BUT SERIOUSLY, WHERE’S ALLIE BROSH?

说真的，艾莉·布罗什现在在哪里？

On November 13th, 2014, Allie Brosh, creator of internet comic sensation Hyperbole and a Half, tweeted, “The great social media paradox: share, and expose myself as the sort of egotistical maniac who’d do that, or languish in No-Attention Land?”

2014年11月13日，网络漫画《精彩的夸张》的创作者艾莉·布罗什发了一条推特：“伟大的社交媒体悖论：要么像那些自大狂一样分享、展示自我，要么就默默无闻，暗自哀伤？”

Apparently having made up her mind, this was the last day she tweeted to her fans. For people who have followed her since the beginning, her reclusive tendencies are not surprising.

很显然她已经打定主意了，这是她最后一次发推特给粉丝。对于那些一开始就关注她的粉丝来说，她的退隐并不意外。

She once went radio silent for over a year immediately after posting a now beloved strip exposing her struggle with depression, causing fans to speculate on her mental health and even start to worry if something had happened to her. She was fine, as she proved when she finally reappeared with a Part Two to her depression comic, and she still is. But this is her longest internet disappearance to date.

她曾经在发布了现在深受人们喜爱的漫画之后沉寂了一年多。该漫画揭示了她深受抑郁症折磨，粉丝因此开始推测她的心理健康状况，甚至开始担心她是否发生了什么事。后来她出了抑郁漫画的第二部，再次复出。也由此证明她一切安好，其实她现在也很好。但是，这是到目前为止是她在互联网沉寂最久的一次。

So, where is Allie Brosh this time? Will she ever come back?

现在艾莉·布罗什在哪儿呢？她还会复出吗？

If you’ve never read Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half, a comic strip that started as a blog and ended with a book deal, you’ve probably at least heard her strip quoted.

如果你从未看过布罗什的《精彩的夸张》，你肯定至少听过引用她漫画的话。这本漫画最早以博客的形式开始，最后出版成书籍。

“All the things” – as in, “I’m going to eat all the things,” or “I want to do all the things,” or “Give me all the things” was a viral phrase that originated with Hyperbole and a Half, for example.

举个例子，像 “所有东西，我要吃掉所有东西”，“我想要做所有事情”或“给我所有东西”这样的流行句子就出自《精彩的夸张》。

Her comics are not known for artistic achievement, from a technical perspective. Pulling character inspiration from the internet meme “rage comics,” Brosh draws strange looking stick figures in a paint application with triangles for hair, blobs for bodies, and dots for eyes.

从技术角度看，她的漫画不是因艺术成就而闻名。从网络表情包“暴走漫画”获得人物灵感，布罗什画的是棍子小人，彩色部分的头发是三角形，身子是长条形，眼睛是圆点。

However, she spends hours perfecting her rudimentary characters, adjusting the position of their stick arms and one-dimensional faces, and it works. There’s something hilariously expressive about those dumb looking stick figures.

然而，通过调整人物的条形手臂和平面的脸，她花了数小时的时间来完善她初设的人物，效果很好。这些搞笑的棍子小人有一些很滑稽的表情。

Her writing is just as clever.

她的文字也一样睿智。

Linguistically, she draws from the language of internet memes and culture to develop quirky phrases that are distinctly her own but also highly quotable. Thematically, she taps into experiences from her childhood, (like forcing herself to continue eating the hot sauce that was burning sores into her mouth just to impress her father’s friends), that are at once endearingly idiosyncratic and hilariously bizarre but yet somehow still very relatable.

在语言上，她借鉴网络表情包和网络文化的语言，写出了很多原创的奇怪句子，被广泛引用。在主题上，她写了很多自己的儿时经历（比如为了给他爸爸的朋友留下印象，强迫自己不停地吃辣破喉咙的辣椒酱），很可爱又很奇怪，却给人亲近感。

This balance between the peculiar and the relatable, with a good helping of laughter thrown in, is exactly what caused her fandom to explode when she published her two-part series on depression.

可爱和奇怪的平衡分配，再加上其中的笑点，她的抑郁漫画第二部出版的时候，粉丝量极速上升。

The strip, “Adventures in Depression”, is a personal account of her own struggle with the disease. Allie manages to portray mental illness in a way that is remarkably keen, tapping into behaviors and thoughts many of us have experienced but yet feel like we’re the only ones.

这部名为《抑郁冒险》的漫画是她自己抑郁症经历的描述。艾莉想要以无比亲切的方式来描述精神疾病，描述多数人也会有的行为和想法，让我们感觉自己不是一个人。

Her comic shows fans they aren’t alone, but fans have shown her the same. Even Brosh herself states, “Depression is such an isolating experience. There’s a tendency to feel like you’re the only one experiencing that depth or that exact brand of misery. And so it was surprising to hear how much it resonated with people.

