Interview With A Man Who Is Angry About Hot Goth Porn Girls

Maybe the second in a series of interviews with people who are totally wrong?

Anyway, readers will be aware that a lot of people get mad that porn stars play D&D.

An adjacent issue is that people get mad when porn stars--or any sex workers really--do literally anything. 

There was a recent internet controversy where a video of a bunch of model-types did a sexy video and they were goths. The internet got very upset that goths were shown as being hot. There was also something about Drake? Idk. There was discourse.

Here at D&D With Porn Stars we know a thing or two about goth sex workers but this is the Internet, where actual knowledge is often a tremendous handicap in trying to figure out what people are talking about.

So I interviewed one of them.

I started talking to B00GIEpunk and asking why he cares about any of this, he eventually got real frustrated and stopped answering and said that he would only respond if I paid him or if it was a formal interview. I said Ok, its a formal interview.

He then put a bunch of perfectly reasonable conditions on the interview assuming I'd decline (he does not assume good faith--which is evil). I agreed to the conditions, he said:

Q:

Ok, you've said that these girls in this video represent a trend that you don't like, is that right?

A:

Yes, with one qualification: I'm not saying the women themselves are the problem, I'm saying the way they've been selected and presented appears to reflect a broader, commercially legible stereotype of goth femininity - the conventionally attractive, sexualised "goth girlfriend" archetype - and I find that flattening of a much broader subculture irritating.

Siouxsie Sioux

Q:

So, the idea of this as "flattening" would seem to suggest that this piece of media is part of a *more* significant trend than lots of *other* media which portrays goths in different ways. Why is it *more* significant than other kinds of media takes on goths?

A:

I don't think it has to be more significant than every other portrayal of goths for "flattening" to be an accurate description.

Different representations can coexist, including ones that pull goth aesthetics in very different directions. My point is that this video participates in one recurring shorthand - namely, goth femininity reduced to a narrow, conventionally attractive, sexually legible aesthetic.

"Flattening" describes what happens within that representational pattern - a broad music-based subculture with many aesthetics gets compressed into a smaller set of immediately recognisable visual cues. It doesn't mean that pattern has successfully erased every competing representation, nor that this particular video is culturally more powerful than all of them.

So I wouldn't claim this video is uniquely significant. I'd claim it's recognisable as one example of a broader stereotype that is significant enough to be culturally familiar in the first place.

Patricia Morrison (Sisters of Mercy)

Q:

If it's not more significant than say "the goths in South Park" or "goths represented as losers who watch too much anime and need to touch grass" or "Goths who will boil and eat your cat" then why are you steamed?

A:

Because "significant" and "annoying" aren't synonyms. I don't need to believe this is the single most culturally powerful depiction of goths in existence to dislike what it's doing.

What irritates me about this particular stereotype is that it takes a subculture with decades of music, fashion, DIY culture and internal diversity and filters goth women through a very familiar lens of sexual desirability - "goth" as an accessory to the fantasy of the hot, available goth girlfriend.

The South Park goths are a caricature too. So are the "anime loser" and "cat-boiling weirdo" stereotypes, and I can criticise those when they're in front of me as well. Other stereotypes existing doesn't make this one less worthy of comment - this happened to be the representation in the video I was looking at, so it's the one I commented on.

I don't rank every cultural irritation on a league table before I'm allowed to be annoyed by it.

Maitri and Valor (Christian Death)

Q:

So would you say "I'm being annoyed on the Internet about something that doesn't really matter"?

A:

I'd say I'm annoyed on the Internet about something that isn't especially high-stakes, which is different from saying it doesn't matter.

Most cultural criticism concerns things that aren't matters of life and death. Representation, stereotypes and commodification can still be worth noticing and discussing without pretending they're the gravest problems facing humanity.

So yes, it's a relatively minor irritation. No, I don't think "minor" means "meaningless."

Cosey Fanni Tutti (Throbbing Gristle)

Q:

Well, I know you said you didn't have a problem with the women themselves--you do understand that they agreed to do this right? And it's basically part of their job?

A:

Yes, of course. I understand that they're consenting adults doing paid work, and I haven't suggested otherwise.

My criticism isn't that the women were somehow coerced into appearing, nor that they're personally responsible for every cultural meaning attached to the finished product. It's about the product itself - how it selects, frames and packages a particular version of "goth femininity" for an audience.

People can willingly participate in something and that thing can still reproduce a stereotype. Consent answers the question "did they agree to do it?" It doesn't answer the separate question "what cultural image is this piece of media constructing?"

