Issue 1 by Skelis Magazine

Where mainstream and subculture subculture meet Issue 1

May 2011

Inside this issue: Tina Pearson Photography Native American Festival The Feminine Mistake â&#x20AC;Ś and more

Inside this edition Native American Festival .................................................................................................................................................... p. 4 It is all about Nature ...................................................................................................................................................... p. 12 The Feminine Mistake ................................................................................................................................................. p. 9 Dragon Age 2 Review ........................................................................................................................................................ p. 17 44 Charles Street Review............................................................................................................................................... p. 21 Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll Walk Alone Review ............................................................................................................................................... p. 22

Editor

C. Ashley

Writers

Elle Tison Kevin White

M. Caethforwyn Art

S. Jones

Photography

Ashley Jones

The event had lots of interesting attractions, including ative tribal dancers of all kinds, musicians and folks demonstrating different skills of the time, such as constructing bows and arrows, building a fire, tanning hide and building basketss out of strips of wood. This took place at Chehaw Park in Albany GA. If you missed this great event there is always next year. By Ashley Jones

The Feminine Mistake: How a Woman Born as a Man Found Her Femininity by M. Caethforwyn

When asked to write about me, I sometimes get a little shy. After all, aren't we all quite complicated, and aren't there things we'd rather not share? This is why it's good to have a focus; it's a small relief to know that at least you only have to be embarrassed about one side of yourself. My focus here is on my life as a transgendered person. *Sigh* Yes, it's not exactly an easy thing to talk about at times, but I suppose it's better than talking about the time I got sick on the sch school bus and had to be sent home for fresh clothes (and what's worse, my grandmother even sent me back to school that day). But it is an integral part of me and my life, just as your sexual identity is probably an important element in how you lead your own life. So where did it all start? Many people who have no idea what they're talking about have offered lots of theories behind the inner workings of the transgendered individual, but I have the unique insight of knowing first hand. I was born physically ly and genetically male, but I first knew that I wasn't a boy when I was three years old. Yeah, I'm surprised I remember anything from that age as well, but I also remember my second birthday party, so maybe a life-changing changing experience at the age of three isn't so hard to believe. One of my first memories at that extremely young age was of me playing a game all by myself in the house. The game was "Knight Rescues Princess from Bad Guy", or perhaps "Damsel in Distress" for those of us who have absorbed cultural tural themes. The point of the game was for me, the Knight, to rescue the Princess, also played by me, from the Bad Guy, for which I made a guest appearance. Talk about having an identity crisis! The point of this little tale though is that when the gam gamee was over, I spent the rest of the day playing the Princess. Indeed, I spent the rest of my childhood playing the Princess until I realized that it was never really a game for me. Thus I can honestly say that I've identified as female since I was three years old. It was on my mind constantly and it was shortly after that I began to realize that something was terribly wrong with me. Everyone said I was a boy, why did I insist I was a girl? I drudged on through my early childhood utterly confused, playing ng all of the wrong games, wearing all of the wrong clothes, using all of the wrong pronouns. Somehow I managed to mostly ignore it though. Some transgendered children are devastated by their confusion, but I'm lucky enough to have floated along like a b butterfly utterfly through those years. I'm often called a ditz, so maybe that condition also has an early onset. The aching desire to be female began haunting me intensely around the age of 9 or 10. It was that year that the game Streets of Rage 2 came out for SSega ega Genesis. As stupid as it sounds, (and don't be polite, it does sound stupid), I fell in love with Blaze. Well, I fell in love with the idea of being Blaze at least. Somehow

