Warlach’s World

Well, this will be a short and to the point post as I’m planning on heading to bed very shortly, but there are a couple of things I thought I’d mention:

1) Well, as my Twitter bio states: “Level 60 Cultural Investigator, currently grinding his Journalist skill set.” Yeah, I’m a nerd, and a cultural studies one at that, currently working as a journalist writing about property. It’s the last thing that bothers me. I don’t hate the job - it pays well and the people are cool - but I have zero interest in commercial property, equity, square meters or yields. I just sort of fell into the work after finishing Honours.

Late last night I found out that I had been successful in an application to write for another publication. It’s entry level, naturally, but concerns writing news and reviews about video games, specifically those played in territories that use PAL region coding. I’ll leave it that ambiguous for now but will link when my first story gets published. Shouldn’t be too hard to guess the site anyway.

Grand point is that, while I won’t be quiting my current job to concentrate on this new publication any time soon (it’s essentially freelancing) I’m finally getting a chance to write about something that interests me, to an audience that cares. This makes me very happy.

2) Yeah, Wednesday came and went with no Webcomic Wednesday No. 2. Nor were there any other posts in between. I’m working on one longer piece but it’s been a very long and busy week. The new Webcomic Wednesday is nearly done and should be up tomorrow.

3) And finally, how the hell did I miss the Dumbledore is gay news? I don’t really think it changes anything a whole lot. Either we were supposed to pick it up in the text or it wasn’t relevant enough to warrant inclusion. I have to admit i thought the Dumbledore/Grindelwald friendship as described in Deathly Hallows was vaguely homoerotic, I’m not going to go back and pore over the books looking for passages which contain hidden references to Dumbledore’s ‘preference for wands’, so to speak.

That said, I’m looking forward to a Potter themed Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras next year. Perhaps it could be expanded to include an alternate relationship between Harry and Ron. I’m sure the fan fiction for such a thing is rife, and Hermione would make a great fag-hag.

Technorati Tags: webcomics, Harry Potter, Dumbledore, gay, work, career

G’day y’all.

This is the first of a series of posts I plan on doing in attempt to share my love of webcomics with others. Once a week I’ll take one webcomic, give a short review, a sample comic, what you can expect and any other details that take my fancy.

Like most native creative forms on on the ‘tubes - podcasts, blogs, forums etc - webcomics suffer from a stigma associated with their medium rather than their content, enduring arguments such as “oh, podcasts arn’t really my thing” or “blogs don’t really interest me”.

To me this is like saying you won’t listen to Mozart because you don’t like Delta Goodrem. The infinite canvas of the internet refers more than just to the potential of any one creative piece but rather to the potential of the medium. Whatever your interests - from habedashery to politics, comedy to the brutal slaying of your coworkers - please know: there is something for you.

I’m not going to start with Penny Arcade, Starslip Crisis or Something Positive. I’ll get to the big boys later. For now I want to highlight some of the little nuggets of gold people may not have heard of and so, without further stalling, I present: Webcomic Wednesday No. 1.

Title: Dresden Codak
Author: Aaron S. Diaz
URL: www.dresdencodak.com

So, what is it?

Dresden Codak is a beautiful, single page formatted comic created by Aaron Diaz and detailing adventures in the life of the main character, Kimiko Ross. With a cast that features Tiny Carl Jung (a version of the famous psychologist who’s only a few inches high and responsible for Tiny Dream Analysis), two characters described as ‘possibly nuclear powered’ and Myers-Briggs ratings for each character, you can tell this is aiming for a slightly geekier and more intelligent audience than your average Sunday paper strip.

Diaz himself describes Dresden Codak as “an illustrated celebration of science, death and human folly.” The work is funny, beautiful and often moving. The back catalog currently available on the website lists a number or stand alone pieces, and, more recently, a drawn out story arc. Our (anti?)heroine Kimiko is fascinated by transhumanism, the technological singularity and the future of mankind - but it’s OK if your aren’t yet familiar with the subject matter, it’s mostly explained. Newcomers may become lost with Diaz’s creative panel positioning and the linear flow of each page but if you let yourself be carried along it soon becomes fairly clear.

Not all the Webcomic Wednesday’s will be such as gushing tribute but I can honestly say there is nothing in the Dresden Codak archive I wouldn’t recommend. It was fairly difficult to chose a sample comic, so in the end I chose two:

More Here: Girl Vs Bear

More Here: Summer Dream Job

One criticism, and it’s only because of the high quality of the comic, is that Diaz’s update schedule is fairly random, however he recently posted that DC will now be a weekly comic, making now a perfect time to plow through the archives.

Start at the beginning of the archive and work your way through and I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.

Hey all,

My brother, Fulltimecasual, has given me the kick of the arse I apparently needed to actually set up a number of sites that I’d been talking about but not doing. This, clearly, is one of them: a personal blog, straight from my mind to you.

I’m sure that sounds fascinating to the world in general, but I hope it will get more interesting as I post more than the bleeding obvious, such as that this is just another blog on the intertubes.

For now, I’ll leave you with this spoiler: