gs_silva

Life is tough all over. A friend is having a particularly difficult stretch, so to cheer her up, I offered to draw her something silly with a character of her choice and a character of my choice.

I always choose Cathy. For one thing, I own the rights to her, so that's easy. And she comes out of my pencil easily, now that I've drawn her at least a thousand times. (I'm counting previous drafts of Alien Romance, plus my rough draft of the hypothetical sequel, plus all the many, many times I drew her for prompts or just because.)

She's very versatile, too. With her wide eyes and unruly hair, and big ears that look like they're ready to go flying off somewhere, plus a fashion sense that favors scribbles and flares, she always looks a little bit lost. She doesn't belong anywhere; therefore she belongs equally well everywhere. The Silly Old Bear seems like a good enough fit.

Today is a special bonus flashback. It's really long and not actually related to the current plotlines.

Maurice answers the question about childhood bullying posed by ysabetwordsmith.

Typhoon is very angry about the snow. She's not even an outdoor cat, and would be perfectly capable of finding a comfortable spot on the catio. But she's displeased and concerned with the conditions of this establishment. She'd like to lodge a complaint.

I'd say it was pretty, but it's all whited out now. Not a lot of contrast anymore. It's as pretty as the cover of The White Album.

(Which was just white, with "The Beatles" embossed on it, also in white.)

(There was a version that had the text in black, I guess? Or was that just the cassette/CD cover? I had the LP and it was white-on-white.)

Yesterday I did a marathon session of daily comic, wishing the whole time that I could have some high-quality alone time. Now I'm trying to have a marathon session of touching up the graphic novel, but my stamina for holding a stylus and tablet and staring at scribbles on a screen is much reduced.

At least the kitchen is cleaner than it used to be.

January is always a hard month. Ideally, I could go into semi-hibernation and not speak to anyone except for saying goodnight to my spouse and son every night, and come out in mid-February with a renewed sense of my place in this world.

But have you listened to the news lately?! That's not a world I have a sense of place in.

Not that it's THAT different from the previous iterations of the world. Humans were doing a lot of gawdawful things then too; we just had to dig a little harder to hear about it. Americans could still benefit from digging into the news, because while we have a full set of international news sources available to us, we still rarely look at it. I know a few American friends who read The Guardian. Somebody mentioned Al Jazeera a while ago; I haven't followed them in a couple of years, because you have to brace yourself for a high global death count (since they cover world conflicts that are harder to find in other English-language news outlets) and it's been a long time since I was able to do that.

Mostly I read French-language news now, which is not complete, but they cover the Middle East and Africa pretty well, and they're more likely to speak directly about the ugly bits of US and UK politics. Not always. You still have to click around different sources. But I can read in French. My vocabulary has improved in a direction I wouldn't have otherwise chosen: tuer, incendie, lacrymogène. To kill, fire, teargas.

I made a snow horse in the front lawn a couple of snowfalls ago, and I go out and patch it up when the temperatures allow for a little melting and the blocky, chunky snow becomes more malleable, but it's pretty thoroughly a wreck at this point. I was looking forward to an additional chance with this snow to build upon it, add a whole new layer and make it smooth and horse-shaped again, but it looks like it'll be just too cold for just too long.

In Alien Romance world, I'm working on a scene where the pub band is performing, and it has some continuity problems, so I'm trying to decide how much work I should put into changing the art entirely. There's this one guy in my comics critique group who is a bass player in a similar band in real life, and while he's always happy to identify and point out issues in my portrayal, it makes me want to put a little more effort in so he doesn't give me too long a list of corrections.

I had another friend who was a blues singer and she used to do the same thing for me, but she passed away last year. Every time I think about her, grief hits me all over again, and I think about her a lot.

The dolly stacked full of cases of beer hits the floor. Maurice was trying to prop it up with his left shoulder while he clutches his re-injured right arm, but he's gone down too. Damion turns around and sees the mess, and stands helplessly with his arms full for an entire panel. Finally he unfreezes, puts his beer down, and runs to help Maurice.

The alien lingers briefly, but she can only apologize for not being able to turn back time. There's nothing helpful she can do.

