Megan Rose Gedris - Comics n' Stuff

Someone explain to me how RSS feeds work, and how I can use them? I'm tired of not knowing how they work.

The new Monkey Island game is great, but it is too big for my computer to handle. It makes it all slow and jumpy. No good. So I installed it on Laura's computer, which handles it much better (though still slightly slow), only to have her monitor break the next day. Curses!

The game itself? I've only played about half an hour of it, but it's fun so far. The controls are a bit hard to get used to (they change them with every game, don't they?), but after a while, I mostly got used to it. The plot is very interesting, what I experienced so far. Same excellent humor, same fear of porcelain, same I-have-twenty-cannonballs-in-my-pants-pocket inventory. (I call them "endless pants" games.)

The problem with playing a game as soon as it comes out is that there are not hints for it online. So I have to do it all myself. I always break down and find hints, but this way, I can't, so I won't. I can play the game for real, and actually exercise my brain!

Day one of Gluten-free diet.

I feel a LOT better. Since I haven't had a chance to look up what kinds of foods to eat, I've only eaten things that boldly proclaim "GLUTEN FREE!!!!" on their labels. I slipped up and had 4 Pringles, which hopefully won't make much of a difference. But all in all, my digestive system is already feeling calmer, though still somewhat painful.

I lost 2 pounds since yesterday, (for a total of six this week), officially putting me at a lower weight than I am comfortable with. My inability to eat most things right now isn't helping matters, either. I guess I shall eat a shitload of rice tonight. Perhaps try to exercise and see if I can't gain some muscle.

Thanks for all the advice, to everybody who gave it. I'm going to try the Gluten-free thing for a couple weeks, to see if that helps. I'd still like to go to the doctor for confirmation, but as we've discussed before, that isn't something I can do on a lark. I need to put some money aside for that.

*insert another pro-NHS rant here*

If I didn't know better, I'd think my appendix was acting up, because a lot of these symptoms remind me of the time when my went bad. At least there's one thing I know I don't have.

IBS, Celiac, Crohn's... these are not words I want to have to use when talking about myself. (Although if I have Crohn's, that might officially make me a female Jeffrey Brown (cartoonist who lived in Grand Rapids like me and writes sappy romantic stuff that I love. He has Crohn's, and from reading his auto-bio comics about it, it does NOT sound like fun, for my body or my wallet.))

But things are getting worse. "Gastrointestinal distress" doesn't cover it anymore. I stayed home from work today because of it. If I don't start feeling better in a few days, I might have to find a way to go to the doctor. I wonder if the grocery store clinic can handle this? Probably not.

Oh, la vie boheme. So glamorous.

The new Monkey Island game came out today! I'm'a install it soon as I get home!
Fuck you, work! I'm playing videoh gamez!

I worry that I'm getting what I had five years ago that caused me to lose so much weight and be unable to eat most foods without intense pain. The past week has been hell for my entire digestive system.

I had the house inspection today. It went pretty good. It's definitely in better shape than the other house, so getting a loan this time around should actually work. The weirdest thing about the whole thing? Half of the outlets were installed wrong! They put the negative wire on the positive side, and the positive wire on the negative side, and the ground wire goes nowhere. So if I were to plug anything into any of them, it would basically just fry itself instantly. Yikes! Luckily, my dad should be able to fix that no problem. And even luckier, the FHA doesn't even check electricity! They care more about the living area and making sure there's no lead paint than making sure the wiring works. So, yay!

My Finnish friend Sam got into university today (go Sam! Yay!), so Laura and I celebrated with Starbucks (Sam went there a thousand times when she visited us in October!) Up until a few minutes ago, the smoothie I got was the only thing I ingested today. I kind of forgot to eat/ when I remembered, I was too sick. I've been feeling kind of stomach sick lately. Lost 3 pounds in the last few days. Considering my ongoing attempts to actually gain five pounds or so, this was not productive.

When Laura and I got home, we worked on my secret YU+ME-related project! It's very complicated, and required Laura's assistance to help me do. Those pages should go up in a month or so. It's going to be hard not to talk about them beforehand! I might have to tell you all, at least those of you on LJ. See, this is the reason you read my blog. I occasionally give you hints on stuff!

Once I have that out of the way, I'm going to go balls-out on Lesbian Pirates and get an issue done in time for September. Hopefully I can have it done by the end of July, and have all of August to focus on moving. I also want to do this ArtPrize thing, and I need to get crackin' on an entry. I have a great idea in my head.

You never realize how much you use your thumb in drawing until you hurt it and it's covered in duct tape (the only thing handy when I hurt it). Inking is going slow.

