#mg project

I think about this a good deal, especially since I’ve effectively abdicated from Millennial Gospel and turned the blog into an archive. 

I started Millennial Gospel with Alice Lesperance when I was 18 years old. I was so blown away when what started as a way to swap stories and ideas of Biblical re-invention with a friend turned into a collaborative art project with tendrils all over the internet. It was an amazing place for young people to use poetry, photoshop, playlists, and fiction to express their own wrestlings with faith, and to imagine Jesus and other Biblical figures as young people struggling to get by in the 21st century like them. I was humbled to be able to host those stories. 

When I see playlists and RPGs and novels that directly trace their lineage to Millennial Gospel, it takes my breath away. To answer your question about books based on the project, I’ll say that people have already written some, without my permission or consultation. They’ve leaned on Millennial Gospel tags and branding in their advertising strategies, again without my permission. But I’m not in the business of going after indie authors, and I was publicly working with concepts and characters in the public domain, so there’s virtually no intellectual property to protect. Most importantly, I feel strongly that I don’t own these narratives. MG was always explicitly democratic and punk rock in its ideology. These characters belong just as much to you as they do to me. God can’t be boxed into a book or a project or a narrative. Religion is wild and bloody and breathing, and yours to re-shape as you please. 

It’s essential to note here that I stepped away from writing any sort of MG novel and announced my decision to cancel that project years ago, in 2015, I think. I’m no longer interested in codifying my ever-shifting takes on a living, breathing religious text into a word-of-God MG novel. That undermines the entire ethos of the project, in my mind. 

Millennial Gospel was the first creative project I shared with the public, and the first place I explored my own developing theological identity and identity as a woman with spiritual agency. Now, I’m 25. Since starting MG, I’ve broken with the evangelical church that raised me, courted many different religious and spiritual expressions, been confirmed in the Episcopal church, gotten a masters degree in theology, published two books and multiple short stories, worked in churches, publishing houses, and marketing agencies, started spiritual director training, and built a six-year career as a tarot reader. I have been so many different women since I was eighteen, and I hope to be many more before I die. Put simply, my theology and creative expression, and the places where I wanted to invest my energy, grew beyond MG.

I don’t interact with my old content from those days because my sense of self, God, justice, and the world has changed so wildly. Some days I do fear that old posts build on problematic or short-sighted theological concepts could be screenshotted, but I’m not ashamed of the young woman I was. I want the resources to be available to the people who have found healing, solace, freedom, and joy through MG. 

I’m always always very, very happy when people message me about MG-inspired projects or tag stgibsonofficial in their MG contributions. Do that more! Just because you don’t see me on the blog anymore doesn’t mean I don’t care.

Unfinished drawings for the magical girl project, part 3/3 (Precure edition).

I really want to draw all the Precure one day... by the time I get to restarting the project there will undoubtedly be more of them to draw.

Unfinished drawings for the Magical girl project, part 2/3 (Kazumi Magica edition).

I’ve had some sketches for the magical girl project laying around on my desktop for months and taking space. Since it looks like the project won’t be going anywhere any more I thought I’d just slap some colour on them and call it a day. There’s also some Kazumi Magica and Precure characters but they’ll be their own post.

Magical girl project, part 87: Ruler