INTERVIEW WITH BRACY APPEIKUMOH, APRIL 2024

How has shame shown up in your life in relation to your work? Especially in relation to the more erotic aspects of it?

I actually haven't had too much of an issue with my comics causing shame. They’ve made things a bit awkward with homophobic family members and acquaintances, but those folks can fix their hearts on their own time. I’m also fortunate to make my living in a creative field that encompasses adult and non-adult works, so there’s no “GASP! SHOCK!” factor if you yourself make both adult and general-audience work.

Shame definitely factored in as a developing force in my art, though, and those experiences informed my writing later on. Growing up, I was punished for drawing "inappropriate" things like characters kissing or wearing revealing outfits. Once away at college, I started exploring sexuality in my art, but it didn't last--in my early twenties I was sexually assaulted by a friend I trusted. He claimed that a drawing he found in the back of my sketchbook, of two anime characters having sex, amounted to my “asking for it”. I didn't draw anything really NSFW again for about eight years, when I started TJ AND AMAL. I wasn’t ashamed of the erotic content, but I was incredibly anxious as to how it would be received [and whether I'd be punished for it again]. This was also at a time when queer comics weren’t nearly as popular as they are now and were still seen as pretty weird and skeezy.

I’m glad I moved forward. “Do it scared,” as the saying goes.

Have you ever been harassed online because of your work? You don't have to go into details if you understandably don't want to, a yes/no answer is fine. This question is more about showing the lack of safety that queer folks have when speaking our truths in art and being public online.

Funny enough, I haven't been harassed for making erotic art--I've been harassed for objecting to harassment & slander of other queer & adult artists, and for blocking the people doing so. It's impressive how snakes can spit venom while eating their own tail.

Honestly, things have been pretty quiet for a while. I've been spared a ton of flak by not being famous. I often wish my comics had a larger audience, but I’m not sure how well I’d bear up under the waves of scrutiny that hit more prominent creators.
Things are definitely riskier for queer artists, too. You’re more likely to get targeted by bad-faith and pro-censorship types, and sadly, that call often comes from inside the [queer] house.

How have you been pushing back against that shame with and in your work? Both Amal's and TJ's storylines in TJ and Amal grapple with shame and I wonder if this is something that ripples outward toward you, the author.

I think continuing to create erotic art in this day and age is pushback in itself, honestly. I attach my real name to my NSFW comics because they’re good and I’m proud of what I made. (Very much aware that I’m in a lucky position here, though–not working in childcare or education, not in a job where I can be fired for drawing erotica on my own time.)

It's funny you bring up TJ AND AMAL—I didn’t think a lot about shame as a core theme in TJ&A until about halfway through.  Amal’s character arc centers on his personal growth. It’s a painful and embarrassing process; multiple times in the story, he looks back at his words and behavior and realizes he’s been hurtful and self-centered. That shame doesn’t disappear, but he learns from it and begins to change for the better.  I was definitely drawing from and processing some of my own shit in writing that, haha. Looking back on my own early twenties makes me wince; I’ll wake up at 3am haunted by some thoughtless thing I said. Writing someone else living through the thick of those days helped a bit.

TJ (and Tre in SHOT AND CHASER) have similar struggles with shame: they’ve both lived through some heavy trauma, and they’re not ashamed of having that trauma, but of the fact that it still affects them.  They’re not magically “over it” just because they’re grown men now.  TJ cloaks his shame and vulnerability in jokes; Tre’s been in therapy and learned some coping mechanisms but still holds himself to impossible standards.

Olly’s shame, meanwhile, is more about how he sees himself as failing and damaging the world around him. That’s venturing into spoiler territory, though.

SHOT AND CHASER has been deliberately about internalized shame from its conception. It’s been a kick in the pants to write Tre and Olly hypocritically beating themselves up while giving others grace, then take two steps back from the drawing table and go “ah. Maybe I should learn from this.” (haha)

How do you make your work a place of  joy for yourself and your readers? Where do you locate that joy, how do you find it and center it?

