Rynling R&D

The most recent Nintendo Direct was like a sign from the gods that I should stop faffing about and draw the Link's Awakening comic I keep saying I'm going to do. The script is written, and I have the thumbnails laid out, but...

...but honestly, my art isn't very good. Or at least not good enough to convey what I'm trying to express in an interesting and visually appealing way.

I've found that, if I commission a real artist to draw one of my comic scripts, the work can get thousands (and even tens of thousands!) of notes, which I obviously appreciate. I can't commission someone to draw this particular comic, however, because it's autobiographical and a bit embarrassing in its sincerity. I'm really going to have to do it myself, even if my garbage art makes me cringe.

On the other hand, I had a zine of my old Zelda comics printed, and it's actually kind of cool. Outside of the context of Tumblr, where professionals and hardcore hobbyists are overrepresented, my amateur art doesn't look half bad. Like, it's not awful, and maybe it's even a bit charming.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the most important thing is to be excited about what I do and get my work out there. Not everything has to be perfect!

In my post about Balthier's Hot Dad, I referred to Vayne as "the game's primary (kind of?) antagonist." This is because I think FFXII's real antagonist is Ashe.

Livvyplaysfinalfantasy makes a very good point in her post about Ashe's theme music, which is that it "sounds more like a villain’s theme than a leading lady's." Ashe wants freedom and agency, and she wants the power to protect herself and her people, and for most of the game she is willing to do whatever it takes to assert her independence and achieve independence for Dalmasca. She is willing to destroy Archadia, and she is willing to destroy Rozzaria, and she has seen what nethicite can do with her own eyes, and she says (to Reddas, of all people) that she's not afraid to use it.

What I appreciate about Ashe is that it takes five sympathetic party members, two sympathetic party guests (we don't talk about the third one), and an entire cast of sympathetic NPCs to prevent Ashe from essentially becoming Ganondorf. She almost - almost! - becomes a villain anyway, though, and not a single person would have respected her less if she did.

Every morning I drink a tall glass of Respect Ashe juice, and it helps me get through the day.

However - and I apologize - I know this is very shallow, but who in their right mind let Ashe leave the house looking like that? Of all of Vossler's many sins, Ashe's outfit is the most reprehensible. Penelo can dress like that because she's sixteen and can do whatever the hell she wants, and Fran can dress like that because she's (at least) sixty and can do whatever the hell she wants, but I don't think it's sexist or misogynistic to say that "surfside lingerie casual" is a strange look to wear when you're on a tour to meet with all of the political leaders in your region in order to negotiate the independence of your kingdom. In Ivalice, the political power of humes seems to be marked by how much clothing they're wearing, and Ashe is wearing a gauzy negligee and a red handkerchief. It's like, Come on girl, dress for the job you want, not the job you have!

Anyway, what's really interesting about Ashe is that, in not only refusing to take the power offered to her by the Occuria but also eliminating its only accessible source, she is responsible for rise of religious zealotry and the resulting Cataclysm that destroys Ivalice and permanently limits the level of its civilization, all of which probably occurs within Fran's lifetime. It turns out that Ashe made the absolute worst decision she could have possibly made; but, in her defense, she made it for all the right reasons.

Gaslighting is the process of attempting to convince someone that their accurate perception of a situation is incorrect; and, moreover, that there is something wrong with them personally for having perceived the situation in this way.

Based on what I’ve seen, a lot of the disagreement over this definition has to do with how many people need to be involved in order to a situation to be “gaslighting” and not “abusive behavior” or simply “being an asshole.” For example, if Person A says “There’s a strange smell coming from the kitchen” and Person B says “No there’s not, you’re just crazy,” then that’s probably not gaslighting. I would contend, however, that there is so much atmospheric discrimination against certain groups of people that even an isolated “you’re just overreacting” contributes to a broader system of systematic gaslighting. As a result of this atmospheric gaslighting, some people from marginalized positions can feel that there’s something inherently wrong with their point of view, especially during times of stress and vulnerability.

So there’s this thing that many American therapists do, which is to try to gently lead a patient to arriving at a revelation on their own, generally over the course of several sessions. I understand the theory behind this, but I still hate it.

I’m going to give a personal example. I was in a toxic relationship for more than a year when I was in college. I feel as though I’ve been conditioned to claim partial responsibility and say something like “the abuse went both ways,” but that wasn’t really what was going on. Essentially, the boy I was dating would be a disgusting assclown until I snapped and reacted, at which everything that was wrong with the relationship would be my fault because I got upset. I had never been in that sort of unhealthy relationship with anyone before, and I otherwise got along with most people really well, so I had no idea what was going on. I therefore went to a therapist and told her, in so many words, that I was “forcing” my boyfriend to abuse me verbally and physically, and that I needed her to help me figure out what it was about me that compelled him to hurt me.

