Horahkti's Sock Drawer

Good Heavens

2011-01-09T18:31:00.000-08:00

Has it really been since last April that I posted?

Sheesh.

People may be vaguely interested to know that as of this past December, that guy I'd been calling "my guy" in previous posts is no longer "my guy" and has been demoted back down to "a guy."

You don't need to know the details. It was all dumb and awkward. (Well, okay, here's two details: he was apparently madly in love with me and didn't understand why I wasn't acting like a proper girlfriend, and I was not madly in love with him and didn't understand why not acting like a proper girlfriend wasn't bringing that across. Yeah. I'm the great communicator, folks.)

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

PS: I went to Star Wars Celebration 5 last summer. It was awesome. I'm thinking about posting photos from it here. And various stuff.

How not impressed am I

2010-04-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I've been not on, folks, because I've been totally freaking behind on my scheduled stuff recently, and this blog takes a backseat to my webcomics.

Because it does, that's why.

So my guy took me to see "Kickass" last week. And it was pretty much what I expected out of it: James Bond style superheroing. (With Luchadore costumes.) But it made me think of something that's always kind of bothered me: the way people use an "R" rating as an excuse to have everybody swear as much as possible.

Everybody in "Kickass" swore almost exactly the same, except that Big Daddy and Hit Girl always said "My gosh" instead of blaspheming, which was actually a terribly nice touch. Even Kickass's horribly sweet girlfriend dropped an F-bomb when he climbed into her window, and was perfectly comfortable dropping more of them later on (I suppose this was a sign she'd been "loosened up" or some idiot thing like that?)

It would not take a Luchadore climbing in my window to get me to drop a verbal F-bomb. (I have said it online, but only when I was the kind of angry you will never see me expressing at this blog.) I see people claiming that swearing makes a work of fiction more realistic. I have to disagree: Swearing only makes a work of fiction more realistic when it's presented realistically. I have worked in environments where you could go an entire week without hearing a single swearword, even the increasingly mild "damn." I know plenty of people who wouldn't even swear online, and I personally wouldn't if there were a better way to project my own forcefullness in type. Assuming that everyone swears the way you do is self-centered and arrogant.

My older brother dislikes swearing enough that, out of respect for him, I don't even call "Kickass" by its name in front of him. (My mother, who doesn't swear much either, doesn't have the same compunction.) As a kid, I had trouble reading off lines from Shakespeare because of the occasional swearword (and "ass," "shit," and the f-bomb weren't even really considered swears back then! "Damn," "hell," and taking the Lord's name in vain, however, were.)

It makes perfect sense that a kid in New York would name himself Kickass. It's just when everybody else from the moms to the wholesome girl next door to the supposedly respectable businessman all also drop F-bombs, every five minutes, in public, that I start to have a problem. (I would have loved it if Big Daddy had kept a fairly clean mouth, while Hit Girl still swore like a twelve year old sailor.)

As a completely off topic closing statement, I would like to register my strong disagreement with the main character that the "difference between Spider-Man and Peter Parker is that Spider-Man always gets the girl." I've read the comics, too, genius. Peter had women all OVER him, it's Spider-Man who had trouble with them screaming and trying to hit him with their purses.

Or, you know, sporting equipment.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama does not need the intentional irony of her final statement pointed out to her; thank you.

There she goes again

2010-04-07T17:34:00.000-07:00

Today my dog ran away from home. She didn't get very far (down the street) (partly because we have a big yard) and she wasn't gone particularly long, but she did take the opportunity to roll in something she found in our neighbor's cow field.

Nice.

Her last bath was Friday, and it wasn't really warm enough today. But do you think we cared?

Heck no.

Problem is, she thinks it's a game. If we come after her, she'll run a little way, too far for us to actually reach for her, and then stop, looking back at us to see if we'll follow. We pretty much catch the dog by running away from her. Dad thinks if we try hard enough, we can train her to come when we call, but... well...

Good luck with that, Dad. I'm sticking with the leash.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

April 1st and other things

2010-04-01T15:35:00.000-07:00

I don't really celebrate April Fool's Day. In my opinion the real "fools" of April 1st are the ones who take it to extreme nonsensical levels.

Anyhow, last night I went with my guy to see "Wicked" for his birthday. It was awesome. It was also why I'm posting now and not last night (Oh yeah, the Russian ballet was Sleeping Beauty. :3 It was pretty cool too, although somehow there's always someone at these things who's just tall enough and in just the right position that I have to crane my neck and move my head constantly just to see anything.)

....

I'm still sort of recovering from a combination of being sick last weekend and his driving, though (he's not... not a bad driver, I just get carsick really easily and he's a.... less smooth driver than anyone I'm used to riding with.)

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

something that would be nice

2010-03-25T18:02:00.000-07:00

USB port octopus plugs. You know, like those extenders for outlets that add eight to sixteen extra outlets to the wall, but for flash drives.

That would be awesome.

It would also be nice if I could think of something to blog about, but the most interesting thing I've done lately is go to a Russian ballet for Sleeping Beauty, and I'm sure nobody wants to hear about that.

XD

Oh yeah, and I got another cupid in my tea. I was kind of hoping for a leprechaun again, honestly, because now the cupids outnumber the leprechauns, and if I'm not careful I'm going to have turf wars going on, but then again this collectible line lasts until the end of the year, so if I'm lucky, I'll have a small army of one faction or the other by December. :3

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

St. Patty's with Leprechauns

2010-03-17T15:25:00.000-07:00

"So, you guys know any good drinking songs?"

All I Never Wanted to Know About Tweenagers

2010-03-10T17:29:00.000-08:00

EVERYTHING I NEVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT TWEENAGE GIRLS I LEARNED FROM FANFICTION

1. Sex is awesome.

2. Like, really, really awesome.

3. Especially if you're a virgin.

4. Most especially if it's rape.

5. Unless you die.

6. Everything, including male pregnancy, is possible if you love each other hard enough. :P

7. Sex is really, really awesome.

8. It's okay if he abuses you, because your love is that strong.

9. If you're pretty, obnoxious and have a long enough name, you too can rule the world.

10. And have sex with everybody.

11. Except that one chick, who you shall abuse for she is a bitch slut whore and also way too nice all the time.

12. Everyone shall laugh with you in your triumph.

13. And then you shall have sex.

14. Because sex is awesome.

15. All women who are not yourself are bitches and whores.

16. Who deserve to be raped, because if you're raped, you die.

17. Unless you don't, in which case it is awesome.

18. Babies come from sex, and are therefore also awesome.

19. They are always cute.

20. ALWAYS.

21. Babies will love you unconditionally, even if you leave them in the care of another their entire lives.

22. But they are only cute for so long.

23. Therefore they must die.

24. Unless they are sexy.

25. In which case they must have sex and more babies.

26. Because sex is awesome.

I think ya'll got the point a while back there. I knew I was hormonal and horny as a tweenager, but I had blocked out how bad it was! XD

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama couldn't really think of something meaningful to blog about this week. I really did try, though. XDD

Shutter Island

2010-03-03T17:17:00.000-08:00

So a friend of mine and I went to see Shutter Island last Friday. (No, I don't know if this has anything to do with my haphazard schedule regarding Alien Revenant the past week, fearless readers. All I know about THAT is that I woke up in three kinds of pain on Sunday and SIX kinds of pain on Monday. And a gal's gotta scale back somewhere.)

I thought it was a nice little piece of horror, and that is the least spoilerific thing I'm going to say for the rest of the post.

Most horror films these days that manage to be big moneyrakers aren't my cup of tea, because most of them are slasher flicks. It's not that I can't take gore, it's that, whenever I see something half hacked to pieces and twitching on the ground, I have to work so hard to restrain my urge to stomp on its head (or shoot it in the head) that I hurt myself. I am an extreme advocate of putting things out of their misery. I did, after all, grow up in roadkill country.

There was only one scene in this film that really made me want to perform mercy shooting, and that's about as many scenes of that kind of thing, I feel, that a horror film really needs to have, if it needs any at all. A few scenes, I felt, were less creepy than they could have been-- I would have liked the little dead girl from the train to look more dead when she opened her eyes and started throwing accusations. (Of course I know she was supposed to look more like his daughter, but guyeez, make her look more dead!)

I also felt that, in the beginning scene, the doom-harmonics went a little overboard. The really good horror films, in my mind, leave "the doomed approach" devoid of any music at all. Let them jump at seagulls, man. It makes a movie stand out when it starts with silence; so few films do.

What surprised me about the film wasn't any of the horror tactics, though. It's that I didn't expect to cry from being touched. "You didn't give up on me, did you doc?" really got my eyes burning (not that I would have admitted THAT to my date, ha ha. XD)

The TRUE horror of the story, however, slipped by my friend entirely until I pointed it out-- and he read the original book, while I haven't. (Maybe it's because of that horror lit class I enjoyed so much. X3)

The true horror of Shutter Island has nothing to do with drowned children, Nazis, arsonists, hurricanes or conspiracies. The true horror is a question.

Did he REALLY slip back into his other persona? Or did he just pretend to, because he knew they would lobotomize him for it?

After all, there are harder ways to commit suicide.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama is fairly convinced it's answer B, by the way.

Comic Craft: Organizing Your Ideas

2010-02-24T16:42:00.000-08:00

The other day, I posted a blog at Yukai no Yugi that talked a lot about comic craft, and friend and reader ASJ asked about how I put my comic pages together.

I confess I panicked a little. XD I have a general idea of how I do what I do, but it's a process, one that involves a lot of little steps. I just couldn't answer her in less than a few paragraphs. So I promised her that I would tackle it here as this week's post.

Obviously you have to have a pretty clear idea of your story. Asj talked about getting words in her head and not being sure how to show them on a page. Write the summary out. If you have an understanding friend, take advantage of their presence and pitch ideas to them, and see what they think (this is the real reason I refer to Invid as my "editor." It's not exactly editing, but it's similar enough to call him that.) Write down a list of all the things you want to happen in your comic, or a summary of the chronological events with notes about character reaction and interaction.

I'm going to use the Law of Purple short storyline I just finished, "Shades of Sin," as an example study, partly because I did parts of this stage on the computer, so's I can just cut and paste, (XD) but also because it underwent a lot of mutations to become what it is.

The basic premise of Shades of Sin was this and simply this: Synn backstory. I wanted to include the defeat of Clarence the Evil, and I wanted to go into the conditioning torture that Synn had to suffer at the hands of Silver and Doc Dross. When I started the thing, I only had a vague idea of what kind of torture was involved (and originally had no intention of going into any detail.)

I had no idea how I wanted to show what I wanted to say, so I wrote a script. Scripts are very handy for when you aren't sure how to depict something. I've occasionally done short narratives also, because prose is what I cut my teeth on and it helps me to collect my thoughts very effectively.

Here is that original script:

Basic Summary
Synn headed the operation to kill Clarence the Evil and bring Geist under Silver's control. It is a shaking experience for him, especially as he is thanked by a woman who bears a faint resemblance to Vanessa and Clarence (who Synn kills himself) does not look unlike Doctor Dross. The story is sprinkled throughout with themes of Synn's torture at Dross's hands, a torture he comes to welcome.

Page 1 (montage)

I love him.

He killed you.

She killed me.

He let her.

I love him.

He does not love you. Watch him. See how, with your absence, he warms the beds of many.

I love him.

He went to her first.

I love him.

Then love him. But never, never forgive him.

I won't.

Page 2

Scenes of the battle on Geist.

Silver: See what he does to these fine beings, stuffing it down their throats until they choke to death from the inflammation.

Synn: (determined eyes) (takes down a soldier)

Silver: WE would not torture them so. WE will put their talents to good use.
Synn is shooting someone who was standing over a young woman.

Page 3

Notvan: (stopping Synn) Oh, sir--!
Synn: ?

Notvan: Thank you, sir, thank you so much--!
Synn: !!
Notvan looks a little too much like she IS Van.

Synn: (pushing her gently aside) Just doing what I'm here for.
Notvan: Are you all right, sir?

Synn: (closing his eyes) Yes. I'm fine.

Page 4

Clarence's throne room door is getting knocked down.

Synn: Lord Clarence?
Clarence: Who dares!!?

Synn pulls his helmet free. Clarence looks surprised.

Clarence: A woman?
Synn: (smirk) Not the last time I checked.

Clarence's face twists in anger, and in that moment looks altogether too much like Doctor Dross, but with hair.

Synn's face slacks.

Then twists in its own anger.

And Clarence gets his head blown off.

Page 5

Doctor Dross is working on something in his lab.

Synn: Doctor. I'm back.

Dross: So I heard. Stunning work, boy.

Silence.

Dross: What's wrong?

Synn: I need....

Synn: I need to be reminded who hurt me.

Dross: I see.

Dross has picked up an obvious instrument of torture.
Dross: Take your shirt off and lie down on one of the tables.

Synn: (tears running down his cheeks silently) Yes Doctor.

END

If you clicked the link and read through the story like you probably should have, you'll see that the final story got much longer, covered more events, that Clarence's passing resemblance to the good doctor never was pointed out very sharply, that Synn and Blue's relationship was gone into MUCH more deeply, and that Synn hardly was as passive. (This is something that happens a lot in my projects: characters become more agressive in the final product than they were in the original concept. This is usually a good thing.) Also, "he warms the beds of many" is a really cornball line. I don't know how lines like that keep ending up in the first cuts of my fiction, but in more serious stories, they're usually weeded out by the time it goes online.

So how did it change so starkly? Because of the next step in the process: Sketch comics. I usually call these "precomics," because that's what they are, but it's important to remember that this thing is not your final product and does not deserve as much time or attention. My precomics are typically very scribbly, sometimes feature nothing more than talking heads or stick figures, and sometimes the characters talking aren't even drawn into the panels, and just their voice bubbles are there (occasionally with a label to remind the reader, me, of who's talking. Although the voice only panels usually only happen when the characters aren't doing a lot of moving.)

Occasionally, precomics (especially for action scenes) can simply be drawn on a part of the page, enabling you to use one page for several precomics or even several versions of the same page. I think my maximum number of times that I've sketched a scene was ten, for the opening scene of Man of Power Part 2. Your average sketch comic, not counting dialogue, should take maybe ten seconds per panel to draw. Seriously, don't spend a lot of time on these things.

The main expanded parts of Shades of Sin included the scene at the beginning, which now features a conversation between Silver and Doctor Dross, and everything after the rescue of "Notvan" (I have great placeholder names, don't I? XD) All the scenes that covered events after the taking of Geist featured things I already knew took place in the comic, from the disapproval of Silver's actions by the royal family to Slaughter Night and even to the brief extra scene for Man of Power. (Although it was sexier originally. XD I toned it back for emotional reasons, partly, and partly to keep to my own standards of mostly-safe-for-work.)

I'll concentrate on Slaughter Night. This scene had already been alluded to in the comic, but back when I had only colored pencils and MSPaint to work with. I'd always held back on it before, showing glimpses as brief as possible or simply showing symbolic imagery. Now that I felt reasonably confident with my skills at CG color and with my craft, I was ready to rip into the scene as drastically as possible.

I already knew what was in my head: it had been there for years. Somehow, Blue would get his siblings away, but his parents and most of the rest of the royal family would die. Parts of the scene would still be fractured, since the scene is shown through the prism of Synn. Most importantly, I wanted to make it as clear as possible that Synn was not responsible in any way for Slaughter Night, and neither were most of those goofy soldiers that we saw running around in Man of Power: they were simply too strong minded to cold-heartedly kill people they loved just because Silver said so. These were not Star Wars clone troopers, steeling themselves constantly for when Order 66 came down the line.

So I had to have Synn trapped in the barracks. Originally, I was going to have his suit of armor in his quarters, so that the entire scene he would be hearing the screaming of his troops through his helmet comm, demanding to know what was going on, but the sketches showed that no matter what I did, this distracted from Synn's own anguish too much and broke the flow of the scene. So I discarded it. I wanted to call back the scene of Whitey's nightmare, way back in Far Side of Nowhere, so I did a sketch that interspersed Synn's struggle to get past his door with shots of Blue dragging his siblings out of bed. This was, after some fixing here and there, what ended up becoming the final page. (In my head, he was going to be clawing at the door, but when I sketched it, hitting it with his fist turned out to look better.)

