Dissecting the internet's webcomics through a feminist lens. My personal tumblr. And my very own webcomic for everyone else to analyze, Rainbow Mansion.
My favorite genre of webcomic is slice of life, but most of the romance is “these two characters don’t like each other, fight a lot, end up fucking, decide they like each other, the end”.
Look, I get the appeal of the “opposites attract”, but so many of these characters are just straight up assholes. Or they’re annoying. They have very little depth. They’re not assholes for a reason, they’re just shitty teenagers fitting in as many zingers as they can manage. And if they do have a tragic backstory, it’s like “oh yeah my parents died in a car wreck”.
I think this all comes down to writing ability more than it does romantic preferences. There are “opposites attract” stories that can work, but it’s harder to do for writers who aren’t skillful. What I’d love to see more of is adorkable romance. You know, two characters who like each other but don’t know how to say it but still want to hang out and learn about each other as friends.
So basically, comics like Heartstopper and Best Friends Forever. But these kinds of meet cutes are so rare. Instead we’ve all gotta snark at each other and act like total assholes. Why? If you insist on writing about teenagers-- BABIES, in my eyes--they’re still trying to figure out the world. Why ya gotta make them assholes to each other? Don’t they gotta put up with enough of that already in high school?
I’m just done with “edgy” romantic interests. This is 2017. We’re dealing with the crumbling of the American government in real time, and we’re all looking for an escape. We don’t need edgy anymore, ok?????
There’s only a few good “opposites attract” comics I’ve found, like Long Exposure (hell, I’ll throw in Always Raining Here because it’s a good example of how writing can really improve with the maturity of the writer) If you know anything with really strong characters, let me know.
As a purveyor of amateur webcomics, I see a lot of poor attempts to express emotions *coughTeahousecough*, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a webcomic this bad. It also really struggles with Same!Face. If your characters’ hair was removed, could you tell any of them apart? No? Then you’ve got Same!Face syndrome!
Anyway, no one in this comic opens their eyes more than halfway. They can also speak without opening their mouth.
Lastly, I’m totally fine with people not knowing English that well and still doing a comic in English because that’s where the biggest audience is, but you can always ask someone who speaks English as a first language to translate your bad English into good English. I’m a shitty American that only speaks one language, and I would be willing to do that for anyone who asked because it’s pretty easy. On the flip side, It’s really difficult to create compelling characters if they speak like Google Translate, and you do them a disservice.
To end on a positive note, look at how several other comics do character design/expressions well, in a variety of styles. In each of these, you can tell who is who at a glance. You never struggle to figure out who is talking, and the character designs take more of the character into consideration than how generically hot they are. Their character informs their appearance, which is a way to create a stronger connection to their narrative.
The Less than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal
The Quick and Dirty Life of Fritz Fargo
Long Exposure
Dead City
Transfusions
Tripping Over You
Check Please
Heartstopper
Ya’ll can add more if you know of some good ones. :)
It’s no coincidence that these comics line up with some of my favorite webcomics I keep up with these days. Good character design usually equals a good comic. It makes the characters more interesting and more memorable.
As a purveyor of amateur webcomics, I see a lot of poor attempts to express emotions *coughTeahousecough*, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a webcomic this bad. It also really struggles with Same!Face. If your characters’ hair was removed, could you tell any of them apart? No? Then you’ve got Same!Face syndrome!
Anyway, no one in this comic opens their eyes more than halfway. They can also speak without opening their mouth.
Lastly, I’m totally fine with people not knowing English that well and still doing a comic in English because that’s where the biggest audience is, but you can always ask someone who speaks English as a first language to translate your bad English into good English. I’m a shitty American that only speaks one language, and I would be willing to do that for anyone who asked because it’s pretty easy. On the flip side, It’s really difficult to create compelling characters if they speak like Google Translate, and you do them a disservice.
You know, as a horse person, I am used to being disappointed by artists’ best estimations of what horse tack looks like, but this attempt was NON EXISTENT. HOW DOES THIS BRIDLE EVEN FUNCTION.
Here is a tutorial I put together on how to draw tack. If you don’t like tutorials, please just google “bridle” or “saddle” and trace it. For my sake, and every other horse person’s. I’ll forgive you for it if I never have to see another bridle that looks like this.
So I run my own personal blog on Tumblr and never get suggestions from Tumblr on what blogs to follow, but I do on this blog. I seriously think Tumblr is trolling me because it keeps recommending to me crybaby “anti-sjw” Tumblr white boys and I’m like... is it the name? Are you doing this to me on purpose? What the hell, Tumblr.
