Joe Peacock's Blog

Soooooo…. why DID I donate all that Akira art to the Oscars?

…Fuck, man. This piece got heavy.

In other drafts, I quoted both Shakespeare and James Baldwin. I referenced masterworks of other art forms. I talked at length about intention and execution; about the difference between “lust” and “love”, about suicide and intention and a life well led (and how that’s only possible after leading it poorly)…

So much unnecessary stuff… All just to talk about my relationship with Akira and the art that made it.

So here I am starting over. Starting from the beginning, in so many different senses. But definitely starting over on writing this piece; this letter to you, from me, about why I donated a whole bunch of Akira art. And to discuss that honestly — without all the pretense of the events of my life (both good and bad) as they were intermingled with my collecting and exhibiting Akira art — I have to go back to 1991, at a little ante room of a theater in Athens, GA, where a gang of college kids decided to screen the film.

I was fortunate enough to have been given a flyer to this screening of the insanely different, hugely buzzworthy film Akira by the owner of my local comic shop. An old guy named Jay. I never knew Jay’s last name. I didn’t really know his actual age until his passing in 1994, when he died at the age of 78. Which would have made him 71 when I met him in 1987. Jay was an old man who loved comics. But more than comics, he loved introducing people, both young and old, to comics. He had been pulling comics for me for a year or so when, on a whim in July of 1988, he decided to slip a copy of Akira #1 inbetween my monthly requests for Wolverine and The Punisher.

“It’s got motorcycles and explosions,” he said when I questioned him. “You’re going to love it.”

The old man was right. I loved the crap out of it. I loved it so much, I decided to add a comic which cost $4.95 to my monthly subscription, amongst four other $1 comics. Nine dollars a month I was indebted to the comic shop for, and my allowance was one dollar a week. I had to mow lawns to cover the spread.

There you go, the first real touchpoint of “The Life Of Joe Through The Lens Of Fandom” — I learned how to work to pay for my addictions.

I tore through Akira #1 and needed — not wanted, but needed, deep in my very soul — to read #2. And then #3, and #4… Pretty soon, I was caught up. I had read all of the Akira that Marvel had decided to share with us, the “better not call it ‘manga’ reading market” here in America in the late 1980’s. But I was hooked. Every single month, I eagerly awaited the trip to the comic store to clear out my box and get my next big fix of Akira. And it didn’t take long for Akira to slip from being “monthly” to “whenever Steve Oliff finished coloring the next set of pages” which, having met the man, I can tell you isn’t his fault. He’s a workhorse and a genius, and he took a lot of blame for things that weren’t really his fault. OH, AND ALSO: he invented digital coloring process for comics. He wasn’t just the first guy to do it; he invented the way it’s done which is, from a core color separation at print standpoint, is still the theory used today for digitally coloring comics. The guy deserves even more awards than he’s gotten.

Anyway.

In 1990, between the pages in Akira #10, I found a hand-drawn fanmade flyer for a screening of Akira, put on by the University of Georgia’s Anime Club, on Friday October 26 at the Tate Theater in Athens, Ga. Athens was a 2 hour drive from my house on the southside of Atlanta (a town called Jonesboro, which if you’re a Gone with the Wind fan, I’m sad to say isn’t anything like the movie). My father drove me after school to check it out, because he loved me and he knew I loved it. A depression-era WWII veteran and not at all into anime, this man who chose to adopt me drove me two hours each way to see an animated film based on a comic book that had no dubbing or subtitles, wherein a boy murders people with his brain (and before that, a pipe wrench) and then becomes a gigantic blob baby.

There’s your second big point about me: an adopted kid, who was passionate about things that were uncool to literally every generation on the planet at the time, had the entire direction of his life paved by two old men who thought “hey, this kid likes this thing, maybe we should support that?” And honestly, if there’s any one thing I want you to take from this, it’s this:

SUPPORT THE YOUNG PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE WITH WHAT THEY LOVE.

You never know — they may one day get the fucking OSCARS to recognize that thing they love as not only valid, but a monumental work of artistic achievement in spite of 99% of society not seeing the merit in it for 20+ years. Seriously, I cannot fucking stress this enough. I never in a million years thought this would ever happen, and it wouldn’t have if two old men, otherwise unrelated, hadn’t decided to give a shit about one kid’s passion in a comic book. YOU DO NOT KNOW THE POWER YOU WIELD WHEN YOU SUPPORT A CHILD IN THEIR PASSION. Do not slouch on this responsibility.

….Annnnnyway.

When I first saw Akira, my brain could not handle it. My jaw was on the floor the entire film. I gasped about 200 times, sometimes because of the plot, but often simply out of disbelief at what I was seeing on the screen. Now, being 12 years old, I knew jack shit about anything related to art. My appreciation for the sheer artistic depth and insane, never-to-be-replicated-before-or-since technical excellence of this film was lost. But my apprecation for explosions, motorbikes, and the words “Fuck you!” spraypainted on a wall? Those were in high gear. And I fell head over heels in love.

Akira was my favorite movie. Akira still is my favorite movie. And this is where I skip past about 30 years of stuff that you can read about in articles elsewhere, documenting The Art of Akira Exhibit and my involvement. And in fact, if you’re at all curious, I encourage you to do a quick google search and see the evolution of those articles, from tiny writeups in a local paper about a small cartoon museum’s exhibit, to CNN and a hundred other places between. And I want you to note the sudden and sheer discontinuance of any media related to “Joe+Peacock+Akira” in your searches, because that’s literally the point of all of this.

