Welcome to the Gamer Dad Podcast, where we talk about all
things Magic the Gathering and gaming.
We strive to keep things fun fit into our busy lives because
gaming's worth finding time for. I'm Gamer dad Bob, a 30 year
Magic the Gathering veteran who's played formats from Legacy
to Standard to Commander, and I've brewed some absolute
nonsense decks over the years. Jesse can vouch for that.
But nothing quite as chaotic as and as fun as what our guest
brings to the table tonight. And I am Jesse Hoagy, also a 30
year Magic the Gathering vet dad of 2 gamer girls, a guitar
player of questionable questionable skill, and the guy
who somehow still blames manuscriu for all his life
problems. That's right, it bleeds into
real life when when you get manuscript.
Tonight we are joined by Jane Judge.
You might know her as Jane plays Magic Grixis, evil dungeon
master, community builder and con regular.
Now, I've seen you at every con for like the last couple years.
I'm doing my best. We're going to get into all of
it, the decks, the content, the community.
What exactly is a Hex girl? And yes, the person behind it
all. But before we dive in, remember
this podcast is powered by you, our listeners.
If you'd like to support, we do head over to Patreon.
Most of what's there is free. It's kind of where I post my
blogs, essays, deeper thoughts around MTG, the podcast,
production work. If you want to chip in a few
bucks, it helps keep everything running.
The podcast, the gear, the time it takes to get this stuff
right. It's completely optional, but it
is the best place to keep up with everything happening behind
the mic. And also, don't forget to stick
around for flavor text or song lyrics.
At our midway point, will Jesse try to stump me with some
obscure card or pull something off my plate?
And before we really jump in, let's talk a little bit about
who we have sitting with us today, because this is someone
whose presence has genuinely made waves across the MTG
community. Jane.
As most of you know, her Jane plays Magic, has built one of
the most creative corners of the Commander scene.
She's the grixist witch behind the Hex Girls themed pods.
She's dabbled in CEDH, just told me she has a CEDH tournament
coming up very soon, cooked up some new formats, or at least I
think so in secret partners and somehow makes it all look
effortless. She's a Las Vegas creator,
cosplayer, dungeon master, and full time community builder.
Her audience keeps growing, over 1500 subscribers on YouTube,
more than 1600 followers on Blue Sky, and a few 100 loyal
regulars tuning in on Twitch. Those might sound just like
numbers, but what they really show is connection.
People show up because her tables are fun, inclusive, and
authors authentic. Jane has championed marginalized
voices, lifts up the trans community, and brings that come
as you are energy to every Commander table she touches.
Her streams mix style, personality, and play skill in a
way that's completely her own. And if you've caught her live,
you've already know that energy is contagious.
We're thrilled to have her here today to talk magic, creativity,
and what it means to show up as your full self in this hobby.
Jane, welcome. Thank you.
It's so crazy to hear you say
all of that about me. I'm really here living my
dreams, just playing some Magic the Gathering for everyone to
watch. And you do want to watch, and
I'm so honored. And it's all true.
At least Jane approved it. So it's definitely true.
Right. So diving right in here.
So I like kind of getting people's magic origins and not
for like the sense of give me your magic credentials and why
it's important on how long you've been playing and
everything. But I feel like seeing you in an
interview, maybe it was with Shivam, you mentioned that Lord
of the Rings was your entry point.
Is that correct? So.
Did Universes Beyond do its job here?
Tell me a little bit about that. I do think so.
I started playing Magic in 2020. I was a COVID magic baby and I
did just mostly stuff at home. And then my partner and I just
went to the LGS one Friday. We were like, OK, it's time, I'm
going to go do a draft. Let's try that out.
And it ended up accidentally being the pre release for Lord
of the Rings, which we didn't know was a thing at all.
And it was the most magical experience of, you know,
anything that I've ever done in magic.
And I drew Gollum patient plotter.
And I was like, oh, though before this I had been just been
playing for my partners collection who loves Selesnia.
So he had traded away all of his cards that weren't like, you
know, little token creators or big stomp guys.
And Gollum was a graveyard kind of mechanic.
And so I built this deck about graveyard mechanics.
And that was the thing that really was like, OK, I'm into
this. It has stuff that I like too.
So did did knowing the Lord of the Rings lore kind of help you
understand the cards a little bit better?
I'm assuming that that's what pulled you in also, right?
Absolutely. I am an extended versions Lord
of the Rings girly. I know all the little facts
about Viggo Mortensen's toe and the tomato and you know.
Love it. Freaking love it.
So fun. Fact.
Definitely. From my hometown.
Really. Yeah, his parents raised him in
Watertown, NY. That's where I'm from.
Small world, huh? And you've never.
Fun. When he was, when it was like
the whole movies were in in the theaters and stuff, I was like,
hey, he's from my town. That's cute.
I think one of our best is like Kelsey Grammars from Saratoga or
something. Jesse.
Yeah, yeah, somewhere around there.
Jesse and I grew up in the in the same area.
We do not live near each other anymore though.
Yeah. I decided to move South into
better weather. I got tired of the winters and
now I'm thinking about moving back.
N So what do you remember about picking up the game for the
first time? So we have playing your
partner's decks, right? And and you got a heavy dose of
selesnia. Were there any decks that you
looked at from his stuff? And then you're like, well, I
don't quite like this, so I think I'm going to try and build
something. What made you go Yeah, this is
my jam? My partner realized I was
getting bored, I think, and he got some of the dual decks.
We had Obnixilis versus Nyssa, so I of course played the evil
Abnixilis. Lots of hot cards in that deck.
It was really fun. But the one that really got me
was the Might versus Mind dual decks and the Mind 1.
You have like this three cards in a row that you have to play
and if you do them all on one turn, you get to go in your deck
for free and find the Unspeakable and put it out on
the battlefield. And he didn't tell me about
that, so he just sat me down with the sleeved up deck and was
like, here you go, you're going to solve this little puzzle.
And that was interesting, maybe the best Magic experience I've
ever had. Somebody just handed me a deck
that was a little puzzle I didn't know was coming.
And yeah, that was quite the experience.
And you solved it. It sounds like too as you were
playing. A few games, I didn't do it the
first time and I was like, I don't wanna shuffle, I don't
wanna see, I don't wanna know what's in there.
I wanna find this out like naturally through the game.
So yeah. Okay, that's kind of cool.
It was really fun. I highly recommend the dual
decks. There may be one of the best
magic products out there in my opinion.
I think any of those kinds of decks are really good entry
point into TCG. Like my son is into Pokémon and
I'm trying to find some of those decks, but of course scalpers
get them all first. But I love those dual decks, the
entries. I mean, I remember Angels versus
Demons, those dual decks from from the thousand 10s, right?
Those were fun too. And and Jace versus Chandra.
That was some of the first plane planeswalker decks I saw.
I didn't know what the hell planeswalker was.
I was like, what do you mean they have planeswalk?
Like what planeswalk? Yeah, they can attack in a
plane. No, no, these are a different
card type altogether, Bob. I was out of Magic for so long
and came back in like prime Lorwin planeswalkers coming into
Origins here and Oh my gosh, talk about drinking from a
firehose. I can't imagine what your, your,
your life has been like here. And then you gravitated.
I get to play a game. And then every time someone
shows me a new card, that is just a fresh experience to me.
So and then you gravitated toward Grixis, right?
Which is the blue, black and red Shard.
So was it Sauron? Was it Saurmon was it?
You know what was inspiring there?
I love. Brixus I went shopping for pre
cons and I was like OK, I want a vampire, I want something that
does sacrifice and I found the new Kapena one on Hello the
painter. That's my my very first Brixis
deck and I haven't taken it apart to this day because I just
love playing it. I think the commander deck just
in the box plays so incredibly well.
It's a perfect power level to not be totally overpowering if
other people are playing pre cons, but also you get to play
26 tap 22 zombies sometimes. It's very exciting.
It's a deck with a lot of drama and flair in it.
Chris Mooney did this deck. He also made Parnessa, who's
like maybe the more powerful alternate commander in that one.
But you know, Anhala's got the flavour.
But Chris Mooney also did the Avatar decks.
So I'm really, really excited to play with the quick question
there. He was the head designer for
this one. Yeah, you have them pre-ordered
then? Of course.
Love it. So was it?
