Anonymous asked: Are you saying that no girls have ever pretended to be interested in something they aren't to seem more attractive? Because saying 'fake geek girls don't exist and have never existed' is a perfect example of this.
-male nerds seem agree that being nerds makes them less attractive to normal women
-so why would normal women pretend to be nerds to be more attractive to men who are already less attractive than normal men
-things like tv shows and books and videogames are designed to be fun and accessible to a fairly wide range of potential consumers. they are products being sold for money, not some kind of exclusive sadkid narnia club you only get into by being pure of heart and testicle
-hey you know what’s not fun? exclusionary sexual harassment
-why would normal women enter into hostile spaces just to look attractive to the hostile men making those spaces so fucking toxic for women, when being attractive to those men is only going to invite vicious, resentful sexual harassment? we all fucking know this. all geeky women know this. the only geeky women who don’t know this are young teens, and they get fucking taught.
-you know that ‘boo hoo highschool was traumatic people were mean to me just because of who i was and what i liked’ gauntlet that male nerds think entitles them to be shitheads forever? female geeks never get to exit that gauntlet, thanks to male geeks. it goes on, and on, and on for us. and yet: we’re still fucking here.
-hey, you know what? there are women who only exist to artificially pander to male nerd’s baser instincts. they’re fictional. they’re the characters in the shows and games and comics that male nerds go goddamn ham over. they’re the fictional female fuckdolls men keep fucking pumping out by the truckload, for each other.
-so anyway, if a woman says she’s a geek, she’s a geek. if she’s hot and posts a picture of her sticking a goddamn game controller up her personal business and says ‘i’m a geek!’ she’s a geek. if you don’t like her, she’s still a geek, and also, you can go fuck yourself.
This is Martin Shkreli. He’s a despicable piece of shit.
Why? You ask?
Well:
Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.
The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.[…]
“This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business,” Mr. Shkreli said. He said that many patients use the drug for far less than a year and that the price was now more in line with those of other drugs for rare diseases.
“This is still one of the smallest pharmaceutical products in the world,” he said. “It really doesn’t make sense to get any criticism for this.”
[…]
Yeah, nobody really uses this drug, so he’s totally doing a great thing! Oh, except for:
Turing’s price increase could bring sales to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year if use remains constant. Medicaid and certain hospitals will be able to get the drug inexpensively under federal rules for discounts and rebates. But private insurers, Medicare and hospitalized patients would have to pay an amount closer to the list price.
Well, this is probably just a one time thing. I mean, he’s only 32 and … oh.
In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which also acquired old neglected drugs and sharply raised their prices. Retrophin’s board fired Mr. Shkreli a year ago. Last month, it filed a complaint in Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of using Retrophin as a personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.
This is what happens when a country like America allows something as fundamental as the health of the human beings who live in this country to be a thing that shitbags like Martin Shkreli can use to get rich. This is disgusting, and wrong, and nothing will be done to stop this because PROFITS.
(via Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight - The New York Times)
(via wilwheaton)
So a few people have pointed to Kieron’s excellent post on the economics of Image comic titles, in relation to us having to put UMBRAL on hiatus.
Some have mentioned Kieron’s point that even if WicDiv’s single issue sales were bad (which they most certainly aren’t), the sales of collections (aka “trades”) would more than make up for it, and asked why the same wasn’t true of UMBRAL.
Well, it was. And that was entirely the problem.
Not only were UMBRAL’s single issue sales low after the first year, but we didn’t sell enough trades to make up for it. I actually stated that in the post, but perhaps I didn’t make it clear enough. So, in Kieron’s spirit of openness, here are some numbers:
UMBRAL #1 sold 16,500. By issue #6, we were down to 6,300. That’s quite a drop, but in terms of percentages it’s actually entirely normal for comics. We even have an industry term for it: “standard attrition”. Any comic that actually increases its sales from month to month is rare and wondrous.
So 6k isn’t great, and nobody’s really making any money with those numbers. In fact, Chris and I were already working for free, at that point. After paying our colorist and letterer, there was nothing left for us.
