Ask Gisele and Dave Questions Here

['J']

All trans people are 'born that way'...

of course, this is assuming a high degree of what we call in psychology 'biological determinism'. to say that it's a contentious idea in general is an understatement, but when you start getting anywhere near issues related to anyone's concept of identity, it gets downright messy.

the other side of things is the idea that physiology is one of numerous conditions that shape a person during their life. it's one of the big three, but usually not the determining factor (the others being personal experience, and social/cultural pressures).

a general rule of thumb we learn in biopsych is that the more complex a behavior is, the more it has to be learned via personal development, rather than being inborn.




i'm really not looking to start anything here, so i'll leave it at that.

[wiseguy]

back to the Q

basically we want to know

Senna was a Brazilian boy through his childhood, than decided to be a girl when a teen in high school or after becoming an adult in Brazil, or she developed her breasts "naturally" (without taking hormones) when she reached puberty

[Fluffy]

This is essentially what I was meaning to ask - I just have a terrible time getting my thoughts down properly at times.

Thanks for clarifying what my question was, wiseguy.

And apologies to Artemisia for any offense/insult I may have caused you.

[Artemisia]

J,

Studies into the brain structures of trans people have shown a high degree of similarity between their brains and the brains of people of the sex opposite that which they were born. A recent study into the toy preferences of children showed a high degree of correlation between those with female patterned brains and what society tends to think of as female toys, and vice-versa. The evidence, though, is that society determines what is typical for male and female genders, but not the person's gender imprint. Gender is broken up into several different forms including gender identity (one's physical gender if you will), gender expression and a few others that I can't remember right now.

There is evidence that transsexuality is, basically, a form of intersexuality. This is not surprising given the high number of people who are both transsexual and intersexual.

There are a small population of transsexuals who aren't, shall we say, born this way, but most never do well overall. There are a number of gay men who transition because they want to no longer be gay men due to religious beliefs and feel that being a straight woman is better for them. Of course, things don't really work that way. I think I tried to explain this in the forums before. Sexuality can be a bit tricky and a lot of them have found out that, on the other side of the surgeries, they were still homosexual, but not rather than preferring men, they preferred women.

Fluffy,

I wasn't offended or angry. I was more frustrated. Basically, you were asking if Senna is transgender or intersexed. She could be both, of course. She may have had androgynine insensitivity syndrome- that is she could never properly absorb testosterone, have klinefelters- that is her sex chromosomes are XXY- she might even have ovarian tissues inside her that never formed full ovaries and so forth. Having AIS or Klinefelters doesn't automatically presume that someone is trans. In fact, there are a lot of transsexuals and transgenders who have undiagnosed intersexual conditions

So no offense or insult

[Villainous_Muse]

I've actually got quite a few questions for the both of you, mostly for Giselle though (Sorry Dave *hugs*)

Question 1: For Giselle, I'm actually curious as to why you never seem to show any vaginal or penis imagery. I mean it's not like I'm expecting you to draw pictures of DiDi spreading her labia or anything like that (That would be hawt though... I think I'll draw that... Anyways!) but you seem to be fairly liberal with -everything- else in regards to nudity (Boobs, butts, tummies, everything) and even draw sexual positions with careful choice of angle to keep any gender defining organs from showing. It just seems silly to me on an already mature audience site to not go balls deep (pun not intended) ya know?

Question 2: Again, for Giselle; you must get this all the time and it's a fairly short one but: What inspired your character designs?

Question 3: For Dave; How does your creative process with Giselle work in regards to jokes and story telling?

Question 4: For Giselle; Would you be willing to chat/IM with me on a regular basis? I know it seems kinda out there but I'm working my butt off on trying to get my own webcomic off the ground and I really could use, as you put it before "an old hat" to wear when things are getting confusing or I'm approaching uncharted territory. If you think that would be a bit strange or uncomfortable, perfectly understandable, I raise my eyebrow at random IM chat requests from internet strangers. I just think your experience would be invaluable to have as I dunk my toe in to rather hostile and unforgiving waters.

Question 5: For Giselle; How did you feel when Tom what's-his-face closed down Penny and Aggie and what's your take on what happened? (Optional question, might be bordering too personal)

Question 6: For Dave; Random girl walks in to a store where you sell comics and starts talking to you about a webcomic and then asks for you to co-write, what were your thoughts at the time?

Question 7: Last one I promise for both of you; What is your favourite colour? Oh also, would either of you like to discuss my webcomic with me? I have concept designs and am making the first pages already, I'm curious as to other peoples' input on it.

[wiseguy]

about no sexual organs showing or no showing of the actual sex acts (oral sex or intercourse)

is basically the same reasons a movie producer will show or not show things in a movie in order to make sure a movie is PG, PG13 or R and does not get to the point of becoming NC-17 or go into the "porn category" that has nothing to do with the MPAA (porn industry basically have "X" for soft porn and "XXX" for hardcore)

if DaGiT started showing "too much", they would be supposed to make the strip less Accessible, even to the point of forcing one to "log in" to see the strip itself (not just the forums) AFTER giving up a credit card number to "prove oneself as an adult"

[Giz]

This is essentially what I was meaning to ask.

Artemisia has answered as best as we can at this point. We don't want to go too deep 'cause we want to keep our options open. At this point, she's trans and might've had surgery for some things. All depends on when she made the decision. I'm sure we'll eventually touch on it.

Question 1: For Giselle, I'm actually curious as to why you never seem to show any vaginal or penis imagery.

'Cause our ad providers wouldn't allow it. If we showed it, we'd be considered porn, and we'd then be a porn site with porn ads. Meaning, actual penis and vagina in your face all the time around the comic. We just didn't want that.

