I’m FancySchmancy, an eldritch scholar of the watery underworld, on an academic quest to draw every creature in the multiverse. Last week’s theme was “Vampiric.” Here are the creatures we discovered.
The Jack Black the Ripper Vampire
With a gut full of noxious fumes and a voice of heavenly metal, the Jack Black the Ripper vampire is known to siphon box office profits with his multi-hyphenate fangs. Yes, his presence in film is pervasive, but remember, he can only star in a video game franchise if you explicitly invite him in.
Skibidi Toilet Vampire
Subsisting on the veins of brainrot iPad babies, the Skibidi Toilet vampire is the latest and perhaps most peculiar case of vampire evolution. When it’s not stalking the sewer systems and fomenting esoteric world wars, it’s shopping screenplays for its Michael Bay movie adaptation.
Vampire with Too Many Familiars
Vampires across the multiverse have mortal familiars to help them scour for new victims. While Dracula recruited an adult Renfield in one universe, in another the Renfields were a set of quintuplets. Thus the baron of fear became a father of five. Shame he’s not an early riser.
Join me live Wednesdays at 7pm EST on Twitch to suggest what creatures I draw based on the weekly theme. Our next theme: “Rock Solid.”
Movies aren’t meant to be content. I think the Netflix era has made us forget that. They’re not like podcasts or lo-fi music, things we passively ingest while we do the laundry or finish our homework. That kind of media has its place, but movies are different. Movies are intentional, multi-sensory experiences that are worthy of our full attention.
That’s why I like watching movies in theaters. At home, I have a hard time sitting long enough to enjoy a movie in one sitting. Chalk it up to ADHD, the myriad chores around the apartment, or the infinite other stimuli the internet puts at my fingertips. But in a movie theater, I’m more than happy to stay riveted to my seat for two hours or longer. I love the ceremony of getting popcorn and soda, like I’m getting wine and bread for communion, less with the Holy Spirit and more with the human spirit.
I’ve been telling friends and strangers alike that you need to see Ryan Coogler’s Sinners in the movie theaters while you can, because it’s a reminder of why movie theaters exist in the first place. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know what it’s about: two fraternal gangsters known as the Smokestack Twins return from 1930’s Chicago to start a juke joint in their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi. In doing so, they radically alter the life of their cousin Sammie, a guitar-slinging blues prodigy, while enticing a terrifying trio of music-hungry vampires out of the Delta darkness.
When I say this movie should be seen in theaters, I’m thinking of the scene where Sammie first plays his first song. As his music swells, the camera circles the juke joint in one continuous, mesmerizing shot. As it does, spirits from the past and future of the blues appear, from modern hip-hop to African folk music, weaving fluidly into each other, and growing with such intensity that the juke joint erupts in metaphysical flames. Rarely do I drop my jaw in any literal sense, but that scene had me breathless. It’s one thing for a movie to say that music has otherworldly power. It’s another thing to make you feel that power in your bones. And I can’t imagine that feeling happening on a flat-screen TV in my living room, knowing there are dirty dishes in the sink.
There are elements of this movie that steal the air from my lungs even in retrospect. For example, if you told me that Michael B. Jordan had a twin and was not, in fact, playing two people in this movie, I would have believed you. When the Smokestack Twins are introduced, they exchange a cigarette, and my thought was, “Wow, that was really seamless.” From that moment forward, I forgot they were one actor, as if they had just hypnotized me with a close-up magic trick.
Honestly, the acting was magic in general. I could’ve watched Delroy Lindo deliver hours’ worth of monologues. Wunmi Mosaku and Hailee Steinfeld were as perfect as tightrope walkers. And the fact that Miles Caton could anchor the film as Sammie with such tenderness and sincerity, while learning competent blues guitar, in his first acting role ever, is a testament to his own artistic prodigy.
The character I can’t stop thinking about is the vampire Remmick, and the relationship of vampirism to Whiteness in this movie. It would’ve fit the narrative alright if Coogler had made his vampires overt White racists, like the clan member that sells the juke joint to the twins. Instead, he made Remmick an Irish American, old enough to have endured centuries of oppression at the hands of the English. He’s sympathetic to the plight of Black Americans, but his remedy for their pain—the vampire transformation—is nothing more than a living death. It may offer them unity and power under the guise of “fellowship and love,” but it ultimately incarcerates the soul.
You can hear Remmick’s own soul crying out from its prison, as he dances a jig and sings a raucous, haunting rendition of “Rocky Road to Dublin,” trying to coax his victims to let him into the juke joint. The metaphor for Whiteness is as subtle as a stake through the heart. It’s a consumptive force that can only devour, imitate, and suppress, and it’s worth exposing to the sunlight, to let its power wither, so we can all reclaim what’s been taken from us.
See Sinners in theaters if you can. Be bathed in the blood.
Lately being on the internet feels like clamoring up the topsails while it sinks deeper into AI-infested waters. The latest shipwreck is Duolingo, where CEO Luis von Ahn proclaimed his “AI-first” agenda on LinkedIn, much to the chagrin of the language app’s userbase.
