A Response to Our Argumentative Commenter, Matt, All in One Place for Your Convenience

Dearest Matt-

Here are responses to your recent comments here (Matt's statements below are in blue italics):

Matt sez:

Jess - As a race we have tribal natures, cliques even, so yes if someone you are trying to have any sort of relationship with has only art in common, that relationship is going nowhere.

Jess sez:
Your reading comprehension seems to be poor. I will simply repeat what I assume you were commenting on:

I have friends and relatives that I love very much, that believe the wackiest shit that drives me up the freaking wall. Does that mean I don't love them any more? Does that mean I avoid them completely? No. It means I act like an adult and instead of going "boohoohoo, you hurt my feeeelings cuz you differ/are vocal about your religous/political/dog-related/diet/younameit practices or beliefs," I just ignore the stuff that bothers me and concentrate on the things we both enjoy and have in common.

Matt sez:

I do have to say that curiosity got the best of me and I had to see if you even read my note about the religious issue.

Jess sez:
We read all of the comments. We only delete spam or truly abusive comments.

Matt sez:

I have no problem watching/being dealt 'blasphemous' jokes or similar content.

Jess sez:
That's nice, but it's not true. See below.

Matt sez:

My problem is the amount of it.

Jess sez:
So then you do have a problem with the anti-religious content. What's the cut-off? One post out of ten? One out of twenty? Out of fifty? Where, oh where, are the rules for these things? Perhaps we should consult Miss Manners. Or Dear Abby.

Matt sez:

Like I said before, I quit reading comics when I realized I was paying $40 bucks a week for them and they started resurrecting long dead heroes. Your blog had nothing to do with ending that. I only wanted to point out you had been my favorite artist throughout my reading years. Compliment like that should be worth something.

Jess sez:
No fan really wants to hear this, but except in certain cases, it's quite true: compliments are, in reality, worth nothing. They are nice to hear, but they rarely mean anything on a lasting level unless they are coming from a respected peer, or for some situations non-fan related, a loved one. That's not really very nice, but it's true. My parents think everything I do is just wonderful. I like to hear their compliments, it's very nice, but it doesn't make a lasting emotional impression.

Matt sez:

I can give two shits about keeping up on a blog. I liked your humanoid artwork and came back to check what's happening. It was the amount of anti-religion posts that was getting to me.

Jess sez:
I am on a very active canine breeding mailing list, and some of the breeding practices of the other breeders just drive me up the wall. Repeated posts about male dogs with no libido. Bitches with low progesterone, thyroid issues, allergies, poor-mothering instinct. Puppies that have to be helped along at every turn. I want to scream, "What the hell are you doing? Why would you do that? What is breeding dogs that are completely incapable of mating, whelping or caring for pups on their own going to do for the breed, or even your own lines? Don't you understand that fecundity and libido and mothering instinct can be hereditary?" I don't write that, though. Those screwed up dogs are loved and cared for by their people, and hey, if they want to breed those dogs who am I to tell them they're idiots?

Atheism and religious idiocy are interests of Brett's. He likes to post about them. Who are you to tell him that he posts about it too often?

Matt sez:

If you had to check a blog and scan through weeks of posts and we'll say every 7th post was something not to your taste, you might start to think there's an issue.

Jess sez:
No one has to check a blog. Holding a gun to a reader's head to get more hits went out of style years ago. I read a number of blogs. I scan through weeks of posts on topics I'm not interested in, usually training for some kind of sporting event like agility. Or rants about over-population and irresponsible breeders, those are real fun and some of the anti-breeding people are pretty virulent. Or articles about species or issues that aren't interesting to me. Some blogs I might read one post out of twenty or thirty. Boy, those people must have some kind of issue, writing a lot of posts about something they ::gasp:: care about.

Matt sez:

Believe in no God. That's your perogative. But I think you'd get just as annoyed if we held a conversation, and I name dropped Jesus every seventh sentence.

Jess sez:
If you think we're having a conversation here, you're sadly mistaken. The give and take of a natural conversation is not even close to the same thing as discourse on a blog or message board. There is no real give and take on a blog unless the writer makes it so, and yes, you will see some exchange of opinions on some of our posts. Steve, frequent commenter, friend, and believer in god, initiates a lot of discussion. When I speak to people in real life who have an interest in something I have no interest in, I steer the conversation away from those topics towards something we both like. Unless, of course, we feel like an argument. You, as a reader, cannot steer, have no right to steer, and no right tell Brett that he posts too much on any one topic, because this isn't a conversation, and it isn't your blog.

Matt sez:

I'm not crying at your lack of respect, just concerned.

Jess sez:
Concern troll is concerned. How sweet. Is it because you think we're going to hell?

Matt sez:

Thank the monkeys or primordial ooze.

Jess sez:
Why? What would the point be? I'm not descended from monkeys and ooze has no capability of appreciating thanks.