The most frightening dream I ever had was the night after I had my foot surgery in 12th grade. I had to sleep downstairs because I couldn't get upstairs on my crutches yet. I was laying on the couch, and as far as I knew, I had just blinked. But I didn't blink. I fell asleep, and dreamed I was sitting on the couch, right where I was. There was no difference between what I was seeing in the dream and what I saw when I was awake.

Something very minorly creepy happened; I don't even remember exactly what it was. But when you think you're awake, only to find something impossible happening right in front of your eyes, it freaks you out. Somehow, after all the freaking out, I realized I was dreaming. So I told myself to wake up. (I do this a lot during nightmares. I figure out it's a dream, and it's like suddenly, there's the exit.)

I found myself back on the couch. I was relieved to have woken up. I was thirsty, so I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water. As I stood there drinking my glass of water, it occurred to me that I just had surgery, and couldn't walk. Oh, shit. I'm still dreaming.

So I woke up again. Thirsty again. But I had a glass of water next to the couch. I began to drink it. Then I looked at the glass. I knew I had brought a round glass of water to bed. The glass I was drinking out of was square.

I woke up again. Over and over I woke up, and attempted to get a glass of water, only to find something that was wrong, which told me I was still dreaming. I began to panic. I knew I was on a lot of pain meds. And at the time, I never even took aspirin, so they were extra potent in me. I worried that the meds had somehow interacted wrong in my system, and put me into a coma. Or worse, death. I was so scared I would never wake up, and be forced to live in a world where creepy things happened over and over.

But finally, I felt something I hadn't before. Most of my dreams don't have much in the sense of touch, and I hadn't realized how numb everything had been in the dream until I began to feel something. It was the scratchy upholstery of the couch. I clung to that sense of touch. It was my anchor to the real world. I let it pull me back into the waking world. Finally, I woke up.

Though it had seemed like at least an hour to me as I dreamed it, when I looked at the clock, I had only been asleep for five minutes.

And then, I finally got my drink of water.



This dream happened about six months before I started writing YU+ME. This dream influenced a lot of the Dream World "rules", such as the time differences, and the ability to dream within dreams, and the feeling of being "trapped" in a dream. It's a bit different for Fiona, as she didn't actually want to wake up (quite the opposite), but I've gotten a lot of material just off this one dream.

My head is a freaky place sometimes.

I woke up at noon today. Took a shower, ate some food. Started drawing around 1:00. It's almost 5:00. I have penciled* 8 pages of YU+ME today. Eight. Pt. 2 Issue 8 is almost entirely drawn!

Having a script really helps make this all go faster. I have issues 8, 9, and 10 all scripted out, with instructions for how much dialog is on each page. I've caught 3 separate potential plot holes that I wouldn't have caught had I written this one page at a time as I went along.

My plan was to have issue 8 done by Monday. It looks like that might actually happen!
If all goes according to plans, issues 9 and 10 will be done by the end of July!


Edit: Half an hour later and I have 2 more pages done!



*And by penciled, I mean drew in blue lines on my computer in Photoshop, which is the current process I use to draw comics.

I am learning animation!
I've got a program that makes sense to my brain, so I'm going through all the tutorials now. I hope to someday entertain you all with awesome cartoons.

Had a dream I lost six teeth, and could no longer talk. My mouth swelled up to the point where I couldn't talk. I followed my mom around, trying to get her attention, to show her my handful of teeth and ask what I should do.

I think I really need to go to the dentist.
Too bad I have to wait until school starts up again so I can go to the dental school, the only kind of dentistry I can afford.

Oh, but nationalized health care would be socialism, and at the very best sub-pare health care.
You know what? I'd rather have socialist sub-par health care than none at all, thank you very much.
Nothing will really get done so long as the people in charge of this all have excellent health care and don't know what it's like to choose between gas money for a month or one doctor visit.

I'm so glad the king and all the dukes are telling the peasants to be happy with their stale bread while they feast on roast pig. It'd be easier to eat my stale bread if my teeth didn't hurt.

Often, when I draw, I forget to breathe. I get dizzier and dizzier and my head begins to hurt, and then suddenly I expel the last breath I took in two minutes ago. I don't know why I do this. It's not that I forget to breathe in, I just forget to breathe out.

Now, people have been throwing around the term "gay is the new black" lately, meaning that gay people are the new black people, the new civil rights fight. But I wanna talk about something else. Gay is the new black the way pink is the new black, or sometimes green is the new black, or blue is the new black. I'm talking fashion terms here.

