Got the plaque for my Ignatz award! *wipes a tear* my house finally has a tiny trophy shelf.

I know the brick is more impressive but it’s nice to see a Nerdlinger joining it on the shelf. <3

Comic Book Page Technical Specifications

This is a post for comic book artists preparing their pages for their publisher or colourist. I’m aware that many pros still don’t know some of this stuff, often because the bigger publishers have production teams who will take the incorrectly sized or shaped pages and adjust them before passing on to colourists or for print. However, this a) is giving more work to people that you can easily do yourself and b) reduces the amount of control you have over how your work is printed. It makes sense to provide files that will present your work in the best way possible.

So, the basics of a digital page file:

Keep reading

This can save lives of many Black people who were wrongly convicted and arrested on drug possession charges. Please spread!

I was worried that this post would be a protest against these employers, and am pleasantly surprised that this is being promoted as a positive.

Many, many people are either wrongfully convicted, or grossly overcharged due to mandatory minimums in drug possession, minor crimes, and three-strike rules. Disproportionately, these sentences fall on people of color, especially poor people, and particularly black people. 

Prison is dehumanizing and deprives people of far more than their liberty. Individuals with a felony conviction, even once released, have trouble finding housing, jobs, income sources, etc., and society provides barely any aid or recourse. Bless these employers for going against the tide and helping change a brutally unjust system. 

All of the people subjected to the brutality of the American criminal justice system deserve the chance to rebuild their lives.

The second and final installment of my comic Take the General! is now up on my webstore: http://aaronshattuck.bigcartel.com/

You can get it by itself or bundled with part 1. Both have screen-printed covers and black-and-white interiors.

I’ve been describing this thing as a 1970s-themed action farce. An obsessed sort-of crime fighter squares off with an obsessed master criminal in a swanky pad, with a boy dictator caught in the middle. (The dictator is a sadistic, tantrum-prone brat in a somewhat clumsy alliance with far-right ideologues, so there is of course no relevance to our current decade.)

Here’s a 12-page preview from part 1: http://aaronshattuck.tumblr.com/ttg-preview

And a few context-free images from part 2: http://aaronshattuck.tumblr.com/post/163653742473/ttg-part2-snippets

survey time: what’s the first operating system you remember using, what did you waste time doing on the computer when you weren’t on the internet, and what’s the first website you remember spending an inappropriate amount of time on

DOS, bitches. I moved a dang turtle around to make lines because AOL hadn’t been invented yet.

I made a little booklet called “YES”. It’s not a comic, more like an illustrated short story- sort of like a Little Golden Book, but instead of for kids it’s for cool tastemakers.

It’s 32 pages (11 illustrations total), black and white, about 5”x7”. Visually it’s SFW, but conceptually it’s NSFW. I made about 200, so I probably won’t run out anytime soon, but who knows? If you want one, send $7.50, postage included, US residents only (for now, but subject to change), via PayPal (and use the “goods and services” option- it’s just easier- and make sure your address is correct!), to thomasherpich@gmail.com (or inquire via that same email address if you’d rather send cash, in which case it’s $7).

Yes, it’s raining again. Going through art today. Palefire pages by @mkreed and #fareldalrymple and #secretacres . (at Irvington, Portland, Oregon)

Femslash: Demystifying Fandom’s Gender Disparity

Alternative titles for this essay include:

.

So I’ve been thinking a bit about femslash. 

About how even on the rare occasions I find a female character in film/tv that is both 1) well written and 2) relatable I often find the fanfiction version of this same character to be oddly … sanitized in a way that makes me find her less relatable.

I used to watch Grey’s Anatomy for Christina Yang - Charming Genius Asshole Extraordinaire. I’d then go on AO3 to look for fanfic and I’d get Christina Yang - Hard Worker and Good Friend. All of her abrasiveness was smoothed over. She wasn’t funny anymore. She wasn’t fun anymore. She was boring. 

I have a similar issue with het fanfiction [see discussion], where even when I find the rare tv/film het pairing that defies the usual gender normative romcom tropes, the fanfic writers for that pairing will often go out of their way to reimpose those same tropes. Perhaps the most egregious example was the Game of Thrones fanfiction author who thought it was a good idea to cisswap Jaime/Brienne.

But I digress.

My favorite fictional relationship dynamic, romantic or platonic, same gender or different gender, can be summed up as follows:

Now I know plenty of women who share this dynamic. I know a very small handful of female characters in film/tv who share this dynamic. I’ve been in fandom for 15 years and I have yet to read a single work of femslash that reflects this dynamic.

People are afraid, I think, to write women being obnoxious, or abrasive, because they think it will make those women unlikeable. Yet these are the very qualities that make us fall in love with male characters. Fandom loves Failwolf!Derek Hale and snarky malcontent!Stiles Stilinski. Flawless queens make for great photosets, but boring stories.

We live in a culture of gender double standards. 

It is much easier for us to imagine men being layabouts, or workaholics. A woman who is either very lazy or very career focused is viewed as unloveable and neglectful. It’s easier for us to imagine men as pranksters. When a woman pulls one over on her friends her actions are viewed as malicious. 

Escapist fantasy is defined very differently depending on the gender being catered to. I go into further detail about this disparity: [here].

