7 minute read
It’s not often that I feel seen by Brian Tyrrell
The conversations I see about folk like me love to revel in the negative: trauma from my childhood, the loss of vital spaces that I need to thrive in society, and a government that repeatedly proves it doesn’t care about me. Mainstream media likes to pity me rather than see me as a real person. They only condescend to focus on stories like mine when they can be commercialised.
Talking about being autistic is difficult. I have to decipher my own thoughts about it, skimming the murky waters of shame, anxiety and rage to try and find what I think I believe to be true. There’s no ‘Autism 101’ class in high school. My parents, my colleagues, even other neurodivergent friends are still struggling to find the language to talk about it all.
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If this feels familiar, it’s because it is. Marginalised communities experience many different, often incomparable problems. However, one common root is an inability to talk about them, and be heard when we do. The spaces where this language would normally sprout and find usage are hard to find and harder to access. What’s worse, when we do create the words we need, they’re often appropriated out of context, and commodified.
Community through Storytelling
Since we first had campfires, humans have been telling stories. Communities love to tell stories—they fascinate us. We raise them up as examples (to strive towards or to rally against). We tell them to preserve our history, and to share our skills. Stories can teach us a great deal about what was important to the community that wrote them (or acted, or sang, or filmed them).
They help us comprehend things we didn’t think were possible. Lightning and fire, castles in the sky, tablets on spaceships, being reborn into a new body. These things weren’t possible, but then we started telling stories where they were, and they were so inspiring that we had to make them real.
Time and Place
When you tell your own story in front of a huge audience, you can feel compelled to redact the messy details. It’s not the same as having a natter in your kitchen with the kettle on when there’s the cold shadow of judgement leering over you.
Masking and code-switching are essential; they keep you safe. But they’re also exhausting. So, when you tell a story in front of a small group of friends— people you trust—it can feel like the world lifting off of your shoulders.
Games, but it’s okay to cry
‘Storytelling games’ are a set of collaborative rules for people to come together and tell a story. You might know them as Roleplaying games, Tabletop games, Dungeons & Dragons, or something like that. Some games use funny looking dice, others use Jenga towers, or a deck of cards, or an Xbox controller. There are some that don’t have any gimmick to them. However, they all tell stories, so I like to call them storytelling games.
In these games you play a character, and that character has to face conflict that you have to help solve. These conflicts can range from the fantastical, such as slaying demons, to the utterly mundane, like finding the energy to go shopping after work.
When asked to talk about roleplaying games, consistently across all audiences there is one thing in common; how they are talked about. Positive experiences are shared with personal and group pronouns (e.g. I did this amazing thing, we accomplished this task). Failure is explained with secondary pronouns (This character slipped off of a cliff, they messed up). The way players talk about their experiences reflects the hidden benefits of these games. They let you glory in your successes and learn from your mistakes, without the added shame and stigma of messing up in real life.
Mental Gymnastics
Lifting weights for the first time is always underwhelming. 20 minutes later and you’re still weak, but much sweatier, your heart is pounding, and there’s a creeping dread that everyone is looking at you. Keep doing it regularly and after a while your burning muscles transmute into something less out of breath (and hopefully stronger).
Roleplaying games are the same. Through our characters, we get to practice what it’s like to be the main character of our own story; to be the hero and the villain; to be dramatically in love and casually out of it; to be absolutely normal, and brilliantly different. It’s awkward at first, but through playing we can practice confidence, and then exude that confidence in real life.
Pass the Sugar, Please is a game by Clio Yun- Su Davis where friends and strangers meet at a tea party, only to realise they have previously slept with one or more of the people around the table. The goal is to talk about your partner and their ‘performance’ through the allegory of food, without revealing who you’re talking about. Part of Honey and Hot Wax, an anthology of sex-related roleplaying games, Pass the Sugar, Please captures the excitement of sexually charged gossip while also refining your subtlety and innuendo.
For in our queer community, talking about sex comes easily, while for others it can be intimidating, clunky, and result in real harm when mistakes are made. Games like Pass the Sugar, Please provide the space to understand, practice, and train skills that are a pillar of how we interact with each other.
Different Angles
Roleplaying games also help you tell your own story. As a group, players can explore complex social issues with the help of analogy. They can face problems they don’t know how to solve in real life, and find a solution collaboratively. Keeping cool under pressure, supporting one another, managing your priorities—these skills are important whether you’re defending your castle from a dragon or running a queer and inclusive space in the middle of a conservative suburb.
The rules of a game can be written to simulate the difficulties we face in real life, and curate our experiences for others to explore. Dominique Dickey’s game, TRIAL, centres on the legal defence of a Bruce Orson, a black man accused of the murder of a white woman. The rules push the players into different positions (such as whether they believe Orson is innocent or guilty). Even if there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to prove Orson’s innocence, there is still a high chance that he will be convicted and suffer some kind of punishment. As games go, TRIAL’s rules aren’t representative of a fair legal system, but they aren’t meant to be. They help its players explore what it is to be black and specifically oppressed by America’s legal system.
Making Space
Roleplaying games don’t have to be coliseums to hone your skills. For many, they’re safe places where you can find comfort amongst like-minded friends.
Often, roleplaying games can be played in a series of sessions (like episodes of a TV show) over months, and even years, with the same recurring characters. Over time, these characters grow, and the stories they are involved in inspire joy. Players are understandably invested in these stories, and embellish them with their own hopes and dreams. Commissioning artists to bring these stories to life is common, like the commission I worked on to map out one group’s cottage, built to house the foundfamily in a space that protects and nurtures them.
Seeing queer characters find love, disabled characters defy expectation, and other maginalised backgrounds succeed where the real world pushes them down can reinvigorate players with the energy they need to keep pushing for real change in the world.
Growing strong
In many ways, I owe a lot of my social growth to roleplaying games. At a young age, they let me explore what sort of person I wanted to be, in a safer environment where I could learn without the fear of ostracism. As I grew older, they were a way for me to tell the stories I wasn’t seeing around me; of neurodivergent characters who didn’t have to alter or mask who they were to fit in, who were accepted and loved as they are. Now, running a publishing imprint, I have the tools to help other people tell their own stories, and feel seen for the first time.
We’re always looking for creative submissions to feature in the magazine – from photography and artwork to creative writing. If you’re interested in submitting something, contact us: info@s-x.scot
Brian is a queer and disabled illustrator, writer, and all round creator based in Edinburgh. He runs your favourite local indie publishingimprint, Dungeons on a Dime (doad.co.uk), and you can find his gamesaround the world in all good bookstores.
