dev_chieftain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-06-09 02:43 am
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-06-09 02:43 am
High hopes, and also vegging out
Today, I had an interview. I think it went really well! (But you know how it is-- in retrospect, despite having several people called in to speak to you in addition to the first people who were talking to you, and everyone being really excited about you and whatnot, you have hours and eventually days, even weeks to wonder 'did I mess up? what could I have said to impress them more? how didn't I impress them? WILL THEY REMEMBER ME IN A WEEK TO EVEN CALL BACK?!' so even though I think it went really well I'm also nervous.) I'm really hoping they offer me the position because they decided to consider me for a position as an academic counselor-- a posting that hasn't even been made yet.
Fingers crossed on that one.
Danny's started his new job, which is weird and different and somewhat interesting. It involves being a security guard, which means cute uniforms and crazy long shifts.
Rather than work on the animation today, after spending my whole day working or trying to acquire better work, I decided to kind of just sit back and veg out for a while. Consequently, I read the entirety of Girls with Slingshots. It's a slice-of-life 20-somethings-who-drink comic, which is actually a fairly popular format. I had actually glanced through it back in the day when I still read Something Positive, because they had a crossover. Anyway, I like the comic all right overall, though I think my end feeling on it is that certain issues are a little uncomfortable for me. Things this comic does right: a diverse cast of a wide variety of folks; relatively realistic job issues (for a webcomic-- I just mean nobody's being given a convenient job of 'now you're fabulously wealthy, go soapbox', which is an easy and common excuse, especially in the slice of life genre); interpersonal relationships that don't just have to be romantic. I would actually rec this to Bubbles if she hasn't read it because it expressly deals with a healthy, positive romantic relationship between an asexual person and her girlfriend. I read the most recent storyline to gauge if I wanted to hit up the archives, and that was what I found-- it was a big motivator for me to go back and read up on the rest of it.
However, I'd say the problems I have with it are pretty two fold. First, I'm a little uncomfortable with the dynamic between Hazel and her friends with regards to the following:
-Everyone says Hazel is gay for her best friend.
-When she denies it, everyone calls her a homophobe.
That just seems like utterly shitty social circle behavior. They're cattily encouraging her to freak out by trying to put a sexual spin on a platonic relationship. I can relate to this; I find most people attractive. That doesn't mean I want to bone them, so even though I thought my best friend in high school was hot, and we openly geeked out about how hot OTHER girls were to each other, I wasn't interested in a romantic relationship with her at firs,t and when I tried to pursue it at her request, some pretty bad stuff happened (mostly involving the realization that she was NOT emotionally ready for a relationship, and that to actively pursue such a relationship was actually putting her in physical danger of her abusive parents. You can imagine I said "whoa, NO. We're not making out in your house again." when she made it clear that her mother had beaten her for such offenses before).
The other thing I don't like about this comic is the fallback to certain sexist behaviors that I really loathe. The comic's really very forward thinking in some ways, but since Hazel herself is kind of a flawed character who actively asserts that she wanted to be a boy when she grew up, rejects all things feminine in an effort to be manly and tough, and denies vehemently that she's a feminist like it's a bad thing, well, the narrative can be restricted sometimes by Hazel's own personal restrictions, such as buying into the faulty notion that only boys get to do cool things, and girls and girl things are all shitty. That doesn't bug me as much as stuff like the tacit societal joke that women are irrational when they're on their periods, for example. What bugs me about that assumption isn't even that I'm saying that hormonal levels in all persons don't affect them-- it's the implication that women are somehow so different from men that men couldn't possibly understand what it's like to be a woman. That, for whatever reason, being on your period is SO BAD that it's just a free pass to act like a crazy jerk until it's over. That, somehow, women are not capable of functioning normally and without the entire town knowing that it's their period when they are actually on their period.
