26 Comments

  • StoryWriter

    September 16, 2014 at 12:07 pm

    Agreed! Smart thinking Jessica. Ooh! That woman already irritates me. Her son called Aeren a Faggot! Grr! Jason is the precious baby boy! I don’t have children of my own but I do have 10 nieces and nephews and I’d defend them faster than you can blink. My Poor Noah my oldest was punched on the bus because he was singing (He’s fantastic by the way.) and then he got in trouble when he was being bullied on Field Day! His dog at his dad’s house passed away from old age. She was a sweet old thing too and he was so upset. These two bratty girls started making fun of him for crying and he cursed at them. Believe or not he got in more trouble than they did. I don’t think they got in trouble at all. I was so freaking pissed off! No one hurts my babies! But he’s older now and the top choir student in highschool.

    Makes me wish I had Kovar or Galahad around to help sooth things over. They are VERY MANLY that woman wouldn’t stand a chance.

  • Quin

    September 16, 2014 at 8:20 pm

    I remember the hullaballoo the sign above the door caused in the letter column. Ah, nostalgia. And I wish to hell I’d kept the comics when I moved back in with my family >.<

  • Colleen Doran

    September 16, 2014 at 8:29 pm

    Argh. I should never have taken the bait and answered that guy’s letter. Learned my lesson. He’s been sending me inflammatory mail since 1985, and posted to the site about 6 months ago.

    And I didn’t appreciate his writing to women fans of this book to inform them their enthusiasm for Rieken and D’mer was turning them into “fag hags”. He sent this letter to a small fan club for the book that went back to the 1980’s, and there was much weeping and drama, after. Just awful.

    I really stepped in it taking that bait. Whew.

  • StoryWriter

    September 17, 2014 at 1:28 pm

    Fag hags? *Hiss* the nerve! What D’Mer and Seren have is beautiful! Grr. How dare someone say that about them and us?! Is it bad I want to tear him to shreds now?

  • Colleen Doran

    September 17, 2014 at 2:17 pm

    Yeah, I don’t know what his thing was. Dude had issues.

    I can remember incidents, but don’t always remember the people or names attached to them. So we had a file on this guy going back to the 1980’s. Stopped hearing from him, and forgot about him. OK, moved on. But the file was there.

    In the 1990’s he wrote me some really long, impassioned and rage-filled letters. He said he was gay, but used inflammatory language, and was extremely misogynistic.

    Anyway, without realizing I was engaging with someone I’d engaged with before, I responded to some bizarre letters he wrote all about how racist the sign was, because Irish people had never experienced oppression. Which is crazy, because HISTORY.

    Things went downhill from there.

    Every time I think he’s gone away, he pops up again. Sometimes years later.

    He had serious hate for women and wrote nasty letters pages long. I think I still have some of them, but I know we threw some out. Like the bad karma would crawl out at night or something. Lots of ad hominems and weird stuff about how I think men are throwing themselves at me, and how no man would ever look at someone like me. I mean, just odd.

    It was really stupid of me to engage him. I know better now.

  • Stampers Saverem

    September 17, 2014 at 6:29 pm

    Personally, I laughed when I saw that sign–

    And I’m part Irish!

    Learned a long time ago (from “Doctor Who”, actually) that one isn’t insulted if one doesn’t choose to be.

  • Colleen Doran

    September 17, 2014 at 6:51 pm

    It’s an old sign. It’s been around forever. There’s dubious debate over whether it was displayed in stores, but there is proof that old job ads carried the term, so whatever. Here’s the story behind NINA – No Irish Need Apply.

    http://historymyths.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/myth-82-signs-saying-no-irish-need-apply-were-common/

    And while one academic got a lot of press for claiming it never happened, it did, and still happens.

    http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/generationemigration/2012/03/12/australian-ad-for-bricklayer-calls-for-no-irish/

    For my part, I have rarely experienced anti-Irish racism. Only a few times in my life. And, of course, I’m American.

    Whatever, I’m not sure what his problem was, but he really seemed to have issues with women and Irish people. But for some reason, after going over in detail how he could not believe I could ever have been discriminated against or harassed by a man, since if I thought I was attractive to men, I was just deluding myself (and how progressive of him to assume that women who face harassment or discrimination do so based on their level of attractiveness,) he then wrote me a couple of long letters asking me to visit a friend of his in jail.

    Yeah, you read that right.

    He said I could give his friend art lessons, and his friend would be happy to look at an attractive blonde woman.

    I wish I was making that up.

    I have absolutely no idea what kind of person I was dealing with, but it was a stupid mistake to address any of his letters in public. I’d never mention it here except I know he’s not reading the blog.

