Yay! Yes, that’s them, Anthony and Alysia! Just seeing ‘em makes me miss Singapore SOOOOO BAAAAAD.Like pretty much all white American writers, I have definitely screwed up and gotten stuff wrong in the past. But it does bug me hugely that so many groups of readers have little or no representation in comics. I am hoping to be part of a much bigger wave that doesn’t want to automatically default to straight, white, and male for every key character. I only do a couple books, I want to see ALL of us trying to do much, much better at this.
As for Singapore, oh, man, I have to tell you. I can’t quite explain it without feeling foolish, but I cherish Singapore in my heart and will, forever. The reception I received there, the friends I made, the things we saw and experienced, there’s no place like it in the world, and I miss it terribly. I can’t wait to go back (AND I had the two best meals of my life there…you guys have the best food culture in the WORLD and I will stand by that til my dying day!).
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I remember a lot of people very upset there about what had happened with Ryan Choi and I didn’t really have a good answer about that, but it did make me determined to try to bring some more characters of Asian descent who aren’t martial artists (Tumblr and some other bloggers had pointed out how many Asians I had created that were all martial artists, and how that was a poor stab at diversity, and they were dead right) to comics.I hope you continue to like Alysia. She is based absolutely on some Sinaporean young women I met while there, and they have been delighted to be represented, which makes me happy.
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I love those two so much, Alysia is named after them both. Alysia Yeoh, with Alysia’s first name and Anthony’s last name.Singapore haunts you once you go there, I swear!
Thank you, thank you for this.
(also, here’s link to Cocotte’s!)
SOME INFO ABOUT MYSELF
Being the selected wisdom of a certain writer of adventure picto-books, Gail Simone.Following