that game allowed me to find common ground with my violent young male friends who wanted to walk around with their chests puffed out as Axel or Max, play fighting in the condo courtyard. Meanwhile I watched them fight, pretending to be Blaze and doing flips and cartwheels on the grass like my tarty-looking video game idol. Don't worry, I found other role models, which is good because I'm not sure I could have pulled off the tube top. It was about that age that I started cross dressing, although in my mind I was a girl and had been cross dressing as a male my whole life. Being 10 or 11 years old meant that my cross dressing was limited to me raiding my sister-in-law's wardrobe, which she kept in our house for some magical reason that puts me in her debt. When I was home alone I would dress up in skirts and halter tops and all sorts of cute outfits in a size 0. When my family was around I would sneak some garments outside and go for glorious walks in the forest behind our house dressed in my feminine clothes, feeling at one with the universe, or at least at one with myself. Unfortunately children grow and I wasn't a size 0 for very long, and there went my magical feminine wardrobe. For another couple of years, throughout middle school mostly, I tried to consign myself to my fate as being a male. I don't know if it was the way I was raised or the fact that puberty was beginning to rear its ugly testosterone-bearing head, but I had decided that if I was born male, I should act male and be male, and there was no use in complaining about it and pining away, longing after the femininity that was robbed from me at some cruel moment while developing inside of my mother's womb. This is what I told myself, but my new found masculine identity remained incongruent with my inner self and ultimately the two clashed. By the time I had entered high school it took every single ounce of my concentration to ignore my inner voice crying out and wanting to be heard as the female within, the actual person behind my teenage male mask. I can trace the exact moment my last shreds of diminishing masculine resolve failed me, and that was when I found myself in the band room alone one afternoon my junior year. It was my study hall, and I had special permission to practice music in the band room. On that particular day the music teacher had to run out early, leaving me alone in a locked band room. As I indulged myself in doing nothing, as all teenagers are likely to do, male or female, I came across a great treasure. Hanging in the instrument room was the school's color guard outfit, a delightfully trashy little spandex number that looked like a cross between a cheerleading uniform and a girl's figure skating costume. It thrilled me so much and gave me such a feminine urge that I undressed and modeled it in front of a full length mirror (which musicians use to watch themselves play, before you begin to wonder how I conveniently found a full length mirror in a high school classroom). My last efforts to cling to the masculine mask fell to dust and I was hooked. I was no longer ashamed of my diary that I signed with a female name or all of my longings and urgings, or of my obvious bisexuality (if you think being transsexual is hard for a teenager, how about being bisexual too?). Of course without a wardrobe and living at home this princess was still forced to play knight for a while, but that thankfully changed on the proud and momentous day I was sent off to college. My college years were the first great years of my life. I have to say that, despite the psychological pain, I had the strength of character to still enjoy high school. Good friends are good friends no matter what gender or sex you are, and I enjoyed my time with my childhood companions, both male and female. However, college allowed me the freedom to explore who I always knew I really was. For the first time ever, I managed to live as a woman. A very awkward, possibly unattractive, tall, and deep-voiced woman with occasional

beard stubble, but as much as I had trouble passing I still didn't want to go back to the way things were. Without hormones I had a hard time in college, however, and was known more as a chronic and bloody weird cross dresser to all those around me than a transsexual woman coming into her own. For that a girl like me needs a miracle in a pill, and that's what I worked to get. I got myself deep in debt at first buying hormone treatments for a male-to-female hormone therapy regimen. I got so in debt that I lost the means to purchase them for years at a time and went back and forth between watching me begin to blossom into womanhood and watching it melt away in the mirror months later. My next challenge was graduate school. I admit that I lost my nerve and made a terrible mistake: I interviewed at graduate schools as a man. I've been kicking myself for it ever since, because it meant another major setback in my transformation as I turned myself into an androgynous wreck in an effort to save face with my academic colleagues and still satisfy my sense of self. The fortunate thing is that I did come to realize that I didn't have to hide who I was, and even came out to a classroom full of students during a lecture (teaching was part of my graduate assistantship). With a great sigh of relief I forever embraced my feminine identity, eventually found the means to return to hormone therapy, and I am slowly but surely over the years making a smooth transition into a passable woman. And all it took was a childhood full of confusion, a teenage epiphany followed by an adolescence full of self-deception, an adult realization, a foolish backslide, and a lifetime of determination and self-knowledge of who and what I really am. At least I can thank my parents for giving me a girl's name. That's one less thing about myself that needed changing...

To be continuedâ&#x20AC;Ś

It is all about about nature! By Elle Tison

For Tina Pearson, her photography is all about nature in its beauty.

When did you get started in photography? I have taken pictures since a young age. When did you decide to pursue it professionally? About 5 years ago What do you enjoy most about photography? Looking through the lens you see so much more of the world. What is your favorite thing to photograph? Trees because each one is unique Tell us a little about yourself.

I am an outdoors person who loves animals. I like being active. How would you describe your style? Unplanned and spontaneous What is the worst experience you have had trying to photograph something? I accidently stood in an ant bed. Are you self taught or did you have a mentor? Self taught

How do you decide on locations and what to photograph? I just let the inspiration strike me. Have you ever gotten frustrated and given up? No What turns you on creatively? The beauty of nature What turns you off creatively? Nothing What is the one lasting impression you wa want nt to leave people with from your photos? To show people how beautiful the earth is

Her work can be viewed at The Maze in Americus GA

Dragon Age 2 Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3 Developer: BioWare

