#was this created by someone who works for NYCC???

[captainameowica-mrowvel]

Is there any chance #NYCC has seen this yet? Its totally on brand for this year's merch and store theme...

Where the NYCC 2024 ppl at? @newyorkcomiccon

isekai about a nyc apartment block getting teleported into a fantasy realm, and how this group of people who previously have only had incidental contact with one another come together to build a vibrant community in their new circumstances. there's a season-long arc about introducing bagels and pizza to the fantasy world that gets into the details of sourcing ingredients, developing new technologies, and learning how to work with supernatural substitutions.

[genericpuff]

The Derivative Fashion Sense of Lore Olympus

So I'm usually out here going Gordon Ramsay on Rachel's ass about her writing and art, but for this unsolicited essay I will be wearing a different hat.

Yep, we're going Miranda Priestly today. Specifically the Miranda Priestly who talks fashion, not the Miranda Priestly who abuses employees lmao (though rest assured, I'm gonna have a lot of curt words throughout this).

Disclaimer: I am not at all an expert on fashion, these are just my thoughts and observations from studying fashion styles as part of my own artistic journey, so as always, take what I have to say with loads of salt. I also realize the irony that I am addressing the derivative nature of Lore Olympus when I, myself, am creating a derivative retelling of Lore Olympus.

Alright, enough small talk.

There's this general misconception in runway fashion that all those "impractical outfits" are meant to be worn by the average person, people such as myself who see these outfits and go "what the fuck do you mean Lady Gaga wore a dress made out of meat?!" When we see these crazy fits, our first impression is often "Why would anyone wear that?"

Well, because they aren't outfits. They're art pieces.

And not only are the outfits themselves art pieces, but the people wearing them are the canvases. These outfits aren't designed for just anyone to wear, especially not your average Joe, they're designed both with the artist's vision as well as the model in mind. A lot of thought, expression, cultural influences, and personal messaging is sewn into these designs.

Think about it this way, you couldn't take that aforementioned Gaga meat dress and put it on Taylor Swift. Not only would it not be physically tailored to her, but it wouldn't align with Swift's brand of music. Gaga, at the time of wearing that dress, was making a statement that came about from a collaborative effort between herself, the canvas, and her fashion designer, the artist. The meaning would be lost if you put Swift, Katy Perry, or any other musician into it, because the fact that Gaga is the one wearing it is part of that meaning.

What would happen if you did take the meat dress and put it on someone else? Well, that's how you get the controversial 2022 Met Gala when Kim Kardashian wore the sequin dress that Marilyn Monroe wore for JFK back in 1962.

Not a replica. Not a re-interpretation. The actual literal dress that Monroe once wore. This was a very bold - and in my opinion, reckless - move on Kim's part, because not only was she forcing herself into a dress not tailored to her (and yes, there has been deliberation on what damage was caused to the dress on account of this) but rather than working with a fashion designer to come up with a fresh new interpretation of the same concept, she just went "yeah I'm gonna wear the exact dress", in what many interpreted as a disrespectful power move to artificially put herself on the same level of prestige as Monroe. But she still isn't on that level of prestige and it speaks volumes that she thought carving out her own legacy would be as simple as just taking someone else's. The wolf wore the sheep's clothing with the intent to fool the sheep, but it was still a wolf.

But okay okay, WHAT does this have to do with Lore Olympus?

Well, Rachel released a new interview clip.

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A post shared by Rachel Smythe (@usedbandaid)

I will say, these seem to have all been recorded at once probably when she was back at NYCC and they're probably going to be released daily leading up to the free release of the finale. Why they're hyping up the free version rather than hyping up the FastPass version that actually generates income, I have no clue, but I digress.

As always, the transcript is as follows:

"I really like looking at like, uh, vintage clothing and silhouettes that are... y'know, timeless. I mean, obviously it's really hard to future-proof work that's set in the modern setting because of course the times are gonna change, like, rapidly and there's not a lot you can do about it, but in terms of, like, fashion, there are just some silhouettes that are always going to look very classy, so... I try to put things that will not age. Like, I think there was a chapter recently where she [Persephone?] had like a very vintage Dior look which I really liked, um... and I feel like that will always look nice, like in 10 years time I'll be like, 'She looked good'. But there are some outfits which are more modern where I'm like, 'That probably won't look good in 10 years time'. But, y'know, we still got the inspired vintage Dior outfit so that's good, that's safe."

There isn't much to say about the actual transcribed text itself, but I do think it's very telling that Rachel tries to upsell her sense of fashion sense in LO when... much of it is just flat out derivative. At best she's often referencing real life people (mostly Hollywood celebrities) and at worst she's usually just grabbing stuff off Pinterest inspo boards without any consideration towards the influences or who she's putting into them.

That said, I do think she told on herself quite a bit in that final line of the interview clip - "that's good, that's safe."

I can understand wanting to play it safe in terms of knowing your limitations and not wanting to create something that would be dated in a few years.

But fashion... isn't about playing it safe. Because ultimately, how something ages in the long term isn't something that you, the artist, can control, and like many art mediums, you need to be focused on what to create next, not on how well your old art pieces still hold up in the present where they've been removed from their original context.

And I think this rings true for a lot of Lore Olympus, beyond just the fashion. It's all just a little too safe. We see it in the fashion, we see it in her uncommitted writing decisions, we see it in how often she's willing to retcon things just to write herself out of corners.

And I think that's really Rachel's biggest weakness as a creator at the end of the day. As much as she's tried to put on the persona of "screw you, I'll do what I want", her actions are always the opposite of what she says. She says that the fashion in LO is very vintage, but I can count on one hand how many outfits were actually vintage. The vast majority of them are a lot more modern, with a lot of Western influences, and sometimes with a boob window thrown in.

Case in point, the most recent outfit of Persephone wearing a practically-nude sparkle dress?

That's Rihanna's Swarovski dress that she wore in 2014.

Now, to Rachel's credit, she did find a way to personalize this to Persephone by removing the cap and giving her a rose-shaped bun, but the outfit itself is still just copied directly from Rihanna. Not only is there not a whole lot of Persephone's influence beyond her being literally made out of roses-

-but there isn't anything calling attention to the fact that this is a Greek myth retelling. And this isn't just a problem with the Swarovski dress callback, this is a problem EVERYWHERE.

And of course, that's not even touching on the fact that Hades and Hecate are forced to wear suits constantly. Because, according to Rachel, the fashion inspiration for Hades and Persephone only went as deep is "he's the groom and she's the bride"-

Rachel plays it safe by sticking purely to the inspirations she consumes from modern American media. The "modern twist" on the myths in LO is literally just "it's Greek myth but it's set in Los Angeles". She doesn't seem to want to put herself out there and actually consume Greek content any deeper than what she can find on Google, and it shows in how little Greek there is in this Greek myth comic.

There is, ironically, as I've been told by community members in ULO, a fashion collection called Persephone created by Paolo Sebastian, and in it you can see the actual Greek influences in these outfits far more than what you see in even Persephone's most visually stunning outfits:

These are dresses and yet Paolo uses them as an opportunity to tell the story of Persephone, somehow even more faithfully than an actual written adaption of The Hymn to Demeter. Because fashion, too, can tell a story - and Lore Olympus' fashion, like its writing, has no story to really tell, at least not in Rachel's hands when she's just pulling whatever she can find from what she treats as a pile of "stuff" on Google.

And that's not even getting into how the writing plays it safe much in the same way as the fashion influences and artistic choices. A good example is that S3 premiere sequence, in which Hades and Persephone are pulled away from each other so that... they can get washed down by their family and peers.

Rachel doesn't really do anything to re-contextualize this reference for the context and setting and circumstances of LO, she just goes "I liked that bath scene from Beauty and the Beast so I'm going to put it in LO."

And of course, it doesn't work as effectively as it did in Beauty and the Beast, because the whole original point of that scene was to showcase the big and scary Beast being washed down like a dog by his servants-turned-into-furniture while he stresses over how he's going to win over Belle. It's a comedic subversion, artistically by showing the ferocious beast reduced into a wet dog, but also on a narrative level by showing through his dialogue and actions how nervous he is to impress Belle because his own fate - as well as the fates of his servants - depend on her falling in love with him. He can't afford to mess this up.

But in LO, it's two naked people who we already know love each other and are committed to each other, we've already seen countless scenes of them being sweet on each other and showcasing that they're into each other, and by all accounts they've already gotten their happy ending, so it makes no sense for them to just be like "OMG SHE LIKES ME?? I CAN'T BELIEVE SHE LIKES ME!" "should I seduce him?!?!??" because this seems like a no-brainer and there's zero actual stakes riding on this the way that there was with Belle and the Beast. Plus the people washing them down aren't their servants who are in the same situation as them, they're random gods from the Pantheon whose affiliation ranges from "family" to "never even had a conversation before". One of the women washing down Persephone has literally never spoken a single line of dialogue to her; another one of them was literally dumped by her partner because he wanted Persephone more than her. Who are these people and why are they enthusiastically appearing to give her a bath? Why is Hades being given a scrub down by his own brother?

And that's really the most striking difference between inspired references and derivative ones. Undertale was a game created by a guy who was in love with retro games like Earthbound and Megaman. Stardew Valley was a game created by a guy who loved Harvest Moon and used to play it with his girlfriend. Content that's built on the foundation of another is natural and the basis of inspiration, but you have to go further with it than just going "yeah this thing existed and I'm taking it", otherwise you miss the purpose of why those inspirations were created the way they were.

And when you don't actually explore how you can re-interpret those influences and add your own voice into them, that's how you wind up writing like Rachel whose writing is about as inspired as a cheap character swap cutaway gag from Family Guy.

Rachel's great at referencing, but that's not at all an impressive thing to do as proven by Peter Griffin. She's not at all re-contextualizing or expanding on what inspired her... but she still claims that she's exactly what she's doing because she calls Lore Olympus a "deconstruction". But her deconstruction only ever goes so far as "well what if Aphrodite left Ares for Hephaestus instead of the other way around?" and then just showing that question and never answering it or delivering on the potential of what that could cause. At best, she'll ask a "what if?" but then never actually show us the what if, it begins and ends with the question and the question itself doesn't provoke any thought deeper than "huh, yeah, that would be neat I guess." Episode's over, next scene. What if we showed that clip of Bill O'Reilly freaking out on set, but like, replaced it with Stewie Griffin and changed nothing else about it except for that? That's the joke, next scene.

I know, we're digressing hard off the fashion here, but the fashion itself is just a symptom of a much bigger problem that expands even beyond Lore Olympus - Rachel plays things way too safe. Even her responses in her interviews are painfully subdued, often resorting to the same tired answers that we've heard 823190589320 times before to the same hand-picked questions that are undoubtedly chosen ahead of time to ensure she doesn't have to answer anything too complicated. And when she does say "I have thoughts about xyz" she never actually... expresses her thoughts. She just says she does and then moves on without any further elaboration because she can't wholeheartedly commit to whatever thoughts she has going on.

Granted, I'm sure that part of that is owed to the fact that she might feel like she can't say anything while the critics are breathing down her neck. I can understand that. But it's gotten so chronic that it's now bleeding into the work itself and it's led to even more criticism of her work. Need I remind you that this is the same person who copy pasted the definition of "xenia" from a first result Google search into her comic instead of naturally writing it into the script:

Rachel played it so safe that she basically treated her own audience like kindergartners by explaining what a scene meant even after explaining it in the text:

As true as it is in fashion, writing stories and making art takes risks. That doesn't mean you have to completely throw caution to the wind, but if you don't take risks, you do yourself the disservice of writing something that can truly be called unique and special to you. If you don't use your influences wisely, if you don't analyze and re-analyze what's influenced you over the years, you're going to wind up losing a lot of subtext in those influences and missing out on the opportunity to add your own voice into the re-interpretation. Rachel does take a lot of risks in LO, but they're not calculated risks, they're not risks that actually have any meaning behind them, she's sort of just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks, and worst of all, when it doesn't stick, she herself doesn't stick to it, she backpedals, she cowers away from the decisions she's made.