It was always Grixis. Never dabbled in like the Esper
Shard, the white, blue, black, or Bant, the white, blue-green
or. Did think I was Demir
originally, and then I was like, red is a little too crazy.
I don't know, I don't want to just discard my stuff.
I didn't like exiling my cards and not doing some sort of
graveyard value thing with them. But then yeah, the red really
accelerates the on Hello deck in a way that no other color can
really do. It just makes it go a little
faster, you know? Goblin Mayhem.
Jesse, you love red decks. I love red decks.
Like I think all I can't. I have a hard time thinking of
any deck that doesn't have red other than Slesnia.
I'm a big slesnia guy too. My first ever commander deck I
had was Celestnia and it was Rise the Redeemed and that
actually had like the original duels.
I had a Gaze Cradle in there and then I sold my car.
That's but yeah, red is always, I'm always a John guy usually.
So I'm always, always using the red.
Was there an early moment where your deck did the thing that I
was supposed to do? And what did it feel like
finally to dial that that in? I mean, I think you already
described it was kind of that the puzzle thing that you had.
Yeah, I do love the puzzle. But honestly, when I was first
building that Golem deck, my very first commander deck I ever
made, my partner was like, is this even going to work?
Does this do something? You know, because he's just
paying me for one every time. It's just like the smallest
little thing. And then when it finally
happened and I was like, OK, this is going to work.
You know, I'm building it out of traps.
So it took a few traps, but we got there and we got something
that really, you know, it slapped.
And that was really fun to design something that wasn't
just something that was handed to me in a little magic package.
I think a lot of everybody's commander experience, it's like
I'm just throwing these cards in a pile of 100 Singleton.
I think there's some synergy here.
Let's see what it does. And then you kind of reform, you
know, you refine it from there and it's like, OK, now I've got
some combos, now I've got some synergy, now I can do the thing.
And, and I think that's really cool that you you kind of found
that in the Golan deck. Sorry.
But I love playing a hot stack of garbage.
It's so I was. Going to say that's like
everybody's commander experience really is you.
You have your first deck. It's just the card that you
like. It's like all these are my
favorite cards. I'm gonna throw them all into
like this doesn't work, so let's try this.
Let's try this. And then it's kind of like just
iterating on it every every single time you change it.
Yep, Jesse and I saying the same thing.
That's so wild that that just popped into our heads there like
that. So you came into Magic Jane in a
very connected area, right? There was such an amount of
content. There's Discord servers left and
right. I've lost count of the amount of
ones that I'm a member of at this point.
There's online pod spell table. It's such a different starting
point than a lot of us had in Magic the Gathering.
How do you think that's shaped what Magic means to you in
particular? Well, funnily enough, for the
first two years that I played Magic, I didn't really engage
with any of that. You know, my partner, I had some
questions or whatever. They showed me a professor video
and I was like, OK, that seems like it's for nerds.
Took me a few years to figure out I was one of them.
But I think I just didn't really engage with the Magic content
that was out there because, you know, personally, it just didn't
feel for me. It was focused on making decks
more powerful and that wasn't really a problem I was
encountering. So it wasn't, it wasn't
something I really wanted to watch.
I only really started getting into like the online community
when I started being a creator. And that's just because I was in
the mail. And it's more fun to be in a
community that you can actively participate in, at least in my
experience. So until I had something to say,
I didn't. I didn't come in What?
What was your first play group liked, if you remember that and
you still play with those people?
I do, I do. My first play group was just
kind of my local community, my friends.
We got a lot of them into Magic because, you know, we didn't
have a lot of Magic playing friends.
But it turns out there are a bunch of weird nerds in Las
Vegas who like to play Magic too.
So we found them all and you know, some people from my very
first play group moved to the Netherlands and so we have like
an every other week spell table game with them.
I think Magic is such a great way to stay connected with
people and it has really been that kind of through line in my
life. How I feel bad?
Yeah, like Bob said, he moved away and we we still play
commander over spell table. So it's it's definitely a great
way to stay connected. It's a great excuse to sit down.
She said the Netherlands and I'm like now I feel bad because I
have one of my good college roommate friends is is Dutch.
He lives in the Netherlands now and I'm like, I never talked to
him and we never play because of the time you.
Went to. Amsterdam.
Together to the I went. To Magic Con, I went to Magic
Con Amsterdam, but I haven't talked to him much since.
It's it's, yeah. You got to wake up early in the
morning. I got to do better.
It's funny because you're
friends with him and I also was in online games with him too, so
it's like we got to swap friends back and forth.
She was like, did any other creators help pull you in early
or was it more like friends that were kind of polishing things
up? Oh, I was so lucky when I very
first went to a Magic Con. I went to Magic Con Vegas in
2024. This was like right when I was
first kind of toying with the idea of being a content creator.
And I came to Magic Con and I met some of the people in Birds
of Paradise and I went and sat at their purple tables at the
the Magic Con thing. And it was like a, you know,
safe space for queer gamers or whatever.
And I met so many cool people. And those connections are really
what skyrocketed me to where I am today.
And I'm so grateful to the people who talked to me when I
came and I was nobody with weird decks and a weird outfit on, but
everyone wanted to say hi. The Magic community is very open
and welcoming. What'd you say?
The Gathering Grounds. That's where I spent most of my
time in Atlanta this year. I was hanging out with the
Pendragon crew the. Gathering grounds is rad.
It, it is really cool. There's you get so many people
in and out of there too, Like if someone who's standing with a
clicker, I mean, the amount of people that rotate in and out
from those tables, it's wild. And and the Birds of Paradise
booth was always packed, right? I love it, I love it.
Always packed as as I observed. That representation really
matters, you know, we find each other.
For sure, for sure. And, and, and you know what,
we'll touch on this a little bit later, but like having that
welcoming presence is so important as a creator in
general. You don't want to put up those
walls. You, you need to be there for
everybody and you have to truly care about it because you're not
going to succeed if you don't truly care if that's not who you
are. So when did it go from playing
games with your local play group to sharing them, to recording
them, putting them up on YouTube to streaming them?
What made you decide, yeah, I'm going to hit that live button?
I guess I had already had a little bit of training.
I had done some D&D streaming, and I was looking for a new way
to do something that I streamed like a game on Twitch.
And so Magic kind of filled that space for me because I was
really nervous. You have to get three people
together to do a Twitch stream. It is a big ask, gathering three
of your little friends together to do a game on a certain time,
and they have to look a certain way, be presentable or show up,
have all their lights on and whatever.
You know, it's really, really hard to to do, but luckily there
are like a good fifty of us that are very motivated and all come
on each other's streams. So ever since I started, it has
been easy to fill pods and I'm so so grateful for the community
for doing that for each other. Was it nerve wracking at first?
I don't know, it's kind of nerve wracking, but like I said, I had
training and you know, performance is in my blood.
I need a little something to get me nervous and ready to go.
I always have, you know, some weird performance that I'm
planning or you know, moving towards and Magic gives you so
many opportunities to do that. You know, at Magic cons, which
is my favorite thing in the world, doing the spectacle
plays, doing events. I love to do that kind of like
crowd work and big performance in person.
You. What was the the was it
spectacle play that you had with Brad and Steph was and it was
like weird first person cameras. That that wasn't a spectacle
play. They just had a a table over in
the creator zone at Magic con Atlanta and they let the
creators apply to like have an hour or two there.
We just filmed an episode in VR 360 because I have a lot of
VR360 camera. So I just brought it.
I hooked it up. If you go to my YouTube, you
know, you can go sit at the convention and watch like, you
know, the decked out crew have meet and greet right next to us
playing an episode of magic. It's wild.
It's really, really fun. Yeah, I, I caught it on your
channel. I was like, what, What am I
looking at here? This is this is a very different
camera angle that I'm used to for these these kinds of games.
You can click and drag around if you want to watch and if you.
Have a VR headset you. Can plug right in so you can
see. I wish I could do that.
I'd. Try that with my.
I'd get most of Jesse. You're going to have to tell me.
Yeah. I have.
It's not the Quest 3, it's the Quest 2 I have that.
I'll have to try that. Yeah, our VR camera shoots an
8K, so it should look crisp and delicious.
Wow. So you've built this real
identity with your hex girls pods. 1st I'm going to put my
old man hat on because I I truly don't know this.
What is a hex girl and can can I be 1?
And then second like how did the idea start for these?
