2256: Born To Be Alive – Fancomic Sequel

Title: Harry Potter Becomes A Communist
Author: HardcoreCommie
Media: Book/Film
Topic: Harry Potter
Genre: Fantasy/Parody
URL: Chapters Thirty-Eight, Thirty-Nine, Forty, Forty-One, Forty-Two, Forty-Three, Forty-Four, and Forty-Five
Critiqued by Herr Wozzeck

Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to Harry Potter Becomes a Communist.

…

Well, there’s no sex disclaimers this time! Things are already looking up for–

WARNING! WARNING! CHALLENGER APPROACHING!

Oh what? Hang on, what fresh hell is this? What the hell is interrupting my rage about Harry Potter being a–

Title: Born To Be Alive
Author: Borba
Media: Film
Topic: Zootopia/Zootropolis
Genre: Drama/Webcomic
URL: Born To Be Alive – Page 1
Critiqued by Herr Wozzeck

…

…

*claps hands*

Hehehehehe, ladies and gentlemen, this is fortuitous indeed!

*pulls on the SWAT gear*

Well, if something absolutely had to interrupt the shitfest that was Harry Potter Becomes A Communist, I’m glad it was Borba, ’cause man, do I love taking any and all opportunities to shit all over idiot edgelords who mistake shock value for depth. ‘Cause let’s face it, that’s basically what I Will Survive was: it was an idiot edgelord mistaking shock value for depth.

And man, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to do this, ’cause guess what? You know the Zootopia abortion comic? Well, its sequel ended literally yesterday, and I can’t fucking wait to tell you guys just what kind of bullshit Borba made this time! ‘Cause, somehow, the sequel is both slightly better and much, much worse than the original!

So let’s get started, shall we?

Okay, so in addition to being emotionally manipulative and super pro-life, Nick is also apparently a stalker. Good to know he made the right decision leaving Judy last time!

Which means that Judy’s gonna be leaving the door closed to him, right?

*facepalm*

Judy, if you’re going to install extra locks on your door in addition to the doorknob, why are you going to then open the door for him anyway? ‘Cause I’m going to assume that the only reason she got those locks to begin with was to make sure Nick would be kept out, you know what I’m saying?

And no, the next bit of dialogue doesn’t make this look any better:

So clearly, this is not the first time Nick has done this, and indeed Judy seems more exasperated and bitter here than surprised, so it’s started to become a problem. And then, there’s the number of locks plus chain on the door (which, BTW, I cross-referenced with the last panel of IWS: two of the locks were not there before!), which could only have been installed by a woman who was starting to run out of options while trying to look out for her safety..

You would think that Judy would probably push to get some kind of restraining order against Nick Wilde just because he won’t leave her the hell alone, or at the very least she would just dial her subordinates straight off because she’s been through this whole song and dance before. But nope, she just answers the door and opens all those locks quickly, because Goddammit this is a Borba comic, and logical solutions to problems are just that thing other writers do.

Aw look, he’s willing to risk personal injury to get to talk to the woman he loves! How very incredibly creepy holy shit woman how have you not called the police on this guy yet!?

Oh, save the telenovela-style theatrics, Nick: they might work on people like Marimar and Rosalinda, but they sure as hell are not gonna work on the cold, over-calculating, proselytizing caricature that Borba replaced Judy Hopps with. Especially not after the way you walked out on her, jackass!

And hey, you know what? Considering that Borba didn’t remember a lot of Judy’s actual characterization from the film, I’m not expecting him to remember such fine details as “Nick was the one who walked out” when it comes to producing this sequel comic! But hey, at least Judy will, which is why she’ll stick to her guns, not fall for the obvious attempt at manipulation (that she would know he is capable of considering he tried to pull this same emotional appeal on her when they talked about the abortion initially), and go on with her life.

Right?

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

Well, I guess it only makes sense that Borba wouldn’t know how one should really deal with a clingy bitch. He had to wait until the comments section of page 19 to meet a guy like that, after all, so I can see why he wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean I can’t bitch at Borba for letting Judy do the dumb thing!

“The space heater sits under the painting. The coffee table is still in front of the couch. That bunny thing looks like the Chinese dollar store cats you sometimes see. I’m saying interesting things!”

Thank you, Judy, for getting him back on topic. Good Lord, I thought random tangents about nothing was the domain of the fic we’re taking a break from!

