Cartoon: Reducing Abortion Is Definitely Their Number One Priority

Posted on June 10, 2019 by Ampersand

I’ve gone from making about six poli cartoons a year, to making almost fifty! That couldn’t happen without the support people give my patreon. A $1 pledge really matters.

Democrats often say that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.”

I’ve seen some feminists argue against this slogan. “Why should we care if abortion is rare? There’s nothing wrong with it.” And they make the very good point that Democrats shouldn’t embrace a slogan that could be read as implying that abortion is immoral.

I can understand that perspective – I’m definitely in the a-fetus-has-no-independent-moral-value camp myself.

But even if we attach no moral value to the fetus, we should still want abortion to be rare. Abortions are expensive, and often extremely unpleasant for patients. So wouldn’t everyone be better off if fewer unwanted pregnancies happened in the first place?

It’s like appendectomies. I’m glad that the procedure exists for people when they need it. But if there were some sort of treatment that prevented appendicitis in the first place, so fewer people needed surgery, that would be even better, because it would be physically and financially easier on patients. Saying so is not saying that there’s anything immoral about appendectomies!

So I think liberals can, and should, want abortions to be rarer. So this is an area of potential compromise between pro-choicers and pro-lifers, right?

It doesn’t turn out that way.

I find it useful to use some economics language when I think about reducing abortion. Supply and demand. We can reduce abortion by reducing the supply – trying to shut down clinics, waiting periods to make abortion less available, and at the extremes, bans. All of these methods are coercive in some way.

Or we could reduce abortion by reducing the demand – changing society so that fewer people want abortions. This primarily means trying to help people who don’t want babies avoid getting pregnant, but it can also include better safety nets for people having babies. These methods are not coercive.

The pro-life movement, at least among the policy makers – Senators, congressmen, the leaders of the major pro-life orgs, etc – simply has no interest in reducing the demand for abortion. In fact, they actively oppose non-coercive ways of reducing abortion.

And that’s why the most obvious seeming compromise between pro-life and pro-choice – which is to embrace non-coercive methods of reducing abortion – is a no-go.

(I wrote a twitter thread about this recently, which has some more info on how extremely effective giving away free birth control can be for reducing abortion.)

Another strip where I paid a lot of attention to drawing environments! I think panel 4 came out pretty nicely. I also decided to color everything except hair and skin in shades of blue, which I think is really neat looking.

I was binging “Person of Interest” on Netflix while drawing this cartoon, and decided to draw the pro-life guy as one of the stars of that show, Michael Emerson. (Emerson is probably most famous for playing Benjamin on “Lost.”) I didn’t do this as a comment on Emerson’s politics – I have no idea what Emerson’s opinions on abortion are. He just has a super interesting face.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows the same two figures walking through a city environment while they talk. The first figure is a dark-haired woman wearing a business outfit, with a black shirt. The second figure is a middle-aged man wearing glasses, slacks, a collared shirt, and a striped necktie.

In the first three panels, they’re both walking in the same direction with the man in front, so the man is facing away from the woman.

PANEL 1

Both speakers are friendly-looking.

WOMAN: Okay, Pro-Life… let’s brainstorm ways to reduce abortion!

MAN: Reducing abortion is definitely my number one priority!

PANEL 2

The man dismissively waves a hand.

WOMAN: Research shows that giving people free long-acting reversible contraception reduces abortion more than anything!

MAN: Nope. That would encourage promiscuity.

PANEL 3

WOMAN: Okay, um…  How about a super generous child benefit program, like Belgium or Germany?

MAN: I don’t want taxpayers paying people for being irresponsible.

PANEL 4

The woman loses her temper a bit, looking angry and holding up her hands. The man has turned around to face the woman, smiling and looking eager and excited.

WOMAN: Come ON! There must be SOME way of reducing abortion you approve of other than punishing doctors and patients!

MAN: Now you’re talking! What’d you have in mind… Shaming? Prison? Death penalty?

SMALL KICKER PANEL BELOW THE BOTTOM OF THE STRIP

The man from the previous four panels is now talking sternly at Barry the cartoonist.

MAN: If a million “pre-born babies” have to die to avoid compromise on birth control, it’s worth it!

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights, Cartooning & comics, Feminism, sexism, etc | 7 Comments  

Silly Interview with John Chu, who will tell you about the great injustices of American Musical Theater

Posted on June 7, 2019 by Mandolin

(Illustration by Christopher Silas Neal for “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere“)

Rachel Swirsky: I am completely fascinated by the translation work you and Ken and others are doing to bring Chinese SF to the US audience. (Also, I am very grateful for it as a reader and writer; I am so happy to be able to see those stories which I wouldn’t otherwise.) We talk a lot about the challenges of bringing something into a new cultural context–for obvious reasons!–but what are some of the good parts? Do stories pick up new resonances sometimes?

