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99 thoughts on “Sara Mayhew's Response (Updated)

  1. 12

    I agree with Mayhew this time, actually.

    All this time we have spent living in reality and we never sent her a postcard. I think this passive aggressive request for us to send her a postcard from reality was bound to happen.

  2. 14

    But… but… that’s where real eyebrows are, on the bones of the eye socket. Well, mine are, anyway, where the hairs can be useful stopping crap from getting in my eyes. OMG, they didn’t work! I still have the image of the drawing stuck in my eyes!

  3. 15

    It’s nice to see Mayhew acknowledging that she’s only an occasional visitor to Reality. Perhaps if she made more of an attempt to assimilate while she’s here, she wouldn’t be such an obvious tourist.

    Hey, can someone mash this up with one of her tweets about maturity or being nice or Surly Amy’s baby art for babies? I need a nice ironic juxtaposition to end my night.

    Something about the Skepchicks being boozy next to the ‘I hope everyone drank lots of Cosmos for Carl Sagan Day’ from the ScienceySadie account would be good too.

  4. 16

    Okay, folks, I know there’s no substance to the response to critique, but this is where I step in and mention that taste is subjective. Plenty of people like Sara’s artwork. (A few are even huge fans of this particular piece, though I doubt it’s for the art.) That you don’t isn’t necessarily a comment on its quality.

  5. 17

    I actually always thought Sara was a good artist. I liked her stuff, anyway… back when it was being advertised by Surly Amy, amongst others (which just makes her endgame even more mysterious… I feel like she had more fans and more of a following when Surly Amy was pushing her and she was modeling SurlyRamics… wouldn’t she have wanted to keep that?)…

  6. 19

    Still, the image does cry out for analysis.

    F’rinstance, viewed in blow-up, the cheek-spots appear to have Saturn-rings around them. ???

    Those eyes, if open (and placed in a reasonable zone on her face) would be princess-sized!

    And that little gap in the chin-line, right below the mouth: does that mean the figure feels such distress that she’s actually drooling?

  7. 20

    @NateHevens #7

    that “first set of eyebrows” just over the eyes aren’t supposed to be eyebrows, but lines representing the bones of the eye socket.

    The facial expression is way off. For the brows to wander that far from the suborbital socket, even in manga/caricature, the bottom half of the face would have to be different. She’s trying to convey both extreme amusement or amazement with “fuck you” nonchalance. Doesn’t work. (Somehow I’m not surprised.)

  8. 23

    The fact is, Stephanie, that whole “it’s all a matter of taste” business sounds like the standard DeviantART excuse for shitty drawing. But the fact is, you can shout “but it’s my STYYYYYYLE!” all you want, that won’t turn a bad drawing into a good one. And even aside from the arsehole content, and even though it’s supposed to be “manga style” (which is a shallow-as-fuck take on what actually goes into manga), it’s still a bad drawing.

    Clearly studying animation for a few years (although it did burn out in the end) has made me a little sensitive to such things. Oh, well.

  9. 24

    NateHeaven (#7)

    that “first set of eyebrows” just over the eyes aren’t supposed to be eyebrows, but lines representing the bones of the eye socket.

    Actually, it’s supposed to be the top crease of the upper eyelid (below the bone of the eye socket). You can see it all the time in manga. Either Sara doesn’t understand the style she’s attempting to imitate or she’s just being incredibly sloppy here. Or both.

  10. 27

    I’m sorry. I have to make a liar of myself.

    @A. Noyd #24

    Actually, it’s supposed to be the top crease of the upper eyelid (below the bone of the eye socket).

    I wondered about that. If it’s supposed to be the top crease of the upper eyelid, then the line of the nose shouldn’t curve toward it, as it does on the left side of the character’s face. That line curves toward the brow line.

  11. 28

    @Stacy #27

    I wondered about that. If it’s supposed to be the top crease of the upper eyelid, then the line of the nose shouldn’t curve toward it, as it does on the left side of the character’s face. That line curves toward the brow line.

