#the blog was about politics and sociology and history and stuff and was actually fucking awesome

[missedthelate80s]

YOU. WE NEED MORE FROM YOU.

madilton as exes (sometimes despising each other, sometimes still missing each other despite the years that have passed by, always in resemblance of an explosion's aftermath) takes over my brain from time to time

[doorsclosingslowly]

For the books! 3, 9, 10, 14, 25, 28, 30

3. A book you found overhyped, and why

I have no idea what's hyped, tbh. I trawl through blogs and reviews and catalogues looking for stuff that might intrigue me, and I know well enough that my tastes aren't universal to care less about acclaim than about the details someone tells me

9. Fiction or non-fiction or both? In what ratio? Where do you draw the line between the two?

I read predominantly nonfiction. History, mostly; popular science biology and textbooks about bees; political theory and sociology; and also some more journalistic accounts; and essays. In terms of fiction, I like poetry; scifi and occasionally fantasy; and stuff like Kureishi and Woolf etc that I don't know how to categorize because I'm not that well-versed in lit. It's probably 3:1 nonfiction.

For most things I guess I read it's easy to draw the line. It's not a autobiography vs autofiction situation; I read some stuff for information (keeping in mind the author's perspective, obviously, and well-written is a bonus) and the other for an immersive experience. I am kind of interested though in stories that blur the line--there's a kickstarter for a hard scifi book about foreign life that includes science essays; I'm probably gonna buy Negarestani's "theory-fiction" book Cyclonopedia; also I need to start reading Flusser' Vampyroteuthis Infernalis and get back to Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas. Categories, as always, are a tool created for easier navigation that fall apart when looked at too closely.

10. The book(s) you bought because the cover was pretty, and whether it was worth it

It's been a while since I last bought a book based on the cover! I haven't been in a shop except for essentials since before the pandemic. I think it was the [Map Puzzle Book] which has puzzles based on maps in it. I like maps. Haven't done a lot of the puzzles yet though, I got distracted.

14. The book that, in hindsight, really should have clued you in to the fact that you’re _________ (queer/in love/doomed to be an academic/etc) 

It should probably have clued everybody in that I was a fucking nerd when my favourite aisle in the library as a kid was the history books for children section. Illustrated books about historical villains, mock-newspapers from the Roman or Viking or neolithic era... I read every single book there multiple times. A melodramatic nerd, given I learned the Greek myth CDs by heart (they censored a lot of sex and violence because they were for under-10s)

25. The only book care question that actually means anything: do you write in your books? If so, in pen or in pencil? 

I don't write in books, not because I think it's wrong--actually I really love reading strangers' notes in books--but because I'm too insecure about my own thoughts to want them immortalized.

28. The one where the fanfic was better than the original (and the relevant AO3 links, pls) 

Obviously Harry Potter--much more imaginative and far less hateful, at least the ones I sought out--but the last time years ago when I read hp fanfic I was very into Percy Weasley & anybody who wants can ask me for recs but they're gonna be niche

For Watchmen, I wouldn't say the fanfic does what the comic does better, really, because I rarely see Watchmen fic exploring the same thing, but there are very good Rorschach fics exploring self-hatred in a way the comic alludes but does not drown you in

Tbh though, usually I don't seek out fanfic for the novels I read, especially those I actually love, because part of what I love is the construction and conciseness and if I thought there were large gaps that needed more exploration, I'd be less impressed with the novel. Also, the more I love a novel's style and voice the more particular I get

30. The book you read the blurb of, constructed a version of in your mind, and were promptly disappointed by once you finally got around to actually reading it

The Darth Maul (2017) comic haha

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

y’know the one thing I hated while I was doing my arts degree, and still hate after having graduated from it, is the condescending statement/belief from people that “oh why didn’t you just do a more useful degree like maths or science???? and not your useless bullshit mickey mouse arts degree, which was never intended to give anyone jobs outside of teaching, anyway!” or some other horrendous bullshit, such as: “why didn’t you just stay with communication & media studies and complete the marketing & PR major???? you would’ve had a job after all of the unpaid internships you do throughout the course!” or whatever. (media and communications is abbreviated to m&cs further down in this post, just an fyi).

