#i usually saw these kind of illustrations in a sticker book that i once have as a kid

[barbie-girlll]

These disney princess illustrations/art style just scratched something in my nostalgic brain that I didn't know I have

[fabulaee]

COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE

// A 🐺 fic based on my Stay journey’s aesthetics which was a coffee shop au bc they remind me of those times when I used to go to the café to draw and would see fellow regulars but unlike y/n and Chan, I never interact with them. We all just share a table 😂😂😂

*

*

*

Monday. Wednesday. Friday

That was the set schedule for your coffee run. MWF from 9 am to 10, then coming back with your study supplies from 1 to 4 in the afternoon. It was routine; the small college café a safe haven from the slight messy floor of your dorm and the formal vibe of the library. Here you were focused and at peace of mind. The aroma of the coffee beans and soft sounds of the coffeeshop’s playlist serving as background noise.

There wasn’t much students at this time of the day compared to the much later prime of the evenings. The café then filled with college youths grabbing a drink after a long day’s worth of lectures and test reminders or staying to cram a night’s worth of information. There was something about cafés that seemed inviting and less suffocating yet at the same time a place where you can find the nursing students with their big thick books opened with streaks of neon yellow running across them.

“Vanilla Bean Cold Brew for y/n!”

Standing up, you went to grab your drink leaving behind the pastel rainbow set of highlighters and gel pens on top of your notes. You quickly thanked the barista as he handed you a straw before plopping back down on your seat continuing where you last went off. Something about the history of impressionistic art. You sighed as you lifted your eyes across the room, it was currently 2:30 pm on a Wednesday afternoon. A good time to take a break before your mind starts to commit brain fart.

*

Chris Bang. Affectionally called Bang Chan by his friends. Music major with golden hands, a good candidate for the honor roll, member of the varsity swim team, and resident social butterfly. An all rounder any college is proud to have.

You heard about him once or twice from your common friend, Yang Hongseok. They met at the gym apparently and became quick friends through the Japanese exchange student, Adachi Yuto, and their shared love for fitness.

You see him sit at the same spot everyday since the middle of sophomore year. His laptop with the cute decal of Deadpool open and his AirPods snugly tucked in his ears. He's always has his blonde head bopping to a song he's playing on either his phone or his laptop. Always seemed so engrossed in this little world he made for himself across the room, ignorant to the bustling crowd of students that come and go.

He looks up catching you off guard. His lips curled slightly upwards, chuckling to himself as he watches your cheeks turn pink in embarrassment. Great, he must think I'm a weirdo!

With a quick exchange of nods you both went back to doing your own thing. Just a regular day at the coffee shop.

*

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

It's the Friday following Monday's slightly embarrassing incident. You looked up to find the same Chris Bang, laptop in hand, smiling at you like a friendly yet lost puppy. Warm brown orbs looking back at yours.

“My laptop's about to die and this is the only table with an outlet.” He explains himself, a tiny awkward giggle making up as the period.

“O-oh, of course!” You stuttered, hastily making room for him despite the large space as you swiped for the stray pastel highlighters and napkins closer. “No one's sitting here so go ahead.”

He whispered a small thanks before setting down his laptop to grab his bag from his usual spot while you went back to your notes. It was silent for awhile, only the sounds of pen against paper and the soft tick tack of the keys. At some point you hit a mind block, eyes glazing in boredom as you stared at the blank space of your notebook. You felt your table mate leave his stationary position too. he stretched in his seat before turning his attention to you.

Sensing his sudden gaze on you, you flashed him a small smile. You were never one to start a conversation, often keeping to yourself and minding your own business. A bit of a complete opposite towards the friendly Australian who somehow knows at least three students from each program.

He smiles back at you showing off his cute dimples and an outstretched hand. “Hey, I'm Chan. I never caught your name.”

Again with the cute giggle. It seems to be like a signature to him but it's cute still the same. You grasped his hand giving it a soft shake. “Y/n,” you answered curtly.

*

The following days you find yourself hanging around Chan more. Afternoon study sessions were no longer a date between you and the textbook or the small watercolor set you laid out on the table. Chan was there to fill the space making the long table that was a party of one to a party of two and maybe some on certain busy hours but mostly it was the both of you in your own tiny world.

You got to know him, his likes and dislikes. His major and passion for music, sometimes slipping in a few complaints about certain homework here and there; What else he likes to do. Apparently mr. Chris Bang was gifted in so many areas you often wondered what good he must've done in his previous life to be this gifted. Not only was he a jack of all trades, he's also the master of all.

