Sounds Fake But Okay
Sounds Fake But Okay
Ep 162: Dungeons and Dragons and Gender and Sexuality feat. Perry Fiero
Hey what's up hello! This week we are excited to have our amazing friend Perry on as a guest. We chat with Perry about Dungeons and Dragons and the potential it has to let you explore your identity.
Episode Transcript: www.soundsfakepod.com/transcripts/dungeons-and-dragons
Listen to Into the Gridge: https://anchor.fm/intothegridge
Follow Perry: @perryfier0
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(0:00)
SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)
KAYLA:… and a demi-straight girl (that’s me, Kayla)
PERRY: And non-binary bisexual dude, that’s me Perry.
SARAH: talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.
KAYLA: On today’s episode: Dungeons & Dragons.
ALL: — Sounds fake, but okay.
PERRY: *sings the theme song in pews* You gotta put that in there.
SARAH: Welcome back to the pod.
KAYLA: M’ental illness.
SARAH: Mm hmm.
KAYLA: Yeahhh.
PERRY: That was a good one. Quick side note, per a discussion we had before recording, remember to take your m’edications.
KAYLA: Thank, yes. M’edications.
SARAH: Remember to take your m’edications every day.
PERRY: All day, every day.
SARAH: Innnn credible. Great. Before we dive in, do we have any updates?
KAYLA: We should probably introduce our guest.
SARAH: No I know but before that because once we do that we’ll get into things.
KAYLA: Um, nope.
SARAH: Cool. Let’s introduce our guest.
PERRY: Nice dead air.
SARAH: I’ll get rid of the dead air don’t worry.
PERRY: I’m going to go get a set of dice and anytime either of you are thinking for a while we’re just going to do dice ASMR because it’s a Dungeons and Dragons episode.
KAYLA: You think I don’t have my bag of dice right here? You don’t think it’s right here?
PERRY: I have the dice tray Kayla got for me here.
KAYLA: Well, here we are.
SARAH: Oh god I hate this.
KAYLA: So Perry, introduce yourself.
PERRY: Hello. You two both know me. You two had the displeasure of knowing me for a number of years. I’m Perry, they/them/theirs. Like I said in the beginning, bi guy, never made a decision in my life. I am the DM for Into the Gridge which is a D&D podcast that Kayla is on with me which started because I made a joke about remembering stuff so we should just make a podcast and Kayla was like, what if we did?
KAYLA: I was like, I already have one and I’d like a second. Let’s do it.
PERRY: We did it!
SARAH: And I’ve never listened to it.
KAYLA: Sarah is a terrible friend.
PERRY: That hurt so bad. I always listen to your stuff.
KAYLA: Yeah Perry listens to —
PERRY: You have to do what I did, start in like the middle, listen for a good couple years, and then you can ghost.
SARAH: And then just stop and you can just stop.
KAYLA: Perry has been a patron for a very long time. I feel like old listeners or old Discord members might remember Perry as PianoFiano. That’s who this is. Very famous.
SARAH: Yeah, indeed. And we’re here to party today.
PERRY: Yes.
SARAH: Kayla, I’m going to let you take over this today because I don’t know what’s happening.
KAYLA: Yeah Sarah basically gets the week off which is great for Sarah because we once again have had meetings with each other every day this week so.
SARAH: Businesswomen.
KAYLA: It’s true we actually have. So, speaking of Into the Gridge, the podcast that you should listen to on every platform and follow on Twitter @intothegridge?
PERRY: Intothegridge. Gridge is spelled like fridge, but with a g.
KAYLA: Don’t know what our @ is, that’s bad I run the Twitter.
PERRY: You run the fucking Twitter!
KAYLA: Anyway, speaking of that, this week we’re going to talk about Dungeons & Dragons as just probably roleplay games, in general, I think probably will apply, I know a ton of our listeners play Dungeons & Dragons, there’s a D&D channel within our Discord and they’ve played together before. But for those who don’t know, do we want to give a definition of what that is?
PERRY: Yeah it’s probably helpful. So, Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop roleplaying game, is how it is technically classified by nerds, in which you sit around the table with some friends or as many people want to do recently with the world right now, over Skype or Zoom or Roll20 or whatever. And everyone has a character that they play and you get to kind of embody this different person through various classes, and dice rolls, and just rules that are there to help guide you through what is essentially, depending on how you play, a story that you’re building with your friends. There is one person who acts as a Dungeon Master who is kind of in charge of everything and plays all of the non-player characters so that’s enemies, friendly NPCs, the world, gods, you know, sentient mushrooms that your party has brought to life—
(5:00)
SARAH: A big tree in the backyard.
PERRY: A big fucking tree in the backyard.
KAYLA: I don’t know that we’ve had that for us.
SARAH: You should add one.
KAYLA: Yeah. Perry is the DM—
PERRY: We have some huge spoilers for Gridge.
KAYLA: Perry is the DM so if Perry wants a big tree they can add one I guess.
PERRY: I can do anything.
KAYLA: I once demanded that we added the “shrimp was the manager” and it was and we immediately made it very angry.
PERRY: Hey you know what’s wild? That was like a year ago to the day.
KAYLA: I know. That’s very wild.
PERRY: So this time the shrimp was the manager.
KAYLA: The shrimp was the manager you guys.
PERRY: Hopefully that explains D&D well enough.
KAYLA: Yeah, I think it does.
PERRY: At this point, go watch the first 5 minutes of Stranger Things. There you go.
KAYLA: That’s true. There’s ones that you can buy out of the box that’ll have a pre-made story for you or pre-made characters, which is how we started Gridge and then we diverted from that pretty quickly. But there’s also people like Perry who’ll make up their own thing, their own characters, which I think for what we want to talk about today, is most relevant. We wanted to talk about the possibilities that playing a game like D&D gives you for exploring your gender, exploring your sexuality, identity stuff. I feel like we’ve talked about this before when talking about The Sims or something, I think it’s a bit similar and the fact that you can make your own character—
SARAH: Sim-ilar.
KAYLA: Huh?
SARAH: SIM-ilar.
PERRY: Good job.
KAYLA: Wow Sarah is adding a lot to the episode.
PERRY: Sarah is the color commentary. This is kinda going to be an AB conversation with the C being color commentary.
SARAH: Nice.
KAYLA: God. Yeah, because like Perry said, you make your own character and you build them and then you have to play as them. You have to speak as them and talk to other characters as if you’re that person, and some people do accents and it’s usually some mystical creature so usually, my character is basically me because I’m lazy but most people—
PERRY: Yeah you really.
KAYLA: I’m so lazy.
SARAH: Brenda Pizza.
PERRY: Except for some key moments where you go off the shits and it’s wild.
KAYLA: Brenda sometimes does things that are not well-thought-out.
PERRY: Ironically for a wizard, Brenda is head empty, no thoughts.
KAYLA: Sometimes.
SARAH: And you’re saying Kayla is not?
KAYLA: You’re saying I’m so filled with thoughts?
PERRY: I don’t think Kayla’s ever had a thought in her life, let’s be real.
KAYLA: I don’t think I have either. Any sense of the word “thought.”
SARAH: Smooth brain.
KAYLA: Smooth brain. Yeah, so I don’t know, I feel like it affords a lot of possibility. Where to go from here?
SARAH: I don’t know it’s your podcast.
KAYLA: It’s your podcast too.
SARAH: But oftentimes I’m the one directing the podcast, and I’m making you direct the podcast today.
KAYLA: I guess. Perry, how long have you played D&D?
PERRY: So, I played a little bit in high school with a group of people. We were able to play for about half a year or so and that was kind of my first experience with it. That was right around—Jesus—right around when 5th edition first came out so my uncle got me the starter set, players’ handbook, monster manual, Dungeon Master’s guide, all that good stuff to get me started. I got a group of friends together and played, and that was all sort of pretty generated Wizards of the Coast content we sort of talked about earlier. And then cut to my freshman year of college, I tried to play with some people and that was my first time trying to be a Dungeon Master, a DM. And that was alright, I kinda had to fail I think to get better at it later and it was also just a weird group of people to try and run a game with. And then I went to Gen Con, which is a really big gaming convention a couple times and for a few years, that was the only time I got to play D&D, is like those four days cause I was in school and couldn’t find a good group and just generally didn’t have time to get into it. And then in the past year and a half, I have been going nuts with D&D.
(10:00)
KAYLA: You play a lot of different games.
PERRY: Yeah so I’ve had Into the Gridge, our podcast, going since May of 2019. I had one game with my roommate Jared back when we didn’t live together for pretty much quarantine and lockdown, we had that one going. I started one with my roommates here and one of their friends, and just recently started up a new one based off of the Mythic Odysseys of Theros stuff that Wizards of the Coast recently published, which is really cool cause that’s sort of inspired by Greek mythology. And that one I’m also DM-ing. I’m DM-ing two games right now. And it’s neat because with Gridge, it’s all homebrewed at this point so it’s a story and world that I’m making and fleshing out and there’s a lot more opportunity for, if Kayla says something stupid off the cuff for me to be like, alright that’s canon baby, that’s in there, that’s official versus having to read this reference book essentially of facts and ways the world works and memorizing that in order to answer any dumb little questions my players have.
KAYLA: Yeah that seems a lot harder. So, you’ve been playing since high school and you didn’t come out as bi until it’s been a couple years now right?
PERRY: Yeah, it would have been the— so there was a soft coming out—
KAYLA: A soft launch!
PERRY: My sophomore year when I was in actually the musical that you two did.
KAYLA: Oh yeah.
PERRY: It wasn’t ever official but when we would talk about it in N.E.R.D.S. stuff I’d be like, “Yeah I think I’m maybe probably into other genders as well.”
SARAH: Cause that entire student org is queer, so gay.
PERRY: Yeah! And I think that speaks to part of the point of D&D is that it gives people a creative outlet and safe space to gather as queer people and then explore that. And I think that’s what N.E.R.D.S. helped me do and I think that’s what D&D does for a lot of people.
KAYLA: Did you ever find yourself using D&D that way for either your sexuality or gender? Or was that during the time when you weren’t playing much?
PERRY: I think sexuality not really because that I went through this soft launch of coming out and being out to my friends and sort of close family members and then finally Facebook official.
KAYLA: When you’re Facebook official with yourself.
PERRY: And sort of publicly coming out. I wasn’t playing much D&D but I think certainly with gender and the non-binary or for a while I thought I was genderfluid, I think it’s given me opportunities to explore that a little bit and I think when you told me this morning that we would be thinking about this—
KAYLA: Yeah we’re very prepared on this podcast.
PERRY: Yes, I did have to call you guys out for that at least once. A thought that I had in thinking about things that I would want to talk about or might be good to mention is that part of I think what D&D does so well with letting someone explore gender is that since it is very much a audio thing—you’re talking with your friends and imagining what’s going on yes. Sometimes you use minis and those are placeholders and a very static thing. So I think it allows for you to have this ideal image of your character in your head. And if you’re using that character as a way to explore your gender or your sexuality or what have you, you can kind of avoid any sort of issues you might have with dysphoria or something like that in the real world if you were non-binary but you were masculine looking than you want to be sometimes. That’s kind of the boat I’m in, but when I play D&D, you can imagine your characters, even if they just look like you, they can look like capital Y You, if that makes sense you know.
