Last night Crysta and I got home from the Northwoods of Wisconsin. The rest of my family is still up there (and will be for the rest of the week) but sadly I can only take one week off of work these days. The vacation itself was pretty awesome though, just as it is every year.
Heck, we all even got a long pretty well this year too - which is a miracle when you consider how many us are under the same roof when we do this.
I don't have a lot to say - I played softball on at Vandervort Field/Forester's Ballpark, went out on the lake, played an epic connect four game with my brother David, saw my nine month old nephew Ethan, and ate at the White Stag. It was a fairly typical vacation - albeit an awesome one.
Back to real life though...
- Traegorn
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Starting Friday, I head off into the Northwoods of Wisconsin for my annual family vacation. We all gather at a cabin and try not to kill each other. It's fun.
Anyway, I'll be there for a week, so expect my online activity to, well, evaporate. It's not that I won't be able to access the internet -- it's that I'm going to choose not to.
Well, unless it rains a lot.
Comics should update as per normal while I'm gone (I'm currently working on building a buffer), and I'll be stopping by the site at least once a day to make sure nothing explodes.
So yeah. Be good while I'm gone kids.
- Traegorn
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I'm just mad right now.
I wanted to write something eloquent, something moving - but I can't. I just mostly want to yell obscenities a lot and throw stuff.
What we've learned is that in this country you can ignore instructions from a 911 operator, chase down someone just trying to walk home, pick a fight, and then shoot them when you start losing. If you're black, you can't walk home without risking some psycho vigilante hunting you down and murdering you.
Then the douchebag will get away with it.
Welcome to f**king America.
- Traegorn
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So yesterday afternoon I released the fourth print collection of my webcomic The Chronicles of Crosarth. It collects chapters seven and eight of "Volume One," and only costs $9.99.
I wanted to get this book out sooner - honestly I should have had it out in May. But life got in the way, and without any cons on my schedule until August... well... I got lazy. In any case, it's out now and available for purchase both via my website and Amazon.com later this week.
The first three books are obviously still on sale, and you should buy them as well if you don't have them already.
So yeah. That's it.
- Traegorn
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So in an attempt to post about something a little more light hearted than my last two entries, I decided to do a "Random Art" post today. It's laziness incarnate, I know.
Today's image comes from a page of The Chronicles of Crosarth from a few weeks back. It's the first appearance of Samantha Von Taeliac's command ship, so I thought people might like to see what it looks like in full color.
Nothing much else to say than that.
- Traegorn
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 Recent allegations Ryan Kopf, who runs "Chrono, LC" (the company behind the conventions Anime Zap, QC Anime-zing!, Anime-SPARK!, AniMinneapolis, Meta Con, Domo Con, and Anime Midwest), committed rape during a convention he was running this May have led some to demand a boycott of his events.
I talked about this the other day in my blog, and the police report that has surfaced is both a genuine document and a disturbing read. The part that most convinced me was the detailed list of photographed injuries on the third page. When you combine that with at least one exgirlfriend of Mr. Kopf coming forward saying that he was abusive during their relationship as well, it paints a fairly damning picture.
So while Mr. Kopf has been convicted of no crime, it sure does seem like he's a guy worth avoiding. Avoiding events he runs seems like the right thing to do as well.
Here's the thing though - I had already decided long before this I'd never go to a Ryan Kopf run event.
My first exposure to Ryan Kopf was in late 2010/early 2011 when I first heard about Animinneapolis. When I asked around if anyone had heard about it, I got messages "warning" me about Ryan. These are people I've worked with for years and trust implicitly - and the first thing they wanted to do was warn me that Kopf was a bad guy. One report involved a Voice Actor writing a Con to specifically complain about Mr. Kopf, while others were complaints about nickel and diming his attendees.
You see, Ryan Kopf's conventions are run as a for profit enterprise. And while there's nothing inherently wrong with that, a lot of for profits like to cut corners where they can. It's true that some don't, but from what I've been told, Kopf is no exception to that rule. That may be okay for some, it means it's not the experience I want to have after I travel hours to an event.
I've only met Ryan once in person, and it was for a few minutes. It wasn't enough to decide if I liked him or not, but it was enough for me to be unimpressed with the man. He builds inauthentic, cardboard cut outs of experiences.
And that cavalier and irresponsible attitude was confirmed by a piece of information I discovered the other night: Ryan Kopf's conventions have staff members as young as fourteen.
Now, I'm not familiar enough with labor law, and volunteering with "for profit" entities has always seemed sketchy to me, but there's a larger problem here. Having minors police and manage your event put both them and your attendees in danger. It's irresponsible and a liability no well run event should have. And while some events allow volunteers as young as sixteen and seventeen, fourteen is far too young.
So, in the end, Ryan Kopf may not only be a dangerous person to be around, but his events may be unsafe as well.
And that's why I won't be attending any.
