Reading the
different archives over and over again, I’ve had to admit something to myself:
I enjoy Shredded Moose.
I mean I hate
it, but there is also something oddly satisfying about it. It’s because all
around you in society, you’ve got these barriers to what you can say and draw.
You have to abide by all those strict rules about what is “appropriate”. You
have to join a group and say exactly the same as what the others in that group
say, or woe be unto you.
If you stray
from the path in one direction, an army of offended SJWs will descend on you,
venting out all the anger they never get to use to actually change anything.
They can’t shut down the power structures, but they can shut down you.
Go off into
the other direction, and it will be the horde of Gater-type goons instead.
They’ll say you’re trying to destroy their way of life and attacking their
freedom and blah blah blah, but what they really want to do is take away your
freedom to disagree with them.
They’re
actually all just the same: captive monkeys who can’t stand it when you rattle
their little cages. So they lash out at you, and throw their shit at you.
Shredded
Moose was beyond all that. It didn’t give a fuck. It always did what it wanted
to do. It could be a violent sexist exploitation comic in one second, and high
drama in the next. In the end, Shredded Moose was just sound and fury for its
own sake. To read Shredded Moose is to peek into the mind of somebody who has
become truly free.
And when
you’ve experienced the shock from its art and language enough times, then
something interesting happens: you need more. You need to experience more words
and images that rattle your cage bars. Words and images produced by genuinely
free spirits.
I’ve been
going to a lot of sketchy sites recently. Some of them turn out to be
disappointments, like SW: after the initial shock, you start seeing the
patterns, and from then on it’s all just repetitive and boring. There aren’t
many sites that are capable of skirting all social conventions without
accidentally setting up their own rules that trap them in dull routine.
It feels
strange to write this, but Shredded Moose has set me free.
With that
in mind, here’s a message from our resident artist. Take it away, Mr. Garrison:
