Comics Riot

Here’s the thing: There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative. We don’t often talk about this, the same way we don’t often talk about the fluidity of identity.

There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative because there is no one-size-fits-all experience of sexual orientation. Or friendship. Because different people have different social needs and part of being a good friend is recognizing that. But there are kids — and adults — for whom hearing a frightening truth from a trusted friend is a huge and welcome relief: a signpost to a revelation; permission to acknowledge and articulate a secret they’ve been running from.

It’s possible to follow the best-practices list to a T and screw up. It’s possible to deviate from it and do just fine. Once more, with feeling: There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative.

Also, and I hope I’m not stepping on Rachel’s toes, because I know they’re perfectly capable of advocating for their own work, but as someone who also (much less prominently) straddles the line between fan and critic, I think it’s really insulting to say that Rachel’s just going easy on Bendis and Jean Grey and the comic out of an affection for the subject matter. Rachel is a professional critic, and has amply demonstrated an ability to be critical of things they love (a skill that’s required for the job). In this instance, they went to the trouble of writing 4000 words intelligently defending what goes on in this comic, and for you to just say, “You just like this because you like X-Men,” is frankly a pretty shitty response.

Look, we’re not going to all agree on this, and that’s totally fine. But for those inclined to argue, can’t you at least argue with what Rachel actually wrote, instead of your simplistic straw-person version?

I did read the whole article. And no, I did not discuss all the topics Edidin addressed. She wrote, as you said, a professional 4,000 word piece. I wrote a 184 word Tumblr post. It was a casual post on a social media site where I expressed my disagreement with only a small subset of issues raised in the much longer article. If this was an editorial response, a class discussion board, or another article, I would’ve failed. Mea culpa. I didn’t know I needed to be more academic here.

Here’s my attempt then, to address (what I interpret as) the main points of the article.

1) Levels of context. Level 0 would be the reader who saw the leaked panels and, with no knowledge of the wider context of X-Men (the issue and this volume, but also X-Men history further back), makes a snap judgment. Level 2 would be seeing the panel with knowledge of the X-Men context. Level 3 is seeing this story as one among many comics stories, and among fiction in general.

I feel the Edidin spent a fair amount of energy in the article at level 1. You’re right, it wasn’t entirely in the X-Men bubble, but it was strongly focused in it. One of Edidin’s salient statements is that Jean is not a “callous monster” for the outing, its method, or its execution. This is supported a discussion of the characters’ backstory. Edidin argues that in light of the backstory, Jean is actually “succeeding” at being a friend because she’s doing “her muddling best.” I fundamentally disagree with that, but that’s okay. Trying one’s best, in spite of youth and inexperience (and in spite of powers and time travel), isn’t enough for me. A character having faults is fine, but the story should address the idea that they’re faults. Good intentions alone don’t exonerate the character.

That said, Edidin does go to level 2 with her discussion of her own experience (with her mother) and the idea of…

2) Best practices vs. messiness of real life. Edidin says those critical of the leaked panel want to see stories about LGBTs and we want to see them exemplify “best practices” for how coming out should be treated. Rather, Edidin argues, real life is messy, people are complicated, and limiting stories to best practices is restrictive and not reflective of real life. Edidin asserts the primacy of honesty in storytelling.

Since real people and their complexities are too varied to be captured en masse by a single story, then it is necessary for a story to focus on specific characters. In turn, that specificity means the story will fail to be reflective of all experiences. Coming out can’t be “one size fits all.”

So, this story features two (apparently) very unique characters. They and their circumstances are special and personal, and this coming out (or, I would say, outing) experience can’t be judged just for being not like everyone else’s. (And again, the focus on the uniqueness of the characters – in this case Iceman and Jean Grey – is why the article is still rooted in the X-Men context.)

Okay, I’m still on board. Stories can’t just be about best practices, or they’d be boring and trite.

However, I think Edidin is asserting that the very idea of best practices is limiting. That it implies there’s a right way to do it (i.e. coming out, or forcibly outing). She argues, in part with her own experience, that sometimes not acting in best practices is actually the way to go. We can’t judge unless we intimately know the people involved (or unless we’re well-positioned with telepathy, like Jean).

Edidin’s mother managed to try an assertive, proactive approach and it worked out well. As Edidin mentions, it’s not one size fits all and the same exact tactics may, in another situation and with different people, have resulted in something traumatic. (Don’t necessarily try this at home, kids.) That the same actions can lead to a rewarding interaction for one group, and a painful result for another group, is a nuance in reality I think Edidin was trying to tease out.

Edidin wouldn’t trade the honesty of “best practices aren’t the only practices that work” for the world. For me, if you’re going to tell a story about a case where complicated, real people had a rewarding interaction – oh, and they defied best practices – you should still cast that story in relief against best practices. Compare and contrast the two.