If a scared teenager came to me and said this, my first response would be, in no uncertain terms, “Honey, you need to get out of there, because no one should be assaulting you for any reason. We can talk about this for as long as you want later, but you are in real danger and right now you need to get out.” What my therapist – and then another therapist – and then another therapist – said to me, however, was “Well, what do you think is wrong with you? Why do you think he hits you and calls you a dumb cunt?”

Even if this sort of thing isn’t technically gaslighting, it still feeds into the pervasive social narrative that teenage girls are crazy and irrational and deserve whatever happens to them if they don’t follow all of the contradictory “rules” about dating and relationships. Between one thing and another, I had never found a safe space where I could talk to other people my age about real relationships without being judged or losing face, which is why I didn’t immediately jump to the obvious conclusion that the reason why a boy would want to physically strike anyone is a conversation that needs to happen between him and his therapist.

Around this time I got on LiveJournal and discovered fic. What this meant is that suddenly I was exposed to all sorts of models of romantic and sexual relationships, and this was when I started to understand what was going on in my life. It’s not so much that the fic I was reading was explicitly like “this is what a healthy relationship looks like” or “this is what abuse looks like,” because Lord knows the BDSM Sailor Moon and Trigun femslash I was reading did not get even remotely close to that sort of thing. Rather, what I got from reading and discussing and eventually writing fic was that women’s stories are valid, and young women’s stories are valid, and queer women’s stories are valid, and nonbinary female-presenting people’s stories are valid. No matter how transgressive the fic or meta you wrote may have been, it was no less worthy of being taken seriously because you specifically wrote it.

That sense of “being valid” and “being taken seriously” is, in my opinion, an effective antidote to gaslighting. I don’t think fandom is or ever was inherently an activist space or even a safe space, but I do think it’s a place where a lot of female and transgender and nonbinary people first get the sense that it’s okay for them to exist in the world as themselves, no matter how weird or strange or non-normative or queer they might be.

I think this is one of the main reasons why the purity culture of anti-fandom bothers me so much. If people are only supposed to write “pure” relationships – or even, to take this a step farther, if they’re supposed to be so pre-enlightened about social justice that they need to tag everything they write with all applicable content warnings – then that’s tantamount to being told that they need to police themselves at all times in fandom, just as in real life. In addition, because the rules about “safe shipping” are so arbitrary and contradictory, this feels very much like the same sort of “Well, what do you think is wrong with you?” nonsense I got in therapy as a teenager (and then later, when I tried therapy again at several points as an adult).

If we can call fandom a safe space, and if we can think of fandom as an activist space, I think that’s because it’s a space where the voices of people who are so often silenced, marginalized, and discounted in the real world are allowed free expression. In this sense, a sentiment such as “don’t like, don’t read” can be a powerful and almost politically transformative expression of tolerance and empathy.

By the way, I get that not all therapists are incompetent jerks. Many of them are, though, and finding one of the good ones (who also happens to be a good fit for any given client) is not just a difficult and time-consuming process but also a community effort in many cases. I don’t want to suggest that fanfic is an alternative to therapy... but it sure is a hell of a lot cheaper.

Writing Workshops Suck, and Other Tales of Woe
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/14429.html

I randomly found this Dreamwidth post on Google while searching for something else, but the title caught my attention and it ended up resonating with me on a deep level. I think about universal basic income a lot, and I like to daydream about what I would do if I lived in a society that had such a system. Sometimes I take these fantasies too far and consider applying for an MFA program in Creative Writing, but then I'm like... nah.

After submitting my book manuscript, I spent a week frantically writing and sending off overdue jobs that I put off while getting the manuscript ready for submission. I then devoted this past week to putting the finishing touches on the Zelda comics zine, which I sent off to the printer this morning. I also decided to create a separate zine for my autobio comics, which I hope will be ready to send this evening. The bookmarks and sticker I made for the Zelda zine are lovely, so I also made a bookmark and two stickers to go with the autobio comics zine. In addition, I made a double-sided promotional postcard for the "Video Games and Japan" course I'm teaching this semester. The class is full, but I want something nice to hand out at events and so on.

This was a lot of work, and it wasn't cheap. I had to put everything on a credit card, but I'm sure I'll pay it off... eventually.

I learned two things from this process. First, design work takes time, and it's okay that it takes time. I'm going to make mistakes, and that's okay too.

