@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
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ZachWeinersmith

@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social

The SMBC guy.
New book: A City on Mars (Nov 2)

Co-author of Soonish
Illustrator of Open Borders
Scop of Bea Wolf.

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ZachWeinersmith, to random
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One of the weird things about writing a book called Bea Wolf is you discover the "Be a wolf" hashtag which appears to be a lot of large shaven men posting photos of themselves to each other?

ZachWeinersmith,
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@nadim Thanks enormously. I'm in the final part of Bea Wolf 2 and it's very hard writing, so this is encouraging!

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/automatic

#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #religion

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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I've been working on getting my dialogue more natural

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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So, after putting it down for many years, I'm back to trying to read HG Wells' corpus. Interesting thing: all of his famous, lasting, books were published between 1895-1899, when he was aged 29 to 33. There are other novels, lots of philosophical and political thought, but so far I would say none of it comes close to that first few years.

Having read lots of it my feeling is that he was very smart but used up his original ideas quickly and his political thought verged on silly.

ZachWeinersmith,
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As an example, at one point he proposes a Samurai class of government, which he understands to be a group of people who would forego privileges in exchange for power. He also has "philosophical" books which invariably feel like a sophomore college student paid by the word.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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How old were you when you realized that when your karate teacher told you not to put your thumb inside your first, it's because he was protecting other people from you having ultimate power punches?

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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I'm offended by this comic idea

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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There should be a version of John Wick where, as in the Iliad, whenever someone is killed for any reason you get a story about where they came from, who their parents are, and how they'll never see their son again.

ZachWeinersmith,
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@boldewyn It always kills me how they wink at the scene too much. Maybe I'm anomalous but it'd be 10x better if they went all in on it being sad.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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J'apprends la Francais par lire Reddit, et... "gant de toilette" ? Qu'est ce qui passe dans les douches francaises?

ZachWeinersmith,
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@Minski It's the glove part that's weird!

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Hey language-learners, what's your tip for improving your ear? I can read French pretty well, with a glossary, and I can write it OK, but my hearing is garbage.

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/frank

Try this one weird trick where you support artists whose work you enjoy: https://www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Question whose premise may be faulty:

Why is it that in Chinese calligraphy, it seems to have always been impressionistic, with quick pretty strokes, whereas with Latin scripts the calligraphy, even when it's swoopy and fancy, is highly controlled? Is this inherent to pictographic vs alphabet calligraphy or is it random cultural stuff, or are their actually just forms of calligraphy I haven't found?

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Lot of people telling me we know the Earth is round because the people in space look at it all the time but how do we know it's not just a very cleverly made sprite? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(computer_graphics)

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Garrison Keillor is really strange to me career wise. He wrote exactly one outstanding novel - his first. Then ever after he wrote the same novel, only worse, and with more weird sex stuff. He also wrote very good (really!) poems early on, and then over time what he counts as poems is just aw-shucks Minnesota stuff. It's like he noped out of a lasting literary career for kitsch.

ZachWeinersmith,
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@Flux But he's rich! He even came out of retirements to do his kitsch show! There are other authors who only produce one good thing, but that's because there other things suck, not because they (as far as I can tell?) chose to do something easier.

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Fossils
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/fossils-4 (click for full comic)

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Hey literature people--

So, I was reading HG Wells and I noticed something I hadn't thought about. He writes in a style that's very weird, and but for the Victorian/Edwardian language might even be considered experimental now? Like, in The War in the Air, it regularly alternates between goofy comedic scenes and scenes of horror and violence. And in between THAT there are digressions about economics and engineering technology. (1/n)

ZachWeinersmith,
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But then it occurred to me that Dickens does this all the time! Both the alternation between serious and goofy, and the social level stuff. The closest modern writer I can think of is Steinbeck who in e.g. The Grapes of Wrath talks both about economic conditions, and real people, and is capable of doing silly comedy and reasonably good drama.

ZachWeinersmith,
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I'm sure I don't read enough to have an opinion, but my sense is you don't see a lot of this anymore? It feels very 19th century to me, in that way 19th century novel narrators often feel like some guy with opinions on everything sat down to tell you an anecdote. That is, the narrator often feels closer, more patient, less disembodied, happy to pass through the 4th wall gently than in modern literature.

ZachWeinersmith,
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@Lyle WHALES ARE FISH

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/featherless
Comics early on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith?ty=h
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #dinosaurs

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Oh god people are fighting about abortion and overpopulation and all I really wanted today was to write "sack-blast" in a comic

ZachWeinersmith,
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@Phosphenes Yeah, but where it gets interesting is whether we should see added happy people as neutral or not.

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