Welcome, everyone! I'm glad you stopped by. Please, feel free to flip through the pages.

News Flash!

Where I'm living right now, the walls are all concrete. You'd think that concrete walls would deaden sounds. Nope, sound comes through loud and clear. Doesn't make any sense. And it wakes me up in the morning all the time. >.<

Well, I thought I'd just let you know that new stuff has appeared on theO from me. Isn't that exciting. A bunch of fan art will be coming out in the next week or so, I've got comics up, and a new musing, if you haven't read it yet. Please check it out.

Otherwise, I'm doing alright. Mid-terms are all done and nothing's out of the ordinary as far as school is concerned. My sleeping pattern has been all over the place though so I'm really tired during the day. I should try harder to go to bed at a decent time.

Well, I hope you are all well. Till next time.

Comics

I find it highly amusing that my Musings WORLD has gotten over 350 hits and my little Book of Leaves WORLD has less than 100. At least people are actually seeing what I put out there. I was talking to my cousin the other day (thinkanti) and she said she stopped putting things online because no one read them nor particularly cared. I think that's true to some degree but I just keep putting stuff up, even when no one reads.

So I went to this lecture last night about comics. Mostly it was about women and "graphic literature." The woman giving the speech made good points about how pages are laid out and what kind of meaning they have and how authors' decisions about how they present thier work (whether in monochrome, color, or greyscale) brings out certain emotions. It turns out that these "graphic literaries" are popping up all over the place and tend to be mostly about true traumatic events. There was a whole discussion about this as well. Although the lecture wasn't quite what I was expecting, it was good and I learned a lot.

There was a Q and A session afterwards and, in a panel like this, one can expect there to be a question about manga at some point. Personally, I was dreading it. But it happened, which sparked a three or four person debate in the room, and mostly from people who knew what manga was. Though the speaker was supportive (of course she was, her whole work is hinged on comics), I think she made a general stab at it. She said that what was coming out right now from young people that takes them only a few months to do is basically slush. I'm simplifying and aplifiying here but that's basically what she was saying, in a nicer way. These "graphic literaries" were taking years to make. Now, I don't think she's studied enough about manga if she's making statements like that. I read a series once. By the fourth volume, it was already 10 years from when the author started the series. It was only half way through the entire thing.

I did get to thinking about why I do comics the way I do. Why anime? I boiled it down to the idea that people who read manga have an understanding of how things work inside a page. I appreciate that.

Anyway, I'm sorry I went all "musings" in my life page. Just wanted to share.

In other things, I got told the other day that I was "too wordy." I sort of blinked at reading that. That's interesting. I've never been called wordy before. I guess I can be. School has sort of conditioned me to go all essay-like when I talk about something serious. Darn you school! Ah well. I thought it was kind of funny.

I'm going to see if I can get anything up (as far as fanart) today, so keep an eye out!

Dead like Leaves

Well, actually the leaves here aren't dead yet. They haven't hardly even changed color yet. Everything is about a month late this year. I wish it would rain.

Anyway, theO seems pretty dead these days. Not many of my friends (if any) are updating on any given day. It's a little depressing. No pressure, you guys; I'm just lonely. Ha ha. If I'm able, I plan on sending a little stimulous into the system. Turns out all of my friends have scanners that I can now aquire very easily. Maybe I'll go steal one from someone sometime soon and get some of my stuff out there again (too many "s"'s in that sentance). That'd be exciting.

As for me, things have changed a lot, I suppose. School's started up again. Already I'm tired of it and just want to go home all the time. It's only my second week for crying out loud! I haven't had TOO much free time lately and already I find myself drowning in homework. Procrastination is a hard habit to break. Sigh.

Well, I hope all of you (if you end up actually reading this) are well in your absences. I'll try to update a little more regularly (though I don't know what I'll write....we'll figure that out later). Hope to see you all soon.

A Tiny Rant

So I'm just going to say in advance that I'm sorry for all of this..."unloading" (if you will). I'm going to keep the person and group involved anonymous, so as not to ruin any reputations (even though I'm extremely bitter, I'm not that mean). It's alright if you don't understand, I just want to get this off my chest.