But that was OK. We knew some people were “trade waiting” the book, and if trade sales were strong, they’d make up for it.
They weren’t. Despite buying ads, taking out sponsorships, and doing as much PR as humanly possible, UMBRAL vol 1 sold around 3,500 copies in its first month. A respectable number, but nowhere near enough to turn a profit and make up for low issue sales.
Maybe we should have thrown in the towel at that point. But we didn’t, because Chris and I were enjoying telling Rascal’s story, and having a great time just working together again. So we carried on, still hoping things might pick up, and maybe the release of vol 1 would give the single issues a boost.
Nope. Issue #7 sold 5,000.
Still we soldiered on, hoping good word of mouth would keep sales of Vol 1 turning over. Readers kept telling us how much they loved UMBRAL. Page 45, a single small store in England, sold 200+ copies of Vol 1 in the first two months. Surely, if we just kept going, we could turn things around.
But by issue #12, sales were down to 3,400. And then Vol 2 sold just 1,600 copies in its first month.
*sad trombone*
Three final things, make of them what you will:
1. Digital made no meaningful difference. Even #1, our best-selling digital issue, only sold a few hundred on Comixology.
2. We often heard from readers frustrated that their store wasn’t stocking issues of UMBRAL, and in some cases didn’t even fulfil pull list orders for them.
3. When we made the hiatus announcement, one anonymous message boarder said, “This makes me sad! UMBRAL was the first book I torrented every month!”
It’s absolutely true that single issue sales don’t matter as much for indie books, if you’re selling lots of trades. But it’s also true that you have to sell lots of trades. Sadly, UMBRAL did neither.
Once again, thank you to everyone who bought UMBRAL, whether in issues, digital, trades, whatever. Every sale made us feel we were doing something good. Alas, there just weren’t enough of you.
Onward and upward,
- Antony
22 Jun 2015(I Feel I should add a quick coda, so people don’t make wrong assumptions: I’ve been making creator-owned comics for my entire career, more than 15 years. The above is normal, and expected. I’m just explaining things here for the benefit of readers who aren’t familiar with industry insider stuff like this.)
Those numbers are depressing for a book of that quality. I suppose good things fail to find a following in all media but I can’t help but feel that something went wrong here: it just didn’t seem to get talked about for some reason.
I wish things were different and I hope that one day there’s a way back to Umbral.
The CIA Just Declassified the Document That Supposedly Justified the Iraq Invasion | VICE News.
And nobody will ever hold Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, and the rest of those fucking liars accountable for the oceans of blood on their hands.
(via wilwheaton)
The cover of the first edition of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo since its staff were murderously attacked by Islamist gunmen last week shows a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed crying and holding up a “Je suis Charlie” sign under the words: “All is forgiven”.
(via wilwheaton)
Anonymous asked: If today's attack on cartoonists in Paris does not show the danger that Islam and Muslims present to the world, I do not know what else would. Marvel should be denounced, and not supported as a company, for promoting characters and hiring creators that practice this religion of hate, terror and destruction.
The greatest and most harmful lie of the 21st century is that to combat terrorists, we must become terrorists, to combat hate we must hate.
Bigotry in all its forms must be opposed and overthrown.
It’s like people think it’s impossible to be angry about racism and extremism at the same time.
I would like to tell you a story about what my life is like these days.
Friday morning I wake up. I glance at my Twitter feed, which is full of attacks against me, so I pass it off to one of my people to clean up. I spend the morning dealing with the endless headaches of…
(via wilwheaton)
The ‘Great Houses’ model of the Marvel Universe.
Interested in what people make of this.
Nice idea but doesn’t really work as only the X-Men have focused on societal systems to any great degree. You get the odd “Reed can change the world” or “Steve’s hacked off with the government and gone off in a strop” story but otherwise, only one “Great House” is playing, the others just aren’t engaged with this dynamic.
(via kierongillen)
ashli-likes-your-veggies asked: I'm getting into comic books now but I'm really overwhelmed by the poor representation of female artists, writers, and kick ass characters. Do you have any suggestions to steer me in that direction?
