The Gay Wave

So I've noticed something as of late:  There are a lot of gay characters in comics I read.  Of course, I do reach out to lesser known strips much of the time as the ones with the larger audiences, like Sluggy Freelance and Schlock Mercenary, don't have any gay characters I can think of off the top of my head (meaning they might have them, but I don't remember them).  But I do read a great many who do have them and it makes me wonder why.

Not that I have a problem with it, I feel I must reiterate this because people tend to read the wrong things into statements like that.  No my issue is purely from a character and story telling angle.  Why is that character gay?  It's the same thing that triggered my rantish post on Exiern not too long ago and the fact that it was outright stated when it was unnecessary.

Still, I understand he had his reasons for it and while I think it could hurt the character and comic in the long run, it's not guaranteed.  But for other comics, I'm less sure, and more worried.  In fact, I see this happening with other "minorities" (yeah, not so minor any more, but you get my point) at various points in the past.  As such, I think there are only a few valid reasons to make a character gay, black, a woman, white, male, transsexual, Asian, etc, etc, etc.

The first reason is they just are.  I know that sounds like the weakest reason, and in a way it can be, but it's still valid.  There's no reason for the character to be gay, no hidden agenda, no message, no plan, no anything, the character just is gay.  There's couple advantages to this method, the first being that some OTHER trait can take priority over the character's long term development.  Also, it leaves the option open to explore the gay trait in the future if necessary.

The next best reason is that is important for character development.  Sera from Serenity Rose is gay, but it isn't confronted directly until near the end of the comic.  Before that, it was just another layer of division from the rest of the world, already amplified by the fact that she is one of 57 witches in the entire world.  Being gay further segregated her from the world, and charged her crippling social anxiety.  While being gay is important to her character, it doesn't really affect the comic as a whole.  Had she not been gay, some of the events would have changed, but I suspect the story would have generally remained the same.

The final good reason is that the author/artist has something to say on the subject.  What the comic is trying to say varies quite a bit.  Material Girl covers the crossdressing thing pretty well, the basic message being it doesn't matter what you wear, it's who you are underneath that's important.  Dumbing of Age does it not as well, but I think the point is still there about how being gay affects the people around the person and how they might change how they act as a result.  There is an issue, but I'll get to that with the worst reason to make a character gay:

Everyone else is doing it.  This is what I fear a lot of comics are doing (not necessarily the ones I'm reading).  It reminds me of the "token character" trend from the 80's and 90's that peppered television and other forms of media.  Random, non-white characters were added and given the most stereotypical aspects possible to act as if they were being diverse.  The same problem comes up for gay characters.  In attempting to "stay current" they just gather whatever they think they know about gay characters and throw them in, creating stereotypical characters that are worse than even the worst slurs.  Having something to say on the topic has the same issue, but unless the author has access to someone who IS gay (or are gay themselves) the trap of stereotypes is laid and could easily be fallen into.

Like I said, I don't think any of the comics I read fall into the last one, but I do wonder how many comics have been falling into it.  I hope it's not many.  Until next time kiddies.

No Dreams This Week

Too damn tired to translate it.  Next week, I promise.

Sorry about that

Due to a snafu in publishing, I didn't get the article I intended out this week.  It'll go out on the 31st instead.  Sorry about that.

Dreams of Stars Part 13

            Night had fallen some time ago as Deborah lounged back on a bale of hay.  They had been going all day, and well into the night, longer than before.  It wasn't fun, as they kept up a near running pace for most of it, but it was completely necessary.  Undoubtedly the authorities would be out looking for them after what L’lorne had done inside the CDPC.

            Now, though, they could relax, just as soon as L’lorne got back from talking to the farmers about getting some blankets.  The old barn that she now laid in the upper loft of was plenty warm enough, and the nights had been very nice recently, but the main concern was the itchy hay, and their combined desire not to lie upon it.