“And what is your duty, then?”

“To act all cold and businesslike even though the source material says I would never intentionally act this cold and heartless, least of all for my career. You know, like how every character written by a latent misogynist who has never talked to a woman who either considers or goes through with an abortion does!”

Well, considering that the alcohol likely convinced Borba to keep posting this comic after it made him take a month-long break on posting new pages despite the fact that it was a really stupid idea to do so, I imagine so, Judy.

You know, for someone who is supposedly still angry at Nick, she’s doing a pretty shit job of conveying that. I mean, she let him into her house, she’s holding conversation with nothing more than an annoyed glower, she hasn’t called for reinforcements yet, the fact that Nick is commenting about it being the same means she clearly hasn’t thought it might be a good idea to leave her old apartment to throw Nick off her trail, and oh yeah, she’s now letting him use her coffee maker! 

*BAM*

If you’re trying to paint Judy as someone exasperated with the antics of a former partner who won’t leave her the hell alone, you’re doing a pretty shit job of it, Borba! If you want to paint her as cold and too calculated to feel, you can go way further than this!

*record scratch*

Wait, hang on, what?

Zoom in on that fast food bag!

…

…

…

*headdesk*

“Arbitch’s”? Really? You’re going to create fast food branding that uses the word “bitch”? You know, the derogatory way to refer to a female dog? How has nobody in this chain’s PR department told the CEO that their company name is a little… you know… uh… racist towards dogs and all that? You’d think that’d cause a huge uproar in the universe of Zootopia, so why is it–

*offstage trombone*

…

Wait, is that what this is about?

*offstage trombone*

Well, if he’s going to reference the Arby’s-based parody of the previous comic, he could do much better than giving it a puerile name that would never fly in the source.

*offstage trombone*

I suppose you’re right: I’m asking for good taste from the guy who wrote I Will Survive. Asking for that is like asking McDonald’s to use fresh ingredients in their menu.

*GASP*

Nick lied to you to get into your apartment!? Who could have ever forseen this!?

And she would’ve barred you entrance if not for the fact that we basically wouldn’t have a comic if she did the sensible thing that any real person would’ve done well before this point. It doesn’t count as a hustle when its success depends entirely on the author reaching into Judy and making her do something stupid and nonsensical for the sake of plot, Nick!

*BAM*

Still not your line to use, mister! That’s still domain of Judy, and I won’t let you forget it!

Yes, you know, the one that got robbed at the 2018 Sucktastic Awards? The one that was hilarious in a way that–

See? See!?

*points*

Even the asshole who said it thinks it’s an unintentionally hilarious line! This comic was robbed at the Sucktastic Awards! Robbed, I tell you!

…

Actually, now that I think about it, I guess this would be a good place to bring up the other irksome thing about the “premeditated sin” line. Which, you know, sounds super Catholic and all that jazz. And Nick here put that on full display with the “premeditated sin” line, and with a few of the pictures that Borba drew on his nightstand in the panel where Nick sees the picture of his mother. And… well, Latin America is super Catholic, as I can tell you coming from a Cuban Catholic household. The only people more Catholic than the Latin households are the Irish and the Italians!

And yet, as the TVTropes page for this webcomic points out, anyone who is this devoutly Roman Catholic that they don’t like abortion also tends to have a very negative view of pre-marital sex.

So, uh, how is it that Nick is super pro-life, but is also apparently okay with the child being born out of wedlock? I mean, being a Cuban Catholic I think you could excuse it because some Latin Catholic households are somewhat more accepting of pre-marital sex that results in a pregnancy and they would much rather see the baby carried to term than aborted, but I think you and I both know that Borba in all likelihood did not think that far ahead.

After all, he doesn’t seem to understand that characters in a cultural landscape based off of the United States would likely be Protestant more than Catholic, so, you know, lack of thinking.

Anyway, Judy, did you, or did you not?

Well, goodnight everybody! So long, farewell, and thanks for all the fish!

…

What? That’s exactly what Borba said in the creator’s comments on the posting of this page! To quote him:

To those people who only came here to find out if Judy did “that” or not: So long, farewell and thanks for all the fish!

For those people who are still interested in this story so far: The RIDE is just beginning!

Because Borba totally wants people to read his comic! He totally does!

“After all, you walked out on me! Why should I get your forgiveness now?”

