words

I am alive.

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:31:13 GMT

I drove around three thousand miles across the country, moved in with with my boyfriend, and am about to start summer classes. Somewhere in between that was the grand canyon, the total destruction of my mother's car, and a funeral. Currently, I am in an ongoing effort to clean my boyfriend's house. After a month, I have cleared enough space that I can resume some of my hobbies, such as updating my livejournal and making comics.

There's not much to say about the road trip that quincunx didn't say, but I'll be posting comics related to the trip for the next few weeks anyway.

The best part of the trip was undoubtedly finally getting to spend time with one of my best friends.

My only advice to anyone taking a similar trip would be: whenever you can, do something you haven't done before. Eat a type of food you've never heard of. Go to a biker bar/family restaurant. Turn off the road to see an attraction that looks cool. Even if you regret it, it will still be awesome as long as you're with people you love.

Wait--my other advice is to take your time and limit how much you drive in a day. That is also good advice.

Regardless of everything else, if I am trapped in a car for long enough, the conversation will eventually become somewhat surreal.

The Road Does Things to You

Wow, ok I cannot even tell you how fun this comic was to make. Unlike my last experiment with computer coloring, this was actually a breeze to do. "Me vs Toaster" took over three weeks to color and I wouldn't really consider the coloring on it to be complete. It took so long to do that all the fun was drained out of it. A lot of that is because I was essentially using the brush tool as a literal brush because I didn't have much of an idea on how to use the selection tools. Brendan corrected that, and with the power of the magic wand, this comic took less than a day to fully color, and I still had time to run errands, go to the gym, and go to like 4 comic shops. Coloring by hand is probably still quicker, but I think the other advantages of coloring on a computer outweigh that advantage.

Some more stuff that is great:

-I really love being able to change my mind about colors after I put them down. Just a quick ctrl-z and what would have been an accident to work around on paper might as well never have happened.

-The scanner will no longer pervert oranges, greens and purples. The colors that appear are the colors I intended with some slight variations due to monitor quality and settings.

-More choses for colors. I was severely limited to certain colors, and no matter how many pencils I bought, that never seemed to change. Now I have the power to, for example, show white people as being different shades of white. This is very important to me because I think comics tend to reenforce the idea that white is the default color for people. Genre fiction is, of course, often guilty of this too. It seems like people of color are always portrayed as an ethnic and cultural other, but if the author intends for a character to be ethnically neutral, they are as white as they come. The thing is that no one is completely ethnically neutral, and treating white as a default is probably harmful. So, I'll always try to keep culture and ethnicity in mind when writing comics, autobiographical or otherwise.

All of that in a comic where I essentially admit that all I know about Iowa is that they both grow corn and allow gay marriage.

Sorry Iowa! Maybe I will look up things about your culture on wikipedia later!

Fri, 29 May 2009 14:20:18 GMT

While driving I hit a butterfly. With my car.

Am I going to hell now?

roadtrip

Wed, 27 May 2009 03:17:50 GMT

quincunx and I are going on a roadtrip. Maybe hopefully we won't die! Only time can say!

I rushed through drawing this comic basically because I wanted to post something before we leave but I have a million other things to do. I realize the text is too small, and that basically everything in the small panels is pretty bad too. I thought they would be easier but then my pen was too fat.

In the future, when I have my own scanner, I am planning to scan each panel on it's own piece of paper and then put it together in photoshop or whatever. This should make it so I can do really small panels better maybe.

I think for the first time ever, I feel like a chapter of my life is ending. I've never felt like that before--not in high school, not when I went to Japan, not ever. But today, every single part of me is aware that today is the last day of whatever my life has been up until this point.

The Inveterate Punster

Fri, 22 May 2009 21:11:56 GMT

This is my step father Matt! I've been living with him for a while, but I'll be moving back to PA very soon, so here is a comic about him!

He loves puns. Perhaps more than any one person should. He's also incredibly good at them. It is a skill that is not necessarily endearing. When I showed him this, he didn't remember this specific pun, pretty much because he comes up with about 500 new ones a day.

The worst part is that I myself have begun to develop an appreciation for such things.

vanishing into the clouds

Fri, 15 May 2009 23:09:56 GMT

Kumogakure - vanishing into the clouds. This is a bit of an uncommon word, for which the very first hit on google is a wikipedia article discussing what I am quoting. The first hit in English is something or other about Naruto. This is profoundly pathetic, English Speaking Internet.

My mother died today. It is completely acceptable to quote someone else in this situation. If you're unfamiliar with the Tale of Genji, the chapter in which Genji dies is called "Vanishing into the Clouds." No description of event occurs; the pages of the chapter are blank.

We cleared through some of the last of her stuff and took it to Good Will today. In her belongings we found a forgotten Christmas present from her to me.

After that, we treated ourselves to lunch and shared ostrich burgers and buffalo burgers. The differences between the ground meat of one animal and the ground meat of another are not as much as one might think.

my good boy

Fri, 15 May 2009 06:32:51 GMT

Still not used to drawing with my new pens, but I had a lot of fun with this page so it is of course a resounding success.

Spot is not my dog. He is Matt's dog. In fact it was like hate at first sight until somehow he turned into my dog bff and I no longer ever have a moment of privacy to myself. I cannot sleep or eat or pee unattended.

Dogs.

sad times

Sat, 02 May 2009 02:30:32 GMT

Can you tell? I have new pens!

This happened a while ago, back when nearly all of what she said always made sense.

