#absolutely hate the format so far but I’m only using it for art so whatever

[sinfulsunni]

OK TRYING THIS AGAIN. izzy [REDACTED] posting attempt part two electric boogaloo

view full image + two more nasty sketches on pillowfort!! (you don’t need an account)

tumblr pls don’t nerf me he’s just tired from some exercise I swear

[themadauthorshatter]

Red Queen Headcanons!

Part 3!!

I am not including Dorothy Must Die this time because I feel like I headcanoned the fuck out if that series, so I'm giving it a break of headcanoning for a post or two😊.

With that out of the way, ON WITH THE HEADCANONS!!!!

Maven used to scream and cry a lot in his sleep. Before Elara took that away from him, though, the sound would cause Cal to wake up and wake up his brother. This would result in the two staying up until sun rise, much to the annoyance of Tibe and Elara.

When Cal was brought back from the front, Tibe was both impressed and a little nervous that Cal was so calm the first few months. He did not know Cal had lined his room to be mostly sound proof, or that Cal would scream into his pillow after training because of the memories; Red or Silver, people still died and Cal saw it happen.

Elara tried to "fix" Cal like she tried "fixing" Maven once,but had Samson do the deed because like hell she was going downfor that. IT DID NOT GO WELL. She took one memory of him and he almost had a mental breakdown from trying to remember. Naturally, Tibe was absolutely pissed when he realized what happened. Samson gave the memory right back, not just out of respect for his cousin, but also because Tibe is scary when he needs to be.

Before the events of Red Queen, Cal actually had a snack drawer in his desk. It had some small sweets, and Cal only took a snack out maybe once or twice a month at most.

If YouTube were to exist during the time Red Queen takes place, Cal would most likely watch How Ridiculous, GrayStillPlays, Markiplier, and some Bobby Duke Arts. Maven would mostly watch ASMR channels, Buzzfeed Unsolved, and kiwami japan. Cal watches that last one, too because Maven got him into it. A guilty pleasure channel, or two, for them both is Jenna Marbles and Julien Solomita.

On his first day of training, Maven thoroughly got his ass handed to him. Multiple times. Once by Cal, but by a cocky strongarm the rest of the times. Cal dealt with him whenever Maven wasn't looking; you can have the strength of a hundred men, but have fun trying to maneuver yourself away from your slimmer opponent that can get you at a short and long range.

Cal hates swimming with a burning passion. If you go swimming at a pool, and you two are alone, he will only sit on the edge and let his legs soak, or only sun bathe. If you two are not alone, he will fake a smile and guve you the biggest, 'SAVE ME,' 'I HATE THIS,' and 'I'M GOING TO KILL YOU' eyes as he walks in the mostly shallow ends.

Maven can tolerate water and swimming SLIGHTLY better than Cal.

Cal wanted to.learn how to play the violin and piano, but a soldier's work on the front is never done.

Maven DESPISED being on the front. Mainly because it was impossible to sleep with the notion that he could die at any given second, regardless of the orders given to the other soldiers.

While Cal holds onto ALL of his scars, Maven only has one big scar on the side of his body. He only noticed when Cal pointed it out to him. Maven admitted he didn't know where it came from, but he did know that he only remembered being knocked down and something hit his ribs and he passed out. Only Elara knows the full story of that scar.

It took a while for Bree and Tramy to warm up to Cal. The time was absolutely worth it because the remaining two Barrow boys were the best friends Cal ever had, and that's including Kilorn.

Kilorn found a copy of The Outsiders. Cal and Mare found him crying the next week, and the answer he gave when they asked was, "Stay gold! How can anyone stay gold when someone so young died saving a bunch of children!? He just wanted to live a little!"

Cal, Kilorn, Bree, and Tramy made a bet once that whichever one of the electricons won in training, the loser who bet on his electricon had to get his chest, stomach, arms, and legs waxed. Unfortunately, the electricons had decided to tag team: Mare and Rafe vs. Tyton and Ella. The latter team won. Bree and Tramy had to carry Kilorn and Cal as the two were hiding and were terrified to get waxed. Kilorn shrieked like a little girl and Cal screamed after a few times. It was very funny for Gisa and Mare, but Cal almost kicked them both.

Cal and Maven have been there for each other emotionally in their darkest times. Cal grew to treasure those moments, after the events in the series.

Cal is an early bird and Mare is a night owl.

Cal tried to test the flashlights in the Scarlet Guard to see which was the most powerful. He didn't get far, as Mare had found him in the dark. This is the conversation they had when she "found" him:

"Cal?"

"... Yeah?"

"Where ARE you right now? I mean, in this room?"

"The corner a head of you."

"What are you doing?"

"Testing the flashlights, just in case something happens."

"(Laughs) You've got to be kidding."

"(Turns on a flash light, but has the light shining up at him with the flashlight under him, if that makes sense, so she can see him) I've never been more serious."

"Come out. You're going to ruin your eyes."

"(Turns the flashlight off) Just a few more, I'm almost done."

"Cal, let's go."

"... Fine."

Mare and Cal are both fans of The Office. The two constantly quote it and make each other laugh.

Whenever Mare is playfully mad, Cal just stands back and holds her forehead so she can't get any hits on him.

Mare and Can have a system: if he will carry her on his back, then she will rub his shoulders and back when he's sore. He rubs her back and shoulders as well, though he does have an easy time giving her piggyback rides.

Cal doesn't need glasses to see all the time just for when it's late and he's up reading something.

Do you remember Red School!Maven's hair? Red Quenn!Maven once grew his hair out that long. He only got the incentive to cut it shoter when Cal kept grabbing him by this long hair and kicking the crap out of him. Elara gave him shit for it, but it was a lesson well taught and learned.

Contrary to whatever Elara says, Tibe DID discipline Cal. She just never saw it happen, and whatever Cal did, he was sure he would never do it again, or get caught doing it. Th former worked better for him.

If you het Cal at the just right moment, he will become the giggliest bitch ever. His officers found this out during a formation drill, where there soldiers all had to stay in form until time was up or everyone dropped out. The officers told dirty jokes and brought in one of those screaming rubber chickens to help. Although Cal did not drop out, when time was up his soldier mask completely shattered when his officer said in the most serious tone in the world, "So these boys don't have lint for balls and balls for brains after all." Mixed with the rest of the jokes and the screaming chicken, Cal fell down and started crying from laughing so hard. He tried numerous times to calm down and it did not work. He eventually calmed down, but he still had some giggles through the rest of the day.

People don't like to be around Cal when he's in hunter mode. It's not that he gets arrogant, he gets really, REALLY SCARY. Like, if you try to tell him something, he will give you murder eyes. Whether or not he means it is up for debate, but, needless to say, he does not like distractions from his hunt.

Cal had a nickname when looking for/hunting and taking down spies: The Hellhound.

Being a good killer, Ptolemus also has a nickname: The Berserker Prince.

AND THESE ARE THE HEADCANONS!!!!!

These are a little more focused on Cal and Maven, but I like them a lot☺️

AND THEY BOTH DESERVE BETTER!!!!!😩😩

Anyway, thanks for reading this post, I had a fairly good time writing this

Stay safe, happy new year, and have a great day!!

[ardentprose]

College Boyfriend: Jungkook

Warnings: language, suggestive/sexual themes, boyfriend jungkook

Dating college-aged Jungkook...

Would be annoying as hell

he’s the type to piss you off whenever he’s bored

which happens alot because this boy. does. NOT. study.

which is stressful for you because at exactly 1 am every night he comes to you with his dumb shit-eating grin and his mint textbook because he never uses it

and begs you with not even a morsel of regret because he knows you’ll help him

otherwise how will you two graduate on time to move to the city together?? that rent will not be paid on one income

“baaaabe. what’s on the exam tomorrow?”

“Wow, i’m shocked you even knew there was an exam this time.”

“TaeTae just quit our game so he could go study and now i’m bored”

if you simply rolled your eyes and kept typing away at your paper he would drop his textbook loudly on the edge of your desk or if you’re in bed on your legs without hesitation

earning your death glare that does not phase him

he snakes his rock-hard arms around your tummy and nuzzles his face into your neck, his hair tickling your cheek and blinding you in your right eye

“pleasssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” 

“ALRIGHT BUT THIS IS THE LAST TIME!”

alas

it was not the last time

bored jungkook would show up at your dormitory on the daily and you’d know because either

all the girls get real giggly out of nowhere

or he’s brought his entire squad and even the RAs are swooning over the seven boys clearly breaking the rules by being present in a girls’ dorm

he would never knock but just shout until you heard him through the door and your headphones

but of course your neighbors didn’t care

sometimes they’d even answer their doors first and by the time you let jungkook in he was already waist-deep in ranting about a battle gone wrong on league of legends and the regret in the girl’s eyes caused you to take pity rather than get jealous

he was Never allowed to bring all the boys in your pathetically small room so they would either scatter and explore this sacred paradise or line up obediently in the hallway, winking at the girls as they passed

bored jungkook lays his stinky feet on your thighs after working in the gym

he shakes the sweat from his hair onto you and will offer you his shirt and as soon as you turn your head, sometimes accepting the shirt blindly, he’s cackling as you hurtle the dead-cat smelling shirt across your room

bored jungkook will make up names inspired by his twitter feed and call you each one until you laugh or smack his closest body part

“babe. baby girl. bae. my boo. main chick. girl with the good hair who’s not becky because i only love you. mamacita. miss thicc. my skinny legend. sweetheart. brat (that’s YOU, jungkook). my ult bia AND my bias wrecker. my all-kill. yummy yumm- (NO!)

but sometimes bored jungkook was really sweet

there were times he was exhausted of his testosterone flooded environment and texted you in the most polite millennial format you had ever seen

“can we netflix and chill but like really just chill?”

baby boi jungkook is activated as soon as you reply ‘yes’

he shows up with a blanket and a hoodie he’s wearing but its for you because he would rather be shirtless and snuggling you under the blanket’s heat

and of course he brings exclusive “Y/N and Me snacks” from his many shelves of Jungkook Snacks

no lie he punched jin in the face because jin ate your favorite oreos and jungkook had saved up to buy those

okay so he accidentally hit jin while wrestling them out of his grip

you greet him with a kiss on each cheek and his eyes become adoring stars as he literally follows you around your room. he stands at the bathroom entrance and watches you get ready for bed. he waits patiently by the bed as you clear it of your study materials

you set everything up he strips his hoodie off and hands it to you

his arms again around your waist and this time he keeps his hair in a bun so it doesn’t tickle your nose and make you sneeze even tho your sneezes make him giggle

he kisses your lips at least four times while you surf netflix not offering suggestions because he only wants to watch anime or whatever you wanna watch

his love for romantic korean dramas started with you which is funny seeing as he’s had an entire lifetime to watch these with taehyung repeatedly recommending them 

tae is not happy that it took a girl to convince jk to sit down and watch Boys Over Flowers

or even Strong Woman Do Bong Soon which was made for jungkook like c’mon-

and if a couple breaks up on screen, fighting and screaming he instinctively grips you tighter and presses his lips against the pulse in your neck for comfort and assurance

his wide doe eyes are glassy as they fight but they absolutely flood when the couple makes up

jk will whip his head into the hood behind your head and hide his tears while you stroke his forearm and interlace your fingers with his

most nights jungkook falls asleep on your shoulder before the first episode ends

some nights the first ten minutes have barely passed before you realize soft boi jungkook was a ruse and his hands are up his sweatshirt on your torso, cupping your boobs and mouthing at your neck and

dang nabbit you’ve been bamboozled AGAIN

but fuck is it hot the way his teeth pull the skin on your neck, going back in to suck on it and repeat the process until red blooms like an abstract necklace

and if you’re too lost in the feeling of his fingers circling your skin leaving traces of fire he’ll remove one hand and cup your cheek turning your jaw to interlock with his

thus a makeout session ensues

at some point you’re pulling the hair tie from his head and weaving your fingers through the wavy thick strands, moaning at that sensation alone

but your roommate usually comes in before you get very far

or annoying jungkook returns and he pulls away breathless but a smirk flashing on his lips as he glances over your shoulder 

“its curfew...gotta go”

jungkook is actually very smart and very talented

like the best in his film production class AND his art studies class AND best athlete on the football team

he would be best dancer but hoseok claimed that title and jungkook has made it his personal mission to surpass the dancing legend before either of them graduate

he always holds your hand while walking to class

runs up and snatches your hand, kissing your cheek in greeting

uses your interlocked hands to pull your arm around his shoulder, cup your waist and kiss you for good luck before your test

always leaves his friends to come say hi

uses his extra college-given bucks to buy you a coffee or a meal in the cafeteria if you forgot your money 

lets you use him as a chair if all the seats in the library are taken or even if they’re not and plays with your hair with one hand, phone in the other while you study for the both of you

everyone on campus knows jungkook is top of the line but everyone on campus thinks you’re top tier for wooing the man

that annoying student who guesses the answer and gets it right

if namjoon can hate another human being it’s jungkook in philosophy spouting off A-class bullshit and getting praise from the teacher

then having the audacity to ask for namjoon’s notes

college boyfriend jungkook may be your typical jock in physique but his heart is kind and protective and he knows how to balance time with his friends and time with you

well no thats a lie

he spends 99% of his time loving you

[davidmann95]

Superman’s 10 Best of the ‘10s

Good Miracle Monday, folks! The first third Monday of May of a new decade for that matter, and while that means that today in the DC Universe Superman just revealed his secret identity to the world on the latest anniversary of that time he defeated the devil, in ours it puts a capstone on a solid 10 years of his adventures now in the rear view mirror, ripe for reevaluation. And given there’s a nice solid ‘10′ right there I’ll go ahead with the obvious and list my own top ten for Superman comics of the past decade, with links in the titles to those I’ve spoken on in depth before - maybe you’ll find something you overlooked, or at least be reminded of good times.

A plethora of honorable mentions: I’m disqualifying team-ups or analogue character stories, but no list of the great Superman material of the last decade would be complete without bringing up Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #7, Avengers 34.1, Irredeemable, Sideways Annual #1, Supreme: Blue Rose, Justice League: Sixth Dimension, usage of him in Wonder Twins, (somewhat in spite of itself) Superior, from all I’ve heard New Super-Man, DCeased #5, and Batman: Super Friends. And while they couldn’t quite squeeze in, all due praise to the largely entertaining Superman: Unchained, the decades’ great Luthor epic in Superman: The Black Ring, a brilliant accompaniment to Scott Snyder’s work with Lex in Lex Luthor: Year of the Villain, the bonkers joy of the Superman/Luthor feature in Walmart’s Crisis On Infinite Earths tie-in comics, Geoff Johns and John Romita’s last-minute win in their Superman run with their final story 24 Hours, Tom Taylor’s quiet criticism of the very premise he was working with on Injustice and bitter reflection on the changing tides for the character in The Man of Yesterday, the decades’ most consistent Superman ongoing in Bryan Miller and company’s Smallville Season 11, and Superman: American Alien, which probably would have made the top ten but has been dropped like a hot potato by one and all for Reasons. In addition are several stories from Adventures of Superman, a book with enough winners to merit a class of its own: Rob Williams and Chris Weston’s thoughtful Savior, Kyle Killen and Pia Guerra’s haunting The Way These Things Begin, Marc Guggenheim and Joe Bennett’s heart-wrenching Tears For Krypton, Christos Gage and Eduardo Francisco’s melancholy Flowers For Bizarro, Josh Elder and Victor Ibanez’s deeply sappy but deeply effective Dear Superman, Ron Marz and Doc Shaner’s crowdpleasing Only Child, and Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine DeLandro’s super-sweet Mystery Box.

10. Greg Pak/Aaron Kuder’s Action Comics

Oh, what might’ve been. In spite of an all-timer creative team I can’t justify listing this run any higher given how profoundly and comprehensively compromised it is, from the status quo it was working with to the litany of ill-conceived crossovers to regular filler artists to its ignominious non-ending. But with the most visceral, dynamic, and truly humane take on Clark Kent perhaps of all time that still lives up to all Superman entails, and an indisputably iconic instant-classic moment to its name, I can’t justify excluding it either.

9. Action Comics #1000

Arguably the climax to the decade for the character as his original title became the first superhero comic to reach a 1000th issue. While any anthology of this sort is a crapshoot by nature, everyone involved here seemed to understand the enormity of the occasion and stepped up as best they could; while the lack of a Lois Lane story is indefensible, some are inevitably bland, and one or two are more than a bit bizarre, by and large this was a thoroughly charming tribute to the character and his history with a handful of legitimate all-timer short stories.

8. Faster Than A Bullet

Much as Adventures of Superman was rightfully considered an oasis amidst the New 52′s worst excesses post-Morrison and in part pre-Pak, few stories from it seem well-remembered now, and even at the time this third issue inexplicably seemed to draw little attention. Regardless, Matt Kindt and Stephen Segovia’s depiction of an hour in the life of Superman as he saves four planets first thing in the morning without anyone noticing - while clumsy in its efforts at paralleling the main events with a literal subplot of a conversation between Lois and Lex - is one of the best takes I can recall on the scope on which he operates, and ultimately the purpose of Clark Kent.

