logansrogue (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
logansrogue) wrote2010-11-04 07:13 pm
logansrogue) wrote2010-11-04 07:13 pm
Carrie and the Magnetism - The Real Story.
A lot of people ask me what my comics are about. I can sum them up all pretty well.
BirdMartiaN - Sci-Fi Parody of Superhero and Alien Lore.
The Muse - A woman is sent mad by seeing her own muse, is put on parole and babysat by Fae, then goes to challenge the Fae and recover her freedom.
But Carrie has always been hard to explain. It's been hard because, really, Carrie and the Magnetism isn't written for men in particular. So anything that I say about the surface story, seems pretty boring to the people I talk to (fashion, image, social struggles, inner power). I've been told, again and again, through either marketing, discussions or feedback, that this is a bad thing. I've found myself ashamed of a product that was heavily inspired by Jem, She-Ra, Xena, Buffy, Dark Angel, Wonder Woman, and strangely, The X-Men. Carrie and the Magnetism is the comic *I* want to write, that *I* want to read. It's pulpy, it's soapy, it's fun and it's tough. There's heart in this fucker, and I can't wait to show you that heart.
But I realised, reading one of my favourite blogs (Hoyden, actually) that the heart of Carrie and the Magnetism, the thing that the struggles of these two disparate groups of fashionable, tough women represent, is the two things that make things so tough for women today:
Real Honest-to-God Feminism, and the Feminism-Lite that women are "allowed" to adhere to in the current system.
There's a kind of girl-power, 'real women', 'dove soap', 'let's all use this shaver', 'oooh girls, let's have a shoe party' kind of feminism that the marketing companies and the television shows love to peddle. And they always, *always* use it in some kind of imagined "Battle of the Sexes". It's the sort of thing that keeps women in competition with each other. It's a sort of Faux-Feminism that means that nothing really changes, even though it has all the appearance of the paradigm having overturned the ways of the past.
It's not obvious, though. When reading Carrie, one might think it was about women superheroes and villains duking it out in funky outfits. But underneath, hopefully, it'll be more than that. I say hopefully cause, well, I don't know how good I am at this comic business just yet. :)
BirdMartiaN - Sci-Fi Parody of Superhero and Alien Lore.
The Muse - A woman is sent mad by seeing her own muse, is put on parole and babysat by Fae, then goes to challenge the Fae and recover her freedom.
But Carrie has always been hard to explain. It's been hard because, really, Carrie and the Magnetism isn't written for men in particular. So anything that I say about the surface story, seems pretty boring to the people I talk to (fashion, image, social struggles, inner power). I've been told, again and again, through either marketing, discussions or feedback, that this is a bad thing. I've found myself ashamed of a product that was heavily inspired by Jem, She-Ra, Xena, Buffy, Dark Angel, Wonder Woman, and strangely, The X-Men. Carrie and the Magnetism is the comic *I* want to write, that *I* want to read. It's pulpy, it's soapy, it's fun and it's tough. There's heart in this fucker, and I can't wait to show you that heart.
But I realised, reading one of my favourite blogs (Hoyden, actually) that the heart of Carrie and the Magnetism, the thing that the struggles of these two disparate groups of fashionable, tough women represent, is the two things that make things so tough for women today:
Real Honest-to-God Feminism, and the Feminism-Lite that women are "allowed" to adhere to in the current system.
There's a kind of girl-power, 'real women', 'dove soap', 'let's all use this shaver', 'oooh girls, let's have a shoe party' kind of feminism that the marketing companies and the television shows love to peddle. And they always, *always* use it in some kind of imagined "Battle of the Sexes". It's the sort of thing that keeps women in competition with each other. It's a sort of Faux-Feminism that means that nothing really changes, even though it has all the appearance of the paradigm having overturned the ways of the past.
It's not obvious, though. When reading Carrie, one might think it was about women superheroes and villains duking it out in funky outfits. But underneath, hopefully, it'll be more than that. I say hopefully cause, well, I don't know how good I am at this comic business just yet. :)
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- Feminism-lite which gives us such "wonderful" things like the lead female in the Transformers movies, and other "rolemodels".
- Extreme feminists that are all for female superiority, but first we need to get rid of all the men because it's not like full on gender equality would be good for people of either, both or any gender.
- Real feminisim, masculism and equalism. Hardly existing, often overshadowed by the above two. Equality and nothing else. If I get a job as an engineer, I shouldn't be treated differently from if I were a guy being an engineer, that simple, how is this such a difficult concept to grasp out there?
It's been hard because, really, Carrie and the Magnetism isn't written for men in particular.
I have honestly never been all that good at writing for an audience. I barely ever think what kind of readers would like my stories, although sometimes I think about what some people would think of different parts or themes. Mostly it's the stories themselves (and some of the more vocal characters) that decide what kinds of messages will be there if any, and that's why my concerns surrounding ethics and morals in a story is mainly that they are consequent within the story and setting. (Part of why I didn't like Harry Potter towards the end was the more clearly visible double standard going on there, where it's okay to do something if you're one of the good guys. That's not consequential.)
I've been told, again and again, through either marketing, discussions or feedback, that this is a bad thing.
I wouldn't worry too much about that, it's generally hard for a creator to describe their creation, I think, so sometimes the feedback on what you tell isn't the best. You have a easier time seeing the full picture and how it all fits together. Lots of stories seem boring on the surface.
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