Why I Don't Do Webcomics Any More

There’s something hinky on my computer, so I’m running a full scan of the hard drive before I do any more sensitive work for my day job.  And in the downtime, I figure I might as well answer a question:
Why am I not doing any webcomics these days?
It’s not for lack of desire, I assure you; I really miss doing Home on the Strange, which was sort of a Twitter-before-I-had-a-Twitter.  For example, if I had a webcomic, today’s Twitter thought – “I think that just as all biology classes should discuss creationism, all astronomy classes should discuss the terror of Galactus” – would have been a much funnier comic, a la SMBC’s recent (r)evolution discussion.  And it would have been passed around a lot more, as comics are much more likely to get StumbleUponed than mere Twitter statuses, which always makes me happy.
So why not start a webcomic?  Hell, I’ve registered two domains just in case I decide to get back in the game. I’m a better writer, with better understanding of the format that I had back in 2006.  It could be fulfilling.
Well, first off… I can’t draw.  At all.  (No, seriously – check out my guest week strip.)  And yes, I know Howard Tayler started out with only slightly better artwork than I did, but I just don’t have the time to devote to learning a new skill at this point.  Nor would I particularly enjoy writing cut-and-clip strips like, say, Wondermark or Married to the Sea, or PartiallyClips – part of my joy of writing comics is coming up with bizarre visuals and then watching them come to life.
So that involves getting an artist.  There’s two ways of doing that; the first was what I did with Roni on Home on the Strange, which is to take on a co-partner.  And I don’t want that.  If I did a webcomic, I’d want it to be my vision, without the creative frictions that inevitably led to the ending of HotS.  Essentially, I want to say to someone, “Here’s what I wrote, draw the damn thing.”
Doing that, I’d feel bad about having someone do it for what is, essentially, free.  HotS was starting to earn some Olive Garden money near the end of its run, but I don’t like the idea of compensating artists with just “exposure!” – the ones willing to work for free often that good, and the ones that are good should do better than being paid the pennies that would come from a Project Wonderful Ad.  For My Name Is Might Have Been, I wound up paying Avery Liell-Kok out of pocket for each strip – a pittance, given what she was worth (and I’m glad to see her have gone on to better things), but I was still in the hole for a couple hundred dollars a month.  Doing that for vanity was just too much.
So in an ideal world, I’d find a good, regular artist who was willing to work for the love of it, without any creative input, for as long as I wanted.  Not gonna happen.  So my webcomics ideas have remained, well, in my head.  Perhaps mercifully so.
In the meantime, for preparation of one of these non-existent webcomics, I had Rich Morris (the excellent artist behind Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic) draw me up two samples.  It occurs to me that I’ve never posted them, so here: have a look at what might have been.

 
 
 

(Speaking of My Name Is Might Have Been, at some point I swear I will write up what happened in the end game. I just need to put together my notes. Probably some time before 2020.)

Two Types Of Dicks

I love me some roleplaying, but there’s two types of jerks in RPGs that summarize why the world is so fucked up.  Satisfy one, you encourage the other.
See, in roleplaying, the DM plays the guy who adjucates reality: you tell him what you want to do, and he decides what happens.  And in a perfect world, you wouldn’t need rules: you’d have a DM who rewards cleverness and good strategy, and punishes the mundane and badly thought-out. Maybe throw in a few dice rolls to keep things interesting, and bam!  Perfect game.
Unfortunately, there are both DMs and players who are divorced from reality.  So fights start something like this:
PLAYER: “I fling my knife into the demon’s eye, killing it instantly!”
DM: “The demon is twenty feet high, and your knife is plain lead.  It wouldn’t kill it in one shot.”
PLAYER: “What?  An eye-shot is invariably fatal!  Read your Tolkien!  What kind of a crappy DM are you?  You just gypped me, man!”
…or maybe the DM is the sort of jerk who completely neutralizes a well thought-out infiltration plan just because he’s pissy you circumvented the big fight he had planned.  Doesn’t matter.  One side’s being unfair.  And what happens is there’s a big old fight over what should happen, where both sides are convinced that they’re right, and after a while people get tired of arguing over this.
So they create rules to standardize things.  A dagger now always does 1d6 damage, triple damage if it’s a called shot to the eye, and for demons you need magical weapons to hit.  But in creating rules, you bring on this guy:
PLAYER: “So my character is an ocular ninja.  If you notice, I’ve taken every advantage that allows a stacked bonus for called shots, so now my character not only does triple damage with every hit, but he actually has a +2 to every roll.”
Next thing you know, thanks to Rules Lawyer boy, you’re in an arms race – the DM has to either develop ridiculously overpowered monsters to keep up with this ridiculously overpowered character, leaving the “normal” characters in the dust, or everyone else starts lawyering and the game becomes more about loopholes than gaming.
Such is the world.  If you leave things open for interpretation, some greedy asshole will grab everything he can get, thinking it’s her due.  And when you devise rules to cut down on arguments over fairness, some other asshole will sift through the rules to find the loophole.
This is why you can’t win.