Among other things, you'll notice that several things were actively scribbled out, and some of the dialogue was changed when I actually inked the page. While the sketch gave me a good idea of where panels were relative to one another, I didn't allow it to completely govern how big the final panels were relative to each other.

Incidentally, there's been a lot more swearing in LOP since Synn joined the cast, has anyone noticed?

I may as well mention that, despite all the sketching before hand that goes into my comics, I will often still change things at the last second. In the final page of Shades of Sin, Synn was originally pushing Blue down in several panels. But I sat and stared for a minute at it before I started penciling, and ended up deciding that it looked too forceful on Synn's part. So they ended up just leaning against the table bed the entire scene. XD

Once you get into practice, you'll find yourself settling into an average of one to two sketches per page. One of the things I do a lot is sketching out several pages, one right after another, in the order of a scene (like, I zip out a quick page one, then page two, then page three.) That way, you can work on a scene several pages long as one cohesive whole. Sometimes, instead of drawing a whole new page for one or two changed ideas, I'll write a little note in the corner of the panel or sketch a tiny alternate image next to a panel. The point of these things is not to be pretty or neat, but to organize your ideas.

My final word for this post is this: do NOT exercise caution in sketch comics. This is where you figure out what looks bad, so that you can also figure out what looks good. Go to town, people.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama means it about throwing caution to the wind. Do it. Do it now.

King Tut News

2010-02-17T15:47:00.000-08:00

So like, I didn't really have anything to blog about this week.

But then this turned up, huzzah!

Apparently, yon boy-king (so demeaning, 19-year-olds aren't necessarily boys, you know) died of malaria. Or something.

.... I'm glad he wasn't murdered, but 1. It's still incredibly sad, and 2. doesn't excuse the fact that they kept him in a shoe box for a while.

Which is exactly what I said to Invid this morning, when he came into my room to smack me with the newspaper and drag me out of bed. XD

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

Fairy Tales Gone Wrong

2010-02-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

The other day, I reached into my tea box and found a leprechaun. "WOHG, there's a leprechaun in my tea!!" I shouted. And Invid said "SHHH!" because it was past midnight and everyone else in the house was asleep.

Apparently, this is part of a promotional thing that my tea brand does-- like the toy at the bottom of your Cracker Jacks, but horribly less cheap.

Now, I have the highest sort of respect for capitalism and the kitschy little box-extras that come with it, but this strikes me as mildly exploitative. First of all, think of the poor leprechauns' families. There they are, off in Ireland or something comparable, wondering where on Earth their missing son, brother or papa is, and he's sweltering in my tea box, waiting for my fingers to find him.

Then there's the fact that the leprechauns are part of a collection, a collection which includes little cupids (!), scarecrow men, and... and... well, hell, those are the only ones I've gotten anything of so far. Anyway, there's a little paper in the box that tells you how to get "the whole set" plus a BONUS-- something to keep the poor blokes in.

Aside from the wanton kidnapping and enslavement of various fairy-types, you just know that there's a small country's worth of little old ladies shelling out money for these things. Little old ladies, for all their good points, are often pretty silly about money, especially if they've got dementia-- I remember my parents had to go to all sorts of measures to keep my Alzheimeric grandmother from giving to the same charities five times in a row within the space of a month. (Alzheimeric? That's not a word, is it?) Some charities are like sharks; they can smell a mentally impared person from across the planet and won't give in until you bop 'em a good one on the nose.

Speaking of which, you be careful to research your charities and make sure you're giving to charities that put people first on both ends, not to sharks. Smart giving helps more people.

You might think that the company more than makes up for it, since they're giving away little men that can give you pots'O'gold at the end of the rainbow and wishes and so forth. I am here to tell you that the pot'O'gold myth is just that-- the dip in the world-wide economy effects everybody, and leprechauns have been putting their gold in yon bank so that it at least does something for them instead of sitting in the pot. Anyway, it doesn't excuse leprechaun exploitation, it only makes it worse. Robin Hoodery may strike some of YOU as karmic justice, but to me it just smells of thuggish communism.

(And honestly, do you really believe those collectors are going to let their leprechauns GO after they get the alleged treasure? It would leave a gap in their collection!)

The problem is, I'd LIKE to let my leprechauns go, but it's a big, scary world out there. The cat would eat them before they got off the porch. Cupids can fly (supposedly), and scarecrow men are apparently happy to sit wherever you leave them, but my little green dudes are apparently going to have to settle for hiding out with my porcelain cats.

Talk about stuff that really makes you lose your faith in the goodness of the world. (dramatic sigh!)

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama is kidding, if you couldn't tell.

HUUURG and TA DA PROGRESS

2010-02-03T13:53:00.000-08:00

Turns out that writing down what you're going to do really does help you do it.

Last week, Thursday night, I had just finished both my Friday comics on the wire, and wasn't much looking forward to repeating the nightmare of finishing everything at the last minute in the week to come. I've been in and out of this cycle for over a year, mind you, since Alien Revenant started, and before that LOP suffered from a bout of spotty updating and long hiatuses (although the long hiatuses came to an end when I started the preliminary work for AR-- that was part of the reason WHY I started it, so that I could work on two drastically different stories at once and keep my creative mojo going.)

Incidentally, The Law of Purple will hit 1000 pages on April 2nd-- Lette's birthday. I couldn't have planned that if I tried.

Anyway, last Thursday night, I could have sat around vowing to get both comics drawn and inked, or I could have even started in on the inks, but I didn't. I had done that sort of thing in the past, but somehow it never really got either page up sooner. I knew what I really needed was to get enough ahead that Monday's pages wouldn't become a matter of "Ink 'em on Friday, TRY to get 'em colored on Sunday" anymore. I knew that a new chapter of AR was starting on Monday, which would give me some breathing room in the form of a title page, but I also knew that if I didn't take aggressive advantage of it, I'd be right back where I started by the end of the week.

I also knew that, much as I love making comics, I was tired of not giving myself enough time to do anything that wasn't an update for AR or LOP.

I knew all these things, so I sat down with a notebook, and I wrote them all out, by hand.

I then wrote out a plan for the entire week; I would set the goal of getting not only Monday's pages inked by Sunday, but all six pages for the week. I knew it was a high goal, but I also know myself well enough to know that setting a goal higher than I expect to meet means that I also get more done than I originally believed I could. (In the end, I actually did get five pages inked over the course of the weekend.)

Just a few minutes ago, I uploaded the pages for Friday, for both AR and LOP. (This is a Wednesday, for those of you not reading when I posted this.) I just got six inked and full color pages finished in half the span of time it usually takes me, and got other things done besides. (Like a sketch for my Deviant Art, which I haven't touched in ages.)

I am really pleased with myself, as you might expect. My goal for the second half of the week is six more full color pages, for next week, plus a black and white inked page for my fancomic (which I am going to do first, since I already started in on it), plus a short essay for my fanblog.

There's a point you hit where you finally just get so fed up with your own spinning wheels that you can hit traction just by force of will. I'm tired of being upset about it, so I plan on just being happy that I finally did.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

PS- Yes, I know some of you are mildly terrified that I have the ability to do six color comic pages a week at all, much less that I don't consider that enough. I don't have a life, okay? This is part of working on getting one.

Bla bla bla CLOTHING bla bla bla PONIES

2010-01-27T17:27:00.000-08:00

I've decided that I'm going to try to update weekly, preferably around Wednesday. It's not that I have too much to do that I can't blog, it's that I don't have enough structure to my schedule to remember to do it. The only way to get structured is to decide days of the week that I'ma do stuff. So, Wednesday is Sock Drawer Day. XD (Friday, for any of my random followers who started chasing me around because of my Yu-Gi-Oh! stuff, is soon to be YnY Blog Day, while Monday is probably going to be Random Drawing at Deviant Art Day. So stick around.)

As an artist, and more importantly as a comic artist, I spend a lot of time thinking about clothing I wouldn't be caught dead in, like a three-piece tux. (Welllll.... maybe I wouldn't mind being found dead in a three piece tux, if I had to be found dead at all. It would be aptly bizarre when compared to me alive. I would also like to be found with clean hair, but that's just me.)

Costume design is one of the more important aspects of character design, especially if you're like me and can't see farther than a foot from your own face (this is how I used to recognize my friends and classmates with similar body types before I got glasses: I memorized their clothing preferences and haircuts. XD) It's even more important when you don't like dressing all your characters in the same outfits all the time, like they're the Simpsons, or even in all the same colors all the time, like they're the Power Rangers.

Of course, there IS an appeal to designing uniforms and then just stuffing your characters into them, but even uniforms have ways of showing off individuality, and you still have to have some idea of what looks good on the human body.

Hint: This isn't it.

I'll just take a quick moment to point out what's wrong with that outfit, in case you haven't heard me complaining about it before: There is only one body type that it looks good on at all, and that body type is broad-shouldered, huge chested, and tiny-hipped. There at least needs to be enough allowed variety so that chicks with big sexy hips can sit down comfortably, but you know, funny enough, there's NOT and the only other option is hot-pants, which is technically a variation on the boy's uniform. SMALL chested girls look even smaller with that weird chest design, and even medium-- I'm sorry-- AVERAGE, as in MOST WOMEN HOVER AROUND THERE-- sized chests look almost nonexistant. If I have to wear a uniform, I'd much rather have something with less junk all over the very front of the coat.

Anyway. (Yes, they changed the uniforms in the next time-setting the school appeared in. They were rather better. >_<) Another thing that many people who feature uniforms in their comics (read: a ginormous number of webcomickers who started off reading manga, and many, many manga-ka) tend to forget is that girls play more with their clothes than men do. (Most of the people who forget this, of course, are probably men.) You'll very often see comics in which the male uniforms are being worn five or six different ways, while the female uniforms are all being worn in one of two ways: the summer outfit, and the winter outfit.

This doesn't happen. Girls, especially American girls, like to accessorize, regardless of whether or not they're allowed to. They'll wear multicolored socks (and damn what the principal just said!), bracelets of all kinds (as long as they're unobtrusive), even anklets. And while the Japanese tend to have higher discipline in their schools, they can't control everything their students wear, much as they might like to. (A particularly mischievous young woman might even go the strawberry panties route.) If the uniform includes a jacket and a bow tie, you can BET some miss or another is going to run around with her ribbon hanging loose about her neck, her jacket flapping happily in the wind.

A friend of mine who changed from public to private school once showed up at our bus stop wearing a prim dark blazer and a dark blue, pleated skirt, black pennyloafers and white socks scattered with bright green frogs. It was glorious. Point is, if your male characters mess with their uniforms, realistically your female characters will do it more.

My own forays into designing school uniforms have been fairly sparse: I grew up without uniforms, and few of the stories I want to tell require them. Military uniforms, however, are another matter.

Of course there is the practical military uniform. You can look at what the USA military has done for pretty much all of it, if you're going for modern realism: They're the most modern military in the world and they know what they're doing. But there's also the dress uniform, and these are very different. They're mostly nicer versions of what used to be used in the field, and they should tell the viewer several things depending on the kind of military you're designing for.

Generally, a dress uniform should indicate alliegance, rank, and possibly what section of the military a person is in. I designed a set of these for Alien Revenant, keeping in mind that their ranks include general forces, Morrigans (genetically altered soldiers), and special project soldiers (that is, they don't fit elsewhere), and that there was an entire section of the military within AR that was made up of underage students. (Yikes.)

I decided pretty quickly that whether someone was a general soldier, special force or Morrigan would be indicated by some color difference. Since the AR military is descended loosely from the United States military, I already knew I wanted the dominating color to be army green. I liked the open-coated look of the uniforms worn by the Science Patrol of the original Ultraman, so I imitated that with a wide band down the center of the jacket. It was fairly natural when I came to the conclusion that the color of this band would reveal the nature of the soldier: black for a Morrigan, white for general forces, steel gray for special.

The quickest way to design all the uniforms for all the ranks is to design the basic uniform and add decorations for each level upwards. You can look up the varying ranks in a number of militaries by going to Wikipediea or to your local library; that's not what this essay is for. XD

When designing clothing for someone who's NOT going to be wearing a uniform their entire waking hours (and some people do; it has to do with the special quirks of their own jumbled personalities) one may be tempted to design every single piece of clothing in a character's wardrobe. This, while certainly an interesting exersize if you're making an RPG character, is foolish when creating a large ensemble of characters, as it takes too long. As I noted before, you can go the route of dressing all the characters in the same clothes all the time, but I don't like doing this because I have a very good imagination for smells.

What I do is define character aethstetics. This shows up a LOT in The Law of Purple. Yes, you can say "He likes jeans and T-shirts" and then just draw your character in a pair of jeans and T-shirts all the time. But are the jeans loose or tight? So loose they fall down? Bellbottoms? Does he prefer plain T-shirts or shirts with clever sayings? Maybe he likes band shirts. (My brother Invid, as an example, is one of those people who always wears mostly-fitting blue jeans and perfectly plain T-shirts that are tucked in, preferably with sleeves that land approximately half-way down his bicep. I can barely stand it sometimes, because this is what he'll wear to work, to work in the yard, to school, shopping, and at church. Of course we have a wonderfully informal church, but still.)

These are the questions to ask yourself about a character's clothing:

Does she prefer comfort or looking good? Does she somehow balance in between?

Does he have a particular obsession he'll dress toward, like a sport or form of music?

Is the character good at using clothing to accentuate the body's forms, or horrible at it?

For a woman, does she prefer to look feminine, or does she like to wear "masculine" clothing? How far does she go in either direction? And if she does wear men's styles, are they "men's cut for women" or did she actually go looking in the menswear? And does she avoid skirts like the plague, or like them? (Sometimes the answer here is "she doesn't care.")

For a man, how important is looking masculine to him? Is he wrapped up in machismo, is he metrosexual, or does he not notice?

How important is "looking smart" to the character?

Does your character think about these questions himself, or does he just throw his shirts at the wall to make sure they don't stick to it?

What is your character's budget? (This is pretty important: your character might not be ABLE to dress exactly the way she wants.)

Is your character trying to look powerful?

Trying to draw attention to himself?

Trying to keep people from noticing her? (This is when you get the girl in the turtleneck sweater that's way too big for her.)

Does he sometimes wear things that emulate clothing from a certain time period? (This may not always be as obvious looking as you think: someone emulating some ancient culture's dress might decide to use modern clothing to do it, and there's a LOT of ways you can do that.)

Does the character place a high emphasis on being prepared? (She might never go out in public without a hoodie tied around her waist, for example.)

Does your character like hats, or hate them? Does he like hoods better, less, or the same amount? Would she wear a hood WITH a hat?

Jewelry-- yes or no, preferred colors and symbols, gaudy or understated, heavy chains or thin.

Grungy versus clean-- this is a scale, and some characters will waver on it depending on the situation (I personally will wear torn pants that were broken in the hard way on one day, and black, store condition jeans and a dress shirt, even a blouse, on another day.)

What are your character's favorite colors, and are they the same ones the character looks good in? Does she have a good sense of what colors look good together, or a horrible one? (Like, she wears hot pink and puce together. O_o Some people will do this deliberately.)

Does he prefer boots, sneakers or tennis shoes? Big clunky shoes versus ones that conform to the foot? Maybe he has a particular color of shoe he prefers (I won't buy shoes if they're not at least mostly black.) Is he trying to make himself taller, or does he not care?

How long is her favorite coat? Does she like simple coats, or coats with trimming? Bulky coats or coats that are as streamlined as possible?

Does he like ALL his clothing to have the same level of streamlining versus clunkiness, or not?

What kind of gloves does he like?

Does she like scarves? Enough to wear them just as a fashion statement, or only in the cold? Does she dislike them enough she WON'T wear them in the cold?

