HELLOOOOO NEWSLETTER PEOPLE! Sorry it’s been a grip, the months have sort of smeared together into each other this summer. Going back to Pittsburgh for my first Anthrocon in 12 years was an absolute blast, and I’m eager to try and head back again– even amongst furry cons, there really is no event quite like it. 🙂 It was also nice seeing the Digital Villainy Summit, the online streaming convention I co-founded, raise over $22,000 for the Transgender Law Center this past weekend! Not half bad for a bunch of supervillains. >:3c
I also was privileged enough to slip sideways into Worldcon, the premiere global sci-fi and fantasy convention that’s been running since 1939, since it was being held in Seattle this year. It was at a really fascinating opportunity to attend an event that so many other fandoms sprung forth from, even if I felt sort of alienated from the proceedings. It’s way more of an academic conference than your typical comic con, with the primary focus on the panels rather than the dealer’s floor, and the attendee count skews way older on average than most other events I’ve been to. This year’s Worldcon had a lot of controversy surrounding it on multiple fronts, not least of which was its new practice of using AI tech to select guests for panels instead of, y’know, humans with experience in the scene. There were some panels I really enjoyed, like the “Cyberpunk: What Comes Next?” panel and the “How To Control A Mind” panel, and there were others that felt… less so, due to many panelists feeling at odds with each other. (Shoutout to the sci-fi novelist who kept interrupting the actual prosthetics specialists on the Cybernetics and Prosthetics Today panel with shit like “Well, what if we replaced all our blood with nanomachines? Wouldn’t that be CrAzY???” Like… yeah, I guess? Okay?)
One of the weirdest interactions I had at Worldcon was at SFF author Seanan Maguire’s Sunday panel “You All Need To Get Back On Tumblr”. I could tell that her and her other panelist were very enthusiastic about the fun, low-stress interactions they had with fans and friends on The Internet’s Most Improbably Surviving Social Media Site, and that’s fantastic. Someone made an “I like your shoelaces” joke! Everyone laughed! How grand. However, as someone who basically went cold turkey from Tumblr in 2017 right after the porn ban, the relentless positivity left a sour taste in my mouth. When the panel opened for Q&A’s, I went up to ask about what Tumblr users were currently doing to push back against censorship, either through fighting to reinstate adult content on the site or deposing its current CEO Matt “I Replaced All The Bacteria In My Mouth With Better Bacteria” Mullenweg. The answer I got out of Maguire was disappointingly azy and non-committal– I think she thought I was asking about clean art being incorrectly tagged as NSFW? Which, no, I wish to advertise my explicit erotic art and connect with fans of said art. Tumblr used to be amazing for that, riddled with tech and culture issues though it was; arguably, its discovery and curation tools for independent erotica was one of its biggest selling points. I got the vibe from the panelists that they hadn’t even remotely considered this as a use case for the website, which was, y’know, fine, but also frustrating. After the panel, another attendee came up to me and mentioned that they thought my question was interesting, and that in their personal opinion there was no efforts whatsoever from Tumblr’s userbase to push back on its censorship policies, and that the website isn’t just unsafe for pornographers, it’s unsafe for trans people in general. Yikes! At least they were being honest, I guess. Without the freedom to be queer or horny, Tumblr really does feel like the proverbial DashCon ballpit– a soft, sad little playpen for adult children.
SO HERE’S THE PITCH: If you’re a regular Tumblr user– and I’m gonna start posting these newsletters on my promo account there, so if you’re reading this, hello– and you aren’t thinking the negative impact of censorship on queer and creative community spaces like yours online, you should be. For the last month and change, a lot of tenacious activists (inc. yrs truly!) have been pushing back on the restrictive anti-sex policies that have gotten games, comics, novels and art delisted from sites like Itch.io and Steam, through a committed call, email and letter writing campaign. It’s a fight on multiple fronts– against credit card companies, payment processors like Paypal and Stripe, and banks like Wells Fargo and Citigroup. The United Kingdom’s recent law requiring all websites featuring “adult content” to verify users’ ages with photo identification has only made this issue feel more urgent and relevant; this is not an effort to “make the internet safe for The Innocent Little Children”, it’s a concerted effort to limit the spread of any media the system deems pornographic and subversive, and create a record of subversive people who engage with that media. It’s textbook surveillance state shit, and the credit card companies are paving the way for this practice to spread to the rest of the world! These corporations were not created to be arbiters of culture, and they should not have a say over what is and isn’t obscene art, or what adults do with their own hard-earned money.