(15:00)
SARAH: And you can’t be misgendered by sight in that sense cause there’s no sight to be seen.
PERRY: Exactly.
KAYLA: Yeah I feel like character building is such a big part. We have friends that will sometimes just sit down and make a character because they just love doing that and I think especially for that the look of it. I know people that will spend a ton of time making their mini figure that they use on a physical board if they have one. Or they draw their character or do things like that, it’s a big deal for them to be able to physically see that because when you’re playing and everyone else is roleplaying and you’re talking and some people have accents, that’s you for however many hours you’re playing, that’s the person you are. And so I can imagine that if you’re questioning a part of yourself and you just get to say like oh it’s just a game, it can be very low stakes you don’t even have to admit to yourself that that’s what you’re doing. It’s very low stakes like I’m just going to be a different gender for this game and see how it feels.
SARAH: You’re just trying it on for size.
PERRY: Yeah, and I think a part of what works so well for exploring these more personal and heavier topics of sexuality and gender is you may be playing as a character that isn’t you but you’re still kind of experiencing the emotions of that character. It’s almost like — it’s one step closer than acting is cause when you’re acting you experience what the character experiences but from a reverse sort of thing. You have to draw upon your memories and experiences to bring up the emotions the character is feeling whereas I think with D&D the experiences a character is going through will then reflect back on to you given that you are in a game where you get so deep into the roleplay or combat or what have you and you sort of have that back and forth and that relationship where there are sort of these deeper, more emotional moments. You may be playing in a fantasy world, but the emotions are real.
KAYLA: Yeah for sure, like Perry has made me cry before when we’re playing because—
SARAH: To be fair, not hard to make Kayla cry.
KAYLA: Absolutely not.
PERRY: The example I was going to bring up that’s maybe actually a good example is when it was one of the first things we were doing for Gridge, right before the big boss fight, I was playing an NPC and I was talking with one of the characters and that player and I we literally started yelling at each other from across the table cause we were so—
KAYLA: It was very dramatic, we were all scared.
PERRY: I remember seeing you and Jared texting each other.
KAYLA: We were like is everyone actually okay? Is this still a game or are they mad at each other, I can’t tell where it ends.
PERRY: What helped there is that that player and I were the two who had played D&D before and everyone else was new to the game so that was your first experience with, “oh shit! This can get real.”
KAYLA: Yeah and I think obviously you can play with strangers like I’ve played before with people I do not know well at all and I think that’s fine for playing but I think especially when you’re trying to explore certain things or get into heavier topics, having people that you can play with that you can trust and a DM that you can trust, being able to have a DM that you can go to and being like “hey I’m thinking about maybe trying this with my character” and that is something — if they’re good at what they’re doing — is they’re going to facilitate for you.
PERRY: Absolutely. My theory as a DM and my sort of practice is you are there to facilitate the players having a good time and that means checking in with them to be like “hey! Is there anything you want to see in the game?” Or—
(20:00)
SARAH: A big ass tree in the backyard.
PERRY: Big ass tree in the backyard. Can we take a quick timeout? Is this a new thing that Sarah has come up with today out of the blue or should I know what this is?
KAYLA: No this is not an inside thing this is a new thing that Sarah has decided is her thing today.
SARAH: It’s the hill I’m going to die on.
PERRY: Are you guys working from the inception of big ass tree.
KAYLA: Yeah I don’t know where this came from.
SARAH: I don’t know whose backyard.
PERRY: It’s not in your backyard?
KAYLA: It’s certainly not my backyard I don’t have one.
SARAH: It’s in the backyard.
KAYLA: I have a back strip of sidewalk that goes to the trashcan.
SARAH: I’m at my parents’ house right now and they have a backyard. My actual apartment does not have a backyard, so.
KAYLA: My parents in their backyard have some big ass trees. Is that anything?
SARAH: Nice. I don’t know.
PERRY: It can be. Alright. Time in. I just had to get that settled. Sort of for me.
SARAH: A personal vendetta.
PERRY: Well I mean also for the listeners, for the audience. You know, like I said, you’ve gotta be able to fascinate, if you’re a good DM.
KAYLA: You gotta do a yes and. That’s a thing is that it’s very improvisation. Like what you were saying, if you’re acting, it’s not as connected because it’s something that someone else wrote but for D&D I think it’s something that a lot of actors and improv comics should probably get more into just for practice because you really have to just say shit quick and sometimes Perry will be like, “Okay you have 10 seconds to make this decision or I’m moving on and you missed this opportunity,” like fuck.
PERRY: I would like to point out that that most often happens with Kayla.
SARAH: That stresses me out.
PERRY: I’m very generous with how much time I give people.
KAYLA: Sarah, I think you would like D&D as a concept but there are a lot of stressful moments with stuff like that that I think you would freak the fuck out.
PERRY: I mean that’s part of what makes it — I think that’s what has given the games I play, that we’re in Kayla, that consequence and that realness leads to those moments of self-discovery that is not just having well-thought-out roleplay but consequences to actions. Like yeah, we’re in a combat and your turn is “6 seconds” it’s really nebulous and weird and don’t pay attention to combat time. You are making snap decisions so I’m not going to let you take 5 minutes on your turn to figure out the perfect move. You are in the middle of a fight. You’re on a time limit you know.
SARAH: There’s time limits in real life.
KAYLA: But I think like that has consequences for the way you roleplay too. If you are playing a character that’s not like yourself or trying out something different with your identity, it forces you to make decisions and say things and do things without doing any super introspective thought or getting all in your head about it like I think people do when they’re questioning their identity.
SARAH: It’s like a gut thing.
KAYLA: Yeah you just kind of go with it. I think that can be really helpful just to hear what you say when you’re under pressure. It’s very interesting to hear what people do when they’re put in that situation.