Is anyone else sick of seeing their sexual orientation treated about the same way as crocs or skinny jeans? Girls kissing other girls the same way they might carry a clutch bag - as an accessory.

Popping up all over the place are articles about a "new trend" of girls kissing girls. As if this is just a new fad, not something that has been around for millenia, not something that is going to continue forever. People are just trying on the gay, the way they might try on a silkscreen tee, but when it goes out of style, they're free to donate it to Goodwill.

Straight people kissing the same sex for fun is like a Presbyterian wearing a Yarmulke for fun. It isn't there to be fun for you. Take it off!

Despite gay rights becoming more and more prominent and publicized, we're seeing fewer and fewer gay people on TV these days, and more Katy Perrys. I fear it's because gay, real gayness, is sooooooo 2003. Faux-bisexuality is the new black.

People who are actually bisexual aren't the ones I'm talking about. I'm not talking about girls feeling freer to express their actual sexual orientation. I'm talking about people who use it when it pleases them (or pleases boys), but when it comes to dealing with the actual consequences of being gay, (you know, the hard stuff, like coming out, getting bullied, or having family members disown you), they can peel that t-shirt off and pretend they never wore it.

I fear networks are saying "We've already done lesbians. Let's do schizophrenics this season." As if including gay people in a show would be like dressing a character in ugg boots - so unstylish! How could we ever have worn those things?

For LGBT people, real LGBT people, this is not something we can take off, throw in the laundry hamper, and decide later if we want to put it back on again. It's not a trend to us. It's not something for straight people to use as a fashion accessory, or something to spice up a story without giving any depth to it. It's not a shallow, stylish thing. It's a deep, ingrained part of our lives.

So please, straight people, take off the "tee shirt of gayness" and retire it. And know that it was never meant to be worn by you. But also know that it isn't going away just because you've stopped wearing it. It might go "out of style", but it's never going away. We're here, we're queer, and we're not going anywhere.

I've been writing up a storm lately. My goal is to have all of YU+ME Pt. 2 Issue 8 drawn by Monday, and Issue 9 drawn by the 18th. Have a crazy amount of buffer.
Issues 8 & 9 are scripted out. I like this scripting thing. I almost had a plot hole, but it was an easy fix. But I wouldn't have caught it if I hadn't scripted it beforehand.

Sounds like everyone is enjoying the moist, towel-clad Fiona. It really wasn't mean to be fanservicey, but making things wet increases their sexiness by 97%. Oh well. XD

You're all asking so many questions lately, too. I love it! Keeps me on my toes.

Clawdee had me go to PaperBackSwap.com yesterday, and now I am hooked. I found a way to magically turn books I hate into books I love. I cleaned out my bookshelf last night, sorting everything into the "keep" pile (which was 95% of my books) and the "get rid of" pile. All of these awful books that looked good when I bought them, but turned out to be terrible, or books that are part of an 18 volume series that I only own 2 of, and have no desire to get the rest.

So now I have about 15 free books due to me. They don't have everything. Some of the books I want will probably never show up on this site. But there are a few gems that I'll be picking up. (Anyone have suggestions? You gotta give me summaries, not just titles.)


Getting rid of old books always makes me feel uneasy, especially if I'm getting rid of books that I hated for idealistic reasons. Books with sexism, racism, homophobia, and various other "isms" portrayed as something other than the terrible thing they are. Why would I want to let someone else read that? Why would I let that book continue to exist and be read by another person?

Two things keep me from just destroying these awful books outright. One, any time you burn or ban a book, it actually makes people want to read it even more. It drives up curiosity for the book. Sure, me burning one copy in private behind my house isn't national news, but it's the principal of it. To me, burning a book actually honors it in a strange way, like fallen heroes. And these books deserve no honor.

Secondly, if they're buying it used from me, they aren't buying it from the publisher, so the awful writer doesn't get any money from the transaction. Whoever's getting it from me would otherwise go out and buy it, giving the author and publisher money, which I don't want them to have. Better they get it from me.

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Also, 4 of my birthday books came in the mail already, as well as one book I ordered a while ago but it got lost in the mail. After two months, I finally have my "Convent of the Pure"! Expect a review of that, soon.

Damn you Alas for being hilarious and distracting me from work!
Much of it's blogged by the artist of Hereville, which I love.

For my birthday, my parents gave me $100. Pretty nice gift. I tried thinking for a while about what big, expensive thing I'd buy with my Benjamin, but then I got a better idea. I decided to buy $100 worth of my favorite books. Books I've checked out from the library over and over because I loved them so much. Books that still buzz around in my head, years after having last read them.


