RuPaul’s Drag Race has kicked off its eighteenth installment, crawling closer and closer to a milestone 20th season.  Premiering almost 17 years ago, the series has gone through plenty of changes as the franchise worked out its now polished structure: a batch of drag artists compete in weekly challenges; one queen earns a win for their performance; two queens land in the “bottom” of the competition and perform against one another in a lip sync for their life; and the winner of said lip sync stays in the running for the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar.  It’s a tried and true format that has remained steadfast over all 18 seasons, its three varying network homes and a plethora of international spinoffs. But in the early days of RuPaul’s Drag Race, before they snatched up 29 Emmy Awards, there was no preexisting framework for queens to reference going into the competition. They simply went into things blind, as all first-season reality TV contestants do.  “When we started, we had no blueprint,” season one winner BeBe …