but, meredith. do you know that even people with science & maths degrees struggle to find meaningful work that’s related to their degrees? do you know that some of those people will turn to teaching anyway just because they feel like there’s nothing else that they can do??? do you know that some people (mainly me and probably quite a few others) just can’t handle maths past like idk year 6 level??? I would’ve been completely and utterly fucked if I even tried to set foot in first year uni science or maths subjects. even though some of the content did interest me.... (also there’s the fact that my handwriting wasn’t good enough for diagrams etc etc in maths & science- but that’s a whole other topic not for this post).

like I had to totally skip out of psychology/sociology and even the PR major, bc they required you to do statistics subjects.... where no matter what level of study I would’ve/could’ve done for those subjects, i would’ve still failed them spectacularly because my mind really struggles with processing and working with numbers. but that’s besides the point.

hey earl, do you know some people simply do not suit particular fields of “real world” or “practical” study areas like business subjects? trust me. I tried that one sem of marketing 101 and intro to management/ business communications in first year. and you know what I found? that my mind just could not take the complete and utter dryness of the content of marketing theory and, again, numbers. and that’s despite the earnest encouragement of my tutor, who thought I had a knack for marketing. i literally almost fucking died in that business communications subject... even though the lecturer seemed to like me as well. but as i thought further ahead into my degree in comms & media, i dreaded it. I absolutely fucking dreaded it. the PR stuff sounded as equally dry & boring (besides the point that every project was group work lmao) and so did upper level marketing subs in advertising/marketing strategy/various fields of marketing etc etc. i couldn’t stomach that lmao. and besides the point, the analysing of media just bored the fuck out of me too, for some reason. I just didn’t like the subject. hell, even my advanced diploma in marketing from business college was a fucking hard slog for me.

but when i sat in my english, philosophy, (kind sorta) history and -further down the track- creative writing subjects.... I fucking loved them. I was writing like I’d always wanted to. okay yes I did get pretty dismal marks in most of my philosophy and english exams or assignments. but I don’t fucking care. I was there doing what my mind was built for. if id tried another business subject, like intro to economics or even gone back to redo that “intro to management”/“business communications” (or whatever it was called) as an elective/as electives, i probably would’ve dropped out of either of them in the first 2 weeks. whenever i read those subject descriptions, they literally put me to sleep.

also, for the media and comms point. do you know that there’s loads of media & comms students that don’t get jobs because there’s just such a HUGE intake of students in those courses??? do you know that that the most popualr field in that degree stream (at least when I started that degree at my local home uni in 2015) was journalism & professional writing??? where literally EVERYONE was aiming to be a journalist????

I was one of the very, very few people when I began in media and comms, to outwardly say that she was there to do marketing or maybe the marketing & PR double major.... and everyone looked at me as if I was insane. “why don’t you want to be a journalist? I think journalism is so cool and that I’m more likely to get a job in that than you are in marketing or PR. you actually engage with real people in journalism and do meaningful stuff with the community!” was one of the utterly dumb responses I sometimes got from people in that course, when I told them the above. but you know what kelsey, or, trent? neither one or any of us are “more likely” to get jobs in media & comms... when you’re both competing against people with “proper” straight journalism degrees who might have more media experience than you- if you didn’t do an internship or do some uni newsroom/magazine or whatever.... or maybe more streamlined (if that’s the right word) media &comms degrees.... as well as generally competing against each other, in the same field, for the fucking same exact jobs. while im competing against commerce students doing marketing and PR and people doing the PR & marketing major in m&cs.

also in relation to the above, doing multiple unpaid or even severely underpaid internships in journalism, or even marketing, probably won’t fucking secure your chance of getting a bloody job, adam. just shut the fuck up. those internships may have helped you. but they most likely won’t help most people, theresa. because there’s only a tiny freakin chance that the place that they worked for will actually give them a guranteed job at the end of their internship’s timeframe or at the end of their whole degree. it’s a fucking scam lmao.

