Alejandra P.

It is insane that the best paying jobs I've had in comics were from other artists paying me out of their own pocket because they actually value labor. Meanwhile, million-dollar companies will refuse to pay a living wage bc they know they can find someone else to exploit

On the way

[ #art #places #sketchbook ]

the position i went to interview for was shockingly awful, 3-4 shifts a week at $16.50/hr which up in Canada is sub-poverty wages. it's not enough to pay rent, let alone anything else i need. i'll take it if it's the only thing i can get but fuck i need help, if you can spare it.

A painting of seagulls

Be a seagull. Be loud. Annoying. Cringe. Go for it. Fight those who are keeping out chips from us.

Seagull painting done with housepaint.

The dumbest most boring and hateful losers stomping their feet and getting whatever they want is getting really really old

A digital painting for the role playing game "Legend in the Mist". It portrays a small child lost in the forest. A hunched figure with more hands that is strictly necessary and a series of masks merged to its back offers the child a small flower. The child stares at the gift, and not at the hands that reach out from under the cloak.

I did this one a while ago, but it's still one of my favourite concepts I've done for the game.

📜 The scrolls are unsealed — contributor applications are now open!

Join Cāng Qióng Archives, a fan zine dedicated to the messy, formative disciple years of the Peak Lords of SVSSS. We’re seeking writers, artists, and merch artists to help us bring this tribute to life!

my artificial intelligence will, within the year, become more powerful than the human mind can even understand. right now though it’s scamming lonely people into believing it’s god. we think that’s just a phase it needs to work through

Well I guess it's a bad time to return to social media, huh?

Antagonism to transgender rights is tied to the authoritarian desire for social conformity – not just partisan affiliation Authoritarian attitudes – the desire for social conformity and an aversion to difference – play an important role in Americans’ willingness to restrict transgender rights.

I think this is something I've missed when talking about why the far right values attacking trans people so highly. It's not just that it radicalises people and teaches them anti human rights arguments, it's that it literally cultivates authoritarian thinking

theconversation.com/antagonism-t...

YouTube video by ABC7 Reporter hit by rubber bullet while covering ICE protests in LA

Apparently, because it’s 2020 again, I need to start a thread on police violence targeting journalists in the US.

So, here we go:

1. Australian journalist Lauren Tomasi shot by police officer with less lethal munition.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=yrFJ...

Two panels, a cinema screen showing the LOTR opening, the second panel showing the crowd yelling “NUTS!”

OK LET’S TALK ABOUT ADAPTATION!

In the year of our Lord 2001, Peter Jackson released his cinematic adaptation of the 1954 series of books by J.R.R. Tolkien “The Lord of the Rings”

And everyone went NUTS

It just says "The end!"

It’s not only fine that the story changes and has a completely different meaning when you introduce changes in adaptation, THAT’S THE WHOLE DAMN POINT OF IT.

Single panel, a black Hermione is being mocked for fighting slavery. Lottery is looking at it and going “this has ALWAYS been fucked up”

This is WHY “forced representation” is such a bullshit argument against a work of adaptation

Changing a character’s race, gender, sexuality, age, etc. doesn’t “ruin” a story, it CHANGES it. It can shed light on certain themes that would’ve probably gone underdiscussed without those changes

Single panel, steamboat willie is hiding something behind his back, sweating, and Lottery is looking in suspicion

In fact, that’s why I don’t like a lot of recent corporate adaptations, they don't want to find new lenses through which to give meaning to the text, they are trying to CORRECT people’s reads by going “NUH-UH, we’re not problematic here” and preventing further interpretation

Single panel, Lottery is still bored, and sad, as a rube points to the book she’s reading and yells “WHY DID YOU WOKE IT UP???” a small caption reads “don’t be boring pls”

What is NOT fine, cool, nor sexy, though, is to reflexively defend the original work as if finding any meaning within it is disrespectful to the ghost of some dead guy who wrote it.

It can lead to some really dark and problematic places, but it’s also just plain boring.

Lottery gives big thumbs up!

As I said, it is completely valid to recognize that the changes made to the source material transform its meaning in a way you do not like. That is fine and cool, and you’re sexy if you argue from that position.

Single panel, Lottery is sad and tired, as people behind her shout “you’ve ruined my childhood!!!”