Brett - If anti-religion posts have been here the whole time, then that's my error.

Jess sez:
Yes, it is. Since you are in error, maybe you should stop digging the hole even deeper. You might even feel the need to apologize for your initial comment where you quite deliberately tried to make Brett feel badly.

I possibly only clicked art-related posts.

Jess sez:
And is there a particular reason you cannot do that now? Clicker on your mouse broken?

Matt sez:

I purchased some of the Marvel stuff you did, probably all of it, as I am a Marvel slut. Outside of that no, I didn't as I'm white trash. Sorry you're jaded enough to only be about the money. O_o Just ignore it?

Jess sez:
And where did this come from? Yes, money is important, because we do what we do as our sole means of income. Comic books feed us and support our hobbies. That is neither here not there and has nothing to do with being jaded and everything to do with making a living and having a life outside of work.

Matt sez:

Tables turn: I'm an artist but I support dog fighting. Make random posts about "cool dog fighting videos". Needless to say, you'd be turned off to ME for liking that stuff. I don't, but it's easy to say that when it's something as laughable as religion.

Jess sez:
Garbage. And a very poor argument, as well. Dog fighting is not the equivalent of being anti-religious. Dog fighting results in death and injury and pain and fear and it is illegal in all fifty states. Atheism and anti-religiousness are neither illegal (not yet, anyways), nor do they do physical harm. We are not responsible if your faith or your self-esteem is so weak that our mere written words can cause you mental harm.

Matt sez:

And yes, you say you weren't the best artist but there was something. You just needed to mold it. I suppose with enough training, I could be anything? I have an equilibrium issue, but by all that's holy I show Tony Hawk what for with some practice. Doubtful. OMG I could probably be a rocket scientist in my off time with some education! We're all created differently. Created. My mother's womb did not make me to factory settings. If so, move over bitch, I'm gonna gun for your job, with a little practice.

Jess sez:
There are no factory settings in reproducing by sexual means. The offspring inherits genes from each parent, and each offspring inherits a different set of genes. That is why all brothers and sisters are not exactly alike, and all pups or kittens in a litter are not the same. Asexual reproduction is different, btw, although I think they've learned that even parthenogenesis does not produce perfect clones in some species.

I won't get into the created thing, there is no valid evidence for creation by an entity of any kind.

Humans, like any animal, are the product of their genes, and propensity for certain tasks is hereditary to some extent. Brett's grandfather was a painter, both his mother and father can draw and his sister and brother both draw. My sister and brother can both draw, and my biological father did photography. My sister also has a strong interest in and affinity for animals, like me. Suspicious, eh?

Are there people who want to do something that they have no propensity for? Yes. I met a few of them in art school, people who could never go beyond a certain level no matter how hard they practiced. Fortunately, art is not particularly dangerous, so these people didn't hurt themselves other than wasting their time. I'm sure we've all met people are just terrible at something: driving, child-rearing, cooking, and not through lack of practice.

There are also people who have unknown skills, simply because they haven't really tried. True story: my first year of college I had to take Basic Drawing. This was a class that was acceptable as an elective for graduation credit for other majors so we had a lot of non-art majors there. We were using a book called "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" as a textbook, and it had exercises that would teach you to consciously access and use the right side of your brain. I switch easily from left to right, (except for mathematics), so this was of no interest to me until I saw it work. There was a woman who was a chemistry student, and her drawings were terrible. Her skill set had stopped somewhere when she was nine or so years old, very childlike work, all symbolism, no real ability to see when drawing from life, which is basically all we did in that class. After a couple of weeks of doing these exercises, she was good. She had real talent and easily caught up to the actual art majors in class. Did all the non-art majors catch up? No. She was the only that had real aptitude. She didn't give up on her chemistry major, though. Nor did she thank god for her new talent, as I recall.

Annnnd, I've digressed something awful. Sorry.

Matt, you should have let your initial, oh, so very dramatic comment stand and simply toddled off to do whatever it is that you like to do on the internet. Then we could have slept the sleep of the sickening, content in the knowledge that we'd driven a fan away from comics entirely! Such power!

Matt's original comment:

Haven't been to your blog in a while, thought I'd check up on the sweet artistry. The AMOUNT of anti-religion is too heavy for this fan. Believe what you want, but such commitment to negativity is sickening. Are you plagued by religious zealots or what? The skill you were given to breathe life into a drawing should be enough to thank God. Oh well. Thanks for taking away my last interest in comic book artistry.

Jess sez:
Be warned: you DO NOT come on OUR blog and make a comment clearly intended to insult and hurt, and think you're going to get off easy. In this tiny little unimportant universe, WE ARE GOD. You pull that shit here, expect to be smited.

Regards,
Jess

P.S. You are lucky that I decided to make this post, Matt, instead of letting Brett do it. He's far more blatantly insulting than I am, and he meanders even more than I do.