#the need to include text in every art piece I make persists

[swatch-ful]

I felt bad that I’ve only rlly drawn pieces with Soul and Mind so uhhh here’s Heart

Wanted to experiment with brushes so. watercolor

[seacottons]

uni!au with ateez — [ part one ]

—[ san - performing arts ]

ironically, you met when you helped him after a taller male shoved him down whilst in a heated argument.

he burst out laughing when you asked if he was okay.

“don’t worry, we’re just practicing our lines!”

you quickly glanced up at the building and grimaced once taking sight of the gleaming silver ‘performing arts building’ plaque.

of course.

to say you were embarrassed was only scratching the surface.

you had no regrets, because the incident was the catalyst that formed your friendship and eventual relationship.

will never let you live that moment down.

“remember when you tried to save me from mingi?”

“i thought we promised not to bring that up again-”

“why can’t i? i was saved by an angel that day?”

san invites you to both his dance and theatre shows.

will appear to be very professional on stage, but you catch his eyes frantically darting to the crowd to try and spot you.

and once he does, he will repeatedly smile and wink in your direction.

you’re always early, so you manage to snag a seat in either front two rows.

likes when you bring him bouquets as a congratulation gift after his performances.

gets very loud backstage just to let everyone know you bought him a gift.

a huge show-off.

is very good at facial expressions.

you fall for every time he pretends he’s crying or hurt when you don’t give him attention.

he will imitate different characters and repeat after actors while you two watch movies together.

“it sounded sexier when i said it, right (y/n)?”

is a very clingy cuddle bug.

and a leech.

will always have his arms around you while walking at campus.

loves to give you back hugs.

is the type to wait outside for you until you finish class.

and takes you to the cafeteria afterwards for lunch.

embarrasses you in said cafeteria by spinning the lunch tray while waiting in line.

also likes to spin your phone just to freak you out.

also the type to excitedly text you about the donuts and coffee they’re giving away at the library’s breezeway.

likes to refer to you as ‘angel’.

will beg you join the different clubs he’s in.

and then brag about you to the others once you do.

will hype your choice of attire even if he’s already seen you earlier that day.

the type to also sneak you a latte in the middle of your class.

also the type to sneak in with you during your auditorium classes.

you regret it sometimes because he leaves no room for you to pay attention to your professor.

often times, so much so that you have to lightly pinch his side in protest.

“do you want me to fail this class?”

he likes to participate in the many events held at campus.

everyone knows him.

challenges you to dance offs in the middle of campus.

you refuse and push forward a startled mingi instead.

“mingi wants to have a turn this time!”

also likes to lay in your arms whilst you play with his hair.

“were you a cat in your previous life?”

he will then proceed to meow in your ear.

“i’ll take that as a yes.”

—[ hongjoong - fashion design ]

dating him would consist of always admiring his new projects.

supplying him with unhealthy amounts of coffee.

trying out new pieces he made.

offering to carry his overly large portfolio binder sometimes.

sitting down and listening to him rant about how his roomates fail to wash clothes properly.

he has a guide taped to the washing machine with the different symbols of clothing labels.

“no, san, you can’t use shampoo as detergent.”

“but seonghwa finished all the detergent!”

using seonghwa’s lint rollers to remove all the fabric fibers stuck on hongjoong’s clothes.

you scold him while cleaning the bleeding scratches on his fingers from his sewing needles and pins.

“don’t worry, it’s nothing i can’t handle.”

“but i don’t like seeing you get hurt, you bum.”

you bought him strawberry bandaids because he thought they were cute.

sometimes, when he has time, he’ll custom make clothes just for you.

he insists on having multiple matching outfits.

will ask you to model his work for his social media page.

thinks you look best in skirts.

you’ll be the source of comfort during presentation week.

he’ll be a wreck whilst making a new collection.

but you’re always there to pick him back up.

most of the time, you’re the source of his inspiration as well.

you insist he shouldn’t sit for hours writing essays or sketching numerous ideas for future work.

but he’s stubborn as a mule.

nights with him include binge watching fashion shows or cute cartoons.

or painting your nails.

you both enjoy coffee dates when you have time.

he tells you he wants to open a fashion line one day.

you’re trying to stand still as he plucks numerous pins into the dress you’re trying on.

“what do you think i should call it?”

“hj couture? does that sound too basic?”

he pauses momentarily before spooling the leftover red thread.

“(y/n). i’ll call the line (y/n).”

—[ wooyoung - culinary arts ]

invites you to his dorm and cooks for you.

his apartment always smells of warm spices and comforting meals.

pretends his roommates’ teasing doesn’t affect him, but the tips of ears always glow red.

will always bring over leftovers he made in class.

“i just thought you wanted to try this mille feuille.”

“which one is better? the salted rosemary loaf or the oregano and olive oil one?”

loves to bake and cook with you.

will make your birthday cake from scratch and will go all out decorating it.

has an annoying habit of taking pictures of you mid-bite.

“delete that right now.”

“but babe, you look so cute.”

“jung wooyoung!”

will wrestle with you as you attempt to take his phone away.

“okay, look! i swear i’ll delete it!”

he saves it in a hidden folder.

calls you his ‘cupcake’ or ‘sugarplum’.

teases you nonstop when you fail at something in the kitchen.

“babe! no! gentle folds! you pulverized those poor blueberries!”

“but the instructions say to mix!”

“the dough isn’t supposed to be blue!”

he’ll whine nonstop about how much he hates baking bread in class.

“do you know how abnoxiously long the fermentation process is!? i’m losing my mind.”

will wave and yell your name to catch your attention if he spots you nearby at campus.

you hear him every time.

he’s just that loud.

drags you to new restaurants just so you can rate them with him.

also drags you to go cutlery shopping.

accidentally dropped a plate in the store.

and when the employee came sauntering in the aisle suspiciously-

“(y/n) did it.”

once gave you food poisoning by accident.

you never wanted to eat scallops again.

you don’t mind his hands smelling like garlic or ginger most of the time.

or stained with spices.

“turmeric is a bitch.”

“woo, who wears white while cooking with turmeric anyway?”

will show off and brag about his knife skills.

demands to race with you to see who can chop the vegetables the quickest.

“you’re going down, (y/n).”

“uh- i don’t think i ever stood a chance to begin with.”

he lets you win sometimes though.

will beg you to visit him at his part time job at the cute cafe not too far by.

you always try to when you have the time.

and when he finds out you went to the rival cafe across the street one day..

“on a scale of 10 to 10, how bad is kang yeosang’s cooking?”

“what?”

“answer the question, (y/n).”

“woo, it’s 3 a.m.”

the next day, you explained that you were merely invited by your classmates to that particular cafe because one of them was a former employee there.

he childishly ignored you with crossed arms and a subtle pout.

“your jajangmyeon is much better. they didn’t even like the food there!”

he finally perks up with a large smile.

“wait, really?”

you think he looks endearing with his apron and chef’s hat.

will post cheesy captioned pictures of you after serving you delicately decorated plates of food.

‘two delicious meals for tonight, hehe.’

“gross. did you really have to say that?”

—[ jongho - kinesiology ]

you met him at the university gym and instantly clicked.

found yourself months later agreeing to go out with him.

a giant goofball.

sometimes makes faces at you while you exercise across the gym.

makes sure you watch him when he deadlifts.

loves when you hype him up.

opens all the jars for you.

and cuts all the fruit for you.

“why use a knife when you have my hands, love?”

you nearly choked on your saliva when he punched open the watermelon.

“can we ever just have a perfectly sliced watermelon!?”

“no- unless i break my arm one day.”

insists you jog with him around campus early in the morning.

likes to practice wrapping elastic tape on you.

you own half of his hoodies.

takes you to watch basketball matches.

then challenges you to a match when you go on dates to the park.

will persistently tease you about your poor aim.

and will absolutely not let you have the ball for more than a few seconds.

“stop cheating!”

“i’m not cheating! you just suck!”

joined you in some of your elective classes.

will also wear sleeveless shirts because he knows how flustered you get while his sculpted muscles are on display.

“what did professor kim just say?”

“what?” you tore your gaze from his biceps to glance at his face.

“are you staring at my arms again?” he snickers.

“no,” you say too quickly, face heating quite considerably.

despite his teasing, he’ll always baby you and take care of your needs.

has the cutest gummy smile.

you like to call him your gummy bear.

he hated the name at first, but grew to accept it over time.

likes to randomly pick you up.

sometimes will throw you over his shoulder.

has a habit of patting your thighs.

sometimes asks you to sit on his back while he does push-ups.

your eye bulged at the sight of a mop of ruby hair.

“don’t say anything.”

“you like apples so much you dyed your hair red?”

“i lost a bet.”

“you look cute though.”

you tugged at his tresses, smiling as you admired the shade against his tanned skin.

“baby?” you brushed his bangs away to display his forehead.

“hm?”

“you’re the apple of my eye.”

“i’m-,” he sucked on his teeth and pursed his lips, face scrunching in a mock grimace, “i’m going to throw up.”

[inventors-fair]

Animal Planet - Full Commentary

Like I mentioned earlier, there were a lot of great entries this week. Full commentary below the cut. - @teaxch​

@bread-into-toast​ - Indomitable Tardigrade

Tardigrades are famous for their ability to live through anything, and indestructible plus protection from everything covers almost every effect in the game that might remove a creature, with only non-targeted non-destruction removal getting through. I also like temporarily gaining indestructible on a tardigrade more than I like it on some other creatures that have gotten it as a replacement for regeneration (Drudge Sentinel, Icehide Troll), because Tardigrades really do become indestructible, rather than just putting themselves back together.

@deg99 - Anikole-Watusi

The flavor text is doing a lot of work on this card, helping justify an ability that otherwise would be a bit incongruous. With a reasonable statline at base rate, the card is less reliant on the second ability than the similar Stormwild Capridor, and it’s also threatening enough that preventing it from being bolted or fighted to death is valuable even if you have no ways to trigger it yourself.

@demimonde-semigoddess​ - Beetle Colony

The design of this card is interesting in that it is both a card that you don’t want to play in a deck with no forests, but also has incidental added value if your opponent is playing forests. (You could play the card in a deck with no forests, with the intent of only ever using the last ability, but that’s pretty far below rate, so I don’t think it makes the cut if you’re on that plan.)

The big boundary-push on the card is that it’s an aura that taps, and one that goes on a card type that people often tap pretty casually. Tapping enchantments appeared in Future Sight as a thing that Magic hadn’t done yet, but otherwise haven’t appeared. I’m not sure that this card crosses the threshold of what it would take to be worth breaking that rule on its own (as opposed to being an additional upkeep trigger or something), but it would be reasonable in a set that included other tapping enchantments.

@dimestoretajic​ - Bara, Friend to All

This is a strong tech piece; a fair number decks across a range of formats have few, if any ways to deal with a card like this mainboard. It’s fast enough that it’s not practical to go under it, it requires specific pieces of removal to handle, and even if it is handled eventually it can often put an aggressive deck effectively out of the game. (That said, most decks do have answers for something like this in the board, although not reliably great ones.) This might be safe in a product that skips standard, but it’s not totally clear whether this is something that would make it in a commander-focused product. (It’s not too powerful for Commander as a format, but it’s not something that all commander-product decks have many good ways to deal with.) I’m also not sure whether this could go in a product meant to be drafted. If this was introduced into certain non-rotating formats, it could certainly be an interesting role-player.

@fractured-infinity​ - Cunning Cuttlefish

There’s currently no shapeshifters in Magic that use this technology in quite as straightforward a way as this - Cryptoplasm might come the closest, with Dimir Doppelganger also playing in that space. This was one of a few Cuttlefish entries this week, and shapeshifting with controlled size is a pretty clever way to implement a Cuttlefish’s abilities. This card also allows for some shenanigans if you control an evasive creature and a creature with a saboteur effect. I wasn’t initially sure whether this should only last until the end of the turn, but precedent suggests that it’s fine for it to persist.

@ghoulcaclulator64​ - Snake-Head Larva

Morph and saboteur abilities go together naturally, enough so that Headhunter, Silent Specter, and Haunted Cadaver all play in this space. For its morph cost, this card has a fairly brutal saboteur effect, and it’s appropriate to put it at rare for that reason. That said, as long as it only connects once, it’s pretty fair, and if the other morph cards in the set obey the KTK-forward soft rules about the size of creatures with cheap morph costs, then it can at least be blocked safely.

@gollumni​ - Zhalfiran Zebra

This card homages two existing cards, Master Decoy and Zhalfiran Decoy, rather than alluding directly to something that the animal is known for outside of Magic, which is a novel twist on the prompt. The card entering the battlefield tapped presumably references those two cards needing to tap to use their abilities. It reads a little oddly in a vacuum, as it’s not a drawback that appears often on white cards, but the connection to the second ability helps to to feel part of a piece. I do think that there’s room to push this card a bit - even at common, sorcery-speed tapping for one turn isn’t worth a huge amount.

@grornt​ - Nude Defenders

Surprisingly one of three cards this week that made use of the Skulk mechanic, Nude Defenders is a spin on Rat Colony that’s more insular and that has less power, but gains the aforementioned mechanic. I’m not sure whether Skulk plays well into the fantasy offered by the rest of the card of building up a large group of creatures that are themselves individually large, however. It still has some utility in that it can help get a last few points of damage in and generally prevent very large creatures from blocking (the Defenders in many circumstances will at least trade, rather than just getting eaten), but the two parts read as negative tension.

@helloijustreadyourpost​ - Clever Octopus

The second of the skulk entries this week. It’s clear what this card is doing - it steals small objects when it attacks (including things like food and treasure, which octopuses value) - but executing that ends up requiring a lot of text. I see the value in keeping your opponent from sacrificing whatever it is you target with the ability by preventing sacrifices of artifacts entirely, but most card just accept the fact that sacrificing a permanent is an answer to abilities that would steal it. I think that the extra text may be worth it here because the set of things that the octopus can steal includes a lot of things that can easily be sacrificed, but it’s on the line.

@hypexion​ - Abyssal Angler

I really like this design overall. “Creature that can force a creature to attack, but also must block the attacker” is a combination of abilities that I was a little surprised doesn’t already exist on a creature, given the very clear story it tells. I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I like the subtle drawback of the ability being mandatory; if your opponent has only a 4/4, you must commit your Angler to blocking that creature if it’s untapped, which is a missable but relevant interaction. It does tell an interesting story of an Anglerfish in over its head, however.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes​ - Battle-Ready Emu

It’s hard to do a card with a single short line of rules text that’s both novel and a complete and understandable reference to a real-world phenomenon (or event, in this case), and I think this card pulls it off. In many environments, the Protection is largely trinket text, but as evergreen colored artifacts allow Wizards to print more and better equipment at lower rarities, it’s something that has a growing chance of mattering.

@jsands84​ - Eclipse of Moths

Cards that allow your opponent to escape part of their effect by paying a certain color of mana aren’t common, but I like this more than Quenchable Fire for two reasons. First, the hybrid cost to buy out of the effect means that more, but not all, decks have the option to do so. Second, the repeatability of the effect means that the cost can legitimately add up over time. There are shades of the not-so-popular Rhystic mechanic, but I think in small volumes it’s fine, especially when tied to clear flavor, as this is.

@juggernaut-is-a-metalhead - Decaying Waverider

I wasn’t completely sure what to make of this card; the card mostly holds together, except for the art (although the dog is very cute), and doesn’t seem to be a top-down representation of the animal depicted, unless I’m missing something. Skulk and the ability to destroy cheap things on ETB is an interesting combination, as depending on your opponent’s curve, this might remove the only creature that can block it. 

@loreholdlesbian​ - Coveted Rabbit

This is a strong design for a card that goes in a deck with spells that target your own creatures, specifically because it itself is a creature. The simplest execution of the mechanics of this card would be to just make the foot itself an equipment card, but this implementation allows you to up the creature count in an aura- or combat-trick-heavy deck by being a creature itself.

@misterstingyjack​ - Beaver Dam

The bulk of the power of this card is vested in its last ability. Being able to pitch lands for business is worth a lot in the late game, and the defensive nature of the card as a whole helps support a longer-game plan. The rest of the card tells a nice and flavorful story as well. +0/+1 counters aren’t a tool that’s used any longer, and I’m not sure if this card crosses the threshold for making it worth bringing them back; the card could use another counter type and scale with the number of those counters, if +0/+1 counters weren’t being used.

@nicolbolas96​ - Protective Mother Boar 

I’m not sure if there are any “mom will fight you if you hurt one of the other ones” cards that represent the mother creature itself rather than the baby, which is an interesting point of novelty. This card represents potentially quite a lot of face damage, but cleverly uses the Crested Sunmare trick of tying a powerful effect to a tribe that tends to be used for limited filler rather than for serious constructed shots. (Although the number of Constructed-interesting boars has gradually crept up over time.)

@nine-effing-hells​ - Aposematic Display 

Menace and Deathtouch as a combination mean that blocking the creature is very costly, so there’s some synergy there - your opponent will generally treat the creature as unblockable. (Which is completely fair for the card’s cost - in blue, auras that make creatures unblockable can cost a single mana.) What I mostly want to talk about is the interaction between menace and the last ability. Because of the nonobvious way those abilities interact (if your opponent has only one creature that can block the enchanted creature, they don’t have to block it, but if they have two or more, then the targeted creature and another creature both have to block the enchanted creature), putting the two abilities on the same card is probably a complexity flag, but the card is uncommon. The specific combination has the interesting (but not necessarily desirable) effect of making Menace a drawback a significant fraction of the time, as the second ability is nullified entirely as long as your opponent doesn’t leave up two or more blockers.

@reaperfromtheabyss​ - Sandfish Skink

I didn’t think much of the ability at first, but the more I thought about it, the more impressed I was with its flexibility. It spoils a range of combat tricks, it lets the Skink block a large creature and then swap to a small one, and it allows the Skink to block things it wouldn’t normally be able to block. There’s a lot packed into a simple ability, which makes for an impressive design.