Is she the kind of person who would willingly wear an enormous bubble coat, woolen scarf and hat with short shorts and flip flops?

Does he have a good self-esteem about his body, or a bad one? About what parts of his body? If a young man has broad shoulders but is otherwise very thin, and this bothers him, he might decide to wear clothes that make his body look larger overall. If a girl has a fairly flat chest, she might try to emphasize that area of her body, and if she has a full bosom but doesn't like her tummy, she might wear sweaters to disguise it.

What kind situations does your character find herself in most of the time? Does she dress for practicality within an environment, or in clothing that doesn't do much more than cover her?

And finally: Does your character dress for formality, or for informality, and does she do it in all situations, only the appropriate ones, or only the INappropriate ones? Does she know the proper etiquette for such things, or not? Does she care?

All of these questions play off one another, of course. If a woman is dressing for formality but prefers comfort, she won't wear a tight little corset that she can't breathe in, but in something she's comfy in. Depending on her body type and whether she's good at complimenting it, that can mean a variety of things. If she prefers to dress on the more "masculine" side of the spectrum, she might wear dress pants instead of a skirt, but she might also choose pants instead because she thinks of that as "dressing for power." And if she wants people to notice her, she might choose to wear a flashy blouse or a brightly colored, long jacket.

Don't be afraid to change an outfit because something doesn't "feel" right about it. Character personality is half conscious work and half intuition. You might be surprised at what your character wants to put on sometimes.

These are all things that I took into account when I designed Rose Wulf's wedding dress in the Law of Purple. Rose likes to dress smartly, but for both practicality and comfort. She was also recently exposed to a lot of alien fashions that she found rather appealing, and I personally wanted the dress to feel like a mixture between medieval dress and modern ideals (Rose likes medieval things, but mostly in a rather vague way. I'M the real fanatic there.)

She's comfortable with clothing that's snug around her middle and has a fairly good body-image (it helps that she's muscular). Rose is also not bothered by breaking from fashions of the day and doesn't feel the need to be strictly traditional. I could hardly put her in those little tube-tops that are so popular right now, because she's fairly independant.

I didn't want it too low cut, because it's a wedding dress and needs to be fairly tasteful, but I also wanted a V-neck or something that echoed it, to match the bridesmaids' uniforms. (And they were uniforms, not dresses. XD) Also, the wedding colors were purple and black, and knowing Rose like I do, I knew I couldn't go with something that was all one color-- she'd find it boring.

Through the story, Rose suffered being stuffed into six other dresses that were nothing near the final design, partly for the purpose of humor. The cover dress, which was deliberately designed to look both gorgeous and uncomfortable, and the five on this page. There's not much wrong with any of them, but none of them quite fit into her clothing aesthetic. As Rose says later, "This would be so perfect for someone else." (Although I have my doubts about the poufy one in the first panel. That thing's shoulders wouldn't look out of place on a Go Nagai robot.)

Her final dress lets both her arms and legs move freely, accentuates her hips and bust, and does indeed look rather medieval. It's obviously a wedding dress, leaving white the predominant color, without being monochromatic. For a wedding dress, which should express a woman's clothing aesthetic as purely as possible (aside from color, but not everyone wears white), developing that side of someone's character becomes crucial.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

OMG teh GDG is teh back

2010-01-20T17:17:00.000-08:00

WOW, it's been a long, long time since I've been in here. Probably because I've been trying to come up with something to blog about that isn't related to politics or sexism. O_o (Seriously, I know how I sound when I get on about that kind of stuff. Crazed, for the former, bitter on the latter.)

I have a new desk. Now, I've HAD a desk for years. Little kid's desk, really, office style, painted white, covered in the kind of scratches a kid's desk gets covered in-- I think I've had it at least since I was eight. Of course, I'm way too big for it at the creaking age of twenty-three, and I was never actually comfortable using it even as a bitty child (it's NOT very ergonomic, if you catch my meaning.)

That doesn't mean I don't find it useful, mind you. It makes a very nice shelf/table, and my living space would be even more of a hopeless mess if not for its drawers. I use the chair that came with it to hold one of my lamps (and some Transformers. You can never have too many places to keep Transformers). It'll probably stick around for a nice long while, especially since it goes so very well with my child's Globe Frome Ye Olde Colde War. (Which, incedentally, has deliberately been placed upside-down in its stand. I have a somewhat juvenile sense of humor.)

But it just doesn't work for me as a desk. It's been a long time since I've had someplace I could just sit down and draw, without falling randomly asleep or suddenly discovering that someone didn't wipe the table off properly. (I fall randomly asleep in a lot of places, fyi. Don't try to draw in bed or on a really comfortable couch. You will nap.)

My NEW desk was aquired at Goodwill for the price of one dollar. It's not an office-style desk, nor is it a drawing table, but it is a style of furniture in which I have gotten much work done over the years, and which I can safely say I find both comfortable for drawing at and not comfortable for sleeping in.

My new desk is a school-style combination desk and chair. :3

This may sound strange, but I have coveted these sporklike creations since elementary school. In college, I wrote most of LOP's Man of Power Part Two while sitting in such a chair, waiting for one of my math classes to start (I would go to the classroom as much as two hours in advance, just so I could have quiet time for this purpose.) I got this desk chair, and I did a happy dance (even while I was cleaning the muck off from when it was sitting outside Goodwill. XD)

The only problem was, I had to do some CLEANING before I even began to have a place for it.

My room is an infernal chaos of old papers and jumbled clothing. (Yes, I still live at home. If all goes well, this will change within the next few months.) The only place I could even imagine fitting my new aquisition was on the side of the bed closest to the closet, but the problem with that was...

There was an enormous pile of clothing and a TV dinner tray stand standing there.

Why do I have a TV dinner tray stand? It's this little wobbly thing you might expect to see in a nursing home, except in the nursing homes the part where you set the actual trays isn't rusted halfway through and threatening to stab people with blunt but painful edges. Dad brought it home from heaven knows where and said he was going to throw it out unless someone cleaned it and claimed it for their own.

So of course I had to have it. My original plan was to use it to stack all these leather bags and backpacks accumulating in my room, and maybe to keep my boots on. This had not worked out (as if!) and now there was a very large cardboard box, with about a third of my wardrobe piled inside, balanced atop the long suffering little thing.

Around it, on the floor, lay another sixth of my wardrobe, joined by the boots (who had protested to the TV tray stand mightily) one or two of those wheeled backpacks that had turned out not to fit, and a pile of books.

Next to it, directly in front of the closet, sat a two level shelf with more clothes on it (though not on the lower shelf; there used to be but every time I tried to put something away there would be a very large, pleased calico cat meowing at me from the very spot I had intended to leave my jeans). And behind it, of course, sat my morose and neglected dresser.

The dresser hails from the same set of kid's furniture as the little white desk I'm keeping my globe on. (The set itself is all hand-me-downs from my half-sister, who probably appreciated them more.) It features six very nice drawers, of which I only use one, for socks. (And an Ewok.) It supports several shelves, which were about as organized as the floor but which I use more than the dresser.

I don't really understand dresser drawers. Sure, you fold the clothes, you stuff them in there, but then everything gets messed up again as soon as you want a specific shirt. They also get stuck, especially mine. I can't blame it on my putting too much inside, because they're as hard to open and close when they're empty as they are when I've miraculously tucked fifteen pairs of adult jeans in one child's drawer. They usually smell kind of funny, or at least, they usually smell like confined air. I mean, yuck, like I want all my clothes to smell like musty oak. The only reason I bother using them to keep my socks is because I lose socks like alcoholics lose money.

So I use my drawers to keep Ewoks in, and cardboard boxes for my clothes. I imagine someday I'll have a better system, but today is not that day.

Anyway, I had to get that TV dinner tray stand out of the way, and I had to figure out what do about all those clothes. Eventually, I managed to dig the stand out and put it in a storage room of the house, but those clothes?

Oh look, it's a closet!

Oh dear, it's a DUSTY closet.

I'm very allergic to dust. It's been five days since I undertook this undertask, and I'm still suffering. =p It's like having a cold, except that all you have to blame is your own lack of dusting and your hypersensitive immune system. (But at least I can say with certainty that it ain't Swine Flu germs I just sneezed all over. Still gross, not dangerous.)

I suppose I should also mention that, in order to even start to get some of this stuff out of the way, I had to reorganize the top of my bunkbed (did I forget to mention the bunkbed? Silly me), so that I could reach the upper shelving on the OTHER side of the bed (I'm short, so sue me) and put the books on the floor away. This involved getting the floor where I wanted to put my desk chair even MORE messy (except that this time it was Garfield plushies and bunny rabbits) and completely overhauling the shelves on top of my poor neglected dresser.

You can guess why it took me all day to do this. About halfway to supper, I suddenly remembered that I had never eaten breakfast OR lunch.

OMG!

Sometime that evening, however, I managed to vacuum the affected area (first time I've vacuumed in my room at all for over a year) and finally wrestled my new desk into its new home.

The next day, even though it was Saturday and therefore busy, I sat down for around an hour and zipped easily through an entire inked comic-- even though I kept getting interrupted by a small child and a very large calico cat.

That, my friends, is what I call "worth it."

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

Con Report: Mid-Ohio Con

2009-10-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

Gads, it's been fahreeehhhhvah since I last blogged!

At Mid-Ohio Con, we schmoozed with the 501st Regiment.

In a manner of speaking.

Lindsay got her picture with Ray Park----

Oh wait, here it is. XD

Which of course made Barbara just a touch jealous.

Don't worry, they worked it out eventually.

Even our mascot had a good time.

More schmoozing. XD

We also got to hang out with Boba Fett.

I mean, Daniel Logan, who PLAYED young Boba Fett (Lookit those fantastic arms!)

Everybody likes Leia's chain!

Aaaand here's the websites off some fliers I collected; one of my favorite parts of cons.

http://www.robyngriggs.net
-This lady gave me a pretty photograph for free because she was out of business cards. XD

http://www.D20girls.com
-Their card says they specialize in everything.

http://www.expressprintplus.com
-Brad McDevitt.

http://www.jayfife.com
-Illustration, portraits, graphic design. :3

Tortuga Trading Post
-This was from the pirate with the hammer from Barbara's video. He is awesome. Right before we had to leave he treated me to a prop-sword fight-- the kind of swords you can actually hit people with without hurting the people or the swords? And it was ROCKING. As soon as I have money for it, this is the first place I'm going.

www.hangingchadentertainment.com
-They have comics. :3

Blue Collar Invasion
-So do they, and they're also wonderfully audacious. XD

A Life of Science
-They're making a comic and an album as one package. All I know is that the robot on the cover was sleek and sexy.

Alienated Productions
-Their Myspace says they're 101 years old. I find this highly dubious. XD

David M. Bancroft
-This guy gave Lindsay a free Slave Leia print for posing with him in her costume. I say not fair! XD

Pickle Press
-More comics! :x This dude's logo is mildly disturbing.

Back Porch Comics
-These guys didn't have a card, they had a flier to a small press and alt. comics expo. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. And it's not until April! Maybe I'll have cash by then! XD

Anyway, that's the end of it.

(coughs)

Signing off-
Jessi-sama

I dislike

2009-05-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

browsers that constantly ask me if they should remember passwords. There are five people who use this computer, some of us log into the same sites, and at least one of them has reason to be nosy. Also I have a lot of websites I log into, and you never know who can look into your computer's records while you're online.

Of COURSE I don't want the damn password remembered! Sheesh.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

We have a walking machine now

2009-03-28T16:47:00.000-07:00

Mum und Da brought a used FreeStyle Gazelle home from the Goodwill about a week ago, so we've all been using it, because Mama mine wishes us to be in shape.

I spend ten minutes on the stupid thing, walking at my normal, brisk walk-- and I get a stich in my side. I am the skinniest adult person in this household at under 120 pounds, and can spend the least time on the stupid thing because I get a stitch in my side. Anybody who thinks skinny=in shape is a moron.

Meanwhile, my cat is 22 inches long (not counting the tail) and weighs fifteen pounds-- Very large for a cat. (And not all that weight is length.) And she can jump a foot into the air from a lying down position.

So now I'm jealous of my cat.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

SO hey I revamped my forum

2009-03-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

I got a forum for The Law of Purple some time ago. And while it tends to be quiet even on its best days (and filled with robots other days, although I admit I find them mildly hilarious) it's always been a nice place to dump background stuff about the comic.

So this past January, I started a new comic, Alien Revenant. And I had this nice forum just sitting there, minding its own business--

so I changed its name from The Law of Purple Forums to the GDG Comics Forums and added a section for Alien Revenant. (GDG acronymizes my username, Golden Dragon Girl. I'm considering using it as a name for what amounts to being my own little comic "company." Not that I actually make any money off the damn thing yet.)

AR's section hasn't got an in depth "About the Comic" section yet, so I can't actually link that at the moment. But I CAN tell you this about AR:

It is heavy duty science fantasy, duudes. XD Possibly the heaviest scifa story I'll ever do. Aside from the story itself, which you can read the comic for, it features not only alien settings, but full on alien languages, and I get to show off one of my insaner hobbies (making up languages.)

So why did I start another webcomic at the beginning of the year? It's not like this is the best time in my life for it.

But it was the time. And if I can help it, it won't be the only new comic I start this year, certainly not the only new comic I'll be doing art for this year. (Invid likes to write stories too-- but he hates drawing, the freeloader.)

If you see a post about a merchandise store in the near future don't be too surprised.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

Speaking as a religious person

2009-02-24T16:00:00.000-08:00

I am really tired of hearing people talk about how we need to dispense of religion because "it's holding us back and always has."

Not only is that insulting to me as a religious person (who attends church every week and who recieves about a third of her human interaction from that church) but it's brain-numbingly untrue.

Exhibit A: Before the Christian sect got its start, people in the Roman Empire considered it perfectly acceptable to leave unwanted infants to die in the street, or to be taken in and sold as slaves. Christians started the concept of orphanages, which, while they have their faults, are certainly better than letting infants starve to death in the gutter. Christianity uplifted the worth of a human being to that of something worth preserving.

Exhibit B: The world's first athiests (although they made a show of following gods, as a cover) were the great Greek philosophers. They believed that the only thing on Earth worth study was the human mind, so they accepted with glee the idea that the Earth was the center of the universe. When the Catholic Church picked this up it was because of the Greeks, not because of any original Christian edict-- and when the first Medieval scientists first began to study the world around them, it was because they felt that, if God had made the whole blamed thing, that made it worth studying.
In short-- If we had listened to the Greek philosophers, we would still think the sun revolved around us. The Catholic Church may have persecuted the people who discovered otherwise, but if it hadn't been for Christian attitudes they would have never figured it out in the first place.

Exhibit C: Genetics were discovered by a monk.

Exhibit D: The Protestant Ethic. It made the United States the most powerful nation in the world, yo.

Religion connects people. It gives them disciplines to live by. It gives them laws of the soul. Abolishing religion is not going to make close-minded people more open-minded. If anything, it will produce chaos and anarchy. Chaos and anarchy always go hand in hand with terrible violent death.

If that's what religion is holding us back from, I will gladly let it.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama will blog next about stem-cells if someone comments about such. If not, probably about my webcomic or Dollhouse or something.

Slasher Movies

2009-02-13T17:09:00.000-08:00

So that new Friday the 13th movie came out today, right? And I'm totally not going to see it.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing wrong with gore. I just don't care for slasher flicks, or for slasher horror in general. I like horror that makes you think, makes you say "What the hell just happened?!!" after the fact. I like horror stories.

But what I'm actually posting about is this niggling little thought that keeps chasing after me and knifing my side whenever I see that another slasher flick's in the works.

I wanna see a film about someone who goes around killing horror flick slashers. A little Dextery, I suppose, but I have specifics. I want it to be a woman, more importantly, a small woman, possibly with eldritch powers and most certainly with martial arts training (and mad knife throwing skills.) She has to hum or sing absentmindedly when nothing loud is going on, as if she has this aching need to fill the silence. She must do her work by the light of a full moon, as though she's working on a lunar cycle, and must be so named to reflect this fact (Silenia works; but there are other names. Luna also works.) And she has to hunt down and kill everybody the slasher guy missed due to her killing him, because she's not doing this because she's a good guy.

