#mysterium

[shoomlah]

sometimes the spirit compels you to make a 90's vaporwave fever dream tribute to Myst, and you must listen 📕📘

[absolutelynotsanebaby]

Oc moment

[toyoll]

MYSTERIUM 2024 ART ROUNDUP!

I know I don't post as much art here as I aughta, but this was a ton of fun and I drew (and seen!) more Myst fanart than I've ever seen in the wild!🙌🙌🙌🙌

[hollowsart]

I redesigned [That Cursed Mysterio Variant]

Avataars earth.. but just a little to the left.

No dome, it's just cloth. It's sheer enough for him to see through it, but not enough for anyone to see him inside it.

His magic is like a curse and his appearance changes into various monsters as he's casting his spells. Like he got magic, but it went horribly wrong. And he was cast out of where he used to reside among the normal people.

he could still create a mouth/face out of his torso if he wanted. let his head detach and float and swirl. explode with mist around him if he needed or wanted.

but it takes awhile before he is able to reform back to himself again. Stuck to look like a "freak" (for lack of a better word) for at most 3 days until his original form returns. (a slow transition out of what he had quickly turned into. magic comes with a cost, you know)

(personally, I prefer the altered colors as it clashes far less)

[meowthiroth]

Coming through!!

(HUGE thanks to Jiro from the Mysterium discord server for recording this awesome tracking shot!!)

[lucario1829]

this panel is up on youtube with audio now!!!! it was super interesting to me and is worth watching

[caelichythcat]

there are worse hauntings

[veovis-of-kveer]

At Mysterium!!!

[princess-marble]

I'm so good at mysterlum I can use two crystal balls simultaneously!

[vertigoartgore]

2020's S.W.O.R.D. Vol.2 #1 cover by Valerio Schiti & Marte Gracia.

[magpies-gold]

Back From Mysterium

I did a very small couple of posts before this, but Saturday at Mysterium blew my expectations out of the water, and so I decided I needed to circle back around and try again as a much bigger post.

First, foremost, and coolest - yes! I got to meet Rand Miller (bonus infamous RAWA just to the left as well)! Even better, for once in my life my social anxiety didn't turn me into a non-verbal lump and I was able to say a grand total of two full sentences and a greeting. If you know me at all, then you know that that's quite the accomplishment. Usually @timmcosplay has to do the talking for me when I inevitably choke on my own tongue, but by a quirk of fate we got separated (he wanted to get our Book of Ti'ana signed and got yoinked into a different line up from me, who wanted photo evidence) and I had no choice but to attempt to be a functional human. My theory is that I've talked to Rand's face so many times during the intro to Riven (I always talk back) that it was just second nature to say hello the second he looked at me. Genuinely, though, he's so kind and so patient and I'm stoked that he made time to meet all of us and then spend a couple hours even after that being a presenter and answering heaps of questions.

Tim may have not been with me directly, but he was still creeping in the sidelines getting photos of me getting photo'd and briefly chatting. ;)

Ultimately, we were split into three groups and everyone ran through the events of the day in a different order.

Tim and I were on Team Ytram (or Team Forg as I insisted on calling it) and had little Rivenese froggos on our badges.

After the meet and greet, we got lunch. It was simplistic fare, but the fact that we got hot dogs and Cool Ranch Doritos out back of the Cyan HQ means that they were very special hot dogs and Cool Ranch Doritos. Legendary!

And then... they actually allowed my wee goblin self and Tim to go through the iconic archway entrance and to scramble around their actual studio. I've seen pictures of the place on the internet before and knew how neat it would be to some degree, but now I know where everything is!

In no particular order....

Iconic signage and that giant honkin' Moiety dagger that Adam Savage apparently worked on?? It is truly large in person!

Costumes from Riven! Including Catherine's dress, which I remember my mom was always cooing over when I was playing the game on my clonky PC in the late 90's, and Gehn's costume, with Tim posing (and having not totally slightly held up the rest of the group by getting detail shots for cosplay purposes, no, no, he wouldn't do that....)

Art! Design sketches and THE MAP.

The infamous elevator wherein you'd better know your D'ni numbers if you want to get anywhere (I would get stuck).

