Children of Women

"gezeugt in Hass und ohne Samen"

Rammstein - Mutter

 

 

One scene from Selkie's current storyline (mind the spoilers if you flip forward or back) got me thinking about the role of fathers in webcomics, which albeit aging still count as one of our newer modes of expression.

It posted almost contemporaneously with a reader comment on page 707 of Soul to Call, which is among other things about a teenage girl seeking her father: 

"every time I see Avril sad, hurt or in danger on this mission to find her dad, I hate him more - but she doesn’t. It leaves me in the position of wanting to punch him in the head while also knowing that Avril would not want to see her dad hurt, so I can’t just want to punch him in the head."

 

Granted, reader comments being reader comments they're usually not worth the imaginary paper they're printed on (YouTube being the classic example) but this one does hit upon the central conflict. As readers are expected to identify or at least sympathize with the heroine, anything which frustrates her is by default placed in opposition. You are being primed, long before his appearance, to hate the man for failing to meet his daughter's expectations.

 

That brings us to Gunnerkrig Court which unfortunately deletes reader comments for all but the current post, so I can't pull the exact quote. On this page where the heroine magnanimously forgives her father (repeatedly established to be a very insular person by nature) for not displaying as much emotion as she demands, a reader hated the supposed message that every time someone hurts the heroine we should go easy on him just because his brain is broken. Skipping over the basic observation that regardless of narrative demands in a medium of fiction, persons do not exist simply to support a designated heroine's mythopoesis, even his supposed redemption consists of his daughter condescending to validate his existence, foisting an extraverted justification on an introvert as some act of beneficence.

These are hardly isolated examples. Unsounded doubles down with two fathers guilty of neglect, endangerment, treason, treachery and general criminality, and another character's defining conflict (at least until the impending religious revelations break) consists entirely of failing to protect his daughter in an impossible situation. I've never read Dumbing of Age, but supposedly it features a rather infamous paternal kidnapping scene. The Last Halloween pins much of its early humor on a sit-comically dense heroine's father - but his guilt is lessened by entering into a morally superior homosexual relationship. It doubles down with an abusive boyfriend who gets flayed alive so we can glory in seeing him beg his girlfriend for the mercy of death. Questionable Content, though it at least supplied a couple of minor counterbalancing examples, spent a decade building a central character's entire development arc on blaming her father's suicide for her problems.

... and these are just some examples centering on a father-daughter relationship. We haven't even gotten to the sons. Whomp makes Santa Claus into an alcoholic absentee dad. Weregeek had its stereotypical "sports-mad bad dad" as I once put it. The Order of the Stick gives us character after character (Nale/Elan, Roy, Haley, a certain goddess) stuffed to overflowing with daddy issues. Wilde Life has one young man arguing repeatedly with his nominally bad (never seen) father and another fighting with a physically abusive father. Paranatural has a gay son rebelling against his clichéd workaholic wealthy father and, once again, a stereotypically incompetent sitcom dad as punching bag in early strips. Daughter of the Lillies has a father condemning himself to Hell for sinning against his gay son.

Etc.

etc.

etc...

 

Stock bad dads as moralistic punching bags have become as much a cornerstone of webcomics as the strong woman glorified abuser. A few counterpoints do exist, like Girl Genius which supplies examples of both sexes, as does the Unicorn Jelly trilogy* or Angelique from Kevin&Kell or that old Dr. Laura parody from Sluggy Freelance... but even those last are a decade or two outdated by this point. Take note that:

 

1) In many such cases the father in question has not, in fact, done anything actively wrong... or done much of anything, as they tend to be blamed for inertia, for "not getting it" or not lavishing enough affection on a daughter (or homosexual son as a stand-in, amusingly enough) or in some other way failing to meet Procrustean feminine demands for attention. His guilt is almost always informed by plot contrivances or merely a protagonist's subjective condemnation... or the artist caricaturing him into the uncanny valley... and that's good enough for readers.

2) As a rule, there are no bad mothers in such comics. Anywhere. Ever. Some maternal figures might pop up on occasion to help establish a pattern of female omniscience, saintliness and all-around perfection in all things, but more often than not maternal mortality in webcomics is an order of magnitude worse than in the Middle Ages! Mothers in such works live just long enough to leave the protagonists with a few heartwarming, gilded memories viewed through a greased lens. No sooner do they perform for future flashbacks than they get swept away by a rampaging horde or an epidemic or simply languish to naught in decorous Victorian consumption, too good for this world.**

 

We are left to project all parental conflict angst versus the father alone as illustrative of a protagonist's plot-conveniently formative hard knock life.

^ That's not a bug. It's a feature.

I said this post began with Selkie, a comic about a late-twenties single man adopting an unusual young girl from an orphanage. Both male and female parents are shown as both capable of error and of learning from said errors and improving, growing into their roles and connecting with their young charges, and every positive character, male or female, upholds the conceits of social "justice" activism. All in all a laudable attempt at allowing male characters to demonstrate positive qualities (at least in the limited and insulting pigeonhole of SJW fatherhood) but it's missing the point so aptly captured by all those others: the public doesn't want fair examples. The demonization of men, fathers included, in every creative medium, exists because we want to hate men. These entertainment products fill a public demand for justification in abusing men which simply cannot be supplied within the real world. You might counter that all these aspiring artists must be drawing upon personal experiences, that they all had abusive fathers... but then did all their mothers also waste away in decorous Victorian consumption? Of all your acquaintances close enough that you can see past their public persona at least on occasion, how many truly, honestly, have nothing but praise for their mothers and nothing but condemnation for their fathers?

 

What you're seeing here is both a political need for justification to chime in on politically correct hatred of men and, more importantly, a deeply instinctive need to designate particular men, at will, as villains to be ostracized or defeated in ritual displays of solidarity with women. Note the eagerness expressed by readers to reach the cathartic cusp in the story when they can finally openly hate the father character. More tellingly, what you're seeing played out in these often young-adult-oriented works of fiction is also the fabrication of a Big Lie to suit our most traditional, reactionary social value as a species: females' need for psychological leverage over men, the need to inculcate guilt, debt and duty into men to force their subservience to female interests. Look at the narcissistic presumption linking most of the above examples: that the male (never as individual but only instrumental) in his role as caretaker just didn't do enough caring to supply an arbitrary demand!

 

There's a flip-side to this, that our social "justice" Newspeak vocabulary has by design deprived us of even the terms in which to portray feminine, much less maternal wrongdoing, but that'll have to await examples from other, more mature media.***

 

 

 

 

 

 

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* I do get the feeling that Jennifer Diane Reitz makes much of the newer generation of self-described transsexual or "non-binary" artistes uncomfortable despite having worked more than most to pave the way for them.

 

** At this point I should say, on the off-chance I have a female reader somewhere, if you find yourself performing for a future flashback... RUN !!!

*** ... most likely including Hannah Nielsen from Dark.