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Umi and Oboko webcomic:

Violet stood hesitantly near the pile of ash. Oboko made a weird face at her, not knowing why she was avoiding playing in the ashes of the fire pit like him and Umi had done for fun many times before. Violet slowly walked up to the pile of ash, kneeling down and putting her hands into the ash. Violet looked down at hands, tears forming in her eyes. The tears fell on her hands, mixing in with the ashes. 2 black drops of liquid ran down her arms. Oboko could clearly see her struggling. “Violet”, he asked. “What is wrong?” Violet looked up to him and began to tell a story.

“Back I. 2021, I had a fairly large friend group. One day a couple of lads were playing out in the dirt, and they covered each other with dirt and laughed together. Suddenly, an adult came out, and scolded the kids. She told them that what they were doing was racist blackface and they should stop.”

Oboko looked at violet, knowingly. “Were they purposefully covering themselves in the dirt as a way of mocking certain groups of humans? Or were they just innocently having fun?”, he asked. “Innocently having fun.”, she answered. “Then what they were doing was not blackface.” “Really?”, Violet asked. Oboko began to explain to her. “The act of covering oneself in a dark substance is not automatically “blackface”. In fact, it’s been a thing since before humans were even a thing. Both land and sea animals have used it as a way of camouflage. “Blackface” specifically refers to practices where someone would cover themselves in a dark substance was a way of mocking certain ethnic groups on earth. Still, you shouldn’t equate every single act of darkening oneself to racist mockery. So, in conclusion, it’s fine for you to cover yourself in the ashes of the fire pit. And not just that, but people in general shouldn’t have to stop doing perfectly normal and innocent things just because bad people have used those perfectly normal innocent things for bad agendas. ESPECIALLY if those perfectly normal and innocent things have been around longer than the bad people and there agendas themselves. It was wrong for that adult to try and call those kids bad people.”

Violet looked up at Oboko who was sitting in the ash pile, and smiled. “Thanks Oboko.”, she said with an innocent warmness in her heart that she hadn’t felt for years. She then jumped into the ash pile, causing the ashes to fly up like leaves from a leaf pile or a bag of flower exploding. Violet and Oboko laughed happily in the now much smaller pile of ash. Umi, on the other hand was puzzled. “How could Oboko know so much about human culture?” She thought. “I have no clue what he’s talking about?”

This is something that I feel strongly about.

Im scared that some people are gonna unfollow because of this comic, you know, because of the subject matter. I feel like if I post this in a community, they might take it down, but I don’t know, so I’m gonna try anyway.

Edit: after posting this, I realized that I need to explain a little bit more for anyone who is out of the loop of the general context of this comic/just discovered this comic through this post.

My OCs are currently on an alien planet. The 2 pink characters, Umi and Oboko, are aliens. The purple haired character, violet, is a human from earth. I don’t want to get into backstory spoilers, but basically, she is originally from the modern day UK, and she has seen people get cancelled for painting on their tans because they saw final destination and became afraid of tanning beds, and has also seen stuff like that and other ridiculous stuff like that. She was arrested eventually for something that falls into spoiler territory, but after that she is abducted by the aliens in my comic, and she is now on a world with a completely different history than earth, so most of the aliens just see covering yourself in ash from a fire as a fun, albeit messy, pastime. (Oboko, the one who is saying the “people of earth, take it back!” stuff, knows earth history for a reason that is also spoiler territory, but it has to do with his own traumas and experiences. The title, “trauma from earth”, references violet’s trauma that she got from existing in today’s climate, especially in an EU country.

I wanted to avoid cerebus syndrome by teasing something like this early on in the comic, which I did if you look at certain moments with violet and Oboko, (I mean this is technically pretty early on in this comic’s run, I want to make it a long running comic, and I have the entire story, more or less, in my head.) this was planned out from the start, literally in the concept art. I made this story not just because I wanted to show off my artistic talent and worldbuilding skills, but because I wanted to tell a personal story too.

This comic will contain heavy themes and messaging related to my views on how becoming a obsessed with stuff relating to discourse and radicalization can lead to mental unwellness, and, dare I say it, the flaws in modern progressive politics and how they can change for the better.

Let me explain this to you right now, i believe that all races and genders are equal, but I think that some culture war related commentators actually hinder progress to achieving an equal society, and this story will be used as a way of exploring themes of that.

Still, I am a younger person, a teen, in fact, writing this story, so some things end up in need updates.

The reference:

I looked up what to do on the internet, and people have been saying to uninstall and reinstall the app, but I can’t do that without my moms help and she will probably get annoyed and not let me do it, and also what if it deletes all my progress?!

Previous: https://www.tumblr.com/bionic-baby/814741551260581888/post-by-bionic-baby-4-images