OK, OK, so a Hex Girl is a scooby-doo fake band.
So it's like a three girl band. They're all goth, they're all
witchy, they're gorgeous, they're punk.
You know, it's this sort of like witchy band that like, you know,
defends the castle. There's like a, you know, a big
monster who like comes and is threatening them. scooby-doo
people save them whatever they did.
A couple of these movies, they're great.
The Hex Girls songs, though, spectacular and the styling on
them is like such classic 90s goth girl punk.
Like it's a real cult sensation, I would say with the girlies,
especially the gay girlies. So everyone had a favorite hex
girl that you had a crush on and a hex girl that you wanted to
be. So it was very, very easy to get
people to build a Hex girl decks because everyone had this
emotional connection to them. And you know, I'm doing a couple
of other media tie insurance and stuff like that, like maybe
Powerpuff Girls and things like that.
Stuff that people have a like a real strong color identity
associated with as well as an emotional connection to.
But out of all of them, Hex Girls is definitely the one that
took the pod by storm. And and we've seen like the all
braids pods, right? The the you had an all venom pod
also. OK, OK.
So we're, we're we're getting a theme here, right?
I love to do a silly theme, you know, I am a soccer for a mini
game or you know, anything like that.
I didn't write this question down, but do you find that you
you kind of role play a little bit in these pods?
Do you, do you almost, you know, you get to put on your Dungeon
Master hat and you get to role play a little bit as well for
these pods as as you're going, as you build the themes out.
Most definitely I will put on a silly voice and I have a little
attitude and energy about it. I really love that.
I think something that magic feels for me is that like play
space where you can be an adult and it is still acceptable for
you to do a silly voice and do a little plaything together.
It's really a space where people are open to that kind of magic
and that kind of connection, and that's, you know.
I thrive on that. I always joke that one of these
days, of course, I I can't do this now because I don't, but I
was Jesse, do you remember I used to joke and say that I was
going to sit down at our F&M and role play the entire night as as
a planeswalker playing the deck. I used to threaten that and and
say, I'm just going, I am Bob the enchanter and I cast counter
spell and and I would have gotten kicked out so fast.
But that's the kind of safe space that that you have where
where people can be someone else at the table.
I love that put on your secret identity with me.
Yeah, you've also been running something called Secret Partners
and I have to know, is this something that you've cooked up?
Because I haven't seen that in any sub formats or anything.
And, and the idea that I, I of it sounds so fun and so insanely
chaotic. Can you, can you talk to us a
little bit about that, that format of EDH and, and and just
describe what, what it is? Yeah, it's really such a blast.
OK, so before the pod sits down, I have my partner who is not in
the pod assign a name to everybody.
So he just randomizes our names and hands out a name to
everybody. Sometimes you do a little pod
design to mess with me, like, you know, changing patterns or
whatever. But everybody has an assigned
partner and you win if only you and your partner are left on the
board. But if your partner dies, you
can't win. That is just off the table.
So it's like an alternate win con, a secret, and also a
diplomacy game rolled into one. So there's a lot of like trying
to throw people off, like not trying to say who's your secret
partner in the beginning. There's a lot of drama involved
in this. So I think it's really fun
actually did not invent this, though I did steal it.
I think I watched it on a Tabletop jocks episode actually.
I was going to say who? Deserves the credit there.
Let's make sure that they get that if we can.
I do think the tabletop jocks stole it too so it's something
that's been out there for a while man and I highly suggest
if you want to do it on your channel, please play some secret
partners. Mini games are so fun.
That has got to be so wild, like, and obviously there's the
unspoken rule, right? I can't be like, Jesse, come on,
we got to do this, get your shit together.
You know, we got to win this, do that.
Though, you know, and that works as a bluff, as a different
tactic. You know, there have been people
with all sorts of strategies that come to the secret partners
table. Sometimes people don't know that
we're doing that or, you know, don't build decks around it.
But I've had people come on with the deck that is like, I'm gonna
kill at secret partners with this deck.
So. Huh.
Yeah. That's a whole new dynamic that
I haven't followed. Yeah, that sounds fun.
Yeah. Yeah, it does.
I did come up with one mini game which I think is such a blast
and if you want to steal this one please feel free.
Also it's called Chaos EDH where we have a random Skyfall card on
the screen and anyone can cast it with mana of any color.
That one's it's really intense. It speeds games up quite a bit.
Is it like 1 cast or cast at any time you want?
You cast it, and if you cast it, a new card comes up.
So sometimes people cast it just to get it out of the way, so
there's a new something cool. Yeah, it's fun.
That's really cool. I know Joe Kilchar is playing
that now on this channel so. OK, that's completely random.
Like you don't choose it it it's just random.
Wow, sometimes it's a crappy one and we just all like agree to
that one software. We're just switching.
It's very vibes based. Cool.
And you do CDH two, you're pretty much doing everything.
You went all in on that. Do you flip like a switch
mentally to go from like casual to competitive?
You know, this may surprise you, but I play CDH almost exactly
the same way I play casual. If we're on my channel, CED has
takes these vaccines. You know, we're talking about
people's turns. Like, I don't know, I get that
it's serious and we're competitive and we're all trying
to win, yes, but like, what if we all tried to learn how to
play a CED H Jack Better Together?
Would that be more fun? Right, So do those does that
change the dynamic of CDH for you guys?
So you you mentioned that there, you know, you guys get to do
take C backsies and stuff. Is it like I fumble the combo
and and the rest of the table is going to be like, here's how it
could have gone and then you kind of walk through it.
Sometimes it's like that for people who are very new or
playing a combo for the first time.
Yeah, I do think that's really helpful.
You know, people did it for me when I started playing Tasiger
in my, you know, 20 step hoarding brood Lord combo.
Lord knows I needed a lot of help trying to learn how to do
this. In the beginning, sometimes I
would tutor for the wrong thing and people would be like, oh,
wait, you're going to get stuck there.
You know, I think that kind of learning is really helpful.
And as I have grown as a CEDH player now I don't need that
anymore and I can take off those training wheels.
But I really enjoy the space to have the training wheels and not
feel like an idiot when you mess something up and your friends
are like ha ha you suck. It's a different vibe than that.
Did you did you stream those or were those offline to start?
My very first ones were offline. I was so nervous.
I was like, I'm gonna mess up every piece of this.
I wrote flash cards, like color-coded and stuff like, you
know, I don't if I'm playing casual, I'm very low stakes
about it. But if I'm playing competitive,
I am here to win and I'm here to crush you and I need to do well.
My emotional well-being rests on this in a way that it probably
shouldn't. So, you know, even when we're
playing casual CEDH, you know, we're trying to win.
It's not like totally free for all, whatever goes.
I don't know, Jesse. It sounds like Jane does flip
the switch. It does.
It's there.
It's there, you know, and there's a certain point at
which, you know, we're in a tournament.
There's no take these backsies here.
There are spaces for certain things.
But you know, that's the code switching of Magic the
Gathering. You got to be able to read the
vibe. Speaking of switching, OK, now
it's kind of a bad segue. So do you tend to prep or play
different decks for camera as opposed to like just offline
with your friends? Does does your deck building
change? You know, sometimes Jesse, and I
know this all too well. We, we feel the pressure to
build these decks to perform on camera, streaming them, you know
what I mean? And it's like, sometimes it's
more than just like the deck needs to be efficient, but how
big is the thing that it does? How fun is the thing that it
does? And, and I mean, I, I build to
do the thing I am. Jesse, I think you'd agree.
I'm a much more casual commander player than than you are in
general, but my deck builds sometimes bleed into competitive
anyway. But I don't necessarily play the
decks cut through. You know, there's kind of, so do
you, do you kind of prep your decks different?
Do you play them different depending on what's going on?
How does that go for you? Yeah, I think kind of no matter
what deck I'm building, I'm building for the drama, for the
entertainment, for the excitement.
Even if I'm playing just personally, that's the thing
that I like about Magic. So all of my decks are built to
do a big, dramatic, exciting thing, not necessarily to win,
but I'm in the kind of unique spot where my play groups
offline are very low power, usually like one to two bracket
at the most. People are playing with chaff.
My friends who are local maybe don't buy a lot of cards or even
go to pre releases and stuff like that.