Rachel expressed her worries about depicting fashion that would become aged, but Lore Olympus is already aged through her own inability to commit to her decisions, take risks, and find her voice. It's aged itself through its poor interpretations of the myth, it's aged itself through its reliance on Tumblr tropes that have already been replaced tenfold, and it's aged itself through Rachel herself riding off the initial innovation of creating Lore Olympus and then never continuing to challenge herself or raise the bar for herself.

It proves true the discussion around why Lore Olympus became popular - at the time, it was groundbreaking, drawn in a style that we hadn't seen much of before, with fresh new takes on the myth; now, in 2024, its 'takes' feel tired and half-baked, and its art style has become a corporate-scrubbed shell of what it once was. And yet, Rachel is still rewarded for it all the same, so settling for comfortable mediocrity has become the name of the game.

Rachel may be trying as hard as the Disney life action remakes and Kim Kardashian to put herself on the same pedestal as the greats of yesteryear simply by copying what they did, but in playing it this safe and refusing to find her own voice out of the voices that influenced her, Lore Olympus isn't timeless. It's soulless.

[bizarrelittlemew]

Hello, I’ve been unable to watch the NYCC panel but I see everywhere that is was awful and weird?!?! What actually happened ? Could you make a little recap for people like me who didn’t get to see it? Thank you!

I'll try my best ✌️ this is just the impression I got though (and sorry this got long lmao)

it was awkward because they weren't allowed to talk about ofmd, which made the whole thing seem more and more ridiculous as it went on. in addition, they had to do a sort of game where they were asked questions like "who is the most likely to do [x]" and then write a name on a board and reveal it at the same time. this could've been fine for maybe 10 minutes but they had them do it for the whole hour.

the issues with this game were that 1) the questions were very "generic corporate ice breaker questions", 2) they spent a lot of time in silence writing down, and 3) when a question finally did lead to stories or conversation, it was quickly shut down in order to move on to the next boring question and writing in silence.

they could've asked them about non-struck work (Rhys even brought up the books he's written several times and it wasn't followed up on), they could've collected and vetted fan questions beforehand, they could've just let them talk idk, they could've found a more fun game or ditched the boards (one of my fav moments was Rhys saying something like "I have a mic, why do I have to write it down?" honestly this would've made it 25% less boring lmao).

adding to that, there were sound issues meaning that Con and Rhys couldn't hear what was going on a lot of the time. Rhys said it again and again and nothing was done about it.

you could just tell how frustrated they all were and what this panel could have been if not for the shitty studios refusing a fair deal for the actors. I think the cast did what they could, and there were some sweet and funny moments. but it was clear that Rhys was pissed about not being able to talk about what they all wanted to talk about (I felt bad for everyone but especially for him).

they did a whole "ha ha we were all in New Zealand at the same time what a coincidence" thing and Rhys said that (paraphrased) if only they could be paid fairly, they could create something great with all the talent in the room, going off on the studios for a bit. it was honestly a bit of a relief for someone to voice it (to me, it felt like someone had to say something lmao and he did).

in the end they got a question about fantasy worlds. Rhys said he already lived in a fantasy world in his head and it was nice, though this was one of the odder moments. Matt and Nathan basically agreed and said it was all very weird (in different words). Rhys then said fantasy worlds are important because the real world is shit right now and there's no denying it; that in fantasy worlds we can all love each other and use kindness; and it's important to keep creating and believing in them until the real world becomes like that too.

and then he said "goodnight" (= "fuck this shit I'm out"), got up, put on his sunglasses, and started beat-boxing and rapping saying "why can't we talk about the show". their time had run out anyway, he said it had certainly been an experience, that he couldn't hear much of what was going on, and they all thanked the audience and it ended ✌️

anyway this is just my take and I hope SAG-AFTRA get a fair deal soon so the cast can celebrate the show with us like they so clearly want to. I also hope Matthew Maher does more panels after this (it was his first I think!) despite it being such a weird experience because he was great to watch!! anyway they're all happily doing photo ops and autographs now I guess 🤸

(if you want to watch there is a way)

[adventuresofclever]

CleverMax: SDCC 2021 Masquerade Entry

Comic-Con@Home Masquerade Entry: Adventures of Clever Costume Title: CleverMax - Mr. Clever as a Borderlands boss Costume Description: Recreation of Mr. Clever from the Doctor Who episode Nightmare in Silver, written by Neil Gaiman, done in the style of the video game, Borderlands. Bio: They/He pronouns

Greetings all!

I realized that I never wrote about how I made my CleverMax mashup cosplay, so when SDCC posted about their At Home masquerade, I figured this was the perfect time to do so! Most of you know that I cosplay exclusively as Mr. Clever from Doctor Who, with the random mash up thrown in here and there. I’ve always wanted to be a Borderlands cosplayer, and the following is how I managed to combine the two together.

As always, enjoy the blog and if there are any questions, please feel free to contact me. 

Let’s step into the TARDIS and jump back to October 20, 2009, when the first Borderlands game was released. It was my first foray into FPS (First person shooters) and I was hooked from day one. In 2012 they released Borderlands 2 which is, in my not so humble opinion, the best video game ever created. We got some of the most iconic charcters and storylines in that game. Including the best DLC ever, Bunkers and Badasses. And my second favorite villain of all time – Handsome Jack.

Jack’s sass, sarcasm and charm fits well with Mr. Clever’s personality. And in the pre sequel you get to play a version of him called the Dopplegnager.  I mean, this pretty much wrote itself.

Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2 and Mr. Clever from Doctor Who

Borderlands cosplayers have aIways left me in a state of awe and admiration. The style of the game is so unique and seeing it recreated in person is nothing short of incredible. I’ve always wanted to figure out a way to be a Borderlands cosplayer. For the past eight years I have only ever cosplayed as Mr. Clever from Doctor Who. In the summer of 2019 I decided that was the perfect time to try to make this happen before NYCC.

When I initially decided to do this, it was going to be more of a mash up between Handsome Jack and Mr. Clever. I had planned on wearing Jack’s basic outfit, but in Clever’s colors with the a few add ons. Namely the bow tie and the cybernetics.

After much research and drafting, I decided against that. I ended up just turning Mr. Clever into a Borderlands boss. Same basic outfit as Mr. Clever/11th Doctor, but cel shaded and with weapons, cause Borderlands.

I made the accessories, chess set, and obviously the working cyberplanner piece itself for my Nightmare in Silver version of Clever, but I have never tackled anything this ambitious. An entire costume from scratch? Not something I thought I could do. Not knowing how to sew and being visually impaired were both challenges that I had to work around.

I started with looking around my house for various items that I thought I could use. I figured if I messed up, might as well mess up on something I hadn’t spent money on yet! I was going to toss a pair of my old paddock boots as they had some rips in the leather. Ripped leather? How very Pandora. They were the first thing I tackled.

Old paddock boots that I refurbished for the cosplay

This was my first time using leather paint and I have to say I am very pleased with the Angelus brand of leather paint. I have worn these in the rain and through puddles, and they have held up 100%.

After the boots were done, I started on the vest. I had an old black vest lying around the house that was sort of the shape and size I wanted. I don’t have a dress form, so I put it on myself, inside out, and used safety pins to make it the size I needed, then hand sewed around the safety pins. Not ideal, but it works.

I had a spare pair of black jeans, button down light blue shirt and a plain bow tie that I just ended up cel shading.

The only item that I really couldn’t figure out was the purple frock coat. Try as I might, I couldn’t find one to modify. So the coat was actually made by my friend Heather Long. I did alter the length after NYCC. 

With the clothes themselves all set, for the most part anyay, it was time to paint. This was my first time trying to recreate the art style of Borderlands, often referred to as cel shading. I have a few “art of Borderlands” style books that I poured over before I sat down to attempt this.

Other than the accessories and anything leather, I used the same materials and techniques for each article of clothing. Instead of describing each seprate piece, I’ll just explain what I did to achieve the overall look.

When you look at a Borderlands character on screen, it can be a bit overwhelming. So many colors, and so many nuances of each color. I did my best to visually sift through all that, and try to establish what I thought was the base color.

Once the base color was determined, I just added blotches, blobs, shading, low lights, highlights and other variations of the base color itself throughout each piece. I recommend keeping your fabric wrinkled and using those wrinkle as guidlenes for where the lines and shading would fall naturally.

Once all of that dried, I then went over different sections of the fabric with white and black lines. To get that crisp, almost comic book looking outline of each piece I used black sharpie, and white fabric pens as well as white fabric paint.

When I sat down to do the coat, I wanted something a little different than just cel shading. During a second playthrough of Tales from the Borderlands, I noticed Rhys and other characters had interesting logos and designs on the back of their jackets. I ended up putting a chessboard pattern on the back as a homage to the chess game between the 11th Doctor and Mr. Clever in the episode.

Great shot of the chess board and my Judd Nelson pose

The materials that I used for all of the clothing items were craft paints that I had around the house. Any brand works, but I prefer Americana paints. I then added an additive that you use to make the paint water proof and used various sized brushes. Dry brushes are also very useful if you have them.

Black sharpies of different sizes and any fabric markers are also very helpful. Heat setting is required to make the paint waterpfoof, so if you mess up before you add sharpies, you can wash the clothes and start over.

A few tips if you decide to undertake cel shading clothing: Until now I hadn’t noticed that there aren’t many thing in Borderlands that are true black. Due to the art style most things that appear black are in reality shades of grey, with a grey base colr. This makes it easier to add the lines, shading, and what not.  Looking back, I should have bought GREY clothes. It was a ton of work to make the pants look like they were a mixture of greys. And as a result of so many laers of paint, they are stiff, lost their stretch and feel an entire size smaller! So I would recommend grey fabric as a base for black clothing and buy a size larger.

The pants are so stiff that I think they will stand up on their own

This entire process was way more fun than I thought it would be and I’ve since become addicted to cel shading anything I can. I may or may not have started cel shading my guest room. 

After the clothing was finished, I started on some accessories and props. The first being the easiet – a wee little cybermite that I cel shaded. My cosplay of Mr. Clever always has a cybermite on my lapel, so I took one of my older ones and repainted it.

You can’t have a Borderlands character without some sort of weapon, so I painted a nerf gun that looks similar to the one that Clara Oswald holds in the episode.

I have never had to carry a gun for my Mr. Clever cosplay before so weapon checks are sort of new to me. I didn’t want to go through that at NYCC so I came up with a clever, no pun intended, way around it.

I took a photo of each side of the gun. Went to Staples and had them printed on heavy cardstock. Then I cut around the guns, glued them together between a piece of cardboard then added some black electical tape around the edges.  Viola. Instant weapons check approved gun that is lightweight, and also acts a fan when it gets hot. It was a huge hit at the con. A few security guards were like “ we have to check your…wait..is that flat?” And they proceeded to play with it. I highly recommend doing this!

Gun and its flat counterpart

I am holding the flat gun in this picture from NYCC

In the actual game, you can equip your characters with mods that give them certain abilities and bonuses. In the Pre-Sequel, you can play as a Dopplganger of Handsome Jack so I searched for some of his mods and found one in purple which seemed perfect. I made the mod with cardboard, covered it in craft foam, modge podge to set, and installed led lights. The first time I wore it I put it on my belt which didn’t work. It kept falling off. I eventually put it on my lapel and wore it like Jack does. Unfortunately, someone glomped on me at a con and broke it, so I recently had to remake it all over again.

