#kim sokol

[art-of-mtg]

Path to Exile (Assassin's Creed) - Kim Sokol

More cards with art by Kim Sokol on Scryfall

[clawsandfangsofthe-abyss623]

Hardy Outlander

Kim Sokol

[frankensteinmutual]

my favourite artworks from the new magic the gathering set, duskmourn: house of horror 🏚️

1. demonic counsel, babs webb 2. overlord of the balemurk, babs webb 3. unwanted remake, eli minaya 4. bedhead beastie, david auden nash 5. rite of the moth, a. m. sartor 6. abandoned campground, cristi balanescu 7. overlord of the hauntwoods, tiffany turrill 8. fear of infinity, fernando falcone 9. fear of isolation, irina nordsol 10. cursed recording, kim sokol

borderless alternative art bonus:

[libraesthetiques]

like dornish food and dornish law, dornish speech was spiced with the flavors of the rhoyne, but a man could comprehend it.

【 jewish dorne fancast 2/? 】

art credits: amok, arantza sestayo, tiziano baracchi, kim sokol.

[playedbetter]

I'm trying to remember what ships I actually have on this blog and here's what I've got so far, if I've forgotten one or you're interested in having a ship please lmk!

Harry X Kim (quillheel)

Kim X Harry (quillheel)

Owen X Floyd (scxttershot)

Jacket X Sokol (ko3ak)

Jean-Paul X Hyeon (v1r4l)

Hoxton X Stevie (vihrago)

+ a bunch with chaosmultiverse.

[reborn-spoilers-cards]

[OTC] [EN] [0124] Winged Boots [1U] [MV2] [RAR] [BLU] [ART-EQ] [Equip1] [Kim Sokol] [2024]

[allhailklisz]

Rodeo Pyromancers (art by Kim Sokol)

i saw two women on the same card and automatically decided they are married

There's "spaghetti western" and then there's whatever the hell this Chef Boyardee shit is

Hello! and welcome back to Wifelink. We're talking about Outlaws of Thunder Junction today, Magic's second product in a row set in a version of Nevada, and let me tell you something: I am not impressed. The mechanics are uninspired, the setting is undercooked, the story is overstuffed, and to top it all off the whole thing smacks of settler-colonialism. AND they yassified Vraska, the monsters!

WE WILL GET TO THE HOT WOMEN, BELIEVE YOU ME, BUT FIRST I AM GOING TO COMPLAIN SOMEWHAT, AS IS MY RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN, AS A HUMAN BEING, AND AS A GAMER

The mechanics we've discussed elsewhere, and I will skim over the main storyline except to say that very few of this Big Villain Heist Team-Up gets enough spotlight to justify their inclusion here beyond getting recognizable names on cards, and that Rakdos' presence on the plane alone ought to be an apocalyptic calamity. I appreciate Jace & Vraska going full blackpilled accelerationist, stealing a baby, and aiming to destroy the multiverse & start over (a novel hybrid of Raising Arizona and Doctor Strangelove,) but I also know, sure as the sun rises, that whatever happens with their villain arc will be a underwhelming let-down.

What I actually want to complain about, though, is the setting. Thunder Junction ain't real, and I don't mean it's fictional, I mean it's plywood facades on a backlot. It's the set for a cowboy film. You feel me? This ain't a plane, it's a god damned sound stage.

Lemme go over the facts: we know Thunder Junction has been settled for a bit over a year. A year! - and yet there's multiple towns, multiple railways, and an honest-to-god metropolis. Less than two years and we already have ghost towns! This is not the product of a bunch of people on various planes all individually deciding to seek a new life in the off-world colonies. All of this represents a staggering quantity of people, material, wealth, and labor, being moved between planes, directed and organized - but by whom? For what reason? How, even? The story is totally uninterested in these questions.

One of the few silver linings to the way the Phyrexian invasion storyline ended was that the Omenpaths had a lot of interesting potential! Different planes would come into direct contact with each other for the first time ever! Different technologies, different philosophies and religions, different kinds of magic colliding, coming into conflict, adapting and adjusting to each other. And after a couple of sets where the interplanar contact was limited to one or two particularly adventurous individuals, we finally get to see what interplanar contact at scale looks like here in Thunder Junction... and it just looks like a John Wayne flick. Did people not bring their culture with them? Is there a big rack of hats and boots and dusters right where people step off the Omenpath? Shuck off those old Ravnican rags, kid, get changed. You'll spoil the aesthetic. I mean, it's baffling.

Luxurious Locomotive (art by Leon Tukker). This is one of the few man-made parts of this plane that I can look at and know where it came from: this is a Kaladeshi design. More of this sort of thing would have made Thunder Junction feel more like a real place and less like a Sergio Leone joint.