One small note - it should probably be limited to targeting attacking creatures that are attacking you or a creature you control. While I believe the game rules can handle the circumstance where you target one of your own attacking creatures, the Skink itself, or a creature attacking another player in a multiplayer game, it’s probably better to sidestep that entirely by limiting the legal targets.

@snugz​ - Bombardier Beetle

This is an interesting design, and another in the category of cards that seem like they should already exist. The big question with this card is: Is it green? Almost all similar effects (with a fixed amount of damage) are red, and in practical terms the ability functions a lot like Double Strike, but only against creatures. Not every card needs to be in the color that’s number one in something, but this ability feels borderline in Green, which doesn’t have a long history of creatures being able to one-sided fight nonfliers without external help. (That said, I guess the fact that it’s blocked or blocking is sort of like it’s fighting?)

@starch255​ - The White Whale

This is a wrath attached to a large body, with a bit of a twist that players o-ring one creature each instead. Putting a card that some players will interpret as a Whale tribal card in a color with no Whales might disappoint some players slightly, but it’s a pretty on-flavor way to keep the card from affecting itself or other copies of itself. This is currently one of the easiest to cheat out/reanimate/blink wraths in the game - it’s pretty standard for creatures that wrath on ETB to only get that effect when cast from hand, or to require some additional investment or action.

@typical-davinci-impersonator - Leyline Cuttlefish

This is already a bear, so the card is basically serviceable in limited even if the ability doesn’t end up mattering, but I’m assuming that this exists in an environment where color matters. Depending on the way that color-matters is implemented, there’s an argument that this could maybe cost 1 instead, but given that 2/2 for 2 isn’t a statline that colorless gets much, the ability can be pretty marginal and this is still an interesting card. Being directly tied into what Cuttlefish can do in a very literal way limits the environments where it makes sense as a card, but makes it quite resonant if there were a reason to print it.

@walker-of-the-yellow-path​ - Blue Glaucus

I had to look this one up - for the benefit of anybody who’s in the same boat, this is a slug that preys on jellyfish-like creatures and actually stores their stinging cells in its own body for defense. It’s also immune to the stings of some such creatures.

The card has a lot going on, and a lot of it is novel, although most of the text directly references the abilities of the actual organism. The third ability is interesting in that it can be proactively built around, although Deathtouch creatures more often die on your opponent’s turn than on yours, making the mana potentially more difficult to use.

I’m not totally sure that the creature needs morph, but morph + deathtouch is a good combo, so it’s reasonably justified if the set it appears in already has morph.

@wolkemesser​ - Magical Hat

If I had done Honorable Mentions this week, this would definitely have made the cut. It’s super rare that such a clear and clever story can be told with just one relatively straightforward line of rules text. I respect the decision to leave off flavor text even though cards with three lines of rules text almost always have it; the card doesn’t need any help explaining what’s going on. I had a hard time gauging the rate on this card, but I think it’s within the band of fair.

[mtgbracket]

Tiebreaker - Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest vs Polukranos, Unchained

Hi folks!  Yesterday, these two cards both got 177 votes in Batch 2.3, leading to a tie.  I don’t vote in the polls so that I can be the tiebreaking vote when it’s needed.  So here I am doing that.

I am going to be using the same format as I did for the ties in the original Magic Bracket - see this old post for an example.  Essentially I will provide a written analysis on each card over five categories, and then finish with scores.  If the scores also tie then my personal favourite gets the nod.  The categories are:

 - Quality of design, scored out of 10  - Power level, scored out of 5 (overpowered cards will score lower)  - Flavour, scored out of 5  - Art, scored out of 5 (combined across multiple arts if there are any)  - Place in Magic history, scored out of 5

Let’s get stuck in.

Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest

Design

Fittingly for a death priest, Mazirek cares about death - specifically, he’s one of the relatively few cards that care about sacrificing.  While we’re more used to seeing this on black-red cards in recent years, Mazirek was printed in Commander 2015 and the sacrifice-matters element is perfectly at home in black.  While it doesn’t feel green, the reward you get - +1/+1 counters on all your creatures - certainly does, and Mazirek has a solidly black-green feel as a result.  And by both caring about death and growth/life, he also feels specifically Golgari - which matters as the Kraul are a Golgari insect group.  Sacrifice-matters probably does play better in black-red (where red’s ability to sacrifice its own stuff lines up nicely), but it’s not massively out of place here.

Having flying (which makes sense for an Insect) but a measly 2/2 body for 5 also guides the player to imagining growing him into a massive threat through adding lots of sacrifice effects.  The design is also kept light by not having Mazirek provide any inherent way of sacrificing things or making sacrifices happen - the player has to provide their own.  This is pretty common for these kinds of designs, but is good because it means the rewards can be a bit juicier, as the player has to provide a sacrifice payoff, an enabler, and likely some fodder - although making your opponent sacrifice things also works!

One ding against the sacrifice trigger is that it does require players to handle a small bit of rules knowledge - specifically, identifying the “sacrifice” keyword action and understand which things are and aren’t sacrifices.  And effects that make temporary tokens are annoyingly inconsistent about whether the tokens are exiled or sacrificed, which sets up a bit of a reading debt.

Power level

Fittingly for a card from a Commander precon, Mazirek is pretty potent.  He can grow your team quite substantially with a few triggers, even if he doesn’t provide you an in-built way of getting them, and promises unbounded payoff.  Combined with a sacrifice outlet and something with Persist can even make infinite combos, which is pretty compelling as a power option.  Mazirek is technically legal in Eternal formats, but isn’t up to grade there - but that’s not a mark down on him as few cards are.

Mazirek ranks #278 on EDHREC, as the Commander of 424 decks, and as a card appears in 4% of decks on the platform.  This indicates a potent and popular Commander card.

Flavour

Mazirek, as mentioned above, is the leader of the Kraul, the Golgari insect race.  His card name certainly conjures up a lot of what’s going on with him - “Death Priest” is quite a title, and gets across both the death-focused aspect of the Golgari as well as the Kraul’s society - Mazirek was the leader of the Kraul race until his death in the War of the Spark storyline.  His name is also fun to say - and feels quite insectile.  It’s a shame that the “priest” title, which feels more like a Cleric, is not matched with his typeline, where he is a Shaman.  There are plenty of green and even black-green Clerics, so this does feel like a minor ding.

Mazirek’s flavour text reinforces the “insect” thing nicely, with talks of clicks and buzz, and the very Metal “incarnation of decay”.  Overall the picture of a rotten, death-feeding entity is well sold.  Being empowered by death is a flavourful concept, but “sacrificing” specifically is hard to convey as a flavourful concept - it’s a bit too mechanical.

Art

Mathias Kollros’s piece revels in the black-green colour palette we’d expect from a Golgari legend, and shows the central figure suggestively in dark greens and yellow highlights, but with the details hidden by strong green-white backlighting.  The posing emphasises the many additional limbs that Mazirek has over a humanoid figure, with his wings and extra legs, as well as his elevated position.  Some drippy, slimy looking moss decorates his podium and the darker edges of the piece give us the sense that we’re in the Kraul’s tunnels.  After adjusting to the main image we also see the eggs at the edges of the image, adding to the insect / creepy vibe for an overall very effective piece.

Note that the colour palette appears to have been significantly darkened from the original printing for the later Double Masters version for no clear reason.  I think the original printing is the superior.

Place in Magic history

Other than a supporting role in the Ravnica / War of the Spark storyline, Mazirek doesn’t have much to write home about here - no particularly unique or interesting things about him.

Polukranos, Unchained

Design

From this year’s Theros: Beyond Death, we have the zombified version of Polukranos.  Originally gaining infamy as Polukranos, World Eater, this hydra is now presented in a black-tinged version - our second black-green card.  He starts out with square stats as a very undercosted-seeming 4-mana 6/6, before later promising to escape as a 6-mana 12/12.  The “permanent damage” drawback here is something originally seen on Judgment’s Phantom creatures, which only ever lost one counter per instance of damage; the counters-per-damage version was premiered on M11′s Protean Hydra as a “heads” metaphor, and was also seen on Ugin’s Conjurant.  Conjurant and Polukranos share an important improvement - they only apply the replacement effect while they actually have a +1/+1 counter, which stops them becoming invincible if you raise their toughness some other way.

As well as being a big reservoir of power and toughness, this newer version of Polukranos connects mechanically to the original by including a fight ability - and a very rare repeatable one at that.  This opens up some interesting options whereby if Polukranos has shrunk too much, you can fight him off in order to have him die and then be able to escape and reset him with his final Escape ability.  Polukranos has the highest card-cost for any Escape card, needing six other cards to come back - justified by his massive size upgrade when you do so.

The design overall hits some of the right notes for the established Polukranos power set - beefy and activated-ability-fighting - while adding some interesting play patterns with the Escape mechanic.  It doesn’t do a great job of feeling green-black to me instead of just green however - monogreen has Escape cards and that’s all that black is really bringing to this package other than a generic multicolour power injection and the Zombie creature type.  And the design is very busy, with a lot of text and moving parts that is a bit confusing to play.

Power level

While being a Limited powerhouse, Polukranos hasn’t managed to get anywhere in general constructed thanks to competing for resources with the far superior Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, which is commonly played with black.

In Commander, EDHREC shows Polukranos, Unchained at rank #494 as a Commander of 170 decks, and appearing in 3% of decks.  The combo with Vigor is particularly nice - you can choose to apply Vigor’s replacement effect instead of Polukranos’s own one and have him grow every time he fights instead of shrinking!

Flavour

The name is straightforward enough - and connects with the art - but not inspired.  The lengthy rules text doesn’t even leave room for Escape reminder text, let alone flavour text.  The character of Polukranos is of a dangerous monster that Elspeth had to defeat in the original Theros storyline as the champion of Heliod, but the new version is just “that same guy from before, only he escaped from the Underworld”.

Art

Chris Rahn is one of Magic’s most notable current artists, with a great ability to render detailed fantasy images with beautiful details.  The purple-and-grayish hues of the underworld are used here to show the location, and nicely we see the upper purple head of Polukranos blending with the beautiful night sky.

And those purple heads are shown coming from the same root - I believe they are actually regrowing at the time of the art!  There are a lot of nice visual indicators of this - a pinkish glow showing where the stump was, the purplish colour of the two new heads, and the fact that those are a little smaller than the other four.  The new heads both have collars on so I imagine these are magical collars designed for a hydra - but the art also shows that the chains weren’t strong enough, as the name tells us.  A close look shows a loose chain breaking a statue in the foreground - and the other foreground figures help sell the size of the monstrous creature in front of us.  The overall mood is “Oh s***, the monster has got loose!”.

Place in Magic history

We have a minor storyline character here and the card has no particular resonance or important part to play, so not looking at a whole lot here.

Final verdict

Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest

Design - 7/10 Power level - 4/5 Flavour - 3/5 Art - 5/5 Place in Magic history - 2/5 TOTAL - 21/30

Polukranos, Unchained

Design - 6/10 Power level - 3/5 Flavour - 2/5 Art - 4/5 Place in Magic history - 2/5 TOTAL - 17/30

Good luck to Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest in Round 3!

[psychcomposer]

Alright, I have too many feelings about a video game that’s going to come out in a month that I really just need to get out. It’s been over a decade and one of my favorite games, The World Ends With You, is finally getting a sequel. I’ve been brooding on the trailers for months, and I just finished the demo, so it is time to put down my capital T Thoughts on Neo: The World Ends With You.

As a warning, this will be entirely too long. But I’m not about to keep this bound up any longer.

TWEWY is my favorite title for the Nintendo DS. It is a JRPG starring Neku Sakuraba, an aggressively antisocial teen living in the Tokyo district of Shibuya. He is suddenly pulled into a test of survival called The Reaper’s Game, where he is forced to join forces with a partner in order to survive a week of lethal objectives in a sub-planar version of Shibuya. I love the story, its such an honest and interesting take on learning to get outside of your comfort zone. But more than that, it is a game that does so much to put a modern twist on every piece of your typical JRPG. You control two characters at once, Neku with the touch screen and his partner with the control pad, forcing you to split your attention and giving mechanic weight to the idea that Neku can’t survive alone. Armor and weapons are replaced with clothes and outfits, with a character’s ability to wear them restricted not by class but by a character’s bravery. The music list is filled with punk, alt-rock and hip-hop that are a stark contrast to the symphonic tracks of other titles. Battles aren’t random impediments, but fun diversions that sport a robust reward system that encourages players to push their limits.

But even more than that, the most modern thing I appreciate about TWEWY has to be the characters. Neku, Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme all feel like believable teens that grew up in the 2000′s. They bicker, clash, and banter like teens struggling to survive and make sense of their situation. One of my favorite little gimicks of the story is just how many nicknames there are for every character. Almost everyone has earned a few nicknames. One of my favorite examples is Sho Minamimoto. He’s a reaper with an obsession with math, often infusing his speech with mathematical jargon or expressions, and seems to enjoy erecting “art installations”, which most people can only decipher as towers of trash. Over the course of the story, he gets called Pi-face, the Grim Heaper, and another nickname I can’t even mention because of spoilers. It’s just... such a nice little human touch, these kids throwing crafted insults at a human enforcer of their doom that could almost certainly tear them apart.

I’m getting into this to try to give a sense of why I enjoy TWEWY so much, why it has such a unique place in my heart. Its a game I’ve 100% completed several times over, a task that’s no easy feat with the sheer amount of collectibles and post-game objectives. Unfortunately, for the last year or two, I’ve been kind of dreading this sequel.

Neo:TWEWY has been... a long time coming. Way back in 2007 they had a whole website counting down to some sort of announcement, with the music slowly building in intensity. I remember following it with bated breath, until it finally hit zero! And we got... An ios port of the game. Talk about a let-down. To be fair, apparently it is a solid port, even managing to re-work the old battle system, one that required a second screen to work properly, into one that only needed one. But what that really offered to someone like me was the hint of a sequel, a single image of a new character being shown. They kept flirting with the idea of bringing the series back. The main cast even featured in a Kingdom Hearts game, of all things, even if they didn’t really do a whole lot. But these acknowledgments grew sparser and sparser.

A few years ago, they released a switch port of the game. Not only that, it included an epilogue! They were finally getting a sequel rolling! Of course I bought that game, beat it yet again, and fought my way to the new content and the hint of the new story ahead.

It was... Well. I found it disappointing.

The gameplay was competent, even if it was clear that the epilogue itself really hadn’t had too much put into it. One new character,  new enemies just being reskins of old ones. It wasn’t meant to be dlc itself or anything, it was just there to herald a return to the series. That wasn’t what bugged me. What bugged me was the writing. It was heart-wrenching. It just didn’t feel right. It just felt flat compared to the story I’d enjoyed so many times. But what really killed my excitement was the new character, Coco.

Now, odd personality quirks are not too unusual among the ensemble of TWEWY. Pi-face is just one of the characters that is so infused with a particular theme that it shows in how they express themselves. It’s part of the charm of them, discovering the personalities that live in this dark underworld of Shibuya. But Coco... she talks like the most stereotypical young teenager possible. unironic lols, totez (yes, spelt exactly like that, in a speech format), OMG’s, and just, like, likes everywhere! It felt like someone who knew they needed to make a quirky character but had no idea how to write one well, and just made the most stereotypical caricature possible. I hated seeing that. It embodied every fear I had about the sequel being just a cynical project, pushed forward after so many years  by people who just didn’t understand what made the original great. That mild dread was so persistent that even the release of the first few trailers couldn’t really get me excited for the game. Neo:TWEWY was shifting into 3d from the original 2.5d, with all the problems that could cause. What I could see of the story felt so much more like a generic fantasy tale with some modern buildings than the story I had grown through my teenage years with. And, well... Just look the original Neku and the new one they showed off.

Look at this. Look at one of the most vibrant, eye-catching character designs on the market for any JRPG in history, one that manages to mix purple and orange with striking lights and darks. And then look at the teenager edgelord bullshit they did with him. It’s atrocious. I hate it. He’s just another guy in a black outfit and just too much fucking cool guy protagonist power to not have the story be about him at this point. And look, I know that there’s Story LoreTM, I know that there could be some twist that explains this, I know that him being such a denial of his old self could be the entire fucking point. But let me tell you, when I saw this, I felt years of shifting, misplaced unease coalesce into a hard lump of dread.

And... Even... So... I did the stupidest thing I could have possibly done and preordered the game anyway. Don’t look at me like that, nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

But you know what? The damnedest thing happened. They released a demo for the new game a month before its release. And I played it, and... I enjoyed it.

Did you see that coming? I certainly didn’t. Welcome to the roller coaster.

Right off the bat, the writing soothed a lot of the fears I had. It felt right at home, like being plopped between to teens exchanging banter. One of the first exchanges is Rindo and Fret, his best friend, trying to meet up. Fret wants Rindo to meet him at  someplace called Wunafo, an area Rindo is clueless about. After some annoyed texting, it turns out Fret is actually referring to 104, a local landmark of a building. Fret insists that its a stylish improvement on the name. Rindo only gives him some grief about it..

I’m not doing the scene justice, or I could just be really desperate for half-decent writing, but I can’t deny that it quickly put a smile on my face. I am almost sure I’ve had this conversation before in years past myself. And beyond that, this game boasts voice acting that brings out a ton of personality in the large cast they are introducing (besides Rindo, which is a shame because he’s the protagonist... hopefully he gets over his apathetic teenager shtick eventually). Not everything is voiced, but it conveys so much appeal and personality, and even when the character’s aren’t voiced there is a conversation screen that occasionally breaks out some stylish layouts to convey mood and temperment and clearly draw from the style that made the original game pop so much.