This is what I got for $100:


A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
The main character is a total selfish, self-absorbed asshole... and I love reading as bad things happen to him. This book is hilarious.

Zero Girl: Full Circle - Sam Keith
Sam Keith is one of my heroes, and Zero Girl is my favorite work of his. Full Circle is the sequel to the original, which I already own.

Moomin Comic Strips Book 1 - Tove Jansson
Oh, Moomins. I love you, so. And when you are in comic strip form, printed large in a hardcover book, I love you that much more.

The End of Mr. Y - Scarlett Thomas
A total mind fuck. This book has haunted my soul since I first read it. It might be one of the best books I've ever read, ever.

Sir Apropos of Nothing - Peter David
A parody of fantasy novels, the misanthropic "hero" meanders through his horrible life.

Sunshine - Robin McKinley
Vampires, a la one of my favorite authors.

The Hero and the Crown - Robin McKinley
There was a while when I was younger when I didn't like books. This book got me back into reading, and I haven't stopped since then. This book also inspired me to write my first long-form fiction work, when I was about 13.

God Save the Queen - Mike Carey
Changelings, and some awesome comic art.

Passage - Connie Willis
A doctor researches Near Death Experiences. Another mind fuck, and another that has haunted me. I last read it about eight years ago, and I haven't been able to forget it.

The Folk Keeper - Franny Billingsley
A scary story, with selkies (seal maidens from Ireland). Kept me up a lot of nights, and made me afraid of the dark for years.



This is far from a complete list of my favorite books, partially because I've already bought a lot of my favorite books, and partially because my list is too long for $100 to buy them all (especially since so many of my favorites are out of print). But 11 books should do me for now.

An excellent splicing of the two stories.

It's tricky writing gay characters.

It's not so much that the characters themselves are hard to write, but it's more how people read them that makes it hard. Gay readers are some of the most critical readers out there.

It's not always a bad thing, being super-critical, and it does come as a logical result of seeing bad depiction after bad depiction after pregnant-lesbian-vampire-serial-killer-who-randomly-sleeps-with-men bad depiction. But seriously, you may have set the bar too high.

Despite being a lesbian, I still get flack for how I write my gay characters. And if we ever want to see depictions of ourselves reach into the mainstream, we're going to have to let some straight people write gay characters, too. But if they feel like there's no way their gay audience is ever going to be happy with the way they're written, a lot of those writers are going to say "Fuck it. I'll just write straight people all the time."

Yeah, if someone is writing a horrible gay character, complain. If no one can think of a good idea for a lesbian character's storyline other than the overused "she needs to find a sperm donor so she can get pregnant!" cliche, complain there, too.

But I don't include those things, and I'm still getting criticism.

From sometimes the same person, I will get both "This is too gay" and "It's not gay enough." What? To a lot of readers, unless there are girls constantly showing affection (in the form of making out all over the place), they aren't "real" lesbians. But if I show them kissing too much, it's "They never do anything but make out! They're such flat characters! You just made them lesbians so you could increase your readership!"

If I write them with too many flaws, I'm showing gay characters in a bad light. But if I give them no flaws, not only is the character boring as hell, but people complain that making the gay characters too good is being preachy.

If I treat their relationship as being a big deal, I'm "scandalizing" them. But if I make it nonchalant, I'm "ignoring queer issues".

And if I have to deal with this stuff, imagine what a lot of straight writers have to deal with. At least I can always fall back on the "Hey, I'm an actual lesbian, and this is coming from a first-hand experience" argument. Straight people, despite their best efforts to try (and often succeed) at making good gay characters, don't have that to back them up.

I know nobody can please everybody, but some people don't even give us writers a chance to write a good gay character. They have their minds made up before they even start reading. "If the girls kiss a lot, I'll say they're being salacious. If they don't kiss enough, I'll say they're being squeamish about gay people."

Lots of webcomic artists are doing wonderful depictions of LGBT characters, despite being straight. Comics like Danielle Corsetto's Girls with Slingshots, Gina Biggs' Red String, Josh Lesnick's Girly and Jeph Jaques' Questionable Content (just to name a few) have excellent gay characters, both as main characters, and supporting cast. They don't just have gay characters to further the plots of the straight people. Their stories are the plots. Are they all perfect? Of course not. But they are interesting, original, and well-rounded, and I'll take that any day.


If you want to do a nice thing, read those comics. And then write to the artists and tell them "Good job". Give people some positive encouragement for writing good gay characters. I know I do every time I come across a good depiction. I know you have to get over the scary "OMG I am writing to someone cool! I am gonna sound like a dork!" feeling. I get that, too. But I think it's important to tell people they're doing something I like.