    I think it’s more she doesn’t do NEARLY enough life drawing, which is a weakness common to a lot of weeaboo “manga” artists. There’s this messed-up idea that referencing and drawing from life is a crutch that a good artist doesn’t need (and they’re always in a hurry to toss it away) instead of a common tool used by professionals like in…well, real life.

  12. 29

    The thing about being good at manga is that, to everyone but manga conoisseurs, your work is indistinguishable from other manga artists (especially if your work is kind of unremarkable and somewhat otaku-by-the-numbers). But that’s trivially true and it’s the case with any highly prescriptive style of art.

    That aside, what this “postcard from reality” says to me is that Mayhew only vacations there – after all, you don’t send postcards from your home town, do you? And how familiar with a place can you become if you only go there occasionally?

    Anyway, it’s cute that she sat down for half an hour (I guess) and drew this (as opposed to just taking a bird-flipping selfie) – clearly she really cares. If she didn’t, I expect she’d take the standard #bravehero advice and grow a thicker skin/don’t feed the trolls/[insert standard bollocks].

  13. 30

    Stacy (#27)

    If it’s supposed to be the top crease of the upper eyelid, then the line of the nose shouldn’t curve toward it, as it does on the left side of the character’s face.

    Correct, it shouldn’t. That’s part of Sara’s error. Actual manga artists draw the curve of the nose going toward the eyebrow, even when there’s an exaggerated separation between the eyebrow and the top crease of the eyelid. The other part of her error is how the crease lines are too long. They should either be shorter (indicating just the top of the crease) or come down to meet the corners of the eyes.)

    ~*~*~*~*~*~

    Kels (#28)

    I think it’s more she doesn’t do NEARLY enough life drawing, which is a weakness common to a lot of weeaboo “manga” artists.

    Right. Where manga artists are drawing stylized people, Sara is drawing other people’s drawings of stylized people. And it shows.

  14. 31

    Sorry, that really should be “Sara is drawing other people’s stylized people.” I don’t think she actually copies other people’s drawings only their styles.

  15. 32

    @Hankstar #29

    The thing about being good at manga is that, to everyone but manga conoisseurs, your work is indistinguishable from other manga artists (especially if your work is kind of unremarkable and somewhat otaku-by-the-numbers).

    Actually, to anyone who knows manga, this sort of thing is easily identifiable as a westerner doing a shallow imitation of what they perceive to be manga, even though it doesn’t actually resemble most manga. And especially not the good stuff. Actual manga includes a wide range of styles, from highly styllized to highly realistic, in marked contrast to all this same-looking wanna-be stuff.

    And yet, other wanna-be’s eat this stuff up, so she’ll always have an audience.

  16. 34

    Kels (#32)

    Actually, to anyone who knows manga, this sort of thing is easily identifiable as a westerner doing a shallow imitation of what they perceive to be manga, even though it doesn’t actually resemble most manga.

    Even Westerners who are quite good artists in their own style have this problem. Like Colleen Doran drawing the disaster known as Mangaman. *shudder*

  17. 36

    Someone on that page of hers actually wrote “Don’t those people have day jobs?” Seriously. Like, no concept of how much time Sara and that group spend policing other people. Unreal.

  18. 41

    Stephanie wrote:

    Those are usually called “skeptics”

    Don’t confuse the poor dear, Stephanie; he’s not going to cope well with the fact that ‘skeptic’ doesn’t actually mean ‘person who refuses to accept as fact things they don’t like to hear and uses social media to try and silence the people disseminating those facts’.

  19. 42

    I should also note that all I had to do was check that I was remembering things correctly and that Sara was reaching enough people to bother with, because despite the suggestion of some guy on Facebook before Sara blocked me, I had checked things out when Rebecca wrote about them in March.

  20. 44

    chigau, Sara’s been calling me a stalker, with the suggestion that I’m feverishly checking out everything she says. In this case, I simply saw that she’s said something that conflicted with my memory.

  21. 45

    Sara’s right nonetheless. Who the fuck does such things ?

    Sara’s right about what? The claims she’s made that are demonstrably either false or so unreliable as to be unbelievable by any reasonable standard of evidence? That’s a funny definition of “right” there.

