So I've been playing Silent Hill Downpour for the PS3, the newest entry in the venerable Silent Hill series of survival-horror video games. It is thematically unique among video games, where it is a game mainly about suspense and atmosphere that purports to have a tight sense of dramatic pacing. For huge parts of the game, nothing happens, but it knows just when to scare you with some kind of shambling monstrosity, and this is usually something you dread, because the games tend to also feature a deliberately simplistic combat system. Your character is usually (and I stress the term usually) not a good combatant, so your only means of defense is to whack the dangerous ghoul over the head until it falls down. Health items are also commonplace but not abundant; you'll find just enough to be worried that you don't have enough.

For the reader's convenience, this journal is split into two parts: a retrospective of the Silent Hill series in general, its importance to gaming, and its recent ups and downs, to establish what Silent Hill Downpour was expected to live up to. The second part concerns Silent Hill Downpour itself. Read whichever one you feel is most pertinent to your interests. There may be spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution.

THE RETROSPECTIVE

Silent Hill 2 and 3, released in 2001 and 2003 respectively, were considered the series' high points. One of the elements about the series that allows it to rise above the usual horror game is in its setting, and your hero's relation to it. Silent Hill, as you start into it, just seems like an unusually foggy, deserted town. As you explore it, though, the town starts to become quite strange: spatial relations in various rooms and buildings start to warp (you could go through a door in a basement and end up on a rooftop), the town starts to feel like its guiding you in a certain direction with roadblocks and people you have to follow, and the town becomes considerably gory at some points, like you've walked into a giant flesh wound. Eventually, as you find out more about your playable character, you come to realize that Silent Hill seems to be pulling up their deepest regrets about who they are and what they've done with their life, and forces them to confront them in the form of particular monsters. Even from the start, people make a conscious decision to come to Silent Hill to quell an inner demon once and for all, and the town feels like it's happy to oblige them.

This has been an irresistible, compelling experience for many gamers that want to be challenged in ways other than just the game itself being difficult, and exists as an extremely unique series in gaming culture. Such a level of uniqueness is hard to maintain, though, and Silent Hill 4: The Room was already on the slip. Rather than your character being drawn to Silent Hill for a reason, he's sucked into it unwillingly in a sort of abstract scenario: he can't leave his apartment, but various holes appear in his wall that lead to various parts of Silent Hill. I haven't entirely figured out why this happens; it has something to do with some kind of evil cult, which seems a bit like the game is straining to explain, rather unnecessarily, how Silent Hill "makes snese". It was an appreciable effort to try and flesh out what Silent Hill is and how it works, but it affected the game's atmosphere.

By this point, the Silent Hill series fell from the hands of Konami's internal Japanese development team, which had broken up to work on various other projects. We couldn't get enough of the creepy little burg, though, so Konami agreed to carry on the series with other developers.

This is where things start to come apart.

The fifth installment in the series, Silent Hill Homecoming, was passed on to a new American developer, Double Helix Games. I name the developer's nationality as a point of interest because I get the impression certain countries do horror differently. Japanese horror movies are ones like The Grudge or The Ring, where the horror is usually more supernatural and psychological in nature, preying more on the victim's fear through intimidation and a sense of hopeless dread. Contrast to American horror of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th variety, which banks more on the sense of your life being in danger because of a violent psychopath, not necessarily supernatural in nature, and playing off the much more basic fear of being killed with a chainsaw. Both have their own merits, but it's hard to make one become the other.

And this was the general failing of Silent Hill Homecoming: its story, character, and general milieu were based more on American horror, where huge slobbering monsters would leap out at you and hope to catch you off-guard, rather than lumber towards you with the sickening dread that, eventually, you'll have to deal with it. This was further hampered by the fact that your character is now a trained marine, so he is good at combat, which takes away from the game's generally oppressive atmosphere. It feels more like a standard action game in a creepier than usual setting. The town doesn't seem actively malevolent, it just seems like a creepy town full of monsters. It smacks a lot of that terribly average Silent Hill movie that came out at around the same time, speaking of American-style horror.

A more specific criticism could be that the developers seemed just so damned excited to be allowed to take a crack at Silent Hill, that they decided to cram their version of it full of things they liked from the previous games, at the expense of the pacing and subtlety that made those games so effective. For instance, rather than the setting gradually becoming more hellish and defying physical laws as you progressed, the game instead goes into "hellish mode" at certain intervals in the plot, usually announced by a siren. As well, certain enemies cameo from the earlier games, and considering those enemies were physical reflections of the inner turmoils of the main character from those games, their place in this new game doesn't make sense. The game laid it all on pretty thick, is what I'm saying.

Following this, the series fiddled around with various other undertakings, among which include Silent Hill Origins, a prequel, and and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a remake of the first game. Both were developed by UK-based Climax Studios and held their own well enough, but felt a bit rote. Overall, though, they upheld Silent Hill's qualities well.

SILENT HILL DOWNPOUR

Which leads us to 2012's newest addition to the series proper, Silent Hill Downpour. It's got a lot to say for itself: it stars a new character who is a convict that stumbles into Silent Hill when his prison bus crashes, it's a new story independent of the plot of any of the other games, and it has been handed over to a new developer, Vatra Games, based in the Czech Republic.

Wait, a developer from eastern Europe is helming Silent Hill now? Intriguing, to say the least...

The game relies less on fog and darkness than previous titles, and uses a more over-the-shoulder perspective, as opposed to the more crane-shot view used by previous games. This makes the setting look more realistic, but still claustrophobic. As the title suggests, it relies more on rain than fog. The rain creates an interesting tension in the game where when it starts raining, more monsters come out and they become more aggressive. I sort of wish this was more effectively utilized, though, since later in the game, you spend most of the time indoors, out of the rain.

There are less monster types, but each one presents unique challenges, from the "Witches" that would stun you with a loud scream before attacking, to the "Thugs", burly, convict-conditioned types that don't go down easy, to the "Mannequins" which can't be physically attacked; you'll see what I mean when you encounter them. The environments are impressive, from huge dilapidated buildings which look like they've caved in from the roof all the way to the basement, to the ancient mines filled with old, water- and steam-powered machinery.

There are interesting new solutions to puzzles, as well. In the past, boarded-up doors in Silent Hill meant you could never go in there, but now, you can find fire axes that can break the boards down and allow you to enter, and many of the puzzles don't rely so heavily on the "find this and put it in that" or "remember the number sequence" riddles the games previously relied on; often, the solutions of the puzzles had to be deduced by finding various notes and clues left around the environments.

The way that the game treats the hellish, reality-bending nature of Silent Hill is also, in my opinion, absolutely brilliant. You'll often see it coming, but you won't know quite what the game is going to do. In one part of the game, you find a derelict auditorium, and to progress, you have to follow a script you found elsewhere in the level. When you re-enacted the play in the correct order, raising the curtains and putting out the right sets, the set actually came to life in the darkness, and you have to walk through a dark, rainy forest to get the item you need to progress. Many of the hellish environments also evoke strong setpieces with recurring themes, such as a rocking chair, a record player that plays the song "Born Free", a sickly man in a wheelchair, and other strange manifestations. These environments can vary from slow, unsettling puzzles to fast-paced, nerve-racking chases, and they're so dramatically expansive and unusual, they're amazing just to look at, and to figure out just how you got there.

There are flaws, though. The frame rate often chokes, but never so much as to interfere with the game, the lighting engine is often pretty appalling, and some of the puzzles can be guessed just as easily as figured out. The game also tends to rely on the same few terrors every so often, including a black hole-like hazard that appears way too often to be very scary. Bizarre enemy designs like Pyramid Head and the nurses are also replaced by more conventional monsters like one called (I'm totally serious here) "The Bogeyman", which is just a large man in a gas mask and a heavy black raincoat. I guess it makes more sense as an eastern-European sort of monster, and its probably better than just designing a slightly different Pyramid Head, but... come on. Though to be fair, his purpose in the game's plot transcends his conventional design.

The plot is also very sharp, and adds some new elements to Silent Hill's mythos without feeling forced. Usually, Silent Hill tends to deal with just one person at a time in manifesting his or her inner demons, but in this game, it seems to be two: you, and an aggressive prison guard who was on the prison bus with you. Your inner demons relate very closely to her own demons, and seem to be dealt with in the same sort of events. The cop's anger with you comes off as a little cheesy at times (I've often compared her to the "hot cop" character from the Silent Hill movie) but her motives eventually justify her actions.

