The most magical day of the year, or maybe two or three days of the year? And I’m being serious — for something that has the potential to bring down the entire site, to be able to log in with the otherwise-unused admin account, press a button, and have things patch to the next release without a hitch? That’s pretty damn impressive, even if it’s not really anything to do with webcomics.

Also only webcomic-adjacent is our main topic today. Longtime readers of this page will recall that one of the many friendships I’ve been privileged to make in my 15+ years of semi-abusive opinion-mongering is that of KB “Otter” Spangler¹, creator (and still writer) of A Girl And Her Fed², person that I can call on if I ever need to make a problem “go away”, and wrangler of the most wonderful words. Let’s be clear about this — I love her for her magnificent mastery of profanity and euphemisms, for her endlessly amusing goofball dogs, for the stash of Thin Mints with which I have been plied, but most of all for her words. She not only writes up a storm, she edits other people³ whose words I love and makes their words (and maybe yours?) better.

But we are here today to discuss Spangler’s words; I think I’ve had an alpha-read of each of her novels and while I have made the odd observation or suggestion here or there, I am usually too engrossed to to nitpick. Her latest series is cosmic sci-fi and features a galactic-level intelligence that is also a child and has discovered humanity. For thousands of years, its favorites (who’ve come to be known as Witches) have been given the ability to ask for galactic-level intelligence skills to be brought to bear, which may as well be magic. Thing is, said child godling is easily distractable, sometimes alarmingly literal, and can’t do everything — think about the most wonderful, eager-to-please Golden Retriever puppy you’ve ever known.

Now imagine it with near omnipotence. Mind that tail underfoot.

By luck and circumstance, the Witches have learned to direct that raw power and potential to shepherd the expansion of hairless plains apes to countless worlds, and mostly oversee shipping and logistics.

What? What else are you going to use near-instantaneous travel across galactic arms for? Stuff’s got to get from world to world, and supply chains are tricky even with a child godling making things just happen. Then there’s the simple fact that people faced with various inhospitable worlds can either try to change the world to fit the people, or they can change the people to fit the world. Because it’s cheaper, a thousand gene-tweaked versions of humanity exist, and where there are obvious differences, somebody is going to decide they’re superior to somebody else. Same shit, different millennium.

In Stoneskin, the newest Witch tries to wrap her mind around the sudden shift in her life — from a backwater, hardscrabble world to one of the galaxy’s political elite in an instant, with very little time to get up to speed. And out today, the followup: The Blackwing War, where it becomes quickly apparent that for every reason the Witches have to prevent a war of extermination on the part of genetic supremacists there may be an equally good one to keep out of it, province-sized extermination camps or no.

Spangler’s writing of the human condition is sharp, her hopes and her cynicism for the potential of humanity brought to bear with words that range from scalpel-sharp to blunt instrument as the situation requires. You’ll hold your breath along with Tembi Stoneskin as she tries to find a way forward that will save everybody, knowing all the while that it simply isn’t possible. There are unknowable minds in the galaxy that cannot be understood, and the worst of them are about 2 meters tall, more or less, bipedal, and like to dress up in black leather uniforms.

Start with Stoneskin, then grab The Blackwing War, and dive into Spangler’s back catalog while waiting for the next one to come out. Whichever book it may be, in whichever series, it’s going to have some fantastic words.

Spam of the day:

Hello, my name is Tyrell , I wanted to personally reach out to you today hoping we could potentially partner together.

I only partner with other Garies Tyrrell, and that’s two Rs, dammit.

_______________
¹ She doesn’t really go by Otter any more, but she did when her number first went into my phone so she’s now Otter forever.

² I love all the variations on your art in the strip over the years, Otter, but the smartest thing you ever did was partner up with Ale Presser to do the pictures of Act III.

³ I would pay good money to read a full-length Vernon original draft with Spangler’s edits in situ.

There’s some creators that I just smile when they have something new going on, or something new to share. Got some smiles going today that I thought I’d share.

• Doing an enormous, complex, emotionally-deep (not to mention sometimes fraught) story that doesn’t pay the bills around your other paying gigs¹ takes a lot of planning and patience. Barbarous (by the absolutely stellar team of Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota) wrapped up it’s first “season” of five story arcs six months back, followed by a series of guest–illustrated side stories until end of last year, and resuming today.

  But more importantly, we’ve had a couple of teaser images for the forthcoming Season Two, which makes me believe that Ota and Hirsh are getting ready to drop some new plot goodness on us. How excited am I for the return of Barbarous in any form, but especially Season Two? I momentarily mistook guest illustrator Niki Foley’s page today as the start of the new season, as her style is reasonably close to Ota’s. In any event, today a side story, and soon the triumphant return and hopefully some comeuppance for a twerp who pissed off the wrong people. I can’t wait.

• I will never not wake up and want a new comic from Jeffrey Rowland. Never So much so that I’ve apparently been invading his dreams, and while I understand on an intellectual level that running the company that makes it possible for dozens of webcomickers to make a living, when he can find a moment to chronicle whatever a couple of weirdos (chosen from at least seven different cohorts of weirdos) are up to, it’s always worth it.

