I've been saying for a LONG time that I want to completely overhaul my website.
I sort of took a crack at starting it last year, in the summer sometime, and I started with my art page because I update that pretty frequently and it seemed like a pretty straightforward part of the site to begin with. I'm building each part of the site on its own subdomain so I can just point links from the main site to each wing after it's done, without knocking the existing website down or losing the ability to add new stuff while it's in flux.
But with the doodles page as one of the easier parts of my site to migrate, it's not particularly easy to choose the right format, decide whether to disinclude anything I initially included and vice versa, figure out how to make it easy to browse, etc. On top of that, I have to think about what I want out of an updated website. Why am I doing it?
Well, I've come up with this list.
1. I want it to be easier to add content. I spend a lot of time processing content and it gets really tiresome.
2. I want it to be easier to interact with for viewers. I would like people to be able to comment on content if they want to without me having to use a complex, clunky e-mail form that I then have to manually post the content on the site. (Yes, my sites really are that ancient.) The visual media like photo galleries and art are particularly unfriendly to browsing right now.
3. I want to prune some of the content that really shouldn't be online. There have been a few times in recent years where people said they "saw my site" and I cringe a little because I have no idea what they saw and whether they think it represents my current opinions or abilities. The drawings site has a section for childhood drawings, but even the stuff that's designed to be "current" is, in some cases, TWENTY YEARS OLD. (Yes, I've had a website for about twenty years, and most of what I learned about making websites was in the 1990s.)
So here's how I'm addressing these issues.
1. For the drawings page at least, I've selected themes that are friendly to gallery insertions. I just upload a bunch of pictures through drag-and-drop, and then . . . the site arranges them for me. I don't have to write the code to place the thumbnail images or manually link them or resize each photo so there's a miniature one to click. It will be WAY easier to add content.
2. Comments are native to the pages, so I don't have to do anything. (I may have to approve some comments, but that's necessary in an environment where any form that accepts input from users is open to being spammed.) It's very easy to get captions or more information by hovering over images or clicking through to see them full size.
3. Pruning takes time, so there's no alternative but to individually go through every piece of content and decide whether and how to display it. That said, it's kind of fun to revisit old stuff and to add some stuff I didn't realize I'd never shared, and I'm also making a "featured" gallery at the top so people can just go there to see the stuff I'm actually proud of.
When I get into organizing the huge clumps of writing I have on my site, I think it might be less visual and more oriented toward organization by tags. That way I can include pieces in multiple categories if I want, without having to update or repost copies of my pieces every place I want them to show up. There are many easy, modern ways to organize content, but it's just such a monumental job to dig through everything I've done in the last twenty years that I've kind of been too intimidated to do it.
So first I'm going to reorganize my existing pages and try to convert everything, and then I'll also start incorporating some stuff I've got scattered around the Internet: blog posts that deserve to be preserved, better resources, some galleries I didn't have before, updated links, and better inclusion of external content (like my book reviews, karaoke recordings, ukulele performances, YouTube videos, and social media that probably has a nice handy plugin to do stuff like share my latest tweets and Instagram posts). And I want to finish my heavy-duty autobiographical page (which currently stops at 2006!) and post up some pictures of my new living environment.
It's a lot of work, but it's mostly about organization. The content is there.
And I really like to organize. :)
Maybe I'll be done with the art page by the end of this week and I can show it off here.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
Saturday, February 3, 2018
Personal Digest Saturday: January 27 – February 2
Life news this week:
Interviews, Articles, Mentions:- Saturday was a pretty dang good day. I got my blogging done early and did some organizing on Amino, and then Jeaux came to get me so we could go to St. Petersburg. We found parking after a little bit of searching, ate at a yummy grilled cheese place, and got into the They Might Be Giants concert for free because we were on the guest list. We used earplugs because we're old dorks. :D The concert was good and I bought the band's latest CD!
- Sunday it rained almost all day. I did karaoke and my Amino profile rebuild all day, plus some goofing off, texting with my friend Ralph about cartoons, and watching silly reaction videos.
- Monday I came to the office and my lost keys were NOT on my desk or in the bathroom, so that was bad. But then my office's bookkeeper found them in the hallway on a windowsill! Don't know how they got there. But now I don't have to replace all my keys and change the locks. :P At work I had to put in a design ticket which is the first time I've had to do it, and also dealt with a letter of response and roll plots all over the floor. When I came home I drew a dorky drawing of Gem characters crossing the street holding hands. And I started a crystal growing kit and did my laundry.
- Tuesday I helped with another letter at work and wrote some book reviews and posted pictures of new merchandise. Also processed concert photos and got my writing webcomic posted. I fell asleep, woke up, did laundry, and went back to sleep.
- Wednesday I updated some databases at work. Then went to CiCi's pizza with Jeaux and went to Target for groceries and stuff. We just chilled looking at cartoon things. I fell asleep on the couch covered in plushies. I wish I had a picture because I bet it was cute.
- Thursday I got to work early and worked on database stuff. I also summarized the Steven Universe podcast on Tumblr and it was a really good one. I met friends at Fuzzy's, a taco shop, and my friend Ralph gave me a DVD back that he'd borrowed and I got to meet one of his friends who took me home. I tried to paint my fingernails like a cartoon character's but that failed pretty bad. Then I talked to Victor on the phone and drew my comic.