The battles, of course, have been completely revamped. TWEWY had you control two characters, one of which you could customize by equipping up to 6 different pins that all used different motions and unleashed different attacks. Now you control up to four characters, but each one can only use one pin. But even so, it feels very genuine to its roots. An effective build in TWEWY was usually one that let you stagger an opponent so you can unload a bunch of attacks on them, and in Neo:TWEWY the game actively pushes you to folllow up attacks with characters in succession. It would be easy for this to devolve into a mash-fest, but even with the little time I had with the game it introduced a wrinkle in that- an attack that unleashed a single powerful blow, but couldn’t just be unleashed at the end of the previous combo. It needed to be charged for a while, long enough for the combo timer to deplete. So now an effective combo requires thinking ahead, and even after that you’re paying attention to enemies to dodge out of the way when they strike back. It’s entirely possible this system will flop in the late game, but so far it is robust enough for me to think that it will be one that could make me look forward to battles.

The music hasn’t impressed me so far, besides the tracks that have made the transition from the original. But I remember those strange tracks needing some time before I appreciated them too.

Finally, the story has hooked me. I don’t think that needs much more explanation. I want to see more of these characters and see the changes that have been made to the world in what I assume is years after Neku’s game. And to address the elephant in the room, Neku has not made his appearance in what is available in the demo. Odds are I will probably hate whatever they do with him. But there is enough happening in the space around it that I’m interested in exploring, and a bruised apple can still taste sweet.

Almost all of this, of course, is mostly just saying that Neo:TWEWY is not doomed to fail. There is still plenty of room for things to go wrong later on. There are entire systems I haven’t really seen in game, like shops, pin evolution, clothing and food (Though it looks like they have changed the food system significantly, which I approve of). The things that unnerved me so much in the trickle of information after this game’s announcement could still be enough to turn this sour. But I’m smiling as I’m strapping myself in for this ride now, one I’ve waited quite a long time for. Whatever’s coming, I’m excited.

[jmyamigliore]

How To Do Reiki Massage Fabulous Useful Tips

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[theseadagiodays]

May 4, 2020

This is Not a Performance

Irving H Bolano’s incredible repurposed newspaper fashion for the Met Gala Challenge on Twitter #HFMetGala2020

May the Fourth be With You as you reach the next chapter of this current sci-fi drama we seem to be living through.   As the saying goes, reality can be stranger than fiction.   But it just happens to be a many red-eyed virus rather than an evil, black-masked father that we’re fighting as we all walk around like Storm Troopers.  

There are so many aspects of our lives, during Covid, which make it feel like we are actors in a make-believe story.   First of all, we’ve all become movie stars, with our faces, homes, and even pets showcased on our own silver screens.  As isolated as we are, our private lives now play out in the public sphere more than ever - no paparazzi required.    For some, this invasion of privacy is unwelcomed. But for many people, it satisfies a secret longing to share themselves with a wider audience.  After all, deep down, everyone wants to be seen and heard (I guess, me included, since I have this blog, after all).  It’s why TikTok and YouTube and Facebook have become multi-billion dollar companies so quickly.  And now, while this pandemic is a harsh daily reminder of the impermanence of all things, it makes sense that these digital missives are an attempt to seek immortality, in some strange way.

As someone whose work responds to human’s need to have a voice, I truly get why this is the case.  And I love that this time has turned housewives into opera stars, and health care workers into hip hop dancers, and housepets into circus performers. But, at the same time, I have become very aware of the masks that we wear, even inside our homes, to portray a certain self to the world that may stray quite far from our authentic selves.  The expression “dance like no one is watching” acknowledges the fact that we all tend to perform when we have an audience, and perhaps we’re only truly ourselves when we don’t.   I understand that the way we “perform” ourselves online gives each of us a chance to reinvent the fictions we want our stories to have.   So, while I surely take some guilty pleasure from intimate glimpses into strangers’ lives, I also do so with a certain skepticism about the veracity of what I’m seeing.  

This became particularly true for me when I received a recent link from my friend and amazing singer/songwriter, Dominique Fricot. Capitalizing on this current trend of oversharing, he cleverly asked his fans to film their morning routines for the music video of his new song, Wake Up, by his duo, Flora Falls.  Dom’s warm tenor voice blended with his partner’s breathy tones feel just like a lazy morning in bed.  But I’ll leave it up to you to decide just how accurate these portrayals of people’s idyllic daytime rituals actually are.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EbsqXou5FeY

May 5, 2020

Homeschool Heroes

About twenty years ago,  I was invited to adjudicate a youth music competition in the Yukon.  Travelling to one of the northernmost inhabited spots on earth, I imagined that my greatest surprise might have been a polar bear or Northern Lights sighting.  But it turned out to be something entirely different.  Among the 25,000 residents of the thriving metropolis of Whitehorse exists a treasure trove of talent.  I could not believe the incredibly honed skills and nuanced expression with which these 11-18 year-olds played.   Wondering why, I developed a theory that I now call SLoW: Sheltered Living Wonder.  When long, dark days, cold climates or pandemics force people indoors, they tend to spend inordinate amounts of time on creative endeavors and skill development.  In other words, they slow down and take time for wonder.

This theory has surely applied during these past few months of sheltering in place.   One of the most remarkable examples has been the inventiveness that many of my friends have brought to their first attempts with homeschooling.   So, I wanted to give a few shout outs to some of these Homeschool Heroes and the highly imaginative projects they’ve done with their kids.

Stunning Easter Eggs made from natural materials and dye, by my friend Jane Cox and her kids  (Botany lesson)

Candy Covid virus, made by Amelia, my friend Jen Sanke’s daughter, as she learned about the virus’ proteins (Biology lesson)

But perhaps the prize for most complex homeschool project has to go to my architect friend, Bryn Davidson, who upon returning from Australia, in late March, had to fully quarantine for 2-weeks.  So, with his 5-year old son Bei as helper, this Physics lesson allowed him to enjoy home delivery beer while in isolation.  Just brilliant!

https://youtu.be/FF9-2dWoUtc

May 6, 2020

Living in livestream

So today, 5 million British Columbian’s awaited our “sentence” with baited breath, as word spread that our provincial prime minister would deliver the Re-Open BC plan at 3 pm.   I have to admit, it felt a bit like when you were “grounded” as an adolescent and then your parents returned certain privileges to you.  Of course, I’m well aware that our province has already been far more licentious than many places around the globe.  We’ve been fortunate to maintain reasonably low numbers of infection (just over 2,000), with counts as low as 8 new cases per day, at this point. So, while our provincial parks closed, our beaches never did.  While we were encouraged, within a reasonable range of home, to be active outdoors, we were not restricted to walks only within the 100 metre radius of our house, as my Israeli friends were.  And while we could still shop at gardening and furniture stores, to make sheltering at home more enjoyable, New Zealanders had nothing but grocery stores and pharmacies open, for two months.  

I have sensed the gratitude my fellow Vancouverites have felt about these privileges.  But that does not mean that we aren’t still anxious to return to other aspects of living which we’ve missed.  When lockdown began, ominously on the Ides of March (the 15th), I’d harboured a secret hope that certain restrictions might be lifted on my birthday (exactly two months later).  And it turns out that Phase Two of the BC ReOpen plan will commence on May 19th, just 4 days later than I’d hoped.  What I most look forward to experiencing again are small gatherings with friends, (we’ll soon be allowed to socialize in public with up to 10 people); meals inside certain restaurants and pubs (those that are able to function within WorkPlace BC’s safety regulations); visits to registered massage therapists; and hugs with select people, (”using one’s own ‘risk assessment’.”)

But in the long-range plan, the harsh reality for artists has been laid out, as Phase Four (which includes resuming large-venue concerts, conventions, and international travel) can not occur until either a vaccine has been developed, an effective treatment plan is widely available, or herd immunity is achieved.  And this is not estimated to occur until mid-2021 or later.  So, the prospects are still bleak for symphony orchestras, opera and dance companies, artists who perform in crowded bars, or musicians who travel for arena shows and festivals.  This likely means that in order to satisfy audiences’ need to access live performance, and for artists to continue to share their creativity,  livestream formats will still have to persist for some time.  Therefore, I thought I’d share a few regular weekly livestream arts events here, both from Vancouver, LA & NY.

Canadian National Live Art Champion, Dmitri Sirenko, who we featured at our non-profit’s annual benefit on February 20th, 2020

Every Monday Night at 7 pm PST (Vancouver) Poetry Slam: https://www.facebook.com/Vancouverpoetryslam/

Every Thursday at 5 pm PST (LA): LIVE Art Battles - Watch painters do their magic in just 20 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWJoWGVwzGtk99nTOCib9vg

Every Thursday at 8 pm EST (NY): Spotlight on Plays - famous actors perform readings of theatre pieces, online: https://www.broadwaysbestshows.com/post/the-best-of-series/

May 7, 2020

Collateral Blessings

So many thoughtful writers are adding to the discourse, as we all strive to make meaning from what can feel like a senseliess time.  I have so appreciated the abundance with which people are sharing these missives, right now.  Every day, bursts of inspiration or flickers of insight come my way, thru texts, emails and Facebook.  Like adventurers, traveling together thru the dark of night, we shine light on guideposts, anywhere we can find them, as we collectively quench each other’s thirst for wisdom.  

One of the most profound writings I‘ve recently discovered came from a stranger’s blog.  In The Examined Family, Courtney Martin, without ever diminishing the gravity of the havoc that this virus has wreaked, writes about some of the assets that have also come out of this time.  New friendships with neighbors.  A long-neglected puzzle completed with her kids.   The time to draw and truly notice an artichoke in her back garden. My good friend Juan calls these collateral blessings.  This reference to the accidental gifts that this cruel virus has given us, is a beautiful twist on “collateral damage”, a term coined to explain accidental friendly-fire deaths during the Gulf War.  Commenting on the anticipatory nostalgia that she projects she will feel about certain things, once this time has passed, Courtney writes:

“I instantly feel overwhelmed at the prospect of schedules and stuff. I don’t want to go back to our former accumulation or frenetic pace. I don’t want to stop texting (my neighbor) my little triumphs. I don’t want to forget about the artichokes in the garden. I don’t ever want to forget this happened--the grief and the beauty of it. I’m not even sure that will be possible, but if it were, I wouldn’t want it. I don’t want to vote like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to eat like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to consume like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to schedule like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to mother or daughter or befriend or neighbor like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to sit inside this little life, noticing and appreciating and breathing, like it didn’t happen. There is unnecessary suffering all around me, and inside of me, too, but there is also necessary meaning. May we hold on to that.”      

You can read her full entry here: https://courtney.substack.com/p/unnecessary-suffering-and-necessary?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3OTg0NDcyLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNzU1NDMsIl8iOiJCTnk2VyIsImlhdCI6MTU4NzA1MjgyMCwiZXhwIjoxNTg3MDU2NDIwLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjA5MjIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.puI9NMne-783ypInpvTkJ96T237WcrTo2ItDhqlkMiY

May 8, 2020

Nostalgia

I’m rarely one prone to nostalgia.  My childhood photo albums are in storage.  I have no family heirlooms displayed in my home.  My tendency is to revel in the present or dream about the future.  But this pandemic has strangely turned me into a sentimental fool.  Perhaps this return to simpler times, where we seldom shop, where we wander mostly by foot, or where we get to know our neighbors better, makes us long for the past in certain ways.  

For me, I’ve honored this by resurrecting my daily teenage Twizzler habit - a candy I’ve rarely eaten since then, but that now feels so satisfying during my Netflix & Chill evenings (while watching films almost as old like Groundhog Day & Anchorman).  

I’m also listening a lot to Old School Hip Hop, where the explative-free rhymes of the 90’s feel so strangely innocent.  It’s refreshing to listen to these musicians spit verses that merely celebrate the joys of dance and rap, rather than ranting about gun violence and other societal ills.  Run DMC It’s Tricky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-O5IHVhWj0) and Beastie Boys Body Movin’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvRBUw_Ls2o) happen to be personal favorites.  

Last month, I was tickled by an old memory while planting a lilac bush in my backyard.  I suddenly remembered a story about my college boyfriend, whom I hadn’t thought of in 30 years.  Our relationship started a bit secretively, so as not to hurt his ex’s feelings.  So, one May afternoon, we snuck away to a distant park that was hosting a Lilac Festival.  Unfortunately, our ruse was quickly spoiled when a candid photo of our picnic under the purple blooms was plastered all over the front page of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle the next morning.  

Another sweet memory returned in culinary form. Every Tuesday, for 7 years, my mother selflessly drove me an hour from home and back, for my flute lesson.  And to break up the long drive, we regularly stopped at Bickford’s Pancake House for my favorite adolescent treat: breakfast for dinner. Their specialty was the Dutch Baby Apple.  And I finally made my first homemade attempt at this deceptively easy delicacy, last Tuesday.  

This has also been a time to return to bedtime stories (some I’ve read to friends’ kids, and others for adults to hear.)  The Great Realisation by British performance artist, Tom Foolery, has been making the social media rounds. But in case you missed this touching tale that looks back on this time as if the tale is being told in a not-so-distant future, it’s a wistful story about some aspects of modern life that we may never long for in the future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw5KQMXDiM4

[queermediastudies]

Sex, sex, sex and so much more in Blue is the Warmest Color

The French film, Blue is the Warmest Color was released in 2013 and directed by, Abdellatif Kechiche. It follows the story of a young woman named Adele who faces crises with her queer identity. The film begins with Adele facing pressure from her peers to have a relationship with a boy named Thomas. On her way to her first date with Thomas, Adele passes a young blue haired girl in the street and later has a sexual dream about her. This scene is the audience’s first glimpse into Adele’s queer identity. Later in the film when she officially meets the blue haired girl named Emma, an art student in university, at a gay bar the audience begins to see Adele’s queer identity unfold and come to life through their relationship. While this film does work to bring attention to queer elements that are so often missing from films, it also falls victim to heteronormative and hegemonic values in the way that it presents Emma and Adele’s relationship.

The relationship between Adele and Emma seems to follow a similar arc as any other romantic film. They first officially meet at a bar as some type of “meet cute” and Emma later seeks Adele out at her high school, and they have a romantic moment on a bench while Emma sketches Adele. Though unlike the heteronormative romantic films often seen, Blue is the Warmest Color also functions as a queer breakout film. Andre Cavalcante (2017) in his article “Breaking into Transgender Life: Transgender Audiences’ Experiences With “First of Its Kind” Visibility in Popular Media” defines breakout texts as “media that portrays “first of its kind” representation” to a marginalized group. While this film is not about Trans characters like the ones Cavalcante analyzes in his article, the film does work to represent queer women’s lives in a way that is not often presented in mainstream media. One of the ways that the film does this, is through its representation of Adele and Emma’s sexual relationship. While the sex scenes throughout this film are striking and even at times uncomfortably long, they give queer women a sexual visibility that is rarely seen.

 The sex scenes that occur in the film not only occur in a queer context meaning that it is not prompted by a male third party, as we see in other hegemonic films, but the content is also extremely explicit. They show the female body in a realistic and raw way. They do not hesitate to show female genitalia, and in doing this they break patriarchal boundaries that demand modesty and concealment of the female body. The scenes also give visibility to queer women that is not through the Heteronormative male gaze. The sexual interactions are by women and for women and unlike the Canadian queer film, Below Her Mouth that also has female sex scenes, they are not all focused around a strap on.

 While queer women can and do use strap ons in real life, the persistence of it in every sexual encounter in Below Her Mouth presents a binary and heteronormative view of female-female sexual relationships and re-enforces the idea that one of them is “the man.” The sex scenes in Blue is the Warmest Color also present a reciprocal sexual relationship, where in neither of the characters seem to be the “dominant” or “submissive,” and a power dynamic between the two, at least in this point of the film, is non-existent. This works against the heteronormative narratives that are so often portrayed in romantic films where one character (typically the man) has more control over the other character. The film also makes the sexual interactions between the two women appear to be consensual, and while this doesn’t happen in the form of either party asking or saying yes, the scene does include mutual participation unlike typical heteronormative sexual encounters seen in films where one party seems to be resisting for one reason or another, and the forcing of the sexual interaction somehow leads to consent. 

Even though this film uses sex scenes to break patriarchal barriers and gives visibility to queer women, as Cavalcante also discusses in his article the short comings of breakout texts such as Blue is the Warmest Color come in their tendency to fall into hegemonic tropes and feed stereotypical narratives. To start, Adele and Emma externally fall into normative ideas of queer female couples. Adele is the innocent femme character and Emma is her butch lover. Later in the film, Adele pursues a career as a teacher and takes on the domestic role, while Emma is a rugged artist. 

This depiction of the characters falls into binary and heteronormative values and reinforces the idea that a queer relationship needs to mimic straight ones by having a “man” or masculine partner and a feminine partner. In addition, the age gap between the two characters is also worth discussing.  While without knowing that Emma was much older than Adele, the audience may assume their ages were similar, but the audience is explicitly told that Adele is 15 while Emma, in her fourth year of university, is assumedly around the age of 22. While, this age gap is not huge, it is still large enough that in contemporary western society it raises some red flags. Not only does this age gap seem strange to include, but it also reinforces narratives surrounding the idea that the queer community is filled with pedophiles and is out to corrupt the youth. This is also played out when Adele cheats on Emma with a man and throughout the rest of the film the audience never sees her have any interactions with any other women. 

This is problematic because not only does it make Emma and Adele’s relationship seem like some sort of fad that Adele was seduced into by the older Emma, it also suggests that femme women are inherently straight. Adele’s lack of interactions or relationships with women other than Emma, and in contrast  Emma’s multiple female relationships throughout the film suggest that feminine women like Adele are inherently straight and that to be truly queer you must be butch like Emma. Similarly, Adele never comes out to her family or friends and her being closeted is almost never mentioned, and even when she does eventually have Emma over to her parents’ house it is under the guise that Emma is just her friend. This is problematic because again it suggests that if you do not externally look queer, then it is easier to stay in the closet. While as discussed in Bonnie Dow’s (2010) article on the Ellen coming out episode, an individual’s coming out is not “taken to imply the success of the discourse” around queerness, it seems for a film such as this it would be important to include. To not include one of the main queer characters coming out at all suggests a shame around queerness that is perpetuated, and not addressed or corrected through Adele’s story.