7. Man and Superman

Seemingly geared on every front against me, built as it was on several ideas of how to handle Superman’s origin I legitimately hate, and by a writer whose work over the years has rarely been to my liking, Marv Wolfman and Claudio Castellini’s Man and Superman somehow came out of nowhere to be one of my favorite takes on Clark Kent’s early days. With a Metropolis and characters within it that feel not only alive but lived-in, it’s shocking that a story written and drawn over ten years before it was actually published prefigured so many future approaches to its subject, and felt so of-the-moment in its depiction of a 20-something scrambling to figure out how to squeeze into his niche in the world when it actually reached stores.

6. Brian Bendis’s run

Controversial in the extreme, and indeed heir to several of Brian Bendis’s longstanding weaknesses as a writer, his work on The Man of Steel, Superman, and Action Comics has nevertheless been defined at least as much by its ambition and intuitive grasp of its lead, as well as fistfuls of some of the best artistic accompaniment in the industry. At turns bombastic space action, disaster flick, spy-fi, oddball crime serial, and family drama, its assorted diversions and legitimate attempts at shaking up the formula - or driving it into new territory altogether, as in the latest, apparently more longterm-minded unmasking of Clark Kent in Truth - have remained anchored and made palatable by an understanding of Superman’s voice, insecurities, and convictions that go virtually unmatched.

5. Strange Visitor

The boldest, most out-of-left-field Superman comic of the past 10 years, Joe Keatinge took the logline of Adventures of Superman to do whatever creators wanted with the character and, rather than getting back to a classic take absent from the mainline titles at the time as most others did, used the opportunity for a wildly expansive exploration of the hero from his second year in action to his far-distant final adventure. Alongside a murderer’s row of artists, Keatinge pulled off one of the few comics purely about how great Superman is that rather than falling prey to hollow self-indulgence actually managed to capture the wonder of its subject.

4. Superman: Up In The Sky

And here’s the other big “Superman’s just the best” comic the decade had to offer that actually pulled it off. Sadly if reasonably best-known for its one true misfire of a chapter, with the increasing antipathy towards Tom King among fans in general likely not helping, what ended up overlooked is that this is a stone-cold classic on moment of arrival. Andy Kubert turns in work that stands alongside the best of his career, Tom King’s style is honed to its cleanest edge by the 12-pager format and subject matter, and the quest they set their lead out on ends up a perfect vehicle to explore Superman’s drive to save others from a multitude of angles. I don’t know what its reputation will end up being in the long-term - I was struck how prosaic and subdued the back cover description was when I got this in hardcover, without any of the fanfare or critic quotes you’d expect from the writer of Mister Miracle and Vision tackling Superman - but while its one big problem prevents me from ranking it higher, this is going to remain an all-timer for me.

3. Jeff Loveness’s stories Help and Glasses

Cheating shamelessly here, but Jeff Loveness’s Help with David Williams and Glasses with Tom Grummett are absolutely two halves of the same coin, a pair of theses on Superman’s enduring relevance as a figure of hope and the core of Lois and Clark’s relationship that end up covering both sides of Superman the icon and Superman the guy. While basically illustrated essays, any sense of detached lecturing is utterly forbidden by the raw emotion on display here that instantly made them some of the most acclaimed Superman stories of the last several years; they’re basically guaranteed to remain in ‘best-of’ collections from now until the end of time.

2. Superman Smashes The Klan

A bitter race for the top spot, but #2 is no shame here; while not quite my favorite Superman story of the past ten years, it’s probably the most perfectly executed. While I don’t think anyone could have quite expected just *how* relevant this would be at the top of the decade, Gene Yang and Gurihiru put together an adventure in the best tradition of the Fleischer shorts and the occasional bystander-centered episodes of Batman: The Animated Series to explore racism’s both overt and subtle infections of society’s norms and institutions, the immigrant experience, and both of its leads’ senses of alienation and justice. Exciting, stirring, and insightful, it’s debuted to largely universal acknowledgement as being the best Superman story in years, and hopefully it’ll be continued to be marketed as such long-term.

1. Grant Morrison’s Action Comics

When it came time to make the hard choice, it came in no small part down to that I don’t think we would have ever seen a major Golden Age Superman revival project like Smashes The Klan in the first place if not for this. Even hampering by that godawful Jim Lee armor, inconsistent (if still generally very good) art, and a fandom that largely misunderstood it on arrival can’t detract from that this is Grant Morrison’s run on a Superman ongoing, a journey through Superman’s development as a character reframed as a coherent arc that takes him from Metropolis’s most beaten-down neighborhoods to the edge of the fifth dimension and the monstrous outermost limits of ‘Superman’ as a concept. It launched discussions of Superman as a corporate icon and his place relative to authority structures that have never entirely vanished, introduced multiple all-time great new villains, and made ‘t-shirt Superman’ a distinct era and mode of operation for the character that I’m skeptical will ever entirely go away. No other work on the character this decade had the bombast, scope, complexity, or ambition of this run, with few able to match its charm or heart. And once again, it was, cannot stress this enough, Grant Morrison on an ongoing Superman book.

[iknowicanbutwhy]

To anyone who thinks texting is a billion times worse than talking on the phone and that texting is a miscommunication disaster ready to happen: I get you. You're probably 100% exactly like my friend who I hate texting despite how i rather appreciate talking with them on call or in-person.

Hear me out, though. Please.

You know what's weird? I love talking with my other friend on text more than i talk with them in real life. No, it's not because they're untalkative irl. No, it's not because they have a different personality in text. No, it's not because they have any trouble whatsoever communicating in-person (more than the usual trouble everyone sometimes deals with).

It's because I'm the one with the auditory communication issues. I stammer and stutter, I can't forward my opinion in that microscopic pause between people talking, i can't think quickly when i or someone else is speaking, i can't think quickly, and i can't double check my grammar when ive already said something - among other problems.

And that friend i like to text? Just so happens to be skilled at texting.

Yes, texting well is a skill. Something that you can learn and cultivate and look up on Google. So if you hate texting and find it irredeemable, you probably don't have the skill for it. But you can still learn just by using your normal speaking skills while remembering and sticking with only a few bitty - yet crucial - rules of texting.

You may not want to learn to text. You may want to speak and text only when necessary. You may defend your point by stating that texting lacks key human communication, such as body language, tone of voice, rhythm of voice, and other context that adds to the meaning of words in a way texting could never have. Aaaand you'd be right, actually. Italics and bold and emojis/emoticons and writing style can only do so much while the imagination fills in the gaps - and unlike with books, if the imagination sees/hears something terrible in a text, it's offensive instead of interesting.

So, what about the people who don't have the skill to make coherent, intelligent sentences with their mouth in the first place? The context doesn't help too much, then. Of course, why should you have to learn how to text when clearly these people who are afflicted by their inability to speak should be learning how to talk, because it's more effective and healthier for them that way?

You're right, they should be learning. And they are! There's no avoiding speaking in real life unless you're mute, selectively mute (let's be understanding), deaf (sometimes they learn to speak and that's awesome), or something else I can't think of. Those with speech impediments - when they don't know sign or there's no one who knows sign nearby - are generally forced to try to speak, and are constantly training to communicate well. People with social anxiety don't want to be afraid of talking, and especially if you befriend someone with social anxiety in real life and talk with them in-person, they'll try their best to open up in-person too. And me? Who can't think fast enough to speak for some reason? I'm trying to change that, too. I hate being unable to speak as well as I text, because speaking is more efficient.

But it would still be really, really nice to have a deliciously complex conversation sometimes, and for those of us with trouble speaking, we developed the skill of texting to better fulfill that human need to communicate and share. We're trying to speak. But.. it would be really nice of you to text.

To text more than just "okay"

To elaborate on "I can't"

To exclaim more than only "ah"

To give something that isn't difficult to find a specific response to.

And it can be easy to; we text-savvy people swear our hearts on it!! Google provides lots of good links when you search "how to text well," but I'll sum up a few common tips to texting with meaning.

Text proportionally. This is probably the only rule you need to remember, because all-in-all, the best way to text someone (if they're not sending one or two words a text) is to follow in their example. If they ask your opinion? Tell them yours and ask theirs. If they send texts of two or three sentences each? It's polite to try responding with the same magnitude (keyword: try. You can't always do it). They send you a paragraph? You don't have to send one back (even though that'd be real cool) but if they seem to be expecting a thorough response, don't be afraid to tell them you can't think of much. Just make sure you follow tip #2. Just imagine what it's like talking to a cat that only meows vaguely at you in response. Maybe you think the cat is smart enough to somewhat understand, and you're getting the chance to let your thoughts out at it, but getting basically nothing back is kind of boring.

Dont send curt, few-worded answers. This includes saying just "k" or "ah" or part of a sentence that you're never gonna finish. It sends the message that you're not interested in thinking about whatever the person texting you just said. Sometimes you can send a tiny response as a joke, but do it over and over again, and the other person will think you're never interested in talking. If you're not interested in talking (not just in text, i mean audibly too), it'd be less rude to simply say your not up for talking, with a short, polite apology.

Respond as soon as possible to a genuine question. If you need to think, say so. If you can't respond just yet, say so. This is a personal thing for me. I'm in the middle of a conversation that has been active for a while, i ask an important (sometimes timed) question, and nobody responds for an hour. I lose confidence and take the silence as "no, don't be ridiculous," and take back what i said. Then, very suddenly, i get a response finally informing me that someone needed to ask their mom and the conversation took a while, or they were researching the question, or chores suddenly came up, or etc etc. People get busy all the time, and especially on text, it's easy to suddenly drop out because something irl shows up. But it's hard to tell the difference between being ignored, missed, or being considered. Your excuses are valid, but even a vague "brb" and then later a quick explanation would be more informative than straight silence.

If you need to leave in the middle of a conversation that's been very active, say so. Building off of the last one, it's just polite to be informative. Now, you don't have to say you're doing this at some specific location for a particular amount of hours and you'll be hanging out with whats-their-name and then you'll go into the bathroom and pick your nose in the mirror - no, you don't have to be specific. Just make it clear that you'll be gone for a bit and you'll get back to the conversation another vague time. It's polite, that's all, and alleviates the worries of all us anxious individuals who think "oh no did i say something wrong its been like 20 minutes and they left suddenly-"

Try to leave an avenue of conversation open for the other person to pick up on. This one is easy because generally, all you need to do is think of an open-ended question that isnt yes-or-no. Say something, then ask a question that relates to what you said that the other person can add to. Like.. the other person said they like a certain band, and you like that band, too. You could tell them your favorite song from them and gush about why, then ask what their favorite song is and why? Then it's up to them to give a good response.

If a conversation turns exhausting because you feel like you're pulling all the weight, then drop it and politely say goodbye. There's all these tips about good texting but sometimes, when you can't bring the other person out of their shell or they are genuinely uninterested, it's because they are the ones not doing their part in the conversation. You've tried your best, and if they wont thank you, then I will. And someone in your future who knows how to text and is interested in what you have to say will thank you in their heart. Just, not the person who you're walking away from right now.

Observe the texting "body language" of others. This sounds weird, but examples of this would be using bold to outline the absolute importance of things, italics to slightly emphasize something, s p a c i n g to signify your mind being blown, emojis to express light emotion (unless someone uses way too many, which, that's just a bad habit and sometimes an art form), "ha" for sarcastic laughter, fjsjskajfjie for real laughter, ALL CAPS for high energy, etc. Im sure you can Google it, too, otherwise you can just learn from experience. It's all generally very universal unless you meet a Homestuck, and pretty soon, picking out and giving out emotions in everyday text will be a little easier.

That's all I got right now. Thank you for reading this far and indulging me with this topic. It's okay if you want to keep your avenues of conversation far away from texting, because it's all your own choice, but just know that if you ever do find someone interesting who speaks better in text, it's not impossible for you to communicate with them as well in that format. Just takes practice :) (<- that's a genuine, gentle smile, otherwise I would use c: or :3. Someone else may use it differently, however. Think of it like my personal accent.)

[crystalelemental]

Okay.  Deep breaths.  Serious banner talk time.

I’m so mad at myself.  How did I not predict Quan and Eldigan?  That should’ve been the most obvious thing in the world.  Of course they’re his groomsmen.  Like, of course.  How did I not guess that and guessed family instead?

Anyway, Lachesis.  Sweet, wonderful Lachesis, with proper art, in all her glory.  And she’s the demote.  A green dagger flier.  I love her so.  Honestly, I initially thought she was a 5* locked unit.  Air Orders seemed really obvious for being 5* locked.  But apparently Air Orders gets to be on a common.  Before Guidance.  That’s a choice.  Cantrip skills also immediately got demoted, so like...RIP Dorothea.  Courtly Mast+ seems solid.  If she’s got over 50% HP, gets +5 attack and res during combat, and reduces damage from foe’s first attack by 50% if they can follow-up.  That is AMAZINGLY good.  It only works if they can follow-up, so being faster than her or have guaranteed doubles, but still.  I really like it.  It probably won’t be a huge deal for her, though.  I imagine other dagger users will have great utility for it.

Ethlyn is also gorgeous, it’s amazing.  Courtly Fan+ is...yeah.  Attack/Speed +5 on initiation, and neutralizes skills that prevent follow-ups.  That’s going to be one hell of an option.  Windsweep is...interesting.  I get that it’s basically “I will double you and you can’t do shit to retaliate, but you know.  It bugs me that they’re able to do things like this.  Joint Drive Speed is of course also beautiful.  But hey.  What the fuck is with the AR-D skills?  I thought we killed those.  This is really the best you can do?

Quan...okay, his art looks a little weird.  Courtly Bow+ is the same as Lachesis’ weapon, but with attack and defense instead of attack and res.  Joint Hone Defense plays into that well, and Flier Formation is...well, a choice.  But hey.  What the fuck is Attack/Defense Bond 4 supposed to be?  We have Unity skills as of like...two weeks ago.  Step up your game, loser.  You’re the unfortunate 5* locked due to fodder option, and your fodder isn’t even that good.  Quan.  Quan, come on.  You’re better than this.

And then there’s the Duo, Sigurd and Deirdre.  Let me start with this.  Get absolutely fucked.  I’ve never been so happy to not really like Sigurd or Deirdre, because it means my soul won’t hurt.  Gilt Goblet is nice.  A 17 might weapon with Attack/Res +6 if foe is at full HP or initiates, and cuts magic damage and AoE attacks from them by 50%.  You’re gonna need that if you’re going against Ophelia, given color disadvantage.  Attack/Res Bond 4 is super unfortunate.  Lull Attack/Res is fantastic.  Joint Hone Res is a choice.  I think that’s the last Joint Hone actually?  So that’s nice.

Here’s where life sucks for the Duo.  Their Duo effect is trash.  It refreshes every turn, but all it does is act as a reposition for up to two units, just switching them to the opposite side.  It only works if they’re already adjacent, so like...okay.  But the stats.  38HP, 55 attack, 18 speed, 16 defense, and (presumably) 37 res.  If you haven’t noticed the problem, allow me to spell it out.  They’re slow as fuck, can’t take a physical hit, get absolutely no support from Duo effect, weapon effect, or toolkit to offset this, and are severely lacking in raw damage potential for one-shots.  They are a purely dance support focused unit, at a 185BST.  They didn’t get a unique dance, so apparently their only unique status is being the first cav dancer (called it).  While cav dancer is at least mildly scary, the fact is cavs fell off the meta ages ago, and three movement dance isn’t scarier than L!Azura’s bullshit of turning whatever she danced into a three-movement nuke.  The severe drop-off in SP scoring means they won’t even top the Arena charts.  More than likely, they’ll be used for AR, specifically in cav lines, but even there I can’t imagine they bring all that much to the table aside from “is cav.”  The fact that many supertanks in AR are ranged means they can check the mages like Brunnya, but are absolutely demolished by archers like Norne, who pack Spendthrift Bow to delete their one saving grace, and hit them right where it hurts.  I recognize dance support is a fantastic thing, but I honest to god feel like their toolkit is astonishingly limited.

Once again, I feel like maybe the devs have it out for Genealogy.  Seriously, as far as banners go, this is very limited powercreep compared to previous fare around this time.  Hoshidan Summer gave us Dancer Micaiah, who was an absolute nuke of a unit with dual effectiveness, and inheritable weapons with Hardy Bearing built in, alongside some kind of effectiveness against specific threats.  Last year, the dancer banner came with the advent of Gen 4 powercreep, and gave us the powerhouses of Ishtar and Reinhardt, as well as the supremely physically bulky Berkut.  This year feels...tame by comparison.

And yet.  I love it.  I kinda wish more banners were like this.  I don’t like obvious and intense powercreep.  The only thing I would change is giving Quan a better A-skill, since Bond 4 is now irrelevant, and that the Duo were less...like that.  I really don’t think “Cav Dancer” is enough to distinguish them.  But I guess we’ll see.  Maybe being a magic check is a thing after all, who knows.  Probably not with that speed, anyway.

Oh yeah, and Eldigan is the free unit.  I hate Eldigan, so that sucks, but at least my grails are safe.  Also he’s a lance flier, so get fucked buddy.

[technicolorfamiliar]

The Artist vs Social Media

I have been sharing my feelings about art and its ever-growing relationship to social media with a number of people recently. I wrote a bit about it here some months ago, but that was primarily focused on reactions to different types of art I was posting on different platforms. Without a doubt, it’s been something that’s given me pause for a while, and I have a suspicion I can’t be the only person that feels this way.

