From Square Enix selling off some of its most notable IPs to Heartstopper taking the world by storm with its queer love story, the past week has been a busy and eventful one.
With it being Thursday, it’s that time again for us to look back at some of those highlights, both the good and the bad, like MTG releasing a card that’s a diamond in the rough, finally representing all body types, but shining a light on how little Magic does this sort of thing. Then there’s the memeification of the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trial, undermining what’s a very serious topic by turning it into an entertainment highlight reel.
Heartstopper Interview: Director Euros Lyn On Bringing Alice Oseman’s Queer Story To Life
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This week, lead features editor Jade King sat down with director Euros Lyn of Doctor Who fame about how he brought the Heartstopper comic to life in the Netflix show and how he’s handling such a positive reception from the LGBTQ+ community.
“It’s so exciting to see the show having an emotional impact on people,” Lyn told us. “Countless stories of people feeling empowered to come out to their parents as a consequence of having seen the show, or older generations of queer people watching the show and feeling slightly overwhelmed by the emotion of what might have been their memories, or what could have been, or what they once had.”
Interestingly, Lyn hadn’t come across the comic until he read the script for episode one. Afterward, he decided to read the graphic novel and through the two, he came to interpret Heartstopper as a story that’s all about celebrating queer love and how “wholesome” and “pure-hearted” it can be, that “love is love across any sexuality.”
Bearscape Shows That Magic: The Gathering Needs To Respect Fat Characters
Wizards of the Coast has a new promotion called the Pride Across The Multiverse Secret Lair, with eight new cards from LGBTQIAS2+ artists. It’s raising funds for queer youth charity The Trevor Project, and features new art for Magic’s first trans character, a gay marriage, and more. But something that MTG specialist Joe Parlock and the community latched onto was one card that depicted fat bodies.
It’s called Bearscape, a play on the term ‘bears’ which is usually used opposite ‘twink’ to mean larger, hairier, and more muscular gay men. The card embraces larger bodies in a unique way that hasn’t been seen before, and is diverse beyond that, as it shows affection between men, stretch marks, all manner of hairiness, and even surgery scars.
But the response to the card from the community was mostly memes, and that response came off as “dehumanising” to use Parlock’s words. That’s because there aren’t any named characters to latch onto as on the other cards, but rather nameless people used in the art instead. It showed that Magic is lacking for any larger, 'bearier' queer characters it could've used, which is something that needs to change if MTG is to truly embrace all body types.
The Memeification Of The Johnny Depp, Amber Heard Trial Needs To Stop
Speaking of ill-fitting memes, the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial is ongoing, with both parties alleging that the other was abusive. But this serious topic has been fizzled down into bite-sized clips of Depp “owning” Heard’s lawyer or Heard “acting” as she shows any sign of emotion in court. Our editor-in-chief Stacey Henley took a look at this court of public opinion through the new online lens, with TikTok and other platforms exacerbating the problem.
The case has been turned into a match where fans are picking sides and creating fan cams for their favourite of the two, ignoring the complexities and depth to the case - that the two may have very well brought out the worst in each other, or the undermining of male victims in media. When looking into this case, it might be best to use sources that aren’t ten second clips on social media with Wii music in the background.
Square Enix Is A Fool For Giving Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal Away For Pocket Change
Square Enix has a troubled history with its Western studios, often throwing them under the bus for “underperforming” or blaming studios for when things go wrong as in the case of Crystal Dynamics and Avengers. But nobody foresaw Square Enix selling off Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, Crystal Dynamics, Eidos, and more for as little as it did.
Jade King talks about as much in her piece, examining the flaws with Square Enix’s decision and its bizarre focus on blockchain, a failing plan as NFT sales have dropped by 92 percent. But King goes beyond looking at what’s happening now - the problems with such a deal - and looks back at Square’s history, its reliance on Final Fantasy, underwhelming remasters, and other service-based games that continue to fail.
Bugsnax’s Depiction Of Failure Is Painfully Real
Bugsnax is a fairly lighthearted ordeal, giving us a glimpse into a world of furry critters who turn into food items when fed all manner of things from apples to hamburgers, but evergreen editor Ryan Bamsey saw something a little more hard-hitting beneath the bright colours.
He notes that every Grumpus you meet is dealing with severe, personal failure, and that it forms a pattern that runs deep through the entire game - an underlying theme. And each one is resolved, usually in a positive way, teaching us that failure isn’t a bad thing but an opportunity to grow and learn. It hit close to home for Bamsey as he platinumed Bugsnax the month after he left his PhD program that he’d spent a year on, working to become a doctor after ten years of wanting to, and Bamsey says that he did fail, but that it isn’t a bad thing, and that Bugsnax helped him to get through that grief of failing.