#its a different flavor of fan happening there. both are weird. both could be discussed in different capacities. but they arent the same | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

imuybemovoko · 4 years

Text

I die inside while dissecting Jesus music

For this fun little exercise in self-torture, I’m going to find a weird worship song and dissect it. Today I feel like saying death-cult a distressing number of times so I’m going to find one that talks about how the next world is supposed to be better for this one.

I’m probably going to regret this. And probably cope by blasting metal while I do this.

I’ll go with a bit of low-hanging fruit for this first one: Even So Come. It’s attributed six ways to Sunday because like seven different artists/groups have a recording of it somewhere out public, but this lyric site thingy says Chris Tomlin. Some of these songs get wildly popular to the point where even as a church guitar guy (read: very large fan of this shitty music) I tended to find it a bit confusing to tell who originally wrote them. This is an example. I think it was probably Kristian Stanfill but uh... I can never be 100% sure. I’ve been wrong about ones I was way more sure about before.

This song is repetitive as fuck, like a lot of these, because what helps indoctrinate people more than literally singing the same words for 15 minutes?

Let’s get into this shit.

The song

I’ll spare you a few minutes of your life if you want to keep it. I already linked the lyrics, but I’ll give this a quick listen to make sure Stanfill doesn’t literally freehand some new lyrics during the video; if he does, I’ll discuss that too I suppose. The whole point of this is that I’m listening to this shit so you don’t have to. But if you really want to, then go off I guess. I can’t and honestly wouldn’t try to stop you. Unless this shit is triggering to you. In that case please don’t listen. It used to fuck me up hard when my brother would blast songs like this in the shower after I deconverted. I don’t want that happening to anyone out there. Tread with caution.

Okay. I wrote that while I was listening, and apparently he doesn’t yeet off into new spontaneous lyrics at any point. I think that’s more of a Bethel thing, but I don’t remember it being exclusive to them so I had to make sure.

Ok, let’s do this more or less in order. I’ll take it a verse at a time. But first, let’s talk formatting. The first two verses aren’t separated by anything, and the third is after the first chorus. After the third verse they play the chorus again, then the bridge. The AZLyrics entry under Tomlin lists it twice; Stanfill plays it twice. When I was on the worship team at a church, we’d typically play the bridge four times for extra drama. After this, they end with two tricks. First is that they play the first half or so of the chorus, then a whole chorus right after it. Again, this is for extra drama. The leader of the worship team at my old church would tend to point to one part of the song as the “climax” and we’d do a fair amount of this kind of shit leading up to it. In this particular case, it’s actually most of the chorus, leaving off only the “even so come” lines. The break is at a lyrically appropriate place more often than it’s just like “haha 2 bars into the chorus” or something like that because of course the message has to be consistent. After this, they fade the song out by repeating the last line or two, like, umpteen times to foster a contemplative mood. (It works. I’ve been on both ends of this dynamic. If you’re in a more charismatic crowd, my experience suggests that this final repetition is the most likely point where someone’s going to fall out and start speaking in tongues or something. Also, in those circles sometimes one of the vocalists, most often the team leader because of course, will give some kind of “word from God” to the congregation.) That’s the format, and it’s a very common one. At church camps and retreats and events like those, often they’ll loop choruses or bridges or ending tags or, sometimes (but far less often), verses and extend a song like this one to like fifteen or twenty minutes. In a typical church service they don’t really do it that way though because people might get impatient or something.

On to the lyrics of this song. I’ll address the verses in order, then the chorus and bridge, then talk ordering, because doing this chronologically would get annoying as fuck. The first verse is as follows:

All of creation All of the earth Make straight a highway A path for the Lord Jesus is coming soon

Notice the equivocation in the first two lines here. The author most likely believes this is an accurate thing to equivocate, and so do most of their audience.

The next two lines are a similar repetition, using both modern and more Biblically-flavored language, in reference to Mark 1:3. The particular language used is not altogether different from most English translations. These lines, both in the sense that the author intends and in their function in the song, are meant to prepare the listener for what follows: “Jesus is coming soon.” A reminder of the inevitable apocalypse most Christian sects teach and, in their view, the second chronologically of two most important events in the entire history and future of the world (the first being the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ). Every verse of the song ends with this reminder.

To boil the message of this verse down into one word:

(I have entirely too much fun with this image lol)

The second verse:

Call back the sinner Wake up the saint Let every nation Shout of Your fame Jesus is coming soon

“Call back the sinner” implies a return to origins and contains an implicit reference to the prodigal son in the parable in Luke 15. The implication is that being a “sinner” (and I’ll discuss the dichotomy in a second here) is a life of running away from God either by ignorance or by choice, and that they were originally with God. The typical narrative on the mechanisms of the fall of man seems to suggest otherwise because only Adam and Eve were technically originally with God and everyone else starts out separated because of that lovely little generational curse thingy, this is a bit of an odd take, but in light of the evangelical perspective that not only a god, but their god is so self evident that people have to make the active choice to not believe, this makes an entire hell of a lot of sense, and “calling back the sinner” could entail saying “lol stop wasting your energy running from what you know.”

The next line engages in a bit of common guilt-tripping. Saying “wake up the saint” implies that believers and churches have fallen asleep in some sense, and that’s actually a perspective referenced in the letters to the seven churches in Revelation, each church getting a different flavor of messaging like this. When churches and saints are called to “wake up”, it means to cease engaging in whatever behavior is apparently polluting their message, i.e. forgetting the original reason they’re doing this, normalizing “worldly” practices, bad leadership paradigms, etc. Thus, I’m inclined to read this line as something like “you’re better than the rest of humanity; act like it.

Also of note is this dichotomy established here between “sinners” and “saints”. This is, on paper at least, the only important distinction in evangelicalism. (In practice they have a lot of shitty perspectives on women because of Paul’s writings as well as some class and/or racial biases, unconscious or conscious depending on the particular congregation.) A “saint” is a “true” Christian, one who is “set apart” from the world by God. A “sinner” is literally anyone else. In addition to their entire laundry list of harmless actions that are considered sins, Evangelicals (and probably many other Christians honestly) will say that to be non-Christian is a sin. In my old church and its affiliates I often heard that to remain non-Christian for an entire lifetime is the only unforgivable sin, identifying it with the “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit” referenced in Matthew 12:31. There are a wide variety of perspectives on what this “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit” actually means, and I can really only confidently speak to Calvary Chapel’s perspective on that. In any case, this song makes use of the “sinner vs saint” dichotomy common in Christianity. I analyze it as a typical “us vs them” with an added twist that says “the ‘them’ can become us and that’s better”.

After this is a reference to the passages in the Bible that speak of the Gospel being spread to “every nation” and things such as that, and that every nation will come under Christ’s lordship at the end of time. Then there’s a reminder that the singer is awaiting this apparently fast-approaching end.

The third verse:

There will be justice All will be new Your name forever Faithful and true Jesus is coming soon

This third verse is mostly a reference to events predicted to occur after the second coming of Christ. In Revelation, among other places, there is a described sequence of events in which the world comes absolutely fucking unglued, falls under the thumb of a tyrannical world government run by some guy who lets himself get possessed by Satan, and then is yeeted by God and soaked in the blood of Satan’s armies at the final battle. A bit later, for some reason Satan has to be let go for a bit, but he loses hard once again. After this, God yeets the unbelievers into hellfire and makes a new world which he rules forever. In short, the collapse, battles, and Great Divine Yeet are what this “justice” describes. The remaining lines speak of this renewed world run by Jesus himself. Lastly, we have the reminder that this is all going to happen before very long here.

There’s a bit of a double-reference thing going on here and in the second verse too, and I’m honestly not entirely sure what to make of it, but it shows up often in contemporary Christian music. They’ll switch between referring to God in second person (Your name forever) and in third person (Jesus is coming soon). It seems ...most likely to be a matter of convenience, and I’m rather inclined to treat it as that because the other things I think of seem either counter-productive or very, very outlandish. Like, are they alternating between addressing God and addressing the listener? Maybe, but the message of this song is so much more listener-directed that I find that thought kinda weird.

In any case, that’s the verses.

Now let’s get to the chorus. This is repeated after the first two verses and again several times after the third, and it contains a lot of deeply cursed metaphors. I mean holy fuck.

Like a bride Waiting for her groom We'll be a church Ready for You Every heart longing for our King We sing Even so come Lord Jesus come Even so come Lord Jesus come

So the first two little couplets here refer to a metaphor found in several places in scripture where the church is the “bride” of Christ. This. is. CREEPY! In the old testament, the role of the wife is often analogous to that of property, so that’s deeply gross. Further, Paul says men are the head of women, i.e. have great authority over them, and women should be subservient. Jesus doesn’t honestly do a whole hell of a lot to resist this, and powerful women throughout most of the scriptures are either defined as attaining their power in “God-honoring” subservient ways like Esther or as dangerous demonic influences operating under the “spirit of Jezebel”. (”Jezebel” is literally a scriptural term for this kind of thing; one of the church letters in Revelation uses it. Many evangelicals/fundies add “spirit of” because of their borderline-animistic take on spiritual warfare. I might describe that in more detail in a later post. It’s a metaphor based on an old-testament queen who is presented as manipulative and narcissistic, taking the real power in the kingdom from her husband by manipulation and doing a great deal of damage with it.) Thus, in this context, I find the “bride” metaphors inextricable from a tyrannical, abusive relationship in which the man, or in this case Christ, is the absolute head. Biblical ideas on marriage and family life are an entire problem too, establishing what I feel very confident in describing as an abusive power dynamic. Thus, this song references a metaphor by which Christ is described as having abusive control over his people. @kristian stanfill thanks I hate it. @whoever the fuck wrote the bible thanks I hate it. The couplet in this song is describing a situation in which the church is waiting to submit to an abusive authority and it’s fucking disgusting and I hate that I used to live that way.

The next line, “every heart longing for our king”, indicates that it’s normative to strongly desire this power dynamic and expresses a probably-genuine (mine was) desire for more of Jesus on the part of the writer and the singer. So with these preconditions established, they say, “we sing, even so come, Lord Jesus, come”, repeating “even so come” and on twice for added weight. The chorus and bridge are, by the way, where this seems to get deathculty.

Remember that in referencing the coming of Jesus, they reference ideas that this world is shitty and being dead and in heaven/having the world destroyed by God and replaced is going to be a hell of a lot better. The Bible and many churches, particularly evangelicals, will even use language like “dying to oneself” to refer to the process of laying down one’s life for the cause of Jesus. Thus, death metaphors infiltrate their literal daily living. The general attitude that’s expected for people to have in those circumstances is one of “I won’t seek death actively but I will welcome it when the time comes”, and coupled with the way the other forms of abuse broke me, this had me fantasizing about dying in third-world countries for getting too annoying about Jesus. So that’s pretty wack, I suppose. This belief system is one that puts death on a very disturbing pedestal. This entire song is about preparing for the return of Jesus, which is going to bring a hell of a lot of death if it happens as they predict. This very deadly event is what “Jesus is coming soon” entails, and it’s one of two possible interpretations that I can think of to apply to these “even so come lord Jesus come” lines. The other is that they believe that Jesus is present with them when they worship (Matthew 18:20) and they seek to experience this presence. But the preparatory nature of this song, in my experience at least, puts very strong priority on the first sense, even though it can be, and in church settings often functions as, both. These lines are a plea for personal transformation and for the apocalypse. In the vanishingly unlikely event that the Christian version of the divine turns out to be true, billions will die in wars and disasters (some actively caused by God’s agents) and many of those same billions and many more people, including me, will be victims of the Great Cosmic Yeet and land in hellfire forever. And they want this to happen sooner rather than later. That’s literally the main point of this song.

So we wait We wait for You God we wait You're coming soon

This is the bridge. It’s typically repeated kind of a lot. Like, I mean holy fuck they repeat this. It’s literally just “we’re excited for the second coming of Christ”. You know, in case someone needed a reminder that they want billions dead, even more people yeeted into hellfire, and the entire world destroyed. Evangelical and fundamentalist strains of Christianity are literally a death cult.

So with that rant-filled analysis out of the way, let’s see if I can talk formatting without dying inside again or getting too pissed off.

On the lyric site I linked above (and I’ll link it again so you don’t have to scroll through whatever literal mountain of text and cursed images I’ve produced) this goes verse 1, verse 2, chorus, verse 3, chorus, bridge twice, weird most-of-chorus tag, chorus, the last two lines like several times over. Thus, already we have multiple repetitions of most concepts found in this song. Also, this two verses-chorus-third verse-chorus-bridge several times-chorus twice-ending tag format is quite common in contemporary Christian music, in the studio recordings, official lyrics, and chord sheets you’ll find out there. But I cannot stress enough that this structure, especially the bridge and latter choruses but the entire structure including the verses, is extremely modular. Anything can be repeated, or repeated more times. Anything can be re-inserted in another place. This is mostly a Bethel thing in my experience, but there can be instrumental breaks for one of the vocalists to yeet out entirely spontaneous lyrics. There can be massive empty instrumental breaks, or instrumental breaks with spoken words in them. And I’ve seen even less of that, but parts of other songs can be inserted just about anywhere too, and I’ve actually participated in that one on occasion. To an extent, any music can be handled in ways like this, but it seems to me like contemporary Christian music is consciously designed that way because its target audience goes nuts over long, “spirit-filled” songs played at church camps or an extra spicy church service.