PERRY: Yeah and maybe not even put under pressure but when you strip away the walls and barriers people put up to almost protect themselves. I think D&D is a way to really — you can work through that and push past those without even knowing it. Like you talked about earlier Kayla, it’s that tiny bit of shield that you have. “Oh this is a character that I’m playing” — then you go back later and you think, “oh no that wasn’t the character, that’s something that I’m going through, something that I did.”
SARAH: So what I’m hearing is that D&D is therapy.
KAYLA: It like really is.
PERRY: That’s one of the biggest memes about D&D that it’s just free group therapy. I get where that comes from and it’s a funny joke and I like to joke about it. I think at the same time you have to be careful when you’re joking about that because it’s not like going to help you—it’s a delicate thing to kind of balance.
(25:00)
SARAH: You can’t expect your D&D group to solve all of your problems.
PERRY: Right. But it is at the same time, with a good group and a good DM, a safe space to work through what you’re not comfortable confronting in therapy or with other people. That space to put the problems in a fake world and work them out is helpful to then take it back to the real world.
SARAH: Instead of lying to your therapist, play D&D, or better yet do both.
PERRY: Don’t lie to your therapist. They can’t help you if you—
KAYLA: Sarah’s like “mm but I would like to lie to my therapist.”
SARAH: But it sounds like so much fun.
KAYLA: But I do it every week.
PERRY: I’m starting a 3rd D&D game so we can get Sarah to fucking play D&D.
KAYLA: Dude I would love for Sarah to play D&D we should do like a one-shot at least.
SARAH: I know I would like it, it’s just never—
KAYLA: We should do a one-shot with Sarah. Can we invite Sarah— for one episode of Gridge Sarah comes on.
PERRY: An episode.
SARAH: A guest appearance with Sarah.
PERRY: I thought about doing that way back at the beginning of Gridge. I had a list of people I was thinking about having guest stars.
KAYLA: Sarah can come in for our next holiday episode.
SARAH: Was it just my name over and over again.
KAYLA: Perry’s like, “you weren’t even on it.”
PERRY: Honestly I don’t remember.
KAYLA: I’ll never tell. I had a question I’ll forgot.
PERRY: Checks out.
KAYLA: It is just nice to be able to put big real-world problems into your fake game and sometimes pretend like you can solve very big systemic issues
PERRY: You can also create worlds that are free of these systemic issues or there is no homophobia or transphobia or aphobia or any of that in the world you create. It can be this ideal place without any of those sort of issues, you know. That’s how Gridge is.
KAYLA: I feel like it seems like a conscious decision on your part, when you bring in non-player characters that are playing that we’re interacting with they’re very diverse in terms of gender and sexuality so we’re interacting with a lot of different people with different issues.
PERRY: I really like to have representation in NPCs and at the same time it toes that weird line of what can I represent cause I don’t have certain experiences and I don’t want to be stereotypical or things like that. I am — not to brag — I am this world, so. I don’t want to create this idea of a world with only one kind of person. You have to give this impression of a wider amount of diversity than I can necessarily portray.
SARAH: I certainly have that issue in writing things which being a DM sounds like being a writer with lots of wild cards because people do things.
KAYLA: Honestly Sarah, I feel like it’s a good practice for writers to be DMs too cause Perry always has such nice things about what we’re going to do and then we’re like, “What if we just go to a brothel for a second?”
PERRY: One time, I offhandedly mentioned some festival that was going on.
KAYLA: We got so caught up we thought it was a huge plot point, we thought it was the thing we needed to do.
(30:00)
PERRY: And I hadn’t planned anything for this festival. So they said that and I was like oh shit, now I have to plan this festival. I spent a long time building out this game and specific carnival foods and the way it looks and the vibes and then they didn’t fucking go.
SARAH: Cruel.
KAYLA: We changed our mind. Sometimes we’ll ask Perry, “oh if we had done this instead, what would have happened” and Perry’s like, “it’s a secret you’ll never know.”
PERRY: There’s some times it’s like that but other times like this festival, I’ll tell you what that is.
KAYLA: I’ll tell you how hurt I am.
PERRY: It’s more that some of the stuff you miss, it’ll come back later and there’s consequences for certain actions and not taking particular steps. To circle back to the writing bit of it a little bit, I think D&D is the perfect space for me to run because all I have to do is world build with the occasional bit of favor text to describe the location or a person.
SARAH: Flavor.
PERRY: The dialogues and the moments are improv and that feels better. Cause I’ve tried to do NaNoWriMo and I was like, “this sucks.”
KAYLA: You should do NaNoWriMo but each day you just build another D&D world. I mean to me when I was younger and way more into writing and thinking I was going to write my little fiction or whatever, I would always do my world-building and it’d be super dope and then I’d be like, okay I’m done with this one, onto the next.
SARAH: I’m all dialogue. I don’t care what these people look like.
KAYLA: You do care though what those names are Sarah.
SARAH: I do care about their names. I like world-building to a certain extent but once it starts getting complicated, I’m like, I don’t care and I want them to argue about sausages.
PERRY: And I think to tie this talk about world-building back into the focus of this episode, to keep the thrill ongoing here—
SARAH: Thanks for hosting our podcast, Perry.
KAYLA: This is really just Perry took over the podcast for us, we sat here and took a week off.
PERRY: I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see it coming.
KAYLA: Hey! Perry comes to our podcast and roasts our podcast?
SARAH: In their defense, they’re a patron.
KAYLA: You give us money, you’re allowed to shit on us. It’s true. We only will take hate from people who will give us money. You can’t be a hater for free.
PERRY: I think the world-building kind of circles back to the point I made a few minutes ago about you have to build these worlds where it’s kind of a safe space to be queer in and you can explore sexuality and gender without any of the unfortunate consequences of the real world. You can really just be like “that’s just it” and everyone’s cool with it.
