kukuruyo

Those who follow me already know that I do a webcomic called Gamergate life. This comic was born almost 2 years ago as my way of supporting the Gamergate movement, a group that fights for ethics in games journalism and against censorship and political correctness in the gaming medium. At first they were just quick comic strips I did as a kind of morale booster, but somehow they became popular, so I kept doing it, making references to happenings of the moment. The structure of these comics has always been:

A journalist/sjw dev/media says or does something stupid -> I make a quick 2-3 panel comic about it, both to laugh at it and to spread info about it while the news are still hot (because it’s when collective action, if any, can be born) -> some weeks later almost only those in gamergate remember it, because the topics are usually those who only matter to gamers worried about this stuff. Most people are not gamers, and many who are don’t really know about any of what’s happening or they are casuals who don’t really care much about it.

And that’s cool. Gamergate life has always been a comic for Gamergate supporters. But sometimes I want to do pages about topics that are not directly related to gamergate, but they’re also not unconnected, like feminism, social justice, campus outraged students, etc; and I want to do them in a way that everyone can understand, not just gamers. Those are all topics that usually Gamergate supporters find related to their interests, and you can find them commented in the hashtag, Kotakuinaction, etc, but even so, many times it feels like a stretch to do a Gamergate life page about them, and if I do there’s always someone who comes to me with the “that has nothing to do with gamergate”.

So far I’ve kinda “solved” the issue by doing those pages without the “gamergate life” name and introducing my Monster girls on tour character K’sara to differentiate them, like in this one:

But doing a separated single page without adding it to one of my comic folders causes that the page will be very hard to find in the future in my website, and it will not be connected to other similar comic pages; and if I add it to the Gamergate life folder, they feel very random when you get to them, and I still get the “that has nothing to do with gamergate” comments. Also when someone who doesn’t know about GG or gaming finds those pages and turn to the next one, they find a GG page and they don’t understand what’s happening.

So I’ve been for some months thinking if to begin a new comic series, similar to GG life, but about social justice/feminist bullshit; kind of a “social justice life”. I don’t have yet a very specific idea about how it would be, but something along the lines that several characters, like Vivian, K’sara and someone new, arrive to a University to begin their studies, only to find they’ll have to live in a dormitory/campus filled by sjws. So we would have Vivian acting as the long time gamer, and Lilian as the sjw gamer, with some other particular sjw characters around, having conflicts about happenings or relevant topics related to social issues. I would also extend the format to 1-6 panels, since the 2-3 many times has proved too small to convey all the necessary info and as consequence there has been too much text on screen. Of course I would keep doing GG life for topics directly related to it.

The thing is that I’m unsure as to how well this would work. I don’t know how much ok Gamergate people would be with using Vivian for a comic that’s not directly related to GG, or if people would be confused by having two different comics, both about similar issues and with Vivian, in the same website, but in different folders. I don’t know how many people will still think those pages are part of GG life and still come at me with “this has nothing to do with gg” or if they will create misunderstanding like “gamergate is saying this, because look at this comic with Vivian on it” if I do a page about, I don’t know, the mizzou protests or whatever. I don’t even know if people would be interested in reading comics like that and i will have just to forgot about it and reestructure my comics again after a few months.

Maybe people would prefer if I just “upgrade” GG life by introducing some of those changes to it, like broadening the topics, new chars and more panels, though that would still not solve the problem of non-gamers finding a page about feminism and when they go to the next one, it’s about a game journalist comment; or the problem of complains about not being related to GG. Another option is to do two separated comics, but also introduce the “social justice life” pages in the folder for Gamergate life, so i can link the SJW one to people who don’t know about GG but is interested on those social issues.

Or maybe someone has a better idea as to how to develop this or a different kind of comic to make. Or maybe people prefer that I just do GG life as I’ve always do with no changes or new comic.  I’ve been thinking about this for a while but I can’t really decide, so, what do you think? I’m interested on reading opinions to reach a conclusion.

Edit note: I’m seeing in several places that people think i want to stop doing Gamergate life. That’s not the case. Pages about GG life will still come in. My doubts are about how to do comic pages about social justice/feminism/outrage culture in an organized way.