Caroline Pierce (currently playing an elf ranger)

Q:

Ok. I'm asking a different thing. Knowing that these people worked on this project as their job, do you get that your nuance between "I don't like this video" & "you're not real goths" might not be real important to them--especially with thousands of others saying obnoxious things to them?

A:

Yes, I understand that. If someone is already receiving thousands of obnoxious comments, they may not care very much about the distinction between criticism of a piece of media and criticism directed at them personally.

But that doesn't make the distinction unreal or unimportant in what I'm actually saying here. I'm responsible for the claims I'm making in this interview, and I'm being explicit that my criticism is of the representation and packaging, not of the women as people or their legitimacy within the subculture.

I can understand why somebody on the receiving end of a pile-on might not stop to parse that distinction. That's a question of how criticism is experienced, though, not whether the distinction itself exists.

Vampira

Q:

The extent if your grievance is "this annoys me but I can't think of any way it really affects anything" correct?

A:

No, that isn't correct. I've said it's low-stakes, not that it has no effect. My criticism is that repeated commercial shorthand can narrow how a subculture is popularly understood, particularly when women within it are repeatedly filtered through a sexually marketable archetype.

I'm not claiming this video causes some large, independently measurable social harm by itself. Cultural representation generally works cumulatively, not because one video changes society overnight.

So if you want to characterise my position as 'this annoys me and it isn't terribly important,' that's fair. 'I can’t think of any way it affects anything' is using your own interpretative wording to misrepresent what I said.

Ms. Cassandra Peterson

Q:

Ok, so this "narrowing"--how could that affect anyone concretely?

A:

Concretely, repeated narrow representations can affect what audiences come to recognise as "authentically" goth, which in turn affects how people within the subculture are perceived and treated.

That can mean:

- women who don't fit the conventionally attractive, sexualised archetype being treated as less recognisably goth

- people assuming goth women are inherently sexually available or performing for male attention

- commercial spaces increasingly rewarding the most immediately marketable version of the aesthetic

- newcomers encountering the subculture primarily through that stereotype rather than through its music and broader history

None of those effects requires this one video to be uniquely powerful. They're cumulative effects of repetition. My claim is not (and has never been) that this video causes measurable harm by itself, but that it participates in a representational pattern which can shape expectations about what goth women are supposed to look like and what their participation in the subculture means.

Penny, who ordered this miniature

Q:

Let's start with the first one: if someone is not conventionally attractive and so they're not read as goth (by someone really stupid and impressionable who watched some videos) who cares? Why would even they care? How does this hurt anyone?

A:

Because being persistently misread or treated as inauthentic within a community you actually belong to can matter to the person experiencing it.

That doesn't require catastrophic harm. It can mean being dismissed as "not really goth," being excluded from spaces or conversations, having your taste and identity treated as illegitimate, or being expected to perform a narrower aesthetic to be recognised at all.

And I don't think you need to posit some uniquely stupid person who watched one video. Cultural stereotypes work through repetition: people absorb shorthand from lots of media and social encounters until it starts to feel like common sense.

You asked me for a concrete effect. That's one. If your next question is "but why should anyone care about that effect?", that's a different argument.

Chelsea Wolfe

Q:

Why should anyone care about that (entirely hypothetical) effect? Both the person causing it and the person feeling it would appear to have such a severe mental health problem to start with that the video wasn't the issue. The problem is untreated mental health problems.

A:

If you continue framing ordinary social behaviour, identity, or (illegal claim deleted) as evidence of "severe mental health problems," or otherwise introduce (illegal claim deleted) premises into the questioning, the interview is over. You're free to challenge my argument as aggressively as you like, but I'm not obliged to participate in (illegal claim deleted) or pathologising framing.

I don't accept the premise that caring how you're perceived within a community, or being influenced by cultural stereotypes, constitutes a "severe mental health problem." Those are ordinary features of human social behaviour.

People care about belonging, recognition and how others perceive them. People also absorb stereotypes. Neither of these require a mental health diagnosis.

And even if someone involved did have a mental health condition, "therefore the surrounding social influences don't matter" wouldn't follow anyway. Individual psychology and social environment aren't mutually exclusive explanations.

You asked for a concrete way narrowing representation could affect someone. I gave you one. Declaring everyone involved "mentally ill" doesn't actually rebut the mechanism. It just changes the subject in a deeply offensive way.