No Borderlands costume would be complete without cel shading on yourself. This was a huge challenge for me for a few reasons. One, I’m visually impaired so doing line work like this was challenging. Two, I am highly allergic to so many materials and ingrediants that finding a make up brand that I could wear was a trial and error process that ended up with many break outs and rashes before I found the perfect combination.

I used mostly eye liner pencils and liquid eye liner to achieve the look. The Wet n Wild liquid eye liner lasts forever, and is actually difficult to remove, but that is not a bad thing as it stood up to the heat of a very crowded venue.

As for the cel shading itself, I relied on many refernce photos of various characters in the game. I started with the eyebrows first as that seemed to frame the face nicely and give me a nice mischvieous look. I then just outlined the bones of my face, adding some random lines here and there. It never looks the same way twice, but that’s ok. Playing with different angles, lines, shading etc is half the fun!

The only real challenge were my hands. The make up didn’t last that long on my hands so I had to touch it up throughout the con. I also eventually started to use band aids that I cel sahded to cover up a tattoo on my inner wrist.

Figuring what to do with my hair is an on going process that I still haven’t 100% mastered. I opted to not use a foam wig as I have over heating issues on a cool day let alone trying to wear one if it gets warmer. I have had adverse reactions to craft foam in the past, so I don’t want it touching my skin, and lastly, I think a wig AND a facial prosthetic would be too much for me. So I decided to just cel shade my hair.

This takes forever to do, and I’m still figuring out better techniques every time I wear it.

I have a really great brand of colored gel, called Mofajang which I apply with a baster brush that you would find in the kitchen gadgets aisle. I also use a clean mascara brush to add some finer lines here and there. Set with way more hair spray than I ever used in the 80’s and it becomes fairly waterproof.

I have learned that due to how hard the make up and hair color is to remove, I really need to wear this on the LAST day of a con. I made the mistake of wearing it on day one of Long Island Who one year, and spent hours scrubbing my skin and hair for the next day. Far better to just leave the con with a tad bit of left over cel shading. Which makes it very interesting when you stop at a roadside bathroom on the trip home.

With the entire costume done it was time to work on the actual cyberplanner appliance. 

Next time I make a variation of Clever, I will make this FIRST. Making these pieces is the bane of my existence – I love wearing them, hate making them.  It’s a long process.

I am allergic to latex, silocone, scuply, most clays, and so many other things that seem to be every cosplayers go-to. When I made my first cyber piece back in late 2013, I spent weeks trying to find a substance that would keep attached to my face all day without causing a rash. Like an alchemist in a fantasy novel, I submerged myself into creating the perfect concoction. It took 22 days to finish the final product.

I admit that I rushed a bit on the Borderlands one.  As a result, it doesn’t quite fit as well as my others, and is a bit heavier than I expected. I only added two working lights, instead of the usual four, to hopefully balance the piece out. It lasted through two full days of a con, despite the heat of a crowded venue, but I did end up tweaking it a bit after. Even with the tweaks, it still doesn’t fit as well as I would like. It is too heavy and brings down the entire left side of my face, making it difficult to keep my eye open at times. I really need to sit down and force myself to make a new one.

There are a few more things that I would like to add to this costume eventually. Like a belt of grenades, and maybe another gun. But aside from that, I am incredibly pleased with how this costume turned out. It is by far, my favorite Clever variation that I have done.

I hope this post gives you the inspiration to go off and cel shade something, and possibly even play some Borderlands!

[cosplayinamerica]

Batman of New York: rethinkcosplay // photo: felixwongphotography

I thought what if an origin story happened in real life. If you could take the same impetus from a comic where heroes are created, and apply that to real life, you'll see a Batman created in real time, where today’s time has laid the foundation for this to happen, and how cool that could be. I thought that any cosplay going forward I couldn't at least do one that wasn't a commentary of what was going on around us in the world; that years from now people would refer back to pictures of this time for a snapshot of what was going on, and how that influenced things. They'll see Loki Variants, The Mandolorian, and this other weird thing I call the Batman of New York.

I wanted to recreate Batman the same way comic book writers take liberties with characters, and put out the latest iterations of them. My Batman embodies New York State, and the Joker head represents the Covid cluster. It was never meant to be Covid as a joke or anything, I'm sorry if people got that, but rather that it was contained, severed, and put away. The image of both together represents New York State having it all under control. It's meant to be uplifting - despite the acrylic paint shrinking the eye area of the mask and making it look like a frown.

I was attracted to the use of symbolism already, and wanted to take that further. "Last Knight on Earth", the Batman post-apocalyptic world story, is another part of the flavor text that went into it. And incorporating different aspects to best communicate New York and Covid. The first thing I settled on was the color. That medical blue, which actually, was used in Batman Year Two. When I saw the outline of New York State in my Google searches, I knew this could lay the groundwork for something powerful. I then immersed myself in the Batman world of imagery to see all the things that I could recontextualize to fit.

I'm not one of those great cosplayers you see, I am known for my execution and ideas I guess, so I was looking to play around more, and branch out to where I wanted some element of motion as part of this one. The Jokers head is an FX head that moves, with golf cues for that spikey Covid hair. The stitches on each side of that head are prison tally marks that go up to the number 16(this year in ny comic cons). I didn't know whether NYCC was happening this year so I had half the time I did to create something when it was announced, and I had to get moving. There are things I wish I did more with, or whatever, but I think I did pretty well considering.

(chill_bruh_photography)

Cosplay is an important thing to champion to other people. It's wholesome, it is healthy, it's not drugs or alcohol, it doesn't harm anyone, and it's okay. People make fun of you, but what they are really doing is putting down someone who has passion. Cosplayers are thinkers and detail-oriented, and really amazing people, cause those skills cross over into the rest of their lives, and I wish they were recognized better for what they achieve and go through just to bring you these heart-warming outfits off their own accord. To do these laborious cosplays is almost microdosing pain, that when faced with other greater pains in life, it becomes blunted in ways. This is not only helpful, but meditative in a lot of ways for us. It's confirmation of a passionate and healthy person, who can work through problems creatively, who when faced with issues are willing to go to the extra mile for resolve, not to mention, a creative spouse that would utilize that creativity to give you a unique and exciting relationship or home life. These are people who continue to create for the sheer passion, with no promised outcome of monetary gain or fame, it feels pure to do it and be it. I respect those people, I trust them. Unashamed, with their interests worn proudly on the outside, willing to look foolish to make so many people happy. You feel important again, and widely accepted, outside of your birthday. I've always said Comic Con was like a second birthday to me.

I want to give love to all the photographers and videographers - documentarions out at these conventions every year. To please understand how important you are, and how much you are needed. Cosplayers and conventions dont exist without you. These times in our lives couldn't be recorded without you. Finding, and being sent amazing pictures, etc, of work that you slaved over is essential. Some of us are in outfits that won't allow us to get our own phones out and take pictures, so thank you all for recognizing something in us, and me, that is special enough to want to capture. 

[sapphichymns]

Gotta be completely honest: as a new Doctor Who fan, I feel the majority of the fandom wants to kick me out just cause I don't have the nostalgia. The fandom's obsessive insistence with the 'Present' being the worst while the 'Past' is perfect as it is.

I did a small dive on old issues of the Doctor Who Magazine (the letters section reads like Reddit) and this isn't exactly new but the fandom did nothing to change how it welcomes its new fans or accept some just view the same work in a different perspective. The fact the two biggest subreddits in the fandom (r/DoctorWho and r/Gallifrey) don't have any info about this era pinned (for example, the upcoming NYCC panel) is rather telling of the gatekeeping still going on with new blood. Another thing is if someone tries to create something about this era or try to be positive about Chris Chibnall, Jodie Whittaker or Segun Akinola (yes, even him), the post gets ignored or someone has to comment 'but the writing is awful'. You can just imagine that comment gets like 20 different replies saying this era isn't as good as RTD or Moffat and it becomes about something that isn't the post itself. The nostalgia runs deep.

The reason this is so infuriating is how stale the conversation about this era has become. The fandom only wants to engage with the 'Susan/Master/Yaz should've been the Timeless Child' takes or bad faith criticism of how Ryan's arc is just him playing basketball and Chibs is just ticking boxes. If I bring the fact that no, that isn't his arc and it was him maturing and becoming more emotionally intelligent, I'll probably be told I'm reading too much into it even though this is superficial text reading. It is obvious. It is there for every single person in the audience to see.

Reading those letters in the DWM made me realize something. The fandom refuses to engage with the 'Present' but also with the 'Past' cause doing so for both, it enters in conflict with their nostalgia. The letters would never mention any plot points. They would mention the actors, characters, name of the episodes, producers, etc (basically what someone would list to be called a fan) but would never try to engage with it in a thematical, metaphorical or allegorical manner. Just saying it was 'best thing of all time' or 'pure drivel'. It feels if you want to go a little deeper, you're ruining what came before, the nostalgia, even if you don't have it.

I love to engage with this kind of stuff but when I was looking for a place where I could do so, the most popular fandom spot was not it. Thank god I never did this super deep dive about the current era there! I would probably be told there's nothing to read hera or (even if indirectly) be told I'm not a 'true' fan. Just cause I go against their nostalgia. The idea that there's someone who might find flaws in the one thing they like. Someone who might see a positive somewhere else.

[chaseartwork]

STORYTIME So- this time of year, is usually the Calgary Comic Con. And after years of always over-preparing and pulling all the stops to have the best show possible at Calgary/lots of new work, I've developed a physical response to this time of year. I get excitedly stressed and super motivated to make new art. Even now, when there is no show to go to, I feel the stressful urge to "create" way more than usual. Way-Back when I was just doodling on the side, and working full time as a graphic designer, circa 2010 I didn't think "art" could ever be a full time thing, especially if you asked Graphic Designers (website design is where the money is!) I started doing local Winnipeg conventions, and actually made a bit of money with my own art! I had never really ever been able to sell my drawings before (tried a bunch of fine art galleries, but that didn't work). I covered my costs at my local con, so I thought maybe a 12h road trip to Calgary's much bigger comic con was worth the financial risk. I work my BUTTT off getting as much new work made and printed, packed my car full of everything I could, and drove all day to Calgary. I made more than my costs at Calgary, beyond expectations, and I had this moment, where my mind was blown: I made money with my art, not art someone else wanted, not do portraits, my own art. this was a thing. My productivity grew three sizes that day. It was a big moment in my career as an artist, and Calgary became a huge time of year for me, even when I had 30+ cons on my schedule that included giants like SDCC, NYCC, EMCC, Calgary was still the most exciting, because it was the show that turned art into a full time job for me, and I always wanted to have new and exciting work ready for that event. (Attached is my 2013 booth, where I decided to quit my job and start my own company) Thanks so much to everyone for the support back in the "before times", helping to get here, and to everyone who is ordering online and keeping me going during these weird times when cons are not yet safe. All orders on my store get a fun little thanks postcard/bonus cloud art and a thumbnail sheet of what paintings I'm working on next! https://www.instagram.com/p/COMLWV2AEUV/?igshid=1n1j6jv6thyky

[cielrouge]

NYCC 19′ RWBY Volume 7 Panel

Went to the RWBY Panel at Hammerstein Ballroom, with following cast and crew in attendance: Kerry Shawcross & Miles Luna (RWBY writers & showrunners), Lindsay Jones (Ruby), Barbara Dunkelman (Yang), Arryn Zech (Blake), and Kara Eberle (Weiss).

New Announcements (Official News, Partnerships, Media Tie-ins)

The Smite collaboration was officially confirmed, with Team RWBY available in November. There will be a battle key to unlock a god skin. Miles noted humorously that it's typical for Smite characters to have a joke line of some kind, so "they won't a bunch of stinker joke lines for Weiss, since she wouldn't be good at telling them."