To be clear: this is not meant to be an attack on the people who enjoy and excel at being a creative on social media. It is purely an expression of my own frustration, a cry out to others who have struggled with the same issues, because I know I’m not alone.

First of all, my personal style just doesn’t compliment a successful social media presence, I’m such a fan of the long-format, in general. I don’t want anything in my life to be bite-sized, cropped, or condensed. I struggle to convey the concepts teeming in my heart in a limited number of characters and pixels. As I am evolving as an artist, I enjoy incorporating many layers of meaning, drawing on a multitude of sources for inspiration. Social media, for the most part, wants to condense, compartmentalize, limit. It’s short-format, lacks fluidity, and promotes shorter attention spans. It feels counterintuitive to the kind of art I love and the art I want to be making.

For as streamlined and easy as social media has made sharing artwork with the great big world out there, it’s also birthed a lot of additional anxiety and despair. At least that’s been my experience. Some people have taken to social media like ducks to water, they are thriving in an endless stream of posts and pictures and stories. But this particular artmaker finds the rise of social media more like an impossible mountain, and climbing it is a requirement.

I envy the artists and makers who have figured out how to hack social media in order to promote their work and their brand. These people make it look easy, like social media integration with one’s art practice is as simple as breathing. I understand how it is crucial now as any kind of artist to have a big social media presence. But despite that understanding, I still have a lot of issues with it.

I was in art school in the still relatively early days of Instagram. Facebook and Twitter were big, but I didn’t really ever get too deeply involved in either platform. For me, Facebook was mostly for staying in touch with friends and family back home. I didn’t even have a smart phone until some time after I graduated. The school I attended encouraged us to build a website, get a business card, but there was no way to prepare us for the expansion of these apps among others that would emerge later on. This is not a sorry attempt at an excuse for my complicated relationship with social media, because there are a lot of artists in their early 30s right now who are very clearly doing well in that arena.

Circa 2009 – 2011, using social media for networking was beginning to be a real thing to consider. Having a Facebook page and separate Instagram and Twitter accounts devoted to your craft in addition to your website and blog in order to reach all possible professional connections was increasingly important. And now, they are all absolutely essential. People think you must be kidding yourself if you’re making art and don’t have a social media presence. I’ve caught myself being judgmental of young artists who aren’t on social media. But then I’m reminded of my own issues with Facebook and Instagram and all the others and I think maybe I should shut my mouth.

—

That’s the background. The real thing I’m trying to say is this:

Social media is exhausting.

I hate it.

For all the good content being generated and shared on FB, IG, etc there are a thousand mentally and emotionally draining posts being shared by people who, by and large, aren’t on social media to promote their craft. And that’s fine, people should have a place to vent their frustrations, laugh at funny or un-funny memes, share recipes and cute animal videos, get 100+ validating reactions to their photos, post thoughts/criticisms/ideas too long for Twitter but too short for a blog…

But to expect an artist generating original content to compete with everything else being blasted on every social media platform is complete and utter unrealistic nonsense.

—

My big, huge, major beef with social media is the totally insane decision to stop having posts featured in chronological order on pretty much every major platform. This really hurts creative people who are trying to get exposure, share their work to the world (or at least their friends and followers), and requires them to generate even more content, or share the same post over and over again in the hopes that their painting or photo or video somehow makes it over all the other posts from everybody else that are only just so much noise. Trying to get noticed or share your work with likeminded creatives you don’t already know is like shouting in a canyon full of other people shouting, drowned out by all the other voices and the echoes of the voices.

But that’s not the only thing about social media that keeps me up at night.

There are people on social media who have become experts in making their lives look like perfect, magical journeys of self discovery and growth and good fortune. Seeing their perfectly composed, perfectly lit photos of what is supposedly their daily lives, their brunches, their cocktails, their pets, their clothes, their travels, their significant others, and whatever else makes me want to not even try. Why should I even bother to try to compete with that? Looking at those kinds of posts immediately makes me feel inferior because 1) I’m not living that theoretically beautiful, charmed life, and 2) I’m not generating masses of content like that of my own experience. I look at my weird little life and there’s hardly anything photo- or post-worthy, at least not on a daily basis, not enough to get above everyone else’s noise. When did having a social media presence become an art form in and of itself? One of my very close friends described social media as performance art, which is probably the best description of this phenomenon I’ve ever heard. I’m not saying it’s not hard work — in order to project this perfect life, you have to be a photographer, or at least know and/or have the money to pay for one, be a master of self-marketing, and you have to set aside the time in your day to make the posts (more on that in a bit). But as someone with at least half a brain, I know that the content being gobbled up by glowing, supportive friends and followers is only a version of reality.

I know I’m not the only one who feels utterly alienated by the “perfect lives” being presented on social media, and I know that it’s not most people’s intention to alienate their friends by posting gorgeous photographs and positive affirmations of their own journeys.

And yet, even just thinking about it is exhausting. It’s a destructive and deadly combination of self-loathing and self-doubt inspired by the vast majority of what I see on Facebook and Instagram with knowing full well that those feelings are totally unfounded since the posts are not a true reflection of reality. It doesn’t motivate me, it doesn’t inspire me to follow their lead, it doesn’t get my blood pumping. It just makes me tired.

—

By my nature, I am a relatively private person. I have no real desire to share my private life with strangers, and it’s a struggle for me to open up to acquaintances. I have a hard time talking about myself, my dreams and aspirations, my needs and wants with other people. I keep to myself, I have a small circle of close friends and family with whom I share things openly.

There’s nothing like the gut-wrenching feeling you get when you’re talking passionately about your art or your interests or your hopes for the future with someone and seeing the very moment their eyes glaze over with disinterest. It’s a special kind of soul-crushing dismissal that has lead me to live an introvert’s life. Because why, after all, would I share anything with people when that’s the reaction I often got in my youth when sharing with my peers?

The whole grand purpose of social media is to share. Share everything and share often. Artists who hold regular jobs and don’t have an abundance of free time or energy to devote to generating social media content on top of the art they’re already making need to find that magical balance. The Buzzfeed article about burnout that was circulating a few months ago touches on this a bit. Work + Art + Self Promotion. That’s always been the case for artists looking to make a profit off their work, but now it’s on a whole other level and puts creatives in direct competition with social media influencers and everyone else on FB, IG, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, etc. When I say time and energy, I mean the lack of energy I personally have after a working a job that already requires me to use my creativity, strategy, and organizational skills. When I get home or when I finish a job, I want to recharge so I can have the energy and motivation to actually sit in my studio and make new art. I struggle with budgeting out my time and energy for taking photos, writing cute little descriptions, thinking up clever hashtags, and setting timers to remind me when to post in order to get the most views.

I’m over-focused right now on making the art, in finding my voice as an illustrator, in re-vamping my portfolio and considering the future of my practice. I would need a personal assistant to run my social media accounts in an effective and professional way, and I don’t understand how other artists don’t have assistants. Or maybe they do. At the very least it would require me to have my phone in my hand far more than I already do, so another reason to keep it on me, especially in my studio while I’m in the zone, working, makes me feel gross.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But Emma… you took all this time to write and edit this long blog post. Surely you could have used that time to work on content for your IG or FB accounts.” And you would be right. However, I’m in a place mentally and emotionally where I see the social media game, I understand it, but I just don’t want to play it. Not the way we’re all expected to if we want to get noticed. I’m not a performance artist, I’m not extroverted enough, my process doesn’t lend itself to this new gold standard of being an artist in the 21st century. Am I making big strides to change my process? Not really, because the very nature of social media feels inauthentic to me and the work I want to be making.

—

In the end… I don’t really know how to make social media work for me and my own journey as an artist. It would be great if there was some compromise, some middle path for people like me who are rubbed the wrong way by hashtags and stories and filters. Is there even a possibility for existing any other way as an artist today? Because everyone I know who creates any kind of art seems to have accepted and figured out the key to doing well on social media. It’s almost not even worth airing my grievances since I’m not willing to completely change and conform to something that does not feel right to me.

I’ll just keep plugging along as I have been until I figure it out. Or some kind souls who have been through a similar conundrum swoop in and offer their wisdom and insight.

[askkrenko]

Krenko’s Guide to Creature Types: Dragon

Art by Jason Chan

What is a Dragon (flavorfully)?

You know what? No. You don’t get this one. You just don’t. If you don’t know what a Dragon is, I don’t know why you’re here, I don’t know why you play Magic, I don’t know what you’re doing with your life, and you should seriously question whether or not your parents properly prepared you for the world outside.

For Magic specifically, dragons range in intelligence from bestial to many times smarter than humans, and almost always have six limbs: Two wings, two hind legs, and either two front legs or two arms.  Dragons live on every known plane except for Ixalan, and may have been initially spread by a multi-planar being called the Ur-Dragon, which launched its eggs through the blind eternities such that they hatched into dragons in various places, and also one volcano. The largest draconic populations are on Tarkir and in the portion of Alara known as Jund.

For more information on dragons, explore “Dragons of Dominia” , a draconic encyclopedia that inspired me to create first Goblins of the Multiverse and then Krenko’s Guide to Creature Types.

What is a Dragon (mechanically)?

Dragons are the undisputed red iconic, usually large, aggressive fliers, often with haste or some sort of direct damage ability. Dragons have appeared in nearly every set since alpha, and are one of the game’s larger creature types despite the larger rarity. Due to the sheer coolness factor of dragons, Dragons are also prone to appearing in other colors. While this is occasionally a one-off, it’s more commonly the result of a five-dragon cycle, such as Legends and M19’s cycle of Elder Dragons, Kamigawa’s Dragon Stars, Invasion and Planar Chaos’s Primeval Dragons, or any of the multiple dragon cycles from Tarkir block. No matter what color, dragons are almost always large, flying, game-ending threats.

Can I make a Dragon deck?

In Tarkir or M19, Dragons and Dragon rewards are so plentiful that it’s not unreasonable to play a Dragon Tribal deck in sealed or draft, making it easy in constructed format. Despite the fact that Dragons tend to be large, solo creatures in the same way as Angels and Demons, Tarkir pulled no punches in ensuring Dragon Tribal could be successful, and both Scourge and M19 did their part to help. Time Spiral’s Dragonstorm and Tarkir’s Black/Red Dragons were both solid standard decks, and though it’s too early to tell it’s entirely plausible for M19’s support to result in a standard Dragon Tribal deck.

Modern, unfortunately, is simply too fast for dragons. The big draconic threats just can’t outrace the other strong, ground creatures, and paying the premium for flying rarely matters because any deck that would otherwise roadblock on the ground is going to have the dragon deck on the defensive. Legacy, similarly, just has better, stronger options than any of the dragons. Even the deck “Dragon Stompy,” a mono-red control deck that won with Rakdos Pit Dragon and later Thunderbreak Regent, has cut all its dragons  in favor of Goblin Rabblemaster and Chandra, Torch of Defiance. Despite Dragons being so common, there are no commonly played Dragons in either Modern or Legacy. This isn’t inherently a problem, as there are many creature types that don’t have anyone who can make the cut in older formats, but it is odd that Dragons can’t pull their own weight.

For Commander, there are a whopping fifty three Legendary Dragons, ten of which support the Dragon subtype, plus another three non-dragon Legendary creatures that support the tribe, and one partner pair where the non-dragon supports dragons. Most importantly, there’s a preconstructed Dragon themed deck called Draconic Domination which features The Ur-Dragon as its face card. As the goal here is to create a Dragon tribal deck, I’m going to discount discussion of any Commander that isn’t red. While there are a fair amount of non-red dragons, the multicolor nature of so many dragons means that even going three colors without red severely limits your option on actual, quality dragons and cuts out many of your tribal reward cards. Let’s take a look at our red commander options.

Atarka, World Render is an immediate threat on her own as a creature with flying, trample, and double strike that gives all your dragons double strike when attacking. For big, stompy dragons, this works quite well, and green gives access to mana acceleration. Atarka tends to work fine ignoring other dragons, though, as she can reliably kill a player in two hits.

Bladewing the Risen helps solve an important problem with big creatures in that he returns them from the dead. Further, he acts as a dragon lord, granting a potentially absurd boost to all your dragons if you’re able to untap with him. His own ability coupled with black mana encourages a zombification strategy, filling your graveyard as quickly as you can, returning dragons and removing players in one big attack. Cards like Living Death and Patriarch’s Bidding also work well in a deck focused on high-cost creatures.

Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund grants three colors, which is particularly helpful for having a good removal suite, but granting haste to other dragons at 7 mana is actually rather weak when you can do it with artifacts and enchantments much more easily. Gaining control of all dragons is potentially hilarious, but without access to blue it’s exceedingly difficult to abuse this.

Kolaghan, the Storm’s Fury encourages attacking with many dragons at once, which can be fun for a tribal deck, and Dash is useful, but it’s difficult to put so many dragons on the board that the buff she gives becomes important. At two dragons, it’s just +4 total damage. Still, this empowers your non-dragon support creatures, and in a deck filled with creature tokens it could become terrifying with only two dragons.

Lathliss, Dragon Queen is a decent beater in her own right with shared firebreathing, but  her requirement to cast other dragons after her, as with Karrthus, is going to be difficult to pull off at her high mana cost. Overall, she reads to me as a worse Bladewing the Risen. Both pump, but Bladewing gets you a free dragon when you play him while Lathliss gets you a free dragon only if she survives a round… And honestly, the dragon Bladewing the Risen grabs is probably better than a 5/5 flier.

Scion of the Ur-Dragon is an absurdly powerful commander that can win the game on a swing via combo shenanigans and lets you play whatever crazy dragon you want. Five colors is difficult, but getting to attack as any dragon in the game enables  amazing power. Further, the dragon goes directly to your graveyard so you can use black mana later. Scion’s one real problem is that people are generally aware of its strength and it draws hate like no other creature. The basic combo is this: Pay 4. Activate its ability twice. On first resolution, pick Moltensteel Dragon. Maintain priority, pay 10 (or more) life to activate +5/+0 until end of turn. Then the ability resolves a second time. This time, choose Dragon Tyrant. Scion of the Ur-Dragon is now an 11/6 Flying, Trample, Double Strike creature, which deals 22 commander damage. If you expect blockers, just pay more life. You can only do this once, as the cards go to your graveyard, but there’s ways to get them back and Scion is still plenty powerful when not using this combo.

The Ur-Dragon itself is the most obvious Dragon Commander. The Eminence ability to reduce the cost of your dragon spells is very powerful, access to all five colors enables you to play whatever you want, and The Ur-Dragon’s ability only cares when a dragon attacks, not when it attacks, so playing it onto the board and attacking with other dragons still allows for immediate card draw and free permanents. Nine mana is absurdly high, but reducing the cost of everything else means you’re getting significant value even if you never cast The Ur-Dragon. If you’re willing to invest in a five color mana base, this is probably just the best Dragon commander.

Zirilan of the Claw provides for a unique, mono-red draconic build, throwing dragons individually at an opponent with haste. A lot of work needs to go into Zirilan to make him work right, but with cards like Illusionist’s Bracers, Flameshadow Conjuring, and Erratic Portal it can do some noteworthy things and function entirely differently from traditional tribal decks.

Kaalia of the Vast is worth noting as a commander that reduces the cost of dragons and gives them pseudo-haste. Kaalia is rather strong in her own right with the ability to drop some absurdly costed creatures early, though it’s generally a bad bet to lock her into just one of her three supported creature types rather than using all three.

Sylvia Brightspear and Khorvath Brightflame are a particularly interesting combination. Khorvath himself is  relatively weak. Six mana for three power with flying haste is far too much, even for granting all knights Haste and Flying. Flying is useful if you’re playing more of a knight game, but you simply won’t be playing enough knights while a six drop is sitting on the board for haste to be very useful. Sylvia, on the other hand, grants all your dragons Double Strike for a mere three mana and has Double Strike herself. This means if any dragon you cast survives, Sylvia can immediately turn it into a major threat. While the partners might suggest a balance between being a Knight deck and being a Dragon deck, the fact is that Khorvath is so much mana and so weak that it’s only worth playing the absolute best Knights, like Mirran Crusader and the Backup-Sylvia Silverblade Paladin. Strong equipment will also go twice as far in the hands of Sylvia or any dragon while she’s on the battlefield.

Is Dragon a good creature type?

As Red’s iconic creature type, Dragon does an excellent job, presented as large, aggressive flying creatures with traditional red abilities that strongly convey the flavor of being a dragon. Dragons that are not mono-red, however, tend to become varied and unique enough that their mechanical identity starts to blend in with other large fliers. In Green, this isn’t a problem, as Green doesn’t get large fliers except in the form of dragons, but White dragons tend to be indistinguishable from Angels, and Blue dragons tend to blend in with Blue’s crowd of large fliers. Black often uses Dragon as an excuse to have a large, flying undead, and this works well, but others like Deathbringer Regent and Kokusho, the Evening Star could mechanically be Demons just as easily.