Morticia

Q:

Offended or not, do you dispute either of the following:

1. Someone who decides someone isn't a goth because they're not attractive has a mental health problem

2. Someone who decides they care significantly whether that person thinks they’re a goth has a mental 

health problem 

?

A:

I dispute both. Neither of those facts, by itself, is sufficient to diagnose someone with a mental health problem.

More importantly, I explicitly told you that continuing to frame ordinary social behaviour as evidence of mental illness would terminate the interview. Your very next question did exactly that.

So the interview is over. You may publish the answers given during the agreed interview period under the terms we established. I won't be answering further questions.

Astarte

Q:

Yeah you have been perfectly clear: you think things that are absolutely bananas aren't and that pretty much explains your whole deal. No need to ask any more.

Brides of Dracula

You Got To Appreciate What An Explosive Element This Bonnie Situation Is

On Quentin Tarantino, GMing And The Art of Anti-Mystery

0. This will all have to do with games, trust me.

1. Pulp Fiction was in a small class of films that changed movies forever. Directors like it, arty people like it and audiences liked it--which is rare enough by itself--but also it changed what Hollywood thought regular people could put up with in a movie. Only a few other movies did that and most were genre movies with special effects showing you something only movies could show you (realistic moving space ships, dinosaurs, demonic possession, etc). Pulp created a director-centric frenzy not seen in a decade that lasted basically until the Marvel movies--which Pulp strongly-influenced.

2. There's no one simple explanation because, as so many people-- including QT--have pointed out, all the cool things in it have roots somewhere else. The lurid subjects appear in all kinds of old B movies, Shane Black and Howard Hawks did good dialogue in crime films before Pulp did it, Scorsese did those needle drops and cool characters, Godard and the French New Wave did a lot of the experimental film techniques, the plots were standard potboiler fare (thus the title), etc.

3. A common thesis might be that he did them all at once, but then you've got things like The Long Goodbye which arguably did as well, and a million movies since (including ones with Samuel Jackson, Uma or Travolta), which don't hit as hard.

4. I think I have a piece of the puzzle:

5. For all his interest in genre films Quentin Tarantino has never done a spooky or mysterious movie. Death Proof is mayyyybe a horror movie but it definitely is not spooky.

6. One thing Tarantino does not do is mystery. And not just spooky horror mystery but also another kind of mystery.

7. You've seen the other kind of mystery in a lot of the foreign films that Tarantino loves: a character appears and is doing something and you don't know what. It may turn out to be something banal, like shopping while waiting to hear back from her doctor about a life-threatening illness, or something crazy, like running from the mob or stepping through a time warp to talk to a machine consciousness from the future.

And, crucially, even when you do know what's going on, you aren't told what the interesting part of it is supposed to be. The point is: you don't immediately know what's going on and part of what the film is saying is: I know you're confused, we have to watch other peoples' lives carefully to see what's going on. The mystery around simple plot points is part of the aesthetic. The poetry is in the difficulty of extracting any meaning from anything in this crazy world. David Lynch was an American director who definitely did take on this kind of Euromystery. He could make a diner or a police station as strange and new as a black dimension of evil spirits. 

8. Basically these kinds of films trust the audience to eventually notice there is some kind of beauty in what's going on. But it is also possible that the audience won't "get it" because the movie never signals "Alright, here's where it's supposed to be awesome". You either notice The Week-End is beautiful and surreal and as absurd as life or you scratch your head wondering where those sheep came from. 

9. Often this is when a film critic is brought in to explain the art movie to the audience.

10. So here's my thesis about Quentin, with Pulp as the prime example:

Quentin managed to use all the techniques of arty filmmaking to make a blockbuster by chucking out the mystery and instead making the explaining-what's-going-on part of the movie. The film critic has been entertainingly imported into the movie.

He shows instead of telling---but then he also tells.

But he doesn't do it in a Deadpool way, as a winking meta-comment, he does it by making the explaining part of the movie--sometimes the best part.

Quentin Tarantino made an arty, creative movie that does not trust the audience at all. He tells everyone everything multiple times, but somehow manages to not make it condescending either.

11. The stakes, context and meaning of basically every single big plot event in Pulp Fiction are hyperexplained by characters in the movie--in ways that don't suck:

-A European director would've just let that diner get robbed in the middle of Jules and Vincent's conversation about walking the Earth. This would disorient the audience, making us feel like we were getting robbed of the one thing we now know Jules and Vince reliably supply (great dialogue)--which is fun! But QT is making a blockbuster. 