The next RWBY novel tie-in is called RWBY: Before the Dawn, focused on Teams CFVY and SSSN. It'll be published by Scholastic in July 2020. There is a chance that the lore featured in these novels may tie-in referenced in the general show lore later on.

The first issue of the DC Comics tie-in will be available on 10/9. Blake will also have her own upcoming storyline in this tie-in.  

Volumes 8 and 9 have already been greenlit! Kerry noted that he literally started the first script for volume 8 this morning after the RWBY team was officially given the budget to start working on them several weeks ago.

Miles noted that Vol 9 will be shorter than the other seasons so that Vol 8 can be longer. This is also partially because they want Volumes 7 and 8 to be more connected story-wise.

Miles noted that the main draw of external partnerships is that "it expands the RWBY world and let others play in their sandbox." His favorite thing about the Scholastic novels is that "they're completely different from the show, but still feature the characters we love and get to expand on them."

What's Next for Volume 7

In terms of development, Miles and Kerry noted that "they've never been this far on a volume before so everyone in the office has been working normal hours."

There's no theatrical release for volume 7 this time, which is different compared to previous seasons, but at the same time, having this release usually forces the team to push things ahead of schedule, so this is probably a good thing since it lessens the pressure for the team? Kerry and Miles did thank RWBY fans for having general patience for the Volume 7 wait.

The new designs for Jaune, Nora and Ren were shown. Miles seemed pretty enthused about Ren's design in particular and joked about being "Ren-sexual." I think he also said something along the lines of: "He's just really hot, okay???"

Miles is most excited about exploring the settings of Atlas and Mantle (the extant city underneath Atlas) and that the "art team did a great job combining the future fantasy and tech savvy aspects" which define Atlas.

Lindsay interjected that "Atlas is straight-up NYC," and joked in comparing different architectural designs of the kingdoms, it's like a "Mac vs. PC" situation.

Arryn's excited to learn more about Weiss this season, since she herself has yet to see the full rendered setting of Atlas.

Kerry made a general note that he loves seeing all the new character outfits/designs animated, and Lindsay's favorite outfit is actually for an unseen character that wasn't featured in the teaser trailer shown.  

General Q&A

"Favorite experiences working on RWBY so far": Lindsay noted that "it's been a life-changing and humbling experience." Kara noted that she loves the community and prior to two years ago when she came to NYCC for RWBY, she'd never been to NYC before. Arryn noted that "it's created this wonderful platform that's connected people from all different backgrounds, so it's lovely to hear all these stories of how RWBY has helped them in some way." Barbara noted that she loves "getting to be someone else's favorite cartoon character."

"Is there a reason why everyone is loaded on belts this season?": "Anime, Final Fantasy, and gravity." Arryn did note some confusion that Blake is wearing a cat suit, so she wasn't quite sure why she has so many belts. Kara came up with a humorous backstory theory on the spot for Weiss that she must have had some kind of traumatic experience where she was pantsed as a kid and joked about Weiss subsequently having a "belt butler" of some kind.

"What are some of the most difficult lines to voice act?": The general consensus is that one or two lines are the hardest since more emotion has to distilled/conveyed with less words. Lindsay said Ruby's "Leave her alone," was a tough line, for Arryn, it was Blake's "It's Fine" in Vol 6, Barbara noted that it's a toss-up between Vol 2 with her talking to Blake in the classroom vs. Vol 5 where Yang confronts her mother. For Kerry, it was the chibi episode where Neptune has a noir-esque introduction scene. And for Miles, it was when Jaune first comes across Pyrrha's statue.

"Which character would you choose to be stuck in an escape room with?": Arryn noted that either Pyrrha, who would be calm, or Yang, who would literally just break the room to escape. Miles noted that he'd pick Ren, who would also be chill, and for Kerry, he said that he'd go for the chaotic choice and chose Sun. Lindsay interjected with a humorous anecdote on how she's really bad at escape rooms, and once thought a clock in the room was a clue and subsequently convinced her co-worker to smash it - they ended up having to pay for it, since it wasn't a clue, and indeed, merely part of the overall set.  

The panel ended with showing the first 12 minutes of episode 1 of Volume 7.

[signoraviolettavalery]

I’m new to the Roswell New Mexico fandom and I have noticed people,you, don’t really like the creator Carina and I was wondering why.

Ooooh boy. Would you like those answers in alphabetical order, chronological order, order of egregiousness, or order of how much they piss me off? 

I have a lot of issues with Carina, as do a lot of other people. Obviously, not everyone agrees with me, and some of my answers may be controversial (they’re the subject of biiiig debates in fandom). I have no intention of re-opening those debates, so what I write below is a summary of my opinions (many of which I know are shared by at least some others in fandom) for the purposes of answering your question. I’m also putting it all under a cut, because it’s a lot of negativity that some people may want to skip. 

I mention a lot of tweets and interviews in the answer below; I, frankly, don’t want to go searching for and linking to each interview and tweet (and also, Carina has me blocked, for reasons I’ll get into), but everything below has a source that I can find if you super want to read it yourself. 

So, here goes.

Firstly, Carina pisses me off because she is a white, straight woman who is writing about oppressed and marginalized minorities and, quite frankly, doing a bad job of it. She brags constantly about how progressive her show is, how much she wanted to include people of color and comment on things like immigration, how important the Malex storyline is to her, etc, etc, but doesn’t seem to be capable of (or care about) the delicacy, nuance, and care such issues require.

In a panel she did on Roswell (at ATX or NYCC, I think?) she talked about how she had qualms writing about marginalized people from identities she didn’t belong to; she said she was plagued by the question of “should I even be doing this?” Which she then immediately answered with, “but we’re doing it!” and that was that, and that seemed to me to be such a flippant way to answer the question. Like, you’re writing about people whose experiences you don’t share and your response isn’t “I’m going to do research and talk to people,” it’s “eh, I”m doing it anyway”? 

Then there’s the fact that when it comes to representation, Roswell has done a really really shitty job, engaged in harmful tropes, and thrown its characters of color under the bus. Carina insists that she consults with a lot of advocacy groups when writing about the experiences of undocumented immigrants and Latina characters, and yet. Liz simply forgives Max in the span of two episodes, even though he covered up her sister’s murder and was responsible for subjecting her family to racially-motivated hate crimes for a decade. Max, a white man, at no point acknowledges his privilege; he just pouts and whines when she rejects him until the Latina who was fucked over by his use of privilege just...forgives him. It is, in my opinion, incredibly indelicate and kind of insulting. She made the south Asian man (the only Asian character on the show, in fact) the borderline pedophile serial killer who violated Isobel for years, was creepily grooming both Isobel and Rosa, and murdered a bunch of women. She made the only black woman on the show (Maria) the plot device for an entire season: Maria had no storyline. She was there to give information to Liz when Liz was solving Rosa’s murder. She hasn’t known about the aliens all season and was thus excluded from the major show narratives. Her one defining character trait (her loyalty to her friends) was completely thrown away in order to make her a plot device for Malex (because let’s face it, Miluca won’t last and Malex will get back together). Narratively, she was thrown under the bus. 

And then there’s the queer representation, which...don’t get me started. She keeps talking about how much she loves Malex and how they’re her favorites, but she’s also very explicitly said that she finds happy relationships boring and that she uses fiction to work out her own trauma, which means that she’s essentially likely going to put the only same-sex ship on the show through an interminable amount of tragedy (because that’s what queer viewers absolutely need in this day and age). 

Plus, the idea of a straight woman using a fictional same-sex relationship to work out her own issue makes me really, really uncomfortable, because she’s made it clear that she fundamentally doesn’t understand the queer experience. She says she consults with advocacy groups when she’s writing queer characters (she won’t actually name these LGBT advocacy groups, which doesn’t make me sideye her at all), but I have doubts about whether she listens to them. I mean, she said, after the season 1 finale aired, that Michael going to Maria has nothing to do with her being a woman, even though she also explicitly said Michael wants something “easy,” and a same-sex relationship in Roswell, as it’s presented in canon, can never be easy. Roswell is canonically a homophobic, bigoted town, and Malex’s trauma stems largely from homophobia. Their relationship issues stem (not entirely, but largely) from them being the victims of homophobic abuse and a homophobic hate crime. Being with Maria means Michael never has to worry about any of those things, and the fact that Carina doesn’t seem to conceive of this is mind-boggling to me. 

Then there’s the fact that Maria...basically outed Michael to Liz, and this doesn’t seem to be a problem. Of course, maybe they’ll address it in season 2, I don’t know. But, Carina basically wrote a woman who has been best friends with a gay guy for more than a decade as casually outing someone (when she tells Liz that Michael is Museum Guy). The fact that this is a problem doesn’t seem to cross her mind for a second when she tells Liz, even though this is information Michael has never told her himself and they’ve known each other for a decade. It’s not something Carina’s ever mentioned in the numerous post-finale interviews she did. And frankly, it doesn’t matter who Maria outed Michael to; the fact that she’s capable of it when best friends with a gay guy in a town like Roswell, when Maria has been written as a loyal and understanding friend up to now, again suggests to me that Carina just does not comprehend the queer experience. 

(Also, technically, all the Isobel/Rosa hints, then it turning out that actually Noah was possessing Isobel, screams queerbaiting to me)

And then there’s the mess that is the love triangle. I’m of the camp that things that it’s complete and utter bullshit that contributes to the stereotype of bisexual people as promiscuous, though I know there’s people who think it’s good representation. It shows that she’s more interested in her particular (and frankly, kind of esoteric) storytelling preferences more than she cares about representation or continuity. The love triangle is, frankly, really badly written, and nothing about Maria developing “feelings” for Michael (or him for her, honestly) is in any way believable. Maria getting with Michael behind Alex’s back requires throwing out Maria’s only character trait (her loyalty and commitment to being a good friend). But Carina ~has~ to have her love triangle, characterization or continuity be damned. 

Speaking of storytelling, Carina is kind of...a bad writer. Look, I love the characters on Roswell, and I love the world she created, and it had some truly beautiful moments. But let’s just admit the season 1 plot was a mess. There were so many plot holes. Who knows what? Does Alex know Liz knows about aliens and vice versa? Does Alex know about Rosa, or just about aliens? Why did they spend episode 9 establishing that Alex is taking over project Sheppard to find the alien serial killer, only to have him be missing from the episode (1x11) where they find the alien serial killer? Does Alex know that it’s Noah? If Michael’s hand got broken right before he went to cover up Rosa’s murder, why did Liz think it couldn’t have been Michael “because his hand was broken then”? If Isobel is an event planner (a busy and demanding job) how did they manage to cover up her being missing for so many weeks? If Malex went straight from the museum to the toolshed, when did Alex have time to tell Maria about Museum Guy? What is Alex’s rank? (it changes from the pilot to the show). I could go on. Like, I just don’t have a lot of trust in the narrative going forward, in character and emotional continuity, in a fulfilling story for the characters I love, given that Carina seems to have a basic inability to so much as google (”my entropy changes”? that makes no sense), let alone write a story that makes sense. 