I'd gone back and forth about writing this particular post. I mean, I write a comic about conventions (whose readership is largely convention workers), and I co-founded Wisconsin's longest running Anime Convention. I want to be clear though that I only write this as myself, and my opinions are not necessarily indicative of those of No Brand Con Inc. or any allied events. I felt strongly enough though that I didn't feel comfortable staying quiet.
Update 10/17/2013: Ryan Kopf has now sent me a Cease and Desist Letter.
- Traegorn
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Content Warning: As implied by the headline, this entry contains a frank discussion of rape and rape culture.
A version of this appeared on my Tumblr blog earlier today.
Recently allegations that Ryan Kopf (organizer behind several conventions including Animinneapolis and Anime Midwest) has committed rape have been circulating the internet. If you're curious about the exact details, you can find them here. Now whether you choose to believe Mr. Kopf is guilty or not, one of the questions that's been asked a lot is "Why didn't she press charges?" David Capito wrote an interesting response to this, but I wanted to add my two cents in as well.
Every time someone tries to tell me rape culture isn't a real thing, I think about how many women I know who have been victims of rape at one point or another. And those are just the ones who trusted me enough to tell me. I'm completely sure there are more. Here's the thing - none of these women ever reported their rape.
Why? Because we put rape victims through the wringer in this country. It's a ridiculous monstrosity against justice and humanity, but that's the current reality.
I've been working cons for a long ass time (16 or 17 years now?), and there's this weird perception that the bubble in which cons exist is somehow safer than the rest of the world. That "one of us" wouldn't do something like that. Well I'll tell you something, for damn sure "one of us" could do something like that. I can guarantee you that at, say, No Brand Con, in its over a decade of history has had at least one sexual assault. In fact, I promise you it has.
Because I was Floor Manager on duty when one of the victim's friends reported it to the staff.
It's been many years since this happened, but I remember quite clearly asking the young woman to report it to the police, but she was too afraid to. There was no evidence and she feared no one would believe her. So it went unreported.
Conventions are filled with the same people you find on the street, and the sad fact is a percentage of them are rapists. Most of whom will never get caught. Because our society and culture kind of sucks. I'm not saying the allegations against a certain convention organizer are true or not -- I met him for a whole two minutes once at a con, so I don't know him -- but don't dismiss them just because people in the convention scene are "different."
Because they aren't.
- Traegorn
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 I mentioned to some people a while back that I was working on a soundtrack for The Chronicles of Crosarth as the next Lt. Snorkel album.
It was kind of a random whim, but one I've done at least a little bit of work on -- so I thought I'd share some of the in-progress tracks.
Now I want to be clear, these are not finished songs. They may mutate significantly before I put the final versions online.
In any case - here we go:
1. The Vigilant Son
2. A Dance With Friday
3. One Eyed Old Man
The track names are, obviously, references to three of the main characters. The album itself is going to be quite eclectic in style - some tracks traditional, others heavily electronic. In any case, let me know what you think.
- Traegorn
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 Before Crysta and I ever moved to Lafayette, I decided to google the area and look for interesting landmarks and things to look out for. An odd footnote I ran across back then was the Operation Skywatch tower in Cairo, IN. But it was so odd, I just sort of filed it away and didn't think about it.
Then, randomly on Sunday (years after reading about it) I decided we should track it down.
Cairo (pronounced KAY-ro I'm informed by the internet, much like the town in Illinois) isn't much of a town - if you can even call it that. It's just a few houses that happen to be relatively near each other. You won't find it on most maps, but various websites provided me with the GPS coordinates.
For those who don't know, Operation Skywatch was a program implemented in the 1950s, where 8000 towers were built across the country and staffed by local volunteers 24 hours a day. Their purpose was the very Cold War task of watching the skies for Soviet bombers. These watchtowers were used because at the time low altitude radar wasn't available -- and I think it probably made people feel like they were doing something to help.
To get there we traveled down some random county roads, and pulled onto a mostly gravel, dead-end street. Tucked away where you almost won't see it is the tiniest "park" I've seen. The small plot of land contains the tower itself, a historical marker, a statue/monument dedicated to the volunteers who staffed the tower, and enough room for one car to park.
While the "park" is maintained (someone mows the lawn, flies the flag on the flagpole), the tower itself is in terrible condition. From photos online, I can tell that at one point the tower had stairs and a platform at the top, but all of that has either rotted away or been blown down. In truth, I fear this strange little memorial to the paranoia of the 50s may not last another decade.
And that would be too bad.
If you find yourself in rural Indiana, you should find this place while you still can.
- Traegorn
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Recent allegations Ryan Kopf, who runs "Chrono, LC" (the company behind the conventions Anime Zap, QC Anime-zing!, Anime-SPARK!, AniMinneapolis, Meta Con, Domo Con, and Anime Midwest), committed rape during a convention he was running this May have led some to demand a boycott of his events.