- Friday I got my butt kicked by my Access database but I got it sorted out. After work I wrote up my old post about bagel sandwiches for Amino and it made the front page (for the fortieth time). Came home and finished my comic drawings and posted them. I am coming down with some kind of illness so I felt crappy and went to bed early after that.
- For some reason Maclean's recycled an old article about me on their Facebook this week. Comments filled up with people saying I have a chemical imbalance and that I can't find a man to have sex with me, balanced with people insisting that this is not news and does not need education. Yawn.
- Finished this week: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. Five-star review.
- Currently reading: Eyeshield 21 Volume 28 by Riichiro Inagaki & Yusuke Murata.
This week's song was "Live to Tell" by Madonna.
New drawings:
 |
| Crystal Gems and allies holding hands crossing the street. Because Steven said so. |
Webcomic So You Write Issue 80: "Diverse."
Webcomic Negative One Issue 0664: "Dialed Down."
New videos:
None.
New photos:
Just got some photos from the They Might Be Giants concert. The ones in the crowd are taken by Jeaux because photos I take are of people's backs.
Social Media Counts:
YouTube subscribers: 5,270 for swankivy (lost 3), 660 for JulieSondra (1 new). Twitter followers: 907 for swankivy (3 new), 1,324 for JulieSondra (lost 2). Facebook: 297 friends (no change) and 202 followers (no change) for swankivy, 659 likes for JulieSondra (no change), 55 likes for Negative One (no change), 126 likes for So You Write (2 new). Tumblr followers: 2,510 (no change). Instagram followers: 133 (no change).
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Wednesday Factoid: Home Quirks
Today's Wednesday Factoid is: "Jiggle the handle!" "You have to press the lightswitch twice!" "It just makes that noise sometimes." What kinds of quirks does your home have?
Wow, where do I start?
The house I rent was built in 1956. It's been steadily upgraded and added onto here and there, and as a result it's got a lot of, um, weirdnesses?
First off, the house is on a well and septic system. So there's a loud banging as the water filtration and pump system works in the garage EVERY TIME you use water. If you flush? BUMP-BUMP-BUMP. If you shower? BUMP-BUMP-BUMP. If you use the washing machine, God help you, not only does the pump start up but another loud machine kicks in. One of my friends, upon first hearing it, said "well that's an interesting EDM song." XD
Furthermore, the well and septic system situation makes all the water distribution weird in the house. If the washing machine is draining, the toilet burps and bubbles. Sometimes if a sink somewhere in the house has water draining, the kitchen sink will sputter. And weirdest of all, there is a hose sticking out of the side of my garage that sprays water into the yard at random intervals, and sometimes when that's going on, I don't have water in my house at all. (Every time I contact the office about this, they tell me they'll check it out, and then I never hear about it again.)
There's also the fact that the washing machine hookup in the garage is on a different wall from the dryer hookup, and since it's a septic system you're not supposed to flush anything but toilet paper and waste down the toilet. When I first moved in, the toilet didn't flush at all and they had to dig up my back yard and get the pipe back into place from where it'd been disturbed by a tree root.
There are many bare wires hanging around in the garage. Spiders love my garage. They seem to like my shower too. I had an epic showdown with a spider the size of my hand in there once.
The garage door sometimes opens back up after you close it for no apparent reason. The front door has weird molding so the door is difficult to close properly. My house has a side door on the garage which doesn't open. It is blocked inside by a built-in set of shelves. It looks enough like a real door, apparently, to attract delivery drivers who somehow think it makes more sense to go to the side of the garage behind some bushes and throw my packages in the mud there than it does to go to the front door. *shrug*
The front door has poor accessibility. My disabled friends have to come in through the garage. It is accessed either by walking through the yard or using a path made of flat stones, and then the porch has a LARGE step up with no railing at all. There's a pole that looks like you can brace against it, but it isn't attached to the ground. It's ornamental and will move if you push on it.
The light sometimes flickers in the middle bedroom.
The house is set up with the assumption that you'll be entering through the garage; the lights for the main room are on the far wall so you have to walk through the entire room to turn the light on if you've come in through the front door. The front door leads to a vestibule that leads directly into the master bedroom. You could walk into the house and go right into the master bedroom without going through the rest of the house. The hallway's entrance inexplicably has a door. There are two switches for the lights in the hallway and both must be on for the light to come on.
The house is directly across the street from a golf course. I have found golf balls in my yard. My geolocation on Google that prompts me to check into places often wants me to say whether I'm at the golf course whenever I go home.
The house has a fireplace in the room you can enter from the garage. Spiders like that too. The fireplace room looks like it was meant to be a small den or something. (I use it for a game room and baking center.) It doesn't have carpet or a closet so it's not really a good bedroom, and it has a door that leads to the backyard. The fireplace room has built in bookshelves.
The kitchen has awesome new cabinets with a soft-close feature built into them. :D
The ceiling fan in the kitchen does not work. :o Just makes a loud buzzing noise when you turn it on. The water line on the fridge is not hooked up so its ice dispenser and water dispenser on the fridge door doesn't work. The light over the sink takes a long time to come on but eventually it does come on.
The trees in the backyard are gorgeous. :)
Wow, where do I start?
The house I rent was built in 1956. It's been steadily upgraded and added onto here and there, and as a result it's got a lot of, um, weirdnesses?
