted to see more Green MPs in Parliament on July 5th, but realistically, this time around the choice is between Labour and Conservative. I don’t currently know for sure whether I will stay in Labour beyond the election, but I am critical of Labour now, because I want the Party I joined under Ed Miliband to be better, to stand for the values I associated with it then. (Dare I say it, to be a bit more like Corbyn’s Labour Party!)

Vote Labour to get the Tories out, if your local candidate is anything close to acceptable (Alas, there are some who do not meet that criterion). But I will be voting Labour on July 4th, and protesting them on July 5th.

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Works In Progress Update Feb 2024

Posted on 15/02/2024 by ValeryNorth

So, this is just a quick post to congratulate myself on having got something creative done over the past month or so. Because I feel like I deserve it for the minuscule amount I’ve achieved. Yay me!

Seriously, though – dayjob keeps me pretty tired by having me be on normal office hours instead of my natural sleep pattern, and also takes away time that I could be using creatively (or wasting playing video games, same difference). Dayjob is less demanding in terms of actual work to do right now, so I’m writing this update.

MUSIC

I’ve written a super-filthy punk song called “Slam My Glam”, all about going out and having kinky oral and buttsex at a fetish club. I’ve recorded all the parts, I just need to settle down and create a mix I’m happy with.

I’ve also come up with a little tune in Dorian mode that feels like it would work well as a scene-setting background music or intro for any fantasy-themed TTRPG session/actual-play. Will need to work out an arrangement to bring out the best atmospheric vibes for the purpose – maybe try a few different moods to give options.

STORIES

In January, I bashed out a pervy porn fantasy into a roughly 10k word story of the type you can find on Smashwords if you turn all the filters off and go looking in the Erotica section. And it is indeed my intention to publish via that platform. Having left it a month or so since I finished the first draft, it’s probably coming up to time I should be launching into the editing process to make sure the work is as polished and ready for market as I can make it. Careful proofreading and editing is not always apparent in other ebooks (though still better and more common than on some sources!) so here’s hoping it makes a difference!

I also wrote a little bit more of my second novel, but now seem to have mislaid the memory stick I saved it on. I am sure I have a save in one of my computers too, I don’t think it’s lost, and I am sure the stick has just slipped into a corner somewhere and will turn up soon enough. But having it available as the primary version helped!

VIDEO GAMES

Rather less sexy filth involved in my current video game development project (there’s a couple of sexy/filthy game ideas I have plans for, but those can wait).

It’s based on a pen-and-paper game Papa taught me to play back when I was small. I don’t know if it has a “proper” name that it’s known by more widely, and I don’t remember it ever having a name that we knew it by. It was a maths/geometry type thing about navigating a boat around some islands and back to the starting point. On each turn you could adjust your horizontal speed and your vertical speed by +1/-1, and the aim was to be the fastest around the course without crashing into land or the other boat.

It seemed like something that should be relatively easy to implement as a 2d video game, although of course it turns out to be trickier than I imagined! I’ve got the basic movement mechanic working now, so I just need to figure out a reasonably attractive GUI for inputting the turn by mouse-click instead of using the arrow keys (although I want to keep that option!) and figure out how to make it work as a turn-based “hotseat” multiplayer game. Creating an AI to pilot the other boats in single-player is also on my to-do list but I have less confidence in my ability to do that.

A naval combat variation might also be doable, I’d need to think about how that would work in terms of how to do attacks.

CONCLUSION

So, that’s what I’ve managed to get done in the last month or so. All of it adds up to a lot of unfinished projects, but at least I have clear goals on each one for what the next step is, and I can progress them somewhat at least.

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What I’m doing for the #GlobalStrike for a permanent ceasefire

Posted on 21/01/2024 by ValeryNorth

I have seen various calls on Twitter (aka ‘X’) for a week-long global strike to support calls for a permanent ceasefire in the immediate term, and a free Palestine in the future. The aim of this is to deliver as big a hit to global finance, commerce and economics as possible, to draw attention to the weight of opinion around the world in support of Palestinians’ human rights.