You even had a small debate between Deadpool and Spider-Man. God, he's such a nerd it's adorable!

In return he knew these things about you. How you're taking up art as your major hoping to make it out as an illustrator one day—

“it would be so cool if you drew a variant cover for Deadpool!”

“Ha! We'll see about that, Chris Reynolds.”

He knows how you like to collect stickers and are quite passionate about making sure your notes are beautiful. He knows how you loved your drinks iced despite it being the middle of winter.

“Isn’t the weather too cold for that?” He’d ask with a quirk of his brow, amused brown eyes glancing at the iced hazelnut latte you have in your hands.

“Nope!” you replied, taking a sip as you did so. “It’s always the perfect weather for an iced coffee, Bang.”

He only chuckled at that.

*

It hit you like a freight train. You didn’t mean to fall for him. It wasn’t supposed to happen. You and Chan? No way, it was just supposed to be just friends. The kind where you hang out and have fun, no feelings attached. He was just supposed to be that regular from the café, right?

That was the plan, right?

But you can’t deny the small flutters from your heart much like those newly emerged butterflies. How you can feel that giddy feeling of excitement when you spot his mop of chocolate curly locks outside the café’s window. How you mirror his smile when you get together to talk about anything and everything under the sun. Bang Chan in all his cute dimpled glory, soft curls and hearty giggles was just too much to adore.

Yet it wasn’t that what pulled you in to the Music major. You felt love blossom when you both stayed up late, when the café was quiet after a busy day. The only people around being a couple medical students, some late night goers, and the employees. You felt the tiny flower buds start to bloom when he stayed with you then; keeping you company under the dimly warm fluorescent lights, laptop tucked away and a hand playing with yours.

You felt it bloom when you cuddled on the booth’s sofa one rainy November day. He scoots over next to you when he saw you shiver from the corner of his eyes. He’s naturally warm —you’d often tease him how he made the room hot. Why? well it’s because he’s from Australia! which earned the loud chorus of laughter from his friends and Chan’s ears turning into the color of the fire hydrant.

“Babygirl, you’re shivering.” He mutters as he wrapped an arm around you, pulling you gently towards him. You accepted the subtle invitation, sides sticking together as you both went through forgotten notes and half finished coffees.

You felt it when you caught yourself staring at him a little longer than intended. Eyes drifting from Jisung’s expressive face to glance at the older one. You watched him look at the former with such adoration in his eyes; how he looked like a proud dad. You watched him nod along and laugh to Jisung’s animated story about how he and Hyunjin would fight back in the day, a fact that still seemed to shock you seeing how they are the best of friends.

Your eyes would linger on him while he worked on his music; focused and determined, hiding the exhaustion and sleepless nights prominent on the dark circles under his eyes. He was handsome even if he looked like shit. Hell, he was handsome even when he sported the infamous broccoli colored hair. You’d find yourself in a trance, like it was a dream. The world didn’t matter as much anymore when it was only you and Chan in the small dimly table, surrounded by the aroma of coffee beans at the small quaint cafe at the corner of the street.

*

You loved him. You loved him in the most beautiful of ways; you loved him in the most perfect highs and in all those crevices full of flaws.

You loved him in those bright moments, when the lights were shining on him during a 3RACHA gig. How they made him more beautiful, how they made him stand out from the 2 younger members. You loved watching him do what he loves; how he immersed himself in a world that was different from yours. How his version of colors and dried paint were beats and melodies, rhythm and tempos.

You loved him in the lowest moments; when the tide was high enough to cover you. You loved how you fit perfectly in his arms, how he became a shoulder to lean on when you felt the world was against you and you to him. When he would open up to you about his worst fears and his grandiose ambitions; when he spilled his heart out at the underlaying insecurity that’s been biting him due to his perfectionist attitude. You became his confidante; the one he can trust his heart to.

You loved him in the times he was vulnerable. You loved him when he would bask in glory and shining lights. You loved him like those cheesy lines in love songs. You loved him like how the tides would look at the moon in awe and yearning; gravitating with every push and pull.

You loved him in ways words can never describe. How the seeds he planted in your heart bloomed to the most beautiful bouquet of flowers.

You love him simply because he’s Chan.

You promised yourself you’d be just friends. It was safer that way but then again, what is love when she’s not one without twists and turns?

What is love when she comes to you, sneaky and sly like a weed disguised as a flower, whispering into your ear that it’s him.

It’s him, it’s him, it’s him.

It was always him, it just took you some time to figure that out.

