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RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 12 – “Wigloose The Rusical” Review & Power Ranking

March 18, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the twelfth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “Wigloose The Rusical.” It’s a winking drag lip sync parody of Footloose that arrived at the perfect time, plus an “Everybody Say Glove” runway theme.

RuPauls Drag Race Season 15 Episode 12 - Wigloose The Rusical Title CardDrag Race couldn’t have gotten the timing of the release of this episode any better if they had consulted a crystal ball. This Rusical about outlawing drag comes just as many states in America are passing anti-drag bills that cast drag queens as inherently predatory and indecent.

Of course, the idea that drag is inherently adult or sexual is absolutely ludicrous. Drag and blurring the lines of gender has always been a staple of entertainment for all ages, whether that’s in Mrs. Doubtfire, Steven Universe, or William Shakespeare.

A drag queen reading a storybook to children is truly no different than the reading coming from someone dressed as a Disney Princess. Both are forms of exaggerated femininity, and it’s up to each parent to decide when that’s appropriate for their children.

Really, these bills are a simply an old tactic brought back to life in the ongoing war on transgender Americans and all LGBTQA* people waged by hate-filled Republicans.

Legislating against drag is often synonymous with restricting all forms of presenting yourself in a gender non-conforming way. It tries to enforce gender norms with threat of public shaming, felony charges, court costs, and even jail time.

It’s important as part of this conversation to state clearly that doing drag is not synonymous with being trans. Trans women are women dressing as themselves – they are not doing drag. Not all drag queens are trans women, and not all trans women have done drag. However, if it is illegal to perform in drag, does that also make it illegal for a trans person to perform as themselves? If it is criminal for a drag queen to be seen by children, does that also mean it’s criminal for a transgender person to be seen by children?

Republicans are interested in blurring those lines if it means they can harm more queer people and erase them from being visible in every day life.RuPauls Drag Race Season 15 Episode 12 - Wigloose The Rusical - Musical

If I grew up under one of these drag bans, I would not have been able to dress androgynously in high school. I would not have been able to give one of my first performances in a theatre, which was in drag as Jackie O. And, in the present day, I would be at risk of being charged with a felony as someone who sometimes drives my car while wearing long hair, make-up, and high-heeled boots just because that’s how I like to look.

Of course, these laws are not all about me – and, I don’t even live in America anymore! However, I use myself as an example to show the kind of intentional side effects that come with these laws.

No anti-drag law is truly about keeping drag confined to night clubs or removing children from risky situations. They are about trying to enforce gender norms in all walks of life, which has the side effect of criminalizing being visibly trans or queer.

I often struggle with whether I should be writing about drag on Crushing Krisis. Do people who like comic books want to see these posts? Should I be writing them as someone who is not a drag queen and is not active in a queer subculture? Is it somehow embarrassing or inappropriate for me to be writing about drag as a business professional? What would my clients think?

These laws and their accompanying discrimination is why I write about drag. Drag deserves to be visible. Drag is for everyone. Drag is art just like comics are art. Drag artists deserve essays and analysis written about them just like artists who create comic books, movies, music, and other forms of popular and fine art.

Drag isn’t going away and neither are LGBTQA* people. It’s important for everyone who can safely do so to show their support and resistance to the advance of hate in the world in any way they are able. It felt good to see my favorite television show make its own silly statement about it in a week where any form of queer joy is welcome.

(It didn’t hurt that it may have been their best Rusical of all time.)

This highly-enjoyable, highly-relevant episode of Drag Race slightly shuffled the rankings compared to last week’s comedy challenge. However, it mostly confirmed what we’ve known all along to be our top four, with one very lovely, very loose fourth-runner up.

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win!

[Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 12 – “Wigloose The Rusical” Review & Power Ranking

Filed Under: politics, teevee Tagged With: Anti-Drag Laws, discrimination, drag, Drag Race, LGBTQ, RuPaul's Drag Race, RuPaul's Drag Race Season 15, Rusical

Breaking News: D&D continues support of Open Gaming License (OGL 1.0), releases their core rules SRD under Creative Commons

January 27, 2023 by krisis

Huge news breaking in the past hour: In a totally shocking reversal, D&D and its parent companies Wizard of the Coast and Hasbro have abandoned plans for a restrictive update to the Open Gaming License (OGL) that would revoke the existing OGL v1.0. Even more shocking, they have released their “System Reference Document” for free under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License!

Image by ScalyDragon from Pixabay

I first wrote about these changes and the depressing effect they have on TTRPG creators and players alike a few weeks ago.

The OGL v1.0 is the license that allows 3rd-Party creators to publish products that use the rules and core concepts of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

Now, D&D has gone beyond re-affirming their support for that license by offering free and irrevocable access to their entire 5th edition core ruleset – called the System Reference Document (SRD) under Creative Commons.

The now freely-available information not only includes rules of play, but standard spells, and classic D&D monster state blocks. You can access the massive 400+ page document here.

This is a massive shift, not only compared to the proposed restrictive OGL v1.2, but compared to what anyone imagined was possible a few months ago.

In the words of D&D executive producer Kyle Brink from his announcement post:

This Creative Commons license makes the content freely available for any use. We don’t control that license and cannot alter or revoke it. It’s open and irrevocable in a way that doesn’t require you to take our word for it. And its openness means there’s no need for a VTT policy. Placing the SRD under a Creative Commons license is a one-way door. There’s no going back.

Our goal here is to deliver on what you wanted.