It’s also worth noting, and if I end up doing a whole lot of these I’ll probably explain this in a great deal more depth, that these songs can get reasonably similar to one another. I think that’s because to a very large extent, the words and structure matter a hell of a lot less than the way they set the mood. You can get the same impact on a crowd of willing Christians from probably literally any combination of these songs. I always had my favorites but that didn’t seem to matter that much.

I’m inclined to say some of the same things about a lot of modern music, actually. It has common structures, a lot of music is interchangeable for certain moods, etc. But I can’t say a thing about the modularity of modern music. A song seems to be way more of a distinct unit in most environments. Mashups do happen, but massive repetitions of one piece of a song generally don’t in any context that I’m aware of. They’ll jam out on an instrumental for a while at concerts sometimes, but you really don’t get this, like, singing “Crawl on your belly til the sun goes down, I’ll never wear your broken crown, I took the road and I fucked it all away, in this twilight how dare you speak of grace” more than like the twice they do it in the studio recording from most groups like you do in very many Christian music settings. (The example chorus I put here was from Mumford and Sons- Broken Crown. It’s an amazing song, I totally recommend it lol it was the first one that popped into my head for this purpose.) Some other commonalities are present in a lot of modern music, but for the most part, that modularity would just come across extremely weird. I think just about every time I’ve either seen or been involved in the playing of Even So Come at a church, the musicians engaged in at least some degree of modularity, most often by repeating the bridge but sometimes uh... holy crap. Because of the extreme prolific use of these songs in church or retreat settings, I’m inclined to list the modularity as the single most important aspect of the formatting of this song and of many others.

#ex christian #contemporarychristianmusic #worship #i probably need therapy #dead inside

3 notes · View notes

comicteaparty · 4 years

Text

April 8th-April 14th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from April 8th, 2020 to April 14th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

Has gatekeeping ever affected which comics you read? If so, how so? If not, do you think it could in the future?

DanitheCarutor

You know, I usually don't care about the person behind the work, although there is an exception. During the Twitter Pride Month event if a webcomic creator I'm following says asexuals/pansexuals/non-binary people aren't allowed/can't follow them either due to not being oppressed enough, or not being real LGBT+ people, I will stop reading their work. Afterall, it wouldn't be right since I'm not queer enough to read their work. -coughsarcasmcough- There are instances where I'll still read their comic, but with a feeling of mischievous excitement for doing something "against the rules". Although there will always be this understanding of that person hates me, coupled with a slight feeling of 'yikes' whenever I see their work. Lol It's about the same with any other type of gatekeeping, although admittedly I'm more lax about unfollowing someone if I'm not being targeted since I'm narcissistic like that.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Thats ridiculous to think an author would try to control which demographics can read their work. Artists shoudn't discriminate against certain groups in who can access their art.

RebelVampire

It does happen a lot though as all my gatekeeping experiences are about that as well, creators kind of directly shunning a specific demographic (granted not exactly @DanitheCarutor 's experience)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@DanitheCarutor Man I've never seen anything like that. I thought this post was about "only true gamers will understand" comics and such. I guess I'm lucky I've never stumbled into that side of the internet. If someone holds such views and expouses them so loudly i probably wouldn't like what they write, anyways.

RebelVampire

To answer the question more thoroughly, there have been plenty of incidents of gatekeeping that have affected how and if I read certain webcomics. However, generally speaking, they come in two specific flavors. Flavor 1: Creators basically pushing for their target audience too aggressively to the point they're either: A) insulting anyone who is not in that target audience or B) dismissing anyone not in that target audience and treating them as someone who isn't a "true" fan. which usually means their opinions are basically treated as auto invalid and not worth anything. B is more the experience I see for this flavor on my end, though honestly I don't think a lot of the creators I see do it on purpose. This particular flavor usually just effects my engagement because I generally just don't want to engage with the work at all if my opinion is going to be auto invalidated anyway. Flavor 2: Creators basically saying "Don't read my comic if you don't 100% agree with my political view(s)." This is a nope for me. A guarantee I will never read that comic again and will immediately mute said creator on my social media - even if I do 100% agree with their specific view. I cannot stand it when people literally cannot tolerate the fact that people who may think the opposite of them (or even have nuanced opinions that aren't full agreement) can still enjoy their work. Out of principle, I will not support this, and out of practicality, the audience that stays after that will probably be equally closed minded and probably not people I want to hang out with on a regular basis anyway.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I don't get the "don't even read this if you [x]" thing. I can understand if they just don't want to hear disagreements, but even silently reading?

RebelVampire

What I don't get is half the time said political view has absolutely nothing to do with the work whatsoever. So it's not like people would be going into the comic commenting disagreements anyway?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Who knows, maybe they've actually had weirdos making political comments in their comment sections and they finally had enough one day.

I do know at least one person whose (very non-political) comic has attracted a lot of politically vocal readers, and it has been a source of headache for them for a long time.

RebelVampire

Yeah I mean I don't doubt there's some comics. Usually in the little research I've done it wasn't really the comic that was getting view. THey just saw something on social media that made them angry thus had to comment on it.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

In the case I'm thinking of, it wasn't that the fans got angry at the creator's views. The fans were just openly talking about that stuff? They didn't seem to understand, nor care, that the creator didn't share their views. It's..... weird is all I can say.

My only guess is the comic got shared in a politically oriented space (forum, a FB group, whatever) and attracted some vocal readers from that space. Maybe.

RebelVampire

Possibly, although in my experience it's pretty easy for comment sections to devolve into some random political discussion. People tend to be very passionate about their viewpoints, so it really only takes one person being mad

and then relevant xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/386/ happens XD(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It might not be relevant in this case because the readers weren't arguing with each other XD just vocally agreeing with each other in someone else's space

Though yeah, I have seen it happen too, political wars in some completely non-political comic's comment section

There was a semi-infamous case

The Tiny Hippo comic in which the hippo knifes a raven that stole its toy got littered with Koreans arguing with others about the Korean-Japanese political tension. The comic... has absolutely NOTHING to do with Korea, Japan, or even Asia.

RebelVampire

omg now thats extreme

DanitheCarutor

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) Yeah, be prepared if you ever dive into the LGBT+ artist/comic side of Twitter during the Pride Month events. There are far more nice, inclusive people, but the exclusive ones are very loud and make long rant threads. Also you may get someone responding to your promos with nasty shit if you use the hashtag. This has never happened to me personally, but has happened to webcomic creators and illustration artists I follow who are very open about being asexual/non-binary/pansexual.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

To be honest, I am usually the one LGBT+ creators keep from reading their work in those scenarios. It has happened before where a creator has said something similar about ace people or hetero people not being allowed to read because "they wouldn't get it." Or sometimes even more offensive. Even if I wasn't both of those things, hearing someone be so exclusive of any group just makes me not want to support them. So yes, haha, I have definitely been affected by gatekeeping.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Theoretically, I can see where gatekeeping can be done in good faith, and possibly even respectfully. Like, there's a reason why support groups for a specific thing only allows people who are directly affected by that specific thing. Trying to educate other people on that issue, and including the allies, those things are extremely important, but a gated safe space is also incredibly valuable. You can do BOTH of those things (just not in the same place at the same time). It can definitely go wrong, though. It really can.

like "we need a safe space for lesbians to talk about their struggles" is not the same thing as "if you're not a lesbian, you don't count as lgbt" (which would be... no???)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

yeah.. I've also seen lesbian only spaces turn terf-y

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I think there is definitely a difference between gatekeeping against bigotry and blanketsweep gatekeeping against a specific group of people that you've stereotyped as bigots

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean, it's not always about keeping the bigots out

sometimes you need a safe space specifically for that group, and not the supporters of that group. That serves very specific purposes.

DanitheCarutor

@Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) Oh gosh, there is this one artist who's words I remember to this day. During Pride Month they made this looooong thread about how they didn't want ace people following them, how they are not allowed to use the hashtag or even be part of the LGBT+ community, then went on about how they were all just heterosexuals. The they talked about how non-binary people are damaging the trans community with their "fake gender". Very ignorant, very weird, I totally unfollowed them after that even though I really liked their art.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

But yeah, Twitter is probably the wrong place to do that.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

God

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

@DanitheCarutor wtf ._.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

That's part of the reason I don't participate in Pride stuff

Because I know I would get skinned alive

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

lol, I already got skinned alive for that reason even though I wasn't advertising my comic as lgbt. That's getting off topic for reader_favorites though.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

In regards to comics, I haven't seen other readers gatekeeping a story before

But oddly more creators

Which completely boggles my mind

DanitheCarutor

Fffff yeeeah. I still try to participate in Pride stuff when I remember, but I never specify anything. I just say I'm a queer person and everyone is fine with it. Lol

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Because you'd think they want more readers, not less

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Mmm, not everyone wants more readers (or at least, it's not a priority for them)

RebelVampire

I'm kind of glad about that too. Readers gatekeeping is even worse sometimes in mainstream. So to a degree it makes me glad that the only people hurting a creators work is the creator themself, if that makes sense.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah, definitely

When fans of a specific TV series try to gatekeep against specific groups, it makes me so angry

It's usually for entirely stupid reasons too

"If you're not (insert race), you're not allowed to watch this show. It was not made for you."

Haven't really seen this yet for comics, but if I ever do..... YIKES

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean I can get "It was not made for you." But that's.... not really a reason to actually disallow anyone from enjoying it.

DanitheCarutor

Oh god I'm getting SU and Rick and Morty fan base flashbacks.

RebelVampire

I think when it hits webcomics (cause I won't pretend it won't someday), I think it's gonna be in the same regard where I see it more. In that readers will be saying "If you don't agree this webcomic/ship/something is the best, you're not really a true participant in the webcomic community!"

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Honestly, I think educating people outside of these marginalized groups is just as important as validating the groups

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

like I do it all the time, I check out stuff whose target audience does not include me. I just don't openly criticize it for failing to cater to me.

@Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) It's absolutely important. But one can support both education and gated safe spaces! Like I can totally imagine the same people moderating a gated safe space, and holding educational seminars where everyone is welcome. Those two things serve different functions.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah, I was talking about media tho, haha

Not gated safe spaces(edited)

DanitheCarutor

I imagine if it happens with webcomic it will be an extremely popular comic that will have the readerbase size of something mainstream. I've stumbled across a couple small instances where webcomic fans have been gatekeepy about fanart and such, but not real big, crazy instances.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

That would likely be one of the biggest curses about having a webcomic that's popular.

RebelVampire

Actually when I think about it more, I've seen readers start to get gatekeepy about ships on super popular comics

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Actually, yes

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Oh man, shipping wars X'D

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Ship-gatekeepers are kind of scary

Especially popular romance comics that include love triangles(edited)

DanitheCarutor

Yeah, a couple of the popular Webtoon webcomics I've followed like Gourmet Hound have had big ship wars in the comments. Actually if you want to see a good example of ship gatekeeping, you can look at any popular romance comic on Weboons, the comment section will probably be insane.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yep

True Beauty is just FULL of gatekeepers arguing about the male leads

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I like to think a lot of the seemingly vehement shipping war comments are made in jest. But even if like, 80% of them are just having fun... you know there's 19% that are actually serious... and the dreaded 1% who will actually commit a crime IRL for their ship

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Ewww... Yep

DanitheCarutor

No, Keii, you're wrong. Most of the readers on Webtoons are horny children, they are going to be very serious about their ships.

RebelVampire

Yeah that is like the problem with a lot of things on the internet. It's hard to tell who is the 80% not being serious, and who is the other 20% who is super serious and thinks the 80% are completely serious about it too(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Omg, don't call the readers out like that

DanitheCarutor

Someone's gotta tell it how it is!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@RebelVampire Yeah, that's definitely the hardest part. Trying to tiptoe around the fact that a specific commenter very well COULD be serious.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

yeeeeah

DanitheCarutor

@RebelVampire That's definitely the crappiest part about being on the internet. You can never tell just from reading words, especially if they type in a super anal way like myself most of the time. Personally if I have no idea if a reader is serious I default to responding with a dad joke or a meme... which has caused a few upset responses.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I have definitely been attacked for what I thought was an innocent comment

RebelVampire

I've learned if I don't know if the person is serious or not to just ask. Sometimes make them grumpy and you get "well obviously i was joking/being serious", but at least saves the headaches of assumptions.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

oh jeez @DanitheCarutor that sounds horrible gatekeeping

DanitheCarutor

Opinions, MMMM gotta love'em.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

A comic creator I really respected, someone I thought was super supportive of the community at large, made a blanket statement forbidding cishets from joining their big new webcomic server. The server wasn't meant for LGBTQ+ webcomics only - all comics were allowed to be discussed - so it wasn't incredibly stringent on its content, just its membership. I know it's small beans compared to other bits of gatekeeping, but it definitely made some people feel left out, and it made me feel really sad. Made me feel like... even if I somehow became friends with the creator someday, I would always be considered an other/outsider, so... why bother, you know? I haven't really felt like keeping up with their work since. It doesn't quite feel the same. I don't know if had the 'right' reaction, but the experience definitely took off my rose-tinted glasses.