First off, the house is on a well and septic system. So there's a loud banging as the water filtration and pump system works in the garage EVERY TIME you use water. If you flush? BUMP-BUMP-BUMP. If you shower? BUMP-BUMP-BUMP. If you use the washing machine, God help you, not only does the pump start up but another loud machine kicks in. One of my friends, upon first hearing it, said "well that's an interesting EDM song." XD
Furthermore, the well and septic system situation makes all the water distribution weird in the house. If the washing machine is draining, the toilet burps and bubbles. Sometimes if a sink somewhere in the house has water draining, the kitchen sink will sputter. And weirdest of all, there is a hose sticking out of the side of my garage that sprays water into the yard at random intervals, and sometimes when that's going on, I don't have water in my house at all. (Every time I contact the office about this, they tell me they'll check it out, and then I never hear about it again.)
There's also the fact that the washing machine hookup in the garage is on a different wall from the dryer hookup, and since it's a septic system you're not supposed to flush anything but toilet paper and waste down the toilet. When I first moved in, the toilet didn't flush at all and they had to dig up my back yard and get the pipe back into place from where it'd been disturbed by a tree root.
There are many bare wires hanging around in the garage. Spiders love my garage. They seem to like my shower too. I had an epic showdown with a spider the size of my hand in there once.
The garage door sometimes opens back up after you close it for no apparent reason. The front door has weird molding so the door is difficult to close properly. My house has a side door on the garage which doesn't open. It is blocked inside by a built-in set of shelves. It looks enough like a real door, apparently, to attract delivery drivers who somehow think it makes more sense to go to the side of the garage behind some bushes and throw my packages in the mud there than it does to go to the front door. *shrug*
The front door has poor accessibility. My disabled friends have to come in through the garage. It is accessed either by walking through the yard or using a path made of flat stones, and then the porch has a LARGE step up with no railing at all. There's a pole that looks like you can brace against it, but it isn't attached to the ground. It's ornamental and will move if you push on it.
The light sometimes flickers in the middle bedroom.
The house is set up with the assumption that you'll be entering through the garage; the lights for the main room are on the far wall so you have to walk through the entire room to turn the light on if you've come in through the front door. The front door leads to a vestibule that leads directly into the master bedroom. You could walk into the house and go right into the master bedroom without going through the rest of the house. The hallway's entrance inexplicably has a door. There are two switches for the lights in the hallway and both must be on for the light to come on.
The house is directly across the street from a golf course. I have found golf balls in my yard. My geolocation on Google that prompts me to check into places often wants me to say whether I'm at the golf course whenever I go home.
The house has a fireplace in the room you can enter from the garage. Spiders like that too. The fireplace room looks like it was meant to be a small den or something. (I use it for a game room and baking center.) It doesn't have carpet or a closet so it's not really a good bedroom, and it has a door that leads to the backyard. The fireplace room has built in bookshelves.
The kitchen has awesome new cabinets with a soft-close feature built into them. :D
The ceiling fan in the kitchen does not work. :o Just makes a loud buzzing noise when you turn it on. The water line on the fridge is not hooked up so its ice dispenser and water dispenser on the fridge door doesn't work. The light over the sink takes a long time to come on but eventually it does come on.
The trees in the backyard are gorgeous. :)
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Still unbanned
In a previous post from November, I wrote about getting banned from Amino, which is a fun little place where I share fan content and interact with other fans. Someone had falsely reported me for sending porn to them (I obviously would never dream of doing that), and explicit material is an insta-ban. After I created other accounts to investigate why I was banned (because you can't use a banned account to contact the management), the troublemaker went after those accounts too.
On Wednesday last week, the person got caught trying to do it again. They did something foolish and sloppy while trying to frame me, finally creating enough of a red flag for the administration that they investigated it and determined that I'd definitely been framed. The bad person was banned and my account was reinstated.
I'm still irritated about two things.
One:
The staff at this place is volunteer, young, and largely non-responsive. The one staff member I was able to initially get on board to investigate was very dismissive to me throughout the investigation. (A different staff member was later more sympathetic, and it was she who contacted me about the suspicious behavior of my stalker and led directly to getting me unbanned.) Now, it's true the first staff member was just doing her job, and was probably overwhelmed, and isn't being paid, and has the unenviable task of handling many problems with no real resources to help her and no training, and is a teenager. But among other things, my major problem with the way she handled the situation was this:
She was not willing to even consider that I was being targeted.
After I got banned three times for "sending porn" within the same few days, some of those "offenses" mysteriously occurring WHILE I was trying to get them to believe I hadn't done it in the first place; after I spent eight months creating valuable daily content that was frequently featured on the front page and understandably did not want to lose it; after I had supposedly done something extremely trollish with no apparent motivation that was so far out of character for me . . . the idea that I was being targeted by someone who wanted me gone was not worth entertaining whatsoever.
When I suggested it to her, she simply told me she didn't think it was possible--end of story--and warned me to avoid "causing trouble" on my replacement account, because if my new account "happened to" send porn like the others, she wouldn't be able to listen anymore, because three times in a row is where she draws the line.
After the truth came out and it was clear I absolutely had been being targeted, and after the other staff person unbanned me and I was free to post again, she did find me and apologize for being harsh. (The message was longer, but the rest of it was about why I should understand that she took the action she was supposed to, as she should have.) But I wasn't worried about her "being harsh."
I was worried about her just straight-up dismissing me.
She wouldn't consider my position at all. I was already guilty based on very suspicious "photo evidence" that she has admitted can be faked. There's something wrong with your approach if a popular, mature member suddenly turns into an unrepentant porn bot from three accounts and you don't think her previous reputation is relevant.