Part of the reason she’s not a very good writer, though, is because she doesn’t seem to like criticism. She insists she listens to it from people who matter and whose judgment she trusts, but, um, the mess that is the narrative suggests otherwise to me. The fact that she wrote in the love triangle suggests otherwise; it screams to me that it’s something she just had to have, regardless of whether it made narrative sense. She also literally blocks fans on Twitter who give her any kind of criticism. I don’t mean hate and vitriol, I mean criticism. She complains about how she, a public figure, a showrunner with a show that has millions of viewers, wants to log in to twitter and only see positive things and have fun interactions with friends. And I get it, criticism can be exhausting. But her job is literally to bring viewers to the CW. It is to tell a good story, and, if she wants to be as woke and progressive as she insists she is, it is to listen to different people - including fans. If she wants to shoot the shit with friends on Twitter, maybe she should get a private account. But I personally believe that she can’t use queer and marginalized characters to work out her own trauma, with no understanding of those people’s experiences, and then demand that people only ever praise her for it. It reminds me of the debate about criticism in fic comments, actually: some fic writers don’t want any negative comments. Which is fine if you’re writing fic for fun. Carina’s a professional writer with a TV show, who is getting paid. Insulating herself from literally any and all objections from the audience she’s writing for is, in my opinion, stupid, and also incredibly self-centered if she’s writing about people who’s experiences she doesn’t share. 

Honorable mentions, probably not worth getting into: 

She has like, a really creepy crush on Michael Vlamis, and even though she’s technically his boss, she’s constantly basically...thirsting over him on Twitter and Instagram in very uncomfortable ways

Max’s little speech to Michael in 1x11 about how he felt “everything,” every part of the abuse Michael suffered, and how guilty he felt about it, was just absolutely horrifying and tone deaf. Max, a character with great privilege, basically making all of Michael’s abuse about himself and how guilty it made him feel and acting like he can in any way share or understand Michael’s experience was just in every way gross, but clearly intended to make Max ~compelling~ and get the brothers to start talking and become closer and it just again shows a complete misunderstanding of the experiences of people less fortunate than her. 

Which, in short, all means that I have absolutely zero faith in Season 2. I’m not in the least bit excited for it. I think she’ll completely let us down, and I expect a lot more of the same tone-deafness and lack of nuance in relation to complex issues and marginalized characters. I think she’ll put us through the wringer, emotionally, for the sake of writing angst rather than telling a good story. 

Anyway, hope that answered your question, anon. 

[thekeyissue]

Reflections from a NYCC Panel: Chronic Illness, Disability, and the Comics Industry

During “The Creative Community, Disability, and Chronic Illness” panel at New York Comic Con this year, two overhead lights flickered nonstop, directly over the seated panelists. For most this was an annoyance – but for the presenter living with epilepsy, it made for a dangerous and unsafe environment. He had to wear sunglasses to avoid a potential seizure and participate in the panel meant to address this exact kind of issue.

It was embarrassing for everyone, and a perfect encapsulation of the state of support that the comics industry provides professionals who live with chronic illness and/or are differently abled. Giving conversations like this space and time at large events like NYCC is absolutely to be applauded, but clearly we are far from properly hearing, implementing feedback, and accommodating this community.

                                                                 *            *            *

The panel itself took place in the early afternoon on Friday of NYCC weekend in one of the smaller designated panel/screening spaces. Six panelists and a moderator, all of whom live with conditions that complicate their work, spoke to each other and a room that was about a third full (I’d guess around 50/60 people watching – not a bad turn out).

I slipped into the back of the audience right before the panel kicked off, deciding to attend somewhat at the last minute. I have a family member who lives with a chronic illness (but does not work in comics) - it can be burdensome for her (or any differently-abled or chronically ill person) to explain her day-to-day challenges on top of facing them – so I took this as an opportunity to gain a fuller understanding of what her life and coping may be like, while also learning about comic-specific issues. I mention the context of my attendance only because I believe the majority of the audience at the panel also had a direct or adjacent relationship with disability or chronic illness as well (this assumption comes from audience reactions I observed – nodding at points being made, voiced agreement, questions asked). To some degree that’s a shame – like many things, increasing awareness can be a huge catalyst for change, especially when many of the accommodations that would help this community stem directly from individuals’ awareness.

From the panel’s first minute a steady stream of personal blind spots were revealed to me – a both satisfying (learning more is so helpful) and disheartening (feeling inconsiderate/like a failure at having missed them) process that continued throughout the session. Helpfully, the panelists were all amazing speakers, projecting positivity and a clear desire to educate and spread awareness, even while recounting emotionally-charged, disrespectful, and challenging situations they’d experienced.

The hour-long conversation they held was serious, funny, charming, poignant, sad, hopeful, informative, and too short – but more than anything, it illustrated each panelist’s tenacity and bravery. Recounting difficult personal anecdotes and sharing emotional vulnerability in front of one person can be challenging – this group did it in front of an audience in the service of their community, a demonstration of toughness and grit that should be celebrated. I was surprised to learn that participating in the panel brought with it a potential risk and necessary braveness in and of itself. Many creators who fit the criteria for the panel turned it down to avoid publically revealing their condition, fearing companies and editors might subsequently not “risk” working with them. While examples of those who had treated the panelists with understanding and accommodation were given, the prevalent fear of losing work & money due to their conditions clearly suggests that decent companies/editors are more exception than rule. The world is already ill-suited to fit the needs of those who are differently abled or living with a chronic illness simply because they are not the majority – it’s a sad reality that this disadvantage is topped off with an increased risk of losing or not being able to find employment. It’s easy to see why this community is so tough and brave – they have no other choice.

The challenge of the comic convention setting was another major topic of conversation during the panel. Attending conventions is necessary to make (or try to make) a living wage in this industry, but most comic cons do a poor job of accommodating the differently-abled and chronically ill.  Surprisingly, even those that do offer a range of accommodations typically fail to adequately communicate the resources they’re providing. More than once a panelist would mention an accommodation NYCC provided that other members of the panel were not aware of. What’s the point of these accommodations if the people who need them the most are not actively told they exist? And failing that, shouldn’t this information be easily found? As time quickly ran out, it felt like the entire room was disappointed – we had only scratched the surface of the topic (not a huge surprise given the complexity of the subject matter) and there was an incredible amount that still hadn’t been addressed – but I left with a bunch of simple, actionable, convention-specific advice that I’d like to summarize below in the spirit of others joining in to support this community:

- Dedicated, easily accessible entrances, bathrooms, and elevators should be provided at conventions for the differently-abled to reduce the body stress this setting creates. - Designated quiet spaces should be accessible and large enough to accommodate anyone who needs them. - Often accommodations are limited. Do your best to not unnecessarily take up an accommodation that someone might truly need to get through their day (if you do not need it in such a way). - Be wary of your surroundings and those behind you when walking. It’s difficult and painful for someone in a chair/with a walker/etc. to have to move to avoid you, and they may not be able to. Don’t stop suddenly in front of someone, be understanding of their level to the ground, and prioritize their difficulty moving through crowds if it eclipses your own. - Remember that a creator might find crowds and constant (or any) social interaction challenging. Some may need breaks/alone/quiet time to not be overwhelmed with anxiety. Some may literally not be able to recognize or remember faces/pair them with names. Some may lack the ability to pick up on social cues that seem obvious to you. - Accommodations should be clearly communicated to anyone who might need them. The information should be actively given and easily/clearly accessible. - No one owes you a disclosure of their condition – be patient, understanding, and assume everyone’s best intentions – and don’t ask for or demand explanations.

                                                                *            *            *

I’d like to wish a huge, gracious and appreciative thank you to the participants from this year’s panel for all they so bravely shared and taught. I have not included their names (which can be easily found) because – and I am honestly not sure whether or not this is the right inclination – I’d hope their work is appreciated before the challenges they live with. It would distress me if sharing this experience and advice resulted in the panelists becoming more known for the condition they live with than their work – all of which is interesting and fantastic, and inherently deserves attention without further context. On the off chance one of the panelists reads this and would like to be identified, I’d happily edit their name(s) in.

Also - I’ve done my best to understand and properly use language around being differently-abled and living with chronic illness, but if I’ve messed up please let me know so I can correct and apologize.

                                                                *            *            *

Thanks for taking the time to read. Below please find the NYCC “The Creative Community, Disability, and Chronic Illness” panel’s official description:

Disabilities, both visible and invisible, can make working in the deadline-intensive, yet creatively rewarding fields of comics/gaming/geek culture especially challenging. Managing energy, coping with pain, depression or other mental health issues, and the added cost of being self employed (no employer benefits) are all candidly discussed in this panel which features professional creators who all have disabilities or chronic health concerns. They will not only share their challenges, but their strategies for success, while being open and honest about their work and their lives, and the way they are perceived by clients. Brandon Kazen-Maddox will provide ASL translation services.

[re-readingcomics]

NYCC 2014 Day 3

I was still doing the re-reading Batwoman thing and trying to defend the book while it was on a downswing. I got confused for Batgirl frequently. I think this was around the time the Bombshells started coming out. I think I’ve seen more people cosplay that version of Batwoman. I expect since the TV show is coming out that will change.

Image Comics has been the publisher I’ve read the most for several years. I went to several of their panels that year. Towards the end of the convention I found the moderator of more than one at the Image booth towards the end of the Con and congratulated him on doing a good job.

I swear, I didn’t remember I wrote this down when I wrote about it in a previous post. I would like to say that a thing Saga and Game of Thrones have in common is that  both have sprawling ensembles whose characters you enjoy on their own only to be shocked by how painful and violent things get when they actually meet. They’re both also anti-war stories set in war times, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say Saga does a better job in not glamorizing the war.

I’m a huge Sex Criminals fan. I have two shirts related to the series, a Sexual Gary one (which you may have noticed I was wearing in the selfies) and more recently a “DON’T WORRY BE WORRY” one that I wore to the first day of Book Con this year specifically to impress Kelly Sue DeConnick. (It worked.)

I only read the first issue of Deadly Class. I had recently read the first trade paperback of writer Rick Remender’s Black Science and hated it.  I thought it was needlessly mean, doing things like killing off a character in the first issue only to have her show up in flashback a few issues later all excited about the mission that already killed her. (There was also something degrading about a dancing humanoid female amphibian.) Nothing in that first issue of Deadly Class made me feel like “this might be better.” I’m just really excited to learn about artists’ models.

Right now that everyone seems underwhelmed by Hawkeye’s role in the MCU, it may be hard to understand, but the Matt Fraction penned Hawkeye series was very hot at the time. It had very little to do with the film version of the character. It was a fairly low key tale of the least powerful Avenger being a mentor and a good neighbor in some trying circumstances. I have a shirt based on this run too.

Part of the regular response is that Vaughan wanted The Will to be a Jason Stathem type. Vaughan also jokes about this being an “all white bald men look the same” describing himself as confusable with fellow comic scribes Grant Morrison and Brian Michael Bendis. I actually agree that he and Morrison do look very similar.

Now I’m wondering how much this inspired the flash forward in which The Will is drug-addled and has gained a lot of weight.

This came up with the example of someone on YouTube reading out loud a then recent issue of Thor to point out how bad the dialogue sounded. I wonder if this caused a controversy that I missed.

So this is the point where I have to write about having a pleasant encounter with someone at NYCC and then finding out about that they’re awful. Shortly after this convention in which Upchurch told charming stories about the difficulties of working from home with small children, he got arrested for domestic violence. He served his sentence, had the crime removed from his record, but was still let go from Rat Queens. (His wife claims the abuse was worse than in the police report and that after completing his sentence he abandoned her and the children, both physically and fiscally.) Stjepan Šejić finished out the arc they we’re working on and Tess Fowler became the series artist. She was fired after one five issue arc and a spin off special. At the time she was let go, she was under the impression that she was going to be replaced by Upchurch. That didn’t end up happening, but the whole thing was pretty devastating. I gave up on Rat Queens, but I still follow Fowler and Šejić. Upchurch recently announced a new series. I won’t be reading that.

I didn’t remember writing this as a tweet when I wrote about this in the previous entry. It’s a sign that one remembers things better if you write about them, even if you don’t remember writing about them.