There's a side story, No Tells, by Isaac Fellman, which I quite like actually: it's about guilt and betrayal and the inevitable regrets of having moved into a queer housing co-op, and one of the things that makes it great is that we know where Yuma came from (New Capenna), we know why he left (the limitations of "be gay do crimes" as praxis under capitalism), and we know what he brought to Thunder Junction with him (cocktails, pool tables, and his co-op's emergency funds). Fellman has written nothing else for Wizards and doesn't play Magic, and even so he's done more to make Thunder Junction feel like a real place situated in a real history than the rest of the story team combined - which goes to show, one, that we should only let trans people write magic story for the next decade or so, and two, that what I'm asking for in terms of worldbuilding is not unattainable, or even that difficult.

And all of this ties into the colonialism, right? Thunder Junction is being colonized, and asking questions about who benefits, who's sponsoring this breakneck settlement of the plane, what they're after and so forth would require the story to take a good hard look at the process of colonization itself, and Wizards is flatly unwilling to engage with anything that thorny in their products. So, just as Ixalan involved a limp-wristed slant reenactment of the Spanish conquest of the Americas - but it's fine because they're the bad guys and they're technically not even trying to colonize Ixalan and they don't win anyway so no one gets hurt! - Thunder Junction is attempting to present a Disneyland version of Western colonialism. Untamed wilderness! Bringing civilization to uninhabited deserts! How cool and heroic these hard frontiersmen and -women are! I'm told they brought in Navajo cultural consultants for the Atiin, a fantasy equivalent, and I hope those folks were well compensated! The Atiin seem cool, and the one Atiin character we spend any time with is well-written, but the Atiin are not indigenous to Thunder Junction. They're not being colonized. And if there weren't anybody being colonized, I'd probably still dislike the colonial vision of a wild land inhabited only by animals, just waiting for us to shape it to our will with railways and violence, but there is in fact a native race of sapients on Thunder Junction, and these cactus folk get no voice in the story, so if they have some kind of opinion on the rapid colonization of their home and the clear-cutting of their cactus forests, we don't get to hear about it.

Prickly Pair (art by Brian Valeza) Too much of the extremely-limited presence Thunder Junction's only indigenous sapients have on the cards is devoted to cactus-based puns like this one, which is pretty distasteful given, you know, the colonialism.

I'm talking about colonialism not because I think that replicating colonial myths in fantasy fiction is an unethical thing to do - although it is - but because you can see, right, that Thunder Junction's lack of verisimilitude is intertwined with the colonial vision of the world at play here, yeah? The story wants to have cool cowboy shootouts and train robberies and it does not want its cowboy fantasy to be complicated by uncomfortable realities, so it has to avoid all of the basic worldbuilding questions that would tell us who the colonization benefits and how they're profiting off the plane, and in the end we're left with nothing but an empty aesthetic, like a duster hanging off a scarecrow, blowing in the wind.

ANYWAY SO WOMEN

To be honest, under the circumstances I'm not really feeling like giving the fine women of Thunder Junction my usual more elaborate treatment, so we're going to lightning-round this shit, which is at least thematic.

Blood Hustler (art by Anna Pavleeva)

Vampire MILF.

Rattleback Apothecary (art by Loïc Canavaggia)

Snake MILF.

Wrangler of the Damned (art by Michal Ivan)

Cis lesbian haircut, good with a rope.

Obeka, Splitter of Seconds (art by Ryan Pancoast)

BIG

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Bloodbat Summoner by Kim Sokol

[geekynerfherder]

Showcasing art from some of my favourite artists in the field of visual arts, including vintage; pulp; pop culture; books and comics; concert posters; fantastical and imaginative realism; classical; contemporary; new contemporary; pop surrealism; conceptual and illustration.

The art of Kim Sokol.

[comparativetarot]

Five of Cups. Art by Kim Sokol, from 78 Tarot Carnival.

Full art: 

[st-just]

Ruinwaker by Kim Sokol

[art-of-mtg]

Ryan Sinclair (Doctor Who) - Kim Sokol

More cards with art by Kim Sokol on Scryfall

[weirdletter]

What Became of the Moth-Witch, by Kim Sokol, via kimsokol.com.

[nott-ljomi]

Kill the Batman (The Joker meets the Mob) | The Dark Knight [4k, HDR, IMAX]

[ramblingandpie]

Seriously though her portraits are great. Also: orc with flower crown = <3

It’s free shipping for orders over $25 on InPrnt time!  I have some new prints up since they last had that sale, so if you’re interested, it’s a great chance to check those out.  (There’s more than what’s shown in this post, so go take a look!)

[jamiesonwolf]

Best Books of 2020

Best Books of 2020

This year was a difficult year for many reasons. Normally I find comfort in reading, in the words and stories written by others. To me, reading and writing are like breathing to me. Which is why it was terrible that I had trouble losing myself in the written word. I just couldn’t concentrate enough to let a story take me away. There was too much on my mind, too many thoughts that wouldn’t quiet…