So I have to sort of code switch, shift my energy, shift
my attitudes and play with them at a lower power level, a lower,
you know, competitiveness level, which is fine, which is fun,
honestly. Sometimes I will play my decks
that are threes and fours and I will just play entirely
differently, not necessarily wrong, but like with a different
energy and a different goal in mind.
And that's fine. You know you could sit at a
table with any kinds of decks together as long as you have the
right vibes. That's that's.
True online, people are playing fours and fives and you know,
content creators go crazy. If you have access to all of the
tools, you know you're going to use them.
So people who have a larger Magic library, a larger
collection, you know, you have to, you have to play differently
around people who have been playing for 30 years like you
guys. Well, both of us sold our
collections, so we're not as. Originally, yeah, we're we're
we're definitely a doubt and that he could.
Probably quote guys cradle from memory so you know, you have to
play differently around people who know these tools that I
don't always understand. That's true.
And and there's a lot of, you know, you talked about this last
week, a lot of insider lingo and everything that that isn't
explicitly there for people like if I talk about Bob the card,
Bob, some people, many people actually don't know.
That's dark confident. I am going to say I did not know
that one. I know a lot of them.
I know. Steve, you know, and to be fair,
that's fine. And that's Bob.
Steve, you know what about? Sad Robot?
Do you know Sad Robot? I do know Sad robot, yes.
OK, nice. OK I play EDH now so I'm
learning all the little words. See, this is perfect.
So, you know, I find that I will definitely be able to play
suboptimal lines in strong decks to kind of balance things out
depending on how the table situation is too, right?
So yeah, you don't you don't have to play the optimal play
for the board state given the time, especially if like you
want to just prolong the game and hang out with your friends
longer. It's like, I don't know, I could
win right now or I could do this and continue.
The game play. Yeah, right.
So, you know, pitch that board. Yeah, there are multiple times
where someone in our pod has a way to end the game right then
and there, but we're like, I'm not gonna do that yet because
we've only been playing for 15 minutes.
Yeah. But like we want to play a
little bit longer. It's happened multiple times I
think so usually. It's from you.
Yeah, yeah, cuz like Miram or Edgar or something that will go
off and I'll have like the. Purpose when you play the
heater. Yeah and then I'm like, OK, I
could kill everybody now and then I don't.
And then 10 minutes later I regret it cuz I'm dead.
Across the YouTube, Twitch, blue sky, all social media stuff, you
have probably a lot of different different following, but a lot
of crossover for the following. Does each base feel different to
you or is it kind of like all the same and it just doesn't
matter like what color the icon is that you're going to be on
that day? I mean, there's some proof to
that, but each individual space has a different community, a
different energy. Like blue sky is where all the
girlies are. That's where you know, the gay
people hang out online. Twitter is a hellscape that
nobody posts on anymore. You know, they all have a
different energy. I really like Twitch.
The people are chatty. It's a great vibe in the room.
It's very companionly because everyone is talking to each
other real time. And YouTube is sort of like, I
don't know, screaming into the wind and hoping three people
will hear you. And you know, those three people
hear you and they come watch all your content.
And I love them. Yeah, what?
How do you feel like? What's your honest feeling about
the engagement in Blue Sky? It's weird because I have been
on so many different social medias where it's really really
easy to grow. Blue sky is very difficult to
grow on. The algorithms don't really
prioritize good content. They just show you all of the
most recent content, which has its benefits.
It also has its drawbacks. You know, every algorithm is
going to make choices and they're going to hurt somebody.
Content creators can grow really easy on algorithms like
Instagrams, but also Instagrams algorithm is deeply punishing
for those of us who don't conform so.
Yeah, that's that's interesting because I even find myself
guilty of this on Blue Sky. Like I will like a post, but I
don't click the button. I'll just kind of nod silently
and scroll on, you know, and, and I think that's just that's
blue sky in a nutshell. It's most people in blue sky
right now vibe with each other and the validation loop,
feedback loop doesn't exist right now And, and we still need
to train each other. Oh shit, I like that.
Let me hit that like button. Let me repost that because no
algorithm is feeding that and oh, by ever, by the way,
everything in blue sky is so fleeting.
Like if you ever see yourself post something, it's gone from
from your feed in minutes. You have to Scroll down for, you
know, 6-7 scrolls before you even see your post again.
And you're like, oh, that's why I have no likes on that.
You know, it's like. We treat your friends.
We treat artists you like. It's free.
Exactly, exactly that we need to train each other better for blue
sky. That's that's actually a really
good question, Jesse. So segueing off of that
actually. So The thing is, the followings
that you have and everything, are you like elbow deep into the
analytics on like YouTube like I am?
Or are you just kind of like going on vibes and kind of like,
OK, this one worked. Maybe I can lean into this.
Or are you a little combination of the two?
I mean, I have looked at the stats pretty at length I would
say, but I am kind of doing this as a side hustle still and I'm
putting every spare moment of my energy that I can in, so I'm
just grateful for whatever I can do.
Content creation is always a formula.
There are ways to use an algorithm to succeed, and you
have to learn those. So if you don't look at your
stats and you don't learn those little pieces, then you know you
won't succeed. That's just a part of the job.
That's boring. But.
Banging your head against the wall with the same thing and
true definition of insanity at that point.
Yeah, unless, unless that's just your brand, right?
Because it is important to stay true to yourself also, right?
Because I'm not someone to start with, you know, breaking down.
Why Avatar card is controversial or not or something?
That's not my brand. So I'm not going to dig into
that side of content. I'm going to keep doing what I'm
doing and I'm going to refine that based on the stats that I
see. So that's a really good point
too. So pivoting, you have this like
whole other side now as as this cosplayer, as Adm as a dungeon
master. And when did that creative side
start crossing over with your magic content or which which
came first? I think I know the answer, but.
So I've been playing D&D and role-playing games like Vampire
to Masquerade and stuff forever. This is actually how I got into
the nerd space. This is the thing that I found
out that I love to do because you get to dress up and play a
little character and do a little voice and everyone else is doing
that. And that's exactly what I would
like to do. So I really love D&D.
You know, I am the person who shows up with a three page back
story. I am here with the outfit and
the energy. So I really, really love that
part. And that has, you know, really
increased the size of my costume closet as well.
I, you know, I did Monsters University, my first DND game
live stream before I came and did magic stuff.
It just really turns out that the people are watching magic
content in a way that they aren't watching RPGs.
There's a different level of investment that you have to have
as a viewer and watching an RPG is a weekly thing.
And you are like, you know, kind of committed for like a long
period of your life to this magic, to this DND content and,
you know, magic games. You can just watch 1.
You can just watch half of it. Yep.
Did you? So you you Vampire Masquerade
mentioned? Did you also LARP Vampire the
Masquerade? I never did any larping but I
did do a lot of Vampire the masquerade games.
I DM DA few. I was in a bunch here in Vegas.
It was really fun. OK our our buddy Matt from our
pod just did some LARP LARP ping with that with vampire.
I did too in college for a hot minute.
Realized that one of my buddies from college is actually friends
with our buddy Matt and they don't live near each other.
It was it was the strangest thing.
It was, but but the point is it was all because of vampire the
masquerade LARP like these sorts of things bring people together.
So so that's they do. I think it's great that that's
that other part of you here that that I I find very interesting
and and it just paints the whole picture right.
Who is Jane? Have you tried any of the
Vampire the Masquerade video games?
Have the soundtracks Incredible. They're.
Incredible. Yeah, The gameplay is not
exactly for me. I'm a yeah.
The second one just came. Out bloodlines too just came
out. I haven't picked it up yet,
probably one of those like on sale I'll pick it up things, but
I played the first world lines for I don't know how many hours
I was so into that the. First one was pretty fun, yeah.
It was good, like the gameplay, like the combat wasn't so good,
but the story was in the environment and like the whole
vibe was really cool. It's kind of real aesthetic
vampire. You should try it, they're
really fun. It's good.
The first one it's, I mean we're talking like I think it was over
10 years ago the first one came out.
So it's very old graphics, very blocky, but the story is
phenomenal on the second one, I think came out two or three
weeks ago. So it's a lot different
obviously, but I hear it's pretty good.
It's not like the best, but it's pretty good.
I think as far as story and vibes, like Vampire really hits
for me because it's almost like magical realism.
It's like the real world, like, you know, exactly.
I think Vampire LA, right? Yeah, yeah.