This isn't a very funny comic. A lot of mine aren't very funny at all.

When I set out to write a comic I have a few goals, and they fall in about the following order.

1 - Have fun drawing. This one nearly always happens because I always love to draw, in spite of my lack of talent.

2 - Vent. Often drawing out what's bothering me helps me deal with it more than just talking about it does.

3 - Draw something relatable/cute/funny. I sort of consider this an added bonus after the first two.

This really just applies to my autobiographical comics. I'm sort of off and on working on some fictional stuff which will be more about communicating an ideas.

A lot of why I post stuff publicly is because I want to improve my art. Posting things for an audience other than myself makes me have to think about things like, "If everyone's head is the same shape, a reader will become bored looking at it, or have trouble telling characters apart." and "I can't break the 180 degree rule, it will trip people up." It also allows people to criticize what I draw, which tends to happen privately for some reason. All sorts of things that I never thought would be a problem get brought up, and suddenly I realize, "Oh yeah that is pretty dumb." and can avoid similar mistakes later.

I really like stylized art of all forms and don't really enjoy looking at v realistic art such as that of Alex Ross. But just because I'm not drawing from reality, doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement.

Nursing Homes

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:33:27 GMT

This is sad and this is awful, and so maybe you shouldn't read it.

We are putting her in a nursing home in Point Loma. We're in the next neighborhood over so it's not so bad. It might even be walkable if it wasn't for the persistent light of my old enemy, the day star. One day I will have my revenge.

Everything is awful. She is always in pain; there is always some emergency. We never sleep properly anymore. I cannot focus on things I enjoy doing let alone things I do not enjoy doing.

I tried to draw a comic, but I botched inking it. Maybe I will have a go again this weekend. Maybe not.

I have a paper due. I never sleep anymore, so doing it is nigh impossible. I will write the dean asking for an incomplete or something. Until she has been in a nursing home for a few days, I don't think I can deal with the paper. I cannot even deal with warcraft or comics at the moment. I keep trying to deal with the paper but not making any progress at all. I'm utterly burned out from everything.

The social services that you try to use in a situation like this are of no help. Hospice continues to pressure us to keep her at home as long as possible, even though we should have put her somewhere weeks ago. We didn't want to, but we are in a legally uninhabitable apartment that is not handicap accessible. In order to put a hospital bed in here, we got rid of my bed. The entire idea of having her here is basically a way for insurance companies and hospitals etc to save money at the expense of our mental health. The hospital kicked us out because she did not have a "skilled need" and because she does not have a "skilled need" they will not pay for a nursing facility or what have you. They say you have to go to hospice and they will help you set up your life so that your home is a nursing home and so that you yourself are a caregiver. So they save huge amounts of money, and we slowly go insane. It is the way of the world.

In spite of their assurances, it cannot go on this way. So we'll pay for a nursing home out of pocket.

The woman who showed us different homes nearly killed us. We were seconds from what would have been a fatal collision in her car because she was attempting to make an illegal U-turn, talk on her cell, fuss with her GPS, and talk to us at the same time. The car that nearly hit us was going more than 40 miles an hour, and it missed my door by inches. This near death experience did not prompt her to drive better. She told us she had a guardian angel and then proceeded to talk about her syncretic belief system for like 20 minutes.

By far, my least favorite thing about California is that everyone has Religion.

Not only do they have it, but they insist on talking about it at the drop of a hat. Like god damn it, I really do not care what you think of seances right now at all. Half the time it is some bizarre evangelical version of Christianity, the other half it is some strange mix of the shallowest possible interpretations of Christianity, Buddhism, and whatever flavor of animism is hip right now.

I'll say right now, I have no use for religion. I understand that other people do, but that is not me. The idea of god is largely depressing to me. I understand that people want to comfort me in some way, but really. Just shut up.

Maybe that's harsh. People always think atheists are harsh. I'm really not that harsh, I always let people prattle on about Tibetan bells or druids or whatever because intellectually I know that they are trying to help. It's just not helpful. I try to politely end the conversation, but there is no escaping it. I have to sit there until they exhaust themselves on the topic. It's the dumbest thing.

I'm not going to go on about the myriad things I simply do not get about religion except for this one thing.

I do not get what it is about protestants and the transubstantiation. Like, the religion I am probably most familiar with is Anglicanism/Episcopalianism and Catholicism. So maybe I am biased. But like I swear to god protestants keep bringing up transubstantiation as why Catholicism is ridiculous to me lately.

If you are already accepting that (1) all humans are born with original sin due to a snake tempting a woman to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge (2) an immaculately conceived virgin became pregnant by way of annunciation with the incarnation of god who was also the Messiah foretold in the old testament and that (3) this messiah was killed and then resurrected and and then ascended to heaven, the transubstantiation is not such a stretch. It really is not.

I guess a lot of people do this. They bring up crazy things about other religions as if their own religion is not its own special brand of crazy.

I am so tired.

Wieners

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:01:14 GMT

Man, I have no idea why sometimes the colors are too bright and sometimes they are too muddy. I use the same scanner at the same kinkos. It makes no sense.

Things will be better when I have my own scanner maybe.

Did you ever pick up some annoying speech affectation because you hung around someone else too much? I am constantly spreading my irritating habit of ending statements on an up note, thus turning them into questions to my hapless friends. I guess because of that I deserve to say wiener forever maybe.