All in all, this felt like a game developed by an inexperienced team that were nonetheless trying their best, and had some really good things to offer. This game is an effective modernization of a series that peaked in 2001, and though it's a bit rough around the edges, at least it doesn't feel as incredibly forced as Homecoming.

The odd thing is, critics have been eviscerating this game like crazy, and I can't figure out why. They've made it seem like the frame rate was calling their mother a whore and, for some reason, crying foul on the stiff combat, even though one of the worst flaws of Homecoming was its tight combat. Apparently some of the more disturbing excursions to the otherworld weren't enough to make these critics well-disposed to the game, and instead of saying they were brilliant enough that they made the game worth playing, they said they showed how disappointing and not worth playing the rest of the game was; a pretty back-handed compliment, if you ask me. The more negative reviews maintain a strange doublethink where they wish certain elements that are key to Silent Hill would be "fixed", like the combat and exploration, but lament other changes, like the new music composer. The more positive reviews are optimistic about what Downpour did right, and believe they can make up for some of the things the game did wrong. I hope Konami is still pleased with the game and gives Vatra another chance, because with this experience behind them and a less demanding development cycle (the game was delayed a few times), I think they could make one HELL of a Silent Hill game!

WHAT'S NEXT FOR SILENT HILL?

It looks to be a big year for Silent Hill after a period of latency, between an HD re-release of Silent Hill 2 and 3, the release of Downpour, and the release of a new movie, Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, which already sounds destined to be pretty awful with a title like that, but never mind. A more surprising addition to the series is a PlayStation Vita game called Silent Hill: Book of Memories. It has a lot of odd new elements to the series, including an isometric gameplay perspective, co-operative gameplay, and a more multiplayer action emphasis. These all sound like pretty big red flags, but the most interesting thing about the new game I think is a very promising sign for it: it's being developed by one of my favourite game companies, WayForward Technologies.

WayForward has made a lot of games that have often been good, and usually pretty interesting. Many of their games have had many different kinds of appeal, including the well-received Contra 4, the cult favourite Shantae: Risky's Revenge, the surprisingly charming Wii version of A Boy and His Blob, and a few darlings of the DS eShop, including Mighty Switch Force and Mighty Milky Way. Even their licensed games have aspired to be pretty unique, such as Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck and Aliens: Infestation, and they've recently been tapped to make an Adventure Time game. These guys know how to do interesting re-imaginings, and when they say they've got an idea for a more action-oriented, multiplayer Silent Hill, I trust they're going to pull it off pretty well.

It's the kind of movie that makes you want to make your own movie. Sometimes that's a compliment, sometimes it isn't. This is a little of both.

Chronicle, as you may know, is about a group of teenagers who come across some buried crystalline object which gives them telekinetic powers. Their powers grow stronger the more they're used, so they're eventually able to fly, crush cars, and all other manner of impossible feats. The three kids that get the powers are from many walks of teenage life: Steve, the outspoken extrovert running for Class President, Matt, the average guy dealing with usual teenage problems, and Andrew, the bitter, dark-voiced little malcontent dealing with a dying mother, a cartoonishly abusive father, and being generally the school's punching bag. He's also Matt's cousin, which will be important later.

Possible spoilers ahead.

The movie is praised for its "realism", I suppose, because it's something I like to call a "camcorder adventure"; the sort of movie where someone (in this case, Andrew) inexplicably has a camcorder that can produce footage as good as a professional 35mm camera. It has editing characteristic of someone just pushing the Record and Stop buttons for the cuts, as well as a lot of long takes and shaky-cam footage (though good on this movie to realize that kids with telekinetic powers can levitate the camera and hold it much more steadily).

I've never really been worked up about camcorder adventures, like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, but they remain an irresistible curiosity. The movie has some cool scenes, like when the group learns how to fly and rocket through the air at blistering speeds, and... well, basically that, really. I guess there's also the ending, but you'd rather see that yourself, I'm sure.

From there, the movie hurls forward on a predictable trajectory. Andrew fancies himself an "apex predator" now, above the rest of humanity and free to do whatever he likes with them, so he wonders why on earth he needs to put up with his goonish father. I don't know if any real people display that kind of silly abuse, but if they did, it would surprise me.

By the end, Andrew's just decided "screw it", and decides to re-enact the end of Akira, sans the weird, disgusting growth that Tetsuo goes through. Matt tries to stop him, as he's been trying to maintain discipline about this whole sordid affair, but Andrew, not unreasonably, fails to see how he would enforce this, and doesn't take it seriously.

Andrew is supposedly a "realistic" character, in that he's not a perfect movie child, but I wasn't really drawn to him, because he doesn't evolve as a character. He's the same sullen jerk that he was at the beginning of the film, but he just gained a better means to make the world go his way. If he didn't have telekinetic powers, he probably would have committed a school shooting. He has occasional glints of complexity, like when he saves Steve from getting hit by a jet while they're out flying, when he explains his desire to go to Tibet, which briefly exposes his more sensitive side, and when he enters a talent show with his telekinesis, and briefly overcomes his crippling shyness. Of course this doesn't last long, as he plunges straight into supervillain mode shortly after this. Matt's probably the most compelling character in the film because he comes the closest to being heroic, even though the extent of his heroism is to stop Andrew.

I guess the movie just felt too steady about the characters suddenly gaining remarkable superpowers in a world where superpowers aren't really the norm. You would think that's not the sort of thing they would use to win a talent show. I don't think they'd get taken immediately by the government, partly because that's such a cliché angle, partly because the US government hasn't displayed that kind of tight reaction time since the 60s, though Andrew's spaz-out at the end of the movie would probably attract their attention. Hopefully in the sequel, they dissect his brain and find out what happened, try to weaponize or commercialize it, and shit hits the fan. Holy crap, that actually sounds awesome!

And that's the sticking point, really; Chronicle is the sort of movie that makes you imagine other movies. A lot of the times, I encounter stories and movies that don't really appreciate their premise that well, and that sends my brain inevitably thinking about ways I would have acted on this idea. Chronicle, in particular, re-emerged this particular concept I've been thinking about for a while; an idea for a webcomic called "Providence, Pennsylvania".

The other things that made me think of Providence, Pennsylvania are pretty numerous: the origin stories of various Marvel superheroes, like Doc Samson and Komodo and Spider-Man and so on, had taken people with a less than ideal body image, whether they're really nebbish or disabled or something, and had gotten superpowers that take them into such the opposite extreme of how they were, that it becomes kind of silly. Not only do they have incredible superpowers, but they're also all studly and awesome and can be on magazine covers.

Spinnerette is also a webcomic that caught my eye on one or two occasions as kind of a Horatian superhero satire where superheroes are common, but they're depicted in a really silly way. The main character, as well, bears resemblance to Spider-Man if he was a far more goofy character; like if he had six arms, shot webbing out his butt rather than his wrists, and if he got his powers not from being bit by a spider, but by accidentally getting shot with a giant laser. I couldn't get too into it, though; its humour was too overblown, many of its plotlines and character designs were distractingly foolish, my suspension of disbelief was too severely challenged by the main character's attempts to keep her secret, two-armed identity, and again, none of the characters seemed to react appropriately to their situation. They treat getting superpowers with the same level of awe as finding a really good Chinese restaurant.

But anyway, "Providence, Pennsylvania" is about an eponymous small town in Pennsylvania. It was a former mining town, but has fallen on hard times following the mine's closure. Then one night, there's an inexplicable event which suddenly causes all the townsfolk to gain powers like super strength, endurance, and durability, but has also idealized their appearances to look like comic book characters. All the men have become burly Adonises, and all the women like curvy Aphrodites. The event has also made them age slower, so the teenagers remain as teenagers for a long time, as well as the children.

What I hope to do with this comic is how a real-world society would react to a sudden population of comic book characters in their midst, and how that population would react, as well. The town suddenly experiences a tourist boom as people flock to see these astounding specimens, and the town's infrastructure is groaning under the weight of it. The other towns in the country refuse to cooperate with Providence, due to the huge economic imbalance of the town's tourism, and that they no longer have the need to import and export goods as much as they needed to. Policing in the town has also become more difficult, since everyone in the town has super strength and invulnerability to bullets. Government workers may also be sneaking around the town trying to figure out the nature of the event, but no one, including me, is too sure.

The story arcs would focus on different characters in the town, and one of the groups of characters I intend to put the camera on are a group of teenagers. Body image is a common thing teenagers are worried about, especially with childhood obesity on the rise, and when several of these characters suddenly have strapping chests in the case of the men, and svelte curves in the case of the women, this is a shock to them. On the one hand, they're no longer fat and slobbish, but on the other, when they look into the mirror, they don't recognize the person staring back. They also have to contend with the fact that they will probably be teenagers for decades to come, and they are part of one of the strangest populations of people in American history.

