Max Scoville's Teenage Garbage Vortex

Hello! I'm Max Scoville. You may know me from my game-related work on IGN, Destructoid, or Revision3, or perhaps from my podcast, The Comedy Button. This is my personal blog that I sometimes write proper coherent sentences in, but mostly use as a catch-all for interesting images/gifs/videos, and to give advice to sad teens. I'm not really qualified to do anything. Nothing I say here reflects the opinions of anyone else, and I'll probably be embarrassed by it in six months anyway.

[maxscoville]

[youjokebut-deactivated20180818]

gamer: did you play this game as a kid

me: no

gamer: i must be way older than u

me: actually i was just poor

[vintagegeekculture]

The 1996 animated series “Siegfried and Roy: Masters of the Impossible” put the two magicians and their white tiger friends into a D&D world.

While the show did not touch on their personal lives, which is nobody’s business but theirs, it nonetheless made the baffling choice to comically overcorrect, and made them heterosexual college guy pussy hounds.

[maxscoville]

[nickcagesbeard]

[absolutelyalvaaron]

OH MY GOD

[blindmech]

GODLIKE

[diligentnewtype]

OH MY GOD ITS GORGEOUS!!!

[absolutelyalvaaron]

PART 2 BITCH. THE RIDE ISN’T OVER YET YOU CUNTS

PART 3. LOOK AT THAT CAPE. IT’S BEAUTIFUL

PART 4. STRIKE A POSE

[maxscoville]

😍

[weirdheat]

Here’s Weird Heat #1! Please, share and subscribe! It’s also available in audio form on iTunes, SoundCloud, RSS, and we’re figuring out Stitcher and Google Play. If you like what we’re doing and wanna support it, our Patreon launched this morning, and we’ve also got shirts for sale.

[maxscoville]

Hey, this is my new show. It’s an overly ambitious project that my best friend/main collaborator Brian and I have been kicking around forever.

Everybody consumes stuff on the internet differently these days, and the fragmented nature of distributing something on different platforms is made worse by discoverability algorithms and short attention spans. But basically if you give a shit, go take a look.

[weirdheat]

Hello! This is WEIRD HEAT a brand new project from Max Scoville and Brian Altano. Starting Monday, February 12th 2018, there will be things here, and in other places around the internet.

Please, be excited.

[artemis-entreri]

Rations for various RPG Races

[[ Source. Original creator: wats6831. Additional information and images linked under each one. Love this project? Support it here! ]]

Universal:

Homemade artisan herb bread, home grown and dried apples and prunes, uncured beef sausage, munster cheese. Made a small bag from cheesecloth and tied it closed.

Discussion thread here.

Human: 

Waterdhavian oat loaf (handmade irish soda bread, fresh smoked ham shank, “dessert” pear, Corm Orp “mountain” bleu cheese served on butternut squash, imported Saerloon broccoflower (Romanesco), mixed garden vegetables (carrots and radishes), Misty Forest chestnuts.

More images here. Discussion thread here. 

Dwarf:

Garlic chicken livers, smoked and peppered cheese, spiced pork sausages, hard tack, dried vegetables, dried wild mushrooms.

Discussion thread here.

Elf:

Top left to right: Evereskan Honey Comb, Elven Travel Bread (Amaretto Liquer Cake with custom swirls), Lurien Spring Cheese (goat cheese with garlic, salt, spices and shallots), Delimbyr Vale Smoked Silverfin (Salmon), Honey Spiced Lichen (Kale Chips), and Silverwood Pine Nuts.

Discussion thread here.

Halfling:

From upper left: “Honeytack” Hard tack honey cakes, beef sausage, pork sausage mini links, mini whole wheat toast, cranberry cheddar cheese mini wedge, mini pickles, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, lower right is my homemade “travel cake” muesli with raisins, golden prunes, honey, eggs and cream.

Discussion thread here.

Half-Orc:

Wrapped in cheesecloth and tied in burlap package. Forest strider drumsticks, molasses sweet wheat bread “black strap”, aged Munster, hard boiled eggs, mixed wild nuts.

Discussion thread here.