I almost might watch that. Especially if the last scene showed her driving away with the slasher's head in her trunk, and she was going "la la la la" the entire time, including after the screen went black.

It would be awesome.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama is not applying for this role. She just likes small women characters.

PS: Happy Valentine's Day!

Boob rapage

2009-02-07T16:17:00.000-08:00

So I was watching Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds today, because I could.

And I would like to say that I am REALLY TIRED of the prudish, perverse and sexist policies that make the YGO dubs what they are.

What am I talking about?

THIS kind of stuff:

In the Japanese, Mai (and any other women with low necklines) have nice, normal, and yes, cleavagey boobage. "Sexy?" Yes, but only if you swing that way.

This is the English version, as you can tell from that little "WB" watermark. (both images courtesy of the Yu-Jyo Episode Guide, btw.)

If you couldn't tell, they erased her cleavage. English version Mai-- and every single YGO female after her with low necklines-- does not have boobs from the front. She has a weird lumpy void on her chest.

I feel violated just looking at this. What exactly are we protecting children from by paying some guy to mark up cleavage lines? Most American children go to public swimming areas; the lucky ones go to public beaches. This is nothing they haven't seen before. Most of them have seen rather more than that. Personally, I'm a little grossed out that there's somebody actually erasing cleavage lines over at 4Kids studios. And annoyed-- because there's nothing wrong with a woman having cleavage. MOST little children? Won't notice. Because hey, Mommy's got those too, right? Erasing cleavage lines is much more perverse than drawing them.

And if that wasn't bad enough?

MEN GET TO WALK AROUND LIKE THIS AND WE GET OUR CHESTS ERASED???? What the HELL, man??

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama is in a tizzy.

And the Magic Fortune Cookie Say...

2009-01-24T16:33:00.000-08:00

Today, Invid's fortune cookie sent a real nugget of wisdom his way:

"Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time."

MY fortune cookie, I'm sorry to say, couldn't quite keep up:

"You are the mast of everything situation."

YOU SPAKE ENGRISH GOOD, YES?

We are horribly amused.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

Not to be disrespectful but DIS DIS DIS

2009-01-21T16:36:00.000-08:00

I only have a few thoughts regarding the inauguration:

I'm really tired of being told by know-it-all politicians, reporters, college proffessors and politician's pastors that I'm a racist bigot just because I'm white. I'm pretty sure making generalizations based on the color of one's skin like that are a sign that you're a racist bigot.

I look forward to the day when we can talk about a successful black dude without dredging up not only every single successful or vocal black dude in the civil rights movement, but every single black dude who by luck and serendipity managed to be a "first" after that. ("dude" here encompasses womenz.) I look forward to the day when we stop talking in terms of white, black, brown, yellow or red and start talking in terms of "we." When that day comes, it'll be the day that Martin and Malcolm and so many others died for. Not before.

For all their high-mindedness, the Democratic Party only makes the issue stick around longer by picking at the scabs. They don't seem to understand that you don't need to reopen a wound to apply the salve. (Learning from history is one thing. Beating a child with stale white guilt is sadistic and cruel.)

I'm really scared by the fact that we seem to have elected the first black president so that he could be the first black president. He's a nice enough guy, but I would have preferred someone who wasn't such a flake.

Or so Marxist.

Like Thomas Sowell.

Just because someone talks pretty doesn't mean they're at all grounded. The poet they had there should be proof enough of that.

I am offended by the poem because I cannot believe I am expected to take such artsy gobbledegook seriously as art. Formless is fine; themeless just shows that you're an idiot who doesn't know when to let a pretty sentence go because it doesn't fit.

Women everywhere should pray that the first woman president doesn't get elected so that she can be the first woman president. I don't think I could suffer such an insult.

Signing off--Jessi-sama is not white, she is an off-pink-orange.

Obamania has finally gone too far.

2009-01-17T10:22:00.000-08:00

Now, as some of you may know, I do not have cable.

This means that we have to watch Power Rangers on the broadcast networks. Specifically, of course, since Power Rangers went to Disney, we have to watch it on ABC.

ABC, as many of you are probably aware, drools over Obama-sama so much, they feel the compulsive need to suddenly check up on him needlessly. As they did today, giving live broadcast in a "Special Report" of his train trip to the inaugural ceremonies.

They interrupted the final episode of Power Rangers Jungle Fury to do this. Nor did they shift the show over to one of their other two digital channels so that frantic parents could switch over and avoid screaming mimi fits.

Well, let me assure you, any affection my little seven-year old brother had for Barack Obama is now effectively destroyed. Way to go, ABC. (He actually had tears welling up. Jerks.)

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama feels Special Reports should be reserved for natural disasters and terrorist attacks, herself.

(PS- Don't worry, we watched the rest of the episode on YuuTube, and he cheered up.)

Chainletters

2008-12-16T12:46:00.000-08:00

I hate chain letters. I'm not talking about those cute little stories that people send along or the photo emails that share cool or interesting things. Okay, so I could be. Because mostly, I'm talking about the kind of letter that asks you to send it on to other people.

It's one thing when these letters threaten people. I got a horror story concept out of that. "Send this on to five people within fifteen minutes or your love life is dewmed forever."

But then there are the letters that start like this: "I sent this on to you because you're important to me. I hope I chose correctly. Please send this back (You'll see why!!)"

This utter emotional blackmail. "YOU DON'T LOVE ME AND HAVE SHATTERED THE FAITH I HAVE IN YOU" is what it's saying not forwarding the message back will say. And in the past, I've gotten five of these damn things in one day from the same people. I appreciate being loved and stuff, but I'd feel more loved with a simple "I love you," in a letter that they had written themselves, and they'd get plenty of reciprocation without the threats. (Threats, in fact, wear on my love and make me love a person less.)

And then of course are the little religious messages that say at the end "If you have faith in God, send this on to ten people."

"If you" are the words Satan uses to begin all his attacks when he's tempting Jesus in the wilderness, by the way.

So yeah. Chain letters R stoopid. If you know me, and forward me email, don't be insulted if I don't forward back. I'm abstaining.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama's closer friends all knew this already!

Character Types: A Study of Dynamics

2008-11-25T14:04:00.000-08:00

So Invid and I have what are basically jam sessions at least once a day (sometimes all day), in which we discuss writing ideas, bounce jokes and dialogue off each other, and work on character concepts. And he's been cranking out a lot of ideas lately, which isn't really that unusual except he's started to worry he's becoming "a helpless idea man." (Actual quote.)

So recently we got into a discussion about character types, and dynamics of how these are usually built into a team.

And it got me thinking about the patterns.

The smallest a team can get, of course, is the team of two. In fiction, this usually consists of the "Leader" and the "Anti-Leader." (The reasons for their names will become clear soon enough.) The Leader is usually more focused on what needs to get done, the Anti-Leader often cares more that whatever needs to get done is done the way he wants. He can also be referred to as the "hothead," the "cool guy," or the "edgy one." Whatever the case, his purpose is to argue with the Leader and create conflict.

The most traditional third member of a team party is the "Smart Guy." Obviously, the Smart Guy usually comes up with solutions to things, gadgetry if it's that sort of story, and typically handles anything that requires big words. In a three-team dynamic he often either ducks into his books as soon as the Leader and Edgy One start spitting, or actually tries to smooth out relations.

Which brings me to the Diplomat. The Diplomat doesn't have to be the fourth member, and in fact the traditional fourth member is usually actually the Clown, but the Diplomat has become a rather important component to such dynamics. The Diplomat actually began life as the Token Female, who, because of being the only chick among a bunch of testosterone ridden guys, usually finds herself portrayed as the cool head, as well as being a source of conflict because everyone wants her attentions. The girlier Token Females make big eyes during conflict and plead for the conflict to stop. This is how she became the Diplomat. Diplomats do not have to be Token Females for conflict to be incited over their attentions. In TMNT, Splinter is the Diplomat, and the unintentional incitation of conflict has to do with the fact that he's also the father figure, inviting sibling rivalry between the turtles.

Then of course is the Clown. He's there mainly for humor, and usually annoys his teammates. A good Clown plays the entire rest of the team as his straight man. Typically, the Clown is also very open and friendly, perhaps rather flashy, and despite themselves most of the other team members probably like him pretty well. He, alongside the Diplomat, is most used for the role of Heart of the Team.

Alternate extra roles include the Big Guy, who is usually fearsome but gentle, and of course the Token Female, who rarely works very well unless she takes on one of the other roles, because being female is not really a character trait. Neither is being male, and I have found a couple Token Males in my day so they do seem worth mentioning. (Tuxedo Mask is an example of a Token Male.) Tokens often also get in by being Love Interests, although I admit that I tend to find a character who's nothing but a Love Interest pretty boring and usually want to breed in one of the more interesting types. (After all, being a Love Interest tells us nothing about a character's actual personality.)

Then of course is the Kid. The Kid comes in multiple flavors, but is usually most defined by youth and inexperience, perhaps with a dash of recklessness and lack of refined grace. He or she may fill the role of Clown, Smart Guy or Token. Different flavors of the Kid include the Fragile Kid (who is sensitive and may need a lot of hugging, and who folds to peer pressure pretty easily) and the Scrappy Kid (who chafes at being left behind and typically gets into a lot of trouble.) Examples of the Scrappy Kid include Jade of Jackie Chan Adventures, and most of Batman's underage sidekicks, especially as Robin and Batgirl were characterized in The Batman. Fragile Kids include Booster of the Buzz Lightyear cartoon (Booster is an interesting case because he doubles as the Big Guy.) In more stereotypical times, like the fifties, the Scrappy Kid would have always been male, the Fragile Kid female. Kids can also be adult characters, after all, having experience or being older doesn't mean a person acts like a grown up. Characters like this are more likely to be Scrappy than Fragile. (Most flavors of the Kid are based on more general character types-- the Leader and Edgy One are wiser adult versions of the Fragile Kid and the Scrappy Kid, respectively.)

Opposite of the Kid is the Old Guy, who knows more than everyone else except the Smart Guy, which usually creates conflict between them as their knowledge is born of different methods. The Old Guy doesn't necessarily have to be old, just wizened somehow. Usually he's gruff but soft-hearted. A wonderful example of the Old Guy/Smart Guy dynamic can be found in Spock and McCoy, who were always at odds about something. The conflict is usually much friendlier than that between the Leader and Edgy One, because despite themselves the Old Guy and Smart Guy can't help admiring or at least respecting each other deeply. The Old Guy and Smart Guy are usually good replacements for the Leader and Edgy One in a two-man team, if one wants to depict a team that fits together seamlessly. In Star Trek, the Old Guy and Smart Guy acted as the Leader's sounding board and safety net. It certainly worked better than asking people to believe the Edgy One had gotten anywhere in the military (Although if anyone was the Edgy One, it was Kirk, which actually means that Spock and McCoy combined were the Leader. XD)

A character type that's usually bred with one of the other types is the Aethsetic. The Aethsetic is the one who, while everyone else is all shouting at each other or making some other kind of general rabble, was probably trying to read, meditate, or otherwise get some happy quiet time. The reason Venus of TMNT:NM had so much trouble fitting seamlessly into the dynamic is because she was an attempted blending of the Token and the Aethsetic, but the usual dynamic of TMNT usually places either Splinter or Leonardo into the Aethsetic role, meaning that one of them (Leo) had to lose that aspect of himself in order for it to work. Leo is less himself when the Aethsetic is taken away from him, thus he felt like less of a compelling character. (In other words, if Venus were to work as a sixth member of the TMNT dynamic, she would have to fulfill a role besides Token Female or Love Interest that wasn't already taken-- and the only one I can think of is Big Guy, which doesn't exactly work for her.)

Going back and into the Token Female or Male a little more, these types are actually a version of the Alien, who is the eccentric and is defined mainly by being "strange" or "unusual" to the other members of the cast. Like the Token, the Alien is best used as a modification of another type, because he simply cannot stand alone on the leg of being different.

There is also the Sidekick, who I am leery of because he is usually presented as "a lesser version of the hero." I'd prefer to think of him as "Hero's aide" or what have you, but the fact is, he's usually what happens when you have a two-man team consisting of a Leader and anyone who's not enough of an Anti-Leader to want to fight with him all the time.

Then there are the other modifiers, which I consider character types that have more to do with temperament than what the role of the character is-- these range from Sweethearts to Sleezebags and I don't really feel like going into all of them.

This entire discussion stemmed from a discussion of Voltron, incedentally.

The proper use of such character types is to mix and match their traits in such a way that surprises the reader and makes the team characters and dynamic feel unique. In Jackie Chan Adventures, Uncle is the Leader and Jackie Chan is the Anti-Leader, even though Uncle is edgier than Jackie and Jackie is the title character. Uncle is the one who drags everyone else along on whatever mission (for the purposes of this discussion, anyway) while Jackie argues with him constantly about the execution of things.

In Yugioh, the character types are all screwed around with. Yugi is most certainly not a Leader- Joey is. Téa would seem to be the Diplomat, but she's actually the Edgy One, because she's always fighting with Joey. Tristan is mostly the Big Guy, although sometimes he competes with Joey for Clown status. (It is possible to be both a Leader and a Clown.) If anyone's the Diplomat or the Smart Guy, it's Yugi. This is probably why I'll always be fond of the series.

Star Wars is a bit more traditional. Luke is a bit between the Kid and the Leader, and since the Leader's younger version is the Fragile Kid, that means he whines a lot in the first movie. XD Han is the Edgy One, Leia is the (particularly pissed off) Diplomat Love Interest. (She's less calm than you might expect a Diplomat to be precisely because she's a Love Interest, by the way-- Love Interests not only have to have conflict with their opposite numbers, they need to have enough traits in common with them to make the romance believable. Leia's opposite is Han. Also, she does have plenty of the Leader and Edgy One bred in in equal amounts.)

Chewie is the Smart Guy and the Big Guy. :D

Admittedly, most of us don't create characters thinking "Hmmm, I think he'll be a Leader crossed with a Big Guy and an Old Guy." But it's interesting to see how these character types can be found in so many different stories that require close character interaction.

It also makes a wonderful creation engine, actually.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama linked everything for the sake of consistency, mind you.

Dammit Walky!

2008-11-24T16:19:00.000-08:00

Ya'll (one or two of you) who read this blog might remember this post, which was rather quickly followed by this post.

And now he's done it again, dammit. No no, I know he's parodying Twilight. But does anyone remember this post? In which mummies were compared both to zombies and vampires? Yeah.

Darnit, Walky, if you're going to use me as a source of inspiration, you could at least link my poor pathetic blog.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama is not intending to be taken seriously at all here. Stop it.

Some thoughts

2008-11-12T16:44:00.000-08:00

The reason gay rights movements should be giving to people as to why gay marriage should be legal, which would also work for polygamists (I'm talking normal polygamists, and polyandrists, not the child-molestors): Because if the government has the right to say what gender your spouse should be or how many spouses you have, then the government also has the right to say what race your spouse is.

A revelation I had about abortion recently: Legalized abortion is not a sign of an equal society, it is a sign of a terribly sexist society that stigmatizes pregnancy. Because lots of the so-called "pro-choice" people I argue with this about seem to think there's something wrong with being pregnant. Which there is not.

Some things I learned over the last five days:

When holding an excitable cat, one should not carry him anywhere near other cats who might be fighting, and especially should not hold his back feet with one's bare hand.

The taller the leaf pile, the more fun it is to throw cats into it.

A good mother will not let you give up, even if you're just looking for winter boots.

The media probably performs self love to Barack Obama's photograph. Which is really creepy, and I kind of hope he carries mace.

Ohio pays less to its veterans than any other state besides Indiana.

Webcomics are much less time-intensive if you make four pages at once.

Yusei may be sexier than Judai, but Yugi is still sexier than both of them.