I'm hoping I can depict teenagers more authentically in this comic, because in Chronicle, they seem to be mainly on the level of whooping fanatics who see their superpowers as some kind of extreme sport. Maybe teenagers are quicker to accept these things than I give them credit for, but you'd think they wouldn't consider getting superpowers to be a particularly "normal" thing. The superhero movie is a popular genre nowadays, but sometimes filmmakers don't want to make a superhero movie, and try to do a superhero movie with some things dropped and some things added. Chronicle is about superpowered people that don't become heroes right from the get-go, but unfortunately, that means they don't have much to do. Making a "different" superhero story probably isn't about adding or cutting elements from a conventional story; it's about seeing its premise and doing something else with it.

I must admit, this caught me off-guard. I was on Google and thought "Hmm, they have an unusual Doodle today", and it turns out it was for this occasion. Imagine that.

But this is a good opportunity to look upon an important middle point, some would say high point, of English literature. He wrote stories in the centre of one of the English-speaking world's biggest historical turning points, in the middle if the 19th century. Industrialization was on the upswing, the middle class was growing, and everything was moving much faster. But by the same token that industrialization helped shrink the gap between the rich and the poor (ever so slightly), the rapid urbanization brought in people from the country and the fields, hoping to find work in the cities. The workhouse was on the rise, as Dickens' own unsympathetic protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge pointed out, and the worst tasks were given to small children. Social stratification adapted to the rising middle class, as it is wont to do, and Dickens saw all of this out his front window.

He started as a journalist, which may reflect how the characters he made are often considered the standout features of his work. He would see many of these people as he reported the various aspects of life in London, compile several of them together, or turn them into ghosts and poorhouse workers. Several of his characters, including Fanny and Nell, are based off members of his family. The death of Charles' favourite young niece, Mary, in his arms, is part of what inspired him to create the character of Nell.

And as you no-doubt know, his works are celebrated. A Christmas Carol is one of the most oft-adapted stories in the world today; everyone from Reginald Owen to Mickey Mouse has taken a crack at it. Oliver Twist remains a scathing indictment of young poverty and how people adapt to it, and A Tale of Two Cities remains a powerful work.

With all this in mind, it brings me to wonder about the state of literature today? Dickens' works turned a mirror on the world, as the words and characters reflected things we may not have noticed in the world around us, and the power of his work caused us to sit up and take notice. What kind of mirrors do we have these days?

Rather discouragingly, we have Twilight, a book that argues that lustful obsession is the best love a young girl could hope for (I hesitate to think Stephenie Meyer understands the symbolism of making the main love interest a vampire, but maybe she does), and that you must remain chaste and abstinent for the first person you've been attracted to in your confused hormonal youth, because there's no way you're going to get a broken understanding of your own sexuality that way. Maybe this is just romantic fantasy and not meant to lay bare something about society, but considering the distressing number of young women that fall adamantly into "teams" about which of the book's competing love interests is best, they seem to be getting unsettlingly invested in the false relationships this book shills.

That's the first example of a current book that has permeated society at large nowadays, but admittedly, it's much more stratified into who it appeals to, and much more narrow in its focus. Who wants to read a book about society in general, when they're just one person? It may also be better to compare to a book aimed at more than just a specific audience, but Dickens' works were for all ages, and many teenagers have enjoyed reading it, so I call it fair game.

In a larger sense, the literary world is becoming equally as stratified. Stephen King is a highly popular author who purports to write about aspects of American life under the guise of various horror stories, but really, pretty much all they are are horror stories, which just happen to be set in small American towns. If you can think of a way that "IT" is supposed to make us think about the world, I'd love to hear it. Thrillers are on the rise as well, from authors like Stieg Larsson and John La Carre, which attempt to scandalize and sensationalize certain aspects of the world. As our society becomes more global, and as other cultures blur together, it becomes more difficult to commentate on society.

Even just after Dickens' death, the literary world was changing already. The world was on the cusp of a new century, and other English writers, such as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Mary Shelley, drew from the advances that came in the wake of industrialization; advances in science, government, and class systems. The Time Machine is a commentary on class divisions and the rise of Marxism, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a commentary about European imperialism, and Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (as if "Prometheus" wasn't enough of a tipoff) is about the advancement of new science, and of society's trend to be fearful or rejecting of it. Sherlock Holmes, too, rose to prominence towards the end of the century, leading us into an age of greater wit and sensationalism.

So the literary world is much more varied than it was in Dickens' time, and similarly, less focused. What books are out there that could change the way we see the world? We've had some figures like that in the more recent past, like Orwell, Kerouac, Tolkien and Golding, but their influence was often down to a single work, rather than to a whole body of work, and even then, what's out there nowadays that's changing the world? The DaVinci Code? Please.

With Dickens on the mind today, where do you think literature has to go from here? Where has it come from? Where is it now?

Many artists have original characters of all shapes, sizes and kinds; fully conceived creative entities that they can use for their projects, whether it's for drawings, comics, literature, or whatever. They may have hopes and dreams, they may have quirks and flaws, they may have some physical characteristics of theirs that makes them appealing, or abnormal, or sometimes both.

These are things an artist has made, they're something that makes them an artist. They're fictional fabrications that you could picture leaping off the page, or the screen, or out of the words, and make the world just a little bit more interesting. There may be other things out there in the world that look and feel a little bit like them, but (with some exceptions) there's nothing out there that's just like them, and it all came from you.

With that in mind, how valuable do you think these creations are? Are they precious to you? Do you not want to see them hurt, or damaged, or abused? You want them to go out and have adventures, since that's part of why you made them, but what sort of trouble do you want them to get into? If you don't do anything with them, they stay in your head where no one but you can know them. But if you get them out there somehow, where other people can find out about them, they can be put in their heads, and they'll try and do something with them. Hopefully what they do will be much in the spirit of the original creation, but often it isn't. The more popular your character will be, the more likely it will be made into a mockery. There's certain things you can do to keep them safe, but on the whole, they're out of your hands when they're out in the world.

On the other hand, however, there are some artists that embrace and encourage this trend with their characters. They're out there for anyone to do whatever they fancy with them, and often, they'll help them along with it. They'll make drawings people ask for, sometimes with the artist's characters mixed with the requester's, and depending on what kind of opinion of these characters these fans have, the results can be exploitive. Sometimes they will design these characters deliberately with a feature or a personality trait that will make them popular, in the interest of drawing fans. They'll whisk and pull them into situations that may not make sense with the character's milieu or personality, but it seems like fun, so why not just go for it?

This may relate to something I've recently come up with called the Theory of Purity. It's a trend I've noticed in many works of fiction lately, especially ones concerning a hero, and a journey he has to do. The hero, at the beginning, is kind of a blank slate. He demonstrates exceptional goodness and admirability, and is in a somewhat simple environment that allows these features to flourish. Then, however, something forces a radical change in his environment, and he must drag up skills that he had honed but never used: resourcefulness, a capacity for violence, a strong sense of justice. These will make this character change in certain ways; how he reacts to a dangerous situation is where this character's individuality emerges, but when he's on the other side of all this danger, he won't be pure anymore. He'll bear scars and wounds, he'll have a cynicism and toughness he didn't have before, and that twinkle in his eye may be replaced with more of a steely gaze. Sometimes he may even die, or be otherwise unable to go back home again. There's no coming back from where he's been.

What I'm getting at is, before the hero is forced out of a neutral environment, he's essentially an ideal. Massive change will force him to develop, to shed his ideal form, and become something more distinct, but at the same time, more blemished. We may like the hero more at the end, with the unique and compelling ways he's stood his trials, or we may hate him, if it's turned him into an annoying jerk, or he feels too defeated by everything, and we feel sorry for him.

This doesn't just apply to heroes in fiction, either; it can apply to real people, especially yourself. You may initially feel or think a certain way about something, but as you have to contend with society, especially all the ugly and judgmental parts of it, you're going to have to react to it somehow. The Theory of Purity can apply to really anything that's new, possessing certain innate attributes, but when they're taken out of a neutral environment (such as your own imagination), external forces will make things happen to it.