and plus, (not to be as rude as you were to me).... but why the FUCK would you want to go into journalism.... when it’s been debased so fucking much by media outlets like buzzfeed; writing nothing but clickbait bullshit listicles.... and is polluted by internet virality.... so much so, that more than half of the people my course had the career goal of being a viral youtuber or an instagram influencer???? like i’m sorry. this is a dumb asf course, no matter the field you’ve chosen to study.... and there’s no way that a single one of you will be a successful viral youtuber or an instagram influencer???? what on fucking earth led you to believe that????

like no offence. but there’ll only be a lucky, lucky, lucky few who get to be the next jennamarbles, ray william johnson, pewdiepie, lily singh, tanya hennessy, jeffree star, james charles, etc etc.... or hell, even friendlyjordies (if you want some satire & politics). and for instagrammers.... idek know them. someone list some instagrammers lmao. but my point still stands.

being an influencer or youtuber- both with huge followings- is a fucking pipe dream- as much as me being a hugely successful author is. it only goes to the insanely lucky, lucky few who have the right connections and the right digital savviness/finesse to grow to be uber successful.... or who started super early, before it was even considered a job title (like jenna mourey/marbles and ray william johnson listed above, and several others not listed who have big fan followings on here) and eventually grew to be the first original titans of the youtuber job title.

or again, they already have some type of other successful media career (like tanya hennessy is an aussie radio announcer. jeffree star had a short lived myspace music career in the late 000s mostly, and made cameos in emo music videos and LA ink at the time also, for example) so that they can successfully fund their youtube channels and/or instagrams as side projects or whatever, as part of their media portfolio.... and they also know how to engage and grow follower bases etc. because they already have an existing one. so it’s twice as easy for them.

tbh i actually entered the m&cs course bc of my use of this hellsite and all the weird trends it had and stuff.... but I eventually got over that as I realised that I just did NOT fit into that field of study. I realised I was too shy... and I also just hated the fact that I had to learn how to use twitter and wordpress and probably eventually snapchat & instagram 😂

i had also gotten sick of follower counts and “growing a following”- considering that by 2015, I’d hit over 3,000 followers on here, I think.... and I realised just what energy and time it took to build this blog.... and my followers.... that I just didn’t have the energy to expend on other platforms for the same thing lmao. like it seemed like more wasted time. I was tired. in addition to that, i also realised that i didn’t want to waste my whole fucking career on the internet worrying over a business’s/company’s multiple corporate social media channel follower counts and image etc.... when i’d done enough of that for myself on this hellsite lmao. doing that stuff with other students in the m&cs course seemed fake asf, especially when it came to giving feedback comments etc lol.

but do you know that one place where you don’t have to give a flying fuck about followers, post views/comments, and blog views? philosophy and english. lmao 😅. no one gives a fuck what you say. unless, of course, you have the evidence and the force of argument to back your pov up. that’s what I was about and am still about. I loved reading and analysing the many books I had to read (contrary to the complaint posts that I made on here lmao)- whereas learning about media and who owned what and how media is manufactured- just made my brain freeze. and although I didn’t do my readings in philosophy (lmao)- i enjoyed a good bulk of the content I had and the issues it involved. doing media & journalism subjects in the m&cs degree, on the other hand, terrified me, bc it meant I had to get in front of a camera and speak- which also scared me bc i look & sound terrible on camera lmao 😂. but I didn’t have to do that almost throughout the entirety of my arts degree (im obvs not counting class presentations in this lol). but do you get my point???

and also the teaching comment. don’t get me wrong, i know a good bunch of people go into teaching after their arts degrees... including many of my friends; and a load of the people I was in my arts degree with. but that is mainly because with other degrees like journalism or media & comms or whatever other fields that they overload into uni arts departments- have taken our job titles away, in a sense....

so, then you’re practically forced to either go into teaching, or go into something outside of your expertise; like idek human resources management/a MBA via a masters.... or, again into something like librarianship via postgrad study- so, that for the love of fucking god- you have a job title to whack next to your name-!!!-instead of just “arts graduate” or “english major” or “philosopher” that all mean fuck all. and that’s because those labels sound vague, unhelpful, undefined and useless; as that’s opposed to something like “teacher” or “librarian” or even “information specialist”. all those titles/labels sound defined, and have actual useful concrete skills: like coding, database creation and maitenance & information retrieval (amongst other things), for a librarian/an information specialist, for example. these skills are then translated into something that you can physically demonstrate to people.... unlike with philosophy and english where people perceive that it’s just “all in your head” and “doesn’t produce anything worthwhile” bc of your very obvious skills that everyone has of communication and writing. like idk. anyway.

anyway here’s my rant for november.