*

When you first met Chan, he was simply a friend of a friend. Someone you knew because your brothers are his friends. He was the guy you’d hear about in passing, the popular cool guy with a heart bigger than a massive sized teddy bear and a smile that could cure the most depressing of days. Someone who, in probability, would just be an acquaintance to you.

He was that guy you regularly saw at the coffee shop you visited every week. He was just some guy from the music department who would flash you a friendly smile because you were a familiar face.

Funny how fate made him more than what you originally expected him to be.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#10yrsago A journey through my junk: happy Down the Rabbit Hole day!

As previously mentioned, today is "Down the Rabbit Hole" day, when bloggers are encouraged to post in a different style from their accustomed one. I don't think I can manage a whole day of that, but I'm willing to kick in one post, anyway.

I don't normally write much about my personal life here, partly because I'm pretty jealous of my privacy and partly because it's just not the kind of thing we do here (but that's the point of Rabbit Hole day, of course!).

Last November, Alice and I had our big, grand wedding in Toronto, and invited all my friends. Now, I haven't lived in Toronto for nearly ten years, but for most of that time, I've had a storage locker there, filled with the memories of the three decades I spent in the town of my birth before I left, first for California, then for the UK, then for California, then for the UK again. I've delved into the locker on three occasions, attempting to figure out what I had in it and what I was going to do with it all. The first time, I confronted the incredible, jammed-together mountain of junk and boxes, opened a few, and gave up (it didn't help that the rest of my family had filled all the remaining spaces with their unloved junk). The second time, I showed up with more resolve: I was going to sort through everygoddamnedthing and figure out what I was shipping to London, what I was giving away, what was headed for the dumpster and what needed to be shredded.

That was last spring, when we went back to Toronto with the baby for her first visit to meet her Canadian family, over Passover week. I spent a dusty afternoon, opening boxes, looking through them, sorting them into piles and putting them back together. It was an incredibly emotional experience. The boxes hadn't been packed very intelligently: years before, I'd come back to the warehouse loft I'd shared with my ex, and stuck all the junk I thought I couldn't part with in boxes. It was miserable. The stuff was filthy, and there was so much emotion in this stuff, which felt more like the wreckage of a past life than the memories thereof, that I just lost the capacity to be careful and discriminating, and by the end of it, I had some 80 boxes of random and assorted crapola that disappeared into the locker for most of a decade before I saw it again.

There were enormous piles of books, of course. I'd worked in libraries and bookstores from the age of 12 to the age of 23, and I'd amassed some 10,000 of the little wooden bastards. I had previously believed that these books were my identity, that you could know a man by the books he kept, that I'd be able to read their spines and find in them a palimpsest of all the people I'd been on the way to becoming the person I was. But once I'd been separated from them, I discovered that I barely missed them. Now and again, I'd need to reference something in one of them and I'd find it on Amazon, usually for less than a buck. The books went to my brother's school, where they've been integrated into the school library. Books should be read, not stored, and there's plenty there to make normal kids into happy mutants.

There were boxes of cassettes and VHS cassettes, including a trove of fantastic mixtapes that I'd exchanged with friends and as a courtship ritual over the years. Ten years before, I'd been unable to part with them. Now, it was easy: off to the thriftstore with them. I can download that stuff whenever I need it.

There were boxes of t-shirts, and these, weirdly enough, were harder to get rid of. I find myself sentimentally attached to a shocking quantity of tees. The Rocky Horror tee I wore every Friday for years to the Roxy theater in Toronto. The shirt from Grindstone Island is part of a small trove of memorabilia I have from the place (including a hammered-together chest made from old fruit boxes, and a complete run of WHOLE EARTH CATALOGs) that, to this day, is the place that I think of when I want to imagine perfect peace and happiness. Sometimes, I wonder if my life peaked at 17, there on a 12-acre island in the middle of Big Rideau Lake, listening to the loons and swinging in the hammock on Moonwatcher's Point, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and talking all night long.

There was some art, and a few wardrobe pieces from my teens and twenties, including my beat up old punk leather jacked, covered in chains, worn to shreds, with stencils on the back. Maybe Poesy will wear it someday. Angry leather jackets never really go out of style.

There were my files -- all my juvenilia, the stories I wrote in elementary school and high school (including Tommy the Toenail Tarantula, with some damned good illustrations by Toby Muller -- where are you these days, Toby?). A truly fantastic quantity of photocopied material about Disney World. A thick folder of anti-fascist material from the John Brown/Anti-KKK League in San Francisco, whom I used to send away to for stickers, fliers and other material. And correspondence -- all the letters and postcards, the lovenotes and snapshots.