The question is how people deal with the nicks and scratches that come their way. Some people use it to their advantage, to come up with unique ways they can overcome or use the dark changes they face, and realize this allows them to see incredible new things about the world. Some, instead, let these impurities get right down to their core. They shout and rage at these forces to try and stop them from changing him, because they think they can successfully beat them off, and they can go right back to their own personal perfection. But even trying to beat them into submission is still reacting to it. Your fist will still be bruised.

Some things, though, they don't worry about this. They were created in such a way, and with such a mindset, that anything you do to them will just roll off their backs. Put 'em in makeup, make 'em wear a dress, send them off to the planet Alderaan to fight Morlocks, who cares? Their environment was more of a set, they can just walk off it whenever they want. There may still be things about these characters that we like, but often, they were designed for a certain pliable appeal; a framework for people to go gaga over, an archetype for them to put on whatever they want. It was you that made it, but you threw it out there for anyone else to do what they want.

This may have a certain merit, but it leads one to wonder if some artists value what they make more than others? Which artists are overprotective, and which are just pimps? Which artists are free spirits that just want their creations to be loved by all, and which ones deliberately made these characters for fanservice? Is one less moral than the other? How do you strike a balance? What sort of value do you put in the things you make?

So `Exileden posted a journal a couple of days ago, where she asked the question of what makes an artist an artist? A thought-provoking question, to be sure, but her reasoning boiled down to "Is it due to technical skill? No, so that means everyone is an artist in whatever they do!" Frankly, that brings to mind this sort of thing. Most people agree with her, of course, and I'm inclined to think that her 9000 Llama badges contribute somewhat to this general acceptance.

I don't necessarily disagree with her, but I do think she has oversimplified the question quite a bit. You can't ask a question as complex and abstract as "who is an artist?" and then basically provide such a clear-cut answer. This is a question that has been deeply explored philosophically, and I think, with this latest take on it, it deserves further exploration.

I do believe that art isn't down to technical skill, as Pearl had described, but I do believe there is more to it than "everything everyone does is art, in some way." There's a lot that people do that one wouldn't call art, mainly because they don't necessarily depend on a person's imagination or personality to exist, but they still have value in not being art. A scientist, for example, isn't an artist: he works to cause something to repeat over and over, to allow people to find the constants in our world, and use them to make it a better place. It's not art, since it aspires to be predictable and easy to repeat, but it is still an important part of the human condition.

And as art doesn't require excellent technical skill, it also doesn't require positivity, or even making a whole lot of sense. In the comments section of Pearl's journal, someone mentioned Marcel Duchamp, an artist who once signed a urinal, and that became a landmark piece in 20th century art, because it provoked strong emotion and response, since no one knew what it was. It was a piece from the Dadaist movement, an organization that wanted to ridicule meaninglessness by deliberately making ordinary things into art. Through meaninglessness, they were able to put up a mirror to the art world, and show them that it had no reflection.

Similarly, the movie A Serbian Film is one of the most depraved and gratuitous films ever made, is a strong work of art because, at least when you're watching it with stark horror in your eyes, you know that there's really something behind all this. There are a lot of ways for art to be art, even if I don't like them: the works of Damien Hirst, for example, who once studded a skull with eight thousand flawless diamonds just to have a skull covered in eight thousand flawless diamonds, and it still worked as art because I gave a crap about it.

Some creative things I don't believe are "art", because they've been done to death, or have no soul to them. Pop stars like Katy Perry and Li'l Wayne I don't consider artists; they're more like salesmen. They make things that are easily packaged, easily understood by a lot of people, and easily bought and sold. That's all well and good, in its way, and creative energy was used at some stage of it being made, but I don't want to equate art with product. Art can be used as part of a product, such as with how it looks, what is unique about it, or that it reproduces a single work of art for mass consumption (like a book or a movie), but if it's designed as a product, it's not art. The painted plates at my local drug store aren't art, because I know there's thousands of them being made in a factory somewhere.

What all this means is, an artist is someone that can bring something unique to the world. Everyone else just draws a picture, sings a song, or writes a story. These aren't all automatically art, just by virtue of being made; they're just things. It's art when it feels like something that couldn't have been made by any other person, at the moment they made it. Art is something that, if you followed it all the way back as far as you can, you end at an unknown. You end at something that you must describe poetically, or abstractly; something that must be described as "just how it is." Art isn't something that I think everyone has: it's precious, it's valuable, and though it's common, you are still surprised when you see it. Independent of how well-drawn it is, how significant it is, or whether you like it or not, it's something you can feel a certain soul in; the outcry of the artist's emotion, thrown out onto paper, into a lump of clay, or out of a musical instrument. It's not so automatic, and one mustn't think it so.

Something that's been pressing on me lately is that I feel somewhat creatively indecisive. Most of my best efforts are spent on writing lately, but I also want to be able to draw well, but that is unfortunately not getting quite as much attention. This is especially hampered by certain parties taking it upon themselves to judge my level of competence in drawing (usually harshly), and when you don't already have an inclination towards it, that further wanes my interest.

Someone had said to me at one point that I am a "decided" artist, as in one day, I decided I wanted to try and draw things, and don't necessarily have any fundamental attachment towards it. The other type is a "born" artist, someone who didn't decide he wanted to be able to draw, but does so out of personal necessity. It seemed like he was making the nature vs. nurture argument, where nature favours some, and nurture deludes others.

I was frustrated by this notion, until I thought of a way to picture it. Each of may need to wear certain clothes for what we want or need to do. We may need to wear worker's clothes when we go to work, formal clothes when we're at an important dinner or event, or ceremonial clothes for one of the many little rituals we go through in our day. Hell, even in places we ought to be ourselves we're wearing some kind of outfit: school clothes, partygoer's clothes, social clothes, and so on. We take on many guises in our day, but underneath all those clothes, we're only one thing. It could be anything: a poet, a lover, a madman, a misanthrope, but it's not like you're covering up anything at that stage.

And there's the rub, I think. I wear an illustrator's clothes, trying my damnedest to make new things and challenge myself in whatever ways I can, but underneath all that, I'm a writer. Writing is where I'm most anxious to push myself, writing is the thing I want to sit down and do every day, writing is the thing I could probably do for the rest of my life. I don't mind wearing an illustrator's clothes, but they sometimes itch or feel too warm, and it's not as though clothes actively dictate your disposition or outlook.

This leaves me to wonder what I ought to do. I'm often advised that I need to practice drawing every day and do as much of it as I'm able, but I often don't think it's nearly that simple. I know I ought to commit to something I decided to do, but I'm going to be more naturally inclined towards the thing I'm made for. In that regard, my artistic temperament when it comes to drawing is far more fragile than when it comes to writing. It's subject to my mood, the course of my day, how tired or alert I am, and so on. It sounds immature that I only draw "when I feel like it", but it's not like forcing it would do any better.

But I also know that I didn't decide to draw for reasons as simple as "it looks like it would be cool" or "I just want to," the reasons are far more complex than that. I decided that I want to draw because there are things I want to express that words can't do very easily or to any satisfaction, I want to be able to engage my hand and head into the mutual action of drawing, and because it would open up a lot of things for me if I could write and draw both at once. I don't think it's a hopeless cause: potential exists for me, and certainly I wouldn't be doing anyone any favours if I just didn't draw at all. My creative attitude is that anything is worth doing, because even if it wasn't that good, it's still something that didn't exist before, and you're a drawing or a paragraph ahead from where you were before.

Hopefully I will come around in such a way that I can balance my time between drawing and writing. It's difficult at present, because most of the work I'm doing that I may be paid for is writing, and so that's where most of my time and mental energy is invested. With any luck, things will balance out once these projects are done, and what I'll be able to do will be more evenly distributed.

I don't tend to want to admit this, but a lot of the time, I do pretty much nothing. Maybe that's obvious; had a DeviantArt account for six years and have submitted only 64 Deviations in that period, but that's not really the "nothing" I mean; a lot of what I do, I don't want to submit for the arbitrary approval of the internet. Often, and problematically, it feels as though I do nothing, and cannot summon the interest to do anything other than nothing.

But I don't mean "nothing" as in I sit motionless for hours on end and do as little as possible with my time, I mean nothing of worth is accomplished. Work isn't done, new things aren't learned, talent isn't developed, things aren't produced. I will spend these times, when it seems as though there is no worthwhile activity to do, doing unsatisfactory things like sleeping longer than is honestly necessary, sitting or lying somewhere that I don't need to sit or lie, watching videos on the internet or reading things that I've already watched or read, and get nothing out of it from watching or reading them again. It's futile indulgence.