Relationships, Expectations, and Rules: Failure States

I’m going to say something controversial about relationships. But before I can do that, I need to define two terms that often get slurred together.
In relationships, there are two tools you can use to determine how your partner should react to things: Expectations and Rules. There’s a fine distinction between the two, which is often confused.
Expectations are what you believe your partner will do in a given situation.  For example, based on past history, I think Gini and I will probably sex it up a couple of times a week.  We’ve never discussed this; it’s just something that, assuming Gini and I are both healthy and in a good mood, I expect will happen.
Rules are limitations that you set down explicitly to avoid hurting your partner.  For example, I have an agreement with my partners that I will not sleep with anyone without getting explicit permission first.
Every relationship has expectations.   Not every relationship has rules.
Now, expectations are nebulous in that sometimes the expectation is, “I don’t expect anything from you,” as in a FWB thing or a very open poly where both partners do as they please, and have no say in what the other wants.  (In which case, the expectation is, “You’ll leave if what I do bothers you enough.”)  And expectations are useful in diagnosing potential relationship problems – if, for no reason that I can name, Gini starts having sex with me only every couple of months, it’s probably not a bad idea for me to check in and ask what’s going on.
But most relationships contain an (often hidden) expectation of a certain level of honesty, and of good intention (you’re not going to hurt me in a bad way intentionally), and of some form of attraction (or else why are you dating, unless you’re asexual?). Those expectations are, in fact, generally the reasons you’re dating that person, even if it’s as simple as “I expect we’ll have some pretty damn amusing conversations.”
The problem is, it’s extremely easy to break an expectation, because it’s just some mental construct someone’s formed of you – in many cases, completely arbitrarily!  I tell people time and time again, “I write up my essays because I screw things up so often that I have to keep notes.  I am not a together person.  I am a teeming mass of insecurities.”  Yet because I write strongly, and consistently, people often think that I’m a confident, wise person.  Then they date me, expecting a confident, wise person.
…that doesn’t work out too well.
But that’s usually the reason relationships collapse; you realize that the model you have constructed of this person inside your mind does not actually exist, and the person who’s really there is not anyone that you actually want to live with.
Managing expectations is difficult.  It’s complex math, trying to synchronize a model with a real person who doesn’t even fully understand themselves. You’re creating a simulation of the person inside your head, and running that simulated person’s reaction against what is happening now, then determining whether they’d be upset by this, and then deciding whether they’re correct in being upset by this and whether you’re willing to have the argument…
Rules, on the other hand, are simple.  You set down like a lawyer with a contract, delineate what is and is not acceptable behavior in a given set of circumstances, and hash it out.  They’re clear.  Easily understandable.
And here’s my controversial statement: Rules are a failure state of a relationship.
Not “the sign of a failed relationship.”  Many functioning relationships have rules.  But I’d argue that most of those relationships have a weak point that’s been poorly shored up, and relationships with a lot of rules are often on the verse of collapse.
“What’s wrong with rules?” you ask.  “Aren’t rules clear and easy to follow?”  Well, yes.  And no. There are millions of laws on the books out there, and having watched my wife do law, you could dispense with 95% of them if everyone just went by the tenets of “Be fair, be honest, and don’t be a dick.”  Most people can spot dickery in the wild, but there’s a significant percentage of folks who go, “No, that’s not dickery, that’s just good honest business practices!” or “That’s a perfectly fair price I’m offering this man with no recourse!”
So what happens?  You codify.  Endlessly.  Exactly what percentage of orange juice must you have in a drink before you can call it “natural ingredients”?  How many square feet can you devote to a home office before you can write it off on your taxes?  Basically, all you do in law is take a basic principle and narrow it down to precise, exacting terms – terms that are ludicrous when you look at them.  So, okay, 30 fly eggs per 100 grams of pizza sauce is okay, but 31 is just crazy?
But that’s what happens when you turn “fair” into “law” – you wind up with an arbitrary marker.  And maybe your pizza sauce contains 20 rat hairs, but hey, that’s not on the books, we didn’t check, that’s totally cool.  Until somebody complains about their furry pizza, and wham.  One more guideline for business owners to feel resentful about checking.  They feel hemmed in, taking this extra time and expense to have to someone inspect their pizza for infestations.
