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Mar. 21st, 2006
Sorry it's been so quiet
Mar. 21st, 2006 07:39 pmSorry if it's been quiet here, my Mom's not been doing well and had her gallbladder out yesterday but is still in the hospital an extra day. Apparently it was VERY infected. I'll spare the gruesome details. Dad has been with her day and night, and of course I'm in Los Angeles far away from it all... it's times like these I miss them very much.
As some of you know, Kevin Paul Shaw Broden (LJ name: kevinpsbroden) and I have been at work on a webcomic called FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY, which to date has been simply a labor of love but we would always love to entertain the opportunity to do more with it. The webcomic turns five years old this summer, and as it turns out we've launched into our serious story ever which I think will change the tone and the focus of the comic in a very good way. We love what we have done to date, but we're looking forward to our characters growing and changing.
What we did not expect five years ago when we launched this webcomic would be taking on the issue of attempted date rape.
This storyline was not included in our initial long range forecast for the comic, but came to me while I was in Las Vegas in the summer of 2005 for a convention called The Gathering of the Gargoyles. It was my first trip to Las Vegas, and one night I traveled some of the Strip by myself. Fortunately, nothing happened to me personally. However, seeing all the dancers and showgirls and sale of sex as a spectacle made me think about how sex, power, and stardom can be intertwined. This comic also weighed heavy on my mind both because I would be appearing at a panel on webcomics during this convention, and also because Kevin and I seriously started discussing before I left the fact that while the events of Issue #3 started to make an impact in Debra's naive and dreaming-of-stardom world, we really needed to shake her to the core and have her lose a great deal of her idealized naivety in order to help her and the comic grow and expand.
I came back from Las Vegas with a proposal for him that ultimately, after a little work and figuring out how it (and some other brainstorms from the trip that Kevin liked) would affect further planned continuity, became Issue #6, "Off-Key Duet". The duet concept actually goes back to an unrealized feature film we had in the works prior to the webcomic, but was not used in the same way; it works far better here, I think.
It is my personal hope that while moving our storyline forward, the issue is handled appropriately. I'm particularly sensitive to doing social issues, women's issues in particular, and have been for many years. If anything is not handled as well as it should be, I take full responsibility.
The link is http://www.flying-glory.com if anyone is interesting in seeing where we go with this. I'm both excited to be telling such a strong story and scared I'll really mess it up.
What we did not expect five years ago when we launched this webcomic would be taking on the issue of attempted date rape.
This storyline was not included in our initial long range forecast for the comic, but came to me while I was in Las Vegas in the summer of 2005 for a convention called The Gathering of the Gargoyles. It was my first trip to Las Vegas, and one night I traveled some of the Strip by myself. Fortunately, nothing happened to me personally. However, seeing all the dancers and showgirls and sale of sex as a spectacle made me think about how sex, power, and stardom can be intertwined. This comic also weighed heavy on my mind both because I would be appearing at a panel on webcomics during this convention, and also because Kevin and I seriously started discussing before I left the fact that while the events of Issue #3 started to make an impact in Debra's naive and dreaming-of-stardom world, we really needed to shake her to the core and have her lose a great deal of her idealized naivety in order to help her and the comic grow and expand.
I came back from Las Vegas with a proposal for him that ultimately, after a little work and figuring out how it (and some other brainstorms from the trip that Kevin liked) would affect further planned continuity, became Issue #6, "Off-Key Duet". The duet concept actually goes back to an unrealized feature film we had in the works prior to the webcomic, but was not used in the same way; it works far better here, I think.
It is my personal hope that while moving our storyline forward, the issue is handled appropriately. I'm particularly sensitive to doing social issues, women's issues in particular, and have been for many years. If anything is not handled as well as it should be, I take full responsibility.
The link is http://www.flying-glory.com if anyone is interesting in seeing where we go with this. I'm both excited to be telling such a strong story and scared I'll really mess it up.