More than just unproductive, I think it's dangerous. There's no reason to do all this nothing; no premeditated thought goes into deciding to not do anything, and often, it will sneak by unnoticed before you look up at 8PM and notice that nothing was done. This isn't strictly chronic, as I do often have things to show for my efforts, but any amount of nothing is dangerous, and should be regarded fearfully.

What causes nothing? I'm inclined to blame my environment. I spend a lot of my time in a house out in the country, where I've lived for years. It's out somewhere quiet and secluded, so as you might imagine, nothing happens. Nothing encourages nothing. Many of the responsibilities and "somethings" I should be doing here, when nothing is happening and nothing is really expected or encouraged, seem imaginary. I'm not certain how practically-minded I am when I get right down to it, but I like to know that I will be able to quantify what I do. If I try and do something in a place with nothing, it's hard to know if I've done enough. It's like trying to fill up the nothingness; you can't do it.

This is probably why I tend to win Nanowrimo when I attempt it in November, with a lot of other people and a highly supportive global community, but when I try and do one of the other novel writing months during the year, like WriDaNoJu or JulNoWriMo, I can't muster up the interest. Sure, getting 50,000 words that didn't exist a month ago is nice, but on its own terms, it's hard to see the worth in it. It's far better, and far more gratifying, to do something like this when encouraged and imposed.

Earlier this evening, I was at my sister's house, and after we saw a movie, the thought-provoking Frost/Nixon, she talked to me about how frustrating it is for my parents that I have difficulty finding, and keeping, a job. She didn't condone or condemn, but she spoke with much more civil discourse than my parents tend to; she said something, rather than my parents, who even though they talk, say nothing. I was more able to talk to her effectively, though when my parents try to expound similar topics, it's the same old posturing, to which I react with just as much banality. With something to think about, I was able to think more clearly. I drove home from her house on a longer route that I don't usually take, because driving is one of those things I like doing when I'm frustrated about something, and can't work it out, and I had a lot to work out, so I wanted to do more driving than usual. It was also along more urban streets, with things I'm not familiar with, which was further stimulating.

I'm not a social person by any stretch, but I am still a social animal; maybe my own human nature means that I am better able to think and produce when I'm presented with more external stimuli, and without it, it's too easy to just go numb. From a logical point of view, this means I should endeavour to make my life more stimulated, perhaps even more difficult, but at the same time, I need to react to things that are outside my control, to be able to be more productive. It's less likely that a lot of something is suddenly going to come into my life, but now that I know the dangers of nothing, I'm able to take more responsibility to drive it away.

Well, it finally happened. After years of minor, almost dutiful interest in it, after this Canadian federal election we've just had, I can officially say I now am completely indifferent to politics. Left wing, right wing, taxes, programs, this or that, it's all an overcomplication of the simple idea of running the country. I had a minor hope, in this election, that Canada would lean back towards the left, after the thorough contempt our leader has shown for his seat of power, but now he's more politically strong than ever. I was incensed at first, naturally, but after thinking about it, what's it matter? A man in a blue tie stands up and shouts, rather than a man in a red tie. Makes no difference to me.

As you may or may not know, Canada has just held a federal election. We've had quite a few of these over the years, because unlike the American political system, which has federal elections every four years like clockwork (usually), the Canadian Parliament can become dissolved if enough people vote for it. Stephen Harper, who is basically a Canadian George Bush impersonator (minus the speech impediments), has had what's called a "minority" government for the last five years, through two elections. This means he's technically in charge, but it's like he has to get a note signed by his parents if he wants to get anything done. How our government works is that our legislature has 308 "seats", for 308 different federal districts, and whichever party has the most, its leader is the Prime Minister, but if he has a certain amount, he has more power. His opponents have dissolved Parliament twice, since he's pretty helpless to stop it.

An election just passed, and the Canadian political climate has been changed severely. Harper got his majority government after years and years of whining, the Liberal Party (basically the Canadian version of the UK Labour Party, or like something between Democrats and Republicans) lost over half its seats because they're an ineffectual bunch of tossers, and they've mostly been replaced with the New Democratic Party (hardcore left-wingers, the Canadian equivalent of the Democrats), which is surprising, since they've never had much federal clout. The Bloc Quebecois, a party mostly dedicated to the idea of Quebec becoming its own country, also lost most of its seats, and its leader resigned. Oh, and now a member of the Green Party is in Parliament (the Green Party is exactly what it sounds like). This new Parliament is pretty hilarious... if it wasn't for all the Blue.

Why am I waffling on about this? Well, most of my friends are young people, artists, and intellectuals, the sort of people with no patience for the right wing. Their reactions have ranged from pretentious pity ("Canada, I'm so sorry"), alarm ("This country is doomed!"), or blame ("How could you all fail so much?") They can all pretty much agree that we voted in Hitler (wouldn't Nixon be a more sensible comparison), and are actively wondering how in the hell something like this happened.

We'll get back to that whole Godwin's Law thing in a moment, but for now, there's the question of how the hell this did happen. Me, I'm inclined to blame the Canadian equivalent of Dumbfuckistan (you remember, [link] ). The American Midwest is where most of the credit for the Republican's boon in the early part of the decade is due, and the Canadian Prairies are a similar environment. The more egalitarian, urbane parts of the country like Quebec, most of Ontario and my own Nova Scotia helped bolster the NDP's numbers, but in the middle of the country, the Conservative Party is a big hit with the rednecks roughnecks, especially because of how aggressively they're investing in the Alberta Tar Sands, which creates thousands of jobs, at the slight expense of holding back the development of alternative fuel for decades to come. The fact that the Conservatives are basically the only stable party in the country right now, considering that the Liberals have changed leaders four times in six years, and the Tories are the only right-wing party in the country, with three or four other parties who are varying, conflicting degrees of left-wing, it's no wonder the Canadian left is struggling to make gains lately (though the NDP almost tripling its seat count, and the Green Party gaining a seat, is promising).

Anyways, Harper is someone who has a poor record for women's rights, opposes gay marriage and gay rights in general, opposes marijuana decriminalization, opposes gun laws, gives large corporations tax breaks while busting the balls of typical people, seeks to privatize our national health care system more and more, and took the credit for the Canadian Dollar being at record highs, when that had little to do with him. In other words, he's a typical right-wing politician. Many of my friends, being liberally-minded, assume he will now become a straight-up fascist, because his Parliament won't be dissolved every 18 months by bitchy Liberals. They must think we elected Sideshow Bob, and he's going to demolish our house to build the Matlock Expressway.

Look, I'm all for a liberal cause, too, but good Lord, I had no idea these people felt so insecure about their national identity. A twerp that's been in power for five years gets slightly more power (and an Official Opposition that actually has balls), you suddenly think the country's going to become Mussolini's Italy? Our country has been through worse than this: we fought off national terrorism in the 1960s that threatened to tear it apart, we've been pressured by the USA for most of our history to help them with their pointless wars and their Soviet paranoia and have usually denied them, we've struggled for years to emerge with a distinct national identity, and you think because a right-wing Prime Minister won't get a vote of no confidence so soon, that's all going to become ash in our mouths? It won't be pretty, that much is for sure, but we've had worse right-wing PMs in our history. Brian Mulroney was in Ronald Reagan's pocket and made the Canadian economy practically useless thanks to NAFTA, John Diefenbaker who cancelled the biggest leap forward in aviation because Eisenhower bullied him (or because we couldn't afford it, I'm not sure), Joe Clark, who ran for less than a year when he tried to implement taxes that other PMs would implement later... I'm sure many of these guys were pretty personally ambitious, but did we ever let them paint their scary face on every wall, or burn important literature that was deemed "enemy propaganda". No, and we never will. Do you know why?

We are Canada, and we are a country that doesn't let that kind of shit happen. We elected a right-wing Prime Minister, who got a majority by the skin of his teeth, who was punished for contempt of Parliament with this new majority government (remember kids, if you bribe and piss off the right people, you too can grow up to be Prime Minister someday!), he's probably going to let the War in Afghanistan carry on for as long as he wants, he's going to try and implement stupid government programs, he's going to give handouts to big corporations and jack taxes for normal folk, he's going to keep human rights in the 1950s against the ideals of one of the most egalitarian countries in the world, do you know why none of this matters?