A big part of that is making participation in the Global Strike as visible as possible, and that’s why I’m bothering to write a short blog post about what I’m doing for it.

I am currently a temp worker in a precarious job security situation, and no union representation, so I can’t afford to go without a week’s pay – or even take reduced pay – so I won’t be taking part in the work stoppage aspect of the strike, there are other things I can and will do. Besides, the role I perform and the industry my current employer is part of do not seem to me to be very significant in terms of finance and economics in the immediate term.

On the other hand, I can definitely afford to go without spending money for a whole week. Saturday is my usual groceries shopping day, and I have bought the groceries I need for the week ahead, and enough to see me through a whole day longer than usual, so I can do the shop on next Sunday instead.

The organisers ask people to shut down their social media apart from posts and reposts relating to Gaza, Palestine, and the Global Strike. I will mostly be sticking to this, with the biggest exception that I plan to make being that I will repost several Mutual Aid requests through the week. Some of the situations people find themselves in are time-urgent and cannot wait, and if I were currently feeling secure financially I would also make an exception to send money to at least a couple of those requests. Sadly, I am not secure enough to help that way but I will still encourage others to do so.

I will also take a step back from multiplayer online games, for the most part. The companies who produce and host such games rely on their user base to provide an exciting experience and attract further players, and thus revenue, to their servers. My withdrawal might not mean much, but it is still a gesture I can make towards shutting down global commerce.

I don’t know if I will be able emotionally to stay away from sites like YouTube, because the videos often help me make it through a working day.

But the three things: no spending, online or in person; focussing almost entirely on Palestine (and Mutual Aid requests) on Twitter and Bluesky; withdrawing support from MMOs – these I can and will do, and stick to.

I’ll leave you with this, to the tune of Sweet Caroline’s chorus – the song British Xers and Boomers love to sing at sporting events, for some reason:

FREE PALESTINE (doo doo doo)
From the river to the sea (The sea! The sea! The sea!)
I’d be inclined (doo doo doo)
To say that’s the path to peace…

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Goodbye 2023, hello 2024

Posted on 01/01/2024 by ValeryNorth

So, another year over, and that I survived. A new one just beginning, bringing who knows what opportunities, challenges and trials.

It seems like it’s time to look back and look ahead, achievements and plans, that sort of thing.

The big thing that has made the past year different, and positive, for me has been that I’ve been in paid employment for the entire calendar year. This has literally never happened before in my life, and it’s meant I’ve had more money for good things and to help out a few of those in need in my social media circles, than ever before. I have bought myself many nice things and been able to afford experiences and events I wouldn’t have been able to get to otherwise.

I’ve continued creating TTRPGs through 2023, even though I had kind of planned to step back from it. I just kept getting ideas that deserved development. I made 3 new games, plus the SRD one of them is based on: The Goldilocks Dice System.

Goldilocks came about through a Twitter discussion about dice mechanics and roll high vs roll low. In Goldilocks, you want to hit the middle two values on the dice you’re rolling. The extremes (1 or maximum value) are total failures and the values in between mid and top/bottom are various levels of “success with complication” or “failure with less cost”. The key thing is, a failure too high should be different from a failure too low, because if you overdo something it generally doesn’t have the same consequence as not doing it enough. Why Goldilocks? Because you want to be not too hot, not too cold, but just right!

The game based on it is Dinosaur Sleuths In Rural England, in which you are undercover dinos but also private detectives based on the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s famous creations, and so on. Your rolls to investigate the horrendous crime that has befallen the little quaint village can be too enthusiastic, too timid, or just right.

