Monster Genome

29 year old engineer, artist, writer, and nerd.

[mongen]

Working on some hill giants. Here’s the better of the two. This is all just underpainting. The skin, wood, leather, cloth, and metal will all get translucent topcoats to tie everything together and make them look less surreal (tho hopefully still cool)

[mongen]

Been painting a lot of little debris pieces for tabletop. They still need a couple coats of mat varnish, but this is all the color and detail I’m going to give them. I think they’ll go well with a goblin-centric oneshot I’m working on.

[mongen]

Tried layering some various flesh tones to get a necrotic zombie look. I’m happy with how it came out, but now I have to paint the metal, leather, and chitin to match 😅

[mongen]

Doodling stouts (little gnome-goblin-dwarf-Smurf creatures from one of the settings I’m writing)

[mongen]

This is Astaroth the Vain, Duke of infernus, and he’s going to be the “oops, you made all the wrong choices” boss of a oneshot in running this weekend.

I’m trying a new underpainting technique I saw online, basically, before even putting down the first layer of the base coat, use yellow, red, and blue to sketch in the shadows, highlights, and warm mid-tones. We’ll see how the first layer turns out.

[mongen]

Sea monster!

[mongen]

Tricerilla or Tricerahulk

[mongen]

Girydra! Or maybe Hydraffe?

[mongen]

Project Hail Mary is Really Good

I gave it 4.5/5 on Letterboxd, and here’s my review:

Absolutely amazing movie. Go watch it if you haven’t. The asynchronous storytelling and character work are phenomenal. Every reveal is striking but doesn’t chew up the screentime. The CGI and practical effects are practically perfect in every way. The comedic timing and acting are on point. The original score is sweeping and beautiful but doesn’t drown out the vital quiet moments. The needle drops are relevant, fun, and not overplayed. The only reasons I can’t give this a 5 stars are the momentary editing, cinematography, and external ship shots tended to get sloppy on action scenes, which pulled me out of the moment at times. It’s not a pervasive issue through the whole film, and it’s more a symptom of modern Hollywood than something uniquely problematic here. However it was still enough to add friction to the viewing experience that wasn’t particularly welcome. 

Again, this is near-perfect movie, and I might watch it again soon. The main characters are so strong, they could carry the whole thing on their own, and everything else just elevates the experience from that already high place. Anyone who can watch this, should.

[mongen]

Brandon Sanderson is not a bad writer, but…

He is oblivious, repetitive, and funneling money into an abusive organization that some refer to as a cult. Now, I’m not going to touch on that last topic again, I’ve said my piece on that for now. However, I do want to dive into the way Sanderson’s writing boils down to a fairly straightforward formula and shows a lack of medium awareness.

The Formula: Power Systems

I know that people have endless positive things to say about the Cosmere’s worldbuilding and magic systems, and I’ll admit, it tickles the same part of my brain as Worm, My Hero Acadamia, Ben 10, and most Marvel movies, but it’s really not as deep as his fans make it out to be.

Let’s start with the powers. In every one of his stories I’ve read so far (plus all the ones I’ve heard even briefly described), his magic system boils down to “What if there were [number] types of [item or creature], and if you [verb] them, you get [magical thing]?” And then he extrapolates from there.

Now, before I show some examples, let me clarify that this is true of A LOT of media that I like. It’s a good formula! Nen in HunterXHunter is like that. The dragonballs are like that. Devil fruit, infinity stones, mother boxes, silmarils, rings of power, elemental magic, pact magic—you get it. It’s common. But it’s the ONLY formula he follows, and it’s everywhere in the Cosmere.

What if there were 12 types of spore, and when you wet them, they cast spells?

What if there were 16 types of metal, and when you consume them, you get superpowers?

What if there was one type of breath, and when you give it away, you get magic items?

What if there were ? Types of demon blood, and when you get infected by one, you get a magic illness?

What if there were ten types of fairy, and when you befriend them you get superpowers? Wait, superpowers again? Well, dice do tend to land on the same side now and then.

What if there were 16 shards of a dead god, and when you absorb one, you become a lesser god of that aspect of the original?

Again, this isn’t a huge problem in and of itself. The issue is that it’s the same every time. The only notable exception is Aons. Aside from the runes in the very first Cosmere novel (and arguably breaths), the entirety of the power system is just numbered lists of magic powers.