  And in the past couple of days, those weirdos have been Dug (the groundhog), Sheila The Horse (the horse), and Observation Duck. Everybody feel good for these weird animals that live in the center of the Earth as they try to live their dreams and live with the consequences of same.

• You know who is the most relentlessly positive person on the planet, just so invested in the idea of you being as happy as she is and determined to make the whole world more joyous? Colleen AF Venable. Doesn’t matter if the you in question is a reader, a fellow creator, or a bunch of bats that she traveled halfway ’round the world to help care for. Come Monday, Venable will be in a YA-GN Zoom meetup with fellow creator Mark Crilley to launch his latest, mention her most recent, and generally show the process behind making awesome graphic novels.

  The session will be hosted by Book Beat of Oak Park, Michigan, who will have signed copies available for in-person pickup or mailing. Fun time kicks off at 5:00pm EDT on 15 March, 2021, with free tickets available now (or just watch the stream at Book Beat’s Facebook page). Venable’s always a delight in conversation (something I discovered exactly 13 years ago as of Monday and her Crilley convo), and I suspect this discussion will be no different.

Spam of the day:

Basically we provide full turnkey solutions to launch your very own online betting website with real money odds and casino where you controll winnings, players and everything else?

So instead of running this solution yourself, where you are the house and the house always wins, you are going to sell it to me, so I can be the one with the guaranteed winning? This tells me you are not able to make money even with a casino, which puts you in some pretty rarefied company, and bodes ill for your venture.

_______________
¹ Not least being their co-writing duties on Pixels Of You, due in November, with art from JR Doyle.

Hey, how are you? I’m doing okay, just trying to keep up with everything that’s going on these days, and a couple things jumped out. Unsurprisingly, they’re at two of the focal points for the study of comics in this country, and I doubt you’ll find either of them surprising. They’re taking somewhat opposing tacks on the whole downslope of the pandemic (if downslope it be — get your vaccine and then stay the hell home until a lot more people have their vaccine, too), and I’ll let you decide which is closer to the right of it.

• In the great heartland, you’ve got the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State (pardon me, the Ohio State), who have a whole slate of virtual events going on right now. The one that caught my eye features Mari Naomi (they of the queer, disabled, and of color cartoonist databases), to be featured in conversation with the Billy’s Associate Curator, Caitlin McGurk, as part of the ongoing efforts of Art+Feminism to close the information gap around gender, feminism, and the arts.

  The program will run 22 March from 2:00pm to 3:00pm on Zoom, and requires advanced registration. Naomi’s appearance is part of Art+Feminism’s 2021 Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, the Billy’s contribution to which will take place on 24 March from noon to 4:00pm (all times EDT). The live Zoom session again requires pre-registration. Both sessions allow for accommodations (like like captioning or interpretation), but you have to email libevents, which can be found at the Ohio State University, which is a dot-edu; for best results, email at least a week before the event.

  Oh, and if you happen to actually be in Columbus, Ohio, we’ve previously noted that the Billy is open for extremely limited visits — essentially, getting into the library (weekdays only) or museum (weekends only) is by appointment only, and will remain so for the duration.

• By contrast, this past weekend our friends at the Cartoon Art Musuem in San Francisco have reopened to the public, albeit with some controls:
  

  The Cartoon Art Museum will be open every Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 5pm starting immediately, with plans to build toward our full six-days-a-week schedule in 2021 in full compliance with the safety guidelines established by the city of San Francisco and the State of California.

  Masks or face coverings are mandatory for all visitors, who will be required to maintain social distance from other parties visiting the museum. Occupancy will be limited to 25% capacity for the safety of our visitors and staff.

  That from the email they sent to me; the full safety plan is here and includes capacity controls (no more than 33 folks on the premises, including staff), spaced entry (10 minutes between groups and no more than 11 people in any gallery), closure of interactive features, and reduced contact in the store¹. Oh, yes, and mandatory masking and distancing requirements because you’d be surprised how many people need to be told.

  Given that San Francisco is a hub for travel, given that we haven’t really gotten transmission rates down anywhere in the country yet, given that people are idiots, I’d personally have held off for another month or two before making this decision², but I’m not the one looking at the income statements and determining what keeps CAM as a going concern, so I’m not going to second-guess them.

  I’m also not going to be hanging out inside anyplace longer than it takes me to gather a to-go order anytime soon, and absolutely not going anywhere where people aren’t masked³ even though I’m a full month past shot #2 at this point. Rushing back to no controls is what’s going to give us Wave Number Three, and I won’t have any of those folks on my conscience.

Okay, that’s it for today. Just … stay home for a little longer, keep masking and distancing and washing your hands. If we’d done that a year ago (and demanded meaningful quarantine for arriving travellers), we’d be New Zealand by now.

Spam of the day:

Rapid Covid-19 Test Kits – Buy-Rapid-Tests

Oh yes, I am entirely going to trust my life to something sold by a sketchy parasitoid like you, “Graham”. Die in the most ironic manner possible, and in your last moments realize that it was your own hubris that brought about your demise.

_______________
¹ Okay, you know how serious I take all of this, but they might be going a little overboard on this part. Stock handled in the store won’t be re-shelved for 24 hours, if you bring your own bag you can’t put it on the counter, thorough surface cleanings, and suchlike. We’ve known for a good while now that fomites aren’t a significant risk with COVID, but you know what? Not my museum and if you’re going to let people in, they’re erring on the side of caution.

