Thursday and friday were surreal as hell because the entire American part of the web ground to a halt. All the blogs and stuff I read. No content! Chatter about booze and turkey and pie! And meanwhile it's just another workday in Indicialand, and there I am with my coffee and my pencil and my work to be done. :F

I was at the gym today and did about 60min on the bikes and elliptical and they talked about the Tiger Woods thingie on CNN the ENTIRE TIME. Nooo. Boring! I need news variety while I'm exercising! I wish they'd turn CBC newsworld back on, but it was CNN or football. :F twice.

Also. I have no clue why, but Vegan!Boy is stalking courting me.

All heart-strewn text message-y and emails everywhere and freaking flowers today. WtF. I've been sick with the flu (and gave him the heads up on that so he wouldn't think I was ignoring him, because he does seem nice.) But that's got to be the least sexy mental image ever. I guess I should be flattered, because the thought of someone I just met puking and laying around in bed dying of swine flu wouldn't exactly set my romantic imagination alight.

He is cute, though. I seem to constantly meet IT geeks. But he's a Buddhist, which is nice. Progressive politics, of course. Someday I'm going to have to date some total asshole of a conservative just to see what they're like, because I've been solid left wingers all through my dating career.

Nice flowers, though. Gerbara daisies, the best flowers in the world after chrysanthemums and dahlias. I'm not so hot on roses, they just don't have enough radial symmetry to me. A rose is more like a spiral. This is also why I'm sort of a wanker about orchids. I don't like them. I'm sure this alone would be enough to get me excommunicated in any flower wank.


193/200 pages. Fuck yeah! I'm above quota, actually. I may finish tomorrow!

Got one of those 'did you or did you not gain admission to (insert art school here)' letters today. It's for Cap's animation program. The admissions process has three or four rounds. I try not to think about the details beyond the immediate stage of this process. Besides, thinking in those terms is a very left-hemisphere brain activity and all the best drawing is done while focusing through the right hemisphere.

Anyway, passed hurdle number one.

Related: I need to do life drawing of animals for the final portfolio rounds. Bloedel Conservatory, which is a geodesic dome perched upon a mountain in the middle of Vancouver (and which has both koi and many varieties of parrots living in it and therefore many possible models) is closing. In March. Still, SADFACE. I <3 gardens, and I love greenhoused-in gardens best of all. The winters here turn very grey. It's nice to know that you can visit a bunch of rainforest plants and tropical birds even in the middle of a freezing rainstorm.

Maybe those 'independent public donors' the article mentioned will step forward with some magical $$$ and save the place.

So the rain is gone and now we have FOG. I approve! Vancouver's November fog is spooky and cyperpunk-dystopian as all hell. Moar plz, weather.

Gel pens, which I've bought for highlighting words I think are particularly cool (in a typographic sense) when making ink notes, are actually fun sketch tools. So are those calligraphic brush markers. But the nib's inkflow generally can't keep up with the kind of slashing brushwork I favor, so I'll probably want to use actual brushes and ink.

Fan brushes are likewise the best things ever.

I'm definitely getting closer to the point where I'll feel comfortable posting stuff. I have to get over that performance anxiety eventually, so I'm working on it incrimentally.

183/200 pages! Almost to the end of my quota for the day.

Of course, Evil Doctor is always right. I should know this by now. He's the only doctor I've held onto since The Beginning of the Journey Through the Looking-Glass of being sick lol. Since 1997, in fact.*

I have drawing to do and work to do and I in fact should photograph the Japanese maple leaves, which are transformed back to bright yellows and reds when clustered in puddles against wet black concrete, and that means I don't have time to write a gigantic post.

So in short: Evil Doctor warned me that as I got better- for real- there would be an issue with some people around me. And it would surprise me when I heard this coming from otherwise well-intentioned friends.

The issue is: when you're sick in a very life-altering and long-term way for more than a decade, people get really really used to you as The Sick Person. This becomes your whole identity. I've noticed this. I can talk about many other things for a solid 90 minutes and then mention that I need to check my insulin. And all the person I'm talking to remembers about me is that I am a person with insulin problems. Because nothing else about me matters in their eyes, that is my sole identity. They don't want to hear or listen to me talk about anything else.

And, needless to say, they don't really want to talk to me about anything else.

Well, as I recover, that identity is effectively nullifed.

So I'm finding out that there are definitely people I know who really only want to know me while I'm sick or in some level of physical or psychological pain. Period. This is the identity they wanted to interact with. Period. As I cease to be that person, they no longer really want to know me. They don't have to be raging assholes, and in fact, most of them aren't. They just don't really want to interact with me as anything other than Sick Indicia. Well With Energy and A Life Indicia is not a friend they want to have.

And it's weird, but it's not that uncommon.