Okay, so maybe I knew that last one more than five days ago. :D

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

Jessi-sama and Fighter Robots. WOOHOO.

2008-11-06T17:01:00.000-08:00

Invid talks about robots a lot. And being his sister, who lives with him, I spend a good chunk of time hearing what he has to say about them. And I like them too, although I tend to be more attracted to the general concepts as opposed to the little details. (This just has to do with the different ways we tackle life in general-- I'm a big-picture person, he's a details man.)

There are myriad methods to handling the fighting robot in a storytelling format. There's the piloted mech, which in my experience is far and away the most popular in Japan. The other end of the spectrum would seem to be the sapient or sentient mech (sapience is self-awareness, whilst sentience is awareness of one's surroundings on some level and is not necessarily the same thing), but I would argue that the piloted mech is actually not on an end of the spectrum at all.

The spectrum, you see, is that of how integrated the pilot is with the robot itself. The furthest end of the spectrum away from the sentient mech is that of the remote controlled mech, which we see in real-life today. The pilot could be seen as the "mind," the mech itself as the "body." Obviously, a mind that doesn't even exist within the body is less integrated than, say, your average Gundam. The spectrum of integration is how the Tekkaman series can be considered a mecha series-- while yes, the mecha part of the tekkaman is like a suit, it's much more like a mecha that has been integrated into its pilot's body than it is like a super-sentai suit. The mecha dominates the perception of the body. Transformers are the ultimate integration, because the robot IS the pilot-- or rather, the mind and body are of one entity.

This rather simple set up can become endlessly complex when one realizes it is possible to change the number of pilots. Typically, such mecha follow the "combiner" route, in which each "mind" is at the same level of integration with the "body," whether this multipiloted situation came about because of several mecha combining into one, or if multiple pilots is the status quo for the machine, but it is easily possible for the different pilots to coexist with the mecha on different levels. A quick example of that is the robot that both has a pilot and a mind of its own. Another is the robot that has both a pilot and is capable of being controlled remotely. (Personally, I'd like to see how far the redundancy can really be carried believably.) Even a teknoman-like suit, "plugged-in" as it is to the human pilot, could concievably have either a mind of its own or could be remote-controlled from without (a disturbing thought, actually.)

I admit that I am usually most attracted to the sapient robot. Maybe it's the way the mecha often feel like glorified cars in stories about piloted mechs. Maybe it's because the mecha in Super Sentai are so de-emphasized that they may as well not be there at all. (This is not true of ALL sentai series, of course, but Power Rangers? Yeah, sometimes.) It's probably because I tend to be attracted to series because of the characters, more than the pretty backdrops. In many gundamu-style series, the mecha is little more than an extension of its pilot. Old-school super-robots have much more personality on their own, even despite the usual lack of an integrated mind, which is probably why they still even exist alongside the dangerous looking, sleek "modern mecha." (Admit it, a robot with a giant icky oni-face on its chest probably has a lot of personality.) (YES I KNOW THAT ISN'T AN ONI.)

On the other hand, there's certainly appeal to a world in which mecha become so ubiquitous that people don't even notice when one stomps down the street.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

History in the making! Meh.

2008-11-05T12:21:00.000-08:00

So, by an overwhelming not really a landslide at all but sort of one compared to the LAST two times, the general population has elected the first black man to be the president of the United States ever (unless you count Bill Clinton, which I do not.)

Note I say the general population. I will tell you nothing of how I voted except that it wasn't for Obama.

Because, you see, now that he has the magic glow stick, he will find it is nothing like what he was hoping for.

I have a problem with Obama being the first black president, BTW. Because I have a problem with this man as a president. I know he's cast his glamour over more than half the country. But he strikes me as no more than typical lib-socialist fluffle FDR worshipper at best, and at worst a post-Vietnam "America is evil" terrormonger.

And what really sticks in my craw about it is that when he screws up, the dirty idiot racists in this country will feel vindicated. How is THAT a good thing?

I feel rather cheated, because McCain really wasn't trying hard enough to get his message out, and the TVland media is shamelessly biased. I'm not going to whine about it, because everybody who whined about Kerry losing were VERY annoying, but I will say that this entire election struck me as unfair from begin to close.

Also, I fear for the airlines now.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

A totally non-political post for election day

2008-11-04T13:51:00.001-08:00

I hate shoe shopping.

This may come as a surprise to certain of you reading who were aware I am a young woman, not to mention an occassionally petty one, but I have always hated shoe shopping, and I will always hate shoe shopping.

I wear size 7 1/2 wide, mkay? 7 1/2 is not SO bad. It's kind of harder to find than sevens and eights. 7 1/2 wide, though?

I speak for all wide-footed womens when I say that having wide feet makes shoe shopping hell.

I would love to be able to tell you that I have a pair of dress shoes for every outfit, not just because that would mean I have lots money but also because it would mean I could actually find shoes in the right size. Instead, I typically look for the first mildly attractive shoes in black that don't make me want to scream as soon as I take a step. And then I buy them, because finding them took two hours.

At the beginning of this summer, I managed to find both a pair of sandals and a pair of shoes I could work in, both of which I was actually happy with. I consider this the most successful shopping trip for anything I have ever had. Even now I am stretching the use of the sandals by wearing black socks under them (the sandals are black too, and they're not open-toed, so it's fine.) Mainly because I'ma have to go find new shoes again soon, and I don't wanna. D:

Furthermore? I dun' like my toes. XD So that eliminates as a prospect about ninety-eleven percent of pretty shoes. DX I suppose that's fine, though, because none of them fit anyhow.

And why can't I ever find tall in the leg, flat in the heel boots that are cute instead of making my legs look fat? (Since I practically have Barbie legs, this is quite a feat.)

So yeah, shoe shopping. Hate it. It sucks.

In other news, El Goonish Shive actually updated today. Hooray! XD

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama cares not for the weight of your world.

Hmmmmn shouldn't this have gone up Friday?

2008-11-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

The relationship between mummies and zombies in horror fascinates me, and not just because I'm an ancient Egypt nut. It's the differences between them, alongside their similarities, that everyone is aware of but which I've seen little serious discussion on.

For starters, the typical pop-culture zombie is found in mobs. This is their main strength, in fact-- because they're mostly mindless, groping and slow, a single zombie doesn't really pose much of a threat at all as long as one knows what to do with one (personally, I have little use for headshots, though-- zombies don't strike me as particularly frightening if all one has to do is chop its head off.) The average zombie is falling apart with each step, rotting actively before the eyes, and it's not uncommon for them to be moaning constantly for whatever reason.

The modern horror-movie mummy is a separate creature altogether. He typically stands alone, and strikes the viewer as more intrinsically noble than the mob-zombie-- not merely because he's likely a former king or other royal, but also because he's more likely in command of most, if not all, of his former mental faculties. He is often possessed of massive magical powers which are his main bite-- either you die by the king's curse or the plaguelike swarms of scorpions and rats he sends upon you. Maybe he's got soldiers buried with him, in which case he becomes the general of the mob-zombies or of a faceless, emotionless and robotlike horde. Typically, he is much better preserved than the mob-zombie-- after all, he's likely much older, and has had certain arcane rituals performed on him for that exact purpose.

Mob-zombies are often used to express a fear of epidemic. The mummy (for he is typically THE Mummy as opposed to A mummy) is the Ancient Evil with the mind of a man. You sympathize with the mob-zombie on the basis of its victimhood, on the basis that its individuality and humanity has been stripped away by something it could not control, and because the mob-zombie could easily be someone that you love. The mummy is very unlikely to be a person you knew before, yet he can be sympathized with because he retains his humanity, possibly is resurrected because he wanted to be, and yet finds that all his plans are gone to pot, or that they're not what he was hoping for. He perhaps dabbled in that which he should not have. It is for the reason of his individuality that it is much easier to make the mummy a sympathetic creature, even a hero, or at least benign.

In other words, mummies and zombies are two sides of the same coin, that coin being the living dead. They're the two extremes of the concept. And that's what fascinates me about the two in conjecture.

Vampires exist in between the mummy and the mob-zombie, incedentally. They have a certain amount of the plague-theme of mob-zombies, but also retain the individuality and occassionally the mystical powers of the mummy. Typically, however, they are prettier than either. (The attractive, youthful looking mummy is a very new idea.)

I would TOTALLY watch a movie about a mummy trying to save the world from a zombie horde. XD

SOMEONE WRITE IT NAOW.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama stays serious for NO ONE.

All Saints Day

2008-11-01T16:52:00.000-07:00

As a Lutheran (I can't speak for other Protestants) I believe that a saint is someone "who lets the light shine through." And All Saints' Day is when my church honors the members of the congregation who've died in the past year. It's when people might honor those they know and care about who've died in the past year. I know it's what I always think about.

As you might imagine, it's rather emotional, or it can be.

See you, Harold. Godspeed.

-Jessi-sama has nothing more to say.

It's Halloween

2008-10-31T13:10:00.000-07:00

I WILL EAT YOUR FACE. DX

.....

......

No, I'm not serious. Enjoy yourselves, and don't get killed. :P

And now I'm going to talk about robots.

robotsrobotsrobotsrobots

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama actually will do a semiserious post about robots sooner or later, believe it or not.

RANDOM VIDEO DUMP!!

The New Bull Moose Whig Freedom Party

2008-10-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

With all the blah about politics as of late, I've come to be painfully aware of an odd.... we'll call it an irony involving the two main political parties of the United States.

Which is this.

The Republican platform favors small government-- that is, the government gets as much out of your life as possible, only there when you need someone arressted or to wage war for you. (That's a mild simplification, but the point remains.) Yet many radical Republicans try to tell you how to live, what to be, what makes you "acceptable" as a human being. (Mostly, it's a straight white Christian that you hear about. I can do the Christian part. The straight, not so much. And I couldn't stop being white if I tried.)

The Democratic Party claims to promote multiculturalism-- that is, of course, the freedom of the individual human being to follow whatever path they desire or are inclined towards, be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian, gay, bisexual, straight or (eventually) transgendered. Yet their political platform favors big government, restricting how much money people can make, whether or not they're allowed not to work if they so choose, what kind of jobs they can have, and how successful they can be.

Isn't there something wrong here? Why isn't there a party that both promotes multicultural social standards AND small government, that allows you to live how you want in all planes of life? There's already names for the people who want it the other way around-- Nazis. Totalitarians. That sort of thing. There should be a party that doesn't criticize its members for their culture OR their success, shouldn't there?

SO I PROPOSE WE MAKE ONE. The only thing is, I'm stuck on a name, and my brother is insanely sick of politics (as he will tell you.) Any help? Would be welcome.

And no, I don't think we can call it the Batman Party, as Batman is anti-gun and I'm thinking this party would support the Castle Doctrine.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama just wants someone who isn't an idiot that she can vote for. And Atem isn't an American citizen. Plus I doubt he understands the concept of democracy.

Nice Guy Guide

2008-10-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

And after reading through some of this, I suddenly feel I have a better understanding of why some men are crazy. Now if only I could find a manual on women.....

-Jessi-sama

Teknoman, not Tekkaman XD

2008-10-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

So today mein bruder did a little profile essay on the Tekkaman series, and he mentioned me, saying "let's not even talk about what kind of effect it had on the psyche of [my sister...]"

And I feel the need to respond to that, and so I shall: The tiny snatch of the Teknoman dub I remember clearly made me into a child pervert. Because he was walking out of burning crater madness, and he was nude. And it was sexy. XD

That is all.

-Jessi-sama

I like cats

2008-10-25T17:05:00.000-07:00

Which is where I'm willing to bet I got the habit of drawing characters with elf ears (or something similar) that emote like kitty ears.

Which would be why, between the young men in this picture, Blue's ears are always at half-mast (he's kind of emo :x) and Morgan's are always all perky (he's a former pirate who's pretty much always high on life.)

Yeah that's all I gotta say. XD

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

Political acid spitting

2008-10-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

I don't like Obama. I am aware this not a popular opinion in my age-set, and I don't give a damn. I don't like him. I don't like his redistrubutionist policies, I don't like his gun policies, I don't like his abortion policies.

"Spreading the wealth around" is socialism. Clean and simple. It's communism. These are nice social theories, but they do not work. If they did, we wouldn't have won the Cold War. Example: I don't actually make any money, because I'm a starving artist. I work my shapely little rear-end off and don't make any money. If Obama really believed that "spreading the wealth around" worked, he would gladly give me half his salary.

Do you suppose he will? Most certainly not. And he shouldn't, because he earned that money and it is his.

Obama, like many liberals, follows the "guns are evil and kill people all on their own by infecting people's minds" theory of gun control. I follow the "people kill people" and "wild animals kill people" and "people need to be able to protect themselves" theory of gun control. I am not a gun nut. I have never hunted in my life. I do not own my own gun. When I move into my own house, I will buy a gun. Why?

Because I'm 120 pounds and relatively attractive, and would rather not be raped or murdered. I'd really rather my stuff not get stolen, either, but raped or murdered are naturally higher concerns. Gun control groups believe the government should be the ones protecting the people, but the fact is, I can respond to people trying to rape and murder me much faster than the cops can. I, after all, am the one who's in it. The only way that the government could give me as much protection as I should be able to give myself just by owning a gun would be to station a soldier or a policeman in my house. And guess what? That's unconstitutional! It's in the Bill of Rights! And so is the right to keep and bear arms!

There's another, somewhat more morbid reason we need the right to bear arms. In the unlikely event that our government becomes so horrible that we the people can no longer bear it, losing our right to bear arms means that the government could just sytematically shoot down protestors, and much as we yell about it, we wouldn't actually, realistically be able to do anything. THIS is why the Founders even put it in there in the FIRST place. Nobody likes talking about it, because it feels like sedition. But believe it or not, it's the height of patriotism in a country that supposedly IS the people that populate it.

Losing the right to bear arms is the REAL way Big Brother gains control of your life. It IS the most important right we have, because it is the key to protecting all the others if things ever become desperate.

Obama suports partial birth abortion. I'm not getting into pro-choice or pro-life. Partial birth abortion is neither. It operates on the fantasy that, just because a baby's not all the way out yet (despite being healthy, full term, and exactly like any baby that IS all the way out) it's okay to lobotomize the kid. I don't understand partial birth at ALL. For me, as a woman, the reasons to abort a pregancy stand thus:

You were raped and don't want to be reminded of the fact for a full nine months.
You're a kid and/or can't support the baby and for whatever reason, you can't let people know. (Otherwise you could just give it up for adoption.)
Health issues-- either you or the baby won't possibly survive.
Incest, which is in many cases pretty much an altered version of the first one.

In which of these four cases does partial birth make any sense at all?

The answer is that it doesn't. The only "good" reasons to get an abortion are all pretty damn easy to decide on in the first trimester. It should not take nine months.

Furthermore, I don't really get where everybody gets the idea that Obama is so damned eloquent. I have not read his books, so I have to take him at face value. This is what I hear:

Bla. Bla bla. Blaaaaaah....
Uhhhhhhh.
Bla BLA bla-- aaaaand...
Uhhhhhhhh.....
The, uhhhhhhh......
Bla bla bla.... is bla.

This, boys and girls, is what a terrible public speaker sounds like. I can't STAND listening to him. Everytime he comes on I want to scream "Shut up or get on with it!!!" This is not unlike a vocal tic my father and uncles have, except they actually get to what they're saying and the "uhhhhs" don't last fifteen to twenty seconds at a time. When my father and uncles do it, it's endearing. This is probably why it ticks me off so much that Obama is even worse about it.

Yeah. One of the things the media marvels about with Mr. Senator Obama-sama SIR is that he's galvanized America's "youth vote." I'm galvanized all right. I've been galvanized right into voting for the other side.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama promises to back off the politics once McCain is President.

So I got this letter the other day....

2008-10-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Sigma Alpha Pi, a.k.a. the National Society of Leadership and Success,

I am afraid I must respectfully decline your invitation into your ranks, which you claim I earned through the "accomplishment" of 2.5+ GPA.

