You Can Choose Which Finger, Even The Rude One Will Do
That title will make sense eventually, I promise.
If there’s one person (and he would be the first to say there’s never just one person, it’s always groups) that has done more to popularize and legitmize webcomics and indie comics, and to make niche foreign comics available to North American audiences than Chevalier Christopher Butcher, then I don’t know who that would be. Y’know, little things like co-founding and largely running TCAF, being instrumental in running The Beguiling for much of its history, scouting manga for importation to the US/Canada market and editing stone fuck classics are why. This is aside from the fact that he is the sweetest dude in the world and is compelled to take care of people down to his core¹.
So when something he’s built is under challenge, when he feels the need to ask for help, people step up. You may recall that TCAF launched a pop-up store in the Toronto Reference Library for the 2014 holiday season; it being what the kids call a roaring success, the shop stuck around as an ongoing concern under the name of Page & Panel². Like everything else, it’s feeling the pinch of public places closing, and with TCAF cancelled, they’re also missing out on an expected bump in sales. So Butcher and the TCAF folks are asking for some help:
Happy Giving Tuesday! The pandemic has hit our festival shop Page & Panel hard and we need your help. Please consider supporting our vibrant community space! https://gofundme.com/f/page-and-panel #GivingTuesdayNow, #GivingTuesdayCa #TCAF2020
Look, I get it, we’re all tired and cranky and many of us are about a week from being From Circumstances. But some of us are still okay, and maybe even don’t need all the stimulus money that we maybe have received from the gubmint, and could kick a few bucks to P&P (along with creators that could use a hand, many of whom have direct cash links on their sites)?
The first day of fundraising went well, and they’re about a third of the way to meeting the goal that will stabilize finances and hopefully allow for staff to be re-hired. If you can’t give away cash, maybe that comic you were going to buy anyway could be bought from them? Or possibly you have your eye on something from The Beguiling’s online art store? Plenty of chances to lend a hand, or (as Topato would say), a finger or two.
Spam of the day:
We are also ready to offer professional EN-RU and RU-EN translations. All our developers are from Ukraine and Russia!
You can’t see it here, but the body of this spam was ridden with not-quite-standard Roman letters, designed to be readable but also defeat text-matching based filters; the f in from was actually italic, with swooping descender, likely the forte indicator (𝆑, which may or may not render in your browser) from a musical score. So color me slightly distrustful that you are actually looking for a business partner to market your computing services in the West, unless those services are widespread cybercrime.
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¹ Although he is an inveterate trash-talker when playing drunk Pac Man Vs and not above attempting to body-check opponents away from the control stick. You might be twice my size, but you ain’t chasing ghosts onto me, Butcher.
² That link took me forever to find, as the name consists of two words that appear all the hell over this blog.
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