It's like a recovering alcoholic who has been known as The Raging Drunken Lunatic to their family and friends. What happens when that person becomes sober? Well, people who prefered to see them drunk, who knew how to deal with them when they were drunk, suddenly have no idea how to deal with them. They no longer play the role they have been counted upon to play for so long. And the funny thing is? Lots of people really really don't like it when that happens. They don't like dealing with a new person. They don't like the pigeonhole for that person to be dissolved. They don't like the status quo to change.

And wow, it is ever surreal to see it in action.

Evil Doctor also says that while it's going to be unpleasent to go through the process of losing friends who are invested in you being The Hopeless Sick Person Who Will Never Ever Get Better, it means that you'll also meet new people who actually don't mind you being better. And who see you as something other than an illness. Looking forward to that.

Anyway:

173/200 pages! Almost done.



*If anyone's curious, Evil Doctor was named for the gigantic painting of Satan tempting Christ in his office. "I'm a Luciferian," he deadpanned, when I asked him about it. Fucking awesome. He's also the only doctor to date who has admitted he had no idea how to deal with picky endocrine conditions and was like 'ENDOCRINOLOGIST NOW, LOL'.

It's funny. After so many people took a 'GYMS ARE BAD' message from my last post, I now feel obligated to defend fitness. Fitness is great! (No, really.) It makes you feel good. Granted it's also shot through with the same toxic shit as the rest of Our Society(tm) here, and we're also in the midst of a five alarm moral panic over obesity. And our food supply has never been more contaminated, nutrient-void and altogether shitty. Including that organic food us latte liberals buy at Whole Paycheck Whole Foods.

But fitness? Fitness is our friend. And hell, fitness is about the best weapon I have to keep insulin from drowning me in my own blood, so hey! Yay, fitness.

Since this post is just not grim enough yet, this is clearly the moment that I should discuss RaceFail 09!

Well, not really. I don't want to write a huge post. I have drawing to do. But at some point, as someone who is trying to write five characters, three of which are POC, I am going to have to sit down and take all that fabulous advice about Not Fucking It Up that I saved from RaceFail.

Granted, being white and middle class and with a gigantic skein of white privilege wrapped around my head, I will fuck it up. But at least I can avoid the really obvious areas of fuckup.

Also. It continues to RAIN. Rain rain rain. Yes, moving to Vancouver and complaining about the rain is like moving to hell and complaining about the air quality. But wow, this is very cold and dark and overcast and just... completely unchanging and relentless in a very ENOUGH ALREADY kind of way. Can we have some fog instead, maybe? November is Fog Month in Vancouver, usually. Enough with the driving, freezing, high-wind rain. That shit already destroyed one umbrella this week.

But hey, I'm inside and I have three of those scented candle thingies that people give me and I put in a closet and forget about- until now!- lit. And it's half-cosy.

I figured that I should talk about my process in writing Thingie here, but now I realize that process is boring as fuck to 99% of the world. Just shut up and make the art, self. Seriously.

Anyway:

170/200 pages. On quota. I'm getting close to the end.

Someday I'm going to have to write about the loleriffic (that is, both funny and horrific at once) way the fitness industry both encourages, profits from, and could not function without eating disorders, yet has absolutely no capacity to deal with them and must sort of pretend they don't exist. My personal trainer was like INDICIA WHY DID YOU CANCEL YOUR APPOINTMENT MISSY?! And I was like, 'well, because last time you had me do fucking squats in front of a wall of mirrors next to roughly five women who were all about 1/3th my size while two assholes guys waiting nearby commented on how I was a fat pig and how I should try anorexia (HAHAHAHA ASSHOLE I'VE BEEN ANOREXIC STFU KAY?). And when I said to you 'uh, you know, I'm recovering from an ED here, this is fucking triggering me' you were like: "STOP MAKING EXCUSES." '

Fuck you :) I'm not paying you $75/session for you to make me relapse :D :D :D

Anyway, when my endorphin levels will play ball (which is NOT ALWAYS), I really enjoy exercising and I don't sweat how I look as much. Weightlifting is great fun, and it's making my legs strong enough to begin to build some decent running ability. I really enjoy fitness in an ideal sense that does not involve the five kazillion mirrors everyfuckingwhere so you can examine how fat you are from every possible angle (granted, they also let you study your form while running, which is nice.)

Good drawing day today!

Also, I feel Protagonist B is now starting to come off like Ed Elric (if Ed were about 10 years older and a socialist). "I'm not a communist!" is pretty much just "DON'T CALL ME SHORT!!!11!" with political pretensions. Now I feel that to add an additional layer of lol to this, Protagonist A should flip her shit about something in a ridiculous manner too. I'm thinking it may be music, somehow. A seems to be supremely wanky about music, which (I know from direct personal experience) is absurd as hell to see in action. A also takes a laidback 'lol, he's arguing with the taxi driver, omg' attitude towards B's antics, so I feel that A should then (ironically) get into a tiff with the guy at the hotel check-in about whether Bruce Springsteen's latest album was any good. (A <3s Springsteen, I'm proud of her.) I continue to get a Misato from Evangelion vibe from A. I guess Misato was 29, so A would be a younger version of such.