Tarantino doesn't want audiences confused by where this new two-person gun crime is coming from and what it might have to do with the previous two-person gun crime (nothing, but Godard would want that confusion--America is just full of guns and violence and so its absurdly funny for two violent criminals to get robbed at gunpoint just after a violent crime of their own). 

So what does Tarantino do? QT gives us a prologue at the beginning of the movie where the two diner robbers extensively discuss why anyone would rob a diner (Denver omelette, anyone?). We don't know why they're doing it when we see it, but when it pays off, our confusion evaporates.

-J &V discuss Tony Rocky Horror and the foot massage. Why? It sets up the stakes of the Mia Wallace date. Tony stepped out of line and got thrown four stories. Almost every other director would've let us realize for ourselves that touching the boss gangster's wife is a high-risk activity (Hell even I know that), QT makes sure we know, but does it fun, and with swearing.

-At the end of the execution scene, Jules recites a Bible verse and we're left hanging with that--shots fire and the scene ends. Why did he do that? Again, an art movie director would've just let us live with the weirdness of it (David Lynch would've), but no, QT then has Jules explain, scenes later “I just thought it was some coldblooded shit to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass.” Then his spiritual awakening is because he is thinking about what it means and he explains that.

-Christopher Walken's cameo. What's he explaining? How important the gold watch is. Again: many other directors would've made a scene where the boxer, trying to survive in a world of murder-capitalism, is fixated on a gold watch he used to own for reasons of symbolism alone. Not QT. You're gonna be told and you're gonna be told by the greatest weird-exposition scene guy in film history.

-Butch kills a guy in the ring. Do we see boxing? No. Do we see a scene where the boxer explains to a driver how he feels about killing a man in the ring? Yes we do.

-Willis blows up at Fabiana for forgetting the watch. He then, in the car, explains it all to himself (and us) again. "I didn't explain to her how important the watch was..."

-Now we have the one thing that's not glossed by anyone in the movie: the pawn shop basement grotesquerie. Why is this happening? Well, its in the title at least: Pulp Fiction. This is a lurid story and you came here for violence and cheap thrills. No explanation needed.

-The Bonnie Situation starts with the unlikely end of the execution previously seen and then Jules and Vince discussing the meaning of the previous scene--was it a miracle?

-Marvin gets shot. Grieving Marvin--Jules! friend!--takes a back seat to Jules (to Vincent), then Quentin (to Jules and Vincent), then Jules again (on the phone to boss Wallace), then the Wolf (to Jules, Vincent and QT) all explaining how dangerous it is to be roaming around The Valley in the middle of the day with a dead body.

This sequence contains almost nothing but people explaining to each other how serious the situation is and other people trying to crack jokes while they do it. And did they have to? No. Like 90% of crime directors before 1980 would've maybe spent one line reminding the audience that cops tend to notice shit like you're driving a car drenched in fucking blood, then gone about the business of having these cold-hearted gangsters get to work doing their mysterious, underground business with hatchets and garbage bags and whatever. Watch, say, Sexy Beast or Gangster Number One for great examples.

-The whole film basically ends with an exegesis--Jules explaining the Bible verse. 

12. So what's all this have to do with games? 

13. Remember: while immersion (mystery! confusion! where are we?) is fun. But the other thing can be, too: just explaining what is going down and why you should care. And in RPGs, with all the numbers, and the players who missed sessions or forgot the rules, or were in bathroom, often requires a lot of explaining--about the story or the stakes or the backstory or the math. But explaining can be fun. Explaining can be the difference between a fun afternoon at the movies and a full-on blockbuster.

Fannishness, Incompleteness, Imperfection, Fascination

We all like lots of things. We only gab all day about certain things. This is about why that is.

 

Stimulating The Gene

If someone old me they were going to make a movie where Boba Fett fights The Predator I would want to see that.

If the same person told me they’d done one where Indiana Jones fights Ernst Stavro Blofeld (a villain in the Bond films, including my favorite, Diamonds Are Forever) I would be like “Whatever. Is the movie good?”

This has little to do with how much I like the source media: I don’t really even like the Predator movies that much*—and I love James Bond movies.

Somehow, Predator and Boba Fett activate the fan gene and Indiana Jones and Blofeld do not.

Two Things

I think this has to do with two things.

