Daughter of the Lilies
I was recently recommended the webcomic Daughter of the Lilies because it has a charming protagonist and beautiful line and color work, and I’d been told there would be queer characters in it. The story seemed to have a subversive slant to it, which I liked, so I gave it a shot.
However, in this comic, does the queer character live?
No. God, no. No he doesn’t and it’s awful, frankly.
I really like web comics. I tend to assume they’ll be more broadly informed about the world, since people who spend time on the web interact with views they’re unfamiliar with as almost par for the course, and queer people are well represented in the art world. This comic... doesn’t seem to get it.
Let’s lay it down.
There is one gay character in this comic. He’s called Jamie, and before you meet him, you learn he is already dead.
Yikes.
The rest of the next chapter is dedicated to his dad being possessed, and encouraged to forgive himself for the responsibility he feels over Jamie’s suicide. Jamie’s narrative purpose is his father’s emotional arc. This is... not good. It’s not good writing, and honestly it made me feel a little physically ill. Jamie is a set piece in this story. In his first appearance he is a corpse.
That’s him, in the white suit. It is at this point that you learn that Jamie is a young Black man.
I had wondered how this would play out, and in the end, Jamie possibly forgives his abusive father and disappears.
Which is a very magnanimous ending for the author (who expresses no minority identity, I checked) to express.
This, in and of itself is well-intentioned but tired writing. The part that really kicked me in the teeth was this:
And on the author’s tumblr...
... excuse me.
The gay character... the only gay character, and first important person of color... is dead... and his death is... fabulous.
After this his father ascends to heaven and possibly is eaten by a dragon, but I stopped reading.
When I reviewed Blue Exorcist they had some very nasty tropes as well, but I felt that maybe people could read that comic and enjoy it if they skipped the chapter in question. You can’t skip this arc because it covers two and a bit chapters, and there’s a lot of plot heavy writing going on. I would say, if you plan on reading this, you need to examine whether this will be a dealbreaker for you or not. For some people it won’t be. I did not appreciate the author’s flippant approach to Jamie’s death outside the comic, and I was bothered by seeing the first character with known intersecting minority identities being treated this way, so I won’t be reading any further.
There are a few other things to be aware of. The comic is good at having a generally diverse supporting cast, while the main cast includes a character who is mixed race (in the fantasy sense), a white elf, an orc, and the main character, who hides her face. However, there are drow in the first chapter of the comic, who are matriarchal cannibals with dark brown skin, tattoos and loincloths. This is another example of writing (and character design) which falls into distasteful tropes at best and racism at worst (the face tattoos in particular remind me of Maori Ta Moko, which is distressing). I was uncomfortable at that point but I know for some PoC this would be an immediate cause for closing the tab. I kept reading for the purpose of this blog, but perhaps I shouldn’t have?
The art for this comic is lovely and polished, but the story doesn’t give much thought to how its art and writing choices tie into negative/unpleasant tropes about people of color, First Nations or queer people. I, personally, would not recommend it.