Even sloppy comics have power

A quick drawing for Squashtober, a local Adelaide community's alternative to Inktober. And now, for a sloppy comic that says more than any venting can.

you can't gatekeep comics

I've been working very hard to get a pitch doc ready in time for something (not this image below, that's just my webcomic). As a fulltime solo parent, I can't afford to abandon my baby in order to focus on art, I have to balance my life. I am typing this one handed right now, and it all drives me a bit batty.

Also, to get to the topic of this post: you can't gatekeep comics.

Being someone whose been unwell for half a decade, I haven't had the bravery to attempt comics. Until I have experienced something big. It's big to me. 

So I have started trying to get my stories out there in webcomic form (this image below) once a week on Sundays ACST time, but am also applying for heaps of literary and comic themed opportunities, as I've just said. 

Comics aren't about how long your webcomic has been going for, I see too many people plodding along with no substance and not very thought-out pages. And as for me? Well, I've stared at Berserk on a daily basis for the last half a decade, no doubt, people think this hasn't helped me. But surprise surprise, it has totally helped me. As not only do I read comics a lot, but I have worshipped the best of the best for a very long time: Berserk. That counts, a lot.

To be quite blunt, seeing as everyone has always parroted how: 'you have to play games to be a good game dev' and 'you have to read to be a good writer', and well given all that rhetoric, you should've ogled Kentaro Miura's Berserk manga every day for the last 5 years if you want to be a comic artist! Don't argue with me on it, bud.

(I'm aware my spelling is wrong in this handwritten speech bubble I always final check my typed words. My quickly scribbled words are always rough.)

self compassion while autistic

I now recognize that my life as a late diagnosed autistic woman with a second disorder, has obviously made my life more fraught with mental agony than what is experienced by normal neurotypical and mental illness-free people. But comic making is an act of contemplation and self compassion. I give myself the self love to accept my mind is wired a bit differently, and that's OK. I recognise it and it makes me stronger for enduring all that I have!

I gotta' get back to mumming, studying and other ambitious things. Ack.

late diagnosed

Yes, technically I have two disorders. With ASD, I have been unable to relate to it ever since I got it. Maybe you'll get why from this.

the inky darkness

I can wax poetic lately about how much I'm enjoying comic making, but its all there, in the lines I draw and the words I type. Its in the 'inky darkness'. That being something I've often babbled on about in regards to Kentaro Miura's use of ink in Berserk, but I am now thrilled to announce, I finally am making progress in regards to my own implementation of the 'inky darkness'.

I have taken from Berserk and done something creative for once. Turned the memory of Tobins' on the hill into something constructive.

Life feels good. What.

I am not including a intertextual reference to how the psych ward (below) had felt like Berserk's Falconia for me during my illness. That's because, eclectic seinen manga intertextuality would muddle the point of the story and fly over people's heads.

Exhausted tonight again, seems like a trend for me.

The (sinister?) Margaret Tobin centre, part of the Flinders hospital precinct.

The ethical implications of using medical terms in a derogatory fashion in your comics or otherwise.

I’ve been still ruminating over the relationship between ethics and writing in regards to an unpleasantness I experienced at a local comic festival last weekend. On Friday night when an artist read their work out loud to an audience of probably a hundred, one part had their characters say a specific clinical word.

Not only was it a word that is an illness that has been a massive source of trauma in my life, but I've suffered horrible stigmas around it on a near daily basis. However, this clinical term was used in a derogatory fashion, completely removed from the true meaning which has impossibly heavy, nuanced and complex meaning for me.

To use specific medical terms in derogatory fashion is either intentionally sinister, or at the very least, just painfully ignorant, but there is a very dangerous harm from such negligence. 

According to Booth, ‘we all underestimate the extent to which we absorb the values of what we read.’(1988) This means people unfamiliar with the term will believe what a poor writer presents to them at face value, they won't challenge the negative associations.

It is unethical to use words like a slur, so far removed from their true factual meaning, and skew it towards harming people who have to endure the weight and burden and stigma of such a word, on a daily basis.

Writers like me, with actual lived experience, have to fight back and educate readers with my own work, otherwise harmful stereotypes are continually worsened.

Writers who haven't experienced such things have an ethical obligation to watch what words they use. 

Unless they want to incur a wrathful storm of comics from people like me, that is.

References

 Booth, WC 1988, The company we keep : an ethics of fiction, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Written for a small weekly homework assignment. Because unbridled torrential rage-posting on social media doesn't convince people, apparently.🔥 Fine, I'll simmer down. A bit.

Cirno Day

I'm anxious because I've applied for numerous artistic opportunities, some seem a bit prestigious which will be competitive to get. Other opportunities I found aren't as big a deal really, and shouldn't be such a hassle to be selected for, but I still am still anxious my work will be rejected. 

If I get rejected for some of these project submissions, I'll somewhat take it as a rejection of myself, not gonna lie. But ultimately, I will get back up on my feet, and try to hunt for something new to get excited about. I like to get excited about things.

I feel a bit exhausted after spending the first half of today writing up an application for a Fellowship. It's fun to write about myself for a few hours, but also makes me more worried that I'll get shut down after all that effort of exposing my soul in an application.

But I have to have some faith in my stories. 

I do really want to chip away on my comics, burning the proverbial midnight oil every night as they say, but I do feel too tired past 8:30pm. Alright guys, no excuses, better just put some lines down.

Another Cirno day*, another dream....

09/09 was Cirno's day!

printing, folding and stapling addiction

Makin' some cool zines way ahead of time, as I got a table for Zina Warrior Print Fest happening on October 18th. Will post more details closer to the event. Check my site and this blog later.