Also how did that rapscallion Spot make it into my comics? It is a mad world.

rss feed

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:09:37 GMT

I added an rss feed to my website. Finding out how to set one up without using some stupid program doing it for me was like going on a vision quest through the underbelly of the internet. Hint for anyone wanting to set their own up: forget whatever the internet says, just go and look at the page source for a bunch of the stupid things.

The feed is here by the way.

If you're not sure what this is: basically, rss feeds are like mailing lists except instead of your mailbox getting spammed, your rss feed reader gets spammed. There are a lot of benefits of using rss over mailing lists. The main one is that if the site uses an rss feed instead of a mailing list, the subscriber's privacy is protected and their mailing address cannot be sold to the penile enlargement companies of the world. In order to use an rss feed to its full capacity, you need an rss reader, which you can get for free through google and a number of other sites. If you're not interested in using the feed, that's fine because I will also continue posting updates on my livejournal. For the livejournal crowd, this feed is redundant.

I also finally changed my gallery to mark which images are new since the latest update to the gallery. Thanks for the idea, Karen ♥

Improvement: a constant frustration

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:54:41 GMT

As I'm sure people who follow my comics and art are aware: I have absolutely no idea of how to draw. More specifically, the foundations of art elude me. Perspective? Anatomy? Shadow, line, and composition? These things are all mysteries to me.

I really love drawing. I basically have to imagine that the energy of that love carries through to my drawings, because I really can't imagine why else they are appealing. Something about them compelled all sorts of people to give me art scholarships year after year. I've won a bunch of stupid art prizes, been published, successfully sold some of my work, and have had stuff put on temporary exhibit in actual museums. This line of stuff is not really that impressive. The only reason I bring it up is that somewhere through all of this, you would think that I would have picked up a perfunctory knowledge of perspective and anatomy. But nooo. That would have been too reasonable.

My art schooling breaks down easily into a few categories.

School classes: The teacher identifies the art movements that are the most historically significant, but take the least actual understanding of the foundations of art to horribly reproduce. The focus is always on abstract, primitive, naïve, folk, or outsider art. Sometimes there are still life painting/drawing classes in which fruit is placed before the class but nothing is explained.

Early scholarship classes: Hey kids, it is time to have fun. Do whatever you want but include yarn~!

Late scholarship classes: What do you mean you don't understand perspective? We can't take time out for this, everyone else gets it.

And so I would consider the time spent in the classes largely wasted.

However, I want to improve. So there are books out from the library.

Yesterday witnessed my first three attempts at drawing in perspective. I went and bought a protractor just for the task. I've got a book of no less than 240 pages on the subject, and it is filled with discussions of angles. I only read about 20 pages before my first attempt. I finally figured out the use of holding rulers in front of things and squinting. No really, this had been a great mystery to me for many years. Armed with this new knowledge I discovered that, hey, if you don't hold the ruler at a consistent distance for every measurement, the measurements will just be completely wonked.

Now why the hell didn't the book bother telling me all that?

Oh, it did. On the very next page. God damn I am stupid.

It's really a series of terrible experiments where I just learn obvious things through crippling failure.

The second drawing was done before I returned to the book, but benefiting from the previous terrible session of trial and error. This time the key issue was probably along the lines of attempting three point perspective before one point. It also suffered from a complete failure to understand that lengths of vertical lines should diminish as they approach the horizon. So, I ended up with some kind of strange chair prism drawn from an angle that should have had 3 vanishing points, except nothing vanished.

The last one was of a tray table. I correctly positioned it and myself so that I would be drawing it from one point perspective. It still looks stupid though, and I have no idea why. If I had to guess it would be something along the lines of "being unable to accurately gauge it's depth due to stuff being all over it" with maybe a side of "being totally distracted by Babylon 5."

Even glancing at the book, there are continuing issues.

When trying to draw from life, I have no idea how to determine what the horizon line is before actually drawing the object. I guess actual problem is more on the lines of, before the object is drawn, I do not know where to place it in relation to the horizon. It is a stupid problem that is probably related to having a terminal case of wiggles.

Am I too flaky for art? It remains to be seen.

Another issue is that the book is largely utterly confusing.

Yet another issue is that I actually have no idea how to apply any of this into comics. Like the panels are so small. And most of the time I am in rooms, complicating the issue of where to put the horizon line even further. And then I already have a massive issue where I can't get pencil lines to erase completely and this will just make more unnecessary pencil lines.

In conclusion:

There is supposedly a go proverb along the lines of "Everyone has a hundred bad games of go in them." I also tend to have an assumption that if you do something enough you will eventually properly learn to do it.

And so begins my rote learning of perspective.

Here's wondering if I have more or less than 100 terrible perspective drawings in me.

I hate outside.

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:39:30 GMT

I am pulling into a parking space. I suddenly notice a tow away sign. Pausing not fully in the space but not obstructing traffic, I read the sign and heave a sigh of relief when I realize it does not apply to me. While reading, I feel that feeling of eyes boring into the back of my skull, so I turn around to see what appears to be George Costanza's parents peering at me from the safety of their car. Our eyes meet.

I give them the "Sorry, I'm pulling in not out" wave, finish parking, turn the car off, fuss around with my purse, get out, and--

They are still there. Watching me. Our eyes meet again.

Their window is down. Attempting to clear up the mix up, I say, "I was reading the tow away sign. Sorry..."

The man in some ridiculous accent that I am unable to place: "Why are you talking to me? Talk to your Obama!"

My Obama?

Instantly, they drive off without another word.