And it's just a little bit of extra magic on top of it, and
that's really cool. I think that's fun to play with.
So it looks like you're you blend performance and play a
lot. Is that something that just
comes naturally or do you have to kind of force yourself to do
it? I mean, I kind of structured my
entire life so that I could do this for everything.
I think, you know, here in the US we have sort of a lack of
third spaces and a lack of adult play spaces.
This is something that sort of had a resurgence in recent
years, you know, like escape rooms have become a thing.
And like, I don't know, men go to like axe throwing places
where you, you know, have a rustic axe you chop into a log.
It's all just, it's role-playing.
It's a public space where you can go be a different person for
a few hours. You can pretend to have this
energy that you don't normally have.
And I think we as a society are really hungry for that.
That used to be filled with other kinds of spaces, you know,
like religious community spaces and stuff like that.
And we don't really have those as much anymore.
You know, when's the last time you went to an event at your
local library? It's just not something that we
do anymore. So we're thirsty for those
spaces and working for them online.
Yeah, yeah. You do this for your kids.
But like, as an adult, you don't ever have these opportunities
to, like, let that creative piece of you out.
And magic really allows you to do performance.
It allows you to do creative building.
It allows you to do math with your friends.
You know all these things you lose from from growing up?
That's what I would say about magic, is that it really may be
good at math. That's the only.
Reason I'm good at math. It really does.
Not because you were a computer science major.
I mean, that helped, but it's all because of magic.
Magic the gathering helps with math.
You heard it here first. So so Jane, your streams, your
posts, everything you do is just aesthetic, right?
So like the costumes, the camera positioning, your cosplays.
Do you do you look back? Do you have like a favorite
theme or or like a commander pod where where everything was just
perfect aesthetic? It was it was I had I had the
best outfit. My my group had the best look.
We all had the best vibes. Everybody was in character for
that. Do do you ever look back and be
like this one? Was it?
You don't know, I would say I really love my in person games.
I think we have a great vibe at the table.
It's very kitchen table energy. You're just hanging out with
friends. And so one of those that was
recent that I really had a good time with was the one with
mental misplay for Roxy and Hannah and Cyrus.
And we played, I think we played secret partners, but we were, we
were playing whatever. And there was just this moment
where I had a demon on field and it does this thing where when
you attack, you sacrifice all your permanence, lands included.
And then you RIP 7 cards off the top and you get to play any of
those for free, but you lose all your lands permanently.
And I played this demon in a very inopportune moment and
everyone was like, I could kill Jane right now, but I kind of
want to watch this demon destroy her whole board if people pass
the whole turn around so that I got to do this thing and I lost
immediately afterwards. But we all just like realized
what we were here for. And it was for this moment of
watching this stupid demon destroy my whole board and just
ruin my game plan for me. That's funny.
It was exquisite, exquisite. Great vibes.
See that I think a lot of stuff, a lot of magic is missing that
type of attitude because that's really what it's about in my
opinion. Like, I, I mean, as I'm getting
older and I think Bob is the same way.
Like the competitive side of us isn't really as there as it used
to be. Now it's just we want to have
fun. We want to do the wacky fun
things. And that's really all that
matters to us. It's just having fun and doing
the crazy things that you might not do hardly at all.
Yeah, If I. Blow up my board and go out in a
ball of flames, so be it. Yeah.
Was it Mothman where I milled myself or something like that?
I did it just to. I drew.
I decked myself in my Watcher of the Water deck accidentally when
I thought I was going to win. Did you?
Control your own destiny in some way.
I was like, I completely botched that up.
Oh, well. And the guys afterwards were
like, because we all scooped because we thought I won.
And then someone was like, after the fact, Bob, you actually
decked yourself. Oh.
God, did you ever build a deck to go with a specific cosplayer
look? Not really.
I cosplay a lot of universes beyond characters, so like
Storm, I don't know. The design didn't really sing to
me in the way that I wanted to do something silly with it.
Storm's powerful, right? And it's a winner of a deck, but
like, I wanted to be her. I didn't want to play that.
I think sometimes I've gone the other way around where I have a
deck and I want to cosplay the character like Braids.
But yeah, I don't have a Doc Ock deck.
I was going to say let we got to get a doc octet going I think.
Yeah, I did build Venom. That was my Spider Man 1.
So you talked about the DM thing, So let's touch on that a
little bit because I, I don't think people understand
everybody. We talked about this earlier,
right? We talked a little bit about the
crossover between magic role-playing and stuff, and it's
not, it's not connected to a lot of people.
They don't understand what it is necessarily.
They're here for the Magic Gathering vibes, not the four
hour Monsters University session, right?
What I'm surprised. So that's that takes some legit
creative muscle, right? World building, performance,
keeping everyone engaged, ad libbing.
What are your favorite stories to tell in in those kinds of
worlds? Well, like I said earlier, I
love the the magical realism, almost normal kind of story,
even magic Monsters University is set in Las Vegas and it's
sort of like a school within like a secret area in Las Vegas
that only the monsters can get to.
And I like that kind of play because it allows for a setting
that you don't have to work as hard at.
You know, I don't have to build Las Vegas.
We all live here. And we know when I say, OK,
we're going down Charleston St. towards the main city, you know,
we know what that looks like. We have picture in our heads.
I have a picture in my head so I can describe the sunset as we're
driving downtown. You know, I like that because
it's easy to ground in a space where everyone feels comfortable
exploring because they've done it in real life and now they can
do it just with a little flare of magic.
You know, you can imagine yourself flying over the streets
that you were once driving in real life.
So that's the piece of my creative sort of thing that DND
really hits for me. And I know there are lots of DND
games that I've played in where I'm a silly elf or something or,
you know, I just, I played in one on MTG critical stream last
month where we were in New Phyrexia and it was like a, it
was a fun hope story of, you know, hope against all odds.
Kind of was it a was it a one shot?
Yeah, it was like a four shot right through.
Oh, OK, OK. Yeah, it was pretty good.
I think we we had some really big story notes.
We told the sort of, you know, all is not lost in times of
trouble story that we all needed in this moment to hear.
And that's the other thing about D&D is it can really give you
catharsis. It can let you work through what
is happening to you, maybe you politically and socially, in a
way where you can just bash someone's head in and get those
emotions out with your friends in a comfortable and safe space.
DND always provides that for me. You know, I play a horrible
villain or you know, I play my cute little, you know, Angel who
likes to make sponge cake for her friends.
You know, DND lets you be all of these people at once and all at
the same time. Especially as the DM, you get to
play multiple characters in a session for sure.
So let's touch on Monsters University because we've talked
about it, but I don't think our audience knows what Monsters
University is so. I don't know what it is.
Other than the movie. Thank you for the four people
who watch the entire thing. I popped into one of these as I
was researching and and it was like, if you're not 18 or older,
get the frig out of here. And that's how it opened Jesse.
And I was like, we're in not the movie, though.
So this is this is 18 plus monster on monster action, if
you know what I mean. So is this like your own home
brew? Because.
It is, yeah. That's not something I ever
considered to be in the role-playing space, but man,
there's got to be a huge market for that.
We're missing out here. We got it.
We got to do something here. There is, and let me tell you,
it's the girlies we have been. I'm going to use my 1F bomb, my
PG13-O. I used it.
No, the girlies have been monster enthusiasts, let's say,
since the beginning of time. You know, it's that thing.
Where would you choose the bear or the man?
And we choose the bear. And also the bear is hot.
That is something so you had to build.
Is this your world? Like you?
This is this is your thing. Oh my gosh.
I was going to say from other people's worlds, I didn't think
there was the. University was in Vegas but now
it's not the movie, so no, I know.
There is no Sully. OK, Yeah.
I was thinking Sully. The entire AD and D system,
that's called Monsters School of Monsters or something like that.
Oh, Monster hearts, that's what it is.
And it's set in a high school. So I aged it up a little bit so
we could get sexier, and I stole sort of the vibes from it.
But it has a mechanic system, and I didn't like how
complicated the mechanic system was.
So of course I didn't just homebrew the world, I homebrewed
my mechanics to make it much simpler.
I was playing with a bunch of my friends who hadn't ever played
RPGs before, so I wanted to give them a system with just three
stats and they just have a button that they click that
rolls that stat and they were fight, flirt and a third F word
that I can't say I can't play anymore.
OK. That's awesome.