First thing is simpler:

Boba Fett and Predator are toyetic. That is: they look like they’d make good toys. They also—and this is more elusive—act more like toys. What is interesting about them in the movies is very much their physical actions, what they are capable of. Indiana Jones is capable of action of course but also he's an interesting guy incarnated by the arguably greatest heroic actor of all time with all the personality and complexity of facial expression that implies—it is interesting to hear him talk. Boba Fett talking is just a prelude to Boba Fett doing something cooler than talking with a wrist rocket or some shit. His whole body, character design, look, is built to do things on the screen—he wears the backpack that he will fly with. His entire visual image is defined by actions he will take, his body is a threat—the same goes for the Predator, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Gundam mecha, a space marine, a wizard, a dwarf barbarian with an axe.

While these characters suggest to you what they might do, Indiana Jones is someone where you would wait to see what he will do. His story is as much about (cliché incoming) whats inside as what’s outside—that’s why God doesn’t melt his face. I wouldn’t dream of telling Indiana Jones what to do—that’s the job of people who invented Indiana Jones and want to tell me what he’s like.

This leads into the second thing:

There is always some sense, with toyetic characters, that what has been done with them is wrong. Maybe not totally wrong, maybe just not enough or surely not everything they could do.

I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark and I was happy. To me, Indiana Jones was basically a real guy and that thing I saw up on the screen was his greatest adventure and he told me about it. I did not need him to have another adventure or fight another guy (though if he wanted to, I was happy to hear about it)--that seemed enough for me.

When I saw Empire Strikes Back I was also happy. And I could start thinking of other, cooler things they could have Boba Fett do in the next movie. And this wasn’t just because he isn’t in it much—I liked the first Iron Man and had the same reaction.

Indiana Jones' adventure seems complete because it is part of a good story where what is interesting about IJ is woven into and somewhat solved by the shape of that story—his possibilities are, if not exhausted, then explored thoroughly. While Tony Stark is similarly solved in the Iron Man movie, Iron Man’s not: there’s soooo many cool things they could do and didn’t.

Fascination

I would say that I love Raiders of the Lost Ark (and Julio Cortazar novels, and Wong-Kar Wai movies, and cheeseburgers), but I would say that not only do I love but also I am fascinated by games (and comic books, and giant robot cartoons). 

The things in the first category are great and satisfying. The things in the second category are great and unsatisfying. You not only always want more but somehow your brain just starts going “well what about..and what about…and what about…”. I am not going to blog about cheeseburgers—I am perfectly happy with cheeseburgers as they are and lack entirely the will to tinker with them.

There is something about the kind of media for children that also translates well for adults that is forever mysterious. Perhaps it is the point that—unlike a classically great work of art—it takes no arrogance to see the flaws, while still being wholeheartedly devoted to the result. These things work on your mind and should not. They are forever incomplete in an interesting way.

This week I went through every single comic Gil Kane ever drew looking for the really good ones. I read some really good ones. I came away happy and wishing he’d drawn the Flash more, and wishing that the scripts they gave him were better. It was great and unsatisfying—and fascinating. I can’t stop thinking about Gil Kane.

I feel the same way every time I open up an RPG. That was cool—why was it cool? How come it worked or didn’t? How can we do it better next time? 

I don’t know whether everyone in the RPG scene feels exactly this—but I think there’s a reason that we blog about some things and we just sit back and enjoy others.

*Except Prey, Prey rules).

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The Theory of the Labyrinth

A good part of the magic of D&D is from a specific aesthetic effect it shares with several other types of fiction that I'm going to call The Theory of the Labyrinth.

It's this:

So theres

• The Known
• The Unknown, and
• The Labyrinth. 

The Known is like: so you go to Boston, you see a statue of a man in the town square. Who is it? George Washington. Easy to know who that is, why he has a statue here, what it means. You eventually ignore it because its so familiar and easy to understand, it's as unremarkable as a chair--despite the remarkableness of George Washington as a figure. 

The Unknown is, like, you go to the desert and see Newspaper Rock. This is the Unknown. No-one will ever be able to explain all these glyphs, painted across centuries, they are forever a mystery. Intriguing and a spur to the imagination but ultimately you know you will never understand it the way you do the George Washington. You won't access the lives of the people who made them, you won't be able to see what this meant to them--it is -unknown-and also, to a certain degree, not-knowable. It is from a time with no written records and oral traditions conflict. 

Then there's The Labyrinth:

You go to Croatia or something. You're in a tiny village. There's a statue of a man on a horse. You are with a French friend, a Spanish friend, you ask them "Who is the man on a horse?" they shrug.

Now you know this:

That guy has a name--you don't know it but he does. You can ask around and go to some archives and find out who he is, why he is important, what he did in this tiny village, this is --you know-- technically all knowable despite the fact it reaches into the distant past. 