Premonition

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:19:59 GMT

As the legions of wild parrots screeched this morning, I had a sudden epiphany. Should they remain so concentrated and should I remain here, it would nearly become inevitable that I would encounter a dead one.

Mere hours later, I did.

Hate & Vitrol

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:56:17 GMT

We are left asking, what will drive her crazy first: the situation, the place, the computer, or the television.

But before that comics and art!

There is a new comic HERE and HERE.

There are some general boring drawings here, here, and here.

There are some boring character designs for a few short fictional comics I am working on here, here, and here. There is yet another one here that is NOT SAFE FOR WORK due to nudity.

The situation
I don't go out because I can't go out because I have to take care of my mom all day. She can't carry conversations that well anymore, and does not feel moved to try for me. She can't follow TV or the like anymore. Also she has totally lost her internal clock, so she wakes us up early for breakfast or asks about every 30 seconds about something over and over because she cannot tell that time has not passed. This is not an exaggeration. This is what it really is. Furthermore I don't really have any friends anywhere within 500 miles and the best comic shop is on goddamn clairemont mesa blvd which is sort of hellish to get to from Ocean Beach because the city is laid out in some strange pre-automobile/post-automobile way that makes no sense at all I swear to god.

The place
Well it is stupid and filled with drugs and posers. I do not know if all of CA is like this, but Ocean Beach definitely belongs on a shortbus somewhere.

The other day, I went to the more delicious pizzeria/bar (it is always /bar here). It was maybe as late as three in the afternoon. The entire place was full of drunks at, yes, three and they were all singing along together to a weezer song from pinkterton, one of the more inferior albums.

Now you may say to me, "Emily, there were like good songs on that album. Like the lesbian one or that other one." I may sadly have to inform you that pinkerton actually has more than three tracks. It actually has along the lines of ten tracks. You may also tell me that pinkerton is maybe weezer's second best work. I would have to tell you that it is actually their second work, and that every work after it has been an even greater failure.

Some background on this album for those of you who did not suffer through it when it you were ten: it is a concept album built around the idea of "What if Rivers Cuomo had yellow fever so bad that he wrote a concept album about it." The story of the concept album can be broken up into three parts: tracks 1-4 as "Man, fuck white girls." tracks 5-7 as "It's probably not really that wrong to want to do the 13 year olds in my official Japanese fan club, right?" and 8-10 as "Wait, was this supposed to be a concept album?" As for the quality of most of the songs: "[Cuomo] wrote all of its songs after a painful leg surgery; as a result, they were written in first-position on his guitar's fretboard so that he would not have to move too much to play them." (I was too lazy to find a real source).

Now, I love that horrible lesbian song which is actually from this album. And I even think the other two singles were passably acceptable as music. Unfortunately, the song that was playing was from the uncomfortable first half of the album. You know, the tracks that everyone skips because they all unambiguously terrible. Or so I thought.

Only in California would I be able to walk into a pizzeria/bar at three PM to discover it full of drunks who all apparently know the lyrics to "No Other One" well enough to want to sing along to it. For those of you who are not in the know, this is a terrible, trite, repetitive, uncatchy, shittastic song about staying with someone only out of a crippling fear of being alone.

Within moments I discovered that the bar was actually playing the entire blasted album.

This scene encapsulates everything I hate about here.

The computer
God I hate macs.

Here is the situation in which I would buy a mac:

My grandmother needs a computer for word processing and emails. I give her a mac because she is unlikely to get any viruses/keyloggers/etc, there is not much maintenance such as having to defrag the hard drive periodically required, the system is very user friendly, and the technical support is rather good considering. She is unlikely to be bothered by the fact that many programs do not have mac equivalents.

My parents are what you might call "true believers" in the mac platform. This is not me. I don't have very strong OS loyalties. Mac, PC, whatever. I, however, absolutely never wanted a mac due to a profound understanding that they are inadequate for my purposes. Yet I am stuck with a mac. It is an albatross around my neck.

The problems:
- the laptop keyboard stopped working
- laptop overheats, causing me to have a burn on my leg. Haven't used it on my lap in ages, but a burn mark is still visible. Wondering if it is permanently scarred.
- Cannot run many freeware programs without x11 environment installed, which is not included on the computer by default and is not available anywhere online
- Cannot run many programs simply because there is no mac equivalent except running a program like bootcamp to simulate windows. If I am going to be running an OS within an OS I might as well just get a fucking PC and cut out the middleman.
- the fan is constantly buzzing. I've recently installed a program to monitor fan speeds and temperatures. So far my fan is running randomly at nearly 6k rpm for no apparent reason. It should be going around 1.5k rpm. I have no idea why it is doing this.

The new problem:
-The mac is freezing up under what I would guess are heavy load conditions such as playing world of warcraft or using video chat on skype. The problem is that I do both activities on minimum graphical settings and my system is way over the minimum specs for both activities. It's even a little bit over the recommended specs. My best guess right now is that my system is over heating. This would mean that it is maybe reaching temperatures as high as 100C while playing warcraft or videos of any kind. It should not be hitting such high temperatures under any circumstances. It will take a few days to figure out if the computer is overheating or not.

I, of course, cannot take it to the "genius bar" at a mac store. They typically have one of two suggestions: accept a coupon for 10% off your next mac (hint: my next computer will not be a mac) or reformatting the drive.

The television
Lately the TV has been an increasing part of my life. I'm up from "Never watching TV" to "Watching 2/5ths as much TV as compared to the average American according to the 2000 census." It is still a high amount for me. I am afraid I am reaching toxicity levels.