I worked so, so hard to get people to appreciate Akira. I spent a lot of money touring my little animation collection around the world, and at some points clung dearly to the appreciation of the fans that would show up to see this collection, because it became all I had to live for.

And then, I lost my will to live. And by not succeeding in that, a new path became carved into my story: the path of figuring out who I am, and what I want, and what I really want for my life.

To say anything more really undoes the point of letting go of this collection. And that’s why I’ve had to re-write this a few times, because I found that as I retold the story — even to myself — I was betraying the point of the donation. I was betraying the decision I made this year. I was forgetting the one and only reason to ever do what I did:

To let go. To set it free. To allow it to be what it is, without any further need to qualify that.

I got that chance for myself a few times in life. I’ve had the opportunity, through sheer luck and good fortune, to decide a few times what I really want to be. And in prior iterations, it was always tied to something external. Say, a massive collection of Akira production cels and backgrounds, for example.

It’s 2019, the year Akira takes place. I spent a decade exhibiting and talking about and evangelizing Akira, so of course, the year 2019 should mark something truly special and unique and amazing in celebration of this movie I have loved my entire life. And so it has. It’s the year I decided it was time to be a fan again.

To love this art again. To appreciate it the way I did in my youth — without attachment, and without labels. To not need Akira to be a part of ME, and just let it be something I love.

The rest of this story has been documented by the Japan Times in a few articles put out this year, and has dominated almost every waking hour of my life from June of this year until literally last week (as of the time of this writing, on December 25 of 2019… My Christmas gift to myself: not revisiting subject matter already covered with far greater writing talent elsewhere).

Part of the reason I donated a collection of thousands of cels, backgrounds, and production art from the film Akira to the Oscars because it needed to be preserved, maintained, and exhibited by an entity with the financial, technical, and logistical means to properly care for it. Because the art that Otomo and his team deserves that, and I cannot provide that anymore.

The other part is the gift I gave to myself: getting everything I’ve ever wanted for this art and this film. How many times in life do you get to have EVERYTHING you wanted? Well, here’s some good news: I get to see a huge portion of the movie preserved as one unified collection, forever. It’ll never be sold. It’ll never be parted out. It’ll be maintained and cared for by the worlds’ foremost experts in cel and art preservation. It’ll be permanently exhibited in the new Margaret Herrick Museum of Film. It’ll be digitized and made available for free for the rest of eternity to anyone interested in the movie, the art, or the collection. And as a result, the movie Akira is now officially recognized and honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — something absolutely ABSURD to consider in 1988, when it was released.

It’s everything I ever wanted. And I had to admit to myself that I, myself, could never make any of that happen. I gave myself the gift of letting go of that obligation, to get what I wanted.

And to address the obvious: yes, I know exactly how much it was worth, and that I could have made a lot of money selling it.

I like money. But I LOVE Akira.

Would you sell your child? Your mom? Your dog or your cat? For how much?

If you answered “nothing, ever” then you get it. And if you didn’t, you don’t, and that’s fine. We’ll probably never be friends, but I get it. But I’m not like that. I can’t ever be like that. And I refuse to let this thing I spent my literal ENTIRE LIFE be parted out and ruined.

I had a moment in my life once where I had to ask myself, genuinely and not at all trivially, if I intended to continue living. After some thought and an actual attempt not to, I came to the conclusion that yes, I will continue living. And that meant also figuring out what it was in my life prior to that moment that lead to that moment, and how was I going to change my life so it didn’t repeat?

That change resulted in the complete and utter collapse of the life I’d led to that point. I learned that I had given far too much of who I am as a person to everyone else in my life. Reclaiming that cost me my wife, my career, and a lot (A LOT) of “friendships.”

I live a very simple life now. I tolerate very little in the way of bullshit — most especially from my own self. And when January of 2019 rolled around and I asked myself if I was truly up to the task of celebrating and honoring this thing I loved more than anything else in the world, I had to answer “no.”

I knew in that moment that I had to let this collection go, and with it, any concept of maintaining identity I’d created for myself surrounding it.

It was not a loss. It was a gift I gave myself. And it has made me very, very happy.

So there you go. Well, honestly, there I go; finally writing out the thing I’ve been laboring over for months: my reasons for donating my Akira collection. I suppose this is also kind of a “decade recap” as is popular in this year before the next decade. I’ve not read back any of this, and so it’s not edited at all. It’s straight from the hydrant, so to speak. I hope that it’s given you some insight. It was not a joy to write. It was painful for weeks, up until I did a quick CMD+A and DEL and started over with the intention of posting this before midnight on Christmas Day, 2019.

There’s so, so much else I thought I’d want to say. Being 2019, the year of Akira and Blade Runner, and also a year of SO SO SO SO SO MANY political and sociological and technical oddities, there’s a lot of allusions and allegories I wanted to cram in here to make it all so much more meaningful. But it all poisoned what was really the only points I wanted to make:

You have no idea how much power as an adult you have in shaping the path of a child.

You have no idea how important and massive your work is in life until well after you stop caring about your legacy.

You have no clue what you can achieve with honest passion.

All these dreams I’ve had my entire life, and the only one to come true is the one I never, ever, in a billion years, thought was even possible.

Me, a kid from suburban Atlanta, Georgia who saw a random student screening of a VERY UNCOOL AT THE TIME thing called “anime” got the fucking Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — THE OSCARS, MAN — to officiall honor it, and permanently exhibit it in a museum.

You just don’t know how absurd that whole thing is unless you’ve lived it. So if it seems a bit lost on you, I will ask you simply to take my word for it: your passion for something is POWERFUL. Any derision it may get is from confusion, ignorance, or jealousy. Those who do not understand it will try to dissuade you from it — even family and friends.

