Graphic Archer – How Do They Do Those Awesome Backgrounds?

Archer is all things wonderful, but one thing I’ve been appreciating lately is the combination of CGI backgrounds and 2-D drawn characters. At least, this is how the show appears to be done. This technique reminds me of the original Scooby Doo: Where Are You?

The original Scooby show (1969) used watercolor backgrounds and the characters were animated via hand-painted cells. Gorgeous textures and detail. You remember! Whenever there was a trap door or brick that was going to move, it was clearly a different color and texture from the rest of the background.

My Years in Women’s Studies at USF

The University of South Florida (USF) classical studies program was filled with men. Conservative men. Conservative, entitled men who had little understanding of women as anything but a convenience in their personal lives. So it didn’t surprise me when my classics professor became dismayed that I was also majoring in women’s studies. He quipped, ‘Women’s studies? Where are the men’s studies?” I told him, “Those are all the ones I take with you.”

There were many memorable moments in the USF women’s studies department when I attended in the early 1990s. I didn’t end up majoring, but minoring, due to personal issues that had me choosing to get the hell out of Florida. But my experience at USF was pivotal. I came in as an essentialist with a talent for analytical philosophy and through Professor Linda Lopez McAlister and graduate student Laura Sells, I discovered the post-structural feminists. The world was suddenly much more interesting.

I had the privilege of hanging around some brilliant women when I served as an assistant on Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. (“Feminist philosophy,” said my classics professor as he smirked at his own cleverness, “is an oxymoron.”) The class “Women and Law” showed me how truly malleable the law is, and the most eye-opening class was the seminar offered by Assistant Professor Etta Breit, “The Social Construction of Female Sexuality”. I graduated summa cum laude able to translate Latin, Greek, and gender bigotry, but my work was to focus on technology.

I carried this bigger view of the world as I returned to Iowa and found myself working in male-dominated industries. I managed that for fifteen years, publishing erotic fiction on the side. Then one day I decided I could longer sit at a desk for ten hours a day. I’m now a certified personal trainer with the goal of guiding others toward healthier and more active lives. In addition, I write and illustrate the LGBT adventure webcomic, Darklaw.

The permission to express who I am in every way began with my mother–a feminist who developed her own awareness without social or academic support. Even so, without the experience of the women I knew at USF, I might have lived a far different and much smaller life.

I’m a feminist. I’m a voice of internal dissent within the Catholic Church. I’m active online–a writer, illustrator, trainer, and socially engaged. I live in Iowa City, proud of the fact we have equal marriage and always surprised how many people are ignorant of feminist history. But my children know, even at ages 9 and 10. My experience in the USF Women’s Studies Department has informed so much of my personal and professional life. It helped me see the world and the roles we assume with more discerning eyes. It helped free me. I’m so glad to see all the new faces, new professors, and the department thriving!

Go check them out!

Sex Matters

– In case you missed this. Originally published at Babbling About Books Lesbian Fiction Appreciation Event –

I’ve seen some strange things.

First, it was the rise of the slashes. “Lesbian” became “f/f” and “gay” became “m/m.” Then there came “m/f/m,” leaving every publisher’s erotic fiction section with 5,354 stories with penises and 2 without.

Now, don’t call me bitter (I am), because as a reader, I’m just happy to have so many niche markets, queer themes, and sex sex sex. And lesbian romance is becoming marketable, as this blog points out. How exciting is that?

But I write and illustrate lesbian erotica. Let’s just say I’m envious (and bitter).

Writing Sex

I write smut.

I write it raw with no strings attached. Between women. Who aren’t in love. Oh sure, you’re as likely to believe such a thing in lesbian fiction as in lesbian life, but I’ve never been able to write a romance. Those stories sit unfinished in a folder, awaiting their happily-ever-after as I cross out one satanic sacrifice and vampire staking after another.

I like tales of unfettered lust. And I like them about women because only women know endless eroticism. Men, you know, always “finish.”

Sex is character. Sex is conflict. Sex is self-discovery. The turn-on is secondary or, indeed, a result of the struggle. This is why even the best fiction gets better with erotic content. How much of our thought and action every day arises from intensely intimate encounters with our life force? This is why erotic literature should not be genre. Erotic experience should be part of every well-crafted character and her story.

Chaos Theory

Okay. I don’t write smut. Not really. I write about struggle. It just looks like smut because the struggling people are usually naked.

My characters struggle because one seeks control while the other seeks freedom. They find a momentary union because other people reveal who we are by showing us what we want.