In isolation, the non-best practice event can very easily turn off readers for whom the non-best-practice-ness is reflective of their own experience – a much less positive one.

So at the end of my post, for example, I said, “For those inclined to argue...” and the rest of what I wrote (including the bit about respecting the validity of others’ queer experiences) is directed generally to people I’ve seen making those arguments. I didn’t mean that part as a direct critique of your words.

That said, when someone points to a fictional queer narrative and says that it’s meaningful to them because it resembles events in their life, and your response is to proclaim that the same narrative “fails in the broader context of LGBTs in fiction,” I actually don’t think that’s very respectful of the first party’s queer experiences. If accurately depicting experiences that real queers have had isn’t successful queer fiction, I’m not sure what is. And it’s not just Rachel who the story strongly resonated with. There’s also the anon who wrote into Rachel’s Tumblr, and various other people who’ve responded around the web. And also me, obviously, or I wouldn’t feel so strongly about this.

As for your idea that problematic, messy stories should always be accompanied by a demonstration of best practices... that just doesn’t sound to me like the path to good fiction. And it’s certainly not the path to getting queer stories told in mainstream comics. Don’t get me wrong, I would love nothing more than for this issue to also include a scene in which Magik comes out as queer to Emma Frost, and Emma behaves flawlessly (which she would, because Emma is of course flawless), but it seems like a pretty big ask (and would look narratively like an odd coincidence).

Neither Rachel, nor I, nor anyone else whose opinions I would ever align myself with, has ever said that you and others should not be disappointed and angry about what happens in All-New X-Men #40. Sometimes stories elicit that reaction. I myself am extremely disappointed and angry about what happens with Kitty Pryde at the end of this week’s Black Vortex Omega.

Here’s the thing: There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative. We don’t often talk about this, the same way we don’t often talk about the fluidity of identity.

There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative because there is no one-size-fits-all experience of sexual orientation. Or friendship. Because different people have different social needs and part of being a good friend is recognizing that. But there are kids — and adults — for whom hearing a frightening truth from a trusted friend is a huge and welcome relief: a signpost to a revelation; permission to acknowledge and articulate a secret they’ve been running from.

It’s possible to follow the best-practices list to a T and screw up. It’s possible to deviate from it and do just fine. Once more, with feeling: There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative.

Also, and I hope I’m not stepping on Rachel’s toes, because I know they’re perfectly capable of advocating for their own work, but as someone who also (much less prominently) straddles the line between fan and critic, I think it’s really insulting to say that Rachel’s just going easy on Bendis and Jean Grey and the comic out of an affection for the subject matter. Rachel is a professional critic, and has amply demonstrated an ability to be critical of things they love (a skill that’s required for the job). In this instance, they went to the trouble of writing 4000 words intelligently defending what goes on in this comic, and for you to just say, “You just like this because you like X-Men,” is frankly a pretty shitty response.

Look, we’re not going to all agree on this, and that’s totally fine. But for those inclined to argue, can’t you at least argue with what Rachel actually wrote, instead of your simplistic straw-person version?

Here’s the thing: There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative. We don’t often talk about this, the same way we don’t often talk about the fluidity of identity.

There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative because there is no one-size-fits-all experience of sexual orientation. Or friendship. Because different people have different social needs and part of being a good friend is recognizing that. But there are kids — and adults — for whom hearing a frightening truth from a trusted friend is a huge and welcome relief: a signpost to a revelation; permission to acknowledge and articulate a secret they’ve been running from.

It’s possible to follow the best-practices list to a T and screw up. It’s possible to deviate from it and do just fine. Once more, with feeling: There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative.

Into It 20: Steven Universe with Juliet Kahn

Comics critic prynnette is bursting with feelings about Steven Universe. Aren’t we all? The joy of Steven, the sadness of Pearl, the chaos of Amethyst, the awesomeness of Garnet, and Greg doing his thing. Not to mention Connie the critic and the importance of Nana Pizza.

Here’s the thing: There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative. We don’t often talk about this, the same way we don’t often talk about the fluidity of identity.

There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative because there is no one-size-fits-all experience of sexual orientation. Or friendship. Because different people have different social needs and part of being a good friend is recognizing that. But there are kids — and adults — for whom hearing a frightening truth from a trusted friend is a huge and welcome relief: a signpost to a revelation; permission to acknowledge and articulate a secret they’ve been running from.

It’s possible to follow the best-practices list to a T and screw up. It’s possible to deviate from it and do just fine. Once more, with feeling: There is no one-size-fits-all coming-out narrative.