            Warm nights.  It had been oddly warm, it finally occurred to Deborah, especially for mid March.  Hadn't the weather man mentioned something about the weather being out of season or something?  She could remember snippets of it, but it really wasn't important.  Something else about the report was important, but she couldn't lock her thoughts on what it was exactly.

            "Hey," L’lorne stopped and shook her head as Deborah giggled at the greeting.  "Ha, ha, very funny.  Here," she tossed a blanket at Deborah and it covered her head in a lump.  "We're good here until tomorrow.  We've even been invited for breakfast."

            "Sounds good," Deborah laid out her blanket against and along the hay bale and nestled into it.  Ah, not to be itchy, it felt good.  "Think we'll be able to take them up on it?"

            "Maybe, depends."

            "On whether they're still looking for us?"

            "Oh, I doubt they'll stop looking for us," L’lorne said, then started to gaze at a beam in the wall.

            Deborah picked up on it.  "What are you looking for?"

            "Police frequencies.  They may not stop looking for us, but they might move their search elsewhere."  Her face went from blank to curiously confused.  “Interesting, nothing.”

            “Eh?”

            “No police or military frequencies.  It’s as if they’re going for radio silence. . .” L’lorne trailed off.

            “What is it?”

            L’lorne looked at her and smiled.  “Oh nothing you need to worry about.”

            Deborah looked at her companion then shrugged and leaned back.  If it was important, she had decided sometime ago, L’lorne would tell her.  If it wasn't, she'd just have to ask later.  Speaking of which.  "You really beat the hell out of those guys."

            "Yeah," L’lorne responded as she shuffled her blanket around amongst the hay.  "That I did."

            "Especially since they all had guns and you didn't have anything."

            L’lorne chuckled slightly, again.  Deborah was both irritated and relieved.  Irritated every time L’lorne revealed some new trick or idea, and relieved that there was a new trick she hadn't heard about yet.  "Not exactly nothing, I used this."  With that, she tapped on a small pouch on her right hip.

            Deborah, in all the time walking with L’lorne, had never even noticed it, and this was the second time it had happened.  The first was the watch that even now she could see bobbing on the wrist that tapped on the new addition, a strange pouch with a crescent shaped bottom that stretched out slightly farther than the rest of the pouch.  "What is it, a gun?"

            "An axe." 

            Deborah looked at the pouch and thought that yes, she could see it being an axe, an axe head at least.  She wondered where the handle was, probably in another pouch that she won't notice until the last minute.  "Um, wouldn't that have left more serious injuries than simply knocking them out?"

            "I use it mostly for the weight," L’lorne closed her eyes and leaned against the wall of hay.  "That and I'm very good at using it, if I must say so myself."  Deborah chuckled with L’lorne this time at the little bit of self praise L’lorne just issued.  "But that's not what you wanted to know.  Is it?"

            The girl blinked, scratched her cheekbones lightly and almost blushed.  “Well, yeah, it’s just,” she paused again, searching for the wording she wanted.  “How did I do it?”  L’lorne looked at her and Deborah quickly added, “How did I find my mother?”

            “Ah, that’s what’s on your mind.  Alright, I’ll try to explain it.”  She moved forward so she could look Deborah right in the eyes.  “Your brain is wired differently than most other people.  You have this natural ability to see patterns in complicated things, sometimes things thought to be unpredictable.”

            “How do I do that?”

            “That requires knowing a lot about how the brain works, physics and a few other things that, to be honest, you don’t quite know enough to understand yet.”  She held up her hand trying to hold off the negative reaction she expected from Deborah.  “In time you can learn them, but until then, you’ll just have to trust that you can do it, and leave it at that.”  L’lorne leaned back against the wall again.

            Deborah could only accept this response, agreeing with L’lorne’s assessment of her education, but also knowing that she really didn’t have the time at the moment to learn it.  “Okay, but what do you mean by patterns and unpredictable things?”