You don't know if it'll mean anything or be relevant once you find out--you also don't know if you do the work to find out whether it'll just go in one ear and out the other. You don't know how connected it is to your current concerns (perhaps not at all, perhaps very much so) , but you know that it is both real and--to you--unknown. You -could- find out. And this weird in-the-middle space is where megadungeons live. Even for the DM--they can't take it all in just by reading it, they can't say how it'll play, it always represents more knowledge than a person can hold in their head. So it is an object of eternal fascination, even once it's explored. 

It is a Rabbit Hole. You can go down it. There is definitely -something- there.

----

Although The Labyrinth effect requires reference to the past, it is (in my reading, anyway) most common in modern authors who marvel at the complexity of the past as an aesthetic effect in itself.

Labyrinth-aesthetics in literature are frequently the result of an American author's encounter with a culture that has a long(er) and less morally-legible recorded history. The author from the younger country is more capable of being dazzled by the vastness of these functionally-infinite stories.

So: Thomas Pynchon encounters Europe and the tangled international histories that lead to WW2 in his labyrinthine novel Gravity's Rainbow.

Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges encounters the world of Old Europe inside his library and explores bookishly infinite imagined pasts in his short stories.

William Burroughs, HP Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith also partake on occasion--though their fascinations often lie further east.

And, of course, Gary Gygax, Arneson and co encounter versions of European history (via fantastic fiction and realistic wargames) and turn it into D&D, a great engine of infinitely explorable, infinitely interconnected histories.

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(I don't know about Tolkien. British but mazy. He always seemed to exert a storytellerish mastery over his fiction where you got the feeling he knew what every stray reference was to. I think his references to the deep time of his setting were to give a feeling of myth rather than an unknown of tangled obscurity.)

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I am tempted to wonder if this is one of the few clear advantages D&D's fictional background has over Warhammer's--the British authors at Games Workshop were happy to detail for you what life was like for everyone and exactly who all the bad guys were and what they were about (the better to make playable, legible factions), whereas D&D always pointed to ragged edges of the unknown--a lich is what now? The rakshasa is from India? How do you get there in Greyhawk? What is the Invoked Devastation? Who is Vecna and why are we only speaking of him in whispers?

The unfinished quality of the game fiction had a tacit flipside: if you played the game long enough you'd find out.

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Keith Giffen Is Dead And He Was Better Than Anybody

Keith Giffen died.

He has been sick for many years, so it's not a surprise but, still, I'm sad.

If you look him up, you'll notice in all the comic book news site eulogies, he's weirdly hard to summarize. They'll say he created this or that second-tier character or contributed to an influential run you may or may not have read on a comic book you may or may have not have heard of.

This is fitting--Keith's style, like his art and writing--is hard to pin down.

Here's the splash page of one of his comics:

Again: this is what they call the splash page --the big announcement page to get you excited.

Batman's face is in shadow, Robin's facing away and would be unrecognizable if this were a black-and-white comic, and it took me, a huge Giffen fan, like, minutes to realize that what's going on here is there's a blue-clad figure (Clayface) in a hat holding a knife up to stab Robin. 

This is everything they tell people not to do in illustrator school. And Giffen was great at it.

Nobody can use the traditional comic bro vocabulary to explain why his comics were so good.

He also just kept evolving. All of these are the same guy:

Defenders 50, from the beginning of his career

Legion of Super-Heroes #1 when Giffen was a fan-favorite

Dr Fate limited series, when he started getting weird

Near the end of his first Legion run

His soup-to-nuts creation The Heckler

Another later-career all-Keith joint, Trencher. Scroll back up to the Defenders and compare

Throughout his career, Giffen was dogged by accusations of copying other artists--but this misses the point. Giffen was mr anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better. Or at least weirder. He was like the Ridley Scott of comics--Oh you made Barry Lyndon you say? Here's The Duellist. You made Dark Star? Here's Alien. Ben Hur? Fucking Gladiator. You made 2001? Star Wars? I made Blade Runner. 48 Hours? Thelma and Louise.

The early work--like that Defenders page at the top--owes a clear debt to Jack Kirby, but the dense, dark designs and schematic presentation are far too deadpan for Kirby. Keith caught a lot of slack around the time of that Dr Fate page for copying Argentine artist Jose Munoz--but Munoz had that loose, indie sensibility--he didn't have Giffen's full-color design sense. 

And what Giffen did with Munoz's style...