Overall, Blue is the Warmest Color presents its audience with a raw version of queer female-female relationship, but the way that I experienced the film is probably much different from a queer identifying female. While I was watching the film I thought of Alexander Doty’s (1993) piece Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture, in which he describes that in the same way that “heterocentrist texts can contain queer elements […] heterosexual, straight-identifying people can experience queer moment(s).” While Doty discusses this in terms of queer readings of straight texts, it applied to my experience watching the film, because during the raw and unfiltered sex scenes I did experience queer moments. Though despite my queer moments, I do understand that my analysis is very skewed because despite being a feminist and having knowledge through gender studies classes, I have not had queer experiences. Therefore, for me to say that the film depicts “real” life queer female relationships and even queer female sex lives may be an over exaggeration. Especially the scenes where the women are “scissoring” stood out to me as being potentially stereotyped though again, I do not belong to the queer community, have not experienced a female-female relationship, and have not discussed female-female sexual relationships with queer women and can not speak to the accuracy. It is also notable that I have not seen an abundance of French films and so the nudity in the film that I describe as being liberating or forward may simply be part of French culture/films. 

Sources:

Cavalcante, A. (2017). Breaking Into Transgender Life: Transgender Audiences Experiences With “First of Its Kind” Visibility in Popular Media. Communication, Culture & Critique, 10(3), 538–555. doi: 10.1111/cccr.12165

Doty, A. (1993). Making things perfectly queer: interpreting mass culture. Minneapolis u.a.: Univ. of Minnesota Press.

Dow, B. (2001). Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18(2), 123–140. doi: 10.1080/07393180128077

Kechiche A. (Producer), & Kechiche, A., Maraval V., Chioua B., Lemal G., Martin A. (Director).(2013). Blue Is the Warmest Color [Film]. France.

Mullen, A. (Producer), & Mullen, A. (Director). (2017). Below Her Mouth [Film]. Canada.

[williamsockner]

LGBT+ Identity in the Time of Mindless Self Indulgence

Mindless Self Indulgence isn’t an act that could have flourished at any other time. The emo/pop punk wave was gathering steam; hip hop was still a novelty one could distinguish themselves from the flock by cribbing. “Random” Invader Zim-style humor was in the decline, while “edgy” no-limits humor was skyrocketing. Nerds hadn’t become the dominant force they are today, but due to the internet and the rise in manga and anime sales in the United States, they were able to access nerdy content much more easily. Youtube was taking off, music piracy was booming, and reliance on both radio and local record-store gatekeepers was at a low for young music fans.

Perhaps most critically, our national understanding of politics and identity at the time, particularly LGBT+ identities, was in a different stage of development than it is today. “Punching up” vs. “punching down” was not a concept that most people considered in their comedy. “It’s just a joke” was more widely accepted as an excuse for transgressive entertainment than it is today. “I’m an equal opportunity hater” was a common refrain.

Early in their career, the band released multiple tracks where Jimmy Urine, a man who was certainly not black, used the n-word. The “Pantyshot” cassingle was a treasured possession among MSI fans, featuring an early song that supposedly lost them a record deal due to being about lusting over a 5 year-old. Little Jimmy Urine sold kisses for a dollar to fans after shows, including to the teenagers. As a whole, the band made punchlines of racial and sexual slurs, rape and child abuse, school shootings, prostitution, drug use, incest, and just about every other taboo under the sun.

The understanding was that none of it was real and that none of it had any real consequences. Calling someone a faggot didn’t matter if we were all in on the joke, that homophobia was stupid. Words were just words. The identity of the speaker didn’t matter so long as their ideology was clear. It was something of an inversion of the way we publicly navigate comedy now, in that their identity determines where on the ladder they are to punch up or down, and the contents of their ideology is of minimal consequence compared to the text of their words. The context of a joke is not a matter of what the audience believes, but of the many complexities of hierarchy that society as a whole believes.

“Who cares?” asks 2008. “It’s just words.”

“How could it not matter?” answers 2018. “Words create culture.”

So LGBT+ identity in the era of Mindless Self Indulgence.

Describing the difference between 2005 and 2018 to young queer people is a source of anxiety for me, because I feel like the old woman talking about how she walked uphill both ways to the library if she wanted to read a book. It’s difficult, however, to put in perspective how quickly the culture around LGBT+ identities has changed. As dangerous as it is for queer kids today, they have much freer access to information about their resources and history than we did, and far greater representation in all forms of media.

When I was a teenager, I was the first person openly LGBT at my school, and my only point of reference for LGBT identities were Rosie O’Donnell and Elton John. There was no “Born This Way” yet, no Halsey and Hayley Kiyoko and Ellen Page, no Troye Sivan and Adam Lambert and Frank Ocean, no Miley Cyrus, no Laverne Cox. There were no empowerment ballads.

Which was fine, because I didn’t want empowerment ballads anyway. I felt disgusting. In reckoning with my LGBT+ identity, I felt small, broken, repulsive, confused, discarded and doomed. I was sickened in my own skin and filled with self-loathing because of my sexual orientation. Sometimes I still am. When I was 15, I drew a map of my heart, and in between the “fields of sexual insecurity” and “possibly irreparable damage” I had written “guilt!” several times and underlined it.

“You’re beautiful” didn’t only feel false, it felt invalidating. I was fiercely defensive of my self-hatred. I was working so hard at it, spending so much time and energy convincing myself I deserved the beating I was giving myself. To this day the barriers I’ve put up against generic bromides persist, and songs like “Scars to Your Beautiful” or “Roar” make me cringe. Maybe someone gets something out of them, but I can only think of the teenagers like me who used that sort of sentiment as fuel for their own self-abuse. I remember once bursting into tears at a “Jesus Loves You” sticker because it served as proof that the whole world was playing a joke on me, telling me that someone so unlovable should have some hope.

It was impossible to internalize that queerness was not dirty, unnatural and loathsome. Any attempt to break that association was drown out by the rest of the messaging we were receiving and our own tried-and-true mental gymnastics. Reassurance could not reach us at the bottom of the well.

At the time, I was obsessed with Mindless Self Indulgence with the kind of all-consuming adoration that only teenagers can possess. I aped frontman Little Jimmy Urine’s fashion, writing slogans across my coats with white tape. “What Do They Know” and “Cocaine and Toupees” were my ringtones, much to my mother’s chagrin. I had catalogues of bootlegs, lovingly sorted and pressed to CD. Mindless Self Indulgence populated my artwork, both in classroom doodles and in art pieces for my portfolio that I labored on for weeks. They were the subject of my college application essay. I met my first love on an MSI forum (which I moderated) and lost a few romantic relationships over my inability to talk about anything else. I owned every shirt. When I was hired on at Barnes & Noble’s music section, I would nominate Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy for the staff recommendation shelf every single week, and whenever it inevitably got recalled to the warehouse for lack of sales, I’d order it right back.

Sometimes my friends and I would go to the mall parking lot at night and blast Mindless Self Indulgence from my car, dancing around the empty lot with our striped stockings, fingerless gloves and Hot Topic trip pants.

This band kept me from killing myself.

“I’m filthy, disgusting, horrible, irredeemable,” we’d say. “People tell us we’re beautiful and we know they’re lying. I’m a freak.”

“Yeah, you’re fucking ugly,” the music said. “So what? So’s everything else. Have some fun with it.”

Despite the fact that Jimmy Urine has never publicly labeled himself with an LGBT identity, we young LGBT MSI fans claimed him as our own. We enshrined the article where he described being sexually attracted to anyone regardless of gender. We imitated and revered his gender fuckery onstage, the skirts, the pink suits and tutus, the eyeliner, his yelping falsetto leaping up from the masculine shouting, the way he danced. We pored over lyrics - that we transcribed ourselves in many cases, through multiple listens and endless debate - for those nuggets of same-sex attraction and gender ambiguity.

“I make a good girl but I make a terrible boy,” went one song. “These things in my pants that we’re all waiting for, I never really knew what that thing down there was used for,” went another. And the most sacred text of all was “Faggot”, off Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy, the most beloved record of the vast majority of hardcore MSI fans.

“I played that shit straight / blowing suckas to the side hopin' I get laid / now everybody knows / no way in hell I can ever live it down”.

Shit was a revelation.

Kitty, the drummer of Mindless Self Indulgence, once said of the band’s LGBT fans that listening to MSI’s music was like vomiting: it hurts at the time, but then you feel better. You got it out. And the band always cultivated their relationship with their LGBT fans. Gay marriage was one of the few political issues they openly took a stance on, in a time when states like my own were amending constitutions to protect themselves from Massachusetts’ same-sex marriages.

Thus, we had a place where we felt simultaneously seen and valued by the band, and unseen amongst the chaos surrounding us. The irreverent humor of the band created a safe space where homosexuality could be disgusting, but so was everything else. There was no shame at an MSI concert. You were listening to a man famed for drinking his own urine sing about whipping his meat out, who cared if you liked to kiss girls? That’s old news. We’re all freaks down here at the bottom of the well.

I’m 28 now, and I don’t know if the kids these days have an equivalent band. I don’t know if there’s a market for it anymore; I’m sure there will always be queer kids who have internalized the awful message that they are inherently unlovable, but I’m not sure if they can’t find more accessible and more inherently positive panaceas. I see mutations of the same style of humor in Willam from RuPaul’s Drag Race and in some of the undercurrents of Tumblr’s teen humor. “We’re goblins, trash, garbage babies.”

“Yeah,” my inner child says. “I fucking feel that.”

The paradigm of humor has changed since 2008, at least in my circles, and the reasons for that are manifold, political, social, capitalistic. In many ways, it’s been a good thing: bigotry can be exposed rather than cloaked in excuses. A basic understanding of social inequality is presumed of most audiences. People are responsible for the impact of their words, not the intent. “Equal opportunity hater” is seem for what it is: intellectually lazy and blinkered, the refuge of white guys who don’t want to own up to the fact that some jokes aren’t funny.

But I’ll always have a place in my heart for comedy that meets people where they’re at. Where we’re at isn’t always beautiful or acceptable or healthy, but sometimes it’s the place where we need the laugh most.

[drkungfus-customs]

Mtg Custom Card Competition Round 2: Phyrexians on Ixalan

Hello everyone and welcome back to the second week of I and Alyssa's custom card challenge. Just a quick foreword to thank everyone for the warm response we have had to the last round of judging, it is always nice to see people throw feedback back at us for running it. This weeks prompt was provided by Alyssa where participants were asked to present a theoretical Phyrexian corruption of Ixalan. As always submissions were gathered through discord and were judged by myself and Alyssa.

Michael says: So our first submission of the prompt, this card is a powerful reanimation and board control effect stapled onto a phyrexian corrupted dinosaur. However the power level, especially for a rare, is what has me most concerned. The colour pie is fine and the card feels very black, there are no problems in that regard. The part that has me worried is that the reanimation is instant, comes at a low cost, and is a replacement effect. Once Corruptosaurus is on the battlefield, and if itself gets a -1/-1 counter, it becomes almost impossible to deal with as traditional measures such as rest in piece or leyline will do nothing to prevent this effect. Additionally because the return is instantly rather than at the end of turn as with Marchesa, the Black Rose it opens the card up to some silly loops with persist cards or anything that has -1/-1 counters built in.  While the card is slow to distribute -1/-1 counters, their existence on this card implies they exist elsewhere in the set which will make this card much stronger. Especially in limited this card would be a nightmare as -1/-1 effects your opponent controls will be useless against your creatures and your own also feature as a steal effect. In order to make this card feel a little less broken and more fair I would restrict the resurrection to either only your own creatures or only your opponents. The potential value engine of this card seems a little above the curve as-is, especially when considering older formats with access to things like black sun’s zenith. There isn’t a single factor that pushes this card over, its just a confluence of factors that would make this card just not fun to play with and too warping in the limited environment.

Alyssa says: Formatting is mostly fine. The third ability shouldn’t be a replacement effect, because as written it inappropriately uses “return”. (Because the word return requires a card to be in the graveyard, and this replacement effect means that you gain control of the creature instead of it dying, it never enters a zone it can “return” from.) As written now, it resurrects friendly things with -1/-1 counter on them, meaning anything that has a -1/-1 counter either endemic to it (Bloodied Ghost, Grief Tyrant) or has permanent persist can be infinitely looped by it. You’ve accidentally prevented some abuse like Disciple of the Vault and Blood Artist by replacing the death trigger, but you can still benefit immensely from the infinite sacrifice. Furthermore, it just makes immortal creatures.

Balance-wise, it’s doing a bit much. The endemic wither is fine, giving it a way to damage stuff and get it back, and it would tie well in with the third ability like a souped up Necroskitter. The second ability is completely unnecessary, though perhaps more novel. You really only need one of these for the card to be useful for Limited and narrow Constructed applications (which is where this thing feels like it belongs.) It would be so much better if you went with only one of these abilities: I prefer the second one, as the incremental infection-based effect, perhaps through infected bites or claw injuries, seems much more “dinosaur” than a resurrection effect.

Flavor-wise, it’s okay, but it’s a bit bland. It’s a zombie dinosaur that does vague infection stuff. There’s not much of a story to the card, and a bit of flavor text with the space freed up from the above changes would be just dandy. I want to see how it fits in with the set around it, how Ixalan responds to its new apex predators. You have no art credit. We wouldn’t have noticed that “Mr. J” wasn’t an art credit if someone else didn’t use that art and credit it correctly.

Possible improvements:

-          Focus on one of the two passives and cut the other. If you wanted to focus on the incremental blight aspect, then perhaps make it asymmetric and only affect your opponent’s creatures.

-          Fix that malfunctioning third ability if you decide to stick with it.

-          Flavor text never hurts.

-          Drop a reminder text bubble on Wither for easier reading comprehension.

Grades:

Formatting – 4/5

Function – 3/5

Flavor – 2/5

Michael says: This card appears to have a serious flavour issue which really hurts the mechanical execution of the card. The flavour text indicates a phyrexian merger of Ghalta and Etali, something I would expect to have a similar importance as Brisela from Eldritch Moon, however the rest of the card appears to instead by an Ixalani call-back to Phyrexian Obliterator. This card feels like two excellent ideas combined to a less effective whole.

Judging by the perspective of an Obliterator call-back this card feels like a very good way to make a dinosaur version of the card, using enrage as an in theme way of simulating the desired effect. However in this case the card doesn't feel very green at all, outside of the dinosaur tribe and enrage there is nothing mechanical to make this card green. Given the enrage effect is symmetrical and only sacrifices a single land, if you had to keep the green in the mana cost rather than making it BBBB you could probably improve its power and toughness. Additionally if we assume this card is representative of the rest of the set, it is important to note that Wither and Enrage really do not play well in the same environment as wither -1/-1 counters will not trigger any enrage abilities on blocking. I personally would look to replacing wither with another ability, preferably one that is more green to help reinforce the colour requirements.

Again the card isn't particularly bad by any means, but the foremost improvement I would make is replacing the flavour text. The combination of Ghalta and Etali shouldn't be as small as a 5/5, should certainly be a legendary, and should at least cost red. The dissonance of these two ideas harms the card severely.

Alyssa says: Wither shouldn’t be capitalized. In a list of keywords, only the first one is capitalized. When you’re writing quotes in flavor text, make sure you put a shift line break in between the end of the quote and the beginning of the speaker’s name. The card feels barely green at all: in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this as red/black. The only bit that really strikes me as possibly green is the trample, which is secondary in black anyway. Enrage is also really hard to trigger intentionally in black, making abuse of the ability in its two intended colors very difficult.

The enrage ability is beyond busted. I understand you want to reference Phyrexian Obliterator and its extremely powerful on-damage ability, but remember that ability can only be as strong as it is because there’s very few ways for you to abuse it, since the controller of the source sacrifices the permanents. There’s tons of enrage enablers that would allow you to use this to repeatedly Armageddon the board. You may think its symmetry compensates for it, making it a “risk vs reward” play, but if you’re building around it the play will never be symmetrical. If you have one of the many ways to reliably damage this each turn you can just pop every land your opponents play consistently, and you’ll have a giant 5/5 that can wear down literally anything over time provided it doesn’t die. There’s a reason people play Armageddon despite the “this includes your lands” line, and making a repeatable version on top of a strong creature isn’t a good combo.

But it’s the flavor which really grinds my gears. The implication is that the Obliterator is some kind of Brisela-like chimera of Etali and Ghalta… which completely doesn’t gel with the card itself. It’s not legendary, it’s less than half the size of Ghalta, it has none of Etali’s lightning stuff or draw power going on. It looks like a generic compleated dinosaur, which would honestly be completely fine if it weren’t for that flavor text implying this was an amalgam of two of Ixalan’s Elder Dinosaurs. It would be similar to Brisela being, like, a 3/3 Eldrazi with a card draw ability.

Possible improvements:

-          You need to find a way to make it green. Perhaps play on the legendary Phyrexian resilience and have it punish by getting bigger when it takes damage. Or perhaps have it dredge its way out of the graveyard at end of turn if it would die from combat damage. Who knows?

-          Figure out a new enrage ability. This one is ridiculously easy to turn into Armageddons For Ever.

-          Use some new flavor text. If you’re dropping story characters, then you need to reflect their abilities, roles, and legendary status.

Grades:

Formatting – 4/5

Function – 2/5

Flavor – 1/5

Michael says: A compleated Azor is a very interesting concept from a lore perspective, and his card would surely excite players to see printed. This card however I am not sure would accomplish this feat. His mana cost is highly colour intensive meaning he is very difficult to cast in any normal game, therefore I would expect to see a reward equivalent to the effort I put in to cast him. In addition to possessing no built in way to protect himself, his effect feels incredibly weak. While seeing your opponents hand is noteworthy, in the vast majority of games when you cast Azor you are likely to be in the later stages of the game. At this point your opponent has likely already cast most of their hand and if not you are playing against control in which case Azor is never resolving let alone actually attacking. And even if the effect does trigger you are only likely to draw a single card at most given the opponent will play around the effect as much as possible. In order to make this card playable its effect needs to be tuned into a specific niche; given Azor's previous identity as a control piece I would want to see an effect that works well against control to help tie the flavour into the mechanics. I and Alyssa came up with giving him "this card cannot be countered" to help give him an anti-control niche along with changing his effect to be an enter the battlefield trigger. Allowing you to look at an opponents hand, pick a card type, and producing a static draw effect whenever your opponent casts one similar to how Archon of Dawn's Reach is worded we believe would be the best way to give him a specific use worth the extreme mana investment to cast him as well as being more relevant in multiplayer.