Then why did you say “I forgive” instead of “please forgive”, Nick Wilde? Because I think we all know that there’s no other way she could have interpreted “I… I forgive” except in a context of “I forgive you”!

…

…

…

Yes, thank you, Sassy Gay Friend! I can’t believe you’ve had to do that twice now to the same author, but here we are!

*sigh*

*pulls off gloves*

Okay, Borba, just… just stop for a hot minute here. Just stop.

Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing here with this comic, because I do. And you know why? Because of this:

Yes, I get what this line is: it’s Nick making fun of the lofty language that was a big part of why his writing was so out-of-character in I Will Survive. You know, something that people pointed out to you in how the comic got memed. It could have been a great moment of metahumor pointing out the flaws in your previous work, Borba, and that could have been a genuinely good way to poke fun at yourself and at your old work.

But, you know, humor like that only works when you fix the problem with your shitty writing. You don’t successfully pull off metahumor like this by pointing out the problem in the previous comic, laughing about it, and then writing the exact same way not even three pages later! That takes the joke away from the shitty writing, and then it turns it on us, the audience, by way of insulting our intelligence by insinuating that we’re stupid enough to believe you understand the problem with your writing and why it’s a problem.

And you know what? I’m just gonna say it here, ladies and gentlemen, because while it may not be the end of the comic it was this moment that made something abundantly clear to me: Born To Be Alive is a comic that could only have been written by the kind of man who actively, unflinchingly, and proudly hates his audience, and especially his critics. It’s an issue with Borba’s writing that was merely hinted at before, but it’s especially evident with the lampshading of Nick’s language, the way Borba himself references Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the author’s comments of Page 10, and particularly the “Arbitch’s” gag. It’s literally like Borba read the criticisms given to him and then wrote an entire comic just to throw them back in our faces as if to say “fuck you, I’ll do whatever the fuck I want and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it!”

Well, that, and there’s this:

Last time we were here snarking Borba, I talked about Borba’s inability to take criticism. Now, this hatred for the audience and the critic has bled into the writer’s work. While I didn’t think it would manifest in quite this way, the fact it manifested at all should really tell you everything you need to know. And moreover, I knew this was likely to happen, because hatred towards the audience like this does find a way to bleed into fanfic authors’ work and the way they address their audience. Trust me: it happened in Subject 23, it happened with FBA people like MitchDLG and IllaRouge, and now it’s happened with the Zootopia abortion comic, too.

Well, Borba, give your critics all the middle fingers you want. But just know you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot in the end, because your story suffers for it.

*pulls gloves back on*

Anyway, what’s this about foxes being emotional?

B-but nothing, Nick Wilde. You said your piece, and now it’s Judy’s turn to talk, because arguments are apparently the only thing Borba can write.

(Also, hooray, he did remember it was Nick who walked out!)

Oh! Thank you, Judy!

Proceed.

While Judy is absolutely right that Nick shouldn’t have walked out on her after one conversation, I can’t help but feel like Judy’s point is kind of dampened by the fact that all it took was one conversation to bring Judy to this point. There’s a reason that I Will Survive was considered a candidate for Worst Romance, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s reasons like how you guys were mentioning in the comments that they frankly should have had this conversation well before the idea of kids came into the picture. Relationships never fracture because of one single conversation, you know: there has to be a build-up to it, and we’ll never know if there was because of Borba’s insistence on starting IWS in medias res.

So, you know, all this ultimately rings rather hollow.

*snerk*

Okay, I know this is about to segue straight into a Shocking Move-On Reveal™, but I can’t help but laugh at the way that the Frida Kahlo painting is looking at these two as if to say “what fucking dumbassery am I witnessing here?” I wish I could say it was Borba inserting a bit of meta humor because I think we all know that the only meta humor here is the one where Borba gets to insult his audience, but for the time being man is it a funny image. Well, once you stop asking yourself why in God’s name a country hick from the cultural equivalent of the US has a Frida Kahlo painting to begin with, anyway.

Anyhow, what’s this reveal?

…

Oh for fuck’s sake, you’re shitting me!

…

…

Okay, we’re really doing this, then! We’re really having Judy Hopps go suddenly bisexual!

So, uh… You want to talk about how this came to be, Judy?

No kidding. Again, care to explain?

Wait, hang on, they are what?