SARAH: I hate those real-world consequences.
PERRY: They suck real bad.
KAYLA: It’s kind of like, I’ve seen a lot of people say that during quarantine, they kind of went into a TikTok hole and ended up in queer TikTok and then you go outside and you forget there are straight people, which happened to me for sure. And then I moved to the South so that was super cute of me. It’s kind of similar with D&D because our group that we play with is so queer. I am the only woman. It’s wild. There’s two straight people? Three?
PERRY: Four.
KAYLA: FOUR?
PERRY: Mmhmm.
KAYLA: You counting me? Count me as half.
PERRY: Kay. Three and a half.
KAYLA: Max, Jared.
PERRY: Max, Jared, Jake.
KAYLA: Jaaake, you sassy sausage. God that’s disgusting.
PERRY: To bring back anyone who’s kind of like, “oh I don’t want to listen to this stupid podcast” three of the people are non-binary.
KAYLA: It’s 3 non-binary, then a couple dudes, and then there’s me. Yeah but —
SARAH: Brenda Pizza who can’t read.
KAYLA: Brenda Pizza who can’t read ooh have to listen to find out. It is so important when you’re playing with people who are often in a minority like you don’t want to go into fun times with friends playing a game and then just be completely bummed out. Like sometimes we are dealing with some heavy shit but you always want to walk away from it being like, okay that was a good place to be.
PERRY: You have to balance it. You have to — my philosophy is, I have to earn those more intense story bits. We have to work through a lot of moments and build up to it and get there and sometimes I just have to be like, alright we’re not going to where I wanted this to be and that’s okay.
KAYLA: Sometimes all of us are being too silly.
PERRY: Sometimes all of you just want to goof around and I’m like alright.
KAYLA: Fine I was going to make you cry today but I guess we won’t.
PERRY: I guess I can’t. You guys made me cry today.
SARAH: It’s like — I forgot. I think I had forgotten before I had started talking but I remembered I had something to say.
PERRY: Yeah.
KAYLA: Would you like to move on?
SARAH: As soon as someone starts talking, I’ll remember.
PERRY: Yeah, here’s a random thought that can be wholly interrupted. I’m really bad at just coming up with names on the spot, so Sarah if you like naming things—
KAYLA: Sarah is obsessed with naming things.
PERRY: If you could send me a list of names I’ll just start pulling names off the list.
SARAH: I have an Excel sheet of names.
KAYLA: Every time we meet—
PERRY: You always ask someone’s name and I’ll be like, “uhh.”
KAYLA: Because we know that you don’t have a name that’s the funny part. We’ll meet a random person that we’re not even supposed to have a long conversation with and we’ll be like, “what’s your name?” Perry’s like “uuhhhh oh god.”
PERRY: Gosh you show like basic human decency and I’m like, “fuck me.”
KAYLA: Never expected them to do that.
PERRY: “Hi. I’m Paul.”
SARAH: “I’m Barbara Garp.”
KAYLA: Is that what you have?
PERRY: It’s me, Britt Slomney.
KAYLA: Barbara Garp is a good one, that sounds like a giant or a troll. Barbara Garp.
PERRY: Barbara Garp is pretty good.
SARAH: Just for you, Perry. Came right off the top of my head.
KAYLA: Did you remember, Sarah? If not I have something to say.
SARAH: No I did not remember.
KAYLA: Okay. This is going back 12 things. But when you were talking about having non-player characters or NPCs that are queer and trying to figure out representation, I feel like something that I struggle with is Brenda’s character that I created as canonically asexual just for shits and giggs because I was like of course why not. But I never find moments to, and this is something we’ve talked about, when you’re asexual you’re kind of very straight passing because it’s not like you can be like I want a girlfriend like other charatcers in our game do. Literally “I want a hot dog and a girlfriend” is something that other people can say but I cannot. So I just feel like—
SARAH: Is Brenda aro and ace?
KAYLA: She’s just ace currently I think.
SARAH: Brenda could have a girlfriend if she’s just ace.
KAYLA: She could, it’s honestly so—
PERRY: Brenda hasn’t had a lot of options. She’s busy wrangling everyone else.
KAYLA: Brenda is saving the world, talking to gods.
PERRY: Killing her brother.
KAYLA: Killing my brother on accident, spoilers.
SARAH: Oh dear.
KAYLA: But I think for NPCs it’s even harder because you bring in someone for an episode or a couple lines and it’s like, how do I establish that they’re queer without throwing in a random line about, I like boobs—
SARAH: I like dick!
PERRY: I have complained to friends about that. I have these characters I want to be queer but they’re one-off characters.
KAYLA: And you have to say it cause it’s always assumed straight. So if you don’t say it, they’re just going to assume.
PERRY: I will say with Gridge and the players that we have I think there’s assumed, at least with female characters, it’s assumed lesbian. Let’s be frank.
KAYLA: With female NPCs I think it’s always assumed. With NPCs that you’ve dropped that are non-binary or trans, it always takes me by surprise because I live in a problematic society where I never assume someone isn’t whatever. Especially cause you can’t see the characters, it’s like not that non-binary people look a certain way, that was a shitty thing to say.
PERRY: There’s a certain amount of flagging or what have you that you can see.
(40:00)
KAYLA: It’s a very interesting thing that oh you can do all these possibilities. There are also these weird hurdles you have to jump over to make an inclusive campaign.
SARAH: The moment you realize your bias.
KAYLA: Yeah.
PERRY: What really gets me is there’s the hurdle of I voice everyone. So sometimes I’ll have someone who uses different pronouns than I do and then you guys just assume based on the voice assume this person’s pronouns and it’s hard to be like that’s where it gets weird to actually be like, “oh no this person actually uses these pronouns” and you have to come out of the fiction for a moment to make sure that there is that, like I said, you would know this person’s pronouns.