Which is what happens with relationship rules.  You think they’re well-defined, but often there’s a lot of room just outside the defined zone to cause further problems. And they cause resentment.
“You can’t sleep with other people,” goes the rule.  But can you kiss them, even if you never intend to sleep with them?  Can you flirt with them?  Can you go over and spend time at their apartment alone?  Can you give friendly backrubs?  Tickle fights?  Beatings at the club?  Beatings in private?
You’d think those should be simple questions – but the fact is, generally if you say, “You can’t sleep others,” then one or more of those things will often cause agita. Because the rule is “No sleeping with other people,” but the problem it’s attempting to address is something like, “You can’t form romantic, intimate bonds with other people, because that would make me feel completely insecure.”
The problem with rules is not what they’re intended to do – which is minimize hurt, a valid goal – but rather that an excess of rules encourages a certain laziness in expectation management.  People follow the rules blindly, forgetting why they exist, and their mental map often fails to take into account all the other things that might upset their partner. And so their partner piles on more rules, trying to shut off the undesirable behavior, not realizing that their partner literally just doesn’t get the root cause that all the other issues stem from.
Rules are not inevitably bad.  They’re often a starting point for a good mental map; I’ve been on hiatus from new sexual partners now for eight months as I try to devise a better set of rules that will lead to my long-term partners being happy.  But the rules are not the rules.  The rules are there so I can see what I’m doing wrong in creating new relationships (and I was doing things wrong, as far as I’m concerned), and create a new mindset that’s going to make anyone I’m dating happy.  And when they’re done, it won’t be a set of law, but rather a mental map of good expectations that works.
In other words, I’m developing rules as a method of what my partners expect of me.  When this process is complete, then I won’t need rules.  When I date other women, I’ll know exactly when I’m pushing the limits of my current lovers’ comfort zone.
Now, the danger of valuing expectations over rules is that there is the unspoken assumption that “If I just make my partners happy, then I’ll have a great relationship!”  Which is, of course, ridiculous. Sometimes, you go through all the effort of forming a proper set of expectations, understanding exactly what actions will make your partner happy… And discover that the only way you can keep them happy is to be miserable.
It also doesn’t exempt you from fights.  Even when I know exactly how Gini’s going to feel sometimes – and expectations being as inaccurate as they are, I’ll say that after thirteen years of marriage I still have about a 1 in 20 shot of getting it wrong – there are times when I have to say to her, “Look, I know you feel this way, but that’s crazy.”  And she has to do the same with me.
Then there’s all the times I get the expectations wrong, and have to talk about that.  The goal is not to be perfect, of course – that way lies madness – but to create a working model to determine what, if anything, you need to talk about in advance.  Which involves finding new information.
It also doesn’t exempt you from using that information.   The reason New Relationship Energy gets such a bad rap in polyamory is because people will meet a new partner and just fucking forget to run the actions by the Expectation Engine. Why should they?  That’s effort!   This is love!  I don’t want to think about old him when new him is right here, kissing me!  And so, rather than having to deal with any sort of model (which takes a fair amount of brainpower at all times), many kinky folk go, “Fuck it, I’m not bothering to consider other people’s emotions at all, I’m just demanding no strings whatsoever.”  Which is a workable way of doing it.  (Or, you know, you just date people with low expectations.  Which is also workable.  Which is also not me.)
Furthermore, expectations are not only nebulous, but they’re mutable.  What I wanted six months ago isn’t what I want now.  The reason they tell you that communication is a good idea is because the best way to keep those mental models updated is to spend time together, to be open to new experiences, to pay attention. I’ve broken up with people not because they’re evil, but because what they came to want out of a relationship wasn’t what I wanted, even if it we’d synced up at the beginning.
But I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that properly managed expectations are the key to a happy relationship.  Not rules, because rules are stiff and generate conflict, but a mutual understanding of what you think is fair and what you want of each other.  Which, when done properly, is wondrous.