I’ll save you the money you’d pay to listen to someone speak about this at a convention. Here it is.
You either:
a) draw very well
or
b) draw porn
Preferably both!
There ya go, that’s the whole lecture. I hope you all learned something today. Go forth and share what you’ve learned with the rest of the community so we don’t have to have another 500 panel sessions debating this.
Mostly hetero but a little gay? There is a lesbian witch, which is the only kind of witch I accept.
Summary: First it was meeting the ghost of a 1940s mathematician in the upstairs hallway, then it was finding a teenage werewolf in the bathtub. Now Oscar doesn't know what will show up next. Maybe that's okay, as long as nothing eats him.Wilde Life is a supernatural adventure/horror series set in a small town in rural Oklahoma. It focuses on stories about creatures from Native American mythology as witnessed and documented by a journalist from Chicago, Illinois.
So I know that writing positive reviews aren’t as fun for me and reading positive reviews aren’t as fun for others, but I have to wash out the taste of Galaxia from my mouth, so here is one of my favorites! I used to keep up with webcomics way more than I have been, so the list of “comics I keep up with” is pretty short these days. Wilde Life is one of those rare comics that manages both plot AND awesome characters. Characterization tends to serve the plot and plot serves the characters, which results in a perfectly paced supernatural thriller that juggles humor with action. There’s a good balance of male and female characters, the lesbian couple is cute, and I’m emotionally invested in everyone. I usually don’t like an overload of fantasy elements, but Wilde Life has a good mixture of a familiar contemporary setting with supernatural occurrences. Not much exposition is needed to explain the world to me. (Note: please don’t do this in a comic. Taking up five pages to have a monologue about the mythology or whatever of your world is usually boring).
I honestly cannot manage more of a review than that, but know that I highly recommend it. The story is good, the art is great, the plot is solid. Definitely one to follow!
Summary: Galaxia’s main satellite, V-113, fights for independence by frequently attacking the other planet. Any attempt to destroy Galaxia’s tranquillity keeps failing, until the young prince Geron gets involved in a scandal that earns him the exile.
Because Tumblr doesn’t like too many screenshots in one post, here we go, onward to Part two. We’re only on page 46 out of 96, because every page is offensive to me. NSFW images under the cut:
Uke boy tells Seme Asshole to go slower. We get the typical seme reaction. I don’t know about you, but it gets me SUPER hot when men ignore my requests and do what they want instead!
Looks like they found some screenshots of porn to reference, because this panel looks like a facial scene. Does anyone actually stick their tongue out like that unless they’re getting a facial?
Oh look a cafeteria scene. Where have I seen this before?
I wonder if some Mean Girl shit is about to go down like it did in the original! Because obviously that scene was so important to the plot that it necessitated being copied!
Some romantic banter.
A Latino character is introduced by saying some Spanish words. I personally would have said “Ah yes, I love the hispanics, especially the tacos, ajajajajaja” but that’s just me.
This exchange is painful for me. This guy shows up, says “hi”, calls Skinny White Boy a “fresa”, then leaves, but not before saying “the king wants to see him”. Like… you forgot that it was your whole mission? You were about to leave! You had hardly any meaningful interaction! WHAT IS GOING ON.
Now you can buy merch from a blatantly plagarised version of Starfighter. Nice!
Why are there eyes on their cheeks. See, they fixed the problem of the CheekMouth, only to have CheekEyes instead.
THE KING JUST SAID HE WANTED TO SEE THIS DUDE. WHY ARE YOU ALL SO SHOCKED THIS KID IS THERE.
Also, why does a future society even have a king. Shouldn’t we have figured out socialst democracy by then?
Still don’t know this kid’s name. Unless his name is Prince. Which is unacceptable. There can only be one Prince.
LIKE BEING GAAAAAAY. Gays are super dirty sinners. But nah, he says “drugs, betting, sex”, as if sex is this super sinful thing that nearly every child in this world is the product of. I know to a teenager it might be see it as the dirtiest, most rebellious thing to do, but adults have it all the time and it’s very meh.
Also, gambling is legal in, like, half of the US. And marijuana is getting there. So if you’re gonna have some City of Gomorra or whatever, at least make the sinful stuff interesting. Like making children fight each other! Or having sex with oven mitts! You know, something at least somewhat edgy.
