By Kevin Ferrisi –
If you haven’t heard of Drag Duel, you have now. Drag Duel is a brand new online drag competition that closely mimics the style of RuPaul’s Drag Race. In total, 12 contestants from around the world will compete in weekly challenges to put their drag to the test. Each week one person will be eliminated until only one remains to claim the grand prize of $2,500.
Two contestants casted on the first season of the new online competition are from right here in Connecticut. Glass Staine from our state’s capital, Hartford and Susan? from Danbury. And no, we did not misplace the punctuation; she is formally known as Susan?.
Glass Staine got her drag name from her favorite vocalist Alice Glass, and Staine was derived from a catchy play on words: glass stain, stained glass. She thinks Staine is very fitting, kind of gross and dirty, like her style of drag.
Glass has been doing drag makeup since 2015 and started performing in 2017. You quickly get a sense of what Glass is all about during the first episode when she talks about her thrill for surprising people, “I love shocking people and I love kind of people’s reaction to maybe being a little bit scared of me,” she goes on to say, “like it it makes me happy that people are maybe a little bit put off with some of my performances and my looks.”
Glass is no stranger to online competitions. Starting drag as an underage bedroom queen, online competitions were a huge part of her drag for a long time. She participated in a well-known Instagram competition, Supreme Drag Race, during Season 7 and was runner-up. She also competed in a very popular YouTube competition called Drag Showdown. During season 1, she got eliminated in the 3rd episode and then came back as a returning queen for season 2 and went home during the 4th episode. She was then selected for their All Stars season “DSDivas” and was runner up. Staine also hosted her own Instragram competition called Queen’s Purgatory from 2016-2022.
Growing up, Glass could never find what she was good at until she discovered drag and started getting into drag, creating bigger and better looks. Her biggest inspiration comes from Lady Gaga, specifically the ‘Born This Way‘ album. Glass feels doing Drag Duel will push her to think bigger and do bigger.
The other Connecticut native competing in the series first season is Susan?. This queen has a very quirky perspective towards drag. Her catch phrase during a prelude to the first episode where we meet Susan? says it all, “I’m Connecticut’s premier queen of stomping all the dolphins the death, why do you think there’s no dolphins in the forests of Connecticut.”
Susan? explains how she got her drag name by adding punctuation to a grandma name because, as she puts it, “All the other names were taken.” Susan? starting doing drag in spite of her abusive past relationship, where she wasn’t allowed to do anything, so she was determined to do everything! Her drag draws inspiration from natural disasters, crimes, and bad things that happen.
Susan? wanted to do Drag Duel because she loves competition and loves deadlines. She’s enjoys being pressured into completing something and feels she makes her best stuff under stress.
The newest online drag competition is hosted and judged by YouTube’s Drag Detective Derek, Bucy, and Zelda Vox. You can support the new competition Drag Duel by following the judges and all the contestants on their social media platforms.
Make sure to subscribed to Drag Duel on YouTube so you don’t miss a thing. You can catch weekly episodes of Drag Duel every Monday at 7:00 p.m. on YouTube.
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