amateur detective who solves crimes out of curiosity and then just. doesn’t bother to tell anyone the identity of the perpetrator
armchair detective who investigates objectively funny and morally correct crimes so they can help the perp cover their tracks
bystander who accidentally observes the protagonist commiting a felony and just…quietly walks off stage. they’re no narc and frankly? not their business
For anyone who wants this exact premise, told like an Agatha Christie-esque mystery combined with Silver-Age style masked vigilantes, check out Lavender Jack.
One of my favorite comics of all time, with gorgeous art, themes of power, wealth, law, justice, and corruption. With incredible characters who bond and grow as the series progresses, including some amazingly well-written villains. With a dash of Steampunk sci-fi for good measure.
If you want to see more exciting & interesting queer art you’re going to have to support independent queer creators and look at the stuff they make.
Y'know how The Owl House is such a great show, but they put one trans character and one lesbian romance in there and the Mouse was like “nah” and tried to hamstring the entire thing?
Imagine, if you will, a world where the Mouse just isn’t involved at all
That world exists already in a thousand thousand beautiful variations. You only haven’t heard of it because none of us have the budget for marketing.
I had a conversation with an anarcho-sybdicalist friend about whether The Owl House was moral because of the way it was produced and who is profiting from it. And it hit me as we talked that, for me at the time, the medium of animation was a large portion of the enjoyment of TOH. And that got me thinking about how difficult it is for indie queer creators to gain any foothold. Because, I can write a queer and trans novel, but it’s not going to reach the same audience as TOH, not just because of marketing, but because I cannot leverage entire animation studios to put my story in a medium people want to engage with.
This isn’t a “touch grass” message about how people should stop watching kids’ cartoons to get queer stories, but it is sad to realize I had so easily fallen into the trap of thinking an animated queer story was inherently more entertaining than a novel or comic or any other more democratized medium.
Animation can be democratized, but it’s got the same problem as AAA video games. Both games and animations studios leverage their power and resources to make “the best of the best”. Artistically, it sets the bar of quality to a degree that no indie animation group could ever compete with - in terms of length, finished art, voice acting, sound design, etc. We have no problem watching poorly filmed tiktok videos done on cellphones, but almost no one consumes animatics: an early cut of a storyboarded animation with sound, usually in black and white, with no animation break downs. Animatics are like single pictures with dialogue over them, and the pictures don’t move that much.
People also don’t watch black and white animation, which is much easier to make. Or boiled line/sketchy animation.
Everyone could be watching amazing queer animated stories if you all got into art where the hand of the artist is visible. Commercial entertainment works hard to erase the thousands of hands that go into it, and the expectation in animation is that the artist isn’t present at all. Democratized art means accepting and expecting the artist to be present in the roughness of the presentation, including their skill weaknesses. If you can accept awkward, unedited grammar in indie writing (I’ve read some fanfiction, you all put up with a lot), and terrible lighting/sound in a tiktok video, then ask yourself why you don’t accept raw animation or video games. You’re missing out.
#Yeah: this is a fair and important point#I mean: you def dont want to take it so far that it turns into a personal responsibility/ethical consumption argument#which it ISNT tbc#but accepting lower production for the sort of stories we WANT is worth doing#Hell: That was CENTRAL to the early Webcomic fandom tho we didnt think of it like that at the time#and a community welcoming of ~Shitty Art~ leads to SO MUCH amazing experimentation#Like: That’s where Homestuck came from
Honestly, if you want my hot take, the obsession with always ramping up production value is one of the worst things to happen to mainstream art and the fact that it bleeds over into outsider art as much as it does is a tragedy. To me it’s not even “accepting lower production for the sort of stories we want is worth doing,” it’s more “accepting lower production is a vital step towards falling in love with art that actually has a soul and isn’t just bloodless corporate drivel.”
Imo, a community being welcoming of “shitty art” does lead to amazing experimentation, but it also leads to art that’s actually good.
It was briefly mentioned, but I do want to say the indie cousin of a full fledged animated tv series is the webcomic. Animation, specifically, is incredibly labor intensive even in its simplest form. Think about those flash animation projects from the earlier internet days. How many of them are longer than five minutes? Without a studio, time, and money (animators deserve pay), the types of stories you can make are incredibly limited. The closest we’ve come to indie animation in the same realm as The Owl House would be Cartoon Hangover (Bravest Warriors, Bee and Puppycat), which hasn’t put anything out since 2018, or Roosterteeth (RWBY, Red vs Blue, and a few other smaller titles I’m fond of).
My point is there isnt really infrastructure for independent animation, not the same way there is for indie games, and what there is *must* compromise on scale due to the nature of the medium. Burnout is real in every artistic medium, but I’d bet dollars to donuts it happens more in animation than any other field.
Webcomics though? Webcomics are a deep well of good, bad, beautiful, diverse, passionate, community driven nonsense. Go find and support yours today!
Webcomics are absolutely great, but personally I find Visual Novels hit that Animation Itch a little better while still being attainable for poor indie creators. I specifically rec Butterfly Soup to anyone looking for a funny, diverse, quasi-animated f/nb romance without any gameplay elements (there are choices, but they’re just for fun and don’t change the story)
And of course if you’re not after animation specifically there’s fanfic, (self) published novels, podcasts, web series, etc. There’s a lot of great independent queer fiction out there, and maybe most of it won’t be what you’re looking for but hopefully some of it will. And if not, you can make it yourself pretty cheap ;)
Also it’s worth checking out translated works. There’s some great queer anime and manga out there, as well as comics from Korea, the Phillipines etc.
A lot of really good points here. Webcomics, fanfiction, Ren'py VNs, Twine IFs… There’re worlds on worlds of indie out there.
this is probably my favourite comic of all time jsyk
can someone explain this to me?
Sure thing! For convenience I’ll refer to the guy with his arms in his pockets as SG (shorter guy) and the one on the computer as TG (taller guy).
In the first panel, SG sees TG playing on the computer and is disappointed. SG puts a lot of value in the idea of “making things,” specifically “art,” and thinks TG is just wasting their time
So he asks them if they wouldn’t rather be “making something” instead of just playing games and listening to music, implying that TG isn’t doing anything worthwhile or creative with their time
But TG replies that “interpreting is generative,” meaning that even if they spend their time just doing fun stuff, the mere act of enjoying something is creating an experience and an interpretation. Talking about something, dancing to music or sharing a piece of art with your friends IS “making something,” and each of those can be worthwhile and artistic.
SG leaves, complaining he “can’t be an auteur of [interpretation].” Auteur is a movie term that refers to a filmmaker with artistic control and vision enough to be considered essentially the singular creator of the resulting work of art. Turns out, SG doesn’t just want to “make things,” he wants to make things he and others see as “important.” He wants to make art not for the sake of art, but for the sake of being recognized and praised for his art.
This comic really speaks to elitism within the artistic community, the idea that art needs to meet certain standards to be considered art. SG’s viewpoint is really traditionalist, that art need to be “approved” and validated in order to be considered “really art;” while TG recognizes that art can be as little as just talking about what you love.
TLDR: Art is for everyone, not just some sort of social “artistic elite.”
ooh i love the explanation
Rebloging for that in depth and not even a little snarky explanation. 10/10
“auteur” is one of those words that I had previously encountered but was always too embarrassed to admit I did not know.
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