*snerk*

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA–*breathe*–HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA!

“Carrotholics”? So, according to this fic, being addicted to carrots is somehow grounds to say that you are part of a religion that frowns down on abortions. I don’t… I…

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!

[Scene Redacted for Extreme Laughter]

Oh man, I needed that. I think the interns did too, what with them being workaholics and all. I guess they’re over-carrotholled.

*breathes in*

Okay, Judy, continue.

W-wait, hold on: so you told Nick because “it wouldn’t be the most honest thing to do”, and then in the next breath you decide not to tell your parents because reasons? But Nick is fairly “Carrotholic” (*snerk*) and you still told him anyway! At that point, why not just go all out, you know what I’m saying?

Wait wait wait wait, stop. “First rabbit to get an abortion”?

*headdesk*

Zootopia has been modernized for how long, now? It’s pretty clear Zootopia is in a well developed country. If that’s the case, how is it that Judy Hopps is somehow the first rabbit in all of history to get an abortion? I mean, I know it’s probably the first time with a hybrid baby, but if that’s the case then just say “pregnant with a hybrid baby”, Judy!

I… how!? How is she the first rabbit to get an abortion if it’s clearly a big enough topic that Nick and Judy get into a relationship-breaking argument over it?

*headdesk*

Sense! Why do you not make any!?

…

Okay, Judy, you’re starting to get a touch over-explainey there. All you had to say was “you know, she and I bumped into each other at the hospital after the procedure had some complications and we hit it off from there over shared pain”. Instead, we’re getting this over-explainy, oversaccharine tract that takes way too long to get to the point. It’s almost like Judy is being all sugary while trying to rub it in Nick’s face.

Oh wait, that’s exactly what it is, because this is just Judy throwing her pain in Nick’s face. And like, why would you do this to begin with in this particular situation? Judy, you’re a goddamn cop: if you had been trained well, you would know that, when you have a drunk in your house who is prone to emotional outbursts, the proper protocol is to, I dunno, de-escalate the situation? But instead, you’re going on this long, over-explained speech that acts like a twist in the knife. And this gets doubly stupid considering that this is Nick Wilde: you know, a predator? Who can get violent if pushed to the edge? Hello? Earth to Judy? Even I’m not stupid enough to push someone to the edge when rational, and the tone of your speech (and also the speech’s length) says to me that you are not getting enveloped in all-consuming rage!

So, you know, nothing about this speech makes any sense, because it’s needlessly long and needlessly sugary. Oh, and of course, it tells and doesn’t show that Judy cares about Shay. Because of course it does: if you were expecting showing and not telling from a comic artist who let his characters go on huge, proselytizing speeches last time, you are sorely mistaken!

Ah well, at least it’s not homophobic.

*offstage trombone*

…

Wait, WHAT!?

*looks through Borba’s DeviantArt*

…

*pulls off the gloves*

Well, guys, looks like there’s a big-ass elephant in the room that we need to address.

Okay, so you all might say to yourselves at this point “ooh, snap, Judy has a lesbian lover, how very progressive”. You’ll wonder what the response in the comments is: some people in the comments have mentioned that, suddenly, Born To Be Alive has become about gay rights. Well, unfortunately, you then have to also talk about Borba’s treatment of lesbians in previous art of his, and that treatment is not good.

In the first instance, we have Borba drawing lesbians getting tortured because reasons. And sure, you can claim “but historical accuracy” all you want, but then you have to contend with the fact that he drew a very, very fucked up picture of a character named after the Greek poet (and lesbian icon) Sappho raping a twelve year old girl. That image doesn’t exist online anymore because it got taken down from DeviantArt, but fortunately we’ve got record of the DeviantArt posting of the piece thanks to the WayBack Machine, so we know for a fact the piece existed at one point. And, well, Borba’s comments on the matter are pretty gross:

As a visual aid when I was developing a series of books about the early days of a fictional Amazon civilization established on Brazil’s central region, I’ve made many drawings depicting the characters and their environment. Here we have the perverse Sappho, the youngest of all daughters of Queen Artemis, raping a girl under the very eyes of her own mother who is being kept at bay by two of Sappho’s minions.