SARAH: I find that since writing in screenplays and stuff is my reference point, a character if you don’t specify their race, it is assumed that they’re white. So anytime you want a character to not be white, you have to say that they’re not white and the same thing goes for sexuality. I had a character in a pilot that I wanted to make aro-ace and I wanted it to be clear that this person is aro-ace but there is no way to slide that into a pilot.
PERRY: You could a pride flag in their room.
SARAH: We don’t ever see his room okay. Listen.
PERRY: Or a pin on his backpack.
KAYLA: Lil sticker.
SARAH: Listen.
KAYLA: Sarah’s like, “shit never thought of that.”
PERRY: Sarah’s like, “fuck.”
SARAH: Some of us don’t have pins. The point is that you have to specify.
PERRY: Yeah your point stands, you have to find some gimmick to show that. To your point about race, the world of Gridge is populated by mostly non-human races and I think there have been 2 or 3 human NPCs and that has been very intentional to show that there’s not a lot of humans here. So when I say you’re in a room full of people, I’m hoping I have done it well enough that people picture a room full of fuckin’ orcs and tieflings and gnomes and shit.
SARAH: I’m picturing the aliens from what’s that game on Jackbox that’s like Mafia?
PERRY: I really thought you were going to say the Mos Eisley Cantina from Star Wars.
SARAH: No.
PERRY: No.
KAYLA: I thought you were going to say all of the monsters from Monsters Inc., that’s where my head went.
SARAH: I’m glad we all went different directions.
PERRY: We went wildly different ways, which is good.
SARAH: Excellent.
KAYLA: My cat is in the weirdest sleeping position.
PERRY: Yeah I mean Kayla a little bit to circle back which is all we’ve done for the past half hour.
SARAH: Push the button, it’s called push the button. I just googled it.
PERRY: Good. You gave me this dice tray and you personalized it and it says, the inscription—
KAYLA: You mean what I wrote in sharpie on your felt mat the day I gave it to you.
PERRY: The inscription reads, “Keep Gridge gay” and I think that was a turning point for me because yeah there were a lot of queer characters in it for 6 months but it wasn’t intentional, or not as intentional as it is now. Now I put in NPCs and I’m like, alright I’m going to make sure that the players know that these people aren’t straight.
SARAH: Like it’s shocking when someone’s straight.
KAYLA: Kind of.
PERRY: In Gridge? Yes.
SARAH: As it should be.
KAYLA: I will say my favorite characters that I was very delighted were gay was, there was a fight club we were in like an underground people fighting and the two men running it, one was really big and one was really tiny and they were a gay couple and they were cute.
PERRY: That was the French voice I did earlier.
KAYLA: Yeah tiny French goblin.
PERRY: He’s one of my favorite NPCs he’s fun.
KAYLA: I wish he would come back please. I know it’s impossible with where things are currently probably.
PERRY: I did do a—and it should be releasing around Christmas hopefully—one with just Jared and Max, we did a rematch between—
(45:00)
KAYLA: Did you? Why did I not know about it?
PERRY: Well remember that one time you joined Skype and you were like, “am I in trouble? Did I miss something?”
KAYLA: Was that that? Oh my god one time, cause we have a Skype group, and because you get notifications when people start Skyping so it was like not when we were playing so I was like, did I miss what we scheduled? So I popped into Skype like, “did we schedule something? Am I supposed to be here?” And Jared was like, “Go away what are you doing here?” I did get in trouble.
PERRY: It was good. D&D’s just fun, plus I get to do a lot of voice acting, which is a good time and people keep telling me I’m good at it, so I keep doing it.
KAYLA: You are good at it.
PERRY: Thank you
SARAH: We love a voice actor in this house.
PERRY: Speaking of, the offer still stands if you want me to make an audiobook of your novella.
SARAH: I know the offer stands.
PERRY: Good, I just want to make sure that’s clear.
KAYLA: Listen Sarah is the only one that doesn’t want an audiobook version of Aven Swords.
PERRY: You know what I respect that.
KAYLA: No you don’t, none of us do.
PERRY: Artistic integrity.
SARAH: Perry respects it but Kayla does not.
KAYLA: I don’t respect it.
PERRY: It was tended to be read.
KAYLA: Here’s the thing though, it was a lot of people’s favorite episode and so it’s just like, we have to bring it back that’s all I’m saying.
PERRY: Sarah stay strong.
SARAH: I will, thank you.
KAYLA: So if anyone has any hot tips on how to play ace characters in D&D, let me know because it’s not like our game’s a dating sim where people come up to me and want to date me and I tell them, “no I’m asexual.”
PERRY: Well there are certain characters who want it to be a dating sim.
KAYLA: Yeah but I‘m not one of them. There are other people in our campaign that actively seek stuff.
PERRY: I appreciate you not being. That’s also weird where there’s a certain amount of that for these characters and these stories to be on the lookout for these things—
KAYLA: But then you have to roleplay it with your friends.
PERRY: With your friends and it’s so weird.
KAYLA: Here’s a hot tip. If you have a crush on your DM, just pick an NPC and flirt with them.
PERRY: No, don’t, no no no no.
KAYLA: I’m not saying I’m going to do this.
PERRY: I’m negating your advice. As a DM, do not do that.
KAYLA: But it would be a nice way to just flirt.
SARAH: The allos are back at it again folks.
KAYLA: You do what you can. I guess don’t do that, fine. Don’t take my very good advice.
PERRY: That just seems manipulative, damn. Kayla’s like, yeah I know.
SARAH: Kayla’s just drinking her beverage. She just pauses to take a little sip.
