Theri There

As you may have noticed, it has been over a year since the last update of this comic.  I’m not inclined to declare “Theri There” as dead, as people have been asking; it’s just… mostly dead, as they say in Princess Bride.  I have a marvelously thick folder of sketches and scripts for upcoming pages, but producing finished work is something else.  I’ve overcome some of my personal obstacles to working on the project, but some still remain.  The comic may recover and continue, or it may not.

I do want to publish a paperback of the comics so far through Lulu.com, and it sounds like there are plenty of interested readers.  I made a manuscript, but I reached a point where I didn’t know how to make it work.  I did some research on how to solve some of its problems, but I expect that if I try to do it myself, or with the wrong software, that the book will end up with that awkward, unprofessional look that self-published books so often have.  Is there some volunteer out there who has experience with designing books?  Someone who could take my manuscript and polish it up until it would really work as a paperback?  I think there’s not a lot left to do, other than making sure that page elements fall on the pages that they’re supposed to.

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a different Otherkin-related project: otherkin_news (Otherkin News).  So far, I’ve found articles about Otherkin themselves in a magazine about religion and also in a newspaper from Israel.  I’ve also found news items on relevant subjects of interest to Otherkin: art installations about human-animals, a new dragon statue, discoveries about phantom limbs, sightings of werewolves and fairies, and the loss of websites about Otherkin due to the closing of Geocities.com’s website hosting service.

Read today's comic.

It takes so many years to get to know one another... everyone keeps so much locked up inside. There are all these things that are so important to us, and yet so vulnerable, and so we are made up of secrets. When meeting one another, we see only a superficial, outward persona. What if we could reveal, in an instant, all that we really are? If that was possible, would anyone be brave enough to do so, or to look when someone did? Could people survive an exposure so deep?

Further reading: an illuminated quotation, Secret Worlds, on xkcd... the Shout It Out Project originated by liliy and perpetuated by hundreds... the artistic anonymous confessions in Post Secret... and the surreal book Finder: Dream Sequence by Carla Speed McNeil. (Please note that each of these links have some contents that are not to be viewed by children, or are not safe for viewing at work.)

By the way, would you be interested in buying a paperback book of all the Theri There comics? I'm thinking of either self-publishing through Lulu.com, or going to a small publisher, so I'd like to have some idea of how many people want it! Answer in the poll, or if you don't use LiveJournal, send me an e-mail.

Poll #1199063 Interested in buying the book?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 79

Would you buy a paperback book of these cartoons?

Read today's comic.

In the interest of preserving information, I've taken a few of the LiveJournal communities that I maintain, and backed them up to PDF. In this file format, you can download the sum of all entries and comments in one go. Then you can read it offline, or even print it out as a book and read it under a tree. If this website is someday no longer here, you can still keep this. I used LJBook.com to back up the journals to PDF.

The LiveJournal community for discussing my comic, Theri There (therithere) is backed up as theritherelj.pdf.

On DeviantArt.com, I've made a collection of all the artwork that I can find that people have made about therians and otherkin. In this collection, you'll see self-portraits that various therians and otherkin have drawn of their inner selves, or of their past lives. Some have written poetry to express their spiritual feelings.

Otherkin and Therian Art Collection

Before DeviantArt introduced the Collection feature, I was working on making a webpage listing the art. That was last spring, and boy am I glad that an easier way to manage all those links came along! It's as much a handy solution for the artwork as LibraryThing.com was for my therian and otherkin bibliography.

The collection is very long, and getting longer all the time. I add more artwork as I find it. Of the collection, I have a few favorite pieces that I featured in a post in my DeviantArt journal. I also have a section for some of the symbols that have emerged, such as the otherkin star and the theta-delta, explaining their background and showing a few examples of them by different artists.

Let's see which of these designs are the most popular, and then I'll put together a CafePress store! :) Here's what the poll is talking about, since I don't think that I can put links inside it: this is the Theri There logo.
Here's the dragon looking at stars, sans text.
Fae fear iron.
Soul machine.
COUGAR!
Shift key.
Tea tiger. (Last panel only?)
Typing with phantom claws. (Last panel only?)
Faery tail and fairy tale.
Gryphon reading a book (second panel).
Cougar sleeping in a tree.
Forgot to close the bold tag.
Cat and human yin-yang (sixth panel).
Astral project more often.

Poll #1157182 Theri There merchandise on CafePress
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39

Which of these designs would you like to buy on merchandise?

Interested in any seasonal designs?

What types of merchandise would you buy these designs on?

