Liana and Lord of the Rings Masterpieces
on June 24th, 2011
Another commission sketch, and another official Lord of the Rings Masterpieces sketch card. I’ve kept most of the cards back saving them for a special occasion to sell, and they sell very quickly. I didn’t even have time to put this on the open market!
I know blogging has been light lately, and I apologize. I am deep in drawing mode.
I also have a bunch of hardcovers I really need to ship, so it’s busy, busy here.
I have so many sketches and commissions to get out of here, I could just blog that for weeks. Maybe I will.
In the meantime, if you want something to natter about, here’s yet another article about Geek Culture and its sense of persecution and Special Snowflake status. Now they complain they’re being victimized by raging hordes of good-looking people who can’t possibly be geeks, and are therefore evil capitalist geek plants.
I’ve already expressed how I feel about this subject.
The Liana drawing is lovely! (So is the LOTR card!)
As for Geekdom…. I have hereby arbitrarily descided that my snob threshold for Geekdom will be that anyone who doesn’t think it is cool that I got a personal tour of the atomic testing grounds outside Las Vegas (where I also got to have a really neat conversation with the Head Engineer of the plutonium testing facility there) doesn’t rate as a geek.
Just kidding. But really… are we now getting to class structures in Geekitude? You’re only barely geeky if you just like Big Bang Theory but have never read or seen anything the characters talk about?
That’s an amazing Liana!
It gets a little annoying when someone calls themselves a geek when they’re not using it properly. I can see how some would feel that unless said self-professed “geek” was also somewhat ostracized then they aren’t one by definition. It’s a looney way of thinking but that’s the Internet for you!
It doesn’t matter to me, really. A friend of mine asked me which would I prefer to be called, a geek or a nerd, to which I responded “I’d rather be called by my name.”
“Geek” I can just roll my eyes and ignore but “nerd” hits a bit more to the bone and is more of a pejorative to me.
Scribbler, I’m a big fan of “The Big Bang Theory” and for a moment I did a double-take when a friend of mine said how he and his fiance love the show as well, plus they watch “Chuck” regularly. Now if you were to look at him and me, I’d have a big ol’ “geek” sign on me but he’s more the antithesis of that.
It seems like some of those who were on the fringes of the social strata in school – and for years stated that we should be judged what’s on the inside, not by our appearance – are now being quick to judge and deem those who don’t look the part as not being “one of us”. Messed up world.
I will never forget the first time I tried to buy a comic I liked, and got bullied by the shop owner. Or the first time I walked into a room at a convention and got shot down without my ever saying a word because I was blonde. Or the first time I had to explain that I really drew my own work. Or the realization that every time I tried to hire a male assistant or often worked with an inker, the male either unfairly took sole credit for the quality of the work, claimed to do work he didn’t do, or blamed me for his crap inking. Or the multiple times I’ve been admonished for wearing perfectly normal clothes and discretely applied makeup in a room full of people wearing skimpy costumes and blue body paint, ie. self-described feminists rail against other women getting an unfair amount of attention while trashing the other woman’s art, dress, or other attributes in the most sexist and un-feminist terms possible. “Fuckable” still rings in my ears.
It’s not that geek culture is developing a hierarchy, it’s geek culture has always had a hierarchy.
Where do you think the Hierarchy in A Distant Soil comes from? A lot of the back story in this book comes from my adventures in SF fandom.
(edited for clarity)
Liana is sweet.!
I’ve got one of her for you here! I will scan and post in the nest couple of days.
I was hoping that was mine but I am sure mine will be just as sweet!
Your is a bit more realistic, but still very sweet.
I hope everyone knows I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek about the snobbery – at least on my part.
But I agree, Colleen. A lot of that “You don’t fit the image” stuff still holds true amongst the so-called Geeks. Just a few years ago, down at the San Diego Comic Con, after a panel that featured one well-know female writer (and just to head it off at the pass now – NOT Gail Simone), I heard one guy say to another as the audience exited afterward, “If she lost some weight, she’d be a babe.” Mind you, the woman in question was not all that overweight to start with. It just tweaked me that the fact that she was a talented writer wasn’t enough.
Oh, for God’s sake. It never ends.
And yeah, I got that you are funnin’ a bit. No worries.
And I really, REALLY wasn’t kidding. A lot of my stuff about the Hierarchy comes from experience. Niniri is based on a real person.
This all is really making me want to visit San Diego comic con just to see how these things work in real life over there. I can’t recall ever running into this sort of hierarchy thing over here. Not to say there isn’t sexism or mindbogglingly stupid people and cliques, but by and large, it’s starting to feel like we have it really good over here on most levels of society. I’m not sure what sort of a difference there is between a “geek” and a “nerd”, but I’ve always been very openly both, because the shoe fits. I don’t even think Finnish bastardations of the words are used in insulting ways. Geeks like geeky things. I wasn’t aware I had to prove “how much I really really wanted to be geek always and forever”.
I figured it was all for the sake of drama when those 19 year old girls started shouting something about other girls of the same age being fake on America’s Next Top Model (and could someone tell me how that show has been running over 10 years now but the one that had female AND male models competing got canceled after the second season?). Apparently not.
