Intention vs Interpretation

Like I’ve already mentioned in the last post, working a job that’s all about producing entertainment while the world burns has been a struggle for Matt and me— and everyone else we know in the arts field, too. It’s just a really hard time to be a person in society right now, across the board. You already know this, I know, I know. 

So, anyway. 

The comic this week. 

Matt and I decided to open up on our anxieties about doing this kind of non-essential, “frivolous” work while we know there are so much bigger things going on right now, while also keeping in mind that we’ve gotta keep earning a living too and also try to take care of ourselves emotionally and mentally as people who are dealing with our own struggles. We started with just a straight-up autobio set-up and then segued into a sex toy review, which is the easiest kind of comic for us to pump out. 

A few hours after we published the comic, we went back and edited a few bits in the introduction because we weren’t totally happy with how we’d worded everything. Unfortunately, neither of us thought to save a copy, so I can only share the second version with you here. Honestly, I don’t think it was a huge difference! Just a few tweaks.

“There are SO many important things going on right now. The Black Lives Matter movement. Police brutality. Beloved children’s authors going off the rails. A Pandemic without an end in sight. And fucking TRUMP.”

We listed the individual big world news events because these are the ones that take up the most space in our hearts and minds. We debated whether we should be more timeless by just saying “There’s SO many important things going on in the world right now!” and then vaguely saying “things are so hard right now.” But that just felt… it felt disrespectful? Like, by not naming these specific movements and events, we were glossing over them, erasing them. We’re in an important moment in history right now, we're going to acknowledge it. 

THE INTENDED MESSAGE
The upsetting state of the world has been hard on our hearts and minds because we care about these issues. People -all people- need a break from sadness and stress, which means taking a pause from forces that drain you in order to replenish yourself so you can return functional and productive. Now, let’s do the easiest type of comic we can get away with, as a form of making our work load a little lighter this week.

Overall, I got the impression that most people “got” our intended message, based on the responses that I saw from people (especially folks in the creative industries) saying they related. 

There’s always more than one ways to interpret everything, of course, and there is another message that could be read from what we wrote. 

ANOTHER INTERPRETATION
We, two privileged people, are bummed out from the all the injustice in the news, so we’re choosing to “take a break” from it, which is something that marginalized people do not have the option of doing. NOW BUY THIS SEX TOY.

This is not the message we intended, but I can’t fault anyone who reads it from the words that we wrote. 

Matt and I talked about it with some somebody we trust who’s way more qualified to weigh in on that stuff than us and ultimately decided to just pull that entire second tier from the comic. 

So now it reads like this: 

It still works, but from a storytelling perspective, I think it makes the opening transition a bit jarring and contextless. Like, Matt’s just in crisis-mode for no reason that the reader can discern. It’s still a functional introduction, it just lacks a bit of heart and setting, I think. BUT, it can’t be read as us cavalierly ignoring real world injustices as a segue for shilling vibrators. 

We get feedback on every. single. comic. from people who project alternative interpretations on our work and for the most part we don’t re-edit comics to suit individual people’s personal requests, but this time, well, it just rang too true, it was too easy to read it that other way. 

This is the part of the post where I should have a closing statement that wraps everything up with a satisfying conclusion, ideally referencing something from the opening paragraph to make it feel like its come full circle. Man. I’d be such a good writer if I could pull that off. 

INSTEAD: 

I have a:

————————— COMMENT REQUEST —————————

Please comment about anything other than what I just wrote. 

Thank you so, so much for not weighing in on what I just shared. I just really don’t have the stomach to read whether people think we made the right call or the wrong call or they have further advice on what we should have done or what we should do now or or or... 

Instead, I’d love to hear what organizations you’ve been supporting during the quarantine, or what actions you’ve done to participate in advocating for social justice or what books/links you’ve been reading to further your understanding of the current issues. 

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Thank you again for respecting my comment request! I really appreciate it ♥️