So long as you are not hurting anyone else in the process, FOLLOW YOUR DAMN PASSION. Do your thing. Do it unapologetically. Do it to the point of exhaustion. Question it, you will. But don’t give up. DON’T EVER GIVE UP. Work a third or fourth job if you have to.

And if you have to give it up, give it up entirely. Let it go. Not because you can’t achieve it, or because you suck, or it was never meant to be…. I mean set it FREE. Put it on the internet FOR FREE. Give it to another artist who will take it and run with it FOR FREE. Let your darlings go and be darling, my friends. Without attachment and without remuneration and without malice. If you love it, set it free. Give it life. Let it live.

If for no other reason than because you love it, let it fucking go. Because that is true love. Having is not love. Possession? That is not love. Letting something be exactly what it is, without your own gain, and empowering it to be that?

That’s love.

We need more love right now. We need more art. We need more connection. We need old people who love young people enough to give them free comics and a 4 hour drive to see a movie they don’t understand. We need genius digital color experts to take a shot on something and change the face of it forever. We need producers to spend their own money to bring the cels of a strange new art overseas and give it away to get people interested in it (paging Jerry Beck!!) We need teachers and we need artists and we need to connect with one another, now more than ever. Give what you got to give, and do it with everything you fucking are.

Trust me on this.

Joe Peacock
December 25, 2019

The post Soooooo…. why DID I donate all that Akira art to the Oscars? appeared first on Joe Peacock's Website.

What is it like being Gen-X in 2019?

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be middle-aged in 2019 (AKA Gen-X) it’s simple:

1) you have TONS of great advice because you never listened when you were young and fucked everything up real bad. This is called “experience.”

2) no one listens to your great, hard-earned advice, so you learn to stop trying to warn them and instead fire up the camera app on your phone. This is called “Wisdom.”

3) your joints hurt, but not all the time, so it’s always surprise when you wake up in the morning.

4) People older than you are full of shit because they’re closed minded. People younger than you are full of shit because they’re naive. You are the only one who is right in every single argument…

5) …But you’re so exhausted from the first 3 points that all you ever want to do is listen to records and drink coffee, whiskey, or both, because why fucking bother.

6) technology doesn’t scare you with its mere existence like it does boomers, and it doesn’t excite you the way it does millennials or zoomers. It’s nice to have every movie, song, and game you’ve ever wanted, but also annoying because you can clearly remember saving up to buy the discs, cartridges, tapes, cd’s, and hardcovers and so it’s really hard to enjoy it fully, because you feel equal parts guilty and resentful that it all comes so cheaply.

7) You want to be an activist, but have been so thoroughly beaten down by corporations and politicians that you lost whatever focus you had to change the world (We are really, really, REALLY sorry, youth. But we are on your side, and when the time comes, trust us, there will be an army of Doc Marten wearing, Rage Against The Machine singing folks storming the whatever it is we are storming. But we aren’t going first – we have our own crippling debt we have to work every day to pay off and vacation time is super limited. Yes, that’s right: Gen-X is waiting on you to start the revolution, but we will back you. If you think that’s unfair or wonder why, please see the first three points).

8) Fuck you, we won’t do what you tell us… Except pay taxes, sit in traffic to go to work a job (or three) to pay those taxes, buy things to temporarily make us happy to cope with the traffic, the jobs, and the taxes…

9) You know that, just like Kurt Cobain, Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself.

The post What is it like being Gen-X in 2019? appeared first on Joe Peacock's Website.

America The Beautiful Fundamentally Different

No matter what happens after today, America is forever changed.

Not just in theory, not just socially… the literal fabric of the Republic will be altered, permanently.

If you’re taking breaks from the media and internet for mental health, or just to avoid drama, or for any other reason… Now is the time to straighten your back, lift your head, and start paying attention. Because no matter what happens next, it’s not just going to affect you, it’s going to require your involvement. None of us are immune. Change is here.

To set the stage: the President of the United States is outright defying the sovereign and sole authority of the House of Representatives. The constitution states very clearly that there are three equal branches of government: the Executive (President), the Legislative (House and Senate, or Congress), and the Judicial (Supreme Court). Each branch is equal to the other in terms of authority and power, and as such, each must respect that authority and follow due process where the others are concerned. This is called Checks and Balances.

Furthermore, the House is a co-equal part of the Legislative branch — this means it’s equal in power and independent from the Senate. It does not require the senate’s involvement in matters where it is solely responsible… and Impeachment is 100% the sovereign and sole responsibility of the House.

President Trump is outright refusing to cooperate in a matter solely governed by the House, which means the Executive is refusing to respect the authority of the Legislative.

To be clear: IT DOES NOT MATTER if the President thinks he’s innocent, or if there truly was no wrongdoing… in Impeachment, the Constitution demands the President comply with all matters and requests (this is why the Senate is the body which tries and convicts, to prevent a rogue House from seizing control of the government…) — and by refusing, the President is stating that the Executive does not have to respect the authority of the Legislative.

This is a Constitutional crisis. This is not hyperbole. This is not overreaction. This is not media hysteria. This is literally happening right now. It’s historic and important, for several reasons:

1) the only other time in history we’ve faced this is with Nixon, and he eventually resigned, avoiding the showdown that looms over this moment. Should Trump resign, it’s historic because it’s the second time in the history of our country it’s happened, but also opens the doors to a billion weird options… all of which are nuts. He will be tried for crimes in the state of New York, his election will be investogated and possibly made illegitimate which, Jesus… that’s a lot to discuss on it’s own…

2) should he not resign, we now have a test of the Constitutional authority of each branch of government. Should Trump succeed in stonewalling, he will have proven the executive branch immune to the authority of the legislative – which will forever shift the checks and balances and make them impotent. The executive will be in sole control of the Republic, and we will forever from this point be living in a dictatorship.

