JanerBlog

Michigan Comics Show

Hey, all you Washtenaweans: Paul and I are going to be speaking Tuesday night at EMU, in Student Center Ballroom B, for the MIchigan Comics Exhibition. There'll be a little exhibition-opening thingy from five to seven, then at seven, Paul and I will be joining fellow Michigan comics creators Jef Mallett (Frazz) and Dave Coverly (Speed Bump) in a panel. There's no charge, and knowing EMU's gallery, there'll be the little pumpernickel round with the spinach dip in, and the boxed white wine and everything. Dinner and a show.

Why I love him, part a-bajillion

I've been having an especially bad acne breakout lately. It has not been helped by the fact that I still, at almost thirty-five years of age, cannot leave my acne alone. Over the weekend I bought some concealer.

Him: Are you having an affair with another woman?

Me: Bahuh?

Him: I just walked into the bathroom and found makeup.

Racism_101

Here are a pair of useful conversations on cultural appropriation over at Racism_101. Go check 'em out.

Lori Phanachone

From the Sioux City Journal:

Lori Phanachone is a member of the National Honor Society, has a 3.9 grade point average and ranks seventh in the senior class of about 119 at Storm Lake High School.

But school officials have told her she is considered to be illiterate based on her refusal to satisfactorily complete the English Language Development Assessment, a test she says is demeaning and racist.

On Wednesday, Phanachone finished serving three days of in-school suspension for what school administrators say is insubordination. She faces another three days for continuing her silent protest with a second refusal to take the test. According to a written statement presented to her Wednesday, Phanachone said, she could be suspended again and then expelled for a fourth refusal.

"Mr. Ruleaux (assistant principal Beau Ruleaux) told me I was 'no Rosa Parks' -- that I should give up because I would not succeed in my protest," Phanachone said.
...

The school district's curriculum coordinator, Lori Porsche, said taking the test is mandatory because Phanachone indicated on her school registration that English was not the first language spoken in her home. Her parents are Laotian and still speak little English.

Phanachone, who was born in California and lived in upstate New York before moving to Storm Lake with her family in 2006, said she has never been enrolled in any English Language Learning or English as a Second Language program.

"Someone told me I should have put English as my first language when I registered for school," Phanachone said. "But I refused. I will not deny who I am. And I will not disrespect my culture or my mother."

Source article.

Here's the contact info for the high school if you feel moved to protest.

Fun with Tesla Coils and a Faraday Suit

Now here's a new one on me... a wearable Faraday suit. Plus, you know. the Imperial March. Also: Check out the overhead fluorescent light as the arcs shoot off. Does it get any nerdier than this? (Shoot, why did I ask that?)

BATSTRONAUT!

Somebody with more free time than me needs to make a comic out of this story. Because, you know he held on. You know that he got bombarded with cosmic rays, even as the tanks detached and fell back to earth. Let's just hope he doesn't get angry. I don't think we'd like him when he's angry.

I was going to post another link post...

... but this essay has links to pretty much everything I was going to link to, anyway. Go here, and read the whole thing, and all the links off it. It's important. (ETA: Here's part two. And here's a critique of the comments thread, which I find very, very useful as well.)

I'm still reading reading reading. Internalizing. Thinking. A lot. And since I don't have anything smart to say at the moment, here are a pair of posts to compare.

Certainly observant, isn't he?

So you may have noticed that there's another page up this week.

In light of the overwhelming response from my readers, I've decided to keep the Clockwork Game archives online and run the remainder of the first chapter of the book. As things go along, I'll add links and additional information to the footnotes and bibliography to help make up for what I consider gaps in my storytelling. After that -- I'm still not sure, but after some very positive reviews from people whose opinions I trust, and a lot more heavy thinking, I'm reconsidering my stance on permanently ending the book. Let's call it a hiatus for now; the end of the first chapter's a good stopping point. In any event, I need to pull back and do a lot more reading and researching, then re-evaluate the first half of the book to see if it's something I can fix to better match the much darker tone of the second half.