So I had e-mailed this group that does cosplaying photoshoots, asking them some questions about how they opperate. A certain well-known and respected cosplayer owns/is a part of this group. As a fan of said cosplayer, I thought it would be a great honor to have a photoshoot done by said group. As per usual, I didn't sign my name at the end of the e-mail because I never do that with people I don't know. About a minute later, I get an e-mail back saying, "Hi, who are you?" Okay. I don't get offended easily. But this really annoyed me. I figured that said cosplayer would respect the fact that I would like to stay anonymous, as it is that said cosplayer stays pretty anonymous themselves. Figuring I had no way out of the question, and because I was feeling ornery, I answered and said "who are you?" almost half jokingly. So I can say that what happened afterwards was partly my fault. The next e-mail I get says, "First things first. You send me all these questions and you don't even know to whom you sent them? And why are you asking all these questions?" Well, that really surprised me. The words seemed really hostile. I mean, I know that the meanings of phrases get lost and misunderstood really easily in the written word so granted, the hostility could just be me. By this point, I was actually hurt. Extremely offended, but hurt as well. Obviously I knew who I was e-mailing, since I put "Dear so-and-so" at the top and if I had any doubts, I would have stated them in the e-mail. What I had meant by my question was who in the group was replying to me? And why can't I ask questions? Where's the harm in that? I wanted to put this all down in my reply but didn't, thinking I'd be scorned for it. Instead I tried to be as nice as possible (the result of working in customer service), hoping that being nice would cool off whoever it was that was writing to me and they would return the politeness. Apparently that doesn't work because I was continually greeted with rudeness. I've noticed this at work too but it's almost as if people expect you to get angry at them when they're rude to you. As much as you'd love to be rude back, you'd likely get fired if you did. So you're nice but they never back down. In the end, they did answer my questions (in the shortest responses possible).

Thinking it over, I don't think I've ever been so insulted by one person so much before. I've never been so bitter. Besides the fact that I was treated like this as a customer, I was also very hurt by the fact that this was someone I greatly respected. Like rubbing salt in the wound. As much as I don't want to tarnish the idea I have of this person, the damage is done and I'm not real sure if it'll go back to the way I thought of them before.

Maybe it was something I did. Should I have been rude instead of nice? Was being nice only fanning the flames? Sometimes I think that I'm just asking for people to walk all over me because I'm a timid person. I don't really know.

I know I sound like a stupid complaining customer but would you say that I'm justified, or just misunderstanding things?

Birthday

Today was my birthday! Well, it would be yesterday, comparing to theO time. I took the day off work so I could enjoy myself. But really all I did today was catch up on chores and have dinner with my family. Ha ha. My idea of a holiday is...strange. Still! I enjoyed myself!

Otherwise, I've finished writing my manuscript and am now looking to publish. I've been looking for a company who is willing to take it as a novel and a manga. That's a lot harder than it sounds. I've only found two. Before I do all that, though, I think I'm going to have one of my Japanese friends read through it and make sure I didn't make any huge errors. I also have to decide how I'm going to go about doing the screentones. Whether I should do it via computer program or by hand. Each method is easily available to me but I'm not feeling very confident in either. What do you guys think? Please note that I'm trying to be as professional-looking as possible.

I've also done a lot of art lately. Of course, none of it is making it here. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to use my old scanner with my laptop. It's going to be an explosion. Things tend to pile up after a while. When I am able to put things up again, I'll be posting my first fan comic! Well, it's not exactly a "fan comic"...and it's not the first time I've done a comic...but still! I've only posted fan arts (and one article) while I've been a member so it'll be good to branch out into other areas of theO. I'm excited.

All other moments of free time outside of work have been devoted to a bag I'm sewing for a friend. I think I've mentioned I sew here before. Anyway, I made a gift for her one time and she liked it so much she insists that I make her other things. I don't particularly mind but this bag is so frustrating! It's a panda/totoro design (how that mixes I'm not sure but I've been able to do it) and it has a lot of detail so it's taking FOREVER. Oh well.

Well, I should go end my birthday celebrating and go to bed. Till next time.