...he summons a bodiless mouth in mid-air to annihilate Batman with green vomit. Meanwhile, what's Munoz drawing? Some guys playing jazz?

I mean, if he's not going to use his style why not let Keith borrow it?

The next page down Giffen's starting to be influenced by Kevin Maguire...

...but whatever the fuck Colossal Boy's lonely shapechanging wife is doing to herself in panel two, Maguire would never. And that snap screwball-comedy transition to the angry-eye close-up? Pure Giffen.

A major reason Giffen's going to be hard to summarize is he did exactly the opposite of the conventional wisdom about what we're all supposed to like in comics.

If I was to try to summarize what that was, I'd say it was this sort of thing:

Ahhh, the podcasters sing, the storytelling. That story sure did get told. That robot definitely busted through that wall and Batman sure does look concerned about that explosion.

We're supposed to really like that. It's clear, it's accessible, it's emotional, it's simple, it's open, it's...meh.

Ever since Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics came out people have been talking like there's something to understand. Like: it's a fucking comic, dude. It's a form literally designed to be understood by schoolchildren. It's never hard to understand comics.

People praise comic artists so often by saying "the storytelling is so clear you don't even need to read the words to understand it, it leads the eye across the page".

Who cares? Giffen realized the eye would always get across the page sooner or later because there are panels and the page is a picture the person reading wants to look at because they bought the comic on purpose to look at it. Comics aren't rocket science.

Giffen went hard the other way. He made gorgeous patterns of color blocks and shapes on the page--and if they didn't tell the story all by themselves--oh right, there's word balloons.

What does it mean? Where is the story going? Who cares? Keith Giffen built comics as labyrinths of color, shape, continuity, reference, collage, image, jokes. They didn't invite you to understand, they didn't have epic character arcs of Campbellian heroics, they invited you to come get lost in the funhouse.

Keith Giffen's comics make you go "What the fuck is this?" and honestly--if you think how everybody who loves comics loves them because they picked up issue 456 of some random comic which was part 3 of a 6 part arc that got finished in some whole other series the next year by different people or loves them after finding some manga with a mythology that you have to get through 4 fanslations a Wiki and an anime to understand--that is what a lot of people want. They want to peel the arcana apart.

I loved Keith.

I hope someone picks up where he left off.

The Most OSR Session

Before I go on to this actual play report, a legal update:

Details here. 

And here.

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Anyway, let's get back to games. This is Slorm:

Slorm is a goblin and a cleric who appears weekly in OSR founder* Jeff Rients' weekly game alongside a guy named Graham played by Lamentations of the Flame Princess founder James Edward Raggi IVs guy, Graham, a fighter who goes around dressed as the dungon-boss necromancer we killed in our first adventure.

Anyway Slorm worships a god that fell out of the God Maker, the Sister of Infinite Punishments.

Last time Slorm played, he was in a giant slime and got stung by an LotFP-style trap where he looked through a telescope and gained a view of the infinite universe like the Aleph in that Borges story and was incapacitated and then the session ended.

Then I spent several weeks not playing because life, then I came back and we're in a dungeon but Slorm now has Expanded Life Universe Perspective and talks like a SoCal acid guru who sees....who like seeeees, man, he sees youuuu, he sees what you're about, man, like....enTIREly.

So this game is Jeff Gameblog DMing, Zak S fresh off suing someone, James Raggi on fighter, two trans people and a Ukrainian sniper--you don't get more OSR than that.

So, this report straight from the from the seeeecret LotFP weekly game! (ssssh) :

Slorm wakes up to find the party's bard is dead. "Good!" he says. He is replaced by a blind dwarf.

We are in a Library. James' henchman El Grec has identified a sigil! its the sigil of the king! 

I , theee goblinn has posted henchindividuals outside the library, theres .MAGnificent fresco of the king leading troops. Slorm, filled with a wholly fraudulent sense of the inherent spirituality of a blind dwarf, says we have to follow the blind dwarf's lead through the library.

The blind dwarf has got a book off the shelf. As has Dr Merchandise thee henchman. 

(Not a real doctor just needed a name that began with D to go with previous henchfolk Astrid (R.I.P.), Boulder, and Christopher (R.I.P.).)

One d8 roll later  @Jeff Rients  "Does your character  actually read dwarf braille is the question?". More rolls, no. 

The henchmen notice one of the walls outside are bleeding. Slorm the goblin casts cure light wounds" on it, it scabs over. 

Blarnibus the Ogre licks the wall. The blood tastes significantly more acidic than expected.