More romantic banter. What a cute couple!
While Starfighter managed to squeeze in a few female characters to ruin the gay for everyone, Galaxia does not have a single female character, which could possibly be an act of mercy. It has one Mexican character. Everyone is skinny and hot and wears super tight black uniforms, and I have no clue why anyone is here or what building they’re in or what is going on at all. The only good thing I can say is that the artist is clearly improving with time, which… good for her. Maybe with enough time, her writing will improve too, but it’s been a few years and the quality of the dialogue certainly hasn’t changed, so maybe it’s a lost cause. At least Hamlet Machine of Starfighter kinda realized halfway through all us SJWs complainin’ that yeah, the comic is kind of rapey and yeah, it needed to be slightly changed. It’s still gross, but now it’s kind of gross in that “Your kink not my kink” way instead of straight up sexual harassment. But I’ll admit, I haven’t read it in a while, so I could be wrong.
If you love Starfighter, Galaxia is the Mall Cop 2 to Starfighter’s Mall Cop. So you might like it, I don’t know. YKNMK.
Summary: Galaxia's main satellite, V-113, fights for independence by frequently attacking the other planet. Any attempt to destroy Galaxia's tranquillity keeps failing, until the young prince Geron gets involved in a scandal that earns him the exile.
So it’s been a very long time, but sometimes you find a comic that’s so offensive that you can’t NOT talk about it. This comic would be Galaxia, the most ham-fisted transparently obvious rip-off of a more popular comic I have ever seen. I will even admit that it’s written more poorly than the original too, though we all know how I feel about Starfighter.
Nope, nothin’ alike at all.
ANYWAY, I came across Galaxia on Tapastic, and I expected to find lots of Starfighter fangirls in the comment section, but maybe we’ve moved passed the days of petty comment sections a la Teahouse, because mostly it’s people doing what they do best: offering bland compliments and requests for more. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you’d think at least someone would be like, “Um, hey, so this is so fucking blatantly stolen from Starfighter. Maybe at least avoid the black and white color scheme?” But nah. We are cool with plagiarism if there’s buttsex.
Not that Starfighter is the most original webcomic ever made but come on— it has artistic themes that are immediately recognizable. If I knew ripping off something popular while contributing absolutely none of your own creativity would grant you 3.6K followers, I shoulda been doing Teahouse parodies from the start.
And everyone who actually works hard on their comic sheds a single tear.
Like all shitty yaois, this one starts out with sex, because sex sells and if you don’t have a plot (it won’t), sex is the best way to get fans. I honestly do not know this character’s name (and I’m not sure the author does either), but he manages to fuck at least twice, so... PRIORITIES!
See? It’s different from Starfighter because he has a star tattoo on his cheek. Totes magotes not Starfighter, ok.
Thanks for the “smooch” action tag. Wouldn’t have picked that up without it.
I don’t know if Council is spelled wrong because our author did not consult spell check or if it’s supposed to be a sci-fi thing, like when people write vampire as “vampyre” or whatever. I’m gonna go with the former.
As an underage what? An underage drawing of absent artistic integrity? Also, if you need to subtitle your comic in order to explain the rules of your universe, you are not telling your story correctly. I especially like how they upped the age of consent to give this comic the FEELING of pedophilia without the CONTENT of the pedophilia. It’s okay, we all know he’s 12 in spirit.
GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUUU-UUUN oh girls just wanna have fuuuuuuuuun.
Allow me a moment of self-indulgence because now I feel like this comic is stealing from ME now (I kid; I’m never original, but I try to be subtle about it, lol). Granted, Justin had a much different reaction than *BLUSH BLUSH DESU*
ANYWAY ENOUGH OF THAT
I think we’re supposed to root for the Cai— I mean… whatever this guy’s name is, even though he’s just as much of a sexual harasser as the others. But it’s okay, semes can literally rape someone and people think it’s hot.
This is some SERIOUS anime profile mouth going on. Why is his mouth on his jawline? Ya’ll need to learn how to draw some goddamn lips.
Virgin looks. They’re a thing! Why did no one tell me this? Here I am, showing my virgin face to the world like it’s nothin’, and not a single rapist has licked MY cheek!
I appreciate that this comic is light on stealing the quality of Starfighter’s art but big on stealing Starfighter’s (weak) storyline. Sexual predator asshole main character? CHECK! Spineless scrawny wimp who he is for some reason obsessed with? CHECK! That’s pretty much the whole plot, right?