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Honestly I think it’s really counterintuitive to gatekeep?(edited)

Like you want people to read your work don’t you? So can you really be so selective of people with such standards?

And if you’re a reader, gatekeeping is just going to harm the creator and make you look bad

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #reader favorites

1 note · View note

wineanddinosaur · 3 years

Text

Next Round: Inside the Creation of Bourbon County Stout With Goose Island Beer and Old Forester Bourbon

Airing between regular episodes of the VinePair Podcast, “Next Round” explores the ideas and innovations that are helping drinks businesses adapt in a time of unprecedented change. As the coronavirus crisis continues and new challenges arise, VP Pro is in your corner, supporting the drinks community for all the rounds to come. If you have a story or perspective to share, email us at [email protected].

In this episode of “Next Round,” VinePair CEO and founder Adam Teeter is joined by Goose Island brewmaster Keith Gabbett and Old Forester master taster Jackie Zykan. While Goose Island collaborates with a different bourbon distillery every year to produce its famous Bourbon County Stout, both Zykan and Gabbett agree that this year gave way to a particularly special version.

The 2020 Bourbon County Stout was brewed with the classic Goose Island Bourbon Stout recipe and aged in Old Forester’s Birthday Bourbon barrels. Zykan discusses Old Forester’s Birthday Bourbon tradition, in which the distillery founder’s birthday is celebrated every year with one huge day of production. All the bourbon produced and barreled on that day is designated for that year’s birthday bourbon, and it emerges each year with different tasting notes.

Similarly, since 1992, Goose Island has produced a Bourbon County Stout that arrives each year with an exciting new flavor profile. The tasting notes depend on the barrels the stout is aged in, and both Zykan and Gabbett spoke about being especially excited for this year’s yield. Both discuss the aromas and flavors in this year’s stout, and the steps that led to this truly special collaboration. While this year’s Great American Beer Festival had to take place online, the collab between Goose Island and Old Forester gave beer fans plenty to look forward to.

Listen Online

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Or Check Out the Conversation Here

A: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter. And this is a VinePair “Next Round” conversation. We’re bringing you these conversations between our regular podcast episodes in order to give everyone a better picture of how the industry is adapting during Covid-19. Today. I’m really lucky to be talking to Goose Island brewmaster Keith Gabbett and Old Forester master whiskey taster Jackie Zykan. Thank you both so much for joining me and for coming together for what I’m really excited to talk about, which is your collaboration on Bourbon County Stout, probably the most anticipated beer every year. So Keith, Jackie, thanks so much.

J: No, thank you.

K: Yeah Adam, thank you very much.

A: So Keith, let’s get into it from the beginning. And what I’d love to talk about before we jump into your collaboration with Old Forester and what’s up this year, for listeners who maybe are somewhat familiar with Bourbon County but don’t know the whole history, I’d love it if you could just explain how that started. I think a lot of people may not even realize that Bourbon County was the original bourbon-barrel-aged beer. How did it come to pass that you guys decided to start putting your beer in bourbon barrels?

K: So it really came to pass back in 1992, when our former brewmaster Greg Hall wanted to celebrate the thousandth batch out of the brew pub at that time. And at that time, craft beer was in its infancy, and to get to that kind of a milestone was huge. And so brewers liked to celebrate that with something amazing, whether it was a giant IPA or in this case, an Imperial Stout. And a few weeks before, Greg had been at a beer, bourbon, and cigar dinner and he happened to be sitting next to Booker Noe from Jim Beam and they got to talking, as people will as you drink and eat, and Greg happened to say, “Hey, what do you do with your bourbon casks once you empty them once you’re done aging the bourbon in them?” And it turns out that these casks are pretty much up for grabs. There’s not necessarily a good reuse for the distillers for those casks. And Greg said, “Hey, next time you empty some casks, send me up a couple. I’d love to see what I can do with it.” So lo and behold, a few weeks later, a couple of empty casks showed up at the brew pub, and Greg filled it with this massive Imperial Stout, just kind of on a whim, because what goes better with beer than bourbon, right? Maybe cigars, maybe food, but it’s hard to interject those two. Bourbon’s a lot easier. But no one had really done this before. And in my mind, it’s similar to this craze of hazy milkshake IPAs that’s been going on lately in the sense that it’s weird, it’s different, but once you get into it, everyone’s on board with it. So this beer, the Bourbon County Stout, was so original, so unique, that no one knew what to do with it. Everyone loved it. They took it to GABF, the Great American Beer Festival, and entered it into the Imperial Stout category where it promptly got kicked out for not being true to style, because there’s nothing about Imperial styles that say it needs to taste like bourbon. But as soon as the competition was over, as soon as that judging portion was over, all the judges ran downstairs to the floor and ran over to the Goose Island booth and drank the rest of the keg of Bourbon County. So much so that once the fans showed up, they didn’t even get a chance to try it. So that was the birth of bourbon-barrel aging as we know it. And it’s gone from there to now, you can’t go into a brewery of any size these days without seeing at least one or two bourbon barrels sitting in a corner, holding Bourbon County or holding stout or barley wine or what have you. So it really comes down to eating and drinking with your friends and coming up with something cool.

A: That’s awesome. So Jackie, had you had this before? Because this is the first year that Old Forester’s collaborating with Goose Island to make Bourbon County, correct? Had you had Bourbon County or other bourbon-barrel-aged beers prior to this and what was your impression of them when you had them as a master taster?

K: Oh, sure. I’m a very enthusiastic imbiber of all categories. So, yeah and of course, Keith brought up a really good point, throw a dart and hit one — any taproom anywhere, everybody has one. Now it’s just its own thing. And of course being somebody that obviously is a bourbon aficionado, if you will, by trade or by recreation here, I find the flavor profile delicious, and it’s just one of those things that why haven’t we been doing this longer? It makes perfect sense. The flavors just meld so perfectly with it. So I was a massive fan, and when I found out that we were doing this particular partnership, it was something that was incredibly exciting. It’s such a cool project, and they’ve been such a great team to work with on it.

A: So what does that collaboration look like? Obviously, I want to get into more technical details, too, about brewing the beer and what needs to be in order to make it really work in the bourbon barrels, but before we get there, just because you brought up the collaboration, Jackie, I’d love to talk about that a little bit. What does that look like? So the second that you decide you’re going to work together, I’m assuming it’s evolved from just Jimmy sending you random casks, to specifically selecting those casks. So how do you guys go through that process and how collaborative is it back and forth in terms of, “Hey, we’re thinking about doing this beer, and we’re going to put it in here,” et cetera?

K: Go ahead, Jackie.

J: Oh, no. I was just going to say from our end, our main focus is obviously making the best quality whiskey that we possibly can. Whatever’s left in those barrels we stand behind just as much as the stuff you see in a bottle on a shelf. I think with this being such an incredibly sought after and such a really unique product on the market — and Keith, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I’ll let you take it after this — I think they had their eyes on the best of the best of the best that we could give them, that was our birthday bourbon barrels.

K: Absolutely.

A: And so why birthday? Were you just aware of the Birthday Bourbon? Obviously, they’re the 11 year olds, but what was it about that that you thought would make the stout so special?

K: I think first and foremost, we’re beer fans. But second to that, we’re bourbon fans. If you walk through our offices you’ll see probably just as many bottles of bourbon on our desk as you will bottles of beer. And there are distilleries that we love to work with that are kind of pie-in-the-sky ideas of things that we would love to get our hands on. These offerings, the birthday bourbon, they don’t come around very often. They’re very unique. They’re very special. And you can’t just call up the distillery and say, “Hey, can I get some barrels? And can you make them super special and unique?” It just doesn’t happen anymore. So I believe we started the conversation with Old Forester probably about a year before we actually got these barrels in, and it was just building that relationship and talking with them and saying, “Hey, we’d love to get some unique barrels in.” And then when we found out that these were being emptied, I believe it was June or July of 2019, we were actually done filling Bourbon County Stout for that season. And Old Forester called us up and they said, “Hey, we’ve got these fantastic barrels. Do you want them?” And we said, “Absolutely! We’re going to do it.” So we dropped everything, and we brewed another batch of Bourbon County to put in the barrels. You don’t say no when these opportunities come up, and the bourbon itself is highly sought after and super unique and just really delicious. But yeah, it’s just building those relationships with the distillers. We were lucky enough to go down to Brown-Forman in February, just before the country shut down, and were able to tour through almost everything. I had to cut out before we jumped ship and went down to a Jack Daniels. But yeah, the distillery and the dedication to process and detail and quality is amazing with them. And we knew that that would showcase itself in the beer.

A: So you, you mentioned something that I’m curious about. You said, “we brewed another batch of Bourbon County.” So is the stout recipe the same no matter what barrel you’re going into, or do you adapt the recipe based on the bourbon barrel? Obviously, you have traditional Bourbon County Stout. You have Birthday Bourbon, you have Anniversary Bourbon, you have Bourbon County Kentucky Fog. Is it always the same, or are there little things that you change?

K: Oh, good question. I tried to keep Bourbon County style to be as true to the original recipe as possible. I’m very, very, very protective of it. And every time we have new brewers coming into Goose Island, they always have this idea of how they can change Bourbon County to make it better or more unique. And I always say, “No, there’s no way we’re going to do that.” That being said, we occasionally do some recipe tweaks, but not very often. In the case of the Birthday Bourbon. And then down the road, with the Anniversary, it’s all that same base stout, the original Bourbon County Stout recipe. The recipe itself is good. It’s a great Imperial style, but the magic happens in the barrel and being able to showcase that magic of the barrel, itself is really what we’re trying to do here with these releases — especially with the Birthday Bourbon.

A: And so Jackie, have you now tasted — you mentioned a little bit before we started recording that you were drinking some stout now so I’m assuming you have tasted it. What did you think when the stout came out of the barrels that you had now been aware of and had tasted the original liquid? How much does the beer remind you of Birthday Bourbon?

J: Well, I am drinking it right now. I was like, “I guess I better crack this open.” I was saving it for a special occasion and this got put on the books, and I was like, perfect. No, it’s fantastic. I poured it into a glass and the first hint of it — this is going to be the cheesiest thing that I’d probably say this entire time, but it is really very much this very solid stout that’s enveloped in this ethereal bourbon character. And then as you get it onto your palate, it’s perfect, right down the middle, there’s elements of the Old Forester. There’s elements of that particular Birthday expression there, which were so nice. It had so much chocolate to it, so much dark fruit to it. And of course, there’s baking spice. It was so complementary. And I don’t think that the similarity in flavors really made it monotone by any means. I think that each one had its own unique tweak to it. So it makes it a really dimensional product, and I think it’s fantastic.

A: Obviously you’re a master whiskey taster, you’re not a marketer, but I am curious, do you see having Birthday Bourbon barrels involved in this beer — which is such a phenomenon, and I’m going to get to that with you Keith — as a really good way to introduce Old Forester to bourbon drinkers that haven’t had Old Forester before? And if you do think it is, what do you think they’ll get in Old Forester that will remind them of the Bourbon County Stout that you’re drinking right now?

J: Well it’s really interesting, because the brand comes across as being bigger than it is to certain circles, right? The bourbon nerds out there know it well because it’s such a legacy brand, but there are so many people that are like, “Old what, what is that? I don’t know what that is.” So we’re still growing very quickly in that space, but we’re still growing awareness. So any opportunity like this is of course a benefit for the brand, but it’s great, because you’re actually getting to reach a completely different audience — somebody that appreciates flavor and appreciates things that take time and a lot of work and a lot of thought, and not just someone who is trying to slam something to get wasted on. So that’s definitely a great crowd for us to appeal to, because we do put so much effort into making such a high-quality product. But I don’t know. I think if you’ve never had Old Forester and you go to taste the Bourbon County Stout from Birthday bourbon barrels, you’re obviously not going to be like, “It tastes like Old Forester!” Old Forester doesn’t have an unorthodox Kentucky Bourbon profile. There’s so many brands and they’re all very unique, but I think that we do definitely represent a very flagship, traditional, Kentucky bourbon flavor. Sweet on the front end and spicy on the back and just very well balanced. So I don’t think that it would necessarily resonate one way or another. But once you start lining them up, right? And you start collecting them. And I’m really glad to hear Keith say that they try to keep that variable to a minimum and let the barrel shine through because if you line these up side by side, I think that’s where you’re going to start seeing those nuances pop through a little bit more.

A: So, Keith, what has made Bourbon County Stout, in your mind, a phenomenon for so long? I think it’s still something that beer nerds talk about every year. It’s still something that the beer press gets really excited about every year. Why do you think that is? And so I have two questions. It’s that one. But then also a lot of other people have started making stouts aged in bourbon barrels, but all of them aren’t so good. And so I guess my other question is, what do you think you’re doing right that makes the beer so consistent year after year? And what are some people maybe not understanding? It’s not just about throwing beer in a bourbon barrel. And is that maybe why the beers have become so timeless?

K: Wow. That’s such a loaded couple of questions.

A: Totally is.