3) should Trump resist and lose, what happens? If he exiles himself, where does he go? If he ends up in prison, what will his followers (and there’s enough of them to be concerned) do?

And no matter what happens or who “wins”:

4) you can guarantee that who ever is left after the smoke clears will legislate (or, if Trump wins, dictate) permanent changes to the law to prevent this ever happening again, including amendments to the constitution and laws regarding who may assemble, how many can assemble, when, and where…

As a person given to long bouts of researching how things were, observing how things are, and imagining how things might or will be… I am beyond struck by this current moment in our lives. It’s clear we are living through a moment that will be taught in textbooks across the globe forever after today.

If you’re not paying attention, now is the time I highly recommend you start, no matter how uncomfortable and not fun it is. Because there’s a very real possibility you’re going to be called to action – at the voting booth, or on the streets in protest – and you need to know what the hell it is you’re acting on.

The post America The Beautiful Fundamentally Different appeared first on Joe Peacock's Website.

No One Cares About Your Project…

No one cares about your project.

Your book that you’re writing? That album you’re slaving away at? The recital next weekend? Your costume for the next convention? Nope. No one cares about it.

…until they do.

You know this part of the story all too well. The fame, the haters, the coattail-riding, the accolades, the interviews, the legions of newbies ripping it off… You know this part of the story because it’s MARKETABLE. It sells, and what sells gets the attention — because those giving the attention either a) have bills to pay through advertising and stick to the top of the bestsellers / trends / Spotify plays / subscriber lists, or b) wants to be in that top spot themselves.

What you have to understand is that sometimes the best stuff doesn’t get the attention. Sometimes the easily sellable / marketable stuff does, because people who talk about other people’s art are paid based on how many people they get to pay attention. So the thing they talk about needs to be not just good, but broadly appealing.

(And of course, it helps if you know those people already and can ask them for help and favors…)

By and large, though, the vast majority of books ever written go unread. The vast majority of music ever made goes unheard. The vast majority of sports games played go unwatched.

These are facts. And that’s why you have to love this shit so much, you do it without being paid for it. You have to love it so much that it’s as good as it’s going to be before even the first person checks it out, nevermind any crowds or best seller lists or whoever.

Nobody cares. And that’s freedom. You have zero expectations. Zero bars to try to raise. Zero people to please besides your own self. You have unlimited freedom to pick any direction you want your art to go and then walk it there, jog with it, full-on sprint if you want… no one is watching…

…until they are. And that’s when the boundaries start showing up. That’s when the goalposts start moving. That’s when the expectations form and the lines for people to get their say about what you’ve done.

It’s no wonder that some of the most impactful, amazing, truly wonderous art comes from out of nowhere. Of course, the person making it usually has been dreaming of it and slaving over it for years, but hey, it’s new to us.

Suddenly we care, because the artist in question made us care. Their work was undeniable. It struck a chord. It rang our bell.

(Yes, there are famous people in various art worlds who strike no chords and ring no bells… being famous is not the same as being an artist, never ever get that twisted)

These days, it’s far easier to make people care. Streaming your drawing, or holding live book editing sessions on a feed, or giving away some of your art to people interested in checking it out… there are a billion other ways to let folks in on your process if you want, and show them what you’re up to, and build a following of people who have been along for the ride with you.

This will be a small audience. The people who care before lists or other curators tell them they should, those are your REAL supporters. They care about not only your work, but that YOU are the one making it. They may take some time to find, and you may be shocked at who shows up (and even more shocked at who doesn’t…).

But by and large, no one cares. And that can either be a cry of pain or a prayer of thanks, depending on your perspective. I flutter between the two pretty regularly. Today, I’m choosing to be thankful, because along with the freedom from expectations and demands for what people WANT, comes the freedom to go wherever I want with this story, and tell the story I want to tell (which is much bigger than than just a genre story, or just an action story, or just another cyberpunk story).

The music we make for the books? We are free to change formats to match what happens in each novel. We can go anywhere our hearts take us.

Now, there’s “freedom to go anywhere” and then there’s “a sloppy, uncohesive disjointed mess” — there’s still rules and structure that should be put in place and adhered to if we want to actually communicate anything to someone else. But we get to decide those rules and define that structure.

No one cares about your thing, until you make them. And that, my fellow creative friends, is the ultimate artistic freedom.

(For more on this topic, I HIGHLY recommend Steven Pressfield’s Nobody Wants To Read Your Shit — it’s a fantastic, and believe it or not, uplifting book)

The post No One Cares About Your Project… appeared first on Joe Peacock's Website.

I Miss Jeff Buckley

Jeff Buckley’s Grace turns 25 today.

I’m listening to the vinyl and drinking amazing scotch and smoking an amazing cigar. I am enjoying my favorite things in life, and it occurs to me that throughout my life — the adult part of it, anyway — there has always been Grace.

Jeff taught me about Grace. Grace is the confidence to defy fear and be what you know you are. Grace is not forgiveness, it’s absolution. It’s not a blessing, it’s a freedom. It’s elegance borne of a distinct, unshakable, deep understanding of who we are as people and creating the person we want to be, exactly the way we should be. It’s beyond intention. It’s instinct. It’s our deepest self, when no one is watching… or when everyone is.