            “Well, let’s try it this way.”  L’lorne twirled her fingers in the air a bit as she seemed to think of the best way to explain.  “A smart person, a very smart person, could look at a sequence of numbers and say what the next number is.  If I said ‘1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, they could probably work out the next number is 9, and later what every number in the sequence is, using a mathematical formula.”  She looked over at Deborah.  “If I said ‘1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 to you and asked for the 30^th number in the sequence, you would reply. . .”

            “3329,” Deborah said without thought.  She blinked, a bit shocked at the sudden response, while L’lorne smiled, confirming it as the correct answer.  “And this helped me find mama?”

            “Indeed, but that’s only the most recent example of what you can do.  Earlier you could predict things such as the routes of police cars on the streets, knowing where the next blow from an attacker was coming from, tracking me through the city and a simple game of chess all fall within the same category.”

            “Like seeing bullets?”

            L’lorne seemed surprised at the question and looked at Deborah for a brief moment.  “You could see them?  Interesting.”

            “Interesting?”

            “Well,” L’lorne said looking up at the ceiling in thought.  “The path of a bullet isn’t exactly complicated, but under normal conditions, no, you can’t see bullets.”

            “But I did,” Deborah protested.

            “I don’t doubt that, but the conditions at the time weren’t exactly normal.”  Deborah scrunched her face in frustration.  “First, you had been using your talent quite extensively on the data stream.  At the moment, you can’t simply turn on and off your talent; it just flows from one event to another.  That would help, but in the end, you mostly saw them because you were still wearing the glasses.”

The glasses were now in her pocket, Deborah checked the pocket with a pat, but she hadn't actually taken them off until they had reached the farm.  "I don't understand."

            "Once you knew what you were doing, the glasses made an effort to help you do it.  They assisted in finding the information on your mother initially, highlighting whatever word or phrase your eyes focused on.  When we were being shot at, your eyes started looking for the routes of the bullets.  The glasses helped by filling in what you wanted to see.  The bullets."

            "The bullets."  Deborah said it nearly at the same time as L’lorne.  "I didn't realize they were so powerful."

            "Not really," L’lorne off handedly.  "Truth is they're a simple tool, nothing special, but important when you're first learning."

            "Learning what?"

            L’lorne opened her mouth to speak, but stopped and looked out the open loft door.  "We have visitors."

            Deborah turned to the door and peered out.  A truck, a big one, with military markings, rumbled down the road kicking up a mess of dust that even in the darkening evening stood out against ground.  "They found us," she said with alarm.

            "Relax.  I'll go see what's up."  L’lorne began climbing down the ladder to the barn floor.

            "Wait, I'll go with you," Deborah started.

            "You can watch, the glasses work like binoculars too."  And she was gone.

            Deborah tried to find the breath to counter the suggestion she just stay put, but gave up on it and dug the glasses out of her pocket.

---------

Questions

1. What kind of person is Lcorn Llorne? What does she look like (in your mind)?
2. What kind of person is the Deborah Ignigus? What does she look like (in your mind)?
3. Does the setting seem fitting? Would you like to know more?
4. Does the explanation of Deborah's ability make sense here?

Just a General Update Thingy

So hi, how's it going?  I'm fine.  I'm working.

That's really what this rather brief post will be about, that I'm working.  A lot.  It shouldn't interfere with site updates, but it might.

The scheduling isn't really weird, but annoyingly early in the morning.  And long hours.  My point is, despite me working, I do intend to keep updating the blog.  The issue is finding time to come up with articles or reading comics for reviews.

Still, work means money, money means food which means I live longer, so that's positive.

In the meantime, I'll try to at least keep Dreams of Stars updated.  I've got ideas for articles, just need to sit down and write them.  Reading comics for reviews might be a little rougher though.  We'll see as things go on.  Until then kiddies.

Dreams of Stars Part 12

Sorry on the shortness of this section.  Probably should have posted it last week, but the next section starts a new scene and it would have felt weird.  Ah well.

            The door snapped open.  "Glad to hear it."  L’lorne gestured for Deborah to follow her.  "Let's go, I've bought us some time."

