Variations On Your Body

A short collection of four games by Avery Alder.

Finding girlhood through witchcraft and bravery through stray feathers. Reaching back to ancient magics and forward to alien encounters. This collection contains four games, loosely defined – each straddles the line between poetry, roleplay, self-help, and magical invitation. They’re all solo pervasive games, meant to be played in the margins of your life.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with my body. These four games draw on my life as a queer trans woman, as someone living with chronic pain and mental illness, and as someone healing through trauma. They together ask the question: what if escapism can help us to return to our body more whole?

In addition to the four games, I’ve included an essay titled “We’ve Been Stranger Things.” First presented at Probabilities 2014 in Calgary, it explores the importance of impossible ways of seeing ourselves.