Girls With Slingshots
I found GWS through a link from PVP (which I just realized I haven't yet done a Haunt Haunt Haunt Haunt Haunt for, but let it satisfy you to know that PVP is a daily webcomic with quite a bit of clout in the webcomic business) that was highlighting the work of female webcomic artists and then saying "Why does everyone say girls can't make webcomics?" I reacted to this question as follows:
A) That is an oddly specific taunt.
B) Wait, everyone says that?
C) Wait, anyone says that?
It seems to me that webcomics, of all things, should be an art so new and so situated in the modern day that they should be rid of the old cliched nonsense of "girls can't do that." I tend to give (most kinds of) prejudice the benefit of the doubt-- I figure they're based in some sort of fact, like "oh, it used to be like that" or "well, they've probably not seen many people that don't fit their stereotype" or "eh, true or not, it proliferates the culture so deeply that it would be more surprising if they didn't think it." And I think, most of the time, this is accurate. Most people do not come up with stupid non-truths and try to pass them off as common wisdom.
But "girls can't make webcomics"?!?!
This is a new, exciting step in the evolution of stupidity.
That being said, GWS was an exciting find for me when I clicked over, because it was the first comic of any sort and one of only a few storytelling methods in general that really captures a female point of view. Perhaps because it is a webcomic, and there are no syndicates, publishers, or general audiences to please, the "normal" viewpoint is actually the female one.
If, by chance, you are a male, you probably don't realize how deep a crater this left on my consciousness. It's a given of being a female reader that in order to cast yourself as the hero in any story, you cast yourself as the male, and in order to tell any story, you project as a male. With great fear and trepidation, I will use the following strip to demonstrate. I must caution you, however, to fend off the thought "so... a female viewpoint means talking about having a period" from your mind, with unnecessary lethal force. That is not the point.
What makes this different from the standard viewpoint is not that a period is brought up... the frequency with which that is done is not a product of a female viewpoint, but just a sign of changing cultural acceptance. What really makes this treatment stand apart is a combination of two things: one, there is an absence of stigmatization about the period... it is not treated as a frightening, alien thing; nor is it treated as a PERFECTLY NORMAL THING, YOU FREAKING MALE CHAUVINIST, that is NOT FUNNY AT ALL. There's no fear involved at all in this approach: this might be my favorite part about it.
The second thing that makes the viewpoint unique is that she's touching on one of the parts of the menstrual cycle that is largely unknown to people who don't experience it: the overwhelming miasma of self-doubt that lurks around like a bag of wet sand on your shoulders, bringing up thoughts that are so creatively depressing as to be absolutely hilarious when looked at in any other week of the month. It's not really something that can be explained, at least not by someone with my level of talent, but it's quite real. When I saw this comic the first time I laughed out loud for quite a few seconds. (Which is a lot if you think about it.) It's like hearing the "in-jokes" that touring shows and stand-up artists do for the towns they're performing in, or suddenly realizing that a favorite author is writing about your own city and your own favorite landmarks and haunts. Simply put, it's fun to recognize things.
Here's another, less charged example of what I mean.
Men gain emotional support and perspective from women in times of crisis (faaaaar more support of any kind than women gain from men, thanks, universe). So in the standard(male) perspective of storytelling, it's just kind of assumed that women will perform this function. Here, we see quite clearly how providing the female viewpoint can contradict these assumptions. If the female viewpoint existed solely to contradict assumptions, it would be stupid and useless. But what this does is regard assumption-friendly behaviors as just one of the reactions a person can have to a situation. And it provides a very real idea of what's going on in your head the first time this happens to you.
(Having presented all the reasons it's fun for being female-based, let me reiterate that that does NOT mean that a male audience wouldn't get it, or that it doesn't have good male characters and storylines and all of that. I happen to enjoy Batman, Beowulf, and the rest of the cultural output of Western civilization, so by God, you can enjoy a dancing cactus and some drunk girls.)
This brings me to the real reason this strip is good, quite separate from all the reasons I could give that it's female-oriented: it's freaking hilarious. It is good at being a comic strip. Now, I didn't just (just) go on the female-oriented rant because I felt like throwing some theory around, I did it because you really have to be aware of that if any of the rest of the strip is going to make sense. Maybe I'm underestimating the general audience. But I know I had quite a weird time reconciling the fact that I have virtually no common ground with the characters, setting, or action with the fact that throughout my reading of the archives, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. For the record, GWS contains: frequent delvings into the gay scene, very alocohol-centric lifestyles, much mourning and scheming over lack of sex, sex and sex references, one dominatrix, a regular setting of a porn store, and much much more! Lest this drive anyone away from it (if it draws you towards it, more power to you), I can only say that clearly, I don't have much in common content-wise with this strip, and I have to be connecting to it somehow to like it so much. I think it's fair to say that GWS is really well put together and really funny, since a sex or booze joke by itself isn't going to fly with me.
I could try to explain the various characters and plotlines running through GWS but there's no way I could really do it effectively. I'm not out to write a movie review here, I'm just out to tell you why I'm hovering around GWS every night at midnight hoping to catch an update before morning. So I will provide a few samples and try not to ruin them with too much editorializing.
Not a happy one: in this one, Hazel finally realizes that her longtime friend and crush, Reese, has not been thinking about her the same way she's been thinking about him.
This is Hazel's interview for Pussy Whipped Magazine, for whom she writes for awhile.
For reference, Chris the Pirate is a guy Hazel met at the doctor's office wearing an eyepatch, who is a compulsive liar and is head over heels for Hazel, who is fairly freaked out by that fact. The guy in this one is Jameson, the barista at the coffee shop where they all hang out and an old crush of Hazel's. You don't really need to know any of that, though.
A) That is an oddly specific taunt.