John Chu: A translation is a trade-off. (This is hardly an original thought.) Yes, we lose something in the process but it wouldn’t be worth doing at all if we didn’t also get something in return. At the end of the day, it’s is not practical to be fluent (enough) in every language that is the original language of some work that you’d like to read. (I’ve lost track of how many languages I’d need to be fluent in.) A really good translation, combined with knowledge of the culture the original work is a part of, can get you much of the way there. It is a way to experience what would otherwise be impractical to experience. (That said, I don’t think you should let yourself think you are, somehow, engaging directly with the original work. Translation is always an intermediated experience. If you want to engage directly with the original work, I’m afraid you need to become fluent in the language of the original work. And the standard is that you are fluent. If you can’t understand in that language well enough, you are probably better off with the translation.

Stories inevitably pick up new resonances. Part of translation is to get the readers of the translated work to feel what the readers of the original work feel. One way of getting there is to find equivalents (to the extent possible) for what can’t be directly translated, like the resonances of the story. For example, I translated a story once where each section was written in a distinct style. What I needed to do, then, was to find styles in English that had the same affect as the styles referenced in the original text then write the translation in those styles. The translations end up harkening back to different traditions of storytelling than the original, but the effect on the reader is much closer to reading the original than if I’d just translated the text so-called ‘literally.’ (Again, if you really need to see what the writer actually need, you need to read the original work directly.)

RS: Your wikipedia page calls you “an American microprocessor architect” before also mentioning that you are a writer and translator. It took me a minute, reading that, to parse it, and for a second I was wondering about what kinds of buildings you’d design. So, what kinds of buildings would you design?

JC: I love Brutalist and Modern architecture. (Postmodern architecture is also wonderful but we’re still in that period (or we’re still so close to it) so it’s hard to generalize.) One of the joys in visiting Chicago for me is that its skyline beautifully details the evolution of skyscrapers as tastes changed and construction methods improved. One of the things I most treasure about my trip to Helsinki is the day I played hooky from WorldCon and just walked around the city encountering one lovely piece of Modernist architecture after another. The juxtaposition of buildings from many eras in Helsinki was also a delight. (The city also inadvertently make it clear that we have left the Modernist Era. Still, if you are able—and it’s a lot of walking, sometimes on cobblestone–I highly recommend walking around Helsinki and engaging with one fabulous example of Modernism after another. It’s a beautiful city.)

The buildings I would aspire to design would probably draw on the sleek elegance of the International Style of Modernism whether I intend to or not. (It’s probably not literally true but one of the things I love about Chicago is that it kind of feels like a giant tribute to Mies van der Rohe, not to mention Frank Lloyd Wright (who, yes, is not of the International Style).) However, it’s the early 21st century, not the early-to-mid 20th century. Left to my own devices, I hope I would be brave enough to engage with humor, like Frank Gehry. (Not specifically his sense of humor, though. Mine. Frank Gehry is already the world’s best Frank Gehry. We don’t need another one.) I hope that my work would follow in the tradition blazed by Arata Isozaki, who pointedly does not design in any one architectural style. Instead, he is very site-specific and project-specific, letting those requirements dictate what the building needs to be. (Also, he just won the Pritzker Prize! *kermit flail*)

RS: I read an interview where you said that you make it a point to find out things about obscure musical theater history! Me, too! (I took classes in this! LOL.) What are some of your favorite forgotten musicals?

JC: Well, I’m not sure how forgotten these are but I do wish they were more popular:

The Golden Apple. I will flog that musical until it gets the mainstream recognition it deserves. Jerome Moross and John LaTouche set The Illiad and The Odyssey at the turn of the 20th century (and engage in a search for the truths necessary to survive the 20th century). I won’t say that it’s a perfect musical but the score is absolutely glorious. It’s appallingly short B’way run is one of the greater injustices of American Musical Theater. A mostly complete recording of the show was released in 2015 (and it’s absolutely worth getting).

You can see snippets from 2017 concert production (which I saw!) here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpEjaDW3feI

The Day Before Spring. Lerner & Loewe would go on to Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot. Before all that, they wrote The Day Before Spring. The story is nothing to write home about but the score is pretty terrific. (Bits of it was recycled into their later efforts.)

Sweet Adeline by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. It played B’way in 1929, Set in the 1890’s, it’s a lush, nostalgic story of a woman who becomes a Broadway star and her various failed relationships along the way. For me, its take home hit is a choral set piece in the middle of Act II called “Some Girl Is On Your Mind”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8S_1_MPRo4

St. Louis Woman. Music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Book by Arna Bontemps and Countee Cullen (based on Bontemp’s novel God Sends Sunday). It’s the musical that “Anywhere I Hang My Hat Is Come” and “Come Rain, Come Shine” comes from. Love! Revenge! Murder! And a happy ending. Here is Audra McDonald singing “I Had Myself a True Love”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovMj0EHx-bc

Golden Boy. Music by Charles Strouse. Lyrics by Lee Adams. Book by Clifford Odets and William Gibson (not that one!) based on Odet’s play. It’s about a man who becomes a prizefighter to escape his ghetto roots. He does, but at a cost. I saw a concert production of this that makes the book never really worked. It has a lot of terrific songs though.

“While the City Sleeps” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuK-1oFj5sc

“Night Song” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwhFxDzYjSo

“Stick Around” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwhFxDzYjSo

I could go on, but I think that’s enough for now.

