Research Log Four

Queering the Universe

Up to now, the most interesting part of my analysis by far of Tillie Walden’s On a Sunbeam has been the dual levels of “safe space” that I’ve been discussing in my prospectus, preliminary research, and past research logs. Half of this comes from the analysis of the queer cultural value of webcomics; I’m not the most avid reader of online comics, but I do find them enjoyable and a great place to find diverse LGBTQ+ stories. The colorful visuals and often homophobia-free worlds make them popular with queer teens, and can also be argued to oppose more “straight'” traditional methods of storytelling such as written narrative.

Additionally, I’ve found interest in exploring the importance of free access to webcomics; I believe this is critical not just for those who don’t want to buy hardcopies, but those that can’t due to financial reasons or homophobia within their home. I should also say that it blows me away that authors like Tillie Walden will create intricate webtoon art that takes hours to create, and it easily worth hundreds of hardcopy pages, and still leave the graphic narratives without a paywall.

Chapter navigation of onasunbeam.com

Homepage of Webtoon, a popular site for free webcomics

However, that’s only half of my “safe space” interest; the other half lies exclusively with the space-opera worldbuilding in On a Sunbeam. I find it interesting that Walden set out to write Sunbeam with the goal to worldbuild a queer-friendly space in the stars, but in the end, despite gorgeous visuals, the book has very little dialogue or explanation specifying anything about the time, location, technology, events, or current state of the universe. Sunbeam’s plot is driven forward by the personal relationships of its characters and their misunderstandings and need for redemption, instead of, say, the advanced technology prominent in sci-fi, or even tropes common in both sci-fi and space-opera, such as colonialism, ancient legends, extraterrestrial life, opposing “bad guy” forces, alien cultures, and so on.

Worldbuilding, of course, is a highly humanistic process, but Walden seems to take it to its humanistic lengths by centering her narrative world on the relationships between her characters and visual art. This is jarring in a fictional outer space setting seeing as most sci-fi and space operas taking place off Earth prioritize STEM for establishing most of their worlds. While the following questions are not a guiding one for my research, I keep finding myself asking:

“Is the minimal material worldbuilding in Sunbeam intentional?

Is centering human interactions in space a celebratory queering of outer space, or instead a sign of a shortcoming in worldbuilding, indicative of the still unsteady place of LGBTQ+ folks in space?”

Image credit: cover from The Governance of Friendship: Law and Gender in the Decameron

In any case, it’s clear that the galactic setting of On a Sunbeam is meant as a safe haven, or as I love to put it, safe space, for queer people in a sub-genre that is typically not made accessible for them. In this way, Sunbeam almost reminds me of The Decameron, in its multiple narrative frames. While I don’t believe Sunbeam offers much in the way of multiple narratives (unless you count the intertwined, four years-apart timelines of the story), its frames, or layers of spaces dedicated to queer youth mirrors how The Decameron was meant to alleviate the melancholy of young women, but also create a safe fictional space for the young members of the brigata to interact.

However, though On a Sunbeam isn’t as old or narratively complex as the Decameron, it’s still worth scholarly analysis. As webcomics go, it’s an excellent example of the growing trend to exclude homophobia in queer stories, a queer cultural affirmation of identity beyond facing hate. In fact, narrative exclusion has received scholarly attention by scholars such as Lin Young in her paper Pixel Fantasies and Futures: Narrative “De-Othering” in Webcomics. Additionally, Sunbeam’s detailed and colorful art, clearly a labor of love, is worth a study in the passion that many LGBTQ+ artists have in creating accessible queer utopias.

Image credit: screencap of "Pixel Fantasies and Futures" in The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader

Beyond what has already been established in the conversation though, I think Sunbeam offers great potential to understand how queering a space often includes the somewhat radical act of prioritizing the focus on human relationships. The novel is also worth analyzing for the liberations and limits of fictive queer utopias and how that translates to real life queer spaces. As I plan to establish in my thesis, unconscious heteronormative biases still exist and shape the queer outer space of On a Sunbeam.

As of now, the means with which I plan to communicate my thesis (beyond my research paper of course) are primarily through the visual, and maybe through the tactile. I’d like to show my peers some of the graphic novel’s panels to walk them through a process of my visual analysis, and I also think showing the difference between scrolling through a webtoon versus flipping through the actual book could be a good demonstration of the difference in mediums.

I’ll probably have to limit this to presenting on the projector and navigating through the website for On a Sunbeam, but at least it’ll show how webcomics work for those who haven’t read them before. Presentation of my research process would likely be limited to photos where I would highlight the tags and search words that brought me to the articles, then key terms, important quotes, and theses within the articles themselves. Finally, I’d also like to create a video if it wouldn’t be too much effort. I’m thinking of a short 5 minute video summarizing the key points of my argument with all the graphic novel’s visuals and quotes displayed as needed. This would take some time to edit, but as a final product, I believe the effort would be worth it.

Works Cited:

Sherberg, Micheal. Governance of Friendship: Law and Gender in the Decameron. OHIO STATE UNIV PR, 2020.

Walden, Tillie. On a Sunbeam. First Second, 2018.

Walden, Tillie. “On a Sunbeam.” ON A SUNBEAM, 2017, https://www.onasunbeam.com/.

“Webtoon.” Www.Webtoons.Com, 2014, www.webtoons.com/en/.

Young, Lin. “Pixel Fantasies and Futures: Narrative ‘De-Othering’ in Webcomics.” The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions, edited by Alison

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