Now, you might say this is nothing without seeing the art, but I’m pretty confident based on the descriptions in both snapshots of this posting that it was sexualized (one of the posters in the older snapshot made reference to Sappho’s strength being hot, and that was from before the comments became inundated with outrage as you see in the second snapshot). And then, you know, there’s the fact that the Sappho art unapologetically and unironically plays into the ugly stereotype of homosexuals as inherently violent pedophiles, and the fact that he’s attached this to the name of the very first lesbian idol ever (and, you know, the whole reason why “lesbians” came about as a term) only makes that worse.

So now, you have to ask yourself this: why does he repeatedly portray lesbians in situations where they are either awful people or the victims of horrific violence, and what does this have to do with this comic? Well, look at the way Judy talks about her love for Shannon for a second: it’s overlong, incredibly overwrought, and it reads like Judy is only going that far to rub it in Nick’s face that he fucked up. Think about it: wouldn’t the only way to add salt in the wound at that point is to then add an undertone of “and on top of all that, he lost her to a woman“? Nick is acting all shocked, and the comments defending Borba have mentioned that Nick would be shocked regardless, but would this twist have been anywhere near as shocking to the reader if Judy got together with another man? I don’t think so, because if you take out the fact that Shannon is a woman this “twist” is otherwise trite and uninspired.

In that light, for me, Judy being together with a vixen thus plays into Borba’s history of portraying lesbians as either violent or the victims of violence because of one thing: the way he uses it to get an audience reaction. In the above two lesbophobic pictures, the violence is pretty shocking, right? Well, Judy being with Shannon is also merely shock value, and it doubly becomes more obvious that Shannon is a woman just for shock value given that she has all the personality and depth of a blank sheet of printer paper. Let’s not beat around the bush here: Judy’s sudden bisexuality is little more than a lazy plot device intended to elicit shock and awe, and given Borba’s history of using lesbians as an easy way to shock his audience that is super not okay.

As a gay man, let me make something abundantly clear to Borba and the many idiot sycophants fawning all over this comic: LGBTQ+ people are not objects for you to use as a cattle prod when you don’t know how to properly raise a story’s stakes, heighten the drama, or build a world. We are real, breathing people, with desires and problems of our own, and you have no business objectifying us as if sexuality/gender identity is a mere instrument of awe instead of a huge part of who a person is. If you’re going to write characters like us in your stories, you need to treat us as people, because to treat us literally any other way is a shitty thing to do!

Miss me with your lesbophobia, Borba, because it is gross, disgusting, and ultimately validates homophobia and sexism in a way you will likely never be able to comprehend.

*pulls on the gloves*

Anyway, no doubt, Nick is going to act in shock, yes?

Okay, Ebenezer Foxmas, you can calm the fuck down now! Probably go ahead and wake up from this dream sequence now so we don’t have to suffer your insufferable bullshit anymore, if you please!

Yup, Nick got violent (and also incredibly homophobic). Exactly as anyone with two brain cells to rub together would’ve predicted as soon as Shay walked out.

*headdesk*

I guess Borba didn’t get the memo from last time that writing both characters in this situation as mean-spirited idiots winds up making the audience root for neither of them, huh?

I mean, on the one hand, Nick is displaying signs of manipulative, clingy, abusive behavior. Make no mistake about Nick’s behavior here: this is how an abusive person behaves! Nick attempts to manipulate her to get his way, and when that doesn’t work he turns violent, just like he has here. Oh, and need I remind you that he is getting his panties in a twist about Judy moving on after the way that he walked out on her? Yeah, Nick, it seems Judy made the right call moving on from you, because she would not have been happy given the way you are behaving here. And mind you, this isn’t even the first time you’ve bothered her at 2 AM while drunk!

On the other hand, this entire plot could have been avoided had Judy done the smart thing and refused Nick entry to begin with. I mean, she knows he’s manipulative, and this is not the first time he’s pulled this crap, but then she lets him in anyway when he lies about being close to death? And then, when she does let him in and he gets all clingy and shit, what does she do? She twists the knife instead of trying to de-escalate the situation after the shock value girlfriend comes out into the hallway. Granted, she only does so because Borba takes it upon himself to write her in the most overblown, overdramatic way possible, but it still happens that way.

Either way, neither one of these characters are particularly likable, and while Nick is way shittier they both come out of this looking like dumbasses with a hurtful streak. But then again, I’m expecting good character writing from a guy who is writing a sequel to a comic where Nick is an emotionally manipulative PSA mouthpiece, Judy is a selfish bitch, both of those are true because of bad framing and bad structuring, and practically everyone talks like Soraya Montenegro is about to come in and start screaming about “goddamn cripples” any second now. So, you know, I’m misplacing my trust here.