At the gym, there are three choices for me, depending on which machine I am sitting in: Lou Dobbs on CNN, E!, or music videos. Now, Lou Dobbs sends me into a blind rage. If you've ever seen his program, you know why. If you haven't: It is an old white man misrepresenting political news to stir up gun rights activists, xenophobes, and other staples of the republican party. An example: the attorney general said that Americans are cowards about talking about race. Lou Dobbs ran a segment on how the attorney general is an unpatriotic bastard who is slandering all Americans with words like "coward."

More surprising is that I actually like watching E! It is like "Oh, there is a pretty dress." Except then it is like, "LET US CRUSH YOU WITH TERRIBLE BODY IMAGE ISSUES."

They were showing a segment on people in bathing suits. They started lamblasting some actress for going up to... a size two. It's bizarre and surreal. The photo of the woman was simply a skinny bitch who appeared to have not been airbrushed. I'm guessing it was a paparazzi photo because it was also of her moving and was taken from some weird ass unflattering angle. But this was fat. Unairbrushed and weird camera angles. I know its been said a hundred times, and more eloquently by others, but what the fuck. That is not fat. That is not even unhealthy. That is not even, "Doesn't look good on camera." That isn't even "You have to wear special clothes to downplay your ridiculous body."

I'm a size 14. It's not my thinnest, but I'm also at one of the two healthiest times I have ever been. I could stand to lose a few pounds, but I am not in any danger of fat-related illnesses. Over the last few months, I've even been more resistant to illness and less prone to stomach unhappiness. At my thinnest, I was basically always in some way under the weather, and sort of obviously malnourished in some way. Not all skinny girls suffer from such maladies. But seriously, there is such a thing as a healthy size in between "unrealistic" (and a size two is unrealistic for a lot of girls) and "going to get diabetes."

Lost Art of the Shameful Past

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 23:30:46 GMT

Not that I periodically look though old sappy emails to my boyfriend or something weird like that, but it seems that one of the comics I made sometime before my life ended managed to survive my computer getting a virus and needing to be reformatted.

I made a few others before everything went bad, but who knows if they will ever see the light of day.

The Old Enemy Returns

It can also be found on my website with the rest of my comics now that I have decided to use my website as more than a more expensive photobucket.

Going through my mom's old blog, I also found this ancient piece of crap from like 4 years ago.

Looking through my drawings makes me feel so old.

In other news, my new keyboard is finally here. Can you believe that I actually wrote those last two TL;DR entries with a click to type program? I am insane and retarded. Perhaps even, dare I say it, insanely retarded.

I really hate how the scanner ruins the colors of everything. When I go home to a place where I will hypothetically have a scanner and a photo editing program, I will probably switch to coloring on the computer again just so the colors look how I want them to look.

Hopefully this weekend I will make it out to the kinkos and scan some stuff, there are some character designs that I would love to get some feedback on.

Edit: I just realized that this is the first comic where I decided to include a representation of how hideously asymmetrical my face is. The line coming out of one of my eyes is a Melasma. No I am not pregnant. It has been there since 7th grade. They said it appeared because of puberty and that it would go away. It did not.

Dealing with the ignorant in discussions about minorities

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:50:26 GMT

The last post, I felt, was kind of harsh to people who didn't really deserve it.

I've continued to think about the issue a lot. cherprudence wrote me a comment. When I tried to respond a lot of what I was thinking about came out with it. It's not just a reply to her, it is an addendum to the previous entry. It is also too big for LJ's comment field. I am so bad at being concise.

cherprudence wrote:
I definately agree about the losing the debate part (and i mean the other too but--) The minority in so many ways has to accept more prodding by the ignorant (however well meaning some may be!) majority and they have to do it with grace and the very understanding theyre asking for. I think the fact that it's so exhausting is something a lot of people dont get credit for.

I often do not feel like the ignorant are particularly well meaning. Maybe 80-90% times when I have been subject to this prodding I've felt like the privileged person was looking for some kind of failure on my part that would invalidate the claim that I and my kind are human beings of equal worth to them and theirs. Most of the time when people ask me about glbt things, they are trying on some level to see me fail to explain that people should be with whoever they want so long as they love each other. If it's about socio-economic class, people want me to be unable to provide a compelling argument for the existence of generational poverty. If it's about feminism, they want my general incompetence as proof that women should not receive equal pay.

Basically the people who ask typically on some level want me to fail. They want me to yell. They want to hate me. What they want from the conversation is proof that inequality is mainly gone and that the issues that minorities continue to deal with are bullshit. They want to be able justify their apathy as well as the current social order.

The absolute worst part is that once they manage to dismiss the very real inequality that minorities face, it is only a small mental leap to start thinking of the laws that protect minorities as discrimination against the majority. Their voting will reflect a desire to strip away such protections as anti-redlining laws, affirmative action, welfare/food stamp/wic, hate crime laws, and more.

It makes the whole thing undeniably frustrating and exhausting. And I understand that it is hard to take the prodding with grace because in every other situation the correct response to such questions would be along the lines of "Are you serious? What. the. fuck." But that response is pretty much along the lines of just what the ignorant majority needs to justify never taking the minority seriously again.

That doesn't actually mean that the minority has to answer the question.

The ignorant majority does not always realize that the question they are asking would basically require the minority to write a massive dissertation on the subject. Furthermore, the ignorant majority does not want a dissertation because LOL TL;DR. The minority is damned if they say what they really feel and damned if they actually think it out and give a good answer.

