Tuesday, 11 February 2025

DEATH TO THE BLOGGIES

Hahaha only joking. I love the bloggies! 

Consider yourself clickbaited. 

I never do that: haven't previously will never do so again... but I just couldn't resist after Prismatic Wasteland's substack post titled Are the Bloggies Rigged?, which also featured my hilarious Goblin punch joke (uncited). I mean, anything I have to say has to be taken with a pinch of salt given that I was overlooked (thank you, general public) after being a finalist in 2023—see my handmade-by -Zedeck 2023 finalist pin, below!

This is very cute and I love it

Honestly, no sour grapes here, but I do have one or two things to say.

In praise of the bloggies

I'm not a fan of awards for art. The oscars make me sick. I quite like the Turner Prize, but mostly because it helps me identify philistines who I can then eject from my immediate social circle. But they can also be a force for good! Let's have a look at a one of the comments from r/rpg when Sacha shared the link for this years finalists:

Man, I have been churning through these. I had no idea the bloggies existed until the last post announcing this year, and now I've read all of last year's entries and this year's entries in the span of a few days. I appreciate this contest just to expose me to absolute truckloads of good RPG writing.
- Reddit user z0mbiePete
Just the ability to proselytise on a sub as vanilla as r/rpg and to get one comment like that is worth it. Zombie Pete is now a convert, and (perhaps befitting his name) has already infected 9 up-voters. It's not that our sub-sub-genre needs to grow (this little corner of a niche within the nichest of hobbies is never going to take over the world) but fresh blood is always welcome. I'm told it's what makes the grass grow.

Secondly, some of my favourite posts of last year were there. Some. There were also posts by blogs I wan't previously aware of which I now follow. 320 posts were nominated by "the community" so we have their good taste to thank for the overall high quality.

Thirdly, this is an entirely voluntary operation carried out by the previous year's winner. The 2024 awards were administered by SachaGoat, overall(platinum) winner of the 2023 bloggies. It is time consuming and (mostly) thankless. Not only that, you also have to put up with pricks like me sniping from the sidelines about how it could have been different. So Sacha (and Zedeck before him, and Prismatic Wasteland before that...): thank you for your hard work, it's appreciated. I've tried in the past to contribute to the "community" (perhaps most notably with "Five on a Friday") but I always run out of steam, so my admiration is doubled. 

Very awkward and embarrassed mild critique of the bloggies

My main issue with the bloggies is the focus on Twitter and Bluesky as the platform to spread awareness of the event and to announce stages of voting. 

I left Twitter mostly because I resented hanging out on a website that was rapidly turning into Elon Musk's glorified Facebook page. I say "left" hough I have kept my accounts—mostly because I have some weird paranoia that an AI Bot is going to steal my identity and start posting Nazi propaganda or something—but I don't log in. 

I also "left" Twitter because it's an ugly free-for-all and full of such banal, throwaya takes not worthy of my attention. It's not worthy of yours, either—and I'm sorry to say I have found Bluesky to be exactly the same, improved only by the absence of fascists.... which is a bit like saying "this bath full of human shit is unpleasant, but at least I'm not sharing it with actual nazis"

Anyway, unlike in the G+ era, the community is polycentric. I appreciate that my personal distaste for  micro-blogging sites is matched by the distaste others experience for platforms I prefer (Discord, for instance), so I'm not sure how to solve this other than conducting it through the previous year's winner's blog page. This year I even missed the nomination process, which was... upsetting.

The second issue I have is that the format allows for authors to be represented multiple times. I appreciate that a) the awards are meant for individual posts so this does not preclude multiple entries and b) the categories are organised so that authors/blogs are only able to appear once in any category.... but:

...approaching half of all (26/64) posts were written by 11 bloggers. It is possible that a blogger could win in one or more categories, and then face off against themselves in the final—hence my incredibly funny joke (stolen by Prismatic) about Goblin Punch cleaning up at a hypothetical Bloggies event in the future.

But apart from that... what's the issue? Well that's 15 other blogs that could have been showcased that weren't. Blogs like Weird & Wonderful Worlds, The Comic Orrery, Hex Culture, Archons March On, Noise Sans Signal.

... most importantly...