I have also decided that this series will be an entirely Mary Sue/Gary Stu-free affair. Which means that A can want and wish and pine to be a fighter pilot or sniper all she likes, but NO because they don't make underage girls (who are only there as the CIA's disposible psychic kid-materiel at that) into fighter pilots or snipers in 1993-1999, unless their name is Mary. Same goes for B and peacekeeping- he is there as a translator (and to be nice and local so he can be yanked off to bases to remote view Afghanistan), not as a commissioned officer. He also does not get to be the prophecied child who saves the world (though he reaaaaaally wants to be. BUT NO.) But he does get the blue helmet. And A does get to fangirl actual fighter pilots and do weird experiments to see if being psychically connected to her helps them land on the aircraft carrier better.*

The fact that I'm not writing a superhero story makes just about everything I know (and love) about psionic powers from X-men kind of null and void. I like that word, though. 'Psionic'. I suspect the characters use psychic/psionic/psychokinetic/telekinetic all interchangably, since this is how the 'official' (lolol) material on Monarch and ULTRA tends to roll.

But no one gets Jedi Mind Tricks. It's amazing how conditioned I am to write a Jedi Mind Tricks-type story. But the characters can't be so powerful that they can just waltz out of their situation, or tangle with the gods and kings of the universe (as Jean Grey, Xavier, Emma Frost et al tend to.) The whole point is that they are embroiled in their situation. Which means they have to do what just about everyone else has to do, since most of us are not blessed with superhuman powers: deal.

How one would deal is interesting to me. Being able to nuke Neo-Tokyo with your miiiind** would kind of defeat the purpose.


And, as always:

164/200 pages.
One page above quota, actually.



*Apparently it's actually pretty damn hard to land on a carrier, especially given windspeed, the boat pitching around and the fact that even a bigass carrier doesn't give you much of a runway. Also one of the alleged Monarch survivors IRL was claiming he was used this way and that it was fun. Cool.

**I really have nothing against stories where people can nuke shit with their miiiiinds, though. I <3 X-men and I <3 Akira.

Apparently how you feel about Lady Gaga is dependent upon how you feel about Andy Warhol. Have to post on this moaaar when I'm not tired. Also, have to draw. But I really do like her persona and videos. Now she just needs to make a catchy new wave album with Timbaland or something and I will be all over that shit.

Thought du jour: I wonder how much Catholicism has fucked up Protagonist B. I wonder if Protagonist A, an American by choice, is willing to pledge allegiance to the flag. I wonder if B is willing to let the Pope tell him how to run his life. Seems like the same question: wearing the gang colors v. actually believing.

154.5/200 pages. I need to hit 156 before I go to bed. Fuck, I R TIRED. The sun sets at four pm these days, and with the freezing rain, I want to stay in and hibernate. And go to bed and not work. The day is damn short. :F

And I'm not even sick anymore! (Which means I have to call The Boy, oh noes. And be semi-presentable. Come to think of it, I think I wouldn't mind some blonde highlights. But I keep hearing my mother's voice in my head: 'a thirty year old woman should dress in a sophisticated manner, dear.' I asked her if 'sophisticated' was a polite Irish Catholic Canadian euphemism for non-slutty* and my mom denied it- but YEAH RITE. :F)

Anyway.

I am watching the American Music Awards, and Protagonist A loves this sort of stuff. I'm pleased because it's actually kind of a struggle to get A to talk about herself. B and A both really like talking, but B is the former emokid who can regale me for hours and hours on his thoughts and feelings and ideas and political beliefs and etc, etc. A, while she can talk glittery circles around the point, seems to kind of like to avoid certain subjects. Like herself.

Anyway, she won't tell me anything of substance about her past or her motivations, so I am watching the Shiny. Shiny, sparkly, disposable junk food culture. Empty sugar calories. I keep thinking of the way Precious used the iconography of MTV, BET, etc to spread a thick layer of anaesthetic glitter over her completely horrific reality. And yet, I don't think A uses this material this way. She doesn't daydream about being a pop singer or a model or a socialite. And B doesn't either, really. He doesn't seem to daydream about being the President of the EU or the Secretary General or some young messiah of a politician. Or being a heroic revoluntionary. So, why not? I think what it is, is that since both were subjected to a bunch of horrific shit and the imperative to act like there was absolutely nothing wrong at once...

...constructing a glittery fantasy life doesn't appeal. What would be really novel and neat? Telling the truth, probably. And actually being told the truth in return.

Anyway twice.

I really really love Lady Gaga's videos. There's so much Monarch imagery** in Bad Romance alone that it's like Christmas in November. And I can intellectually see the appeal in her music. I like that she wears a bunch of bubbles for a dress and put bits of wire mesh on her fingernails and various sparkly things on her eyes and dude, fabulous. But I just can't really get into her music. I wonder why. It's one of those things that I really should like, that has a musical pedigree full of things I like. But I just can't really manage to like it. Weird.