RS: Relatedly, what words do you have for young gay, American men who don’t know who Judy Garland is?

JC: My feelings about this are weirdly nuanced. Basically, I don’t think it’s good to be the gay version of That Guy Who Wants Everyone To Read Heinlein. So I’m not going to be. Without taking anything away from the brilliance and genius of her work (and, at her best, Judy Garland was in a class of her own), it’s not unfair to say that the near-religious reverence for her was also, in part, a consequence of a culture that, as a matter of life or death, had to stay underground. The discovery and the love of her work was part of how you found your (secret) tribe. There is a reason why, once upon a time, one might discreetly inquire whether one was a “friend of Dorothy.” And, back then, if you were gay and never discovered a love for her work, I suppose you might have lived your entire life thinking you were the only one in the world and remained desperately and heart-breakingly alone? 🙁

Nowadays, though, on one hand, I’m not saying that we have achieved full equality. In fact, it feels like reactionary forces are desperate to drag us back into the closet. On the other hand, we are freer than we once were and the path to finding other gay men does not necessarily go through a discovery and a love of the works of Judy Garland. (Yes, she was a huge star in the mainstream, too. I’m making a point. Hush.) Gay culture has become much more diverse and much more mainstream. (I mean, RuPaul’s Drag Race is on VH1!) I think we may be inching towards the point where it’s not Gay Culture as much as it is just part of culture. Assimilation is a tricky topic and way outside the scope of this interview. However, to the extent that Gay Culture was a reaction to the systemic oppression of LGBTQ (although, in the case of Judy Garland, let’s face it, the demographic in question is mostly cisgender gay men), the way the culture shifts because we are no longer as oppressed can’t be a bad thing on the whole.

So, if you are a young, gay American man and musicals are not your thing, there’s no reason to subject yourself to Judy Garland. If you love musicals though (and I loved musicals long before I realized I was gay) and you have not yet encountered the works of Judy Garland, boy are you in for a treat.

RS: I also have some improv training, although I don’t feel like I use that a lot in my work. (I’m sure I have much less experience with it than you do.) What techniques prove especially useful?

JC: I actually have an entire lecture about this! This is what I talk about when I’m invited to fill an hour at a workshop or something. (The lecture, perhaps appropriately, is a constantly evolving work-in-progress.)

I steal shamelessly from the improv toolkit when I write. In improv, you are on an empty stage with a scene partner who, because the two of you are not telepathic, does not actually know what you are going to do (and visa versa). And yet, merely through the things you say and the things you do, you two are able to fill out an entire world and a relationship that leaves the audience satisfied. If you can do that with improv, imagine what you can do when you bring in the other tools that a writer also has at their disposal. Improv turns out to be a great lens (for me, anyway) to strip everything to its fundamentals, work the skills it takes to write a great scene, before you then add back in all the other things you can do. (Also, the ability to revise is huge. In improv, of course, you get only that one shot.)

Everything you do on stage makes a promise to the audience, whether you intended to or not. That promise has to be kept no matter how small it seems. So, if you walk from point A to point B, you jag around what you have decided is a table, you have defined the length and width of that table. Until someone moves the table or destroys the table or changes the location of the scene, no one can simply plow through that empty space. That would break the promise and throw the audience out of the reality you’ve created.

Improv forces you to consider, in real time, “OK, if this is true, what else is true?” The most obvious place to apply this is world building, but it’s a question that writers need to ask about everything. For example, once I played a scene where I squinted, shaded my eyes and my first line was something like, “OMG, you’re so happy, you’re glowing. I can barely stand to look at you.” Because my body language was that of someone looking at a very bright object and because I was working with a terrific partner, he immediately recognized that the glowing was literal, not metaphorical and that he was glowing out of joy. Now, because he’s an awesome partner, he took my second sentence also for its emotional truth and considered if I can’t look at him because he is so happy, what else must be true about me? The result was this really searing scene of loss and healing that neither one of us could have anticipated from my admittedly somewhat goofy opening offer.

RS: What projects are you currently working on?

JC: Being mostly a short story writer means I’m always in the middle of writing multiple somethings but I almost never have anything in progress that I can announce. I do have a story forthcoming at Uncanny Magazine and another story in the anthology, The Mythic Dream, forthcoming from Saga. As for what I’m currently writing, I have great hopes but nothing is locked down yet.

(This interview was posted early for my patrons on Patreon. Thank you!)

Posted in Interviews | 1 Comment  

Bunny Chicken

Posted on June 4, 2019 by Mandolin

Bunny Chicken is a character I drew for a role-playing game I was sketching out called Cats and Dogs Living Together.

Bunny Chicken is a muscular, black domestic shorthair. He’s five years old, weighs twelve pounds of sheer strength, and is vain about his shining fur and whiskers. He thinks of himself as Alpha, master of all he surveys. He’s genuinely tough, but he’s been tame all his life–deep down, he wouldn’t be cat enough for the mean streets. He’s smart enough to see the benefits of power, but not to worry about consequences.

(originally posted on my patreon)

Posted in Cats | Leave a comment  

Straight to the Point: What can we learn about ourselves from the world around us?

