drawing of the day #6 - the legacies we leave behind
WARNING: TW suicide , homophobia This blog post will talk about someone's suicide, and heavy homophobia. Please don't read if you're heavily affected by these triggers.
Today's sketch is a little design overhaul of one of my FFXIV characters - a Xaela/Hrothgar mix. I thought a little bit about how I'd present both their mixed heritage & their gender through this doodle. My character (whose name is Spectre) is a hunter, and they present themself as somewhat masculine, but retain some femininity to their appearance.
This little doodle has a bit to do with today's post. My heart is a little heavy today, so I hope you can bear with me a little as I write my thoughts.
I won't go into a spiel on why I still have an account on X (I barely go on there these days), but today particularly I read about a few posts that made me feel heavy — a prominent artist that used to draw two popular gay ships from Alien Stage (ALNST) had passed away after being in a coma following a suicide attempt.
Suicide is never an easy subject to talk about, but what particularly made me feel heavy was the fact that this artist in particular came from a Muslim background. Her pen name was Yufka, and she came from Türkiye. It's hard to tell whether she was Muslim or not, but I'm judging by her ships alone and her accounts of experiencing religious trauma according to her friends and followers, she must be queer in some way - a queer Muslim trapped in a conservative environment, as most of us (including me) do.
She left behind a suicide note on her Instagram, talking about how her family didn't believe in treatment for mental health and how she had experienced harassment over fiction. She talked a fair bit about it, which I don't feel right elaborating it, but essentially the lack of support from her family to begin with led her to finding community online — only for that small part of the community that she cherished to betray her. leading her into committing suicide.
Yufka's last wish was for her art to be shared, but her family expressly wished otherwise, citing that they "didn't want any more sin on her". This statement caused a lot of heated debate between the Muslim & queer community over on X — a lot of charged conversation about whether or not art is a sin (particularly queer art) , the position of queer Muslims, whether Islam is an oppressive regime or simply another one of these things in life where people enforce rules on a personal faith too much.
We'll never know because Yufka is dead. What a horrible thing, to have your death be the subject of debate simply because you dared to portray love that goes against heteronormative structure (and before you open your mouth about how Islam is incompatible with queerness — don't). How horrible that this might be the legitimate end for so many like me, like Yufka, regardless of the religion that they try to reclaim or can't fully leave from. How horrible to have your family try to erase your existence because they think what you create is a sin and that you won't be able to pass peacefully in the afterlife, even though such things is between oneself and Allah SWT. I'm not ignorant about how the ongoing conversation about queerness with regards to Islam particularly is so charged with Islamophobia on one side, or how too many Muslim people will outright say that we deserve nothing short of death for being queer. Every time, these conversations online end up becoming violent, and ultimately they attempt to erase us from existence.
I barely see this violence when we talk about queer Christians or Jews.
It's a heavy burden to think about. My art, however shoddy and shallow sometimes, is ultimately a proof of existence: I'm here, I'm queer and I don't believe my queerness is incompatible with my faith. I love regardless if I get hatred and violence from it. For my own safety, I've decided that I'll never come out to my family until a significant number of the elders in it are dead - both the Muslim and Christian side. My art, my characters and stories are my only safe outlet to express my queerness and gender - it's the barest minimum, I know, but it works for me. It works for many people like me.
When I die, and if I end up dying at "too young an age", I want my work to be shared. I know inevitably it'll be impossible and I've long since accepted it, but part of me wishes to also be remembered as a man who drew characters and make stories about people freer than him to love and be whoever they want - testament that his love and existence is never a sin, and that only Allah is Most Worthy to judge his heart and no one else.
Because for some of us our art is all we have to prove that we exist despite it all.
I hope when I die no one will erase this legacy of mine.