Darkside Rainbow

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[facepalm] Yeah, after reading that, I’m feeling pretty scarred, too. Sweet bloody Jesus doing the twist on a hot poker. Someone’s been watching too much of that Sarah Silverman show.

No, Kyle, you’re not gay (and you’re not the only one who doesn’t want you to be gay, trust me). You either have a very bad sense of humor or a serious mental malfunction. …and possibly a couple of necrophilia and bestiality problems. Spellcheck is a boon to many people, by the way.

Please gods, don’t let him be gay. I don’t want that as even a tiny jot on the graph in our demographic.

People, this is the side of the Ask Adri column that you never see. I get a few e-mails a week; about 25% of them are legitimate questions, and then only half of those are questions that I can answer on the column, as the people who wrote in requested a private response.

The other 75%?

The other 75% are things like this crap.

Some of them are obviously pranks; some are seriously people who don’t understand that bestiality, taxidermy-related necrophilia, and homosexuality are entirely unrelated. [groan] Seriously. Did Ann Landers ever get letters like this?

Sorry about having to reuse the art from comic #10; I had an exhausting weekend and by the time I could settle down to draw the comic, I was so tired I could barely even focus on the light table. At least I upgraded the art a little, by replacing that cruddy tablet-drawn laptop with something involving straight lines. And I did a few color shifts and ooh, lighting effects. Suddenly it’s night time in my living room. Ooh. Ahhh. Magic.

Yyyyeah, it’s coffee time. See you kids tomorrow.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, ask adri, gay advice column, ann landers

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[tilts head] You know, I think I should just give up on anything involving straight…anything. Including drawing straight lines. I’m too gay for art, people. That’s why Takeshii and I are eating off a slanted table in there. Really. Yup.

…I so halfarsed on that newspaper, and on the hands, and proportions, and…oh, bah. My mind was everywhere but on drawing last night. I spent most of the day starting a new novel - and if you knew what it was about, I’d never live down the shame.

Anyway. The color in this comic is kind of dull, but…meh. I doubt anyone really reads this for the art anyway. And if you’re wondering what the comic’s about, no, it’s not really about my poor social skills (or utter lack of any at all). It’s just a little good-natured snark on the 42nd birthday of Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil (that’s a mouthful), the openly gay prince of India. Apparently hundreds turned out for his birthday celebration; s’pose that happens when you’re royalty. Retail value on just one of his birthday gifts could probably pay my rent for a year.

Me, I’d just hate to have to clean up after that party. I hope the catering staff got overtime on that one.

Silliness aside, though, it’s nice to see a publicly gay figure of such rank, who’s openly celebrated by so many people in a country with such restrictive laws. It sets a nice example to others.

…mmkay, it’s time for me to give up on trying to talk until I’ve gotten a little more coffee down the pipes. I’m off; see you tomorrow for some (hopefully more coherent) rantage and discussion. And as always, if you like what you see, scroll waaaaay down to that BuzzComix button and give the comic a vote every day that you stop by.

~Adri

P.S. Happy, Taka? This time I didn’t embarrass you.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, india’s gay prince, 42nd birthday of Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil

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…you know this comic was just an excuse for me to say “giant anime hooters”. It’s kind of catchy.

The boyfriend would very adamantly like to make it known that he does not own a shirt like that, wouldn’t be caught dead in one unless it possessed an image of Koda Kumi, and is basically sacrificing himself to my whims for the comic because if I tried to draw Koda Kumi (and trust me, if he had on a Koda Kumi shirt, we’d have a conversation very similar to this one) you wouldn’t be able to recognize her from an inkblot.

Take heart, love. At least I didn’t embarrass you by putting you in a Stella T-shirt…though I’ll refrain from mentioning who else I could have put on the shirt. I like living.

(What cracked me up was when I showed him the art for this while I was working on it, and he said “Oh my god, I look like such a fag!” “Darling, you are a fag.” “…oh. Yeah. Looks good. ^_^”)

Aaaanyway…I couldn’t resist taking another jab at the article from last Friday’s post. It’s always fun to take something absurd and flip the situation around to highlight the absurdity of it even more. After all, I really doubt that anyone would get sent home for a shirt that says “Straight? Fine by me!”

The art on this one’s a little hokey; I’m not sure what went wrong, but something’s off. I drew this in a hurry when I was tired and ready to keel over, so that probably contributed to it quite a bit. I’ll try to take more time on next week’s.