*snerk*

“Bug off”?

Borba, you’re allowed to swear now. I mean, you’re talking about abortion, you’ve had Nick drop a lesbophobic slur here, and oh yeah, you had a visual joke surrounding “Arbitch‘s”! Don’t tell me that “bug off” is the best you can muster now! You want to throw adult topics into Zootopia, go all the goddamn way!

*BAM*

Also, here comes the lesbophobic violence! And here I was afraid Borba wouldn’t get to that in this comic…

Eh, don’t worry, Judy. Shay will be fine. Just give her an opportunity to beat Sasha Velour in a lip sync contest and she’ll be fine!

Wait, is she actually–

Thank you, Judy! God damn, it’s about fucking time you took a stand and told him to GTFO. Now where the fuck was this back when he was at your door so that we could have avoided this whole involved rigmarole to begin with!?

Also, how have the neighbors not at least called 911 yet? You’d think that with a drunk and his ex screaming at the top of their lungs at 2 in the morning that someone would have said something, but nope! Silence!

*headdesk*

That has got to be the most ham-fisted title drop I have ever seen in my life! I… I… Are you seriously gonna do that in a series that was kicked off by a PSA about goddamn abortion?

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

I swear to Christ, at this point I am so done with Borba’s awful writing it’s not even funny.

“And don’t expect me to do the stupid thing next time, because Borba won’t be writing a sequel to this one!”

“Didn’t he say that about IWS before he caved and wrote this piece of garbage?”

“Shut up!”

Oh, don’t worry Shay, I’m sure Judy will be fine. I mean, it is a really weird, trying thing to tell someone to get the fuck out of your life when you’ve shared a good chunk of time, money, and love with that person. And yes, this holds true even though Nick was abusive and manipulative towards her.

…

Wait, hang on, did Borba actually do successful character depth!?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Quick! Someone smack the panic button! I think the flying pigs are about to enter the building! This is not real life! There is no way this is real!

Ah!

[Scene Redacted for Extreme Windiness]

Uh, okay, this is weird. Why’d we suddenly  go into color?

Oh, I think I get it: it’s just to add a degree of saccharine oversweetness to the fact that Judy will be alright in the end even though tossing Nick out is hard. You know, because pink fluffy hearts flowing from the bottom of the panel is totally not a tone whiplash from the previous twenty-seven pages at all!

Uh, guys, are we sure Freddy Kreuger isn’t invading the last panel of this comic somehow? Dear Lord, the art in the rest of this has been pretty nice, but that fucking face is so creepy! Like, Jesus Christ, what the fuck is that expression!?!? Even Maria Mercedes didn’t look that bad on camera, good Lord!

*shakes head and hands out*

Well, at least someone came out of this happy, because dear Lord, the shit the rest of us are left with is a self-indulgent mess that just hates its audience. The writing is the same clunky Telenovela-style crap, the characters are exactly as likable as they were last time, and oh yeah, the topic of abortion is still handled in a ham-fisted manner!

So, you know, it made the exact same mistakes the last one did, and then added a shock value girlfriend. Ugh, at least this didn’t indulge in the bullshit Bury Your Gays trope, but still…

And now, we have to get serious for a moment, because here’s something we need to get out the way right now: Borba’s attitude outside of the writing. And in order to do that…

*takes off gloves*

I know we at the Library try not to talk about the author and try to keep it confined to the writing, but here I feel I have to just because Borba’s attitude actually points at a deeper flaw with the comic, and it is a hard flaw to point out unless I get into the nitty-gritty of something that is also a fault of Borba’s character as a person.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “but Herr, it’s just a comic.” Miss me with that, because despite what so many people may say, this is not “just a comic”: this comic, as with all storytelling media, does not live in a vacuum, and because it chooses to explore the topic of abortion in any capacity at all it is going to engage with the debate surrounding it no matter what Borba does with it. Unfortunately, Borba seems not to have gotten that memo, and his responses reveal two things: his ego is the size of Jupiter, and he doesn’t have the conviction to stand by his own opinions either.