By Kevin White

Let’s start off by saying that I am a PC gamer, and an RPG junky. That said I have been patiently awaiting Dragon Age 2 since I first heard it was in development. BioWare is one of the last bastions of RPG gaming for us PC goers. Even so after playing Dragon Age 2 I found myself both thrilled and oddly disappointed On the one hand I find that the combats system has been cleaned up considerably and is both very fun and engaging. The graphics have been sharpened and are still surprisingly light on my system. The talents were easy to understand, and straightforward. These of course are all good things that I will get into a bit more detail on in a moment. However, Dragon Age 2 is not without its shortcomings. I find that while the combat is more entertaining, faster paced and so on; it suffers from a lack of something easily overlooked from the first. However the fatalities are simply visceral and satisfying. It was a nice break from the standard shield pummel or flurry of animations. Sometimes your character would simply get it into his/her head to just brutally murder some random Darkspawn or another, and let’s not forget how epic you felt when you ended the life of a dragon (or didn't depending on the choices your made). That thought brings me to a whole separate point. Choices need to feel important, they need to have consequences. Something the first Dragon Age did very well and the second did a very mediocre job of. My choices seemed to have little effect on the outcome of what happened as a result of Hawks actions. It didn't seem to matter if I looked cross eyes at the blood mage or gave him flowers; either way there was going to be a fight. The only difference was which party member approved or which didn't. Even that didn't carry a whole lot of weight to it. Party members stick around regardless of how nice you were to them or how terrible. Hell sometimes it was even a benefit to piss off certain characters. In an RPG, the player needs to feel they are impacting the world they are populating. The story itself is still engaging, entertaining, and sufficiently deep as to dominate 40ish hours of my life. The one thing it’s missing however is the replayability of the first. Some replayability remains but not nearly as much as in the original. People don't react differently to you if you’re Hawk the master assassin, or if you’re Hawk the mighty warrior, though the mage does get some other fun options despite the fact that you’re in a city filled with Templar. (For those who are new to Dragon Age, Templar's are the mage police and really, really annoying.) I will admit these are possibly the most ineffectual police I have witnessed. It seems every other quest is to go do their work for them since it’s apparently raining mages in Kirkwall. By the end of the story, your character will have 3 unlicensed mages running around with you and the Templar just won't care anymore. All that aside though, I have to give Dragon Age 2 a good rating considering it did keep my attention, making me wanting to play. It was nice to run around and do all the random side quests and follow up on rumors. I felt bad when one of my party members was going through a hard time. I became connected to the NPC's, though still not as much as Leliana from Dragon Age 1, who is possibly the best written and most likable character. Those things are all hard to accomplish in a fictional setting, especially in a video game where the player is focusing on his or her own character.

There's something to be said for a rich game world, and it’s something BioWare does very well. They held true to that legacy with Dragon Age 2. The codex is worth reading, filled with entertaining and informative entries about the world at large and Kirkwall, its inhabitants and their cultures. Speaking of which you will find the races slightly changed in appearance and in demeanor. Most notably being the Qunari. Speaking of the game world, remember the rich settings of Dragon Age? The fantastic Ferelden forests, the pain that was the fade, the huge expanse that was the Deep Roads? I hope you really like the décor of Kirkwall. You’ll be spending an exorbitant amount of time there. Most of your time is spent traveling back and forth on a series of unrelated side quests. The part that bugs me is even if you don't do any side quests at all (I wouldn't recommend it. The side quests are lucrative and combat is fun despite the repetitive maps), you’ll spend your time bounding around at max of maybe 13 different locations. Many of which seem to be a reskinned, slightly altered location from the Dragon Age 1. The farthest out you get to go is Sundermount and the Wounded Coast. Come on Bioware what happened to the ingenuity of Andraste's temple? It just seems to me like the story and setting were left behind for some graphical enhancements and a full on combat overhaul. It doesn't appear as much effort was put into it as the first. Perhaps my opinion is a bit jaded from the first Dragon Age. Perhaps if this was made as a standalone, non sequel game I would find fewer faults with it. I think I just missed the mounting tension of the Darkspawn horde. The previous story felt like it was building, like everything hinged on you. Whether you were a complete ass or the pinnacle of all that was good and right, the fate of Ferelden hung on your shoulders alone. It made the game feel epic. Something this one failed at doing, at least to the same degree. The story could have gone on without me and likely would have been better for every single NPC if I hadn't come along. It seemed like an exercise in how much meddling can I do, and by the end I found myself wondering if Kirkwall wouldn't have been better off without me. Of course then I wouldn't have met any of the more entertaining and fun characters to hang around with. I'd never have become friends with the 70's pimp dwarf Varric, the Swarthy Isabella, or the overly nervous Dalish blood mage Merril.

