secondlina | Oddities...

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Oddities...

Well damn.

I made this face a lot this week. And it's a face I keep for special occasions. First off, i'm annoyed with aspects of my job, mainly idiots calling. Second, I seem to be in a bit of a rut this week. I can't write a comic or an LJ post worth a damn. Third, holy flying macaroni Batman, what is the internet up to?

For starters, Namesake showed up on fandomsecrets. Of all the elements I was expecting readers to nitpick about (such as genders, Lewis Carroll's reputation as a pedophile, sexual orientations of characters, comparing to Disney, etc), someone seemed to have been bothered by the ethnicity of the Wendy character. Huh. That's... a little odd. From what I gathered, she had a very clear vision of what the Wendy of Peter Pan should be. and our version... din't really cover that. It's unfortunate for the reader that feels this way. I still think she should have given the story a bit more of a chance (since Wendy has yet to actually show up).

To continue.... Oh, Deviant art. More deviant art issues. For some, anyways. Deviant art technicians have eliminated the "Other" choice in their "gender" categories. As a person who works with software, I suspect that the technical team did it because the marketing team wishes to add gender-defined campaigns to the site (jewelry stores for isntance would be show on "girly" galleries). However, this has offended many people (including some of my friends). Basically, this has offended people who do not feel attached to a gender or another. Such as Transgendered or Queer folks.

I admit, myself, I didn't get the issue right away. I'm pretty naive. So I still though LGBT people identified to a specific gender. My friends have explained to me that that wasn't the case. so I see more where this issue comes from.

Also, To me, the change in itself is not insulting. As I said, it's probably marketing based. But the Deviant art tech support was very rude to many who complained. and I find that is the bad point. Not understanding there's an issue? That's an honest mistake. Being rude to people who report said issue and refusing to fix anything? That's bad public relations and just doesn't cut it.

I won't quit deviant art (since I use it for work, among other things).

However, yesterday, me and

dqbunny were considering advertising namesake on deviant art. Now? Not anymore. Not if we can avoid it.

So, if anyone knows good sites to advertise Namesake (either through project wonderful or not), please let us know! We appreciate all guidance and suggestions.

Also, have cool namesake drawings I designed for the banners to make you feel better.

Sorry for not drawing comics this week guys. I am really void of joke ideas.

- Isa

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My friend told me this joke. It's really stupid but let's see what you think of it.

"What do you do in a bathroom?"
"European."

Haha. It's stupid, really. But, just thought I'd share.

YAY! New art! ^_^

The fandom secret would have made a little more sense if s/he was talking about the original book. But s/he was talking about the Disney version (for all we know, Book-Wendy looked nothing like Disney-Wendy)!

**sigh** Yet another reason to add to my list of "why I haven't signed up for Deviant Art yet". :P
In addition to being convenient for transgender folks, the "other" gender specification is also useful for artists who simply don't want their gender to color the viewers' perception of their work (just like how most female fantasy/sci-fi authors use their first initials instead of their names). Not to mention the desire to avoid unwanted male attention without having to outright lie about being female.

I read that fandom secret. Everyone is allowed to have their opinion, but I wouldn't think seeing a different version of Wendy would be that big of a deal. @_@

Anyway, the banners look great. I think Jack and Alice's are my favorites. ^_^

It was really stupid on their part, first because of Spirit Day and then because deviantart has always claimed to be a "non-conformist" place. I honestly have had issues with the website since the whole 'Yellow Alien' issue (one of the co-creators left and they basically rewrote the whole site history so it would seem he never took any part in creating the site). Then the "erect penis = porn / photo of your open vagina = art!!" hyprocrisy and "underage characters drawn as adult in adult situations = bad / nude cosplayers wearing a wig of same underage character = good!" crap, I guess this was just the last straw. I don't think the whole uproar is because of the change itself (because honestly, it would have been quickly and easily changed if they noticed what a stupid move it was) but the whole PR response to the person who e-mailed them politely, that was really rude! I'm English as Second Language and even I know the difference between the terms and what words to use.

Sorry, I didn't mean to rant on your LJ :P I've been discussing this topic to my boyfriend on Skype all day and it just amazes me how sometimes people fail to treat their customers right o.o (plus all the other issues) And honestly? I'm female/straight/dating a straight guy/cis-female (or whatever the term is, sorry I don't know) and I **HATE** with a passion when they put "girly ads" for me. Sorry, I really DON'T care about your "baby maker software" at aaaaaaall. :P

(And Project Wonderful is your best option for webcomic advertising. Find websites that are in the same literary genre as yours, advertise there and see which sites they are on.)