Another heinous case of anime profile mouth, or as I now shall call it, CheekMouth. Also, I like the doctor showing up out of nowhere to take him somewhere private. I’m sure his intentions are good, as they always are in yaois.
I will never understand these comics that are set waaaaaaay in the future but for some reason the society hasn’t managed how to figure out glass eyes yet. Everyone’s got a goddamn eye patch. Like, people hardly wear eyepatches now. You mean to tell me we’ve got space ships that can traverse the galaxy but no surgery to replace eyes?
Glass eyes don’t exist, but the KKK sure does! Man, we as a society have come far!
The star is gone from his face and I don’t know why. Was it the licking?
Ah yes, look at this obviously-above-the-age-of-19 boy. Definitely doesn’t look 12.
You know what I want in yaoi? Some goddamn sluts. People who know what they want and what they like and actually ask for shit instead of being all ~*~I just don’t know what’s happening to me, what are these FEELINGS~*~. Yaois often come across to me like the internal monologue of a 40-year-old man hitting on teenagers. “Yeah, you don’t like me now, but once I touch your boob you will be so overwhelmed by my sexual prowess!”
Summary: Nino is in love with a beautiful girl who appears only in his dreams, is she real or just a part of the imagination of Nino?
My Review: You know, sometimes I really try hard not to be “that artist/writer” who laments over what gets popular while your own work gathers dust in the corners of the internet, but sometimes I really want to whine. Today I will be whining, and a comic called “Red Dress” I found on Tapastic is gonna help me out.
As someone who has never really “gotten” the draw of manga and yaoi, I understand that much of anime and manga’s style and sense of humor will always go over my head no matter what. Sometimes, no matter how long I sit and stare at something, I’m still like “WHAT IS THIS”. Like that interior design trend of having shelves in your kitchen instead of cabinets. Why anyone wants to show off to every visitor the Disney collector mugs you got in 2005 from your one visit to Orlando is a mystery, as is the inevitable layer of dust that will gather on all your grandma’s old dishes you don’t have the heart to throw away. Also, white kitchens. Why are white kitchens a thing? So your toddler has a proper canvas to wipe their snot across?
ANYWAY, I’m not here to bitch about interior design, though God knows I could do that. I’m here in hopes that people can explain to me this:
Like, if it were porn, maybe I could get it? No one expects quality in porn. it’s like hot dogs. You eat hot dogs because you like the taste of hot dogs, not because you expect good nutrition. People like porn because they want to see a dick and/or vagina, and if it’s delivered in a poorly rendered, poorly written comic, who gives a shit, because PENIS.
This is not porn. It’s just this trope I have yet to understand, where boys dress as girls. Integral to this trope is that the boys are never ever suspected to be boys unless told otherwise. If disguising low voices and adams apples were so easy, I think trans women would have a much easier time in life (well, also if people were less transphobic. I guess that’s the main problem).
I don’t get crossdressing. Okay, so I do, but not in the way it’s used in so, so, so much yaoi shit. Here’s the thing: I am all about defying gender norms, about dressing how you want, about feeling comfortable in the body you’re in. But crossdressing fics never defy gender norms— they reinforce them. They fall into the pit of heteronormative bullshit that denies any conversation about gender variance and demands huge suspension of disbelief. Worst of all, feminine clothing is used as a way to degrade and embarrass, not to empower.
Anyway, on with the comic.
It’s like I’m there.
Look, I’m a decent artist with an art degree. I can’t even draw my own stupid face and make it look like me. You’re telling me some high school student can draw a woman and some classmate is like “oh yeah this is a guy in our class”. WTF.
You can’t have yaoi without the “well, he’s close enough to a woman and he’s pretty so I guess I’m gay now”. Nooooot how that works, okay. Fucking straight people can’t even handle a gender conforming woman with a dick. You’re now trying to tell me high school boys are down with a boy just cuz he kinda looks like a woman he fantasizes about.
NO SEMPAI I AM SO MANLY.
This uppity woman won’t let me touch her body without her consent. WHAT A BITCH.
Why would you have your hair long if you don’t like it? Granted, I had long hair in high school and I begged my mother for years to let me cut it and eventually she caved, but I am a woman and my mother was a very traditional person who made her daughters wear dresses one day of the school week in elementary school, thus forcing me into my “tomboy” stage I probably wouldn’t have had if it weren’t for her forcing femininity on me, because now I vastly prefer dresses to pants, and I could have gotten there without loathing girly things for five years….
