   Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
Tomorrow, April 1st 2025, we have a massively important State Supreme Court election here in the state of Wisconsin. It will decide the balance of the state supreme court, and it's vitally important that we get Susan Crawford elected. Elon Musk has literally poured millions of dollars into Brad Schimel's campaign, and we are fighting for our lives here. I've already voted, and if you haven't yet and you live here... make sure you do.
But no matter what happens tomorrow, no matter what the result is, the fight is far from over. ICE agents are grabbing people off the streets, our public institutions are being systematically destroyed, and our international and diplomatic relations with historically close allies are just, honestly, fucked right now. Today is Trans Day of Visibility, and trans and queer rights have been under steady attack by the right. As a nonbinary person and member of the trans community, I'm genuinely scared for a lot of my friends right now.
But we fight. We stand up. We survive.
If we accept defeat, we are handing victory to those who want us dead. By living and fighting, we carry on to the next day and then the day after that. I know I posted it right after the election last November, but there's a pretty famous Joe Hill quote everyone should keep in mind: "Don't waste any time mourning. Organize!"
Go out, hug your friends. Build a local community if you can, and get involved in your local politics. Make sure you call your Reps and Senators every day if you can, and for pete's sake fucking vote.
We can make it as long as we don't stop fighting.
Remember that on April 5th at 11AM Eastern/10AM Central you can join me for the Critical Thinking Witches' Collective's April Brew virtual event! Attendance is free, and you can register here!
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Can you say Awkward?
My dad brought me to my first convention, and wants to come with me to conventions again. In all honesty my dad really is the “Cool Dad” for fellow geeks, so I guess I may never understand.
MY DAD’S -DEAD-!! *sob* *sob* …okay, he seriously is, but it was years ago.
I think Anime would have confused him, but he liked Star Trek.
Mom took my brother and I to a couple of Conventions back when we couldn’t drive ourselves. She found them weird, but accepted she had weird kids. Enough stuff around she didn’t get bored.
I had my dad *staff* my convention.
Wow I don’t really want to talk about my dad cause I have a variety things to say about him. He’s accepted my geekiness now but growing he was a prick about it. He had his own interests mainly airplanes(having a private pilot’s license and all) and deer hunting. Plus he’s done lot in the last 10 years to break my family apart.
Wow, Trae, looking at this comic and Sarah’s model sheet, I’m very impressed at your ability to get so much expression out of a stick figure.
It’s the way I’ve designed her eyes. The smaller eyes and the eyebrows give her a lot more flexibility in expressions. Sarah is an expressive, extroverted character — so I needed her to have a range. Contrast that with Ruth — Ruth is always in a state of calm, even when stressed out. She’s much more introverted, so she emotes quietly. Because of that, her eyes never really change. In fact, she almost never smiles.
I do think about these things when I design the characters. 🙂
I’m probably going to be unconsciously examining the other characters’ eyebrows from now on… 😀
Early characters who I wanted to do more with their eyes are like Lynn, Veronica and Megan — where the brow is integrated. Awesome Roy was the first to get separate eyebrows (to go with his dot eyes).
Scrappy and Barnes both have eyebrows, but you can’t always see Barnes’s because of his hair. Random other characters, like Marcus, do too — I just can’t remember off the top of my head.
Between my wife and I, we have 5 kids. We’ve been taking 4 of them to conventions for the past 5 years. We’re also on staff for our local con and have roped a couple of them onto staff, as well.