            "Time?"  Deborah reached the door and paused for a moment.  "What about that guy?"  She pointed to Sergeant Blake, lying half naked just inside the small data room.

            "He'll be fine, his friends will get him out."  L’lorne stepped over a second person sprawled out on the office floor.  "Well, as soon as he wakes up," she indicated to new body on the floor, who groaned and started to move.  “Which will be sooner rather than later I suppose.”

            "What happened?

            L’lorne sighed.  "This guy, and another one who got away, must have been friends with Blake there, and they saw through my attempts to fool them."  She should have sounded upset at her failure, but she didn't even seem a bit depressed by it, as if she meant for it to happen.  "Got him with the tape dispenser, missed the girl with the stapler though.  Sloppy work."

            "Oh, well, um, two out of three, I guess," Deborah said.  "So what happened then?"  The office door opened just as the data center door closed, and the two stepped out into the hallway.  All around, up and down the passageway, were bodies.  Deborah caught her breath as something like twenty men and women all dressed in uniforms clung to the floors and walls in various poses.  The only movement was the occasionally rise and fall of their chests, otherwise they were motionless.  "Oh my."

            "They'll be fine," L’lorne said flatly.  "I put them down when they tried to rush the office.  Guess they figured a woman couldn't defend herself."  There was a snicker.  "Or even attack.  They learned though."

            Deborah bent down and touched one of the soldiers.  "Looks painful."

            "Pain is temporary, they'll be fine."  L’lorne looked down the hallway in the opposite direction from which they arrived.  "We should get going, I'm sure they're going to send more people to check on their friends." 

            Deborah nodded and began a light trot back they way they had come.  "So we're just going to go down the elevator?"  L’lorne didn’t reply, but kept moving.  At the doors to the elevator, Deborah stopped and pushed the call button.  The light didn't come on, so she pressed it again.  Still nothing.

            "Don't bother," L’lorne said quietly.  "They've shut them down."

            "How do you. . ." Deborah never finished.

            "HALT!"  Right at the turn in the hall, a man, dressed in heavy combat gear and wielding a large, impressively intimidating weapon, yelled at the two them again, ordering them on to the ground.  He was quickly joined by three more soldiers, each with their own impressively intimidating weapons, all of them looking almost as scared of what it was they were aiming at as Deborah immediately felt upon seeing them.

            "Time to go," L’lorne said quickly, and she grabbed Deborah.  In a moment, the girl was flung up into L’lorne's arms, and the combination charged away from the weapons and the people who held them.

            Deborah could only just see over L’lorne's shoulder, and it was enough to see the leader give the order and the flashes of the weapons as they fired.  She had seen guns before, Danny occasionally brought one out for whatever effect he was trying to pull, and sometimes the cops did too, but never had she seen one fired, especially not at her.  The sight and the sound caused Deborah to want to bury herself into L’lorne's body and hide, but the shock of seeing it at all froze her.

            The bullets came.  The bland carpet was dotted puffs of dust and splinters as each piece of metal exploded into them.  More explosions, this time of plaster and bland paint, followed L’lorne's running body down the hall, tearing the walls apart and leaving ripped chunks of walls and small holes.  Bullets that should have hit their targets, however, seemed always to veer at nearly the last moment, passing by harmlessly or suddenly diving away and ripping into the walls and floor.

            Deborah's initial shock passed into questioning as to how these soldiers and their impressively intimidating weapons could miss so poorly.  This was all superseded when L’lorne suddenly turned around.  In an instant, the shooting guards were replaced with walls and their newly acquired bullet holes, and finally the glass of the lone window.  The light jump Deborah felt ripple up L’lorne's body was enough for her to turn her head and duck down.

            L’lorne's back shattered the glass.  Fragments passed by them, almost in slow motion, and Deborah could actually watch the individual particles of glass floating with them as the two moved through the empty sky.  She was screaming now, though when she had started she wasn't sure, but she was, and even more so since the bullets seemed to stand out against the bright blue sky that much more.  Then the fragments stopped moving, or at least didn't move the same way.  They looked almost like they were going backwards, back to where they came from.  As she watched and screamed, the fragments did indeed go back, and the window reformed behind them, only to have bullets create a bright flash behind them as the glass stopped each one cold.

