Post by InclusiveGames in 2 Swans Can’t Kiss comments

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I found this an intriguing premise, and the art style is super cute. It managed to catch and keep my interest despite only having a very short duration, which really impressed me!

I think it could potentially benefit from a longer format that gives us a little more insight into the princess's thoughts and feelings about the situation, as I found myself wondering about this. I hope you'll consider expanding this story someday! :D

As a footnote, there was one aspect of the story that gave me significant pause. (CW for discussion of real-world transphobic tropes in media and general political rhetoric below.)

In my country at present, there's a heavily circulated transphobic narrative of trans women preying on lesbian cis women by 'trapping' them in the sense of starting a relationship before coming out to them. The line of thinking goes that this will somehow force cis lesbians who would prefer not to have sex with anyone with a penis to do just that, and this is sometimes spun as if it's akin to conversion practices. (This is all, of course, transphobic garbage.)

There are a few moments in the current version of this comic that parallel the tropes I just described, which I don't think were intentional on your part. I'm going list them out for ease of reference.

Because page 4 cuts away after "really now?", it's left ambiguous whether the princess consented to be transformed into a swan or was cursed against her will. The latter reading echoes the misleading/'trapping' narrative, albeit allegorically through fantasy concepts of monkey's-paw wishes or Faustian deals.

If you didn't want that ambiguity, you could add in a speech bubble from the princess in response to show the reader whether she's for or against becoming a swan. If she's (at least initially) for it, that negates this entire possible reading.

The curse-breaking condition being to kiss/marry/be romantically involved with the sorceress (pages 5-9) further reinforces the parallels I've mentioned, making the sorceress come across as predatory. If that's the intended effect, then you nailed it, but if not then you may want to reconsider how the magic is framed.

For example, if the condition were "true love's kiss" in classic fairytale fashion, then the princess's conflict about pursuing it could stem from her internalised heteronormative worldview (making her not perceive the sorceress as an option, even if the princess has a crush on her) and her continuing aversion to getting into relationships with princes/men.

The sorceress further comes across as predatory in pages 10-12, which suggest that she's voluntarily maintaining a curse that the princess does not want (at least not any longer?), all for the sake of keeping her around until she either succumbs to the pressure of wanting to escape the curse or comes round to the sorceress's way of thinking - and either option means deciding to engage in a romantic relationship with her. The use of "reluctant" regarding their cuddles further creates a sense that this is not what the princess wants. Again, if you're aiming for a sinister/predatory power-imbalanced dynamic, then this is working well.

However, if it's not the intent, you may want to make the sorceror incapable of reversing the curse independently and also change the curse-breaking condition.

For my two cents, I think it could be a neat option to have the sorceror believe that her romantic interest in the princess is unrequited and therefore wouldn't meet the 'true love's kiss' condition because both parties have to love each other for that to work. She could even feel so guilty about the situation that she's trying to be the best friend she can to the princess in hopes of being platonically loved enough for an attempted curse-breaking kiss to work, even though it's causing the sorceress heartache to do so.

Platonic true love's kiss has become much more mainstream as a concept in recent years due to representation in media such as Frozen and Once Upon A Time, so I don't think this would cause any confusion among readers, but you could always add some extra clear exposition if you were worried about this point.

Anyway, apologies that this turned into a small essay! I hope you'll be encouraged by the fact that your work interested me deeply enough to engage with it like this, rather than being disheartened or put off.

Blushinmoon19 days ago

Hi! I’m flattered that my short comic was able to give you pause and encouraged you to be introspective. I do agree that the comic could’ve used a longer format, as the original intention was to make a 21-ish page comic. Unfortunately, I did have to cut down some of the pages to meet the deadline, and also make room to work on it while working my part-time job irl. So, that may explain why it leaves one wanting more. I may revisit it in the future to make an “extended cut” of sorts, but that probably won’t be for awhile.

It definitely wasn’t my intent to make trans or cis women specifically come across as predatory in any way, nor vice versa. This is the first trans/LGBT+ project I’ve ever made and Exodia is meant to be an evil sorceress like in the story of Swan Lake, which the comic is inspired by (with additional inspiration from the 1994 animated movie called “The Swan Princess”, an iteration of Swan Lake where the evil sorcerer Rothbart tries to marry the princess in order to inherit the kingdom). As for the swan spell, it is like the case of a Monkey Paw in which she didn’t quite get what she wanted, but also takes themes from Swan Lake where she can’t quite escape the spell without meeting specific conditions. Exodia's evil tendencies aren't because she's trans, it's just because I've always made her/and her base character morally ambiguous and pretty selfish. Selene as a character is stubborn and avoids self gratification. The characters (even in cannon) are very much unstoppable force meets immovable object as a trope.

The princess's conflict about pursuing the sorceress is meant to be more in line with her own internalized homophobia, hence the title “Two Swans can’t Kiss”, kind of referencing how it feels forbidden to kiss another woman. While she’s reluctant at first, that is meant to insinuate how she hesitates to indulge in romance with another woman. This was the main idea of the comic as it was for the February/Valentine’s themed Jam I hosted called “5 Times I Almost Kissed You Jam”, where the characters show yearning of some sort. I personally still struggle a lot with my own queerness so the comic was an excuse to explore Sapphic themes and to indulge a bit in content I’m usually too scared to make as someone who isn't out and probably won't ever get to be.

If you want to better see my thought process, the PDF download "The Making of 2 Swans Can't Kiss" shows the thumbnails, comments, and the development while I was making this project.

I hope this clears things up and answers some of your questions! Thank you for taking interest in my story and taking the time to comment.

InclusiveGames19 days ago(+1)

Thanks for the detailed reply! ^_^ That all makes total sense to me.

While I'm familiar with Swan Lake, I only hazily remember 'The Swan Princess' from childhood and had forgotten that plotline - I'll have to go rewatch it sometime! :)

I think part of what struck me so much about the curse-breaking condition in this comic is that, unlike in Swan Lake where it requires someone else (literally anyone else who has never loved before, I think?) to commit to loving Odette forever, this story requires Selene herself to enter into a relationship/marriage that we as readers see she has been actively refusing for a long time - without textual clarity that this is because of her stubborn self-denial and internalised homophobia, it can all too easily read like someone who's genuinely not interested at all being put in a horrific situation. While the title did briefly bring to mind that internalised conflict for me, I didn't find it reflected clearly in the main body of the work. Perhaps that's partly due to my neurotype and I'm missing something that others could pick up on from facial expressions! Anyhow, if you did ever want to make edits to clarify those points, the addition of a few thought bubbles from Selene could be a helpful and relatively low-labour way to add some context about how she feels about the situation (as opposed to drawing/writing entire additional panels/scenes).

I'm really glad you got a chance to explore those sapphic themes through this project, and I'm sorry you don't feel like you're in a safe situation to come out if you wanted to - solidarity. I hope you're able to find some LGBTQIA+ community to connect with if you wish to, whether that's via media representation, online spaces, or in person. Let me know if you'd like to be signposted to any relevant resources! :)

Cool, I'll check out the making-of PDF - thanks for highlighting it to me, brainfog meant I'd completely missed it when I downloaded the main comic!

itch.io

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