Why Rich Kids Don't Know They're Rich

Why don’t you know the air is full of oxygen? You don’t think about it; that life-giving substance is just kind of there, surrounding you, to be taken at will. You’re told it’s scarce on other planets, but that seems abstract.
Take another breath.  There it is.  The elements of life, freely available, whenever you want them.
That’s what being rich is like.
If you’re poor, even as a kid you know right away because your life is defined by what you can’t have: an apartment without nosy landlords and loud neighbors, anything but ramen for dinner again, clothes that aren’t hand-me-downs. Whereas if you’re well off, you just sort of assume that a house and healthy food and the clothes shopping trip at the beginning of school is the default.
And why not?  It’s a saner world you’re envisioning, the one where everyone gets eggs if they want and can have a fun trip to Target to get all the sparkly notebooks.  You’re told that there are poor kids, ones who don’t get enough to eat, but that seems weirdly bizarre; why would you go hungry?  Candy bars are only a dollar, and dollars are everywhere. And houses, well, houses are pretty much the same, with bathrooms that all work and roofs that don’t leak and nicely mowed lawns.
You see other, rattier houses from afar, but you never go in them and they don’t stick in your mind.  They’re like set dressing.  They slip out because you can’t really imagine what it’s like to live there.  You buy cans for poor people at the supermarket, racked up in a nice cardboard box that gets gathered up and carried away periodically.
Your life is still defined by the lack of things, but it’s for things you don’t necessarily need: that X-Box 360, that drum kit you really wanted, the expensive dress for the prom.  You don’t get those things right away.  Those things, you have to wait for Christmas, or your birthday, and even then it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get it.  There was that one Christmas you didn’t.  But usually, you get this once-a-year get out of jail free card, where your deepest desire is presented to you in a nice, gift-wrapped box and you think that waiting eight months for this was an honest hardship.
You ask mom or dad if you’re rich.  They always say the same thing: “We’re doing okay.”  Because “rich” in America is a dual-toned word: if you say you’re rich, well, you’re a douche.  Rich people aren’t supposed to be proud of their money, they’re supposed to be proud of their achievements.   But if other people call you rich, that’s a compliment!  So when you ask your parents, they don’t want you walking around the playground, telling all the other kids, “We’re rich!” – especially when there are probably even richer kids who would put you down for the hubris of self-proclaiming.
So you’re not rich.  You’re doing all right.  Doing all right to the tune of being in the 10th percentile of American income, in many cases – but as a kid, you don’t understand that.  And you’re probably in a neighborhood where everyone’s about as rich as you are, so the word just doesn’t come up.
You think you’re middle class. Maybe even tickling the bottom of middle class, because at your school there’s a kid who’s really rich – like, his dad owns a helicopter rich – and when you go to his party, he’s got a live band and ice sculptures and a caterer, and all your party had was a clown and a rental of Chuck-E-Cheese for the day.  You can’t be terribly well off, because that wasn’t even a particularly good clown.
Some day, if you’re not particularly lucky, you wind up on your own and realize just how things actually are.  When you wind up out of work and eating the ramen noodles, you start to realize exactly how much of your childhood was a gimme.  You feel, exquisitely, every dollar poured into the fundaments of your life.  You start adding up the cost of hiring that clown and the Chuck-E-Cheese rental and realize that it’d be half a month’s rent now, and go, “Wow, we were doing more than okay.  We were pretty well off, as things go.”
Or maybe you don’t.  Maybe you just quietly keep floating along, bolstered by a good college and good connections and a taught trade that’s valued highly in America, and you continue to think that nobody lives like that.  Or if they do live like that, then they must have specifically rejected the basics of life, living a lifestyle so depraved that they actually shucked off the natural fine home and two dogs and well-kept lawn that are the birthright of every American to live in some stupid tenement.
But if you do find out, then you have an embarrassment.  It lasts for a while, realizing just how much your Mom and Dad did for you.  And how oblivious and, at times, ungrateful, you were.