I really do feel like my autograph hounding has led me to being in a rut while attending conventions.

Let’s talk about Dare2Draw. I’ve spent a lot of time with them, though not recently. It’s an organization that promotes people interested in cartooning and drawing for comics. For a while they would have monthly meetings which consisted of an opportunity to draw cosplaying models doing quick poses, a competition involving how to draw some high concept that you associate with comics. (There was a Godzilla inspired one the first time I went, some other time there was what your pet does when you’re not around. Then there’d be types of gods or villains. It’s a very demanding contest.) There’d be a lecture by a guest artist, examples of whom include Cliff Chiang, Bill Plymton and Russ Braun. There wasn’t a lecture part, just the competition. The category was creating heroic types. I had no idea what to do, did a variation of Casper David Friedrich “Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog.” I didn’t place, all three of the people who did were women and had much better, more dynamic drawings then I did. I only ever placed, once. I actually won that time. I haven’t been back. I miss it, even the constant losing.

I would have liked to have met Marc Andreyko. I really wanted to publicly support his Batwoman run. It is as much about me being a contrarian as about me being nice. I also like him as a Twitter follower.

I missed a birthday party for my cousin’s son. I don’t remember anything else that I missed. Maybe a semi-regular baby sitting gig?

[thecomicsnexus]

DRAWING BLOOD #1-4 MAY - AUGUST 2019 BY DAVID AVALLONE, KEVIN EASTMAN, BEN BISHOP, TROY LITTLE AND BRITTANY PEER

SYNOPSIS

Once upon a time, Shane and Paul Bookman created an indie comic named “Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls”. The comic was a success that ended up becoming a big franchise. Many years later, and inspired by his mentor Frank Forrest, he sells the rights of the Ragdolls to the Kiddiescope network and creates a new publishing studio to champion creator rights. This doesn’t go well and Frank Forrest (who was managing the failing studio) takes his life.

Shane, working on a troubled Broadway musical based in Metropolis (the silent movie), also gets in trouble with the Lithuanian mafia because of the debts of Frank Forrest. He has to make a few millions happen. Fortunately, Hollywood producer Morgan Harbor is doing a new movie about the Ragdolls and hired Shane to work as a consultant, mostly to calm the fans. But he was hired after production started, so he had no say in the whole thing. He gives the little money he gets to the mafia, and arranges with them to have control over the Broadway musical (including casting) as even if it ends up being a train wreck, people will want to see it.

Shane tries to contact his brother to get involved in this new movie for a few bucks, but Paul is very angry at Shane after the way things ended between the two. The next day, Shane is going to NYCC, but when he arrives he discovers all the fandom is outraged after Morgan Harbor announced the new Ragdolls weren’t mutant, but aliens.

Shane uses his power as fan-favorite creator to manipulate Morgan Harbor into admitting he was confused and the Ragdolls are going to be mutant after all.

When things seem to go back to normal and he has to hire the boyfriend of the mafia boss, he discovers that his main actress is in some shady business, just before being kidnapped.

REVIEW

Kevin Eastman appearing in the actual comic helps make the distinction that this is not exactly Kevin Eastman’s story. But it’s pretty similar.

From their mentor (Jack Kirby and even his famous quotes), to Siberia Publishing (Tundra), to Morgan Harbor (Michael Bay), and the kiddiescope network (Viacom) there are many similarities. But it is mixed with other events that happened to different creators. The Broadway musical will remind you of the Spider-man musical, but it also reminds me of that time Stan Lee wanted to be in Broadway (and was, briefly).

But the real fun here is in seeing “Morgan Harbor” not understand the property one bit, and not caring about anything.

There is also a lot more going on that will be resolved in future issues (apparently this was a mini-series, but I understand an issue 5 is coming up). I really hope so, as there are a lot of plots and backstory to delve into.

I am not sure if this project is so interesting for non-turtle fans, but it is well written (by someone that worked in Hollywood) and nicely illustrated. Eastman provides black and white (or sepia) flashbacks, while Troy Little illustrates hallucination sequences.

I am also a fun of stories within the comic-book industry, as there is much more drama happening behind the panels than what we actually get, so this is kind of my type of story.

I give these issues a score of 9.

[ptw30]

as someone who's only been watching this sh-t show from a distance (and don't actively follow the twitter/social media besides what I see cross-posted here, so who knows maybe they actually /did/ already) can I say how at this point it's completely plausible to me for a fan to say how harmful it is to constantly yell how you hate and want to (and HAVE) kill the single canonically queer character in the entire canon, and have the lovely duo of VLD snap back (1/2)

how not only are they exempt from the Bury Your Gays trope and completely immune to any effects or consequences of it, but that “we’re actually TOTALLY EVEN MORE SUPER PROGRESSIVE becuz gay kuron being totally 120% evil shows that gays can be villains too uwu u just dont understand it duh get on our level sweetie!” (2/2)

I had the privilege to attend the “The Future is LGBTQ” panel at NYCC.*  Marguerite Bennett, a queer comic book writer, spoke about issues she had when writing DC Bombshells. She was accused of having written harmful queer tropes by a few fans, to which she replied, “The majority of the cast was queer. Angst is going to happen to queer characters with a queer cast.” (I’m paraphrasing.)

Contrarily, the majority of Voltron: Legendary Defender’s characters is not queer. And many of the terrible events in the script were reserved for the queer characters. 

Below the cut, an exploration into the BYG trope and how Kuron being evil feeds into it. 

Canonically - there are four queer characters. Shiro is the only main cast queer character, but Zethrid, Ezor, and Adam are also queer. If you listen to the EP interviews, then you also know Blatyz is queer. 

Every canonical queer character has been killed. 

Out of all the deaths in VLD, Adam’s was truly horrific. He screamed out in pain as he was killed, compared to Thace, who closed his eyes and surrendered to the blast; compared to Antok who accepted a blast, groaned, and fell to the side; compared to the Druid, who received a sword in the chest, muttered, and disappeared; compared to Zarkon, the Evil Emperor of the Universe, whose labored breathing ended and his bayard stopped glowing; compared to Trugg and Ladnok, whom we actually didn’t see die; compared to Keith’s dad, whose tombstone symbolized his death.  

Adam’s death deserved a trigger warning. While I do not agree with Hypable’s most recent season review, I am grateful to Donya for spoiling his death. On August 10th, I was anxious about Adam’s impeding demise, but even knowing - I was horrified when it came. 

The EPs are not exempt from the BYG trope or the consequences of its use. 

The issue with VLD is its treatment of its gay characters. All Lotor’s disabled and queer generals were killed. The only general to survive and turn “good”? The straight, non-disabled one. The only paladin to return home to absolutely no family? The queer paladin. Keith found his family in space. Hunk, Lance and Pidge had family. Even Allura is shown with Romelle and Coran. 

Shiro? Absolutely no family. 

I don’t even believe Adam and Shiro should be together - 

(Tangent - as a former caretaker of someone with degenerative disease, I can tell you that most people who say they will stick around to the end, don’t, and if Adam wasn’t willing to wait for Shiro to return, then he wouldn’t have stuck around to take care of Shiro. Furthermore, Adam and Shiro made the decisions that was best for them, which is mature and thoughtful. Even if we disagree with Adam, he broke up with Shiro, and Shiro, by choosing to go to Kerberos, broke up with Adam. But that doesn’t mean Adam deserved to die.)

- but I’m not going to argue whether Shiro and Adam fulfilled the BYG trope. Each person can decide for himself/herself how they feel about Adam’s demise - but Zethrid and Ezor are unequivocally the BYG trope. A touching moment, a promise for them to be together, and then they die. 

There’s no way for the EPs to escape that, technicality or not. (Another point - I don’t care for technicalities. The spirit of Adam and Shiro’s relationship wasn’t written in good faith, especially since the EPs wanted to kill Shiro - so they don’t win any points here.)

Now, I will give the EPs credit that Kuron is not your traditional “queer-coded” villain, but Kuron being evil doesn’t make them or the story progressive. In fact, it makes them either woefully ignorant or actively offensive. 

In “The Strange, Difficult History of Queer-Coding,” Tricia Ennis writes how during the 1950s and ‘60s, conservative groups in America discouraged queer characters in films. These characters were still written but in subtext, and actors were told to play these characters as gay. 

Even dangerous LGBTQ tropes rose out of this time period as the depictions of pulp noir femme fatales and other deadly women rose in popularity. These women were usually written as promiscuous and sexually devious, both with men and sometimes with women. They were also evil and usually met their end as a result of their sins. While depictions of LGBTQ characters were frowned upon, depictions of them in this specifically negative light were not. You were not endorsing an “alternative lifestyle” if your gay characters always met an untimely demise. Instead, they were merely paying for their poor choices. This trope would eventually give way to what we now refer to as “Bury Your Gays.”

Thus, Shiro/Kuron being the only queer paladin, the only paladin to have his bond with his lion broken, the only paladin to turn “evil” and to be killed twice - Shiro’s body and Kuron’s soul - the EPs are not progressive. In fact, they fed the trope they so adamantly denied using. 

Coupled with Shiro being announced as no longer being a paladin in the same season that he was revealed to be queer, in the same season it’s revealed he has/had a degenerative disease, in the same season his one-time partner was killed - one can even make the assumption all this happened to Shiro because the EPs and DreamWorks do not support LGBTQIA+ rights.  

Rounding back - the EPs aren’t exempt from repercussions. 

Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery came from DC Comics as directors, became showrunners at DreamWorks, and went onto Marvel, back to the director chair. That is a demotion. DreamWorks cleaned house - even before Season 8 premiered - and though I think the messages were offensively underwhelming, JDS apologized on Twitter the Monday after Season 7 was released, and LM expanded upon that apology at NYCC. 

The damage is done, though, as many people found Season 7 so harmful that they will not watch more DreamWorks’ show and definitely not projects with JDS and LM. The best thing DreamWorks can do is to apologize (an exec this time), admit there were issues with Season 7 - including the BYG trope, plus the racist, sexist, and ableist themes, as well - and promise to do better in a Voltron sequel and in all their shows by creating diverse teams and an inclusive environment in which to create inclusive shows. 

DreamWorks hasn’t completed that final step yet, but the fact that the EPs are no longer a part of DreamWorks and are not working on a VLD sequel, despite the show being “popular” and what I would say, an overall “success,” says DreamWorks did take notice. Now it’s up to us, as fans, to continue the conversation and not to stop discussing. We need to keep telling DreamWorks and others content creators to create inclusive stories until we get shows with true and empowering representation. 

* I highly recommend any fan of any fandom to attend a few educational panels at each con. They’re included in the price, and they are welcoming and informative for writing true representation in your stories. 

[violethowler]

Alchemists and Paladins

This analysis is derived from @leakinghate‘s Seek Truth in Darkness post that breaks down the "errors” and discrepancies in Season 8 that point to the version we got in December being cut up and frankensteined back together in post-production. 

One of my big disappointments is that we never got on-screen acknowledgement of Shiro’s connection to the Black Lion following Season 6 despite the fact that he was still wearing the Black Paladin colors. While re-reading Leaking Hate’s meta, a few ideas occurred to me that helped me formulate a theory about Black Paladin!Shiro in Season 8.

Despite Shiro moving on from being the Black Paladin to being captain of the Atlas, the show persistently keeps everyone in their original uniform colors. While it could just be down to staying true to the original 80s show, the visual adherence to the Season 1 configuration is a pattern that persists all the way into at least Season 7, and a few times in Season 8. There are multiple times where the team is arranged according to the lion configuration, but Lance is still in the left leg spot that Allura, as Blue Paladin, should be in, even though he’s now flying the red lion (ex: the astral plane in S5E3). The same is also done for the red lion itself (ex: the roar during Shiro’s rebirth in S6E7) a few times in at least Season 6 and 7. Even in Season 8 itself we still see characters positioned according to the season 1 configuration:

Keith is on Shiro’s right side and Pidge is on his left, exactly like the Paladin configuration in Seasons 1-2. 