You may have noticed I didn't list all the characters in Dragon Age 2 in that list if you've already started playing (Which I still recommend it is a very entertaining game I will be playing through a second and probably a third time.) It’s because not every character feels fleshed out enough in comparison, though it certainly does better than some other games out there. It still left something to be desired from the BioWare team. On the plus side, the AI and threat mechanics are good. If you're the tank you can hold aggro easy enough. If you’re a rogue you have abilities to lose aggro quickly. If you're a mage...well you were screwed from the beginning. Wing that fireball downrange soldier! Stealth is all but pointless really; there are no more traps to be placed out. I do have to say I thoroughly enjoyed what they've done to the Qunari. It was very cool to learn more about them. Considering Sten wasn't ever really that informative about them...or even himself again The Dalish got a little bit of a lore boost, which is odd since they have relatively nothing to do with any part really, save an excuse to give you a second elf party member. That's another thing I miss from Dragon Age: You are human and only human. There is no customizing what race you are. There aren't 6 different starting points leading into an arc. There's 1 storyline, 1 story beginning, which only really changes if you’re a mage or not. I liked being an elf having people mistake me for a slave and then yelling at them for it. I miss being a dwarf and having entire other reactions. It made the story seem like I was a part of it. The story in 2 isn't bad; it’s just not as great as Dragon Age 1 was. The Codex was a good read; I always enjoyed that about BioWare's games. These smaller unrelated stories still get into the overall arc of the thing and simply enrich the world. It is very cool to fight a bunch of monsters and then check out the codex entries to see what they are doing there. That nice named weapon that a character finds, yeah, it has a story too. It’s not integral to anything, but the story is there if someone wants to read it. I'm a junky for the stories within the story. I find few other things that make an RPG really stick in my head. It almost gives the game a kind of deep history which makes it come alive.

The companion conversations help out a great deal as well. Hearing the banter and the bickering serves as a fun realization that no, not all of your friends get along in the game. Some downright can’t stand each other. Put Fenris and Anders into a group for a while and let the humor ensue. For that matter, try popping Isabella and Varric in a group and listen to them. The party banter is something that always keeps me entertained by the Dragon Age games. It’s a fun addition that I hope to continue to see in BioWare's games. I can’t speak for the console variant here, I played it on PC. The control scheme remained familiar to me, while the loot is a whole lot quicker and more fluid. The whole thing is just more responsive. Even selling things became a bit easier, as they added a button to sell all the stuff they have labeled as 'junk' or things you have labeled as junk. It just makes sense. Not to mention it made my time spent in vendor windows that much quicker so I can get back to the game and killing whatever it is I am killing today. My only other real complaint is the dispersal of equipment. I have to say it was on the frustrating end to be digging through my stuff and finding nothing but robes on my warrior, then nothing but plate on my mage. To top it off, I couldn't even put the good stuff and I couldn't use it on my party members. However, they do get special armor upgrades to their starting armor. In a way, I guess it makes sense. If I handed you pants and said “wear these you'll be better” would you? No you probably wouldn't. You would probably wear your own pants that you’re quite fond of really. Overall I think I would have to give this game 7 out of 10 despite the short comings. The game is still a great game. It’s pretty, the music is good, the story is good, and the characters are good. The game simply suffers from being a sequel to a great game and not having all the angles to repeat the process of its predecessor. So give it a go and have fun with it. Enjoy the new mass effect style conversation system. Enjoy the new combat system. But, at the end of the day, I'm sure you as well will feel like the game was rushed off to print quicker than it should have been.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Four people, one houseâ&#x20AC;Ś you know what? I think MTV did it firstâ&#x20AC;Ś Oh, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ok, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still just a romance novelâ&#x20AC;? Morwennaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Review of 44 Charles Street: A ovel by Danielle Steel