Damion asks, "You all right?"

"Yeah," says Maurice.

"Can you still drive?" Damion asks.

"It was just my bad arm collapsing. I'm fine," Maurice assures him.

They survey the puddle of glass and beer on the warehouse floor. "That's a lot of beer," Damion observes. Maurice mumbles an agreement, on his feet again and cradling his arm. "Vinny gonna be mad."

***

Life pummels you sometimes! I'm on track; just off schedule. That's one of the problems with keeping oneself to a schedule. When I'm doing well, I tighten it up and add more to it, and then when my smooth sailing becomes a little bumpier, I feel like I'm falling off the schedule. I'm not really. Nobody is holding my feet to the fire except for the utility companies and my need to eat regularly.

Transcription:

Maurice is pushing an empty dolly at work, where he's an assistant manager at a beer and liquor wholesaler. The manager, Vinny, is saying to an employee there, "Damion, you're riding with Moe today. Go load the truck. Hurry; yer late."

Damion and Maurice stand in the warehouse in front of stacks of cases labeled "Bud" and "Coors." Damion says, "Can you handle the dolly if I stack it?"

"Course!" replies Maurice. "I do it all the time."

When the dolly is full, Maurice tips it back to begin pushing it. But it keeps tipping back, and he lets go of it. He stares at it as the cases begin to slide off.

The alien appears in the background and we can no longer see Damion surrounded by cases of beer. Maurice is pulling his right arm away from the falling dolly, and implores her, "Stop. Make it stop."

"what happened?" she asks. Maurice looks at his right arm. He's turning so that his left side will meet the dolly as it continues to fall toward him.

"My arm gave way. The broken one. It went crack. That can't be good."

"Oh," the alien exclaims. "Oh no."

Maurice's shoulder is near the left handle of the dolly now, and his left hand has almost grabbed it. He continues. "I told Vinny when he hired me that..."

He pauses.

"...I wouldn't do heavy lifting. I wouldn't injure myself. Aaaaaand there goes my back. Take it back."

The alien continues to hover in the background, keeping her distance. The dolly is nearly at the floor now, and Maurice has gotten his shoulder under it and it's weighing on him hard. "This is my own fault. I need a second chance," he reasons with her, then pleads, "Rewind! Rewind!"

"What?!" says the alien. "I can't rewind TIME!"

"But I need it," Maurice pleads.

***

There's a whole other level of fictional characters, or imaginary friends in some cases, that wasn't originally part of the story. I added them after I finished Draft 1 because I kind of wanted there to be an alien in Alien Romance who was an alien, and not just an immigrant. The title of my book actually refers to immigrants, and it's a callback to the old cheesy shows and movies popular in the 1980's about an attractive alien coming to earth and having a romantic subplot with a cute human while the FBI tries to chase them down. Those shows were, to a degree, allegories for immigration and intercultural relationships. So I bypassed the allegory part.

The bones of this story popped into my head in 1987, so you can't really be surprised, right?

Jon, at work again, goes to Sarah's office where she's working at a computer station with the mainframe behind her. "Sarah," he says.

She looks up, disheveled - I didn't mean to make her that disheveled and I was going to fix it but it seems I didn't. "Jon, I'm sorry about what I said the other day!"

"Okay?" says Jon.

"I was so afraid I was going to say the wrong thing that I made it terribly worse!" Sarah cries. "I've always been an awkward person but I was trying really hard, I swear."

Jon stares at her. "I don't remember what you said."

"Oh," Sarah exclaims, smiling a little. "Is that true?"

"True enough for practical purposes. I need the template for the state tax reports."

"Of course!" Sarah says.

***

Sarah ended up being much more awkward than I'd intended, but I guess I was venting.

Jon is catching on. His instinct would be to snap at her, shut her out, and feel sorry for himself for being such a magnet for what he would consider to be people's worst treatment. He'd make it all about him, and mourn the loss of his former dude-bro self, when everyone stumbled all over themselves to impress him, and awkward people left him completely alone. He didn't even have to make any effort himself. He was a smart white boy, going places, and the only social skill he had to learn was to make occasional quips to remind his friends that he was in charge.

