Please buy this comic, be it trades, issues (physical or digital) this is a super feminist LGBT+ comic for all ages.
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.
Digital copies can be bought instantly right on Comixology: https://www.comixology.com/Princeless-Raven-The-Pirate-Princess/comics-series/46971
You can buy the physical volumes on amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B01BF7U91Q
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.
So, obviously the rumors of Micah’s death is greatly exaggerated or misunderstood. We’re never shown exactly how he ‘died’ we just know he did and Angella feels responsible since it is implied it was her plan or decision that lead to his supposed death. Which is why Angella has a fear of making another bad decision that she didn’t make any decisions leading ( or contributing) to the original Princess Alliance to fall apart.
So, Micah isn’t dead. Then where is he? If he was a prisoner of the Horde he would’ve been used as a bargaining chip by them already. To get Angella and Castaspella to comply with whatever demands in order to ensure Micah’s safety. Both have a strong emotional and personal relationship with Micah, they would’ve done it. Two kingdoms submitting with little to no resistance at the same time would be a huge advantage for The Horde.
I theorize Shadow Weaver somehow has him under her own secret and private improsonment. Without Hordak’s or anyone else’s knowledge. Why would Shadow Weaver hide this from Hordak?
Simply because Shadow Weaver cares about her own magical power first and foremost. Even if giving Micah to Hordak would gain her approval and favor, Shadow Weaver has shown again and again, Hordak and his mission means nothing to her. Hordak is simply convenient for her goal.
The way she used Glimmer as a living magic battery while crude, but given the rushed circumstances she seemed to be comfortable and at ease with the situation. While showing disregard for Glimmer’s physical well being during this, it shows she has the knowledge to perform this and a lack of empathy to take magic from other’s regardless if it’s hurting them.
It also helps show that she’s hypothetically done it to Micah and possibly still did while she was in the Frightzone. Shadow Weaver probably has a complex spell or magical device that’s keeping him imprisoned (and out of sight) but alive enough to serve as a magic battery. Her being kicked out of the Frightzone has possibly cut her off from his magic.
Though, if he’s not being held by Shadow Weaver he’s possibly stuck or trapped in whatever area of the mission he ‘died’ in or he has amnesia as a result of the injuries he received on said mission.
By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.
Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.
This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):
Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):
Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.
But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:
Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.
Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation
Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.
Meditation
Martial arts
Sports in general
Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)
Woodworking
Cooking
If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers
Things can be easier. You might always have a disability around this (I certainly always will), but it can be easier. You do not have to be this stuck forever.
I've been reading Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, and it's gotten me thinking about how worldbuilding is multilayered, and about how a failure of one layer of the worldbuilding can negatively impact the book, even if the other layers of the worldbuilding work.
I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, so I'm going to talk about it more broadly instead. In my day job, one of the things I do is planning/plan development, and we talk about plans broadly as strategic, operational, and tactical. I think, in many ways, worldbuilding functions the same way.
Strategic worldbuilding, as I think of it, is how the world as a whole works. It's that vampires exist and broadly how vampires exist and interact with the world, unrelated to the characters or (sometimes) to the organizations that the characters are part of. It's the ongoing war between Earth and Mars; it's the fact that every left-handed person woke up with magic 35 years ago; it's Victorian-era London except every twelfth day it rains frogs. It's the world, in the broadest sense.
Operational worldbuilding is the organizations--the stuff that people as a whole are doing/have made within the context of that strategic-level world. For The Hunger Games, I'd probably put the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and even the existence/structure of the districts as the strategic level and the construct of the Hunger Games as the operational level: the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and the districts are the overall world that they live in, and the Hunger Games are the construct that were created as a response.
Tactical worldbuilding is, in my mind, character building--and, specifically, how the characters (especially but not exclusively the main characters) exist within the context of the world. In The Hunger Games, Katniss has experience in hunting, foraging, wilderness survival, etc. because of the context of the world that she grew up in (post-apocalyptic, district structure, Hunger Games, etc.). This sort of worldbuilding, to me, isn't about the personality part of the characterization but about the context of the character.
Each one of these layers can fail independently, even if the other ones succeed. When I think of an operational worldbuilding failure, I think of Divergent, where they took a post-apocalyptic world and set up an orgnaizational structure that didn't make any sense, where people are prescribed to like 6 jobs that don't in any way cover what's required to run a modern civilization--or even to run the society that they're shown as running. The society that they present can't exist as written in the world that they're presented as existing in--or if they can, I never could figure out how when reading the book (or watching the film).
So operational worldbuilding failures can happen when the organizations or societies that are presented don't seem like they could function in the context that they are presented in or when they just don't make any sense for what they are trying to accomplish. If the story can't reasonably answer why is this organization built this way or why do they do what they do then I see it as an organizational worldbuilding failure.
For tactical worldbuilding failures, I think of stories where characters have skillsets that conveniently match up with what they need to solve the problems of the plot but don't actually match their background or experience. If Katniss had been from an urban area and never set foot in a forest, it wouldn't have worked to have her as she was.
In this way (as in planning), the tactical level should align with the operational level which should align with the strategic level--you should be able to trace from one to the next and understand how things exist in the context of each other.
For that reason, strategic worldbuilding failures are the vaguest to explain, but I think of them like this: if it either 1) is so internally inconsistent that it starts to fall apart or 2) leaves the reader going this doesn't make any sense at all then it's probably failed.
I want these so bad!
Pizza Socks, by Meg Cyprian on Etsy
See our ‘socks’ tag
Dropping this here for anyone who may not already know about it. paywallreader.com
22/Bisexual/ Autistic/ ADD/ Dyspraxia/Dysgraphic/ She and her pronouns/ Pagan/intersectional feminist
223 posts