The best thing to do is just dodge it.

The ignorant majority is doing a test. They want to see if the minority has sharp teeth. If the answer is yes, their response is, "Mad dogs need to be put down." not "Maybe I shouldn't walk around pulling tails."

So the most important thing is the tone of the answer. What they are really after is whether or not the minority is rational. No matter how unfair the question, it is always in the minority's best interest to say "Yes, I am rational and calm." So long as the ignorant majority continues to be answered with "Yes, I am rational." they have a chance of undergoing a magical transformation from ignorant into questioning.

By questioning, I do not mean asking more of those same questions though they will do that. I mean sincerely questioning whether the status quo is just.

The thing that sucks is that the minority will also have to continue to worry about tone lest the questioning member of the majority revert to completely ignorant.

The good thing is that the questioning majority will actually read long things and research independently. If they actually absorb what they read they may become "enlightened." By this I mean they will understand the role privilege has had in their lives, and that due to privilege the "playing field" is completely uneven in countless ways, some more subtle than others.

The majority is mainly ignorant or questioning. Here are some examples of how we can package responses to them with a minimum of effort but will reaffirm in their minds that we are not crazy so our grievances are legitimate.

Well, then how do I write minorities well then?! Would you rather just have no representation in fiction at all?

Good but dodgy answers:
- I'm bogged down in this massive race related internet drama right now and cannot really give this question the well thought out answer it deserves.
- I don't write fiction, and cannot give tips on things like characterization. I just know that seeing x, y, or z is very hurtful to minorities.
- I haven't figured out the right way. I just know the wrong way.
- Here are a few examples of minority characters that were not terrible...
- Post a link to an article on the subject that you largely agree with

Bad but true answers:
-I don't have a responsibility to teach you this.
-"Do your own research" or links to google or snarky versions of google.

How did you find out you were gay?

Good but dodgy
-It's different for everyone.
-I don't feel comfortable talking about it here/now/at all .
-(Depending on tone) How did you find out you were straight?

Bad but true
-You do not have a right to know intimate details of my private life just because I'm different from you.
-You only think you have a right to ask me such a rude question due to the privileges you have from being part of the majority.

Oh man, wouldn't you believe it, but I also have not been treated right by society. For example, I am part of a different underprivileged group..."

Good:
- Wow, that's interesting, but this thread is really just about this other group. Maybe you should make a separate topic for your group.

Bad:
-Do not make this about you, white/male/rich/straight person.

The bad but true answers will come off as condescending, mean, "reverse racist," or other impressions that are just not conducive to anything. Not only that but tearing someone down over this is a form of trying to shame them into knowing better. First of all, at best shaming them will put them into resentful silence, at worst they will lash out in anger and potentially derail the discussion. It won't make them learn anything.

Secondly, there is basically no way for people to really learn about it unless they go out of their way. Privilege is not obvious. Even people who do not benefit from privilege do not necessarily realize its existence. A woman once told me that women should never receive equal pay because they would always put their children ahead of the job. This person was younger than me and more than half way through post-secondary education at a liberal arts school. The status quo is so insidious that it can and does convince people that they deserve the inequality they see. Someone who mainly benefits is not going to see it on their own, is not going to have an "oh duh" moment when their ignorance is pointed out, and will think the person doing the pointing is nuts.

A caveat:

There are times when someone needs a public shaming.

I tend to put the line at spreading misinformation. So, when I see:

-Women already get equal pay and do not need anything else
-Fat people show a lack of discipline by being fat and should not be given important jobs
-Blacks never created their own civilizations
-Gay people are harmful to children
-People with disabilities should not be permitted to breed
-Rap music is what is wrong in the urban black community
-etc etc etc

I tend to think it is time to bust out some citations on their asses. Would not really want a bunch of easily disprovable bullshit to spread.

This is a post about Racefail

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:29:06 GMT

I never miss a chance to rattle on about race. Ever.

I read through a lot of racefail. While I agreed with a lot of what was being said there were about two things that stood out to me about it that really disappointed me.

The first thing was that I continued to see in this racial discussion what I see in every racial discussion: a complete failure to understand forces such as globalization and cultural syncretism. These two forces are basically inevitable, and I really really wish they would stop being brought up in the context of "They stole our...!!!". Yes, white people stole rap and jazz and blues. This was going to happen, we live in the same god damn country. We can listen to the same radio stations and by the same CDs. On the same note, it was going to happen that black people would use white instruments such as turntables and basses in their music. We live in too close quarters for it not to occur, and this effect will only magnify as globalization causes our planet to shrink.

My absolute favorite phrasing of this situation was something I saw on Japanese TV. They were interviewing those weird guys that dress up as cowboys all the time and one of them said, "When I was a child I watched John Wayne every day. You say that this isn't my culture, but if growing up watching it every day is not my culture, what is?" I'm paraphrasing but it was something like that.

I guess what I am saying is that some aspects of black culture are going to become part of mainstream culture. There is nothing inherently bad about it. In fact, I would argue that there is a lot of stuff that is really really good about it, but this is going on long enough as it is. Media representation of minorities as stereotypes is a sort of different issue than widespread adoption of an art/music form.

The second thing I saw that really frustrated me was what I sort of perceived as a massive failure in communication between mainstream-but-questioning-the-status-quo whites and minorities.