"Let me guess: it's that time of the month." I don't know if any of you, FL, have ever received this gem of an insult, but I've gotten it plenty of times when I was legitimately upset over something horrible happening (like my grandfather dying; my car breaking in a way that made it irreparable for less than $3500, which is more than I make in a month by a significant amount; my air conditioning breaking on a day when it was 115F (46C)). I'm sick of this joke, and I don't find it funny. I don't like people making the assumption that I'm incapable of controlling my emotions, I don't like people assuming that my emotions are baseless, and I don't like people making the ridiculous logical leap that I consider my behavior expected or excusable because of the fact that something biologically is happening to my body. People have bad things happen to them sometimes and those are BAD DAYS. Being a woman doesn't magically exempt me from having terrible things happen to me that I legitimately am upset about.
So, I know these complaints aren't specific to the comic, but since it's framed from Hazel's perspective for the most part and she's a little bit like that anyway, those sorts of things come up more frequently than I'm really comfortable with. I would recommend the comic to slice-of-life enthusiasts.
I do also kind of give it mental demerits for being about how people who are 20-somethings like to go get drunk, care only about fucking, finding someone to fuck, or ~romantic relationships, and characters having kind of vaguely defined hobbies and goals that rarely, if ever, come up.
Speaking as a twenty-something who has a lot of interests, none of which include going to bars, clubs, or frat parties and never have or will, I wouldn't mind more comics about girls playing Magic: the Gathering or gay couples meeting over a nice game of chess. People who actually do art as a regular part of their appearance in the comic (Bobwhite was a good example of this, but still had many of the same problems), people who actually like to cook, whatever. Just, really, I find drunk people uninteresting and repetitive. Most sober persons do. I'm not condemning drinking, but it's SERIOUSLY uninteresting to read about. There are better stories out there!
Anyway, rambling on 'cause it's very late and I'm extremely tired. Tomorrow I'm busting my ass on the animation all day, but I just needed a break tonight. Also: My aunt's been sending me the colored pages for the first couple of scenes of the comic project she took up with me. She's really not confident about her art, but I actually really like her style because it's so different from others. I know she's not comfortable drawing people, having not really drawn much in such a long time (she does sculpture, pottery and household usable art almost exclusively these days), but I really do think her pages look great. I want to get them set up online and stuff but I'm not sure if she's comfortable with that or just humoring me. Will figure it out when I can.
Excited to report that I have learned how to suck less at brewing tea, thanks to Danny showing me how to make his Tazo green tea the proper way. Results: yummy iced tea in the morning to look forward to. Yay!
Fingers crossed on that one.
Danny's started his new job, which is weird and different and somewhat interesting. It involves being a security guard, which means cute uniforms and crazy long shifts.
Rather than work on the animation today, after spending my whole day working or trying to acquire better work, I decided to kind of just sit back and veg out for a while. Consequently, I read the entirety of Girls with Slingshots. It's a slice-of-life 20-somethings-who-drink comic, which is actually a fairly popular format. I had actually glanced through it back in the day when I still read Something Positive, because they had a crossover. Anyway, I like the comic all right overall, though I think my end feeling on it is that certain issues are a little uncomfortable for me. Things this comic does right: a diverse cast of a wide variety of folks; relatively realistic job issues (for a webcomic-- I just mean nobody's being given a convenient job of 'now you're fabulously wealthy, go soapbox', which is an easy and common excuse, especially in the slice of life genre); interpersonal relationships that don't just have to be romantic. I would actually rec this to Bubbles if she hasn't read it because it expressly deals with a healthy, positive romantic relationship between an asexual person and her girlfriend. I read the most recent storyline to gauge if I wanted to hit up the archives, and that was what I found-- it was a big motivator for me to go back and read up on the rest of it.
However, I'd say the problems I have with it are pretty two fold. First, I'm a little uncomfortable with the dynamic between Hazel and her friends with regards to the following:
-Everyone says Hazel is gay for her best friend.
-When she denies it, everyone calls her a homophobe.