² And if you’re going to be open two days a week, I’d probably have made it one weekend day, one midweek day, with a thorough airing-out in between. Aerosol concentration is the name of the game.

³ So basically, Texas.

A week back, I wrote about a new kind of collaborative storytelling, in the form of a game from Jeeyon Shim and Shing Yin Khor that involves prompts to dredge through one’s memories and craft a story from them. There are things created (journal entries, letters) to go along with the experiences, and at a sufficient pledge level on the Kickstarter, physical artifacts and ephemera.

In the time since The Field Guide To Memory launched its email playthrough (there will be a full set of prompts sent to Kickstarter backers as a PDF), both Shim and Khor have launched new campaigns in this new category that now has a name: a keepsake game.

Shim’s funding The Last Will And Testament Of Gideon Blythe (I saw the launch too late to get in on the limited physical rewards, dammit), and Khor yesterday launched A Mending, which has an embroidery mechanic. We’re going to talk about the latter today, not because it’s any more interesting than TLWATOGB or the game mechanic is more interesting, but because of a pair of secret stretch goals that Khor revealed after the funding level they had in mind was crossed¹.

A new kind of game/story/experience needs new kinds of ideas associated with it, and Khor’s given us two. The first isn’t too unheard of, but the second is something really special. From the Kickstarter update:

I’ll be releasing art template files for A Mending under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license so you can design/make your own cards and maps. Of course, you can make your own maps and cards for personal use and adapt the game however you like anyway, but template files will make it a lot easier if you would like to maintain some visual consistency. You can also distribute the things/expansions/files you make, albeit non-commercially (totally fine if you want to direct people to your tip jar, though). These files will be released close to the start of fulfillment, likely in late April. [emphasis original]

There’s a real tendency among creators, one that is entirely logical and proper, to view their creations as How This Thing Should Be. There may be adaptations into other media which they are or are not involved in, but once something’s done and released, it’s kind of cast in concrete. Khor is explicitly recognizing that a story that is as much prompts for the audience to fill in as it is structure will never be cast in concrete; the story of A Mending will have as many (or more) variations as there are people who read/play/experience it, and they are acknowledging that it’s not a sole creation.

That idea of my thing isn’t just my thing is even bigger in the second reveal:

I’m creating two $1500 grants for people who would like to adapt A Mending for wider accessibility. One grant is focused on visual accessibility, the other on range-of-motion accessibility. These grants come with a free commercial license, so they can take 100% of profits from work they choose to make commercially available (I will only need attribution). The non-exclusive commercial license includes my art, writing and game design work. What does this mean? Maybe it’s someone selling raised versions of the cloth map in high contrast colors. Maybe it’s porting the game to Roll 20. Maybe a website that produces randomized voiceovers for all the cards. I don’t really know but I’d like to find out too! [emphasis original]

What distinguishes Khor’s announcement from so many previous nods towards accessibility is a) it’s not members of a group that need accommodation having to come as ask for it, and b) it need not be done on a volunteer basis. The allow others to profit from their adaptation part is unique enough; the grant is, as far as I can tell, unprecedented.

I have never seen a creator so explicitly say I have made a thing that is what I want to see in the world but recognize that I can’t predict all the ways that my version of it may preclude others from enjoying it. I want to not only invite you to modify it in ways that I can’t think of and allow you to profit from it, I will pay you to do so.

We’ve talked about the unique nature of comics and how they are read enough times here at Fleen. On a few occasions we’ve mentioned accessibility, but there’s not been a huge exploration of accessibility around comics as a medium; I think it’s just been decided that if you haven’t got sufficient vision, you’re out of luck. Given that the game will have more than just a reading component, but also tactile/motor control components, there are potentially many ways that A Mending could be made more widely accessible². No one person could conceive of them all, but if a crowd could come together to make the initial form of A Mending, why not a crowd of suggestions as to how it could be better?

I have a feeling that keepsake games will be taking off as a category any day now; others will see what Shim and Khor have done, and try to create something that instills as much feeling in their own audience (others still will make slapped-togther crap to try to cash in). Some will be spare, some rife with stuff, and different genres of story will evolve. Will there be another 5-to-6 figure funding of a little game that takes an hour or two to play? Only to the degree that there are wildly original thinkers, people whose brain is (to quote Rich Stevens) the only place that bakes that cookie³. Audiences will be following (and I’m about to get fancy here) the auteur, just to see what they crank out now.

And the very smartest ones will be like Khor, finding ways to enrich the values of their creations by giving up control and ownership, and seeking out others to remix each new project’s DNA.

The Last Will And Testament Of Gideon Blythe is funding for another seven days, and is presently approaching eight times its US$1800 goal. A Mending has 21 days to go and cleared US$80K in the time it took me to write everything since footnote 1; the limited-edition everything-provided tiers (just go read the descriptions; they’re a hoot) are long gone, but more than 1000 people have backed at the levels that provide physical game assets. If you want to see what Khor and Shim are like when they combine their creative abilities, search Twitter for #FieldGuideToMemory.