This album has been with me through everything… every book I’ve written, every project I’ve ever done, every trip I’ve taken — spiritually or physically… God, every breakup, every infatuation , every love. Human or not. Always there. Always relevant. Always real and amazing and lively.

He gave it to us. He gave us Grace.

He gave me the soundtrack of every best moment of my life and every worst. He gave to me a song to go with moments I haven’t even experienced yet. He gave himself to the process, and that process yielded one of the most immaculately produced, textured, layered, passionate, beautiful albums to have ever been recorded.

He didn’t die to soon; we didn’t deserve him. Period. He was too beautiful a soul for this ugly world, and he paid his dues harder than he needed to. By the time he reached us he was already so far beyond us… so evolved and so real.

We didn’t deserve what he gave us. But he gave it, and I know my life wouldn’t be the same without him.

He never knew me.

But I love him and I miss him.

The post I Miss Jeff Buckley appeared first on Joe Peacock's Website.

Understanding vs. Acceptance

You do not need to understand something to accept it.

Despite being told all about it in school, I still do not understand how airplanes stay in the sky. I’ve been educated on the shape of the wing, the difference in air speed and pressure, and how aerodynamics work. In my own head, however, I’ve only come to the point of understanding aerodynamics are a thing, and somehow they work, and this metal contraption can get me from Atlanta to Los Angeles in a little over 4 hours. It’s fine that I don’t understand it, because I accept it.

The same goes with people. You don’t need to understand transgender identities, homosexuality, or the ins and outs of another race or culture, to simply accept they are who they are. If the net result is they’re fun to be around, go have fun with them. If the net result is they’re funny and smart, laugh and learn with them. Or, just leave them alone and go do your own thing. That’s also part of acceptance… Acknowledging that the thing you’re considering doesn’t need your permission or understanding in order to exist. You CAN just, you know… Leave them be.

I am an absolute believer in the saying “You cannot control how you feel, you can only control how you behave” — I think it’s only fair to acknowledge that there are folks out there who cannot help feeling negatively when they meet someone who goes against the grain of everything they’ve been taught, or what their segment of society has imprinted on them. But I also think it’s fair that they be held to account for how they behave based on that.

I don’t understand racists, but I accept that they exist. I don’t understand homophobes, but I accept they exist. And I can’t help how I feel about them (sad mostly… I feel pity, which is, to me, the lowest possible emotion I could ever feel for a person). But I don’t go bash them in the face with books about gender studies, feminism, race relations… I just walk away.

Unless, of course, they behave in a way that harms people, in which case, I fight them.

Or, if they decide to challenge their feelings by behaving in a way that says “I’d like to learn.” Then I’ll try to share what I know (which, as a cis-gendered straight white man, is almost entirely conceptual, and exercises in empathy). And when that does happen, one of the very first things I try to express is that, in my experience, non-cis-gendered people, non-white people, non-males… You know, the people who have not historically been in positions of power and thus framed the perspectives, both through politics and through television, magazines, newspapers, and other forms of media, from a white straight male point of view…

From what I have learned, these people have already accepted white people, straight people, and males, for who we are. They’re not judging our skin color or our penises.

They’re judging how White Straight Men behave.

They’re reacting to how our behavior, since the formation of this country, has affected them. They’re judging the establishments we’ve built, the frameworks we operate under, and the rules we’ve put in place that make being white, straight, and male, the default benefactor of the system.

And they’re talking to you, as an individual, on an individual basis, trying to reach you. And you can’t listen, because no one ever taught you that acceptance and understanding are two different things, and while understanding doesn’t necessarily beget acceptance, acceptance absolutely makes understanding easier.

It was a hard thing to get my head around. And I’m still working on it. I wanted to share that with you, on this Friday, as something to just stir on a bit as you have some Saturday yardwork and some Sunday morning brunch. I wanted to plant a seed that, for me, has borne fruit, in the hopes maybe it does so for you.

But if it doesn’t, I accept that. I don’t understand, but I accept it.

The post Understanding vs. Acceptance appeared first on Joe Peacock's Website.

Light Your Candle.

In an era of fucked up shit, this week has been one of the fuckiest.

I want you to know — I NEED you to know — that there’s a human being here, typing this, who loves you as a fellow human being. I may not come to your house and have dinner and play Super Mario Maker, but I love you, as a living, breathing, feeling entity.

Even if we disagree, politically or morally, I still love you. I love you enough to be angry at you, which is a lot. I love you enough to want better for your heart and mind than to be covered in the thick tar of hate and anguish; so deprived of the real oxygen of human empathy that the sparse breath you can muster is used to shout vitriol and nastiness. I love you enough to fight you — to fight FOR you — to make you see this world has beauty, and that beauty is other people.

We all have it in us. I know you feel it. I know you feel pain and anger and anguish when you see the nasty way the soulless treat their fellow person. I know you feel as helpless as I do as the world seems to be crumbling all around us and the least fortunate of us are used as political seeds to grow poisonous crops to be harvested by the corrupt, the liars, the malfeasant…

We – you, and I, and that person you work with, and the people you go to church with, and neighbors and friends and the stranger at the grocery store — we make this country. There are but a handful of them, bending us to their will through increasingly sophisticated means… social media, manufactured controversy, spin, lies, nonsense… and we consume this over and over, day by day, bit by bit, largely because we are bored and addicted to the thrill of the ride – regardless of what car we sit in on the roller coaster.

Do yourself a big favor: this weekend, at the grocery store, buy a gift card and leave it with the clerk for someone who can’t afford their whole grocery bill. Drop a $5 near the lotto ticket machine. Leave coins in the little turnstile toy dispensers for a kid to find. Hold the door for the next person. Pay the toll for the car behind you. Anything that helps a stranger.

