Things I Like
"[...] so I decided that if I didn't get better than them in four years I would kill them,
and since I didn't want to go on the run if I was a good artist, I just kept drawing." -- Tatsuki Fujimoto
Some Sort of Introduction
Oh, hi there! I'm mel, also known as fractaldunes in a lot of places. However, you can just call me secondvector here. I like the "fractaldunes" name a lot, but it is one that has been borrowed from one of my favorite artists. Thus, I would like to use "secondvector" instead when it comes to my own art. My works are still heavily inspired by that artist and other artists whose works I love, but I want to define my own name and make it something uniquely mine.I mostly made this site to have a place to host and share my art outside of tumblr, but I also just have a certain fascination with neocities. I enjoy how expressive people are allowed to be, with both design and coding. I hate coding myself, but it makes me really happy that I get to be a part of this side of the internet. I also get to see a lot of webcomics, and that's very very cool.
So Many Dynamos
Theyre really good and it makes me so mad that a really badly written Pitchfork review is what did them in. I don't even think Pitchfork are the devil or anything, it just sucks that what did it was a really poorly made piece of criticism. If you like Dismemberment Plan, Math Rock, or 00s Indie Rock, then the Dynamos are for you.
Webcomics and Quests
One of my earliest memories with the internet is reading Weaver's Rubyquest. I was certainly WAY too young to be reading something with any amount of gore in it but it ended up being pretty formative for me (and not in the mentally scarring way). I've developed a fascination with comics as a medium, and how the accessibility of webcomics impacts its form. So many people are able to make the comic they've always wanted to make and share it with others due to just how low the barrier of entry is. There isn't even that much crap! The biggest problem with that low barrier is that it can be really hard to find new comics to read; especially ones that fit your tastes.Quests as a subgenre of webcomic are really underexplored, but they also seem almost impossible to run without going crazy, so it makes sense. It's like being a Tabletop GM for a bunch of strangers who are constantly bickering with one another over things that are completely irrelevant to anything actually going on. I do not envy their position. Still, the quests that do work are really cool. Rubyquest and Nanquest were my introduction to the subgenre, and I think they do a great job of wrangling their players. Rubyquest played out much like a 90s point-and-click adventure game, what with the escape rooms and item puzzles. It did have some strange choices in continuity in order to prevent the players from having too much agency, but I think it ends up being pretty effective. Nanquest is a lot more focused, with the lack of continuity and clear logic in the setting being part of the point. It gives its players a lot less to do at any one moment, letting us spend more time with the setting and its characters. The Hotel ends up being a significantly more memorable location than the Metal Glen due in part to just how long we spend in the "same" locations, all while slowly dredging up its history and learning more about its internal logic. Outside of Weaver's work there's Rootquest by Fileto. This one is still ongoing and I'm also a long-time player in it, so I can't say too much about it. What impresses me the most about it is the way that the players are contextualized within the story. We exist within the world, but our only agency comes from what our companions allow us to do. Though we have a lot of influence on their actions, we lack any real power. They are free to ignore our ramblings as they choose, and it prevents our arguments from getting too bad. Our knowledge and perspective grants them an advantage, all while we slowly learn more and more about the workings of the setting and its history.
Magic: the Gathering
Magic is really really fun. I only got into it last year (around the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm (banger set btw)) but I've been having way too much fun with it. My girlfriend and I have formed a micro-meta of kitchen table 60-card decks alongside the Commander decks we play against our friends and we do drafts pretty often and I got to go to my first pre-release earlier this year for Lorwyn (though I don't care much for the set now that I've played with it) and it's all very exciting. Getting to have reliable first-monitor material is also great, and I highly reccomend the group LoadingReadyRun if you like sketch comedy or MtG. Benjamin Wheeler in particular has inspired me to get even better at the game, and I keep wanting to proxy Canadian Highlander decks to play with and it's all very exciting to me. It's a wonderful game to play.And also a wonderful series to read! I want to get around to reading the old books (probably starting from the original Ravnica trilogy) but the actual story and lore of the world(s) is so incredible (and sometimes infuriating). Even just reading through the wiki or the flavor text on cards has been very rewarding for me, and the stories they release with every mainline set (as short as they are) are really fun to read as well. Most recently, though, we got our hands on their first proper book in like 10 years, and it's genuinely very impressive. Seanan McGuire is a proper established author and you can really tell with her prose. It's a gorgeous book, and I highly recommend it. Magic is very fun.
Favorite color combination in theory: Black and White
Favorite color combination in Commander: Black and Blue
Favorite color combination in 60-card: White and Blue
Favorite flavor text: Golgari Locket (GRN)
Favorite land: Grove of the Burnwillows (FUT)
Favorite planes: Innistrad, Tarkir, Alara (Esper, Grixis), Mirrodin
