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!
August 7th, 2008
Today I’m going to tell you a story about a boy and his car. The car is the template, after all, for our first great status symbol and our first great step to personal independence, and thus, from there the Great American Love Affair. We never forget the first cars that made us stop and stare. The years wind by and men who’ve long since forgotten the names of the girls they took to Senior Prom can still rattle off the years, makes, models, and option-packages of their first cars.
Somewhere near Milpitas and not so long ago (either 2003 or 2004), there was a boy, I think, in love with the Mustang SVT Cobra. I imagine he was a boy, at least, but she may have been a girl; nobody needs a Y-chromosome to appreciate the Cobra’s beautiful, all-American brand of power and handling. Still, it suits my sense of aesthetics to believe that this was a boy, and so this is a story about a boy and a car.
The dealer, sadly, put too high a price on love, and the sticker on the Cobra weighed in at over $33,000, almost exactly an entire year’s wages for the average American man. This is a very old story, actually, at least as old as money and really as old as trade. Too frequently our wallets are too small to contain our hopes and dreams. I imagine him breathing deep in disappointment, but really this boy was still far from a pauper, modestly successful in his own right, and he let the dealer guide him around the lot, showing him less exotic breeds of pony. He might have seen the Mach 1, loud and brash as its name, and every dealer would have a few proud GTs, Gran Turismo cars built to run great long stretches of open American road.
Even these are expensive cars, though, and in time the dealer would have shown our boy the basic-model Mustangs. At $18,000 they were still badges of modest success, sports cars for those who refused to settle into the comfortable domesticity of Camrys and Accords. These, he could afford.
Still, he loved the Cobra, not the Mustang. Two hundred horsepower divided the two, to say nothing of the refinements in handling and trim. The Mustang is an American classic for its tunability, but the Special Vehicles Team had raised it to the level of art, and with the extra 800ccs of engine he could not hope to compete. Besides, the Cobra name brings a special, exclusive sort of cachet, and I am sure he dreamt of its effects on his circle of lady friends.
What would he do? He could tune the Mustang, of course, and even if it could not race the Cobra, he might well be able to match the Gran Turismo. That was a lot of work, though, a commitment to bury himself to the elbows in grease for months on end and pore over the tachometer’s wobbling like a scientist over his graphs, and he probably did not know how. The muscle-car gearhead is a dying breed. Perhaps he could drive a lesser car, something practical and boring, something economical that might let him save for a Cobra in five years’ time, but that was a desperate move. Like so many American boys, ours wanted his gratification now, when he was still young and full of flash.
No, none of these would be good enough. If this boy could not have his Cobra, he would make it.
Or fake it.
