Did anybody care for Better Days by Jay Naylor? It was a webcomic that ran consistently for six years (which is something of a shock in itself).
He uses little animal avatars to explore themes of sex, violence, and what it's like for children to grow up with messy, imperfect and unplanned exposure to those things. Sometimes the animals represent different races, and you'll catch on pretty quickly if you read it. He sometimes lays it on a bit thick with his political and gender philosophies, but even if you don't agree with the views presented it still makes for an endearing and well-constructed read.
I went back over it recently and quite enjoyed it. He's now updating one called Original Life which is more light-hearted, I can report back on that when I've read through more.
The writer is also a furry artist, which I don't care for at all, and I understand might make it a contentious topic in most places. I think it speaks to the merit of the comic, though, when even someone who dislikes that aspect can still appreciate it.
A furry artist you say? And this is a serious comic? Which I suppose is why in the first few chapters the author decries 'feminism', 'social engineering' and 'indoctrination' at the boy's school in order to justify the mother's sleeping around. Great.
Naylor is a bit of a cunt with issues. He doesn't exactly "explore" any issues, he just regurgitates them in a festering mound in front of you, and the comic is basically just there to attract people to his site so he can sell them porn.
The problem is that he is now very high-profile as a furry artist, especially considering that he has been around since the earlier days. His work is some of the first that anyone new to furries will see, and in my opinion it serves as a very bad first impression.
Different characters express different viewpoints, though perhaps not enough to justify some of the outbursts characters have. The impression I came away with is that the artist generally dislikes any restrictions based on gender, which he mistakenly puts down to 'feminism' and 'social engineering'. I can understand that this sort of soapboxing is a deal-breaker for most, but for some reason the comic still had a quality to me that I tried to describe in the OP.
I agree that he has lacked subtlety, but the thought is there. I don't think he just worked in difficult stories for the sake of it, but rather did have ideas about them to express, even if they are presented briefly/bluntly.
Webcomics aren't often a source of nuance to me, so maybe I'm just impressed from my view as an outsider. I'm open to recommendations.
What does he mean by restrictions based on gender being the fault of feminism? Isn't feminism supposed to do the very opposite and break these sorts of things down?
It's suggested that it's something applied in questionable ways ('social engineering' is the term he uses) in school that affects young boys. I disagree with this view, but it doesn't work too badly within the context of a character driven comic. In this case, the teacher is shown to be unpleasant in other ways.
>I've been meaning to read Achewood, but I admit a lot of it went over my head. Perhaps I misread the tone of it. Maybe someone could enlighten me?
Achewood is subtle and difficult, and the stories play out over very long arcs. There are no real punchlines and nothing ever resolves in a neat conclusion. If you don't have a good sense of the characters and their backgrounds, a lot of the nuance will pass you by completely. The art is simple but very expressive and the impact of a strip often rests on a slight gesture. You need to put the effort in to read the art, not just the text. The alt-text is very important in contextualising each strip, although often rather elliptical. If you're going to have a go at reading it, I'd suggest starting with an early story arc, maybe Ray's Startup or Beef on Moon.
>>10717 Did you go to school in this country within the last 15 years? Because that's exactly what it's like now; whether it is the teacher's doing or from the curriculum, leftist ideas are spoon-fed into our young people's minds. Regardless of whether you agree with these politics, surely we can all agree that school should be about education not indoctrination?
I did, and my secondary school was a terrible experience for a number of reasons. With regard to indoctrination, though, I think the far greater problem for me (and perhaps the system more generally) was that schools have a 'mass production' method of teaching students. Standardised tests and the arbitrary grouping of students had a big effect on me. Perhaps there is an argument to be made that this particular method affects boys more than girls.
With regard to the politics of teaching, I'm of the opinion it's extremely difficult to be objective outside of maths and science (sometimes within, too, as a matter of inclusion/omission). History relies on a narrative to make itself intelligible, and even if you resorted to reading bare facts and figures, from which sources to you choose? Which are the most important to prioritise on a syllabus? There's always that subjective element.
>>10720 You've been reading that Telegraph column written by that idiotic Tory teenager, haven't you. Allow me to point out that even if her assertion of 'spoon-fed leftist ideas' was correct, she only uses one A-level paper from one examination board (and Edexcel, the worst, at that) to back it up with.
>Sometimes the animals represent different races, and you'll catch on pretty quickly if you read it. He sometimes lays it on a bit thick with his political and gender philosophies, but even if you don't agree with the views presented it still makes for an endearing and well-constructed read.
>>10729 So you disagree with the DM in general and believe that his post belongs in the DM, therefore you disagree with the sentiment his post conveys.
You can run away by saying 'This belongs in /pol/!! I've put 'lad' in my post so everyones on my side!!' all you want.
Ahh, that brings me some nostalgia. Even so, Better Days was widely regarded in its day as one of the biggest atrocities committed by the furry fandom.
The Goddamn Furry Board (a place for bitter and jaded old-school furries who remember the days of Geocities and Yahoo Groups, before the entire internet hated them) used to have a thread for every new strip he published deconstructing exactly what was wrong with it, and making some rather hilarious edits to exaggerate the conservative views into full on neo-nazism.
Naylor was always better at the porn anyway, like any furry artist.