The snapshots deserve their own paragraph. One thing I realized: I dressed a lot better in my teens than in my twenties. Partly that was the fact that teenagers can get away with some pretty daring fashion. Partly it was that I spent my twenties trying to figure out what someone who had suddenly found himself working real jobs for real money wore (I went from working for tiny wages in a bookstore to doing Internet work that paid as much as my parents earned pretty much overnight, somewhere around 1993). Partly it was that I gained a ton of weight when I was about 23, and kept it on until I was about 32 and I discovered Atkins.

Another thing I realized: the girls I dated in my teens were knockouts, absolutely out of my league. And not just me, either. When I look at the photos of all my pals in their couples, the teenaged boys look lumpy or gangly, unfinished, with bad facial hair (shocking realization du jour: I look terrible with giant sideburns). The girls, by contrast, look pretty much fantastic. They're put together, confident, striking. All the couples look like beauty and the beast.

What else was there? A complete set of original Star Trek action figures and an Enterprise playset with the cool-ass transporter/spinner thing. The original, absolutely fabulous Haunted Mansion board game. A pretty good selection of Disney-attraction-themed boardgames and tin lunchboxes.

Tax docs. Bags of receipts. An entire carton of dead SCSI drives that had to be sent for secure disposal.

The next time I saw my stuff was a few days before I got married in Toronto. I had movers from Hudson Movers meet me at the locker. They were fabulous -- took the charity shop donations, the school donations, the art supplies I sent to Klockwerks, and all the stuff to ship to London away. They packed the shipment, filled in the customs forms, and put it all on the proverbial slow boat.

Two weeks ago, the boxes showed up at my office here in London, and I had a much longer pass through the stuff. By this point, it had been whittled down to six boxes. The books went onto the shelves, the t-shirts went into the storage closet, and a trove of my chewed kids' books and stuffed animals went back to the flat for my daughter.

The locker in Toronto is gone (well, technically, it's still there and filled with my family's junk, but that's their problem, not mine) and the goods are sorted and put away. Funnily enough, even after three or four passes through a "do I want this?" filter, I still had three boxes of garbage and donations out of the eight boxes that sailed the sea to London.

It's liberating. I feel lighter. For years, it felt like there was a weak and persistent nagging gravity tugging at me from Toronto, a needling, wheedling kvetch from all those unregarded possessions that I had responsibility for but no use for.

There's still a locker in LA -- well, in the desert outside of LA, it's one of those outfits that forklifts a storage box onto your lawn a week before you move; fill it up and call them and they forklift it back to some remote location with zero humidity until you request it again. I only have a dim recollection of what's in there, but I'm pretty sure it's almost all framed pictures that we had no room to hang in London but couldn't bear to part with. That and a couple of really good office chairs and a Danish dining room table that Mr Jalopy rescued from the garbage and refinished. Someday, if we move back to the States, we'll have instant decor. In the meantime, there's some of that nagging gravity being exerted by the box in the desert, too.

https://boingboing.net/2009/01/27/a-journey-through-my.html

[literarilymanga]

A Chat About Creativity

Hello! As y’all know, I’ve been talking to various webcomic creators about their individual comics.  Earlier this week, however, I got to talk to Kristina about her creative process and how she brings her webcomics to life. Check it after the cut! 

Me: Do you start with a set idea for a story or does it come gradually?

Kristina: I usually start out with a feeling i want to convey or a problem i want to explore, for example with 14 Nights the problem was "Can you have a relationship without sex?" and then I try to find the answer to my question through the story.

Me: Has working on any one comic proved harder than the other?

Kristina: Hm. Well, at the beginning it was very difficult in general, just because I only had a few skills, and over the years it's gotten easier as I accumulate more. But actually, yes, I’ll say it's been hardest to work on the short anthology comics. I just don't ever feel satisfied with them because they're so short. If I'm not satisfied with the comic then it's very hard.

Kristina: The one I did for Monster Anthology: Demon Edition was the hardest because I don't think I ever really said what i wanted to say.

Me: What would you consider the "perfect" comic length to be?

Kristina: Well, it depends on the story, but I'd say the minimum length for a complete story is probably 50 pages. I can't think of a comic that's less than 50 pages that I've read and had a very strong reaction to. The maximum length could be thousands of pages, ideally. The more pages, the better.

Me: When you create comics, what do you focus on the most to tell your story: setting, characters, or symbolism? Symbolism meaning an underlying theme or a special object or something like that.

