Out of the System

Excuse me while I sneeze. Again. Ow.

Day 2 of being ill. The proposal presentation went by with nary a sniffle but the classes that followed were hellish. I eventually got home and was informed that my mom had locked herself out of her car in the middle of a crowded road and left her handphone at home.

Perspective is a wonderful thing. :P

So while trying to sleep the disease away my mom decides she'll watch 101 Celebrity Slimdowns on E. Hm. A show showcasing how Halle Berry lost 8 pounds. I wash my hands of this human race.

One nap, 2 liters of water, and some hopeful vitamin C later, I present your second Recommended Viewing!























Webcomics are a challenging medium to be successful in. There's no chance you'll be rejected by your publisher, true, but you really have to challenge yourself in terms of your quality and update schedule to what is essentially a hobby, subject to all the scrutinies and difficulties of an actual job. There's no one to push you but yourself, and your love for your work.

Somehow this resonates with me.

While we're talking about quality; Gunnerkrigg Court is fantastic. I realize it's easy to heap laurels on something (zomg birtney spears is lyke, t3h hawtsauce) but there's a certain level of prestige involved when you factor in how I discovered GC in the first place:

While sick in bed last week, I got to read what's out there so far of Gunnerkrigg Court, a really enjoyable webcomic, of the kind that will undoubtedly be out sooner or later in paper form (actually it looks the author's self-publishing it currently in paper form -- http://www.lulu.com/content/215167). It starts at
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=1. Lots of different flavours in there -- it's a semi-gothic funny-sweet school story with mysteries and robots and so forth -- but I kept finding myself reminded of the early days of reading Bone. Nice stuff.

-Neil Gaiman

Imagine you are the struggling webauthor of a comic about a boarding school in which ghostly robots and dragons are a normal occurrence. Then Neil 'I think I'll win a couple of Hugo Awards and shape formative pop culture while I'm at it' Gaiman links you in his blog, and the world is your pearl-producing mollusc.