Alyssa says: Some small formatting changes. It’s “…look at defending player’s…” rather than “the defending player’s”. You need to add a “Then” before “Choose a nonland card type” to help sequence the effect (basically, so you know you look, then declare.) Make sure you install the M15 Mainframe layout for MSE, so you get the M15 card style, holofoil stamp, legendary crown, flavor bar and text chopping.

Woah, that’s a restrictive mana cost! This gent would be underpowered at 3WUB, so making him six mana of specific colors is a bit too much. I get that it’s acknowledging Azor’s original 2WWUU, but he had two strong abilities, one with instant payoff, that necessitated four color pips. This card doesn’t, and should be priced accordingly. I doubt you’ll ever get value off of his ability. He needs to survive a turn to use it, and by that time you not only have to attack an opponent with a brimming hand, but choose a card type they’ll play loads of. It also only triggers from that player casting that card type, so if Jimmy jams all the enchantments that you just disincentivized Bimmy from playing you dont get any cards. Even so, he doesn’t stop your opponents from comboing off, and the fact it isn’t a “may” means in fringe cases he might mill you out. You might get, like, one card off this guy every two turns, and that’s far too weak. Just play Cloudblazer. This ability isn’t black at all. Becoming Phyrexian doesn’t just jack black onto your mana cost, as New Phyrexia demonstrated, and his vague lockdown/card advantage ability doesn’t do much.

Flavor-wise, I’m not sure what Azor is doing here. He’s evidently compleated, and is doing vague law things, but I just don’t see what the ability is meant to indicate. Does he demand tribute from those who would transgress his twisted law? It just doesn’t have an immediate, strong flavor resonance for me. There is also an Incorrect art credit, which also is already in use. This is the art for Sphinx of the Steel Wind, by Kev Walker, from Alara Reborn. (It’s also one of the five first Mythic Rares! The more you know.)

Possible improvements:

-          Make him 3WUB. Or just make him 4WU. He isn’t strong enough to need all of that color.

-          He needs protection, or a stronger ability to justify the risk. Perhaps make his ability also trigger off entering the battlefield, a la Arashin Foremost. You could also retool it into an effect that names a card type that can’t be played, a la Archon of Valor’s Reach. If you make it stronger, tick up the mana accordingly.

-          Make him scale to multiplayer scenarios.

Grades:

Formatting – 3/5

Function – 2/5

Flavor – 2/5

Michael says: Ok so I really enjoy this card. Its a silly win the game condition with a really crazy activator. These sorts of cards are almost always popular and incentivize weird brews in both the standard environment and in eternal formats. Also I do appreciate the effort you put in to photoshop this yourself, good job on that front. While there is nothing wrong this card in its present incarnation, I think it needs to be improved from where it is now. Phyrexia in general often has an identity of using -1/-1 counters, and so if those exist in the environment it will stop a significant +1/+1 counters theme from being present which would be a key tool making this card workable. In addition while the precedent for win the game effects has been established for the upkeep step this particular card would struggle significantly with such a timing window, as many cards that buff or double power last until end step. If we assume this set cannot use +1/+1 counters the main pathway for this card would be effects that double in power, and therefore I think you can change this effect to an end of turn trigger without much concern over power. If you have a creature with power 40 or greater you are probably winning anyway. In order to avoid confusion with the cleanup step and to improve flavour I would suggest an end of turn trigger where if you attacked with a creature with 40 or more power you win the game.

Alyssa says: You need a comma between “more power” and “you win the game” as they’re two separate clauses. You spelt “versus” wrong, and you want to add a shift line break after the quote finishes before the speaker’s name. Make sure to get the M15 Mainframe card style to add a flavor bar.

Funky, fresh, and Green! The problem is that it’s way too hard to pull off. Placing the win trigger at the beginning of the turn means you need a creature with static power 40 or more, plus instant boosts/abilities, which is really hard because it and the creature both need to survive a full turn to trigger outside of some abstruse circumstances. This just feels like it’s been made too safe out of power level concerns.

I appreciate the need for some counterplay in win conditions, but I feel it’s pretty telegraphed anyway, and if you’re getting the beefy boy that you need to win with this there’s some other enchantments for similar cost that will make your beater so ferocious it’ll probably just win you the game anyway. I feel that it’s perfectly fine to make it an end of turn effect. One variant that we like is for you to attack with a creature with 40 or more power to win the game on the end step, really playing up the flavor of the card.

That flavor is really nice, and I appreciate the photoshop. It’s really cute! I would really prefer to have the artists who made the art you’ve edited credited too (the people who painted Ghalta and Vorinclex.)

Possible improvements:

-          Make it an end of turn effect to better synergise with creature buffs.

-          If you want to keep it at upkeep, add an activated ability that boosts power or whatever. It’s hard to use counters in a Phyrexian set (which is going to be a -1/-1 counter set nearly all the time) but temporary boosts still work.

Grades:

Formatting – 4/5

Function – 4/5

Flavor – 4/5

Michael says: This card I find somewhat disappointing in all honesty. To give credit where it is due the templating is correct, I love the flavour text, and the card works. But it is far too safe, and that safety really hurt the card. This is obviously a call-back to the original Mavren effect, but creating 2/2 horrors with deathtouch instead. This really does impact the card in a few ways. Firstly the tokens you make are not vampires, one of the benefits of the original Mavren is that he did not need to attack, and the tokens he made would fuel his ability further so you could always swing in with a single vampire every turn and remain even on tokens. This Mavren requires a significant amount of other vampires in the deck, or to swing with himself which opens up a lot more vulnerability to the card getting blocked and killed. And this plays into my other concern as well as the creatures have deathtouch instead of lifelink. While a more powerful mechanic it promotes a slower and more defensive playstyle, which conflicts with the precedent of the vampires being the white weenie deck, in addition to meaning that if Mavren does swing it is more likely there will be creatures available to block him. Finally and this is the most important concern, he is a white card that creates deathtouch tokens. Yes he is tied to vampires, a tribe mostly in black, but he needs to have black in the mana cost or otherwise this card is a colour pie break.  

Alyssa says: The formatting is just dandy. The full art is nice, but it does reveal the Legend of the Cryptids watermark and copyright information below, which really takes you out of the card. You also spelled Mavren Fein wrong! It’s a small quibble but it really, really hurts the card’s aesthetics and is something that could be easily fixed with some proofreading. Unless compleation made him shuffle his name around a bit.

This card puzzles me. For one, it’s not remotely white: Mavren Fein does produce tokens but they’re white tokens with lifelink rather than black ones with deathtouch. I don’t like the fact that mono-W can break the color pie and make deathtouch creatures relatively easily with him. For another, unlike Mavren Fein’s initial form which produces aggressive tokens with a keyword that incentivizes combat and attacking each turn, Mavren Fien’s ability produces defensive tokens instead. I’m therefore confused as to what exactly his game plan is: attack in every turn, or hunker down? There’s also balance considerations in that he does make 2/2’s, which is fine perhaps on a multicolored card but a bit much for a monocolored one, especially when it’s a color bend like this.

I also don’t like that it lets token vampires make tokens. Small thing, but the Torrezon vampires traditionally make lots of tokens so I worry that might kick it over. The flavor is fun, if a little lazy. It’s literally just Mavren Fein again, but with a slight change in some knobs. I want to see something a little more exciting.

Possible improvements:

-          Proofread! So close to being perfect.

-          He’d be perfect if he just cost WB. No color breaks there, and a neat compensation for being two colors.

-          Is deathtouch really the best keyword for his token? Possibly look to making the tokens more directly incentivize aggression

Grades:

Formatting – 4/5

Function – 3/5

Flavor – 3/5

Michael says: Another odd infect card, this time a compleated siren with the ability to steal creatures. Firstly I really, really love that flavour text. Definitely one of the best I've seen in a while from a personal perspective, it resonates just right. My opinion on the mechanics however is that this card is pulling in two directions. Its raid effect wants it to sit back and block attacking creatures to distribute -1/-1 counters, and this would inevitably be very powerful in limited. However on Ixalan I expect to see bigger creatures than normal thanks to all the dinosaurs, which means it can be very difficult at times to block with this creature. The card really wants to both attack to activate the raid safely as well as remain untapped to block incoming attacks. While this dissonance helps to balance what can be a very potent steal effect, it would also make the card very unfun to play as you cant play in the way this card wants to. Yes a board presence and other infect creatures help to mitigate this, but by itself it will not have a good gameplay loop. Additionally this card uses art that already exists on a magic card. I'm not particularly bothered by that but it can lead to a bit of confusion so if you can avoid that it helps.

 Alyssa says: You forgot the “on it” part of “with a -1/-1 counter on it.” You don’t capitalize the “The” in “the Stormwreck Sea”. Otherwise, formatting is good!

I feel mixed things about this card. On the one hand, it’s mechanically sound, on the other I’m not entirely sure how well it will play. It’s a seemingly very powerful trigger, but I worry that its implementation is internally competitive. You want to steal big stuff here, which is good, but as a 1/5 infect on its own you can only steal things that have 4 or less power that attack into Ichorfleet Despoiler. You aren’t going to be taking any Colossal Dreadmaws with this thing. Similarly, anything it can safely block will probably be worthless when you get it: it’ll be out of the way, sure, but I want more for 5 mana. If the surrounding environment supports putting -1/-1 counters onto creatures, then this could have applications, but it’s really, really bad at triggering its own ability and I think that should be taken into account.

I’m always awkward about putting infect onto things. Once again, this exposes another internal competition within the card. Its 1 infect damage means it’s going to kill people at the speed of a Coral Eel, but I don’t like that you’re incentivized to steal your opponent’s stuff, which probably won’t have infect. You want to win in infect by dealing 10 damage as quickly as possible, but because “not having poison counters” isn’t a resource, you don’t really gain much through incremental, slow upticking. If you’re stealing creatures without infect it’s like the damage this deals doesn’t even matter. In effect, it’s kind of like giving this infect has reduced its power to 0. Just give it wither, like several other entrants have twigged.

It’s a good card, but it just doesn’t sit right to me. The potential line of “attack with my dinky infect rat, get blocked by a gigantic dinosaur, play Despoiler main 2 and steal it” is really fun but once you’ve seen it once you’ve seen it all. This is a card that’s so hard to evaluate outside of set context.

The flavor is lovely, but this art is in use! It’s the art for Siren of the Silent Song from Born of the Gods. Reverse image search your images before you use them just to make sure.

Possible improvements:

-          Give it wither, so it can actually attack well.

-          Swap out the art for something that hasn’t been used.

-          Consider making the card better at activating its own abilities, so it doesn’t rely on the context of a set that doesn’t exist.

Grades:

Formatting – 4/5

Function – 3/5

Flavor – 4/5

Michael says: So because of the nature of this card as a goblin piker I am less reviewing the card as I am the mechanic, and to be totally honest I am not super keen. The mechanic is clearly a riff on explore, providing a poison counter instead of a +1/+1 counter. My concern with this kind of mechanic is that it would struggle to exist in an environment with infect already present as they compete with similar design space and infect is often easier to get to 10 counters thanks to how it scales and is repeatable. With this mechanic you would need to trigger it and hit a non-land 10 times to win and that is almost impossible in limited if we assume the mechanic is seeded like explore was in Ixalan. Another issue here is that these poison counters are functionally useless until you hit 10 meaning that there is no real benefit for the first 9, whereas with explore the +1/+1 counters can be supremely relevant to the board. Encroach would need to be significantly pushed in how often you can activate it in order to see any amount of constructed play and in doing so could produce a harmful standard environment as these counters would be more difficult to interact with than creature damage through infect. In addition seeing this effect on a BB goblin piker at uncommon is very below rate, while this effect existed in Ixalan the explore trigger was significant in that it existed on both a 1/2 and a 2/1 while also costing one coloured and one generic mana. This card is seriously underpowered in almost every circumstance except when the opponent is on 9 poison counters and I am unsure as to how the mechanic could be tweaked and still keep the flavour of phyrexia while also working similar to explore.

 Alyssa says: Formatting wise, this is completely fine. It wants to be a Soldier, though. Or perhaps a Horror, with appropriate art?

Mechanically, I don’t really have that much to say. Encroach is a very weak ability because it really doesn’t do anything to alter the game state aside from when your opponent has nine poison, which, if that is only being spread through encroach, means the first nine activations that don’t hit a land basically do nothing. With explore, both times you’re getting something, whether that’s a land card or a counter plus a surveil, but with the Conquistador you just give a worthless poison counter. It also feels very lackluster as a concept. It’s literally just explore, but with a tinge of Phyrexian spice that ironically makes it weaker. I can’t think of a set that would want this as one of its 3.5 mechanics. The card wants to be 1B rather than BB. For BB you’re getting a 2/2, or perhaps a 3/2, with that basic effect, especially at uncommon.

A big problem I have is that it’s ripped wholesale from Vraska’s Conquistador, which is also a black uncommon 2 mana 2/1 Vampire with the same art (which you didn’t credit, by the by.) There’s nothing spooky or Phyrexian about the art that tells me that this thing is encroaching on Ixalan, and there’s no flavor either. It just feels like it was slapped together in a couple minutes from Vraska’s Conquistador, even down to the name, with a mechanic that’s just Explore covered in Phyrexian graffiti.

Possible improvements:

-          It needs to be overhauled from the top.

-          Encroach needs some genuine thought to turn it into an incremental poison/value generation mechanic, with a benefit on top of just giving them a single poison counter.

Grades:

Formatting – 4/5

Function – 2/5

Flavor – 1/5

And finally we have our winner for this week:

Michael says: This is a safe design, but I think it checks a lot of boxes for a good call back design while still having its own unique effect. Here the original value engine of kumena is replaced with an infect strategy which supports itself through a token creation ability that also possess infect. I also enjoy how in order to fuel his unblockability, it requires a sacrifice instead of just tapping merfolk, an elegant way of powering down the card in a very flavourful way thanks to the addition of black to his mana cost. While infect can be scary I think the limiters on dealing combat damage to players to trigger the token making definitely helps to mitigate the potential of the card. In order to break this card you would need a lot of tribal investment and synergies, which means he would probably make a strong commander but his standard impact can be well measured. In addition to this the formatting has no problems and the art was well picked for this card. Honestly it makes me sad I cant say much more about this card, its just a really good example of linking old and new flavour. The power level may be a bit suspect but I think it is correct to err on the side of caution for infect cards, especially with built in evasion.

Alyssa says: The formatting is superb. You even got the rules for multiple instances of a legendary creature’s name in a text box right! I also appreciate that you provided the token it produces.

I always get leery of infect, but I can honestly see it working here. The stats are about right (considering it attacks players as a 4/4) especially for a 3-color legendary creature. It’s not Boltable, but it has no inbuilt protection, which I feel compensates. The combat damage trigger is a little uninspired, and perhaps a little weak. I’d like to see something sexier, maybe a card draw? I can’t help but look at Phyrexian Swarmlord as a point of comparison. But I suppose incremental infect production is a decent enough compensation. Either way, I feel it’s a good implementation of infect on a creature that is its own game plan.

You could probably dink the sacrifice condition for his unblockability down to two merfolk. Going in on a -3 to then get, I dunno, Divine Arrowed or whatever is really sad. I like it being free on mana but high on card disadvantage to really sneak infect hits through.

Flavorwise, he’s a real treat. Lovely to see a Phyrexian card with a bit of personality, especially with him being all shouty up in the card art. Flavor text is actually unnecessary on this, in my opinion. His charisma and influence is demonstrated by the Merfolk he summons, his cruelty by how quickly he disposes of them for his own benefit. It’s a shame he’s not a Zombie too but the typeline is packed to the gills (ha) already.

Possible improvements:

-          I want to see either the combat damage trigger a bit sexier or the unblockability trigger a little cheaper.

Grades:

Formatting – 5/5

Function – 4/5

Flavor – 5/5

So thank you to everyone who submitted a card and to Hyperviper for his winning design of Kumena, the Tainted Tyrant. As always feedback on this would be greatly appreciated and hopefully the next prompt should be provided shortly.

 As a bonus please see our take on the prompt with Azor the Mad, unable to intervene in the conflict thanks to his oath limiting simply to providing a passive sanctuary on Useless Island.

[bedlamgames]

No Haven 0.932

Highlights for this one include new assignments, the beginning of anal training, slaver gear upgrades, playable centaurs, and more

Download links can be found on the No Haven page. Update notes can be found under the break.

If you don’t have RAGS and you need a copy to run it there’s one on the help page here or the one pinned on the patreon you can find a link to in the attached read me which is more up to date. If RAGS has never worked on your system despite the help page suggestions then it might be worth trying with one of the alternate players. There’s also improvements on there to the RAGS player that can also help with performance.

Change log under the break:

v0.932:

New Assignments: ---A reduced rarity Uncommon harpy themed assignment in the City. Uses a commission. Will be the setup for a special series of assignments somewhat similar to the style of Witch-Queen but will be much more extensive in comparison lasting at least three times as long. Can reward a trait if the requirements are met, or instead get some bonus xp, or even a special penalty unlock. ---A new Uncommon caravan assignment for the Deep Mountains. Uses two commissions for the introduction and the Successes. Has three goals with one having by far the hardest odds so far in the game with a reward to match. All three goals have reduced rewards on a Failure rather than the usual coming away from nothing.