Posted on June 2, 2019 by Mandolin

Verses of Sky & Stars: How to Write the Poetry and Science Fiction and FantasyMy online speculative poetry class, Verses of Sky & Stars, is coming up on June 9th! The class changes a little each time as the group composition does, but if you want to get a basic idea, I talk about why I like teaching it in this post from April:

As our understanding of the world grows to incorporate more science and technology, our metaphors grow to include them. The static human behavior of looking outside to understand ourselves combines with an evolving society to give us reference points that shift over time and cultures. … Science fiction wrestles with how to figure out the universe and our place in it. Poetry allows writers to focus on metaphors and internal states. Science fiction poetry can get straight to the point and ask, “What can we learn about ourselves from the world around us?”

Poetry requires intense linguistic control. Every word matters. Whether you’re a poet who wants to create fantastical verses, or a prose writer who wants to learn the finely tuned narrative power that poetry can teach, you’ll find something in this class. 

Over the course of a few brief lectures, peppered with plenty of writing exercises, we’ll discuss some common forms of speculative poetry, and the challenges they represent. I’ll also send you home with market listings, and lists great authors, poems, and books to pick up to continue your journey.

There is still time for you to join us next weekend. Enroll here at the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers

Posted in classes, Poetry, Rachel Swirsky's poetry, Verses of Sky & Stars | Leave a comment  

Cartoon: The Woman I’ve Been Waiting For

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Ampersand

I make a living because people support my cartoons on Patreon! Join them!

Sorry for the relatively short post this time, but I don’t think this cartoon would be enhanced by a big discussion of what it’s about.

This one is pretty unusual in tone for me. (Don’t worry, we’ll be back to your regularly scheduled snark next week.)

I’ve been working hard to up my game when it comes to drawing environments, and to using smaller, full-figure drawings rather than relying on close-ups. And although I have a long way to go, I’m pretty confident that I couldn’t have drawn this as well a few years ago.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels.

PANEL 1

A man and a woman stand on a fancy pedestrian bridge over a stream, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes. Both are smiling.

MAN: I’m so glad I found you. You’re the woman I’ve been waiting for! You’re always supportive, always cheerful.

PANEL 2

A closer shot of the two of them, walking while holding hands. They’re still looking fondly at each other.

MAN: You never think about your appearance or diet, yet you look like a model. You’ve got a career, but it never interferes with time for me.

PANEL 3

A long shot shows them walking side by side down a path in a park. He’s looking ahead, smiling as he talks; she’s turned to face him a bit, smiling, with an “explaining hand” gesture.

MAN: You insist on doing the cooking and my laundry. You’re eager to hear about all my hobbies..

WOMAN: But don’t forget, honey – I’m also imaginary.

PANEL 4

The same setting and shot as in the previous panel. The man has come to a stop and is looking down a bit, expression sad, one hand reaching out a bit as if to grab onto something that’s not there. He is completely alone.

MAN (in a thought balloon): I always forget that part.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Feminism, sexism, etc | 29 Comments  

Cartoon: How Banning the Abortion Pill Works

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Ampersand

Support my patreon and help me keep drawing these cartoons!

I can’t always say what inspires any particular cartoon. But in this case, I know exactly. Jessica Valenti tweeted this:

Not one anti-choice legislator has answered this question: If a woman  shows up at a hospital, losing her pregnancy – how will you determine  who is having a miscarriage and who deliberately ended it? Pregnancy  loss from taking an abortion pill is indistinguishable from miscarriage.

Building off of Jessica’s point, Lindsay Beyerstein wrote a thread on Twitter, beginning with this tweet:

If history is any guide, they’ll put cops in hospital rooms to quiz  bleeding, drugged-up women; they’ll subpoena phone and internet records;  they’ll grill and threaten friends and coworkers to turn on her; you know, the usual criminal justice stuff.

I checked with Jessica and Lindsay, both of whom very nicely told me to go ahead, and then I wrote this strip.

It’s easy to ignore the kind of police state methods that will be necessary to enforce laws about something as personal as how people reproduce. This is especially the case with banning “the abortion pill,” a drug that should ideally be taken under a doctor’s supervision, but can be taken in private.

Not every cop is abusive, and not every D.A. is abusive. But enough of them are, and the justice system has evolved to accommodate the abuse and protect the abusers. Laws banning mifepristone are inevitably going to target patients who are at their most vulnerable. For something that should never be illegal in the first place.

* * *

Scripting this one took a while. My first drafts, following on Lindsey’s tweets, also talked about how forensic “science” will be used to prosecute, regardless of if it’s reliable. We think of forensics as a very reliable science – just look at what they do with it on CSI! But in practice, it’s a field that’s bursting with pseudoscience, corruption, and guesswork disguised as certainty. To give just one example, identifying people based on bite-marks is completely unreliable – but one that’s been used to prosecute people. There are horrifying stories of dubious convictions based on unscientific nonsense about burn patterns – including at least one execution. Bloodstain analysis, which seems so certain on Dexter, is anything but. Even fingerprints are less reliable than Sherlock Holmes believed.