PERRY: (sipping noises) That’s my folly of Kayla’s sipping.
KAYLA: That was very good.
SARAH: Is there anything else you want to say? Kayla is not capable of wrapping up this podcast.
PERRY: I think we’ve had a very good conversation this past hour. We’ve hit all the points I wanted to and more, so, whatever you guys do to wrap it up, now it would be a good time.
KAYLA: My wrap up is that everyone should play D&D or at least listen to our D&D podcast Into the Gridge because it’s very good. But yeah I think it’s a very fun way to escape the world and do weird fantasy shit with your friends. And it feels more real than a video game because you say things yourself. Would recommend and if you want to talk to other people about it, like I said, we have the channel in our Discord and I know literally of so many people listening to this that also play it. I feel like the queer demographic and the D&D demographic overlap pretty heavily.
PERRY: Yeah.
SARAH: Just tell me when to show up and I will.
PERRY: Alright Kayla we’ll text about this we’ll figure it out.
KAYLA: Sarah has to.
PERRY: I think we get 2 more people so it’s a party of 4. We’ll do it.
KAYLA: Let’s just make a second Gridge that’s also Sarah. Gridge + Sarah. What if I make Dean play?
(50:00)
PERRY: Ooh, there you go.
SARAH: We’ll talk offline.
PERRY: Yeah.
SARAH: Okay, wonderful. What is our poll for this week?
KAYLA: Well I can’t tell you cause my cat is currently making biscuits so. Um, I feel like “Do you play D&D” is very lame. Well also worth noting, 2 of the biggest D&D podcasts that are out right now that aren’t ours, have canon asexual characters which is very cool. So.
SARAH: Are you going to plug them or—
PERRY: Wait does Critical Role have an ace character?
KAYLA: Yeah recently.
SARAH: Is that what Critical Role is?
KAYLA: Critical Role is the biggest D&D podcast.
PERRY: Critical Role is the D&D podcast.
KAYLA: Yeah. So is The Adventure Zone, which also has one.
SARAH: There’s someone I follow on Tumblr who’s been into Critical Role for a very long time and I’ve always been vaguely confused.
KAYLA: Yeah, I’m almost positive that it was Critical Role that one of the characters came out.
PERRY: I bet I could guess which one it is.
KAYLA: I haven’t listened to the current thing so I don’t know.
PERRY: I’m like, a year behind. I love Critical Role, it’s done very well, but the episodes are four hours long.
KAYLA: Yeah it’s a lot. Okay the poll is.
PERRY: Nice good stuff. Sarah give me a character and I’ll just do a voice for you while Kayla figures out the poll.
SARAH: Bob Cratchett III.
PERRY: (British accent) It’s me. Bob Cratchet III.
KAYLA: Why is he so posh?
PERRY: The family’s been working for a few generations now. Bob Cratchett I and II didn’t have such posh upbringings.
SARAH: Oh Bob Cratchett III is Australian.
PERRY: His mom’s Australian, his dad’s still British. So it’s a bit of a mixed sort.
SARAH: Mixed bag? Okay. What about Kitty McDonkers?
PERRY: (Valley girl voice) Hey guys, it’s me, Kitty McDonkers, beauty guru.
KAYLA: Recently Perry has started doing a Valley girl accent on the Gridge but they can’t—
PERRY: It’s so bad!
SARAH: I live in the Valley so you know what maybe.
PERRY: Oh my god you guys.
SARAH: Oh my god.
KAYLA: Here’s a poll—”is your character in Dungeons & Dragons queer? If yes, how?”
PERRY: Alright okay.
KAYLA: Everyone’s like, I hate it but I don’t want to figure out a better one.
PERRY: It’s a lot. But I guess you gotta get that audience engagement with that follow-up question huh?
SARAH: Yeah, we do. We really do. Since Kayla won’t do it because she’s typing, Perry what’s your beef and your juice this week?
PERRY: My juice I think is roleplaying games. I will expand it beyond D&D, I think they’re just fun and just a really good way to get together with friends. That’s my juice, any roleplaying games. Um beef, I have so much beef. I have more beef than a meat market. It’s wild. I guess one, in particular, is I think my roommates are playing something on the TV right now but I can barely hear it through the walls and through my headphones, I’m not sure.
SARAH: Can’t believe they’re watching TV without you.
PERRY: No it’s more than that, I keep trying to focus on hearing but I’m never going to hear enough to figure out what it is until I just go out and look at what it is.
SARAH: My juice and my beef. I haven’t prepared beef and juice in a couple of weeks now. My beef is that I ate too much frosting straight out of the can.
PERRY: As we know.
KAYLA: She did, she was real sad when we started.
PERRY: It was looking rough.
SARAH: My juice is that I successfully Karen’d my way into getting a Christmas gift actually sent to me. My sister and her girlfriend bought me this present and then the address got messed up for delivery so USPS sent it back and the company was basically like, “We’re eating your money, we’re not going to send it, it’s ours now.” And my sister’s girlfriend was like, “excuse me?” and they were like, “no,” and then I sent an angry Karen email, I channeled all the Karen I could get. And they’re resending it to me. So.
PERRY: Yeah I had a hassle like that. I got a lightsaber recently and It was a journey to get it here.
KAYLA: Sometimes you gotta be a Karen.
PERRY: It was worth it though.
SARAH: I was a polite Karen. I said “thanks” but I followed it by a period.
KAYLA: Mmmm.
SARAH: Savage.
PERRY: That’s stone cold. That’s juice #2 is if you are in a situation where you are able to get a fancy lightsaber, fucking do it holy shit.
SARAH: Perry showed it to us before the pod it’s cool.
KAYLA: It’s very fancy.