ANYWAY. Boys generally aren’t forced to have long hair, and it’s really not that hard to get a haircut if you hate it so much. BUT! We live in Yaoi-land, where boys are somehow conditioned to act just like insecure teenage girls, being complimented all the time when they just know how ugly they really are.
Second of all, can anyone tell the difference between any of these characters? I have no clue who is who because they all look exactly alike.
For some reason, a student can convince a teacher to give a student extra credit, enough extra credit for an A. I have no clue if this artist understand how math works.
Later, Purple Eyes tells Redheaded Child that he only helped him out because he wants to bone him. Niiiiiice.
Also, because the entirety of this comic takes place in a mauve void, I have no fucking clue who is doing what or where.
So usually I try to figure out the ages of those doing these comics before I criticize too much because at 15, I was no Van Gogh either. However, no info on this author is readily available to me, so I’ll go ahead and ask wtf is up with these profiles. This is the damage manga and anima has wrought about this generation of artists: no noses and drifting mouths that end up in the jaw region. When was this ever okay. I can usually tell when an effort was made to draw a nose. No effort was made here.
They are both men, but I see this as more male entitlement. So hey, you look better with your hair down, and because the world should operate in the way I see fit, you’re not allowed to have a hair tie.
Let’s just say that if someone pulled this shit on me, he’d be getting punched in the face.
Look, maybe I don’t understand siblings well, having two of my own and everything, but usually siblings try to convince other people not to date their siblings because siblings are gross. Second of all, hello to the “female accomplice” trope in yaoi, where the women must always try to convince the uke that the seme is right for them, often lacking any and all evidence to support their claim.
Yeah, he “forgot” he had a girlfriend. But that’s okay. She’s the “bitch” who refuses to hug people on command, so I’m sure she deserves it.
So in the end, it’s possible that Blondie is being set up to come out as genderqueer and/or trans. The problem with doing something like that in a stereotypical yaoi is that people like me attribute it all to the “crossdressing” trope, which comes with its own set of sexist pitfalls that don’t exactly work in favor of trans or gender non-conforming people.
Beyond the confusion of Blondie’s gender orientation (I honestly do not know who is who in this comic; they all are identical except for hair color, in both appearance and personality, so their names are a mystery), the story/plot is non-existent and I have no clue what the comic is actually about. The author is not a native English speaker, which can be a hindrance to dialogue, but at the same time, I’m not sure how much it being in Spanish would improve the format. It’s just… shallow. Shallow and confusing and utterly bereft of backgrounds and scenery that would help me place what panel where. Everyone seems to have a crush on everyone else for no reason, because actual conversations don’t happen. Everyone blushes and darts around subjects like 14-year-olds with crushes (which I guess is cute if you’re 14; being 27, to me it’s just annoying and obnoxious). I don’t know why anyone likes anyone else, outside of “he is pretty”.
Honestly, it’s a comic that’s bad without being overtly offensive, and I would probably just ignore it if it weren’t for the fact it has nearly half a million views and 4000 subscribers. I just don’t understand, and if anyone is willing to explain it to me using small words with limited “Kawaii!”s, it would be appreciated. I choose to believe that Tapastic isn’t solely dominated by 14-year-olds (no offense to 14-year-olds; I was one once, and now that Trump is president, I envy how naive I was then), but I can’t think of any other reason this comic is so immensely popular. No porn, bad art, bad writing, boring dialogue.
(Also, my apologies for being away so long. I honestly have no excuse beyond “I didn’t feel like it”. It’s not just this though; I don’t write much these days at all. I wrote this because frustration motivates me, lol. I’m still working on my dumb webcomic. That’s… about it. Sorry. :()
I know that manga has a lot of unnecessary action tags or whatever, but if you cannot portray a smile without clarifying that it’s a smile, you probably need to work on your technique a bit.
I don’t think this webcomic requires a whole review because it’s short and has no dialogue, but I highly recommend it to anyone having a shitty day who needs a cute story as a pick-me-up. It’s a webcomic about a Chinese prince who finds himself in the desert and needs to find his way back home with the help of some Middle-Eastern nomads. They style is charming and pretty clear, despite having no written words.
It’s been forever. I apologize. Life’s been crazy, and I’ve been lazy. :( I wanted to do a review of Red Lantern, actually, but I can’t find a complete version online. So I decided to do this instead.