The idea that this moderator believes she handled it with the appropriate amount of skepticism, with only her "harshness" to apologize for, is frankly alarming. Everything I said, everything I tried to do, everything I suggested--it was all no, no, no. Not important, not worth talking about, not worth researching, not worth the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure she did some homework and legwork she hasn't disclosed to me, but none of it was discussed with me and none of it was presented as if she was hoping to help get to the root of what was really going on. The fact that I had no leads on who was targeting me or why, that I didn't have counter-evidence to show them, meant I was guilty by default, and that I was treated like it.
I've been dealing with trolls and deplorables for half my life and they are exactly like this. They target people who enjoy their lives, enjoy creating, have something to say/something to contribute . . . and they decide "wow that's lame!" and try to destroy it. Not only do they target people like me, but they also rarely give up.
Which brings me to my next point.
Two:
These kinds of people strike again.
Falsely reporting someone is also a bannable offense. If someone's willing to risk such a thing, they are putting themselves on the line to get rid of you, and must be confident that they can pull it off. This person actively followed me around to different profiles pretending I was the one attacking them with pornography, and more than two months after they got my account suspended, there they were trying to get me again.
It wasn't enough that they successfully hurt me one time. They weren't satisfied by destroying something I cared about. They wanted to keep limiting my ability to communicate and share fan content with people who liked what I do.
They've demonstrated that this wasn't a whim. This was a sustained campaign and it was intended to be ongoing.
And if they hadn't made a mistake, the management probably would have gone on believing them. Believing that I inexplicably am targeting this one member sending them porn over and over again, rather than believe maybe someone has it out for me.
What REALLY bothers me is that I know this person is out there, and that they were not satisfied with what they did to me the first time, and that they are probably even more furious that they got their account banned as a result of stalking me and lying about me. They're probably madder than ever. (And I don't know what I might have ever done to make them mad, because I do not have a relationship with the person as far as I know. Now that I know who did it, I can see that I apparently had nothing but a passing relationship with them, and we've only ever had civil conversations on the account that's now banned. They have at least one other account, though, and I don't know what it is.) Anyway, mad lying stalker getting punished for targeting me leads to more aggressive, more determined stalker in most cases.
And given the history here, I'm worried they'll do something that no reasonable person would believe, but will work anyway. Since that's basically what happened last time, you know. It was thought reasonable that I was porn-spamming people while in the active process of trying to convince the management I wasn't doing it, after all. No reason the stalker couldn't, say, pretend I found them on a new account and threatened them with violence. That would get me banned, if they believed I was doing it.
I noticed certain aspects of how the person spoke (while impersonating me) which may help with evidence on any further attempts to harass me, but me pointing them out isn't very useful. If it's ME trying to prove I didn't do something, pointing out obvious differences in how they spoke would make it clear that I recognize those myself and could imitate them. Sounds like a lot of mental gymnastics, but after spending more than two months assuming all my hard work was gone and then getting it plopped back in my lap and getting vindicated, I'm fiercely irritated that justice didn't prevail in a more reasonable manner, even if overall I'm just grateful that it did at all.
But I'm annoyed because I know they are very likely to try again and if hearsay has so much power with the management, to the point that accusation is essentially conviction, then it's just a matter of time before it's coming again, and I cannot trust that being vindicated on a previous occasion is enough to protect me.
Having stalkers really bites. Having people in charge of protecting you enabling the stalkers instead bites even more.
On Wednesday last week, the person got caught trying to do it again. They did something foolish and sloppy while trying to frame me, finally creating enough of a red flag for the administration that they investigated it and determined that I'd definitely been framed. The bad person was banned and my account was reinstated.
I'm still irritated about two things.
One:
The staff at this place is volunteer, young, and largely non-responsive. The one staff member I was able to initially get on board to investigate was very dismissive to me throughout the investigation. (A different staff member was later more sympathetic, and it was she who contacted me about the suspicious behavior of my stalker and led directly to getting me unbanned.) Now, it's true the first staff member was just doing her job, and was probably overwhelmed, and isn't being paid, and has the unenviable task of handling many problems with no real resources to help her and no training, and is a teenager. But among other things, my major problem with the way she handled the situation was this:
She was not willing to even consider that I was being targeted.
After I got banned three times for "sending porn" within the same few days, some of those "offenses" mysteriously occurring WHILE I was trying to get them to believe I hadn't done it in the first place; after I spent eight months creating valuable daily content that was frequently featured on the front page and understandably did not want to lose it; after I had supposedly done something extremely trollish with no apparent motivation that was so far out of character for me . . . the idea that I was being targeted by someone who wanted me gone was not worth entertaining whatsoever.
When I suggested it to her, she simply told me she didn't think it was possible--end of story--and warned me to avoid "causing trouble" on my replacement account, because if my new account "happened to" send porn like the others, she wouldn't be able to listen anymore, because three times in a row is where she draws the line.
After the truth came out and it was clear I absolutely had been being targeted, and after the other staff person unbanned me and I was free to post again, she did find me and apologize for being harsh. (The message was longer, but the rest of it was about why I should understand that she took the action she was supposed to, as she should have.) But I wasn't worried about her "being harsh."
I was worried about her just straight-up dismissing me.
She wouldn't consider my position at all. I was already guilty based on very suspicious "photo evidence" that she has admitted can be faked. There's something wrong with your approach if a popular, mature member suddenly turns into an unrepentant porn bot from three accounts and you don't think her previous reputation is relevant.