I do, however, seem to like Shakira's She Wolf just fine. That is one fun little gay disco circuit dance song. But that's also going to be my most embarrassing trashy pop music purchase from itunes... since I bought Ayo Technology (and listened to it 64 times to date. Keyrist.)


Anyway again!

148/200 pages. Almost at my quota of 149.
3/4ths through! That was fast.




*I really disapprove of the concept of sexualized dress for women being given an abusive label like 'slutty', in particular when there is a simultaneous push to be attractive and sexualized, or else you're a frumpy old cow. Or whatever. As one commentor put it on a blog somewhere, 'women are sluts when they dress sexy, ugly bitches when they don't, deviant when they do, deviant when they don't, deviant for being women period.' But the fact that I'm aware of how stupid this is doesn't make the attitude disappear. I'm not saying I approve of it, I'm just pointing to it and saying 'look, there it is.'

**According to varios conspiracy theorist people. And as usual, I couldn't care less if it's true. The more batshit this material gets, the better.

So, visiting a friend who has a cat (a VERY fluffy persian cat, my favorite kind) while just recovering from the flu and allergic as fuck to cats...

...wasn't the smartest idea I've ever hand. But I had claritin! And it... kind of doesn't make a dent against a nuclear-powered allergen like cat dander. And something in cat saliva too, I think. I should know this, I'm obsessed with biochemicals.

Between the antihistamines, corticosteroids and rescue inhaler, I'm really tired. I <3 fluffy cats, though. They are so much fun to draw. You just use a medium-soft pencil like a 3B or something and do all the fur and whiskers and stuff. Wiped out now, though.

Also, friend informed me that male characters can't be tsundere. Wonder if that's true. Isn't England from Hetalia a classic tsundere? I dunno, I'll hit wiki tomorrow and try to figure this out.

Anyway:

142/200 pages, bitchez. On quota. Tomorrow's target is 149.

I'm almost over the damn flu! Almost!

But it's raining. And I turn into an incredible wuss when I'm flu!sick. I can't take COLD. And while Vancouver doesn't really do serious weapons grade Canada COLD, it's still damp and chilly as hell out there with the rain and the high winds and the sun having gone down. And that means no walk for me. Which annoys me, I love walks in stormy nights through the damp late-fall mess of various neighbourhoods. It's inspiring.

So I had to make do with the yellow and red Japanese maple leaves in the cold puddles (reflecting the very white overcast sky) on the wet-black concrete steps to City Square today. As my Outside Stuff Visual inspiration. Sucks.

And I went to see Evil Doctor, and had to wear one of those little flu masks. Even though I don't have H1N1, because OMG OMG I COULD HAVE H1N1. Even though I don't have H1N1. (Don't think about this too much, it'll make your head hurt.) But anyway, there I am waiting for my appointment. And the children's hospital has a bookshelf of donated books that you can 'buy' for a donation of $2 or something. I can't keep away from that thing, ever.

So I pick up some hulking hardcover 80s thriller novel with an acid day-glo red and gold-stamped cover. And in that gigantic thriller-novel typeface, taking up 3/4 of the cover is the title: REIGN IN HELL or something. (Oh, lol. See, when I get sick and drugged up, I think really stupid things are funny.) And I turn it over to see the plot summary. Something like: 'When right-wing militia terrorists kidnap the president, the secret service can only turn to ONE MAN- Illinois attorney general (insert Tom Clancy-hero name here, I can't remember.)'

And Protagonist A pipes up "you know, I want the president to call ME when terrorists kidnap him. I can help! I'm a CIA-trained psychic!'

Protagonist A really, really wishes she were in an 80s Clancy-esque thriller novel. (As the hero. Not as the love interest. She's very clear on this point.) I think Protagonist B wishes he were in a tale of a heroic young man who's moral compass was saved by democratic socialism or something, and who then triumphantly went on to become the Secretary General of the UN. But alas, both of them are in a josei-esque manga about identity and relationship issues.

Meanwhile off in reality, there's a whole horrific mess going on in American politics over this Stupak character. (And okay, I'm sorry, I know it's juvenile but lol UR NAME. Some commentator on a blog somewhere was channeling their inner 12 year old and pointing out that Bart Stupak's name is essentially Fart Stupid. And how this kind of potty-mouthed ridicule is richly deserved given his amendment.)

And I'm watching this happen from the safety of Canada, where we not only have healthcare, we also have coverage for abortion.

And being fucking horrified that the US doesn't have the same. But I've been horrified that the US doesn't have socialized medicare for ages anyway. If I were an American, my bout with not-cancer and yes-thyroid tumors would have put me about $300,000 in debt. And that would have been game over for life.

And that's just way too much bad stuff to even think about, and I'm on drugs lol. So instead I'm imagining Protagonist A complaining that the president never ever calls her. And he should! And Protagonist B muttering darkly that the terrorists can keep the president (this being 2003- the president is W. Bush) .