The marketing also emphasizes the original team lineup: 

In one of the two promo images released at NYCC, the team arrangement from left to right is Lance, Allura, Keith, Shiro, Pidge, Hunk. The incorrect order for the current pilot configuration, but still in the right order for the Season 1 configuration. 

The big NYCC poster shows the team, from left to right, as Hunk, Pidge, Shiro, Keith, Lance, Allura. Left leg, left arm, head, right arm, right leg. The correct order for both the Season 1-2 configuration, and the 80s configuration.

And in terms of the textual narrative, even in their new positions post-Season 3, Keith, Shiro, and Lance thrive in their new positions by relying on the textual attributes of their previous ones. Shiro’s battlefield promotion to captain of the Atlas comes from him acting a textbook black paladin: a born leader, in control, “someone whose men will follow without hesitation.” 

All of this indicated that we should have seen a return to the S1-2 configuration at least once in Season 8, but in the edited version we got in December at least, that never happened.

But if it was meant to happen in the original cut of Season 8, there is logistically only one place for this to happen: The Storming the Pyramid Sequence, as #TeamPurpleLion calls it. 

Leaking Hate has laid out a detailed, episode by episode breakdown of all the evidence of cuts and editing in the version of Season 8 released in December, and extrapolates a likely outline of what was supposed to happen based on what was edited, the story structure of the series overall, and the plot points introduced in the first half of the season that were subsequently left hanging.

Multiple plot points indicate that Lotor was still alive inside Sincline and was supposed to be rescued before the final battle:

Despite it ceasing to be relevant after Honerva’s flashback episode, there are two shots in “Genesis” depicting first the Atlas and then Coalition ships flying towards the Altean Colony planet. No one comments on this unexplained detour.

The other Alteans serving Honerva besides the ones who were held aboard the Atlas in the second half, Merla, and the other two Robeast pilots, are nowhere to be seen when Coran and Slav board the pyramid in “The Zenith”. Honerva’s comments about how only the two other Robeast pilots remained loyal indicate they all defected en masse, but we are not shown this.

When the Atlas arrives in Altea’s solar system, the first interior shots of the Atlas bridge have pink lighting accompanied by Lotor’s theme music, while the rest of the scenes in this section of “Uncharted Regions” have golden lighting.

“Uncharted Regions” opens with Honerva declaring that the Paladins know her plans is an advantage, echoing her son’s words before he tricks Voltron into retrieving the Sincline comet in S3E4, indicating that she intends to trick them into helping her. Her next appearance shows her in her new mech scanning for her perfect reality. She is then shown inside the pyramid saying that Allura is awake. There is no explanation for how she got back to the pyramid and changed back into her Altean garb despite the battle happening outside, nor do we learn why Allura is even necessary for her plans. The call back indicates that Honerva needs to accomplish something with Altean Alchemy that Allura can do that she cannot. 

There are at least two split-screen shots that are so heavily cropped to the point that Allura, Lance, and/or Hunk’s faces get cut off at the edge of the screen. If there were no other characters who needed to be removed, the shot would have been planned so that those cut-offs never happened.

There’s a total of 11 shots in the last three episodes where a character is off model, and their proportions are always wrong for a human but just right for a supposedly-dead-Lotor. (Things that give it away include broad shoulders, the character’s head being too small for the size the body is drawn, elongated arms, legs twice the length of the upper body, and in some shots, fangs.)

Lotor has no shadow when he appears alongside the deceased original paladins in the final episode, and his image is simply a stock photo from the official website with the leg slightly warped to hide the lack of shadow.

Lotor being healed and rescued neatly explains why Honerva needed Allura and considered the Paladins knowing her plans to be an advantage (because she cheated the trials of Oriande, she doesn’t have the power to heal Lotor herself, but Allura does, as demonstrated with the dead forest in “Launch Date”), where the remaining Alteans vanished to (they abandon Honerva after Lotor rejects her), and why the Atlas apparently makes a detour to the Colony (the Alteans  need to be dropped off somewhere safe before Lotor, Voltorn, and the Atlas can go back to face Honerva for the final battle).

But there are two things that still got me thinking about this outline:

With how powerful the Altean robeasts are shown in S7 and S8, it raises the question of how Allura was able to get from the Atlas to the pyramid without being spotted by Merla or the two other robeast pilots. Even if the Atlas was keeping them occupied, “Lion’s Pride Part 2” and “Genesis” have shown how much of a challenge it is for the Atlas and Voltron to defeat even a single Altean robeast, let alone multiple. So, somebody needs to form Voltron and keep the Robeasts busy so that Allura can storm the pyramid for her alchemist vs. alchemist rematch with Honerva in the first place.

As Leaking Hate mentions in their meta, many of the shots with a character having Lotor’s proportions are in paladin armor. Given the damage shown to Lotor’s uniform, in order for him to have something to wear in the final battle, it’s implied that he’s wearing what used to be the Black Paladin armor that Shiro wore during the first half of Season 7.

My argument is that if the visual adherence to the color scheme of the lions the team started out in was supposed to go anywhere, the only logical place for it to occur is during the sequence where they assault the pyramid and rescue Lotor:

Lance could volunteer to fly Blue so Allura can go rescue Lotor, Keith steps back into Red so Lance can fly blue, and Shiro steps back into the Black Lion to lead the team one more time.

Leaking Hate’s meta pointed out how the Beta-Four-Ex-Seven coordinates have pink lighting in the backdrop, fitting with Allura’s color scheme as well.

Since this is indicated to be the site of the big Alchemist vs. Alchemist rematch between Honerva and Allura, it would beautifully parallel their previous fight at the end of season 2: Voltron fighting a mecha created by Honerva (Zarkon’s armor, the Robeasts) while Allura faces the witch directly.

If Shiro wore the Black Paladin armor into battle one last time, then handed it off to Lotor for the final battle against Honerva, it would make a nice call back to when he gave Lotor the Black Bayard to use against Zarkon in “Blood Duel”.

It would also, in a way, be a nice callback to his line in S6E3 “I don’t know what’s more fulfilling than being a paladin” by showing that while he has found things that are just as fulfilling, he is still just as much a paladin as the others.  

In “Tailing a Comet” back in Season 3, Lance expresses thet Blue would take him back in a second if he asked, but he doesn’t want to stand in the way of Allura’s growth. If he pilots the Blue Lion while she fights Honerva, Lance would be stepping back into the role of Blue Paladin so that Allura can continue her growth and do something that only she can do.

While this part is hazier, an additional parallel that occurred to me would be if Allura was accompanied by a pair of Galra each time she confronted Honerva: in Season 2, she was accompanied by Kolivan and Antok. Considering their absence from the plot after Genesis, perhaps Acxa and Zethrid would have accompanied Allura to face Honerva in Season 8? 

While I can understand why some people thought the ship had potential, there was one detail I kept seeing everyone ignore that convinced me that Lance and Allura would never have worked out as a long-term relationship no matter what happened with Lotor. Leaving aside the fact that Allura doesn’t appear to be as interested in the relationship as Lance is, Alteans have already been established to have a life span measured in centuries. Coran himself is over six hundred years old, and Allura’s probably at least a century or two herself. Short of pulling some species-changing magic out of thin air to make Lance actually Altean and not just give him the markings, Allura is going to outlive Lance by several lifetimes regardless of their relationship status.

Throughout the season we got in December, Lance questions Allura’s choices. Hate’s meta outlines how Lance’s arc was meant to lead to him supporting her decisions. In addition to supporting Allura verbally when she argues for the rescue mission, he would be supporting her physically by offering to take her place in the Blue Lion for that battle, because while they are both Blue Paladins (just as Shiro and Kieth are The Black Paladins), rescuing and healing Lotor is something that only she can do.

It would also be an excellent reversal of an earlier point in the season: in Clear Day, Lance signing his name on all the Blue Lion plushies even though the current Blue Paladin is Allura feels like him selfishly trying to claim Allura as his own, while for the rescue mission, he physically “reclaims” the Blue Lion out of selflessness to both literally and symbolically let her go.

This is part educated guess and part wishful thinking on my part because I’m still salty that the visual adherence to the Season 1 configuration never went anywhere. There is no guarantee that any of this happened in the original cut of Season 8. But if the visual emphasis on the season 1 pilot configuration long after we’ve switched over to the one from the 80s was supposed to have any payoff, there is only one place in the original cut of Season 8 where it could realistically work. 

If you want to see what the original cut of the season looked like, then I highly recommend you sign the petition and and start writing letters to WEP. 

[aion-rsa]

Are You Afraid of the Darkness?: A Hopepunk Explainer

https://ift.tt/2PUZUv7

A brief guide to the hopepunk movement—its origins, and its possibilities.

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This feature originally appeared in Den of Geek's NYCC 2019 print magazine.

When author Alexandra Rowland (A Choir of Lies) first posted to Tumblr in 2017, "The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on," she had no idea how intensely that sentiment would resonate with the platform’s community and beyond.

"Initially, I was just vaguely bemused that anyone was listening to me," Rowland says, "but at the same time, I understood intellectually why hopepunk was resonating with people. Simply put: they were hurting, and hopepunk was a thing that helped comfort the hurt."

What is hopepunk? It depends on who you ask...

Rowland, quoting her essay “One Atom of Justice, One Molecule of Mercy, and the Empire of Unsheathed Knives,” says: “Hopepunk is a subgenre and a philosophy that ‘says kindness and softness don’t equal weakness, and that, in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.’”

To understand hopepunk as a concept it helps to understand what it stands in contrast to. Grimdark is a fantasy subgenre characterized by bleak settings in which humanity is fundamentally cutthroat, and where no individual or community can stop the world’s inevitable decline. Hopepunk, in contrast, believes that the very act of trying has meaning, that fighting for positive change in and of itself has worth—especially if we do it together.

read more: Autuonomous — Robots, Love, and Identity Under Capitalism

“I think it's a reaction against the overwhelmingly nihilistic, dystopian slant to a lot of stories in the world right now,” says author Annalee Newitz (The Future of Another Timeline). For Newitz, hopepunk isn’t a subgenre but rather “a reason to tell stories, a motivation, or maybe a narrative tone.”

“The idea is to tell a story where there are hopeful elements or maybe a hopeful resolution to the characters' struggles,” Newitz says. “I don't mean to suggest it’s all about having a happy ending, because you can have a pretty ambivalent, broody ending that still conveys hope. Hopepunk is really about showing readers that we can make it through even the most difficult situations. Even if your hero dies, hopepunk suggests that someone else will be there to take up her torch and carry on.”

Hopepunk is Curtis blowing up the train at the end of Snowpiercer, or Max and Furiosa deciding to risk everything and go back to the Citadel at the end of Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s Naomi choosing to open the Roci’s door to let in as many desperate Ganymede refugees as possible in The Expanse. It’s believing that humanity may not be inherently good, but we’re not inherently bad either, and that giving people the chance to prove themselves compassionate is a worthwhile choice.

“At Uncanny, we tend to think of this as ‘radical empathy’ or ‘radical kindness’—choosing to do the good, kind thing, even when the system doesn’t encourage that, as an act of courage,” say Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damien Thomas, the editors of Uncanny Magazine.

read more: City in the Middle of the Night Review

The Thomases contextualize “hopepunk” as a marketing term, one that has gained prominence in the last few years but that has been around much longer: “There have been veins of hope (as opposed to grimdark hopelessness) across literature for hundreds of years, and for decades within the SFF genre.”