The Unremarkable Worlds With Neat Window-Dressing

What if everything was crabs and it rained mud? What if the ocean was made of those magic spores? What if every citizen was forced to cede power to their superior in a pyramid scheme of maintaining the power hierarchy? What if the god-king suppressed technology? What if this other god-king was effectively a child? What if there was guns? What if there was a second sapient species on this planet?

These are simple questions that yield really banal answers from Sanderson. They’re undeniably cool questions with a lot to explore, but Sanderson only scrapes the surface. Case and point, James Islington’s Hierarchy series has an almost identical power-ceding premise to Sanderson’s Warbreaker, but it does so much more with the concept of a hierarchy reinforced by the magic system. Are those books perfect? Absolutely not, but they explore this really interesting question in much more depth without sacrificing any of their character or plot. They even mostly manage to avoid Brandon’s terrible issue with redundancy.

Oh right

Brandon’s Terrible Issue with Redundancy

Anybody who has read The Stormlight Archive knows that Sanderson only ever creates one description for weird phenomena, then uses that description on a loop forever. Fear spen? Gobs of purple goo. Anger spen? Red spikes. Creativity spren? Little shapes. Representations of physical objects in Shadesmar? Spheres. Oh dear god the spheres. There is a chapter in that series where the word “sphere” is used as often as the word “the.” Call them something else! Marbles, orbs, balls, pebbles, skittles, round things, bubbles—change the word from sentence to sentence, please!

And that’s not even getting into how emotion spen are used to supplement actual character writing at times. But that’s not part of today’s essay, so instead I’ll move on to

Brandon Sanderson Doesn’t Know What Makes a Book Good

He advertised Tress as being like Princess Bride. They’re nothing alike. The framing is different, the tone is different, the narrative structure is different, there’s no overlap in character dynamics. It’s like watching Strange Magic and then hearing George Lucas say “I wanted to make this a Star Wars for girls.” It so thoroughly misses the point that it almost wraps around to absurdist humor.

He’s clearly capable of writing compelling character dramas and decently good dry comedies, and magic systems that scratch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles part of my brain, but I don’t actually think he knows what makes a story good or what his readers want out of a story. He makes token nods to queer identities in his later books, but with an awkward clunkiness that makes me wish he hadn’t. He keeps writing from the perspective of gods in a swimmy, floaty way that doesn’t convey much of anything, and the closest similarities I can think of are the way the actions of deities are described in Reaper’s Creek, a book I should never ever be reminded of, but here I am.

My point is, Sanderson’s shotgun approach to writing seems to be working out for him, and his own style of writing isn’t bad. He should stop trying to claim his stories are like other classics that he doesn’t understand and just write what he wants to write.

Conclusion

Actually, that last sentence was kind of my whole point. Sanderson isn’t some revolutionary writer who is making meaningful advancements in the way fiction is written or perceived. He’s just a pretty good writer with a rabid following. None of what he’s doing is new, but it doesn’t need to be. I still enjoy watching One Piece and Transformers. Not everything has to be The Belladonna of Sadness or Everything Everywhere All At Once.

I just wish people would stop talking about him like he’s amazing and perfect, because he’s not. He’s repetitive, reductive, and prolific.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

[merlintheactor]

Poor Dan, having to be invited with Doug Walker, while also dealing with the insanity of Beast Studios

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Imagine you're a long-running youtube creator who used to be so successful that you essentially defined the youtube reviewer format for more than a decade until your incompetence and short-sightedness collapsed your own media empire, leaving a massive influence on how youtube reviews are done even to this very day, and one day a much more competent and clearly more intelligent youtuber makes a video carefully and patiently pointing out how much of a hack you are where he concludes that you "wants to be a filmmaker, he wants to make art, but he can't, because he's a fundamentally incurious person who isn't much interested in what other people think or feel and all his ideas boil down to 'what if Batman met Mario?'" and it's wildly popular and becomes a defining part of your legacy.

And then you end up in Mr Beast's ATV with him and neither of you knew the other one was going to be there.

And then you go home and make a vaguely positive fluff piece about the experience (because doing PR for people who fly you places and feed you is part of Your Job) and months later he makes a way better and more accurate video that reads the experience in much the same way he read you a couple of years ago.

[silverbirching]

Like a lot of people, I've always found Doug Walker... vaguely repulsive, both artistically and socially. None of his creative works have ever spoken to me, and #changethechannel and (of course) Dan's video essay "Nostalgia Critic and the Wall" have definitely cemented my opinion that the guy is a dick and his art is bad.