This whole sick thing is proving educational on one point, though. How, exactly, I can continue to do helpful drawing practice while sick. And it's not that hard. You just do blind contour lines endlessly. This doesn't take a whole lot of focus. Well- it takes some. But if you're awake and lucid enough to handwrite notes, you can do decent blind contour drawing.

Granted, I've been too exhausted to even write little notes recently. At that point, you do just have to go to bed.

But Evil Doctor said pretty soon! YAY.

Daily pagecount:

134/200 pages.
Again, one more page to go to hit my quota of 134.


ETA: OMG OMG I JUST SAW LIGHTNING!!! :DDD It rains all the time here, but we rarely get a thunderstorm. Wicked.

The Tom Paris/B'Elanna relationship is actually kind of awesome. This, for instance, is hilarious. (And I think Tuvok is just epic WIN on this show in general.) What gets me, though, is that swelling music with all the flutes and strings that always wells up whenever they kiss or something. I GET THAT IT'S MEANT TO BE TOUCHING. NO RLY. I don't need the music to smack me over the head with the Heartwarming Stick. Or maybe I'm just fucking cranky. Probably!

I have to get the H1N1 shot... eventually. I'm not very motivated to do it at the moment, since it's been raining and super-windy for a good four days now. This is the time of year when Vancouver honestly begins to resemble Amegakure, in particular if you visit the Downtown Eastside and use your imagination a little. I remember this time last year, I was writing Pain/Konan something or another, and poking my head out the door to get the exact sound rain made as it fell on a partially completed buliding across the way. Which I figured would be the same as a partially demolished building. Same sound, right?

Protagonist B is ticked at me because he thinks I named him after Mitch Albom, and that this is a swipe at his idealism. Wrong on both points, I named him after Edgar Mitchell and if I didn't like the deredere component to his flaming tsundere-ness, I wouldn't let him run wild with it. Not that he ever does what I want anyway. (The character has insisted upon being Catholic, for instance. Nooooo. It's possible that Czech Catholicism is different from Roman or Irish Catholicism.. but still, Nooo!)

But this is a quality that Protagonist A also has in spades: not paying any attention whatsoever to what I want. I guess I should be happy that both characters yanked control of the story away from me so early on. But I'm concerned about B's potential to develop Nice Guy syndrome or some really unfortunate fauxgressive qualities. And A kind of has to watch it with the reckless endangerment. She can only go out and almost kill people on the road so many times and remain a sympathetic character. If I had my way, I'd have her not play quite so close to the line. Her reasoning is like this guy on Canada's Worst Driver (a show that's giving me so much material for A that it's loltastic). That she's a really really good driver so it's okay for her to speed, she's not going to hit anyone! (She hasn't to date, but you know... just, no.)

And she has this rather bullshit-like (but possibly not entirely bullshit) story about doing psychic links with fighter pilots, so that kind of extreme piloting skill rubbed off on her a bit. Or something. But that really isn't an excuse either. (And I suspect the arresting officers are really really unimpressed by this explanation in general. A's been to a holding cell more than once. And she's only 21. Yikes.)

But she ignores me totally, so hey.

For her part, Protagonist A doesn't mind being named Delilah, and seems to actually enjoy the fact that it's a loaded name for most people. Jezebel (the blog) had a discussion today about whether a reader should name her baby girl 'Jezebel' , which is a name with similar negative biblical baggage. The consensus was that it was a cool name, but the stigma associated with it would be way too much to impose upon a little girl. Protagonist A seems to make no bones about the fact that her CIA handler (a nasty piece of work in general) most likely did give her the name as a direct synonym for 'whore'. But she seems to like it. I think she sees it as a way of proving that she can take whatever abuse he can dish out. It sort of reminds me of something I read about prison inmates once. They would be brutalized by the guards, so some would cope by developing pride in the ability to take anything the guards did to them, no matter how sadistic. I get the same vibe from A.

I honestly can't remember what I named her after. I wanted a blousy Southern belle kind of name for her. 'Dinah' would have been fine, but the added hint of disobedience to authority and feminist metacommentary was too much fun to pass up. I think she came close to being 'Dalia' at one point. Probably after 'the Black Dalia', who was a female serial killer or something (I can't remember the details.)

Protagonist B, being kind of an earnest rule-follower in general, seemed to invite a very WASPy name. An 'establishment white guy' kind of name. I think I may possibly have subconsicously named him after Atwood's sleazy lawyer charcter in The Robber Bride. He was also 'Michel' or 'Mikhail' for a good long time, so I wonder why I ultimately chose to anglicize his name. Can't remember. He was almost named 'Marshall', as I recall... and ironically, he does remind me of Eninem. More than a little. Maybe if Eminem were a humanitarian and political policy geek from the Czech Republic with telepathic powerz. Anger management issues intact of course.

Anyway, the current count is:

127/200 pages.
I've got one more to go to hit my quota for today.

But I am sick. So :FFail.

