When Art Mimics Life

[alaingrey]

Hi all

I've got an odd conundrum that's come up in my writing. A year ago I started my webcomic after some odd encounters in my daily life. I decided to make a somewhat-political comic about the old Reagan years in the United States, and wanted to create a narrative about radicalized far-right youths.

Now it seems like there's a lot of talk about this in the media and it has me unsure of how to continue my comic. When I started it, I didn't plan for the story to be this long, so I figured I'd be done by now and that it would be a sort of warning of a story. Now it's a little late for that.

I have an uncanny ability to predict future events through my writing, so I wonder if I should be as surprised that my comic drew up the parallel to modern underground youth culture, but I also just feel at quite a loss of what to be doing next. I wonder if any nod to 'alt right' culture in America is appropriate any more. Even if it's something important to address, which I believe it is, is it appropriate to post on Tapastic vs. a more private, personal site? I'm not sure. : (

Well I'm not sure what the question is, I just want some views other than mine and the views of my friends who have a more personal involvement in my comic. What would you do? Thanks for answering.

[shazzbaa]

I'm gonna ask a question that maybe should be obvious, but I don't want to try to assume:
What specific aspect of this are you concerned about?
Or, is there any specific response you're imagining, that would make you feel that you had made a mistake in publishing the comic?

[alaingrey]

Hm, I think what I worry about is just anyone upset that they could be confronted 'out of the blue' with a narrative about far right subcultures. Lots of people look to comics for escapism, and I don't want to ruin that for anyone, especially because I think a lot of my readers have an inclination that they're reading an LGBT romance story.

Even though it should be obvious that depiction of a viewpoint isn't endorsement of a viewpoint, there's a difference between depicting a story of 'this is the villain who is hateful and violent' versus 'here is my friend, and i have a hunch he is hateful and violent'. I worry that 'grey morality' isn't appropriate when writing a story about things that are certainly not gray.

tldr; I don't want to upset people, especially LGBT readers hoping for a nice narrative about romance, yet I don't want to do a heavy handed disclaimer because I haven't disclaimed for other equally big issues that could be equally/more distressing. I don't want to change to a more heavy handed narrative.

... I also want to keep these elements in the story because I think it's important to recognize that sometimes in real life, friends can do bad things. I just don't know if now is the time to be writing it, or just focusing on nicer, friendlier tales.

edit: i didn't taaag youuu sorry @shazzbaa

[shazzbaa]

I think it's important to recognize that sometimes in real life, friends can do bad things.

This is what I was thinking reading the entire rest of your response! I think that those kinds of things are incredibly important, right now especially, where there's a tendency to draw everything in broad strokes.

I think... what I would look at is, does it feel "too real" to you? Is it something where you're like "this hits too close to home for me right now, I want to tell this story but I don't think I can put my all into it in these current circumstances"? Because if the hesitation comes from being unsure YOU want to jump into it, then that makes sense and, I think, should be respected.

But if you're trying to guess whether it might upset others....... I feel like, someone needs your story really badly right now, with all of its messiness, and it will resonate with them. For someone else, your story will be too much for them. The way I see it, you can't really guess -- it's up to the people reading your story to say "okay, this is starting to touch some themes that hit too close to home right now, I'm going to come back to this some other time" if it's not a good time for them to read that kind of story.

On my twitter feed, there are some people who often tweet calls to action and awareness of problems. There are other people who tweet almost exclusively about silly cartoons and art and cute animals. We need both, and I don't think it's up to any one person to be everything we need. We need a harsh look at truth, and we need comfort and healing. If it's your job to be a truth-teller.... I don't think you have to feel bad just because some of your readers might be seeking comfort instead. There are plenty of other creators who have a story burning in them to comfort and heal, and you don't have to be those people if it's not what's burning in you!

Comics can be escapism, but that's not all they are. People need escapism, but that's not all they need. I dunno, there's not a right or wrong answer, but that's how I feel about it!

[alaingrey]

Nice- I think you and I have sort of reached the same conclusion to a messy answer. I think a lot of my apprehension comes from the fact that my current comic was never supposed to be a webcomic, just a small project to be shared among likeminded friends until a friend persuaded me to try out tapastic to informally host it. I think the situation would be different if my comic were still featured on the app, but fortunately it's not so I feel ok presenting a nasty story to my older audience.

As for personal anxiety, sure, a lot hits too close to home right now! After personal experiences, I don't think current events are a surprise to me, but it doesn't mean I want to come home and stare it in the face. I do want to warn people who might end up in situations like I've been in. What do you do when someone tries to have you support a radical opinion? How far can "art" go before its hateful? Can your gay friend be a nationalist?! It seems important to talk about it.