K: Let’s see if I can unpack that a little bit. So to me, Bourbon County Stout is all about a series of firsts. It was the first bourbon- barrel-aged beer. We’re one of the first to start doing adjuncts or adding ingredients to the bourbon-barrel-aged beer with our coffee stout variant, back in 2012, 2011, somewhere around there. And then we’ve expanded on that. We’ve added fruit, we’ve added toasted coconut, and we’ve really tried to pull out characters that are in those barrels to begin with. You get some of those coconut lactones that come through from the oak. And that was our original goal was to tease out the characters that are in the barrel and bring those to the forefront with Bourbon County Stout. It just so happens that those happened to be fantastic characters, like coconut and vanilla and caramel, and all those other great things. But we’ve stayed pretty far away from going into the pastry stout category. Not that there’s anything wrong with pastry stouts, but these are styles that rely heavily on sweeter adjuncts like chocolate and caramel and replicating ice cream flavors or candy flavors. And there are fantastic ones out there, but we’ve always held a little bit more true to the barrel itself, in my opinion. And then the fact that we’ve been doing this for so long, and have been building up these relationships with the distilleries, has enabled us in the past couple of years to really showcase those distilleries. What we love about Bourbon County Stout is it’s a great beer, but it’s also made from great bourbon as well. And having the chance to showcase a brand like Old Forester’s Birthday Bourbon is something that keeps people coming back, and it showcases that bourbon-barrel-aged stouts aren’t just the luck of the draw. You don’t just throw down into a random barrel and release it and call it good. You carefully choose the partners that you select. And if you’re good to them and the product that you have, they’ll reward you with phenomenal barrels. And that allows us to showcase that.

A: Well, Jackie, can you talk to me a little bit about Birthday Bourbon as a bourbon? I’m embarrassed. I’ve actually never had it and I love a lot of your bourbons, but I’ve never had Birthday before. So can you talk to us about what the liquid is and what it tastes like?

J: Sure, absolutely. So Birthday Bourbon is an expression that we’ve been releasing ever since 2002. The gist behind it is that the founder of Brown-Forman, George Garvin Brown, is the person that came up with Old Forester back in the 1870s. This is the founding brand of the entire company. His birthday is Sept. 2, so to honor him, let’s do something special. So what you got with Birthday is one day’s production. And what we get out of those barrels at the end of it is what you get. We’ve got a unique warehousing situation going on where we do heat cycling. So we do lose higher-than-normal amount to the angel share every year. So the range has been from nine to 14 years. So it’s always somewhere in that realm, every year is different. And that is by design. You don’t want it to taste the same. It’s the only expression of Old Fo that you could really find that’s not meant to replicate flavor profile year after year after year, just to embrace the nuances of those barrels. But so this one, the 2019, was actually the highest proof that we’ve ever had. So it’s interesting that these are the barrels that ended up in this big, burly beer, if you will. It’s great. The flavor profile on that particular bourbon was really, really intense and really dense and had a lot going for it. Every year is different. Some years taste like honeydew, some years taste like vanilla icing, some years taste like strawberry, “My Little Pony” scratch-and-sniff stickers, they’re all over the board.

A: Wow.

J: But, so that’s the thing, it’s why you always want to try to get it, because every vintage is different. But there’s barely any of it that goes around and now the more the brand grows, the more people are looking for it. And now it’s the one thing we have that’s incredibly, incredibly hard to find.

A: That’s cool. And so then Keith, what tasting notes do you think are coming through in this bourbon? What’s interesting about what you said, Jackie is, I think that’s what’s so cool about Birthday and Bourbon County as well, is that Bourbon County is never the same every year. Right? There’s always different tasting notes. It’s evolving with the different partnerships you guys are doing. So the partnership between the two of you makes a lot of sense. I’m curious if someone were to find Birthday Bourbon County Stout out in the wild, Keith, what would they taste?

K: Wow. So I’m a little embarrassed to be talking about this in front of Jackie. But to me, that 2019 Birthday Bourbon had a lot of, and to me, Old Forester has a lot of fruity notes, and a lot of what I got out of the 2019 Birthday Bourbon were these fruit notes with some baking spice, cake, and maple syrup, and all these great things. And a lot of those you find in original Bourbon County in any case, but what stands out to me in the Birthday Bourbon are those fruity notes. I get a ton of red fruit and this really delicious maple spice. So I get a strawberry, raspberry, cherry character that I attribute to Old Forester, specifically, in this case. And then layers on to that spiced cake, that maple syrup character, then also everything that’s in original Bourbon County, the toffee, the chocolate, the fudge, the vanilla, the toasted marshmallow, the leather, the dried fruit. All of those are there, but it’s those fruity notes to me that really come to the forefront and make it stand out as a fantastic release.

A: A lot of people also collect Bourbon County Stout and age it. What happens to this beer as it ages, and if you were to age it, how would you recommend doing?

K: I think if you’re going to age it, aging it at cellar temperatures around 50 degrees in a cool dark place is appropriate. You don’t want to lay the bottle on its side. It’s got a crown rather than a cork, so that’s not going to do it any good. We put a five-year shelf life on most of our variants, although last year we opened up a bottle of 2008 that was tasting fantastic. So you can certainly do that, but those flavors are going to meld, and you’re going to lose some of the rougher edges of the “hotness” of the bourbon itself, and pick up a little bit more of those dried-fruit characteristics, maybe a little bit more of a Nutty Care character coming through. And it’s always fun to age, but with this one, I’ve been blown away by it. I’ve been drinking this one kind of nonstop since we started bottling it. And I really like it fresh. It’s going to be good in five years. I can’t imagine how much better it’s going to be in five years. So I recommend buying a couple of bottles if you can, but this is fantastic fresh, right off the bat.

A: Well Keith and Jackie, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me about both Bourbon County Stout, as well as Old Forester. It’s been a really cool conversation, and I definitely learned a lot about how you collaborated and how this beer has evolved over time. So thank you both so much.

K: Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Jackie. It’s a lot of fun talking with you. And Jackie, I hope to get down to Old Forester to visit you again, as soon as things allow.

J: I know. Back in the day, back before Covid, my travel didn’t allow me to be there for all of the engagements that the team had with your team. And so I look forward to those chats, hopefully sooner than later.

A: Totally, I can’t agree more. Well, thank you both so much. I really appreciate it.

J: Thank you Adam.

K: Thank you, Adam.

Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast. If you enjoy listening to us every week, please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now, for the credits. VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe and me, Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again right here next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity

The article Next Round: Inside the Creation of Bourbon County Stout With Goose Island Beer and Old Forester Bourbon appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/next-round-goose-island-and-old-forester/

0 notes

johnboothus · 3 years

Text

Next Round: Inside the Creation of Bourbon County Stout With Goose Island Beer and Old Forester Bourbon

Listen Online

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Or Check Out the Conversation Here

J: No, thank you.

K: Yeah Adam, thank you very much.

K: Go ahead, Jackie.

K: Absolutely.

A: And so why birthday? Were you just aware of the Birthday Bourbon? Obviously, they’re the 11 year olds, but what was it about that that you thought would make the stout so special?

K: Wow. That’s such a loaded couple of questions.

A: Totally is.

A: Wow.

A: A lot of people also collect Bourbon County Stout and age it. What happens to this beer as it ages, and if you were to age it, how would you recommend doing?

K: Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Jackie. It’s a lot of fun talking with you. And Jackie, I hope to get down to Old Forester to visit you again, as soon as things allow.

A: Totally, I can’t agree more. Well, thank you both so much. I really appreciate it.

J: Thank you Adam.

K: Thank you, Adam.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity

The article Next Round: Inside the Creation of Bourbon County Stout With Goose Island Beer and Old Forester Bourbon appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/next-round-goose-island-and-old-forester/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/next-round-inside-the-creation-of-bourbon-county-stout-with-goose-island-beer-and-old-forester-bourbon

0 notes

agentlereckoning · 4 years

Text

What I think about Alison Roman

Any Gen-Z’er with a Twitter account has probably seen the latest Gen-Z Icon Controversy, i.e. the one involving Alison Roman. In case you’re not caught up on its details, the tl;dr is that The New Consumer (which appears to be a one-white-man show of an online publication steered by a former Vox and Business Insider employee named Dan Frommer) published an interview with Alison last Thursday — an interview where Alison, when asked about the difference between “consumption and pollution” (as if there even is a material difference), said:

“I think that’s why I really enjoy what I do. Because you’re making something, but it goes away.

Like the idea that when Marie Kondo decided to capitalize on her fame and make stuff that you can buy, that is completely antithetical to everything she’s ever taught you… I’m like, damn, bitch, you fucking just sold out immediately! Someone’s like ‘you should make stuff,’ and she’s like, ‘okay, slap my name on it, I don’t give a shit!’

....

Like, what Chrissy Teigen has done is so crazy to me. She had a successful cookbook. And then it was like: Boom, line at Target. Boom, now she has an Instagram page that has over a million followers where it’s just, like, people running a content farm for her. That horrifies me and it’s not something that I ever want to do. I don’t aspire to that. But like, who’s laughing now? Because she’s making a ton of fucking money.”

This is the quote that most people who’ve followed this drama have latched onto, and I’ll come back to discussing it in a moment. I’m really not sure why the interview was published at all, other than for a publicity or financial boost during these times, because I don’t think anything worth hearing was uttered by either the interviewer or interviewee. Moments in the interview seemed either tone-deaf or trivial to the point where I wondered why they were included at all. Early on, for example, Alison laments that she hasn’t been making enough money during this pandemic. (She does not live in want of money.) Later she half-jokingly complains that her public persona has been reduced to “anchovy girl”, ostensibly because she often uses them in her cooking. (She does, and often proudly owns that fact, which makes this complaint pretty uninteresting.) But the point of this interview was meant to be, I think, a rumination on how Alison would turn her belief that she “isn’t like the other girls” into practice.

It’s a common thing to desire, I think — this ingenuity balanced with relatability, and I think seeking this balance is what propels so many people my age. Few things are more embarrassing to us than unoriginality, than being a carbon copy of someone else, yet few things are scarier than social rejection. We don’t want to like the same things as everybody else, but we want at least some people to like the things that we like. I think it’s what drives certain subcultures to exist in the first place, the way that subsections of people can congregate around something or someone, reveling in each other’s presence but also in knowing that they are, in fact, just a subsection of the greater population.

This mentality is, admittedly, sort of what drove me to like Alison Roman in the first place. For background: the first time I cooked a recipe of hers happened unwittingly; in December 2018, I saw the recipe for the salted chocolate chip shortbread cookies that became known as #TheCookies (Alison’s virality can be encapsulated by the fact that all of her most famous recipes have been hashtagged, e.g., #TheStew, #TheStew2, #ShallotPasta or #ThePasta), but I made them without knowing that Alison was the person behind the recipe. The cookies were good (though I think any recipe with over two sticks of butter and a pound of dark chocolate is bound to be good.) At some point about a year later, I watched a YouTube video published by NYT Cooking where she made her white bean-harissa-kale stew, and I thought she was funny and really pretty and, like me (I think), had a fastidious yet chaotic energy that I always thought made me awkward but made her seem endearing. Alison’s recipes taste good, they come together really easily, and you don’t need special equipment or a lot of kitchen space to execute them. It’s why I’ve committed at least three of them to memory, just by virtue of making them so often. I liked her recipes so much that, for over three months, one of my Instagram handles was inspired by one. But I also liked her, or wanted to be like her, or some combination fo both. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be her friend, or that I didn’t aspire to her lifestyle of Rachel Comey clothes, glistening brass hoop earrings that cost 1/4 of my rent, regular trips to downtown Brooklyn or Park Slope farmers’ markets or small butcher shops where the purveyors all knew her name, an always-perfect red gel manicure, the capacity to eat and drink luxuriously and seemingly endlessly and to have the money for a yoga studio membership to help her stay slim anyways.

Of course all of those things are signifiers of social class more than anything else. But in oligarchical, consumerist societies, what is expensive and what is good become two overlapped Venn diagram circles, and I have not yet reached a level of enlightenment to be able to fully tease the two apart. And while I would never drop $425 on a jumpsuit, no matter how pretty I think it is, I could crisp up some chickpeas, stir in vegetable stock and coconut milk, and wilt in some greens, and act like my shit was together. I liked Alison because when I first started liking her, she hadn’t yet risen to the astronomical level of digital fame that she enjoys now, and by making her recipes, some part of me believed that I would be inducted into a small group of her fans who, by serving up her dishes, telegraphed good taste.

This idea of “good taste” is a complicated and racially charged one. Alison is white; she lives in one of the whitest neighborhoods in Brooklyn (maybe even all of New York City); her recipes cater to a decidedly young, white audience. I think another reason why her dishes hold so much Gen-Z appeal, beyond their simplicity and deliciousness, is because they sit at the perfect intersection of healthy-but-not-too-healthy and international-but-not-too-international. Her chickpea stew, for example, borrows from South and Southeast Asian cooking flavors, but you wouldn’t need to step foot into an ethnic grocery store or, god forbid, leave Trader Joe’s, to get the ingredients for it. The shallot pasta recipe calls for an entire tin of anchovies, and you get to feel cool and edgy putting a somewhat polarizing food into a sauce that white people will still, ultimately, visually register as “tomato sauce and pasta” and digest easily. All of the recipes in her cookbook, Nothing Fancy (which I received as a gift!), are like this. She doesn’t push the envelope into more foreign territory, probably because she doesn’t have the culinary experience for it (which is totally fine — I never expected her to be an expert in anything except white people food), and probably also because if she did push the envelope any further, her book, with its tie-dyed pages and saturated, pop-art aerial shots, wouldn’t have been as marketable.