The idea that this moderator believes she handled it with the appropriate amount of skepticism, with only her "harshness" to apologize for, is frankly alarming. Everything I said, everything I tried to do, everything I suggested--it was all no, no, no. Not important, not worth talking about, not worth researching, not worth the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure she did some homework and legwork she hasn't disclosed to me, but none of it was discussed with me and none of it was presented as if she was hoping to help get to the root of what was really going on. The fact that I had no leads on who was targeting me or why, that I didn't have counter-evidence to show them, meant I was guilty by default, and that I was treated like it.
I've been dealing with trolls and deplorables for half my life and they are exactly like this. They target people who enjoy their lives, enjoy creating, have something to say/something to contribute . . . and they decide "wow that's lame!" and try to destroy it. Not only do they target people like me, but they also rarely give up.
Which brings me to my next point.
Two:
These kinds of people strike again.
Falsely reporting someone is also a bannable offense. If someone's willing to risk such a thing, they are putting themselves on the line to get rid of you, and must be confident that they can pull it off. This person actively followed me around to different profiles pretending I was the one attacking them with pornography, and more than two months after they got my account suspended, there they were trying to get me again.
It wasn't enough that they successfully hurt me one time. They weren't satisfied by destroying something I cared about. They wanted to keep limiting my ability to communicate and share fan content with people who liked what I do.
They've demonstrated that this wasn't a whim. This was a sustained campaign and it was intended to be ongoing.
And if they hadn't made a mistake, the management probably would have gone on believing them. Believing that I inexplicably am targeting this one member sending them porn over and over again, rather than believe maybe someone has it out for me.
What REALLY bothers me is that I know this person is out there, and that they were not satisfied with what they did to me the first time, and that they are probably even more furious that they got their account banned as a result of stalking me and lying about me. They're probably madder than ever. (And I don't know what I might have ever done to make them mad, because I do not have a relationship with the person as far as I know. Now that I know who did it, I can see that I apparently had nothing but a passing relationship with them, and we've only ever had civil conversations on the account that's now banned. They have at least one other account, though, and I don't know what it is.) Anyway, mad lying stalker getting punished for targeting me leads to more aggressive, more determined stalker in most cases.
And given the history here, I'm worried they'll do something that no reasonable person would believe, but will work anyway. Since that's basically what happened last time, you know. It was thought reasonable that I was porn-spamming people while in the active process of trying to convince the management I wasn't doing it, after all. No reason the stalker couldn't, say, pretend I found them on a new account and threatened them with violence. That would get me banned, if they believed I was doing it.
I noticed certain aspects of how the person spoke (while impersonating me) which may help with evidence on any further attempts to harass me, but me pointing them out isn't very useful. If it's ME trying to prove I didn't do something, pointing out obvious differences in how they spoke would make it clear that I recognize those myself and could imitate them. Sounds like a lot of mental gymnastics, but after spending more than two months assuming all my hard work was gone and then getting it plopped back in my lap and getting vindicated, I'm fiercely irritated that justice didn't prevail in a more reasonable manner, even if overall I'm just grateful that it did at all.
But I'm annoyed because I know they are very likely to try again and if hearsay has so much power with the management, to the point that accusation is essentially conviction, then it's just a matter of time before it's coming again, and I cannot trust that being vindicated on a previous occasion is enough to protect me.
Having stalkers really bites. Having people in charge of protecting you enabling the stalkers instead bites even more.
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Personal Digest Saturday: January 20 – January 26
Life news this week:
New reviews of my book:- Saturday I did some stuff around the house until Dad and Connie came to take me to lunch as a birthday gift! We ate at Gino's. After we hung out a while, they left and I got prepared for Drink and Draw. I didn't have time to do my usual blogging so I saved it for the next day. Drink and Draw was fun but I didn't get everything done and I talked to Eric and Frenchy. Eric took me home, I reviewed a book, and I slept.
- Sunday I did karaoke and blogging, talked to my mom for a long time while drawing and doing laundry, and made a video.
- Monday I had to go to work later because they wanted me to stay later. I did what they asked and helped put together a PowerPoint presentation. But everything still wasn't done so they asked me to come in early in the morning too. I drew the rest of my So You Write comic when I got home.
- Tuesday since I had to be early I requested a paid ride but it took a really long time to get to my house and one of the drivers canceled my ride to transfer it to a person who was even farther away, and the wait time to come get me kept going UP instead of down. It took more than half an hour. On a day I was supposed to be early. I almost didn't make it before they left for the meeting. But I arrived in time to help them in a rush. And I got donuts! I ate four donuts. And nothing else during the work day. Classy. Later I did a video transcription, made a cool quiz about voice actors on Steven Universe for the Amino, and finished a really neat drawing of Garnet.
- Wednesday I posted my drawing on Amino, answered mail, and ate at Five Guys with Jeaux. We also picked up the new Steven Universe comic book which was like ridiculously cute. I can't even believe how cute it was. And then I got big news (well, for me): The person who accused me of sending them porn and got me banned on Amino back in November was caught trying to do it to me again. They made a mistake on the fake screencaps that revealed it was falsified, and so I got my old account back and THEY got banned. It's fantastic, but also a bit awful because it happened so far after the fact that I had already reestablished almost everything from that account on a new account, and now I have two accounts with 90% same content. Welp.
