I thought I recognized this art so i looked at op’s blog
idk if y’all remember this homophobic mess of a comic. Granted people can change but op’s more recent stuff reflects the same views.
hi! wow, you have a good memory, this was almost a year ago!
I think you might have misinterpreted the comic. the joke was how she, an ace person, could forget something as obvious and familiar to other people as sexual attraction! I thought her reaction was so funny I suggested making a daily comic about it.
Lyd is my girlfriend! We’re in love! Passionate lesbian love. For four years now! Since that comic we moved in together and we’ve started building savings for our life together! We talk online (Twitter, we don’t really use tumblr) about struggles we face, homophobia, lesbian history and representation, and the intersection of being gay with being ace, not ace, gender conforming, and gender non-conforming. That comic you’re saying is homophobic might look like it to someone without the context of our life, and maybe it did cause a sapphic woman to feel alienated due to her sexual attraction. I understand that because I’ve felt that way many times from the words of both lgbt and non-lgbt people alike. But it was an accident, and while that can’t take away the damage, I promise that Lyd’s comics showing our happy life together, our posts online, even our youtube channel all do infinitely more good for fellow sapphic women and other lgbt people than this comic did bad. Lyd apologized for the misunderstandings and lack of clarity.
Please stop holding other lgbt people to an impossibly high standard. We have so many enemies in this world, the last thing we need is to be attacking each other for the smallest infractions.
– Meg, a lesbian
(we went on vacation together last week! 🙂 )
how tf is “allosexuals experience sexual attraction” homophobic
The thing about how women in comics used to be drawn and sometimes are still drawn, you can only really understand the difference between an action girl being forced into unrealistic sexual, sensual positions, and an actual strong and well posed, empowering but still sexy female character, when you see what it looks like to have male characters depicted in overtly sensual poses
And I’m not talking about the Hawkeye Initiative or any given parody
I actually want to draw a comparison using art by Kevin Wada
Kevin Wada is a proud part of the LGBTQ+ community and he has this unique ability to sexualize mainstream male heroes without it looking like a parody. He draws covers for multiple big comic companies and his style reminiscent of old fashion magazines, drawn largely in traditional watercolor, has made him a stalwart of the industry.
He also draws a lot of naked Bucky Barnes.
Anyway, I want to talk about how interesting his art is, the difference between his power poses and his sexy poses for male and female characters.
A typical power pose for a male comics character would look like this
Whereas every so often with female heroes you get something like this
Not all the time, of course, but it happens and it happens in the wrong places. You wouldn’t be posing like a cover model in the middle of a battle, you really wouldn’t.
But when it comes to Wada and male and female characters, the difference is pretty clear.
When he draws male characters, they more often look like this
Sensual, in a pose you wouldn’t usually see a big, muscular hero doing. If not that, then playful, sexy, for looking at, but nothing about their anatomy overly exaggerated
How he draws women is also very clearly different from many other artists, from sexy pose to power pose.
Still posing for the camera, still to be looked at, but very, very different from how we’ve seen female characters portrayed in mainstream comics in the past.
And I guess it’s really just a matter of variety? Objectification in art is a long time debate and appears everywhere always, but for all that we can argue about its impact on popular media, there are a few things I know for sure:
1) having a female character pose like a playboy cover girl in the middle of a battle scene is just Bad Art and y’all need to find better references
2) female power poses will never look quite as right as when they’re drawn by people who know the value of expressing personality through pose (it’s basic animation principles and some artists still need to learn it) and who actually know what a female character’s personality beyond “sexy”
3) Iron Man or Batman posing like they’re about to beat somebody up is 100% not the same as a fashion drawing by Kevin Wada where a Typical Beefy Action Guy gets to pose like a flirty pretty boy
4) the MCU films have figured out the value of pandering to female audiences by sexually objectifying all their male action heroes while simultaneously appealing to the male demographic’s action movie power fantasy. Quoting Chris Hemsworth and Taika Waititi: “I’m not a piece of meat” “Uh, yes you are.”
They definitely struck some kind of balance there.
Also, more important than this entire post: y’all should follow @kevinwada on Tumblr and give him love because his art is divine and his talent beyond words
Charlie, a highly-strung, openly gay over-thinker, and Nick, a cheerful, soft-hearted rugby player, meet at a British all-boys grammar school. Friendship blooms quickly, but could there be something more…?
Nick and Charlie are characters from my debut novel, Solitaire. Heartstopper updates three times a month, on the 1st, 11th, and 21st.
i really appreciate reblogs and shares – please help me spread word about this comic! i’m so excited for people to read it!
KICKSTARTER FOR HEARTSTOPPER: VOLUME ONE LAUNCHES JUNE 20TH. Follow my Twitter or main Tumblr @chronicintrovert to stay updated!
bringing this back today for the start of pride month. still overwhelmed by how well this comic went down and with how many people relate. it’s easy to think aro-ace people are all totally accepting of their identities and really proud of who they are. i guess on websites like this you see a lot of people proudly putting their identity in their bio, a flag in their profile picture.
in fact i think a lot of aro-ace people really hate that part of themselves, hide it, and struggle for a long time to ‘accept’ who they are and feel any sense of ‘pride’. that’s the feeling i wanted to capture here. the disappointment, the loneliness, upon realising that you can’t feel what is such a wonderful thing. the embarrassment of not being ‘normal’, of being some random sexuality that nobody irl has heard of, and letting down those around you because you can’t be who they want you to be. how desperately you want to change, how desperately you want to feel. but you just can’t.
i know not all aro-ace people feel like this. i know lots of aro and/or ace people feel able to be in relationships, to feel closeness and have partners in other ways. but i think it’s important to be aware that some aro-ace people do feel like this.
the comments on this comic have mostly been great but a few have been very frustrating. a comment it got a lot was along the lines of ‘aw!! you don’t need to have sex to be in a relationship!’. you completely missed the point, hah. this is not a comic about sex. it’s about a lack of feeling, the lack of something beautiful other people seem to have. another comment that popped up a few times was ‘maybe she’s a lesbian’. well maybe lesbians and aro/ace girls have more in common than people think – maybe they both often struggle to accept that they feel no attraction to men, even though society has conditioned them to do so, sometimes spending years trying to force themselves to like men in that way, when they just can’t.
this comic is called ‘wanting and not wanting at the same time’ because she wants to love. but when it comes down to the reality, she can’t fulfil the requirements of that. she wants to love someone forever, to get married and have children and grow old with her soulmate, but she doesn’t want it with this person. or that person. or anyone she meets or will ever meet. a sort of catch 22, i guess.
hope that makes sense. thanks for listening, and have a lovely pride month ❤️
At long last I’m excited to share my comic ‘Tinder’! I had so much fun on this project and it got me really excited to write more stories! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the comic and have a great day! ❤
If you want to help support the comic you can help by: ~ !! Reblogging this post !! ( a big please and thank you! <3) ~ Give the comic an ‘ol follow over on Tapas
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