Spam of the day:

The best fake id maker in the market for over 15 years

Neat trick linking ScamAdvisor and other sites to purportedly show how good your fake IDs are, but with links that actually redirect to your site. Sneaky. In any event, where the hell do you think anybody is going right now that they’d need a fake ID?

_______________
¹ For the record, the campaign reached its US$12,000 target in about 17 minutes, and the limited tiers were claimed within an hour. The secret threshold for the secret stretch goals was US$60,000 — five times goal — and Khor sent out the update last night. As of this writing, A Mending sits just under US$80,000 in pledges.

² My immediate thought was around issues of fine motor control.

³ Nine years on and I still think about that quote at least once a month, although I frequently misremember Stevens as having said it at SDCC or Splat!.

Got a press release in the mail and while it did a lot very well, it did something that I think is … overblown. Ultimately, I think it’s a misunderstanding of what one element in here means/implies, and that this could have been better if we’d left it out. Let’s break it down:

[Identifying information redacted]

[title]
A webcomic about [description]

TAIWAN – Monday, 1st of March, 2021

Under embargo until Thursday, 1st of April, 2021

Taiwan-based first time comic creator [name] is excited to announce that our manga style fantasy comic, [title], will be available in English, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese on Patreon starting 1st of April, 2021, and available at [URL] for free starting 8th of April, 2021!

[Title] will be available on Patreon for early page releases, with the top Patreon tier also getting exclusive behind the scenes and in progress works. All patrons will additionally receive discord access to chat with the creators. But the comic will not be hidden behind a paywall — [title] will be released weekly for free on the main site.

Follow the titular character, [name and details], as she tries to manage the power of an ancestral spirit she wasn’t prepared to receive. As she ventures from the broken tatters of her own small tribe into the larger world on a quest for revenge, she learns how much bigger the world is than herself, and how deeply entrenched her enemy really is.

Key Points

• A story of magic, monsters, gods, and a girl gifted with the strength of many.
• Watch [name]’s powers grow as she learns to control the link with her guardian spirit.
• Experience a harsh world of scarcity and loss.
• The friends and enemies she makes along the way shape her as she grows — for better or worse.
• A long but finite story with weekly updates.
• Patreon is available, but not a requirement to enjoy the comic.
• Writing by [author, who also sent the release].
• Illustration by [artist].
• Chinese and Spanish translations by [translator].

We hope you’ll join us, and [name], on this journey!

Press Assets
Please see this google drive folder for press assets: [URL]

About [creator]
[Name] is a first time creator trying to break into the wonderful world of comics. To learn more about [creator], please visit [URL].

Okay, here’s what’s good:
There’s a lot of information here, with a couple of grafs of useful information, and that bullet list of key points, which somebody who is busy can use to construct a puff piece that looks like they wrote it, but really was constructed out of the creator’s preferred talking points. For somebody that’s super busy, that’s useful.

Also useful is that link to visual assets, which would save somebody looking to embed some images in a story the time of locating, copying, and formatting them; again, for the busy toiler in the content mines, very helpful¹.

But if you’re that busy in the content mines, and looking to save that much time as you crank out a tidy 600 words to try to make your $50 for the day, you have to ask if this is where you want to spend your 15 minutes of effort:

[Name] is a first time creator trying to break into the wonderful world of comics.

First-timers don’t have to do all this — you provided a couple of preview images, a couple of pages (which are mostly single panels), and not enough reason to tell me why you, [Name], are worth an embargo. Major publishers sometimes ask that reviews be held until 2-6 weeks before release of a book from an established creator, but I’ve never received an embargo request from them. You also don’t embargo a story until day of release unless you’re a major, established, recognized name.

Keanu Reeves co-writing his first comic? Yeah, that could benefit from everybody racing to get their stories out on the morning of the same day. Somebody that can’t point me to their prior work, or even a quick peek at the first couple of installments? They can’t benefit from a day-of embargo (and those that can aren’t sending out notices a month in advance because that’s how embargoes get broken²).

As a new creator, you want to start drumming up interest in advance of launch to give people a reason to follow you, because honestly? That reason isn’t in the press release. I think that at least half the stories I’ve read in the past decades could be described by the bulleted talking points without filing off the serial numbers, and while the preview images were nicely done, they don’t show how they work as comics. They were closer to pin-ups.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m shitting on [Name], but the dateline, the embargo, all the rest? It’s like getting a rando online sliding into your DMs to say they’ve got the greatest! idea! ever!! but you’ll need to sign an NDA before they’ll talk to you.

The directives to only use this particular version of your logo on light backgrounds, and that version on dark backgrounds, with size and proportion requirements? Ain’t happening. The store that’s already built with merch before launch (including merch not with the comic on it, but your studio logo)? Likewise. You’re starting at Square One; the next step is Square Two, but you’re trying to jump to about Square Seventeen. It’s not going to be taken seriously.

The hustle and confidence are admirable, but you’re going to have to earn the clout you’re faking-until-making (which is not a bad thing; dress for the job you want, not the one you have and all that) by showing your work. You saw how the very biggest, coordinated PR campaigns are formatted, but you aren’t in that league yet. You may or may not ever be there. But take a look at the most beloved webcomics by new creators that you follow and look to see how many launched this way. I’ll make the Toby Ziegler bet that the number is zero.

