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my final illustration for @billfordzine! a 3-color risograph print. a limited number of prints are available in my shop.

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Scott Pilgrim is, I think, the best example I can think of for establishing a setting's Nonsense Limit. The setting's Nonsense Limit isn't quite "How high-fantasy is this". It's mostly a question of presentation, to what degree does the audience feel that they know the rules the world operates by, such that they are primed to accept a random new element being introduced. A setting with a Nonsense Limit of 0 is, like, an everyday story. Something larger than life, but theoretically taking place in our world, like your standard spy thriller action movie has a limit of 1. Some sort of hidden world urban fantasy with wizards and stuff operating in secret has a nonsense limit around 3 or 4. A Superhero setting, presenting an alternate version of our world, is a 5 or 6. High fantasy comes in around a 7 or so, "Oh yeah, Wizards exist and they can do crazy stuff" is pretty commonly accepted. Scott Pilgrim comes in at a 10. If you read the Scott Pilgrim book, it starts off looking like a purely mundane slice of life. The first hint at the fantastical is Ramona appearing repeatedly in Scott's Dreams, and then later showing up in real life. When we finally get an explanation, it's this:

Apparently Subspace Highways are a thing? And they go through people's heads? And Ramona treats this like it's obscure, but not secret knowledge. Ramona doesn't think she's doing anything weird here. At this point, it's not clear if Scott is accepting Ramona's explanation or not, things kind of move on as mundane as ever until their Date, when Ramona takes Scott through subspace, and he doesn't act like his world was just blown open or anything, although I guess that could have been a metaphor. there's a couple other moments, but everything with Ramona could be a metaphor, or Scott not recognizing what's going on. Maybe Ramona is uniquely fantastical in this otherwise normal world. And then, this happens

Suddenly, a fantastical element (A shitty local indie band finishing their set with a song that knocks out most of the audience) is introduced unrelated to Ramona, and undeniably literal. We see the crowd knocked out by Crash and The Boys. but the story doesn't linger on the implications of that, the whole point of that sequence is to raise the Nonsense Level, such that you accept it when This happens

Matthew Patel comes flying down onto the stage, Scott, who until this point is presented as a terrible person and a loser, but otherwise is extremely ordinary, proceeds to flawlessly block and counter him before doing a 64-hit air juggle combo. Scott's friends treat this like Scott is showing off a mildly interesting party trick, like being really good at darts. The establish that Scott is the "Best Fighter in the Province", not only are street-fighter battles a thing, Scott is Very Good at it, but they're so unimportant that being the best fighter in the province doesn't make Scott NOT a loser. So when Matthew Patel shows off his magic powers and then explodes into a pile of coins, we've established "Oh, this is how silly the setting gets". It's not about establishing the RULES of the setting so much as it is about establishing a lack of rules. Scott's skill at street-fighter battles doesn't translate to any sort of social prestige. Ramona can access Subspace Highways and she uses it to do a basic delivery job. It doesn't make sense and it's clear that it's not supposed to. So later on, when Todd Ingram starts throwing around telekinesis, and the explanation we're given is "He's a Vegan" , you're already so primed by the mixture of weirdness and mundanity that rather than trying to incorporate this new knowledge into any sort of coherent setting ruleset, you just go "Ah, yeah, Vegans".

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Fig and Sandra Lynn in Heartache on the Celestine Sea

a.k.a. THE Complicated Women👆

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Decided to try my hand at sculpting again

100% Polymer clay and acrylic paint on a wooden base. :)

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happy pride to host!vic and host!vic alone.

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workin 9 to 5

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the mdr team but theyre serving beatles help movie

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for folks who don’t follow them on instagram— ally beardsley wrote part of an op-ed in the washington post for the 50th dnd anniversary about a moment playing dnd that really stuck with them and i wanted to share it here!

“a character’s journey — and my own”

I was an aspiring comedian in Los Angeles and had just landed a salaried job at the comedy website CollegeHumor. My co-worker and friend Brennan Lee Mulligan was looking for six comedians to create a show that would be like an at-home game of D&D. Why not? “Dimension 20” became a weird punctuation to my day.

I remember there being too many rules to remember. I kept turning to my friend, Brian Murphy, to ask which dice I should be rolling. I wasn’t paid overtime, but I loved the group and was having a lot of fun.

For the second season, I had my sea legs. I created a character for the campaign who was transgender. I had started going by the gender neutral they/them pronouns at work and among friends, but sourcing hormones or getting surgery seemed equal parts expensive and invasive. A fun thing about fantasy is stripping away the crunchy, real-world limitations and asking yourself: “What would I do if I could do anything?”

That season’s arc for my character, Pete, was extremely euphoric for me. I had described him as a trans cowboy you might see at Burning Man, and the artist drew him dressed as a freaky Hunter S. Thompson in an open shirt to show his top surgery scars. He has wild magic — uncontrollable and dangerous in the game mechanics — which we used to explore the painful chaos of leaving a family that doesn’t accept you.

Since then, I’ve started testosterone HRT and had top surgery. It’s funny to listen back to myself playing a character who had transitioned in ways I hadn’t. It’s full of inaccuracies that make me smile. Pete takes a testosterone pill every day; I now know it’s a weekly injection or a topical gel. I see my face, one wrapped up in playing something so new but instantly right. It was like an oracle. A near-future me who has health insurance! Who’s talked to their mom about being trans and even spent a week post-top surgery on that mom’s couch in Temecula, Calif!

As I started transitioning my appearance, seeing that in front of the camera felt raw. I was starting hormones, and my voice was cracking. Realizing it was all being recorded felt naked at times, but it has been really nice to talk to fans and friends about how important it is to see someone that looks like you taking a big risk on themself.

With Pete, it was really important to me to tell a story other than the dramatic lead-up to a medical transition. So we started with him having just gotten out of surgery, but that’s all you see of that process. Part of his backstory is that he doesn’t have a relationship with his transphobic parents, and before shooting the first episode, I felt sick to my stomach. I’ve been on a journey with my parents, and our starting place didn’t have much common ground. When my character meets with his father, it felt as though I was actually running into my own on the street.

Brennan could sense that discomfort, and as my character’s dad was about to call Pete by his deadname, Brennan shut the interaction down, surrounding his dad with bubbles that carried him into the sky. Magic is the power and freedom to manipulate your reality, and you can banish the awful voices in your life — let them swirl away into the air.

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Single Mages are dying to meet you!

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macroplastic queen ❤️ eat that sharpie

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Man.

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de × severance

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Exclusive Preview: Severance Season Two Is a True Piece of Work

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if i got a single office music dance experience my suffering at work would all be worth it !! (everyone go watch severance now, for me, your comrade)

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in official severance lockdown mode

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 Me: It’s 2017, no one wants to hear Gravity Falls meta

Also me: Stan never believed Gideon was an actual psychic—even though he knew supernatural things were possible, and even though everyone in Gravity Falls was against him, Stan always insisted he absolutely knew Gideon was a fraud.  Why was he so certain?

Gideon always called him “Stanford.” 

Anyone with real mind-reading powers would’ve known that was actually his brother’s name, and he was living under a false identity