Erotic Comics and Mental Health Comics
Mar. 16th, 2023 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeQuick thought from the lecture I just gave: mental health comics and erotic comics have a lot in common.
Both involve very personal, intimate experiences, often unfathomable or repulsive to others. Often, both focus on taking those experiences and making them understandable, even lovable. Finally, both are ways to safely experience challenging things that might be deeply upsetting or dangerous in real life.
One of the nice things about books, of any kind, is that they cannot progress without the reader's participation. A movie or radio will keep playing until you turn them off (or until Netflix asks if you're still there, I guess), but a book cannot move forward without you. To halt the experience, all you have to do is nothing. It is one of the most audience-controlled story mediums there is.
If you are curious about an extreme experience, be it sexual or psychological, reading about it is among the safest things you can do. In the bounds of fiction, nobody is getting hurt. It's not real, even if it can summon real emotions or sensations. You do not have to share your feelings or experience with anyone, and if you need to think about it for a while, you can take as long as you need. Depending on circumstance, they may lead you to realize you never want to experience that in real life... or that you do and can take steps to realize that.
I can easily think of comics that made me realize I wanted to experience something in real life, and in at least three cases, they led me to do so, and I had a good time! My multi meet-up wouldn't exist without my comics. Many of my friends, I met through my comics. Because I make comics for a mixed audience, I get opportunities to reach people and change minds that I otherwise wouldn't. People may know me for other stuff on the Internet, but off it, I am overwhelmingly known as a cartoonist.
And that's pretty cool.
Both involve very personal, intimate experiences, often unfathomable or repulsive to others. Often, both focus on taking those experiences and making them understandable, even lovable. Finally, both are ways to safely experience challenging things that might be deeply upsetting or dangerous in real life.
One of the nice things about books, of any kind, is that they cannot progress without the reader's participation. A movie or radio will keep playing until you turn them off (or until Netflix asks if you're still there, I guess), but a book cannot move forward without you. To halt the experience, all you have to do is nothing. It is one of the most audience-controlled story mediums there is.
If you are curious about an extreme experience, be it sexual or psychological, reading about it is among the safest things you can do. In the bounds of fiction, nobody is getting hurt. It's not real, even if it can summon real emotions or sensations. You do not have to share your feelings or experience with anyone, and if you need to think about it for a while, you can take as long as you need. Depending on circumstance, they may lead you to realize you never want to experience that in real life... or that you do and can take steps to realize that.
I can easily think of comics that made me realize I wanted to experience something in real life, and in at least three cases, they led me to do so, and I had a good time! My multi meet-up wouldn't exist without my comics. Many of my friends, I met through my comics. Because I make comics for a mixed audience, I get opportunities to reach people and change minds that I otherwise wouldn't. People may know me for other stuff on the Internet, but off it, I am overwhelmingly known as a cartoonist.
And that's pretty cool.
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Date: 2023-03-20 05:46 pm (UTC)