Kristina: When you put it that way, I have to say symbolism, more specifically, the underlying meaning. The reason I write comics is to give me a platform to express my beliefs, so I'm very focused on whether I accurately represented my own POV. The characters and the setting are tools to accomplish that goal. But, of course, the characters must be treated with compassion, otherwise you end up creating pawns to do your bidding.

Me: Do you find it harder to draw for anthologies?

Kristina: Yeah, definitely. It's hard to make a decent comic story in 10-25 pages. And all the while knowing you can't really go any further with it, if you like it.

Me: Is there a story that you've done that you really connected with?

Kristina: I'd say that if I put in the effort to finish something,I connect with it 100%. I wouldn't waste my time otherwise; I mean drawing comics is way too much work for less.

Kristina: Well, no that's not completely accurate because I just said the anthology comics don't meet that standard.

Kristina: So all my personal comics, Yasha Lizard, 14 Nights, and Alethia,I connect with 100%. 

Me: Since your comics are bilingual, do you ever worry that things get lost in translation?

Kristina: Nah, not really. At least, not yet! Maybe in the future, but so far I think it sounds basically the same in both languages. Although, sometimes little things don't really bother me. For example, there's a character in Yasha Lizard named Anastasia Anole, and the translator used the word for 'chameleon' instead.(变色龙 in case you're wondering.) But I’ve never seen an anole in China and I don't think Chinese readers will know what an anole is, so I’m fine with the change.

Me: Do you prefer working in color or black and white?

Kristina: I think I prefer black and white. I like the way it looks when it's done. B&w comics are, to me, aesthetically superior to color comics. However, knowing that I feel that way, I felt I had to challenge myself to come up with a color comics art style that I would like just as much as I like b&w comics. I'm not there yet.

Me: Do you have certain color families you stick to? Or just whatever matches the tone?

Kristina: Yeah, definitely! Right now I can't seem to get away from teal and magenta. I love blue-greens in general and always want to use them. I need to branch out more.

Me: How do your readers react to your work? Do you seem to draw a specific type of reader?

Kristina: One thing I've noticed is that people only tend to say positive things about it. If they don't like my work, they keep it to themselves. There must exist people who hate my comics, but for some reason, they don't say so publicly. I wonder why? As for type of reader, I seem to have a variety. But they are probably all liberal-leaning. I don't think a very socially conservative reader could get much out of my work.

Me: How do you feel about the webcomic medium and the print comic medium?

Kristina: I love webcomics as a medium. I like digital everything. I'm kind of a technophile that way. I read all my prose books on a screen, too. I only print comics in order to have something to sell at the conventions. If it wasn't for that, I'd never print anything. As a reader, I don't like having a lot of physical things sitting around. I move almost every 2 years.

Me: Do you find that you get more interest in your work after cons?

Kristina: Oh yeah, absolutely. And the cons in china are enormous, so I meet hundreds of people each day at them.

Me: Do you only sell books or do you sell other related merch?

Kristina: I sell prints of my stand-alone illustrations and stickers of cats and guinea pigs. Everyone loves cat stickers. It's how you guarantee you'll make back at least the table cost. 

Me: I saw your guinea pig! So cute! Tell me about being a female comic artist in China.

Kristina: *laughs* I don't even know any male comic artists here. I mean, I know they exist but I never see them. All my comic friends are women. Next month I'm going to share a table with some friends, two women. The majority of the attendees are female as well.

Me: Have you collaborated on works outside of anthologies?

Kristina: I haven't collaborated on anything, ever, to be honest. The anthology stories were also my art + writing. I've never done a comic with someone else, although I've been offered money to try it.

Me: Is there anything you want to share about your experience with comics?

Kristina: My experience with comics has been...It doesn't pay money. It's a masochistic career choice.

Me: Any advice for people getting into comics?

Kristina: *laughs* Well it depends on what their goals are. Other people likely have very different goals than me. I don't ever intend to work for a major publisher, if I can help it.

Kristina:  Ok, but, my advice to female cartoonists is: Use a comic to say the thing you are absolutely the most terrified to say. Dig down deep and find that thing you think you'd be kicked off planet earth for saying, and say it. Put it under a pseudonym if you have to. but once you do it, you'll experience a freedom you never knew was possible.

You can check out Krisitna’s portfolio work and all of her comics at her main site. Don’t to forget to check out my earlier interview with Finnish artist Niina Eveliina. 

If you want to share your own thoughts on the creative process or want to be interviewed, feel free to comment on this post or send an ask or a message.  

Have a great weekend!