It was really fun. It was very silly.
You know, it was just me putting my friends in a bunch of fun
scenarios and playing around. And you know, I hope they had a
blast. I sure did.
I mean, and, and if you're listening out there, it is on
Jane's YouTube. You don't have to scroll very
far. There's some cool stuff there.
There is some Enter your stuff. That's also true.
Make sure you do when your kids are in bed, do you ever feel the
pressure to just always be on when you hit that go live
button? Like do you hype yourself up
before you go live or it's just as it seems like to me, it comes
naturally, but I'm assuming that you have to do something to kind
of get in that that mindset. I have a person with a big
energy, you know, I'm loud. You notice me in a room when I
come in. But I do have the ritual, you
know, for getting ready. I have my little nails that I
put on. I, you know, do my makeup.
I, I, you know, I always take a minute and make sure that I am
like, centered and emotionally ready to perform because it's
really hard to sort of pour out from a space where you don't
have anything poured into you. So there are ways that, you
know, you have to take care of yourself before you go live.
But yeah, I'm a very boisterous person.
Naturally. Some may call me other words.
That that is something because Jesse, I mean, you're streaming
live more with with your marvel snap content and everything.
Do do you ever find that like, Oh God, Christ, I can't do this
tonight? And and do you do you ever pull
the RIP cord on it and just say, no, this ain't happening?
I'm not forcing myself to do this.
Like that's so healthy. Yeah, there's been multiple
times where usually it's during the week because I am just
eternally tired and need to sleep.
It's getting easier now that I'm getting more viewers.
When you're only. Interaction energizes you for
sure. When you're getting one person
or it's probably a BA or those stupid spam accounts that just
hop on and say hey click here from a viewer that kind of
deflights you. But as you get more and get
actual people engaging interaction with you, it makes
me want to do it. Yeah, but there's been multiple.
Times easier when you know you're going to hang out with
your friends. Exactly, exactly.
And when you start getting that kind of community going where
you have people coming back and you know them and you see them,
and for me, I'm starting to see them and other people streams
too. And they're like, oh, hey,
Jesse, how's it going? That makes it a lot, a lot
easier to actually stream and not just say, OK, I'm going to
bed, but I still do that. Like I was going to stream last
night and I fell asleep on my couch.
So that didn't happen. That's how it's done.
I love it. That's dad energy right there.
Getting the kids up at 6:00, get them to school.
You know I'm lucky if I make it past 9:00 these days.
All right, so we have reached the flavor text or song lyric
portion of the podcast. Jesse, do you have one ready?
I actually got a couple of them. I got some new ones.
I do too. We we actually went through all
our list last podcast. So we we were empty.
Yeah, I have some that I have one I want to do, but I'm 99.9%
sure you're not going to get it. I have a feeling that how does
that? How does that happen?
From any other I have a feeling? That Jane might know.
It I have a feeling Jane. Might know it, but.
You should. You should do that then.
So here's the game. Jesse and I will read a couple
lines of text and it's on us to guess whether it is a music
lyric or card flavor text. And Jane, you get to play along
because you are our guest. And at the end, we will reveal
which was which. So we have a little bit of time
to kind of think it over as we continue the interview.
You OK if I read first tonight, Jesse?
Yeah, yeah. Go.
Ahead. All right, so mine is.
She's writing it down. Getting a notebook.
I love this. Mine is infinite dreams.
I can't deny them. Infinity is hard to comprehend.
Oh boy. OK I have a hunch of at least
like if it's song lyrics or flavour text.
But I I have a hunch. So mine is a world that sends
you reeling from decimated dreams.
Your misery and hate will kill us all.
Jesse really walks the line between flavour text and song
lyrics every time because. I did do like so.
Some back story here, Jane. The first time we ever did this.
I went it wasn't fair. I went and found a metal band
that made Magic the Gathering songs.
So they were literally singing about Ursa and the Brothers War.
What's that? Was it the planeswalkers?
It was about the brothers war with Ursa and his brother and.
It was just an ashcraft. Isn't that band?
Really. So it was he was.
They were singing songs about magic.
So it was like totally not fair. It wasn't.
Fair. You're rad.
Honestly go check them out. Y'all planeswalkers.
That's something. So before we go crazy with this,
when I say Jesse's kind of walking the line between flavor
text in a song lyric, like in my mind that pops popped into my
head, that's a black card, right?
If, if, if that is flavor text on a card, I think it's a black
card, but I don't know. I don't know.
Stay tuned and we'll find out. Damn it.
I try to get a try to get obscure, but the last couple
I've done has been to me. It's been obvious, but that's
that's me. I got one of the obvious and I
completely punted the other obvious.
Well, we and then that one we did.
We both did the same song the same week.
That was Ozzy, because Ozzy died and we both.
Picked the same. Song and the same lyric.
It was pretty funny. Wow.
That was really funny. So when we spoke in Atlanta,
Jane, we're going to get a little bit more serious now for
the second-half of this. Interview serious part.
I talked about you and, and one of our goals for our interviews
that always is getting to know you as the full person who you
are, right? Pull back the curtain a little
bit, if you will. And with that comes your day
job, the sex work, right? And I really respect that
because you've been open about your day job and, and how it
intersects with the rest of your life online, right?
We see some of that bleeding into Monsters University
obviously, right I. Did Monsters University before I
was a safe for work creator. That was just a fun project for
me. So how do you, how do you find
that balance being like authentic without feeling like
you have to explain yourself? I guess I've been really lucky
in that I just haven't been questioned that often.
You know, of course there have been some incidents.
Every community has its people who are not going to be cool
about it and that's fine. That's their prerogative.
But it's just, it hasn't really been much of an issue.
You know, I separate my accounts a little bit so people don't see
both. If they don't want to, you can
opt in. But you know, it's just, it's,
it's not that big of a deal. It's the reason that I have all
of the equipment and the capacity to be able to do this,
you know, just the way people are, you know, have a nine to
five that helps them become a magic creator.
I was wondering if that was part of your influence for like
you're like, well I already have all the lighting, I have the
mics, why don't I just stream Magic the Gathering on Twitch?
This is a fun hobby and I already have all this stuff.
Yeah, I just had AVR 360 cameras filmed the whole episode in
Atlanta. My setup is somewhat similar,
not the same vein but all of the equipment I'm using now I also
use for work cuz I work from home so it's like I'm just use
the same equipment. The Internet can be brutal
obviously for judging what they don't understand.
Do you feel like the magic community has been pretty more
accepting than other communities?
Yeah, I really do. I think the queer influence in
the Magic the Gathering community is huge.
You know, I think there's a lot of us, and many, many queer
people have been tangentially involved in sex work or are more
accepting of it than, you know, more mainstream kind of
communities. And it's been easy to find my
people here. And they're so supportive and so
full of love, and they absolutely don't care.
And I appreciate that so much. That is something that that that
my eyes have been open to that in the magic community over the
last couple years as I've kind of moved into the content space
and everything. And it's like I went from kind
of sheltered F&M grinder to picking up Commander again,
talking with everybody and then being like, you know, I guess
I'll just hit that live button on our commander pods and then,
oh, what else can we do? And then you start talking to
people and getting to know them and you're like, there's a huge,
huge queer community in the magic space that I didn't know
about, that I'm upset that I didn't know about because
there's some freaking awesome people to talk to.
And here's the thing, we don't play at the LGS.
I didn't go play it in LGS for a long, long time.
I played with my friends at home because I just didn't feel like
I could walk into an LGS and sit down across from somebody and
like be respected in the same way that I am at home.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm a CIS head guy and I don't feel like I
can walk into an LGS. They're just.
Yeah. They're they're two.
It's. Not exactly a funny welcoming
space. They're yeah, it's that's not
it, man. There are some cool shops in Las
Vegas. You know, every city has its
cool spots, and some of the places are places where crew
people hang out. You know, I went to a commander
shop last night and there were like, you know, lots of women in
the room and like, OK, I love it.
That had to be pretty cool. Like the second you open the
door and you're like, well, this space is welcoming.
Good. Yeah, like the spaces that me
and like Bob, I think you can remember this anytime a girl or
woman came into our F&M shop, everybody just like girl, like
just like was just a typical. I have experienced the stairs.
Yeah, and it's not, it's not only that.
I mean, it's literally the stereotypical too.
Like, all right, what are your magic credentials?