Still, as Humans are so spread because most of the player base is Human, Dragons are spread because they’re just the coolest thing around. Occasionally dipping into Angel or Demon territory is fine as long as it doesn’t happen too often, and while Dragons lean Red, the volume of multicolor dragons means that they’re also the five color iconic. Wizards has also been careful to lean them into being five color and red. While they appear in all colors, especially on Tarkir, the best Dragon support and rewards tend to be focused in red. M19 exemplifies this with a cycle of 5 three-color dragon lords and an undead dragon at mythic, but having its common, uncommon, and even rare dragons in Red.

As far as other creature types, there’s only one that’s similar enough to Dragon to consider folding into, and that’s Drake. While in appearance they’re very similar to Dragons, and I might not have initially encouraged design to make Drakes as their own, sub-dragon things, if Drakes were folded into Dragons at this point it would dilute mechanical identity too much. Drakes are mid-sized Blue workhorses that are basically always good in limited and always trash in constructed (save one notable exception), while dragons are huge Red bombs that can win the game on their own. Allowing Drakes to gain access to Dragon Tribal cards would certainly be good for the cards, but having common 1/3 dragons would really cut into the coolness factor that, currently, even the common dragons have.

Dragon is in a good place overall, with proper flavor, a decent mechanical identity, good support spread throughout the years, and plenty of Legendary options. As long as Wizards keeps doing what its been doing with Dragons, they’re going to be just fine.

[cow5secondchance]

Episode 2 - Why Did People Flip - Xavier

Format: Sequester

Eliminated: Wyatt (9-3-1-1-1) || Daisy (Battle Match)

BLAKE

so! week 2 and my plan honestly is to just really still focus on my social relationships. so far, i feel very confident in my ability to connect with people on a 1 to 1 level, and at least hopefully skate through these first few weeks. consistently my problem in the game is missing out on a key group or alliance that is running more than I know. without being too chaotic and paranoid, i would really really like to try to sit here and just scope out the relationships. as for my groups! i really want to work with jennet. she's like iconic? her art is so cute and i do feel like i made a genuine connection with her early on, and i think pointing out we're some of the only award winners in the cast could bring us closer together ! plus 4th place legends... beyond jennet, i have a group with isaac and nicole, and honestly, im feeling suprisingly good about both. i think these first 6 people i mention are the ones im going to focus on most, and focus on really forming game connection wheras the rest im just socially going to really force myself into their LIVES and hope they like me! Daisy and Jarod... loves them and swifties who ive played with in the past both in a way that i feel we were unfinished. jarod got taken out in the doubles round just as we kinda connected on a game level, and then daisy and i were working together in bb netflix before it got canceled. this is really the group i want to strategize with and im really putting myself on a limb being loyal to them because i know they have options, but its a risk im willing to take because if i can be the number 1, their connections can just offer more safety and information for myself. and the final people who i kinda want to work with is captain and wiliam xavier s up there, we just havent spoken tons dont really have much of an opinion on the others? if i had to nominate right now it might be mario just because we havent spoken yet.

XAVIER

It's annoying to be nominated, especially by Jennet. Literally two minutes before we were talking and I was explaining how this round is played. And then Jennet nominates me. I feel betrayed. Getting my G4ce together (Greenhouse 4) so we can vote as a team. And well, well, well, I just found out that the Sequester 4 are also voting together. It is weird that they are all nominated during the Sequester round. They are targeting either Wyatt or Kaleigh. Knowing they are a team, I want one of them out, if I can swing it quietly.

NICOLE

HI I’m back and already went through a ton! Last round a misunderstanding / Lanie throwing me under the bus just because I said I hadn’t spoken to Nyx and Captain really set me up in a weird spot so I had to get rid of Lanie and then she said we all suck (imagine being almost 30 and telling someone who is your students age that they suck! I get it really is terrible to be blindsided but it was her fault, she played too fast! Like yell at me for not communicating properly or whatever she believed I did at that point but don’t take it out on everyone especially like the youngest player in the game!) Anyway, this round is sequester so we are all back together! I finally get to play with Daisy! I love her so much so I’m super glad we got to play, I’m very glad I get to reunite with Lindsay, I’m glad William isn’t mad at me for the whole Lanie situation and now I’m safe for the first vote! It is a very good feeling but I also feel like I should be learning from Lanie’s mistake and playing not fast so I’m trying to take a step back from talking in the house chat. I’m just so excited to see everyone but I will try to contain myself so I don’t annoy anyone. Check back in later in the round!!!

BLAKE

I forget the questions omg but I had a call with Jarod where he kinda threw out wyatts name as an option to go, and honestly I’m completely fine with that because even though they seem super sweet, I feel like I’m juggling enough balls and I don’t need to add them into my mix, whereas I feel a lot better about every other nominee other than Kaleigh, who I don’t think anybody would do this early My strategy is to just campaign for myself to stay to everybody and avoid throwing out names. I’m hoping that comes from Jarod or one of the safe people because they literally have the safety to get away with it 

XAVIER

I like video confessionals. The only alliance of 4 should be Greenhouse

CAPTAIN

hello dr.. so i'm glad i got saved by jarod :pleading_face: he rlly said i'm gonna make captain safe no matter what happens. and thats exactly what he did :100: for ppl who are vulnerable, i want autumn, jarod and xavier to be safe the most like idc i just want 3 of them to be safe. xavier might be in a bit of trouble tho since the totem pole ppl are voting together for sure hmmm so i need to try to talk to them to sway them from voting xavier. for the plans to avoid battle match? idk i just want them to feel safe around me no matter what. so that if i end up voting them, they're not gonna be bitter at me that much. and i lowkey saved myself with wyatt since wyatt said they wanted to work with me so prays.

__________

also, i secured an alliance with jarod, autumn and jennet. and a greenhouse alliance with mario, nyx and xavier. the latter hasn't been in the talk like with every greenhouse yet but xavier brought it up to me and i think that it should be great. so fingers crossed!

WILLIAM

SOOOOOOOOOOOOO, going into Round 2 im having a really big struggle..... im seeing  THAT I DONT DISLIKE A SINGLE PERSON ON THIS CAST, USUALLY THERE IS AT LEAST ONE BUT NOPE    Also we are moving into a Sequester sorta semi safety chain with half vulnerable and half safe cast and lucky me I think Lanie either hated me the most or the least from our Survivor team and decided to give me the Karma twist which gave me safety for the round but made me have to pick the first unsafe out of the whole cast. I think my strategy was to pick someone who didn't talk to me yet (so i had a reason) as well as someone who was sorta loved by most if not all and wasn't a target for it, because I'm thinking if I just fade into the background this round no one would have a need or want to pick me for the Battlematch, i think its safe to assume whoever goes home will pick the person who made them unsafe plus like one other person, so i just have to avoid being that other 1/13 people. As for the vote i have no clue at all, I think maybe Isaac cause i haven't said much to him at all, or maybe Jarod cause i know he is hella busy and prob wont pick me to go into battle..... just not Wyatt or Blake or Kaleigh rn.  So like yeah, just gonna pray, not talk around too too much, let people come to me so it doesnt seem like im pushing anyones name and hopefully vote someone i dont love out. yeah so much fun xoxo William F

NYX

So, this round is pretty confusing and difficult to navigate cause not only do we have to vote someone out we have to vote someone out and hope they don't drag us into the battleback. I'm very happy to be safe for the vote since at least then i'll have a chance to battleback in a comp. So, for this vote I can't vote Autumn since she gave me safety, I can't vote Jarod since he took one for the team, I can't vote Xavier cause of the gh alliance, I can't vote Blake due to our bonding on tau ceti, so my only real options for this vote are Isaac, Wyatt, and Kaleigh. If I had my way i'd just pile the votes on wyatt and get them out now but it's not that easy because i haven't talked as much and they could see that as incentive to drag me in. Of course all the people I just mentioned I don't wanna vote for I wanna save because that means they'll be willing to work with me to some capacity. To avoid the battle match is the hardest part cause people can be very impulsive with their decisions and heat of the moment always catches people off guard. My best bet is just not to make too many promises and to just tell the truth and hopefully that'll be enough to gain their respect. 

CAPTAIN

besties.. i don't know what i'm doing. its between wyatt and kaleigh methinks but wyatt keeps dropping my name everywhere and i don't really like it. idk if they get eliminated, if they would put me in the battle or not. but like if they're this messy, i'm voting them for sure. also sobs kaleigh is so cute.

__________

prays for me DR! sign: captain.

LINDSAY

bro no one wants to throw out a name because of the battle drag twist so it's three hours to tribal and i dont know who the fuck to vote my gut is telling me jarod but i am absolutely not letting jarod drag that shit back to me definitely not autumn i dont know like. i'm working the tightest with william, daisy and wyatt weirdly enough and none of us have heard anything so i just. ?????

MARIO

I AM SAFE!!! I AM NOT SECOND BOOT AGAIN

AUTUMN

IT WONT LET ME PUT AUDIO FILES IN!!! But when Monty puts them all together later this season I hope yall enjoy haha

XAVIER

Ok this vote is messy. It started out with Jarod and the Sequester group wanting to vote Kaleigh. They got people on board, and it looked good. Until Wyatt made that alliance chat. And of course the vote shifted to Isaac. But the Sequester group won't vote Isaac. Mario voted Autumn. Captain voted Wyatt. I am voting Kaleigh because I haven't spoken to her much. But I want the vote to go Isaac's way - it breaks up Sequester, and he won't think it was me, so safe from the battle. So it may be 5 on Kaleigh, unless the other people in that Alliance chat are not being honest as well. Ha ha. As long as it's not me, right?!

LINDSAY

wyatt made a voting block?? and didn't include me?? the person with no connection to isaac who they kept safe and would have probably voted with them???? wh ok i guess my vote is on wyatt tonight tf 

NYX

So, this round is a clusterfuck of scrambling cause no one wants to get pulled into the battleback and potentially lose there. I just don't wanna go home even earlier than last time because my game has just been so much better and to lose it this way would be fucking devastating. i just want to win so badly so im just hoping i can maneuver this right

LINDSAY

"you know that this is anonymous right" DAISY HELP NO I DIDNT FUCK OK I DONT KNOW WHAT IM DOING WHAT IS HAPPENING WHERE AM I

XAVIER

WHAT JUST HAPPENED. I know Captain voted for Wyatt. Maybe Captain is more influential than I thought? Why did people flip? Because of the alliance chat? It was too much? And why wasn't I included in the flip vote? Agh. Time to make my own rules here.

__________

I am still shookt 

DAISY

[protagonistheavy]

Shitblast about the Pokemon Presentation incoming:

That sucked the life out of me to be totally, un-exaggeratedly honest. It sucked pretty much any care I could have about Pokemon for a good couple of years at least. The downward slant of the franchise is just ridiculously obvious, and genuinely I don’t think I want to buy into the series anymore -- I’ve gotten burned enough times to not even try and get hyped for anything as ugly as the DP remakes or Legends.

Before I even get into the games they talked about, I just want to rag on that opening video thing. The huge montage of all the different things the pokemon franchise has, uh, infected I guess. Am I the only one that was really, really put-off by this? It just seemed like such a huge ass pat for themselves, like, “woo-hoo, look at our millions of dollars we spent on NOT the video games.” And it’s not even structured in some kind of catchy song, it’s just people chanting out hashtags that pop up on screen. It’s so cheaply made and they do shit like this pretty much every fucking year, I’m sorry but I just found this whole thing to be a waste of time. It didn’t get me hyped for anything to come, that’s for sure, it just reminded me that I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for Pokemon to actually progress itself and catch up with a modern market.

Pokemon Snap was the only cool thing from the presentation, and that’s a game we’ve already known about and is honestly too simple to fail. They would have to REALLY fuck up a game as straightforward as Snap. And this presentation didn’t bring any exciting new light to the game, just confirming that yes, yes you will indeed be taking pictures of pokemon, and then sharing those pictures with friends. Everything they’ve talked about is just the natural modernizations I’d expect from any game claiming to be about photography and made in 2021. The most exciting thing they could show off was the illumination item thing, which is just sorta, okay I guess.

The DP remake was disheartening. I honestly wish they didn’t even bother, and just ported the game as-it-was to the Switch.

I hate these graphics. And no, no it’s not some “style.” This isn’t a stylistic choice, this isn’t a “theme,” whatever this toddler’s toy aesthetic is supposed to be. It isn’t. It’s a budget constraint -- it’s a compromise. And I honestly hate that people are trying to defend it as some sort of art style, when I know 100% they would never defend another game like this nearly as hard. They would look at ANY game with graphics this shit and call it out.

There’s this excuse that it’s an art style theme, akin to Link’s Awakening remake on the Switch. Except, did people forget that Link’s Awakening actually looked good? Because it was actually designed to look like everything was a miniature. They used proper shading and texturing to sell that aesthetic, to make it look pleasing to the eye. Link’s Awakening is proud of its graphics and it does as much as it can visually to lean on that aesthetic. These DP remakes? There’s no heart put into this “art direction” at all. The textures are all plastic and flat and even downright muddy -- compare any screenshot of the remake to an original location and you’ll see how awful the colors are now, and how vague some of the models are after having been transformed from sprites. There’s no intent at all from the devs to actually include the polish necessary to make this style work -- it’s not an art style decision, it’s a budget constraint. They chose this design for the game because it would be easy to make, even easier to animate, and they could then justify slapping both of these games with $60 price tags. And yeah I get it -- “we don’t know how much these games are going to be!” -- no we do, it’s going to be fucking $60 like anything else released on the Switch, but if you seriously think this is worth $50 or even $40, then whatever, spend your damn money.

And yeah I am bitter that this is against precedent of the previous remakes. Every other remake before this had the time taken to update the graphics and direction to modern standards, and every remake was better because of it. It was refreshing to revisit these older worlds with modern sensibilities and an updated perspective -- the whole appeal of updating these older games is to give them the love and depth that technology at the time wouldn’t allow. At least that’s the appeal for me, I guess there’s a LOT of people out there whose appeal to Pokemon as a franchise is just buying whatever fucking comes out next and just mashing that A button into a state of satisfaction. This bums me out so bad that instead of getting something with passion and care, we get the absolute cheapest output; a remake that doesn’t promise anything new or exciting, burdened with absolute shit graphics.

And again, this style just sucks. It isn’t cute lol. I guess some people are gonna be into it, that’s fine I guess, but wow I don’t believe a single person that claims “this is what I imagined DP to be like.” No you didn’t, fuck the shut up? You’re really going to tell me that, in your most immersed state of playing this game, you imagined everything to be these fucking toddler toys? Okay you’re just on your own for that one -- I and every other normal human did not think of the DP world as some chibi fantasyland full of lego people. I hate that this is even excused as being some sort of “hark back” to the older art style -- the older art style wasn’t toy-themed or plastic-themed! What the fuck are people trying to pull here? It’s such a shame that DP had amazing sprite work and a wonderful world and an enticing story, but its remake is just going to underplay all of that, abandon it all just so it can have some gimmicky art style -- at best it’s a gimmicky art style riding the coattails of Link’s Awakening, and at worst it’s a budget cut done to make the game as cheap as possible to shit out.

I’m so disappointed in this. I was really looking forward to experiencing DP as a remake, I’ve never played this generation before. I wanted to play the remakes because I didn’t want to adapt to the older logic of the games, and I wanted to be able to bring in my own pokemon, have my own adventure. I wanted another experience like ORAS or HGSS. I didn’t want to go through the work of trying to play the original in a reasonable way. But since this is the direction of the remake, to make it look cheap as hell and totally heartless, then I’m just forced to play the original, and that sucks on a lot of layers.

And then Legends of Arceus or whatever.

Look. I want to like this game. And realistically I do like the idea of this game. But just like the DP remake, it looks like it’s the absolute cheapest response to what fans have been asking for, and it looks like it just wants to ride off the success of another, better franchise. I’ll make a wish now that I hope this game proves to be so much better than it looks in this presentation.

But wow, wow. I don’t think that’s going to happen. This looks like full-on garbage.

I wanted a BotW-like Pokemon game ever since, well, BotW. I think an open-world format would do wonders for the Pokemon formula, and SwSh had potential with its Wild Areas. But again, all the cheapest choices have been made. This game reeks of developers being told that fans want a BotW-styled Pokemon game, and then responding by just inserting pokemon assets into a beta test world of BotW. They didn’t show anything that looked promising for Pokemon gameplay, they just showed elements that are enough to convince an audience, “trust us, this is an open-world, with open-world mechanics -- like stealth! Rolling into bushes! Isn’t that cool? Isn’t this how you want to catch pokemon?”

It’s heartless. The developers clearly don’t care about making an open-world pokemon game; they’re interested in making pokemon an open-world game, the difference being that they don’t care about actually organically mixing the two. It’s just going to be a slop of open-world mechanics, set in an open-world that has no reason to be explored and is ugly as sin to look at, with mechanics designed to slow you down and fill in that 40-60 hour expectation. And I say this with as much confidence as I do because if they did have anything interesting to mention about Legends, they would have fucking said it -- they would have highlighted where pokemon gameplay intercepts open-world gameplay in a meaningful way, they would have brought attention to new mechanics that could only work in an open-world pokemon game.

They didn’t. They showed off a player character rolling into some bushes, and manually throwing a pokeball.