Polyamory And Fidelity

My conservative friend Brad Torgersen wrote this note on Facebook:

My wife informs me that the marriage of a close family friend is breaking up. Infidelity. I see it as a cautionary tale. No matter how strong your relationship with your spouse may be, it only takes being weak once to screw the whole thing up. In my 10 years in the military I’ve seen a lot of people play around on TDY. I always try to make a point of wearing my marriage on my sleeve when I am away from home. It’s a reminder to me that I am not looking for a fling, and it’s a reminder to others that I am not looking for a fling. And yes, I know some women adore a happily married man. And that this may make me a bigger target. The choice is still mine, however. Nobody makes me cheat. I have to want to first. I refuse. I refuse to disrespect and dishonor my best friend & eternal companion like that. I would rather divorce her honestly, than cheat behind her back. Our friend is now in an agony of shame, anger, humiliation, and confusion. It’s such a needless waste.

Now, I doubt Brad is much down with kinky polyamory, given that previously he’s posted links to the only safe sex being “get married and be faithful,” stating “we in modern society have invented 101 excuses for ourselves as to why this isn’t practical, or even necessary.”  But the fascinating thing is how much overlap there is between healthy monogamy and healthy polyamory.
Because even with multiple partners, if you don’t have fidelity, you don’t have a relationship.
In polyamory, the relationship is no longer defined by exclusive sex – but it’s doubtlessly defined by some expectations.  Many of those are sexual, such as “You’ll always use safe sex” or “You’ll always let me know who you’re with so I can make an informed decision.”  But when sex ceases to be the defining factor of your relationship, then the other expectations become that much more critical – “You’ll always be there for me when I need you,” or “Friday night is our special movie night,” or “This restaurant is our special romantic rendezvous, for no others.”
Keeping those agreements is fidelity.  And if you can’t keep those, then you wind up inflicting the same agonies of shame, anger, humiliation, and confusion.
Look, those agreements are who you are as a couple.  And when you suddenly decide to break those bonds, either out of convenience or just out of neglect, then suddenly your partner doesn’t know what you mean to each other.   They’re just as important as the “no sex with anyone but me bond,” and when broken it creates a cascade of terror in that “Well, does s/he still love me?  How could s/he do that to me?  Should we be together?  How could they claim they love me and yet manage to hurt me so deeply?”
Which is not to say that such expectations have to be lasting bonds.  Relationships are dynamic things (hell, Gini and I started off as monogamous, and there’s never a guarantee we won’t switch back if it makes us both more comfortable), and sometimes you want to renegotiate that Friday night movie night, or have unprotected sex, or bring a new lover to that special French cafe.
But too many bad poly relationships broach that by shattering the agreement, and then asking forgiveness.  Forgiveness is often given, because “getting a burger with some other girl at that diner” seems like a small, petty thing to get so wounded over.  Yet it’s not a small thing.  It’s something that defined you, together, and now suddenly it defines someone else, too, leaving one partner to wonder what the moorings of this this particular pair-bond is. You’ve broken fidelity, and that weakens everything else to the point where your partner has to wonder what trust must be accidentally broached next.
And is that really polyamory?  Or just you, doing as you please, regardless of the hurt caused? ‘Cause there’s not much love in that, Jack.
The problem with poly is that quite often, you don’t understand how vital these trusts are until you break them.  Maybe your lover thought your affectionate kiss on the forehead was exclusive to her, and discovering that you do with that anyone you like is going to wound her.  Maybe your partner didn’t understand how emotionally specific those burgers at the diner were to you.  Which is why, in a poly relationship (or in any relationship, really, but the poly ones especially), you have to be up-front about defining your needs and ever watchful of what your partners may think of as special to them.
My wife, who is wise and wonderful, refers to our style of relationship as “polyfidelity.”  I think that’s a wonderful term, and correct.  And one of many wondrous reasons why I go out of my way to keep my agreements with her.