Duolingo has been on the enshittification trajectory for a while now, which bums me out, because I’ve actually enjoyed the app quite a bit. It’s cheeky, it gamifies language to make it more fun, and it’s helpful for reinforcing vocabulary. The persistent (if not outright threatening) green owl is probably responsible for me speaking Spanish with more fluidity than I used to.
But in the last year or so, AI has been slowly plucking out the owl’s feathers. The lessons reek of the sterile non-sequitors common with LLM generation. The UI has become more predatory as it pushes you towards higher subscription tiers. And the AI video calls with Lily, while novel, are often clumsy and uncomfortable, as you rush to complete your sentences before she responds to half-uttered phrases. In some cases, the conversations turns weirdly puritanical: when her AI asked what I like to drink, it hung up on me when I mentioned I sometimes like to have a beer.
Despite these foibles, von Ahn’s message to users is, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. In fact, he mentions “occasional small hits on quality” as they reorient their systems to AI, an odd promise when your current AI products are upwards of $150 a year. Not to mention those hits on quality will probably be larger and more frequent than a well-polished corporate memo would have users believe.
Although maybe the most sinister aspect of the memo is telling employees that Duolingo “cares deeply” about them. That rings pretty hollow when the first casualty of their “AI-first” philosophy is outside contractors. It’s a bit like telling the permanent crew of your ship you’ve got their back, while you walk the merchant sailors off the plank.
All in all, it’s a terrible look. As a brand guy, my sympathies go out to the marketing team. The frenzied, absurdist meme-fest of their content has garnered a lot of good will from their users for years now, and their CEO just set it ablaze. But sadly, this feels like the inevitable descent of every publicly traded company these days: the quixotic pursuit of infinite profit derived from zero labor. The mythic perpetual motion engine of capitalism.
I won’t be renewing my Duolingo subscription when it expires. Look as menacingly at me as you want, Duo. I’ll just shut the curtains and wait for you to get bored.
As with the previous week, this past week’s theme of Parasites was inspired in no small part by the general state of affairs on planet Earth. Here are what species we discovered based on Twitch chat’s prompts.
Parasitic Pigeon
(Prompt from CeruleanOak)
Pigeons, to me, are a tragedy of mistaken identity. Often called the “rats of the sky,” they are, in fact, domesticated birds gone partially feral due to generations of neglect. Yes, they flock to your cities, because they were literally bred to occupy them.
On an alternate version of earth, not only had they gone wild, they’d gone vampire, thus wreaking their revenge on their once affectionate masters. No longer content to eat crumbs, they now feast on human flesh. Should make you thankful for your own sky rats, no?
Parasitic Landlord
(Prompt from Nipplepotomus)
In a forested world, there are stout, gnomish creatures who suck every last nutrient they can from those who occupy the land. These are the parasitic landlords, and should you fail to till their soil, their carnivorous hands will find other means of consumption. Beware eviction, for it means your devouring.
Krangfield
(Prompt by Welkhiki)
A clash of radical dimensions forged this unholy creature, a mechanized feline with no autonomy, piloted by a sentient lasagna. Its megalomaniac quest will not cease until every Monday has been eradicated.
Iron Giant Spider
(Prompt by IdhYaa)
Finally, a mistake in reassembly has resulted in this creeping abomination. While it once idealized the benevolence of Superman, it now craves only a complete body, and will perhaps roam the earth collection scraps until it can reach its former status.
The FancySchmancy Creature Feature happens every Saturday on Twitch. I am FancySchmancy, an eldritch undersea scholar on a quest to draw every creature in the multiverse. Each week, I select a theme, chat gives me prompts, and the Abyssal Bestiary selects which prompts we draw. Join me!
For no reason in particular, I’ve felt like the world’s been a bit trash lately. I don’t know, something about a dull cadre of third-generation nepo-babies tanking the economy for the lulz gives me the sensation the country is their dumpster, and we’re just living in it. So, in the spirit of the pungent refuse that is our shared existence at the moment, last week’s Creature Feature was themed “Garbage.”
Trash Crab
The Creature Feature started with this delightful creature, suggested by Twitch user Nipplepotomus. It reminds me a little of the Mimic-style toenail jar I drew a couple Features back. At least one creature in this world is thrilled about the abundance of rubbish there is to consume.
Shrimp Pimp
This one, suggested by Twitch user Timochet, veered away from the Garbage theme a bit, but it’s in keeping with Twitch chat’s obsession with me drawing crustaceans. As a wise man once said, shrimping ain’t easy. (Forrest Gump, maybe?)
Biblically Accurate Robber Baron
As far as Garbage goes? This one tracks. Bonus points, because it has chat’s other favorite meme, which is me putting lots of eyeballs on things.
The FancySchmancy Creature is a live drawing show every Saturday morning around 10am EST on Twitch. Each week, I play an eldritch scholar from the watery underworld, drawing the infinite creatures of the multiverse. I pick a theme, chat gives me prompts, and the Abyssal Bestiary picks which prompts to draw. One of them could be yours!