So in the comments of page 19, Borba made this claim:

Let’s start by giving Borba the benefit of the doubt for a second, because at the end of the day, BTBA is at least better about not being about same-sex rights, for two reasons. The first reason is the shock value-related reason I brought up above, but the second thing has to do with the focus of the whole comic: the comic spends way less time focusing on Shay and Judy’s relationship than IWS spent on abortion-related themes. Hell, Shay didn’t even physically appear until page 18, which is just over the halfway point of the comic, and it doesn’t fixate on Judy’s same-sex relationship in quite the same way IWS fixates on abortion. So, at the end of the day, it winds up about the gulf between two people, and thus you could argue that the main theme of IWS is intended to be about the deterioration of a relationship.

But therein lies the issue: I’m sorry, Borba, but the way you wrote IWS, it ultimately became about abortion whether or not you intended it to be about something else. With the way you turned Nick and Judy into telenovela-style caricatures, the over-the-top ways in which they parrot talking points from both sides of the debate (especially in Nick’s case), the way both Nick and Judy’s characterizations were supplanted by cardboard talking heads in order to make those points, the fact that “talk about the abortion Judy is thinking about having” pretty much takes up the entire comic’s run-time… Whatever “I want to show the destruction of a relationship” intent Borba had got lost in indelicate, ham-fisted handling of the instrument of the relationship’s destruction.

In other words, Borba saw abortion as an easy way to break up a relationship. And now, aside from Borba saying this in this comic, it’s become apparent from his handling of the gay element of BTBA that he will play whatever plot element he has in store with as indelicate a hand as possible.

This is all fairly problematic on its own, but there is one thing that this is not helped by: his reaction to criticism, and how he himself moderates things.

So, that comment above? I had a YOLO moment, and I decided to go in with this:

Now, you’ll notice my tone was a bit hostile there. And honestly? That’s because I went into this knowing full well that Borba probably wasn’t going to listen to me anyway, so I decided “fuck it”. I mean, last time we got into how Borba sees any criticism of his writing as an attack against his character no matter how calmly and civilly it is related, so that’s the thing: Borba himself brought that tone on, precisely because I knew relating this in a nice tone was an exercise in futility.

Because of that, and the fact that I got into a comment war with two of his sycophants afterwards, he deleted my comments and blocked me. His reasoning?

Which you would think is fair enough, because of this rule he puts on the posting of each page:

Warning! All opinions are welcomed as long as kept within the civilized levels. Personal attacks and extensive postings on matters unrelated to this fan comic will be hidden and those responsible for them will be summarily blocked without any prior notice.

So, you know, that is just him enforcing that rule.

HOWEVER.

If you look at the BTBA comments throughout the rest of the comic’s run after that point, you notice that Borba rarely enforces his own civility rules . There is, for instance, username codymross, who frequently badgers other people with extreme reaches and personal attacks. And codymross is not the only one. There are… There are…

I mean, look at this:

This is the discourse that dominates Borba’s comments section: so much mean-spirited discourse by a bunch of sexists and homophobes that hates on both the characters and the other commenters with equal amounts of abandon. But here’s the amazing thing: almost all of the comments I have spotlighted here have not been deleted by Borba, and he has not blocked a vast majority of them despite the fact that they are being incredibly incivil to others. There are exactly three times Borba has ever stepped in to deal with these guys: the first happened when codymross inexplicably tried to pretend he was a sockpuppet account of Borba’s, the second happened when SonicWindStriker tried to plug his child pornography Pokemon fanfic, and the third time came when he let mimbreyn off with a warning for using “feminazi” as a term. Like, I can get the logic behind all of these, but where was Borba when these guys were breaking his “act with civility and don’t make personal attacks” rule beforehand?

Well, the fact that my comments were deleted and I was blocked within 48 hours for explicitly calling Borba an idiot honestly should say it all: the difference between me and all of the comments I just displayed is that the people making all of the comments I just referenced don’t call Borba a bad writer or insult him personally or anything like that. Thus, when they attack other commenters as “typical leftist SJWs” or “feminazis” or whatever insults they can think of as they espouse their ignorance, Borba lets them, because hey, as long as he isn’t the target of their vitriol, it’s all good, right?