Question 2: Again, for Giselle; you must get this all the time and it's a fairly short one but: What inspired your character designs?

Zii just came out of the blue. DiDi was inspired by Samantha of That Wilkin Boy, and Gary is a cross between my boyfriend & Dave. lol

Question 3: For Dave; How does your creative process with Giselle work in regards to jokes and story telling?

Not sure how often he visits the forum, so I'll answer just in case. We generally discuss what we want to happen together. We then run our ideas by T Campbell, our editor, and our other collaborators, Shouri & Cassandra. When time comes to write it down, whoever feels more comfortable doing a first draft does it. It's generally more Dave on that front but for some things, it's me. Then, the first draft gets passed to the other, who then tweaks it if he or she feels they need to. It's then sent to T Campbell for a final edit. When we can't come to an agreement between us ('cause sometimes there's 2 versions of the same strip), we put the versions up for a vote, which includes me, Dave, T, Shouri & Cass.

Question 4: For Giselle; Would you be willing to chat/IM with me on a regular basis?

It's best to email me. This way, I can attend to it when I have the time.

Question 5: For Giselle; How did you feel when Tom what's-his-face closed down Penny and Aggie and what's your take on what happened? (Optional question, might be bordering too personal)

Well, "what's-his-face" is T Campbell, our editor, and someone who I've known and worked with since 2000. When I decided to leave, T felt he still had some juice left in him to keep going with it for a while. He was free to do what he wanted in general (we're co-owners of P&A after all.) If I had been there, I'm sure some things would've been different, but I wasn't, so we'll never know.

Question 6: For Dave; Random girl walks in to a store where you sell comics and starts talking to you about a webcomic and then asks for you to co-write, what were your thoughts at the time?

I made him discover webcomics. We became friends (via the store) before I asked him to co-write with me. I had no idea what his writing chops were (aside from a few things here & there,) but I was pleasantly surprised. I think he's quite happy that I asked him to collaborate. He's always wanted to work in comics.

Question 7: Last one I promise for both of you; What is your favourite colour? Oh also, would either of you like to discuss my webcomic with me? I have concept designs and am making the first pages already, I'm curious as to other peoples' input on it.

Dave's fav color is purple, mine is orange. You can certainly email us about your comic. Just decide what kind of comments you want first, flattery or actual constructive criticism that might hurt.

[Villainous_Muse]

Awesome and thanks for all the answers Giz! =D

I didn't mean any offense regarding Tom Campbell, I just couldn't recall his name on the spot when I was typing it (didn't occur to me to look it up xD)

I'll e-mail you then and just to give you a head's up, I always want constructive critique. Flattery gets me nowhere (ego boosts are nice but generally more destructive than helpful when trying to improve) but critique without advise on how to improve is lame. The way my stepdad put it was: If I make you food and I ask you how it is and you say "It's terrible" and I ask why, your response is "Because you're homosexual". Well that's great, what's wrong so I can fix it? That kinda deal.

So constructive critique (as long as it isn't "you're homosexual" as a reason for things aren't quite that awesome) is always preferred over ego strokery.

Thanks for your time!

Oh, sorry to be greedy but I do have another question: What were some unexpected problems you've come across when making webcomics and how did you as an artist over come them?

[Fluffy]

So, just out of curiosity - have you guys done conventions before and, if so, what was the oddest/funniest moment you can recall?

If this is a personal question, I apologize in advance.

[Giz]

I didn't mean any offense regarding Tom Campbell

Tom is not his name. He goes by "T".

What were some unexpected problems you've come across when making webcomics and how did you as an artist over come them?

Well, I got into webcomics as a graphic designer, so a lot of problems I might've encountered were already taken care of; like how to set-up/design a website, for instance. I can't think of any specific problems other than that. Just be prepared to have a day job if you don't make enough money with webcomics. Took me a few years to get to that point.

So, just out of curiosity - have you guys done conventions before and, if so, what was the oddest/funniest moment you can recall?

We haven't done any together, yet. We might though. Problem with cons is that it eats up precious time to work on webcomics, that readers are expecting on regular update days without fail.

[Tenjen]

Hey Giz, recently i've noticed that a lot of the webcomic collectives are bonding to each other in some form.

Zoom/seven seas entertainment, Misfile, Hiveworks and pixie trix. A lot of comics i know have joined one or the other collective and these collectives have joined each other while retaining their identity. I'am asking this now cause it "came home to me" when krazzykrow's Spinnerette joined Hiveworks too.

my question is, whats going on in the webcomics industry? (saying this in a neutral and pondering tone, not paranoid or accusatory) this seems to be a rather large shift.

edit: wondering if i should ask the other authors here the same too.

[Artemisia]

Now I have to wonder if T will end up merging The Tea Room over to here too....

[Artemisia]

Given all of the tension lately I just wanted to say that I really do enjoy reading these comics. I kind of feel you may not hear that enough, especially lately.

[dmh3000]

Something I came up with during the arc where it looked like Gary and Kiley were going to get together. It seems, from how I'm reading it anyway, the original plan was for the two to get together for a while until Yuki returned to Japan, but then that was abandoned, I'm guessing because while they work as a couple, them being together doesn't work in the strip as they ease the insecurities where most of their jokes come from (Gary helps Kiley realise she's more than her body, Kiley acknowledges Gary as a person rather than someone to manipulate and subjugate). I was just wondering if that was what happened or it was always intended to just be temporary.

Also, will we get more Kiley later? It was always interesting to have someone level-headed and compassionate in comparison to the insane/self-centred ones.

[Giz]

Kiley was used exactly as we had planned. However, we're not done with her. She'll be back. ;)