    Who the fuck does what things? Fact-checking offensive and libelous smears? As Stephanie said, that’s one of the thinks skeptics should be doing. If Sara didn’t spend her time trying to micromanage the SGU, maybe she’d have more time to do some actual skepticism.

    As it happens, this response that is entirely devoid of content, nicely illustrates that she doesn’t have a way of defending her claims. It’s almost Rand Paul-ian in its belligerence in missing the point.

  22. 46

    Re: the update: I like that she’s casually throwing around the word “giant” regarding someone frequently the target of asinine fat-shaming, while a quick look at her Twitter feed reveals a recent spat with Masalaskeptic regarding the way that women are driven to suicide by image-based shaming.

    I also found this tweet, which would go nicely with this one.

    She’s like a bottomless well of hypocrisy.

  23. 49

    @ Stephanie Zvan, 48:

    I don’t understand. How does one become flicking insane? Did she install a switch somewhere on you? Am I missing some outre cultural reference?

    FLICK! I FLICK AT THEE!

  24. 50

    So funny coming from a beached whale that makes eyeballs bleed and who has to hide behind a censorship iron curtain because none of her gibberish ever holds up to any kind of scrutiny.

    Why is it that Mayhew, Drescher et al. have no requirement for moderation on their blogs? It’s because they’re not vicious idiots spewing unsubstantiated poison. There’s a lesson there – but it’s beyond a bitter, self-loathing hag like you.

  25. 51

    @Tom Foss #45
    Pffft, what I mean by “such things” – creepy crawling after the details and doings of people who explicitely stated that they want no contact with you. That’s the freaking textbook definition of stalking.

    @PatrickG #49
    Flicking = Fricking. L=R + Doube eyebrows = Anime/Manga/PseudoJap cultural references

  26. 52

    Schlumbumbi, you’re saying Sara’s a stalker?

    StepperGoose, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s because you and your friends, assuming you have any, don’t comment on either of their blogs.

  27. 54

    Schlumbumbi @ 50:

    …creepy crawling after the details and doings of people who explicitely stated that they want no contact with you. That’s the freaking textbook definition of stalking.

    I’m glad you agree that that’s a bad thing. Do you agree that hypocrisy and projection are also bad things?
    How about throwing a two-year tantrum over “guys, don’t do that”?
    How about hounding bloggers off the web because you disagree with them?
    How about everyfuckingthing else Mayhew’s ilk do on a daily basis?

  28. 55

    Stephanie Zvan (#48)

    Oh, geez. Also from the Tumblr, from before my post went up: http://fourlights.tumblr.com/post/66514649125/tachibanamakoto-cutely-flips-u-off

    Well, shit. I guess I was wrong in #31. She does copy other people’s drawings. (Or, rather, other people’s alterations of other people’s drawings.) I honestly never thought my expectations of Sara Mayhew would ever be too high.

    Also, you can see how in the original the eyebrows and eyelid creases make waaaay more sense.

  29. 56

    Steppergoose, a pissant, wrote:

    Why is it that Mayhew, Drescher et al. have no requirement for moderation on their blogs?

    Because they’re well aware that their opposition, as you’ve so aptly demonstrated, are better people than they are and will not stoop to their level.

  30. 57

    Part of me wants to take that drawing… and add some unicorns and a dragon to it. But keep the “from reality” part.

    I’m also entranced by the fact that the drawing’s shoulder is dislocated from the torso and attempting to float away.

  31. 58

    Anonymous Brave Hero Douche #44758 @50:

    So funny coming from a beached whale that makes eyeballs bleed and who has to hide behind a censorship iron curtain

    Says the commenter whose pointless & juvenile hatred seems to have posted just fine.

    because none of her gibberish ever holds up to any kind of scrutiny.

    Only if you define “scrutiny” as “checking to see if someone I hate said something then summarily rejecting it on that basis.”

    We really are dealing with the cream of the crop today, aren’t we?

  32. 60

    That aside, what this “postcard from reality” says to me is that Mayhew only vacations there – after all, you don’t send postcards from your home town, do you?

    Maybe if she just moved there… *grin*

  33. 63

    It’s because they’re not vicious idiots spewing unsubstantiated poison.