That’s what’s unfortunate — that white people and white-domineered food publications have been the arbiters of culinary taste in the U.S. for centuries. I’m thinking about Julia Child, about bananas foster being flambéed tableside and served under a silver domed dish cover, about the omnipresent red-and-white-checked Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, about Guy Fieri and Eric Ripert and Ina Garten and the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. I’m thinking about how white women have long been the societally accepted public face of domestic labor when it was often Black women who actually did that labor. It’s Mother’s Day today, and I’m thinking about how, in middle school, I’d sometimes conceal my packed lunch of my favorite dishes my mom made — glass noodles stir-fried with bok choy, cloud ear mushrooms, carrots, and thinly sliced and marinated pork; fish braised in a chili-spiced broth — so that my white friends wouldn’t be grossed out, and so that I wouldn’t have to do the labor of explaining what my food was.

And I’m thinking of that now-notorious Alison Roman quote. To be fair, Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen do have large consumer and media empires, which have become profitable and which require huge teams of people to sustain. Both of them probably do have large amounts of money at their disposals. What’s weird to me is that Alison accuses both Marie and Chrissy of “selling out” because they each branded their own lines of purchasable home goods, yet Alison herself said in that very same interview that she had also done that very thing. It’s just that Chrissy’s line is sold at Target, while Alison’s, according to her, is a “capsule collection. It’s limited edition, a few tools that I designed that are based on tools that I use that aren’t in production anywhere — vintage spoons and very specific things that are one-offs that I found at antique markets that they have made for me.” I suppose it’s not “selling out” if it caters to the pétite bourgeoisie. I don’t know if Alison is explicitly racist, since I don’t know if she called out two women of color simply because they are women of color, or if she genuinely just so happened to select two of them. But that she feels like she has the license to define things as “selling out” based on who the “selling-out” behavior caters to reeks of white entitlement.

There’s also an air of superiority with which she describes how she would market her product line:

That would have to be done in such a specific way under very intense standards. And I would not ever want to put anything out into the world that I wouldn’t be so excited to use myself.

She says this right before talking about Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen, accusing them of being lackadaisical and unthoughtful (”okay, slap my name on it! I don’t give a shit!”; “people running a content farm for her”) when she likely has no idea what the inner workings of either of their business models are. To be sure, it could very well be true that Marie and Chrissy have handed off these aspects of their brands to other people. But for Alison to assume that they have, and that her own business management style would, by default, be better because she would retain control, is egotistical.

Alison ends the interview by proclaiming that her ultimate goal is to be different from her contemporaries. She says,

To me, the only way that I can continue to differentiate myself from the pod of people that write recipes, or cookbooks or whatever, is by doing a different thing. And so I have to figure out what that is. And I think that I haven’t ultimately nailed that. And I’m in the process of figuring it out right now.

I expect that her path to “differentiation” will contain riffs on the same iterations of preserved lemons, anchovies, canned beans, and fresh herbs that she’s always relied on. I expect people will still think she’s cool, because that’s easy to achieve when her recipes and aesthetic are a series of easy-to-swallow-pills, when she tells the cameraman not to cut the footage of her accidentally over-baking her galette, and when being a white creative and working among mostly white colleagues means that she’ll get a lot of latitude. I expect she’ll continue to sell out, which is completely fine, so long as she’ll be candid with herself and actually call it selling out.

And I want to learn recipes from a chef who looks like me, and I want that chef to be “marketable” enough to achieve Alison’s level of fame. I want people of color to get to decide what recipes deserve their own hashtag. I want Alison Roman to be emotionally okay, because Twitter backlash can be vicious. And I kinda want to buy Marie Kondo’s drawer organizers now.

0 notes

talestoenrage · 7 years

Text

Persona 5

Last night, I finally finished Persona 5, and...it wasn’t as good as Persona 4. Now that I have all the available facts, I finally think I can fairly unpack my reasons why. Behind the cut, for anyone else who’s still working on it and doesn’t want spoilers.

The first thing to note is that I am a huge Persona 4 fan. It’s not a perfect game (but then, nothing is); it starts off very slowly, its once-lauded LGBT content is actually not good in the cold light of day when LGBT content is (however slowly) becoming more common in video games, and it has a long, LONG day that is just...awful. Misogynist and transphobic as hell. But overall, it’s a hell of a game that I recommend to almost anyone, even with those caveats. It’s also a game that’s almost 9 years old, so why do I think it’s better than the sequel that came out this year?

Certainly, Persona 5 has a lot of gameplay improvements. There’s more variety in combat, with new types of attacks and status effects you can inflict and have inflicted on you. Adding guns as another piece of equipment gives everyone in your party additional options. Most importantly, the social links the current Persona games rely on for their flavor have added gameplay benefits, as different ranks will grant you useful skills in and out of combat, at a pace that lets you naturally integrate the new options rather than being overwhelmed by them. And the negotiation system with the enemies (imported back from the base SMT series) means that what you fight can matter beyond “this is their weakness/XP gain/possible item drops.” In every measurable way, combat in 5 is better than 4. Even the dungeons are improved, because the set designs stand out better than 4′s randomized crawling. Plus if you do want random dungeon crawls, there’s a whole huge area that calls back to Persona 3′s Tartarus. The best of both worlds, right? The problem is that while combat in 5 is a great improvement, combat is not what I loved in Persona 4 anyway. It was the writing and the story.

If you haven’t played Persona 4, the main plot revolves around a series of murders in a rural Japanese town. After the first two, the main character and his recent friends discover another world, and that it’s connected to the murders so far. When a third person goes missing, they save them, and then decide to work on stopping any further murders and figure out who’s behind them. On its own, this is a workable plot that stands out among JRPGs for being decidedly small scale. You aren’t setting out to stop an evil empire or find your missing father, but it’s a worthy goal, and the fantastical elements explain why you can’t just go to the police about it.

What makes the game sing is the writing for the other members of your group, and for the social links you make to gain power. Your party is a bunch of teenagers, and sometimes they’re, well, shitty in the way teens so often are. They care for each other and stick their necks out, but they’ll also crack inappropriate jokes or be insensitive because they’re still learning how to act like adults. It occasionally goes too far (see Teddy), but mostly it felt believable, as did any of the romance scenes if you choose to date any of your classmates. On top of that, with the exception of the main character, you gain team members by saving them from their own Shadow, which stands for the parts of themselves they don’t want to admit are real. Sure, you beat them when they become the boss, but then the character in question has to accept the parts of themselves they don’t like to admit are there, something that all of us have.

Meanwhile, the social links do the heavy lifting of making the town feel like a real place. Sometimes you’re doing real work to improve someone’s life, sometimes you’re just there for them when they hit a snag and need to process it. But it’s a reminder that outside of the fantasy elements of going into the TV world and fighting weird creatures, you live in a town with “real” people that have real problems. That’s not quite what your team member’s social links are about, but instead it’s about someone who has admitted they have issues...and then you have to help them work through that. Admitting they have a problem is just the first step, not the solution.

If this sounds more like a review of Persona 4 than 5, I can understand that. But I needed to unpack what I love about 4 first, because if I’m going to say 5 isn’t as good, I think it’s only fair to explain what I love about 4 and why. And the main stumbling block for 5 is a combination of writing and, to a lesser degree, a mixed translation job.

The translation isn’t terrible-I don’t think it will spawn any memes online due to particular lines. But some subtlety is lost, and lines that should hit harder lose impact because the sentence structure doesn’t work as it should in English. It’s hard to say if it’s just a case of being too literal or being rushed for time, or some combination.

But even with better translation, the writing just falls flat. 5 raises a lot of questions with its central premise, where your group “steals” the hearts of bad people to make them change and be good, but it’s resolutely uninterested in answering half of them. It will tell you all about the mechanics of how you do it and what happens to the person, but it doesn’t want to deal with the ethics at all for half of the game, and then when it comes up, it’s a half hearted ‘were we doing the right thing?” when people start saying bad stuff about the Phantom Thieves. Are all the villains you take down engaging in truly reprehensible behavior? Yes. Are they largely insulated from official control? Yes, and for reasons beyond general “looking the other way,” since the final human villain is revealed to be covering for everyone you fought before. But there’s never a conversation where your group, the people actually altering people’s personalities, ever ask themselves if it’s okay to be making such radical changes, or asking if you are returning them to normal versus changing a “normal” person into a different version that didn’t exist before. And even the half hearted attempts to question it get shot down by your character’s mouth piece, the fame whore, whose very questionable motivations for wanting to continue are ALSO never questioned, except very briefly near the end. I didn’t need the game to tell me I was wrong for what I was doing, but I at least wanted a discussion, even if it ended with “this may be a bad thing, but we need to do it because no one else can touch them.”

Perhaps the social links would have saved it, but almost all of them outside of the main party ones end the same way. You get up to rank 7 or 8, find out there’s a road block of someone being bad, and then you get a request to change their hearts. Rinse and repeat. This throws the question of how ethical your behavior is into even sharper relief, and adds in the issue of making every resolution to the social links be “I did magic, and then they figured out I was a Phantom Thief, but it’s okay because they said they would keep my secret.” The first few times, I found it charming. The 10nth time, I felt like I might as well stop pretending and just tell anyone who asked “Yeah, I’m one of them. Want me to change some guy’s head? I got my magic gun I can use.”

Most of the party member social links don’t involve that, but most of them also fall flat. Ryuji’s is just there, Ann involves helping her realize other models can be mean and she’ll lose out if she doesn’t put more effort in, Yusuke is having art block, and Haru needs to learn how to manage a corporation she unexpectedly inherited. None of them are offensive, but they’re mostly boring. Only Futaba (trying to reacclimate to society after being a recluse for years) and Makoto (mostly forgettable but she slaps another girl and then challenges a would be pimp to a street fight, which was great) stand out, or seem like you actually do anything to help other than be there as they talk it out on their own.

Then there’s the framing device, where you’ve already been captured and are telling a prosecutor the story of how you came to be the Phantom Thieves. It intrudes every time you hit a certain point in the plot, and whenever you start a new social link. It didn’t take long at all for me to roll my eyes every time it intruded to remind me I wasn’t ACTUALLY in May, I was just RECOUNTING what I did in May. Plus its plot hook of “someone betrayed you to us” was blunted when the person who did it joined my group last and was literally blackmailing us to quit after pulling “one last job.” Gee, wonder who could have sold us out to the cops? The shitty teen detective who talks about people as vermin? I’M SHOCKED.

Now, I will give 5 credit, it has two solid plot twists. The first is when the framing device resolves (assuming you don’t get the bad ending), and Akechi shoots you...only to be revealed that your team was actually paying attention, realized he was lying, and used what they knew about the Metaverse to trick him into shooting a dupe. It wasn’t worth the hassle, but it was nice to see the group not be idiots. The second, that Igor was actually a fake as well and behind all the trouble, was more genuinely surprising, but it did make the voice change that we’d assumed was a weird miscast into a clue that we’d missed.

The final boss fight being about pulling out a giant spirit gun and shooting a god in the head was goofy as hell, but unintentionally so, which is unfortunate.

Would I recommend Persona 5? With reservations. Along with all the issues I’ve noted, the game feels too long for the plot it has; I was close to 150 hours when I finished, and even taking out the grinding I did at different points, I felt like I went through a lot of filler dialogue to get there. Plus the opening to 5 is, if anything, even LONGER than 4. You show up in town on the 9nth, and it’s not until the 18nth that you have full control over your actions, with multiple mandatory tutorial sections.

At least the music is still great.

#persona 5 #persona 4 #persona #review

4 notes · View notes

flauntpage · 7 years

Text

DGB Grab Bag: McDavid's Contract, Canada Day, and the Interview Period

Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter. Check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave Lozo as they discuss the events of the week.

Three stars of comedy

The first star: Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews – The draft was in Chicago, so the Blackhawks had their two franchise players show up to make the pick and engage in some light banter. Was it hilarious? Not really, no, but they didn't drone on for 20 minutes about congratulating the Cup winners and saying hello to viewing parties back home, so we'll call it a net positive.

The second star: Brent Burns and Joe Thornton – Sure, why not. Good luck unseeing this, by the way.

The first star: Scott Darling and Derek Ryan – The new Hurricanes teammates had some fun on Twitter, and the end result was a blockbuster that the team felt the need to make official.

Debating the issues

This week's debate: Connor McDavid is eligible for an extension beginning tomorrow, and will reportedly sign an eight-year deal with a cap hit north of $13 million, which would be by far the highest in the league. The max-length deal almost certainly represents good value for Edmonton. But with Leon Draisaitl still to sign, should McDavid have taken less money to ensure his team would have enough cap room to build a championship team around him?

In favor: Yes. Nobody's disputing that McDavid is one of the two best players in the world and deserves to be paid like it. But you can't build a Stanley Cup contender with one player eating that much cap room. Save something for your teammates if you want to win.