Don’t do this to tick a karmic box and earn some favor in the future; don’t do it to repay a karmic debt. Do it for no other reason than to see what it feels like to give to someone you may never get to meet. Did they desperately need it, or did someone just get a free few bucks? Did it save them from starvation or financial ruin, or did they just shrug and whistle a waltz? What does it matter?

Give to someone — anyone — because it feels good to pull love from your own heart and toss it freely into the world, without any kind of receipt.

If we all do that — not just with money but with any kind of kindness — it stands to reason that the rising tide will raise all our ships.

But even if it doesn’t — even if only a few people do it and it seems like tossing coins into a well never to return — that wasn’t the point. The point is that for a moment, for just that instant, you felt something beyond yourself, without expectation of return. You gave. You helped. You made a change inside yourself that can never ever be removed or taken away. You will forever know the joy of being free with your love.

Be the good you wish to see in the world. And ask the same from those you know. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m asking you to help change the fuckery we see every single hour of every single day, not by pushing the planet off its axis but by the simplest, most in-your-control way possible.

And don’t ask for a receipt. Not from someone you helped and not from the universe at large. Just give. Give love, give time, give unity, give hope, give strength — Because you can.

I’m not gonna say it’s gonna get better, because I have no idea if it will. I won’t lie to you — it’s a scary time. But I will say I’m not going to sit idly by and just let it be scary. The darkness needs but one candle to be lit to be pierced through to its very soul… and one candle can light another, and another, and another…

Light a candle, my friends. Light YOUR candle. And let no one snuff it out.

The post Light Your Candle. appeared first on Joe Peacock's Website.

Tattoos, Symbolism, LGBTQ+ Rights, Comic Book Characters, And The Ever Evolving Change In Meanings

Whelp, this sucks.

If you’re unaware (and honestly I don’t blame you if you aren’t, this is a really, really, REALLY niche thing to be aware of), Dave Sim recently published a one-shot comic featuring his character, Cerebus the Aardvark, in what seems to be a very anti-LGBTQ+ storyline and message:

Photo credit: CW Cooke. Hate-filled nonsense credit: Dave Sim

Now, related but unrelated, I have a Cerebus tattoo on my right calf. Wanna see? Here ya go: 

Cerebus crashing through the window of the Black Tower, from Cerebus 101, August 1987.

I got this tattoo in 2007, and the scene it comes from was from the final page of issue #101 (page 1016 of Church & State), published in August of 1987, well before any sign of Dave’s seeming mental collapse and subsequent transition into a fucking asshole. 

A brief primer on Cerebus, and why I got this scene tattooed on me:

At this point in the storyline, Cerebus had found himself on a strange karmic path that brought him from mercenary for hire, to a staff member of a powerful politician (he was the Kitchen Staff Supervisor for Lord Julius, Prime Minister of Iest, portrayed by what is basically Groucho Marx… Trust me, it makes sense when you read it), to the Pope of the whole damn country. This path was not accidental, however. He was repeating a cycle that had taken place many, many times throughout history, with each iteration seeing the tower fall before it could reach Tarim (God, basically… it’s a Tower of Babel metaphor). 

Only, this time, in the story we are reading, Cerebus is tuned into the echoes from time and knows he must do something DIFFERENT. What, he has no idea. He just knows he has to take this sacred object (a golden sphere) away from where he is, immediately. Defying everyone involved and literally centuries of preordained patterns, he grabs the sphere, runs full speed at a window at the top of the black tower, crashes through it, and falls… and falls… and falls… 

This leap could and probably should have meant his death. But it was the leap that broke the cycle. It got him out of the repetitive loop of failure. It set him free to pursue his actual journey, on his own terms, in his own way. Which he ultimately succeeds at, and gets to meet “God” which turns out to not be God at all, but just someone really bored and much smarter than him who has been watching for eternity from the Moon as humankind fucks this thing up time and time again. 

Cerebus defies the rules, does the impossible, survives, and gets exactly what he wants… And is still not very happy (a recurring theme in the story… See:

A hard-learned lesson that every adult will tell you, is the most important one you can ever learn.

But getting what he wants and not being very happy with it, forces him to grow. It forces him to wake up and be aware. It matures him (at least at that time in the story… MOST Cerebus fans have their own defined point at which they stop reading Cerebus, lest they remember that Dave went off the deep end and ruined it. Mine is at the end of Minds). 

This concept hit me like a brick when I read it for the first time in 1991. I didn’t get it, but it absolutely cracked me up.  Then in 2007, I learned the first really hard lesson about getting what you want and not being very happy. I was the producer and lead writer on what was one of the first internet-based “TV” shows, and it SUCKED SO FUCKING MUCH. I lost a lot of money, cut off a lot of “friends” and distanced myself from something I worked for years to build and put out. I got what I wanted, and I was not very happy.

So I got that moment tattooed on me, symbolized by Cerebus jumping from the Black Tower with the Gold Sphere, defying the rules and going his own way ultimately to learn the single most important lesson he (or anyone) will learn in life. It meant a lot then, and it still does in 2019.

But I don’t think I can keep this symbol on my body. And I literally just made that decision, right now, typing this. 

In a major surprise to myself, I originally started writing this to explore, for myself, the differences and separations (if any) between creator and creation; between what someone believes versus what the thing they create means… And a hypothetical just popped into my brain which I’ll share with you, which helped me make the decision: 

Let’s say it’s 1919, and I’m super into east Asian philosophy and religion. I believe in diversity and am very spiritual, and this symbol, called a swastika,  means that, so I decide hey, I’ll get this on me cause I like that vibe. It means a lot to me. One may say that the meaning really resonates, and this one image symbolizes my adherence to and the importance of this meaning. No one even has the first clue in 1919 that Hitler would appropriate and redefine it forever. At the time of the tattoo, it’s unfathomable that this is even remotely possible.