[gizkasparadise]

PLEAAASE write that post about what you can do with an English degree! I'm getting mine rn and everyone's either assuming I'm going to teach, or trying to push me into the med field instead :\

look, english degrees are awesome okay. i’m going to try and make this as brief as possible but am here to elaborate on anything anyone has questions on. 

what everyone thinks you can do with an english degree:

teach

write a novel i guess

teach when the novel writing doesn’t work out

what you can actually do with an english degree:

whatever the fuck you want (no really)

first, there’s different types of english degrees**based on the US education system, which i’m most familiar with

literature! guess what you get to do with a literature degree? a lot. 

skills: close-reading, critical thinking, problem-solving, potentially translating, communication (written for sure, maybe verbal as well), self-direction, detail-orientated, editing, style guides

stuff: archival work, curation, history if you specialize in an era, making digital humanities projects if you want to work with computers or apps, working abroad (especially if you want to do comparative lit), social justice work, public events including readings and vigils, copy-editing, writing (and we’ll talk more about what “writing” really means on the job market in a second), non-profit work, academia/professor, library work if you’re interested in information science, consultant, book history and printing, publishing

creative writing!

skills: close reading, critical thinking, translating, communication, editing, creativity, design, art, self-direction, analytical thinking, problem solving, giving and receiving constructive feedback, art 

stuff: write that novel! or short story! or chap book! or poem!, marketing/advertising, storyboarding for tv or movies or video games, creative development, script writing, social justice work, non-profit work, academia/professorship, campaigning, travel writing, content development for corporations or charities or whatever you want, social media coordinator (guess what, that starts hiring at around 50k now), administration, public relations/press releases, creative director, creative consultant, medical humanities, publishing

technical writing/communication!

skills: collaboration, communication, technical skills, design, problem-solving, analytical and critical thinking, qualitative and quantitative research methods, documentation, development, project management

stuff: user experience, front-end design (web/software/interfaces/etc.), document design, technical writing, medical writing or design, app design, report writing, grant writing, editing, academia/professorship, political campaigning, social media coordinator, software engineering, programming, risk management, project manager, program development/administration, game designer, accessibility and assistive technology developer, consultant for the government/industry/non-profits, proposal developer, business plan developer, publishing

linguistics!

skills: sociology and anthropology, syntax, editing, writing, typically competencies in many languages, cognitive science and psychology, speech therapy

stuff: computational linguistics (PROGRAM COMPUTERS AND AI TO SPEAK?!), assistive technology developer, develop grammar and editing programs for technology (squiggly lines), academia/professorship, translator,  forensic linguist, teach foreign languages or english as an additional language, lexicographer meaning you get to basically archive human language for everyone and that’s fucking cool, tech writing, programming and coding!, speech therapy, user researcher/field researcher, speech therapist and setting you up for speech pathology, consultant for the government/industry/non-profits, voice/dialect coach for actors or voice actors

and many more! (rhetoric, writing studies, teaching english as a second language, others i’ve forgotten)

guess what all these skills and jobs are likely mix-and-match! take classes across the board, figure out what you’re interested in, and chances are your english degree can be used toward those careers!

also guess what there’s different types of teaching you can do too! elementary, middle school, high school, vocational or technical colleges, community colleges, universities, corporate training, government training, specialist training, writing centers, teaching abroad, tutoring, instructional design, curriculum development/educational program development. teaching is also awesome and you can do a lot with the teaching focus beyond being just in the classroom if that’s where you want to go!

but i only want to write!

don’t worry dude there’s tons of writing out there for you to find comfortable employment in. here’s a few i can think of off the top of my head:

creative writing: scripts/screenplays, video games, novels, short stories, poetry, journalism, blogs, freelance digital writing, travel writing, think pieces, editorials, marketing campaigns

technical writing: grants, documentation for engineers/programmers/factories/products, SEO content, web content, medical writing, contract writing, business plans, proposals, job descriptions, freelance or contracted writing, user experience test plans and reports, codes and software scripts

civic writing: press releases, speeches, journalism, non-profit grants, charter documents, legislation or other legal documentation (usually hired by contract work)

tips

make your minor count. you want to write video game scripts? minor in something related to the industry (game studies is even a thing now in several universities). you want to write science books? minor in astronomy. want to write speech programs for AI robots? minor in computer science or human factors. go go go!

learn how to translate your soft skills to hard skills. english majors, generally, have a lot of critical thinking, analytical, and detail-orientated skills. think of specific projects where you’ve used those and talk about *those* on job materials (we can make our qual life quantifiable, #trust)

be adaptable. english degrees (and by extension, humanities degrees) are some of the most flexible skill sets out there. don’t pigeonhole yourself into roles that don’t fit what you want to do (i can’t tell you how many colleagues i’ve had that did editing jobs even though they hated editing and wanted to do design work instead. #DegreesCanDoTwoThings)

know that “publishing” and “editing” and “writing” have much, much more potential than what you might think initially. publishing jobs exist everywhere if you’re willing to work outside of creative fiction (university presses, magazines/newsletters/blogs, documentation for corporations, data-driven or science publications, etc.). these jobs are competitive, but they exist and you can get them

get experience working with cross-functional or cross-disciplinary teams. find opportunities to join clubs or orgs outside of your major that are doing projects you want to do. want to write movie screenplays? join film club, meet people who want to make films! showing that you can work with a bunch of different people from different knowledge bases/disciplines/skillsets will take you a lot farther on the job market

*dabs at forehead* obviously this isn’t exhaustive, there’s more out there! anyone who wants to chime in or add please do!

[pomegranate-salad]

Seeds of Thought : Wicdiv #27

I slightly rushed this this month because uni stuff is a bit all over the place lately. Feel free NOT to point out typos as I’m about to dive in 4 hours worth of administrative law notes and I really need to believe in myself right now. Thoughts and opinions on the new issue under the cut, not spoiler-free.

 KEEP POLITICS OUT OF US !

 “Roll credits !” would say one particular YouTube channel. After four issues, Wicdiv actually provided us for an in-universe explanation for the title of this arc : Imperial Phase (part I) isn’t just our intuitive understanding of it, it’s “a well-supported model” for any Pantheon that enters its second year. And while this information only shows up toward the end, this issue seems constructed like a pop-up book of that point, developing the variations of what this could mean for each character. The issue opens with Baal’s mission, ends with Cassandra’s obsession, and in the middle ? Anarchy in the UK.

 Now I’m not going to go and unpack everything this issue does and says about its characters, not only because I don’t have the time, but also because hovering over every loaded panel is something even more interesting : the nagging feeling that none of them, taken individually, really matters. I’m sure there will be much talk about the odd structuring at the core of the issue, but personally I found the actual disposition less meaningful than the effect it had on the reader. Because of the changing divisions between the different snippets, you cannot get into a page by focusing directly on one storyline : first, you have to seize it in its entirety, spot the junction lines and decide which block to read first. Before jumping into one, you have to catch a glimpse of the others, have your eyes drawn to every panel standing out because of a contrast in colour or close faces. When you read a block, you can’t help but deviate to an adjacent panel, read a word or two, get back on track. You get in and out of blocks, move on to the next one, try to draw meaning from their juxtaposition, to find alternative reading orders ; you wonder if the links between them are deliberate or just your own interpretation.

You are like an analyst starring at a data spreadsheet, trying to wrap their head around all the info, to find order in the apparent chaos, highlight common trends, spot outliers. Seize and interpret. A single panel means nothing, and there are no solitary ones in these pages. Out of sample size comes accuracy, on the sum of individualities you build meaning. And because we’re the analyst leaning over the page, and not one of the insignificant data lost on it, we can stamp our general understanding onto every individual story. We never come into one data fresh. Each exists and makes sense relatively to the others.