And that’s just the gameplay. Can’t we all agree this game is visual vomit? Just utterly fucking terrible to look at? There are literally fangames with SUCH better graphics. And there’s no excuse here like “oh it doesn’t LOOK like shit, looking-like-shit is its aesthetic!” No it just looks terrible on every level. The textures are so fucking muddy and stretched. The terrain is cobbled together and without inspiration; flat fields, angular hills, and randomly placed trees and bushes, all of which are rendered so badly that you can always see how 2D they are. The player models are uncomfortably stiff and expressionless. And the pokemon? The fucking pokemon?

Why do the pokemon look so fucking ugly? What’s the goddamn excuse? We see pokemon in the overworld, moving around and prancing about -- and they’re animated at like ten frames per second. That’s being generous! These pokemon look like they had three frames of animation to swap between! What the fuck is this?! Sword and Shield have overworld pokemon running around, and those didn’t need significant frame cuts! So how the hell did they manage to stumble so far backwards?! Why is this even a fucking challenge...?!?! Why do I have to be gaslit to believe that video games can’t do more than this? There are so many games doing so much, so much fucking more in even just one second of gameplay. So many games with intense graphics, explosive effects, tons of enemies and players on-screen, all this happening at once... sometimes online... and yet Pokemon still can’t even animate a fucking monkey dancing around in an empty field. What the fuck is the excuse here? How can they honestly show off this gameplay footage and feel proud of their work, without at least saying something like, “This is early-as-fuck test footage of the game, this is like one week into development, this is why it looks so ugly and unpolished.”

You know those throwaway junk games on Steam? That sell for like three or five dollars, and it’s just a really terrible FPS set in a generic wasteland environment? Yeah THOSE games look ten times better than this shit. There are so many pokemon fangames that exist that do this exact concept but DON’T look like utter garbage on the eyes at the same time. It’s baffling -- why is it so difficult for them to not make an ugly-as-sin game? Why does it have to be this way? How can the Switch host a game like BotW or Mario Odyssey but it can’t fucking handle Pokemon?

And this idea doesn’t even sound fun, the concept of being in the “ancient past” of the Sinnoh region just isn’t what I wanted. When I wanted an open-world Pokemon game, I expected it to be... you know, pokemon! I expected gyms or some kind of equivalent, I imagined it having modern sensibilities... But instead it’s this really gimmicky concept, because I guess the devs can’t possibly imagine the normal pokemon world even possibly engaging with something new and different -- no, we have to go to effectively a whole other planet just to let players have pokemon in an open world.

Ultimately these games are fucking disgusting to look at and it’s so disappointing to see them in this state. The DP remakes chose a cheap art style not because they thought it complemented Sinnoh or its story, but because it was the bare minimum to making the game and justifying a $60 price tag. Legends of Arceus has potential, but it’s showing right off the bat that it doesn’t have the manpower or passion behind it to actually live up to it, making it just another cash grab that relies on chasing the coattails of a more successful franchise. And both seem like insulting cheap answers to the two things die-hard pokemon fans have been asking for, making this situation all the worse.

The Pokemon Company doesn’t care, and neither do I anymore. I genuinely don’t see myself playing another pokemon game. It’s so sad because these games are full of potential, and a long-term commitment is obviously one of its appeals. But if this is the direction of the franchise, then fuck me. I don’t want to support ugly-as-hell spinoffs that exist only to shut up the fanbase, I hate how Sword and Shield came out and I hated how scummy the DLC was to add onto it. This series is blatantly trying to rob players by producing as absolute little as possible, they want to make money out of nothing, and I’m not coughing up that money anymore. This is ridiculous. Sword and Shield being so disappointing was one thing... the DLC being cashgrabs for material that should’ve just been post-game content was mind-numbing... but these two games looking like total garbage is on another level. It’s beyond disappointing; it’s insulting that they would even bother making these games with as little heart as they are, so clearly and obviously making games that they know players will shell out cash for regardless of its quality.

I hope the fanbase really matures and wisens up to this because that’s why we’re in this mess. You’re allowed to enjoy this “art style” of the DP remakes, you’re allowed to be hyped for the new gameplay of Legends... but please, for the love of god, have some higher standards than this. Please look at what other game companies can do with their games, and how much they charge, and how much fulfillment and content is in those games. We need to expect more from the literal most-profitable franchise of all time -- they have the resources, they have the capabilities, they choose to be lazy so that they can get as much money out of us as possible. It’s got to be put to an end. Please ask for more from these games. Please don’t settle for these games “because at least they’re still pokemon,” “because at least the pokemon battles are the same,” “because at least the older games are still technically playable.”

After all this, I just don’t believe Pokemon anymore when it tries to sell itself “to everybody.” That’s just plain not true. Their core audience is the dumbest of 10 year-olds and the dumbest of die-hard fans. They don’t care about their community any deeper than their wallets.

[booklust]

Futurelit Vol 5: Grace Byron

This time around, I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Grace Byron, the Brooklyn-based columnist, writer and filmmaker and all-around brilliant, benevolent creative spirit whose recent book release party for NB Carrie Bradshaw (read it here via Epigraph Mag!) at Babycastles solidified my love for her and her work. 

This interview was the first time I had the opportunity to conduct a classic interview over the phone instead of over text chat, or as I like to call it for reasons I’d gladly explain to you over a glass of wine, “The Tony Hawk Method.”

This resulted in a truly gorgeous conversation that flows synaptically and always takes surprising directions (Twin Peaks, the afterlife, and a tender moment involving Coldplay that occurs towards the end---when you see it then you’ll understand!). It also brought me right back to the days at my editorial internship where I would transcribe hours of interviews, but in a good way this time. I took great pains to not only get the content and diction right, but to convey the undertones of our exchange that made it so vibrant. Which, interestingly enough, makes it take on the visual form of a text chat.

Check out our conversation at the jump, with gorgeous illustrations by Becky Ebben:

You do a column called “Trans Monogamist” for the Bushwick Daily (I binged that…it’s really dope) and your latest project is NB Carrie Bradshaw (which is out now!). So I’m curious, what sort of came first: your interest in the format of an advice columnist/relationship columnist,  or your love of Carrie Bradshaw?

Actually--I didn’t start watching Sex and the City until January 2017, which everyone is sort of super surprised by, and honestly? Me fucking too. Not that it’s a perfect show, but the aesthetic signals that it’s something that I should have seen a long time ago. It took me a long time to get to it. I had heard a lot of the negative stuff, which there is a lot of, and rightfully so. There’s this one terrible bisexual episode where Carrie’s just like, “I just don’t know….he’s bi .” And I’m just like… “Girl, so what.” The point is, the column writing came sort of naturally. I had a column a few years ago at my paper called Queer Art Vibes before I had even seen Sex and the City. And I was mostly writing about art, and capitalism, artists, and things I was finding interesting aesthetically. The last column that I wrote was after I had a break-up, and it was called “How To Date an Anarchist.”

Oh my God

And it got like, no comments. Because most of the columns that I was writing were about trans identity and stuff. I got all these comments like, “Why can’t people just make up their minds about gender?” And I’m just like, that’s completely irrelevant to what I’m talking about. So this column got no comments at all. There’s this huge anarchist population at Indiana University. It just closed down this month, but we had this huge anarchist bookstore that was this huge draw for the punk scene.

It was a column that didn’t make sense for where I was writing. But then as I was watching Sex and the City, and as I was doing a lot more dating my last year in college, I was thinking “yeah, this is really important to talk about.” And I started thinking of dating as a political and aesthetic and emotional practice. It’s more using this pop culture phenomenon to let people understand something about what it’s like to be trans and dating. It’s not like it’s me and my three friends that are all going through the same things. Or it’s not like me and my straight girlfriends talking about how our experiences are different. Or me and someone who is nonbinary even talking about how it’s different for both of us. But I do like that element of friendship in it, that element of comradery.  But I think it’s interesting now that shows act like there’s this group of 4 friends and they’re all the same. And that was never my experience? You know, there’s always a nonbinary person, a lesbian person, and...maybe a straight man.

LOL the token straight

Right. At least that’s my college experience, where I’ve never had a group of friends that were all the same. There were always at least one other gay or queer person. It’s a helpful lens to think about dating, and think about dating how much it’s changed since the early 2000s. A column is a dispatch from the front lines, like “this is what happened this month! How’s it going with you?” The book [NB Carrie Bradshaw] has a little bit of a more narrative arc to it. But in the columns, there’s no resolution. -----keep reading below------

Right, and that’s what I like about it. There’s endless thinkpieces about dating apps, queer dating, etc, and it’s so frustratingly depersonalized. It’s very strange how the discourse tries to force dystopia instead of actually having a comprehensive view of how people feel. There’s a lot more truth in the way that you present dating than how someone tries to dissect it in a thinkpiece.

Yeah, thinkpieces are weird. I love to read them, but I also don’t know how helpful they are a lot of the time. Especially when they try to draw a definitive statement. In some things, sure, that makes sense.

Like in a college thesis, where you’re forced to come to a resolution for your life, pretty much.

What was your experience working at a college newspaper?

Basically, I came to college, and I was on the media floor--and basically what I thought that meant was cross-genre. But in reality, what it meant was journalism. And then I thought, you know, okay, it’s fine. I thought it was interesting. And so I almost went to join the newspaper as a writer and interviewer, I did a few articles. But a rule was that if you were a writer for them, you couldn’t be interviewed. And that was my biggest problem with it--I knew I wanted to do art. I knew that I wanted to get press. I didn’t want to prevent that from happening.

Right after I came out my freshman year, this guy on my floor was like, “do you want to talk about being gay at IU?” And I was like uh….sure! It was weird because it was my first time being interviewed for something real, and I was talking about being gay. But I was also trying to sneak a pitch for my website while doing it, I was like...go watch it! They promptly cut that out of the interview, though.

Good effort, tho.

I didn’t love that environment. I wasn’t taken with it. I started volunteering at a local radio station where I did stories about lots of things. That was much more interesting and fulfilling than the college newspaper. And my friend was like, “do you want to be columnist--we need one.” Not because I was special or anything, because they really needed one. And I was like, “sure.” So I started writing these extremely leftist columns, like “capitalism is the devil, and here’s why : )”

And I wrote one that was like, “nudity in art isn’t porn,” which isn’t even an extreme opinion. But I started getting all of these comments like, “Counterpoint: nudity in art isn’t not porn.” I was just like wow, I can tell that you really read this column….

People just read titles a lot of times.

Yeah for sure. Our campus was filled with a lot of views of all extremes, and not just anarchists. We also had a militant white supremacist population on campus. There were a bunch of protests from that group over the course of years--it wasn’t just one year, or just this year, which was definitely the worse than the years before. I also got tons of hateful comments from white supremacist groups on my articles. So I was just one of the people on the receiving end of those comments.

But as far as my involvement in the newspaper group itself, I think I only attended one meeting. I didn’t really feel a sense of community at IU that a lot of people there felt. I think a lot of people looked down on what I did because it was so personal. It wasn’t like I was talking about music, or like I was talking about hard-hitting stories. So I wasn’t really a part of the “IU JOURNALISM COMMUNITY.” But it wasn’t like I really wanted to be. I would still sometimes get people who appreciated my work, that came up to me and said “I love this, I love what you’re doing,” but they were usually queer people.

Which is definitely the desired reaction, which is awesome. Talking about your webseries “Idle Cosmopolitan” -- what was your favorite audience, or your favorite venue that you showed it to? And what was that sort of reaction and vibe like?

I wasn’t at all of the screenings. It showed at Bloomington at Planet Nine--which is this small VHS rental/DVD rental video place that kind of reminds me of Ghost World or something. I wasn’t there, but a lot of my friends were there, since it was my home for so many years. I assume it went well. From the pictures, I saw that it went well, at least.

It showed at Sarah Lawrence, which I know very little about how that went. I wanted to be there, but I was scheduled at work. Which is a whole thing about how I’m not a full-time artist. I say that I’m a freelance artist, which means that I make MAYBE 50 bucks a month off of my art. If it’s a good month! So I can’t always go to everything that’s happening. It’s an interesting part about being an artist in this landscape. People expect you to be global, and there’s only so global you can be if you’re working class. Which I think is important to be transparent about. It’s not always fun to be transparent about that, but it’s important.

Exactly, you want to be honest about it, but you want to portray yourself as larger-than-life-to get attention, and at least the semblance of clout (whatever that fcking means). But being an artist, you’re a part of a community, and you want to treat that community well. You don’t want to stunt and act like you’re making a living off of your art when you’re not.

It’s not cool to lie one way or the other. It’s not cool to portray yourself as a poor person if you’re not, and I’m not super poor or anything, but I’m not living off of my artwork, and I make a decent living off of my work as a childcare worker. But yeah, you shouldn’t lie because you’re fooling yourself and making art seem elitist.

There’s the lie by omission, in a way. A lot of people are internet famous, or have a certain persona that makes people say “Oh, I want to be like this person, who so clearly lives off of their artwork.” When in reality, it’s probably a side hustle at best.

Or they live with their parents. Or they have rich parents.

It distorts people’s dreams and plans--it’s important to be responsible about that.

Totally. One show I was at physically was at Secret Project Robot, at this festival of poets, and my videos were showing between poets that were reading their work. So that was interesting---I was the only video artist at the show. And as many things as I have tried--I have written poems, but I’ve never called myself a “poet.” So I thought that was kind of cool to have that multimedia experience, to see my videos projected really large in front of a big crowd of 20 or 30 people. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s actually a lot. I remember thinking wow, the crowds are gonna be so big in New York. And they are! But 20 or 30 people is a lot for DIY art. Even if you’re successful, or internet famous--it’s hard to gather a crowd wherever you are.

And it was really cool because people who were actually in the video got to see it, which was cool! Chariot is in it, and he was there, so that’s cool.

There was one livestream and q&a in the UK, which was really cool. And that was my favorite, because the moderator was super smart and always asked good question about the fantasy genre, and its intersections with queerness. It was refreshing instead of questions like-- “Why are you gay? Why is this here?” It was a good convo to have beyond the surface level.

It’s awesome that I saw so many showings of your series was in Indianapolis, in Indiana. You may not see a big crowd--DIY art isn’t an Ariana Grande concert--but What you do see is how it sort of transforms the room, and creates a living space, a community. 20 people is a community. Especially in Indiana.

Right, there’s very established artists and documentarians where the only place they have more than 20 people show up is in their hometowns. Even world-renowned documentarians may struggle to get an audience. Which is awful. But I think that one thing that is happening in the real world is that there are plenty of people I look up to, who are famous, whose twitter gets pretty very few likes! And they may have a huge amount of followers! And I’m like--why am I getting more likes than world-renowned feminist scholars? I think that’s happening in real life too. These people are having talks and showings of their work and sometimes DIY work is a different experience and maybe draws more people than these professional pieces, and there’s a community of people who can see themselves in that as artists.

I agree, it definitely changes the dynamic for people are used to when it comes to art, you think there’s the artist and this huge invisible wall and then there’s the observer, and it breaks down that dynamic.

Right, it changes the power dynamic. The artist isn’t a preacher.  What we’ve seen in DIY venues is, everybody is sitting in chairs. The artist is in the front, but everyone is on the same level. There isn’t a stage to walk down from.

I think people are only starting to observe this change, and aren’t sure what to call it yet. Some people see changes like this as the death of something, like the death of some kind of empire of how art works. But especially with this project, I think I’ve not only been an optimist, but a realist in the sense that it’s for the better. So many people are screaming “death to media! Death to print!” and I’m just over here like, “You’re a Baby Boomer, please don’t talk to me.”

Ha! Right. These media aren’t dead, but they’re definitely dying. But I think they’re going to be dying for a while to come. People broadcasting the death of all of these things---like, they’re not dead yet. The Met is gonna be in trouble, but the Met is gonna be around for the next 100 years. The Met’s not just gonna crumble.

Going back to “Idle Cosmopolitan”--I love how it’s a series of very short films. And by short, I mean like, slightly longer than a Vine length. And some people may come across that and immediately compare the series to Vine culture, but my immediate thought was comparing it to poetry, with a lot of tightly-wound content being fit into a small space. So I was wondering how poetry influences your visual work, or how visual work influences your poetry, etc.

That’s interesting. I actually originally applied to go to college for poetry. I never called myself a poet, but I did think about it for a while. When I do write poetry, it’s usually about nature, and viewing nature through the lens of divinity and power dynamics. Which I think is definitely a big part of my video work. The “Queer World” in my piece is a forest. Somebody was talking to me recently, and said that “I think it’s interesting that the queer world is a forest. Do you think of urban spaces as, like, not-as-queer spaces?” I hadn’t really thought about that. But whenever I think of that sort of the afterlife, I don’t think of cities. And what’s our other option, really? Nature. An ocean would be a terrifying destination for the afterlife. I think that poetry is super important, I think when I’m writing anything, I tend towards a lyrical, poetic style. I love hard facts, but I was never super into Hemingway. I always loved the Great Gatsby. Not that I like showy, hyper-stylized stuff; I hated the Great Gatsby movie. But the suggestion of artifice, the suggestion of things like that, I think is really interesting.