Slorm then casts Cure Light on the ogre's tongue.  

The dwarves roll architecture. Nothing happens. Goblin cleric insists we just let the wall bleed because its dungeon dressing mannn. 

Slorm can see through the veil of maya ok? 

We go on. El Grec has picked up some Old Haldrani and can see a book called Lords of Gold!  It says where all the local gold mines are.

I am glad I am doing this write-up because I forgot that we found this.

Slorm can read a book called the Grimoire of Par Kaare which has some spells.

I also forgot that--Jeff what spells are in there?

but WHATEVER...down to level NEXT. We're in a huge corridor. With some...passages? idk James Edward Raggi IV is mapping so I trust him. 

Did I mention my goblin looked through a telescope into the infinite, got incapacitated for 3 sessions and now talks like a cult leader on mushrooms? Ok anyway. So he gets the blind dwarf to listen and he hears Sinister Laughter!  To the north. We go north. 

120 feet and then. Ok this dungeon is REALLLY big like it was drawn in the 70s by someone who didn't do rational architecture but its a Jeff Rients game so that is probably what it is.

(Turns out it's from Judges' Guild Journal. 2 decades of  game blogging for nothing, we are still running around in some eccentric notebook dungeon written by people who know people who give out the 3 Castles Award. ) 

We are in a martini-glass shaped room. Slorm the goblin casts Augury and does not have the spell Augury and so randomly decides to go right and not left. Both left and right doors lead to the same room.

Score! 

Goblin casts Insect Plague and sends the insects go down the corridor, they eventually find a secret door. Graham opens it. 

A TEMPLE! Scarabs on the walls. The floor is made of blue marble with white veins--all veins leading toward a laughing buddha/dwarf like statue. Blarnibus the ogre approaches it. The Statue is entirely blued silver and its eyes are gems. Slorm urges any party member but himself to approach the statue. Quoth Blarnibus "i'm gonna shake it like its a piggybank".

 

The only image that comes up when you google "Ogre with piggybank"

When he picks it up a hidden gong sounds! There's a delay on the guards showing up (Jeff just tells us the mechanic) Blarnibus rolls...4! A bunch of weirdoes in red and black start pouring out. 

I highly suspect Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a reference here. 

Weirdoes? Shaved heads and forky beards! James takes the rearguard and the goblin sends an Insect Plague to protect them.

Slorm is insane but has the Rod of something for Clerics so that's why he's casting all this bullshit. 

The lowest level cultists show up first, and the plague takes them!! We get away scott free! 2500gp statue!

So far, so dungeon. But here's that real sauce:

Then--OF COURSE!--we dress the two dwarves up like the statue of the god by paying 500gp to the best cosplayer in the village. Jeff rules that by coincidence our blind dwarf has EXACTLY the same build as the god. Because: Jeff. 

But the god mostly wears a loin cloth."I'm gonna fast-forward to the stupid corridor with the 2 sets of double doors". Slorm rolls a 2. Slorm casts Continual Light on the dwarf god's loincloths.

So they'll glow, naturally. 

So the nonblind god-cosplaying dwarf leads the blind one to the plinth. The plinth is really tall though. One dwarf tosses the other. "Does he get up there before he sets off the alarm or not?". 1-3 or 4-6? 6. 

So fuck ok the dwarves are messing around on the floor as the alarm rings. Slorm casts Insect Plague! Scarabs to the front! Protect your gods! Guards in chainmail with spears roll up.

They are not intelligent. The statue of their scarab-friendly god that's been missing has no been replaced by two gods? And a bunch of live scarab beetles.

They immediately declare--ITS A MIRACLE. The guards bow "We're not worthy!" The blind dwarf says "No you are not". 

They fetch the high priest. One of the guards is confused to see two gods. Slorm casts Command. The one word command? PHILOSOPHIZE! For a round (6 seconds) the guard rhapsodizes about how there are TWO where once there were ONE!!! A holy mystery! 

4 junior clerics roll up. Jeff rolls to see if they are swept up by the religious hysteria. They fail their save and begin praying. 

James Edward Raggi IV asks "Um no reason, just asking....whats the dwarf gestation period?" Jeff rules 12 months. 

Blind dwarf goes "I don't feel safe". 

James goes..."i'm just saying, that we have the ability, at the rate of one per year, new gods!" "WE ARE JACK KIRBY!" 

 

Jeff: "You know i don't do this very often but I'm awarding everybody 50 extra xp for shenanigans!" 

550xp each. 

No fights.

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