paranatural

Panels from Paranatural, Chapter 5, page 147

Anonymous asked:

where were you when Paranatural went off the deep end to pander to tumblrites? I’m so glad another white, middle-class male decided to insert his ideology into his comic, since the world just needed to know how tolerant and open-minded he is. Now that the muslim woman doctor is also gay, I wonder what other diversity panderings he’ll force in. The woman doctor will be transgender too? Maybe Max decides his unabashed cis male look is out of fashion, and starts wearing dresses everywhere
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Okay
chum-fricassee_twenty-four-hours-later

Anonymous asked:

Anon who sent you the rant about paranatural here. “Okay” That’s it?? Well gee, I was hoping to get some insight into what you thought about inserting gay and minority characters into webcomics, for the sole reason to have gay and minority characters. Or something on that tangent. The author’s twitter feed certainly implies he’s just adding diversity for the sake of diversity. But whatever, if you wanna be lame and dismiss what I said because I come off as le crazy gay-hater, then fine >: (

I didn’t just say “Okay”, Anon. I also had a reaction image.

I mean, what’re you hoping for me to say, dude? Do I think the “I know you’re gay” line was a little forced? Enh, maybe. I think “I know she’s cute” follows more logically from Zarei’s line and gives the same information, but that’s a minor stylistic nitpick. Does it ruin the comic? No. Is it being forced into the comic for the sake of Paranatural having a gay character in it? Also no. There’s a clear narrative purpose behind his revelation, which is that Zarei having a crush on the agent investigating her adds a comedic element to that relationship which can be mined in the future while also, more immediately, explaining why the normally reserved Zarei is flipping out like this, as her flirt-threat failed both as a flirt and a threat.

And sure, it can be kind of annoying when a comic author gets super high and mighty with a big speech about their commitment to social justice when they add a single offhand reference to LGBT characters on panel three of page 959 and then literally never ever bring it up again.

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“Sometimes, in order to move forward, we have to stop waiting for the moment to be right, or the situation to arise organically, or whatever euphemism you want to put on the idea of maintaining the status quo because it’s easier, and just do it.” -Rich Burlew, a man who cared deeply about LGBT representation for a couple of hours once

And I think we as a society are all in agreement that anyone who claims their work is representative and progressive when it blatantly isn’t deserves a good mockery

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“ Inspired by some amputee photo shoots, I decided to try my hand at some cyborg-themed pinup sketches with Kim, a sort of celebration of the female form and taking agency over one’s body. “ -Aaron Diaz, creepy sex pervert. For another example, scroll up to see Order of the Stick try to pass off a literal stick figure as representation of fat people.

But just because representing different types of people in webcomics is kind of trendy right now doesn’t make it wrong. A line about a character being gay, even if it’s a little clunkily written, doesn’t mean that Zach Morrison “went off the deep end pandering to tumblerites”

You say “The author’s twitter feed certainly implies he’s just adding diversity for the sake of diversity.” But I actually checked his twitter feed, and there’s no off-hinged ranting. I just found a billion tweets about Pokemon and this

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Which is literally his only tweet that references the comic at all, besides the “New comic!” tweet. And I checked the responses for that, and nothing there either.  The fuck are you talking about? lnkplzkthx?

Morrison is informing us of a character trait of a significant character. He’s doing this because it’s plot relevant and it sets up a joke. It’s wasn’t shoehorned in really awkwardly. He hasn’t gone on twitter and gotten super pretentious about how including lesbians in his webcomic is a brave and daring risk in the service of changing the world, man. He had a gay character in his comic. It came up at a narratively logical time. We all moved on with our lives. You can have representation in your comic without turning into Sinfest. It’s easy. Fuck, Legend of the Hare has a black lesbian in it (though her being gay was only mentioned on an older version of the cast page), and no one would accuse LotH of “pandering”. And that’s not an accusation that I expect to get thrown at Saffron and Sage, either.

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Look out anon! A black woman! This is clearly because I’m in thrall to the SJW agenda, and not at all because I want to my two female leads to look different

And yeah, I’m kind of blowing you off here. Deal with it? I’m sure lot of people find the idea that including gay characters in fiction means you’ve “gone off the deep end” to be offensive to them as LGBT people or Muslims or what have you. And they’re right to. But additionally I find it kind of offensive as a writer to have people tell me including nonwhite characters is me trying to show the world how big my Social Justice Dick is and that there’s never a storytelling reason involved. So take a goddamn chill pill and realize that maybe a comic having a gay person doesn’t mean it’s ‘pandering” and even when it does you can just read something else.

In conclusion

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