tl;dr: for just the content warnings for the comic (at my site, at deviantart):
Speaking of all this implying horrible things are about to happen to my characters (because this is a Jurassic Park fancomic set in a time where running into non-avian dinosaurs in North America is a completely canonically plausible scenario, and I already draw a lot of raptors, so, come on, it's not exactly a mystery if an accidental dinosaur encounter is going to be part of the story). I do mean it when I say to anyone expressing worry about where this comic is going, that I'll be happy to answer any questions they have about additional content warnings. I know the one I gave at the beginning of the comic is pretty vague, and that title is pretty ominous. I wasn't sure if I should add more detailed ones in the first place, but I wasn't sure if that would completely spoil the plot, since the warnable things are a big part of it.
But I do believe not traumatizing your audience is definitely more important than any spoilers, in media in general, so in case people want to ask but are feeling timid about doing so, I'll try to live up to that first half of this sentence now. Guessing will they meet dinos and will someone get hurt isn't really what this comic is about anyway, and I have deliberately not tried to make how this monster encounter story is progressing unformulaic, because the plot being original and twisty isn't the point.
I decided to stick to the character group of a nuclear family for the same reason, though statistically it would be just as possible for people who run into dinosaurs to not be that. The JP/W franchise is pretty conservative in how every movie's main cast does end up being (after the less important characters get eaten or out of the spotlight) centered around a family, or two adults and some kids they end up looking after in a very nuclear family kind of dynamic during the movie even if they're not their kids. (Also someone's always getting divorced - if it's the main characters, expect them to reconsider by the end.) Sometimes the movies do end up doing something interesting with that, though. The JP/W storyline revolves around families in some other ways, too, after all, or we wouldn't have the overquoted "life finds a way" line.
My ordinary, cute nuclear family has two lesbian moms, because you're going to have to pay me to draw straight people, but also, why not. Even purely statistically speaking, some nuclear families in media should involve LGBT+ people, and media involving LGBT+ people should feature us in roles other than lamenting about the tragedy of not being cishet. But mostly because of that first one.
But. Yes, I do realize that brings some complications to the table, in the form of how having bad things happen to LGBT+ people in media is not interchangeable with bad things happening to cishet people, because of how media featuring one group overwhelmingly often has bad things happen to them while the other has far more happy endings among the horror stories in relation to the other group's track record. I'm a lesbian, and I'm transgender. I know how often we're the character that gets killed off (if we're even in the story to begin with).
I considered getting around playing into that trope by having my human family have a mom and a dad who give the reader no reason whatsoever to assume they might be bi and/or trans, for fear of sending the wrong message with bad things happening to them, because that's just the generic, normal family to most audiences, right. But the reason I chose to use my old original characters that I'm attached to as "actors" for this story was I wanted to be actually interested in writing them and wanted to want them to be okay, so that maybe my audience would want them to be okay, too, instead of just gleefully waiting for those walking dino snacks to get eaten. And, well, these are the kind of characters I'm interested in writing (apparently; I'm pretty sure some of these OCs are actually older than the JP movies are).
I hope this works out the way I've intended. Thank you so much for all the feedback I've gotten so far! It's all been very helpful.
No comments:
Post a Comment