There’s ton of talk about heaven and nature and sin in “Idle Cosmopolitan.” I’m sure it comes from a long line of being raised in Christianity, and having read all of the Christian classics. And as a kid, I was obsessed with the apocalypse. Once, I was between 6-9 I remember looking at clocks in restaurants and thinking, “Could this be the hour of the end?” I remember being super into Revelations, and the ghost stories that my friends and I would tell each other, and often confusing them as the same thing.

I think that’s a form of poetry true, a strange, mental form of poetry. I think the afterlife is poetic, because there’s no concrete that you can provide.

I think in terms of modality, I think I’m always writing in the form of the poetic, even if I’m not writing a poem. Even my column--it’s not a how-to column, it’s not a safari.

It’s not MTV Cribs!

Right! Definitely more reflections.

I always thought of videos sort of in musician terms, like “this is my new album---Idle Cosmopolitan.” This is the tracklist, and each has a poetic name, etc. And each year, there’s a self-image overhaul….well, there’s no image overhaul for me this year, but especially in college I was into that idea, where I wanted to amp myself up every year.

But this iteration, for me, was trying to marry these poetic ideals with my own lived experiences, to make it sort of autobiographical, but still have a flourish. I mean, I was watching Twin Peaks when I was working on it.

Yeah, I can definitely see that influence in there. Where there’s that magic-realism, but it’s so mundane. The suspension of disbelief is so well-dissolved into it.

Right as I was starting to write this, I just finished the season of Veronica Mars---I’m not sure if it directly influenced it…

But it was there

Yeah, and watching Twin Peaks: the Return. What I thought was interesting about it was its formal elements. There was this sort of suspension of disbelief present for both the characters and the audience. So then you’re just like, “Yeah, queer spirits! That makes sense!” So, it’s that magic realism that is super appealing. And also the fact that it’s episodic. One of the things about David Lynch that I’m really into is the episodic nature of his work. There’s this loose play with time and narrative, and it’s an experience.

I think what Lynch talks a lot about, especially in later seasons, is agency. But in Sex and the City, for example--Carrie isn’t a bad person, but she’s not necessarily a good person either. She has affairs, runs around doing whatever she wants, she tries to take a break from dating and has a guilt complex where she feels bad about her actions, and also places guilt on other people--it’s complex, which I think is interesting.

Like chaotic neutral, but a little more complex than that?

Yeah, definitely. I’m obsessed with people who are chaotic neutral. I don’t think I’m chaotic neutral, but I’m fascinated by that those people exists.

I’m a super-intense Virgo, Type A, Blair Waldorf type. I definitely pride myself on hard work--which could be problematic--but I have that crawl-my-way-to-the-top sort of vibe.

This character in the webseries, they’re sort of neutral. They’re a relationship writer, but it doesn’t seem like a main part of their personhood. The only thing that they seem mad about is when their boyfriend breaks up with them, which is fair. But they don’t seem to be making many choices, and there’s something very sidekick about that.

I was in this space in my life where I was having to make all these intense decisions--deciding to move to New York, having to make all of these choices about who I wanted to be as a person. The character is the exact opposite, where there’s no movement. There’s a movement in narrative, a movement in place, but it kind of happens to them.

They get a letter, a pep talk from Fate--and they’re just like, “Sure, whatever, I don’t care.” Then they enter the queer world, and they’re like “Alright.” And then the Blue Spirit is the one who was like, “No, this wasn’t actually a good choice.” And they’re like, “Okay, sure.” They never really doubt people’s motives.

There’s a sort of guilt about making choices that Type A people have. Inevitably, if you’re a type A perosn, you’re going to hurt people. Even if you’re not actually hurting them, you’re going to make choices, and choices affect people. There’s winners and losers. So what does it mean for the sort of stoner archetype, this chaotic neutral archetype, when they don’t make choices?

I’ve never been a chill person, so I gravitate towards writing characters that are like that. Because I’m always wondering….what does that feel like?

Right! I feel like it takes a lot of effort to be chill, which isn’t chill. It’s kind of a self-consuming concept. I’m not gonna say it’s the only real binary, but…

Haha, right! Ok back to influences. Actually, as far as the soundtrack goes, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback where people say it reminds them of Sex and the City, and that it’s derivative. Actually, one person said that the soundtrack reminds them of Rugrats….

Stop!!!

Right!? Well, it’s jazz, but it’s sort of this chaotic jazz.

It’s a typical theme song in a lot of ways, but it’s disarming. Which I like.

Some people said it makes them anxious.

It offsets the perceived chill in the series, which signals you to look harder.

Watching it back, I was like...something is wrong. Narratively, there’s something up. But I’m not sure if that thing ever gets hashed out or resolved, it just sort of hangs like a dark cloud.

Which is what’s so great about poetry. There’s always that lack of resolution. People always get angry at that, where they want to feel satisfied...where’s the sequel at??

Do they get the girl or not??

Yeah! It’s how we’re taught to view life. But especially with creative people, it’s paradoxical--they only thing that makes them (us) feel satisfied is poetry, that sort of form that leaves things unresolved.

Totally.

How has the internet shaped your writing?

The internet is definitely fucked up. It was created by the military, and is now owned by billionaires. That’s already strike one. But let’s assume that the internet is also provides a space that provides more access for more people. But it doesn’t provide equal access for everybody. It provides equal access for a relatively small amount of people. You have to afford a computer, internet access--and even if you go to the library, you have to afford to be there.

But let’s say it does level the playing field in that way---even still, people don’t have more of a chance of getting their art noticed because of it. It does mean more people can put their stuff out there, but it doesn’t guarantee more viewers, or more fans, or some utopia.

The internet has become this neoliberal promise of equality. This reveals itself in every aspect---who dominates media, who dominates internet celebrity, etc. This doesn’t discount the fact that there’s fantastic DIY spaces based on the internet, but there’s a lot being overlooked.

The internet as a structure is racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic. Even if we go back to technology like photography, for example, it was a technology developed to best depict white faces. It’s so great that the internet creates a platform for people, but that includes creating platforms for neo-nazis on 4chan, for alt-righters to doxx people. The web is pretty fucked up, and it amplifies our greatest strengths, like community. Especially the trans community, which is so important. But it also amplifies our problems, and reveals where we need to grow.

I don’t think the internet is the devil, but I think it makes it harder for people to feel like human beings. It mirrors capitalism, and degrades human beings in so many ways where we’re expected to become a brand, which is always tied to capitalism. We’re forced to reduce ourselves to something bite-sized, which is troubling me as a person and as an artist.

When did u start writing and being creative?

I was always drawing. I was super into Pokemon and all the Nintendo games. I was into anything cute and well-designed, like Zelda, and anything involving world-building. I was super into maps, and at a young age, I thought, “I wanted to do that.”

At a young age, I wanted to be a pop star. And I made the boys in the neighborhood be my band. Now I’m thinking that was sort of a strong signal of me being gay, haha. Boys---you’re gonna be in this band, and I’m gonna sing Breakout by Miley Cyrus.

I started getting really into bands. I was really into Coldplay, and I wanted to be Chris Martin.

STOP, ME TOO

I really liked “Clocks.”

ME TOO, when I first heard that, I was like, Now….that’s what I call music.

I also really liked “Lovesong” by Sara Bareilles, which is entirely different, but I was also like...that’s what I call music. Also Paramore and Deathcab, and I was like…..this is also Music. I still love all this stuff

I still listen to all this stuff pretty much on the regular, even though I laugh about it Yeah! And at the time, all of these things were coded as feminine. Even Coldplay, which was, not a boyband, but kind of more healing.

Right, like ~emotional boys~, ~soft boys~, this sort of soft masculinity before it was talked about and memed.

I went from wanting to be a popstar, to wanting to be in bands, to wanting to do comics, and then I was like...I want to be painter! I did a lot of paintings, and then I wanted to be an actor. I was fixated on stardom, on theater. I was in all the plays of my freshman year.

Then I moved schools, and this guy who didn’t even like me and stopped talking to me, but I liked him---I wrote this psycho-opera about him. It was all songs about him, and it was super awkward. I recorded an album about him. He started being nice to me, and then I was just like…...here’s an album…

I was like, that was fun, but then I started to getting into Wes Anderson. And Woody Allen, but #WORST. And then Godard, which was better. Then I started making movies. And I saw 30 Rock, and it confirmed what I wanted to do.

I love how you go from Godard to 30 Rock

I know!! I was very all over the map. Then I started watching more experimental films and wild stuff, so it’s been a journey to where I’m at now.

The wrapping up portion, something I ask at the end of every interview...this is actually the first interview I’ve done that’s over the phone, an actual physical conversation. And the form of how I’ve conducted each interview has really affected it.

How would you describe the future of literature in a tweet-length? Or a sort of verbal tweet length, also tweets are longer now so….yeah….

Smaller.

[smokeybrand]

The Tragedy of Ex-Arm

I absolutely adore Cyberpunk. It’s probably my favorite sub-genre of entertainment. Doesn’t matter what kind of entertainment it is, film, television, comic, animation, whatever, if it’s got trans humanism and a dystopia, odds are I'm into it. Some of my favorite things are all thing GunnM or Battle Angel Alita as it’s known out here in the West, Akira, both Blade Runners, and anything Ghost in the Shell. Well, almost anything. That last thing kind of tied into this essay so, you know, bear with me. I stumbled across something that vibes perfectly with my neon new wave aesthetic while perusing new manga to follow and i immediately bought into the concept. It’s called Ex-Arm and the sh*t is fantastic.

Ex-Arm is a manga written by HiRock and illustrated by Komi Shinya. It follows the young Natsume Akira, who was killed in 2014, only to be integrated into a cybernetic box called and Ex-Arm and used by a specialized police force to fight against cyber crime. He’s partnered with a rather passionate policewoman, Uenozono Minami, and her cyborg partner, Alma. Together, they fight against terrorist in a brand new world where the line between metal and flesh has been blurred into one. It starts kind of low, admittedly, but the narrative picks up almost immediately, Once you’re into probably chapter three, maybe our, you’re hooked. The narrative is excellent, if a little simplistic, but that worked as a framing device for the beautiful art. HiRock does a great job creating scenarios where Komi can really flex his creative ye for action. This thing is, by no means, an Akira or GitS, but it’s absolutely fantastic for cats just trying to get into the genre. You get a kind of crash course into what cyberpunk is and I'm all for growing the fandom. I really enjoy Ex-Arm so when i heard there was an anime adaption, i was hype. And then i heard it was licensed by Crunchyroll and immediately lost all fervor for what was about to happen. And then i saw the trailer. Bruh.

Crunchyroll is a problem for me. When i was younger, and the platform was just starting out, they basically only  licensed anime and subbed it for a nominal fee. They were, effectively, a fansub group gone legit. I was okay with that. I preferred that. Getting y content fresh from Nippon but supporting the many studios making it felt like the right thing to do. When they released their streaming service, they became too rich, too fast. That money went to their head and they began to flex their clout in the industry. Crunchyroll was the first to release a streaming app and they had the most content. Funimation was second but they could only present the sh*t they already licensed but Crunchyroll could show that same sh*t, just in it’s original Japanese format. They are the Goliath in this industry and they began to flex that girth, altering subs to fit their politics, dropping hows they felt were too problematic, and wasting subscription fees on lavish work space and sh*tty original content like High Guardian Spice. This is who got a hold of the rights to not only license Ex-Arm, but f*cking animate it. They opted not to use traditional hand drawn animation in favor of that weird ass, digital sh*t, you See with the new Berserk or that last Git show on Netflix. See, i told you we’d get there. These shows are disgusting to look at and literally lose all forms of kineticism in the movement of the weird CG dolls. It’s like watching a kid smash their Barbies together instead of actual animation. This is the environment i which Ex-Arm was cast. And it’ the worst one so far.

Ex-Arm is a fantastic read with brilliant art and the sh*t Crunchyroll did to it with their disrespectfully terrible adaption should be a whole ass crime. This thing is a f*cking train wreck You can’t even say it was lost in translation or that there were budget or whatever else because you’re Crunchyroll. You sit on the boards of legitimate anime houses as US consultants. Why not partner with them to produce a product that isn’t objective dogsh*t? How do you not learn the lessons of Netflix and their CG animated missteps? Those cats have come a long ass way from Sindonia no Kishi and Aijin. We’ve seen them flex those digital muscles with The Dragon Prince, Dorohedoro, and Dragon’s Dogma. Sure, their GitS 2045 is a little bit of a misstep but i imagine they’ll recover. Netflix is great t that. Hell, the Blu Ray versions of Berserk are infinitely better. Sh*t, man, The Magnificent Kotobuki, GEMBA’s second show after Berserk, is a marked improvement over whatever Berserk was and it was only three years between those release. F*ck, man, Hoseki no Kuni, Beastars, and Promare exist! There are ways to make this sh*t work so why the f*ck is Ex-Arm so goddamn terrible?

This sh*t is a tragedy, for real. Ex-Arm has all of the hallmarks to be a hit stateside. Indeed, if you read the material, I'm sure you’d end up loving the content. It’s really a great example of cyberpunk media and seeing it butchered so egregiously onscreen is mad disheartening. I love cyberpunk. I love Ex-Arm. I can’t help but wonder what a proper studio, someone who knows how to actually create adaptions for this type of content, could have dome with the license. Madhouse, Brain’s Base, Pierrot, Bones, IG, or UFOtable, could have done something miraculous with this sh*t. UFOtable, specifically. The sh*t they’ve done with the Fate series, used t illustrate massive, concrete and steel, neon drenched, cities filled with epic battles fueled by cybernetic enhances action? Are you kidding me? Instead, I'm stuck with a sub-par adaption that robs the core content of everything that makes it great. It’s goddamn tragedy and i absolutely hate it. Ex-Arm is a fantastic manga that you should totally read. Don't watch that sh*tty show, though. Let it be know that lazy, unfinished, cashgrab, content I unacceptable. Ex-Am deserves better than that.

[dapperfvck-arc]

Warning: I’m putting this under a cut, but I know that’s not a bit of help for mobile users so IF YOU DO NOT WANT SPOILERS FOR THE NEW CONSTANTINE ANIMATION OR TO HEAR ME SCREAM INCOHERENTLY ABOUT ALL THE THINGS THAT MADE ME ANGRY, SCROLL FAST AND/OR CLOSE YOUR EYES.

So. Big surprise. I hated every fucking second of it, but here’s the few good points.

-- It’s following a bit more closer to the storyline of ...And all His Engines than it did in the original Constantine series, which did have an episode with loose ties to it. Why on earth they called it City of Demons, I’ve not the fucking foggiest aside from playing on the fact that it’s set in L.A. I think it’s confusing for people who read the comic when it was on Vertigo because there was a fantastic Hellblazer special by the same name. It makes me wonder if they did it on purpose. 

-- Chas is English! Yay! And not magic! YAY!

-- There’s gory violence and John smoking and swearing, so at least they didn’t pull their punches too far.

And now the stunningly long list of things that left me enraged (have I mentioned these episodes are only six to seven minutes long? For reasons unknown???? I’m impressed by how much they jammed into it that absolutely drove me up the wall):

-- Now, this is a bit of a nit pick, I realize this, but it’s very important to me because there is literally no fucking reason for it. The show purports that John and Chas met when they were ten years old. This is patently false. They met shortly after John moved to London when he was in his teens. He was renting a room from Chas’s mother, and some pretty intense shit happened. Long story, but the point is they did not meet when they were ten. Pretty sure Chas is a London native. They were not childhood friends. I know it’s so small, but it erases the dynamic of how they met, the event that happened that won over Chas’s loyalty, and there is no fucking reason for it.

-- Along with this, Mucous Membrane was vastly overblown, claimed to have been something John and Chas started together, that the band was playing for years. Once more this is false. In fact, Chas’s history was blended with Gary Lester’s, who was actually the one who was John’s childhood friend and the one who he formed the band with. Again, there is no fucking reason for this. It’s not like they have to worry about casting actors and being on a budget or whatever. It’s a goddamned animation).  Chas was shown to be a drummer in the band. Also incorrect. Chas was the band’s roadie and driver.  There is no mention of the other members of MM. Also Mucous Membrane was only around for...maaayyybe two years depending on the precise timeline of formation and disbanding.

-- OH BOY! MORE NEWCASTLE RETREADING! Ok, where to start??? So, letsee, apparently Chas was there. McNope. In fact he was not. Now I will give a small amount of credit in that they mentioned Alex Logue and his cult, but the details were heavily altered. Once more, the true scope of Astra’s trauma was erased (which ok, fine. I can understand them not wanting to deal with CSA and  Alex using her as an unwilling magical conduit was a fine change and comparably deplorable) and there is no mention of Norfulthing, which I do not understand and honestly makes John look even more recklessly stupid than he did in the comics. So, the animation tells it like this: John and Chas learn that Alex is doing this awful thing to Astra and go to confront him (incorrect. Aside from the fact that Chas was not there, there were actually five other people who went to the Cassanova Club with John and Gary. It was not to confront Alex about his mistreatment of Astra, but because he had stiffed MM for payment of their performance the night before as well as having a few other curious occultists in tow because Logue’s dabbling in the dark arts was a known quantity). In his self-righteous anger, John summons Nergal in order to fight? Scare? Alex and his cultists into stopping being evil fuckers or whatever (Also incorrect. They stumbled onto Astra traumatized and surrounded by dead bodies because she inadvertently summoned a very angry entity called Norfulthing, who had slaughtered Alex and the other cultists brutally and then proceeded to violently attack members of John’s little group. Nergal was summoned to fight Norfulthing, which makes sense in a very literal sort of way). John lost control of Nergal who, after killing Alex and his cult buddies, went on to kill everyone else at the Cassanova Club. For some reason there’s a concert going on which??? Ok fine, show. I’m not even touching that (Helllla incorrect. While Nergal did defeat Norfulthing, he also fucked with John and everyone else there, mostly psychologically, then dragged Astra into hell. John in fact followed them partway into Hell, but Nergal dismembered her after John got ahold of her hand and in fact John came to afterward still holding onto that limb, so good times that). Now aside from the CSA and uh, some of the fucked up shit that Norfulthing did to John’s friends, I don’t understand why this is changed. It’s just so frustrating I could scream.