PERRY: I now have both a sword and a lightsaber, I am unstoppable.
SARAH: I have a sword, I guess I have to get a lightsaber so we can battle.
PERRY: Yes! Yes!
KAYLA: I agree.
SARAH: Kayla what’s your beef and your juice?
KAYLA: Um, my beef is that today I had to do long division by hand in a job application and I haven’t done that since fourth grade because I’m a normal person. I don’t think I’ll be receiving that job but I don’t want it anymore because who would make me do that? My other beef is that there are so many games I want to buy for my Switch but I don’t have any money. I want to but I shouldn’t, I want to but I shouldn’t.
PERRY: Such is life.
KAYLA: And my juice is I’m going to be home for Christmas which means I get to see snow and have a white Christmas.
SARAH: If we have a white Christmas.
KAYLA: It’ll be whiter.
SARAH: And you’ll get to see me. Woohoo.
KAYLA: And I get to see Sarah.
SARAH From a distance, with masks on. Excellente. Perry, do you have anything you’d like to promote? Yourself?
PERRY: I want to promote me! If you need to hire a biomedical engineer, hire me! I need a fucking job.
KAYLA: See I’ve tried it on the podcast Perry, it never worked.
PERRY: Well you’re not a biomedical engineer. Maybe someone needs one you know.
KAYLA: It’s true. You can also find Perry on Into the Gridge and also Perry streams and you should also watch.
PERRY: That’s the one I was originally going to do, but I plugged the job.
KAYLA: You can do them all.
SARAH: You can promote more than one thing, Perald.
PERRY: I stream on Twitch, swamswimswum, all one word, my @, my handle, my gamer tag. Come by and vibe, it’s pretty chill. I love to talk with people if there are any chats so.
SARAH: We love to vibe and chill.
KAYLA: Sometimes I’m in chat because I have no life so you can come vibe with me.
SARAH: That’s so true, Kayla has no life, wonderful. Alright if you find our awful poll, tell us your beef, your juice, tell us how much you love Piano Fiano, hit us up on social media @soundsfakepod. We also have a Patreon which is patronized but in the nice way by none other than our own Perry. If you want to be as cool as Perry.
PERRY: That’s a me. Well, you can’t be as cool as me.
SARAH: If you want to be almost as cool as Perry, you can become a Patron. Our $5 patrons are Jennifer Smart, Asritha Vinnakota, Austin Le, Perry Fiero. You really got in there early. You’re number 4.
PERRY: Yup. It has been a number of years.
SARAH: You’ve given us a lot of money, thanks. Dee, Quinn Pollock, Emily Collins, Bookmarvel, Changeling MX, Simona Sajmon, Jamie Jack, Jessica Shea, Ria Faustino, Daniel Walker, Livvy, Madeline Askew, Lily, James, Corinne, AliceIsInSpace, Skye Simpson, Brooke Siegel, Ashley W, Savannah Cozart, Harry Haston-Dougan, SOUP, Amanda Kyker, Vishakh, Jacob Weber, Rory, Amberle Istar, Rachel, Kate Costello, John, Ariel Laxo, Ellie, Tessa, MattiousT, Courtney Pritchard, Chris Lauretano, Dia Chappell, Sam, and Megan Jeffrey. We’ve got — I don’t know how recently you listened Perry.
PERRY: We didn’t start the fire.
SARAH: I should make it a song.
KAYLA: I told you a couple episodes to make it a rap.
SARAH: Well I’ll make it a song not a rap. Our $10 patrons are Arcnes who would like to promote the Trevor Project, Benjamin Ybarra who would like to promote Tabletop Games such as D&D, anonymous who would like to promote Halloween, Sarah McCoy who would like to promote Podcast From Planet Weird, my Aunt Jeannie who would like to promote Christopher’s Haven, Cassandra who would like to promote their modeling Instagram @liddowred, Doug Rice who would like to promote "Native" by Kaitlin Curtice, Maggie Capalbo who would like to promote her dogs Leia, Minnie, and Max, H. Valdís, Maggie is not promoting H. Valdis, H. Valdis is a patron to clarify. Although you know what — I can’t speak for Maggie. Purple Chickadee, ichliebevogel.wordpress.com, Barefoot Backpacker, has he told us anything new Kayla? Ashlynn Boedecker, who is @shlynnbo everywhere, The Steve who would like to promote Ecosia, Ari K. who would like to shout out the leftist Youtuber Thought Slime's segment The Eyeball Zone, Mattie who would like to promote The Union Series by T.H. Hernandez, Derek and Carissa who would like to promote the overthrow the heteronormativity and Andrew Hillum.
Our $15 patrons are Nathaniel White - NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, my mom Julie who would like to promote Free Mom Hugs, Sara Jones who is @eternalloli everywhere, Andy A who would like to promote Being in unions and IWW, Martin Chiesel who would like to promote mental health, Miranda Denton who would like to promote Casa Q, Leila who would like to promote their Instagram @leilaofpaper, Shrubbery who would like to promote the Planet Earth and Dragonfly who would like to promote Perry.
PERRY: What speaks to how little force that goes into this — you really could have just pre-recorded most of this.
SARAH: It changes so often, it’s not worth it.
KAYLA: I would like to know that while Sarah was doing that my cat scratched me in the face. And me and Perry had a nice little laugh together.
SARAH: I was like, frantically and chaotically reading the names.
KAYLA: I’m sure you’ll hear it as you edit Sarah.
PERRY: I pushed my mic away —
KAYLA: She got me right in the face with her dumb little hands.
SARAH: Anyway, thanks for listening, and thank you for joining us, Perry. Thanks for listening, and thank you Perawld, for joining as ever.
PERRY: You’re welcome.
SARAH: And tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears,
KAYLA: And until then, take good care of your cows.