Orc:

Orcs aren’t known for their great cuisine. Orcs prefer foods that are readily available (whatever can be had by raiding), and portable with little preparation, though they have a few racial delicacies. Toughs strips of lean meat, bones scavenged from recent kills, and dark coarse bread make up the bulk of common orc rations.Fire roasted rothe femur (marrow is a rare treat) [beef femur], Strips of dried meat (of unknown origin) [homemade goose jerky], foraged nuts, only edible by orcs….nut cracker tusks [brazil nuts], coarse black bread, made with whatever grains can be pillaged [black sesame bread], Pungent peppers [Habanero peppers stuffed with smoked fish and olives].

More images here. Discussion thread here.

Gnome:

Pan fried Delimbyr smelt, spiced goat cheese (paprika crusted hand pressed Fontina), Gnome shortbread (savory pistachio), glass travel jar filled with Secomber Red (wine), hard boiled quail eggs packed in rolled oats (to keep safe), dried figs from Calimshan, and Southwood smoked goat sausage (blood sausage).

More images here. Discussion thread here.

Duergar (gray dwarves):

The Duergar (gray dwarves) are the hated subterranean cousins of the surface dwelling Shield dwarves. Vast Duergar kingdoms exist in the Underdark beneath Toril’s surface. Duergar are known for their foul tempers, penchant for cruelty, grim and bitter dispositions. Their food is as coarse and uncouth as they are. Clockwise from top left: Sour Deep rothé pepper cheese (Limburger), boiled Deep rothé kidney (whole beef kidney), foraged roots and tubers; skirret and Fellroot (ginger and turmeric roots), contorted strangler fungus (Enoki mushrooms), onion & mushroom gravy hand pies (Morel mushroom with shallot and dill in cream sauce).

More images here. Discussion thread here.

Lizardfolk (This is a MEAL/feast and not a travel ration):

Lizardfolk are known to be omnivores, forage for a surprising variety of foods found within the confines of their marshy environs, in this case the Lizard Marsh near Daggerford. Fresh caught boiled Delimbyr Crayfish on wild chives, coastal carrageen moss entrapping estuary brine shrimp (irish moss, dried brine shrimp), Brackish-Berries (blackberries), Blackened Dart-Frog legs (frog legs) on spring sprouts (clover sprouts), roasted bog bugs on a stick!

More images here. Discussion thread here.

Drow (This is a MEAL/Party Fare and not a travel ration):

From top left: Menzoberranzan black truffle rothe cheese (Black Knight Tilsit), Donigarten Moss Snails (Escargot in shallot butter sauce), Blind cave fish caviar in mushroom caps (Lumpfish caviar), faerzress-infused duck egg imported from the surface Realms (Century egg), Black velvet ear fungus (Auricularia Black Fungus Mushroom).

More images here. Discussion thread here.

Mind Flayer/Illithid (This is a MEAL/Party Fare and not a travel ration):

A Mind Flayer dwelling in the Underdark of the Forgotten Realms might celebrate a special event with a smorgasbord of illithid delicacies. Center: An extra large brain (former minotaur servant who did not go quietly) plated on tinged cerebrospinal fluid. Right: peeled kuo-toa eyeballs in serous fluid (with mithral eating pick) TOP RIGHT: green mushroom wine TOP: drow slave heart (tastes better than human) with savory sanguine sauce. All served amongst various potion bottles, scroll and alchemical vessel.

More images here. Discussion thread here. Some “making of” and reaction photos here. ]]

[maxscoville]

i need a name for my d&d character who is a sorcerer pervert

Fellascio The Lascivious

[trainedchimpanzee]

[maxscoville]

Turned 17 a few months ago and currently have no clue what I'm gonna do after high school and whether or not I'm gonna go to college or move back to California. Combine that with the anxiety of not knowing how taxes or a bunch of other adult shit works and just generally feeling like horseshit all the time, it's been a rough couple of weeks for me. Any general advice on how I should go about getting started in life?

Well, I have great news: any newly-minted 17-year-old who claims to have any idea what they’re doing is either stupid, delusional, lying, or utterly extraordinary. Being a teenager straight-up sucks for a variety of biological, sociological, and dermatological reasons, so it’s normal to have some anxiety about what you’re doing with the rest of your life.

The most common misconception in society is that “growing up” is a thing that happens all at once. “Growing up” is something you’ll spend your whole life doing. In the past few months, two of my closest friends had to bury their mothers. I’m getting married this year. People are having babies left and right. It sneaks up on you; it’s not like you wake up one day suddenly having it figured out.