To summarize: 

People in large part read fanfiction for the escape. That’s not the only reason, of course. We also read it for critical analysis, and for representation. But when we look at escapist fanfiction, and in particular what makes escapist fanfiction successful, it has been my observation that power fantasies make better escapes than perfection fantasies.

Mary Sues can be inspiring. But I think after a certain point, the female reader becomes disillusioned by the reality of living in a sexist world, and perfection fantasies stop being sources of inspiration. She becomes tired. The idea of being the perfect leader/lover/achiever becomes exhausting even to think about. The idea of a hapless fuckup finding love/redemption/success in spite of all their personal failings becomes more and more appealing. 

What does that mean for femslash? Consider some of the more popular femslash ships.

Andy Sachs/Miranda Priestly:

Emma Swan/Regina Mills:

Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray:

Popular femslash pairings are generally comprised of female characters who defy conventions for what the media defines as “acceptable” female behavior. 

But more than that, popular femslash pairings feature female characters who enjoy the same freedoms and privileges (redemption arcs, loyal sidekicks, material success, destructive powers, influence) we expect for male protagonists in male power fantasies. We don’t just love The Evil Queen because she breaks the rules, but because the narrative allows her to get away with breaking the rules, thereby making her a viable power fantasy.

.

Writing nuanced female characters who screw around and fuck up is only half the battle. If women who break the mold are constantly scrutinized and punished for doing so, the story comes across as cynical, or even worse – as preachy. The opposite of what your average slash fan is looking for in the average fanfic.

If we want readers to enjoy reading about diverse, flawed, nuanced female characters, we need to put those female characters in worlds where their behavior is normalized and celebrated. Where they can play.

TL&DR

Girls just wanna have fun.

I never posted about it here, so just in case anybody doesn’t follow me elsewhere: Taproot is being published by Lion Forge comics! 

It’s longer (80 pages –> 130 pages), prettier (every page is redrawn) and has a complete epilogue now. The book is coming out in September, but you can pre-order it now!

Thank you all so much for following the comic a few years back, I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you! I hope you check out the new version, because I’m super proud of how far I’ve come and how nicely it turned out. This book is really important to me and I hope you enjoy it too!

😊🌼🌱✨

Here are some tips about pitching to comics anthologies, from an editor’s standpoint!

PS: The Other Side – the queer paranormal romance anthology I read those 375 pitches for – is gonna be on Kickstarter in just about a week.  AreyouexcitedcuzI’mexcited

Re-reading this, and it’s even better than I remembered. A rich variety of characters, sharp LOL dialogue, solid engaging art – it has everything going for it!   @mkreed  @cutegirlnetwork-blog

Aw, thanks! 

YES PLEASE AND THANK YOU.

This is actually info I didn’t know

Seriously folks review my books! Review everyone’s books!

It’s the difference between Amazon giving a damn about you verses pushing your book to the bottom of the food chain. 

Hey, everyone! There’s a cool new ebook in the ICC shop! 

Written by print tech Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein and drawn by cartoonist David McGuire, Let’s Print a Comic (And Not Screw it Up) is 40 pages of field-tested, professional-level instructions, definitions, and advice meant for any cartoonist interested in showcasing their work on the printed page! Whether it’s your first book project or your fifteenth, full-color or grayscale, a saddle-stitched mini or perfect-bound trade paperback, Let’s Print a Comic is bound to teach you something new, up your game, and maybe even fix your pre-press problems before they start! Click here to grab a copy!

( o_o)-b

Taiyo Matsumoto, in a 1997 interview.

I don’t do a lot of ‘reblogging’ around here but this is the absolute truth of my life rn. and it’s comforting to know I’m not alone

I want a high fantasy movie where everyone talks with Southern US accents instead of British ones.

The Dwarves though, they can get Minnesotan accents.

ok but picture this: elves with brooklyn accents

“Hey HEY I’m castin’ here, what’d’you – listen, my pop and I serve the Great Tree goin’ back six hundred fuckin’ years so if you got a problem with our fuckin’ magic you don’t fuckin’ come down here into our fuckin’ grove to gimme shit about it.

“Right? You don’t see me fuckin’ goin’ into your shitty man-stables and tellin’ you how to milk horses, do ya? So instead you come down here, disrespect me, disrespect my pa, and how ‘bout you stop fuckin’ disrespectin’ the Great Fuckin’ Tree that grew whens’t the world was young and carries all our fates ‘n its boughs, okay?

“I said, ‘okay?’

“Okay, now fuck off.”

“Oh, ya, my clan’s been mining these ranges for 500 years, real nice place, real friendly. We make a mean hot dish, too, don’t cha know”

“Now, see, our main export may be iron, but y'see, we’re also the home of one of the modern wonders of merchantry and architecture…. THE GREAT DWARVEN BAZAAR. Four subterranean levels, all shops, biggest in the land! Full of tourists but we’re all here for a good time and we’re all for boostin’ the local economy!”

The neural network has weird ideas about what humans like to eat

So I’ve been training this neural network to generate cookbook recipes by letting it look at tens of thousands of existing recipes.

The generated titles can get a bit odd.

There’s a creativity variable I can set when the network is generating new recipes, and when I set it low, it comes up with its best guess at the most quintessential recipe titles:

When I tell it to get creative, things get even weirder.

ONE COMPLETE MEAT CIRCLE AND A CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CAKE PLEASE

tag yourself i’m Crimm Grunk Garlic Cleas

Crockpot Cold Water