But more than character dynamics, this order/chaos difference is also the essential distinction between romance and erotica. Remittance Girl (that fabulous writer and thinker) has a concise post about the genres over at the Erotica Readers and Writers Blog. I’ll summarize here. Romance resolves its plot with order; it’s a conservative type of writing in that it preserves the status quo (the happily-ever-after ending praised by our culture). Erotica preserves the chaos.

It’s chaos I write about.

I’ve been writing and illustrating stories since I was five. Without these imaginary worlds, I’d likely be an addict or died young. Instead, I went on to graduate summa cum laude and married terribly well.

Then I kissed Laura.

Desire shattered my life. It was the kind of desire that makes all kinds of crime and violence seem suddenly reasonable. I lost everything that made me feel safe and spent the next several years reading Kristeva and Foucault on a Florida beach. That’s where I learned that everything is better when wet.

Now, I spend my beach-time reading Bataille. The truth of a story is as good as the author’s transgression, he says. Eroticism is a refusal to limit ourselves to separateness by seeking another heart or body or soul.

A mouthful of melted chocolate is a revelation of abundance. The wet electricity of human desire cleanses as no confessional can. Kneading warm bread dough is seductive beyond any meditation. The moment has a message. It doesn’t need a promise. That’s why I write erotica. And because eating pussy turns me on.

The poet Audre Lorde said the erotic encompasses more than sex. What is erotic brings new life. We feel our worth when we feel pleasure. We experience spiritual growth when we know joy. Sensuality of any kind liberates our senses, and passion for any pursuit expands our self awareness.

In other words, sex matters.

Darklaw the Webcomic

Lesbian erotica is a rather small niche market. Now imagine turning that lesbian erotica into a webcomic. Exactly.

The comics market has always been heavily boy-centric, and while you might imagine boys would enjoy seeing women together, you should know there’s no stylized eye candy at Darklaw the Webcomic. Just women who are strong and surly. And they’re also gods. In life they were lovers. In the afterlife they’re enemies.

A successful webcomic needs a good story, good art, and a consistent schedule of releases. It’s like producing any work of fiction, except you also have special website requirements because the story is serialized and told in images. We’re living in the Wild West days of webcomics, when every creator has her own ideas about website layout, page presentation, and affiliated communities. Likely, standardization will reduce those options in the years to come.

Darklaw is still new and finding its place, though it cracked into the top 100 of The Webcomic List in December. I hope to acquire a dedicated readership and, one day, provide the comic in print. Visit me online!

---

Teresa Wymore has lesbian fiction in digital and print anthologies. She’s an author, illustrator, personal trainer, feminist, lesbian, Mensan, and a mom. But mostly she drinks beer. DARKLAW THE WEBCOMIC is her current project. She’s all over the web, and here’s her directory: http://about.me/teresawymore

Amy Chu’s Girls Night Out Rocks

As a Kickstarter contributor, I just received my signed copy of Girls Night Out And Other Stories, the first comic written by Amy Chu and illustrated by Cabbral, Louie Chin, Silvio DB, Craig Yeung, Juri H C, and Christopher Sotomayor.

Good stories every one. The illustrators were unique to each story, bringing different moods and layouts. I enjoyed each style and particularly like Cabbral’s use of silhouettes and expressions in “Long Live the Emperor.”

Actually, I was disoriented when I began reading. The stories were ending before I really knew what they were about. After a little back-and-forth, I realized the problem was mine. It was due to reading mostly action serials. Amy’s stories are short. I mean, SHORT. And varied — poignant and thought-provoking, whimsical, and ironic vignettes. Just so cool.

As a lifetime comic reader/collector, I can say I’m thrilled to have this book. I look forward to more. As a comic creator, I can say WOW, what an undertaking, and what a successful product!

Reading these punchy vignettes got me thinking about creating my own short comics. And because it’s me, well, you know they would be erotic. I’m just at the beginning of the lengthy serialization of my Darklaw novels…but now I think I might pause along the way to spin short tales of lust and danger.

Awe. Some.

When I find another author or artist that inspires me in my own work, I KNOW I’ve found someone special.

People don’t kill people. Men kill people.

A man breaks into an elementary school and uses a baseball bat to smash the skulls of a dozen first graders. What would you do to prevent this from happening again?

If you’re the NRA, you say, “We need to hire a security guard for every one of the hundred-thousand schools in the country and give them a bat. And, by the way, you find the tax money for those salaries without raising ours and you can buy the weapons from one of our funders.”

If you’re a parent or any reasonably sane adult not invested in the weapons market, you say, “Lock the fucking door. Safety glass the fucking windows. Take the fucking bats away from anyone who isn’t on a fucking baseball diamond.”