I guess it's a paradox, but the joy I draw from my art comes from exploring vulnerability and pain. And not overcoming or curing that pain! But exploring a character going through it, growing around it, still moving through life, still being whole with their wounds, not despite them.  It sounds a bit bleak, but it’s really super indulgent wish fulfillment.

Like, the wish-fulfillment fantasy in SWEET ABILENE is, it’s from the POV of this incredibly nervous, self-deprecating person whose wildest dream comes true. His big secret gets found out and he’s not rejected, but embraced.  His mental problems aren’t fixed; he’s loved as he is. WILLIAM WILSON AND THE MAN ON A MISSION is about a man late in his career, late in middle age, who feels invisible and undesirable—then one night BOOM, this gorgeous young man thinks he’s the hottest thing around BECAUSE he’s older than everyone else in the club, and wants to go home with him specifically. In TJ AND AMAL, TJ doesn’t feel like he’s really worthy of love or a returned connection because of who he is and what he’s been through, and his story arc defies all that. 

You mentioned that Sweet Abilene has been healing to make and I am so glad to hear that. If you are willing, I would love to learn about this journey of healing.

I spoke a bit earlier about how it’s essentially a big wish-fulfillment fantasy for Olly. Aside from that, it was fun to write a character in transition who is completely confident and adored, being in a nebulous, nameless gender situation myself.  It also felt nice to make SWEET ABILENE purely from my own id, with these characters *I* cared about, rather than trying to market or tailor it to a wider demographic. I made it for me AND I’m absolutely thrilled other folks enjoy it.

And maybe this is a bit strange, but it's been even more healing to work on SHOT AND CHASER, which has no sexual content. Tre and Olly are still in a loving relationship, but Olly's depression, Tre's workload and trauma, and the stressful early days of COVID have them both too tied up in their own heads to fully connect. "These characters love each other but romance isn’t happening right now because so much is weighing on them" is... not something I see often in fiction. At all. Writing it helps me feel a little less broken. 

I find a lot of fulfillment in creating stories where love doesn’t fix problems, but exists alongside them.

When I read your comics, I find myself tasting something so wholesome and beautiful. I am, in particular, infatuated with your sex scenes, you make them so organic, so beautifully mundane, it is refreshing, how are you able to represent the sexual in a way that is so hot but still provides so much light and tender warmth?

Kind of impossible to not get personal here, huh. I guess… part of it is, after being raised to see sex as some Big Sacred Event or special, hyper-scrutinized performance for so long… around the time I started letting myself draw erotic work again [after being assaulted], I’d finally kind of come to see sex as just. A fun thing. Morally neutral. A connection where you can relax and be imperfect and laugh without judgment. I love depicting that, both because it reflects my own experiences and because I see so little of it in mainstream media.

That relaxation also helps me depict the vulnerability of it, too—physically and emotionally. I love creating a sex scene where the characters are having fun but maybe also second-guessing themselves, worrying a little about what their partner is thinking or feeling… Maybe they want to try a new kink and one of them feels self-conscious. Maybe the dog jumps up on the bed and they laugh so hard the whole moment gets derailed. I love that sort of stuff.

Perhaps it’s similar to drawing joy out of exploring pain—I find I can’t draw something really hot unless vulnerability is involved. The characters need to be vulnerable AND I guess I need to be a little terrified at how vulnerable the creation process makes me. It’s not the level of explicitness in the drawing, it’s that I’m drawing what I find hot, not what I’ve been TOLD I should find hot, so that particular wall is down. NOW ALL OF CHINA KNOWS, etc.(Haha.)

There's no porn site called "you're ordinary and a little weird and I want you precisely because of those things, not despite them" dot com… so I guess I'm cooking the food I want to eat, so to speak.

How would you describe your work? What is the beating heart that you find yourself returning to in everything that you make (a lofty question, I know, I'm just curious)

I guess… down-to-earth stories about weird, flawed humans. That about sums it up!