Becase we all need some anarchy in our lives.

[domino_blue.insanejournal.com]

Hello I was going to post the very excellent future comic Spider-man 2099 but because it's written by a certain author who I still love despite the fallout of the last community, I decided to post this Grant Morrison classic Kill your Boyfriend.

First Let's meet our Narrator

Quite the meek thing wouldn't you say?



After having a tiff with her Parents she decides to go out one night when she run's into the local bad boy.




After boozing around for a while they decide to go to her boyfriend's house.





And that is the beginning of an delightful adventure where our two protagonist find love, understanding, and acceptance. Also if you tell I'm lying through my teeth before this sentence you win a cookie. This is a great Graphic novel that is very funny, that, while you can find some symbolism in it you can turn your mind off and read just because it's just so fun. The graphic novel is out there somewhere and it only cost 5 bucks so go get it if you want to find out what happens next.

Comments

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

Escapist fiction suggests someplace you would like to escape to, for me at least. So escapism where the protaganist is accessory to premeditated murder for no reason... well.

I didn't say it was escapist for you. It's the protagonist's dark escapism; she regards her life as such that a criminal rampage across the countryside is a more diverting alternative. It's late-nineties nihilism at its best, with crime presented as a break from routine; you see this in a number of films in the period as well, like Go or The Doom Generation.

I don't respect that sort of story so I don't believe it needs to be deconstructed.

I don't respect romance novels, but I can see why they need to be deconstructed. You take them apart to see how they work. Kill Your Boyfriend spends a lot of time in the beginning framing the protagonist's life for a reason.

Morality plays need a bit more of a subtle moral than this for it to be a real morality play.

Not really, no. Morality plays do not have to be a brick thrown at your forehead in order to be a morality play, at least in the modern incarnation; the original morality plays were "Don't sin, you stupid bastard" for an hour, but in the current-day usage, they don't have to be that straightforward or unsubtle.

And cultural satire? Well, the police are adults and they react. Really, someone having a weapon and commiting random acts of violence is something the average person CAN'T react without seriously endangering themselves.

The average person reacts by getting scared and ducking for cover. "Trying to stop it" is just one of an entire host of possible reactions.

If you read the entire thing, everyone who reacts to the criminal rampage does so in a peculiar and muted way. Some are shown watching the events on television while sitting very still and repressed in their living rooms; others are so subdued about it that they look like a parody of stiff-upper-lip British behavior. I'd need to go reread the book, but I think the protagonist winds up wearing a bright blonde wig and red dress for a big chunk of the book, which makes her and her criminal persona the only spot of color in an otherwise very drab world.

It's a cultural indictment; it's her saying, this is what I have to do to feel excited, to feel alive. I only feel like I'm living when I'm fucking up your lives.

Yes, it's nihilistic, but that's the peculiar liberation of nihilistic fiction. You see somebody else doing what you may be sometimes tempted to do... then you close the book and breathe a sigh of relief that it's not that bad for you. Nihilism in fiction is a pressure valve, and if you've never been under pressure, maybe you can't relate.

[jlbarnett.insanejournal.com]

I've been under pressure but I could never relate to that. Darkness in fiction only makes me feel worse.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

Then this story just flat-out isn't for you.

[janegray.insanejournal.com]

Motto :(

[menagerie.insanejournal.com]

There are those that do, thus the need to tell these sort of stories.