For now, though, I’m out of here. Come back tomorrow for the usual ranting and griping.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, heathyre farnham, spencer new york, principal ann sincock, spencer-van etten high school, homosexuality in schools

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…sometimes, I dress like a Hot Topic teeny-gother. Jeez. Well, there’s a reason this comic is called “No Style”, after all…

There’s a story behind the pink phone - no, really. I’m not that flaming, or that much of a diva.

…yet.

A bit over a month ago, my old cell carrier - Amp’d Mobile - went bankrupt and dropped everyone with very little notice. At the time the carrier that had the plan best suited to my needs (and funds) was T-Mobile, and the best free phone they had available was the Motorola Razr V3 in either gunmetal or magenta.

Naturally, I chose the gunmetal.

Naturally, all they had was the magenta.

It was either live two weeks without a cellphone while they got more of the gunmetal in stock (not happening), or deal with having a pink phone. I hate pink. I hate pink with a violent passion, save for my rose sunglasses, which have somehow become affixed almost permanently to my face and have managed to creep past my aversion towards the vile color.

But…long story short, I couldn’t survive without a cell, and so now I have the cutely gayest phone on the face of the earth. I tried skins from DecalGirl to cover it, and they don’t fit quite right and look tacky, so I just…deal with it until I qualify for a phone upgrade. I’m even starting to like it a little.

And now my friends won’t leave me alone about it.

Yyyyeah. Someone’s going to get a shiv to the trachea if they don’t shut it pretty soon. You know who I’m talking to. That’s right, I’m looking at you. Wench.

Man, I really need a haircut.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, t-mobile, motorola razr

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Eheheh…well, if you can’t mock yourself, who can you mock?

Anyway…my vacation ends tomorrow, so next Monday you’ll get another regularly drawn comic on-schedule instead of another self-deprecating blackout.

For right now, though, I’m off to enjoy my last day off before diving back into the daily grind. Martini, anyone?

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, yuki, shuuichi, gravitation, shounen ai anime, yaoi anime

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A little while ago, Allison over at Reality on Bravo e-mailed me with an interview she had with The Pleasure Chest, after their appearance on Meet the Parker. The Pleasure Chest was one of the first companies to publicly say that sex isn’t something to be ashamed of, including homosexual sex.

Unfortunately, after reading the interview, the only thing my lackluster wit could produce was this. I don’t want to hear one word about the shirt. Not. One. Word.

If you scroll waaaay down to the Blogging Flair section of the sidebar, you’ll see there’s now a BuzzComix voting button. If you like No Style, give it a vote every day that you wander by. I’d really appreciate it; thanks.

See you kids tomorrow.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, meet the parker, the pleasure chest, sex toys

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To those that celebrate it, enjoy your Labor Day off in whatever way you prefer. I know I will be.

See you tomorrow.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip

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Yeah, I know, it’s cutesy-cartoony…but I really doubt that doing a detailed drawing of personified DNA strands would have been any more effective. It works.

So last night, I was cruising the Houston Chronicle website and ran across an article about a study done on a large test pool of gay brothers, trying to isolate common genetic themes overlooked in smaller studies to identify traits that might link to a genetic indicator of homosexuality. I couldn’t help but share some of the concerns raised in the article regarding the possible backlash involved in revealing a genetic cause for homosexuality. It bothers me to think that parents would possibly be able to pick and choose their children’s traits, eliminating things like homosexuality in vitro to create a child custom-tailored right down to the personality. It’s also disturbing to think that adults could be coerced into undergoing genetic therapy to literally cure the physical cause of their sexuality.

Thankfully we’re far away from the technology to do that, and hopefully by the time we reach that level, we’ll live in more tolerant times. But I can’t help but wonder what my parents would have done, if they’d known from the womb that I would be gay and could have isolated and altered some “gay gene”. They accept me for who I am now, but with many reservations - and my father will flip his lid if I even joke about my baby brother following in his big brother’s footsteps. Who would I be today if my parents had been given that choice?

Flippant comics aside, the thought gives me chills.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, gay gene, homosexuality in genetics, gay brothers

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Seriously - I was reading through the article that J was talking about on WashingtonPost.com, and wondering just how this was any different from white churches, or just about any church in the United States. Homosexuality is a divisive issue in almost any Christian church, regardless of the primary race making up its congregation. What’s the point of dividing it further between black churches, white churches, Asian churches, bloody green alien churches?

We, as the gay community, challenge everyone’s world view, regardless of race. Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the transgendered, the intersexed - we’re found in every echelon of humanity, regardless of skin color. There’s no point in trying to segregate reactions by race when they’re already segregated by people who love us, people who hate us, and people who are either confused or indifferent.