It's definitely winter now, but there are still a few Japanese maple leaves clinging to the trees. Soon it will just be Vancouver's constantly changing cloud formations and clouds cut by the dark shapes of buildings and trees for me to photograph. But winter here is also interesting. It's weird to me that I seem to be really disinterested in photographing summer. But spring and fall? Hell yes plz. I'm even bored with the flowers until they just start to die a little. Lol!goth.

Boy appears to be interested, since he's sending me 'get better soon <3' emails (yeah, with the hearts and everything.) He's a Buddhist Zen type of geek rather than a I R Logical type, which I approve of. But he's a vegan, so going out for dinner with this guy is going to be interesting.

I really like the idea of vegan food, but I can't handle that much carbohydrate without being dragged through the floor by my insulin, and vegan food is also rather lacking in the one thing I can have to control my fucking insulin- Teh Protein. I think we could swing sushi, the raw protien in sashimi is enough for me to buffer the insulin gutkick of wheat in soy sauce. But still, this kind of nutritional fussing is Not Very Sexy, and kind of makes me wish I were a cyborg like Motoko Kusanagi and just ate little silver capsules of minerals or something.

Anyway, I have to make time every day to do character development for Thingie. Because Protagonist A and B never shut up, even when I'm sick, so I now have been informed that A likes Star Trek. I'm pleased, since A shows a worrying inability to appreciate either U2 or New Order (apparently because neither of them make songs that are any fun to sing in the shower.) And Protagonist B- to A's horror, does not like music. A can't figure this out. A person who does not like music! That, to A, is kind of like not liking rainbows and sunshine. Protagonist B continues to come off as slightly humorless and is turning his nose up at Star Trek and science fiction in general. But she likes it, so I'm pleased.

And B is a huge Clinton fanboy, so there's plenty of lolfuel there. I think A laughed for about five hours straight when he went to get his copy of My Life signed by BILL!CLINTON!!! and B was totally starstruck and fanboying out and A just thought it was hilarious that B was even more excited to meet Bill Clinton than she was to meet Michael Jackson. (And this is happening in 2002-4 so MJ is still alive and Clinton is actually kind of in disgrace still. And Iraq is being bombed to pieces.)

B's issue with Trek, other than the whole future/alien thing, which is too much unreality for him, is that all humanity's problems seem to have been magically solved and they are just warp-zoned instantly into this perfect state of spotless progressiveness. He seems to feel this is cheating, that he wants to see the process of humanity dragging itself out of the mud. It's a shame that he probably wouldn't watch DS9, since that, ultimately, is a show about the 24th century equivalent of UN peacekeepers. And he'd probably like it if he could get past the whole lizard-alien and Ferengi thing. But A doesn't like DS9, too much politics and religion and not enough Shiny. And it also lacks any significant women of color.

So, to your average Trek fan's horror, she likes... wait for it...


.....Voyager.

And doesn't seem to notice/care about the disjointed writing or uneven characterization. Probably because she's constantly being yanked around the world to places where they may not even have the scifi channel. And she works very uneven hours. So I guess she never sees enough to notice the problems with it. Or else she just doesn't care.

Because! Voyager has B'Elanna, who appearently is way more fun than Hoshi (A doesn't seem overly impressed with Enterprise either). B'Elanna is half-Klingon, which is pretty close to what A feels about being biracial herself. And B'Elanna is an engineer, which is cool and science-y. And in particular, no one is smashing B'Elanna in the face with the same kind of toxic racism A has to deal with, which is a nice break. The kind of cultural issues B'Elanna encounters are codified in just enough fantasy distance to not be as painful to watch. So A is delighted.

And! Plus! B'Elanna is in a relationship with a white man. It kind of amuses me, because I in my snobbery, tend to find the Tom/B'Elanna relationship cringeworthy. But A doesn't seem to care. She likes that it's overdramatic. And I think, if anything, the fact that their relationship is so rocky and shouty and difficult reassures her. After all, she and Protagonist B actually get along much better than Tom Paris and B'Elanna do. But B'Elanna and Tom can still have their objectively worse relationship, with more problems and much less ability to communicate with one another... and it's still basically okay. I think this reassures A that it is possible to have a good relationship, even if you and your partner are totally different ethnicities and in particular, if you and your partner both have serious emotional problems. Both A and B seem to really want to believe that things can be, and will be, just okay. Because underneath everything, they are really really NOT OKAY in so many obvous ways.

A and B, after all, are property of the rather infamous Project MK ULTRA. Which wasn't very nice. I think she could use that reassurance. Having partial memories of really unsmiling scientists injecting cephalpod DNA into your brainstem in an effort to make you more psychic probably feels a whole lot like having a half-Klingon side that makes you want to bite people.

And the gap between how I see the show and the character and how A (and B) see it, is interesting to me. Objectively, I'd say A is more like Tom Paris in terms of personality. She'd totally think that putting tailfins on the Delta flyer would be very important, and that the whole Captian Proton thing was a great idea! But she doesn't seem to see herself that way. She instead identifies with B'Elanna.