Fast-forward thirty years… Do I feel proud or ashamed when people see the image on my body? And if I am in a position to change that image on my body, should I? 

Too heavy a hypothetical? Okay, how would this be different if it was Pepe The Frog?

It sure does.

Pepe the Frog is now, and likely forever will be, a symbol of white supremacy in 2019. Famously, Richard Spencer was wearing a Pepe pin when he got straight-up starched:

Even Pepe’s creator, Matt Furie, has tried to reclaim Pepe, but it doesn’t work like that. It can’t work like that. Symbols mean what they mean NOW, not whatever someone meant them to mean.

And in my case, the creator of a new symbol of hate isn’t actively fighting this new meaning, like Matt Furie is with Pepe. Dave Sim is actively positioning Cerebus as anti-LGBTQ+ and that is something I cannot ignore.

I cannot have this symbol on my body anymore. For whatever it may have meant to me, it cannot still mean that to me without one gigantic asterisk. I also feel, with the various and very gross splintering that comics fandom has suffered, that Cerebus is probably going to end up yet another symbol of the #ComicsGate crowd.

It’s tempting to say “I don’t care what people think about my tattoos” — that’s not necessarily true. I don’t care what PEOPLE, in the global sense, think about the fact that I have tattoos. I don’t care about the individual opinions of strangers about the tattoos themselves. But I can’t honestly say that I feel comfortable with an LGBTQ+ friend of mine, who might also be into comics, seeing this whole kerfuffle with Dave Sim and his very purposeful repositioning of his character Cerebus as being openly hostile to “The Gays” (as Dave says it). I DO care what that person thinks. I DO care what other LGBTQ+ people, whom might need some assistance or backup in a confrontation with a hatemonger shouting at them at a convention, thinks. I  do. I can’t lie, and no amount of bravado and posturing about “not caring” undoes the sadness I feel when I think of how these scenarios might play out for the other person involved. 

There’s another tattoo I have on me — the letters YDMS, running down my shin, which stands for Yesterday Don’t Mean Shit. That also means a lot to me — my past does not define me, it simply educates me and informs me of who I am. The same is true of Cerebus, and of Dave Sim, and of almost everything really: EVERYTHING CHANGES. What matters more than what something meant, is what you do when that meaning changes. 

Cerebus — as a comic book and as a character — has done, been, and meant a lot of things to a LOT of people. Cerebus is the de-facto mascot for the early movements in self-publishing. It was a primer on the Electoral College and European Christian Oligarchies. It was funny. It was witty. It was important. 

Now, Dave’s made Cerebus an avatar of the anti-LGBTQ+ jerkoffs out there who have decided it’s their business and responsibility to govern the business and responsibilities of others, which do not affect them in the slightest, because they’re ignorant and pathetic. 

Now, having said all of that, I know just how easy it is for the immediate followup to enter one’s mind: “Maybe think about what you’re getting permanently tattooed on your body…”

Yea, yeah, I did. No, I don’t regret it. Not even now, not even with Dave Sim making a bold and declarative statement against everything I stand for. That whole line of discussion is “Basic-with-a-capital-B” line of conversation that old white women (it’s always old white women) want to have with me. It’s boring. 

At the time of getting the tattoo, there was no possible way to know that this creator would end up taking this kind of stance with this character, in an era NONE OF US KNEW WAS COMING. 

2019 is, to say the least, fucking crazy. And not one of us saw this level of political distance forming, to this degree, with this amount of insanity attached. By all measures possible, in 2016, we were in a place where acceptance and tolerance and equal rights were all but given. But along comes Trump, and the walking orange avatar for finally getting to be a racist sexist homophobic piece of shit without leaning in close and whispering the punchline to your jokes. 

So here we are, in a time we didn’t think was coming. Stances have to be taken. Dave took his. I’m taking mine. I have to get a tattoo of Cerebus covered, and I have NO RAGRETS. Not even one. 

Not Even One.

I don’t regret getting the tattoo. What it meant to me then was powerful, and the meaning that I attributed to it still is powerful, to me. The actual process of getting that tattoo was an important ritual to me.

But the symbol itself? It can go. The process of getting it covered will also be an important ritual to me. While I’m not entirely sure how it will be covered just yet, I know that whatever my artist and I work out, it’ll be a new symbol, meaning exactly the same thing: following my own path, that I set for myself. 

A path that I am very proud of. A path of empathy. A path of understanding. A path of loving people enough not to inflict myself on them. A path of caring about my fellow person.

How can I approach someone from a position of love, while emblazoned with a symbol of hate? 

I cannot. So I will not. 

The post Tattoos, Symbolism, LGBTQ+ Rights, Comic Book Characters, And The Ever Evolving Change In Meanings appeared first on Joe Peacock's Website.

I'm Sorry Your Dragon Show Ended Stupidly (No, Really)

Game of Thrones fans, I’ve come to a moment of understanding, and I want to share it with you.

Not because some longform fiction I invested myself in disappointed me, or because I can relate directly from a singular instance of my own with a show or movie or book series. But from a place of empathy and consideration I think I get it.

I saw this meme floating around the internet, and I will admit to chuckling at it when I first saw it:

I won’t lie, I laughed.

…But the more I thought about it, the less I smirked, and the more I began to understand: this wasn’t just a tv show. I mean, it could be called that, sure, but it wasn’t. Nothing is THIS huge, with THIS many fans, and is still “just a tv show.”