If hopepunk, by some definitions, is nothing new, it is a cultural lens seemingly on the rise after a pop culture period ruled by cynical stories, like Breaking Bad and The Dark Knight, and in a real-world environment that has become increasingly distressing.

“We can retreat into paralysis, and pretend that's somehow pragmatic or realistic,” says Newitz. “Or we can say, fine, this is a horrible problem, let's get together with other people and try to solve any small part of it that we can. Those are the two pathways we can take through a narrative, too. We can tell stories about people who try to fix things, rather than rejoicing in their splendid destruction. It’s a way of showing other people that just because things aren’t perfect, doesn’t mean they can’t be better.”

Has the definition of hopepunk changed since Rowland first coined the term?

“The heart of [my original definition] hasn't changed at all, but my efforts to remind people of the angry part of hopepunk definitely have grown,” she says. “The instinct is to make it only about softness and kindness, because those are what we’re most hungry for. We all want to be treated gently. But sometimes the kindest thing you can do for someone is to stand up to a bully on their behalf, and that takes guts and rage.”

read more: How Red, White, and Royal Blue Hopes For a Kinder America

In 2019, hope can feel impossible. If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that the struggle to create a kinder and more just world is one that will never be linear and will never be over. It is bigger than any one of us, and longer than any lifetime. If hopepunk is the stories that keep us trying in the long shadow of that reality, then it is a vital ingredient to the recipe for change.

So what is hopepunk storytelling? It’s whatever you need it to be... as long as what you need it to be is a way forward in the darkness.

“In hindsight,” Rowland says, “I'm just very happy–when so many people find a philosophy like hopepunk meaningful and compelling... it sorta restores a bit of your faith in humanity, doesn’t it? Maybe all is not yet lost if there are enough people around to say, ‘Oh. Yes, this.’”

Hopepunk Reading Guide

Novels

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples Uprooted by Naomi Novik Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse The Expanse by James S.A. Corey Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell The Sol Majestic by Ferrett Steinmetz The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison

Other

Our Opinions Are Correct Podcast, Episode 22 hosted by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders

Uncanny Magazine edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damien Thomas (recommendations: "Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse" by S.B. Divya, "Sun, Moon, Dust," by Ursula Vernon, and "Packing" by T. Kingfisher)

Hopepunk Author Interviews

Due to the nature of print media, I was unable to include as many of my interviewees' insightful thoughts on hopepunk as I would have liked to. Here is a guide to the full interviews from various speculative fiction authors and editors. I highly recommend clicking through to read them in their entirety.

An Interview with Alexandra Rowland, Author of A Choir of Lies

Excerpt: "By telling hopepunk stories, we necessarily have to be asking questions like, 'How do we care about each other in a world which so aggressively doesn't care about so many of the people in our communities? Who do we consider community, and is that definition too narrow? How do we fight back against the people who want to make us sit down and shut up?'"

An Interview with Annalee Newitz, Author of The Future of Another Timeline

Excerpt: "I think hopepunk is the opposite of apathy. In so many stories these days, characters are (literally or metaphorically) lighting cigarettes and enjoying the end of the world. They may look cool doing it, but it's profoundly anti-social and toxic. As soon as your characters don't give a shit about anything, you're leaving hopepunk behind."

An Interview with Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damien Thomas, Editors of Uncanny Magazine

Excerpt: "We think that the world can always use more radical empathy and radical kindness. Culture is, fundamentally, a mix of people giving in to their most kind and least kind impulses, and much of our storytelling comes from that inherent conflict. We'd rather encourage the former, personally."

An Interview with Ferrett Steinmetz, Author of The Sol Majestic

Excerpt: "I loved it the moment I heard it. I'm an old punk who knocked around some of the Nazis that the Dead Kennedys decried in 'Nazi Punks F**k Off,' so the idea of punk utilized for something other than some Hot Topic-style cynicism flooded me with joy."

Note: The title of this article comes from hopepunk musician Frank Turner's "Blackout."

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature

Culture

Kayti Burt

Nov 7, 2019

Hopepunk

NYCC

NYCC 2019

from Books https://ift.tt/32pEbOv

[cosplayinamerica]

COSPLAY THEME PAGE : ShareMyCosplay.com

Tell us about ShareMyCosplay, what was the genesis of the ShareMyCosplay? 

Share My Cosplay has gone through quite the journey to get to what you see today. I can still remember the day that I came up with the idea that would eventually lead to Share My Cosplay. I was eating lunch with a few friends at my day job. A friend of mine showed me a cosplay of Jessica Nigri as Pikachu, and because I worked in IT,  for some reason had an idea of doing a website related to cosplay. The actual website took a while to set up, but I started off slowly, with an initial launch on social media. We launched with Tumblr and Twitter, slowly building an audience. Then eventually a little bit later adding Facebook, and eventually much later introducing Instagram into the “family’. Eventually we added the website and have been going strong since then. We’ve of course made tons of adjustments over the years, and most recently started adding content on YouTube. It’s been a great ride so far, and hopefully it will continue.

What was your first experience with cosplay as well as the convention scene?

Like a lot of people who are into gaming and comic books, I was aware of cosplay, but didn’t really know much about it. It was only after looking into the idea of starting a site that I really got to know what goes on behind the scenes. It was meeting and talking to people in the scene that made me realize what an amazing community of people are involved. That is why I have continued the site for so long. As our social media following grew, I got to know more and more of the cosplayers, and was so happy I was able to use what I had created to help them gain more exposure. Share My Cosplay exists as a place where all cosplayers can have their work properly showcased.

As for conventions. While I live in the capital city of Canada, Ottawa is a relatively small city of one million people. Conventions have only really made it big in the last 5 years or so and before that were never a really big thing. I had travelled to other cities within Canada for some conventions, but those were mainly toy based conventions, so there would just be a handful of devoted cosplayers hanging out. It wasn’t until much later, when conventions started to take off, that our city got it’s own “Comic-con”. Then things exploded quickly. When our first Ottawa Comic-con launched, I was there day one, and the lineup was out of the building and wrapped around the whole building. I think it took a couple of hours to actually get into the convention floor. I could only assume it was similar to something like entering SDCC, but on a much smaller scale.

So while that has been a staple in our city for the last 10 years, I’ve also been traveling to Montreal Comic-con, which is a little bigger. Since there are maybe fewer conventions in Canada, people seem to come from great distances to show off the cosplays they had worked out. The dream has always been to try and get to SDCC, but that hasn’t happened yet. Travel is so expensive from Canada.

So for the short term I had set my sights on visiting NYCC, which is a “quick” drive from my area of Canada. However like all plans, they fell through. I had plans to go to NYCC and E3 in 2020, but of course those fell through because of what happened around the world. I miss conventions. One because they are such a great way to meet and interact with the cosplayers, and two, it’s one of the primary places we get content to share on our site and pages. So that has been lacking for us recently. Fingers crossed things will get back to normal soon.

How has cosplay changed over the years in your perspective?

Like everything you get to know, it evolves and grows over time. Being knee deep in cosplay all the time (my inbox once had 100+gb of cosplay submissions), I have certainly seen it change over the years. Obviously cosplays have become more elaborate in construction. Things like LEDs are so cheap now, I always find it amazing when people incorporate them into a costume. So the cosplay builds just get bigger and better every year. Also I find the resources on the internet have gotten better. Cosplayers are now able to find more detailed pictures of what they want to create, giving them a way better idea of what and how they will do it for a certain character.

Another thing that has changed, are the absolutely stunning Cosplay edits you’ll see on social media. So why the cosplay photographers have always been an integral part of the equation (we try hard to tag them when people include their details on submissions), the level that the editing on pictures has changed over the years is dramatic. You’ll often see the time-lapsed photo creations on Social, and they are just mesmerizing to watch. People put so much time into creating these worlds to help elevate the cosplay to the next level. That has certainly changed over the years. That being said, we still love regular shots of cosplay too, the amount of photographers that specialize in cosplay has jumped a lot too.

In general, it seems cosplay has evolved from a simple hobby where you could throw something together to wear to a weekend convention, to a full time gig where people spend months on at a time for each one of their creations.

How has ShareMyCosplay changed over the years?

In my eyes SMC has evolved greatly over the years. As the editor there have been two major changes, and I think it has improved the way we do things. The first thing would be, when we first started I used to go “collect” the cosplay that we shared. So I had to either go find it, or reach out to people. I spent a lot of time tracking down cosplay to share, that I personally thought was cool or very creative. As you can imagine this took a lot of time. So this has changed dramatically over the past 3 -  5 years. Now I’m happy to say that we are 99.9% based on submissions from users. So while there is less than 1% of content that we do go out and ask for, it is basically all based on what people send us to share. So that is why you see such a great variety of cosplay content on our pages. There is a downside to this in a way, as compared to some other pages out there that only feature certain types of cosplayers, some people enjoy that a bit more and those pages can have more of a following then we do. However we are really happy with the content we put out. 

Then the second big change, that has certainly led to better content for our pages, is the introduction of automation. When SMC first started, I had to do everything manually. Like I would be on Twitter or my phone doing everything live, and sharing items. It took up a lot of my time, and greatly affected my personal life. At times I think I must have been crazy, as this is a free service that we provide, and I was putting hours into each day. Now of course things have changed and the Social Media aspect of SMC is way easier to manage. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all have official tools available that allow you to schedule your posts. So you can easily take an hour or 2 and work on several days of a week at the same time, or if you were really organized, schedule the whole week. So I’ve learned to embrace this a bit more and learn the ins and outs of it. This leads to a more constant stream of content that our followers seem to enjoy. Which seems to lead to more engagement from our followers.

What’s the best part / worst part of running a cosplay theme page? 

The best part has obviously been meeting & interacting with the community throughout the years. We do our best to present a positive place where everyone can share their cosplay creations. We’ve been invited to some really cool events over the years, and our team has been able to go to a lot of conventions all over the world. It’s been a fun ride.

The worst part for me personally, is that while our team has grown and shrank over the years, I do most of the work by myself. Sharemycosplay.com is run by a single person, me. Also for the most part there is a single person doing all of the social media. So I do my best to have content up all of the time, but sometimes life gets in the way. We’ve put a few calls out for people that might want to help with content creation for the site, but sometimes it’s hard to attract people interested in helping. Right now I’d love a few writers that could write articles that I could wrap around cosplay posts for the page. We will have to see how that turns out.

What future plans do you have for ShareMyCosplay?

I’m always looking to expand Sharemycosplay.com with new content. During the pandemic I’ve been off my normal schedule so unfortunately updates have been a bit slow, but hoping to get back to things. With conventions off the table for now for the most part, I’m trying to move in different directions. I’ve recently tried to put more effort into YouTube, but even that has been impacted by the Pandemic, so I’ve leaned more on gaming content. That is going to change as I’ve started a new initiative that I just launched on our page a few days ago called “CosplaySELF''. Basically we are looking to have cosplayers interview themselves, and us edit the footage into the “episodes' ' featuring 3 cosplayers. Hopefully those will start to be live very soon. We are already into the editing phase and hope to have the first episode live soon, over on our YouTube page. Keep your eyes peeled. Hopefully, as long as people show interest, this is something we will continue to create and upload on a regular schedule.

Is there anything that wasn’t covered you like to talk about?

 Lastly I want to thank you for taking the time to include Share My Cosplay in this interview. It really means a lot when someone else in the community that you respect, takes a moment out of their busy life to recognize the work you’ve done. There have been times in the past where I have considered possibly giving up doing SMC, but getting some recognition really helps put things in perspective and allows me to continue on. Hopefully Share My Cosplay will continue to grow over the coming years, and continue as a great tool for all cosplayers to use.

https://www.sharemycosplay.com/