I don’t think people should be allowed to use the word “fake” in connection to other people after the age of 18. Smells like a whole lot of entitlement and not a whole lot of self-awareness to me. :T
Fannish politics in some areas of fandom are just godawful. If you find a friendly, supportive fan group, then boffo. There are plenty. But if you get sucked into one of these drama pits, God help you.
Just think of it as the worst of anything you ever saw on a fan message board, only face-to-face with screaming, stalking, bizarre acts of revenge (I once saw a member of our group spit on a door because it had the temerity to be closed,) debates over whether or not anyone had any rights to any limits on sex, drugs and body odor, embezzlement, lies, lies and more lies, trashing, solicitation to murder (yes, that happened in our fan group, conviction upheld,) trafficking in young fen across state lines to pass around like candy, and a lifetime of the wankiest grudges ever.
After years of some distance, I wonder how the hell I ever got involved with those people, because I’d spot them and run like hell today.
And I have better fan friends now.
There are a number of sites online that chronicle the history of fandom and some of its more bizarro moments. Fandomwank wiki is one.
I, like many people who grew up in fandom, had a lot of trouble making judgements about people and walking away from them. I’m really good at it now, and my life is ever so much better in every way.
There are a lot of great fan groups out there.
Oh yeah, walking away is a major skill. It’s really should be taught in schools, it would’ve been helpfull in SO many areas… “If it sounds like Stupid, walks like Stupid and talks like Stupid, walk away. Only life can change those people.”
Reading the comment after the BC article is making my inside hurt a bit. :T
Yeah, me too. Another lesson in “Walk Away”.
Apparently I’ve been incredibly lucky because the fans I’ve been involved with seldom engage in politics. I did run into it in one instance but for the most part it was one ‘leader’ dictating loves and hates. I turned out to be one of the hates and never missed them a bit. It seems to me that assigning terms like ‘culture’ is granting that sort of thing far too much importance, though.
The common term is geek culture. I’m not going to debate use of the word culture or geek. I don’t know why anyone cares.
If you read the comments thread in the linked article, some academic goes on at great length about fan cultures/subcultures, and for God’s sake, you’d think he’d just discovered a tribe in the Amazon.
I was going to write that I had not run into the politics much in Lord of the Rings fandom, and then I remembered Amy Player…
I really need to stop reading the comments (and some articles) on various sites – making my head hurt. There are different articles addressing how various movie studios are not having a presence in San Diego this year. What is crazy (though unsurprising) is how some of those who lamented the studios “taking over” the convention are now feeling snubbed and angry that their opinion is no longer gospel to the studios.
These lummoxes aren’t doing others any favors by perpetuating the stereotype of the fanboy with arrested development. I encountered one of these sorts at the comic store I frequent a little while back. He was being a bit of a nuisance – going on about the different statues he was going to buy and he asked me what I was going to buy and I said “none”. He then said that I wasn’t a “true fan” because I’m not buying these different limited edition pieces. Normally I just let it go but he caught me in an off day so I hit below the belt and remarked “Unlike you, I have rent to pay. Maybe if I lived in my mother’s basement like you, then I could afford to blow all my money on this stuff.”
Not my proudest moment but certain types who just can’t enjoy these things for their own sake can make it a real hassle to say one is a fan of comics, fantasy, sci-fi, etc.
I cannot judge you for that, Jeremy. I too have indulged in a kidney punch in my day.
I am sick to death of the whole “Wah, you’re not a true fan!” B.S. It’s all so “You kids get off my lawn!”
I remember the SF fan group I was in, deliberately not advertising or promoting shows outside fan circles because they didn’t want to attract “mundanes”.
And that’s why you have a North American Science Fiction Convention that gets an attendance of 700 people.
They’re dying out like the Shakers.
I’m happy to see people enjoying the things I enjoy. I don’t make them take a test. I don’t hate them because they’re prettier or younger than me. I don’t care.
Live your life man, be free.
It is nice when more people can expand their horizons. I got a friend into “Doctor Who” after he would read my weekly Facebook status updates about watching the show and what I thought of it afterwards – it piqued his curiosity and he became a big fan as well. Though I doubt I’d ever be the level of fan of “Star Wars” for which he is (bringing a lightsaber -with sound effects – to the midnight showing of “Episode II”).
Costumes can be great but I wish that the media covering the conventions wouldn’t focus on that – maybe 10% or less actually dress up for the shows but it’s portrayed that we all do.
I’m not embarrassed about enjoying the things that I do, but with the stereotype lingering, sometimes it tends to make people not be taken seriously. Keeping it too inclusive hinders others discovering the same joys that we have when reading the different stories, looking at the artwork, etc.
Fandom did the Wah Wah! when the world ignored them and marginalized them, and now they do the Wah Wah! when tv news reports of conventions showcase the costumes and Hollywood exhibits.
The only win in all of this is to do what you damn well please. Read the books, watch the movies, listen to the music, play the games, and if other people don’t like it or aren’t very friendly, then find people who are better company.
If people want to play the outcast Other, no one’s stopping them.
Jeremy, I think Hollywood has been learning that advance word on projects that is too far advanced is not good. And that if the product is not really really good, the word-of-mouth out of SD CCI can be deadly.
I think they’ll find a balance. They just went overboard the last two years. Especially the nausiating TWILIGHT stuff.
Yeah, that’s why the comic book companies are clamping down on artists revealing too much on blogs. Before I post stuff, I have to get permission. Too much info can kill a project before it ever comes out.