Basically when you have a debate, there tends to be a side that represents the current order, and a side that is either leaning reactionary or radical. The side that does not represent the status quo is always going to be doubted more, judged more harshly, and held to stricter standards of conduct. The reason for this is because the audience basically sees the status quo argument every single day in everything that they do. So to beat the status quo's argument you really do have to present yourself better than the status quo will. It's not fair; it's simply reality.

To illustrate what I am saying, during one of the presidential debates maybe like 8 years ago, George Bush had terrible conduct. Interrupting the moderator and his opponent, going over his alloted time, the works. As a representative of the status quo, this was not counted against him in anyway, it may have even counted in his favor. Had any of his opponents done the same, they would have unanimously been declared the loser of the debate.

What I am getting at here is that it's a little bit insane to write a lot of posts on portrayal of minorities in sci-fi/fantacy and then answer questions along the lines of, "How can I learn to write minorities well?" with "Don't make this about you, white person!" and "It's not my responsibility to answer your questions and you only think I should due to white privilege."

It is a miserable truth, but here it is. If you write a post about race in a public place, you are engaging in a debate on it. If you turn away questions from the ignorant white onlookers, you lose the debate. You might be right in every god damn way, but you still lose the debate. You lose because as members of the ruling order, they will judge you by a harsher set of rules because they see the status quo's argument every day. They will not judge the status quo argument by the behavior of the one presenting it, but if you yell, if you are dismissive, condescending-- if you are anything, they will characterize your argument as whatever you did and said.

They cannot understand a statements like "Don't make this about you, white person!" and "It's not my responsibility to answer your questions and you only think I should due to white privilege." because the questions they are asking show basically no understanding of privilege and they will interpret your remarks as racist because yes really they are that ignorant.

It's important that you lost that person specifically because the fight against racism and any other form of chauvinism is a battle for hearts and minds. I know how much it sucks to deal with the ignorant. I'm openly not straight, I'm a woman, I grew up poor, and I am foreign when I live in Japan. It's more important that I and all non-straight people come out looking good than it is for me to vent my frustration at yet again being asked how I came to know that I like girls when it is no one's god damn business.

I guess I feel very bad to see people who are right lose the debate.

Website?

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:21:49 GMT

What if there were dragons that were dying and all they needed was some of your clicks in order to live forever?

Would you click?

In a burst of artistic creativity I redid my entire website.

click here

I would love to know what anyone thinks, as well as if anyone finds anything broken or wrong.

To do:
-Update the "words" section to fit in with the rest of the site
-Add in the rest of the terrible artwork somewhere or other.
-Start adding content again
-sweep through LJ and fix broken images

DRAGONS.

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:18:09 GMT

If you do not click on my dragons, they will die. You don't want that right?

I haven't posted in a while because my life fell apart! I don't even have a scanner anymore. My mom became terminally ill so I came home from Japan to take care of her. It maybe is as bad as it sounds.

I joined a gym and am trying to lose weight! I am white beyond comprehension in spite of the California sun. Everything is kind of awful and you do not even want to know. My wow addiction has reached new complexities now that it is basically my only leisure activity.

I'm going to start work on a short fictional comic very soon. If I can find a place like kinkos that does scanning, you may see it. It's based on the cover of what I assume is a successful romance novel. Hopefully fans of it will not be coming after me to kill me.

This is a comic about Warcraft

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:05:42 GMT

Now, there's nothing wrong with elephants per se. They are just simply not that exciting compared to the other options available. Like, god damn, an elephant probably wouldn't even maim someone intentionally if they didn't deserve it. Compare this to the malicious potential of ghost tigers or horses that are on fire. Purple elephants are just not in the same league.

Here is a rant that will make every nerd hate me.

Today at school an anthropologist came to tell us why Americans become otaku. While she said some things that seemed reasonable enough, there were two points that I thought were kind of questionable at best. The first thing is that she said that people become otaku because they are looking for a way to differentiate themselves from the crowd, and also that elitist fans were mainly just upset that the thing that made them special was becoming mainstream, so they weren't special anymore.

As an elitist, and as a pathetic nerd, I feel like I have to set the record straight.

I didn't get into escapist media like anime because I wanted to be different. I got into it because I already was different and miserably depressed about it. I wanted to escape, if you will.

I'm a trekkie. I'm an otaku in the American sense of the word. As the above comic demonstrates, I play too many video games. I still find myself reading superhero comics, and not just award winning gritty ones. There was a time when I followed nearly 200 webcomics at a time, and spent hours every day looking for new ones. I am a goon. It bothers me when television shows don't stick to their own continuity--even shows like South Park or the Simpsons. I'm not a casual nerd. When I lived in the United States, I had to seriously think before bringing people into my room because no amount of preparation could prepare people for the amount of comic books I had. I've played MUDs, done online text RPGs, and even played DnD like twice.

I am in absolutely no position to look down my nose at anyone and yet here I am. I absolutely hate other nerds. It's not because they got into something later than me, and it's not because they make me unspecial. It's because they suck. They really completely suck. They suck in ways you cannot even imagine if you haven't spent a significant amount of time around them, and believe me it sucks even more when you're enough of a nerd yourself to understand every god damn word that comes out of their mouths.