 This ties in to the permanent double layer of Wicdiv, which I’ve discussed here : there’s always a filter to our connexion with the gods. No matter how close we get as an audience, we’ll always be infinitely closer to the in-world audience, the adoring public, the reporters, the historians and the psychologists. Before we are the gods, we are the ones watching them. And while Fandemonium was about what it’s like to be a fan, Imperial Phase (part I) takes us to the world of scholars. In the kaleidoscope of what it means to be a public figure, we’ve left the stadiums and twitter accounts for the museums and the monographies. Another facet, another layer forced on your reading. The gods are not simply obsessed, they’re not simply losing it, they’re reproducing a well-supported model. Their teen angst bullshit doesn’t just have a body count, it has an archive section, a conference cycle and a study department.

I said in my previous SOT that despite the time we’ve spent around them we really do not know the gods that well. And this arc provides us with another shade of not getting to know them : through the glasses of historians, sociologists, scientists and theologians. The gods are never really just themselves. Never free of scope.

 And it seems like Wicdiv has mined this topic before, doesn’t it ? Yes, despite having Baphomet on the cover, if this issue has one figurehead, it’s none other than Tara. Tara was crushed by the impossibility to reconcile her self with the layers upon layers of significance that were thrown on her. She made clear in her letter that this crucible doesn’t start at godhood. Existing as a young woman of colour is a political act. You can never be free of the meaning that will be forced on who you are : it is impossible to dissociate yourself from the political signification of yourself, even when you try to create a public persona that will carry these layers for you.

This theme comes back in full force in this issue, as Cass helpfully spells out its subtext : the personal IS the political. Everything the gods do bathes in our political and sociological understanding of it.

When Baal, a young black man from suburban London, says he belongs in the House of Lords, it’s political. When Cass, a trans woman, is having fun in public, it’s political. When Woden uses a sex worker to symbolically assert his power over a woman he fears, it’s political as fuck.

The gods have no control over this double layer : this is something that is imposed on them, no matter how much they’re willing to accept it. Minerva cannot fall apart because if so she’ll just be “another teenage cautionary tale”, and indeed, before she even said it there were speculations on whether or not she’d follow the classic implosion road of the child star. Even when the gods refuse to see anything political in what they are, the audience will be there to imbue that meaning in them. Sakhmet’s quest for emotional impenetrability is something we immediately link to her being a probable abuse victim, despite her never even mentioning that fact. They are never just a teenager off the rails or a woman who has survived abuse, they have to be the flagship of their demographic.

 As public figures, the gods are especially vulnerable to this dispossession of their individuality. Exposition allows you to confound your own psychological needs and issues with actual politics. The gods are lost in the blurred lines between a personal research and a political statement. Baal takes a national security issue and makes it about whether he can maintain control, linking it to his personal insecurities. Reciprocally, Amaterasu takes her mysticism and egomania and turns it into a religion.

 But at its core, Wicdiv is more about youth than it is about celebrity. As stars, the gods can put a political meaning forward, but as youngsters they cannot push it out of their lives. This is after all the one constant characteristic of the reincarnations : they are young. I’m 23, which would make me one of the older gods in wicdiv ; but even so, this issue aligns perfectly with how I see my demographic treated in society at large. Young people are the single most objectified and objectifiable age segment : from denigrating articles about millennials, to politicians “catering” to us in the most improbable way, we are simultaneously a curious beast that needs to be seized up and a formless plague on society’s values. In a world that doesn’t belong to us yet, everymen and scholars alike are trying to appraise us using a language that wasn’t conceived to fit all of us. The language of oppressors. So we’re being chopped up in representative samples, aligned in databanks, made into statistics. It’s normal to talk of the young as a unified group because the world doesn’t know who we are outside of the political meaning it has stamped on us. We are young, and we are never just ourselves. And this can be draining. I’ve never seen anyone over 30 as hyperaware of how they make “their generation” look as any young person. Never seen any of them as self-conscious when it comes to talking about ourselves, how we can shape the future of language. I believe that there hasn’t been a single time in History in which young people weren’t the most political group of a given society. Being political is not, at first, a choice ; it’s something that has been done to us.