I turned 31 a few months ago, and I barely know how taxes work, along with a mess of other adult shit. You gradually get the hang of it. Don’t be afraid to ask people for help, or to look stuff up online. The personal finance subreddit is full of people just like you (and me) asking “stupid” questions, and the community’s surprisingly great at providing helpful answers. The subreddits about sex, male fashion advice, and lifehacks are also useful for obvious reasons.If you’re lukewarm about college, my best advice is to go to community college, and take some classes that are incredibly useful, that you can put on a resume like business, welding, or IT. Conversely, you can also take incredibly stupid and frivolous classes that will give you a good idea of what you want to be when you grow up, even if they’re in totally impractical fields like archery, film history, or printmaking.

In theory, community college is an affordable way of getting college credit that you can use to transfer to a university, getting certified in a particular field, or figuring out that school just isn’t for you without racking up a mountain of student debt. Of course, because community college is lower stakes, it’s easy to get stuck there. I knew people on their eighth year, who were always “transferring to [State University] next spring.”

Another piece of advice is to try and get experience working food service, because it’s fairly universal. Ideally, something other than fast food, but everyone’s gotta start somewhere. You’ll probably start out bussing or washing dishes, but experienced waiters and bartenders can make decent money on tips, and they tend to have a pretty good time doing it. Get in on that as soon as legally possible. It’s not something you necessarily want to make a career out of, but it can put you through college, or keep a roof over your head until you get your big break as whatever the hell you decide to be when you grow up.

It might not feel like it, but you have a crazy amount of resources at your disposal. Whether it’s free classes online, job/gig postings on Craigslist, your school’s guidance counselor, or your local library. I’m not gonna say that hard work and persistence will work 100% of the time, but they’ll go a long way. The early bird gets the worm, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and so on and so forth. Most importantly: Don’t Panic.

[maxscoville]

Winter is always a hard time of year for me. I frantically plowed through the tail end of 2017, seeing the holidays as a finish line. Now it’s the middle of January, it’s business as usual, and the inevitable letdown has hit me like a ton of bricks. So, I figured I’d write about it, mostly for my own sake.

It’s embarrassing how bad I am at recognizing what’s going on in my own head. Toward the tail end of this week, which felt like a slow blurry montage of nothing being accomplished, I spontaneously got the urge to listen to Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. It’s a fantastic album that everyone should listen to at some point, but isn’t exactly the most upbeat thing to bump on a commute to work.

Last night, I watched Mother, the latest Aronofsky movie. I’d expected it to gut me as much as Requiem For a Dream or The Wrestler did, and it was good, but it unfortunately didn’t provide the S&M-grade cathartic ass-kicking I was after. So, I got drunk and rewatched End of Evangelion -- possibly the most upsetting thing ever animated -- and broke down crying during the finale.

It didn’t fully click until this afternoon that, hey, maybe I’m in a funk again? Listening to gloomy music and watching sad movies aren’t symptoms, but when you pair them with a general malaise, a pattern begins to form.

Depression is a sneaky fucker of a disorder, and it’ll frequently show up disguised as boredom, exhaustion, or everyday frustration, and it can pass in an instant, leaving no trace and making you wonder if anything was ever wrong in the first place. It’s like teenagers in an 80s movie who buy beer with a fake ID, throw a crazy party, and miraculously clean the whole house before mom and dad get home. But, instead of everything awesome I just described, it’s your own brain chemistry gaslighting you into a feeling of miserable isolation.

Depression’s sneaky bullshit is made worse by the stigma surrounding it, and how much of a pathetic bullshit disorder it probably looks like to anyone on the outside, looking in. It’s an illness that makes doing the most basic of tasks seem like insurmountable challenges, and it will make your favorite things seem boring and unappealing. This, of course, means it’ll reject both positive and negative reinforcement.

I’ve never been exactly ashamed of dealing with depression, but I avoid talking about it because it feels like a cry for attention, or like a girl on her period faking shin splints to avoid running laps in gym class. There are way worse things to suffer from than depression, and honestly, I have a great life... And that’s exactly the thought process that keeps so many people from talking about it or dealing with it. When I’m really at my worst (and thankfully, I’m not there right now) it’s terrifying how much of a fight I’m in with my own brain. I haven’t been outright suicidal in a long time, but when I’m in a really dark place, dying sounds like a nice thing. Like a Sunday afternoon nap, or a vacation. That’s what’s so fucking terrifying. For your own brain to not recognize basic survival as a priority, and to have to consciously remind yourself to ignore that thought process.

