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The mirror replied "To whom?"

"The miller who made the flour for my bread," the queen would say, or "Whoever spun the thread my shawl was made of".

The second time, she says "To the King," and she is pleased to see herself once more.

The third time, she says "To the Royal Advisor," and is once more satisfied to see herself.

The fourth time, she says "To the scribe who takes the King's letters." She is shown the man's wife. And she seethes, but quiets herself, for it is only right that a man loves his wife.

The fifth time, she says "To the Court Wizard," and is shown the man's departed mother as he remembers her from his youth, radiant and smiling and warm and larger than life.

The tenth time, she says "To the Stable Master," and is shown the fastest horse in the stable, majestic and free as the wind even in captivity

"To the baker," she is shown the man's daughter, young and adorable and full of joy and laughter.

"To the artist who did my portrait," she is shown a painting of a woman done by the man's teacher, who he still looks up to now that he is well established himself.

"To the Royal Knight," she is surprised but not displeased to see the castle's entire guard force in the middle of doing drills.

The one hundredth time she asks the mirror, and it asks her "to whom?" she once again says, "To me." And she does the same the one hundred and second, and again and again and again.

Like people regularly pilgrimage out to try and get it to calculate something for them despite the fact that it's widely known that this machine is dumb as bricks. People just refuse to believe that something this big and impression and that takes so much energy to run can actually just be stupid. There are whole entire cults on other worlds that are dedicated to puzzling out the secret actually "smart" interpretations of it's conclusions, widespread disagreements about what the culture of its creators was (if they existed) and how they might impact things like the translation of data submitted or received, there have been historical teams who have worked night and day to understand the planet brain's language and workings and solve this riddle of how it's secretly smart, but prevailing wisdom remains that it just actually, factually gets everything wrong like 99% of the time.

Some people are convinced there's some fundamental flaw to how the planet brain works, and that if this flaw could be fixed then it would become an invaluable resource. So yet more resources and genius have been poured into figuring out what it could be and trying to secure the necessary grants and access privileges to attempt repairs. The few times anyone has actually gotten in to try and change the brain, though, the effect on its output has been negligible, and the brain has gradually reversed those changes and reset itself over time.

It's estimated that multiple billions of resources have been poured into figuring out the planet brain over the years. Experts have dedicated their lives to trying to understand it. Impassioned devotees have ruined themselves and their communities attempting to follow its advice. Even people who agree that it's stupid tend to agree that it should still be preserved and studied, even though trying to recreate some of its systems or apply the super advanced technology involved in its creation to other tech has yielded negative results (it makes everything else dumber too).

What Amaury shows is that if you want a crazy result you need a crazy amount of effort and knowledge, and that's fine! It's okay if you don't have the expertise a pro has, that's why we pay them! Because we value their craft.

I Am Not Your Asian American Doll: a comic for AAPI Heritage Month 2023

I usually spend a lot of time editing and fine-tuning my comics so that they come across as polite and inoffensive. But honestly, I’m really tired of the way Asian cultures and countries are treated / talked about while Asian people themselves are excluded, and thought it was about time I really let my rage out lol.

My main inspiration was the work of feminist artist Barbara Kruger, who you may know from “your gaze hits the side of my face” and “you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men.” I wanted to pair really shocking, striking words with high-contrast monochrome images as she did.

I chose eyes (and lack thereof) as a central motif. In conversations about art and media history, the “gaze” of the audience is a way to exert power. Who is made into the passive subject, and who gets to be the all-seeing viewer? Who is the subject being portrayed for? Hiding the Asian figures’ eyes demonstrates their lack of agency and establishes them as the subject rather than the viewer.

The skyline on page 5 includes Namsan Tower, as some readers pointed out. (You may have also been clued in from the page’s respective alt text, which describes this as the Seoul skyline.) Though numerous Asian countries have been victims of imperialism several times over, Korea was specifically in mind here. It was Western powers who Korea was split into the North and South, and their colonization and exploitation has led to extreme poverty even today, despite the country’s glamorous facade and rising international stardom.

As many guessed, pink was chosen for its association with sexualization and femininity, although of course fetishization of Asian cultures affects all genders. I also wanted to pick a dark, shocking pink that reminded the viewer of blood; in fact, it is used to color blood here on page 6. I was really happy that the color palette was limited but still legible. (But drawing the large food spread on page 4 with only three shades of pink was definitely a huge challenge.)

Here are some thumbnail sketches I made when planning the comic. You can probably recognize some of the final pages — and see how others evolved!

I want to thank everyone for their overwhelming support for this comic. I never could have dreamed of such an amazing response. To my Asian siblings across the world, you made me feel less alone. To non-Asian allies who lent me their ear, thank you so much for standing with us and listening to our struggles.

Usually I’m extremely careful to write my comics in a palatable tone, but for this piece I decided to not restrain my anger. I understood that by making this decision I would be sacrificing readership, and that many people would be much less willing to listen to me because of my tone. Nevertheless, I truly believe that any and all of the harassment I received was a small price to pay for such an honest piece to be seen.

Thank you all, again! Please consider supporting my most recent fundraising project, an Inumaki Toge themed fundraiser for aid in Gaza.

"I'm Slowly Forgetting Your Face"

Flowers:

Roses - Love

Forget Me Nots - Memory

every single time it catches my eye cause what do you mean he is just learning about it and these little mics look like tiny astrophage leading to him

A mini PHM comic about Grace growing old. I wanted to explore two ideas: Rocky dealing with Grace’s dementia and Grace wanting to donate his body to science. I spend so much time on figuring out the dialogue (some part still feel clunky to me) but I hope it express my thoughts on where I think Grace’s life would go :)