When you say "good sites to advertise", are you thinking about webcomic sites to advertise on? I could dig through my webcomic list and see which ones have spots for project wonderful advertising, and have a similar audience to Namesake.

You guys might also try putting up a mirror upload on free webcomic hosting sites like DrunkDuck and Smackjeeves. Even if you already have an official website for Namesake, it could still draw in more people to the comic.

If either of you are willing to do it, you could always do voting incentives for places like Top Webcomics...

As an aside, I know I'll definitely be linking to it once I have my official site for Timothy Green up. I'm very eager to see where it goes!

Like someone above me pointed out, this isn't just a move that's bad for the LGBT community, but for all the artists who just don't want their work categorized by a gender. Sometimes, gender isn't the story, so even if the subject is male or female, why categorize it?

I think the "guh" comic says it all. I've been feeling that way for a while about stupid things.

These are so strong, great expressions and sort of strength in the poses. Also I like how you used the rectangular banner shape, especially with the sword!

(deleted comment) (Show 1 comment)

Hee, that F!S was only good for the publicity. And seriously, of all the things to be bothered by...

I heard about the dA wank too. Oi. Like, yeah...not okay. They really could have handled that better. D:

Also, love the Namesake sketches. And I can't wait for the update, srsly. I love it. *A*

Yeah, the FS secret was weird--almost trolly. But more traffic is good.

---
And here is where I get myself in trouble.

I've got... mixed feelings about the DA kerfluffle yesterday. I hang out in the women-and-LGBT-dominated corners of the US comics fandom, so I am uncomfortably well-informed about many things like the non-gender issue. I respect the opinions, but I think sometimes folk take it ~~too far~~ to extremes as well. There are mutually respectful ways to get things done, and then there is trollery, willful ignorance, screaming matches, dismissing someone's entire opinion on grounds of assuming they are racist/ablist/sexist/etc regardless of if that is true, and etc.

DA shouldn't have removed the non-gender option to begin with, but I think people deeply involved in the LGBT community forget that to people not so involved, it just didn't occur to them as an issue. It's not malice, it's ignorance, and polite discourse and information is the best way to fix things. Internet mobs is not.

As a code monkey, I get why they took out the "unspecified" that used to be there. It didn't matter to DA before. When they retooled the site for v7, they started incorporating the gender setting into how the information pages generated sentences (his/her). They also started using it to target the advertising. Sure, I'm a paid member, but the site lives based on ad revenue. Not enough of us pay to make up for the number that don't. Advertisers will pay more for targeted ads. It's worth it for DA to do that. Whomever coded the site probably honestly did not even know there are people that don't have a gender identity, and coded as they understand the world, as the marketers want and need the site to operate. For the sake of allowing customer/user privacy, they set it so that you could choose to hide your selected gender. Due diligence in their minds and level of information. Now, they overlooked that the info pages would still display he/she, but when you're re-coding a site that large things like that are not a priority. Making sure complex things like the gallery systems, layouts with various ad sizes, search options and etc are functioning properly, etc are the priority. Again, no one meant to offend, and they had a lot of problems with the galleries and image auto-resizing when v7 initially rolled out months ago. No one in the site admin even thought of this as a problem. A polite contact to the admin (I mean an email, not a public call-out on news and DA journals they may not even see) giving information and clearly explaining what the extent of the issue would have done loads more than two sentences demanding 'where is my third option'.

ugh, internet drama...

I try to stay away from it, but sometimes I forget :\

My personal opinion on taking internet stuff too seriously, and making a drama out of it is: There are more important things in life than whatever might or migh tnot be going on behind that screen (and I mean this regarding ALL kinds of internet drama).

Ethnicity? Really? 0o That is rather... odd :/ (I noticed I hadn't received an update email since I posted last, and I was wondering what was up with that! Now I have it saved on my tabs to check manually ;)

DA is making you choose gender for ad sake? That IS insulting! *growl* I despise gender specific crap like toys for girls being stuff like barbies, baby go wets, kitchen playsets etc and boys toys being hot rods and tool sets >(

I hated most 'girly' things growing up, and it always pissed me off how 'role driven' all that stuff is. Like if you are a certain gender than 'this (insert whatever)' is what you are 'supposed' to like.

Wow, why are people freaking out about a different take on Wendy? After all, there are so many different takes on Alice in Wonderland characters etc.

As for the deviantart thing, the decision may have just been clueless tech stuff, but the letter the staff sent to the person was highly unprofessional and rude.

I would be uber-sad if you ever left deviantART. ;.;

I think you can try with them:
http://www.pixietrixcomix.com/

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