[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]

February 29th, 2008

February 29th, 2008
07:25 am [Link]	Really, It Is Coming: Here's Proof The last adventure of Princess Fluttershine. The strip is called "Fluttershone." As you can see, Roni's really knocking herself out on the art on this one. It's not that we're lax, we're just really concerned about laying it to rest correctly. Thanks for your patience. In other news, the comic I'm doing with Catherynne Valente (a.k.a. yuki_onna) will be starting Monday. Set your browsers to go. If you ask Cat nicely, she might even tell you the name of said strip. But I shall not. (28 shouts of denial | tell me I'm full of it)
Time	Event
09:59 am [Link]	Into the Aether I write my submission carefully. It's as witty as it can possibly be, starting with a good line, ending with a hook. I double-check it for spelling and grammar errors. I send it off with a little gust of enthusiasm, hoping this will be the time, this will be the time. I never see a rejection. I never hear back from them. Once again, I lose at chatting. I've said before that I never really "got" chatting, but I suspect my own neuroses are tied up in it. Too many of my chat sessions end in abrupt cliffhangers, where I've sent something personal and nobody responds. I think I've got some sort of flow going where I'm connecting with someone, and they wander away, leaving me to wonder what I did wrong. It happens with email, too. I'll send a nice, long email filled with personal information and questions I was hoping to know the answer to, and I get nothing. We've exchanged four emails over the course of the day, but this is where the road ends. I hear nothing. And it feels stupid to keep pinging, echoing "Hello?" out into the e-void, hearing how thinly pathetic my voice sounds when it's reflected back at me. Thing is, I worry. Maybe I've offended them on some level, and really they don't want to be talking to me. I scour my last communique with them, trying to figure out what I said wrong, listing all the reasons that they might suddenly have come to hate me enough to cut off this talk. Did I offend? Was my sarcasm taken at face value? How can I make it up to them? What did I do to make me unworthy? Or maybe - and this idea eats at me - maybe I'm a terrible chatter. Maybe I'm that guy at the party who speaks in awkward silences, venturing an aborted half-thought that's not really a conversation at all but a musing that leads nowhere, then staring at you with a friendly gaze that makes your skin crawl as I implore you to join me in a talk that's really not interesting at all. When I chat, I feel bland and abandoned. Anyone can leave me at any time, and they do. And that's silly, I know that. But since 70% of my chats end with my partner just up and leaving me in mid-sentence, it hits every neurosis I possess. I know these people - I've seen then chatting for hours with more entertaining e-partners, spending days at a time in long, convoluted sessions that I cannot hope to match. It is the Grand Ball, where everyone is pirouetting and twirling with glorious dance partners in splendid regalia... And there I am, in a black T-shirt and slacks, someone they'll grudgingly do a single turn around the wooden floor with before returning to the ones who truly bring them joy. It makes me feel like an utter loser, talking to a blank wall. I'm so boring that I can't even occupy ten minutes' worth of e-time because anything. Who am I? What am I? Silly, I know. A GMail session shouldn't be an existential crisis. But I wonder. I wonder whether I'm all I think I am, which isn't that much to begin with. Then the chat room turns into a killing field for my ego. (51 shouts of denial | tell me I'm full of it)