Anyway, good to know. I'm happy when characters tell me things.

And:

114/200 pages, y'all.
Today's quota is 121.

I'm still sick, I'm still behind in LJ, I'm still high as fuck on meds, it's still raining! But:

100/200 pages!!!! Yeah, and now my next quota is 107. :F

Thought du jour:

The more I seriously invest in doing my own Urban Fantasy Type-Comic Thing, the less I want to crack on Stephenie Meyer. I don't enjoy Twilight and the gender politics in it make me tear my hair out. But when you actually sit down and make your own thingie? You realize that it really isn't as easy as it looks from the outside. And you seem to lose enthusiasm for tearing someone else, who has done the same thing to great success, to critical nasty little shreds. I actually feel more like I'd like to sit down and have coffee with Meyer now and ask her for advice. The fact that I personally don't like her series seems completely beside the point.

But I sure don't want her level of success, either. It seems like such a double-edged sword. If I had a magic wand and I could just name what level of success I wanted and clam it (lolol), I'd ask to have a solid, reasonably loyal but unwilling to take bullshit audience. I don't need to make a zillion dollars, I just need enough to live while writing and drawing a series full time. That's all. I may have a husband who will have a more Respectable Job somewhere down the line, but if I don't, I'll just be living a fairly simple single person's life. I won't have kids or pets or a morgage or car payments.

And that level of success seems well in reach. Not easy, mind you. But reachable with dedication and effort. Both of which I can do, if my biochemistry wants to behave itself.

Whenever I'm high on medication, I always want to totally abuse my caps key. Which is, I know, kissing cousins to chatspeak. But fuck, it's so much fun!

Point form since I'm also really spacey:

-I don't have H1N1! Apparently! Because if I did, it would have hit me like an express train rather than sauntering up all week (and pretending to be unusually bad pms, at that. Weird.)

-I do have a normal flu. Which still sucks when you're asthmatic.

-I have to get the H1N1 vaccine on monday, so I hope I can drag my ass out of bed by then.

-I'm missing anotherstraycat and phoenix_prose 's burlesque debut however! (But I didn't want to give everyone there even my non-H1N1 flu.) I will be waiting for the youtube videos of the awesome.

-So I was watching Canada's Worst Driver (shut up, I'm sick) and there was a girl on there who cussed out everyone else on the road, tried to race everyone else on the road, tried to cut everyone off, and drove this massive black truck (with flames painted on the side!) and was from Calgary at that (wow, color me surprised) and somewhere in my subconscious, seeing this, Protagonist A screamed 'HOLY SHIT I WANT THAT TRUCK OMG!' And I thought, 'yeah, that's exactly how A drives.'

-I'm supposed to be reading Shake Hands With the Devil for Protagonist B's peacekeeping experience, even though he just witnessed the usual horror show that goes down in Israel rather than the exceptional horror show that went down in Rwanda. But I'm sick, so I'm watching crap on the Discovery Channel instead. Why can't it be Shark Week or something?

-I miss the gym. :(

-It's definitely winter now and it's not just me having chills. It's cold.

Still behind in LJ due to Flo. I'm lucky that I can cut my page quota and just plan to hit 100 pages by the end of Nov 15th (which is sunday.) Because I seem to be also getting a flu.

Hopefully it's just A flu, not THE flu. The CBC has at least one 'OMG H1N1 FEAR PANIC LINEUPS BANKERS ON BAY STREET GETTING THE VACCINE BEFORE YOUR KIDS OMG WE WONDER IF THE MEDIA IS INFLATING THIS OH NOES LOOKIT WHAT HEALTH CANADA HAS DONE TODAY ZOMG CHECK OUT OUR INVESTIGATIVE REPORT ON PEOPLE LYING TO GET THE VACCINE FEAR PANIC LINEUPS DEAD CHILDREN PEOPLE JUMPING THE LINE LINEUPS FEAR PANIC!!' story per night. Sometimes two.

That said, I don't want to get even a normal flu. I like not being sick.

Also- I need to see Precious. But it's going to give me so much material for Protagonist A that I really need to wait for the dvd and be able to pause it to make notes and sketches. That other movie, Inside Hana's Suitcase I think it's called? The one about the Czechoslovakian girl who died in the holocaust. I need to see that one for Protagonist B. But the same need to pause and note-take applies. Plus I'm possibly getting the flu and may not want to share my maybe-H1N1 with a whole theatre of people.

It's really REALLY windy totday, which is the best weather to go for a walk in. So I guess I should- while I still can!

86/200 pages. Temporary quota is 100 pages by the end of sunday.

77/200 pages

On quota, finally, for today. I'm tired as hell because of Auntie Flo, and you can only draw so much if you can't really concentrate.  Between Flo and the drawing, I'm behind in everything LJ and owe people lots of comments.  I'll get to that as soon as I have energy again. 