I definitely feel you on this one, but i really like to think the industry as a whole is moving in the right direction, especially in the past couple years there have been a lot of great comics that are changing the paradigm. There are so many I’m going to miss when I make this list but, here are a few of my personal favorite comics that you may be interested in to get you started.
- Saga - Hugely popular. Great female characters. Alana is the best.
- Sex Criminals - Incredibly sex positive and hilarious and endearing and I wish Suzie was around to tell me about the birds & the bees when I was a kid.
- Pretty Deadly - Written by kellysue, drawn by steinerfrommars, colored by jordiecolorsthings - essentially the triumvirate of badass female creators. Pretty Deadly is beautiful and complex - art in every sense of the word.
- Ms. Marvel - Written by gwillow, edited by Sana Amanat - Starring Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenage girl from New Jersey. THE breakout Marvel comic of the year.
- Captain Marvel - Also written by kellysue - Carol Danvers is a fighter pilot, an Avenger, and who I want to be when I grow up.
- Love & Rockets - The quintessential indie comic. It features some of the most iconic female characters ever and is epic in every way.
- Rachel Rising - terrymooreart creates some of the most realistic and engrossing characters I’ve ever come across, and I’m absolutely in love with his art.
- Wet Moon - I just read this for the first time recently, but it focuses around a group of girls in college and has the feel of an amazing early 2000s indie movie.
- The Big Feminist BUT - Comics about Women, Men and the IFs, ANDs & BUTs of Feminism
- Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life - A long, dense, sensitive, and minutely observed autobiographical masterpiece recalling the summer of 1984, when Ulli Lust, a rebellious, punked-out 17-year-old, hitchhiked her way across Italy.
- Lumberjanes - A kickass comic by kickass women (gingerhaze, ohheygrace & brookeallen) about kickass girls at a super spooky summer camp.
I could keep going for a while and it’s criminal the amazing comics I’m leaving off this list, but that’s a good start! I’m sure people out there have plenty suggestions of their own. Reblog this list with your additions!
Anonymous asked: What are your thoughts on "gamergate"? As a female gamer, has your experience been mostly uneventful or have you run into challenges? How would you compare the gamer culture to comics culture? Or do your interests allow you to avoid negative interactions?
hchomgoblin-deactivated20160610:
Needless to say, as somebody who played games, and was vocal and enthusiastic about games from a really early age (the first game I played was “Parsec” on a borrowed Commodore 64), I’ve run into plenty of challenges. And “challenges” is a nice, vague word, so I’ll be specific and say that growing up as a girl meant encountering misogyny and gender role assumptions as part and parcel of the experience. Since I was a girl who wanted to assimilate into boy’s culture - or failing that share some portion of what boys enjoyed - there was heavy gating, implicit and explicit, on my degree of participation.
One thing that strikes me, looking back, is that I was excluded no matter what. Whether I stayed quiet and lurked in the background, or stepped up and tried to out-boast or out-play everyone else, my options were either to adopt a proper, passive role, or to have no place whatsoever. No amount of expertise would win me access. My achievements were either a lie, or something I’d cheated to obtain. And while most boys didn’t act like this towards me one-on-one, as soon as they joined the pack it was an immediate dissolve into girls vs. them.
Of course, nobody can be blamed at that age. Kids are just doing what they’re taught, and mimicking what’s around them. I had many (many) moments of idiocy and jerkiness, myself. It’s water under the bridge, at this point. But adults are a different matter. Adults can be expected to acknowledge and consider perspectives beyond their own. Adults can be expected to not shut down an argument as soon as it no longer favours or pleases them. Adults can be expected to act graciously - or at least not with harassment and aggression - when disagreement persists. And when all else fails, adults can be expected to not invent a cast of fictional enemies when they feel threatened by something they aren’t even willing to examine closely.
And those are some of my thoughts about “gamergate”.
As far as comics culture goes, I think there are some similarities and some differences. Certainly there’s a similar pressure to maintain the status quo, and not go around tipping over rocks to see what’s underneath.
Marian is the smart one.