- Thursday I worked and did business development stuff. And felt weird about my Amino accounts trying to figure out how to handle posting. I updated one account with a comic book review and then that night I drew my webcomic while talking to Victor.
- Friday I had to go to a webinar but most of it was not applicable to me. I drank a lot of coffee. Also wrote a post explaining the situation to my followers on Amino. When I got home my keys weren't in my bag so I had to call Jeaux to come let me in my house. Also I had to pee really bad when I got home so I just peed in the back yard. Hahaha. I hope I just left my keys at the office. (We have to use a key to get in the bathroom there so I may have just forgotten to put them back in my bag.) I finished drawing my webcomic and also arranged for my friend Yasmin to finalize my tickets to a concert Saturday!
- Tara gave it a three-star review on Goodreads.
- Finished this week: Almost done reading Becky's book but uhhh didn't quite finish, so here's my review of Steven Universe comic #12. OMG. Five-star review.
- Currently reading: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli.
This week's song was "Bizarre Love Triangle" by Frente!.
New drawings:
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| Drawing of Garnet being "shameless"-- a response to Jasper calling her a "shameless display." Heeheehee. |
Webcomic Negative One Issue 0663: "Designate Someone."
New videos:
Letters to an Asexual #54 is about fear of sex and why it's reasonable in some cases.
New photos:
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| The view at Drink and Draw! |
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| Donuts, so what was I supposed to do? I ate four. |
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| My donut is a heart. Or my heart is a donut. I forget which. |
Social Media Counts:
YouTube subscribers: 5,273 for swankivy (lost 1), 659 for JulieSondra (2 new). Twitter followers: 904 for swankivy (2 new), 1,326 for JulieSondra (1 new). Facebook: 297 friends (no change) and 202 followers (no change) for swankivy, 659 likes for JulieSondra (1 new), 55 likes for Negative One (no change), 124 likes for So You Write (lost 1). Tumblr followers: 2,510 (21 new). Instagram followers: 133 (no change).
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Wednesday Factoid: Hater
Today's Wednesday Factoid is: Are you a "hater" about anything in particular? Have you ever been called a "hater"?
Ha! Yes.
Actually this is a really interesting situation because okay, y'all know I am really over-the-top obsessed with the cartoon show Steven Universe and one recent trend toward criticizing it a lot is popping up in my fan spaces. People nitpick on stuff like characters being off model, plot points not being resolved, and social/political issues not being handled how they would like. And my thoughts usually fall like this:
I've never actively said these things to anyone because I'm not a fan of getting embroiled in The Discourse, but I realized way before I'd even thought about responding that these folks are allowed to complain however they want--and that the "who cares?" response isn't constructive. Because THEY care. I really don't give a crap if the characters look different heights and have different proportions depending on who draws them, partly because I know the creator of the show specifically WANTED that kind of variation with her storyboarders, but if that makes the show harder to watch for people who prefer their characters drawn with consistency? Okay, you do you.
I don't agree that the show's failure to resolve certain points in specific ways, tie up "loose ends" that aren't necessarily loose, or focus on what's considered "the plot" all the time constitutes a bad show, but they're allowed to have their complaints. I have to admit that when I've seen deeply negative analysis videos and entire networks of blogs and tagged content specifically devoted to tearing the show down, I wondered . . . why are these people spending their time on this? Why are they paying attention to it if they hate it so much?
And then I remember what "being a hater" was about for me.
I was very active in the "hater" community surrounding Christopher Paolini's novels in his Inheritance Cycle. See, I read the first book in the series unaware of any issues; I'd been expecting such a popular book to be great (or at least readable), and I was so appalled at its quality that I wrote a scathing review. I was recruited, sort of, by other people who felt the same way and wanted me to discuss the book and its surrounding phenomenon with them in a LiveJournal group. I did.
The book was bad. Dragon fanboys and people who weren't sick of the Chosen One phenomenon were bamboozled by it, but to me it was just bad. Poorly written, full of amateur mistakes, obnoxious, sexist, tiresome. I wasn't surprised to discover that the book had been written by a fifteen-year-old and initially self-published, "discovered" because an established famous writer happened to meet the teenage author hawking his wares in a local market, and marketed as the fresh new work of a wunderkind. I'll admit this kind of shortcut to the publishing big-time rubbed me the wrong way extra hard due to my own pursuits of publication, but I absolutely wouldn't have begrudged the author his stroke of good luck if I'd found his book deserving. So my unusual annoyance at the book was about more than just its disappointing and occasionally offensive content; it was also about what I considered undeserved fanfare and platform.
My review was popular among fanboys and other haters alike, but the fans frequently interspersed one taunt amidst all the ad hominem attacks and personal incredulity: "You should read the second one, and you'll see he's gotten better." I resisted because I hated the first one so much, but eventually I caved and gave the second one a chance. (I was working at a bookstore at the time and did not have to pay for access to books.) The second was, in my opinion, even worse in a few ways; most of them probably because the author had been taught through his success that his freshman effort had been spectacular, so he just did more of the stuff I hated (with some additional decorative obnoxiousness). So I said so, and yet, people upheld my willingness to look at the second after hating the first as evidence that I was being a hater for the fun of it.
The other haters had so enjoyed my evisceration of the books that they begged me to review the third when it came out, but I was done (and also no longer working at the bookstore). It took someone actually sending it to me as a gift and over one thousand days of procrastination before I gave in and reviewed the third. And I finished off the series because at that point I figured I had become invested in following this terrible project to its logical conclusion. I never enjoyed any of the books. I never gave any of them more than one star. And I did not continue to monitor what the author was doing, nor did I plan to continue following his career.