167 MEN AND WOMEN, AND THE ONE MAN IN CHARGE OF THEM, DON'T MAKE UP THIS COUNTRY.

Sure, the US might be a left-wing wonderland right now, with Obama catching Osama Bin Laden and everything (sort of like how Harper "saved the economy", lol), but it's still a country where people like Glenn Beck and Pat Robertson make millions of dollars and influence people's politics, while demagogues like them wouldn't even get the time of day up here. It's the kind of country where people care more about who moves on in Dancing With the Stars than about the atrocities going on in their own backyard. It's the kind of country where I'd need to pay thousands of dollars or be part of a Draconian health insurance program because it's one of the last countries in the world to wrap its head around government-provided health care. Sure, I'd love a left-wing government, and I'd be over the moon if Jack Layton was our next Prime Minister, but you know why I don't think prolonged exposure to Conservatism is going to destroy my country?

Because a country is its people, its places, its culture, and its attitude. It's where I go when I walk out into the street, it's one of the things that is one of the contributing factors to my own form of creativity. It's a country that's produced music like Arcade Fire, writers like Yann Martel, actors like Donald Sutherland, inventions like insulin, historical figures like Tommy Douglas and Lester B. Pearson (I know he was a PM too, but just go with it). A country that lets itself be defined by its leadership is a weak country, like 1930s Germany, crippled by a World War, brought back to power by a dictator. Civil-war America, defined by figures like Lee, Grant, and Lincoln, was carried through trouble times not just by leaders like this, but by figures like Longfellow, Stowe, and Twain. Anyone that thinks this country is "doomed" because we elected a guy who is a lot like the UK's equally benign David Cameron clearly doesn't think much of their country. You'll think one dude's going to send the whole thing tumbling down in his four-year term because he won't let you smoke pot or marry someone with the same genitalia?

I like to think a strong country has a certain national nature that its leaders can only influence if it's not anathema to it; no leader can make a country his own personal plaything, unless it is too weak to resist. This great country of mine has had dozens of opportunities to crumble, ranging from repeated risks of invasion, national terrorism, riots, rebellion, and economic hardship; I'm sure it can survive Stephen bloody Harper.

Ironically, the book I'm reading, Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten, the fourth book in the Thursday Next series, features a peculiarly charming political figure who wants to become Dictator of England, and very little is stopping him. This seemed unusually topical, until I remembered that in this book's version of England, it's basically owned by a corporation with 30 million employees, there's lots of time travel, there's lots of fictional characters that come into the book's "real world", like Hamlet, and the stability of this entire country, nay the entire world, relies on the pluck and determination of the main character, since the world is apparently too incompetent to handle itself. The similarities aren't that pertinent, and if I'm honest, I think the Thursday Next series is beginning to spin its wheels a little. I must try reading the Nursery Crimes or find the next book in the Shades of Grey series: the first book was interesting, if quite dense.

As you may have ascertained, I've been in a somewhat poor mood lately. Between rather severe writer's block in my Script Frenzy script, trying to juggle six different tasks at once to find a decent job, and the crummy situation I have at home, I'm not myself. I'm lashing out at people that leave mildly insipid comments on the art I make, magnifying every little thing that happens to me, and I'm losing touch with what I love. I'm becoming sloppy, undisciplined, and forgetting what's important.

What should I do in these troubling times? One thing I like to do is read a good book.

At the moment, this book is "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A person of a certain age, or a certain nationality, may recognize the title. It's a children's book written and illustrated by a French aviator, which probably sounds like one of the most interesting possible Frenchmen you could meet at the time. I remembered this book from way, way, way back in my childhood. I may have read it, but I don't think I understood it.

It was such a wonderful little book, and it's given me a lot to think about. For those not familiar with the book, the narrator crashes his plane into the Sahara, and meets an unusual blond boy in the desert, who asks him to draw him a sheep. Seems like an innocuous request, but he really seems quite adamant about it. We later find out some things about the prince, like how he always asks questions, but never gives answers. He describes to the crashed pilot that he lives on a small asteroid, with three volcanoes, one that's extinct ("but you never know.") I don't want to spoil too much, but eventually, he decides to leave his little asteroid, and meets several other people on other nearby asteroids. He meets a king, who is "lord of all he surveys", but his asteroid is barely big enough to hold him and his throne. All his orders must be obeyed, but he must give orders "that his subjects can follow", like he orders the sun to set, but only at sunset. Things like that.

He meets a businessman then, who believes he owns all the stars because he's the first one to have that idea. He says that counting all the stars is "a matter of consequence", and the prince things that grown-ups "only care about figures". If you mentioned to someone that you met a new friend, would they say "What does his voice sound like? How is his laugh? What does he believe?", it would be "How old is he? Where did you meet him? What does he do?" They care most about what they can count, what they can measure, what they can see is correct or incorrect. Grown-ups are so odd, huh?

This was all pretty sobering to read. I'm dealing with all these flakes that tell me things like "this should be like that" or "this is good for reasons that I don't have". I was taking these figures seriously, when I shouldn't be. I was letting something I like be measured by people that think it's a matter of consequence, and they were trying to tell me it came up short. What I love shouldn't be like that. The Little Prince has shown me how to appreciate things again.

Children's books, to me, seem to have a much clearer idea of how to treat things. I had also recently read "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster, a book that put a character who's bored and numb to life, like I sometimes am, and he goes to a special place called the Kingdom of Wisdom. When there, he encountered many places and things that represented various elements of life, from colour, words, numbers and reality, to the negative things, like triviality, deceit, illogic, and, well... figures. The Senses Taker, who tries to exhaust Milo and his friends by demanding various pointless facts from them ("Tell me when you were born, where you were born, how were you born, why you were born...") This seems to parallel the red-faced businessman counting all the stars.

A lot of books written for adults, they concern themselves with where people go, what they do when they get there, and how it's important to where they're going to go next. They concern themselves with who's honest, who's dishonest, who's helping, who's not, who is good, who is bad. If you were pressed about why they're doing all this, they'd say "To get the secret plans," "To break up the child sex ring," or "Because they need to."  Nothing wrong with this, but in a kid's book, if these things are happening, the reasons why would be "To stop evil," "To teach the protagonist something important," or "To show something new." Sometimes I rely on a book for kids to give a good, clear bit of truth, that isn't buried under literary conventions. A lot of people ask me "Why are you reading a book for children?" but I tell "A book written for children isn't a book only for children." Why are they so concerned with the figure of the genre written on the back cover?

So, to sum up, I've read "The Little Prince" after however knows how many years, and it's made me feel a lot better, after I've had a lot of annoying crap to deal with lately. You should think about it: it's true that wisdom come from the mouths of children, even if they look like grown-ups.

Maybe this is just one of the things I should be taking in stride, but I am finding difficulty in it. Maybe because it plays up something that a lot of artists worry about, maybe it's because I can never really find a satisfactory reasoning for it (certainly from the people I'm trying to talk to about it), but as of late, something has been really grinding my gears.

Some days ago, I drew this:


It's a bit of fanart, for a video game. I had worked very hard to draw it, and I liked the result when it was done, but thus far, most of the interest that it has attracted have been people pointing out that the character on the right, the villain from the game, is supposed to have long hair. Not anything about the drawing, of course (besides the equally insubstantial and annoying "It's awesome!"), but that I should not have drawn the character on the right with short hair.

...See, when I draw something, I like to have a lot of reference on hand. Here are the references I have found for that character on the right:

[link] [link] [link] [link]

Looking at these, you may be inclined to think that this character never removes her pirate's cap, and that her hair is rather short-cropped.

Ah, but you would be remiss. You see, this character first appeared in a Game Boy game, which came out nine years ago. I was vigorously interested in the game at the time, but I sadly couldn't play it, because the Game Boy was on its way out, and copies of the game were scarce in my native Canada. Even if I could find it, I wouldn't have been able to buy it, since I was 13 at the time.

But had I played it, and more importantly, had I played it all the way to the end, I would have seen this character remove her hat, and a headful of waist-length hair would have cascaded across her shoulders. Let me reiterate that I would have had to beaten the game to know this, as there were no screenshots of this event, no official game artwork depicting this, and looking at those reference images, she has short hair! Cartoon logic states that she could probably tuck it away in that small hat, but people are fully capable of letting their hair down while wearing a hat, even in cartoons. Stuffing it in your hat when you don’t have to seems inconvenient and unnecessary, especially if by the same “cartoon logic” that keeps all that hair up there, you wouldn’t have to worry about it tangling or snagging on anything if you let it down.

When I raised objection to this, some of them said "There, there. You wouldn't have known this if you hadn't beaten the game, like I did," which is slightly facetious since, while I was 13 when it came out, they would have been, like, 5. If they did play the game, it was probably years later, on a ROM, when they didn't have to pay for it. Or, failing that, they saw a Let's Play on YouTube. I’m not above such conveniences, of course, but I don’t need to be patronized because I did not want to rip off this game, and thus did not know this detail.