But trying to explain how unreliable forensic evidence actually is ended up being too much to fit into one cartoon. The script was overloaded and clunky, and so I streamlined by getting rid of the forensic angle. Maybe I’ll return to that in a future strip.

Then, what should the situation be? I knew I wanted the gag to be a ban proponent telling the horrifying truth about what a  mifepristone ban would look like, and then correcting himself in the final panel. My first thought was a Senator at a press conference, telling the truth in thought balloons but then saying the sanitized version aloud; then I tried a Senator being briefed by a pro-life lobbyist.

In the end, seeking to simplify and streamline, I went with the “ask me anything” forum. I liked the device of having him type in an answer, and then deleting and rewording – because it just felt so relatable. Who among us hasn’t done that?

* * *

Folks supporting my patreon got to see this strip a week ago! I’m just saying.

* * *

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has nine panels, arranged in a three by three grid. Every panel shows the same subject: A man wearing glasses and a polo shirt, sitting at a small table, with a laptop computer open in front of him.

PANEL 1

The man sits typing on his laptop. There’s a “tap tap tap” sound effect for his typing. Above him, in Arial font (a font commonly used for computer text), we can see what he’s typing. He is smiling and looks relaxed.

MAN (typing): Hello, “ask me anything” forum. I wrote proposed legislation to make using Mifepristone, also known as “the abortion pill,” a felony. Ask me anything!

PANEL 2

The man speaks aloud (in the usual faux-handwritten comic book font I use), looking pleasantly surprised.

MAN: I wonder how long it takes for… Oh, someone’s asked me a question already!

PANEL 3

The man reads aloud from his laptop screen. (Again, regular comic book font.)

MAN: “Pregnancy loss from taking an abortion pill is indistinguishable from miscarriage. How will you know who to arrest?”

PANEL 4

The man, still smiling and looking relaxed, types on his laptop.

MAN (types): Great question! First, we’ll tell doctors and nurses to immediately call the police if they think a miscarriage is suspicious.

PANEL 5

The same scene, but closer up. His smile looks creepier, however.

MAN (types): Cops will show up and grill women while they’re still bleeding and drugged. The perfect time to get a confession!

PANEL 6

Even closer up. His smile looks downright malicious now.

MAN (types): Experience suggests that certain classes of women- like poor women and black women -will more often be seen as “suspicious.” That shouldn’t bother you becau

PANEL 7

The man leans back from the laptop and puts a hand on the side of his face as he thinks. He’s no longer smiling.

PANEL 8

Leaning forward again, frowning, the man hits the “delete” key a few times. We know this because of the sound effect, which says: “Delete! Delete! Delete!”

PANEL 9

The man types again, once more looking relaxed.

MAN (types): Great question! We’ll know who to arrest through good old-fashioned police work.

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights, Cartooning & comics, Feminism, sexism, etc | 40 Comments  

Haiku Round-up #3

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Mandolin

Time for another round-up of my recent haiku! (Here is an explanation about why I’ve been writing and posting haiku.)

A day for walking,
but I sit and try to work.
My thoughts are so slow.

Cats watch the birds cry.
A window divides their worlds,
but watching is fun.

Clouds whiten the sky,
swaddling snug and restrictive,
the arms of autumn.

Cold drives off the bugs.
We shiver, but no bug bites
afflict our bonfire.

Brisk air on my arms.
Colder days come, and the dark,
but this day: fresh, calm.

The chilly blue skies
make the world bright as summer.
Leaves, trees, flowers, friends.

Colder than it looks.
The wind sways me with the trees.
So hard to stay still.

The leaves keep blowing,
tethered to branches and trunk,
brought short by their leash.

Dry leaves, restless wind,
all these things I’ve seen before,
trapped in recurrence.