Link
Grade: C+
Slash
Summary: Tibald Caeso who is the only heir to the Infrasoft corporation gets unawarely dragged into years-long cold war between military and Caesarea.
His abduction is meticulously planned by Intelligence and Security board through rock star Valnaar who often renders small services to ISB.
Imposing on his old friendship with Kristen Ehrhardt and his trust, Valnaar sets Radan, an ISB officer who has a bone to pick with Elrec Caeso, on his son Tibald.
My Review:
Okay, first of all, shoutout to everyone who creates webcomics on Smackjeeves: please learn a bit of html code so you can sort of try to customize your webcomic. Honestly, changing colors and images isn’t too hard, and it’ll make such a difference in the presentation of your comic. Also make sure that your pages fit the template you choose. Either change the template or the size of your pages, because when your pages break the page, it’s ugly and doesn’t do your comic justice.
[Stolen] is an example of a superbly drawn comic that’s forced into a template that doesn’t do it any justice. The template doesn’t work with the theme, and the pages consistently break the format anyway. This would be my first suggestion for this comic. I mean, check this out:
Artists, take pride in your work. If you really can’t figure out html color codes and <img src> tags, then find someone who can help you.
ANYWAY, moving on, [Stolen] is very pretty. I’ll give it that. It’s nice to see a breakaway from anime styles to something more “realistic”.
RenRou, the author, certainly loves to color hair. As someone who personally struggles with hair, I respect this, and I find myself wanting to read the whole comic just so I can see the flawless hairdos abound. It’s like a goddamn shampoo commercial sometimes, and while it may should bother me, I’m not going to complain about men who are too fabulous. I am a religious watcher of RuPaul’s Drag Race, after all.
Of course, fabulous hair DOES becomes detrimental when “rebels” have hairdos that look like this:
That’s the sleekest hairdo I’ve ever seen on a guy taking hostages. Just saying.
We’re also treated to some very tight pants on practically everyone. This may be a future in which everyone has some snazzy butt implants and wear jeans to draw attention to them. I don’t know. But there is not a single man wearing baggy jeans in this webcomic.
I don’t know if RenRou, the author, is a native English speaker, but there are a lot of typos. English speaker or not, it’s the author’s responsibility to find someone who can edit their work and make sure the dialogue flows well. [Stolen]’s dialogue seems to improve with time, so maybe they found someone to look through their work.
Lastly, the range of emotions is… lacking. I’ve brought this up before, how people are afraid to give their characters expressions because it might ruin their “beauty”. Disney does this by making every goddamn “princess” and extraneous female characters identical. because god forbid women have faces that show any sort of personality beyond “doe-eyed innocent”. [Stolen] falls into this trap, without the Disney princesses.
He’s supposed to be a hostage faced with hugely unethical claims by his kidnapper, but to me he looks more like Blue Hair just told him his lasagna was too bland.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN, BLAND, LARRY? THIS IS MY GRANDMOTHER’S RECIPE.
YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S LASAGNA INSULTS ME! GO WORK AT OLIVE GARDEN WHERE YOU BELONG!
Jokes aside, because of Renrou’s realstic style, I don’t expect a lot of exaggeration of features. But facial wrinkles can be what stands between mediocre expressions and passionate ones. No matter how beautiful you are, your face wrinkles. It’s why people who have Botox injections can’t make normal human expressions. Most of the characters in [Stolen] act as if their faces have been frozen by Botox.
So plotwise, [Stolen] kind of loses me. The characters don’t seem to have much depth, and sometimes they’re straight up idiotic. Like when these two just start making out, even though the one’s boyfriend is standing RIGHT THERE.
WHY.
Later, we’re treated to a brief exchange, after Caeso and Val get into a fight that ends in more making out.
This is the 52nd page. Ehrhardt clearly has no issues cheating on his boyfriend and then swapping lovey banter with his ex from a rock band he used to belong to. This might make sense if there was any kind of explanation, but instead we’re treated to a loving exchange with zero background and zero emotional investment in them as a couple. It reminds me of when amateur authors think that killing off an unimportant character early will earn their main character sympathy, when all it does is get a collective shrug from their audience. People don’t care about these characters yet, and forcing them into emotional exchanges before your readers have had time to learn their names and their stories ends runs the risk of losing your audience’s attention.
YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND. WHY ARE YOU HAVING THIS CONVERSATION.
