enna bellanaris

“Me? I’m no one. Lived near Redcliffe all my life. Herded sheep for my neighbor. When the Inquisition came through my village, I helped by telling them everything I knew about the area. Then I signed on. Wanted to see the world before it was swallowed up by… that thing out there.”

anyone can offer you a chance to see the world. adventure, beautiful foreign sights, respect for your skill, status when you go home, community and camaraderie among your fellow fighters. chances that you might never usually get as an ‘ordinary’ person, in this case living in a rural area as a (fantasy) minority. honestly for me the whole “get out there and see the world!” thing specifically evokes the real world evil of like, classic military recruitment rhetoric. it’s all a big adventure! never mind what you’ll be doing and who you’ll be doing it to.

and our first sight of harding is a confident smirk when she kills. (which we’re supposed to feel fine about and maybe think that she’s a #girlboss, because remember the mages and templars are Crazy, so killing them indiscriminately is fine. but let’s imagine dai is a serious game.) she obviously took very easily to violence in the inquisition’s name before she’d met any of the inquisition’s leaders, before the inquisition had a real direction, and before they had a simple-to-justify, no-longer-human enemy like corypheus. if she could be convinced to do all that by the inquisition’s scouts, then why not anyone else offering the same things? why not an inquisition that was actually, you know, an inquisition?

despite leading with wanting to see the world and not even mentioning any kind of moral motivation, harding definitely perceives herself as a good person and i don’t think she would go for anything that didn’t have a veneer of righteousness. she takes pride in the inquisition and what she believes to be its purpose. but any organisation can say they’re doing it for the good and order and stability of the world, right. any organisation can pass you that message through a recruiter who at least sounds like they believe it. and as a scout on the ground you’re so far from the war table that you will never really know why the people directing you are making their decisions. and you opt to kill whoever they tell you to kill anyway. even in some impossibly hypothetical world where those decisions are all just and measured and necessary, can it ever possibly be moral to just hand over your conscience like that? to kill blindly because those are your orders?

i feel like harding’s narrative veers so closely to real world recruitment rhetoric that i don’t just find it uninteresting to be like Yay It All Worked Out :), i find it Bad. this is not heroic when it happens in real life and i don’t think it should be heroic here. i know i’m in the genre where Pure And Honourable Warfare Of Our Innocent Boys And Girls Against Inhuman Monsters or Perhaps The Inherently Evil Foreign Horde of Baddies is virulently everywhere but i think that’s precisely why we should be aware and critical of it and thinking around it not just accepting it as fact you know

As you may know, there was recently a DC Comics boycott as a part of the DCSoWhite movement since DC has not had a mainline ongoing solo with a Black lead for over 1200 days. You can read more about this here, here, here, and here. The boycott has been cancelled (link), but that doesn't mean we can't still show support for Black comic creators!

One of the things the movement called for fans to do was to "[Support] Black creators through independent and creator-owned projects." So this post is meant to provide tips on how to do this.

Check out other works of Black creators you're already familiar with

The Black comic creators you're already a fan of who have made comics for DC or Marvel have likely also made comics for other publishers too. You can usually find out about other comics they've worked on through their Wikipedia page, social media pages, and their own website if they have one. And it's a good idea to follow their social media to learn about any of their projects in the future!

Look through indie publisher websites

A great way to find out about indie comics is to check out indie publishers' websites. There will almost always be a page on their websites with all their comics so you can easily look through them and the creators will be listed so you can look into the creators too. This is one way to find out about Black comic creators who you might not already be familiar with.

The publishers that are listed as examples in the webpages linked above are Image Comics, BOOM! Studios, Vault Comics, Ignition Press, and Stranger Comics.

Check out existing lists

There are already lists online that specifically recommend Black creators to check out and comics by Black creators. You can also find recommendations and lists on social media. This is another great way to find out about Black comic creators you're not yet familiar with.

Speaking of lists, I would like to point you to this post by @bimboopo which includes a list of many Black webtoon creators which you can go check out!

LET'S DO THE FORK IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL

LET'S DO THE FORK IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL