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!
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!
Ladies, gentlemen, and people who identify as neither, either for gender or propriety reasons, I have a request for the subset of you who enjoy looking at attractive men and feel that you are underserved in this regard by RPG books…
Post me pics/art/links of the sort of gents you’d like to see in your fantasy world.
No nudes, please – Paizo’s fairly lenient in that regard but I am still In An Office. 🙂
Sharing now as this seems relevant to the interests of many of our followers.
Ladies, gentlemen, and people who identify as neither, either for gender or propriety reasons, I have a request for the subset of you who enjoy looking at attractive men and feel that you are underserved in this regard by RPG books…
Post me pics/art/links of the sort of gents you’d like to see in your fantasy world.
No nudes, please – Paizo’s fairly lenient in that regard but I am still In An Office. 🙂
Sharing now as this seems relevant to the interests of many of our followers.
A kickstarter for female adventurer miniatures in sensible, practical armor. Seems like a good one for the ‘positive examples’ pile.
If you’ve been searching for miniatures of female adventurers who look like they came for adventure in the dungeon crawl sense and not in the fetish party sense, then this Kickstarter is for you!
Unfortunately Oathsworn’s site is currently undergoing complete overall so their work isn’t available there, however I think the quality of these figures speaks for itself.
A kickstarter for female adventurer miniatures in sensible, practical armor. Seems like a good one for the ‘positive examples’ pile.
If you’ve been searching for miniatures of female adventurers who look like they came for adventure in the dungeon crawl sense and not in the fetish party sense, then this Kickstarter is for you!
Unfortunately Oathsworn’s site is currently undergoing complete overall so their work isn’t available there, however I think the quality of these figures speaks for itself.
The Game Workshop (not to be confused with Games Workshop) is holding a contest to find new 2D/3D game artists. Cool, right? The only problem is all the judges are male.
This is egregious because hello, it’s 2016.
It’s also particularly egregious because art is one of the few areas in game development where women are fairly well-represented. It’s not like they couldn’t have found female judges.
If you’re so inclined, here are the contest’s partners/sponsors:
Also, note that the link to the contest above is through DoNotLink.
A lot of what keeps the odd double standards and worrying tropes in design is the relative isolation the powers that be keep themselves in – that includes often having decision makers consistently entirely of men.
Thus we’d like to support encouraging The Game Workshop and their sponsors to consider diversifying their judging panel.
– wincenworks
Edit: We’ve been informed that since the post was made originally 2 days ago, female judges joined the panel.
The Game Workshop (not to be confused with Games Workshop) is holding a contest to find new 2D/3D game artists. Cool, right? The only problem is all the judges are male.
This is egregious because hello, it’s 2016.
It’s also particularly egregious because art is one of the few areas in game development where women are fairly well-represented. It’s not like they couldn’t have found female judges.
If you’re so inclined, here are the contest’s partners/sponsors:
Also, note that the link to the contest above is through DoNotLink.
A lot of what keeps the odd double standards and worrying tropes in design is the relative isolation the powers that be keep themselves in – that includes often having decision makers consistently entirely of men.
Thus we’d like to support encouraging The Game Workshop and their sponsors to consider diversifying their judging panel.
– wincenworks
Edit: We’ve been informed that since the post was made originally 2 days ago, female judges joined the panel.