So what would I recommend for [Name]? Sure, a major comics or pop culture site won’t pay attention to your release unless it’s in this format (but then, they aren’t going to pay attention to an unknown anyway), but niche blogs like this one? Send folks like us a quick email that introduces yourself, not in the third person, tell me that you’ve got a project you’re readying for launch, tell me where I can direct readers to see more of your work before the launch date, and thank me for the consideration. I may or may not run it, depending on a zillion factors on the day.

Worry about t-shirts with your studio logo on them when people beg for them, not a month before launch. Oh, and for a title? Maybe choose something that doesn’t have 65 entries on the Wikipedia disambiguation page, including 13 from arts & entertainment, and 4 from some of the largest properties in modern pop culture. All the work you’re doing to get noticed will be lost in that background radiation.

But the number one factor to get me to write about something day of launch or even before? Show much something of you in the work³, and prior work, that gives me confidence that it wasn’t 98% of your effort spent on the launch and the remainder on everything else. This isn’t about who’s first off the line with the biggest, most dramatic start; it’s about who’s still showing improving work after 50, 100, 150 updates, with a voice and POV that is unique and authentic.

Spam of the day:

MR HO CHOI wrote: I visited your website and saw your products. I have to say that I am very impressed with the quality of your products. Therefore, we would like your company to ship large quantities of your product to our country for commercial use.

I would be happy to ship MR HO CHOI samples of the pixelform opinions that I monger so freely. You can have all 1440 words here as a starter.

_______________
¹ And I hate to bring this up, but those super-useful assets? You didn’t enable downloading in Google Drive, so I have to take a screenshot to use them and the usefulness just dropped to zero. Might want to fix that.

² And you should know that honoring an embargo is entirely a function of how much an outlet is afraid of being cut off from you in the future. Unknowns don’t get to make those demands.

³ That’s the other thing with this form of press release: it’s about product, with all that implies. Product is designed according to an algorithm with precision to appeal to certain people. It’s soulless.

It’s inescapable. There’s no part of life — modern or at any point in history — that humans have spent more time and worry and brain cycles to the point of obsession on than sex. And yet we as a society — modern and I’ll wager at nearly every point in history — do a crappy job of preparing people for it. They get all fizzy with hormones as teens and starting messing around without really knowing what they’re doing and maybe they muddle through to a good understanding and maybe they don’t.

Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan think that we should do better. Fortunately, after nearly eight years of cartooning about sex in all its forms — a cartoon that turned into an exploration of what it means to be human so gradually I didn’t even notice — they’ve got a ton of knowledge to draw upon (and even better, a metric ton of resources to pull from) and have produced the book that they wanted at that age¹.

Let’s Talk About It is that book, and it’s not only useful for the teen in your life, it’s a damn good primer for anybody that is looking to better navigate the world of sex, which isn’t as much about sex as you might think. If you want to sum up the message of Let’s Talk About It (a PDF ARC of which was provided to me by publisher Random House Graphic) with a quick glance at the index: the topic that gets the second most references is sex, whereas the most cited is relationships. Or, as Nolan and Moen observe in an afterword:

Really, sex education is relationship education, because while we’re not all going to have sex, we are all going to have relationships with the people around us. When you learn about the wide world of sex, relationships, and intimacy, you learn more about yourself and others, which helps you to be a better person and to do better by others.

So the It that is going to be Talk[ed] About is nominally sex, but really not. Sex is a huge part of being human, and just as you can’t be a full human without determining what sex means to you, you’re also not going to be good at sex unless you’ve learned to be a good human.

The bulk of the book is a series of short vignettes, featuring two or three main characters, almost none of whom get names² or backgrounds, and all of whom share their feelings, experiences, wants, and information with their friends, siblings, (would-be) partners, and others.

They give each other respect, attention, and consideration, through conversations that are short and sweet or long and difficult (the most challenging being the recognition that you could be in an abusive relationship in either role; this is the first book about sex and relationship for teens that I’ve ever seen that addresses the idea that we have to examine ourselves for shitty behavior, and it appropriately does so by looking at a teen cis male who is at a crux — he could fall into some really toxic behaviors or choose to better himself. The book is worth the purchase price for this section alone, and should be presented to every person before they get to dating age).

Most of these interactions finish on an ellipsis, a cliffhanger, a chance for the reader to decide themselves where it goes as they consider the full lifecycle of relationships — How do I start? What do we do? What next? What if I don’t like ____ about myself? What if I get rejected? — is presented, and in all of them, a key nugget of wisdom jumped out at me. Some that have stuck with me:

• Consent is not lukewarm, the absence of a no, surrendering to badgering, impaired or unconscious, jumping to conclusions.
• The most important relationship you’ll have is with yourself. Relationships will come and go. But you? You’re with yourself for life.
• Chat it out before you pound it out.
• The vocabulary of gender is still growing, so if you don’t see something here that fits you, don’t sweat it. Your identity is still real and valid.
• There’s no one correct way you’re supposed to feel about it.
• Sex is a SUPER personal thing, so there’s no official “right time” or “falling behind anybody else”.
• Good sex and bad sex are subjective and depend on A LOT of things.
• If you want to judge the success of the sex you’re having, do it by how much fun you’re both having. Good sex is consensual, communicative, fun, and enjoyable.
• Thoughts and actions are different things.
• Punishing yourself doesn’t solve anything.