-- Nightmare Nurse shows up because...JLD? Fuck JLD. Unnecessary and distracting.

-- John’s characterization is still...off. It’s not as infuriating as it was in the TV series but not by much. I don’t know. There’s just that spark missing. A certain magic that makes John charming and fascinating, even if he is also a walking dumpster fire. I guess...I guess it’s hard to write? Idek. I’m once more brought back to the endlessly aggravating question of what is happening with the people who write John theses days? It’s not like the Vertigo series didn’t have people who didn’t get him, but predominately the series had excellent writing and consistent characterization. Pretty much since Nu52, John’s characterization via DC writers has ranged to passable to complete garbage. 

-- More overtly showy portrayals of John’s magic. Whatever. Over it. Enough.

So yeah, I hated it and will not be watching anymore. It’s too stressful. I mean, I guess my standards are really high? But like, I love the Constantine movie, and it strongly deviates from canon, but it has the right spirit and I’m sorry. You can hate me. Keanu was wonderful and I loved him as John. So it’s not like I’m sitting here being that asshole like I WILL ONLY ACCEPT PERFECT CANON. I think it just makes me angry that both the TV series and this animation are like “we’re going to give you a proper adaption of this comic you love” and then consistently fucks up details for completely inexplicable reasons. DC owns John. They own Vertigo, so it’s not like they don’t have the rights to the details of his story. It completely baffles me. Judging from the swearing, violenc, and sexual innuendo, it’s not like they’re pulling any punches to sanitize it fully like NBC did so I’m just...completely flummoxed.

One last note: The animation is...fine. Idek. I don’t really like most modern animation. Like, I understand why they do it on computers now. but it just looks so damned souless to me. I mean, there are other cartoons that have been done on computer that don’t look so flat and dead to me. Also I have a personal vendetta against that stupid fucking stubble shit on John’s face. Like seriously, it looks fucking stupid, and honestly? John is clean shaven more often than not in the comics sooo....fuck off with that shit?

[sally-mun]

As someone who hasn't, wouldn't, and won't be experiencing Major/Minor (or whatever it was called) could you perhaps analyze more specifically some of the things you felt were missteps more in depth, so others who decide they might want to make a visual novel or even just a story, might be able to avoid the same issues? I realize this might not be your area of interest, but I'm always interested in these kinds of analyses.

Man, where do I even begin.

I suppose I should start by saying that this game could have been fine; I don’t necessarily hate this game for the story, even if I think it’s uninspired. I play lots of point-and-click games and usually enjoy them (even the stupid ones) so long as they have merit in one area or another. But that’s the core of the problems with Major/Minor: It has NO merit to work with. Its construction shows absolutely no understanding of this genre of game design. Or of writing. Or of entertainment in general. Or of simply respecting one’s audience.

First and foremost, let’s discuss visual novels.

The critical difference between a novel and a visual novel is interactivity; a novel is a set and done deal that takes its readers along for the ride, whereas a visual novel invites the readers to be part of the ride itself. The direction of the story is influenced by the player, and this allows them to personally take ownership of later events. It’s the sort of game that tries to put you in the role of the protagonist in the most direct form possible. Like other first-person games your view as a player is exactly that of the character you’re playing, but in a VN’s case it’s like reading a comic book in a choose-your-own-adventure format.

Major/Minor not only fails on both the visual and novel elements, but it also fails when combined as a visual novel.

1) Visual

For the most part, visual novels don’t have a lot of action. They primarily consist of conversations with NPCs and usually take place in static locations. For this reason, both the characters and the environments need to have a lot of personality. Players need to feel like they’re actually having conversations with the characters and that they’ve entered a unique location that sees real use. This is the red, meaty center of how VNs engage and gratify their players.

Designing characters in a visual novel is about more than giving each one a different face; it’s about giving each character enough of a range of actions and emotions to sell the idea that the character is actually interacting with you, and in a way that’s truly unique from every other character. In real life, people do all sorts of crap when speaking: Our expressions change, we gesture with our hands, our posture varies, and sometimes we even have small ticks associated with certain topics or emotions. Between these visual cues and the actual discussions themselves, players ought to know the NPCs well enough to be able to describe them like real-life friends by the end of the game.

This brings us to Major/Minor’s first serious offense: Every character has one face. Typically in a VN, each character has a minimum of half a dozen expressions, poses, and gestures/ticks to match the different emotions they’ll need to exhibit over the course of their conversation topics. The characters in Major/Minor can only make a single expression and pose throughout the entire game, which immediately leads to some seriously disjointed discussions. It’s hard for me to take a character seriously when they say they’re angry with me when the art staring through the computer screen is bright, cheerful, and apparently mid-laugh. Sorry, NPC #672, I really don’t care that you’re allegedly on the brink of tears, because your singular piece of character art is so smarmy and mischievous that I forgot you were trying to tell me something tragic.

What makes this even more annoying is that most of the characters DO have a secondary piece of art, but it’s only ever used ONE time as an introduction to a new character before the game chucks it in the bin and we never see it again. Each character COULD have had at least two expressions if the dev had planned his commissions carefully enough, buuut instead he chose to get two shots that are barely distinguishable from one another so there could be a ~=*FLOURISH*=~ when we see someone for the first time. Granted, two per character still isn’t anywhere near enough, but it’s a hell of a lot better than just one! It makes me wonder why he bothered to spend the money on a second image for each character at all, since half of these commissions only get about 10 seconds of screen time. What a waste.

And hey, speaking of wasted opportunities, let’s talk more about the environments! Lots of visual novels don’t spend much energy on their backgrounds, and although that’s usually fine (albeit not my first preference), Major/Minor seriously needed to think more about its settings. For the moment I’ll ignore the laziness of the fact that the backgrounds are generic photos with a blur filter over them; what’s more important is that this game loves to tell us all kinds of random crap about the rooms we’re in, especially during the scenes that take place in Japan. This game would’ve benefited dearly from simply having more detailed backgrounds and just letting us observe the goings on of the room on our own. Y’know, because that makes it more... visual.

Honestly, if it were me, I would’ve taken it all a step further and gone full-blown Ace Attorney on the environments. In AA games, investigating the scene is very important because you have to look for clues. I’m not saying Major/Minor needed to let you hunt for items, but I do think that it could’ve cut a ton of random information from the text by simply letting us inspect the backgrounds. That way the players that want to know what a kotatsu is can find out on their own time and players that already know or don’t care can move on.

Something else that would’ve brought the game a much-needed boost of interest is cut scenes. As noted earlier, visual novels don’t tend to have a lot of action, so when something physical DOES happen, it makes an impact. One way to maximize that flash of excitement is with a cut scene – or at least, the visual novel equivalent of one. A “cut scene” in a VN isn’t typically a full motion video like most video games boast; it still makes use of a static image, but it’s an image whose quality far surpasses that of the rest of the art in the game. Maybe it’s abnormally large and the camera slowly pans across for dramatic effect, or maybe it’s a scene drawn from an interesting angle that isn’t the player’s POV. Some games take this even farther and really do animate their cut scenes a bit (usually on par with a nice animated gif). Lots of VN cut scenes make use of sound effects or action-specific music cues to keep the player emotionally involved with the scene, as it’s a moment that’s out of the player’s control.

Major/Minor, on the other hand, does none of this. Much like the drought of facial expressions, the game simply pelts you with paragraph after paragraph to tell you about the events taking place around you, rather than simply letting you see for yourself and be, y’know, involved. Even a handful of cut scenes that had some real effort put into them would’ve really given this game some pep. Not only would it have kept me engaged as a player, but it would’ve weeded out even more unnecessary narration.

Oh, and speaking of weeding shit out of the text…

2) Novel

The writing in this game badly, badly needed to be edited. Like, so badly it makes me physically hurt from how poorly this text is constructed. I’m not talking about the simple things like misspellings and failed capitalizations, I mean BIG mistakes, like sentence fragments and improper conjugations and completely misusing some words all together. It’s also excruciatingly repetitive. Never in my life have I ever seen prose that recaps itself so frequently – sometimes literally within minutes of the event that it’s reminding you of. It even recaps itself within the same block of text a few times.

It’s pretty obvious the dev never allowed a seasoned editor to proof the text, but it’s so unbelievably bad that I’m not even sure the dev himself ever gave it a second glance. It reeks of being a first draft that was never once revisited; actually, it strongly reminds me of the sort of stories I myself wrote when I was about 13. At that time I wanted so badly to write big, dramatic stories! Stories that had deep themes and lots of intrigue! With a complicated plot and several subplots!! And lots of characters that would all totally be different and completely matter!!!! But the problem was I was so wrapped up in wanting to make my stories big, impressive epics that I stretched myself way too thin and everything came out incredibly shallow. It’s honestly kind of eerie to think back on the things I wrote as a kid while I play this game. The similarities are so striking that I can’t tell if this is something the dev wrote at that age and just never decided to polish, or if he did write it as an adult but has the writing skill-level of a teenager.

But honestly, I’d overlook all the technical flaws and melodrama this guy could throw at me if he would just show and not tell. “Show, don’t tell” is one of the oldest rules in the book when it comes to storytelling, and for good reason: Telling instead of showing is not only fucking boring, but it treats the reader like an idiot. If a writer knows what they’re doing, they shouldn’t have to tell, because they’d just demonstrate those things instead.

For example, let’s examine another huge flaw with the writing: Incredibly shallow characterizations. Early in the game the player meets a character named Rook. Rook is very rude. I know this because the game tells me. All. The. Time. I legit don’t remember how many times the game has mentioned that Rook is rude at this point. The dev seems completely oblivious to the notion that you don’t have to tell the player these things. You can just… write Rook as being rude. Trust me, my dude, I can figure out if a character is an asshole or not. Not only can Rook’s rudeness be demonstrated by how he treats me as a player, but it can be further reinforced by other characters reacting to him in a put-off manner. If you’re so concerned that I won’t pick up on the fact that Rook is a rude person just based on how he behaves, then you’re doing it wrong, end of discussion.

But then, as I said, the characterizations are shallow in general. Everyone tends to have their one basic trope and the story rests on the idea that you know what the character is. None of the scenes go out of their way to really dig into who someone is – which is kind of amazing, honestly, since the prose is so obsessed with making sure you know the most inane and unrelated shit half the time – and even after I’ve known a character for several chapters they still feel like a cardboard cut-out to me.

To be honest, I’m kind of impressed by the sheer volume of ways that Major/Minor fails at showing instead of telling. It tells you what characters are like instead of just letting you interact with them, it tells you about the places you visit instead of just letting you view them, it tells you every single time the characters have a mood shift or expression change because it couldn’t be bothered to give them each more than one face, and it hamfists unnecessary information into the script where it’s unneeded and interrupts the scene – and THEN, it makes SURE you notice that it’s telling instead of showing by repeating those things over and over and over again!

All of this is further exacerbated, by the way, because the dev has no idea how to tell a story in the first place. Even with all the above flaws, I miiight have still been able to enjoy this game if it was just a compelling narrative in any sense of the word at all. I will happily deal with poor construction and telling-not-showing if the story still has some intrigue. Even a flawed story can have a mind-blowing plot and keep you reading just to find out what happens next, right? I thought so too, until I realized that Major/Minor goes SO far out of its way to spoil its own plot that it frequently makes you sit through scenes that you, the protagonist, are not even present for. Yes, in a game that’s built upon being a first-person experience, the story will slam on the brakes and take you OUT of the protagonist’s shoes to make you sit by as an observer to events that probably would’ve been an great reveal later on had the dev just kept his mouth shut.

3) Visual Novel

So the visuals suck and the writing sucks, but hey, lots of games get by without investing much in those areas. Could Major/Minor pull it together and at least give the player an interesting mechanic? Hahahaha no, of course it didn’t. As far as the gameplay is concerned, Major/Minor is so bad that in many ways I hesitate to even call it a game.

The cornerstone of visual novels is making choices. They can range from serious decisions that determine the overall outcome of the game or small cosmetic details, but either way, the core of this gaming style is putting the player in the driver’s seat as often as possible. When playing Major/Minor, however, the player is strapped into a straight jacket, blindfolded, and tossed into the trunk of the damn car. This game is so reluctant to surrender control of the narrative that it’s not uncommon at all to go through entire sections of the game having made no choices whatsoever. It fails so spectacularly as a visual novel that I’d be willing to bet that the dev had never played one before. He is astonishingly disinterested in what makes a visual novel enjoyable to the player.

There’s a principle in game design called Illusion of Control. The goal of this idea is to allow the player to feel like they’re in charge of the game while actually keeping them within strict boundaries. It applies to a lot of games, but it’s especially important in visual novels. Players need to be able to dictate how the story progresses, even if some of those choices make no real impact on outcomes. For example, players can enter conversation trees with NPCs that seemingly offer a lot of control – perhaps the player chooses the discussion topics, or can decide if they want to be shy or snarky in their replies – and yet at the end of the scene there could realistically be no change to the story’s progress. The greater point is that the player feels like they handled the conversation the way they wanted to. This allows them to still feel like they’ve gotten somewhere and that they accomplished something.

Major/Minor appears to scoff at the very idea of this, like the game’s worried you’ll cramp its style if it gives you too much power.The player is allotted no input whatsoever on how the PC treats the other characters, what subjects to discuss, where they’d like to go, how to react to the actions of other characters… It’s truly mind-blowing just how consistently the game misses opportunities to allow the player even the illusion of control. For example, there’s a scene where the player character (PC) is awakened in the middle of the night by a pounding on the door, and no options are offered on how the player would like to handle this. A better game might allow the player to choose if they want to pretend to keep sleeping, or call out to whomever is knocking, or try escaping out a window, or crack the door open to see what the person wants. Even if it’s an absolute necessity to the plot that this person enters the room, it’s still better to let the player choose, because there are a plethora of ways to redirect each of those options back around toward the character getting in.

Unfortunately, Major/Minor is just too damn lazy to be bothered with gameplay, and the PC just lets the stranger in with no input from the player. Soon after, the stranger attacks the PC, which would again be a prime opportunity for lots of reactionary options: The player could duck! Or the player could punch their assailant! Or maybe they could kick instead! Maybe they’d try to run away or call for help! Buuut no, Major/Minor really doesn’t care what you want YOUR CHARACTER to do, and it’s already decided that you’re going to put up no fight at all and immediately pass out. It’s by far one of the most unsatisfying things I’ve ever experienced in a video game.

The disconnect between the player and the protagonist is so extreme that I honestly don’t feel it’s a fair assessment to refer to the protagonist as the “player character.” It’s not uncommon for visual novel protagonists to speak in the first person, but in most games it feels like the PC is speaking on your behalf because they’re acting according to your will. The protagonist of Major/Minor decides so many things for themself that it stopped feeling like “my” character a very, very long time ago. This character isn’t me and never was; it’s the main character of a book that I didn’t ask to read, who very occasionally pauses to ask my opinion on something.

HEY HOWDY HEY SPEAKING OF PAUSING… If you boot this “game” up for a session, you’d better hope you have plenty of time on your hands to get through it, because you’re at the dev’s mercy for when you can save your progress. Being able to save anytime you want is a staple of visual novels because 1) people read at wildly different paces, and 2) for many people, excessive reading makes them tired. Not only that, but sometimes life just plain gets in the way and you have to pick up and go on short notice. Major/Minor ignores all of these factors and leaves the player relegated to appointed checkpoints throughout the game.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that checkpoints are inherently bad, but they do need to be used very, very wisely. Any game (VN or otherwise) that doesn’t allow the player to save anytime they want needs to be sure checkpoints are reasonably close from any given location, and furthermore that they’re spaced at regular intervals. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, however, the dev flushed that idea down the toilet along with what was left of his common sense and parents’ love. Sometimes Major/Minor stacks save points practically back-to-back within the span of a few minutes, and in other cases I’ve literally played for over and hour before the game finally rewarded me with the option to save.

There’s no discernible pattern or technique that I can detect for when save points are bestowed on the player; you’re not even guaranteed an opportunity to save when the game switches chapters! I would say that I can’t fathom why the dev thought this would be a good idea, but let’s not kid ourselves here, it’s clear that the dev never thought this through in the first place. If he had, he might’ve noticed that players being uncertain about whether or not they’ll be able to save their progress discourages them from playing at all.

