The category that Bloggies are missing

This is uncharacteristic post because I don't usually speak about the culture (for the lack of the better word) surrounding TTRPGs blogs, but this situation personally peeved me enough that I wish to speak about it.

(also, as it is a personal peeve, I wish to specify that this is not a take-down in any shape, colour or form on Bloggies themselves, nor on a person(s) who runs them, nor on any articles submitted/spotlighted in Bloggies, nor on anything else related or unrelated.)

Bloggies are here and just like the year before the nominations are full of useful blog articles – be it something immediately useful in a game, or a review of something that might be interesting, or advice for an improvement, a procedure, a table, a theory, a critical thought. All of those are well-written, all of those are good.

But to me there is a lacuna there.

Where is the poetry?

Probably-not-the-best-word-to-describe-it. Would 'Inspirational' be any better? 'Barely useful but still important to be here'? 'Burning spike in your brains'? I call it 'poetry' because to me this word is about all those raw and rough bits, about all those broad strokes and small, tangible meanings, personal visions, about things that cannot be immediately fit into known grooves and put in known slots, something that cannot be fully grasped and statted without making it simpler, and safer, and less free. 

Those fragments that are full of darklight, fluid and broken, a text which makes you pause because your heart is aching a little as you read it, just one sentence that you take with you into your future, a couple of words that now sit within your mind like a worm-spell. Those words that stay with you as something bigger than ink on paper, even if they are about dungeons, and dragons, and swords.

To me this unfinished, often uncomfortable, not fully-useful-part-of-TTRPG is required to balance all those nicely written, very readable blogarticles, as to me TTRPGs is always in part a manual with spreadsheets and bulletpoints, and in part this kind of abyss. It doesn't have to be an equal half-and-half part, and, in fact, 'the poetry' can be a very small part of everything, but it has to be here, it must exist. 

And there are blogposts like this written through the year, but none of them are in Bloggies. And for me to see that 'Meta' category is introduced this year, which shifts the balance even further into structural, orderly and useful, it is as if something small but important is thus forgotten.

I am not very surprised (although still peeved enough to write about this) that nothing of this effect is nominated. With any kind of poetry being intensely subjective, and given how harsher is the selection process with each passing year it is not surprising whatsoever that where 30+ submissions had a luxury of spotlighting something experimental, 700+ submissions don't have any breathing space. Adding to this is the notion that humanity in general prefers easily readable text (instead of whatever mess a poetic text might be) purely because it is easier cognitive load, and it is easy to see why nothing like that passed into nominations (if it was even submitted at all).

The articles that came the closest in Bloggies this time, for me, are "Make better mind pictures", and "A mask that eats into your face" but even these two are simply the closest to what is missing, not the missing part.

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Therefore I wish to celebrate what little I saw through the year, with honourable place for the Sorcerer  (which still makes me pause and choke a little when I read that one particular part.)

(If I am to run it as an actual category, I'd abandon 'There can be only one clear winner' tournament procedure for it, and just parade all 16 nominees before the readers – select 5 that resonate with you the most, and that is it. Seven most selected will be the constellation of the brightest stars; and if I would actually run it as an event with some kind of prize instead of a personal blogpost which is going nowhere, I'd paint a map and cut it in seven jagged pieces and sent each of these authors a piece, purely because I cannot think of anything more inspirational yet unusable than a piece of a map.))

((But I don't even have 16 nominees. ))

In no particular order whatsoever and limited to 2025 with one article per blog:

"Modern Magic: Shades of the Soul"

"shhhhhhhhhh she's sleeping"

"The Peerless Country of Yland (GLOG Setting)" 

"Dead-Eyed Dwarves - development for VotE; ReDux" 

"Serpent, Eye, Key: A Micro-Setting"

"Corpse //Work: Death-Rig, Chrysalis in Death" 

"Potter Wasp"  

"Vulture Blogging"

"Consumerism, Consume Me (Treasures from the Maul of America)" 

"cracked open in the waves, its emptiness loose"

(if anybody is reading this, feel free to submit in comments the 2025 blogposts that moved you, in one way or another.)

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Now that 'Straits of Anian' got mysterious resurrected and posted a huge post about something strange, maybe some of that poetic strangeness is going to come back as well? Would be nice.