Of course, many 3rd Party producers have already announced creating their own open gaming platforms, like Paizo and Kobold Press. However, D&D has undercut those plans by making the 5e rules available in Creative Commons in perpetuity. That changes the playing field for smaller creators, who can continue to create content that will sell to 5e fans with total security.

Gizmodo has more context on this breaking news story.

Filed Under: games, news Tagged With: Dungeons & Dragons, Open Gaming License, TTRPG, Wizards of the Coast

A Surprise Farewell to Prime Minister Ardern

January 19, 2023 by krisis

I was head down all day today burning through work work and comic guide work without loading a single website or social network, which allowed for the comparatively occurrence of E sharing breaking news with me (rather than the other way around).Washington Post - New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern resigns ahead of election

“Have you seen the news?” she asked as we all sat around the table after finishing dinner. Her tone of voice was portentous.

My mind raced. We don’t follows news on sports or royals, nor are we all that mindful of celebrities and influences. E certainly wasn’t bringing me any fresh developments from the world of drag or the Marvel United Kickstarter.

I loaded the Washington Post homepage, fearing the worst – more gun violence in the states, or a bad political development. There was nothing apparent “above the fold.”

“No, what am I looking for?”

I saw it just as she said it. It was the next story that appeared as I started scrolling down the page:

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern resigns ahead of election

(For my American readers: the simplest explanation of a Prime Minister is that they work a lot like the Speaker of the House. The party or parties who control the government nominate one of their own who was elected as a regular representative to be the head of their party, which also makes them the head of government. The people have no control whatsoever – which, come to think of it, isn’t such a bad thing.)

I have mixed feelings on this news. [Read more…] about A Surprise Farewell to Prime Minister Ardern

Filed Under: politics Tagged With: Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand

the early bird gets the eggs

January 9, 2023 by krisis

Today I woke up at 6:55am, laced up my running shoes, and walked to the supermarket because it was 6:55am and I was definitely not jogging at that hour.

Why? Because New Zealand has run out of eggs. We are officially in a national egg shortage. It’s an ovo-crisis!

I mean, New Zealand has some eggs. Personally, we’ve got about 23. But there are not enough eggs. Few enough eggs that it has become common over the past month to visit the grocery store to see an entire bank of egg shelves picked entirely clean, which didn’t even occur during the height of our lockdowns.

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

Yes, people are even buying that one last carton in the corner with the cracked egg in it.

Apparently one measures these things not in terms of eggs but in terms of laying hens. Literally, the chicken came first, in this scenario. I have learned from the prestigiously-titled Stuff that we currently have 3.5 million egg laying hens (a 68% hen-to-people ratio), but we ought to have 3.8m egg laying hens (a 74% hen-to-people ratio). Those hens (and their predecessors, I suppose) laid about 92 million eggs in the year ending in June 2022, down an apparently staggering amount from 101.2m in the prior egg-laying calendar year.

Long story short, today I learned you need three hens for every four people.

The thing is: it’s not like New Zealand just found a whole lot more people. Even if we count tourism, we don’t have as many people in our borders as we did back in 2019, and there hasn’t been any chicken-specific diseases (that I’ve heard about, anyhow – and, we do have a line into the chicken community).

How did New Zealand run out of eggs?

To the best of my understanding, we actually ran out of eggs 10 years ago and just didn’t realize it until last week. [Read more…] about the early bird gets the eggs

Filed Under: news, thoughts Tagged With: eggs, New Zealand

35-for-35: 2001 – “Subdivision” by Ani DiFranco

November 19, 2016 by krisis

general_ani-difranco-by-danny-clinch-5

My second-favorite shot of Ani, shot by Danny Clinch.

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]As occasionally problematic and non-intersectional as Ani DiFranco can be, sometimes her willingness to just say stuff makes for compelling, provocative songs.

Case and point: her song “Subdivision” from 2001’s double-album Revelling/Reckoning, which starts with the line “White people are so scared of black people.”

Despite the bombshell opening line, “Subdivision” is not a song exclusively about racial divides, but about Ani’s beloved home town of Buffalo and her beloved country. Her city has seemingly been left behind by a march of modernity. Here, she wonders if that march is just about having the money and privilege to put more space between ourselves and our fears. Maybe if we’re far enough away we no longer have to confront them.

Except: when we’ve forgotten, buried, or sublimated all that we’ve been running away from, how will we know when it is stil driving our biases?

I had a sense of foreboding when I picked “Subdivision” as my song from 2001 as I prepared for this campaign last month. I’d be posting it just 10 days after the election. I wondered how its message would play in a post-election America, the same country we lived in the day before the election but potentially seen through a new lens. What would it say about a world where Hillary Clinton won the election? What about a world where Donald Trump won? Would it be equally true in both?

Now we know the outcome, and I ask that you simply listen and take from it whatever message you hear. That first line will always stand out for me, but in this redefined world it is teaching me something different than it was a few weeks ago.

Subdivision
by Ani DiFranco

White people are so scared of black people
They bulldoze out to the country
And put up houses on little loop-dee-loop streets
And while america gets its heart cut right out of its chest
The Berlin wall still runs down main street
Separating east side from west

And nothing is stirring, not even a mouse
In the boarded-up stores and the broken-down houses
So they hang colorful banners off all the street lamps
Just to prove they got no manners
No mercy and no sense

[Read more…] about 35-for-35: 2001 – “Subdivision” by Ani DiFranco

Filed Under: elections, Song of the Day Tagged With: 35-for-35, Ani DiFranco

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