Mostly, when I’m in a bad place, I just hate myself. And I know that’s not a normal or healthy way to feel, so I tell myself to ride it out, and to take everything my brain is telling me with a grain of salt, whether that’s in regards to self-worth, interests, or what I’m capable of doing.

Anyway, I wasn’t really setting out to write a cohesive think-piece or anything, I just needed to put words on a page. It helped me when I was posting on LiveJournal in high school, and it still helps me now. If it helps anyone else, that’s a bonus. I’m gonna go watch a movie or something.

[maxscoville]

Hey dude, so I’m 19 and about a year ago I met this super dope girl who really liked me, and like the real dumbass I am, I hesitated. For months. Now she’s moved on and got a boyfriend and I’m here regretting everything. No other girl has shown interest, and no matter how much I branch out to meet others, girls just don’t really wanna talk to me. I wish I hadn’t fucked it up with this girl. I don’t even really know what I’m asking for but any advice for this fucked up situation?

Okay, so here’s the thing: You’ll meet other girls. You might have to like, get a haircut or lose weight or buy a new shirt, or maybe move across the country to meet one who likes you or grow up, but it’ll happen. If one girl liked you, odds are, another girl will also like you at some point. You’re nineteen, you’re figuring shit out. So are girls your age. So is everyone. Maybe try branching out less, and instead, figure out how to comfortably be yourself.Here’s another thing: You fucked it up, and hesitated, and you’ll never get that exact opportunity again. You might get another opportunity with the same girl, but that’s in the past, and kicking yourself over it isn’t gonna get you anywhere. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and life is short and soon we will all be gross skeletons in the ground, so make the best of it.I spent most of my time as a nineteen year old trying to find girls who liked me, and whenever one of them actually did, I fucked it up somehow. I’m still friends with some of them, miraculously. You’re still a teenager, don’t worry about it. Just try to have fun.

[maxscoville]

Hey bud I was thinking I should start running for my cardio. What was your routine when you first started? Assuming you listened to music during a run, did you have a favorite song that gave you a second wind?

I like to find out an exact distance to run, so I can be like “I ran X miles!” It’s a stupid little quantifier. When I lived in SF, I used Google Maps to track a course, and since I moved, I got a Fitbit that pairs with my phone and uses GPS to track. I don’t wear the Fitbit regularly anymore, because it’s more of a constant source of anxiety than an actual motivator, but now I know a loop I can run that’s exactly two miles, and where the halfway mark is, so I can be like “Oh wow, I ran a whole mile without stopping!” or, more likely, “I ran half a mile and wanted to throw up,” because I haven’t been running in weeks because it’s cold out. Running sucks. The Nike “Just Do it” slogan is cliche as hell, but God DAMN is it accurate. Running is, theoretically, the easiest thing in the world, but you have to do it in order to get better at it.Oh, also, running outside on the actual ground is probably twice has shitty as running on a treadmill. So if you wanna feel like a goddamn superhero, get used to running on concrete, and then try it in a gym.As for music, I made a playlist on Spotify called “Fuck This Shit” that I run to, and it’s probably the most abrasively terrible and embarrassing pile of incongruous garbage, but you’re welcome to give it a shot. It’s got like Rammstein, Pointer Sisters, Nikki Minaj, and then fuckin’ Numa Numa guy song.

[fuzzyghost]

[maxscoville]

Hey you, I love your taste. I bought the Syd Mead book on your Up At Noon recommendation, and I love it! My question is, would you consider revisiting a show like Study Hall where you pick a hot topic and act as a “recommended playlist” for pop bastards like myself? And secondly, do you have any other art books to recommend?

Absolutely, I’ve done a few Study Hall-esque features for IGN, but serializing it hasn’t really panned out. In terms of art books, Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo’s Kaba2 is incredible if you can find it for a decent price. It’s a ton of his non-Akira illustration/commercial work.

The J.W. Rinzler Making Of Star Wars series is great, along with Star Wars Costumes by Brandon Allinger.

If you wanna get into some more traditional art, I’ve been in love with this Hieronymus Bosch collection and I really like this book of Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings of cakes and shoes and ladies and stuff.