I despise doing posts where I ask for help, but here we are.
About two years ago I started a new creator owned project. It began as a spin-off of Princeless, but the reality is this – Raven The Pirate Princess is its own thing altogether. I knew this from the first issue and if you’ve been reading, so have you.
Sure, the first few issues of Raven: Pirate Princess had that heroic lady feminist banter for which Princeless has become known both among its fans and detractors. I mean, Raven had this scene:
and issue 1 had this scene:
But perhaps much more importantly, the first issue of Raven had this:
but that wasn’t where that ended. This is a book about a community of diverse queer women actively claiming their place in the world and taking what’s theirs. It’s about Raven, who is desperately in love with her childhood best friend Ximena
It’s about Ximena, a girl who was held captive for years by a pirate king who pretended to be her liberator. Who fell in love with the pirate’s daughter, only to be left behind by that father when she outlived her value.
About Sunshine, the thief that chose the wrong target and ended up falling in love with a woman already hopelessly in love with somebody else.
It’s about Katie, the bisexual second in command who’s motivated by honor…and occasionally beating the snot out of a dude or two
Oh and in case I forgot to mention, Katie is also incredibly muscular:
And Jayla, the asexual science genius who’s tired of being treated like a little sister
and Cid, the deaf engineer who quietly keeps the ship running
and of course, these two:
The socially awkward poet and the angry sword fighter who couldn’t stand her who have somehow become these two:
But here’s the thing: this comic is failing. It has a very dedicated and exuberant but at this point SMALL fanbase. Today I had a hard conversation with Action Lab about the reality of the numbers on this book versus what it costs to produce this book and, suffice it to say, Action Lab isn’t ready to cancel the book, but they aren’t ready to greenlight year 3 either. After Year 2 #13, Raven is set to go on the shelf until numbers can support continuing it.
This is where I need your help
If you care about this book full of queer pirate ladies and you want it to continue, we need to find a way to spread the word about it. We don’t need to sell single issues (it would be nice) but ultimately we need the trades sales that back up the continuation of this big YA Pirate/Revenge/Adventure/Romance thing.
In fact, if you’ve already purchased volumes 1-4, volume 5 is available for preorder there right now!
Maybe you’ve bought all the issues already. Thank you! If you still want to support Raven, you can review the books on Amazon or other retailers, you can share, reblog or retweet this post. You can tell a friend about the book!
If you have a comics review site or, say, a blog where you talk about LGBT media, contact me for review links or interviews. Please, help us save our ship.
Today, in lieu of a regular positive example, let’s reblog this overdue signal boost for the comic made entirely of positive examples!
So I was looking for some silly RPGs to play to pass the time and I found Valiant Force, which is where this lovely piece of work comes from.
And a piece of work it is. It’s always a trip to see generic bikini armor that is at the same time exceptionally overdesigned. (Also I just want to note that her back leg is fully on the ground, heel and all, which means her legs are different lengths.)
So Valiant Force is another mobile action MMO where you collect the greatest “Heroes (capitalized) to have ever existed.” And just like all the other similar games we’ve featured here, the sexy girl aspect of it is completely irrelevant to gameplay. Or anything.
But that doesn’t stop the game’s website to feature this in its promotional art:
So we’ve been doing this for a while now, and we’re curious to see if we can manage 2-hour streams. That redesign speedrun tech! So join us this week on Saturday at 10 AM PST / 7 PM CET. See you there!
So we’ve been doing this for a while now, and we’re curious to see if we can manage 2-hour streams. That redesign speedrun tech! So join us this week on Saturday at 10 AM PST / 7 PM CET. See you there!
Apparently, according to all the people who were upset that we dared to call out Hideo Kojima and implied that his use of Quietin promotional materials was objectification and pandering, you can also act like it’s totally subversive by writing a long back story for the character.
It doesn’t have to be, or really their own back story, or one that the majority of players will even experience – just so long as there’s something there to claim that you “totally humanized and made worthwhile” the character who’s boobs appear in every promo post.
Then it becomes a deep commentary of the “reality of women in these situations”… there being so many women who run around in bikinis on battlefields in reality.
– wincenworks
Since “weaponized femininity” got namedropped in that post we reblogged this weekend, let’s maybe bring it back today. And wonder once again how exactly does displaying a conventionally attractive heroine’s
tits and supermodel strut equally as much as her
weapons and battle prowess count automatically as female empowerment and not thinly-veiled pandering to cishet men.
And also let’s remember another, more evocative name which Miss Represenation documentary gave to this Totally Subversive™
