Seeing how Ruffles reacts to Taus and how Ganji acting back in ye good olde hand-drawn days, I’m wondering if Taus just doesn’t drive everyone crazy as a general rule.
Anyway, I’m going to bring an elephant into the room so that I can talk about the elephant in the room. Maybe I’ll bring in two elephants. How about an entire herd?
Y’all know I don’t touch on politics here. I don’t believe in abusing one’s platform, although if you catch me in person I may not be able to control my runaway mouth. (Although I try.) But this time I’m going to start by talking about the recent assassination attempt on #Trump. It’s not the point of this post, but it is where I feel I need to start.
I watched the whole video from various sources, because news outlets and other places will cut and edit to their pleasure. I long ago learned through watching how the media treated Sarah Palin not to trust them. (I believed the rhetoric for the longest time, and when I learned how wrong I was I was deeply ashamed. I have endeavored never to be that way again ever since.) That being said I’m a little astounded at some of the reactions – on both sides, mind you. I’m a #libertarian. I’ll tell both sides where to shove it in a hurry.
As a matter of fact, Akashik qualifies as a #dystopian libertarian science fiction. Or it would, if it weren’t a comic.
One side is going on and on about angels and the providence of God saving their god-emperor king. Maybe he’s the luckiest motherfucker alive. As someone who also avoided a bullet to the head once by moving at just the right time, I can tell you his reaction is not surprising. His ear stung. He instinctively reacted to see what was up. More shots fired. He ducked. Very human, very realistic, very Trump.
Which isn’t what the other side is saying. Reactions go from how staged it was (from the side that has accused the other side of wearing tin-foil hats) to how they wouldn’t have missed.
The most hilarious parts are by people who clearly don’t know guns, being as they were raised after toy guns became taboo among other things. They fully expect that this projectile passing by Trump’s head should have reached out with invisible gravitational hands and ripped his face off. That would make an interesting weapon for Akashik. It’s not based in reality, though. Reality is different. Guns/bullets aren’t THAT powerful. Surprise.
The constant fighting between both sides has been very draining on me over the years. Because I tend to stand in the middle on a lot of the arguments (they stopped being debates 2 generations ago), I end up walking on eggshells no matter who I’m around. Admittedly one of the two has been far far far nastier than the other. There are conventions I will never return to because of it. Well, there’s a lot of activities I have stopped enjoying because of it. My life isn’t every colorful right now.
The truth is I’ve been dangerously depressed for a while now. No I’m not going to go jump off a bridge (drowning is a phobia of mine, despite my mermaid status). It started not with the death of my parents – grief is linked to depression but they are distinctly two different emotions – but what resurfaced the depression beast was how I was treated by so-called family, that horrible ‘tribe’ my parents had joined, and a host of other political and social factors. The biggest thing that’s been eating me alive is the knowledge that because of social and political factors – as well as abusive ex’s and colonization – I am the last of my line unless a little Thumbelina is given to me in a walnut shell. Everything will die with me.
It’s a horrible cross to bear. I was doing okay until my older brother in a coup he’d clearly been working on for years trampled on my language work with the tribe. A lot of truths started to come out, and they were all nasty. I’d never been able to work on the language the way I’d wanted because I’d been so sick among other things, but it would’ve been nice to be treated like a member of the family enough to be told what was going on so I’d stop wasting my time. Tribal politics don’t work that way. Not when a backstab is more efficient.
The way things were handled, you see, took away the most important part of my personal identity – the knowledge of my tribal place. Without a tribe or that sense of place, we natives tend to flounder. We hurt. We grieve. We’re leaves tossed in a hurricane. It’s not comfortable. When I was a child I was the one who urged my father to go back to the ways. I begged nearly daily for him to take us back to the tribe. I was the one who dealt with Medicine, the only one who soaked up the lore, and yes I did suffer for it. I have very little tolerance for people who claim to be discriminated against only to present events that are clearly not discrimination. You want discrimination? I can tell you some stories.
And when my family did go back, they left me behind. I was never even invited to meet my uncle when they went to visit, even though I lived so very close. There’s a lot I was left out on. And my older brother? We’re “two separate families”. His words. And don’t get me started on how my family over the years started to reject family histories that weren’t brown enough. It’s disgusting.
The language project was the last thread I had while over the years I’ve been brushed aside time and again by this person or the other as I reached my hand out. I’ve never felt wanted, not even since I was a little girl. So like Taus I’d prefer to be left alone. It’s safer that way. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
Now, as a child of Medicine the world will throw me blessings. It just can’t fix the damage my mother has done right away if ever. I pick myself up. People have come into my life with new ways to handle language. Akashik will evolve for it. You never know what the future will hold.
But in the meantime in the real world, I’ve even lost the desire to play music – which btw is something I rarely lose. I haven’t been in this place for a very long time. I’d created a distance from the triggers that caused it. A large part of me wishes people would recognize the triggers for what and who they are and, just once, would be on my side when they come to attack. Just once. Just once I’d like to see someone chew out my mother’s sister for telling me that no one liked me (they’d have to catch her first, though). That they’d tell my brother to shut the fuck up when he talked to me like I’m stupid. That they’d make that damn “tribe” pay for smearing my name. Just once I’d like to feel the world be whole again. But it’s never going to happen.
I’m glad you guys don’t throw me those sorts, and the reason I gush so much with gratitude in your direction here and there is because of all the things I’ve listed and things I have not. I gush at you because you’re important. Every time I make a panel I’m wondering what you’re going to think, and I’m hoping you’ll like it.
You guys don’t get stupid political in my direction either – to swing back to Trump. I know we all have opinions on the matter, but when you post ignorant vitriol you might be hurting someone. I’ve all but dropped completely out of social media because of what my social feeds are filled with. I believe in freedom of speech. But I also believe if you do this, you don’t have the right to compel someone else to use the words you want, not to say what you want, or to worry about your feelings no more than you worried about theirs. It’s a double-edged sword.
Finally, the failed assassination attempt is deeply troubling. These things do happen in politics, by the way. Idiots try to do crazy things. There was a king who was assassinated while sitting on his throne once, if you know what I mean. What makes this event troubling is the circumstantial evidence about who might have pushed it into motion. The people who were calling for President Biden publicly to have Trump killed weeks before it happened. (I’m given to understand talking about killing a president, former president, or presidential candidate is a federal offense, but don’t quote me on that.) When you’ve studied the rise and fall of nations. When you literally watched the USSR fall and even knew how it would happen as a teenager because it made the most sense, you get concerned when you see the patterns here. I am troubled on top of being depressed.
I do not find these times interesting at all. They’re annoying.
Anyway that’s what I had to say. I hope you guys never stop being a light. If you’re not a light to me then be a light to yourselves. You deserve so many good things. I am gushing at you again. Gush. Gush.
P.S. Does that panel look completely hand drawn or WHAT?!?! I did a little. But not a lot!