Posted in Poetry, Rachel Swirsky's poetry | Leave a comment  

Open Thread and Link Farm: Divine Knew Edition

Posted on May 23, 2019 by Ampersand

  1. Graysexuality | Thing of Things
    “Graysexuality is fascinating because we get to watch the process of a new orientation being constructed in real time.”
  2. The Optimizer’s Curse & Wrong-Way Reductions | Confusopoly
    An interesting discussion of the limits of how Effective Altruists choose between charities. (Via.)
  3. Schools Are Full of Hungry Kids Who Aren’t Learning Anything. Why Don’t We Feed Them? | Center For Global Development
    Free lunches for schoolkids in the developing world could be an effective way of improving educational outcomes. (For one thing, feeding kids is an effective way of increasing school attendance.) (Via).
  4. On #MeToo’s Anniversary, ‘Mattress Girl’ Doesn’t Need You to Believe Her
    Emma Sulkowicz seems to have moved to a “restorative justice” position, although they don’t use that phrase in this article.
  5. This fifteen second video of someone drawing eleven lines (not counting some little hash marks) is extremely satisfying to watch.
    Also enjoyable, in a different way, are the many responses in which people posted their (usually) failed attempts at drawing the same eleven lines.
  6. When a Town Takes Uber Instead of Public Transit – CityLab
    An article about a Canadian town that found that adding a bus system would be too expensive, so they decided to subsidize Uber trips instead. But the program was so popular that they’re having to limit it to cut costs. (I think that, whether it’s Uber or traditional, most cities should be spending a lot more subsidizing public transit.)
  7. Kilogram, redefined: Why the world’s new definition of mass is such a big achievement – Vox
  8. No, I Will Not Debate You – Laurie Penny
    “To refuse to debate someone is an act of discourtesy. It is rude. It implies that you do not consider that person’s ideas or behavior worthy of basic respect.”
  9. julia serano – a transgender glossary of sorts
    The glossary is very useful (well, not for everyone, obviously). But I’m also linking it for the introduction, where Serano argues against word-elimination strategies: “This approach ignores the fact that most words are highly contextual, exhibiting multiple meanings or differing connotations depending upon the context. Many words and phrases can be used in both positive and negative ways, or in productive and disparaging ways. Yet, word elimination strategies insist that any negative usage (whether present or past, commonplace or occasional, real or perceived) automatically trumps all potentially neutral, positive, or productive uses of the term.”
  10. What It’s Like To Drive The Worst Car Ever Built
    Which is the 1951 Hoffman. “It’s not a piece of shit, build-quality-wise. It’s just that every possible design decision made on this car is somehow the absolute worst decision you could make.”
  11. Notre Dame fire: a historian on rebuilding the cathedral – Vox
    One interesting question (asked but not answered in this article): The spire that burned down was not the original spire. When they rebuild, do they rebuild the spire we’re used to, try and approximate what the original spire looked like, or create a new spire?
  12. The Centr of Controversy – Kivan Bay – Medium
    Kivan very much opposes the use of the fat suit in Endgame.
  13. Dain Yoon’s Twitter feed.
    Korean body paint artist Dain Yoon paints amazing and beautiful optical illusions on her face.
  14. No more ‘shortcuts’ in prescribing opioids for chronic pain – STAT
    The CDC is, depending on your view, either walking back or clarifying its previous instructions on prescribing opioids. They’re saying they’ve been misinterpreted and that they don’t want chronic pain patients to be involuntarily forced to cut down or cease opioid use.
  15. The problems with one-size-fits-all laws on opioid prescriptions – The Washington Post
    Presidential candidate Kristin Gillibrand has been forced to walk her position back after proposing a terrible opioid control bill.
  16. AMERICAN THEATRE | All Sizes Fit All: The Case for Normalizing Fatness Onstage
  17. A History Of Violence – Pop culture news, movie, TV, music and gaming reviews. | The A.V. Club
    If you’re a fan of action movies, Tom Breihan’s series of article, with his choice for the most important action films year by year, is very entertaining reading. (Or I found it so.) And will almost certainly add some new titles to your “I wanna watch this” list.
  18. Back in 1896 men didn’t call women sluts. They called them “bicycle face”.
    “Why? Because bicycles helped women make their own dating choices. IOW bikes were the first dating app. That scared men.” Interesting thread on Twitter.
  19. Licensing Reform Opponents Say Unlicensed Barbers Would Be as Dangerous as Unlicensed Chefs. Chefs Aren’t Licensed.
  20. (140) GOPRO Goes on Japanese Sushi Conveyor Belt (Beautiful Slice of Japanese Life) – YouTube
    Gets a lot less interesting after the plot twist at 3:40. I really enjoyed this on first viewiing – all those little slices of life contained in restaurant booths – but also had some doubts about the ethics of making such a film, especially after reading this article.
  21. “The Prostitution Problem”: Claims, Evidence, and Policy Outcomes” (pdf link)
    A readable journal paper, giving an overview of the debate and evidence about sex work.
  22. Velocity is strangling baseball — and its grip keeps tightening – The Washington Post
    More pitchers are throwing faster balls – and the result is a(n even) duller game.

Posted in Link farms | 11 Comments  

Cartoon: Token White Male Character

Posted on May 20, 2019 by Ampersand

I can only make these cartoons because of my supporters on Patreon! If you can spare it, please join them! A $1 pledge really matters.

If you don’t pay attention to online discussions of diversity in media, well then: Good for you. You’re getting outraged less often. Your blood pressure is lower. You’re not involved in endless debates about if Rey is more a Mary Sue than Luke was a Gary Stu. You may even be blessedly unaware of what “Mary Sue” even means.

The only downside is, this comic strip might not make sense to you.

But, briefly: In the last several years, online groups of (mostly) male, (mostly) white fans in various parts of nerd culture – gamergate, sad/rabid puppies, comicsgate, and possibly some others – have been really really angry at the increase in female and non-white characters in nerd media.

And they always say the same thing. “I have nothing against Black/gay/female/trans/etc characters! I just want them to be in the story for a reason, instead of having diversity shoved down my throat!”

And then, if it’s a fantasy genre like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones (please don’t spoil me!), comes the inevitable claim that it’s unrealistic to have non-white characters in a European based fantasy culture, that it’s unrealistic to have female characters who can stand up to men in combat, that it’s unrealistic to have openly queer characters, etc etc etc..

Sometimes it’s not as unrealistic as they think. But also: Why should we care? If we can enjoy fantasy worlds with spells and dragons and flying heroes and all sorts of unrealistic creatures, then why can’t we also have diverse characters, if that’s what the author wants?