Even if I did know in advance, I still wanted to draw her hair short. Originally, in the description, I said that I “imagine, since I’ve never seen her hat off, she must have a bad case of hat hair.” This is technically a true statement, since I hadn’t seen her hat off, even though it did happen at one point. Later, I changed it to “the spell vapourized her hair”, because I still think that costume is more embarrassing if you also had short, spiky, messed-up hair to go with it. None of this matters, of course; whether I did or didn’t know this character had long hair, I still wanted to draw it that way, and people still felt the urge to “correct” me.

One person argued that it’s “human nature” to correct glaring inaccuracies in a drawing, also making it seem like they don’t take any responsibility for their opinions, only willing to point out the things that bolster them (like that they beat a video game that I didn’t beat) and pass off anything else to an external influence. “Oh, I don’t actually think that, it’s just human nature!”

Look, drawing Sonic the Hedgehog in a colour other than blue is an inaccuracy. Making Mario thin is an inaccuracy. Giving a character a haircut isn’t an inaccuracy. She still looks like the character she looks like, and when I looked at her, I saw a character with short hair. I’m sorry I didn’t play through her entire game because I thought there would be an important nugget of detail waiting for me at the end.

The entire idea behind fanart is that you want to take a character you like and do something with them. In that example, I wanted them to switch costumes in a humourous fashion. Examples range from drawing a character in a different costume to drawing them in a different gender, if you’re into that kind of thing, and this approach is usually celebrated. Apparently with me, though, my fanarts are held to a higher level of scrutiny. Doesn’t matter how good the drawing actually is, I get one thing wrong, by God I’m going to hear about it. You may try to “apologize” later by saying the drawing is awesome “anyway”. I’m a believer in honest criticism, and think if something is wrong with a work of art, it should be pointed out, but pointing out that a character has “incorrect hair”, this isn't criticism. There is a difference between a criticism and a pedantic nitpick, and there is also a difference between criticism and empty praise (like calling it “awesome” and then not saying anything else).

Other artists are apparently allowed to run free and do whatever they want with characters they like, but I have to stick to a model sheet. Is this because I professed “ignorance” of the character because I had never seen her with her hat off? I didn’t say “She never takes her hat off”, I said “I have never seen her take her hat off.” That is technically a true statement, and even though I corrected it, people are still telling me that her hair is wrong. Even if it is, how is that ANYONE’S business? Did my artistic license expire, and everyone else is reminding me to get it “renewed”?

My point is, I work hard on my art. I spend a lot of time on it, and I like to post it on DeviantArt, hoping people would be interested in it. When you make a drawing you’re particularly happy with, and most of the comments are just people telling you that you did something “wrong”, and it’s not even something important (at least one person told me that her hand was backwards and recommended I fix it; this is a habit I occasionally fall into, and am actively trying to correct), how would you react? And then when you point out what a fucking pedantic detail this is, and they say “Oh, don’t be like that, this drawing is awesome anyway”, so you go from meaningless correction to even more meaningless adulation designed to distract you, this doesn’t help too well. And when someone tells you this is “just something people do”, and yet the first example of it are comments on YOUR drawing, then what? Honestly…

I’ll be fair, only one or two people have pointed out this detail, and the drawing is getting a lot of favourites, so this criticism might have run its course. But since only, like, three or four people ever comment on my works, that is still a pretty significant number to get worked up about this. It may sound selfish, but I like it when people think I did good, and no one on DeviantArt says it that often. I’m trying very hard to get better, and when most of the opinions on my latest drawing boil down to “I knew something obscure and you didn’t,” it’s disheartening.

On a slight diversion, there’s the phenomenon of a fanbase being so exasperating, that whatever they’re fans of seems worse because of it. I lost interest in Invader Zim (Jhonen Vasquez’s whole body of work, actually) because its fans still act like screeching preteen Goths, even though now most of them are in their 20s. It’s been said that Joss Whedon’s fans are the worst things about Joss Whedon’s works, and I lost interest in Seth MacFarlane’s shows when I discovered that his fans would (and did) follow him off a proverbial cliff, if it struck his fancy, and frankly, I’m so creeped out by the recent fervour behind My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic amongst grown men, I’m finding it hard to get into the show myself, no matter how much these same manchildren bang on about how “well-written” and “well-animated” it is (granted, it is, but still).

Hopefully this will pass, but some of the Shantae fandom has proven themselves such a pack of pedantic nerds, that I’m now slightly repulsed just by looking at her. A lot of the fandoms close to me, I like to think they can withstand the idiocy that surrounds them, but in this one, I’m not certain. The things I like about it are things like the fun character designs, the amusing story, the colourful setting, the engaging gameplay, and most significant, the notion that it’s an original, honest production by a small group of dudes that had an idea, and wanted to do something with it (sort of like what I like about Cave Story). All this is threatened by the notion that, when I’m playing it, there’s someone else out there playing it, scrutinizing every wee detail about it like it’s bloody Star Trek. The people that like it can’t just enjoy it, they have to make sure it’s universally respected. Since I hadn’t been able to play any of the games, and didn’t want to download a ROM of it because I feel bad ripping off a company staffed by about six guys as opposed to a cocky mega-corporation that certainly doesn’t need my $40 as much as I do, I’m being punished for it. Maybe I’ll keep not playing the games, as much as I might like to, because I want to appreciate it, not index it. It could just be one or two bad apples, every fandom has them, but them finding my drawing, in internet terms is like two bits of space dust that happen to collide with one other bit of space dust. Given how unlikely it is that the very few twerps this fandom has attracted have happened across my drawing, and I'm not yet popular enough for massive amounts of people to see it, Occam's razor suggests that this fandom has a lot of people like this, and a couple of them came across my work.

The fandoms that I either fell out of or could never form an interest in, its fans were larger than the thing they were appreciating. I liked Family Guy when it first came out, then Seth MacFarlane got to remake the show three different times, with one premise stretched thinly across all of them because its imbecile fans would watch all of them, so screw that. I can’t formulate an authentic interest in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, because its fans seem to think it’s mankind’s greatest recent achievement, when to me, it’s a pretty typical children’s show (far, far better than its 80s version, and with more effort invested in it than seemed necessary, but lowered expectations doth not a great show make). I may still be able to appreciate Shantae as a cult phenomenon, because of its authentic spirit, but if a bunch of people are going to come out of the woodwork and say I’m not liking it enough by their pedantic standard, then I’m not sure it’ll hold up. We’ll have to see.

Cliff’s notes: I worked hard on something, the people commenting on it mostly said one irrelevant thing about it, it’s gotten to me, why do people act like this, and why does it only seem like it happens to me? And again, nothing’s changed, but it was at least good to blow off some steam. If you actually read all this, and gave it some thought, thanks so much! I appreciate it!

Oh, and remember,
:thumb156255220:
Click here for more info: [link]

Well my 20,000th hit came and went without anyone marking it, but no matter, I will use this opportunity for something else! I will start taking commissions! I've become more confident in my artistic abilities over the last little bit, and there's enough on my account that people have a general idea of my style. I think I'd like to be able to start drawing things for people. Here are my rates:

Sketch - $5

A basic sketch done on acid-free sketch paper, or in a digital drawing program, like SAI, Photoshop or OpenCanvas.

Digital Inks - $8

Cleaned-up inks done with a digital drawing program. I can add flat colours at no extra charge if you like.

Digital Drawing, No BG - $12

A digital drawing, drawn, inked, fully coloured and shaded, but with no background.

Digital Drawing, With BG - $15

Sketched, inked, fully coloured, shaded, and a background. It will be a drawn background, and not a photo background, like on the right.

Traditional Inks - $20

A traditional drawing inked with India ink or Pigma Microns. I need an excuse to draw more of these.

EACH DRAWING IS FOR ONE FULL-BODY OR WAIST-UP CHARACTER, ADD $3 FOR EACH ADDITIONAL CHARACTER, SUBTRACT $3 IF IT'S A BUST DRAWING, IN ANY STYLE.



IF I'VE DRAWN A TRADITIONAL SKETCH, EVEN IF IT'S FOR A DIGITAL COMMISSION, I CAN MAIL IT TO YOU FOR $5. I MAY NOT ALWAYS DO A PHYSICAL SKETCH BEFOREHAND, THOUGH, SO BE SURE TO SPECIFICALLY REQUEST ONE IF YOU WANT IT. MAILING TRADITIONAL INKS WILL BE $7, SINCE THEY'RE MORE DIFFICULT TO SHIP.