Opposed: Wait, if we agree that he's worth the money, then that's what he should earn. He's under no obligation to leave millions on the table just to be nice.

In favor: It's not about being nice, it's about winning a Stanley Cup. And to do that, he'll need good players around him. Depth wins championships.

Opposed: Depth is also easy to find and relatively cheap, at least if a team is smart. Generational players, on the other hand, are incredibly rare, and the Oilers are lucky to have one. Pay the man his money, thank the lottery gods every single day for him, and be done with it.

In favor: Winning lotteries is nice. Winning Cups is better. McDavid will make it harder for the Oilers to do that if he's eating up so much cap space. He couldn't take a bit of a hometown discount?

Opposed: He did! He should be making the maximum $15-million. Hell, he should probably be signing one-year deals so that he makes the maximum every year. His contract will be a huge bargain well before it runs out.

In favor: Right, but he's already going to make more money than he could ever spend. How much is enough? Would it really have hurt him to take, say, $10 million instead? That extra $3 million could be the difference between adding another key piece to the roster.

Opposed: But it's not McDavid's job to build the roster. That's up to Peter Chiarelli and the rest of the front office. McDavid's job is to sign for what he's worth and live up to that contract. Assuming he plays as well as everyone expects him to, he'll have delivered on his end of the bargain.

In favor: Sure. But if the Oilers don't build a Cup-caliber roster around him, he should expect fans to point some of the blame at him and his massive contract.

Opposed: Yes, because hockey fans can be stupid.

In favor: No, because hockey fans know history. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin both signed for less than a $10-million cap hit, and now the Penguins have three titles and counting to show for it.

Opposed: But that was under the old CBA, and it was back when the cap was a lot smaller. We can't compare deals signed five years ago to ones done today.

In favor: OK, let's use something more recent from the current CBA: Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews getting matching $10.5 million deals from Chicago two years ago. The Blackhawks haven't won a round since. That's what happens when guys make wringing every penny out of a deal a higher priority than winning.

Opposed: Wait, Jonathan Toews isn't a winner now? I thought we all agreed he was the second coming of Mark Messier.

In favor: He was, before he got greedy.

Opposed: This is madness. It's not "greedy" to get paid what you're worth. If the Oilers can't afford to build a winner around McDavid, then blame Milan Lucic's terrible contract. Blame Kris Russell at $4 million, or whatever he gets. Blame Benoit Pouliot's buyout. Or blame Chiarelli for all of those mistakes. Don't blame the best player on the planet.

In favor: Look, nobody disputes McDavid's talent. But he had a chance to do the right thing for his team here, and he didn't. And the Oilers may not be able to win a Cup because of it.

Opposed: OK, here's a suggestion. If you really think that you can't win a Cup with a $13-million player, I have some good news: You don't have to have one. You can trade Connor McDavid. Put the word out to the league that he's available to the highest bidder, then trade him and his can't-win contract to some other team.

In favor: You're talking crazy. All 30 teams would be running through walls to get to Chiarelli first.

Opposed: Exactly! Every team in the league would love to have this problem. And that's because it's not an actual problem in the first place. Repeat after me: Having an amazing player who makes slightly less than fair value instead of a lot less than fair value is not something to complain about.

In favor: But… I'm a hockey fan. We like to complain.

Opposed: I hate you.

The final verdict: Listening to fans blame McDavid's contract for every three-game losing streak the Oilers have over the next eight years is going to be the worst.

Obscure former player of the week

In addition to being the start of a new league year, tomorrow is Canada Day. And it's an especially big one this year, as Canada is celebrating its 150th birthday.

Speaking of birthdays, July 1 has been a good one for hockey players. The list of players born on Canada Day includes two Hall of Famers — Steve Shut and Rod Gilbert — as well as a sure-thing in Jarome Iginla. But there's only one player in NHL history who was born on Canada's centennial, July 1, 1967, and he's today's Obscure Player: two-way center Mike Eastwood.

Eastwood was a fifth-round pick by the Maple Leafs as a 20-year-old in 1987, then spent four years at Western Michigan. He made his NHL debut in 1991 at the age of 24, playing nine games in Toronto. He pulled part-time duty on the 1992-93 and 1993-94 Leafs teams that made deep playoff runs, playing 28 postseason games including one in which he scored the only goal in a 1-0 win over Chicago.

Eastwood was traded at the 1995 deadline in a deal that would become one of the most popular in recent Leafs history, as it brought Tie Domi back to Toronto. He had a chance to play his first full NHL season in Winnipeg, scoring 14 goals in 1995-96 before the franchise headed to Phoenix. From there, he'd have stints with the Rangers, Blues, Blackhawks and Penguins. The longest of those came in St. Louis, where he scored a career-high 19 goals in 1999-00 while somehow leading the entire league in shooting percentage.

In all, he stuck around the league for 13 seasons, playing 783 games and recording 236 points. He went on to a media career in Ottawa, and is currently an assistant coach with the Ottawa 67s. This weekend, hundreds of thousands are expected to gather downtown to help him celebrate his 50th birthday.

Outrage of the week

The issue: This was the week in which teams were allowed to talk to pending free agents. However, the interview period is for talking only — teams are not allowed to negotiate specific contracts or make binding offers until the market officially opens tomorrow. The outrage: As soon as the clock ticks over the new league year tomorrow, a bunch of players are going to quickly sign contracts that will sure seem to have been negotiated and agreed to in advance. Is it justified: No, because this is one of those things where everyone understands how the system works. Just like everyone cheats on faceoffs and jumps on for line changes a little early, teams are going to get a little more specific than they should during the negotiating window. It happens, it's relatively fair for everyone, it's fine.

But still, this whole thing is weird, right? The NHL went out of its way to create a special window for teams to contact free agents, then told them to avoid discussing what's pretty much the only thing a free agent could possibly want to talk about. It's bizarre. What sort of conversation are you supposed to have with a free agent that doesn't involve specific contract terms? Are you just supposed to ask about their favorite ice cream flavor?

It was even worse when the rule was first implemented in 2013. Back then, Gary Bettman notified all the teams that they weren't supposed to talk about contract parameters at all. A year later, the league clarified that general discussions were allowed, but no agreements could be reached until July 1.

Needless to say, everyone ignores that rule and just hammers out contracts during the window anyway. We don't know exactly how it happens — maybe they just dive straight in, or maybe the agents try to work in some small layer of deniability. "Hey, here's a fun fact about my client: His two favorite numbers are seven, and six-point-two-five. What about yours?" But one way or another, an awful lot of progress seems to be made toward finished contracts that nobody is supposed to be talking about.

It all leads to some fun moments. Remember last year, when the Oilers traded Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson and everyone freaked out about how it was a bad deal, until suddenly the Edmonton media was like "No, it's fine, they're signing Milan Lucic in two days", but then everyone remembered that's not allowed so they all had to awkwardly add "Um…. allegedly"? Those were good times. (Lucic, of course, signed on July 1.)

So yes, it's a good bet that at least a few teams and players are actively violating the rules right now as you read this, striking last-minute deals that they'll announce tomorrow after waiting an hour or two to provide some cover. And that's basically fine, because the rule doesn't make much sense and nobody seems to have any desire to enforce it. There are no victims here, and if anything, this system should make it less likely that teams get swept up in a sudden bidding war and make a cap-killing mistake. It's weird, but it's harmless. In today's NHL, let's call that a win.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

With free agency starting tomorrow, fans around the league are very excited. Your team can add a new player without even giving up any assets beyond cap space. It's almost foolproof. What could possible go wrong?

In related news, ten years ago, this happened.

youtube

So it's July 1, 2007, and the first day of free agency is drawing to a close. This was just the third offseason of the cap era, and the first two had featured big UFA success stories; in 2005, the Ducks signed Scott Niedermayer, and in 2006 the Bruins got Zdeno Chara. Which team would guarantee themselves a future Stanley Cup this time around? The hockey world tuned in to find out.

We start off with some banter about Niedermayer's rumored retirement, which ultimately didn't end up happening. Instead, he took half the season off, then returned to Anaheim and played until 2010. At the time there was some concern that veteran stars around the league would follow his lead, but that never happened. To this day, the only big NHL name who repeatedly insists on playing half-seasons is Gary Bettman.

Our host is Dan Elliott, and he dives in with some of the bigger names on the market, such as Chris Drury, Danny Briere and Scott Gomez. Huh. Can't wait to see how all those signings turned out.

We're also told that Canucks' GM Dave Nonis doesn't have enough money to be a major free agency player this year. Uh, trust me on this one, guys…. that's not a bad thing.

First up, we get Briere signing with the Flyers for $52 million. He's coming off a 95-point season and is flourishing, we're told, thanks to the emphasis on calling the rulebook, so he should be a great addition as long as the NHL doesn't decide to stop doing that.

(Briere was eventually bought out.)

Weirdly, the next deal mentioned is… Matthieu Schneider? Are we doing this alphabetically by middle name or something?

We also slide in a mention of Brian Rafalksi's deal with Detroit, which in hindsight ended up being the best of the day. Nothing says "This clip is from a very long time ago" quite like the Red Wings making a good free agent signing.

Next comes another big signing: Gomez to the Rangers for $51.5 million. He'd spend two years in New York before being dealt to the Canadiens for Ryan McDonagh because they needed help with goal-scoring, which is kind of like acquiring a koala bear because you need help with algebra.

(Gomez was eventually bought out.)

The Rangers weren't done, also nabbing Drury on a $35-million deal. Not only was he coming off a career-best 37-goal season, but he'd forged a reputation as a heart-and-soul leader with the Sabres. As always, if there are two things you definitely want to pay top dollar for on July 1, it's career years and intangibles.

(Drury was eventually bought out.)

Here's the sad part: Drury and Gomez were actually two of the most successful Ranger free agency moves of all-time.

We see some other questionable deals, including the Leafs signing Jason Blake and Scott Hannan going to the Avalanche. By the time we get to Cory Sarich getting $18 million, the guy who does the graphics for this newscast has given up on capitalizing team names because who even cares anymore.

After updates on Joe Thornton and Jarome Iginla signing extensions, we close out our clip by getting a little weird. The Oiler and Flyers make a trade, and our pal Dan is going to get downright salty about it. He randomly drops in a line about Joffrey Lupul not being able to "handle the pressure" and Geoff Sanderson's best years being behind him. I don't think Dan likes this trade, you guys.

And that ends our clip. Here's hoping you enjoyed this appetizer for what should be a fun day tomorrow. Let's settle in for an entertaining weekend of free agent maneuverings, and may your favorite team sign all of the big-name stars you're wishing for.

(Your team's big-name free agent stars will eventually be bought out.)

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected] .

DGB Grab Bag: McDavid's Contract, Canada Day, and the Interview Period published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes

inventors-fair · 4 years

Text

“Surprise Me” commentary: Return to Innocence

Look, I’m not going to lie to you (unless it’s convenient for me or unless you’re about to find the body). Every time we open up a contest, we have preconceived notions about what people will send in and the kind of entries that we want to have. Every judge, all the time, even the ones I’m speaking for who disagree with me and my megalomania.

For this particular contest? I wanted to get rid of that entirely. I didn’t want to experience what I thought would be surprising, because that destroys that notion entirely, doesn’t it? I wanted something new.

I’d say that for most of you, that came across pretty well. I particularly enjoyed the return to custom mechanics, even if some of them... Well, let’s just talk about them, shall we?

@abzanhero — Simikiel, Due Vengeance

What I like: Well, it certainly feels like a WBR angel in the vein of its predecessors. The RW activation combined with the black drain does feel coherent in a way that I enjoy. Stats are good, wording’s fine. I think that this card is interesting because people will be looking for a way to combo out with this even though land sacrifice like Goblin Trenches will do just fine when the activated ability doesn’t pan out. Desolation (italicize!) is an interesting reverse-Morbid in a way.

What we can improve: I’m not personally invested in this card. I see that you made this for a custom set, but this feels entirely like a Commander card, and reactive abilities might not be what Commanders want. Yes, sometimes it’s about control, and I can see where you’re coming from. It might be the fact that because it’s a control-y card it makes it hard to want to build around as a commander. If you’re intending this for drafting and limited? Well, that’s another story, and I feel I’d have to see the context of the set. Desolation is...weird. There would have to be a lot of noncreature destruction for that, and I don’t exactly know how you’d make that happen without, well, a constructed environment. The card feels at odds with itself.

Baked Beans — Mutagenic Slime

What I like: Firstly, uh, sorry about that namesake? If you have a name you’d rather go by, then you’re free to specify in your submissions. Secondly, there’s a lot to love about this card. It does pretty much everything you would want out of a UG ooze for sure. I think it’s interesting how you retained the mana costs of the card and abilities with color weight.

What we can improve: In short, I got very confused by this card. After some discussion in the modhouse, I was surprised to learn that this actually works fairly well, considering the fact that copy effects are notorious for being frustrating to template correctly, and Mutavault-animation-copying is a whole other weird kettle of fish. I suppose that confusion is my fault, and I initially judged this card too harshly. I honestly don’t know if it needs the first ability, considering holy cow that’s powerful, but the rest of it, honestly? Not as egregious as I thought. I guess this is one of those things where my personal confusion initially got in the way — a lesson for me.