First of all, I fail to see how getting higher than a 2.5 GPA, which I seem to have achieved despite failing one or two classes in previous semesters, counts as an "accomplishment." By my reckoning, the only grades that can truly be considered an "accomplishment" in a 4 point system, in which 2.0 is the "average," are 3.5+... especially since this is college and I'm mostly only taking classes that fascinate me. The class that I took to fulfill my math requirement was the same level as a class I took in high school.

Secondly, I have long regarded such organizations as your own as somewhat inflated and pompous. If what you really do is "help" students to succeed, why do you only allow in students who are just as likely to succeed on their own? If what you provide actually "helps" students, wouldn't it be better if you helped the students who actually NEED it? I have no use for an organization that exists solely to take credit for other people's blood, sweat and tears.

Thirdly, I don't actually think I'm what your organization is "looking for," as my career of choice is "cartoonist/artist/writer." There are plenty of people that the access to teleconferences and meetings would assist the career of. I am not one of them. I have the internet, which gives me direct access to more people in my chosen profession than I could ever hope to have need of. It has even allowed me to amass an online portfolio that people all over the world have direct access to, whether for purpose of criticism or otherwise. Since I intend to be my own employer, I can easily write my own letter of recommendation, which I assure you will not only be personalized and handwritten, but will also be much admired by my employer of choice.

Fourthly, in all honesty, I'm only taking college right now because it was expected of me. There are no actual classes at Bowling Green, Firelands or main campus, that fit into my requirements as a comic artist. Art classes and writing classes can only take a young graphic novelist so far on their own. If you could promise such classes as I have suggested, which you cannot, I would likely take your invitation a little more seriously.

Finally, I have a little trouble taking an organization such as your own seriously when its acronym is SAP. It is one thing when one's surname is unfortunate. YOU had a choice of what you put into your name. If your members are all as smart as you seem to claim to be, why in the world would you name your organization "sap?"

Very, very sincerely and with all respect,
-Jessica Segaard
Artist.
Writer.
Sarcastic Comedianne.

........
........

Dear Magna Cum Laude.....

Halloween's a coming

2008-10-21T14:01:00.000-07:00

After Christmas (and possible Easter) Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday, and for a very simple reason:

I don't like dressing like normal people.

Sure, it's easier a lot of the time, you throw on jeans, pull on a T-shirt, you're done. But what if what I really want to do is throw on a black bodysuit, a silver, wide weave dress shirt, and more belts than I technically have waist for? Well, you do that and you just get weird looks. I can get away with some small things much of the time; I like my long coats and my dog collar very much, but typically, the American ideal is that if you stand out as a woman, it's because of nice cleavage and a low neckline. I like low necklines when it's warm. But why should I reserve dressing in the clothing I like for one month of the year?

I'm not talking "Let's all dress gothy," either. Buy me a scarlet waistcoat like Captain Hook's, and I will totally wear it all winter. Some people give you odd looks for wearing oversized men's dress shirts, too, no matter the color. :P

And I totally just realized I dress like a cross between Yugi Moto, Seto Kaiba and Jack Sparrow. Awesome.

Signing off
-Jessi-sama wouldn't mind being an anime character.

Be informed! Stay ahead!

2008-09-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

So I was watching Sarah Palin's interview with Ch-HARLIE Gibson last night, right?

Not many of you know this (other than Invid, but he's my brother and lives with me so he SHOULD know) but I find Charlie Gibson very annoying. I find a lot of media personalities annoying. And here's two things from that interview I feel the need to point out:

Charlie is so SLOW if Palin has to explain things to him like he's a kindergartener and he STILL claims it's not clear. (Abortion question.)

Sarah was very wise not to touch the sexual orientation issue, and for reasons I don't think many people picked up on, and which she probably wasn't aware of herself: Charlie called it a question of "Choice or Genetics."

"Choice or Genetics?" I'll point out right now I don't believe my own orientation is a choice. How I approach it and present it is my choice, but no matter how I do that, I'm still going to be looking in both directions. It's an unconscious thing that I can't avoid doing.

But if it was GENETICS, there wouldn't be so many gay people, in such consistent numbers. They wouldn't be REPRODUCING. Which is the only way for that to happen.

It's a question of "Choice and BIOLOGY."

BIOLOGY AND GENETICS ARE NOT THE SAME THING, CHARLIE.

Rewind to my psychology 101 class. Nobody is QUITE sure what causes a baby to be born gay, straight, bisexual or whatever. But the prevailing theory? Prenatal hormonal washes.

Hormonal washes. Basically, a mother "feeds" these hormone cocktails to the embryo the entire pregnancy. Certain cocktails are crucial in genderal development of the brain, making sure it matches up with its body properly.

In other words, a perfectly masculine, but totally homosexual man, might have gotten the "right" mix for the rest of his brain, but the part that defines what he's attracted to got the "female" mix.

This is obviously a simplified explaination. But it's workable for layman's knowledge.

LAYMAN'S KNOWLEDGE THE GENERAL PUBLIC DOESN'T ACTUALLY HAVE BECAUSE THE MEDIA IS MADE UP OF TWITS.

How are we supposed to "be informed" and "stay ahead" with Charlie if he doesn't even know the real story behind the issues he's badgering people about?

-Jessi-sama is mean!

Trip to Spokane: Home again home again

2008-08-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

Jiggedy jig.

I actually got home last night, but didn't think to blog until just naow. ^_^'' XD

The night before my last full day (That would be Monday night, FYI) the neighbor lady had an emergency and we had to babysit her older child, plus Angel had to pick her neighbor's mom up from the airport (I'm not going into fuller detail because it's not the internet's business.)

Which was interesting, because the girls and the neighbor girl, despite wanting to spend every waking moment with each other, are really nasty to each other much of the time, and there was a storm and most of Spokane blacked out (we were on the military base, which has its own generators, so most of the base still had light) AND our guest was rather insensitive to Sierra's need for the hall light to be on, AND Chenoa insisted on participating in the same bad behavior as her friend. We finally had to separate them, putting Sierra in the guest room (my bedroom at the time) with the light on while the other two stayed in Sierra's room (normally the guest room is actually Chenoa's room.)

They then dropped off almost instantly.

So the last day I was there, we craftily diverted them from spending the whole day with the neighbor girl, because all adults involved (or at least me and Angel) agreed they needed a break from each other.

The last day, we ate at the chinese place the second time (They have really good, genuinely Chinese food there-- more veggies) and went shopping, especially for me to have things to bring home. I brought Mom a Japanese tea set (which she loved) Dad a moose keychain (which he did not appreciate) (HEY, I tried to find something I knew he'd like, but that was all there was) Ted a pendrive (XD) and Will some books. That and some Korean cookies. (There was a shop next to the Japanese/Korean restauraunt.)

And then I drew Angel and the girls all pictures. XD Angel's will be colored; she took a photo for me to have so I could do that.

The flight home went phenominally well. I didn't even feel the last touchdown. I kept noticing Mom and Dad giving me these smiles when they thought I wasn't looking. XDD I guess that means they mean it when they say they missed me.

Also, my cat still loves me even though I left her for a week. =D I was so relieved; I was sure she would hate me.

Angel rather evilly (XD you know I don't mean it) got me into IMVU. I'll probably blog about that later.

-Jessi-sama is on waaaaay too late. XD

PS: I mentioned to Mom that I'd be talking to Angel on the IMVU and that if I phoned her we'd probably spend several hours talking. And she was like "You're not tired of talking yet? XDD" And I said "Of course we're not."

Trip to Spokane: Minor photo dump

2008-08-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

HEE. We took a lot of photos while we were hiking, so this seemed like an opportune time to post a few.

Angel's kitty, Kasha, who is adorable. XD

I like the kitty. X3 (Couldn't figure out how to rotate the pic in blogger, sorry.)

This is funny because I have a character named Sekani. His sister's all like "Next thing I know you'll be a mob boss. XDDD" (Sekani: "I thought we were a mob.")

Mountains are pretty.

This is called "The Devil's Toenail." Nice name, right? XD

Rapids around the Devil's Toenail. :3 It's all so picturesque up here it's not even funny (actually it is; I stopped every few minutes to snap one.)

Me 'n' Angel on the bridge right next to the Toenail.

Me 'n' Jackie on the bridge, plus Angel's daughter Sierra in the background.

Angel's daughters, Sierra and Chenoa (That's "Sheh-noa") overlooking the river. They're darn cute girls, and they're STILL all over me. XD Chenoa keeps asking me for permission to do things, and I'm always saying, "Ummmmm-- your MOM is over there?"

Angel describes her car as a "mostly white Chevy Corsiva." XD

Devil's Toenail at a different angle. If you look at this one really closely, you'll see a tree trunk caught between the rocks where it fell.

This car inspired a scene in Angel's book.

And a log. X3 Heeee. Angel said she'd put the rest up on her MySpace for me, since my pendrive's a tad full.

Yeah. We're all dirty now. XD

-Jessi-sama loves nature! :D

So I'm in Washington State

2008-08-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

I'VE BEEN TRAVELING AND DIDN'T TELL YOU. HARDEHARHAR.

Yeah. I'm visiting Angel, author of Spellbound and dear friend. Because I can. X3

The trip went from Chicago to Pheonix to Spokane. Don't ask me.

And here's how the airplanes went:

Security? Why was I concerned about security?

The first plane (I had two parts to the trip) going up in the air wasn't so bad, going down was awful. Narnia was on the inflight movie (XD) and since I have CDs and a fresh notebook (FRESHU NOTABOOKU!!!) the time period in which my conversationalist I was sitting next to was napping was still quite entertaining. There was a guy sitting in the seat I was supposed to get who gave me an "I will EAT you" look as I went by, so I didn't bother trying to get my seat BACK, and ended up in the back row next to the gal I had been talking to before I actually got on the plane. XD

As the first plane was landing, my companion got a text message saying "Don't forget your toothbrush!!" And I suddenly realized that I had forgotten my toothbrush. XDD

So I had to go through security again, as the only drugstore on the map was past the secure area. :P

I looked for Tarot cards to give to Angel there, walking across to the Borders at Pheonix International, but there were none. :PP Then I was nearly late getting back and for food settled for the most disgusting cheeseburger/sausage thing I have ever consumed.

On the plane to Spokane, (It's Spo-can, not Spo-cane, so no that doesn't rhyme XD) I discovered that my seat was between a couple that liked to book their seats in such a way that their travel companions got more of a choice in seating. I was pretty flustered at the time and unwisely settled for the aisle seat, which then drove me nuts as I couldn't see what was going on.

But I had time to calm down, because then we were delayed for 20 minutes. ^^;

There was a woman with two small children that kept screaming right across the aisle, but once she got them calmed down it wasn't so bad. I WAS, however, quite bothered by the man who sat in FRONT of them because he kept standing up while the seat belt signal was on-- and getting into his overhead compartment. DX I dozed off during part of this flight and so it felt shorter. Also, I ended up getting a drink because the drink I got at the airport didn't last long enough. XP

Then when I got into Spokane, Angel and her girls weren't right there because of parking weirdness, but I DID know them right away, thank-you-very-much-mom. :D (Sends Mom an E-hug)

The girls absolutely loved the stuffed kitties I brought them, and they also have been all over me pretty much since we all got out of the car. XDDD And Eric (Angel's husband)'s dog likes me better than he likes Eric. HA. X3 (No, I's teasing.)

And I'm already having a great time. :3 More updates to come!

-Jessi-sama met a world traveler in the Chicago concourse. She was going to Arizona to pick up her car. XD

CSI: Miami- An excercise in Hawhuu?

2008-08-05T12:29:00.000-07:00

So I was watching CSI:Miami last night, mostly because my dad was. I like to watch CSI:Miami with my dad (and my mom and Invid, too, honestly) because then we can make fun of it the entire episode.

CSI:Miami is sort of the idiot supermodel of the CSI shows, in my opinion-- because it relies on pretty shots of Miami over story, sanity or reason. Yeah, Miami is nice-- but sweeping shots of beautiful Florida don't quite compare to the substance of the original CSI or even to the crazy trip that is CSI: NY. In this particular episode, all the action happened in one day (and they caught the killer because he had some of the crime scene still on his clothes.) Also, they kept making this huge deal out of the fact that the victim was several months pregnant, going on and on about "CATCH this one. CATCH him." XD

Which is like, yeah, it's terrible, and it's now a double homicide, but the fetus was only in the first trimester and getting an abortion is considered an acceptable thing in a good chunk of this society.

Which irritates me. I have my own opinions on abortion I won't go into very much here, but counting murdering a pregnant woman as double homicide while she's allowed to kill the baby herself and it's considered something she's doing with her own body, strikes me as a severe hypocrisy one way or the other. Make up your damn minds.

The CSI main guys have themes, have you noticed? Grissom of the original has his trivia, Mac of CSI:NY is sort of a jazzman, and Caine's got those sunglasses.

Poor Caine.

Also, CSI:Miami's autopsy lady is creepy as hell. I don't know about anybody else, but the thought of being refered to as "our baby girl" on an autopsy table creeps me out.

-Jessi-Sama had more to say but lost her energeeeee XD

Bands I nerd about: Dragonforce

2008-08-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

There are three reasons to listen to Dragonforce.

1. The name of the band is audaciously awesome. The only reason there has never been a band by this name before is because no one else would ever dare.

2. The instrumentals, particularly the guitars.

3. The lyrics never say a thing about love or not being able to live without someone. Ever. That I've heard anyhow. XD They're about epic viking tragedy battles to the DEATH. (So says Invid.)

And dragons, obviously. (Warning, video is just a still image with the song. Sowwy.) Being a nerd about dragons like I am, obviously I'm rather drawn.

Also, this song is begging for a Yu-Gi-Oh! music video and nobody's done it yet. CRIME AGAINST NATURE.

-Jessi-sama wishes she had Windows Movie Maker! Or SOMETHING!

Obama-sama-lama and other political ranting

2008-07-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

I typically want to keep my political whatevers out of conversation. I believe in letting people have their own opinions, and in the end that means sometimes the guy I didn't vote for gets in. And sometimes that's okay, but lately I don't really like any of the choices set before me, so I just kind of stick my toungue out and vote for the lesser evile.

But what the hell is Obama doing overseas? Doesn't he know his voters are over here? Just because he's won his party's nomination doesn't mean I'M in bed with him, the bastard. I have no idea what the man stands for because he keeps voting "here" on important issues.

He's not "here" right NOW, is he.

This drives me nuts, because the media is actually praising him for being more or less AWOL. His behavior right now strikes me as the height of arrogance-- McCain is apparently so not a threat in his mind that he doesn't even need to woo us anymore. This I predict will get him into trouble.

Furthermore, has anybody picked a running mate yet?! This is the first year I've seen election bumper stickers with only one name on them (not counting the Kerry/Edwards stickers you still see everyplace.)

Speaking of which, there's a huge van that I've been seeing at the grocery store for years that still has its Kerry/Edwards stickers on, along with bunches of anti-Bush slogans. I don't care if you want to bash Bush. I don't see much point in it, but it's your business what you waste your energy on.

But one of them says, and I quote:

THE LAST TIME SOMEONE LISTENED TO A BUSH THEY WANDERED AROUND IN THE DESERT
FOR FORTY YEARS.

In case you didn't know, that's a reference to the Bible. More specifically, to Moses. And they wandered the desert for forty years because, the Bible says, God told them to. (And not through a bush, incidentally.)

I understand this guy probably doesn't think of himself as a religious person, and maybe I'm overreacting myself and this really is funny. I don't see how anyone with a respect for God would think so, though, since he's comparing God to a man he thinks is really stupid.

Moses' story is one of the few things that all three of the major religions that draw from the Hebrew traditions agree on. Those all three being Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The bumper sticker is anti-Semitic, anti-Christian AND anti-Muslim. Funny how you can pull that off in one statement.