One could (and they did) argue that I and people like me spent too much time crapping on the topic in question. Why, if we didn't like it, did we still read it and then throw hatred around? What did we stand to gain? Why were we so negative? Why didn't we just pay attention to things we did like?
My answers to those questions are why I understand the reasons behind my own fandom's haters.
Of course, I never did some of the things they do. I never went into their fan spaces and tried to get them to hate the books. I never followed the author on social media and harassed him. I never made personal statements about him or his family or loved ones (except in cases where he put his personal content or made reference to his personal beliefs in public statements or the books themselves). I never insulted or harassed any fan over their love of the books, though I would certainly bar no holds if they came after me commenting on my own content.
That said, I did not entirely perceive my "hater" content as being about Those Books or That Author. It was always more general for me--it was about quality, and it was about opportunities in publishing, and it was about some of the terrible social messages that I believed the books were condoning. There was also nothing about the books that I liked--I was not a fan-turned-hater, nor was I disappointed in the book because I thought it had potential to be better. I just thought it was a shame that an author I perceived to be writing amateur-level, ham-fisted fiction had been given a seat at the table of big shots (and was being paid like one), and this is also key: many of my fans and readers were aspiring fiction authors themselves who took a lot of lessons home on what NOT to do from my essays. (Of course, one could argue that if Paolini failed as hard as I say he did at writing a good story, they'd rather fail like him and make millions too, but I think part of my point is that by and large people who write like this don't even get in the door.)
There was definitely pettiness in the communities I interacted with, and I didn't condone it. Some if it was actively mean-spirited and I admit I kept company with people who were there to be vicious. (If I was interacting with them, I often mentioned that I did not agree with that behavior.) It's easier to judge something petty and specious if you're a FAN of the material being criticized, so I don't know if the anti-fans of Steven Universe actually ARE bigger jackasses or if I just see it that way because I don't agree with them. But here's what I've learned:
Being "a hater" isn't necessarily about hate. It is often about quality, about taste, about high standards, about actual concern, about a bigger picture. I might disagree with some of what the haters say and do, and there are lines they shouldn't cross, but I do not believe people should avoid material they don't like at all costs, and I do not believe intense criticism of a piece of media constitutes a waste of time or a sign of personality issues on the part of the hater.
Ha! Yes.
Actually this is a really interesting situation because okay, y'all know I am really over-the-top obsessed with the cartoon show Steven Universe and one recent trend toward criticizing it a lot is popping up in my fan spaces. People nitpick on stuff like characters being off model, plot points not being resolved, and social/political issues not being handled how they would like. And my thoughts usually fall like this:
- Design variations: Who cares? Variation from the original models is actually a feature, not a bug.
- Plot points: Who cares? They're telling the story the way they want, and you don't get to whine that they failed for not using the pacing and content you'd prefer.
- Social/Political issues: They've had some misfires, which stands to reason as they're imperfect humans, but also, having something portrayed in a show does not mean they're advocating it.
I've never actively said these things to anyone because I'm not a fan of getting embroiled in The Discourse, but I realized way before I'd even thought about responding that these folks are allowed to complain however they want--and that the "who cares?" response isn't constructive. Because THEY care. I really don't give a crap if the characters look different heights and have different proportions depending on who draws them, partly because I know the creator of the show specifically WANTED that kind of variation with her storyboarders, but if that makes the show harder to watch for people who prefer their characters drawn with consistency? Okay, you do you.
I don't agree that the show's failure to resolve certain points in specific ways, tie up "loose ends" that aren't necessarily loose, or focus on what's considered "the plot" all the time constitutes a bad show, but they're allowed to have their complaints. I have to admit that when I've seen deeply negative analysis videos and entire networks of blogs and tagged content specifically devoted to tearing the show down, I wondered . . . why are these people spending their time on this? Why are they paying attention to it if they hate it so much?
And then I remember what "being a hater" was about for me.
I was very active in the "hater" community surrounding Christopher Paolini's novels in his Inheritance Cycle. See, I read the first book in the series unaware of any issues; I'd been expecting such a popular book to be great (or at least readable), and I was so appalled at its quality that I wrote a scathing review. I was recruited, sort of, by other people who felt the same way and wanted me to discuss the book and its surrounding phenomenon with them in a LiveJournal group. I did.
The book was bad. Dragon fanboys and people who weren't sick of the Chosen One phenomenon were bamboozled by it, but to me it was just bad. Poorly written, full of amateur mistakes, obnoxious, sexist, tiresome. I wasn't surprised to discover that the book had been written by a fifteen-year-old and initially self-published, "discovered" because an established famous writer happened to meet the teenage author hawking his wares in a local market, and marketed as the fresh new work of a wunderkind. I'll admit this kind of shortcut to the publishing big-time rubbed me the wrong way extra hard due to my own pursuits of publication, but I absolutely wouldn't have begrudged the author his stroke of good luck if I'd found his book deserving. So my unusual annoyance at the book was about more than just its disappointing and occasionally offensive content; it was also about what I considered undeserved fanfare and platform.
