Check out anytime you like…

For about two months now I’ve been trying to explain something that’s been bothering me about Fanime, but I really can’t find the right words. It makes me very sad to admit this, but it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Instead I feel lost, in transition maybe, surrounded by people I have come to call my own, but ultimately unable to connect, and sometimes unable even to comprehend.

Over the years I’ve made some wonderful friends, and I don’t regret a minute of the time I got to spend with them. One way or the other I plan to see them all again. In between, though, this year felt empty, with long and silent pauses stretching to fill the space, hours of going through the motions without any feeling. I don’t remember cons ever feeling quite so lonely.

I miss really being able to meet people, to sit down and get to know them. I miss making friends that I get to keep, that I still get to talk with sometimes when the weekend is over. Maybe I’ve grown old and serious.

Sic transit gloria mundi, I guess.

I’ve moved to Florida, despite California’s last, harshest attempts to keep me in the state. I like it, for the most part, though in all the rushing around I’ve neglected this site terribly.

I’ll try to catch up. I need to get back into the habit.

I think I saw that coming.

I think I saw it coming.

Back in February I posted a link to Don Peck’s article about the long unemployment crisis and the impact it’s likely to have on our country and our culture. It clicked with some long-floating anxieties, and, sure enough, in April, my company closed its virtual doors. The company gave me a little bit of severance, better than a slap in the face but not by much.

It had been a long time coming. Sometimes I look back and I’m surprised that we lasted as long as we did.

The job search was… both better and worse than I expected, really. I decided that I would submit one job application or sit for one job interview, every weekday, until I found a new position. Weekends and Fanime I kept for myself, and I did take one “vacation” day. Job searching took up about two hours out of every day, and interviews generally took between one and three, depending on how much time I had to spend getting there. It felt like a light search, but others tell me that it was actually pretty aggressive.

By the numbers, this comes out to:

I think that says more about you…

I was hanging out at a friend’s Artist Alley table yesterday when a Random Capcom Employee (RCE) came up and started a little conversation. I’m going to transcribe it about as accurately as I can remember.

Edit: I am now doubting my memory, and it is possible that he was from Namco. I think it is funnier if someone from Capcom is talking high-and-mighty about creativity, because they made exactly the same game four times, so much so that they can be beaten with exactly the same inputs.

RCE: I like your work! It’s very original. It’s not like all this other fan stuff.

Friend: What do you mean?

RCE: Some of the fan stuff has pretty good technique, but it has no life. I mean, why take someone else’s character? Why not make your own?

Adrian: Well, there’s something to be said for using existing characters because they have resonance, isn’t there? They say something; they have power. People respond to them. It’s like retelling myths or something. You don’t think anyone wrote them all from scratch, did you? Why do you think people built so many churches, or did so much religious art?

RCE: Yeah, well, I’m an athiest.

Adrian: You should still be able to appreciate, for example, La Pietà…

RCE: “Well, like I said, it’s fine technically.”

Adrian: “You can’t find the emotion and life in La Pietà?”

RCE: “Phh.” RCE exits, stage left

Friend (unfortunately steamrolled): “Uhh…”

This blew my mind, and I’m still having a little trouble wrapping my thoughts around it. Michelangelo’s Pietà is one of the single greatest artworks in all of human history. If following some school of “atheism” means being unable to appreciate its beauty and emotional weight, it says a lot more about its followers than it does about La Pietà.

I don’t know that I like realizing that about people.

Notes from the Void #4

Sorry for not posting last week. I’m trying to code up a revision to the website to make it a little more intuitive. If you have any suggestions for me, please let me know; I’d love to hear.

Kir-tat gave me a link to Elves from her DeviantArt page, and I think I got about as much traffic from her than I’ve gotten in the entire lifetime of the site so far. For one evening it was the #6 most popular “recent upload” on DeviantArt. I’m really, really proud of that. The credit for the sheer prettiness of her art is hers alone, of course, but I’m happy to have been a catalyst for it, in my own small way.

My favorite comment from her page, by Cielle Du Ciel:

I had I hard time telling if they were male or female, too… I’m wondering if their adrogyny was intentional, so as to represent the story and its four versions. Whether or not it was, that’s how I understand this piece, and I love it. It combines perfectly all the different versions of the story, I think, a beautiful and perfect way to get its message across. I could comment on everything, but, I think reading the story speaks for itself.

On that note, I have to laugh a little bit with those who are so preoccupied with the idea of it being “yaoi”. Read the other versions, guys, the one *kir-tat happened to link isn’t the only one.

(Only about one in 20 people read all four versions, sadly.)

Of course, this is the Internet, and the very next comment (which has been blocked, and the author lost to the sands of time) reads:

i love the detail great pic but are they lesbians

*HEADDESK* They are if you want them to be, sir. They are if you want them to be. That was the point, if you will.

Besides this, I’m still a little worn-out from the post-creative afterglow that is finishing First and Last and Always. I promise that this is a temporary thing; Fanime starts in six days and counting, and cons never fails to give me a kickstart, just from the sheer wonderful fannish energy I pick up. So far I’m planning to hang out around Rem‘s table in the Artist Alley for a while, and I have a few other offline friends to see, but that’s about it so far. If anyone would like to meet me there, please let me know! I love meeting new people at conventions (except for this guy), and it always blows my mind a little bit that people are actually reading this site.

A friend of mine linked me to a little bit of pre-Fanime hilarity, which… really has to be seen to be believed. Enjoy!

Elves, by Kir-Tat

Recently I commissioned Kir-Tat to illustrate one of the Elves stories. She chose this one, and… well, her results blew me away. I don’t think I could have asked for a more perfect painting to accompany the series. It’s gorgeously atmospheric, to the point that the scene almost soaks up the characters themselves. When I saw it, I literally started babbling about how amazingly well it came out. I’m not even going to talk about it anymore; I’m just going to let you see for yourself.