Post 400: DOG GOD DELUXE

 

click here for the goods

 

SALVE ITA EGO SUM CANIS

DOG GOD has returned, almost a full year since its first installment. Volumes 1 and 2 have been properly scanned (no more shitty phone photos!) and compiled with the material I had made for Vol. 3 (which I had made enough of to bleed over into a fourth if I wanted), resulting in a handsome 52 pages of magazine cutups for your inspiration needs. 

I promise nothing but jank (all befitting the name of DOG GOD, of course), but I am happy with the end result. Cutup and blackout are woefully underutilized in this sphere, and hopefully this might inspire folks to recycle some of their old magazines. I'd love to see some DOG APOCRYPHA floating around out there.

DOG GOD is here. All hail DOG GOD.

 

**

 

I had been planning on a reflection post, since 400 posts leaves a whole lot of material to look back on, but to be very up front about things 2021 has not been a particularly good year, personally or creatively. A thousand thousand little stresses have built up upon each other and been compounded by the total loss of any sense of the passage of time. Periods of burnout seem to come more frequently and with greater intensity. My drafts folder becomes a graveyard, my words slabs of lead dropping lifeless to the ground. I cut trenches in the earth trying to push the boulder uphill. Attempts at running games fizzle out on contact. On a good day, it feels like I'm just treading water. I find myself asking "What am I doing? Why am I even doing it? Is it even fun anymore?" with alarming regularity.

Now, before I get too far down the rabbit hole, this is not my first time with hobby burnout and past experience should help in averting the worst of it. I've still got products that I care about (and some of it is, quite good I think.), but the pacing, for the time being, is due some shake up and some refocusing. Unicorn Meat will happen, I promise, and it's not like I'm going to run out of draft ideas any time soon.

When your brain tells you to slow down and take a break, take a break.

 

DOG GOD Vol. 2 Rises to the Top!

 

Click here to download

Yes, it is true! The second DOG GOD has emerged into the light, shuddering and covered in amniotic fluid! It rises to join its preceding volume in the pantheon of cut-up zines that are made by me, that you can download and look at WITH YOUR VERY OWN EYES.

As before, this issue draws mostly from the Nov 99 and Jan 00 issues of Dragon, but it has been augmented by a collegiate alumni magazine, a 2018 issue of Counseling Today, and the Sept 2020 issue of Cosmo.

This one has an actual, functioning prose fragment in it, which I am immensely proud of.

More magazines will be required for the next one of this style, and so I might turn my gaze towards book recycling or Wikipedia redactions or so on for the next.

There's not much else to type here. Go read this dumb thing I made.

DOG GOD Vol. 1 is Live!

 

What

DOG GOD is a cut-up zine.

Why

Those old Dragon magazines weren't going to be of any other use and I was bored.

Who

It was me, I did it.

Where

Here

When

Now

In What Order

This is volume 1. Further volumes are dependent upon me bumming more old magazines off my friends.

***

In full seriousness though, this was a load of fun to make and I can't wait to make more of them. There is a certain therapeutic joy in cutting stuff up and breaking out the glue sticks. Collage does not get nearly enough play in this weird little rpg scene of ours, despite it being an art form with a barrier to entry so low that you have to dig to find it.

The magazines used for this zines were a pair of Dragon issues from the turn of the millennium (Nov '99 and Jan '00, I believe), which I had bought several years ago in a used bookstore.

They were pretty awful. Turn of the millennium D&D, right on the dying breaths of AD&D and the dawn of 3e, was awful. Modern D&D's milquetoast blandness is manna from heaven compared to the simmering stew of racism, sexism, mediocrity, and utter lack of humor that existed two decades ago. It is from an age before the development of self-awareness.

But at the same time, it is a fascinating archaeological look into the past of the hobby - ads for video games that no one has heard of by companies that no longer exist. Some actually really good art tucked away between pieces that can only can be described as "certainly an attempt". There is a certain personality here, even if it is an odious one.

I cannot believe that Knights of the Dinner Table was a comic that existed.