Author: Eric

Middle Grade Media to Enjoy Instead

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With a reboot series coming and no sign of the author shutting up about her trans-hating (and often racist and even misogynist) views, the most commonly known wizard-school story is still being pushed hard by news orgs and of course by Warner Bros. Surrounding all that talk, I hear a lot of base assumptions that HP is somehow uniquely good or influential, when in fact much of its popularity was originally (if I may) astro-TERFed. (For more on the myth of the books’ original impact, check out Caelan Conrad’s excellent deconstruction here.) It really wasn’t until the movies that the series became a pop culture phenomenon, and even those were unable to conceal many of the horribly flawed storytelling and world-building decisions of the books.

I try to stay on top of children’s media, especially for the middle grades, and it always makes me sad how much the specter of the TERF-slop wizard books overshadows much better books, movies, and television. For that reason, I wanted to compile a list of lesser-known works that I consider vastly superior in writing, production, and creator non-bigotry. I’m sure many people would have other favorites to add, but each of these are things that I would personally recommend to anyone willing to try them.

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On the 250th, a Petition for Redress of Grievances

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July 4th, 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States. As a country, we don’t mark our birth from the adoption of a constitution (not even the first, kind of bad one), but from a document that declared our intent to separate from a tyrant. In that document, the Continental Congress listed a set of grievances justifying this action. On this 250th birthday, it seems appropriate to revisit those grievances to see how we’re doing.

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The Uses and Misuses of Nonviolence

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Over the past week, I have watched people who are understandably scared and angry reacting not only to the news, but also to each other. This never goes well. It’s the sort of situation where people who are otherwise inclined to agree on fundamental values start arguing about how to express and defend those values, and because we are facing a wave of state terror, we’re not generally disposed to listening to nuance. And so we have people justifiably defending nonviolence arguing with people justifiably pointing out its weaknesses, and neither can see that they’re both right…sort of. More importantly, they’re not actually arguing around the same definitions.

Today, as we remember whatever selected portions of Dr. King’s legacy seem to support our views, I wanted to take a moment to collect some of the misunderstandings on both sides and clear things up a bit. (For more, see my previous article on this topic.)

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Video Game Reflections of 2025

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This is an unusual topic for me – I’m not usually one for the “end of year retrospective” type of post. But 2025 has been astonishingly rich in great video games. In particular, this year even the “mainstream” has been flooded with games that I’ve liked. You can see this just by contrasting how my playlist overlapped with The Game Awards nominees last year (2 total, and they’re both way down there) to this year (10 total, including 4 of the 6 Game of the Year nominees). And there are several other nominees for this year that I still plan to get around to.

Part of this has to do with the release of the Switch 2, since that’s where I played 3 of the GotY nominees, but it’s also a tribute to the massive strength of indie releases this year. Seriously, the second half of 2025 was just one indie smash after another, and I am still trying to catch up.

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Dachau, Berlin, and Why I Must Resist

four teenagers stand in front of the Berlin Wall, with the Brandenburg Gate visible behind it
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My heritage is German.

On my father’s side, my family is from Fort Wayne, Indiana, as one of a number of families that can be traced back to early settler migrations from central Pennsylvania, and ultimately from southern Germany. But that’s not the really German side.

The really German side is my mother’s. She was born in Germany in 1948 and came to the United States in the 50s, which makes me second generation German-American. (As such, I am also acutely aware of the inherent racism and prejudice that was built into the 20th century quota system, and the privilege my family had in coming from a country that was prioritized over others. However, that is not the focus of this particular post.)

In 1987, I took my first (and so far only) trip to Germany. The main focus of that trip was visiting some of the many relatives we had over there, but we also saw a variety of important landmarks and scenic spots. Obviously some of these were the touristy spots: Köln Cathedral, Rothenburg, Neuschwanstein, and so on. But some were important for other reasons.

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Seeing Rockalypse in Movies Again

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I tend to be pretty low-key about my work in the tabletop gaming industry. I don’t feel like I did a ton of things that couldn’t be (or haven’t been) done by others. I think I have a few unique ways of approaching things, such as the kind of thorough, interconnected worldbuilding I displayed in Steamscapes and my work on the Urban Settings Guide for the Sentinel Comics RPG (which may or may not see the light of day, depending on what happens to Greater Than Games).

But there’s one game that I think may be my most unique contribution, at least as of this writing. It’s self-contained, nicely concise, and it makes a strong case for my view of game design: that games are best when every element works together to create a unified experience. With such a game, you can feel that ethos when reading it, playing it, running it, or even just talking about it. For me, the best I’ve ever done at achieving that was Rockalypse.

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A May Revolution in Song

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It’s been a while since I’ve done a song-a-day project, and the last few started to lean more into musical conversation than topical discussion. But with everything happening, I decided it’s high time to get topical again.

For the month of May, 2025, I am diving deep into some of the strongest musical statements I can find. I expect these songs to be in various degrees challenging, inspiring, surprising, and appalling. I want to warn you right now that I am not pulling any punches on this one – there will be explicit language, explicit content, and abrasive opinions. I will post relevant content warnings on every selection, but it’s also completely understandable if you choose to nope out of the whole playlist. I’m also going to be less picky about making sure every song has a video or a live performance. Most of them do, but not all. So sometimes you’ll be staring at album covers or reading lyric videos, but that’s because the songs are important enough that they need to be there anyway.

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Luigi Wins by Doing Nothing

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In the discourse following the violent actions that ended the life of a health insurance CEO, one trend I found particularly alarming was the assertion that this event somehow proved that violence was the only effective means of systemic change. Amidst the absolutely justified anger surrounding the US healthcare system and the profit focus of its C-suite executive class, there was also an underlying frustration that nonviolent action had failed to bring about any change.

The comments I saw displaying this frustration typically showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the uses of both nonviolent and violent actions. More importantly, they too often veered into post hoc defenses of inaction, which has led us to a new type of online poster: the pro-violence slacktivist.

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Resistance Triage

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Well, here we are again. Yes, the irony is not lost on me that I wrote a literal Cassandra post before the election, yet afterwards everyone keeps finger-pointing and talking about the 2024 election as if it is an isolated incident and not the result of 40 years or more of long-term degradation of the US electoral process.

Anyway, we can’t think long-term right now. We are stuck in the moment, and we’re about to have another wave of intentional crises – a veritable Gish Gallop of oppression – that is designed to overwhelm our ability to fight against any of the individual pieces. It happened during Trump’s first administration, and it’s only going to get worse this time. While we don’t know exactly what will happen and when, there’s a lot of panic and anticipation about all the things that could happen.

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Cassandra Is Screaming

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As of this writing, we still have about 100 days until the 2024 US election. Things have been absolutely chaotic, and they’re constantly changing, so it doesn’t really make sense to write a reflective blog post about that. Instead, I want to take a look at broader historical trends to gain a sense of perspective on how we got where we are and some general explanations of the goals of those responsible.

But mostly I want to talk about what it’s like to be able to see big picture possibilities and to have a sense of what’s coming when so many people are distracted by narrow, short-term concerns. I want to talk about the steps that led our democracy into its death spiral and why we let them happen.

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