Sometimes the race card needs to be played. Racial discrimination does still exist in this day and age, even if it’s greatly diminished from the levels it had mounted to decades ago. But sometimes people are just playing the race card to sensationalize an issue that’s already a major trigger point for most people, and there’s no reason to do that. It’s just media hype.

Cut it out.

I can’t believe I’ve made it through twelve comics without being more than an hour or two late on a single one. Those of you who’ve followed my old comic know what a miracle that is, although this one’s a lot easier, being one-panel and very basic.

And yes, J really does say “word” like that. To everything. I’d be happy if I could get him to stop.

See you tomorrow, kids.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, black churches, religion and homosexuality

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I know, I’m mean. I’ve been told this before and it hasn’t made me any less mean, either. Amusingly enough, that’s a friend of mine. If it had been a stranger, I’d have been nicer or at least bitten my tongue.

Satire aside, this actually reflects something that really bothers me about today’s gay culture: a fixative culture of youth, in which an obsessive desire to remain young and beautiful forever creates shallow and at times self-destructive behavior patterns and promotes a rather horrible negativity towards anyone who doesn’t strive for perfection. It’s a Peter-Pan mentality that tends to irk my last nerve when faced with it, because there is more to life than being young and beautiful. When I die in fifty-odd years or more, I want people to say more about me than “god, he looked so young, and so fabulous”. I want to have accomplished more with my life than that.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to look nice. Looking after your body is good for your health above all things, and looking nice and wearing nice things makes you feel good about yourself and makes a good impression on others. It only bothers me when it becomes the be-all and end-all of existence.

Ah, well, to each his own. I’m not going to run around calling for an ethnic cleansing of all the body-conscious gays or anything; I’ll just content myself with a few sardonic comments and the knowledge that I, at least, have a life beyond my image…and beyond persecuting others.

Take a look at that link, by the way. It’s rather disturbing, the lengths people will go to in their hateful homophobia. Do the words “ethnic cleansing” bring to mind a disturbing similarity to another ethnic cleansing in not-so-distant history?

Last week [Giancarlo Gentilini] told a local television station that he would order police to put an end to gay cruising which he claimed was out of control.

“I will immediately give orders to my forces so that they can carry out an ethnic cleansing of faggots,” Gentilini told the station in an interview.

“The faggots must go to other [places] where they are welcome. Here in Treviso there is no chance for faggots or the like.”

The politician’s remarks brought back memories of the Mussolini dictatorship where Jews, gays and other minorities were rounded up and sent to concentration camps - mostly in Axis-controlled countries where many died during World War Two.

Just…there are no words for how ill this makes me. I might expect something like that out of a third-world culture in which restrictive beliefs are promoted as the norm, but coming out of Italy? Then again, this isn’t the first such thing to come from the ol’ boot, even if Archbishop Bagnasco wasn’t quite as offensive in his statements - but he came close.

I’m horrified that anyone in this day and age can speak of “ethnic cleansing” about any subsect of humanity.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, italy, treviso, homophobia, giancarlo gentilini, homophobia, ethnic cleansing

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If you have no idea what this is on about, check the previous post for the Weekend Edition. I figured hey, it’s topical, I needed something to draw for today’s comic, so why the hell not?

Sorry if the art looks a little odd. Normally I do the lineart by hand on paper, then scan and add color in Photoshop. This time I was in a bit of a rush, had a lot to keep up with yesterday, so I did the whole thing in Photoshop with the tablet in a little over an hour. I tried to keep as close to my pencil-and-paper style as possible, down to a little line-shading…but some of the linework looks off, and I am well aware that that is the fugliest drawn laptop that anyone has ever seen. My hand-eye coordination just isn’t as good with a standard tablet (…which is why I really need to get myself a Cintiq).

See ya’ll tomorrow, unless anything interesting happens today.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, livejournal, blogging, six apart, censorship, strikethrough 07, boldthrough 07, fanart, fanfiction, fandom

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There I was, minding my own business in the Wal-Mart checkout line, when it attacked: the Yaoi Fangirl. Normally only dangerous online or at anime conventions, this dreaded beast has the same fascination with gay men as your average heterosexual male drooling over a lesbian porno. Not to be confused with the (slightly) more sane Slashficcer, the Yaoi Fangirl fixates rabidly on anything attractive and male within sight and immediately begins aggressive reconnaissance, in search of signs of homosexuality. The majority of her life revolves around contriving ways to make her favorite male/male pairing possible regardless of the sexuality of the people/characters involved, or squealing over anything she can find with existing male on male erotica. What little free time remains is often spent either stalking any gay men of her acquaintance or wishing she was a gay man.