* * *

This one took weirdly long to write and draw. I mean, partly it was because the first time I penciled it, I then lost the entire file to a computer glitch. (And yes, I do backups in the cloud while I work to prevent this from happening. But this time the backup didn’t work.)

But, when I started on it again, I found it took me a long time to draw anything. Eventually, I decided it needed some rewriting, and I think that helped. (Very often, when I’m having trouble drawing a comic, it’s because some subconscious part of my mind is unhappy with the script).

My big storytelling concern, drawing this, was the gargoyle. I needed to have it be just a setting element, and not a character, for the first three panels; but still noticed enough so that when the gargoyle moves in panel 4, readers will be going “oh the gargoyle is a living creature!” rather than “where did that thing come from all of a sudden?”

It’s largely because of the need for the gargoyle to be a consistent and recognizable element that all four panels are shown from the same angle. But having all four panels at the same angle made it feel very “Doonesbury” to me as I was drawing it. (The gag is fairly Doonesbury-esque too).

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows the same corner of a rooftop in some “high fantasy” sort of setting. The rooftop is rough-hewn but fancy, with three small gargoyles, like snakes with animal heads, and one larger gargoyle, which looks somewhat dragon-ish.

There are two people on the rooftop: A human male, who is white. He wears no shirt and a red cloak. Next to him is an elf woman, who has facial tattoos, large pointy ears, wide eyes, and is wearing a flowing purple gown.

PANEL 1

The human is looking down at something that’s visible from the roof, stroking his chin thoughtfully, with a serious expression. The elf is positioned as if she was just looking in the same direction, but then looked out the corner of her eyes at him instead. She’s raised one hand in a “just a second” gesture.

HUMAN: If we break into Lord Vezox’s warbase at nightfall-

ELF: Just a moment. What’s the story purpose of your being a white male?

PANEL 2

The human and elf have turned so they’re directly facing each other. The human is a bit surprised looking; the elf looks a bit angry and is “talking with her hands.”

HUMAN: Er… What?

ELF: If there’s no reason your character needs to be a white male, then you’re just a token!

PANEL 3

The human is looking annoyed, crossing his arms. The elf is angrily yelling, holding up a hand in a “stop that” gesture.

HUMAN: But what about white male representation? What about-

ELF: Don’t bring in that SJW garbage! It’s just not realistic to have a white man in this setting!

PANEL 4

The large gargoyle has turned its head to speak to the human. The human is surprised looking. The Elf looks pleased.

GARGOYLE: And if we aren’t strictly realistic, fans won’t accept the story!

ELF: Yeah!

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Feminism, sexism, etc, Media, Media criticism, Race, racism and related issues | 106 Comments  

Silly Interview with Jenna Katerin Moran, who knows what Russian servers to hack

Posted on May 16, 2019 by Mandolin

 

Here’s me! The outfit is Miranda Harrell’s version of the clothing style for the villains (?) of my RPG, Nobilis: A Game of Sovereign Powers. 

Here’s my website! https://afarandasunlessland.wordpress.com/
Rachel Swirsky: You have a PhD in computer science. What made you fall in love with the subject?

Jenna Katerin Moran: We’re one of those rare Tinder success stories! You would not believe how many clunkers I had to date through to get there, though.

(Example: trossulography. Trossulography tried to have like five PhD students just in one city alone without telling any of us about one another … and it probably would have worked fine, too, except we all had to submit to the same journals.)

RS: How does your academic training in computer science affect how you write role playing games?

JKM: There are some really good discussions out there of marketing techniques, cultural trends, and American gamer purchasing habits if you know which Russian servers to hack.

RS: I’m sure you get this question all the time, but I feel like it’s pretty relevant for an audience of people who aren’t all tabletop gamers. How and why did you end up falling into writing table top RPGs?

JKM: So it was like the year 1997? Ish? I don’t know. A little before Y2K, when I would have had to get out of the field of computer science (for, like, obvious reasons) anyway. And I was looking for something good to write because, y’know, it’s not like one can stop the writing, right? I mean, one tries, right, one goes and, like, tries to pursue other careers, or, curls up in one’s closet and wails in despair, or, moves to China and tries to become a foreign pop idol—like, Jenna Starlight Sparkles; whatever—but then one has barely turned around again before discovering that one has just been writing. I mean, y’know? (It is only when one has sighed and given in and accepted that one must be a writer that there is a possibility, er, uh, probability, … near-certainty? Uh, that the words will stop.) But, anyway, so, I was looking for something good to write, and naturally I settled on pornography; only, being a … regrettably … uh, prudish? person, I had to use fairly roundabout and esoteric euphemisms for everything. Long story short, it accidentally came out as an urban fantasy roleplaying game about people with conceptual powers in a world under existential threat from the inhabitants of the beyond. (If you know what I mean, and I think you do.) Only, in fact, despite that parenthetical that I have just shared with you, hardly anybody knew what I meant, or, at least, I think they didn’t? and once it got popular, I was way, way too embarrassed to ever tell anyone. I had thought that, like, 2000-era fanfic would have sensitized people to it? You know, to, uh, roundabout euphemisms? Like, what with, you know, all that, “his melancholy duck quacked down into the shimmering epilimnion of her pond” kind of thing that was, like, the style of the time? but apparently “each player designs a player character (PC for short), one of the protagonists in the story” was just one bridge too far. So now, suddenly, instead of taking my pornography into the bedroom, people were, y’know, propping it up on the coffee table and showing it to their parents and inviting groups of friends and strangers to their houses to talk about it together and I thought suddenly, wait. What if I just did this as a business and wrote for RPGs instead?