”艾莉的漫画让粉丝感到他们不是一个人，同时粉丝也让艾莉感到她不是一个人。艾莉她自己都说：“抑郁症是一种自我孤立的经历。你会感到只有你一个人在经历这种深渊和这种苦难。所以在听到很多人对此都有共鸣的时候，你会无比吃惊。”

The humor she finds in such a solemn topic serves to make it less, well, depressing, without belittling the seriousness of the illness.

她为抑郁症这样的严肃增添幽默使得这个话题不那么使人沉闷的同时又不会让人忽略抑郁症的严重性。

In fact, the strip has been lauded by professional psychologists as one of the most insightful depictions of depression they’ve seen. As Jonathan Rottenberg, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida, writes in Psychology Today, “I know of no better depiction of the guts of what it’s like to be severely depressed.”

事实上，职业心理学家称赞这部漫画是他们见过对抑郁症描述最为贴切的漫画之一。南佛罗里达州大学的心理学副教授乔纳森·罗顿博格在《今日心理学》杂志写道：“我不知道除此之外还有没有对严重抑郁更好的描述了。”

It’s no surprise, then, that her fan base has an emotional connection to Brosh that supersedes your typical teeny bopper groupie. Any look at the comments section of relevant articles or forums will find hordes of fans asking if anyone has seen or heard from her and whether or not she’s okay as if they’re her closest friends.

意料之中，布罗什的粉丝团和她有情感的联系，都赶得上新潮的青少年追星族了。只要浏览相关文章和论坛的评论就会发现成群的粉丝在问有没有人看过或听说过艾莉的漫画，或者有没有谁是她的好朋友知不知道她的近况。

They got an answer when Brosh announced, in August 2015, that she was working on a new book. People immediately started purchasing pre-orders.

粉丝们得到了答案。2015年8月布罗什发声明表示她正在准备一本新书。人们立即开始预订。

“Solutions and Other Problems”, a sequel to Hyperbole and a Half, has already accumulated 229 ratings and 30 reviews on Goodreads, all positive, and was named a number 1 new release in the comic strips section of Amazon. The book hasn’t even been published yet.

《精彩的夸张》的续集名为《解决方法和其他问题》，在Goodreads网站上已经累积229阅读量，30个评论，一片好评。而且，该书在亚马逊漫画书分类新书榜上排名第一。然而，这本书还没有出版。

But the excitement for Brosh’s return was short-lived, with continual delays in publication causing fans to wonder if they’ll even get to crack the spine of her new book. Answers are not forthcoming from her or her publisher, Simon and Schuster, who have offered no comment or explanation.

然而，对于布罗什复出的兴奋热潮并没有持续很久。随着书的出版不断延迟，粉丝开始担心他们会不会连她新书的书脊都摸不着。从她还是她的出版商西蒙与舒斯特公司都得不到答复，西蒙与舒斯特公司既没有评论也没有解释。

She has made a couple public appearances in the past couple years, appearing on an episode of YouTube series Tabletop in July 2015. In early 2016, she gave a talk at JoCo Cruise 2016, an annual gathering of creative and techies.

她在过去几年里曾多次公开露面。2015年7月在YouTube系列桌面谈话上出现。2016年初，她在JoCo Cruise上发表讲话——JoCo Cruise一个有关创意和技术的年度聚会。

In July 2016, the release date on Amazon changed once again, from October 25, 2016 to December 2030.

2016年7月，新书在亚马逊的开售时间再次延迟，从2016年10月25日改到2030年12月。

Fans in the comment section of the book’s landing page speculate on the delays, pointing out the death of her younger sister as a potential cause, (but this occurred well before Brosh announced the book’s publication), as well as a possible split between her and her husband Duncan, given that his Twitter account says he’s living in Seattle, and she is rumored to have moved to Colorado.

粉丝在新书的登陆页面评论区推测，指出之所以延期是因为艾莉妹妹的去世（但是艾莉妹妹是在艾莉宣布出版新书之前去世的），或者因为艾莉和丈夫邓肯分开了，因为邓肯在推特上说他住在西雅图，而有消息称艾莉搬去科罗拉多州了。

But isn’t there something a little uncomfortable about tracking her personal life and whereabouts so obsessively? Being checked up on constantly by a loved one can be overwhelming. Being checked up on constantly by your 400,000 Facebook fans? It’d be enough to make the less limelight-thirsty go into hiding forever, no matter how well-intentioned her fans.

但是这样跟踪她的个人生活，还这么痴迷，不会让人有点不舒服吗？被一个爱的人持续关注是快乐的。但是被400,000个脸书粉丝持续关注呢？这会让这个不太渴望受关注的人永远躲起来，无论她的粉丝是多么出于好心。

I don’t know why her book keeps being delayed, when it will come out, or what Brosh is or has been up to. And that’s okay.

我不知道她的书为什么一直延期，新书什么时候出版，布罗什怎么样，她在做什么。但这都没关系的。

As she tells us in Hyperbole and a Half, “I’d love to hang out, but I have to go sit in my house by myself…”

就如她在《精彩的夸张》中说的，“我喜欢出去玩，但是我却要一个人坐在自己的房子里……”

She’ll come out when she’s ready.

当她准备好的时候，她会出现的。