Mass killings are not about guns. They’re about angry men. Some have mental health problems, some don’t. All have an entitlement issue. Entitlement runs in the veins of privileged white men. No, not all mass murderers are men. Overwhelmingly they are MEN and they are WHITE. I’ll let other feminists, cultural theorists, and social scientists explain that to you if you don’t already know. I’ll just say that no one decision will remove all this violence or all this sense of entitlement. It will take a constellation of laws, education, and funding to make the public sphere safer. Let’s use the simplest solutions to get the largest return.

Step 1 – Limit is Not a Dirty Word

The NRA is not in the business of protecting your 2nd Amendment rights. They are in the business of protecting gun manufacturers’ markets. Mayor Cory Booker made an excellent point on the Sunday, December 23rd This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He said secondary markets should be closed because they are too easy for people to get guns who shouldn’t have them. Amen.

Step 2 – It’s Cheaper Than Hiring All Those Math Teachers You Think We Don’t Need

Lock the fucking doors. Bar the fucking windows. Put in fucking metal detectors.

Step 3 – Hang ‘Em High

When we have a dead murderer, like Adam Lanza, we need to strip his bloody corpse and take photos. Then we should ridicule and shame that corpse and spread the photos around. I’m serious.

The mass murderers who aren’t just crazy are angry and vengeful. They’re getting a hard-on while they plan and fantasize about what people will think of them and what people will say after they get their revenge on the world. Just like jumpers reconsider when they’re are shown a watermelon smashing on the street ten floors below, we should show fantasy-minded masturbating potential murderers what it will REALLY be like when they’ve destroyed a few lives.

Their name will not become legendary and worshiped by other fantasizing boys. No, their puny withered naked corpse will be mocked.

Bitch Slap is the greatest movie ever made. No, I’m not drunk.

My friend, Mike, said I needed to see this movie. He lent me the video and it sat on my shelf for a few months. Now, even he might say I’m exaggerating when I say Bitch Slap (2009) is so much more than a movie, but let me explain why I’m not.

From the stylized opening credits, which radiate the go-go cool cat vibe of 70s sexploitation, to the simulated sex & escalating violence, which is so far from anything the 70s could have created, to the unpredictably predictable storyline, which is my way of saying “wow, you know it’s coming but it still surprises you when it does”–yes, Bitch Slap is so much more than a movie.

At least it should be. It should be a drinking game, a comic book, and a video game. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

*SPOILER ALERT*

The Story

Once upon a time, there were three little girls… Wrong show, but Bitch Slap reminds me of Charlie’s Angels. On crack. Or Meth. We meet our three heroines. No, we meet their boobs first. Then we meet them:

• Trixie, a naive stripper with a whole lot more going on than you think
• Camero, a hotheaded dyke with a penchant for violence, pills, and clever dialogue who hates Trixie and is in love with Hel
• Hel (“Helen”), the quick-thinking, no-nonsense leader with a secret affair and a secret agent past

The three are at a trailer in the desert looking for buried diamonds. The story comes at us from a present timeline woven with flashbacks that take us steadily backward in time to exotic locations with other characters.

The editing and direction is incredible. Snappy, stylish, intense. There is no wasted time in this flick. No slow points. No irrelevant character building. Plenty of plot, titillation, and foul language. Lots of kissing and touching. No real sex. No real nudity (one scene of a stripper).

The acting rocks–from the main cast to the supporting cast. These women and men are over-the-top, but authentic. This is a pulp comic come to life. What’s happening on the screen is making you laugh, but you don’t doubt for a moment that the characters take it all dead seriously.

The Details

Cut to slow-motion. Heavy rock music–did I mention the soundtrack for this movie ALSO kicks ass? Sweat, heels, boobs. Especially boobs. This would be the chain gang scene if this were a 70s sexploitation flick. Here, they’re digging for diamonds.

Camero leers. Trixie gyrates. Hel surveys. They grill a low-life hood named Gage. He’s too stupid to realize that having a penis and a foul mouth will get him nowhere but dead.

A young stud shows up. The sheriff. Ugh. I figured this was where the movie would tank. You know, here is the good penis versus the bad penis who was just buried. The women need to get rid of the law. Will they say “Please, can you help us, Big Boy?”

Nope. They create a fantastic story. They’re virgins from a convent who were exposed to debauchery. Now, they’re dirty and desperate. Sheriff Fuchs (that’s “fyooks” not “fucks”) offers to help, but the girls manage to get rid of him. They SEND HIM AWAY. Solid.

So tell me: what would you do while you’re tediously digging next to two hot chicks in the desert? No, no, no! The soaking t-shirts come later. First, you’re gonna swap sex stories.