And then... artifacts!

They had THE LEVER from the beginning of Riven. Did it never occur to me that the lever was a real lever? THE LEVER IS A REAL LEVER.

Plus there were goggles and books and Gehn's gun (AKA the only Game Over inducing object in Riven) and more character design sketches with actual costume fabric swatches! That last bit made Tim make high pitched glee noises, as someone who both designs and makes costumes himself.

There were presentations after all of that. Trailers, talks, a non-profit project to digitize over a hundred hours of behind the scenes footage from the making of Uru and Riven and other things, which we got a sneak peek of. They showed off a snippet of the remake of Riven. There was just so much. It was hours and hours and I was practically vi-bra-ting by the time we finally were ushered back to the bus and back to Spokane.

I will never entirely get over the fact that I was able to go see all that with my own two eyeballs. As someone who's been enamoured with the universe surrounding Myst island for the full 30 years of its existence, ever since I was 8 years old, who used to make big calligraphy posters of passages from The Book of Atrus and The Book of Ti'ana and tape them up all over Thorhild Central School whether my fellow students and teachers wanted me to or not, and who was so solidly influenced by the idea of books as literal doors to other worlds that it became a foundation for how I view my own characters and stories (namely that I'm no god, and they do have a life all their own), this is a treasured memory.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Opinions on the introduction of Mysterium & its execution?

The creation and discovery of mysterium were really cool and well-executed, and I was excited about the potential application for economic and political worldbuilding, particularly in outer space. But like many of the most interesting inventions of the Krakoan era, it kind of fell into the background and became a bit of a one-note plot device, and we lost sight of most of that worldbuilding once Ewing was taken off of SWORD and Guardians.

Honestly, I think the most interesting usage of mysterium happened outside of X-Men comics, especially in titles like Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange, which took account for the impact of introducing a brand-new, anti-magic element into the world. There are communities and ecosystems beyond the X-Men's scope that would be impacted by such a thing, and I'm glad we got see that play out. People complained a lot about how the "low mysterium" essentially became Wanda's Kryptonite in SW, but I thought it was clever.

Like I said, you need to give characters like Wanda some kind of weakness or obstacle, and in this case, the low mysterium was integrated neatly into the storyline-- Hexfinder is able to enter the narrative as someone who's been waiting for the right weapon, and the perfect opportunity, to strike Wanda down. By having her capitalize on Magneto's death the introduction of mysterium, she ties Scarlet Witch into the larger continuity, which, for an original character in an otherwise very insular title, is honestly pretty impressive.

I think people misunderstand the metal's anti-magic properties, and its connection to the White Hot Room. The power-scale nerds want to create hierarchies-- because mysterium disrupts magic, including Wanda's chaos magic, they reason that the power of the WHR must be ranked above all magic, as a rule, which supports the completely arbitrary claim that Jean is more powerful than Wanda. None of this matters. This is not how writers approach storytelling, and it's not how they think about these characters-- and I think it's also a misinterpretation of the text.

In SWORD #7, Doom explains that the mutants have taken "primal kirbons"-- particles from the heart of creation-- and pressed them upon the material world in the form of common coin, which has altered the balance of things. He tells Storm about "naming as magic," and reminds her of the importance of symbols and metaphor. Elsewhere, Apocalypse and Exodus talk about what they would have done differently. So, I've always taken it as read that the reason mysterium repels magic specifically because it was created as currency. It's not a situation of Phoenix > Magic, it's that this is primal, variable matter that could have been anything, but was given a form that is symbolically opposite of magic.

Maybe that's a stretch, but at least I'm meeting the text where it is, and responding to the ideas that it puts forward, instead of making up a Hanbook entry in my head so I can jack off to the power ratings.

[absolutelynotsanebaby]

Since I've done designs for the Departed Realm and the Cursed Realm, heres Djinnjago, Mysterium, wyldness, and Madness (or their sketches lol it may change)

[hermesserpent-stuff]

Some more cross over event ideas

[cleo1337]

[meowthiroth]

goddd Mysterium was SO much fun this year. I can't wait to get home & spam y'all with photos of all my funny mangree moments