In other words; don't insult Moses, man, and I really hope no particularly radical religious folk of the Hebrew tradition ever see that truck and realize the same thing I did. O_o

-Jessi-sama

Weird thing of the day: Heterophobes

2008-07-20T16:44:00.000-07:00

Homophobia is a terrible thing. Sometimes it's funny, if taken in small doses (I like people who think gays are going to hit on them just because they're gay-- if straight people don't hit on you all the time, gay people usually won't either), but it usually alienates, imprisons, humiliates, rapes and murders. It's sexist, because it demands certain kinds of gender behavior that some of us simply cannot adhere to. Furthermore, it degenerates the homophobe to little more than a brutal animal that lashes out in fear instead of being the beautiful, intelligent human being that they are, flaws and all. And as a non-heterosexual myself, I feel not only that it is my duty as a human being to combat this particular form of Hate, it is also necessary to my survival.

With this in mind, I will now say that I don't understand how people can be heterophobes, that is, people who won't accept a sexual relationship between a man and a woman. I actually do encounter people like this, people who are NOT just joking, people who are perfectly dead serious.

I don't understand the twisted logic behind it. I don't understand the hypocrisy. I don't understand how they can fight and argue for the legitimacy of homosexual love while at the same time claiming that heterosexual love is somehow less worthy and beautiful.

And I'm certainly not going to sit for someone insulting a man I may be dating any more than I would let someone insult a woman I may be dating.

People, if you're non-het, don't be a heterophobe. It makes you worse for knowing what it's like to be spoken about that way and still doing it. It's not edgy. It's not cool. It's really just kind of stupid and it's just as bigoted as homophobia.

Plus that I'm really tired of listening to ya'll.

Only on the internet.....

-Jessi-sama

Am I a jerk or what?

2008-07-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite episode of Sailor Moon:

This is my favorite episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.

Does this mean there's something wrong with me or does it just say something about my opinions of the shows in general? ;P

(No, I actually like Sailor Moon, I just think it's silly at the same time. XD)

-Jessi-sama

Open Letter from a Long Haired Girl

2008-07-17T11:14:00.001-07:00

Dear World:

Yes, I know my hair is long. Thank you for telling me; I never would have figured it out from the fact that I keep sitting on it.

To the multitudes who think it's pretty, thank you. Like any woman, I appreciate compliments on my appearance, even though all I really do with it is wash it and spritz in some leave-in conditioner.

Yes, I know who Rapunzel is. However, I am a warrior, not a damsel in distress.

No, I am not particularly interested in a makeover. I like the way I look. Stop asking.

No, I am not making a statement. I'm just standing out like I always do.

Yes, in the event that I decide to cut my hair, I have every intention of giving it to Locks of Love. They'll throw half of it out due to length inconsistencies, though, and I have no intention of cutting it off just so that Locks of Love can throw half of it out.

No, short hair is not more manageable than long hair. Sure, you can just brush it a few times for everyday use, but when you want to get ready for a big event, doing your hair takes you all day. If I want, I can look like my hair is ready for a big event every day and it only takes me five minutes, twenty if I decide to do something complicated.

Yes, it does get hot in the summer. That's what scrunchies are for. Yes, it does take a bit to dry out. That's what beach towels are for.

Actually, I do cut off several inches at least once a year, to get rid of raggedy ends and give the impression that my hair is thicker. I usually go crazy until it grows back out, trying to grab at hair that isn't there.

Please do not grab on it and pull without asking; you never know when I have a sunburn on my scalp, and that hurts like hell. I would prefer you ask permission if you want to touch it. Just because you've asked permission does not mean you have permission.

Don't even think about cutting it without my permission or knowledge. It gives me grounds to charge you for assault. Failing that, I can sue you. This is if I manage to keep a clear head and don't attack you with your own scissors.

No, I am not keeping it long because I'm "afraid to cut it off." Again, I like the way I look. My hairstyle fits with my lifestyle. I have no reason to cut it off, and the reasons you provide me with are obviously not good enough or I would have done it by now. It's my body, you know.

-Jessi-sama

Mayfly Snack

2008-07-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

The cats love 'em.

(Actually, pretty much anything but humans will eat the things.... :P Although most birds will only eat them during their mating flights.)

No, the mayfly is not eating the cheese. The mayfly has no mouth.

And we don't really know how the thing got into the house, either. O_o

Hanging from the ceiling

2008-07-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

So my brother and I were in Wal-Mart today, in search of Black Sabbath (don't ask) and decided to swing by the toys to see if there were any Transformers we wanted.

And there were.

I think that thing hanging from the lamp chain next to her is a spring-frog-keychain thing. Right.

Anyhow, I'm sort of on a miniature crusade to pick up as many female Transformers toys as I can manage in a small town (XD), because there aren't very many of them.

I don't really understand why, since this fandom is supposedly geared towards men, and women are sexy. XD Animated Blackarachnia here gives me a whole new perspective on what "adult shows" on Cybertron must be like. :3 XDD

(Also, what is up with me and fake spiders hanging from my ceiling? Hmmm.)

-Jessi-sama has weird tastes in decoration! XD

Then, suddenly, Mayflies!

2008-06-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

THOUSANDS OF THEM!! D8

I tried to take pictures of the mating flights, but we have no camera that is quite good enough.

Feh, I'll post one anyhow:

This cannot possibly do it justice. Those little white specks? Mayflies. Those little black specks? Mayflies. Those little imperfections in the field of blue? Mayflies.

In other words, there are many more mayflies in this picture than the three the flash caught.

They coat the streets. They blanket cars. They smell like fish and die by the thousands.

Thankfully, they have no mouths. XD

This is not the last you'll hear of this.

-Jessi-sama

And on the subject of the Weeaboo Reaction

2008-06-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

Walky is awesome.

Seriously, I love this man. XDD He has stated everything I went on about that's stupid about the Weeaboo Reaction, and he has done so far more elegantly than I.

-Jessi-sama

XD Random video nonsense

2008-06-11T17:42:00.001-07:00

I love this song. I don't care if that makes me a dork, I love this song.

And ah yes, as one of the people commenting pointed out (multiple times), this is about filial devotion, not romantic devotion. XD

I need to do a rant about why Bravestarr is awesome and should be considered one of Filmation's Big Three. XDD

-Jessi-sama

I'm POed at your POedness

2008-06-01T15:53:00.000-07:00

"We a WHAT?"

.
I've had enough. I'm tired of it. This is stupid, bigoted and moronic. No, I'm not talking about the hate churches and the political scene today, even though both are valid rant subjects.
.

I'm talking about the "weeaboo reaction."
.

What's the Weeaboo Reaction? Well, for any of you who said "WTF is a weeaboo?!" (which was my first reaction), a weeaboo is a derisive term for people, ostensibly Americans, who absorb Japanese pop culture to the point that others accuse them of trying to BE Japanese. Many of them are. I can see why some people get upset over this: "What, the culture you were BORN in
isn't good enough for you?" but I believe that people have the right to choose who they want to be, and damn tradition if you have no use for it. I have little use for tradition myself-- If I was TRADITIONAL, I would wear dresses, would consider the work I love beneath me, and be married by now.
.

The problem is, many people cry "weeaboo" at the first sign of Japanese influence at all, convienently forgetting that our two cultures have had so much cross-cultural interaction since the end of Edo that we've almost literally become mustache-Spock alternate universe mirrors of each other.
.

Transformers? Started with GI Joe that influenced the Japanese to create Microman that spawned Diaclone that became Transformers when it came over here. (Invid has a great little musing about this over at his own blog.) Yu-Gi-Oh? Influenced by Magic: the Gathering and freaking ancient Egypt (something else we've had plenty of crazes about over the years.) Most of Japanese fantasy? Lord of the Rings. Hentai? H.P. Lovecraft!

.
Manga and anime at ALL? Disney.

.
Oh-ho, yes, I just blamed the way that Japanese comics stereotypically look, the big eyes, the cute animals, the caricatures, on Walt Disney.
.

Ever hear of Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy? Of course you have. Every flipping time ANYBODY talks about the history of anime or manga, Tezuka's name comes up, and if it doesn't, for SHAME.
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SHAME. SEPPUKU. I WILL BE YOUR SECOND.
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Tezuka, for those of you out of the know, is considered the "Father of Japanese comics--" and by extension, anime as well. He first started the craze with the big eyes and cute critters in Japan.
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He got the idea by watching "Bambi."

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I kid you not. This is a historical fact, at least according to Tezuka (and he SHOULD be the authority on his own influences, don't you think?) If you don't believe me, you can look it up-- you WILL find it.
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ANIME STYLE LOOKS LIKE THAT BECAUSE OF AMERICAN INFLUENCES. MORONS.
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The end result of my own knowledge of all this is that I get very cranky when I hear words like "animu" and "weeaboo" being used to describe art styles used by American artists. What, we're not allowed to adopt new ideas anymore? Are we supposed to stagnate in our puddles of Rennaissance and Bugs Bunny goop? (Because Bugs has beeg eyez himself, if you didn't notice.)
We're not allowed to idealize anymore?
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This is ART, people. Let me let ya'll in on a little secret: Michaelangelo's David has hands that are enormous by normal proportions. Why? Because old Mikey believed that the hands represented the most important part of a human being, the inventive spirit (by his philosophy.) Large eyes are a response to the fact that humans use their eyes more than any other sensory
organ. (Scientifically speaking.) They're also the most expressive part of the face, hence why they get called "windows to the soul" so much. We pay the most attention to them when looking other people in the face. Therefore, enlarged eyes is a perfectly natural idealization.

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Here's another little secret: ALL THE GREATEST DAMNED ARTISTS IN THE WORLD LEARNED BY COPYING OTHER PEOPLE. All the late greats they make you read about in class?? Da Vinci? Michaelangelo? The other Ninja Turtles?

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(XD) Even the more recent masters, like Picasso, Campbell, that dude who squirts paint so it drips down the canvas, ALL OF THEM STUDIED UNDER PROFESSIONALS. Yes, even Pollack. In my art class we watched a video about him and it said he studied art in California. (Maybe it was Florida. Har har.)

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And many, if not most, of the people putting comics on the internet are only learning. I believe that this is a good thing. It would be a better thing if we could organize real online courses and forum classrooms. Sequential art as a storytelling medium could enter a new level of serious art. Scott McCloud seems to think we're on the cusp of our own modern Renaissance (don't tell me
we've had it already, darlings, because we're in a sorry state if we have.)

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See, webcomics provide those of us who are serious about comics a place to put them in the open, to allow ourselves to be criticised, and a motivation to do a LOT of art on a regular basis. If it wasn't for The Law of Purple, I would NOT be the artist I am today. I wouldn't have an excuse to be. Yes, many people, unfortunately many of them people who have very popular comics, aren't really open to critique, constructive or otherwise (I'm not open to otherwise either, myself. Who wants to try and figure out what someone means when all they say is "You suck" or even "keep up the awesome?")
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But that is a problem with the human ego-- in our culture, the art of taking constructive critiques for what they are isn't exactly well taught. Nor is the art of GIVING constructive critiques. I would much rather hear "I had trouble at first realizing it was a flashback, maybe you could differentiate those panels somehow?" over "It's confusing shit." What the heck does "It's confusing shit" mean? You didn't understand my phraseology? There's something wrong with the panel layout? You have a monkey named that and he's getting confused by reading my comic? I feel sorry for your monkey if he's smart enough to read simple sentences
and comprehend their meaning and you STILL named him that.

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Yeah, sometimes it's just as well to explain what you're trying to say through colorful metaphors. I find "She looks like a guy crossdressing as a woman using balloons for boobs" works pretty well to get my meaning across when I think a female figure's hips are too skinny compared to her breasts. Not because it's clear or nice but because it shows WHY the problem is a problem. But if you're going to use one-liners to explain what's wrong with a comic, you still need to explain why you're saying what you are. You still need to offer alternatives, so the artist doesn't just sit there staring at the screen wondering "Well dammit, NOW what do I do?"

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And personal attacks? They never get anyone anywhere. We is social primates, personal attacks is bad for in-group cooperationses. When was the last time you wanted to take advice from your neighbor when he always starts his criticism with "NO NO NO you're doing it ALL WRONG?" There's a sign that sits in the window of one of the offices of the grocery store I
work at. It says, quite simply, BE NICE OR GO AWAY. Because nobody wants to work with you when you're a dick, and when you offer critique to someone, you're basically acting as their editor. Sure, they aren't PAYING you, but in webcomics, YOU'RE usually not paying THEM, so you're not losing anything by reading their comic but your time, and they're not losing anything but their own time if all you're going to do is spout crap.
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Yeah. When you offer criticism to someone in a public forum, you automatically stop being just a stranger saying stuff. You become a part of that person's TEAM. So start ACTING like it, even if they refuse to. If they refuse your advice THEN, it's only THEIR loss. YOU can just stop reading.

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And NEVER just say "You need to totally do a completely different art style." No artist is going to listen to you after that. That's as personal an insult as "Your entire choice of clothing sucks, all the time." ALL art styles have SOMETHING good about them.
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If you have to talk about the art style, pick something you like, pick something else you don't like, and then talk about them at the same time. When I was a kid my mom always talked about loving the way I drew "square eyes" (I was influenced by anime long before I even knew what it WAS) "But why don't they have eyebrows?" And for a while, I resisted, calling it a style choice, but eventually, I did indeed find myself drawing eyebrows more and more often. I found they made expressing easier and the art better as a whole, but I might not have started drawing them as soon as I did if not for my mother's commentary.
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(My mother is a real master of the well phrased criticism. I never feel like I'm being insulted, and when I know she's right, I only resist when I feel rebellious. And you can guess why I might feel rebellious, being that I'm a young adult and she IS my mother.)
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Which brings me to another thing that ticks me off about the Weeaboo Reaction (style choices, not my mother.) "Animu."
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"Animu."
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Animu, as I understand it, is when a comic is more influenced in art style by "cheap anime" as opposed to actual manga. This is apparently bad because cartoons should never, NEVER influence comics.
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SUPERMAN WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO FLY IF THE ANIMATORS OF THE OLD CARTOON HADN'T INSISTED IT WAS EASIER TO ANIMATE THAN JUMPING.
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JOKER WOULD NOT HAVE A SEXY SIDEKICK IF NOT FOR THE NINETIES BATMAN SERIES.
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DC has LOTS more examples, but Capslock gets hard on my eyes. And these dudes are the hardcore old-schoolers. If it's okay for Supes to show up in a comic with giant Disneyfied eyes (which he has on occasion) it's okay for Dominic Deegan to have a snout instead of an actual nose. Believe it or not, there ARE people who LIKE how the snout looks. It's a caricature, visual shorthand, and there are people that it works for. You don't have to like it, but the people who do have the right to.
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(I confess. Drawing profiles as snouts ALL the time annoys me, too, but it's a matter of taste. (I have this "thing" about well drawn lips.) The grown-up thing to do here is to walk away. To be honest I never have gotten past the first Dominic Deegan gag strip because it was the sort of thing I found stale by the time I was out of grammar school, but that's just me. XD)
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And I was most influenced in my early years by old-school anime (the eighties, semi-realistic styles) and Filmation. (He-Man is awesome, I wanted to BE She-Ra, and Bravestarr is the sexiest Indian American space sheriff in yellow EVAR. He's also the only one I know of.) There is NOTHING wrong with this. Just like there was nothing wrong with the first comic-book pioneers copying classical styles, with Tezuka copying Disney, or with George Lucas copying samurai. (HAR.)
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Just like there is nothing wrong with all the kids who liked what Pokémon looked like and wanted to imitate the style. Cultural exchange of ideas is a GOOD THING, even when sometimes bad things come of it. Where would ANY of us be if the Egyptians hadn't taught the Romans and the Greeks the best way to carve statues of stone? If the Romans hadn't preserved Greek culture, or invented concrete? If the Chinese hadn't opened their borders and introduced better plows, paper and explosives to the West?
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And so on, and so forth. If you're not a Westerner, you can still dig and find debts your culture owes to another. You will find millions. I can guarantee that.
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SO SHUT UP ABOUT CULTURAL CONTAMINATION BECAUSE IT'S SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. Raaar! XDDDD
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-Jessi-sama is called that because someone ELSE started calling her that.
And she thought it was funny. XD

Pink Kryptonite

2008-05-16T12:19:00.000-07:00

"Innuendo much?"

