Tag: character

Posted on

Kayfabe Collapse
or Repent for the end is nigh

Did you hear the rapture is happening? Or already happened, I’m not sure, I haven’t been keeping up. Feels like proclamations of the end times are being spread every other weekThis one had a bit more traction because of TikTok and the faithful arrogant have been giving away their worldly possessions in the USA, all in the belief that they are going to be beamed up to heaven in the rapture any day now.

Funny stuff because every time one of these things comes around it’s related to loose interpretations of the book of revelations, casting barcodes or chip and pin as the mark of the beast, but there’s never any of the wrath of God stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria¹.

You think you’ll never see any proper signs of the end times…

… and then one day your Dad tells you Penn and Teller just became members of The Magic Circle.

Continue reading “Kayfabe Collapse
or Repent for the end is nigh”

Posted on

Miku Miku Beam
or Fighting Evil By Moonlight

I want to start a new series of articles on this blog for alternative theme personas for magic acts. Partly to move people away from wizard acts, but also as a creative exercise.

The creative part ensures that I won’t devote any more column inches to well trodden ground such as doing mentalism as a Sherlock Holmes character, or pretending the mob broke your thumbs for cheating at the blackjack table in an underground gambling den.

Today’s alternative theme: Magical Girl.

Continue reading “Miku Miku Beam
or Fighting Evil By Moonlight”

Posted on

Antibrand
or Leader of the Opposition

In my last post I mostly provided a lot of background information for the real topic I wanted to get into. In the end explaining the situation was a whole post in and of itself, so the real meat will be here. How to break out of the expectations of cultural hegemony.

For those who still don’t agree that this is something worth doing, there’s a blog post which explains the full reasoning far more succinctly than I ever could by girl on the net. It’s called The Facile Debate About Separating Art From Artist and its an SFW post on a very NSFW website. If you don’t want to read some filthy smut, just read that post and then leave the page. If you do want some filthy smut then you’re welcome I guess.

Anyway this isn’t about whether or not you want to burn down the Hogwarts in your mind. This is about how to actually do it.

Continue reading “Antibrand
or Leader of the Opposition”

Posted on

Culture War
or Magicians stop referencing Harry Potter challenge 2025

I need to start compiling a list of magicians doing good things for the art, culture, and diversity of magic. Through the years I’ve mentioned magicians doing amazing stuff in the field and a list of legendary magic heroes would be a great resource.

Today I’m going to plant my flag a little. As you might know, I live in the UK and I’m as queer as a bottle of crisps¹, which is why the recent news coming out of the equalities and human rights commission is so troubling.

Sure, America has a despot in the oval office using a stacked supreme court to dodge legal accountability while he makes unconstitutional attacks on minorities, but at least over there it’s recognised as an authoritarian coup using strongarm tactics to impose a christofacist regime. Here the official voice of equal rights is imposing transphobic laws, the independent press report constant fearmongering about trans interlopers, and the most left wing government we have available are that the press and right wing pressure groups have valid points and thanks the EHRC for providing “clarity” in their rulings.

On top of all this, the richest woman in Britain has vowed to fund push back for any legal case where a trans person has attempted to assert their rights, specifically for the purpose of setting case law to deny those rights more robustly. And she’s our most beloved cultural export, who people hold up as a champion for progressive politics.

📌 But put a pin in that, I’ll get back to her later.

This post is about legendary magician hero, Justin Wilman.

Continue reading “Culture War
or Magicians stop referencing Harry Potter challenge 2025″

Posted on

What’s Your Damage
or SIMPLICITY

It’s not often I point to writers in other fields for this blog, but I want to steal an idea from one Lu Wilson (who uses any pronoun so I’m going to mix it up).

Lu writes a wiki-blog-garden, which means their posts are hard to sort or read in order. Their site branches by topic and theme, but the posts also cross link, which means the new posts feed is useful but might be the worst way to read the site.

Just today (at the time of writing) she posted about live coding synths in real time to make music much like playing a keyboard. And every so so often she would write a word in UPPERCASE for added EMPHASIS.

Except that this is all a ruse. A con to hide the truth of this format choice. The words chosen are key phrases but they also have one other common trait. They all have three or more SYLLABLES.

Continue reading “What’s Your Damage
or SIMPLICITY”

Posted on

Angels and Demons
or The Ballad of Tyler and Nikola

I feel like I need to start this post with a disclaimer that I have met Nikola Arkane multiple times, got on just fine with her and while I don’t know her well enough to arrogantly describe her as a friend, she is an acquaintance that I have almost entirely positive feelings towards.

Which is why when I needed one, she made a perfect nemesis.

Much like my earlier post on hatred as a motivating factor, I feel like recasting a person whose success you are envious of as a villain in your head allows a much stronger drive to defeat and surpass them than any kind of aspirational idolisation might offer. It didn’t really work out¹ so I am currently nemesisless, but in the peak of her villain era there was one thing she did about 5 years ago that I really didn’t agree with, and I want to contrast and compare it to something which is happening right now, as a kind of learning exercise.

Continue reading “Angels and Demons
or The Ballad of Tyler and Nikola”

Posted on

Shabbycadabra
or Let’s See Jon Allen’s Card

A couple of days ago I saw a lecture by Jon Allen. It was pretty good, lots of solid thinking, strong methods, entertaining effects, and everything he said made perfect sense… But when he explained his reasons for doing things the way he did, I continually found myself disagreeing with him.

Normally when I disagree with someone I can put my reasons into words but it wasn’t until much later that I realised what was going on in my head, and when I had this epiphany it suddenly made a lot of other things slot into place in my head, such as why I have so many props I never use.

Jon Allen is too professional.

Continue reading “Shabbycadabra
or Let’s See Jon Allen’s Card”