A Princess in Wolf's Clothing

rosalarian:

erikamoen:

Sometimes I stop and think about all the people I follow on Tumblr (or on the internet in general), many of whom have amazing blogs that are jam-packed with entertaining, hilarious, beautiful, inspiring things.

But then I start thinking about what their names might be. You know, their real names,…

Oh my goodness, I relate to this so much. So much.

I understand that by making comics about my life public, I relinquish control of them. Whatever context or intentions or meanings (or meaningless-ness) with which I created them can and will be stripped away by the individual viewer who will project their own contexts and intentions and meanings onto them, and then expect to hold me accountable for their interpretations. There are those who mistake thinking they know me, Erika the Human Being, with the image they’ve created of who they think I am, Erika the Entity on the Internet.

It’s weird. I still don’t know what to think of it. I don’t know if it’s positive or negative. Or neither.

But it exists and it’s entirely out of my control.

The only way to keep it from happening is to stop making art. Many times that’s been a seriously considered option, but no matter how long I manage to keep myself shut up I always feel that burning in my brain to open back up again.

2010 (even most of 2009) was all about censoring myself.

2011 will be something else.

My biggest regret as far as my artistic career goes is that I didn’t use a pen name. Oh, I had various handles throughout the years, but never a fake name. People can’t relate to a Rosalarian, but they can relate to a Marylou Peterson, or a Brie Harris, or a Lila MacGreggor. Just so long as it’s a name.

When I was starting Meaty Yogurt, originally I planned to start my career over from scratch. To use a new fake name, maybe even use a male or androgynous or genderqueer persona. (Because honestly, I face a lot of shit for being a lady on the internet; way more than being gay ever has, and I’m tired of always having to defend my femaleness.) I was going to completely reinvent myself, to let Megan Rose Gedris fade into obscurity with YU+ME.

But I spent soooooo long building Megan Gedris’ reputation. As much as it weirds me out sometimes, people are fans of me, not just my work. I am a brand. People will pick up my new comics because they liked my old ones. They know that Megan Rose Gedris likes to create characters who aren’t what they seem, to use foreshadowing that you don’t know is foreshadowing, to slap you in the face with red herrings every other week. That’s not gonna change. And my art style, despite the fact that I think it’s inconsistent, is actually distinguishable and unique.

Basically, if I tried to be a new person, people would accuse that new person of copying Megan Gedris.

Like Erika Moen above, I’ve spent a lot of 2010 keeping my cards close and not tipping my hand, trying to balance out the overshare of 2008-2009. Hence why this Tumblr exists in the first place while my Livejournal rots off in a forgotten corner. Because I came to terms with the fact that I am, in a way, a public figure, if an obscure one, and I need to act accordingly.

It’s really weird. Sometimes I feel a sort of split in my personality. This is my private face, this is my friend and family face, this is my public face. Because I couldn’t create a new character with a new name for me to write through, Megan Rose Gedris [internet version] has become a character I play while Megan Rose Gedris [home version] is who I really am. It gets confusing having the same name.

This is part of the reason why I decided to use an old online handle. (Although my real name isn’t hard to find for anyone who want to know it.)

Still, I know exactly what you mean about feeling split in half- and it’s never been more obvious since I moved from college back to Europe.  Now I live a strange dual reality where all my friends and fans are online, but in “real life”, I have none at all.  Talk about disorienting.  

And when I go to conventions, there’s this bizarre mashup of the two, where suddenly real live people are shyly recognising me and calling me “Miss Yamino.” O_O  (And in CA, I have some old internet-friends turned “real life” friends who still call me by my REALLY old internet handle, “Brownie.”)

I think you are better at balancing the two than I am, Megan.  Since my last two moves I have been slowly drifting further away from “real” life and more embedded in my online social life, which is the only one I can take with me, no matter where I am.