Did your boyfriend build? I mean, the actual stereotypes
coming out in and it's like, come on, people.
Like I, we've heard people literally ask, did your
boyfriend build that for you? Like it's, it's, it was, yeah,
it was sick. It's madding, absolutely mad,
and that's part of the reason why I don't do the LG.
And like Jesse said, the competitive fire is out, so why
go every release? I'll just buy the cards and get
the dopamine hit from opening pad.
So another thing that stood out, Jane, is basically like how
chill you are about your job and that's just part of who you are.
Do you think talking about sex work openly helps normalize it
for people who only know the world through stereotypes?
Yeah, I mean, I do think it's important.
You know, everyone has watched television and seen the, you
know, dead sex worker jokes and whatever and thinks that's
hilarious. But, you know, it's a little
different when you know these people as your friends.
The same way, you know, if you were a person who is not in the
queer community at all, you meet a queer person, your perspective
changes. It just it does change how you
view the world. You can only as a person, you
know, have so many strangers in your head and care about them.
But the second that that gets a face, it gets a real like energy
to it. You know, you know, it's it's
harder to wish me I'll I would hope.
I I don't wish any human I'll at this point in my life, I've I've
matured to that point really well.
There's there's some people in power right now, but.
Anyway. I was just.
We're not going to. Turn that into a political
podcast. Jane, you also mentioned that so
many people of in your line of work, and I don't remember where
you said this, Like they just need to be humanized in the
sense like they're a bunch of nerds like us.
And. Gaming, anime, Magic the
Gathering, crocheting, you name it.
Like I feel like even like I caught like Siri doll in an
interview and she's like, yeah, I do nerdy shit.
What do you who do you think I am?
Like I'm not on camera all the time.
It just, it just cracked me up because that's so true across so
many spaces. So what is it about the sex work
industry you think makes for that overlap?
Because the more I'm learning, the more it seems like
everybody's got the nerdy hobbies on the side, like.
You know what sex work is, it's going to a place dressing up in
an outfit and playing a role. You're laughing.
It just is. And the crossover between the
people who enjoy that kind of role play, that kind of adult
play in the other sense, you know they're going to enjoy it
in in the fun sense too, in the, you know, non sexual kind of
just for play kind of sense. Also, because it's about telling
a story with people that connects to people's emotions
and you know, that's fun. There's a light bulb just went
up over my head on that. It's true.
You connected the dots that I was missing there that that just
makes so much sense. It's like.
We have time. We have time in our schedules to
do this. Do you ever feel like you had to
deal with extra stigma because as a creator because of that
part of your life? I mean, yeah, there are
opportunities that have been taken from me and from others
who do the same job. You know, I'm not going to name
any names or anything, and I'm moving past that.
It's OK. The people who don't want to
work with me will filter themselves out.
And the people who are here to kind of build a better community
together, they're going to work with me.
And there's no sense in stressing myself out about
people who are never going to convert to my position.
That's a good point. On the flip side, what has been
the most positive surprise? Like, do you have people who
have showed up and supported you branching into magic that you
didn't expect them to do? Yes, yes, you know, my friends
who have come to watch me play Magic also are the realist and I
love them. Thank you.
You support my silly little venture from becoming just a
thing where I thought I was going to do this for a couple
months and then we'll find something else that is going to
really bring the eyes in. But this ended up being it.
And I've had two fans in particular who have been
subscribers to my Twitch channel since day one.
Shell Ringo, thank you so much. If you're a fan, you've said
hello to them. They're my little welcome
greeters in the chat. I love them.
I do think that if you are a person who commands a community,
if you are a person who people want to hang out with, they'll
follow you anywhere. It doesn't matter what kind of
stuff you're doing. If you are online, they want to
see you. I just love how you're
normalizing all this, right? Just existing authentically.
And I mean, who doesn't love just being horny on Maine anyway
every once in a while? I mean, isn't that the dream,
especially in our blue sky world, right?
It's it's much safer for that there.
But like, what would you say to listeners?
Anybody who's going to listen to this podcast who's struggling to
show up as their full selves, whether it's their career, their
gender identity, or just feeling no sense of belonging, what
would you say to these people? Well, the first thing I want to
say is you're welcome in the honey pod.
So come on by. You know, we are trying to
create that space that maybe wasn't there.
And I think that's really, really important.
Like I said at the beginning, that representation, the the
purple tables, the Bob space, the gathering grounds, all of
that is so important because it shows that you are a part of
this community too, and you are welcome here.
That stigma is real. You know, even I mean, you joke
about being horny on main and I am.
I'm a little spicy on main, but that's not my main.
Have the separate account people have to have, have that
opportunity to opt into that kind of stuff.
Even still, there is this stigma, and that's real.
And I don't want to deny that or deny the pain that that causes
people in any way. But I want to say that you can
live without that destroying you.
You can move past that and you can bring the little queer joy
that you want to see in the world.
Little queer joy you want to see in the world, I'm going to put
that on a coffee cup at this point because that's that's
where it's at. We're going to TikTok shop that
all the proceeds are going to go somewhere and we're going to
make that happen. I love it.
Translifeline. So you've built such an
intentional space around all this inclusion and kindness,
looking at where magic is AT and content creation are now.
What's something you'd like to see the community get a little
bit better at still? Maybe I would like us to be a
little more positive. I know there are a lot of things
to complain about. And boy, does the algorithm love
it when you complain. Sure, yeah.
But you can also make a thing about something that you like,
you know, and you can enjoy magic authentically in a way
that is fun and filled with the theater and the drama.
I remember when I very first started playing, I wouldn't call
instance instance. I would call them for the drama.
I play this I think. Role-playing again, yeah.
Goes back to role-playing. Bring a little bit of that to
your table. Honestly, it's worth it to let
yourself be the little weird freak first.
You know it opens up the rest of the table to be this for you
too. You know that's true.
And then you get to enjoy your friends weird voices when they
play Souraman or whatever. I'm trying to think what voices
I would do for some of my decks. It would be like like what
would. Goblins like Jesse.
You'd be. You'd be.
Yeah. I gotta know.
What profit sound like Commander tables these days are more
diverse than ever, which is amazing.
What has been the most encouraging shift you've seen
over the last year or so? You want a spicy tig for this
one. Here it is.
It's universe is beyond the girlies love it.
They really, really do, you know, and the people who come in
to play universes beyond, they're so excited.
They're like, I'm playing my favorite character and like that
joy is so infectious. I'm not a huge Spider man fan,
you know, I'm not a huge Marvel fan at all.
But like, man did I have fun playing with the people who were
huge Spider man fans. And I found the character that I
love in it and I built a whole deck around him.
And like, you know, there's something to find that is
enjoyable in every piece of magic, I think.
And if you aren't finding that, but maybe you need to take a
little break for a minute and play something else, Find some
other joy in your life. I think that's a really
interesting perspective on universes beyond.
I think it's a fair perspective. Like I would disagree, but for
different reasons. But if you think of me and Jesse
as archivists of Magic the Gathering, right, 30 years
background where universe is beyond is kind of crammed down
our throats. Now all of a sudden that it
we're going to have a different experience than someone who was
literally brought in to the game from Lord of the Rings.
And damn it, I love Lord of the Rings.
That set friggin. Awesome.
It was fun. It was fun to draft.
It was fun to play. So good.
And, and then I look at, you know, unfortunately for me, I,
I've never watched Avatar. I, I was a little aged out of it
when it came out. I tried watching it again.
My life is so busy. I can't sit down and focus to
actually watch it to, to really dig in.
So this one, this set's going to miss me, but your point is still
valid. It's gonna bring people in.
It's gonna bring new perspectives in.
My concern is, are they all gonna stay?
What percentage of them are staying?
And the percentage that do stay, are they good for the game?
Are they bad for the game? Is it a mix?
Is it a freaking bell curve like everything else in life that we
have? You know?
But your point still remains, right?
Universe Is Beyond is bringing in new faces, new perspectives
from people that didn't even have Magic the Gathering on
their radar. I will say my like my kids,
they're nine and six and the My Little Pony secret lair.
They still play with that. And now that K pop Demon Hunters
is gonna come to Magic, they are like every day.
They're like, is it out yet dead?
Is it out yet dead? Is it out yet dead?
It's like they just announced to give them some time to make the
cards. My kid is asked me to go see
Zootopia 2 today and I was like it's not.