 Regarding this, just how special really are the gods ? Them too, them especially, carry at all times the burden of being simultaneously more and less than themselves. More because they cannot exist out of the political understanding of themselves ; less precisely because of that. They are part of a cycle : emerge, burn out, leave the world. A new generation emerges, at the same time completely cut out from the previous one and yet repeating without knowing it the same pattern. The gods are youth personified. In the last pages, David Blake’s speech is mirrored panel by panel to the gods going awry. What can they do, with all their might, to prove this mere human wrong ? Even if they turn out different, outliers, nothing more. Chosen ones, in a long line of chosen ones, a centre page and a footnote, exceptional and yet so, so banal. The gods have never looked more like icons than in these last pages : Batman and Robin in the storm, two lurking shadows, a sacrificial victim, a human sun over her temple – or is it just an illuminated statue ?

Case studies, all of them. David Blake holds the theory. He holds the meaning, he holds the power. And we, as an audience, can only go as far as he can see. Just like him, we are not trapped on the stage ; when the show is over, we’ll pack up and go home. We’ll blog about it and post pictures, until we get tired of it. Those of us who haven’t already will say goodbye to their youth, and will look with various degrees of understanding at the new generation, wondering just how much and how little has changed.

The gods of Wicdiv will never get to grow up. This power will never be theirs. Loved, hated, brilliant. For others to see.

  WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE ISSUE :

 Holy shit, you guys.

 Well if anything, after this people should stop complaining that I’m being too negative for a while.

 Because holy shit, you guys.

 I feel like those of you who’ve been reading me for a while know me enough to guess I loved this issue. And you’d be about as right as the word love can describe how much I adored this. My feeling might of course change, but as of right now there is no question for me that this is the best thing Wicdiv has ever done. It’s notoriously hard for me to connect with something on a pure emotional level, and while it does come handy to lay out themes and ideas, I always feel like I’m missing something by never being able to just be taken aback by a work of art and not know what to say. The last time it happened to me was when I went to see Mad Max : Fury Road and there was just so much beauty on the screen it sent my brain in overdrive and I wasn’t able to think again until we got out of the theatre. And this is what happened here. The thoughts I laid out above didn’t occur to me until this morning ; from Wednesday to Saturday, all I was able to do was pick up the issue and read it again with my mind completely blank.  Congratulations, Wicdiv team : you made something so good it finally got me to shut up about it.

 If I am to analyse, I think a good part of my appreciation comes from how little I expected this issue to turn out as it did. From the previous ones, there was no indication that Imperial Phase (part I) was going to be anything more than enjoyable and slightly more conceptual than the arcs before, which after the way-too-conventional-for-my-taste Rising Action felt a bit underwhelming. And if this issue has one flaw, it’s that it’s so good it makes me a bit harsher on the previous issues : #25 and #26 were perfect for what they were, but still a means to an end, and #24 almost feels like a throwaway prologue than could have been dealt with in a couple of pages. I’ve heard somewhere that a good song can make an album, but a great one can kill it. And yes, I’m a bit afraid for the structural integrity of Imperial Phase, but I’ll pass my judgment after the arc is good and done.

But despite my surprise, I think deep down this is the issue I’d been waiting for Wicdiv to make : something as offbeat, subtly sinister and anxiety-provoking as it had the potential of being despite always presenting as too “normal” for its own premise. More than the weird, I’m a lover of the uncanny, in the Freudian sense of the word ; the “disturbing strangeness”, as we say in French. Nothing in this issue is outwardly, consciously weird, yet everything feels slightly wrong, slightly worrisome, like the dark space between the neon lines linking the panels, a record that isn’t really broken but always seems to drag a little, in a way you can’t quite place. This issue caters to my tastes so much I imagine others are going to have a hard time getting behind it. The only thing that could make me love this more than I do is if they’d found a way to cram a Dodo bird in there somehow. I love Dodo birds.

 But yes, this is Wicdiv as I wish it always was : slick and messy, grim and bright, cynical and sincere, direct and twisted. Cracks on the marble columns. A dissonant symphony. Madness is looming, but it’s not quite there yet, just something in the air. Who knows what will happen in next issue. Who knows what happens on the first of May. Wicdiv has always thrived in this chiaroscuro, between the lights of the Shard and the shadows of Valhalla. But even if Wicdiv never goes down this rabbit hole again, I’ll always be grateful for this issue, as I am for everything that knocks me off my feet and reminds me just what you can do with Art. Sex and drugs and rock n’roll. Very good indeed.