Also, before I fully move on from the game design, I just wanted to make a brief side note about the music. To be honest, I turned the music off a VERY long time ago, so I don’t even remember what it sounds like; however, I’ve read that all of the music in the game is from the free assets you get in RPG Maker. I’ve further read that the free assets (both audio and visual) were the entire reason the dev decided to use RPG Maker for this game in the first place, in spite of the fact that there are other programs out there specifically geared toward making visual novels. This is worth mentioning because it further highlights just how lazy this entire game is. It’s not a sin to use free program assets – that IS what they’re there for, after all – but when you ONLY use the free assets and then advertise your game on Steam for being sooo creative and original, AND have the gall to charge $20 for it?? Yeah, that’s a gigantic slap in the face.

Speaking of Steam, you’d think a game like this would’ve been weeded out by the gaming community for being the garbage that it is, right? After all, there’s a ranking right at the top of the page showing the proportion of good and bad reviews it’s gotten, and right now it says the feedback is “very positive.” I will say that I do take community feedback into consideration when I’m thinking about a game that I haven’t otherwise heard of before, and my misstep with this game has definitely taught me a valuable lesson. When I saw that the game is ranked “very positive” and I scrolled down to see several glowing reviews, I felt that was sufficient enough research to know if the game was worth my time and money.

However, upon trying out the game and realizing just how badly I’d been deceived, I did a little more digging. As it turns out, the dev is known for flagging negative reviews as “abusive” and getting them deleted, allowing him to effectively filter out the bad press so long as he can make some kind of a case to Steam. This debacle has taught me that it’s not enough to scroll to the bottom of a Steam page for user reviews, as those tend to be the most recent; what you do instead is click the “Read all [x] reviews” link, as those reviews are sorted by popularity. THIS is where you’ll find the reviews that the community has deemed the most helpful and informative, and in this case, it’s like night and day. ALL of the highest-ranked reviews of Major/Minor are negative, and the numbers are staggering. Literally HUNDREDS of people have ranked these terrible reviews as helpful, and most of them are in the 80-90% range on agreement. You have to load more reviews four times to find even one single positive post, and once you do start getting into the positives, the upvotes are significantly fewer.

SO, in conclusion...

I want to say that’s about all I have to give on this subject, but the sad truth is it’s not. I could probably critique this game line-by-line, moment-by-moment, if I really wanted to. Fortunately for my sanity, I really don’t want to. … Not right now, anyway. I’m sure I’ll lose it at some point and decide to go through and count all the missed opportunities in the game or something, but I won’t be doing that right now, thankfully.

So in the vein of others learning from the mistakes of this game: If you were thinking about buying Major/Minor, don’t. If you bought it a while ago during a sale and were thinking about starting to play it, don’t. If you’re interested in making a visual novel and wanted to learn from this game’s mistakes… Well granted there’s a lot to learn about what not to do, but still, don’t give this lazy, deceptive dev any more money. Learn from this guy’s shortcomings based on the feedback of players. Hell, read or watch a Let’s Play if you really want to experience it first-hand. Just please don’t buy and play this game. As a favor to ME, please don’t buy and play this game.

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[queermtl]

An Interview with Tranna Wintour

Tranna Wintour is a Montréal force to be reckoned with. Performer, events programmer and podcaster, her multi-faceted talents are both a boon and a bonus to the Montréal LGBTQ+ scene. Besides hosting her popular Trannavision movie nights (in which Wintour and invited guests provide improv commentary over iconic queer cinema and TV), curating inclusive comedy and cabaret nights or co-hosting the amazing Chosen Family podcast with Thomas Leblanc, Tranna is a welcoming mainstay in the local community. She’s family. On the brink of a busy holiday season of appearances, we spoke with Tranna about her life in Montréal, and more than anything felt the love that she brings to our city.

QueerMTL: How long have you been in Montréal, and to you what is the best thing about life here as an LGBTQ+ person? More specifically, what is the best thing about life here as a trans person? And how has the city changed in these respects during your time here?

Tranna Wintour: I’ve been in Montréal my whole life. I was actually born in Toronto, but we moved to Montréal when I was two years old and I was raised here. The best thing about living in Montréal as a trans person is the strength of the LGBTQ+ community. I feel a real sense of solidarity within the community here and it's that solidarity that makes me feel safe and free to be who I am. We look out for one another here. I think Montréal is a place where people feel free to be themselves and I've seen that feeling of freedom in the city continue to grow and become stronger over the years – and especially over the last year. So much is shifting, I think ultimately for the better, but the process of change is difficult, heavy and often traumatic. What I have seen in Montréal is a clear and powerful resistance to hatred and bigotry. It's not to say that hatred and bigotry don't exist here, because they absolutely do, but Montréal is a city that I feel actively stands against it.

QM: This one’s somewhat similar to question one, but specifically referring to your life as an artist in Montréal. In your mind, what are the best points about life as an LGBTQ+ artist living in this city? Have you noticed a difference in reception to your work here in MTL as opposed to other places in which you’ve performed?

TW: First of all, Montréal has the cheapest cost of living of any North American metropolis. If I were living in any other city, I would need roommates and a day job to make ends meet, whereas here in beautiful Montréal, I've been able to sustain a living from my creative work and I don't need roommates. Thank God! In Montréal, I’m able to devote 100% of my time and energy to my creative work. And then there are, of course, the people. Montréal is a city of innovation and innovators. The number of talented LGBTQ+ people living and creating in Montréal is astounding and wonderful. The spirit of collaboration and of creativity in this city are so palpable and magical. I feel like my work has been very well received in all the cities I've gone to, but to be perfectly honest, I haven't been to any backwards towns … yet.

QM: What prompted the creation of Chosen Family? What do you and Thomas hope to achieve with the podcast and have there been any particular moments so far where your mind was blown live on-mic? What guests coming up are you excited to get into the interview seat and who would you absolutely love to have on the program?

TW: Chosen Family is an extension and deepening of the work Thomas and I do on stage together. We host these very hysterical, pop, high-energy cabaret shows  such as Sainte Celine, Sweet Mariah, Crazy Sexy 90s, and our new one, Greatest Hits coming up on November 30th. There really is a magical, unifying energy at our shows – our audiences are the best – and we wanted to keep that energy and exchange with our audience going on a more regular basis so we decided to do a podcast. Where the cabaret shows are very pop, we wanted the podcast to show a different side of ourselves. We wanted to be able to go to places both emotionally and intellectually that we can't really go to in a comedy show, while still being funny. I think our goal with the podcast is simply to have interesting, meaningful conversations with brilliant, fascinating people in the arts, and to showcase the incredible comedic and musical talents of our chosen family. We want to encourage and expand the feeling of family within the LGBTQ+ community through comedy, art, music and the creative process that links all of us. We want our listeners to feel like family!

The most thrilling moment on the podcast, for me, so far, was getting to interview John Cameron Mitchell, who I admire so much. And also getting to chat to Jonathan Van Meter, from Vogue magazine! I can't really talk about upcoming guests because scheduling is always tricky, but we are trying really hard to get Kai Cheng Thom, a writer we deeply admire on our show. My biggest dream guest – that will never happen – would be Alanis Morissette.  

QM: So much of your work in Montréal involves spotlighting other artists, in particular through your programming and events. Who are some of the artists in MTL that truly inspire you? Is there a lost history of performers you think we should be reminded of? And are there some future break-out stars you can already sense coming up?

TW: I love this question. There are so many MTL artists who inspire me. I worship Crystal Slippers. I think she is the most captivating, genius performer and I am dying for her to be a superstar on an international level because she is just so insanely talented. I adore and admire Maxine Segalowitz, Kama La Mackerel, DJ Mausner, Awwful, Caveboy, Ghost Love, Travis Cannon, Nancy Webb, Rachel Gendron, Ms. Holmes, Ellie Macdonald, Holly Greco, The Brunch Club comedy crew, Jordan Arsenault AKA Peaches Lepage, the House of Laureen, the whole Glam Gam gang … I could go on and on and that is a testament to how much incredible talent there is in this city! The list is truly endless and there are so many more and I trust they know who they are. My heart honestly bursts with joy and love just writing their names! I feel like the luckiest person on earth to work with all of them. They are all stars, and I am positive they will all break-out into the mainstream.

QM: You’re such a multi-faceted personality here in Montréal, organizing an incredible amount of inclusive events that are always absolutely welcoming and above all else, fun. Yet your persona also doesn’t shy away at all from politics and activist concerns, particularly online and on ‘Chosen Family’. How do you balance those parts of Tranna Wintour – one day discussing equality on ‘Chosen Family’, the next adlibbing over episodes of ‘Sex in the City’?

TW: Another great question. The balance between my fun, pop-culture-obsessed, superficial side and my more serious, concerned, political side is not something I am consciously thinking about or even all that concerned with. I am many things and I have many interests, and I'm creating avenues to express all of it. It all has its place and time. I’m a sensitive person and I like to think I'm a person of depth and empathy, but I'm also someone who just wants to have fun sometimes and there's room for all of it in what I do. My worst nightmare is to be a one-note kind of performer/person. My only concern when creating is authenticity. It’s extremely important to me that everything I do, in whatever format, is authentic and true to who I am and my beliefs and that it also comes from a place of love and wanting to do what I can to make people feel good, even if it's just for an hour. When you-know-who got elected I really thought, “What's the point? Who cares about comedy and entertainment? It's all superficial and pointless." But I feel, after this last year, that live performance and entertainment is more important and needed than ever because it's one of the few things that brings people together face to face in the same room. It's easy to hate behind a screen, but when we're face to face with one another, and we experience a moment of joy collectively, whether it's at a concert, a comedy show or the theatre, we’re reminded of our humanity and our connection to one another and I think that is so meaningful and important right now – and always.

Catch Tranna in person this November and December:

Trannavision: Best of Sex & the City at Psychic City on November 18: https://www.facebook.com/events/356723561422262/

Greatest Hits: A Cabaret Extravaganza at The Wiggle Room on November 30: https://www.facebook.com/events/1605923769464943/

Trannavision: Home Alone at Psychic City on December 2: https://www.facebook.com/events/432369067165918/

Keep up with all things Tranna at https://www.facebook.com/TrannaWintour/ (Photo by Maxime Tremblay)

[the-no-good-moonite]

cortana, find “how to remove STD”

So yeah here’s my thoughts on Star Trek Discovery as of the ninth episode:

its ugly, sounds like trash, is terribly badly written and probably smells weird if in a physical format

but allow me to elaborate a bit a lot

the sound and visuals are the smaller problem admittedly; I like plenty of things that looked arse when they were first made and look like double arse now, so if the writing wasn’t so bad I would be willing to accept this as a flaw of the series and concentrate on the rest of it. as it stands...

the music just kind of being “there” is nothing new (see: large chunks of the other series), but it’s still disappointing. the sound design being terrible on top of that? that’s trash. nearly every time a ship opens fire we get minor variations on generic and ill-fitting turbolaser sounds... I mean come the fuck on. you don’t want to be restricted by tradition, go nuts, but if that’s the best you’ve got to offer you shouldn’t have 

(I realise that choice is likely a result of a directive from on high and not entirely the sound team’s doing, but it’s still executed poorly)

as for art direction... well, John Eaves is a very poor choice for how much they’re giving to him (most of starfleet it looks like? not sure who’s doing the klingons but what little I can see of them isn’t impressing me either). I don’t hate his stuff outright like some people do, but he’s very “safe” and has exactly one aesthetic that has worn out for me and compares badly to what they’re making it contemporary to here

the art direction in general is quite bad though - there’s so much nebulous shit that glows blue in the same kind of way that it legitimately confuses as to whether or not it is the same thing - and the way it’s all shot is boring and unremarkable at best. 

(and oh look, it’s another trek villain who has a colour scheme of mostly metals and neon green. get the fuck out of here)

the... space fight choreography (not sure what else to call it?) is absolutely the worst part though, it’s almost claustrophobic, everything’s jammed together like it happening in a bloody fish tank. the camera has no great desire to give us a clear view of what’s happening, or of any object other than the discovery and the ship of the dead. they almost appear to be going out of their way to avoid giving a clear look at anything else, which makes me think they’re not being given the time or budget to make models that will withstand close examination... which would be expected, but still laughable as ever

the spore drive and all the effects associated with it are ugly as sin and conceptually terrible also; I will accept no dissent on this point

sets and props are kinda “eh”, but i’ve not seen anything overtly wobble, and that’s apparently the only metric that matters so uh, good job there

so! the writing. the horrible, horrible writing.

I’m going to mostly ignore the actual dialog here, because while it is deserving of flak, it’s mostly stock phrases and interactions you’ve seen significantly better or worse versions of. so not a lot to actually say about it. I don’t like much of it and the attempts at humour are pretty lame.

what I take issue with is the overall construction of it... like they’re doing a “maybe the federation isn’t right about how it does things?” kind of thing and im onboard with that, asking questions on if the federation is really what it presents itself as has potential. but they’re not actually asking any specific questions.

and this kind of attitude pervades the whole show; there’s vague noises about stuff - maybe both sides are wrong - or whatever and the odd “aren’t we explorers?” but ultimately the show has little to no opinion on any of it (or doesn’t yet anyway), just making enough of an effort to try and get you to think it does, and then let you fill in the answer you agree with most... 

if it sounds like im leading in to a “intellectually hollow centrist liberal” kind of comparison, you fucking bet I am, because that’s pretty much what it feels like to me

I mean I expect someone’s going to try and claim they’re just going for moral ambiguity, but I struggle to think of many actual examples of that in anything, and it DEFINITELY looses any claim to such when you have characters being told that actually no, Their War Crimes Were Entirely Justified and then nobody says any different

(star trek has no substantive claim on moral consistency, but that’s just fucking indefensible, and it shouldn’t be left even slightly ambiguous if Lorca was in the right for saying that. which is kind of a recurring problem with that character, contradictory as that may appear for me to say that right after my previous comment...)

then you’ve got the portrayal of the klingons as man-eating space orks... who are doing a holy war... even if that didn’t conflict horribly with the (for star trek) more complex portrayals of klingons in the past, on it’s own it feels like it’s undermining the claims to progressiveness  just a little bit 

(well it’s part holy war and part MQGA [Make Qo'noS Great Again] but you know what I mean)

and plotwise now we’re doing... voyager? maybe in the mirror universe? I don’t know. I guess they won’t stick with it for long enough to redo voyager’s worst mistakes but why am I having SG:U flashbacks all of a sudden

funnily enough I actually like SG:U more than discovery, though that may be partly not having watched it since it aired

lost my train of thought here, uh, characters bad?

or some characters bad anyway. I like maybe half of them to some degree actually, despite the dialog and how inconsistent the portrayal of nearly everyone is in between - or within - any episode (another old problem for trek, but it’s really grating with the format here)

there’s plenty to criticise though; i’m really unsure the writers have any clear idea of what Tilly’s “deal” is (only socially awkward? on a spectrum? just “weird”? who can say!) or if Stamets is an asshole or a just good-hearted grump... there’s other things like that. maybe they’ve detailed stuff in interviews, but the show itself is terrible at communicating any clear intent

but Michael and Voq’s fake personality Ash are definitely the worst characters, so i’ll focus on them

I will maintain that Michael’s backstory is rubbish, making her Spock’s secret sister is amazingly unnecessary rubbish. on top of that, we’re told she’s a top of the line member of starfleet which is then immediately undercut by her doing something stupid and reckless that almost gets her killed (after which she then presumably irradiates everything between sickbay and the bridge...) followed by doing something stupid and reckless that gets a lot of people killed and starts a war! this is arguably the most prominent trait of the character

she kind of comes off as a suicidal maniac, is my point.  Captain Georgiou is quick to jump to a suicidal option too (and im just gonna say... most prominent asian person in the series to date... suggests a suicide attack...) 

does this version of starfleet just not do psych tests until you hit admiral? of the two that have actually done things we’ve had two walk into obvious traps, but one of them seems comparatively well adjusted

anyway, so we’ve got Michael, a pet character of some writer who changes personality every other scene and totally not Voq, we swear and Ash. who is about the most blandly likeable love interest possible, and definitely Voq infiltrating starfleet, how long are they gonna drag this secret cylon constructed memories bullshit out just bloody kill me already and also a survivor of sexual abuse (and torture) with PTSD. 

they heavily implied this was the case when they introduced the character, and then in episode 9 it was confirmed explicitly by the character in question... that’s all fine, feels like a bit of a cheap grab so they can be a “mature“ story but let’s see how it plays out... and oh.

they went and showed (what was framed as but aren’t necessarily) the events in question. this is, at best, tasteless and inappropriate

now, i’m not going to say they’re going to handle this in the worst way possible, but what they’ve done so far is making me really fucking uncomfortable! I do not have faith that this will resolve even remotely well

and then there’s the whole thing where his memories are likely 100% manufactured as cover, which has a good chance of giving this whole situation an unpleasant taste all on it’s own

I also really had no need to see these new klingons naked anyway, or any naked klingon really, and in context cable drama nudity is absolutely the worst thing they could’ve copied from game of thrones without thinking about it

anyway, that’s [however many, I don’t want to check] badly formatted and often grammatically incorrect words to say: 

The show is bad. You disagree? Ok. I disagree with you. Now nobody is happy. I would prefer to be happy. I am not.

Goodnight.