Second, I really love Sticker Mule. They're relatively expensive if you're ordering small quantities, but the quality is high and the website is super easy to use. Some of the sticker printing services I checked demanded that I go through a twelve-step processes to submit a file, but Sticker Mule just asks you to upload a file and then does the work for you. I suppose I'm very privileged to be able to say this, but I am absolutely willing to pay a bit more money for quality and convenience. I guess the downside to Sticker Mule is that their stickers feel somewhat corporate and maybe too glossy, and there aren't many customization options.

I'm rushing to get everything printed as quickly as possible because I want to apply to table at the DC Zine Fest. I'm not sure when their application opens, and I want to be ready when it does. No matter how proficient I become at art or writing, I could never table at a weekend convention simply because my anxiety would destroy me. The DC Zine Fest is only about four hours on one afternoon, though, so it's much closer to my comfort level.

The next task is putting together the Horror Haiku zine, but I think I'm going to take a week or two to work on other projects before I so much as look at InDesign again.

How I turned an idea into an outline
https://bookishdiplodocus.tumblr.com/post/178570150561/how-i-turned-an-idea-into-an-outline


This is an interesting and useful post about how to plot a novel, and I appreciate that it succinctly cuts through the bullshit of so many mainstream (male-authored) writing guides that are so often treated as one-size-fits-all "industry" standards. I personally structure plots a bit differently, because that's how writing and art work, but it's helpful to think of a huge project like writing a novel as "75 chunks of 1,000 words, give or take." What this set of numbers means is that, if I can write a thousand words in a week, which is absolutely doable for me, then I can have the first draft of a novel finished in about a year and a half. Nice!

I'm going to have to admit that I find the constant obsession with wordcounts a bit ridiculous. I understand that wordcounts help writers keep track of the progress they're making, but it bothers me how many people take it for granted that wordcount defines genre. What I love about literary fiction, as well as fiction published outside the United States, is that there's no expectation that something needs to be a certain number of words or pages in order to have market value. I actually really enjoy novellas and longer stories and essays that don't fit into neat American categories, as do people in most other countries; and, given how frequently I work with editors in the UK, there's no need for me to go into a project assuming that it will be bought in America and thus needs to weigh in at 130,000 words in order to be taken seriously. Before anything, though, I need to have a complete first draft. I can start evaluating the market once I have something to sell; but, until then, I might as well enjoy myself without worrying too much.

When I express concern about people on Twitter getting upset about chunky otters or Marie Kondo, I always feel the need to attempt to explain that I'm not trying to tone police anyone or say something like "You need to be [x] level of oppressed before you're allowed to get upset." Rather, there really does need to be a serious and public conversation about who is secretly racist, and I'm not sure that constant casual accusations of racism are helping us have it.

To give an example of what I mean by "secret racism," back in 2016 or so I followed a few people who occasionally reblogged lovely nature photography. When I started "liking" it, Tumblr's algorithm began recommending all sort of weird gender essentialist and white supremacist posts. What I was eventually able to figure out is that the nature photography was of scenery in Germany specifically, and that the blogs posting it had tagged these posts as "featherwood," a term that may have once been associated with female prison gangs but has since spread to people who have embraced a Quiverfull-style ideology concerning race and gender. As soon as I blocked the keyword "featherwood," the problem was mostly fixed (and biting the bullet and unfollowing the three or four people who had reblogged these posts - often alongside Steven Universe photosets and "are the cishets okay lol" posts - took care of the rest).

What I'm trying to demonstrate with this example is that there are in fact codewords and ideological patterns that are strong indicators of veiled white supremacist leanings, and I wish the huge public conversations about race and representation happening on social media would touch on this sort of thing.

Another example is the expression "the coastal elites," which has been a white supremacist codeword for "the Jewish global conspiracy" at least since I was in college. When people on the American left wing started talking about "coastal elites" during the lead-up and aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, that was a huge red flag for me. Like, there were people on Tumblr reblogging all sorts of authoritarian craziness in the name of social justice, and I had no idea how to tell them that the ideological purity they were advocating was using the language of hardcore white supremacy while wearing a Black Lives Matter hat (which was, admittedly, crazymaking). When I tried to explain my understanding of what was going on (mostly notably with sarasa-cat/vieralynn, if anyone remembers those exchanges), the response was inevitably something along the lines of "well you're racist for not understanding that Hillary is just as bad as Trump." Or like, when I tentatively tried to suggest to a few people that a popular Zelgan webcomic was using coded language and imagery to propagate White Supremacy 101, the response was basically, "They're just fictional characters dumbass, GO OUTSIDE." 