Into It 19: Jack Kirby with Graeme McMillan

Writer and podcaster graemem had a lot to say about Jack Kirby, and for that matter so did Elle. Subtopics include Fantastic Four, New Gods, OMAC,The Eternals, Captain America and the Falcon, Big Barda, and more, plus a bonus consideration of Steve Ditko.

Into It 17: TV Animation with CG of Black Girl in Media 

CG, the blogger behind Black Girl in Media, visited for a far-reaching conversation about diversity and representation in television cartoons. Sailor Moon, Young Justice, The Legend of Korra, Steven Universe, and more shows come up. Superheroes of color, queer relationships, non-binary giants, and all sorts of parent-child dynamics.

X-Men ink commission special #2: Boom Boom! For ellemariecollins! I couldn’t not draw that ludicrous ’90s costume; it’s kind of amazing.

This is nothing new.

Today, a friend of mine expressed that she has become too paralysed with fear to continue writing. She’s working through it and it’s compounded by her mental illness which magnifies this sort of self-destructive rumination. However, as for the trigger, she named it specifically as Tumblr’s vicious hostility towards any piece of work which does not pass their arbitrary, ever-shifting and vastly varying criteria. Criteria for being “inclusive”, as well as portraying “diverse” characters in a way which doesn’t raise red flags for some subset of users and thus gets stamped “problematic”, or if you’re feeling saucy, “garbage shit trash”.

To summarize: Tumblr “critical consumption” has effectively silenced a queer, female, mentally ill creative voice.

I am a minority creator myself (biracial, mentally ill) and I’ll be the first to admit that hanging around tumblr has been helpful in learning how to examine my programming and how it shows up in my work. However, I possess a confidence— and arrogance— in my work that others do not, which allows me to press forward even when my inbox accuses my queer characters being “lip service” because they don’t have romantic arcs.

Is deep-sj tumblr happy with this model? Are we content to batter aspiring socially-conscious creators into abandoning the idea of creating altogether, while scores of white boys skim past your open condemnation of Urbance with a scoff, if they even read it at all?

Let’s talk about Urbance. Before I get right into it I have a related anecdote.

Some time ago, I recommended The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin to a user seeking books with gender-nonbinary characters (the work in question contains characters who are, quite explicitly and viscerally, genderfluid). They immediately discarded the idea after reading its summary on goodreads. They didn’t want to read a book about “some white guys from Earth having to ~learn to accept~ gender noncomforming aliens and that being the entire arc of the story”.

Anyone who’s actually read Left Hand knows this is ludicrous, but for your benefit, the main character is black, and he is the only Earthborn human in the story; the Gethenians are described as ‘Inuit brown’ and are humanoid in every respect besides their unique sexual physiology. The core themes of the book are actually about exploring a society which doesn’t have a masculinity construct. Where everyone is both male and female. No time is spent by the (BLACK) protag being disgusted or crudely fascinated by the Gethenians; only with examining how his two-gendered social programming has led him to frequently prejudge and misunderstand them.

No, that wasn’t good enough. These barriers need to not exist, because we want diverse stories where LGBT and people of color don’t face prejudice, right?

Urbance. Urbance was almost utterly destroyed by Tumblr; its creators sought to portray a society where everyone was mixed race (their characters were unmistakably black and asian-coded) and the construct of ‘race’ was absent, a relic of a bygone era. Tumblr users decided that this, in itself, was racist. They proceeded to pick apart every line of a translated-from-French Q&A page and decided that Urbance was acephobic, nb-phobic, transphobic, queer-erasing, whatever; until, embarrassingly enough, Urbance received a funding surge at the eleventh hour from fucking GamerGate.

GamerGate had to pick up a promising, racially and sexually diverse project because Tumblr users were so utterly batshit hateful towards it that it almost didn’t get funded. Simply to spite us.

So that’s at least one high profile ‘progressive’ piece of media that Tumblr has waved its dick and balls at and nearly destroyed— has there been an analogous example of a diverse project that Tumblr has rallied behind? 

Oh right— The Arkh Project. 

I really have nothing else to add that hasn’t been said a hundred times over by people more versed in this stuff than I am— everything is problematic, progress in small steps, glass half full, etc.

The fact of the matter is Tumblr needs to sort its fucking attitude out, and quick, or we’re looking at a lot of the same shit for the next ten years while the same straight white guys make everything, and laugh at “SJWs” constantly, impotently, pointlessly, complaining. While queer, female, mentally ill writers languish in corners, silent, hiding like battered wives from the people who are supposed to be their advocates, their protectors, and their fans.

Into It 13: Spider-Man with Matt D. Wilson

Matt Wilson (superheroeswearingjackets) is on the show, and his heart is full of Spider-Man.

Check it out on the web site, or listen on iTunes or Stitcher.

X-Men Girl Gang!

Storm/Jordansaidso

Psylocke/Noribear90