2017 Weekly Writing Log, Part 36

- I wrote and edited and posted the fourteenth chapter of The Legend of the Princess. I'm getting ready to turn up the heat between Zelda and Ganondorf, and this chapter was intended to introduce the fact that Zelda has had prior sexual experience. Although I meant for it to be short, it turned out to be a fantastic opportunity for character development, and it ended up being the longest chapter I've posted. Now that I've begun to establish that Zelda is more of an adult than a teenager, I'm finding that it's much easier to write from her perspective.

- Back in 2016 I submitted an essay on Zelda fan comics to an edited collection about video games and social justice. The editors sent me some suggestions, and I made the appropriate changes, and then everything went to the press's editors. In my essay I had discussed a certain Zelda/Ganondorf webcomic, and one of the press's editors got back to me saying, essentially, "That webcomic is racist." One of the collection's editors replied and said, "Yeah, I wasn't going to say anything, but that webcomic is racist." I had been getting racist vibes from the comic as well, so I bit the bullet and wrote to the artist to ask if that was indeed her intention. In response, she went through a lot of trouble to emphasize the racist themes in her artist's notes and in the comic itself – which, I have to admit, surprised the hell out of me. I therefore edited my essay to avoid any mention of the webcomic and instead allocated those words to drawing a clearer line between online bigotry and the transnational rise of the alt right in mainstream politics. I just sent off the edited version this morning, and I am so tired and disheartened. You live and learn, I guess.

- I've been saying for a while that all I want to draw is Ganondorf and flowers. Neither of those things is particularly easy, but this week I was finally able to summon the courage I needed to actually go ahead and draw Ganondorf and flowers. The new thing I tried with this piece involved actually labeling my layers and working layer by layer instead of flailing around in a manic burst of messy activity.

- I've been having fantasies of drawing comics about Professor Ganondorf, and this week I posted one of the rough character designs I've been working on. It doesn't look like anything special, but I tried something new with the background, tried out a simple lighting effect, and actually used the bracket keys to adjust the size of the brush tool instead of doing it with the slider bar like an asshole. This last thing especially, which is Basic Photoshop 101, was a big step forward for me.

- As a present to myself, I also drew an illustration of Professor Ganondorf and flowers. This post didn't get a lot of notes, which I found surprising because this is maybe actually half-decent artwork because Modern AU versions of Ganondorf generally do quite well on Tumblr. I tried reblogging it this afternoon, but I didn't get any notes and lost two followers, so I'm currently trapped in a spiral of self-doubt. Is my art really so terrible? Am I doing something hideously wrong and don't even know it? Is reblogging your own work an obnoxious thing to do? Idk idk idk idk. Anyway, I tried out some texture effects with the background, but the main thing I learned while working on this piece is that, if you set the brush tool to "clear" instead of "normal" it works like the eraser tool, except that it gets rid of lines without creating transparency on the layer. This is very useful, and I should not be proud of myself for figuring out something so elementary, but I am anyway.

- God I love Photoshop. It is my new favorite thing, and it brings joy to my life. Fuck the haters, seriously. I may only be able to draw garbage, but I'm having a lot of fun doing it.