It’s the week of Gen Con, which of course means a lot of running around for me, a lot of game demos, and a veritable army of nerds descending upon Indianapolis for the biggest gaming convention in the country. While a lot of people see the con as one big marketplace, a game store set to super size, it’s also about community. One event taking place tonight is all about the power of that community: Power Word Resist. I sat down with organizers Erik Norris of City of Glass Games and Sara Lang of the Blank Bodies Podcast to learn what went into creating this event.
I wanted to start with where the idea for this event for Power Word Resist, when that sort of came up for you guys.
Sara Lang: Well, it started last year out of spite. It’s a good motivator. It’s very good motivator.
Erik Norris: Yeah, we did a last minute charity show, Last Gen Con. We had teamed up with Crit Awards, so it was a split of local music and then people from Crit Awards ran a little one-shot D&D thing. We were the flesh bodies here locally that did that.
How’d you connect with RAINN and GenderNexus?
Erik: Since GenCon is a combination of big local event here for Indianapolis, but also a big draw for people across the nation and outside of the country try to split our charities between something that affects the local community and then something that has also a national access to help folks. that way all of the community is being considered.
Gender Nexus was recommended to us by a community member who knows the director personally. And we got the recommendation on there because we wanted to make sure we emphasized a national based charity, to draw more eyes to it, but also a local based charity, because as I’m sure you’re aware of the larger scale stuff, the dollars sometimes don’t stretch as far, not say they’re not meaningful, but like they just don’t go as far as what it does for a local base.
Did the change in political climate affect your approach compared to last year? Do you think the response changed?
Sara: I kind of really appreciate that other people have been jumping onto this, this concept of joyful resistance…being able to find…peace and comfort and being able to protect people in ways that are more wholesome. I think nihilism is cringe. I’m going to I’m going to have a good time and party with my friends and we’re going to do the good thing.
Do you think the being in Indianapolis and especially Indiana is part of that?
Sara: A good portion of the state is used as a testing ground for a lot of think tanks for the Republican Party, which fucking sucks. I hate that stuff. It’s cringe. But the good news is a lot of these guys are bumbling idiots. And Indianapolis as a city has a long history of political activism back through like 70s and 60s. We had a lot of ties with like Black Panthers up in Chicago, we were a major hub for the Union Army, a major hub for the Underground Railroad. There’s a lot of folks that do a lot of really good work for the queer community, do a lot of work for the immigrant community.
Erik: We can see where people have bought their tickets from because ticket data, right? Metadata and the amount of people who are local Indy supporters who are showing out for this, I think is like roughly half the audience at the very least. And the other half is either people like me who are from much further outside on either the coastlines or even from out of the country. We have a people coming from the UK, which is crazy. It’s sort of serving this point of also being a spot where they can see they have community, which is so important.
One of the biggest things was that I want to be able to work with Ify Wadiway. That was my number one set dream, that I want this very funny, proud man to come and work with us, put on an amazing show and just capstone that. We have at least two or three like trans women that are helping us out with this alongside whoever is involved in gender nexus and promoting, right? Ify has been cross-promoting us crazy, Juicy Garland, who is our primary drag performer, has been promoting us crazy. We just got confirmation a few weeks ago that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is doing a full on blessing.
Sara: Oh that means I have to be a little more cunty when I’m emceeing, which is a nightmare, but it’s fine. I’ll deal with it.
How was the process of getting the sponsors in? You got a really good amount.
Sara: Eric here kept snatching me like a Pokemon and throwing me at various sponsors, because Eric and I both work conventions through Gehenna Gaming. So when we would have a moment while we’re at a convention, Eric would snatch me with the promise of a boba tea and make go talk to these people. And I’m like, okay. So I would be like, hi, we’re doing this charity thing. You want in?
Erik: When we settled on the idea of there being a solid charity auction, this was back in the early stages of it, we had a board of various companies that we absolutely wanted to be able to get involved with on this. Because we knew they’d either support these efforts in the past, were large enough names that we know we could draw people in, or just had awesome products that we wanted to showcase because they either aligned with the idea of resistance or community or intersectionality of being queer produced games.. And among those names were Monte Cook, Freed League Games, Paizo. We’re trying to think of Modiphius. Asmodee was on there. Like a bunch of these major names. Weirdly enough, one of the names we didn’t have on that list.
Sara: Modiphius was the one company I was surprised that we got such an ardent. “Yeah, what do you need, girl?” We’ll hook you up. They sent it immediately. They immediately reached out to their own like. PR like marketing team and was like, yeah, keep us on board and what’s going on. We’re super down for this.
Power Word Resist will take place on July 30, 2025, at the Indianapolis Repertory Theater, with tickets on sale now via TicketSpice.