He still thinks of himself that way. Here, he's still controlling the narrative. Filing business taxes, bleah! I used to have to do that as an administrative assistant and it was fine; once I learned my way around the template, my accounting program sent it electronically. I doubt that Jon would be put in charge of that. Maybe someone else asked him to go get a copy of the template so he could learn. I'm not overthinking it.

But I've really wanted to showcase the difference between how Jon sees himself and how others struggle against their own prejudices to avoid getting him wrong, and then they still get him wrong. I feel like a couple of rewrites of this story arc wouldn't hurt, but oh well, I can't rewrite everything.

I'm so tired I cannot think of the words to describe how tired I am.

Going to bed. It's noon. I don't care.

Transcription with translation:

Owen pours coffee into mugs as he looks over his shoulder and asks Cathy, "So you and that guy got married? The short one, right? Not the one who came to the rave with you?"

"Hmm?" responds Cathy. She's moving toward the kitchen chair that Seth is indicating for her to sit in.

"It's cute how all of you live together, like Three's Company," Seth adds.

"Hmm?" Cathy says again.

Seth and Cathy are now seated at the table. "So how'd you meet, you and hubby?" Seth asks.

Cathy frowns. "I don't... comprend (understand)."

"Coffee, the universal language," Owen says with his hands full of coffee cups.

Seth jumps up and goes to the turntable, and Cathy follows. He pulls out a vinyl record and gets ready to put it on. "I have a better universal language," he exclaims. "Music!"

I'm sorry for how painful this is. But not sorry enough to write a different ending! It could always be worse.

Jon is sitting at the cafeteria table, unwrapping his sandwich, when Sarah, on her way back to her workstation, turns and says, "Oh, Jon, I think you're doing a great job. I noticed you're a very independent person, and I admire that! It must be really hard!"

"Nah, I was born like this," Jon replies with a half-smile.

"Oh, you were?" says Sarah. "I thought it was... an accident or something."

Jon's smile fades. "I mean I was born independent. A leader, not a follower."

"Oh! Right!" Sarah is trying hard not to look awkward. "Well, if you need a follower... wait no... that's not what I mean."

Oops, well, she failed at that.

"Right. See you upstairs," she mutters as she hastily makes her getaway.

Jon looks down at his lunch. "Huh," he humphs to himself.

Is 'humph' a verb? It is now.

***

I have some story arcs dangling from previous days! We'll have to revisit them tomorrow. I also have a longform scene or two planned. I just have to find the time, the ambition, and the energy to do some speed-drawing sessions. I've been working too slowly lately.

Jon is taking his lunch break at his new job. I suppose he's been bringing his lunch and eating at his desk every day so far, so he won't have to make the effort to walk down the hall on crutches and take the elevator to the cafeteria. But he's doing it this time.

When he arrives at the cafeteria double doors, he pauses to catch his breath, and wonders if it was worth it to come here. Probably not. But then Sarah, the mainframe technician we met briefly in an earlier scene, throws open the doors. "Jon! Hi! Let me get that for you," she gushes, and invites him to sit with her.

I've done numerous scenes where Jon is taking his time going places or performing tasks, and we all get to watch his slow progress, panel by panel. Sometimes, he's in the background while other characters do things in the foreground. I have one scene, not in the book or the daily comic but just for a feedback exercise, where it takes him 3 pages - that's about 16 panels - to pour himself a drink and sit down with it.

I had a friend in college who was disabled, and was extremely defensive about the pace at which he operated. Well, I say 'a friend' but we only hung out a few times. He had the hots for me, and I didn't reciprocate because I was dating the custodian, and then he found a girlfriend and we kinda never saw each other again. But that's neither here nor there. The thing I found interesting was the whole concept of living your life at your own speed. Especially because Jon has three speeds! Racing speed, limping speed, and a complete standstill.

The speed of his personality adjusts to the speed of his body. I wonder if anyone ever noticed that? While he's never extremely outgoing, when he's in his good wheelchair, his personality gets stronger. So even though he's pretty sensitive to the general cultural attitude that being in a wheelchair isn't a good thing compared to not being disabled, he certainly feels better when he's in it.