Whut you say? Well, Invid can explain it better.

I love being a nerd. X3

-Jessi-sama

Happy Mother's Day, 2008!

2008-05-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

"Gee Whiz, are you posting that story AGAIN?"

In 2003, I wrote a story called simply, "Happy Mother's Day" for my mom. It was partly a gift and partly repentance for practically forgetting Momday the year before. It was also, incidentally, a Yugioh fanfic.

Because yes, my mother likes Yu-Gi-Oh! and is less ashamed than I am. XDD She's less of a nerd about it, of course, just like she's less of a nerd about Transformers, Batman, and any number of things we're both into besides, possibly, Star Trek and Star Wars (and Indiana Jones. I am WAY less of a nerd about Indiana Jones compared to my mother.) (But Mom's part of the generation that saw Star Wars for the first time when it came out, so there you go.) But I strongly suspect that's because she has less time than I do.

She's a mom, after all. She raised me to be a culture geek, but she sacrificed the luxury of all-consuming fandoms by being a mother. I'm not saying moms who are nerds sacrifice their motherhood to be dorks about their fandoms. It's easier to be a geek today, what with the internet, than it was for my mom's generation. Mom grew up in the hippie generation. Hippies were the main counterculture back then, I truly believe, because it's easier to be a hippy if you don't know anything.

Maybe I should rephrase that. It's easiest to be a hippy when you only know some things. If you know the world is at war, but you don't know what the warriors are thinking, it's easier to be a hippy. If you know that there is suffering in the world, but you don't know the really constructive ways to handle it, it's easier to be a hippy. If you know being high feels good, but not what the drugs can do to you if you overdo it, it's easier to be a hippy.

Sorry, maybe that was mean. Or maybe I'm ticked off that formerly religious substances get used for leisure like that. It's like the cheapening of sex, death and birth, although probably rather less dire.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Ah, yes, my mother raising me to be a geek. Or something. When the Star Wars prequel trilogy came out, my mother made absolutely sure to see them all at least once in the theater. One summer, I believe the summer my brother graduated, she rented all the Star Trek films that had been made at the time and made sure we watched them. "You haven't seen these and you're missing out," she said. It was as if it was neglect on her part; she sounded genuinely disgusted with herself.

Speaking of which, IT'S A GIANT BALL OF STATIC. NO, Spock, you must NOT attempt to mind meld with it. NO. BAD VULCAN. BAAAAD.

My mother is the mother who sat down to watch the awesome Batman animated series in the 90's, and had fangirl fits over Bruce. My mother is the mother who complained about The Batman in the oo's because Bruce's chin looked funny. She's the mom who took a moment to notice what was going on when Pegasus dueled Kaiba, and responded with "That boy (Pegasus) needs to be horsewhipped." (And believe me, I laughed so hard when she did that.)

I hear other people talk about their mothers' reactions to their fandoms, and I know I'm blessed. "I never talk to my parents about my fandoms, they think it's weird." "I never talk to my parents about my fandoms, they make fun of me." My dad makes fun of a lot of the things I watch, often singing parodies of the theme songs while they're on (and loudly enough that I now watch all shows with closed captioning and have ever since Digimon), but Mom never does. She at least makes a show of genuine interest. Usually, it IS genuine interest. You can rest assured that I never asked her to BUY the Yugioh movie-- I just told her it was out. I certainly didn't ask her to buy Transformers 2007--

When Invid, my brother, told her the date it was going on DVD, Mom squealed "YESSSS!" so loudly you could have heard her outside the house. And then she did a little dance. XD

As for the story, if I wasn't a geek about things at all, I probably wouldn't be a writer at all. If I hadn't admired my mother's prose as a child I certainly wouldn't be a writer. I wouldn't be an artist, either, because my creative endeavors have a way of lumping into one, great huge aspect of myself. Mom encouraged all that, and without it I wouldn't be the person that I am.

And yes, she liked the story I wrote for her. It has little to do with either of us, but everything to do with how grateful I am for her. I tend to think it's a little overmushy, when I read it now, but the occasion called for it, because I get mushy about my mom. XD

So thanks, Mom. For being you.

-Jessi-sama

King Tut Stole My Shoes

2008-04-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

"Give Me Back My Husband's Gonads!"

Now that I've scared an appropriate number of idiots away by making them think this is a feminist/sexual rights campaign blog in my first post, I'll try to get through my second post without talking about porn too much.

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Yes, it is possible to talk about porn too much. I'll illustrate my point in later posts, I'm sure.

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Now then. Those of you who stuck around may or may not have wondered, "Who the heck is Horahkti, and why is the crazy bisexual feminist chick concerned with Horahkti's sock drawer?"

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And if you haven't, I'm either giving you too much credit or underestimating how weird the places are that ya'll might be going to. OR, you're already aware that Horahkti is the Egyptian name for the Great Sphinx, and that it means Mars.*

If it's the last one, please, spawn my children. I worship your coolness. Or nerdiness. The words

are interchangeable in my book, which probably tells a lot about me.
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Fact is, I am a FREAK about ancient Egypt. You can argue that I'm a freak in general, too, and I will concede the point, but I was a freak about ancient Egypt before I was a freak about anything else in particular. (So no, I liked it BEFORE Yu-Gi-Oh! made it cool to like Egypt again, and I got into YGO BECAUSE of my freakish love of all things Egypt, not because of a freakish love for Pokémon like so many of you dorks did. Pokémon sucks except for James, always has, always will. But that's a story for another day, when someone tries to yell at me for not liking their Pikachew.)

How much of a freak am I about ancient Egypt?

Besides the fact that I'm convinced that archaeologists around the world are hiding something, and it started when I heard nothing about the rain damage down Horakte's sides?

Yes, folks, the erosion on Horahkte most resembles rain damage. IN THE DESERT. What, did he get up and move from wetter climes or something?

"Damn this rain damage!! Last time I take a nap in India!"

But I really am a dork about it. I'm the girl who stands up during a movie and yells

"ANUBIS IS NOT EVIL, HOLLYWOOD MORONS!!"
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"ANUBIS IS NOT THE GOD OF THE DEAD, HOLLYWOOD MORONS!!!"

"ANUBIS IS NOT THE _KING_ OF THE DEAD, HOLLYWOOD MORONS!!!"
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"ANUBIS IS NOT WHITE, HOLLYWOOD MORONS!!"

And so on. Because APOPHIS, the giant winged snake who wants to eat the SUN, is evil, OSIRIS is both the god and king of the dead, and Anubis is BLACK. He's also the GUIDE of the dead, like a furry Grim Reaper. NOT the god of the dead. I cannot palpitate about this enough.
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Granted, sometimes the Egyptians painted his skin color differently, but jeez, he was modeled by priests in costumes, what do you want??

Also, the Egyptians were innovators who added as much to our society as the Greeks did (I'm SO TIRED of the ancient Greeks! =D).
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The Peace Treaty, especially as a holding action. XD

Media Propaganda Designed to Make the King Look Good (Yes, folks, you can thank Ramses and his scribes for every last bit of bull the media spews about every single politician you hate. Ain't he grand?)

Some Really Awesome Bible Tales. (Because who better for God to show His might against than the most powerful nation in all the ancient world?)(That the Israelites knew of.)

Equality of the Sexes. (The GREEKS introduced the full-body-veil, which do you THINK I'll like better?)

Yes, that last one is arguable, but where else do you hear of female kings? Not queens. Female KINGS. They were one of the earliest historical societies to have divorce that counted the woman's feelings and needs (She could sue for divorce AND kept what she took into the marriage) and their statues of women? Not even the goddesses of SEX are sexualized as much as a random cover from Marvel would be.** (Makes you wonder.)
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Speaking of which, I ship Egyptian gods. Nuuuu, not through FedEx. I mean "ship" like "relationship." You know, that weird term that you find in a lot of anime and not-anime fandoms, one of the many that probably resulted from lack of sleep, oxygen, and someone to hide the caffiene.

They're all what we call "crackships," too, which means most of these would set the people who actually worshipped these guys into a tizzy fit.
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ANUBIS SLASH BASTET FOREVAR.*** (Even though she's like, his aunt. Or sister. Or

something.)

Although I do love the story between Isis and Osiris. The poor woman chases all over Egypt looking for his dead body, and Seth goes and rips Osiris apart as soon as she does. (But not before she has dead-guy-sex and concieves Horus.****) And so she has to chase all over to find all the PARTS, and there's not going to be anymore babies, folks, because a fish ate his gonads.
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BUT SHE REVIVES HIM ANYWAY.

THAT IS LOVE.
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Osiris isn't green because he's a zombie, by the way (even though he IS.) He's green because apparently he represents plants, coming back to life with the seasons, which Egypt DID have before they dammed the Nile and damned a way of life at the same time.

A FISH ATE HIS GONADS AND HE'S ACTUALLY A PLANT.
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BUT SHE REVIVES HIM ANYWAY.

AWWWWW.
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I like Isis because she's like Wonder Woman, but doesn't burst into tears when men tie her hands or shove her butt into the air while making jokes about being raped. Sure, she's not as STRONG as WW, physically, but she's got her own strength and it's through her efforts that Osiris is saved and Seth's thronehood is eventually taken by Horus.
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Egyptian mythology doesn't get enough of the proper attention anyway. We're still seeing stuff people came up with before King Tut was found. I think that's part of why I like Yu-Gi-Oh!-- it may not pay attention to ALL the facts, and Takahashi might have made up some trippy stupid stuff, but he was CREATIVE. We didn't get the same old "HARHAR LOOK IT'S DA MUMMY OF RAMSES AND THE KURSE OF KING TUT" drivel. And we DID get some sexy monsters (and characters!) in the process.

If I ever did a movie about Ancient Egypt, it would be about Isis chasing Osiris's dead body all over the Nile.
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Anubis would be played by Samuel L. Jackson.

-Jessi-sama thinks gonads is a funny word! Obviously.
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*Although some will tell you Horahkti was just another form of the pharaoh/Horus, but that IS technically true of Egyptian Sphinxes in general. And other people will tell you Horahkti is what you get when you polymerize three Egyptian God Cards. Archaeologists have a hard time of agreeing on these things. XD

**Although I did see a tomb spoon once that had the handle carved in the shape of a naked serving girl. Bwee!

***Yelling "ANUBIS SLASH BASTET FOREVAR," incidentally, is a lot like yelling "JOAN OF ARC SLASH SANTA CLAUS FOREVAR." Which I do not recommend doing in front of any Catholics.

****In one version of the story, she revives him, they have sex and THEN Seth tears him apart again, possibly starting with his gonads. Harsh, man.

When I Came Out They Called Me a Porn Star

2008-04-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

"Welcome to PrOnStar, how may I help you?"

The day I changed my MySpace page to identify my bisexuality, I got something like twenty or so messages and friend requests in two hours. I almost never get any traffic on my MySpace, seeing as how I'm never there, so this was a bit of a surprise. It shouldn't have been. The messages were as brazen as "Give me your IM and we'll hook up" and as bizarre as "your breasts are pretty do you work in porn?"

I'm still trying to figure out how he can see my boobs under my loose T-Shirts and the dress shirt and tie that I'm wearing in what was my main ID pic at the time. I guess some people are just that good at undressing with their eyes. Maybe he just has a "Female CEO" fetish.

My breasts are pretty indeed.

Sadly, the traffic for my webcomic still did not go up during that time. Maybe I need to link it more prominently on the page itself, with a girl in a dress shirt and tie. THAT'LL get em. Whoever Em is. I mean, they'd get more ACTION from my art and quick hands than they're going to get from ME. I'm celibate. XD

I also got a friend request and message from one of the MySpace gay and lesbian communities. I don't really know how many there are, but I got a message from the one. I considered it and said no, even though there was a chance it would eventually lead me to pictures of pretty boys making out (the ID pic was of pretty boys making out, I do not consider it to be an unfair assumption.)

Because it was, after all, a GAY and LESBIAN community. Now, I understand wanting to have a community like that, and I appreciate their opening their arms to me, because it's always nice to know there are people who will accept you, but I hate the term "Gay and Lesbian Community."

I'm not gay OR a lesbian, after all. Yes, if I have a relationship with a woman, it will be a same sex relationship, and I will be her girlfriend and she will be mine. (MYNESZZZ!) But regardless of whether or not she is MY lesbian lover, I will NOT be HER lesbian lover. I'm not a lesbian. I'm going to look at men. I'm going to enjoy the way that some of them smell. I'm going to draw erotica between men. (Link is Not Safe For Work.) I'm going to lust after men just as I would lust after my girlfriend. (Although we shall presume that I LOVE her more than I lust after either, since I can stand being celibate.)

Besides that, the term completely ignores transgenderals. How would you men like to be called a lesbian because of a birth defect? Many transgenderals don't consider themselves gay, they consider themselves to be heterosexuals in the wrong bodies. Or BIsexuals in the wrong bodies.
I'm not saying no one understands my plight. I have a professor who calls it the "GLBT Community"-- although I'm the first to tell you that has its problems too.

"Hello, welcome to Subway's, what can I get you?"

"I'll have a GLBT on toasted honey oat, but hold the M...."

"How d'you want to count that on the T?"

In a lot of ways, I've found it's easier to define us, the gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenderals and bigenderals of the world, by what we are NOT, rather than by what we ARE. We are not strictly heterosexual. We don't fit into the XY=Male=Likes XX and XX=Female=Likes XY viewpoint of humanity or sexuality. We ARE all this way because we were born this way, we ARE all ridiculed, harrassed and murdered for what we are born as and cannot choose not to be (but at least we can pretend to pretend, which is more than we can say for black folks, I suppose...)

But all of us have unique problems of our own. Gay men are seen as wussies, effeminate, emasculated. Lesbians are seen as man-haters who "only need proper treatment from a REAL man" to set them straight. (Gawd, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.) Transgendered and bigendered people are supposedly perverts or predators-- or they're totally ignored because nobody cares when a woman wears pants anymore. I'm considered a loose woman and am expected to like a man just because he has a dick. (Just because you HAVE a dick doesn't mean you need to BE a dick, you hussies.) Bisexual men get a pretty similar treatment-- or else "they're actually gay they're just covering."

That last one REALLY gets my dander up. It's like being told you don't exist, or that you're deluded. There are plenty of things I am deluded about! My bisexuality is not one of them!! And yes, I know despite being a damn celibate virgin!!! How the heck do you know you're straight if you needed to have sex first?!

XD

"Mom, I have something to tell you. I just lost my virginity, and found out that
I'm straight!"

"Have you come out to your father yet?"

There ARE good things about being bisexual, don't get me wrong. For one thing, I get all sorts of wonderfully stupid love notes on MySpace. Yes, I enjoy them sometimes. One was entirely in French, which I don't speak at ALL. (I know the word for "cousin." It's "cousin.") I speak more fricking JAPANESE than I do French. (That's "nihongo" and "francois," for the curious. Although I like the German word for French better than the French word for French. It's pronounced "Fransooosisch," which is far more than enough to make German awesome in my book. X333)

Then there's my art. I fully believe my art is drool-bait because I know what I like. XD I've never had trouble drawing one gender over the other (except when I had to call upon the awesome powers of Grayskull by getting a He-Man figure out so I could see what his pecs looked like. Ooh la la.)

Even better, there's what it adds to my joke list. I love my joke list. I try but fail to add to it regularly. Because my one liners suck more often than they don't suck.

"I thought polygamy sounded pretty good until I found out the wives are all considered to be each others' SISTERS..."

"I should have known I was bi from the beginning. I never could choose between vanilla and chocolate, I always had to have a 'twist' cone with both, I've always liked both crunchy and creamy peanut butter, and everybody knows that eating is like sex."

What? Eating IS like sex.

I'll leave you with that twisted thought for now, my friends. I'm suddenly quite hungry.

-Jessi-sama eats souls!!! And peanut butter.