That just seems like utterly shitty social circle behavior. They're cattily encouraging her to freak out by trying to put a sexual spin on a platonic relationship. I can relate to this; I find most people attractive. That doesn't mean I want to bone them, so even though I thought my best friend in high school was hot, and we openly geeked out about how hot OTHER girls were to each other, I wasn't interested in a romantic relationship with her at firs,t and when I tried to pursue it at her request, some pretty bad stuff happened (mostly involving the realization that she was NOT emotionally ready for a relationship, and that to actively pursue such a relationship was actually putting her in physical danger of her abusive parents. You can imagine I said "whoa, NO. We're not making out in your house again." when she made it clear that her mother had beaten her for such offenses before).
The other thing I don't like about this comic is the fallback to certain sexist behaviors that I really loathe. The comic's really very forward thinking in some ways, but since Hazel herself is kind of a flawed character who actively asserts that she wanted to be a boy when she grew up, rejects all things feminine in an effort to be manly and tough, and denies vehemently that she's a feminist like it's a bad thing, well, the narrative can be restricted sometimes by Hazel's own personal restrictions, such as buying into the faulty notion that only boys get to do cool things, and girls and girl things are all shitty. That doesn't bug me as much as stuff like the tacit societal joke that women are irrational when they're on their periods, for example. What bugs me about that assumption isn't even that I'm saying that hormonal levels in all persons don't affect them-- it's the implication that women are somehow so different from men that men couldn't possibly understand what it's like to be a woman. That, for whatever reason, being on your period is SO BAD that it's just a free pass to act like a crazy jerk until it's over. That, somehow, women are not capable of functioning normally and without the entire town knowing that it's their period when they are actually on their period.
"Let me guess: it's that time of the month." I don't know if any of you, FL, have ever received this gem of an insult, but I've gotten it plenty of times when I was legitimately upset over something horrible happening (like my grandfather dying; my car breaking in a way that made it irreparable for less than $3500, which is more than I make in a month by a significant amount; my air conditioning breaking on a day when it was 115F (46C)). I'm sick of this joke, and I don't find it funny. I don't like people making the assumption that I'm incapable of controlling my emotions, I don't like people assuming that my emotions are baseless, and I don't like people making the ridiculous logical leap that I consider my behavior expected or excusable because of the fact that something biologically is happening to my body. People have bad things happen to them sometimes and those are BAD DAYS. Being a woman doesn't magically exempt me from having terrible things happen to me that I legitimately am upset about.
So, I know these complaints aren't specific to the comic, but since it's framed from Hazel's perspective for the most part and she's a little bit like that anyway, those sorts of things come up more frequently than I'm really comfortable with. I would recommend the comic to slice-of-life enthusiasts.
I do also kind of give it mental demerits for being about how people who are 20-somethings like to go get drunk, care only about fucking, finding someone to fuck, or ~romantic relationships, and characters having kind of vaguely defined hobbies and goals that rarely, if ever, come up.
Speaking as a twenty-something who has a lot of interests, none of which include going to bars, clubs, or frat parties and never have or will, I wouldn't mind more comics about girls playing Magic: the Gathering or gay couples meeting over a nice game of chess. People who actually do art as a regular part of their appearance in the comic (Bobwhite was a good example of this, but still had many of the same problems), people who actually like to cook, whatever. Just, really, I find drunk people uninteresting and repetitive. Most sober persons do. I'm not condemning drinking, but it's SERIOUSLY uninteresting to read about. There are better stories out there!
Anyway, rambling on 'cause it's very late and I'm extremely tired. Tomorrow I'm busting my ass on the animation all day, but I just needed a break tonight. Also: My aunt's been sending me the colored pages for the first couple of scenes of the comic project she took up with me. She's really not confident about her art, but I actually really like her style because it's so different from others. I know she's not comfortable drawing people, having not really drawn much in such a long time (she does sculpture, pottery and household usable art almost exclusively these days), but I really do think her pages look great. I want to get them set up online and stuff but I'm not sure if she's comfortable with that or just humoring me. Will figure it out when I can.
Excited to report that I have learned how to suck less at brewing tea, thanks to Danny showing me how to make his Tazo green tea the proper way. Results: yummy iced tea in the morning to look forward to. Yay!