And, my favorite line in the book:

• I want to so baaaad.³

I found it striking how many of those quotes could apply to multiple, many, or most of the topics discussed. So much of this book — the parts about sex and the parts about things that are adjacent to sex and the parts that maybe aren’t about sex at all — boils down to one perfect little thought, a universal sentiment (much like the universally-applicable New Yorker cartoon caption) that applies to nearly every situation:

There really isn’t such a thing as “normal”. Just try to be the best YOU that you can be.

It’s a spectacular job, one that treats its subject and its target audience with the utmost respect. I’d only change one thing (and again, this was an advance copy, subject to further pre-publication edits and may not be valid complaint): there’s one reference to latex gloves (in a panel without much room for words) and one to latex or nitrile gloves (where there was more space to play with).

<EMT voice>Latex is an allergen, kids. Use nitrile gloves.</EMT voice>

Apart from that maybe-not-even-there concern, I will unreservedly recommend Let’s Talk About It (available wherever you can find books from next Tuesday, 9 March 2021) for anybody wanting to know more about sex and being a good human.

Which is to say, anybody you think is not going to freak at truthful, but occasionally textbook-explicit, information about mashing junk together. And maybe one or two who will, but need the info anyway.

Spam of the day:

The best smart water fountain for your kitty & doggy

Smart water for my dog, who eats condoms off the ground and tissues out of the trash can and would drink out of the toilet if the lid wasn’t down? Yeah, don’t think it’s smart water that she needs.

_______________
¹ Teen!Erika and Teen!Matt make an appearance at the start to set up the conceit.

² I’m not counting the plants named Queen Beth or Sir Gumbleleaf. In one case, there’s a non-trademark-violating Siri-alike, who is rather more conversational and situation-aware than the real deal. In another, a person in distress is helped by a friend-to-be and they introduce themselves. In a couple of conversations, a third party is referred to by name, but doesn’t appear in the conversation. Considering there’s nearly 20 dialogues in the book and not a lot of specific people, there’s a lot of room for readers to project themselves into the conversations and become involved in the topic at hand.

³ This one had nothing to do with sex. It was the response to the observation You want to tell me where to find more [information about sex, relationships, all of it], right? The one time in a book about sex where somebody admits to wanting to apply pressure to convince somebody else to do something they maybe don’t want to do, and it’s to share more information.

I love you, Erika and Matt.

It is today, roughly, 350 days since New Jersey went into lockdown. Today is, roughly, the 366th day of March, 2020, the Fimbulmarch, which will run for another two years and then end in Ragnarökövid. As far as unending tedium and hiding in the house venturing out in the killer environment only in times of great need to obtain sustenance goes, it could be worse. I mean, there’s lots to binge on streaming at least.

And, this being the nominal first week of the neverending month, there’s some [web]comics events you might want to keep an eye on.

• Know who’s awesome? Gale Galligan, who had one of the biggest how do I follow that opening act? high-wire travails ever, taking over the Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel adaptations from Raina Telgemeier and all¹. She’s working on her own original graphic novel now, as well as another project that finished around March 240th that was a little bit more important, all of which are wonderful. She’s also been to Bunny Island and survived.

  Know who else is awesome? Ngozi Ukazu, who had a very big couple of years before and during the Inifinte March, what with the release of the :01 Books collected editions of Check, Please!, which are just delightful². She’s been working on her next project, as well as dropping some primo cartoons into The New Yorker and the Tweet Machine.

  Know what’s particularly awesome? Galligan and Ukazu are both serious about promoting the interests and skills of younger cartoonist, those who will someday be their peers. Galligan’s been mentoring since the Before Times, and the pair of them joined forces to promote transparency into page rates. And they’re teaming up again to offer two free workshops on comic making:

  COMICS WORKSHOPS!
  Howdy! @robochai and I are offering two workshops covering fundamentals for comic making. Workshops are free, but space is limited. Apply by 3/5!
  forms.gle/Xaqc6zjTWjuSv9…

  That link will take you to the Google Form to sign up; the two workshops are on Perspective (Saturday, 20 March at noon EST) and Coloring (Satruday, 27 March at noon EST), with connection info presumably sent to registrants.

• For those looking for happenings between now and Sunday, let this be your reminder that the first week of March is Read AGraphic Novel Week/Will Eisner Week; the ongoing pandemic means there’s less in-person going on than prior years, but that hasn’t stopped the Cartoon Art Museum from organizing a graphic novel read-athon as fundraiser (helping to offset the loss of income from the whole no visitors in lockdown thing). You can sign up via the CAM 99 Pledges page, to support those reading, or to add your eyeballs to the -athon’s effort.

Okay, that’s what’s going on now. We’ll try to keep an eye on what’s happening — and what’s not — in The March That Never Ends. Case in point: it was announced today that WonderCon will be online-only (26/27 March) and San Diego Comic-Con is delaying again until July 2022, with a supplemental 3-day in-person event in November (all details pending as of now).

It’s actually an open question how much society might be back to accessible by summer, but kudos to the showrunners for injecting a little certainty instead of delaying decisions. It’s not a fun decision, but it’s probably the only right one at this time.