For Trixie, her best was a bumper-car three-way. Camero’s best lay was a contortionist behind the freak show tent at Circus Nudiess. She tells us she couldn’t stand straight for days. Never did get her name. Remember that. She never got the contortionist’s name.

Another flashback and we meet Hotwire, a grunge thug with crappy teeth and an engaging case of Tourette Syndrome. He has a wicked Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon sidekick, Kinki, who really likes to squeeze boobs.

Back to the girls digging. Now, it’s getting hot. Real hot. There is a bucket of water handy. In fact, many buckets. Finally! Like everything in this movie, you see it coming, but it still surprises you. Drenched women. But again, no nudity.

The director is brilliant. He uses our experience of wet t-shirts and all that we usually see in such a situation but doesn’t really deliver it. We see nipple bumps once, but no nipples. No clinging fabric. And it’s still fucking hot.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want some of what I’m selling,” says Trixie. Right on!

Another flashback. And there’s Hercules–er, Phoenix played by Kevin Sorbo, an agent in league with Hel. The plot thickens. The women aren’t really who they pretend to be. Back at the water party, the girls find a buried body. It’s Phoenix again. Dead. Who’s onto them? Hel takes charge. Camero checks the perimeter. Hel tends to Trixie’s hysteria. Alone in the trailer.

Sex happens. At least, I think it does. There’s lots of kissing and grinding, and I have a pretty good imagination, so I think that’s what happened. Again, the director has used our expectation to lead us on, to make us think we got more than we did. I didn’t actually see sex. And I didn’t care. It was fucking hot.

Unfortunately, Camero saw sex. She catches Trixie and Hel in flagrante delicto and freaks out. She swallows some pills as she recollects her prison romance with Hel. Now we know why Camero hates Trixie so much.

Another flashback some time later. We meet Xena–er Mother Superior played by Lucy Lawless and her sidekick Sister Gabrielle played by Rene O’Conner. They’re conversing in a convent. It seems poor Gabby is STILL not getting any from Xena: “My impure thoughts have gone beyond inanimate objects and have devolved into lusting after strapping Latvian gymnasts,” she says. They stumble upon Camero giving it to a nun in the confessional. As Sister Prudence Bangtail, Camero is hiding out. She had the diamonds!

And that is only half the movie.

The rest is equally gripping. You think you know how it will end, but you don’t. Hotwire and Kinki show up again. The sheriff returns, but he doesn’t save the day. None of the women is who she says she is. Most of the second half is devoted to fight scenes among the women. They are spectacular.

I told you Bitch Slap should be more than a movie. Here’s why:

Bitch Slap: The Drinking Game

Take a drink each time Camero addresses Trixie with one of her delightful euphemisms. Here are a few:

• Joy Ride
• Blow White
• Ax Wound
• Gland Canyon
• Superball

Take a drink each time the Evil Villain, Gage, degrades the women with his impotent insults. Here are a few:

• Fur-pie jamboree
• Cunt
• Bitch
• Fucking Slag

Everyone else drinks an extra round if you can come up with your own colorful euphemism or misogynistic harangue.

Bonus:

• Everyone drinks when Camero puts a bullet in Gage’s teabag.
• Everyone drinks when she kills him.

Bitch Slap: The Comic Book

Who wouldn’t want to see boobs and violence and girls grinding each other in a print medium that handles easily with one hand while lying in bed alone at night?

And imagine being the artist who gets to draw all that.

Bitch Slap: The Video Game

Your character would be a hot female secret agent or underworld boss, often mistaken for a stripper.

The object of the game would be to find booty, get rich, have sex with other gorgeous women, and kill everyone that isn’t useful. That will include everyone with a penis. It’s Grand Theft Auto IV, but you get to waste the Johns and get their money.

Now Go Buy It

Bitch Slap saw limited release in theaters and was available for a time on Netflix. You have to buy it now. If you know Mike, I’m sure he’d lend it to you. Thanks Mike! You were right. I loved it! At Amazon.

Michael Law’s Devil Woman is intriguing

Michael Law || Devil Woman from Daniel Principe on Vimeo.

Ran across an artist new to me. I enjoyed his music and the video for Devil Woman. Terrific period dressing and storyline! He has a few more songs out you can view through his website.

I don’t find many music videos I can sit through until the end. They tend to bore or offend. Law’s engaging pop songs are good short stories for the videos put together by David Principle (Sunkie Studios). Each is unique, story-driven, as well as gorgeous. Hard to look away — but not in that horrible accident kind of way. More in a “that’s so pretty I wonder what’s next” kind of way.