{"id":9620,"date":"2020-12-27T12:09:26","date_gmt":"2020-12-27T20:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=9620"},"modified":"2021-02-24T16:34:34","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T00:34:34","slug":"the-2020-back-end-escapist-fan-art-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=9620","title":{"rendered":"The 2020 Back-End Escapist Fan Art Festival."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Looks like WordPress changed the rules: you can’t embiggen by clicking any more. You have to right-click and select “View Image” instead.

Stupid WordPress.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Time for the semiannual Gallery Update\u2014that moment when, coddled by a comfy world devoid of trouble, you can dip into newly-uploaded visions of Wattsian dystopia for a bit of cold water in the face. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doesn’t quite seem to cut it this year, does it? These days, dipping into the worlds of Blindsight<\/em> and the Rifters trilogy seems less like a warning of things-to-come than a bit of nostalgic escapism. I mean, sure, Covid is a candy-ass wimp next to something like \u03b2ehemoth; and while the White House is significantly closer than the Oort Cloud, the nonsapient alien that lives there<\/em> at least offers more in the way of comic relief than the Scramblers ever did. But the monsters from my imagination don’t show up until the back half of the century; hell, Echopraxia<\/em> goes so far as to postulate a functioning, high-tech global civilization persisting right up to century’s end. Take a look at that cheery little doomscroll running down the right sidebar and try telling me that’s not, once again, delusionally optimistic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So escapism it is, then. And in keeping with that festive thought and these festive times, you’ll see a disproportionate number of this year’s new pieces tending towards bright, neon whimsy. You’ll see an homage to the Brady Bunch in amongst the usual grimdark, you’ll see excerpts from three, count ’em, three <\/em>imaginary graphic novels. You’ll see Jukka Sarasti sharing center stage with a Maine Coon<\/em>!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I’m highlighting eight pieces here, but that’s a small fraction of the total: by my count we’re looking at 44 new works of fan art (technically more than fifty, but I mooshed the separate panels of those graphic-novel extracts down from separate images to single contiguous murals). All but four reside in the Blindopraxia wing<\/a>; three are over in Rifters<\/a>, and the last is in Sunflowers<\/a>. Since the last upload, three artists have grown prolific enough to warrant their own subsections; two of them, YamiEA<\/a> (aka “Olga Marshmallow”) and SingingWhalebone<\/a> apparently know each other. I can only assume they’ve been talking behind the scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So have at it. Check out the new works. As usual, deep gooey thanks to all those who’ve been moved to illustrate my various invented hellscapes, and apologies to anyone who doesn’t want their stuff shown here (I’ll take it down if asked, but I’ll sulk while doing it). Immerse yourselves in some escapist fantasy art for a moment’s respite\u2014but when you come back out, remember: 2020 was only prolog. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy holidays. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First Starfish cover\u2014 imaginary or otherwise\u2014 that actually singles out the central thematic visual metaphor of the whole book.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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This is pretty dead-on, central-thematic-metaphor-wise, too.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looks like WordPress changed the rules: you can’t embiggen by clicking any more. You have to right-click and select “View Image” instead. Stupid WordPress. Time for the semiannual Gallery Update\u2014that moment when, coddled by a comfy world devoid of trouble, you can dip into newly-uploaded visions of Wattsian dystopia for a bit of cold water […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-on-ink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9620"}],"version-history":[{"count":68,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9827,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620\/revisions\/9827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}