I think your reply put it in better words than I can express, though, so thank you ^_^

[punkarsenic]

well, i spose you can continue to make it a warning comic. something a little similars been done before - the british film 'this is england' followed a group of skinheads descending into the far-right and then clambering back out again when their black friend is violently assaulted, but the film is followed by four seasons of a tv series following those young people as they grow up in margaret thatchers britain (basically reaganism) that looks at racism, abuse, drugs, and the general working class desolation that dominated their lives. its all on channel 4's website for free (if you can get past the regionblock) and id suggest watching it for ideas, although its pretty graphic.

as for appropriate for tapastic, im unsure... on one hand, if you think youre doing a good job at spreading an anti-fascist message, id keep it here because of the exposure it gets. however, if youre unsure how thats doing, or youre going to get quite graphic - as that world does - then maybe a standalone site would be more suitable. normally, id say to artists 'do what feels comfortable' or 'do what you enjoy most' but this is really loaded, so it needs more thought for its surroundings.

I havent read your comic, but id say a turning point could help you at this time - a personal event that opens the eyes of your main character group that makes them drift away from the far-right, seeing it for what it really is.

also, generally, dont make stuff too subtle. comicbooks are easy to read at face value, even though good ones are rarely that simple, and you dont wanna be accidentally humanising fascists.

[alaingrey]

I know this is England- I was kind of inspired by it because it's so accurate. I actually even thought of making my story set in the UK but I didn't want to deal with Thatcherism and Americans tend to really get British slang wrong, so I decided to stick to familiar shores. Thanks for acknowledging this isn't a "do what feels comfortable" situation. I don't think it is either- like I said, I never planned for my story to be a webcomic, but decided to try for it anyhow.
A lot of the narrative is about toxic white gay culture. I think there's a current trend of having LGBT people shown as infallible but there's some real issues relating to race in the community. It's pretty obvious when you go onto grindr and see signs for "whites only" on half the profiles. In the 80s this really did have a close tie with a certain fetishism for the far right. It seems unfair to gloss over it and pretend it didn't happen in a lot of early punk scenes.
I did decide to remove graphic scenes of violence from the narrative, so that wouldn't be as much an issue for tap. I just felt it was too much in my art style. and much like you've suggested, there's a turning point in the story. I think I'm still naively hopeful and want to imagine people can change, right? And if they do change they should be forever haunted by the crap they did in their younger days.
As for subtlety, the only reason I wonder if it doesn't catch on is I make a point of not adding symbols. I don't want to suddenly start, because even if it's historic there's just some things I don't want to draw :-/
Also, execution in ones head and execution on the page are sometimes so different. I am very aware of my intentions, but maybe a reader isn't. A lot of tapastic reads LGBT stories as bl stories and projects that desire onto the comic, so my worry is that this might be read through a lens of fetishism that suddenly makes these actions cool or sexy. Like maybe someone thinks it's a dangerous taboo love story, and grossly misreads. I guess you can't control for extreme circumstance, but that's another reason I wonder "is tapastic the venue when this is the expectation..." Especially when it's easy enough to load up the story on a tumblr.

Edit: mobile doesn't allow replies it seems @punkarsenic

[punkarsenic]

i think your worry abt the BL interpretation is very real, and i guess you could steer away from any coupling to combat that? i read some of your comic before heading to college thismorning, (its really good) and if i hadnt known from this post, i would not have seen the far right narrative coming. i havent actually reached that part yet, but i do think you have a risk of guiding people in and they just stay in instead of thinking 'wait hang on thats awful.' especially in this day and age of fictional nazi worship left right and centre.
you should probably make this aspect of the narrative more explicit in the description, instead of just a mention of 'dubious politics' - that could mean so many things and fascism is not the first thing in a typical readers mind.

you might need to add something graphic. if you really dont want to, then that is a 'do whats comfortable' situation, but because of the readerbase here and your empathetic setup, i think you need a big bang moment to make all your readers realise how fucked up everything is. if you can pull that off, leave em shaking a little afterwards (admittedly, easier on film than comic), then youve done a brilliant job. otherwise, itll be difficult.

[alaingrey]

ah thanks- that last paragraph gives me a challenge, which is sometimes exactly what I need to pull thoughts together.

I probably am leaving it as a narrative to a little too late in the story. I have discovered a tendency within myself to get awfully long winded, especially because my pages don't take long and I can manage several in a week or day. I think it still won't be a big part of the story for some,,, tens of pages more, just because there's more important character development for other characters to get to first. I think I also hesitated to add it in the start because I wondered if it wouldnt just overpower any other narrative? Who knows. A lot has really changed since I started the project, as you noticed, is evident in my hasty description. I'll probably go in and change it when I can find exactly the right combination of direct and not a turn off.

As for people fetishizing anything, especially young people, I wonder if I'm not just thinking of edge cases. It's not an edge case I'd ever want to encourage. There is absolutely no coupling, but the fascist character has had a kiss, which in a subset of readers means 'paired for life' so I might have to just edit those pages in revisions if it really becomes quite a problem. Yikes !

Thanks for taking your time to help me sort my thoughts- It's a pleasure to have insight from a stranger.