You invested yourself into something for 10 years across eight seasons. It was good — really good. You decided to care, and for seven of those eight seasons, the caring came with a huge reward: the writing was sharp, the production values were high, and every week during the season, you had something to look forward to, as well as some point of relation with your fellow fans.

It’s on that last point I really feel you: despite whatever differences we may all have as people, you had this commonality that you shared with millions of others. There was a touchstone that you could return to when conversations got boring or stale or awkward. You always had this great thing you cared about, and if someone else cared about it too, you had a common thread. There was community there.

I don’t know much about Game of Thrones, but I know this character died in the first season because he’s Sean Bean and that’s what Sean Bean does

As society slowly devolved the past few years, this touchstone became more and more important. As people became more divisive and derisive and outright abusive to one another, at least there was Game of Thrones. As corporations, political parties, and tech companies all amplified fear and anger and differences between one another just to get clicks and shares and likes and dollars and votes, at least there was Game of Thrones. As dystopia slowly creeps in, at least there was this thing you had to look forward to, that always rewarded you, that you could talk about with your coworkers and friends and community the next day to avoid talking politics, or societal issues, or other nasty things.

…Not that they shouldn’t be discussed, or that you were avoidant. I know you weren’t. But we all need a break from intensity. Every amazing album ever recorded had “down songs” to help ampifly the “up songs”. The best comedy routines work in “rest bits” so that the laughs don’t become exhaustive. You have to unclench your jaw and your anus every so often. Game of Thrones let you do that.

I know Daenerys, because I have at least three couple-friends with daughters named Daenerys. I don’t know her dragon’s name tho. I’m gonna call him Drago, cause I loved Rocky 4 and also Creed 2.

And then, they shit the bed; almost seemingly on purpose. They didn’t care. They just decided “fuck it” and not only disappointed you, but wrecked whatever fondness you might have had for the earlier seasons by irrevocably destroying the characters and their journeys.

I don’t watch the shows, and I don’t read the books, and from my friends and folks who do, I’ve gathered at least that much. And at first, my reaction was “So what? It’s just a show. Get over it.”

And then I put myself in your shoes for a bit, and realized — it’s not whiny or entitled to ask that your investment be honored. If I had an investment broker who spent 7 years with a stock portfolio, and I watched it grow and felt like my investment in that broker and in those stocks were well run and i was going to get back what I put into it, and the branch manager took it over and pissed in the file drawer and I lost everything, I’d be a little more than pissed.

And this is TIME we’re talking about, which is worth so much more than money. Money comes and goes. Time only goes. And you spent a LOT of time on Game of Thrones. And it was not respected or managed well, and I understand that now.

I’m not sure why Mark Hamill was in the show, but I also didn’t quite get his casting for the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series when I was 12 and I was proven wrong then, so I’m willing to just accept he’s awesome in this.

Trust is a hard-won thing, and it’s getting harder and harder to trust almost anything. Deepfake videos, AI-generated audio of famous people saying things they never said, dishonest youtube video campaigns pretending to be “real” people played by paid actors, Trump, Fox News, Brexit, a crumbling environment, irrevocable mass human extinction just around the corner…

You didn’t need this shit. I get it. And I am sorry your dragon show ended stupidly.

The post I'm Sorry Your Dragon Show Ended Stupidly (No, Really) appeared first on Joe Peacock's Website.

My 32 Step Novel Writing Process

My 32 Step Novel Writing Process

Have a bunch of ideas.
Write them down.
Try to make them all make sense as my eyes cross trying to read what I just wrote down.
Fail.
Want to give up forever.
Decide that’s probably not going to happen, since even if I wanted to I can’t stop writing stuff.
Wring my hands a lot about my ability to write the story
Give it time. Let the pieces float around my head for days and weeks and months.
Have a EUREKA! Moment where all of a sudden, holy fucking shit, I have it.
Write. A lot. Skip meals. Skip events. Skip parties and video games and movie releases, cause I’m writing.
Send to my editor.
Realize there’s so much that isn’t linked up quite right, some missing information (because when it’s all happening in your own head, and you write it all down, it still all makes sense cause it’s still all in your own head, which is why an editor is manditory if you want your writing to not suck out loud)
Rewrite the book, anywhere from 20% to 90% rewrite
Get lots and lots of “YES!” and “Better!” and “This works now” comments from my editor
Clean it up, and inevitably miss some typos, cause that shit happens when you self publish
Lay the manuscript out for publication.
Stare lovingly at the Meghan Hetrick cover for the novel, because they’re always mind blowing and beautiful
Put the publishing candidate through the approval process at Amazon (and other retailers) 
Get rejected for forgetting the barcode. 
Resubmit with barcode. 
Get rejected for forgetting to format the manuscript in 8.5 x 5.5 size. 
Resubmit with correct sizing. 
Get rejected for having text on the back bleeding out of the “safe print” zone because I always get too clever on the back covers
Resubmit with everything somehow correct
APPROVED! 
Release the novel.
Immediately stare at Amazon and Goodreads without blinking, hoping someone leaves a review, knowing fully well 24 hours isn’t enough time for someone to have read and processed the damn thing, much less 60 minutes.
Realize I never told anyone it was out!
Send out emails to newsletter subscribers, notify the Discord chat, and tell the SOCIALMEDIAS that there’s a book out and they should check it out. 
Smile with great relief as reviews come back positive (for some reason… It’s never not surprising, and I love every single review and critique!)
Drink a fine whiskey and smoke a fine cigar
And then do it all again.