I hate nerds because I hate when they don't respect my space. I hate listening to protracted arguments on whether or not the society portrayed in Star Trek would dissolve into hedonism. I hate people getting on my case for not min/maxing, and I hate Asperger's. I hate Mac vs PC arguments, and I especially hate Linux. I hate it when people tell me that I'm not leveling at maximum efficiency. I hate it when people ask me how much manga I have, and I hate it when people try to ramble at me about the finer points of Cowboy Bebop when I've already told them I've never seen the entire thing and never want to. I hate it when people idealize foreign countries, and I especially hate it when they don't take showers. I hate it when people are so ridiculously awkward that it makes me feel embarrassed for them. I hate listening to webcomic "journalists" mentally masturbate about micropayments. I hate it when people seek me out in comic book shops just because I'm a girl. I hate it when people tell me they are studying Japanese on their own in America using only Naruto as a textbook. I hate that the last time I went to a convention one of my friends was groped within 5 minutes of arriving at that stupid place. I hate DESU DESU DESU and I hate the unrestrained obsession with sex that seems to permeate fandom because god damn I did not want to see that and I did not need to know.

What I really really hate though is that nerds want to be my friend. Nearly all of the above list would be alright if people did not automatically assume that there is some bond of nerdiness that ties us together. There isn't. I have plenty of friends that are nerds, but we are friends because they are cool and nice people. Them being nerds is just incidental. I don't even have the same nerd hobbies as most of them. So nerds of the world: stop randomly approaching me with only your nerd credentials. Even if it were not creepy, it is simply not a very great first impression.

When people ask me if I'm a nerd, I tend to say no. It's not because I'm ashamed and it's only partially because I don't want to be associated with the unwashed masses. It's because if someone asks me if I am a nerd there is a good chance that if I say yes they will immediately launch into their life story, their pet theories about the Harry Potter chess event, or grassy knolls and that WTC7 was a controlled demolition. It's not something that someone who just met you wants to hear. Some of it is stuff that most people never will want to hear because it is crazy.

In summary: god damn nerds suck.

Bearbrick Mountain

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:15:07 GMT

This one builds off of the last one about bearbricks.

Yeah, it's a bit late to try to make a running joke out of this but I've been homeless for a month and a half. So sue me.

On that front: I am no longer homeless/couch surfing/in between places/whatever you want to call it. Probably this means that you can expect more regular updates! Weekly, I would imagine.

I am doing the classes thing. You don't want to hear about it. I will start ranting about why I hate moral relativism in spite of being a godless heathen. It is not a pretty sight.

I think my spaceship knows which way to go

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:25:29 GMT

Writing to say that I am, somehow, still alive.

My tour of America's east coast is coming to an end and I really only managed to do 1/4th of the things I wanted. There's nothing to be done about that though, and the only way to go is forward.

Next week is the west coast, or at least the very very bottom of it. My mother is finally getting married, which will greatly simplify explaining that portion of my family. If you don't know why my family needs explaining, it is maybe better not to ask unless you are prepared to draw a flow chart.

After this its back to Japan. Things are still uncertain there, but I've always managed to pull through. I never quite manage to do things gracefully, so it's not so much "always landing on my feet" but more of a "resilient like a roach."

I've kept up drawing while here in the states, but I don't know when I'll have access to scanners. I can only hope before October.

Life Update!

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:51:21 GMT

Things have been messy lately!

Probably the overwhelming concern is that I am moving on the 5th. This seems normal, but actually I am not sure if I have a place to live. That is ok though, because home is where the heart is.

I'm also coming back to the USA! Not moving there, just visiting! What does that mean for you? Probably absolutely nothing because I'm spending less than two weeks where anyone lives, and I am pretty sure I have forgotten how to drive. I will make a concerted effort to see people, but if it does not happen please understand that my life is falling apart!

Before returning and before moving I have finals though! It is kind of stressful! I'm only updating because I am at school and I ran out of things to do! The bulk of my study materials are at home, which is where I will be going as soon as I am done meeting with people.

The other concern is that I have more hamsters than should exist! They are all female, but there really is just a lot of them. Sometimes you look over and see them and it is just an overwhelming quantity. Actually, I am pretty ok with having 5 hamsters. The larger concern is if I really really don't have a place to live I will have to get rid of them! It is sort of a sad thing.

I wish I could draw comics about them, but if I did, it would just be like 4 ovals in a pile with a caption saying "ohgodcute" underneath.

War: Is afraid of other hamsters. She is also very fat. Shares a cage with Famine.

Famine: Is probably the sweetest. She is a cuddle monster much to War's distress.

Death: Tended to bully her sisters, forcing me to buy like so many cages. Wants to be the boss of the cage. Shares a cage with Reaper.

Reaper: The mother hamster! She was somehow pregnant when I bought her! She actually is the boss of the cage. Unfortunately, her health seems to be gradually declining on account of her being the oldest hamster in the world.

Viking: Hates other hamsters! But is soft. Lives on her own and does not destroy everything she comes in contact with! Also she seems happy when I come home like a puppy or something.

There was also Pestilence! However she lives with someone else now! Was the runt of the litter and everyone else was always trying to eat her.

Really, this entry is just to say, "I won't be updating for a while! Maybe all of August. Here is why." So see you all in a few weeks.

Buyer's Remorse

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:24:48 GMT

My computer does not like scanning greens and oranges because it hates me.

I do not actually know how to use photoshop, nor am I a good photographer, so this will be the last picture-within-a-comic experiment.

New Moon

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:03:49 GMT

If I haven't seen you in more than a year and my drawing of you is like way off, don't blame me. It is your own fault for not visiting more.

The CHA on the moon is from a cartoon I liked when I was a kid. Considering the subject, I really just could not resist putting it on there.

That tree is supposed to be bonsai-esque maybe. One day I will develop a style that actually resembles reality maybe.