What doesn’t help matters is what he has stated outside of even DeviantArt: he stated in an interview with The Niche contributor Peyton that he finds people are easily offended, and he relates this thought with phrasing that echoes a lot of the same talking points you hear from people like Jordan Peterson about “snowflakes”. What doesn’t help is that in the interview he stated this:

By the way, I have tried to be as free as possible in presenting the arguments of both parties, leaving the reader to take a position based on their own feelings and opinions.

So there he is, admitting that he wanted the readers to take a position based on their own opinions, no matter how small-minded and ignorant they are. On paper, this sounds fair, but this runs into a pretty big problem: because of the pro-choice opinion he espouses in the interview, he reveals he doesn’t stick to his own guns with how he wrote I Will Survive. This right here is the worst kind of creative and moral cowardice I have ever seen: if you are writing a story involving a really touchy political subject and you don’t have the guts to back up your own convictions on the subject in your storytelling, then you, sir, are not “taking the risk of suffering the ill-treatment… from those who cannot stand the existence of opinions different from theirs”, as you put it. Ayn Rand took that risk, Upton Sinclair took that risk, Tony Kushner took that risk, Glenn Beck took that risk, George Orwell took that risk, Tom Clancy took that risk…

See, in order for you to take the risk of having an opinion that faces a challenge, you actually have to say just what your opinion is first. The thing that differentiates you from all of the people I just mentioned is that, no matter where on the spectrum they stand, they actually made their views clear as crystal and stuck by them in their writing, and you have not. Your attempt to play the middle of the road combined with your selective enforcement of your own rules that you boldfaced in your author’s comments obfuscates your actual views, and allows anti-science misogynists and homophobes to use your comic for their own ends. You could have easily kept people from reading I Will Survive as a pro-life tract by writing it in a way that actually aligns with the views you say you have, but you didn’t do that, and the fact that you selectively enforce people’s comments and then gloat about how many people you’ve angered only amplifies what your lack of conviction in your writing already laid the groundwork for.

Make no mistake, Borba: what you have built with I Will Survive runs entirely counter to what you hoped to do because, as it turns out, you are a bigger coward than the people you were referring to in that interview. As a result of your behavior, you have emboldened prejudice and ignorance, given a pedestal to right-wing identity politics, and made it impossible for people to have an intelligent conversation in your comments section. Worse, you don’t care that you’ve done this, because all you care about is preventing your own fragile ego from being bruised. You can’t take criticism, you don’t actually care about civility, you take people being angry at your work as a badge of pride, and you have platformed ignorance and intolerance.

Well, William Wallace Islay Borba, I have two little words for you:

GROW. UP.

You are exactly the kind of person who should not be writing stories that have anything to do with abortion. Abortion is a very difficult topic to cover in fiction, and using it as a major story element at literally any level requires an empathetic author who has the maturity to recognize how difficult a discussion it is, while having the moral courage to pick a side and simultaneously handle the kind of controversy that this topic attracts. Quite frankly, Borba has done just about everything he can in his actions and his writing to prove that he has none of those qualities. The result of all of this is that his handling of the topic is indelicate and incredibly thoughtless, and this only worsens the telenovela-quality writing of the comics themselves.

Borba’s behavior surrounding IWS and the backlash it received revealed that he is little more than an egotistical edgelord who doesn’t care about the consequences of his actions as long as he himself doesn’t get the heat directly: this wound up bleeding into his writing in this particular sequel comic. Thus, Born to be Alive is decidedly worse than I Will Survive, because in replacing the thematic hijacking with this bitter audience-hating attitude, he essentially distills why he was absolutely the wrong person to tell this story while simultaneously worsening the discourse surrounding his comic.

Grow a goddamn spine, Borba. Oh, and while you’re at it, stick to drawing, because that’s the only thing you’re good at.

*pulls the gloves back on*

Well, on the minus side, Borba also says this:

Oh, yes, I almost forgot: I Will Survive and Born To Be Alive are, respectively, the first and second part of a trilogy named TRILOGY OF LIFE. The last installment, titled Never Say Goodbye, should be published in the last half of 2019 or in the early months of 2020.

*cracks knuckles*

I will be keeping an eye on that, because at this point I’d be insane not to, yis?

So now you might wonder what else is left. Well…

*inhale*

There exists a novelization of the original IWS. In fact, he stated he was inspired by this novelization to do a sequel to IWS. So of course, we have to look at that and figure out what that’s all about, right?

Right.

I’ve been Herr Wozzeck, and I will see you guys next time!

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