You can learn more about fighting back against credit card censorship policies by visiting https://yellat.money , or checking out the Cartoonist Cooperative’s webpage at https://cartoonist.coop/censorship-pay-discrimination/ , which features an e-mail script you can send to over 20 institutions with one click. (I wrote the default email text!) I want you ALL to take action on this, however you can, however much you can. I know it sounds hyperbolic, but the literal, actual future of the entire free Net is at stake.
Well, that’s the big serious thing out of the way! Let’s get on to some news, shall we…
CROSSED WIRES IS ON SPIDERFOREST NOW! NEW UPDATES STARTING THIS THURSDAY!
This year has been pretty quiet for XW updates, I know. A lot of that is because I’ve been busy, but more than I’d like to admit has also admittedly been because of my own brain problems. Obsessing over sticking the landing with Chapter 3 made my brain lock up, and facing the ire of resentful fans– or worse, apathetic ex-fans– felt too terrifying to bear. (I realize this is irrational; Crossed Wires fans have historically never been anything but enthusiastic, kind and understanding. But the fake audience that lives inside my brain… well, that’s another story. Have I mentioned that I’ve been thinking about getting clinically diagnosed for OCD lately?)
This fall, I’d like to fix that attitude. Crossed Wires is a series I’m incredibly proud of, and one I want to keep working on indefinitely, if at all possible. It has so much potential in the worldbuilding and character work I’ve already laid down, and there are so many more rich and relevant stories I can tell with it. In order to kick my own ass into gear, I’ve joined the SpiderForest collective, the oldest continuously active webcomics collective online. They’re a really cool organization with a bunch of awesome comics that you should read, and they’re a hallowed fixture of the webcomics scene. (My first webcomic, Try Everything Once, was hosted on its spinoff site SpiderSpawn for a while back in the late ‘00s, so this is kind of a homecoming for me, in a strange way!) Another big perk, though, is that they require regular updates in order to remain a member. Joining them is, admittedly, also an oblique way to force my own brain to stop getting so anxious about updating XW and just have fun with it again. Crossed Wires will begin updating weekly again this Thursday, September 4th, and will continue on that update schedule until Chapter 3 is finished at the very least. More cyberpunk adventures are also coming soon, as well as… dare I say it?… a new printed volume, way out on the horizon. If you squint, you can just barely make it out…
MEANWHILE: WEDLOCKED
The other webcomic I make alongside my partner, WEDLOCKED, just came back recently from its between-chapter break and is currently updating on Slipshine! This a story about three trans men trying to balance their careers in the wedding industry with a tangled, toxic polyamorous relationship. If you enjoyed the contemporary focus of Split Check but wish it were a little more drama-focused, or if you’re a sicko homo and/or fujoshi who likes watching awful guys bang it the fuck out, this is the prestige porn series for YOU. Subscribe today! Slipshine is well worth your money, especially right now with so much erotic content online under attack. Help us… so we can help YOU (jerk off)!
ARCHIVE EDITION: ALL ABOUT IRIS, PLUS OTHER PATREON STUFF
This month’s Archive Edition is all about my fursona, Iris the robotic secretary bird! (She’s not named after me, I’m named after her. It’s Complicated.) She’s very special to me, and earlier this summer I wrote and drew a little zine about her to hand out at Anthrocon as a little freebie. The zine is collected here digitally, along with some reference sheets and illustrations of her from 2014 up to this year. Iris is very special to me– I definitely wouldn’t be the person I am today without her. You can think of this AE as a companion piece to June’s furry badge showcase, except this one is a little more… personally vulnerable, I suppose. I hope you enjoy it!
I also want to take some time to talk about the future of my Iris Jay Patreon. To part the kimono a bit here, I’m running out of fully-fleshed short comics and collections of material from my archives that I’d feel would be worth showing to you as Archive Editions. I could pull out old, old sketchbooks to scour and scan for more content, but that’d be a big time investment for results that wouldn’t, I fear, be a huge draw for new readers. I could create new comics and art for it, but that’d be even more of a significant time investment that I can’t afford on top of three webcomics, plus assorted contracts and video work, plus actually having other hobbies and social interactions like a normal fucking human. So: I’m switching things up. There are a few ways I’m planning on doing this:
1. I’m restructuring my pledge tiers to make $2 the entry-point tip jar tier, called the READER tier. READER tier subscribers will get access to all of my writing, and will be able to see Crossed Wires pages on the same day that they go up on my public site. The $5 tier will now be called the EXPLORER tier, and will feature early access to Crossed Wires comic pages and reposts of archived art and comic pages (see below). There’ll also be a new $10 RESEARCHER tier as well; RESEARCHER tier patrons will receive high resolution files my Crossed Wires comic pages, in every stage of their development. Legends also foretell…. Of a fourth tier, hidden somewhere in the mists…. ‘,:|a
2. Starting in October, instead of doing an Archive Edition PDF every month, I’m going to be reposting my first graphic novel from 2008, Epiphany, one page per week, along with added present-day commentary and any extra materials and development notes I can dig up. I’m going to call this EPIPHANY: EXEGESIS, and I’m planning on running it over the next few years alongside any new stuff I produce. This is both a fun way to revisit the book that first put me on the map for a lot of readers, and to keep my blog active with updates without adding a whole bunch of extra work on my part.