@chungus-supreme — Myriad Sliver

What I like: Well, it’s easy to see where you started and what you like. I think that Slivers were a great first tribe for a lot of people. A callback to the MH Slivers is pretty cool.

What we can improve: There’re a lot of strategies that could possibly use this card, but it feels immensely “win-more” when it comes to Slivers already. Why would this card need to exist? What interactions would it have that Slivers don’t already have with each other and with weird tribal cards? Someone would be happy with this card, but it wouldn’t be Sliver players. Minor note on presentation, too? Reminder text should be italicized following the rules, but I understand limitations on card creators. The lack of flavor text and context is just a little too weird. What possible circumstances could lead the Slivers to learning that they were every creature type? Frankly, what’s the story point? There’s a massive clash between flavor identity and reasonable storytelling.

@corporalotherbear — Pleasure in Pain

What I like: Alternate win-cons are always a nice addition to the game. I can see the sadistic side of black and the “at any cost” combo style that this card seeks to emulate. Personally, too, I’m a fan of conflicting rules text like the trigger and the static on this card. A new player might think they don’t work, and well, that’s just how new players work. And this card isn’t for them, it’s definitely for advanced Johnny players.

What we can improve: I still don’t exactly know how to make this card work. There don’t seem to be that many combos that could work well with it considering the mana cost. Ad Nauseam already does what it does, so that’s something, but I mean, I’d like to see what deck you would make with this card first because frankly, I don’t see it. Paying life doesn’t work if you don’t have life to pay, losing life is hard as heck, the whole shebang. Damage could work? Yeah, either I’m really dumb, or I don’t see the obvious exploitative combo you were envisioning outside of Ad Nauseam.

@dabudder — Perplexing Pact

What I like: Nice flavor, I think. I don’t know much about Davriel but I can totally see how it works out. It’s appropriately mythic considering how people would treat combat damage and the like, so that’s all well and good. Props for the reminder text, and for what I think is a fairly appropriate use of hybrid.

What we can improve: Where would this card exist? What kind of set would it belong to? I can’t contextualize it outside of just ‘a custom card for custom card’s sake’ and that feels frustrating to me. Ravnica mythic, perhaps? Sure, but what would the rest of the set look like? Could there be two alternate win-con effects i the same set? It’s actually kinda weird that the Guilds block had five across three sets, but still, they were different enough. I also feel that this is pretty easy to exploit with cards like the Pacts, turning this into a four-mana “at the beginning of your upkeep you win the game” effect. Not sure how I feel about that.

@deafeningsandwichpeach — Roaring Stompodon

What I like: This card was almost a runner-up! It’s a fantastic and powerful use of hybrid, it feels like a dinosaur, it’s fast and furious and chompy, and the only real questionable part is the redness of it. Could red get ETB fight like this, is the question? I feel that for this card in the right set that it honestly wouldn’t be too bad. I also feel that that’s more my heart than my head thinking here. I’m a weird control player who also happens to love fast and furious dinosaurs, what can I say.

What we can improve: Hm. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I’m worried. If you take off the “may” on the fight then it’s a little better, but whoo boy, imagining this in RDW with a slightly higher curve than usual? There’s something scary about that. I feel that erring on the side of caution would be best here. As a custom card I love it. I don’t know how printable it would be. Also, flavor text is good but retreading old ground. Consider something sillier, perhaps? Sillier or scarier, either or.

@deg99 — Azor I, Parun

What I like: Yup, it’s a callback to the quintessential Azorius namesake. With the mana cost like that, I can tell that you were shooting for a significant and austere commander for the guild, someone who requires many proper resources.

What we can improve: The problem with a card being quintessential is that everything that it’s doing has been done before. This card does not surprise me in the least. The fact that Azor creates The Immortal Sun on this card is about as expected as can be. Detaining is fine, and the draw is fine, but that’s it; they’re retreading expected ground. The mana cost doesn’t mechanically need the color weight, and as a custom Commander, this card just doesn’t seem fun. I would rather have seen you attempt to make something from the ground-up that was new rather than submit an old design that hasn’t been changed since inception.

@evscfa1 — Scales of Pitiless Justice

What I like: Pretty metal name, pretty rad.

What we can improve: Let’s...slow down a second.

There doesn’t seem to be a reason for the mana cost to be weighted like that. Without any context for the world, set or flavor, it feels arbitrary.

Speaking of arbitrary, why does this need to have both enchantment and artifact subtypes? I don’t understand how that helps mechanically.

This card does not need indestructible OR shroud. Full stop. “Bypassing any interaction” is not the same as “difficult to remove.”

Mana burn was removed from the game for a reason. It simply is not fun.

The “if” ability should be a trigger: “Whenever a player draw a card [etc], that player discards that card unless they pay 2 life.”

The last ability should say “casts” instead of “would cast.”

And in the end, I understand your frustrations with green and blue that you might see in your personal playgroup or whatever, and I understand what might be happening in standard and all the junk with that. Godmodding isn’t the answer. This contest was about seeing more of what you love, not destroying what you hate. In that context this card is antithetical to the approach we were hoping for. I would strongly consider putting love into cards that you submit rather than trying to force the pendulum in another direction.

@fractured-infinity — Sygg, Heir to Mornigtide // Sygg of the Razorfin

What I like: Sygg! Okay, so this is a... I’m envisioning this as a potential Esper DFC mer-legend in a limited return to Lorwyn, which is — aight? Shoot, the thing is, I love each side as they are. With a couple exceptions. I will say that I was both surprised and delighted to see a mythic Syggy-boy.

What we can improve: You have three set-unique abilities on a single DFC, and my friend, that’s confusing as heck. Daybreak and Moonrise just don’t seem like great mechanics, because if you need one and not the other, and you’re stuck on certain places, how are you gonna turn it? If they changed the seasons upon casting, that would be cool, right? What about that? I would maybe keep Aurora or something, and change your set’s mechanics (are you making one?) so that sorcery effects can change whether or not it’s Sunny or Moony on Lorwyn. Keep this idea, just narrow it down. A LOT.

Small note: “MorNINGtide.” Double-check your spelling. I’ve made that mistake once or a hundred times.

@ghost31415926535 — Piece of Mind

What I like: Well, it’s one way for white to interact with graveyards and the like. My favorite part of this is the flavor text. I don’t know much about Chulane but I do like the prospect of this teller having to forget a painful story from the past.

What we can improve: The first ability doesn’t get rid of replacement effects like Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace. Honestly, I think for the sake of all custom designers, graveyard hate effect shouldn’t be hated out themselves. It becomes a mechanical arms race. That last ability, though... Nope. Nooooope. That’s insane. Mono-white draw so many cards? Four mana? Even as a one-time effect it’s absolutely bonkers and out of pie. UW mill means that you can draw three new hands by the time this is activated. And, for this contest, I can’t say that I was entirely surprised by this card. It’s doing what so many custom card designers have done before.

@gollumni — Ihren, Master of the Deep

What I like: This feels like one of those cards where it makes sense in-world and then when you put it on a card it’s like “oh, my goodness, is that the story we’re telling?” And I like that aspect! I’m imagining a happy Giant wrangling a squid the size of a bus and loving every second of it. I can say with certainty that I didn’t expect “tentacle farmer archetype” in these submissions.

What we can improve: But it’s so, so much of a “win-more” again. You get sea monsters with your giants, and then giants with your sea monsters? To what end? What’s the point of casting all these massive creatures that require you to have more massive creatures, when just the massive creatures alone could win you the game? Quest for Ula’s Temple was awesome because for one mana you were eventually able to summon the giant monsters. This card, well, it’s big for big’s sake.

@haru-n-harkel — Ozalii, Apex of Evolution

What I like: I can fully say that I didn’t expect a mutate card for this contest. Did people like mutate? I can tell one of you did! Five-color true mutate legend, yeah, that’s a niche that could have used a spot. Y’know what, props, credit where credit’s due. I like the concept.

What we can improve: I feel that the abilities should say “this creature” instead of the name, right? Isn’t that how all mutate cards work? This may just be me being lukewarm on mutate for this whole thing, honestly. Past that, I understand that this card is good, but Mutate was just so parasitic. I don’t know, this may be one of those unfortunate biases. So don’t take this the wrong way, and please do put this in a custom Mutate-filled cube if you have it.

@ignorantturtlegaming — O’Jaru, Kavu Arisen

What I like: You and Kavu. Meme all I want, but yep, that’s a kind of gaming love I can get behind. It’s a big creature, it’s a beast, it’s powerful, it’s got a strong cost, and Panharmonicon on a creature? Oh lord. OH LORD. This would be an intensely powerful commander for that alone.

What we can improve: ...except for the fact that it triggers itself. It’ll be on the battlefield, so, well, you’ll have to return four other creatures if you want this thing to stick. Hate to say it, but that’s a massive drawback, so massive that I don’t know if it would really stick. However, this is an easy fix. All you need to do is change “If a permanent” to “If another permanent” in that first part. Solved!

@macaroni-and-squeez — The Breathing Past

What I like: I can absolutely commend you for trying something new. This feels like a card where a lot of background understanding is needed, and that’s not always a bad thing.

What we can improve: That doesn’t change the fact that I don’t understand the process behind this card’s creation. In short, I don’t know why sagas and creatures should be combined aside from the fact that it’s new, and that doesn’t feel like a great precedent. The card would have worked fine as a saga (ish) and actually great as a horror. But both makes it feel messy and unintuitive. What story is being told? I don’t know. What kind of character/incarnation is this legend? I still don’t know. Clarify, simplify, and revise.

@milkandraspberry — Importation étrangère

Silver-border is not the problem here. I don’t speak French. Was that the joke? What possible set would this card appear in, and why? I think based on this card alone, cards with non-English rules text are hereby not eligible for submission from this point forward. There may be a joke, but it wasn’t even explained in the submission, so I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do here. Google Translate? To what end? If the gist of the card is that it’s supposed to not be understood, then that’s a sign already that you should consider revising your idea. Most importantly, the judges can’t give you fair critique, and that’s not fair to you either.

@misterstingyjack — Slobad, Selfless Scrapper

What I like: Planeswalker iterations are always cool. Thank you for explaining the story to me, because I think that I vaguely remembered the name but couldn’t remember the context. And man, this is an interesting card. Red artifact/planeswalker matters planeswalker? It’s narrow, but shoot, it also feels appropriate for rare. I think I’m warming up to this kind of specific concept more than I was originally.

What we can improve: Still, he doesn’t exactly feel like a planeswalker and more like a new card type entirely. ... Maybe that isn’t a bad thing. Maybe this new design space could be way more interesting than I’m giving credit for. I would have to see what the environment looked like, because wow, this would have to be balanced properly, else we end up with War of the Spark Horizon Masters of Mirrodin broken. For wording: Second ability could just be ‘Create a _ for each walker you control’ and the last one honestly could just be “Move all loyalty counters from Slobad onto another target planeswalker you control.” A little more busted, but let’s be real, more flexible as well. Who says he has to give up his spark for a specific dude? Besides the story.

@naban-dean-of-irritation — Darksteel Experiment

What I like: Yeah, I can see the problem you’re trying to solve and how you’re trying to solve it. Gotta make something as unkillable as possible, right? It’s the “anything-proof-shield” on the playground of custom MTG design. Making it Darksteel is a great callback, and the flavor text is pretty fun so I’ll give you that.

What we can improve: I’ve played a lot of Magic, and I know that getting things killed can suck. But the game is one of interaction. There are answers to everything but you have to draw them. The card specifically and maybe this specific wording (if it works in the rules, I’ll have to lawyer it) might not have been made before, but the concept? It’s been around since Magic’s existence, to the first frustration of getting a Savannah Lions Lightning Bolt-ed. When the gameplay stops being a conversation, there is no longer gameplay. Trying to find answers to that shouldn’t be what we’re looking for.

@nicolbolas96 — Abyssal Pact

What I like: You know, Mr. Shiny actually made a vaguely-in-the-same-vein card that was almost going to be an example. Well, it involved sacrifice, anyway. But the point is, yeah, same kind of interesting design space. I love winning with no cards in a library, I’ll say that much. For a legendary enchantment, a “pact” is probably as appropriate as you can get without being an object or curse or specific story moment. Interesting flavor, too! Well-conceptualized.

What we can improve: My good fellow this card breaks the game in about a trillion different ways. Treasures become 40-80+ mana. Grimgrin becomes massive. Any card that says “Sacrifice X: Draw a card” becomes an instant and I think uninterruptable win, of which there are four in this card’s colors alone. If it was, like, “the first time” instead? Or something? I don’t know, there’s a LOT to take into consideration, but the gist is: this card is a broken infinite combo waiting to happen. Maybe you intended that. If that’s the case, then shame on you but I respect it. Sort of.

@nine-effing-hells — Evolutionary Explosion

What I like: This was so close to being a winner if it wasn’t really, REALLY darn too powerful. If you have an army of 1/1 tokens, this card becomes incrementally more amazing. Is that a bad thing? I mean, I love the concept, I love the math, I love that you’re doing new things with how to make a cool mythic Overrun sorcery.