Spam of the day:

Elon Musk says he’s a supporter of bitcoin and thinks it will get ‘broad acceptance’ in finance & Bitcoin Rally Takes Crypto Market Value to New Record

Since Tesla announced it had bought a position in Bitcoin on 8 February, their stock has declined by 16.8%, and Bitcoin is down 2.4% (or, more impressively, down 23.1% since their high eight days ago). Your entire contention that I should give you money to put into their two financial vehicles is … misguided.

_______________
¹ In turn, handing the series over to Gabriela Epstein, and now to Chan Chau.

² Reminder: the fourth self-published book is coming, sometime before the end of Evermarch.

A while back, faithful Fleen follower Mark V pointed me to a series of Kickstarter things that he thought I might find interesting. It’s not a [web]comic Kickstarter, it’s a game Kickstarter, but there’s a webcomic connection — the creator (by name of Michael Prescott) sprinkled a comic through the campaign updates to demonstrate aspects of the game, which I thought was a clever idea (start with Update #3 and work your way forward; not all updates have comic entries).

There was also a lessons learned post from the start of 2020, the sort of thing you’d find from a posting or conference presentation by your Spikes, your Lasers Webber, or Bradleys Guigar. Good solid advice, but the sort of thing you might find in other channels.

But the real meat of Mr V’s pointers was a posting from this month on Kickstarter math that was presumed to my cup of tea — you were right on that one, Mark; I love this stuff — and inside was an argument that I’ve never seen made around Kickstarter campaigns. It’s probably more common in the [baord]game space than the [web]comics space, as it involves sunk costs in a way that doesn’t necessarily come up in webcomics, but I still wanted to talk about it.

The way everybody thinks of Kickstarts is How much money do I need to make it to break-even, and preferably profit?. You’ve got a project that will cost (summarizing here) US$10,000 of your time to make, with a unit price of US$30 (what the backer pays), a unit cost of US$20 (what it costs you to produce and ship), and a margin of US$10. The break even point is 1000 orders — US$30,000 raised, US$20,000 in your costs, US$10,000 left over that offsets the US$10,000 of your time, meaning a total profit of zero. Order number 1001 and every order after nets you ten bucks.

Simple. Everybody does these calculations. The goal is US$30,000 or more; any less, you don’t make the thing because you’ll lose money.

But this example does something unique. What if you’ve already put in US$5000 of time in figuring out the Kickstarter, and know that once it goes up you’ll have to spend another US$5000 worth of time to finish your design. Where do you set the pricing? The simple answer is US$30K like before, but there’s a more complex answer:

You’ve already put in that US$5K of work; if you fail to fund at US$30K, you’re not zero in the hole, you’re at a US$5K loss. It may be possible to set the goal lower so that you do the project and yes, lose money, but lose less than if it doesn’t fund.

Let’s say you can’t get 1000 orders, but you can get 800; that’s US$24K and US$10K in your time, US$16K in production costs, a total of US$26K so you lost two grand. That’s a disaster! But if you don’t fund, if you never do the project at all, you’re out five grand. It’s a loss, but it’s better than holding out for break even. Prescott’s argument is that you shouldn’t set the Kickstarter to compensate all costs, but rather to compensate the sunk costs before you launch the campaign. You might not make a profit, but you won’t be any worse off than if you didn’t do anything.

The reason that this doesn’t necessarily map one-to-one to [web]comics Kickstarts is that the sunk costs aren’t going to occur in the same way — most creators don’t make a comic every day for a year in preparation to launch a Kickstarter to print it and get nothing in return; they did that because they were updating their site, selling ads or other merch, and the print run is a secondary sale of what they’ve already been paid for. By contrast, the game space can demand significant, project-specific work to get to a point where you can determine if the project is viable going forward (say, a demo to gauge interest or practicality).

If you’re not making money on the pre-campaign work, you probably need to do a campaign that’s specifically designed to pay you to make the comic and pay for physical production (not many creators have the track record to support that kind of prepay). Either that, or consider that your real goal needs to not just pay for the print run, but to compensate you for the work you’ve already done in which case, yeah — consider the reduced-loss target for funding rather than full break even.

Anyway, this is a very short summary of Prescott’s points, which I find well-presented and persuasive. Give them a read before you do your next Kickstarter plan, and thanks to Mark V for pointing me towards the analysis.

Spam of the day:

It is with sad regret to inform you [nope] is shutting down. Any group of databases listed below is $49 or $149 for all 16 databases in this one time offer. LinkedIn Database, USA B2B Companies Database, Forex South Africa, Forex Australia, Forex UK [that’s enough of that]

So you collected a metric squatload of email addresses and account names and want me to buy them so I can spam them? Can’t imagine why people don’t want to do business with you.

She was such a skittish, skinny little thing when we got her around two and a half years old, having spent her entire life not more than six months in any one place with any particular people. It took her a while to relax around us and let her goofball personality show from behind the veil of stubborn stoicism. Right now, she’s napping in a sunny patch and waiting for the work day to be done so she can collect her due allocation of skritches and get her walkies in. So that’s all right.

Oh, right, webcomics.