I also made a horror movie themed game (Iron Taste Of Blood) using the Iron Core SRD, in which your party find themselves in an isolated region with a mysterious killer hunting them. It plays into classic horror tropes, and requires a certain lack of genre-savvy from the characters to get things started, but relies on the player choices to prioritise between time spent, effort expended, and quality of work – if your attempt to escape depends on your making the thing work, but you have to spend too long fixing it, then the Killer might strike before you’re finished…

The last game I made was another new system, but I haven’t worked out how to make it into a generalised SRD yet. This time, you’re using a wheel of fortune approach, with different skills arranged around the wheel – rolling the dice determines where the spinner lands for each roll, with some results more probable than others (where you place each skill determines which is most likely). The game is Our Deeds Worthy Of Song (Honest!) – or ODWOSH for short. It’s inspired by the card game Braggart, in which players compete to tell the greatest tale of derring-do, but can fall foul of having the truth revealed by another player altering their story to make it less heroic.

In ODWOSH, the players are the whole party, while the GM is more of an interested audience for their tale. The party clearly succeeded and survived whatever feat they’re telling of. The game is all about how epic or farcical the adventure turned out to be, and how will the story be told of the adventurers’ amazing or otherwise deeds? That makes it a very nice zero-peril type of game if that’s your speed, when the worst that can happen to your character is that they had an embarrassing accident on their way to victory.

In 2024 I really do hope to step back from writing and creating TTRPGs. What I want most of all is to get people to play them on livestreams or Actual Plays – with or without my involvement. I’d also like to do a bit more performing or joining in on people’s livestreams and generally being more active as a roleplayer.

Speaking of – In 2023 I was also hugely involved in the Cybertopia Actual Play podcast created by Ben Newbon (writer of the game of that name). My new-age lover of big explosions who may (or may not) have imbibed some mind-expanding substances just prior to being kicked out of the police SWAT team applied cosmic philosophy and forced entry techniques to solving the various problems facing the teams on which they found themselves. There are too many great characters to mention but the whole first season is out now, and it is well worth the listen.

I wasn’t just a performer in Cybertopia in 2023. I also wrote the theme music and intro sting for the podcast. I’ve been getting more into electronica, and combining synth and synthwave styles with more natural instruments. This came together best for the “Finale” version of the theme, which isn’t currently available online. You can listen to the main version, Cybertopia Horizons, on Soundcloud.

Also available on Soundcloud, early in the year I created a synth-y set of tracks exploring the “Axis progression” or “4 chords of pop” by applying the sequence to other scales and modes than the usual major or minor key versions, as an entry in a challenge on one of the discord servers I’m signed up to. “Projections In Multiple Axes” hopefully creates a journey as well as being linked by the same underlying chord relations.

The main thing I did musically was just acquire more instruments and things to help me create the music that I love. From synthesisers to new guitars (an electro-classical guitar, a 3-string cigar box guitar and a fantastic single-coil Squier), and most recently an electric double bass (upright bass). But all of them have expanded my possibilities in recording and hopefully performing. I’m really excited to make more music in 2024, maybe even accepting commissions to write more themes and stings for performers out there to give them unique sonic signatures.

The big reason I want to take a break from TTRPG writing is so I can focus a bit more time on some other areas of creativity. I want to write and publish more stories, and have set myself the goal in 2024 of publishing some utterly filthy porn short stories on Smashwords, alongside my more feminist-themed BDSM relationship drama. I’d also like to finish one or two of my stalled WIPs in the video game creation area, and maybe finally create a 3d game that is actually playable. In 2023 the only game I made was a very short “explore the map” type game for a Game Jam with the theme “Brief Respite”. My game was called Safe For Tonight and features a top-down line-of-sight mechanic executed in a different engine than the previous game with a similar mechanic, that I made back in 2019. (One of the WIPs I’d like to finish uses the same mechanic, so it seemed worth revisiting!)

So there it is.

My 2024 goals:

  • Write MOAR PORN – although new legislation may make that troublesome as far as artwork is concerned.
  • Do more TTRPG performances with other people
  • Finish some video game ideas
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