...no entries from one blog in particular

(spoilers: I'm not talking about this one)

What this post is really all about

On [REDACTED] discord server I chatted with [REDACTED] about some of the omissions from this year's bloggies, and came up with a little suggestion. What was [REDACTED]'s favourite post of last year? This was going to be tricky, as they'd nominated more than 30 posts for this year's bloggies: I suggested rolling a 1d30, but instead they gave a shortlist of 3 and let me pick one.

My intention was to then contact the author of the chosen post, get their favourite post of 2024, contact that author... until it reached a point where one of the authors was repeated.

A quiet round-robin that I hoped would run in parallel to the bloggies—sort of like the fringe to the Edinburgh Festival.

As it happened, it came full circle pretty quickly.

The End is the Beginning is the End 

Of the 3 options with which I was presented, I chose this one:

https://wasitlikely.blogspot.com/2024/12/gods-of-stolen-world.html

My online friendship with Ms. Screwhead goes back to the OSR Purple (or sometimes Rainbow) Discord Server. In 2019 I signed up for the Secret Santicorn, and while I ended up making this for someone called Sherlock Hole (who didn't even say thanks, btw, and I'm still pissed about it) I was overjoyed to receive this from her, after my own request for a dark-age hexcrawl generator:

https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2019/12/secret-santicorn-gift-from-ms-screw-on.html

Perhaps we didn't speak much but I still felt a kindred spirit in the search for a true home in the kaleidoscopic fragmentation of OSR spaces post G+. I think I followed her to the r/artpunk subreddit, but it was never very active (and the two biggest luminaries of that "scene"—Scrap and Patrick Stuart—were notably absent). The OSR server's GLOG grotto (formerly a ghetto) was fun and anarchic, but didn't quite capture the ineffable... something... that I think each of us (in different ways) sort in our games.

Naturally, then, I was delighted to be invited to her then burgeoning Iconoclastic Flow shared-blog project. Sadly that lost momentum (though hope is not lost for future collaboration).

Suffice to say I'm a fan, so I was intrigued to hear what she would choose as her favourite blog post of 2024. What I got was this:

"There was a lot of great stuff this year but I got to double down on 

https://thelovelydark.blogspot.com/2024/10/ultrareality.html 

"it made me cry!!!"

Incredible, visceral writing. It's familiar too, a window not into another world but out of the world we inhabit, maybe? Plato's cave. It feels... close.

The issue would be tracking the author down.I know they used to dwell on the purple server (as QueenOfMonsters I believe), but no more: and there were no contact options on her blog. Fortunately I was assisted in this matter by one Phlox of Whose Measure God Could Not Take and my humble request, along with an explanation as to why I was making the request... the only information I supplied was that her blog had been chosen by [UNNAMED PERSON] and now it was her turn to name hers.

This is what I got back from her:

"Okay, my favorite post of 2024 is definitely: 

https://wasitlikely.blogspot.com/2024/12/classes-for-stolen-world.html

"The Stolen World is stark and strange and fathomless as a mirror. This is like peering through a keyhole."

The eagle-eyed among you will have quickly spotted that connective tissue: not only was this the same blog author that began my little fringe festival, it was a post within the same series as was initially recommended. And guess who is lurking in the comments? 

(no, no you'll have to leapfrog over Taylor Lane)

The author of The Lovely Dark, Vulnavia.

My round-robin had ended before it had begun.

So what?

I understand you objections. this doesn't prove anything, really, other than if I ran the bloggies it wouldn't be nearly as broad. That's okay. I had to go on that journey: I'm sorry I felt the need to take you with me.

But there is a little more, isn't there? There's my need to evangelise about the author of Was It Likely, Ms Screwhead, and my disappointment she didn't receive greater recognition for an incredible year. Of course I'm aware that she received a bloggie in 2023, but it doesn't stop me thinking she should have got another one.

Luckily there'll be another competition at the start of next year. And there's already 3 sublime pieces of work up:

Tove Janson survival horror using Luke Gearing's violence?
https://wasitlikely.blogspot.com/2025/02/before-moon-was-born.html  

A game we're all playing: bitter and sad and emptying


...and this 4th piece just in, posted while I was hammering away at these keys!
https://wasitlikely.blogspot.com/2025/02/make-better-mind-pictures.html
     
So please take this request and nominate one of these for some kind of recognition in 2025.

Links

As usual I've pasted all the links in this post in long format below, for ease of access to people with cell/mobile issues. I've also added all the blogs shortlisted for the 2024 bloggies which weren't mentioned, as it seems right given my advocacy for broader authorial representation.