B) Wait, everyone says that?
C) Wait, anyone says that?
It seems to me that webcomics, of all things, should be an art so new and so situated in the modern day that they should be rid of the old cliched nonsense of "girls can't do that." I tend to give (most kinds of) prejudice the benefit of the doubt-- I figure they're based in some sort of fact, like "oh, it used to be like that" or "well, they've probably not seen many people that don't fit their stereotype" or "eh, true or not, it proliferates the culture so deeply that it would be more surprising if they didn't think it." And I think, most of the time, this is accurate. Most people do not come up with stupid non-truths and try to pass them off as common wisdom.
But "girls can't make webcomics"?!?!
This is a new, exciting step in the evolution of stupidity.
That being said, GWS was an exciting find for me when I clicked over, because it was the first comic of any sort and one of only a few storytelling methods in general that really captures a female point of view. Perhaps because it is a webcomic, and there are no syndicates, publishers, or general audiences to please, the "normal" viewpoint is actually the female one.
If, by chance, you are a male, you probably don't realize how deep a crater this left on my consciousness. It's a given of being a female reader that in order to cast yourself as the hero in any story, you cast yourself as the male, and in order to tell any story, you project as a male. With great fear and trepidation, I will use the following strip to demonstrate. I must caution you, however, to fend off the thought "so... a female viewpoint means talking about having a period" from your mind, with unnecessary lethal force. That is not the point.
What makes this different from the standard viewpoint is not that a period is brought up... the frequency with which that is done is not a product of a female viewpoint, but just a sign of changing cultural acceptance. What really makes this treatment stand apart is a combination of two things: one, there is an absence of stigmatization about the period... it is not treated as a frightening, alien thing; nor is it treated as a PERFECTLY NORMAL THING, YOU FREAKING MALE CHAUVINIST, that is NOT FUNNY AT ALL. There's no fear involved at all in this approach: this might be my favorite part about it.The second thing that makes the viewpoint unique is that she's touching on one of the parts of the menstrual cycle that is largely unknown to people who don't experience it: the overwhelming miasma of self-doubt that lurks around like a bag of wet sand on your shoulders, bringing up thoughts that are so creatively depressing as to be absolutely hilarious when looked at in any other week of the month. It's not really something that can be explained, at least not by someone with my level of talent, but it's quite real. When I saw this comic the first time I laughed out loud for quite a few seconds. (Which is a lot if you think about it.) It's like hearing the "in-jokes" that touring shows and stand-up artists do for the towns they're performing in, or suddenly realizing that a favorite author is writing about your own city and your own favorite landmarks and haunts. Simply put, it's fun to recognize things.
Here's another, less charged example of what I mean.
Men gain emotional support and perspective from women in times of crisis (faaaaar more support of any kind than women gain from men, thanks, universe). So in the standard(male) perspective of storytelling, it's just kind of assumed that women will perform this function. Here, we see quite clearly how providing the female viewpoint can contradict these assumptions. If the female viewpoint existed solely to contradict assumptions, it would be stupid and useless. But what this does is regard assumption-friendly behaviors as just one of the reactions a person can have to a situation. And it provides a very real idea of what's going on in your head the first time this happens to you.(Having presented all the reasons it's fun for being female-based, let me reiterate that that does NOT mean that a male audience wouldn't get it, or that it doesn't have good male characters and storylines and all of that. I happen to enjoy Batman, Beowulf, and the rest of the cultural output of Western civilization, so by God, you can enjoy a dancing cactus and some drunk girls.)
This brings me to the real reason this strip is good, quite separate from all the reasons I could give that it's female-oriented: it's freaking hilarious. It is good at being a comic strip. Now, I didn't just (just) go on the female-oriented rant because I felt like throwing some theory around, I did it because you really have to be aware of that if any of the rest of the strip is going to make sense. Maybe I'm underestimating the general audience. But I know I had quite a weird time reconciling the fact that I have virtually no common ground with the characters, setting, or action with the fact that throughout my reading of the archives, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. For the record, GWS contains: frequent delvings into the gay scene, very alocohol-centric lifestyles, much mourning and scheming over lack of sex, sex and sex references, one dominatrix, a regular setting of a porn store, and much much more! Lest this drive anyone away from it (if it draws you towards it, more power to you), I can only say that clearly, I don't have much in common content-wise with this strip, and I have to be connecting to it somehow to like it so much. I think it's fair to say that GWS is really well put together and really funny, since a sex or booze joke by itself isn't going to fly with me.
I could try to explain the various characters and plotlines running through GWS but there's no way I could really do it effectively. I'm not out to write a movie review here, I'm just out to tell you why I'm hovering around GWS every night at midnight hoping to catch an update before morning. So I will provide a few samples and try not to ruin them with too much editorializing.
Not a happy one: in this one, Hazel finally realizes that her longtime friend and crush, Reese, has not been thinking about her the same way she's been thinking about him.
This is Hazel's interview for Pussy Whipped Magazine, for whom she writes for awhile.
For reference, Chris the Pirate is a guy Hazel met at the doctor's office wearing an eyepatch, who is a compulsive liar and is head over heels for Hazel, who is fairly freaked out by that fact. The guy in this one is Jameson, the barista at the coffee shop where they all hang out and an old crush of Hazel's. You don't really need to know any of that, though.
There's no one strip really representative of GWS the way that almost every strip is representative for, say, PA. It's pretty character-and-relationship-driven, and a lot of the punchlines depend on prior knowledge of the characters... Well, I think I've put off my psychology paper all night. Haunt Haunt Haunt Haunt Haunt's job here is done!
I wish I could find one of the strips that shows McPedro, Hazel's talking cactus, doing the Happy Cactus Dance, but I can't, so here is one of my favorites as a signoff:
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