I recorded a vlog about my post election thoughts this year.
I haven't closed the comments on my site for this, but it's more because I can't do it per-post on the blog software I wrote that manages this site. If you feel the need to defend Donald Trump in the comments, please know I will be deleting them.
I know this blog shows up on my comics, and that my readers don't all agree with my politics. Again, I ask you to just stay silent on the matter if this is the case.
Because right now I am very, very angry.
In any case, if you're feeling stressed out... umm... here's a stock picture of some kittens sleeping I found? I mean, that's all I've got for you right now.
So exactly one week from now, the Nerd & Tie Expo will open its metaphorical doors to the public. We've been working hard towards this for the last year, and the fact that it's almost here... it's just kind of amazing.
Well, that and stressful as hell.
There's so many unknowns when you're starting a new con, and so much is on the line. Now, I'm 100% sure that the attendees of the Nerd & Tie Expo will have a good time, and that it'll be a pretty great con for everyone there... but other than that? Who knows. There's so much that can go wrong, and so much that can go right -- and you can't know how things will go until you get there.
And unknown variables always stress me out. Welcome to living with Anxiety.
I am excited though. We've got some great guests, some great events, and the team we've assembled over the last year are all really great people. I'm proud to work with them and call them my friends.
Putting on a convention is hard and a lot of work, but these events are important. Anyone who knows me well understands that I firmly believe that conventions are a vital part of creating real communities and are the foundation of maintaining a true geek subculture.
Twenty years ago a lot of us met in person at fanclubs, which made building real world communities a simple extension of fandom. And while college clubs still exist, these days a lot of that activity has shifted online instead. Online communities are great, don't get me wrong, but they lack personal interaction. The modern version of the convention lets us build that though -- and maintains those real world bonds that the geek subculture needs to survive.
Sorry... started getting a little preachy there for a minute.
So anywho, yeah -- Nerd & Tie Expo. In one week. Holy crap, this is happening. - Traegorn
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As those of you who follow this site may be aware, for the first half of 2016 I found myself fighting a lawsuit AnimeCon.org/Chrono LC CEO Ryan Kopf filed against me in the state of Iowa. It was over some of the coverage of his events I've written over the last couple of years (mostly thesetwo articles). He later amended the suit to include Nerd & Tie co-creator and contributor Pher Sturz.
It should be noted that Pher was added to that suit solely because of posts made on his personal Facebook page in support of me.
Eventually things ended, with the case against myself and Pher Sturz being dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. We had hoped that would be the end of this situation, but unfortunately rather than take the minor PR hit and move on, Mr. Kopf has decided to keep this going.
Late last week both Pher Sturz and I were served once again.
You see, Ryan Kopf has had his attorneys refile the case in the state of Illinois in late June. You can read the new petition (2016-M3-003898) here, but it is almost identical to the amended petition filed in the Iowa case. Pher and I are both named, along with Nerd & Tie itself (although that last bit is less important as Nerd & Tie is not its own legal entity -- as I am the sole legal owner of the site).
Now, as I said last time, I don't want to discuss details, but I still stand by what I wrote.
Unfortunately though, legal fees and lawyers are not exactly cheap, and we expect costs to be much higher this time around. So while we hate to do it, we're asking for your help again.
I've launched a new GoFundMe campaign, and if you can help contribute we'd appreciate it. We're asking for $6,000 right now, although we may need more down the road. I know it's a lot of money, but theres a good chance this case is going to drag out longer than the last one.
So this last weekend was Crysta and my sixth wedding anniversary. Rather than write anything, I just thought I'd share some photos of what we did instead.
I used to write about Politics a lot more in this blog. I mean, I used to write a lot more in general, but even now it's a topic I avoid. Which is weird, right? I have a degree in Political Science and I used to write about politics all the time. I think this is because my blog now gets displayed on the pages for my two comics -- UnCONventional and The Chronicles of Crosarth -- and I'm afraid of offending the readers of those comics.
Well... the readers of one of those comics. I'm not too worried about the UnCONventional readers -- those people probably can guess my opinions pretty easily.
The tragedy in Orlando this last weekend was so severe though that I can't help but think of anything else. Omar Mateen, a US citizen who had a history of spousal abuse, walked into a gay nightclub with guns he had purchased legally and opened fire. It was the deadliest mass shooting in our nation's history, and it's exhausting.
While Mateen claimed to have been acting in the name of ISIS, those closest to him claim he wasn't very religious. Even if he had been "radicalized," he was a homophobic and violent mad long before that.
And again, he was able to buy these guns legally.
And honest to god, I'm tired of it. Every single time a mass shooting happens, we point out that this doesn't happen in other countries, and that we need gun reform... and then nothing happens. I don't know if background checks would have stopped this incident, but it continues to be insane that it's easier to get a gun than a car in this country.
This needs to change.
But it won't. Because ever since the gun manufacturers took over the NRA, any chance of serious gun reform went away. And the pundits are going to misdirect - they're going to look at the claimed ISIS connection and ignore the extreme anti-LGBT+ atmosphere in this country.
