Observations – Page 5 – The Designer Monologues

January 5, 2015

2015

Here we are in the not-quite-cyberpunk future of 2015. As part of my plans for the year, I intend on getting back to more frequent blogging (yeah, yeah, I know — everybody with a blog says that. Well, I need to get back on top of productivity this year after the train wreck of 2014, and blogging is an easily-accomplished method of getting onto a structured schedule), so here we are.

I started this first full-time week of 2015 with an attempt to climb the mountain of neglected organization: I created a top-level Trello board for projects, after being convinced of its usefulness (along with the pomodoro technique), in a series of blog posts by my friend Eddy Webb. This top-level board has only 3 stages: Conceptual/Development/In Progress.

“In Progress” = Actively underway towards completion.

“Development” = brainstorming, initial drafts, research, work being done.

“Conceptual” = the basics of an idea to do, maybe an outline.

I expect to get more granular when I dig down into more month-to-month and day-to-day organization, but for right now, I’m in the HOLY CRAP THAT’S A TON OF STUFF panic stage.

First on the plate, obviously: Get the late stuff out the door. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to that.

August 16, 2014

A Thought On Drow Cosplay

Earlier today, over on Google Plus, I got into an argument with some folks, who were seriously taking the position that banning people from cosplaying as Nazis was somehow a slippery slope to actual Nazism, because “it was curtailing freedom just because of feelings” or some other nonsense.

Anyway, I was arguing that it should NEVER be done. Which resulted in one of the folks saying that my position was just like the “social justice” people who are complaining about people cosplaying as Drow.

So here’s the thing — there have been some pictures circulating around the internet today of Drow cosplayers at GenCon. I’m not linking to it — you can find it if you want. The problem, as is sadly often the problem with fans cosplaying as Drow, is that they look like they’re in blackface. That’s always going to be the association of a white person who has caked jet-black make-up on their face. It’s a thing. A thing with some very strong feelings behind it, and I’m saying that perhaps you might consider what impression you’re giving.

Gamers: do a google image search on “drow”. You know what you don’t see? Anything that looks like your too-much-like-blackface cosplay. You see grey skin, pale ghostly skin, violet skin, blue skin… Nothing there reminiscent of blackface. Cosplayers at cons, though? Blackface.

I’m sure you don’t mean it that way. But fer chrissakes, THINK.

October 1, 2013

Shocking Parallels

Regarding the current governmental crisis, consider this:

“Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

[…]

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action?

[…]

In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me – my money – was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.”

That’s Abraham Lincoln, referring to Secessionists in a speech to the Cooper Union in February 1860. Ironically, Lincoln is what a Republican used to be. Now, though?

The last time we had extremists pledging “my way or we burn it all down”, we had to fight a civil war and, frankly, crush them.

I wonder what it will take now.