Merchandising. “Spaceballs the t-shirt, Spaceballs the lunch box, Spaceballs the flame thrower!”

Previously, I had declined from putting any Theri There images on CafePress merchandise. Now I’m reconsidering whether I should. People have asked for merchandise a few times. I wouldn't mind making a little profit off of the comic; I've put enough work into creating it that getting something back sounds nice.

In your opinion, would it be immoral to make money off artwork and writing with spiritual themes? That operates on the idea that money-making and spirituality shouldn’t mix. Or is profit acceptable, since people have always been selling spiritually-themed works, and money is a logical part of distributing any creative works?

Are you looking forward to buying materials printed with pictures from the comic, or would you rather pass? What specific images do you want to see on the merchandise?

These aren't rhetorical questions, so ahead and answer in the comments. If you'd rather press buttons in a poll than write out a comment saying some of the same things, here's a poll for you:

Poll #1155125 Comic Merchandise
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 43

Is it immoral to make money off spiritually-themed works, such as this comic?

Would you buy Theri There merchandise?

What specific images do you want to see on the merchandise?

Read today's comic.

If the comic hasn't appeared there yet, read it here.

A few people have said they were interested in translating Theri There into German. Would you be able to help?

Poll #1115358 Do you speak German?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 55

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Read today's comic.

If it hasn't appeared on the site yet, read the comic here.

( Artist's commentary on today's comic. )

Read today's comic.

Today's comic is encrypted in ClaWrite, a dragon alphabet invented by Baxil. The dialog is based on a conversation that I had with a classmate, but I'll leave the fun of deciphering it up to you. ;)

Unless if you'd rather just read the translation in the comments below...

Read today's comic.

Today's comic is based on a sketch and script by Lupa (lupabitch), a wolf therianthrope and pagan author. I just redrew and lettered it. Thanks, Lupa!

Yes, I know the "discuss today's comic" link is missing. I'll fix it later.

Despite my notebooks full of unfinished sketches for it, the comic Theri There is now officially on hiatus. The past few months without posted comics may have been a clue in and of themselves, but I just don't have it in me to produce any finished work on it right now. I do not know when-- or even if-- the comic may next be updated. It could be next week. It could be never.

Read today's comic.

Thanks for writing and drawing today's comic, Sei!

Read today's comic.

( Now-irrelevant commentary about technical difficulties, and a local upload of the full-size comic image. )

Comic for the week of February 3, 2007.

( Artist's commentary )

( Commentary that should be read after the comic, or else it'll spoil it. )

This past year, I've tended to devote more of my creative energies into making an illustrated journal, full of rants, sketches, meditations, jokes, attempts at sorting out my spirituality, and anything else about my personal life that needs to be drawn out in the form of a cartoon. That comic-journal is completely private, since I've found that if I don't censor myself and don't have to worry about how other people would see it, don't have to worry about something being too scribbly or arguable or personal, I'm getting farther with discovering my writing-voice. It just seems to work better when I can be as brashly honest as I want, as well as combining illustrations and text together instead of having them separate. It's been a marvelous exercise. When I drew this particular entry in it last morning (which was something that actually happened) I decided this one ought to be shared.

How do you feel about some (but not all) episodes of "Theri There" being a cartoon journal of a real therianthrope's life, and other interjections such as an episode with a joke about (say) Arthurian legends, rather than all the episodes having to deal directly with defining therianthropy in general? Must they all be exclusively, completely on-topic (even more so than most discussion forums about therianthropy or draconity tend to be, which tend to wander in any direction that interests the members, to such an extent that alt.fan.dragons said that nothing was off-topic for them at all)? Or can the idea of "on-topic" be broadened to include other topics that I feel are related to it? I was starting to feel like it was too limiting, even though I do have a lot of material for it, I have all these other comic ideas as well. What do you think, should they all be together in "Theri There," or should it stay strict with what's considered on-topic?

I improved the Interests list for this community so that people can find it in a search more easily, even if they're not searching in English. Illustrations transcend language enough that people doing an interest-search in  French or Russian might enjoy the comic anyway. I also added thumbnail graphics of the comics to the posts, so you can see a glimpse of each comic before you view it full-size. That makes it easier to find what comic you're looking for, too. 

On t_o_book_club (the Therianthrope and Otherkin Book Club) we're having a poll where everyone can choose which book we'll be reading together for the next couple months. There's also still time to read and discuss the current book (Rich Shapero's Wild Animus, which turned out to be better than I expected). Membership, posting, and commenting are all open, so come join, talk, and vote.

( Cross-posted to waywind, welikehumans, and therithere. )