Also, does anyone actually talk to their SO like this? “Little one” is kind of infantilizing.
Also, Ehrhardt is a total dick. His boyfriend just got kidnapped, which Val admits to being a part of, but the minute Val calls E, has gotta go, despite his boyfriend’s protest. E also made out with Val in front of said boyfriend. Yeah, whatever happened about that? Nothing. And now E’s off again to… comfort the kidnapper’s accomplice? Make’s no sense.
Then Tebald apologizes for being mad (at his boyfriend, for kissing someone else on stage) and then leaving (and getting kidnapped) because somehow this is his fault.
WHAAAAAT.
Also, this is Tebald/Aldi’s dad.
Why does he look 22?
Then E asks Val to marry him? After breaking up with his boyfriend like 2 hours ago???
Here’s the first person who could feasibly be black.
Once the characters get out of the city and into disputed territory, the story and characters get stronger. Perhaps the author hit their stride or finally figured out where they wanted to go with this story, so the character interactions don’t seem so strained or awkward. So it could be leading in a better direction.
In regards to portrayals of women, people of color, queerness, and sex, there’s nothing offensive. There could definitely be more female characters or characters of color, but the mutants seem to have a bit more variety, both gender and color-wise. There’s no talk about sexuality, outside of the assumption that everyone just sexes who they want. And there’s no rape or dub-con sex scenes, so there’s nothing to whine about there.
In summary, the art is the best thing about [Stolen], and it does have potential to get better if the past 15 pages are any indication. However, the characters are still flat and static, and someone needs to invent cargo pants or something.
The slaughter of children in the Hunger Games was portrayed as one of the horrors of a dictatorship in a horrendous dystopia. Not something to be sought after and glorified as a romantic movie. How can anyone even compare the two?!
So I know I haven’t posted in forever. I haven’t been able to find the time or energy to do this sort of thing. I feel guilty any time I’m not actively looking for jobs, working on my writing/art, or using my time wisely. Or mindlessly scrolling through my usual internet fare, because that’s easy and requires no thinking. Like, before, when I had a job, after work I could just go home and vegetate, but living with my parents means constantly doing stuff my mother wants me to do. What this means is that I highly doubt I’ll be able to do any posting until I find a job, and at this rate, I may have a full time job by 2020. If I’m lucky.
If at any point someone wants to link me to THEIR feminist critique of a webcomic, I would love to reblog and promote it. Or feminist critique about anything, really.
Anyone else see Mad Max? I only saw it because I heard some MRAs bitching about it, and I thought “Anything the MRAs hate is something I want to give my money to!” I wasn’t sure how to feel about it at first, but once the old ladies showed up on motorcycles, I was won over. Daily Dot brought up a good point: at no time did Mad Max objectify, talk over, or bully the women. He kind of just stood off to the side, offered suggestions, and let them take it or leave it. This was especially stark when we first saw the brides-- they were wet and dressed scantily, the perfect opportunity for him to go “Heeeeyyyy ladieeezzzz”. Instead he threatened them with a gun because he has learned how to survive in this world, and that means treating everyone like a threat. Women, in his mind, are just as much of a threat as men. I had a knee-jerk reaction to that initial shot of them, thinking “Oh God, here’s the fucking fanservice”. But it ended up not going that way, thank God. Charlize Theron was so brutal kicking Max’s ass that my brother beside me in the theater said, “HOLY SHIT”. She wasn’t the “kick ass” lady that so many films try to pass as “feminism” these days. She was tough, sure, but she wasn’t the girl who had to prove her moves to a bunch of dumbass, immature dudes to show them how cool and empowered she is. She was tough because she grew up in a world that needed her to be, and I didn’t sense a smug white dude behind the camera going all “LOOK HOW GOOD I AM AT PORTRAYING WOMEN”. She was just a character who did what she had to because it was the right thing to do. If she were replaced with a man (thank God she wasn’t), then the part wouldn’t have felt false.
It wasn’t perfect, but shit, it did so much better than 90% of high octane action movies out there. It was one of the most “macho” movies I’ve ever willingly watched, and I liked it. I will never say “Hey, maybe Hollywood will now get the message that groups of women can do cool things and still makes lots of money” because they say that after every movie with decent female characters and it never changes.
But maybe we can at least get more old ladies riding motorcycles and shooting baddies? In fact, let’s just have a movie about that.
If anyone wants to discuss, there are the Disqus comments. :3
