Shocking all of us, I FUCKIN FINISHED Code: Compromised (best name I could come up with). It rounded out at 298 pages, infuriatingly. Haha. It’s not super high quality, overall I’d say though the images are better and more artful and obviously more skilled than when I was 18, realistically the paneling and bubbles are about like they were when I was a teenager.
I think the concept was super solid and the plot was really tightly knit, not trying to do too much, and the development of Micah and Andrew’s relationship was really tender and balanced (even if it oogs my husband out because Andrew’s older than Micah, sorry, I have my kinks, if you can even call “age difference” that…the teacher/student thing maybe, but age is shrugs.)
I go back and forth on whether I want to plunge into a “real” draft of it but I know I’d want to use my computer tablet for that, and having the time to do that seems like a distant dream.
I have to give an invisible blog shout out to All Time Low for their new album Wake Up Sunshine literally being the anthem for this whole story. It was fun to use a really old band’s new work to create my first new work in a really long time. I haven’t figured out how to best document like, I don’t know, the growth of these two since they came around in middle school. I know soon I want to add a page for this story to My Mental Breakdown but that’s another thing I have a hard time imagining squeezing into my stupid adult life.
The weirdest part about this project is that I’m really happy I finished a story but it was almost physically painful how obsessed, compelled I felt to work on this. At times in the last few months I was neglecting not only my child but my husband too and that was…weird. Writing feels like its cost has increased greatly since I was a carefree high school student. And the funny thing is that I don’t even feel “wowed” by this project’s quality, but if I’d put out 298 quality pages I think I’d be dead now.
So, more resolution on this project to come, but in the meantime, IT REALLY IS DONE! wow!
Here’s some art!
i had my headphones on and my husband just texted me from the living room that i was breathing very heavily, i guess these guys make me pretty hot haha
Lastly I wanted a statement to live on my blog forever about recent events. A lot of white people are having potentially their first encounters with white guilt so Black Lives Matter is currently a very trendy slogan to get behind, in addition to many white people stating for the first time that they’re mad about racism. As someone who went through their teens blissfully unaware of the diversity around them, before stepping into a very whitewashed community for a year, before stepping deliberately back into a diverse neighborhood in South Minneapolis without fully grasping how I was still contributing to systemized racism and also basking in my white privilege, who then read Counseling the Culturally Diverse by David Sue, who then felt super guilty for glamorizing diversity and being a bit exhibitionist about diversity in my art, who has then backed off from pretending like I have a place to speak about or be part of the Black community, who has then come to some sense of peace about things, who has now realized many people did not go through all this…I have done a lot of smh at the white community around me, well-meaning as they are.
Many of my friends, Black and white alike, were in the cities protesting following the murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white fucker of a police officer who is now being charged by our amazing Keith Ellison for second and third degree murder. Riots ravaged my nearby city. Shit got destroyed. Uncle Hugo’s was burned to the ground. I was…quiet, withdrawn and depressed, wanting to flee the country as snapshots from apocalyptic games, movies, books flashed in my head, thinking about my innocent albeit white male son growing up in a crumbling country. Since then it seems like there is some really important systemic change that’s beginning to happen, and a lot of organizations, like BLM, have received amazing charity funding that they’ve been scrounging for for ages. And I’m really glad for that. But I know with most traumatic events, the people who weren’t “hurt” by it will move on with their lives. And I wanted to make a statement and a commitment to not forget that I always have and always will support powerful movements like Black Lives Matter. And I am committed to raising my white male child to make this world a better place for his Black brothers and sisters, to know that he has privilege, to encourage him to use it to improve the lives of those who have less privilege than him.
On this blog, Black Lives always have, and always will Matter.
Hey Sweetie:
Proud of you, your husband, and your son for taking a stand.
Next book I suggest: HOW TO BE ANTIRACIST, Ibram X. Kendi. I read his first book, STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING which gives a massively detailed history of racism, racist policies, and attempts from all ideological backgrounds to “make it all go away”. Kendi is brutally honest with himself, about himself — and then brutally honest about “me” — a bofwhig (big, old, fat, white guy). I checked out his first book and was using so many little post-it notes, I just went and bought the book. When his new one came out, I was ready to learn more and formulate a plan for ME that would make me grow into an antiracist. I’d offer to let you borrow it, but I’m barely a quarter through it and it is massively marked up as I study, note, underline, and reflect — then begin to build a way for me to make a difference in the world. It’s amazing (AND he was on Oprah’s special, “Where Do We Go From Here”…) Anyway, just wanted to say I’m a very proud father. Love you (and you husband and son!)