On Blogfests

Yesterday I participated in the It's All Fun and Games blogfest and before that I participated in the A-Z blogfest and the Horror Movie Challenge.

It was fun to do them all and the numbers of hits, new followers and comments speak for themselves; they were very successful as getting The Other Side some attention.

I know these sorts of things have been derided or mocked in the various OSR/Gaming blogs before, but the impact something like this can have can't be overlooked. While I can't say that it increased the sales of Ghosts of Albion or even Chill (WitchCraft, the only other game I linked is free), I do know from clickthroughs that people looked at the games.

Not gamers mind you.  People. The Normals.  ie. The People we need to bring into the fold of this hobby if we are expected to see it survive to the next generation.

Whether it has a significant impact or not, mine is just one site and an admittedly loose focus.  I am likely to talk games as well as horror movies, comics, and anything else.  This is not a platform blog unless the platform happens to be random stuff that is no longer confined to just my brain.

Later in the month I am going to participate in the Queer Film Blogathon. I am going to explore the meme/trope of the Lesbian Vampire in horror films as the ultimate outsider and compare how she is more often portrayed as a tragic figure than that of a monster.  This can be extended to the Homosexual Vampire too (Lestat, or any of Rice's vamps) and even due to race (Blackula).   This of course will necessitate a discussion on the Evil or Dead Lesbian Cliché and whether or not even a sympathetic vampire still qualifies.

This has almost nothing to do with gaming (but I'll give it the old college try*), but it will expose my blog to a completely new audience that has no idea that we even exist or think that D&D died out sometime in the 80s.

If we want to grow our hobby we should be looking for any chance to go out there and evangelize it.





*Since I went to Southern Illinois University for both my undergrad and graduate degrees that means I'll have to have a few beers and then think about it. ;)