Willowweep Sneak Preview
Shaenon: The great Christopher Baldwin is still hard at work on the art for Willowweep Manor, our graphic novel, out later this year. Enjoy this sample page in progress and try to figure out what this comic is about.
Channing: Look, I’ll be honest, I got as far as “it’s about folks in fancy dress looking at enormous clockwork machines” and it’s already soundly in my interest camp.
Question:
Was “Squee” in anyone’s vocabulary, before you encountered Shaenon’s work?
I got to thinking about it when I came across “Squee” in a translated manga I purchased the other day.
Now, I’m an East Coaster’s East Coaster, and maybe it’s commonplace in other parts of the country. But that said, I had never seen anyone try to render that sound into letters before reading Narbonic, and I have seen it rarely, if at all, outside of her work and the comments there upon.
Seems to be quite common in “Wapsi Square.”
I don’t recall the first time I read “squee” in something. But according to dictionary.com it’s only officially existed as a word for around 20 years (so, somewhere around the time when Narbonic began).
I also see it used quite often in the commentary for Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques.
It was already fairly common among the group of friends I had in the late 80’s/ early 90’s. At that time we used it to represent the ultrasonic noise pre-teen girls made when the boy bands made it to the stage. In the mid-90’s I started seeing it referred to as “fangirling,” so pretty much the same thing.
I think I first encountered “squee” in some of the X-Files fan commentary back in the 90s.
Oxford dictionaries says that it deates to the “mid 19th century (representing a high-pitched sound made by an animal or musical instrument).” Written examples in the modern usage are known to the authorities as early as the late ’90s, which generally means some period of oral or lost written usage prior to that (as attested to by Spwyll above).
At a guess, I’d say that its usage in places like comic books as a sound effect caused it to eventually replace “squeal” (of functionally identical meaning and origin) in fandom contexts.
In my experience, it was generally used early on to *complain* about female fans being, well, loudly excited in a non-verbal manner (“squeeing fangirls”). Eventually some men stopped being quite so angry about the existence of FEMALES making NOISE in FANDOM. 9_9 /misogynistic-pearl-clutching-voice Also it was reclaimed by people who were unashamed of voicing their excitement about things.
It’s the name of a Jhonen Vasquez comic. Also gained currency via TV Tropes, I imagine.
I got it from TV Tropes, which is also how I discovered Skin Horse. I’ve yet to actually use it in a sentence, unlike “mechanolatry” (as of just now).
I mean, I got as far as “Shaenon Garrity and Christopher Baldwin”, and I was already sold.
…two-three kick-turn turn-turn kick-turn…
I recognized Christopher’s style so immediately from the first frame that I wondered if I’d clicked on the wrong link to get here. Very much looking forward to this collaboration!
And he doesn’t restrict himself to mere clockwork.
Surrounding that cogged assembly are at least five of the largest vacuum tubes I have ever seen depicted.
The straps / belts on the big gear in front caught my eye…
I’m not familiar with Christopher’s work, so my first thought was, “Huh – this art reminds me of Kate Beaton, but clearly different…”
Oh! Turns out I am familiar with his work! Clicked the link, he’s the Spacetrawler guy! Weird that I didn’t recognize it – maybe it’s the lack of color? I’m not used to seeing his stuff in black and white.
He happened to post one of his Spacetrawler pages this week uncolored, until he had to time to color it, so maybe I was primed.
I vaguely recall gears like that in the Peace Tower in Ottawa. The size is about right for that clock.
Does the novel revolve around 13 homicidal ghosts!