But heck, the same people who have attacking LGBT+ rights over the last few years have tried to play disingenuous lip service to the victims.
This whole Presidential election has been exhausting. I've never been shy about my affiliation with the Democratic party, but I've never had problems maintaining friendships or working professionally with Republicans. Usually, while we fundamentally disagree on most issues, I at least know that candidates the other person supports are trying to do their best for the country.
I mean, sure -- I think they're wrong, but I know they have a vested interest in keeping the country from burning down.
This election hasn't been like that though. Even if you ignore Donald Trump's bigotry, rape accusations, and lack of experience running a successful business, his economic policies actually risk bankrupting the global economy. The only think Trump is good at is promoting the brand "Trump" -- which makes him so dangerous I can't even begin to explain it.
He's not someone who should be nominating a Supreme Court Justice, let alone be given the nuclear codes.
I know this is rambling, and later this week I'll do some "behind the scenes" posts from one of my comics to bounce this off the front pages of my sites... but right now I'm exhausted, and I'm really tired of feeling this way. - Traegorn
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UnCONventional has come quite a long ways since its beginning, and one of the important ways its shifted has been which cast members are considered "main characters." The biggest shift happened starting with Chapter Five, as Tara had left the story at the end of Chapter Four (though she's made a single cameo since), and Phil was effectively demoted to "background extra" after spending a year as effectively "main character in name only." Out of the original team, Phil was the least prolific.
I realized last night that I needed to make another change to the main cast list for Chapter Seven - I needed to demote Max to the secondary cast.
I came to this while looking at appearance frequency (which is pretty easy to check on the site with the character tags), when I realized that with the current strip, Ruth has finally appeared more than Phil. This got me thinking about all of the other characters, so I started to go through the numbers.
Like, Veronica and Phil have the same number of appearances, but this isn't as notable as she was originally introduced as a secondary character back in Chapter One. Megan surpassed Phil a while ago too, but she also showed up in the secondary cast long before getting promoted.
Sarah still has the fewest appearances out of the "main characters," but as she wasn't brought in until partway through Chapter Five, that's to be expected. Lynn reigns supreme, but Max isn't that far behind... for now.
You see, I looked at the number of times Max has appeared in Chapter Seven so far. We've had over fifty strips at this point, and Max has only appeared in four of them. To put that in perspective, Awesome Roy has appeared five times in Chapter Seven. I then thought about the storylines I had planned for the rest of the year, and realized that I didn't really have much use for Max in the upcoming stuff.
There's just nothing really to do with him.
So I realized I should just bite the bullet and reduce his credit. I mean, maybe I have some future storyline for Max, but I can't see that happening before the final chapter (Chapter Ten). It also has the weird effect that my main cast is currently exclusively women, and all but one of them lie on the LGBTQA+ spectrum. That... that wasn't on purpose. Honestly, I'm not sure how that happened at all.
So one of the challenges of writing any comic is knowing exactly when it should end. I mean, I've known since early on in The Chronicles of Crosarth's lifetime that it was going to end mid-2019 (it's going to be about 800 pages in the end), but that comic had a very planned story arc from the start.
But UnCONventional is a very different story. While I usually come up with the big arcs years in advance, a lot of it is written just based off of what I feel like at any given moment. The problem is though that over time I've started to run out of unique stories.
I mean, there's still some stuff I haven't done yet, but there are only so many unique events that can happen at conventions. So, a while ago, I decided I was just going to have to stop.
Now nobody panic, okay?
First off, y'all know I'm a planner, right? I have story arcs laid down for UnCONventional for a while, and I intend to complete all of them. That means that this "end date" is the end of November 2019. That means you have a few years more of story left. Secondly, this doesn't mean it's the last you'll hear from the UnCONventional cast -- I still love telling their personal stories, and some may find their way into other projects of mine.
Chapter 10 will be final UnCONventional chapter though, and that's okay.
I know it seems weird to announce something like this so far out, but I made this decision a while ago, and it seems strange not to share it with you guys. I've always been pretty open about the process behind the comics, and to not tell you guys about such a big behind the scenes decision felt odd...
...so now you know.
Oh, and just because both my comics are ending at different points in 2019 doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing comics entirely -- I'm just going to launch new ones. Maybe do a few short run, stand alone stories.
So this weekend, for the second year in a row, I'm going to be at Anime Central in Rosemont, IL. For those of you curious, I'm going to be working two different tables -- both my Trae Dorn Productions table (H04) and the Nerd & Tie Expo ambassador table (CT14). Here's where they are on the show floor:
I'll have the latest UnCONventional and The Chronicles of Crosarth print collections at the TDP table and you can prereg at the NEXPO table, but most I'd just be happy if you stopped by and said hello.
![Trae Dorn [dot] Com](http://www.trhonline.com/traedornproductionslogo-2025-web.png)