It's 2019, and you'd think we'd have figured this mess out by now, but that's not the case. Recently on Twitter I've seen my friends and contacts - like, university professors and professional journalists and editors and translators of literary fiction - retweet things coming from people who advocate #humanscience and #humanbiodiversity. What these people are specifically referring to is "race science" (here's an archived webcapture of a widely circulated "human biodiversity reading list" for reference), whose main guiding principle seems to be the "scientifically proven" assertion that melanin is a chemical that causes violent and antisocial behavior. The message these people (many of whom are writers whose work has been published in respected tech journals) are advocating is that, if we accept that science tells us that climate change is real and that we need to vaccinate our children, then we must also accept it when science tells us [some racist bullshit].

When I've messaged a few people whom I know personally and have been friends with for years with a gentle note of caution, the response has been, predictably, "so you're an antivaxxer then" or "I wouldn't have pegged you for a climate change denier." It's like, Hang on there friend, I was just trying to give you a heads-up that the person you've been constantly retweeting for the past week is a secret white supremacist! Except it's not even a secret, because all the codewords are right there in their profiles.

So yes, some people are indeed "secret racists," and the reason that most decent people don't see them for what they are is because most of us don't have any exposure to white supremacist vocabulary or discussions. Really, the only reason I know a tiny fraction of what's going on is because I grew up in the rural Deep South (where people tend to be more openly racist) and then started spending time on gaming forums where MRA-style misogyny was often a gateway to more radical belief systems. My first instinct is to block and avoid this sort of thing when I encounter it, so I'm not an expert, and I still experience the occasional unpleasant surprise when I realize that something I thought was silly and harmless is, in fact, deeply disturbing. This is why I wish the conversations people had on Twitter about "secret racism" would focus more on identifying and explaining codewords and exposing and calling out creepy individuals.

“The Linux of social media” — How LiveJournal pioneered (then lost) blogging
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-linux-of-social-media-how-livejournal-pioneered-then-lost-web-blogging/

The passage I quoted above is the conclusion to a wonderful essay about the rise and fall of LiveJournal (and the creation of Dreamwidth). This is a bit narcissistic, but it always makes me happy to see people writing substantial articles about things that actually mean something to me personally. LiveJournal used to be a big deal to a lot of people, but not even professional Media Studies scholars know what it was and how it worked and how it nourished and enabled online cultures that have since become mainstream. Idk, maybe there are always going to cultural black holes like LiveJournal that exert a huge gravitational influence but that most people can't see or measure.

The worst campus interview I ever had was at Michigan State University, which is located in the sad city of East Lansing, Michigan. I was living in Indiana at the time, and I made an executive decision to drive through a snowstorm (instead of flying through a snowstorm) to get there. Despite leaving as early as I possibly could, I still arrived at the scheduled welcome dinner 45 minutes late, and the search committee was not happy with me. Things went downhill from there.

I made it through the three-day dog and pony show of the campus interview by telling myself that there was a comic book store in East Lansing that I would visit once everything was over. MSU has a strong Visual Arts program, and the university library also has the largest collection of zines in the United States. Many comic book stores sell zines created by the local community, and I was excited to see what sort of cool things the store right next to MSU would have.

So after a great deal of misery this awful, harrowing process is finished, and the last lunch has filled me with so much anxiety that I spend a good fifteen minutes crying in the restaurant bathroom after everyone else has left, but finally I can go to the comic book store. I get there, and it turns out to be a small box of a room with stained carpet and fluorescent lighting and a few cheap particleboard bookshelves from Target displaying a depressing collection of the most mass-market graphic novels you can think of, like, The Complete Far Side and the first five volumes of Naruto.

Thinking that it's rude to walk in only to then immediately walk out again, I go to one of the shelves and pretend to look at the titles. I start counting in my head, like, "One Mississippi, two Mississippi," reasoning that maybe it will be okay to leave after three minutes. I pick up Watchmen or something, and I begin to zone out, replaying some particularly mean thing someone said to me during the interview or some idiotic and cringeworthy thing I said in response, and then the store clerk comes up to me.

"Do you need any help?" she asks.

"No," I reply, panicking. "I already have everything in the store."

She looks at me, and I look at her, and then I suddenly become aware that I smell like I just spent fifteen minutes crying in a restaurant bathroom, and I put down the book I'm holding and walk right out the door. I already have everything in the store. I wonder if she still tells people that story sometimes, you know?

Anyway, sometimes I get nervous about the first day of class, but it's comforting to know that at least it won't be as awkward as this one exchange I had with a clerk in the comic book store of East Lansing, Michigan.

Reddas has a fantastic redemption arc, and if you disagree you are wrong.

Reddas is also Peak Fashion, and if you disagree we can't be friends.

I just really love him a whole lot okay.