My review was popular among fanboys and other haters alike, but the fans frequently interspersed one taunt amidst all the ad hominem attacks and personal incredulity: "You should read the second one, and you'll see he's gotten better." I resisted because I hated the first one so much, but eventually I caved and gave the second one a chance. (I was working at a bookstore at the time and did not have to pay for access to books.) The second was, in my opinion, even worse in a few ways; most of them probably because the author had been taught through his success that his freshman effort had been spectacular, so he just did more of the stuff I hated (with some additional decorative obnoxiousness). So I said so, and yet, people upheld my willingness to look at the second after hating the first as evidence that I was being a hater for the fun of it.
The other haters had so enjoyed my evisceration of the books that they begged me to review the third when it came out, but I was done (and also no longer working at the bookstore). It took someone actually sending it to me as a gift and over one thousand days of procrastination before I gave in and reviewed the third. And I finished off the series because at that point I figured I had become invested in following this terrible project to its logical conclusion. I never enjoyed any of the books. I never gave any of them more than one star. And I did not continue to monitor what the author was doing, nor did I plan to continue following his career.
One could (and they did) argue that I and people like me spent too much time crapping on the topic in question. Why, if we didn't like it, did we still read it and then throw hatred around? What did we stand to gain? Why were we so negative? Why didn't we just pay attention to things we did like?
My answers to those questions are why I understand the reasons behind my own fandom's haters.
Of course, I never did some of the things they do. I never went into their fan spaces and tried to get them to hate the books. I never followed the author on social media and harassed him. I never made personal statements about him or his family or loved ones (except in cases where he put his personal content or made reference to his personal beliefs in public statements or the books themselves). I never insulted or harassed any fan over their love of the books, though I would certainly bar no holds if they came after me commenting on my own content.
That said, I did not entirely perceive my "hater" content as being about Those Books or That Author. It was always more general for me--it was about quality, and it was about opportunities in publishing, and it was about some of the terrible social messages that I believed the books were condoning. There was also nothing about the books that I liked--I was not a fan-turned-hater, nor was I disappointed in the book because I thought it had potential to be better. I just thought it was a shame that an author I perceived to be writing amateur-level, ham-fisted fiction had been given a seat at the table of big shots (and was being paid like one), and this is also key: many of my fans and readers were aspiring fiction authors themselves who took a lot of lessons home on what NOT to do from my essays. (Of course, one could argue that if Paolini failed as hard as I say he did at writing a good story, they'd rather fail like him and make millions too, but I think part of my point is that by and large people who write like this don't even get in the door.)
There was definitely pettiness in the communities I interacted with, and I didn't condone it. Some if it was actively mean-spirited and I admit I kept company with people who were there to be vicious. (If I was interacting with them, I often mentioned that I did not agree with that behavior.) It's easier to judge something petty and specious if you're a FAN of the material being criticized, so I don't know if the anti-fans of Steven Universe actually ARE bigger jackasses or if I just see it that way because I don't agree with them. But here's what I've learned:
Being "a hater" isn't necessarily about hate. It is often about quality, about taste, about high standards, about actual concern, about a bigger picture. I might disagree with some of what the haters say and do, and there are lines they shouldn't cross, but I do not believe people should avoid material they don't like at all costs, and I do not believe intense criticism of a piece of media constitutes a waste of time or a sign of personality issues on the part of the hater.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Voices are weird
You know what's weird? Human voices.
Most people can recognize other people's voices. They know who is calling by the sound of the voice; they often know or assume what gender the person is based on the vocal tone and pitch; they modify their voices on purpose to imitate each other; they speak in such a way that we can usually learn things about their emotions that we aren't being told in words. It's very interesting.
But one thing I've been thinking about lately is the relationship between our voices and our relatives.
I have a friend who says he and his father have almost the same voice. (And he hates it, because he hates his father.) My youngest sister used to be mistaken for my mother on the phone often when they lived together. And recently I heard a recording of myself that included me laughing, and it sounded a LOT like my grandmother's laugh. Which made me pretty sad because I haven't heard that sound in a long time.
As a young singer, I was of course always eager to compare myself to my grandmother vocally because I wanted to be a professional singer and she had had a Broadway career. But I didn't think our speaking voices were very similar, and I still don't; hers is pretty iconic. So it was weird when I heard the recording of my voice and I laughed at something and it sounded just like her. I think my aunt laughs like her too.
I wish she were fully present enough to laugh with us. But even though we can't have that, it's sort of comforting to know that that expression of merriment, in her way, is being carried forward.
Most people can recognize other people's voices. They know who is calling by the sound of the voice; they often know or assume what gender the person is based on the vocal tone and pitch; they modify their voices on purpose to imitate each other; they speak in such a way that we can usually learn things about their emotions that we aren't being told in words. It's very interesting.
But one thing I've been thinking about lately is the relationship between our voices and our relatives.
I have a friend who says he and his father have almost the same voice. (And he hates it, because he hates his father.) My youngest sister used to be mistaken for my mother on the phone often when they lived together. And recently I heard a recording of myself that included me laughing, and it sounded a LOT like my grandmother's laugh. Which made me pretty sad because I haven't heard that sound in a long time.
As a young singer, I was of course always eager to compare myself to my grandmother vocally because I wanted to be a professional singer and she had had a Broadway career. But I didn't think our speaking voices were very similar, and I still don't; hers is pretty iconic. So it was weird when I heard the recording of my voice and I laughed at something and it sounded just like her. I think my aunt laughs like her too.
I wish she were fully present enough to laugh with us. But even though we can't have that, it's sort of comforting to know that that expression of merriment, in her way, is being carried forward.
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