May 22nd, 2010
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!
May 7th, 2010
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.
April 27th, 2010
Living in the United States, breadbasket (and corn bushel) of the world that it is, it’s really easy to get used to the idea that food is cheap. Just looking at my weekly Safeway circular, I see whole chickens for $1.69/pound (buy one get another free), pork ribs for $1.79/pound, apples for 99¢/pound, and oranges practically there for the taking ($2.99 for an 8 pound bag). Part of this, I’m sure, is that I live in California, specifically, land of fruits and nuts that it is, but the basic premise remains.
Compare this to Japan, where an apple costs at least ¥398 (about $4.25 at time of this writing). That’s one apple. You can see it off to the right. It’s a beautiful apple, uniformly frosted red all around, and it’s pretty big, big enough to make me spread my fingers a bit when I hold it, but it’s just one apple all the same.
Truly, I live in a land of plenty.
On the other hand, I wonder sometimes if we pay something for that abundance. It’s easy to think of food as a commodity, to think that one apple is the same as another, but that really isn’t the case. Food is a biological product, the end-result of some living thing and the environment around it, its lineage, handling, and care. For example, the Red Delicious is very red, but it’s only nominally delicious, because it’s been bred to be harvested early, in enormous quantities, and trucked across the continent. On the other end of the spectrum, Japanese farmers have made a science out of growing delicious, picture-perfect apples. That apple was simply better, crisper, sweeter, and better-balanced than anything I’ve ever bought at Safeway (or Whole Paycheck, for that matter, or even farmer’s markets and freeway-side stands), and I would love the chance to indulge in more, if only once in a while. At $4.25 each, Japanese apples could get almost as expensive as a bad Starbuck’s habit.
In Japan, though, that was more-or-less a standard apple, and by Japanese standards, it was quite reasonably priced. I found apples just like mine in every grocery store I visited, at train station fruit vendors, and sometimes in department stores and even 7-11s. Japanese consumers expect apples of that quality, and they’re willing to pay for them, so there are no cheap apples, only precious, semi-rare treats. Here in the United States, I’m guessing, we don’t and aren’t, so apples are cheap and plentiful, everyday in every meaning of the word.
I wonder, what does this say about them? What does it say about us?
April 11th, 2010
I’ve been in Japan for the past week and change now, and I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to post. It’s been a wonderful experience, and I hope to come back in the future.
A detective stopped me in the Akihabara police station and asked to see my identification, but he seemed to lose interest almost immediately once I took it out, and he only gave it a cursory glance-over. I couldn’t understand why he did that, until later when I was fishing around for my rail pass. If I have a particularly large load in my upper left pockets, I realized, my jacket makes it look a little like I’m wearing a shoulder holster. Handguns are highly illegal in Japan, so naturally I think he felt compelled to investigate. Really that was a very clever trick – he stood off to the side slightly while I did this, enough to get a look into my jacket and see that the bulge was just a pocket full of wallet, papers, and other random bits that tourists pick up. It stayed low-key, he was in full control the whole time, and I didn’t even realize he thought something was wrong until much afterwards.
A few days later, on a much lighter note, I visited an onsen bath, about an hour south of Tokyo proper. The hostess mistook me for a girl at first and nearly handed me a key to the women’s locker room. She caught herself in time. It’s not the first time that’s happened to me, and I’m used to laughing it off (really I think it’s a nice sort of compliment).
It’s been a little bit of a whirlwind overview tour, and I’m still a bit shocked that it’s coming to an end. Right now it’s some ungodly-o-clock and I’ve been traveling all day, so I’ll post more pictures when I get a chance.
March 19th, 2010
Life is still weird. It actually got weirder since the last time I posted. I’m getting used to it, though.
I haven’t done much writing in the past couple weeks, but I think I’m ready to start up again. One of the handwritten First and Last and Always pages got wet somehow, and I have to rewrite it. That should be a good place to start; it’ll be nice to build up some momentum. Some free time is coming up on my horizon, so here’s hoping everything will fall into place.
In the news: Last week, a high school in Mississippi decided to cancel their prom rather than allow a lesbian couple to attend. It plays straight into stereotype, unfair as it may be; another high school there held out until 2008 to hold its first racially-integrated prom. People can be stubborn like that, I guess.
Stepping up to the plate, supporters of the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition (a queer-youth advocacy group) have pledged enough money to hold a “second-chance” prom that would welcome all students, regardless of orientation. I hope it succeeds.