(side note -- is there anything worse you can call an artist than 'fundamentally incurious?' Art is a conversation between artist and viewer, and how can that discussion exist when the artist barely even thinks other people are real)

And the excerpt of Doug's chirruping little fluff session about the tour certainly didn't do anything to change that. Jesus Christ, dude, why do you talk this way. It makes you sound incredibly insincere.

But like... wow. Wow. I've never watched anything from Mr. Beast before, and the clips in Dan's video...

Okay. Doug Walker is an asshole and his art is bad. We're all on the same page there, right? But like, Doug is a person, even if he's a shitty one, and his bad art is the result of conscious decisions and a point-of-view. A fundamentally myopic and dated point-of-view, lacking any empathy or capacity for self reflection, incapable of producing anything better than "what if batman met mario," but nonetheless, a point of view.

Mr. Beast is terrifying. There is nothing behind those eyes. There are no choices being made. Bad Art is infinitely superior to None Art made by a None Person, and holy fucking shit, that's what he is and what he does. I don't even believe in the ontological concept of the soul but I can tell when someone doesn't have one. Cynicism that's gone so far it's looped around to being sincere. Mr. Beast isn't a jerk, he's a philosophical zombie. Do you feel like he gets lights turned off on him a lot? "Oh sorry Jimmy, I didn't realize you were there staring at a blank wall."

[mongen]

New idea for a fantasy novel: a retelling of the Golem of Prague, but instead of one golem, it’s four, and instead of protecting the people of the city through acts of violence, they have to earn enough money to keep their community center open a la Blue Brothers. They do this by forming a band and playing covers of songs by King Crimson, Yes, Pink Floyd, and Steely Dan.

I call it *Prague Rocks*

[mongen]

Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf and his illusory wolf form for a oneshot I ran with coworkers who had never played DnD before

[mongen]

Working on a lava and water puzzle dungeon for a D&D oneshot. This is gonna be the final boss, a stone golem that’s been heated by the magma of the deepest earth and quenched with snowmelt from the highest peaks.

He’s not done yet, but this progress photo felt like it was worth sharing

[altonin-deactivated20180325]

if you want to actually start to end homelessness, you need to give homeless people unconditional homes, including when we use them to do drugs or sit around drinking. either housing is unconditional or it isn’t

someone sitting at home alone, an active alcoholic, squandering your charity, drinking all day is better situation than a street homeless alcoholic. someone using drugs in your charity house is better than them doing the same w no shelter

most of you would not like most street homeless people, I definitely don’t and didn’t when I was street homeless. for every one person who uses unconditional shelter to turn themselves around, someone else will do jack shit and very slowly, if ever, work through the issues that made them homeless, will maybe never be able to live independently. still better than street homelessness, still worth doing. ultimately either you believe that shelter should be universal or you don’t

homeless people actually can’t be rehabilitated if you want to end homelessness. we either affirm the right to shelter for the worst drunken, lying, filthy, cheating, self destructive homeless people that exist, genuinely irredeemable wankers, or we concede that shelter is not a right

[funereal-disease]

This post is the distilled essence of everything I believe in.

[mongen]

There should be a well-maintained public option for everything necessary for life.

My core political belief is that everything that’s a necessity to participate in the society a nation-state is built around should be provided by public funds to anybody who wants it, regardless of its use. That means a well-maintained public option for food, even if it’s just bread and bruised fruits; a well-maintained public option for gasoline, natural gas, and internet; a well-maintained public-only utility infrastructure for water, electricity, health care, and waste removal; and most of all, a well-maintained public option for housing that facilitates all of the above.

In order to participate in society, we need an address, an email address, the means to clean ourselves, food, water, shelter, and access to locations like work, public offices, and entertainment centers. In places where public nudity is illegal, there should be a public option for clothing. In places where “loitering” is illegal, there should be clear directions on where to go to spend one’s time. We have the resources and means to achieve this, so the fact that it’s not being done is an active choice by those in power.

[mongen]

Been getting back into sprite animation. Might try to make a little 1-hour micro-rpg or something

[mongen]

Solo Seder for Pesach

Homemade Matzo Ball Soup with leeks, onions, carrots, mushrooms, chicken, and daikon radishes.

Impromptu charoset made from apple butter and chopped walnuts, soft-boiled egg, grain-free crackers, and horseradish sauce.

Tofu chocolate mousse for desert.