    Who the fuck are you again and why are you spewing unsubstantiated poison on behalf of people who do not care about you at people who did nothing to you? Why are you even involved spraying your lickspittle anywhere unless it’s to stir shit up and posture as somehow important enough to have an effect? Your insecurity at your ineffectual nature is showing.

  34. 66

    Schlumbumbi:

    Flicking = Fricking. L=R + Doube eyebrows = Anime/Manga/PseudoJap cultural references

    That is some stunning racism right there. I was willing to give Mayhew the benefit of the doubt and assume it was some personal affectation based on the fact that “flicking” when written in all caps looks a lot like “fucking,” or possibly a regional variant of “flipping” as a minced oath, but it’s nice to see where the ‘pitters minds go.

    Hey, if it’s stalking to fact-check the libelous statements of people you dislike, what is it when you’re constantly talking shit about people who you know have you blocked, but still using their @-handles on Twitter? Like, for years?

    StepperGoose:

    It’s because they’re not vicious idiots spewing unsubstantiated poison.

    I would highly doubt, frankly, that Drescher has no comment moderation. But that aside, that’s pretty rich since this whole thing here started because Sara Mayhew was spreading the poisonous claim that Rebecca Watson was saying anti-Semitic things about her, a claim which has been shown to be thoroughly unsubstantiated. Turn off your projector, this isn’t a movie theater.

  35. 67

    I read 37 as somewhat rhetorical, referring back to Sara herself as the kind of person who does such things and creeps around stalking news of herself and then rants about places like FTB, esp. since Stephanie and others have said they want nothing to do with Sara? Is that correct?

  36. 68

    Steppergoose,
    Nice victim blaming bullshit. It’s exactly the caliber of nonsense I’d expect from one of the #Braveheroes fans. You know that merely claiming things doesn’t make them true, right? I know that seems to be the commonly held belief among the people you admire, but that isn’t actually so. It is Sara’s lies that didn’t stand up to scrutiny as mild as a Google search. Meanwhile, it is you who are writing hate-filled, vacuous arglebargles here. Moderation is perhaps unneeded at their blogs because it is that “side” of the rift that does all of the lying, body-shaming, misogyny and harassing. Your brave heroes have the market cornered on being awful while also being awfully ridiculous. What exactly is it you think they have to contribute to any discussion anyway? We’ve heard all their “HerpDerp, U R ugly, you slur you!” comments. My cat yaks up more interesting stuff than that. Stephanie is not required to give them a platform on which to spew their bile and her readers are not required to read it. Now run on back to your pals and get your, “I was a horrible asshole at FTBs” badge. I’m sure you’ll wear it with pride.

  37. 69

    I fucking hate that Mahew is trivializing anti-Semitism with an outright lie, easily-fact checked. What was that about “unsubstantiated poision”, Steppergoose? Say that to someone whose relatives died in the Holocaust.

  38. 70

    StepperGoose @50:

    Why is it that Mayhew, Drescher et al. have no requirement for moderation on their blogs?

    How do you know they don’t moderate? I was silently banned at Wolly Bumblebee’s place; to anyone else, it just looked like I stopped posting. Even in the SlymePit, that supposed bastion of free speech, your posts could be edited, deleted, and you yourself could be banned.

    If they really were unmoderated, they’d quickly fill up with spam. Do you see any? No? Then they’re moderated.

  39. 71

    Tom Foss (#66)

    That is some stunning racism right there. I was willing to give Mayhew the benefit of the doubt and assume it was some personal affectation…

    Well, that could just be Schlumbumbi’s stunningly racist interpretation of some personal affectation of Sara’s. I’d take it with a grain of salt.

  40. 72

    I honestly though that “flicking” was just yet another censored way of saying “fucking”… like “fricken” or something like that.

    In the Led Zeppelin song “Hots on for Nowhere”, one of the lines concludes with “I’ve got friends who give my fluck all”. “Fluck” instead of “fuck”.

    I know so many different ways to censor “fuck” that it’s ridiculous. I just assumed this was another one…

  41. 73

    @A Noyd: Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the racism was Sara’s. Despite everything, I’m willing to give her that benefit of the doubt. No, I think the fact that Schlumbumbi’s mind went to that for an explanation like it was reasonable and acceptable tells us a lot more about Schlumbumbi–and perhaps what ‘pitters assume about each other–than about Mayhew.