  • StoryWriter

    September 17, 2014 at 9:09 pm

    And I thought my brother had issues…Dude’s clearly insane. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s committed acts of violence against women. Poor Colleen! You didn’t need to deal with that! It’s like he was a MEGA TROLL! Trolls can be nasty personal experience. One person said I clearly needed writing classes. I’ve been writing since 4th grade. But all that pales compared to what you went through. The 80’s? Damn. I feel really really young compared to how old this comic is. I’m only 22. I can’t imagine having to deal with this for years. Isn’t there someway to block him out?

  • StoryWriter

    September 17, 2014 at 9:12 pm

    Wait in prison? happy to look at a woman?! EW! Nasty! I’m so sorry you had to deal with that guy. I’m taking a leaf from your book and not addressing my trolls

  • Colleen Doran

    September 17, 2014 at 9:18 pm

    Well, not really. I mean I have his IP from his last post, but he’s only tried to post once in years. He made a big stink on my old message board, which is gone now. He pops in and then disappears for years at a time.

    I honestly don’t know what this guy’s thing is. I’ve had several people very similar to this guy, and one of them spent years using sock puppets, one day making interesting conversations, and the next posting really nasty jibes. I never knew what this dude was going to say, but he was mean as heck.

    I finally figured out the small group of people was all one person, called him out and then blocked him. He then wrote this impassioned letter about how he wanted to get into the comic industry and was worried that if I knew who he really was and he disagreed with me, I could get him blacklisted.

    That’s just nuts.

    Regardless, all pros deal with people like this. If you give them attention, they just blow up like blowfish.

    I caught the last guy after seeing him search for his own name on my stat system.

    So they keep an eye out for you, to see if you are dissing them, and frankly, on a daily basis, I can’t even remember their names. I can remember some of their weirder antics, but don’t know much about these people. I guess they assume we’re paying as much attention to them as they are to us.

    No. Really.

  • Colleen Doran

    September 17, 2014 at 9:22 pm

    Story: yeah, I thought that was so bizarre about trying to get me to visit someone in prison.

    Moreover, it was creepy. Because he went looking for where I live, which I did not appreciate. He concluded I lived in VA Beach (where I have never lived,) and decided it would only be a few hours to the prison for a visit, so I should just do it.

    I posted before about how some poor woman in VA Beach who had my name used to get calls and mail intended for me, and this was one instance. Which meant this guy tried to find out where I lived.

    Got a chill from that.

  • StoryWriter

    September 17, 2014 at 11:18 pm

    Stalker. I’m really freaked out. And all this because of your comics? Your art is beautiful and the story is riveting! I never really liked science fiction till I read this in highschool 3 years ago. I’m just in love with the story and the characters.

  • Queen Ynci

    September 18, 2014 at 9:19 am

    I don’t think your Trollish Stalker really understands, `issues’. My father left a neutral country (Ireland) -> WW2 -> fought for the allies -> and SAW the notices in Boarding House windows in England after his return (1950’s) “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs”. He said that meant he was in the best, and most EXCLUSIVE of circles….AND PROUD OF IT!

  • Colleen Doran

    September 18, 2014 at 11:38 am

    There is a school of identity politics here in the US that claims Irish people did not experience discrimination, and any claims they did is an attempt to, in this guy’s word, “get a piece of the oppression pie”. Which is a pretty creepy thing to say.

    No one is saying Irish people didn’t have an assimilation advantage being white, but they didn’t used to be considered “white”. The meanings behind ethnicity have changed over time.

    Just as Jews are routinely discriminated against regardless of skin color, so once were the Irish routinely discriminated against, regardless of skin color.

    Just because everyone has the same skin color, that does not mean they don’t experience stratification: layers of privilege. People in privileged groups can discriminate against other people in privileged groups. I think WII was one long example. But for some reason, some people believe that whatever discrimination experience Irish people had in Europe, this did not transfer to the USA. Which is nonsense. People didn’t suddenly lose their prejudices when they crossed a border.

    I’m not comparing the treatment of black people with the treatment of Irish people by putting that sign in a picture. I’m not diminishing the treatment of black people by doing so. I don’t know why this guy seemed to believe that was the case. It’s not a misery contest.

    But since he also spouted unbelievably nasty comments about women, he had serious issues I can’t even fathom. Some of his letters ran on for a dozen pages or more. The guy was just full of rage. About everything.

    Anyway, I also got a couple of angry letters from people who believed my response was ‘proselytizing”, saying they’d never read my work again.

    You really can’t win. Respond to some misogynistic guy with hate for Irish people, and I’m the bad guy! I doubt if they’d have been so thrilled wit this dude had they read his original letters.

  • Colleen

    September 19, 2014 at 1:41 pm

    I could not tell if he was trolling, or if he really believed what he wrote. Either way, I understand better about how to deal with this sort of person, and if he ever reads this, he’d explode again. Then again, i don’t know anything about him. Even if he was a he. Sometimes people make up identities to give their arguments credence. Who knows?

    All I know is he claimed to be gay, used words like “faggot” a lot, hated Irish people, and loathed women.

    So, you know, not inviting him to any parties.

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