I hope this post is read in the spirit it was intended: a platonic love letter to the talents of Ms. Screwhead. I suppose when it comes down to it this can be said to all be very cringe: but as I recently read somewhere don't kill the part of you that's cringe, kill the part of you that cringes

Thanks to Onslaught6 for that final remark.

Prismatic's substack clickbait 
https://prismaticweekly.substack.com/p/are-the-bloggies-rigged

Sacha's reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1hsxqtp/bloggies_2024_commence/

Zedeck's summary of 2023
https://slowlorispress.com/post/741547655787905024/bloggies-2023-best-blog-post-of-the-year

Beau Rancourt
https://rancourt.substack.com/

Benign Brown Beast
https://beast.blot.im/

DIY & Dragons
https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/

Explorers Design
https://www.explorersdesign.com/

Knight at the Opera
https://knightattheopera.blogspot.com/

Luke Gearing
https://lukegearing.blot.im/

Mazirian's Garden
http://maziriansgarden.blogspot.com/

Playful Void
https://playfulvoid.game.blog/

Prismatic Wasteland
https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/

Sam Sorenson
https://samsorensen.blot.im/

Silverarm Press
https://silverarmpress.com/

Blog of Max Cantor:
Weird & Wonderful Worlds

The Cosmic Orrery
https://thecosmicorrery.blogspot.com/

Hex Culture
https://hexculture.com/

Semiurge's blog
https://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/

Noise Sans Signal
https://noisesanssignal.blogspot.com/

The blog I chose (as prompted by someone else)
https://wasitlikely.blogspot.com/2024/12/gods-of-stolen-world.html

2 GLOG classes for Secret Santicorn
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2019/12/secret-santicorn-2019-2-glog-classes.html

Sherlock Hole (ha!)
https://themimicsnest.blogspot.com/

Ms Screwhead's inspired gift
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2019/12/secret-santicorn-gift-from-ms-screw-on.html

Ultrareality
https://thelovelydark.blogspot.com/2024/10/ultrareality.html 

Whose Measure God could Not Take (phlox's blog)
https://whosemeasure.blogspot.com/

Why you should leapfrog over Taylor Lane:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FseXEJ7myk4

So What? by The Anti-Nowhere League
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH7pOUm5s9k
~


Finalists for the 2024 bloggies: 

Wobble Rocket (post entered for theory category, blog won silver in debut blog category)

All Dead Generations

Skeleton Code Machine

Rise Up Comus (copper in theory category)

Kobolds & Konsequences

Jay Dragon

Dododecahedron

Mythic Mountain Musings

Behind the Helm

Coins and Scrolls

Slow Loris Press

Among Cats and Books (also nominated in debut blog category)

Spiceomancy

Dungeon Doll

DIY and Dragons

Occultronics

Molten Sulfur

Strange Aeons

Pointless Monument (silver in gameable category)

Dice Goblin

Goblin Punch (copper in advice category)

Among Cats and Books  (also nominated for debut blog)

Roll to Doubt (silver in advice category)

Loot the Room

Press the Beast

Archon’s Court

Weird Wonder (gold in advice category)

Uncanny Spheres

The Soloist (copper in review category)

Attronarch

The Weeping Stag

Indie Game Reading Club (gold in review category)

False Machine

Split Party

El Rune

Traverse Fantasy

Hendrik ten Napel (silver in review category)

Andrew Logan Montgomery

Debut Blogs

1999 A.D.

Among Cats and Books (copper winner debut blog)

Behind the Helm















MURKMAIL (gold in debut blog category)

Patchwork Paladin


Wobble Rocket (post entered for theory category, blog won silver in debut blog category)









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4 comments:

  1. Onslaught Six12 February 2025 at 09:26

    Hey, I got to be mentioned somewhere!!

    By the way, I also have a blog, lol, at onslaughtsix.com.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sofinho - Alone in the Labyrinth13 February 2025 at 02:00

      You did! Thanks for the link, added you to the Library of Babel!

      Delete
  2. maxcan712 February 2025 at 14:09

    I have so checked out with this stuff but I'm glad to see there are still so many new blogs on top of all the great blogs that are still ongoing. I'll take your bloggies over the "official" bloggies any day :p!

    ReplyDelete