RS: Your cat, Kennedy, prefers that you pay attention to her at all times. What do you think is her current inner monologue as you do this interview? (Illustrating with photographs is highly encouraged!)

JKM: I suspect she is wondering if she is sleeping correctly. She is wondering if, perhaps, there is some proper way of sleeping that she was meant to be practicing, but which no one has ever explicitly explained to her, only making allusions to it, talking about “catnaps,” and sleeping awkwardly in her vicinity instead, and leaving her with no recourse but to guess.

Perhaps that is why (she thinks) she is sometimes left alone, to wither and wail in her hopeless misery, while her emotional comfort hominid cavorts beyond the gates with the other cat. Perhaps her failing at proper sleeping is the reason, there—

But if that is why, it is so unfair!

It is not her fault that nobody has taught her how to sleep correctly. It is not her fault that nobody has explained how to get past the top shelf of the bookshelf to the notional higher height that she knows must, logically, exist— for it would not make sense for a mathematical series to carry itself to the top of the bookshelf and then stop— or what the exact rules as to when she may use the two litterboxes that are reserved entirely for her use, that she has access to 24/7, are. It is not her fault that the correct propitiation to the household gods to allow her to go upstairs sans incident has not been made; if the upstairs cat would just tell her what the format of that ritual is supposed to be …

But, enough dwelling on the other cat. Let us return to the puzzle of the litterboxes; as noxious a thing as they may be, still, to her they are more sweet.

It is obvious, she believes, that there must be rules as to their use, because they cannot be used by a single cat, alone. A single cat, alone, entering the litterbox, enters a kind of quantum state— nobody has ever given her a proper explanation of quantum physics, so physicists must forgive her if she gets this wrong— enters a kind of “quantum state” where one may exist, in the outside world, or one may not. Arguably, when one enters into the box, as a fully defined and differentiated entity, one ceases therewith to be. The only anodyne to this noisome quandary is witness: to be witnessed, to have independent affirmation of one’s existence, to have an external force creating continuity from one’s entrance into the box … to one’s exit. But much of the time, this warrant cannot be obtained; no witness can be pressed into service; and the litterboxes, therefore, must lie fallow: the proper rules for this are, as yet, unknown.

Outside the window, in the vaster, greater world, where monsters roam— she knows this; one presses its face against the window, sometimes, at night— there may be entities that know the rules to all such things. Outside the window, one day, if the hominids would only leave the window open at all times as she has asked them to, she may smell and hear as one such beast walks past:

A nebulous, smoke-stack figure in the distance, made of words and bleeding doctrine.

When she sees it, smells it, hears it; when the wind carries to her the shadows of its words— again, if the window has been properly left open—

Then she may, finally, begin to know.

RS: What projects are you currently working on? 

JKM: My major project right now is Glitch: A Story of the Not, which is an RPG about surprisingly relatable evil gods who don’t actually know what they’re doing with their lives but are pretty sure that it shouldn’t actually be bringing an end to everything like they had previously thought. I guess the central thesis of the game is something like, “So, there’s an intrinsic universal characteristic of suffering— what do you do?” Only, unlike some RPGs, you can’t then roll for initiative against the intrinsic universal characteristic of suffering, because Glitch uses a cost-based system instead of dice.

Queued up behind that is A Book of Golden Hours, which represents a quixotic effort to break character arcs down into eight basic stories, split that again based on whether the character is getting cooperation, active interference, or neither from the world, and turn the result into twenty-four character classes with powers abstract and high-level enough that each can actually handle the roughly 4% of fictional characters that they wind up representing. It’s not just an RPG supplement, it’s also a unique work of orphic cubist literary criticism!

Then there’s Adventures on the Far Roofs, which is about fighting god-monsters with heroic talking rats at your side up on the rooftops out where the roofs start to blend together until you can’t be sure there are actually any houses underneath. That one’s been written for a long time, but it uses content from A Book of Golden Hours so it can’t come first.

For my patreon consumers I’ve been building a campaign—a set of pre-made characters and stories—for my game, the Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG. I’ve also lately been sharing a mildly updated version of an old cyberpunk setting of mine. Those’ll both be wanting to go into print sometime after they’re done.

Finally, I have a novel—the Night-Bird’s Feather—that’s gone temporarily back into editing at the moment after some new reader feedback. It’s a book of stories about cross-time dream magic and the mental origins of valuation. I’m really excited about it!

Oh, and tonight I was thinking of making soup?

OK, that’s all.

Posted in Interviews, Jenna Moran | Leave a comment