It's not even in theaters yet pal.
We are literally McDonald's is giving out toys.
We literally watched re watched Utopia one last night because of
the McDonald's toys. There I'm that's this is Jesse
and I live the same life sometimes just I have I have a 5
year old boy and he has 2 girls. So when people Jane sit down to
your channel or play a game of magic with you, what is what you
hope to tip that they take away from their experience?
Right? You you talk about your hex girl
pods. You talked about the the the
demon pod that that was hysterical, right?
What, what, what? What's the experience that you
want people to walk away from every time they play a game of
Magic Gathering with you? You know, I hope people forget
who won and lost the game and remember the drama.
That's what I'm trying to bring to every pod.
That's what I love about the mini games.
That's what I love about, you know, every different kind of
thing that I bring to Commander. It's all trying to enhance that
one thing, which is like the exciting play, the moment where
everyone stands up from the table and yells for a second,
you know, the drama of the gathering.
And that's what I'm here for. Is there any projects or collabs
or new decks that you're excited about that you can tease for us?
Anything that nobody's heard of yet?
OK, OK, we'll do a little thing that nobody's heard of this
month. I'm going to be at SCG Con, so
if you are in Vegas for that, check me out there.
They don't do cosplayers or anything.
It's very much a sweaty grinder thing.
So I'll be there playing Magic, but we can hang out, we can get
a game in. I will be in Shoebox in March
and hopefully I will be doing some cosplaying.
I will definitely be there for Birds of Paradise doing
gathering ground stuff and I may or may not be running a Secret
Partners mini game. So we'll see.
And then in Vegas, of course, nothing is confirmed yet, but
I'm going to be doing cosplays. You may catch me doing another
trivia. I may or may not paint myself
blue again. We'll see.
I will tell you a little tease of a cosplay that I'm going to
do on Sunday. I think people are getting
together to do like a Showgirls cosplay.
I know people have done that in the past.
I'm going to do a showgirl version of Anya Falcon Rat.
I'm very excited about that. OK.
And of course in my brain it's always been Anji, but it's not,
it's literally Anya because that's how that's how the J
works in that Bob. Oh.
Wait, I always say Anji. I could see the look in Jessie's
eyes when she said that. I was like.
Why didn't you blow your minds? But you know, I do think she
says it. Anya, I'm pretty sure you're
right. I'm.
Pretty sure you're right. That's that's so funny.
So last question. We've reached the last question.
Wow, wow. We made it.
This is. Flown by So for fun outside of
MTG. We know you have your DM,
hobbies and other stuff, but what's 1 hobby or fandom that's
really still keeping your attention?
OK, here's something I'm obsessed with.
I have only just started this in the past couple weeks but it has
taken over every spare moment of my life.
I'm here for. It, this is like a game show, TV
show, and it's got everything that I need.
It's a reality TV show. It's about money.
So they're like, you know, dangling money over these
people's head, making them do all these things.
It's got puzzles in it. And then every every day they're
doing a different puzzle. But then on top of that, there's
a meta puzzle, like a puzzle above the puzzle that they have
to solve. And so like, I don't know, it's
I don't want to get tell anything else, honestly, because
like the magic of learning it with the players is so, so, so
good. It's on Netflix.
You should watch it. I know it's done.
Keep watching it. It's OK.
It's really, really good. It's a game show for people who
want to do math a little bit. So that's my pitch for all you
magic nerds. It's like so good.
Have you watched Is it Cake? I have watched Is it Cake?
That's. All my kids are watching.
Is it cake fan? They watch that all the.
Time they're it's. Like a whole the whole family
thing where we're all, we all vote and see who thinks it's
cake or not and who's right. I'm so bad at it.
Yeah, it's surprising to me how bad at it I am.
Man, here I thought you were talking about like blue red
cake. I was like, is it cake?
That's the magic nerd, No? Actual like my.
Phone is. Cake.
Or is it a real phone? Niv Niv Mizzit makes a cake.
Sorry. Look, it wouldn't be a gamer dad
podcast without a little cringe for me, OK?
I thought you meant nyvmizit thighs kind of cake, but no, we
were talking cake cake, OK. All right, we're back to the
Flavor Texter lyrics. I got Jesse.
All right, so mine. I'm going to read it again.
Say. Those infinite dreams, I can't
deny them. Infinity is hard to comprehend.
I think it's song lyric. I'm going to go flavor text.
There we go. We're split.
Oh. And it sounds like a Dream
Theater song, but I don't, I don't know, not a dream.
Theater. But is it a song?
It's a song though, maybe? Like Jesse.
Jesse is right, it is a song. Maybe like blind Guardian?
Jane, I'm curious, did you think it was a blue card?
I would have thought something colorless Aldrazzi or something.
Horrible. OK, I like that too.
Something from Zendikar. This is Iron Maiden.
Iron Maiden, Yeah, this is. Infinite Dreams by Iron Maiden
Zegan. Grandmibes.
Love, love that band. So I was like, let me, let me
pull something. Your layer sounds like.
Our main secret layer. I do.
I got some. They're right here, actually.
Nice. They look so good.
Beautiful. Look at that, I didn't get all
of the ones I wanted because well secret layer cues will
suck. But I did accidentally get the
encyclopedia one. Like I I joined an hour late, it
queued me up for 15 minutes and I was like, well shit, now I
gotta buy it instead of like it. That queue makes no sense to me
and I'm not gonna go on a secret layer rant here at the end, but
no, I did get some of the main stuff they.
'D make so much more money if it's for on demand.
Believe it or not, I ran some numbers.
Their scarcity model actually gets them more money.
I bet it does, because. They can inflate the prices.
Well, I mean, not only that, but they they get to sell out, they
get to put that to their stockholders that they sold out
of a product. It it's a long I'm going to put
a blog post about it eventually on on my Bob's theories.
Again, I have no no full data backing it, but I think the
scarcity method is actually making Wizards more money.
But anyway, Jesse. Definitely drawing the hype
people to read your. Your flavor text or song lyric
for me. Again, so mine is a world that
sends you reeling from decimated dreams.
Your misery and hate will kill us.
See, it doesn't rhyme that much and that's why I'm struggling to
say it's a song lyric. You said I might know it, so I'm
going for flavor text. Yeah, my head says flavor text
as well, and I think it's a black card, but I don't know
which. You are both wrong.
It is a. Song lyric, but black is in the
name. It is Welcome to the Black
Parade by My Chemical Romance. Oh, OK, OK.
Jesse knows I don't listen to them.
Yeah, yeah. You're trying to get my emo
roots, I see. Yeah.
But it's I, I read it in a way where it won't like sound like a
song. I try to do that.
A lot of my a lot of the stuff I picked does rhyme, so I try.
To yeah, we we try to, we try to read them neutral so that they
don't read as like because I've, if I started singing infinite
dreams, I can't deny them, you know, then you No, it's a song.
That, you know, yeah, that, that.
Blows the whole the. Black.
Parade Black was in there. Fine, my brain had something.
I don't know. That was that was fun.
Jane, this has been absolutely awesome.
I really appreciate you coming on.
Thank you for being so open, creative, letting us peel back
the curtain on everything you do.
Yeah, here we are in just my green screen.
I didn't even go to Phyrexia today.
Before we wrap up, the floor is yours.
Plug whatever you want. Tell us where you're going to be
next. Tell us where we can find your
stuff. Give us the full Jane
experience. OK, well the full Jane
experience. Welcome to the hottie pod.
Come by on Saturday at 1:00 PM Pacific Time at twitch.tv/jane
Judge. That's where we're playing silly
stuff tomorrow, I guess maybe if you are live here you'll see
this, but you won't know otherwise.
He's playing CBH tomorrow. We're playing a silly mini game
every week so stop by. Except for when I'm at SCG Con
later this month and you can catch me there instead in Las
Vegas. Perfect.
Everybody. If you're not already following
Jane, although I have a big, big feeling you already are, go
follow Jane. She's doing some awesome,
awesome stuff for the community. And thank you again for joining
us. Jesse, any final words of wisdom
tonight? My parting words are Magic
teaches us many things. Mostly that hope is just a card
before the board wipe. Be awesome out there and we'll
see you next time I took your job.
You stole my line guys. Be awesome out there.
We'll see you next time. He gave Ukraine.