It's not that I don't want to discuss the ugly parts of history, or cover them over. Just the opposite, in fact: the problem I have with the script is that I'm don't show enough of the ugliness of the time. I've unintentionally left issues unaddressed -- important issues -- like the fact that Kempelen was in charge of resettling areas of the Banat taken back from the Ottomans, that 18th century Europeans appropriated Turkish culture for both its stylishness and mysteriousness, and that the Austrian Empire was still at war with the Ottoman Empire, all of which undoubtedly contributed to Kempelen's decision to dress the automaton as he did. Painting it as "just an automaton" -- not presenting enough information about the cultural baggage surrounding its design in favor of a light story focusing only on man versus machine -- now seems disingenuous to me. That's the "framing within historical context" I've been talking about. I'm not sure if I can get enough of that information into the first half of the book as it stands now, at least not without redrawing huge chunks of it. I'm also not well-versed on these topics yet -- not enough to make changes to the script until I've had the chance to better inform myself and become more confident in my understanding of the political and social pressures at play -- and to get to that point, I've got to put the book on hold.

I also want to sincerely thank everyone who took the time and effort to comment or send email, with both positive and negative feedback. I had no idea that Clockwork Game had so many passionate, caring, intelligent readers -- it's meant so much to hear all your responses. Creating a webcomic is a high-wire act, and it's humbling to discover there are so many people holding the net below me.

Because a call has gone out for accountability

I must side with the Readers of Color in this argument. I may not categorically agree with everything that has been said -- every person participating is an individual, after all -- but since I am already involved, it would be disingenuous for me not to publicly state where I stand.

However, I don't feel comfortable saying anything more than this publicly right now, because I am working through a great deal of my own issues in private, trying to make tangible, lasting changes within myself by reading, listening and learning.

UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE.

I love this page, because it is the 18th-century equivalent of Someone Is Wrong On The Internet. I spent about two solid days making sure I got that printing press depicted accurately. Thanks to David MacMillan for the image refs.

*********

In other news, I have decided to end Clockwork Game.

After a solid month of deliberation, I've decided that my original intent doesn't actually match the story I've created. The problems I'm seeing are not fixable with a few changes to dialogue or action; it's a deeper, more fundamental issue with the overall tone of the story. I've been too focused on the nerdy parts of the story I enjoy, and in doing so, I've failed to take some very critical aspects of the story into proper consideration.

I'm not ending the book because of anything anyone's said to me, or because of a need I feel to "keep everyone happy". "You can't keep everyone happy" is a sentiment best reserved for minor issues like the difference between using algebraic instead of descriptive chess notation, not major considerations like accurately framing racial stereotypes within a historical context.

In the last month, I have read dozens of devastatingly honest posts from Readers of Color who've been hurt by White authors who didn't take the full implications of their stories into account, posts so eloquent and brave that I cannot help but be moved by them to examine my own work and ensure that it's worthy of these same readers, authors in their own right who've risked so much to put their opinions out in public.

My passion for comics cuts two ways -- I fiercely love the comics I make, but I'm also unwilling to publish and sell a work that I'm not completely willing to stand behind. While I am disappointed that I won't be completing the project, in the long run, I think I'll be much more comfortable with this decision. I can only hope that my readers will agree.

My last remaining concerns regard the end of the first chapter, and the archives. I have another fifteen or so pages left to run, and I still haven't decided whether or not I'll be releasing them, or keeping them online as an archive. On one hand, if I'm not willing to publish the work, I don't really have a reason to keep it online. On the other, if I complete the first half of the story, properly footnote it, and add the texts that properly discuss the automaton's Orientalism, it could be a good resource to keep up for reference, especially given the dearth of online information on the topic. I'll probably give myself another week or so to make a final decision.

I realize that every work is flawed, and that as creators, we learn as we go. I want this to be a learning experience -- I just don't want this learning to come at someone else's expense.

(comments on this entry are unfortunately closed due to overwhelming spam.)