Next quota is 84.  I'll hit the midpoint, 100 pages, a bit early given that the real daily quota is 6.6666666 pages.  By rounding up to 30, I'll actually be doing 210 pages.. and I might, too.  We'll see where I am at the end of the month.  This whole exercise is proving to me how essential intensive daily drawing is for animation.  I'll explain more about this when I have more energy and less Flo-induced emo going on.

Jim Carrey's website is AMAZING.  Check out the Origins page in particular.  (I'm not sure what's better, the bird belching his tweets word by word, the kid with the gigantic hockey puck or the audio juxtoposition of the national anthem with animal sounds.)


56/200 pages!  Quota today is 63.

I am going to be an animator after all.

Capilano University is actually this perfect mutant hybrid of the nice aspects of UBC (an air of WE R SERIOUS UNIVERSITY) and the nice aspects of Emily Carr (creative student body, engaged student body, ten zillion very very dedicated student clubs and groups, which tells me that people enjoy going there and really get invested in the community).  It's up on the top of a very leafy mountain and not situated with a whole town square and community like UBC, but down the hill a bit is a cosy pub and this one really fancy-looking English coffee lounge.  They all take your student card as a discount.  Want.

Met a boy.  That particular cute, sweet and slightly unassuming sort that I tend to go for.  Not through the program, just by chance.  Will be having coffee, may have to buy sexy underwear sooner than I thought.

However, this is not a bad thing since I seem to have lost 10lbs of candida bloat and water, so I'm now 140 again, which is okay for my height and no longer cheesing off my insulin.   Fat percentage is falling too.  Good.  If nothing else, I like and respond rapidly to exercise. I now want to see what learning how to run properly and becoming a moderate weightlifter will do.  I've never really trained to build and hold lean musculature before.  I might shoot for running that annual half-marathon Sun Run thingie in April.

Inspired by woekitten 's recent tangle with an assholish ex-Montreal person in the toronto community, I have joined vancouver !  And there are two 100+ comment fights about the Olympics on the first page alone. 

An IRL friend and I are going to Capilano University today for the intake meeting on their intensive two year animation program.  I don't particularly want to do the eight month digital animation thing that follows it up, but I might.  I dunno.  I want to be a production designer rather than a 3D animation person.  Actually, I mostly just want a halfway stable day job while I make comix.  A day job where I draw! MOAR.  3D animation irritates me in that it does not involve enough drawing.

Or maybe it does, after a fashion?

Also, the Vancouver autumn has finally transitioned from Yellow Maple Leaf-fall to Desolate Freezing Rain Winter.  (Though I guess the japanese maples are still turning and falling?)  Soon I'll have nothing to photograph but birds and architecture and clouds.  I'm trying to angle for another Tofino trip this Christmas, but my sister will have The Kid then, so I don't know if schlepping a newborn to the other side of Vancouver Island is in the cards.

Also:

42/200 pages.  On quota for yesterday, today's quota is 49.

Ron Paul, Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rusdie, Bill Maher and Joe Conason all have fabulously fun faces to draw.  I like a lot of their eyebrows.  And Paul, for all his annoying gliberatiran politics also does this really great wise-ass thing with his lower lip.  He also has these great curvy perma-wrinkles in his forehead. 

It really amuses me that Conason, though about 40+ years older than Protagonist B, actually kind of looks a lot like a considerably older, slightly less irritable version of Protagonist B.   He's got THE EYEBROWS.  That really harsh V.  Also he seems like he has less rage-expression lines etched into his face.  I think that if Protagonist B lives to be sixtyish, he'll have LINES OF RAEG carved into his face.  Or possibly the Forehead Of Incredulousness.  (Which is what you get when you are constantly going 'what, seriously? I can't believe how stupid that is!' at the world at large.)  One thing I've noticed about B, though.  He doesn't do cynicism.  Or incredulousness either, I think.  He just goes straight from idealism to RAEG. 

Protagonist A seems more even-tempered.  Which is fortunate, since she's the one who likes the bigass guns.  (Unfortunately, she also likes speeding.)  I really need to draw less model-airbrushed women in general (and thank god I've moved away from DRAWING SUPERMODELS, though they tend to be what you have in glossy magazines full of pretty clothes- and I'm there for the clothes).  But I think Protagonist A would grow up to look like our current Governor General, should she make it to see the other side of sixty.  Michaelle Jean has the same soft, somewhat rounded features, and the little crescent moon eyebrows of overall non-stressing too.  (Dude, I love eyebrows.)  Protagonist A doesn't stress shit the way Protagonist B does.  He tears his hair out, she handwaves stuff and gets speeding tickets.  (And then doesn't pay.  Because she seems congenitally unable to remember to care about it.  And therefore isn't supposed to drive period.  Yet there she is, driving anyway.  Maybe this is why she hates the police?)*

Also- SOMEHOW- when this happens?  She needs to have this hat.


*The question of why Protagonist A hates the police is one of the enduring mysteries of her character.  By now, I'm almost hoping it's like The Noodle Incident in Calvin and Hobbes, and I never find out.