All right, maybe I’m being a little harsh. Not all yaoi/shounen ai fangirls are rabid, screaming maniacs, but every once in a while you run across the ones that scare the holy living crap out of you. Unfortunately, I was lucky enough to have that little surreal encounter yesterday morning, while waiting to pay for my grapes, milk, and granola bars and get the hell out of the store.

And yes, her hair really was up like that and she really was wearing all that…stuff.

Some days I wonder if I woke up in some freakish alternate universe, I really do. Seriously. I only wish I was making this crap up.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, yaoi, shounen ai, yaoi fangirls, anime, manga

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Screencap used in comic taken from IGN.com.

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All right, maybe that’s a bit of a lie. I just didn’t find I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry to be all that great, although I always find Kevin James to be adorable (I loved him in Hitch). Even without Sandler the film would have been predictable slapstick humor. With Sandler? It was just downright annoying, but that’s personal bias. I hate Adam Sandler - while the boyfriend, featured telling me to stop talking in the bloody theatre, loves him. I don’t know what it is; it’s not the crude slapstick humor that is his trademark, as that kind of thing really doesn’t bug me. Something about his voice just grates on me, and only love (and a little bribery) will actually get me into the theatre to see one of his films.

The film wasn’t a complete and total waste of time, and you’ll find some parts enjoyable (no spoilers here)…but overall it didn’t elicit a very strong reaction. I wasn’t horribly amused, I wasn’t horribly offended, I wasn’t horribly touched, I wasn’t really much of anything other than bored and horribly annoyed by Sandler’s voice. If I were you, I’d save my money and rent it when it hits BlockBuster/Netflix/whatever.

~Adri

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, movies, adam sandler, kevin james, i now pronounce you chuck and larry

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I know I already ragged on this one verbally a bit, but I couldn’t resist taking one more little stab at it. There’s your sleepless nights, buddy.

Sorry for the crap art, but I wasn’t feeling well last night and when Adri feels like crap, he draws like crap. Hopefully the color makes up for it at least a little.

See you kids tomorrow. I’m out.

~Adri

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, the whole lesbian sex book

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…I tend to get called that a lot. No idea why. Really.

Had to cheat on this one a little - I got sidetracked this weekend working on too many other things and didn’t have time to do new artwork, so I just color-tweaked and reversed the artwork from #3. [facepalm] Sorry, guys. It still gets the idea across. It’s the text that matters, not the picture.

To explain a bit in context: this was a conversation I had with a friend of mine not long after reading the article about gay Lutheran minister Bradley Schmeling and his struggle to retain his position on the clergy roster after openly admitting that he has a same-sex partner. Now honestly, I am not sure why my friend - we’ll call him T - and I are even friends. He’s a fundamentalist Christian. I’m an atheist. He’s straight. I’m gay. He’s white. I’m…whatever the hell I am, I give up on figuring it out. About the only things we have in common are a.) we both grew up in middle-class working America, and b.) we’re both a**holes. Apparently those two things are all it takes for us to work. We get in some hellaciously fun debates, and get along just fine as long as I don’t kiss my boyfriend in front of him and he doesn’t go off on a rant on how I’m going to hell twice for being a gay atheist. We each have our line we don’t cross.

But that doesn’t mean that we don’t know where the other stands on his side of the line, and every once in a while we do get in our spats. He says because I’m an atheist I know nothing about Christianity (I was raised a good little Catholic schoolboy and can still quote the bible by heart, thank you) and therefore cannot attack a flawed foundation with logic, I say because he’s straight he has no right to pass judgment on the lifestyles, loves, and struggles of any gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersexed, or just plain damned confused person on a basis of faith. About the only thing that ends these conflicts is vodka. We never agree.

But on that phone call, I won. He shut up really damned fast after that. And I am horribly, wretchedly smug about it. Because you know, he’s right, but so am I. If I don’t want people poking in my business when it doesn’t affect them, then I should stay out of their business when it doesn’t affect me, right? But at the same time, we’re all affected by everything in some way. It is almost impossible to be passive towards any issue in today’s world, because in some way it will reach out and touch your life. So there’s nothing wrong with being informed, even if you aren’t active. There’s nothing wrong with keeping up with what’s happening in the world around you, even if it involves people who are in no way connected to you.

And since Christianity has a very strong effect on the GBLTQ community - considering the religious wars currently raging over the acceptability of homosexuality - I’ll be damned if I let anyone, even a friend, tell me that I can’t have an opinion on the subject.

I’m out.

no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, lutheran minister, reverend bradley schmeling, gay clergy