New Commission: ---The last of the golem uniques in Ascendency gets her due with this patron submitted commission. Also used for Wastelander Human female slaves. Can also appear for Golem on female anal or futanari on Wastelander anal sexytimes. ---Has another version which can crop up for the Finish Day Encampment art once she's recruited. Well be used more often in the Metal and Flesh scenario, but can appear on occasion if you manage to find her. It can also appear during while futa ass fucking if she's been recruited as an alternative to the Cathayan Caravan one.

Centaurs: ---Thanks to getting a request for a new playable centaur start, centaurs are now available as a playable race as standard. Currently there's two female/futanari options and two male options to start with. Two being more standard ones, and two being more unique due to being patron starts. ---Due to this the Allmounter patron unique start has been moved from his home with the ogres to being with the other centaurs. ---There's also a new recruitable unique slaver centaur to go with the new start, who gets him as standard as a strong right arm.

-Miscellaneous additions: ---Your character will give more credit if a slave goes for twice what they're worth in one of the results in the selling dilemma. The slaver will also get more morale if that happens. ---Art sources commissions are back to being back up to date. ---After getting some good suggestions added some new slaver titles. ---If a characters gets Elf-Like Flexibility it will now be shown as a racial. Reworded it a bit to make it less specific.

-Bug fixes: ---Fix for the traits reminder in the third slot of A Brief Foray reminding the wrong traits. ---Fix for Emissary having slightly different traits listed in different places. ---Fix for the wrong art (the Tax Collecting one) being used for Human and Goblin slaves giving titfucks. ---Fix for Cathayan Caravan having Cooperative as both a Critical and a Success trait. ---Fix for Vicarage Tarts having the chance to go up against the wounding/removal check twice rather than once. ---Fix for bonus XP persisting once it should have done it's thing. ---Fix for not being able to get Artful Whore due to not having the base versions of Seductive and Slutty. Now combined/+ versions will also count for being able to get it. ---Fix for a potential CTError on Little Demon. ---Fix for the slave not being correctly moved if you repick on Whore Makers. ---Fix for Bimbos being generated with Reserved as amusing a concept that was. ---Fix for Flying on Scout the Mountains reducing the time taken by four days rather than the intended three. ---Fix for Overview - Sort by Rarity not picking up Super Rare assignments. ---Fix for Advanced Lesbian Training Success giving Slutty when they already have a combined/+ version. ---Fix for Arcane Flexibilities being offered if the character has the full trait already. ---Fix for Imperial Muses being missing from the Diplomacy Rank Up List. ---Fix for slavers being generated with a Corruption rank up coming with other faiths including Spiritual. ---Fix for Basic Blowjob Critical Success adding Slutty if the slave has Reserved. ---Fix for the 'no role to remove' issue. Due to this while on Encampment roles will no longer add the extra profession titles for having a faith or gear upgrades. ---Fix for an issue where certain effects such as Mistweaver could be incorrectly wiped before they could take effect. ---Some text fixes including the extra ')' on Bimboborn.

v0.931:

-Miscellaneous additions: ---If you get some of the way to working out the second part of Thornspire it will say 'Partial Progress made' instead of 'No Progress made'. Also moved around the priority of one check compared to another. ---Pact with Damnation should now be available to take at max aspects like the upgradeable ones when they wouldn't take a slot. ---Available aspect bolding display should be more consistent. ---Changed the wording on event generated assignments to reflect the new timing that they may now be generated on the next day instead. ---Removed one potential Golem name, and added two new ones. ---Small addition to the second part of Thornspire to reflect the first discord patron's character to fully complete the first part.

-Bug fixes: ---Critical fix for an issue where hiring a mercenary could infect all of your other slavers with their mercenary ways. ---Fix for an issue with the second part of Thornspire where it'd only pass if the first slaver had one of the needed requirements rather than checking both. Also a fix on the Critical Success that could cause issues due to the wrong variable used. ---Fix for an issue where Seamstresses would gain the title of Camp Bitch. ---Fix for the wrong name used during the 'Agree to get the others to back off' choice dilemma. ---Fix for Slaving I being listed as Trading I on Slaver Upgrades. ---Fix for the new Ever Forest assignment not being considered for Diplomacy rank ups. ---Fix for the value estimate bonus for Basic Anal Training not showing. ---Fix for the biomancy part of Slaving III applying incorrectly. ---Fix for Cutprice Roses thinking that you went when you didn't. ---Fix for being able to get multiple Beneath Their Notice assignments. ---Fix for there not being a removal description on Abandoned Watchtower. ---Fix for an issue where a rounding/removal save wouldn't work like it should. ---Fix for Draenei calling ladies 'sir', also fix for their honourifics, oaths, and swears not reflecting the common NH Draenei accent. ---Fix for your name being changed for good after the first night of 'dreams'. ---Fix for futas not being able to do lesbian training (turns out I'd fixed one bit but missed another bit that would also prevent it last time) ---Fix for the issue where removing a slaver from their role would not remove their role. ---Fix for issues with invalid race checking when attempting to enslave a slaver. ---Fix for an issue where a female only trace like harpies would be treated like a male only race. For one example any attempts to give them Blessings of Perversion would turn into Gifts of the Warped. ---Fix for an issue where wearing an item, wearing something else, then giving the previous item to someone else, would make it a clone of what you are currently wearing. ---Some text fixes.

v0.93:

-New Assignments: ---A new rare Ever Forest assignment involving Forest Goblins looking to offload a High Elf to the right taker. Includes an absolutely lovely patron submitted commission for the intro, one you've likely seen before for the outcome, and four separate pieces for the Unique you can potentially get from this one. The Unique has a new aspect and lore page. ---A new follow up assignment to the first one that took place at Thornspire. Uses a patron funded commission. Can potentially tie into twelve different assignments to unlock it in the first place, and to get anything more than a Week's End Comes style special Failure rejection will require some serious working out to determine just what this one is looking for. Well worth the effort though with some of the best rewards yet to find in this one ---Basic Anal Training. Uses a patron submitted commission. This is basically a placeholder for now as I have another assignment in mind for it, but it will do now until I can get something more specific.

-New Commissions: ---Ample Distractions. Also used for Female Ogre slaves, and as crops for Male Neko slavers, and Female/Futa Forest Goblin slavers. ---Heal Slut Training and Healing. Also used for Kitsune slaves with a chance to get either. ---Basic and Advanced Lesbian Training. Also used for Female Human Northerners slavers with a chance to get either, Neko Convent slaves with a chance to get either, and as a generic for Female on Female fondling with version used based on obedience. ---Portraits for the Lamia Bandit Subjugator, the Lamia Demi-Angel, and the Lamia Succubus. ---Patron submitted commissions for not one, not two, not even three, but four of the unique Golems. ---Not specifically a commission, however I did get some art generously contributed for Follow the Dancing Lights. Will also be used for Female Akir slavers.

-Slaver Gear Upgrades: ---Added Buyable upgrades for slavers and you for every type of assignment coming in three ranks each. ---These are locked behind experience which for you translates to a certain number of level ups. ---These will improve assignment odds for each rank purchased and many of the later ranks have all sorts of fun additional bonuses.

-Slaver Title changes: ---Rather than just happening at generation slaver titles are now updated each day based on the slaver in question and so will evolve as the slavers do. ---As before these are more for extra flavour and as a quick way of highlighting what they're good at rather than providing an extra mechanical effect. ---There's a bunch of new ones reflecting various trait combos, traits, and now faiths too and some of the aspects. These are listed in a new addition to the glossary in-game. ---Also reflects the new Slaver Gear upgrades.

Futanari Pussy: ---By default Futanari now come with a pussy to go with their cock. ---That's means they can now do Lesbian training. ---There's a new option under preferences if you prefer the old setup. Golems and Keldans remain as they were regardless of the option picked.

-Miscellaneous additions: ---New recruitable unique slaver in Johann Janssen. A human commoner with a real talent for drawing all sorts of ladies to fall under his charms. ---Due to a bunch of feedback now from different players about them avoiding Dreadsea Coast for fear of missing out on Witch-Queen before they are ready I've set it to appear now from month 3 onwards. ---To make it a more attractive pick, the aspect Sworn Duty is now an Exceptional on Abandoned Watchtower, Toll Bridge, and Road 'Tax' Collecting. Also Toll Bridge now has a proper intro now and not just a single sentence. ---Biomancy and Corruption successes are now also listed on Encampment Status as well as Stats. ---Added some additional checks to ensure that harpies, fallen, and demi's aren't growing additional back wings. ---Basic Obedience Training now adds two new trait slots to slaves, and Advanced Obedience Training adds four. Any Tertiary Trainings apart from Slaver i.e. Fellatrix, and Heal Slut for now will now also add another two. To better reflect how badly you're breaking slaves for Orc Cum Addict training to make them good for one thing and one thing only that now will set their trait slots to zero. ---Added a special reroll to reconsider the option chosen if an Exquisite Fellatrix would not get to suck cock at the first attempt. ---Added a note to show that only one Friend... Aspect for scouting can be taken per character.

-Bug fixes: ---Fix for clothing/armour totals increasing incorrectly if the generator would need to reroll what is generated i.e. if it is not slutty enough. ---Fix for an issue that would cause the witch exit scene to now show correctly due to her instead being sold off to cover gamblings debts. Yes, really. ---Fix for most of the different armour types not being generated if armour is asked for. ---Fix for a CTError mentioning 'Harmony?' during finish day. ---Fix for the wording on Truly Titanic Tits when wearing robes/vestments. ---Fix for an issue with the logic in regard to existing traits on the Critical and Success on Imperial Muses. ---Fix for Drow getting the pointy ear corruption. ---Fix for Naturalist not helping with Healer skill checks as it implied, or providing the extra assignment bonus for already having Healer. ---Fix for being offered double Creative, double Heroic, or double Leader traits at Level Up. ---Fix for slaves made into slavers with Ritual Caster not getting the option to do so. ---Fix for Magic: Any / Elementalist: Any favoured racials not getting the discount on those traits. ---Fix for Magic: Any / Elementalist: Any favoured racials being able to take those traits. ---Fix for the final unfavoured slot on all racials not have any impact on anything. ---Fix for double Bimbo on Orc Cum Addict crits. Also Bimbo is now considered a Personality trait which should cause it to be removed now in other cases where an entire mind is reset. ---Some text fixes.

[macbethtragicheroquotes364]

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[ambitiousfeegirl-blog]

Interview with ME!

- What is your Full name? Include any maiden names, aliases, or nicknames. Serafina Lynn James. Sera, usually. Fee, evidently, as well. Thanks, UK. - When is your birthday? Do you know where you were born and at what time? May 10th. Born in Panama City, FL... I think at 10:20AM?  - What is your star sign? Do you know your Chinese Zodiac too? Taurus!! And Horse. :)

- What is your earliest memory that you can remember? Eating Shrimp Chow Mein with my dad. I think I was three, maybe? - Where was your childhood home? Was it more urban or rural? Not on the beach, but close. Definitely not urban, though. That’s not really how Panama City works. - How was your childhood in general? Did your parents treat you well? Did you have a lot of friends? I had a decent childhood, I guess. Parents divorced when I was young, but they were both good to me as a kid. I was sort of a loner, though, if I’m being honest. I had friends, but I was perfectly content just playing outside by myself.  - How was/is school? What is your favorite and least favorite subjects? What were your grades on average? School was miserable and I absolutely abhor the entire experience, with the exception of the internship it landed me and... eventually the job it landed me. The less said about it the better. I majored in business administration, minored in sociology. - Did you have a best friend growing up? What was their name? Are you still in touch? Amy Lynn. We bonded over a shared middle name and the fact that I accidentally made her puke on a merry-go-round. We are not in touch as much as I would like. She’s got a husband and a kid with another on the way and I’m... you know... working. We talk when we can.  - Were you in any cliques? I hung out with anime fans and comic book fans and tae kwon do kids? I don’t know, are those cliques? Probably not. - Best childhood memory you can recall? The first time I ever saw a live wrestling show. My dad took me to Fall Brawl 97, and at seven years old, it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. The first match set me up for the rest of my life. Jericho vs. Guerrero. I never looked back after that. - Worst childhood memory you can recall? The day my dad moved out.  - Name an event in your childhood that has shaped you into the person you are today Uh... yeah, Fall Brawl 97. True story. - What is the dumbest thing you have ever done to impress someone? Were they impressed or was it all for naught? Probably taking this job all on my own. This is definitely a task for more than one person, but... I can do it. I know I can and I’m going to show Regal that he was wrong to waste me for so long.  - Did you ever have any sweethearts or lovers? Do you have a boy/girlfriend? Sweethearts, lol. Who even says that? I had boyfriends in high school, but nothing serious. And only one long term relationship that started in college. Four years down the fucking drain. Ugh. - Are you a virgin? Lord no. LOL - Do you ever plan on getting married in your life? Do you want kids? See above statement. I’m too busy for that ish. - Would you rather have your own kids or adopt? How many kids would you want? You know... if I DID decide to have kids... I don’t know. Adoption is a wonderful thing, because lord knows there are already so many unwanted babies in this world. Sad, but true. I think adoption is a wonderful option, really. - Do you think you'd be a protective parent or a relaxed parent? Uhhh, given how I am with the boys? Protective. Like... ultra protective. - How would you prefer to pass away? Surrounded by loved ones and at peace, or while doing something heroic? Having mindblowing sex with my mortal enemy. ‘Cause not only do I get to go out hatefucking someone (!), but it’s bound to ruin the experience for them and that’s not something they will forget EVER.  - Generally, how healthy are you? Do you get sick or injured easily or are you fit? Thanks to WWE medical, I’m healthy and chugging down vitamins like it’s my job. - Have you ever been badly injured before? Broke my wrist as a kid and I have a nagging ankle issue, but nothing SERIOUS, no. - What is the worst injury you have ever gotten? What was it and how did it happen? Were you ever close to death? Honestly, I’ve been really lucky. The broken wrist was probably the worst, but honestly, it wasn’t even that big of a deal. - How many times have you been to the hospital/doctor's? I avoid them at all costs. Let’s not even talk about it. - Have you ever had a concussion or brain injury? Have you ever had amnesia? Nope, though that’s surprising as hell since Coach Brookside decided I needed to learn how to bump once I actually started working for the company.  - What was the worst illness you ever contacted? Do you know what it was? How long were you sick? I just really don’t get sick. I think maybe I had strep a few years back, but I literally did nothing about it, so I don’t even know if it was actually strep or not. - Ever had any extended hospital stays? What for? Nope! - Have you ever had to give yourself or someone else emergency first aid? What happened? Yes. I have stitched up my dad when we went camping (not fun), I definitely had to put a hole in my toenail to drain the blood when I smashed it (extra not fun), and I have changed about a hundred bandages for various injuries to myself, my mom, my dad and a few of the boys. - Are you employed? Where do you work and who do you work for? What do you do?  I am currently a member of the WWE Talent Relations office, based in the UK just recently. Like literally three days ago. It’s still sort of surreal. Previously, I was a personal assistant to Mr. William Regal. I sometimes feel like I was sent here as a rib, because that’s one hell of a freakin’ leap, but... here I am, so. Make the most of it, right? - Are you happy with your current job? I literally couldn’t be happier. - Did you have any previous jobs? What were they and what did you do? Mostly small stuff, office management, retail BS, bartender... - Most dangerous thing you have ever done? I’m sure my mom would say something about texting and driving (which I don’t do, mom, and neither should any one else!) but honestly... probably insisting on WWE giving me something more to do, because we see how that turned out. - Do you consider yourself a more active person or a more relaxed person? Active? I mean, I’m not going out running every day... not that kind of active. I stay in shape, but I am literally always doing things. I am constantly working, so... active in that sense, I guess. - What is your dream come true? How about your worst nightmare? To be in charge of NXT. <3 Worst nightmare? Failure.  - What is the biggest and most important goal you have set for yourself? To be in charge of NXT. You’re only as good as the person you help to get a promotion, Mr. Regal... :) - How persistent would you say you are? How much does it take to get you to give up on a task? I’ve been told I’m obnoxiously persistent and it must be true, because here I am. And I don’t ever quit on any goal. I’ve always accomplished anything I’ve set my mind to. - Would you surrender yourself to your enemies or fight to the very end? Surrender is a tool of war that is either a signal of defeat or treachery.  - When do you usually do your shopping? What is currently on your shopping list? Literally, everything is on my shopping list. I am moving into my new flat on Wednesday, so like... ALL of the groceries. Mostly organics. - Top three things on your wishlist? To be in charge of NXT... though I can’t really buy that at the store and I’m pretty sure that’s what they were going for here...  1.) Body Shop Banana Shampoo & Conditioner 2.) Another Key Lime Pie smoothie from the place down the street 3.) And maybe it makes me a mark, but I want a Kenny Omega bear, damnit. (sorry boss!) - Currently, what is something you want but do not need? That damn bear, for sure. - Do you like shopping? What is your favorite thing to shop for? I mean, I guess? I don’t really get to just go shopping all that often. Just like... typical clothes shopping? Maybe?? Is that really a priority in people’s lives? - What is the most expensive thing you have purchased? Was it worth it? My old TV. 4K. It was nice. SIGH. I miss it. - What would you do if you were suddenly given one billion dollars out of the blue? Uhhhhh... wow. I’d do the typical stuff. By my mom a house, get a new car, by MYSELF a house, too, pay off my student debt, donate a shit ton of money to charity... start a wildlife rescue and refuge! - What would you describe your style of clothing as? It depends. I’m definitely business casual at work, but like.. more towards the business end. Outside of work, if I’m WEARING clothes, it’s gonna be a baggy tank and jeans, sandals, sunglasses. - Do you have any hobbies? Name all of them if you can. I used to sing a lot, but honestly work has consumed my life and I am a-ok with that.  - Do you like and appreciate art? What is your favorite piece of artwork? I DO! And I can’t put that on here, because his head will get exponentially bigger than it already is. - Do you like music? What is your favorite style of music? Oh gosh, I like everything. I’m currently wavering between Kenny Chesney and Kaleo right now. But I like a lot of different things. Bluegrass, EDM, Classical, Hip hop... if it’s good, I like it. - Have you ever seen any musicals? What is your favorite? PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.  - What are your top three favorite animals? What would you say your "Patronus" or "Spirit Animal" is? Hm. Top three favorite animals... Florida panther, giraffe, panda My spirit animal is 137% a bear.  - What are your top three favorite colors? Deep dark purple, Emerald Green and Maroon - What is your favorite season? Do you prefer hotter or colder weather? Do you like snow at all? Summer. Always summer. Fuck the cold. - What kind of flavors do you prefer: Sweet, Sour, Bitter, Spicy, Dry, or Umami (savory meat taste)? I like them all, but... I’m going with Sweet and Sour, baby. (12 LARGE). Damn, I just made myself sad. - Can you cook at all? Yes, though the quality of that cooking is always up in the air. - What is your favorite dish? Can you prepare it? Do you have the recipe handy? Shrimp Chow Mein. I’ve never even attempted to make it nor do I have a recipe. You know, I probably SHOULD try to make it, though. - What is your favorite fruit and vegetable? Fruit: Peaches Vegetable: Asparagus - What is your favorite dessert? What is your favorite type of candy/treat? Key Lime Pie. <3 Candy is always always gummi worms. - What is the best thing you have ever had the opportunity to eat? What is the worst? Frog legs, freshly caught and sauteed in garlic butter. Only really good if you catch them yourself, though.  Worst thing ever? Any frozen green tea things. Popsicles were the WORST. - Do you like to drink tea or coffee? Any favorite flavors? I love hot tea, Earl Grey or English Breakfast. And yes, I am a coffee addict. - Describe your sense of humor. Sarcastic. - What is one thing you are justly proud of? My persistence paying off and landing me the job of a lifetime. - Do you have any religious beliefs? If not, have you ever been to a church service? Not my bag, no. I have been to church and actually grew up attending a baptist church every Sunday for years. It was enough to kill any interest in religion. - What would you say is the worst thing someone has done to you? What is the meanest thing someone has ever said to you? The ex did some messed up shit.  - What is the worst thing you have done to someone? What is the meanest thing you have said to anyone? I also did some messed up shit, based on the ex’s messed up shit. - Share the latest entry in your diary/journal. Basically me whining about having slept 20 hours. Thanks, jet lag!  - What is the most precious thing you own? Is it valuable at all? My sense of self and my drive. It’s invaluable. - Talk about someone you know. It can be someone you either like or dislike. Hm. I think I’m going to save this question for it’s own little post someday this week. - FREE QUESTION NO! IMPRISONED QUESTION IS BEING HELD FOR JUSTIFIABLE REASONS AND WILL NOT BE FREED! 

