Multimodal Work In-Progress
This semester I decided to focus my research on the webcomic On a Sunbeam by author and illustrator Tillie Walden. The novel was released over twenty chapters between 2016 and 2017 and tell of the romance of two girls, Mia and Grace, as they fall in love at a boarding school in space, lose each other when Grace is forced to return home to a dangerous, crumbling asteroid, and reunite when Mia decides to find Grace years later (Oliver).
On a Sunbeam is a space-opera, and in case you’re wondering what a space opera is, a helpful definition comes from Wilson Tucker, sci-fi author, in 1941: “Westerns are called ‘horse operas’, the morning housewife tear-jerkers are called ‘soap operas’. For the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn spaceship yarn, or world-saving for that matter, we offer ‘space opera’” (Westfahl). While I find that definition overly negative, the gist of it is that unlike science and speculative fiction, space operas aren’t as interested in the social and political effects of changing technology or environment. Space operas exist to tell dramatic stories centered on adventure in space with a kind of fantasy-mythicism aesthetic in portraying the unknown.
“Westerns are called ‘horse operas’, the morning housewife tear-jerkers are called ‘soap operas’. For the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn spaceship yarn, or world-saving for that matter, we offer ‘space opera" — Wilson Tucker
"The inception of On a Sunbeam came from my perpetual disappointment and boredom towards any story set in space. . . . My initial goal with Sunbeam was to create a version of outer space that I would want to live in." — Tillie Walden
Historically, science fiction and space opera haven’t been the most queer friendly spaces, and in fact Walden explains in the “About” section of the Sunbeam website that, “The inception of On a Sunbeam came from my perpetual disappointment and boredom towards any story set in space. . . . My initial goal with Sunbeam was to create a version of outer space that I would want to live in. So of course that includes tons of queer people, no men (did you notice?), trees, old buildings, and endless constellations” (Walden, “About”). What I find brilliant, then, is that she uses a medium that’s established to have a large queer audience to make space-opera more accessible.
This medium is webcomics𑁋illustrated stories and comics often appearing on websites like Webtoon or Tapas (or their own individual websites), typically released in page-or-chapter-length segments, and most importantly, are available for free. While webcomics may not seem to be worth academically meaningful discussion, in-print comics have been studied by scholars such as Ramzi Fawaz and Justin Hall, and have been claimed as an important domain for queer storytelling (Fawaz; Hall).
Left: The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader, amazon.com Center: Ramzi Fawaz, ramifawaz.com Right: Justin Hall, justinhallawesomecomics.com
Inevitably, the online version of a popular in-print medium would gain traction with the LGBTQ+ community, not just for free access, but likely for the discretion online reading provides for queer teens who wish to conceal their identities. Further, research done by Lin Young in The LGBTQ+ Comics Reader from the University Press of Mississippi discusses that the popularity with queer webcomics comes from a focus on lighthearted storytelling that excludes homophobic conflict (Young). In its exclusion of homophobia, Tillie Walden’s On a Sunbeam follows this webcomic trend of creating a queer safe space, and indeed goes further by omitting men for a non-binary and lesbian utopia.
So based on the established trope queer following of online comics, and on Walden’s own account of writing a space-opera, On a Sunbeam should cater to a queer audience on two levels: in its free, webcomic medium well known to be more LGBTQ+ representative than most mainstream media, and in its reimagining of space opera to create a feminine and non-binary dominated outer space. This layering of a queer-popular medium with the queering of space-opera represents a dual effort by Sunbeam to create online and literary “safe spaces” for an LGBTQ+ audience.
However, establishing a safe space for LGBTQ+ folks is often complicated by exclusion of certain queer identities (think TERFS), unknown emotional triggers that may hurt a safe space member, and internal heteronormative biases brought into the space by its facilitators and members. In discussing safe spaces in the book Queering Safe Spaces : Being Brave Beyond Binaries, Dr. Son Vivienne explains that, “Not only is safe passage [into the space] based on overly simplistic renderings of sex and gender it, perhaps unintentionally, reinforces a normative framework for inclusion that presumes to know the hearts and minds of all beings that enter” (Vivienne). There is no guarantee for physical or mental safety in a safe space, not only from outside forces, Vivienne continues, but from those who deliante the limits of the space, and those who exist inside it. With this added stipulation to so-called “safe spaces” it became important to check if On a Sunbeam was the uncomplicated feminist queer utopia I had originally deemed it to be.
Jessica Baldanzi’s analysis of the novel, “On a Sunbeam: The Promise and Perils of Utopian Bodies, Spaces, and Outer Space” comes to the conclusion that the novel successfully creates a queer utopia by the lightweight, anti-gravity qualities of the characters’ bodies that supposedly floats above the negative weight of gender norms. However, before finalizing this claim, Baldanzi visually analyzes the landscapes in Sunbeam and points out how unexplored landscapes are often depicted similar to the female vulva (shadowy pink caves and crevices), and the fish-shaped spaceships exploring the land could be seen as phalluses. While I don’t completely agree with the spaceship analogy, Baldanzi’s subclaim that the landscapes of Sunbeam initially appear to conform to heteronormative ideas about the male and female intrigued me to search for other instances of heteronormativity being present in Sunbeam’s safe space.
I decided to focus instead on the relationship dynamics of the characters, in particular the romantic relationship between main characters Mia and Grace. I quickly found that their relationship seemed to conform to heteronormative standards of a dynamic, gutsy masculine partner guiding or motivating their passive effeminate partner into action. Based on this, I created my thesis to show that though Tillie Walden creates two layers of safe space in Sunbeam, the queer relationship dynamics in the novel are often portrayed using feminine and masculine tropes, which shows that traces of heteronormativity are still present in this supposedly safe space. Ultimately, this demonstrates that this safe space, beyond facing outside prejudice, faces inner threats of heteronormativity brought in unconsciously by the creator of the safe space.
Left panel: Grace wears effeminate jewelry and a sparkly dress, while waiting in her dorm for Mia. Right panel: Mia arrives at Grace's dorm, in a masculine suit, a flower to offer Grace as male partners typically give at dances, and ready to escort Grace to a school dance.
I plan to prove this through visual analysis how characters in queer relationships are drawn and styled, textual analysis of how the characters speak and interact with one another, and an analysis of the plot to show how Mia, the “masculine” one of the relationship, takes the most active role in the plot from her motivations to be with the passive, effeminate Grace.