3. I’m planning on doing more text blogging. Yes, I know I said I was going to do this in January, but this time is different. This time… I have a new refurbished Linux laptop and three months alone in the house while Nero is away on an art residency. I want to write more about what I’m reading/playing/cooking/thinking about/whatever, and I want them to feel casually tossed off, like these newsletter posts. Ideally, I’ll write a new thing and post it on here every one to two weeks, and I’ll probably keep them free so I can mirror them on my Comradery (more on that below), personal blog and Tumblr. Hopefully they can entice a few people into subscribing. Enjoy hearing more from me than you ever possibly wanted!
4. I’m starting up a mirror subscription page over on Comradery, a new, collectively owned subscription site. For a long, long while now, Patreon has been repeatedly proven that they don’t really give much of a shit about anyone other than their biggest earners. They keep taking bigger and bigger bites out of creator earnings, and they keep changing their website in obtuse and arbitrary ways. Comradery is trying to do some interesting things in the space, and though they don’t have a stable enough relationship to permit explicit erotic content (they WANT to eventually, but nothing’s set as of yet, grumble groan etc). In the event Patreon finally decides to let the other shoe drop on everyone who isn’t a Mr. Beast scale celebrity, I want to still be able to do my thing on a site run by people who give a shit about artists. My page isn’t live yet– I still have to get it approved by the rest of the cooperative– but once it is, it’ll be another cool way to support my work!
All of these notes only apply to my Iris Jay Patreon, btw. My super spicy Distressed Egg Patreon account is doing great. Hell yes, no notes. My only news point there is that I may start a SubscribeStar mirror sometime in the fall for similar reasons to Point 4 here, just, y’know, just in case. Ahaha.
THIS NEWSLETTER HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH, SO INSTEAD OF A MEDIA BLAST I’M JUST GONNA YELL ABOUT SOME FRIENDS OF MINE WHOM YOU CAN SUPPORT
– My girlfriend Rose just put out Nature of Rebar, a polished-up collection of poetry she wrote during the pandemic. Rose specializes in visceral, dreamlike free verse that digs deep into raw, strange subconscious landscapes. Go buy it on Itch!
– A friend of mine, Wren, is dealing with some wild tax debt due to some shady ex-employer shenanigans and needs urgent help with covering the bill. Read more and lend a hand here!
– My friend Sarah’s VIDREV video essay review blog is back off hiatus with some cool new reviews! Sarah is an experienced documentarian with a lot of cool opinions about the emerging genre of Youtube-based educational and critical programming. Go read it!
– My friend Aurelina’s adorable Shiba Inu, Himeko, had a health scare recently, and she’s accepting donations to cover her vet bill! Aurelina hosts the Furry Found Footage channel on Youtube, and her work is a treasure trove of lesser-known film, TV and commercial animation from around the world. Her stuff is worth a watch, and her dog is worth a pet. Help her out!
– My friend Samantha is reviewing anime from this summer over on her Patreon! I love all of Sam’s amazing media criticism writing on film, comics and animation over on her blog Storming the Ivory Tower (her article on perennially underrated series Dance Dance Danseur is an all-time fave), and these bite-size reviews are an exciting introduction to her sharp, incisive commentary.
– My husband Nero is heading down to Guadalajara, Mexico for a three-month artist residency as I’m typing this! There isn’t any sort of actionable thing I’m asking you to do here, other than maybe subscribing to his Patreon. Also send him psychic good luck beams with your mind as hard as possible, as I am and will be until December. I MISS HIM SOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!! AAAAUUGHGHGHH. ; A ; )/)
Anyways, that’s all for now! Sweet dreams and good luck with your schemes, readers. Drink water and check your email, and I’ll talk to you again… very soon. >:3c
-IJ!