Danielle Steelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newest novel 44 Charles Street is a bit of a far cry from her usual romantic mush, which makes it quite refreshing. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the story of a young woman who finds herself newly single and unable to pay the mortgage on her large Manhattan home with her meager income as an art gallery owner, and so she acquires three housemates who rent her extra rooms to solve her financial woes. At first the plot idea seemed very intriguing, if not a little too much like MTVâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Real World. It was shaping up to be an interesting story, the kind of thing that could even emulate true literature if artfully done. How are all of these diverse characters going to get along sharing a communal life together? It sets the stage for a lot of drama, and for that I applaud Steelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imagination. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to spoil too much about the story or the characters, but unfortunately thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not much to spoil that most readers havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t already seen before in some context. All in all, I did not much care for Steelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest book, at least not compared to novels Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve read recently in similar genres. 44 Charles Street is weak in several areas. For one, Steel tries very hard to make the characters interesting, but throughout the work they remain hollow and stereotypical at best. The dialog is stale and unemotional, and during emotional scenes the dialog becomes completely unbelievable; the characters seem to intellectually comment on the situation instead of reacting to it. The narration is boring, dry, and repetitive to the point of being funny. In the span of three pages the reader will find an almost identical description of a scene, sentiment, or character repeated three or four times. The plot itself is schizophrenic, and we lose the storyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thread or arc several times. We forget halfway through that this story was supposed to center around the main character Francesca and her struggle to keep her home. In the end we find out that Steel canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t resist the lure of romance, and the romantic lives of most of the main characters provide a series of prominent digressions from the original premise. It turns out that the possibility for something new and imaginative wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t as strong as the urge to present us with another love story or two. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure most casual readers will be appreciative of this. I doubt anyone would pick up a Danielle Steel novel if he or she wanted a profound analysis of the human condition (or at least a deeper analysis than the one Steel tends to deliver). Steel does, however, do an excellent job picking up the pieces of her scattered story and wrapping them up at the end, and the end is surprisingly satisfying. One gets the impression that Steel wrote the book in phases, which explains the repetition of themes throughout and the blurring of focus on the primary story arc for long periods of narration. In the end, we can forgive her for it because 44 Charles Street was a more diverse read than her usual romantic fiction and most readers will find it to be ultimately touching and hopeful amid the chaos of the charactersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lives and their triumphs and tragedies. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a story about people and what they share with each other and how they manage to come together and grow apart, and we can all relate to that.

I’ll Walk With a Huge Cast of Supporting Characters Morwenna’s Review of I’ll Walk Alone by Mary Higgins Clark

As I was reading it, I knew that reviewing Mary Higgins Clark’s I’ll Walk Alone would be a challenge. Clark’s latest mystery-thriller is a suspenseful read. It was delivered to my Kindle at 6 a.m. and, even though I spent half of my day at work, I finished it by 9 p.m. Needless to say, I couldn’t put it down. Yet I remain ambivalent about the book. Now, even Clark herself would admit that books like these are not meant to be great works of soon-to-be-classic literature, although stranger things have happened (just look at Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga). The book is exactly what it’s supposed to be: a fun read that can be finished in a mere day, a diversion from every day life as much as a good shopping haul or a day at the spa. And to that purpose I’ll Walk Alone is an excellent work. It’s hard to give negative criticism about something after applauding its success, which seems to speak for itself. However, I find that it is difficult to say much specific good about the book without being cliché. There was drama, there was emotion, there was a plot twist or two that might have caught you off guard if you weren’t paying much attention or aren’t used to reading mystery novels. I’ll Walk Alone fits the formulation of a suspense-mystery-thriller so adeptly that it is at the same time wonderful in its spot-on execution and completely expected. I knew the ending by the tenth tiny chapter (there are 90 of them, which certainly makes you feel as if the story is speeding by). The characters are driven by motivations and plot devices that have become conventions in the mystery genre: a distraught mother coping with the kidnapping of her child, a womanizing and vindictive employer, a jealous ex-husband, an attractive and naïve country girl coaxed by a rich and powerful man, a young man sympathetic to the plight of the heroine when no one else is, a police interrogation with a good cop/bad cop characterization, and the list goes on. Indeed, the cast of characters is so big that Clark’s title becomes almost ironic. By the second half of the book it becomes easy to lose focus on which character is supposed to function as the main character. Yet despite this the novel still works. All of the cheap plot devices and conventional characters simply do their job to pull you in and keep you there. The plot and characters, though cliché and occasionally predictable, are quite well done. It’s tough to put into words why a book like I’ll Walk Alone is enjoyable despite the formulaic qualities of it, but I will liken it to listening to a Mozart symphony. With subtle variations, they’re all basically the same, they follow the same formulas and procedures, and yet a Mozart fan never really bores of them and finds new appreciation in each one, a new insight into the artistry of Mozart and the classical symphonic genre. With Clark’s latest, we can experience the same phenomenon in literary form. As a final compliment to the novel, the denouement of the tale actually did make me tear up and was thus more than satisfying after such a swift and exciting read. Clark’s target reader-base of adult women will be especially invested in the themes of the book. I have come to believe that the title references the strength of the tale’s heroine, a strength that any reader would find compelling. On a final note, readers should keep in mind that books like Clark’s I’ll Walk Alone, as is typical for most books in the genre, have a low re-readability factor. It’s best to pass this one off to your girlfriends or save shelf space by purchasing a digital copy as I did. Donating or re-selling your print copy after finishing it is always a good idea too, unless you’re a collector of Mary Higgins Clark’s works, in which case this book is essential!

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