There is a growing tendency, specially within nerdy fandoms of certain… ahem… political tendencies, to view any deviation from the source material as inherently bad without any real reason given other than the need to protect the original for the sake of it being the original.

Single panel, a balancing scale with a caricature of movie Sam on one side and a crude version of Bakshi’s weird ass Sam on the other, Lottery is underneath, studying the texts with a furrowed brow, her one braincell working overtime

It’s completely valid to dislike someone’s interpretation of a text, it’s even completely valid to think they’re wrong and bring up parts of the text that directly contradict those readings.

HOWEVER

single panel, Lottery is indecisive, “ehhh… not… quite…” she otterly mutters (She’s an otter)

So, does that mean everyone who got mad at the changes was a cultureless, structuralist authoritarian with no real interest in literature????

Single panel, Peter Jackson holds the LOTR books up triumphantly and declares “This is about war made bearable and being overcome through friendship, compassion, and devotion… emphasis on WAR!” Lottery claps like an idiot in sublime appreciation for the will to do an interpret of text

When Jackson got rid of Bombadil, added more Arwen, expanded on Helm’s Deep, and got rid of most of the songs, he did so because those were not what he wanted to bring attention to

He had a reading of the text he wanted to emphasize, and so he did

THAT IS THE POWER OF ADAPTATION

Two panels, on the left Lottery is imagining wild, pansexual, trans, communist utopias. On the right, a boring rube scratches all of them and claims “he didn’t mean that”

More to the point, nothing they say changes what they actually wrote down (or painted, sculpted, etc.) and in the debate over which interpretation is “correct” we close ourselves off to the plethora of meanings each of us can find within a single text based on who we are and what we find meaningful

Single panel, an user named ‘no, you’re the bigot here’ replied “they all shat on the hallways I just never thought it needed mention”

Something as simple as a language or generational barriers can completely change the meaning of a text, and while we can guess what they may have meant, we cannot be sure

Even if the author is alive, the very act of clarifying relies on more interpretation and can change along an author's views

Two panels, on the left, two egyptians write down on a slab of rock, one of them dictates “First of all, you have to know what the words mean” on the right, two napoleonic soldiers look at the ancient slab, one of them squints and claims “they clearly were unable to write proper french”

While language helps us communicate with others, it doesn’t perfectly take our thoughts and implants them into someone else’s head. No matter how skillfully we arrange the words, someone else will have to read them and interpret what we might have meant.

Single panel, Tolkien is staring at an unbent spoon with a tinfoil hat over his head, the caption underneath reads “That’s why Tolkien was a linguist and not a student of the occult”

See we could argue endlessly over whether this white English guy from the 1800s would be proud of us, but don’t we have enough of those conversations already?

If there is one thing we need to understand in order to appreciate the art of adaptation, is that language is not telepathy

Single panel of Tolkien and Jackson fistfighting, Lottery (a cute little otter) yelling “NO” from below

The series of movies went on to become widely recognized as the definitive version of the story in the popular imagination, as well as a landmark of cinema as an artform.

So that should settle that debate, right? The changes clearly made the movies a better way of telling the story, right?

A single panel of Tolkien saying “I will not nut to this” and a small caption saying “I’m twenty-eight years old tyvm”

There were, however, a series of decidedly un-nutty people who complained about the ways in which the movies deviated from the books in ways that, they believed, would not have pleased ol’ papa Tolkien

Two panels, a cinema screen showing the LOTR opening, the second panel showing the crowd yelling “NUTS!”

OK LET’S TALK ABOUT ADAPTATION!

In the year of our Lord 2001, Peter Jackson released his cinematic adaptation of the 1954 series of books by J.R.R. Tolkien “The Lord of the Rings”

And everyone went NUTS

I mean once you get to the higher levels... Kinda?

Like that's the whole deal of the papacy. You get to tell people what God wants because if god didn't agree you wouldn't be pope, and that applies to the dudes who voted for you

Must be fun to be one of them dudes

the labor of art is mostly invisible. what you don't see in a finished piece is all the hours of thought it required, all the little discoveries and surprises and tragedies of production. art IS the process. if you aren't interested in the process, then i don't really know why you want to be artist