[stevedmccall]

Project 1: Designer Interview

Looking for a job can be difficult for many designers out there not really knowing what industry they want to get themselves involved with. Good thing for graphic designers there are many forms to choose from. Varying anywhere from prints to interactive media, you're certain to find a field that is just right for displaying your skills. In order to find a field fit right for you, you have to explore your options. Maybe the field you want to work in isn't popular in the area you're from. For example, Youngstown, Ohio may not be the area you want to be in if the video game industry is something you want to pursue. This should lead to heavy consideration as to what is available and in high demand when considering the location you will be working in.

Eric Johnson is a Youngstown State graduate who majored in Graphic Design. He has owned his own business for 10 years. Johnson starting getting involved with art during his younger years and was voted most artistic in his high school. He finished YSU's graphic design program in 4 years and started his own company his senior year of college called Pier Graphics located in Hubbard, Ohio. Being a dirt-biker, Johnson knew exactly what kind of market he wanted to reach out to. When he was a racer he thought about designs that he himself wanted for his own racing bikes. He says his strongest aspects as a designer is thinking outside of the box and giving them and extra pop. Which is definitely displayed in every one of his pieces. His company doesn't get too involved with the interactive design world as their website seemed to be a little outdated.

Pier Graphics specializes in a wide variety of customization geared mostly towards automotive decals and banners. This is a design field that will always be growing and at high demand. Pier offers products like; magnetic signs, banners, auto graphics, business graphics, trailers, business cards, and anything else involving company advertising. This reaches out to anyone and everyone who wants to display their companies name at a larger scale who know little-to-nothing about the design world.

Johnson finds influence for his work by reading magazines based around the needs of his customers like automotive or racing types. He received a 4 page spread in Auto Graphics magazine back in 2005 which included 2 spreads featuring his work. Johnson also won a national art contest sponsored by TIGE wakeboard boats. They actually ended up choosing his design to be featured on the main show boat the upcoming year. Despite all of these accomplishments, Johnson's favorite one is still being in charge of his very own company. Designers are always put under specifics sorts of pressure. When asking Johnson about a time where he had to overcome stress he simply replied with stating that he does every day. As do most jobs, Johnson always has a deadline he has to meet and the customers want their product as soon as possible. Since his field is mostly decals this often involves bringing the product the customer wants designs for into his large, garage-sized shop. The deadlines have to be met at a timely manner being that it is most commonly their work vehicle.

At Pier Graphics they know how to handle and apply certain prints and vinyl that most customers would not be able to do by themselves. They work with vinyl 3m, convex materials, canvas vinyl and banner vinyl. These take a strong understanding and certain tools to handle properly. Since these are being applied to most vehicles, sometimes dirtbikes and four-wheelers, they need to be strong and able to withstand the most intense weathering so proper installment is a must. What sets Pier Graphics apart from other graphic design businesses is that they have one specific goal in mind and that is helping other businesses display their name in a way nobody else could using signs and decals. The consumers that come to Pier Graphics for help are usually the type that has a well-established business motto. In other words, it seems Pier Graphics is getting paid good money to do what they do.

Pier Graphics seems to have a certain style they are pursuing when considering their customer market. Mostly, their customer base consists of hard working business who aren't afraid of getting dirty and have little down time. The design is often meant for the side of a heavy-duty truck or trailer displaying the number and what services the company provides. This deals with heavy type usage. Not only do they need to be clean with their designs but they need to be persistent and detailed with their installments.

The text is usually layered with background colors that give it a 3-dimensional shape like it is popping out at you. If I had to describe their designs with one word I would have to go with, “extreme”. Which is appropriate when considering motor-cross is an extreme sport meant for extreme people. Being that the clients of Pier Graphics are usually made up of hard working companies and have more hands on jobs these designs are able to pull off flames integrated into them. Again, these designs aren't meant to be viewed on small scaled canvases such as computers. These designs are very appropriate on the sides of work trucks, trailers, and such.

The layout of the designs are utilized in a very strategic way. It gets the name out there with bright, flashy colors and explains what the company does often with the companies own slogan. The color palette of most designs consist of 1 to 2 colors and sometimes features a gradient applied to the text. You get the sense of their personal logo to be slashing across the canvas which you can sort of see throughout the rest of Pier Graphic's designs. Their work is very theme-based. Meaning if they are doing a design for a race car decal than it is most likely to feature some sort of flame or slash signifying the illusion of movement. If their customer needs something done for a lawn care company than the design will usually be clean and very legible. When doing designs for the wakeboard competition, the design featured a very tiki-based feel to it. It's all about what the consumer wants in a design. Johnson sits down with each customer and figures out what image they are trying to get across to their very own customers. Although Johnson's most interesting designs are that in which he is able to free rain the projects and the customer just kind of leaves it all up to him.

Johnson had many words of advice throughout his interview aimed towards fellow graphic designers. He said he handles criticism as a learning experience which in terms makes you a stronger designer. Since he accomplished his goal of owning his own company, Johnson's next goal involves getting more printers for further company expansion. He said that despite being able to think outside the box and go above and beyond sometimes in the sign business, simplicity is key. This shows me that it isn't always just about your interest and what kinds of designs you like, you will meet customers that have a completely different goal in mind. Johnson also added that when owning your own business you have to be personable and social because it helps with happy, comfortable clients. Turnaround rates are also very important because it shows you're a company that gets work done and grinds it out till the project is finished. Last but not least he said to pay attention to the details which is very fitting for a decal company with room for little to no error.

[we-future-first]

[In-Depth] The Internet and Memes are Proof that Humanity is an Organism and Money is a Lie

I know this sounds asinine but just give me a few paragraphs to get some momentum.

You can't exist in 2020 and not intuitively just know what a meme is. Even those that exist totally cut-off from the online sphere would get the picture after a few examples. Most typically we think of image macros like this, or this, but these are just a couple of modern, digital memes and don't begin to scratch the surface of just exactly what a meme is, and why the answer to that might be really fucking important.

For example, a picture doesn't need any text to be a meme - similarly, a picture can be only text and still be a meme. A phrase can be a meme, or even a single word. A sound. Symbols. The structure of the building you're in and the design of the device you're reading this from are memetic artifacts. Musical subgenres, fashion and style trends, social patterns and institutions including family, marriage, property, law, crime, and punishment. Even complex ideologies - religious, political, and philosophical - are essentially very nuanced and enduring memes that span hundreds and thousands of years.

It's difficult to think of anything that is not a direct result of memetic repetition, as this is the way in which all information, beliefs, and ideas are shared and become socially entrenched - this method of transmission is directly related to, and reveals something specific about the origins of power, authority, control, and choice, and how we relate to those concepts and ourselves.

Human behaviour and response is memetic - a product of pattern, repetition, and context rather than a series of conscious “decisions” we make at every moment - this is not to suggest we are totally bound and determined by fate, but only that we are bound and determined to act only in accordance with our own character - we are not something responsible for our decisions, we are our decisions, and for that we bear responsibility.

Can you imagine Trump acting like anything else besides a caricature of pure petulance?

That’s his role - his constitution.

I think the belief that he, or you, or I, "make decisions" is backwards - partly a product of the language we use to speak about ourselves and the world, and partly just our basic instincts - it's plainly obvious that I am aware and alive and can consider many possibilities so it only seems to follow that I must exert some influence over my choices.

To me, there is little distinction between Me and My Choices - I am those choices, not a separate entity that chooses - that stands separate, considers, and then finally pulls the equivalent lever corresponding with the 'choice' I’ve made.

Those final three words are superfluous - to me they all reference a single thing - a localized happening from my specific perspective.

This idea is naturally unpalatable as it would seem to not only absolve one of all responsibility for wrongdoing, but also rob one of their ownership over both their good actions, and artistic creations.

I think this is simply a knee jerk reaction to protect the ego's sense of itself as something distinct and in control, as to accept the opposite comes with a great sense of powerlessness.

Responsibility is not something we take - responsible is what we are.

Language has an implicit kind of magical quality - by that I mean much like the imagined casting of a spell, it is widely assumed that speaking the right words in the right combination (and order) can influence and compel people to act, and this action is the source of change. This is why great orators have always possessed great influence over the course of history - someone must be able to give power to an idea that can move masses to act as a single, unified force of nature.

I don't believe individual human action is ever the true catalyst to change - I think it is human action predicated on and driven specifically by the memetic concepts we have at our disposal - most importantly, "What is good, right, valuable, and true?".

Language is itself inherently biased, limiting and divisive - Black Lives Matter means absolutely nothing until it is interpreted, and language is always loaded with judgments. As much as it is the primary way we communicate, ironically it just as often obfuscates and confuses because the kind of language we have available to us directly determines how we understand and conceptualize the world (and ourselves). It is not a matter of merely being Peterson-ianly "precise" in our speech, because precision is meaningless if the principles that precede it are incompatible.

How many proponents of any ideology have actually read and engaged with its foundational and supporting texts?

Probably very few.

How many have absorbed bits and pieces through their specific context - language, culture, family, friends, media, and memes?

Probably almost everybody.

These repetitions of pattern connect us to something far greater than any single one of us - our collective human ideas about value, function, purpose, and their relation with each other - memes are a portal to the sum total of all human knowledge, experience, and feeling - memes are threads sewn into the fabric of the tapestry of reality, connecting us to the past, present, future, each other, and something totally separate - something unspeakable that yet demands to be spoken of.

You may have felt it when engaged in something everyday and ordinary, yet struck as if for the very first time by the majesty and totality of all there is - all experience happening right now, billions of distinct and separate simultaneous happenings, disconnected and separated only by virtue of the limitations of their own collective conceptions of what is real, what is true, and what is possible.

This universal need to communicate and share - to be heard - is intimately linked to creative expression.

Memes are innately communal and creative - they are meant to translate a feeling or thought into a shareable format that can be used, related to, and understood, and concepts of community and creativity have a direct connection to both art and play, two qualities that (partly) define the human experience.

Memes and artistic expression both reflect something crucial and universal in the spark of our human spirit - they represent the human need to share, something intimately linked with altruism (and collectivism). Art can of course be done selfishly, but there is no artistic expression at all without the memetic patterns that allow that expression and an audience to engage with the artist's creation.

Memes are thus quite a bit more significant than just funny and relatable pictures we share - what a meme is has direct implications regarding what we are, and our current shared cultural conception of them is simplistic and, as a result, limiting. If we don’t fully grasp what a meme is, we lack the capacity to both comprehend their true power, and the ability to wield that power to our own collective benefit. Instead, we persist in an ordering of society that enriches only a small handful that have fallen to the top through nothing other than circumstance and who insist this must be the natural ordering of the world simply because it is the current ordering of it.

Can we really trust those who wield inordinate amounts of power to fairly consider how it might be meted out differently?

Is the fate of society directly tied to the fate of the billionaire class, or to the current institutions of policing and governance?

From where is their authority and power actually derived?

The primary source is our shared belief that these institutions are legitimate and just.

The secondary source is their ability and willingness to inflict violence on us if we do not accept the first source.

Violence is of course the most powerful and persuasive avenue of acquiring and maintaining power - both literal violent acts, and indirect violence inflicted and facilitated by a system of organization that regards the principle of one person's right to hoard obscene amounts of wealth as a higher and more just one than providing the material necessities of life for all people.

That is the basic moral principle that serves as the keystone of the structure of our society as it is currently ordered.

Do we really believe those with obscene means deserve it?

What about those with such means that they could lose a thousand yearly salaries in a single day and not have that impact their quality of life in the slightest?

The Divine Right of Kings still rules, although now it's simply the Divine Right of the Wealthy.

We are meant to believe this is just The Way the World Is?

I find that idea just as intolerable and narrow-minded as those that believe it.

Society bears little proof of functioning properly anywhere - properly as in for the common good of all people.

If we instead understand "properly" as to the obscene and perverted benefit of a small few at the expense of everybody else, then it is functioning tremendously properly.

Individualism is too often championed by those who don't understand the distinction between it and selfishness, and this crucial error acts as the basic foundation for an entire wing of political and philosophical thought which insists might makes right, and "value" is directly related to money and money alone, where everything can be spoken about in terms of its relative worth in US dollars, one of many currencies that can, has, and will, become as good as worthless in an instant due to nothing other than our shared confidence in it.

Now I want to make some statements that are broad and general, but ones that I think are fairly common and subconscious. These are not meant to be statements of fact, merely word and concept associations to get us to see how we arrive at 'facts'.

The relationship between progressivism and conservatism is like the relationship between masculine and feminine, which itself is like the relationship between individual and community.

Consider this disharmony between two opposing (or complementary) principles as essentially the basis of all philosophical (and thus political) thought. Also consider opposing principles as really a single thing as opposites always exist only in relation to each other.

This sounds a lot like some meaningless new-age woo, but I think many people make these associations subconsciously anyway, even though we can offer legitimate arguments against them.

Just conjure up some typically conservative imagery and symbols in your head - what kind of qualities are emphasized? What is deemed valuable, good, and of worth? What foundations precede these symbols?

The inescapable and global grasp of the Internet and the smartphone was a pivotal evolutionary shift in human history, comparable to our discoveries of fire, agriculture, steel, and the combustion engine - all of which are only useful through memetic transmission.

The Internet and our constantly connected culture has allowed us to, in a sense, act as a very rudimentary hivemind. Our access to, and saturation of information, media, and communication is both constant and instant - it is now possible to share our thoughts with almost everybody there is - our friends and family, their friends and family, people we don't know and never will, people in another country, and people who perhaps don't even share the same primary language as us - a single sentence spat out into the ether can potentially reach billions of people on the planet in a matter of hours.

You, me, and everybody else has a form of direct access to nearly every other human consciousness on this planet - what could we possibly use that for?

Memes, of course.

To crowdsource the question of 'what is good?', because that is what lies at the centre of all action and belief. The fact that we have seemingly become ever more divisive and politically polarized is not to be tutted at or wished away, but rather acknowledged as the only way in which an outcome - Truth - can be arrived at, spread, copy itself, and propagate to the point where its opposite seems wholly and utterly absurd.

Accepting all of this, it is possible to understand Humanity not as an abstracted collection of billions of separate individuals, but as a single, unique happening of organism/environment that can, given certain factors, act in unison.

The most important factor is, of course, each self knowing and feeling that they are a part of this greater self, which is not something that can be forced, but something, like creation itself, that happens spontaneously.

One can edit and correct and obsess over the minutiae of an artistic object, but inspiration strikes, it is not conjured - it is never willed into being, it is rather being itself which then acts on our will.

Those advocating for either a progressive or conservative approach to policy can not compromise, not because the facts are in disagreement (although that is true), but because what comes before the facts is not in agreement - that is, the way the world is structured and ordered, or The Way The World Is, which always itself acts as the background for an ideology rather than the reverse.

The idiom 'seeing is believing' is actually totally backwards - the truth is that believing is seeing.

So, if memes are the true catalyst of human action and social change, can we then "meme ourselves" into a better reality? Can we, together, engineer, build, or construct a meme to spread and transform our shared, collective (un)conscious and the ideas that follow about not only what is true, but what is possible?