I'd be willing to draw any number of things, from people to animals to fanart to anthro characters, but I do have a few guidelines: no fetish art! That means no yiff, no vore, no inflation, nothing like that. I'm perfectly willing to draw mature art or nudity, but I'll decide that on a drawing-by-drawing basis.

I accept payment through PayPal. If you're interested, send me a note with a description of what you would like drawn, what kind of commission you would like, and any reference images that I may find helpful. I'll provide you with my PayPal e-mail if you're interested in a commission. Can't wait to hear from you!

Hi, just a little reminder that I'm 500 visits away from my 20,000th kiriban. If you're my 20,000th visitor, and can prove it with a screen capture of my page, I'll draw you whatever you want! Best of luck!

I wasn't happy leaving such a pessimistic journal on my page, so I've decided to replace it with a celebration of the positive.

With all the things bothering me as of late, if I can just sit back and let myself think, I realize it does me no good to nitpick and natter. Sometimes it has to be said, certainly, but this time, I want it archived.

What is positive? It's a mindset one should pursue if he wants to do great things. Even if someone is feeling on the negative side, if he makes it into something great, it becomes a positive. Dark works of art, exposing the conceit and dread someone may feel, even just to trap it on a canvas, and let it be seen by people that otherwise wouldn't know of these feelings of yours, are a positive.

And people will keep making things if they feel positive. DeviantArt is a place of positivity. Even through all the moderation muckety-muck and the occasional lapse in optimism, it will return when you see all the art and creation happening around you, and desire to become a part of it. Even terrible or meaningless art stems from an act of positivity, and that, at least can be appreciated.

It is in this state that I wonder what other people see as positive. What, in your own views, do you see around you as emanating positivity? Is it something abstract, or something definite? I'd really like to know.

One reason that I enjoy DeviantArt is because it's a large and varied community of amateur and professional artists that allows for people all over the world to experience and know about many different kinds of contemporary art and media. One reason that I hate it is because it's also a breeding ground for popular artistic fetishes and fads that rise to immense popularity and accolades because it's a tweak of something on a popular TV show or comic book. DeviantArt often can't tell the difference between the two.

To support this first view of DeviantArt I have, and to criticize the second, I tried founding my own group, . This group is basically to promote anthro art as distinct from the furry fandom. Anthro is, to me, one of the most compelling artistic subjects there is, dating back almost as far as art itself, and yet furry is one of the most fixated, emotionally hollow "art forms" there is. Nothing drawn there exists for its own sake; it's made for a very particular audience for very particular ends. Both extremes of my artistic opinions encompass the same subject, so I wanted to do something about it.

It's going well so far, I suppose, but it's hard to keep up steam in the group. There's a few contributors, and I'm diligently looking all over DeviantArt for art that's worth being exhibited, but now that it's not new and exciting, interest in it is on the slip. New members and contributors are slow in coming, and since I'm the one that usually submits art to the gallery and favourites, the group is practically like my second DeviantArt account. Hopefully that will turn around soon, but for now, it's disheartening.

So with all this going on, the results of a contest at have just been announced. I dashed together an entry for it, not really expecting to win, but hoping I had a chance. I didn't place, but the entry I voted for, this one [link] from , won second.

What won first? [link] by

Now, looking at that, I have a question for you. Some of you might not be familiar with the character depicted here. His name is Geno, and he looks like this: [link]

Would you say he looks similar to this: [link]

Really? You wouldn't? That's strange, because according to a majority of voters, he damn well should.

This work doesn't come off to me as a re-imagining or a modernization of a character, both perfectly good creative approaches. It seems more to me like a "better idea" for the character. Though she's apparently a fangirl for him, she probably thinks he would be greatly improved if he was an elf, had an excessive number of belts, jewelry, a more aggressive costume... basically if he was something else. Something you probably saw on Cartoon Network or Disney XD. Something that isn't the character you fell in love with.

Basically if he appealed to the artist's fetishes.

Sure, it's fanart, and artistic license is expected (hell, in my entry Geno's legs aren't supposed to be this long: [link], but you presumably draw fanart because you like the character. If you take a character and basically change everything about him, either you didn't really like him and were just pretending to, or you think he'd be a "cool" starting point for your own character that happens to have the same name and general concept.

And what's the result of this? It wins the contest, is soundly congratulated as "the best", and this artist's method is encouraged and praised. Geno should look like this, because if he was actually a giant living toy with guns in his fingers, that's not as good as something that looks like a cross between Link and Squall Leonhart. Maybe it's just because it's very colourful, but that situation is no better.

This was the straw that broke the camel's back. A well-drawn and energetic piece full of personality is considered "second" to fangirlism drawn with Copics. I'm sure it was hard to draw in its own way, and never mind that my entry didn't even place; I knew I rushed it for this contest, and wasn't happy with the end result. That's not the point: the point is, even if I drew it well, it was missing an important ingredient: derivativeness. I wasn't actually supposed to like the character I was drawing, I was supposed to like the idea of the character, then mould and squish him into whatever is more familiar. Nothing can be just so, it has to conform to whatever the squealing preteen masses like. I can try my best, but until I learn to be derivative, I'm wasting my time.

It's probably also not fair to me to criticize the work of a pink little girl, but we're all equals on the internet, and we must speak our minds wherever we ought to. If I think a drawing is trite and overrated, and yet it's lauded as a great achievement, I'm going to call shenanigans. It's especially important for younger users: she's approaching adulthood, and if it's important to her, her art should be reaching adulthood, as well.

...DeviantArt, I try to like you. I try to see you as a great platform for artists to get their work out there, meet other artists, discover amazing new art, and help themselves improve. So why do you keep disillusioning me like this? Why does it keep becoming a junior high school playground? I know it's not your fault, it's the fault of your younger, less developed users, but I, and a lot of other users, are trying to use DeviantArt for the purposes that I described.

This isn't reactionary to losing the contest; I've had this frustration pent-up for a while, and this finally gave me a way to vent it. I'd probably be told that it's futile to try and change the internet and the people that inhabit it, but the way I see it, saying things are futile is as much an opinion is saying it isn't. You can say yours, I should say mine.

Other people are doing this kiriban thing, where they'll draw someone a picture if they take a screencap of a notable pageview, so I think I'll get in on that action, as well.

I'm just under 800 views from 20,000, and if one of you lucky Deviants are my 20,000th viewer and can prove it with a screencap, I will draw you - yes, YOU - whatever you like. Just note me with a link to your screenshot and a request of what you'd like drawn when the time comes. Good luck!

Happy new year. Everyone pretty much knows that new year's resolutions always fall by the wayside basically as soon as anyone makes them, it's just a fact of nature. In that spirit, then, rather than making a set of resolutions, I'm lining up a to-do list for the year. And here we are:

• Get my webcomic, The Great Mistakes, online.


• Get a literary agent, and get some of my writing published. Hopefully a novel, but some short stories could be published, too.


• Complete my other novels, and start a few more.


• Get a new animation reel done to impress an animation studio and get hired there.


• Get my own damn place.


• Make an animated comic for *humon's Scandinavia and the World.


• Draw much more consistently, maybe two or three Deviations a week this year.


• Save up my money to get a Nintendo 3DS when it comes out.


• Find a girlfriend, maybe?


There's probably some other things about holding down a steady job and paying off my student loan finally, but those are more automatic considerations, shall we say. At this point, I really should focus on moving ahead with my career, rather than trying to work at Wal-Mart.

2010 went fairly well, but it felt like a warm-up to some bigger things this year. Chaaaaarge!

Merry Christmas and so on! Have you been done well this fine day?

I got some pretty neat gifts. I got a Studio Ghibli DVD collection with 12 movies, Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 on Blu-Ray, and... well, that was everything of note, actually. My sister's still coming with some more gifts, though, there might be a few surprises.

Anyways, now time to settle down and watch the hilariously overdone 2009 version of A Christmas Carol. Catch ya later.

EDIT: I got this from my sister:



So that was nice.

I noticed that big blue button advertising a Premium Subscription sale today, and my brother wasn't sure what to get me, so he got me a 2-year premium subscription as an early Christmas present! I'm using one of these new skins for now, before I try to make my own, and I've got to go around and try and play with some of the new features I have access to. Yay!

As for what's going on at the moment, I'm a trifle behind on my NaNoWriMo due to my new bookstore job, but this video: [link] has reassured me that what I'm doing is worthwhile. Here's hoping I can catch up!