• Subscribers to The Nib, the folks that get the magazine 3-4 times a year, you’re going to want to check your email and maybe your spam folder. They’ve sent you a message that you get to give away one copy of The Nib’s Pandemic issue (in print form, no less!) to somebody that you think would appreciate it. The instructions are in the email that went out to you this morning; me, most of the people I know are already subscribers or contributors to The Nib, so I’m not sure who to give it to.

  Let’s do a contest, then. Send me an email with the subject FREE MAGAZINE to me (that would be gary) at the name of this-here website (fleen), which is a dot-com, and I’ll choose one of you at random to get the issue, a US$15 value and probably the best done by the lauded group of contributors. Let’s make the deadline … 11:59pm MST on Sunday, 28 February, the last moment before my evil twin sees his birthday skipped over because he’s a Leap Year Baby.

  You have to make yourself a promise, though — if you enter the giveaway, you have to ask yourself if you should be a subscriber, or at least buy some stuff from The Nib’s retail operation to help support their mission — to find the best cartoonists in the world and pay them properly for their best work.

• I wrote a while back about Shing Yin Khor and Jeeyon Shim were Kickstarting an interactive game, with prompts to be delivered by email (and physical ephemera sent to high-tier backers), under the title of A Field Guide To Memory. I hadn’t mentioned that the Kickstarter overfunded, that other creators were brought in (and paid!) to enrich the story, and that gameplay had started.

  With today’s email, we’re about two-thirds of the way through a deeply personal, deeply weird, and somewhat unsettling tale, wherein you adopt the persona of a scientific researcher whose mentor — cryptid field evolutionary scientist Elizabeth Lee — has been declared dead after going missing five years ago on a research trip. I have, for the past two and a half weeks, found myself bound up in my personal history with a woman that I never met, who never existed, who may or may not have definitively proved the existence of Dipodomys antilocapra, the Pronghorned Desert Rat.

  I have dug up memories of my own life and that of my in-game equivalent (who is looking for the evolutionary descendants of pterosaurs — they’re out there still, dammit, just like the coelacanth!) and at times been unable to separate them. The game has you write letters and journal entries, keep field notes related to Dr Lee’s work, research animal track patterns and bird calls, dredge up anger and betrayal, and possibly mentor members of the Little Citizen Scientists Club. I will not tell you how to play the game, as it’s highly individualized and therefore there is no right way to play, but I will say this: if given the opportunity, if you are in future days passed a PDF of gameplay prompts (or even physical artifacts like D. antilocapra antler casts) and you come across an email address?

  It works. Send the email. The only thing that isn’t real, as near as I can tell, is the address shown for the Institute for Theoretical Evolutions in Bethesda, Maryland. The Pronghorned Desert Rat, the other cryptids, the bureaucrats keeping you from Dr Lee’s notes and artifacts, the letters from her students and colleagues and lovers? All real, every bit of it, even the parts that are fiction. Especially the parts that are fiction.

  If you’d like to learn more — and perhaps end up with more questions than answers — search the hashtag #FieldGuideToMemory. If nothing else, you’ll see some breathtaking photos of the very lovely artifacts that players are creating as we delve into mystery and self-revelation at a rate of one prompt per day for 20 days.

Okay, have a great rest of the day, and tell the doggo(s) in your life that they are very good dogs because they’re all very good dogs.

Spam of the day:

I tried to find you on google maps, but I couldn’t,

STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM MY HOUSE, YOU FREAK.

Know what will involve little typing and hasn’t been done for a while? Spam roundup!

Spams of the day:

I have a company is a reliable cabinet installers Glendale Az

I might be slightly interested if I lived in Arizona and needed cabinets, but your alleged email address is a modified version of “David Duke” so fuck off.

I like MojoHeadz.

In the immortal words of MC Frontalot’s friend Little Timmy, Okay, dunno know who that is.

I would let you fuck me if you was here

Good to know?

It is very easy to funk up your interior or make a fashionable design.

I have all the funk in my interior design that I require, thanks.

remedies for itching

Unless you have a better way to get to that one spot in the middle of my back I can’t reach with the lotion, you’re not of any use to me.

My good friend Alex was devastated the day her mother nearly died. But she never could have guessed that battling this traumatic experience would cause her mom to suffer from humiliating “pee leaks” for years.

Gotta say, I was not prepared for the downshift from nearly died to excess peeing.

Hi, this is Jenny. I am sending you my intimate photos as I promised

Hi Jenny, or should I say “Brole”, when I run you tinyurl through a link expander, it sets off all these alarms and flashing lights that say NO. Is it supposed to do that?

This E-mail lottery was sponsored by International software organization, Your e-mail address was attached to the lucky number that was how your E-mail won the lump sum amount.

Are you the person that teaches conversational English to the guy that’s always calling and tells me This is call from IRS Internal REvenue Service, you are arrested as fraud? And yes, he somehow always pronounces REvenue with an extra capital letter.

Get discounts on prescriptions and other expenses with your Medicare Plus* Card

Godsdammit, how many of you idiots do I have to tell that you have to wait another 15 years before you try to Medicare scam me. I’m not old enough for Medicare yet!

Okay, hopefully that will keep the spammers happy for a bit (47 spams collected since yesterday’s post, 3 since I started this post).