  42. 74

    Hate to participate in such an awful discourse, but as soon as I saw that moniker my feeble mind connected “goose”, “step” and “antisemitism”. No big surprise there, sorry. HE probably found it very funny.

  43. 77

    The word FLICK highly resembles FUCK when hand lettered in all caps, so cartoons written for a genteel audience will avoid it. I assume she’s using it for that resemblance.

  44. 78

    It seems super-duper smart for a struggling artist who works in a category that’s already stacked against her, to use copied artwork while attacking people online. No way PR like THAT could backfire.

  45. 81

    spraying your lickspittle

    A “lickspittle” is – derogatively – someone who licks someone else’s spittle; usually a term thrown at a submissive. See also: bootlicker.

    “Spraying for your lickspittle”
    or
    “Licking your spittle”
    would be correct – “spraying your lickspittle” is not even a malapropism.

    If you’re going to use old school insults, please use them in the proper old school fashion. “Lickspittle” and “bootlicker” have a rich tradition in anti-totalitarian invective.

  46. 83

    You do not have permission from me, the artist, to download and repost my art. This is a commercial website and your use of the artwork in its entirety for non-educational purposes does not meet standards of fair use. Your reproduction has the potential to impair the market for this work, by hosting it on your server and therefore discouraging traffic to the original work.

    Please delete the image from your server.

  47. 84

    Sara, I do have permission. Even without questions of fair use, that’s very clear. This picture was posted on Facebook, addressed to me, with instructions to “pass it on to your douchey FTB Skepchick friends.” Based on your Twitter “discussions” with others, you define “FTB Skepchick friends” very broadly indeed. I did what you instructed.

  48. 86

    I believe I saw the link to the original art that predates Sara’s ‘postcard’. Did Sara obtain permission to use that image as a source before the image she sent To you – with instructions to pass ON to you?

    I am not a published artist like Sara, I am unclear on how this works.

  49. 87

    The original facebook post was not sent to you. Regardless, it does not give anyone permission to download and reupload the artwork for commercial use. The post itself can be shared within the framework of facebook or tumblr, but cannot be downloaded and redistributed by another host.

    Please take down the file from your server.

  50. 89

    @sara #87 If you are concerned about copyright and your rights to market stuff, posting it on Facebook is the dumbest thing you can do. You’re probably well aware that Facebook reserves the right to use the images you post on it for their own commercial use, so it’s a bit silly to start whining about its use here.

  51. 90

    so ‘share this with your douchey FTB Skepchick friends’ Does Not mean ‘on FTB or on Skepchick’. Just FB and Tumblr……have I got this right finally?

  52. 91

    Still don’t recall when Sara got the permission to appropriate the preexisting ‘cutely flipping you off’ work for something she shared on FB and asked you to share to others who write on FTB or Skepchick.

    Keeping up with this legal stuff is more complicated than I thought.

  53. 93

    Technically, Sara’s drawing falls well into the realm of “transformative”. The commercial value of traced art, if she were correct that I both needed (I don’t) and didn’t have (I do) her permission to publish this, would be pretty low, however. She might be able to sell it, but it would be bad for her brand to become known for tracing her work.

  54. 95

    How does reproducing the cartoon affect the marketability of Sara’s work? I thought her business model was to shamelessly e-beg, and then use the money to pay vanity publishing fees.

  55. 96

    Oh Sara. Tsk tsk tsk. Said this before but it bears repeating.

    You can take the girl out of high school, but you can’t take the high school out of the girl.

  56. 98

    Right. Where manga artists are drawing stylized people, Sara is drawing other people’s drawings of stylized people. And it shows.

    Miyazaki recently made a statement more or less that that was the problem with manga/anime artists these days

  57. 99

    Sara @83

    Your reproduction has the potential to impair the market for this work, by hosting it on your server and therefore discouraging traffic to the original work.

    What will for sure impair the market for the work is making the content unavailable on the site you are trying to direct people to in hopes to create a market for the work.

    Just sayin.

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