Between the Lines

I am looking for a collaborator to help me out with the up coming chapters and to take a hard look at the last three chapters. I need someone who likes the comic and wants to see it at its best. Someone who is very critical about the writing and how it ends up on the comic page and is not afraid to offer any and all suggestions how how to make it better.

I've tried a few times to find someone already,
some really bad ones who wanted to change the overall story(thats a nono, I have had all the critiques I need from people I trust when it comes to the overall story and meaning) some people were really good but could never get back to me in a timely fashion(Can't wait a week for your response) So basically as long as your goal is not to make the story your own, If you can critique something harshly but constructively, have a desire to see this story do its best, know your writing and how it can translate to comic form, and can get back to me on anything within a few days then you are all set.

Oh remember that this is a constantly improving comic, the story might have an ending but the goal is to make this story the best it can be.

So if your interested then send an email to
betweenthelines_comic@yahoo.com


~Mekari

We will not be having a booth at the triad pride festival, the people we thought would do merchandising did nto get back to us on time, in fact they did not get back to us at all. Bryce and I will still be there passing out flyers and quality posters, you will have to ask for the posters since they are limited(they are $5.00). So if you planed on coming we will still be there, I should be easy to spot since i'll prolly be wearing a tophat ^.^

~Mekari

Emails like this make it all worth it...

"Hey all, I just wanted to stop in and tell you how great of a job you're doing. Actually I am a huge fan and a dedicated reader of you comic. Although I am not Trans, Gay or Bi I personally feel that your comic has enlightened me in new ways I never thought I would ever be. About a week before I found your comic I met a lovely young lady at a bar who after talking for many hours told me that she was indeed pre op trans. She had been on the hormones for a while and had almost no masculine features what so ever. After she told me I was very rude and said things that I never should have said... However after I found and read your strip and did some research I immediatly called her up and in person explained how horrible I felt for my words before. Since then we have been the greatest of friends and never once since have I acted as cowardly and self centered as I did with her at the bar that night. In fact since then I have even taken numerous gender tests to fond out who I am. I was shocked to find that every test I have taken has shown me to be almost completely Androgenous. Honestley I think my actions that noght were a direct resultbof my own fear of being labeled gay by assosiation. So thank you all for helping me to come to terms with my fears and helping to bring me the great friend I have today. My friend is going in for GRS next week and I plan to be there with her every step of the way. Thank You All."

We want to have a small booth at Triad Pride on May 30th! Triad Pride takes place every year in Greensboro N.C. and has been growing greatly each year and this time we want to be a part of it! for more info www.triadpride.com and go see last years turnout http://www.myspace.com/triadpride2008

Why Triad Pride?
1. The triad is my home and it will always have a huge place in my heart.
2. BtL deals with many serious issues not only dealing with trans but it also deals with many issues in the greater queer community. Triad Pride would be an ideal place to discus all these issues to create greater understanding and acceptance.
3. Promotion of BtL by giving out free items dealing with BtL such as posters, cards, and possibly buttons that will hopefully get people talking about the comic, it's story and the issues within it's pages.

to achieve this we are going to need you to donate so go ahead and donate by clicking on the donate button on the BtL site betweenthelines.sosdg.org/index1.html .The booth itsself costs $100.00. With promotional items it's about $150.00. If you guys donate $200.00 then there will be T-shirts! So $150.00 is our target goal! So please help out if you can!

Things have been down lately. I've been really worried that this comic will just become another online trans webcomic though I surely don't mean it to be just another one, puting this in comic form is just the easiest medium that I could personally put this story into, when I think about it in my head I see it all moving and I just take snapshots of the most inportant moments in a scene.

While  Between the Lines has garnered some respect from unexpected places it has not gone any further and I don't know if it is because of the lack of updates or what but there has been a loss in viewership. Now I know that this comic does not play it safe and I expect to lose some viewers because of it but the story has just barely started to touch on it so it's doubtful that that would be the cause. Basically for many many months everything has been stagnant though I hope that everything gets stirred back up soon.

So what would I like to do with this comic? I would like to turn it into a true online comic, not just any old comic thats posted on the internet, you've seen animated comics before? there are not very many, try taking a look at the comic sequences in the movie Repo: The Genetic Opera and notice the visual and emotional impact with how the word boxs, dialouge, action and panels come up on the screen and you'll get what i'm talking about. Looking beyond I would like to turn this into a series either animated or live action but not based around this storyline, just the characters or maybe a movie and there is a way to turn this into a movie if you start at the end.

So yeah I have high aspirations for Between the Lines, so what. The more people to see it the better.

~Mekari

Yeah the comic ended up to be a little late and i'm not to happy with page 15 so it might be another freaking page that i'll redo but oh well I think page 16 kinda makes up for it in my eyes.

So what have I been doing? Well last tuesday I went to Savvas's Umlaut which is a goth/industrial night thats supposed to happen every last tuesday of the month but when I got there and hung around a bit I just wanted to go home which is funny cause i'm used to being very bubbly and right up in there during these event but these last few times were very depressing, not the night or the club itself it's doing great thats not the problem I just fear that since the events in Philly i've changed and not for the better.

Last thursday I went to a small unofficial gay bar downtown with Steven, Savvas and Steven's friend Joe. I had a double shot of vodka before we left and Joe bought me two butterynipples and no that is not a sexual term, for those that don't know a butterynipple is...
1.Vodka
2.butterscotch schnapps(and/or substitue bailey's Irish Creme)
3.half&half
and that is my favorite drink which I had not had for almost a year so anyone that takes me out for a drink now you know what to buy me =)

Last and deffinately not least I got to see Repo: The Genetic Opera and it was fucking awsome! Ogre, Bill Moseley, and Paris Hilton? Well you can't go wrong with that!