I believe so, and I think a good place to start is to understand the illusory and mutable nature of money and wealth, and their direct relationship to power and authority and the distribution of these things. Money is a real 'thing' that performs a necessary function, but our shared understanding of it holds real power over it, and in this way we can collectively shape and alter that power it commands over our lives.

We can't function without money, but we absolutely can function with a novel way of distributing it so as to lessen the total amount of suffering directly related to poverty and the inability to provide materially for oneself.

Does Jeff Bezos really have billions of actual, tangible currency, or is his currency really in the form of power and influence as represented by money?

Is the standard work week from Monday to Friday, or Monday to Thursday?

Whatever the answer, is it because this is simply The Way the World Is, or is The Way the World Is directly shaped by our collective ideas about it?

The state-sanctioned brutalization and modern lynchings of black men at the hands of “Law Enforcement” in the U.S. is itself a memetic pattern - “Law Enforcement” tactics are memetic, including their violent response to protest, organization, and the legitimate outpouring of anger directed at the inhumanity of the institutions of "Justice". The video of George Floyd's horrific and senseless murder was spread memetically, and so too were the calls for protest all across not only the U.S., but the entire world.

A memetic call for collective struggle has been sounded, and heard by the entire planet - now is the time to take this opportunity to understand ourselves as one, to tear down and rebuild the arbitrary social patterns of power and control that rule all of our lives.

The 'legitimized' armed wings of state, police and military personnel, should stand with the people, not as their opposition - stand with them in demanding justice and equality for ALL PEOPLE and the dismantling of a system which treats all conscious beings as resources, and like its treatment of every resource, exhausts it to the point of annihilation.

A single officer taking a principled stand, to cross the illusory barrier of us/other could be the crumbled brick that begins the collapse of the whole structure. All it will take is one person of good conscience to do something difficult, but something good, to memetically begin a shift towards a better, more equal society.

If you can't bring yourself to do that, you just may be an enemy of the people.

See how compelling language can be? Nested within every word is paragraphs of subtext, assumption, and implication.

Enemies of the people are just that - enemies to a free and emancipated existence.

To preserve life violence may sometimes be the only option, but violence can be avoided memetically - you cannot put a bullet in a concept, and it’s just as futile to do the same to those who espouse, exemplify, or believe it, not to mention a wee bit of a moral grey area. Violence can be lessened with the correct memetic foundation that underpins our conception of 'self', 'other', and 'world', and the reciprocal nature of those things - violence is given power by distinction and separation, but that power can be neutered by understanding that not only are you yourself, you are every other self, too.

The global economic and social reaction to the Coronavirus is proof of this shared power our collective thoughts have over the world we inhabit. Of course we cannot simply will it out of existence through a shared psychic exercise, but we can decrease the destructive potential through the memetic spread of ideas like social distancing.

It has also laid bare that the distinctions and lines in the sand we use to divide and categorize are mostly illusory - the global community, as the aggregate of every other community, group, faction, and individual, is where we must focus our collective efforts. There is no nation but Earth, and to shift our reality in the direction we want, it will take collective effort.

The emancipation of all humanity must happen together because of the memetic nature of change and our connected world. There is no freedom until we are all free.

Somebody called the police because of a suspected counterfeit $20 and here we are.

Imagine what can be accomplished together, by simply altering our beliefs about what is inherent and immutable, and what is merely a byproduct of antiquated memetic artifacts and the resulting methods of ordering and structuring society?

We can meme ourselves better.

Black Lives Matter.

White supremacy does not.

Land matters.

Landlords do not.

People matter.

Profits do not.

Billions matter.

Billionaires do not.

These things are only true or false based on our collective ideas about what is right and what is valuable.

Justice should not be owned by anyone, it is owed to everyone.

Humanity is an organism - a unified field of conscious relationship and pattern from micro to macro, comprised of each one of us.

Knowing what we are is the first step to becoming what we can be.

We can meme ourselves into a better tomorrow, together.

submitted by /u/thegreatself [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/hf0k6k/indepth_the_internet_and_memes_are_proof_that/

[deathghost8]

Memes are Channeling --Parable is a meme -- humanity organism - memes, money, hope

VIA thegreatself on Alan Watts community I know this sounds asinine but just give me a few paragraphs to get some momentum. You can't exist in 2020 and not intuitively just know what a meme is. Even those that exist totally cut-off from the online sphere would get the picture after a few examples. Most typically we think of image macros like this https://imgur.com/Sc1nBL7 , or this https://imgur.com/yW2QUqt , but these are just a couple of modern, digital memes and don't begin to scratch the surface of just exactly what a meme is, and why the answer to that might be really fucking important. For example, a picture doesn't need any text to be a meme - similarly, a picture can be only text and still be a meme. A phrase can be a meme, or even a single word. A sound. Symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S#/media/File:%22Cool_S%22.svg . The structure of the building you're in and the design of the device you're reading this from are memetic artifacts. Musical subgenres, fashion and style trends, social patterns and institutions including family, marriage, property, law, crime, and punishment. Even complex ideologies - religious, political, and philosophical - are essentially very nuanced and enduring memes that span hundreds and thousands of years. It's difficult to think of anything that is not a direct result of memetic repetition, as this is the way in which all information, beliefs, and ideas are shared and become socially entrenched - this method of transmission is directly related to, and reveals something specific about the origins of power, authority, control, and choice, and how we relate to those concepts and ourselves. Human behaviour and response is memetic - a product of pattern, repetition, and context rather than a series of conscious “decisions” we make at every moment - this is not to suggest we are totally bound and determined by fate, but only that we are bound and determined to act only in accordance with our own character - we are not something responsible for our decisions, we are our decisions, and for that we bear responsibility. Can you imagine Trump acting like anything else besides a caricature of pure petulance? That’s his role - his constitution. I think the belief that he, or you, or I, "make decisions" is backwards - partly a product of the language we use to speak about ourselves and the world, and partly just our basic instincts - it's plainly obvious that I am aware and alive and can consider many possibilities so it only seems to follow that I must exert some influence over my choices. To me, there is little distinction between Me and My Choices - I am those choices, not a separate entity that chooses - that stands separate, considers, and then finally pulls the equivalent lever corresponding with the [] 'choice' I’ve made. [] Those final three words are superfluous - to me they all reference a single thing - a localized happening from my specific perspective. This idea is naturally unpalatable as it would seem to not only absolve one of all responsibility for wrongdoing, but also rob one of their ownership over both their good actions, and artistic creations. I think this is simply a knee jerk reaction to protect the ego's sense of itself as something distinct and in control, as to accept the opposite comes with a great sense of powerlessness. // Responsibility is not something we take - responsible is what we are. // Language has an implicit kind of magical quality - by that I mean much like the imagined casting of a spell, it is widely assumed that speaking the right words in the right combination (and order) can influence and compel people to act, and this action is the source of change. This is why great orators have always possessed great influence over the course of history - someone must be able to give power to an idea that can move masses to act as a single, unified force of nature. I don't believe individual human action is ever the true catalyst to change - I think it is human action predicated on and driven specifically by the memetic concepts we have at our disposal - most importantly, [] "What is good, right, valuable, and true?" []. Language is itself inherently biased, limiting and divisive - [] Black Lives Matter [] means absolutely nothing until it is interpreted, and language is always loaded with judgments. As much as it is the primary way we communicate, ironically it just as often obfuscates and confuses because the kind of language we have available to us directly determines how we understand and conceptualize the world (and ourselves). It is not a matter of merely being Peterson-ianly "precise" in our speech, because precision is meaningless if the principles that precede it are incompatible. How many proponents of any ideology have /// actually /// read and engaged with its foundational and supporting texts? Probably very few. How many have absorbed bits and pieces through their specific context - language, culture, family, friends, media, and memes? Probably almost everybody. These repetitions of pattern connect us to something far greater than any single one of us - our collective human ideas about value, function, purpose, and their relation with each other - memes are a portal to the sum total of all human knowledge, experience, and feeling - memes are threads sewn into the fabric of the tapestry of reality, connecting us to the past, present, future, each other, and something totally separate - something unspeakable that yet demands to be spoken of. You may have felt it when engaged in something everyday and ordinary, yet struck as if for the very first time by the majesty and totality of all there is - all experience happening right now, billions of distinct and separate simultaneous happenings, disconnected and separated only by virtue of the limitations of their own collective conceptions of what is real, what is true, and what is possible. This universal need to communicate and share - to be heard - is intimately linked to creative and artistic expression. Memes are innately communal and creative - they are meant to translate a feeling or thought into a shareable format that can be used, related to, and understood, and community and creativity have a direct and intimate connection to both art and play, two characteristics central to the human experience. Art is itself its own distinct form of language - a language that transmits ideas and feeling only through its interaction with another. Art is our way of speaking telepathically - a way to contain and convey something enormous and infinite bound in the confines of an object. Memes and artistic expression both reflect something crucial and universal in the spark of our human spirit - both are inherently creative and communal - they represent the human need to share, something intimately linked with community and altruism. Art can of course be done selfishly, but there is no artistic expression at all without the memetic patterns that allow that expression and an audience to engage with and be receptive to the artist's message. Memes are thus quite a bit more significant than just funny and relatable pictures we share - what a meme is has direct implications regarding what we are, and our current shared cultural conception of them is simplistic and, as a result, limiting. If we don’t fully grasp what a meme is, we lack the capacity to both comprehend their true power, and the ability to wield that power to our own collective benefit. Instead, we persist in an ordering of society that enriches only a small handful that have fallen to the top through nothing other than circumstance and who insist this must be the natural ordering of the world simply because it is the current ordering of it. Can we really trust those who wield inordinate amounts of power to fairly consider how it might be meted out differently? Is the fate of society directly tied to the fate of the billionaire class, or to the current institutions of policing and governance? From where is their authority and power actually derived? The primary source is our shared belief that these institutions are legitimate and just. The secondary source is their ability and willingness to inflict violence on us if we do not accept the first source. Violence is of course the most powerful and persuasive avenue of acquiring and maintaining power - both literal violent acts, and indirect violence inflicted and facilitated by a system of organization that regards the principle of one person's right to hoard obscene amounts of wealth as a higher and more just one than providing the material necessities of life for all people. That is the basic moral principle that serves as the keystone of the structure of our society as it is currently ordered. Do we really believe those with obscene means deserve it? What about those with such means that they could lose a thousand yearly salaries in a single day and not have that impact their quality of life in the slightest? The Divine Right of Kings still rules, although now it's simply the Divine Right of the Wealthy. We are meant to believe this is just [] The Way the World Is? [] I find that idea just as intolerable and narrow-minded as those that believe it. Society bears little proof of functioning properly anywhere - properly as in for the common good of all people. If we instead understand "properly" as to the obscene and perverted benefit of a small few at the expense of everybody else, then it is functioning tremendously properly. Individualism is too often championed by those who don't understand the distinction between it and selfishness, and this crucial error acts as the basic foundation for an entire wing of political and philosophical thought which insists might makes right, and "value" is directly related to money and money alone, where everything can be spoken about in terms of it's worth in terms of the US $ - one of many currencies that can, in an instant, become as good as worthless due to nothing other than our shared confidence in it. Now I want to make some statements that are broad and general, but ones that I think are fairly common and subconscious. These are not meant to be statements of fact, merely word and concept associations to get us to see how we arrive at 'facts'. /// The relationship between progressivism and conservatism is like the relationship between masculine and feminine, which itself is like the relationship between individual and community. /// Consider this disharmony between two opposing (or complementary) principles as essentially the basis of all philosophical (and thus political) thought. Also consider opposing principles as really a single thing as opposites always exist only in relation to each other. This sounds a lot like some meaningless new-age woo, but I think many people make these associations subconsciously anyway, even though we can offer legitimate arguments against them. Just conjure up some typically conservative imagery and symbols in your head - what kind of qualities are emphasized? What is deemed valuable, good, and of worth? What foundations precede these symbols? [][] The inescapable and global grasp of the Internet and the smartphone was a pivotal evolutionary shift in human history, comparable to our discoveries of fire, agriculture, steel, and the combustion engine - all of which are only useful through memetic transmission. [][] The Internet and our constantly connected culture has allowed us to, in a sense, act as a very rudimentary hivemind. Our access to, and saturation of information, media, and communication is both constant and instant - [] it is now possible to share our thoughts with almost everybody there is [] - our friends and family, their friends and family, people we don't know and never will, people in another country, and people who perhaps don't even share the same primary language as us - a single sentence spat out into the ether can potentially reach billions of people on the planet in a matter of hours. [] You, me, and everybody else has a form of direct access to nearly every other human consciousness on this planet - what could we possibly use that for? [] Memes, of course. To crowdsource the question of 'what is good?', because that is what lies at the centre of all action and belief. The fact that we have seemingly become ever more divisive and politically polarized is not to be tutted at or wished away, but rather acknowledged as the only way in which an outcome - Truth - can be arrived at, spread, copy itself, and propagate to the point where its opposite seems wholly and utterly absurd. Accepting all of this, it is possible to understand Humanity not as an abstracted collection of billions of separate individuals, but as a single, unique happening of organism/environment that can, given certain factors, act in unison. The most important factor is, of course, each self knowing and feeling that they are a part of this greater self, which is not something that can be forced, but something, like creation itself, that happens spontaneously. One can edit and correct and obsess over the minutiae of an artistic object, but inspiration strikes, it is not conjured - it is never willed into being, it is rather being itself which then acts on our will. Those advocating for either a progressive or conservative approach to policy can not compromise, not because the facts are in disagreement (although that is true), but because what comes before the facts is not in agreement - that is, the way the world is structured and ordered, or The Way The World Is, which always itself acts as the background for an ideology rather than the reverse. The idiom /// 'seeing is believing' /// is actually totally backwards - the truth is that [][] believing is seeing. [][] So, if memes are the true catalyst of human action and social change, can we then "meme ourselves" into a better reality? Can we, together, engineer, build, or construct a meme to spread and transform our shared, collective (un)conscious and the ideas that follow about not only what is true, but // what is possible? // I believe so, and I think a good place to start is to understand the [] illusory and mutable nature of money and wealth, and their direct relationship to power and authority and the distribution of these things. [] Money is a real 'thing' that performs a necessary function, but our shared understanding of it holds real power over it, and in this way we can collectively shape and alter that power it commands over our lives. We can't function without money, but we absolutely can function with a novel way of distributing it so as to lessen the total amount of suffering directly related to poverty and the inability to provide materially for oneself. [][] Does Jeff Bezos really have billions of actual, tangible currency, or is his currency really in the form of power and influence as represented by money? [][] Is the standard work week from Monday to Friday, or Monday to Thursday? Whatever the answer, is it because this is simply The Way the World Is, or is The Way the World Is directly shaped by our collective ideas about it? The state-sanctioned brutalization and modern lynchings of black men at the hands of “Law Enforcement” in the U.S. is itself a memetic pattern - “Law Enforcement” tactics are memetic, including their violent response to protest, organization, and the legitimate outpouring of anger directed at the inhumanity of the institutions of "Justice". The video of George Floyd's horrific and senseless murder was spread memetically, and so too were the calls for protest all across not only the U.S., but the entire world. A memetic call for collective struggle has been sounded, and heard by the entire planet - now is the time to take this opportunity to understand ourselves as one, to tear down and rebuild the arbitrary social patterns of power and control that rule all of our lives. The 'legitimized' armed wings of state, police and military personnel, should stand with the people, not as their opposition - stand with them in demanding justice and equality for ALL PEOPLE and the dismantling of a system which treats all conscious beings as resources, and like its treatment of every resource, exhausts it to the point of annihilation. [][] A single officer taking a principled stand, to cross the illusory barrier of us/other could be the crumbled brick that begins the collapse of the whole structure. All it will take is one person of good conscience to do something difficult, but something good, to memetically begin a shift towards a better, more equal society. [][] If you can't bring yourself to do that, you just may be an enemy of the people. See how compelling language can be? Nested within every word is paragraphs of subtext, assumption, and implication. Enemies of the people are just that - enemies to a free and emancipated existence. To preserve life, violence may sometimes be the only option. Violence can be avoided memetically - you cannot put a bullet in a concept, and it’s just as futile to do the same to those who espouse, exemplify, or believe it, not to mention a wee bit of a moral grey area. Violence can be lessened with the correct memetic foundation that underpins our conception of 'self', 'other', and 'world', and the reciprocal nature of those things - violence is given power by distinction and separation, but that power can be neutered by understanding that not only are you yourself, you are every other self, too. The global economic and social reaction to the Coronavirus is proof of this shared power our collective thoughts have over the world we inhabit. Of course we cannot simply will it out of existence through a shared psychic exercise, but we can decrease the destructive potential through the memetic spread of ideas like social distancing. It has also laid bare that the distinctions and lines in the sand we use to divide and categorize are mostly illusory - the global community, as the aggregate of every other community, group, faction, and individual, is where we must focus our collective efforts. There is no nation but Earth, and to shift our reality in the direction we want, it will take collective effort. The emancipation of all humanity must happen together because of the memetic nature of change and our connected world. There is no freedom until we are all free. Somebody called the police because of a suspected counterfeit $20 and here we are. Imagine what can be accomplished together, by simply altering our beliefs about what is inherent and immutable, and what is merely a byproduct of antiquated memetic artifacts and the resulting methods of ordering and structuring society? [][] We can meme ourselves better. [][] Black Lives Matter. White supremacy does not. Land matters. Landlords do not. People matter. Profits do not. Billions matter. Billionaires do not. Collective ownership over the instruments of profit, production, and class stratification is OUR right. Food is a right. Water is a right. Shelter is a right. Healthcare is a right. Education is a right. Freedom of expression is a right - this includes the right to quell and dismantle the violent rhetoric that enables violent expression. These things are only true or false based on our collective ideas about what is right and what is valuable. Justice should not be owned by anyone, it is owed to everyone. Humanity is an organism - a unified field of conscious relationship and pattern from micro to macro, comprised of each one of us. Knowing what we are is the first step to becoming what we can be. [][] We can meme ourselves into a better tomorrow, together. [][]