            A sudden thump indicated that L’lorne had landed, and Deborah was able to stop herself from screaming.  She was confused, bewildered by the sudden turn of events, but time wasn't on their side, and L’lorne tugged on her arm to keep her moving.  Even so, Deborah managed to look back long enough at the window, some five stories up, and the impact blasts of a dozen bullets that it contained.

---------

Questions

1. What kind of person is Lcorn Llorne? What does she look like (in your mind)?
2. What kind of person is the Deborah Ignigus? What does she look like (in your mind)?
3. Does the setting seem fitting? Would you like to know more?
4. Effectively, this is the halfway point of the story, so what do you think so far?

Retrospective; Serenity Rose

Wait, there's no Serenity Rose on the read list?  Actually it is, under the website name Heart-Shaped Skull.  Technically the name of the comic is Serenity Rose, and back at the end of November it ended.  Which threw a wrench in my plans to have it be on my "Can't Live Without" list.  Guess I'll have to live without it though.

Not that I think it's over for good.  I'll get to that in a bit, but I will say that this phase of the comic's life is over, and that fits a retrospective as well as anything.  The last page is a "Let's Go Exploring" moment for pete's sake! (and if you don't get that reference, I will educate you sometime this year).

I almost want to talk about this more as a proper review than a retrospective because there's so much to talk about.  Little things like a floating teacup near the end, a mysterious villain, awesome characters (I love Tess), and a growth curve most comics only dream of.  If the comic wasn't so relatively short (despite 10 years of being online), I could almost do another Standard on it.  Almost.

There are two phases to the comic, differentiated by a stark difference in art style.  The earlier, "muppet" style and the more realistic style.  When it switches, the basic framing of the comic, a drawn dairy, more or less fades into the background, only coming back for the occasional backstory interlude.  It doesn't feel as jarring as it could because of this. It works so well that during a period when I couldn't read a pair of chapters in the middle of the comic, the brief bits caught me up very quickly that I didn't even really notice I missed it (though actually reading those sections showed how much I actually missed).

I think, though, the best way to describe this comic is to point out that it's not a "growing up" comic.  So many of those are out there, it's cliche and would have been rather easy, but there is no easy way out here.  Sera is 22 when the comic starts, in college, with all her high school days, as awful as they are, behind her.  So the characters are older, but that doesn't mean they don't have growing up to do, right?  Here, no, she's done growing up, the comic goes in another direction, growing into.  Very different things because what Sera's life will be in the future isn't quite written.

It becomes clear after the first chapter that the entire piece is about what she could be if she wanted.  She could be a rock star, a ruler, a pirate and even just go completely mad.  By the end, she choses none of those things, but the journey to that point is the point.

And I suppose that's what makes this comic so good to me.  It's not another high school/college strip, it's not about wacky antics or grand mysteries.  It's about one person finder her place in the world after all that growing up stuff is over, and seeing what the world really has to offer her, and what she has to over the world.

So why don't I really think it's over?  Well, that's easy, the artist said it wasn't over.  He'll do more with Sera in the future, that's clear, but what?  I think I know.  He recently had a kickstarter (which I failed to mention because I didn't notice it until it was basically over, along with the comic, I'm really bad at that), and that ended with a thank you video.

Where Serenity Rose rises up and gives a whispered "thank you."  Looking through some of the kickstarter stuff, she was created as a subject for his animation coursework and moved to webcomics later.  Yeah, I think he's planning a video series.  Whether he gets to it or not, I don't know, but I think it's in the cards at least.

Until then, this comic is over, for now.  I'll put it in Hiatus until it's officially done, or not as the case may be.

Next time, um, not sure.  Depends on how insane my new job is (looks pretty nuts).  Until then kiddies.