Zydrate Anatomy (fave!)



Repo Trailer

I decided to get some things off of my chest in regards to events that happend over this past year. Here I was like halfway through with a 20 page blog but decided that I would not make you sit through that.

Ok i'm not going to go into details due to possible legal implications so i'll say that me and my friend(who shall remain nameless) were arrested in Bucks county PA(lured from Philly actually) for suspicion of solicitaion or prostitution, escorting actually as well as Savvas who was driving us. It seems that they pull this sting operation every year so the county can prove that they have a prostitution problem and hence recieve more money even though of all the ones they arrested only one was not lured from Philly and my friend and I were the only trans people arrested, they took almost 30 mins to arrest us with dozens of cops there to watch and take pictures on thier personal cell phone and say shit like "I can't believe that's a boy.....i'd still fuck it. Har har" Hahahaha fuck you! Oh gah and all hell broke loose when they pulled Savvas from the car you can imagine, it was like the media from every news station and paper were there but they were cops with personal fucking cell phones! Yes they forced me and my friend to the floor, we were practically naked and it almost seemed like a dream like none of this could possibly be real. They never read us our rights they just hauled us off. the thing that really pissed me off were these cops high fiving each other cause they nievely thought that they were doing something good for the world, what you arrest a prostitute and instead of showing him/her other legal avenues you slap a hefty fine on them which forces them to go out and prostitute themselves again, noone they brought in looked like they had it good. Savvas was great telling everyone who was arrested what will happen and possible legal actions to take and my friend was crying most of the time cause she thought she was going to jail. After close to 5 hours she was pretty pissed as they let us go especially after she found out that they stole $200 from her(she got it back) plus the head detective guy pointed at Savvas and said "I dunno what we're gonna charge you with yet but we'll find something" What tha fuck!

Savvas ended up not getting charged with anything and I had to ask my parents for help and yeah they were really pissed off but they paid for a lawyer and I chose a lesbian lawyer that the GLB center in Philly connected me with. Now three fucking court cases later and 5 extremely non vacation like trips to Philly its all over. Now my friend and I are on a sorta invisible probation where if we don't do anything wrong for a certain amount of time we can get the charge expunged.

~Mekari

 Well this has been an exciting month. We seem to be getting really out there alot of people are reading and enjoying the comic , well over 200 unique visitors everyday is deffinately not bad ^.^ and I was really surprised to recieve about 1000 unique hits one day...so I had to find out where it's all coming from and while only a few comic sites have us linked, most of the traffic comes from forums I just hope that BtL can keep to everyones standards even though I know thats not really gonna be possible since this comic comes from a mostly street level point of view  alot of people can get easily disturbed by that but there are still plenty of things that a variety of people can relate to

Yes I did an interview with the Bay Times and it went pretty well. I coulden't let loose to much about the comic and I really hope that I did not leave any clues in the interview www.sfbaytimes.com/?sec=article&article_id=7347

For the last few weeks i've been in NYC visiting my boyfriend for his birthday and I had a great time, the only thing that went wrong was that Alexis was not able to make it to the city so I did not get to see her =/ I was gonna go to the TG clubs and advertise but I don't want to go to any of those without another trans friend but I did get to advertise for the comic a little at the GLBT center and a few stores and passed out a few flyers to people that I met up there. Well my bf was really good to me and I was able to take him out for $60.00 worth of sushi for his birthday and later that night we went to see the Vulgaras play and I got to meet Goddess Diana who is an excellent trans drummer and one of the people i've been wanting to meet for so long! Went to his Miss Rubber World contest which was very interesting. and he also had two free tickets to Marilyn Manson, though i'm no big fan of Manson he puts on one hell of a show and I enjoyed it though the security at the Hammerstien ballroom are assholes!
Flyer I passed out...

Some of you might not know what i'm talking about but at least a few of you have been following along, but if not...
http://mekarex.deviantart.com/art/Have-you-seen-her-69680835

(This is a rant that I sent to a friend so punctuation has been largely disregarded)

We found her. She contacted Savvas a few days ago.... She's been in Utah in a mormon rehabilitation center and she claims that she was just confused and is now a straight man well she might not be TG but she ain't no straight man! Why would she keep saying "I just don't see how we can work out" to Savvas when your supposidly a straight man plus she proved to me that shes a TS you just don't jump into it as fast as she did if your confused! I even told her to test the waters first to see how she truely feels but noooo "i've been wanting to do this for years!" I mean I did not tell her but just looking at her she would just be better off as a girl she's 18 5'1 and her arms are no bigger around than my fist still I did everything in my power to diswayed her and nope she went full time in a week and a half and you know what? She was soooo much happier, and thats what mainly convinced me! She started going out with Savvas and she hated her penis getting touched she was mortified when someone tried to treat her as a guy how can a straight man feel that way! Her family is also catholic and I wonder if her parents know that shes becoming a mormon, gah she wants to stay there and help deprogram others! GAH! I bet her dad thinks "well it's better for him to become a mormon than a damn faggot" Aaaaarrrghh!!!

Still shes done things like this in the past just to survive but she was so serious dispite the contridictions and since she wants her family to love her so much i'm afriad that this could be very real but we will find out for sure once the charges are droped after Jan 2nd and shes free.

I mean it's not all bad she was able to stop smoking since the place does not allow it and she will be finishing highschool, though she could have done that anyway she will be able to go to a great college instead of a tech school even though it seems that she gave up her long time dream of becoming a chef.

~Mekari

Here's a video of Nicole right after she came out to me. Others in the video are SavVas, SavVas's mom, chuck and his then girlfriend, Shaun, and Caroline