What we can improve: But we gotta compare to cards like Wild Onslaught, which is eight mana for what this card can do for sometimes half that cost. It really can just make the late game a little too ridiculous. I wish I could love it more, and I think that as an uncommon that targets a single creature it can be an amazing powerful blowout. This? Too much for a variable X cost.

Also, I sent a PM tp the Denver museum and they’re checking with their team for the proper artist credit and once they respond in a few days I’m gonna smack ya for improper artist credit. (Not really that last part, but I did message out of curiosity. That mural is dope.)

@ouroboros-breaker — Tibalt, Rakdos Insurgent

What I like: Rakdos Tibalt has been something people have been asking for for a while now, and as a fan, I hope that we can see more of him in the future. I can see that you liked the character’s chaotic nature and the way that he engages with you, plus the double-edged sword aspects of it all. There’s a lot of cleverness behind your process.

What we can improve: That doesn’t change the fact that the second and third abilities are reeeeally pushing what’s reasonable for an acceptable risk. Yeah, it’s neat for there to be some risk involved, but the possibility of -3 and losing three permanents is way too rough. Rakdos at least absolutely saved himself during coin flips and whatnot. The last ability, the emblem? I wish I liked it more. I feel that it could have been a -5 for something like a Hellrider effect: “whenever a creature you control attacks, it deals 1 damage to any target” or something. Then, maybe there could have been tokens made, like Tibalt’s WAR card, and, well, the boy might be more playable. I feel that symmetrical emblems aren’t great to have. In short, don’t be afraid to make cards, especially planeswalkers, a couple degrees more helpful.

@partlycloudy-partlyfuckoff — Progeny of Immolation

What I like: I think that Emerge was a fantastic mechanic, and I’m happy to see it again. Eldrazi Hellion is a great creature type combo, and as a fan of Eldritch Moon this card is hitting some nice parts for me.

What we can improve: The big challenge is whether or not it’s okay for this card to effectively deal up to 11 colorless damage in something like limited. If you’re running a red deck, you can get this out early and have a fine enough red source in-pie, but even if you’re running something like a blue-white control deck you can ramp up to eleven mana and halve someone’s life total. I’ll say that yes, the Eldrazi all from EM all could be cast like this, but the off-color effects were never quite pushed to eleven damage. I fear development issues. Keep in mind what may or may not be appropriate for your costs.

@real-aspen-hours — Instant Pot Chicken and Rice

What I like: This is at its core an affordable, easy, nutritious meal that provides a fair amount of food for relatively cheap cost. Instant rice and chicken breasts aren’t hard to come by, and another great part of this meal is the fact that it’s fairly universal. If someone’s vegetarian, you don’t have great options, but that’s not gonna come up as much as long as you have people who understand what it means to eat affordable. The Instant Pot is a great addition to any kitchen as well.

What we can improve: Tomatoes are fantastic for flavor, but what else is there? I’m missing out on a lot of the herbs and spices that could turn this into a real meal. Adding additional liquid plus things like white onions, garlic, carrots, etc. would turn this from “edible” to “exquisite.” Consider thyme and basil, but also think about different flavors like Teriyaki or sriracha for more stand-out returns. I wonder how chicken chili would go? But that would be a fundamental shift, so that’s more conjecture than anything else.

As an aside, this did bring a smile to my face. However, I hate to say, this is a Magic: the Gathering blog, and I am not a cook. I have to ask that we stick to cards for the future. Still — this is our one and only consolation prize for doin’ your own thang.

@reaperfromtheabyss — Maelstrom Vale

What I like: Hnnnng cascade. This is one of those cards that I friggin’ love because I grew up on cascade, before I knew just how broken it was as a mechanic. I think that in limited and constructed, this card can be played in any deck, and I dunno how to feel about that at second glance. Five-color commander and casual play? Heck yes, this is so much fun. I love these kinds of cards.

What we can improve: Five mana giving practically any spell cascade is...busted, especially in limited. If I had had this last night at FNM, I would have swept so hard. 3-5 drops into multiple creatures and answers? Good lord. If it was 7 to activate, it would be balanced. As it is, might be too far. Small note: this flavor text would be 100% better if you didn’t have that silly attribution. Seriously, it was epic and cool and meaningful until the last part. Sometimes established things work well.

@rustyguacamole — Uth, the Impermeable

What I like: Self-mill with a cool white upside makes this card a welcome addition to some of the other Abzan reanimator builds. I like how you worked off of those to make an interesting fungal commander. I feel that it could even be part of a core set legend if it were mythic.

What we can improve: The “you may play cards from your graveyard” definitely needed a “this turn” at the end of it. And I mean, Yawgmoth’s Will remains an impossibly powerful card to this day. A repeatable version of that seems way too strong at first glance. You could do it at the end of someone’s turn too and then next turn fill that stuff back up. Also, for that reminder text... If you activate it twice in a turn, wouldn’t the second resolution then exile those cards if it already resolved once? That doesn’t feel great. I don’t know, I still don’t think that repeatable Will is a good idea. And small note, the biggest exilers, Leyleine of the Void and Rest in Peace, are replacement effects and would get around that first ability. It really, really, really isn’t a battle worth fighting.

@scavenger98 — Watched of Fanged Winds

What I like: “Wolf creatures you control have flying.” WHAT. I was kinda blown away by that when I first read it, I’ll be honest. Working with, uh, I suppose Bant wolves? Could make for some crazy stuff. The token-making isn’t impossible but it’s a work-around, and I think that I can think of a couple ways to get infinite wolves but they’re all crazy combos and aren’t really broken in any format. That’s not a bad thing! I do like combos when they’re hard to get off. Aura Shards/Lumengrid Sentinel + Ornithopter/Memnite + Watcher comes to mind. See, that sounds fun!

What we can improve: There’s...not much to improve, honestly. I think the gist of my complaints is that I don’t get flavorfully why wolves can fly. Is the spirit giving it to them through some weird magic? What are the Fanged Winds? Sometimes in Magic, there are mechanical interactions that don’t make flavorful sense, but a card has to have internal flavor consistency, and I’m still not sure about that. Mechanically I’m in love.

ShakesZX — Woodland Gratifier

What I like: This is indeed a new version of something that exists but hasn’t seen print in quite this way. That’s pretty much what we were after! It’s a powerful elf effect, and as we speak, someone’s eyeing Gaea’s Cradle and salivating.

What we can improve: This definitely needs to be a replacement effect, see Mana Reflection. That’s an easy fix, though. This submission feels...strange without any flavor behind it. As a draft, sure, this is great. Presentation is iffy. I would have liked there to be flavor text for certain. There’s not really much to say about this card without that. I love the effect, but that’s where things stop. Also, uh, I’m either a terrible person or the word “gratifier” is giving some unintentional innuendo. I may have just spent too long on the internet.

@shootingstarhunter — Jack-In-The-Box

What I like: Knowledge Pool was a fantastic card, and this feels like a callback to that and then some. The change from libraries to the battlefield makes this card really fun to play around with as a kind of boardwipe, and for seven colorless mana there’s a lot of decks that could love this. Playing it then sacrificing with the trigger on the stack? Yike-a-rooni. I’d love to play that. I might also be evil.

What we can improve: But that’s another problem. Do you want permanent exile like that? If that’s your intention, I applaud it. I don’t necessarily like how you’re not the first person to get a present from the box, but that’s a necessary evil, I think. Like Omen Machine. My mechanical suggestion would be to CAST the cards from exile for additional synergy, and to word it so that the boxes are completely optional or completely mandatory. Secondly, the name. Why is a children’s toy exiling all permanents? That’s a major effect, something like an obelisk or a maze, not, well, a box. I would edit the flavor a little bit to reflect a world-breaking effect. Magical portal, woo!

@snugz — Disab, Lord of the Seven Seas

What I like: I imagine if this were come sort of commander it could come with little teardrop cutouts that you could scatter on different permanents or whatever, special flood counters. As a limited card, I think that it’s excellent, and as a constructed card it’s, well, still excellent. It’s a lot to put into a card but you get some awesome control out of it and beef up your pirate to the nth degree. I like how it doesn’t perma-change Islands, although man, there’s some fun combo shenanigans to be had there, I’m sure. Pretty great pirate-y flavor, too.

What we can improve: You know, I don’t have any comments on ways to improve this card. I’ll say that it’s the closest thing that could see print out of most of these submissions, and maybe, well, that’s the problem. It feels almost safe. It’s such a great normal card that it’s not grabbing me by the briney beard and showing me the lost skeleton treasure of Boney Jim. That’s more of an indictment on the contest than it is you or the card, so consider this an apology for having uproariously high expectations for weirdness while at the same time throwing the weirdest submissions under the bus.

@socialpoison — Forget-Me-Not

What I like: You submitted some really cool backstory for this card, and I appreciate the amount of work that you’ve put into this idea. I think that Aetherborn on another plane could work really well with what you have in mind. This card allowing for the self-mill-return is powerful without being, like, Kethis broken. I think you found an interesting balance. Green is a nice choice for the people who would want to make this a commander.

What we can improve: Phasing is one of those mechanics I think I’ll personally never like, but that’s just me. This card itself works with that well, although it hasn’t sold me. I don’t really get the timing of phasing having not grown up with it, but you know, I might have misinterpreted this card and right now I’m thinking about card advantage and realizing that oh my goodness, uh, this card really is a mythic. It’s got card advantage out the butt. Is that too powerful? Well, no, but this may give rise to a control archetype. I think this requires a lot of playtesting. In short, this card is good, but it’s not for me, and that’s no fault of yours. My one critique in an area that I’m actually versed in: I don’t really like the name, cutesy as it is. In-story it could work, but it’s also an idiom of sorts, and that doesn’t feel very legendary to me personally.

@teaxch — Trium, the Strongest Shape

What I like: Alright, this is one of those cards, I’ll admit, I started brewing with it when I saw it. Forgetting the vigilance and haste, there was the draw and the build-around of three-mana 3/3s in these commander colors, of which there are over a hundred. You got Resplendent Angel, Dauntless Escort, Bastion Protector, Verge Rangers... And that’s not counting tokens like Garruk’s beasts. Man. There’s a lot of crazy fun stuff to do with this card, and a fun design space for a meme commander.

What we can improve: Did I say “meme commander?” Good, just checking. It’s a damn triangle. I know they did a legendary Wall, but people were asking for memes before they knew what they were getting into. I love the way this card works mechanically. I’m not going to give any more kudos than necessary to a triangle. (I hope this isn’t too mean, I really do like the design.)

@thedirtside — Master Craftsman

What I like: The more I read/think over this card, the more I kind of appreciate it. It’s a nice casual build-around-me artifact mythic that’s just asking for fun budget stuff. Maybe it’s broken in some builds, but frankly, I don’t see it. I really like how you brought together all the different artifact types and archetypes in one kind of build. This is definitely a Horizons type of card, and you know, for this, that’s not a bad thing.

What we can improve: This card feels pretty cramped for space, and even then, there needs to be a little more. Most of my qualms are about presentation. There need to be commas after all the mana symbols but before the tap symbols. The black ability needs to say “two” instead of 2. The red ability needs to say “Master Craftsman deals 3 damage to any target.” All damage needs a source. And get rid of the flavor text for this one, five abilities fills it up too much already. In terms of surprise, I think after rereading and going through this contest I found myself enjoying this card after all. Just gotta clean up a bit.

@walker-of-the-yellow-path — Time Rift Tactics

What I like: I like this card a lot. The multicolored suspend is pretty interesting considering time shenanigans and blue’s flavor, and even for six mana getting those four tokens is pretty powerful. I wouldn’t say that it’s first-pickable, but it’s definitely great. I’m a fan of the flavor wherein a bunch of soldiers or some general came up with an attack strategy that involved sending soldiers through time and space.

What we can improve: Again, mostly presentation and numeric issues. Suspend definitely needs reminder text, especially for a common, and with the proper em-dashes. Each instance of “4″ should be “four” as well. And the thing is, if you have the blue mana, you can play this in a nonwhite deck for no downside, and I honestly think that that breaks the pie. A cheaper alternate casting cost might prevent it from commander play, but this card was never going to be in commander to begin with, and mono-blue access to this isn’t what blue gets to have.

@wolkemesser — Untapped Potential

What I like: Unique tokens are pretty cool. I like the strangeness of it all, and I think that there’s definitely some ways to make this card really powerful. In colors that can populate, I imagine that there’s a lot of ways to get some crazy draw engines working. I think in the workshop there were a couple people who really liked your work on the flavor text as well.

What we can improve: I wasn’t altogether grabbed by the end result of the token. So, you get a big creature and can see everyone’s hands, but then what? Each player’s token basically becomes a big creature that you’re fighting to get bigger and work with that, discouraging you from casting spells from your hand, and I don’t think I’m a big fan of that. In the end this card makes a cool token but there’s no synergy or movement beyond that, and that’s what’s not lighting my fire. Small notes: “Avatar” should be capitalized, and the two abilities of P/T and “Everyone plays with hands revealed” need to be two separate quotation marks, see Pursued Whale.

Good lord, finally done. Thank you all for your submissions. Tune in tomorrow, when we make history! Or something! We make history every day, don’t we.

-@abelzumi

#mtg #magic the gathering #commentary #custom magic card #surprise me #entries #inventor's fair

18 notes · View notes