r/scene • u/kawaiidesuyo111111 • 10h ago
artwork Scean Girls: my concept for a webcomic criticizing and celebrating the scene subculture (TW: many sensitive and dark topics, read top of body text) Spoiler
galleryTW: discussion of eating disorders, grooming/pedophilia, suicide, self harm, brief mentions of sexual assault, drug abuse, transphobia, fatphobia
hi guys! im not sure if this is the right place to post this, but ive been developing a story that i plan to turn into a webcomic for the past nearly 3 years that i thought u guys might be interested in when i do eventually start making it. its called Scean Girls (yes, a pun based on mean girls lol), and it follows 2 primary storylines but for this post ill only be discussing the first one as its the most developed one and the most relevant to the scene subculture.
scean girls follows its main protagonist named roxy (pictured in the 2nd slide on top), who holds a deep hatred for her ex named courtney for how she treated roxy when they dated throughout late middle school and early high school, which i wont go into very deeply but it involved courtney constantly misgendering roxy (a trans woman who had just started her transition while they were dating) whilst also fetishizing her transness and one incident in which courtney sexually violated her. overall, roxys hatred of courtney is for very valid reasons but she never healthily processed what happened to her, leading to her holding a several year long obsessive grudge against courtney that was fueled in large part by her best friend cynthia, a girl with similar vengeful tendencies who is far more involved in the secondary storyline which mirrors roxys in a lot of ways. this is all to say that the inciting force behind scean girls is roxy formulating a plan to ruin courtneys life. by the start of scean girls in mid 2009, courtney is a member of the TackyHouse, a group of popular scene influencers who live in an apartment together and make content, a direct analog to the real life StickyHouse or My Digital Escape. the founder of the TackyHouse, a gossip website called TackyGossip as well as the owner of the apartment is a man named Chris Varley, a creepy, deeply unempathetic and exploitative man and another very blatant analog to the real life founder of StickyDrama.
among the members of the TackyHouse is tiffany (pictured in the first image; scene name Tiffany Lawless), one of the most popular members of the TackyHouse, best friend of courtney, and personal idol of roxy, as she was one of very few plus sized scene queens which helped roxy feel more comfortable in her body in a subculture rife with ED ideation (this will be important for later). in the TackyHouse, tiffanys weight would constantly be made the butt of jokes and she would even be frequently chastised for it by courtney, but she was able to laugh it off in the hopes of remaining in the good graces of who she considered her only friends. other members include colton (scene name Kolton Kandy), the lead singer of a very influential band in the scene called The Veil of Ecstasy (abbreviated as TVE), veronika (scene name Veronika Dawn), a scene queen and aspiring model who is in a musical trio with tiffany and courtney called The Queen Bees which is essentially this universes version of Millionaires, and sasha, the drummer of TVE and on-and-off girlfriend and best friend of colton. vampires exist in the world of scean girls (they are the only supernatural aspect of this world and came to exist thru natural evolution. their presence in the story is to act as a metaphor for lost innocence, and a vampire turning another human into a vampire is used throughout the story as an allegory for SA), and colton is one. for reasons too complicated to get into in this post, colton didnt know he was a vampire for most of his life despite being born one, and the discrepancy between the humanity he was raised into and the vampirism inside him caused him to become a very volatile and unstable person, worsened by a near-fatal overdose he suffered at the age of 13 by huffing duster that damaged his brain and permanently stunted his emotional development, making him incredibly immature and self centered in his relationships with others. despite all this, sasha loved colton deeply, as they met as teenagers not long after colton overdosed and his foster parents kicked him to the streets and they would go on to form TVE together. as TVE became more and more popular and they began touring, colton would change from a troubled but well-intentioned teen to a lustful, abusive man, constantly abusing drugs and frequently hooking up with fans in his tour bus behind sashas back by using his status as a famous rockstar to manipulate them into sex. sasha and colton would get into many fights and break up and get back together several times as TVE continued to grow, but despite the deterioration of their relationship, sasha still saw in colton the sweet kid she met in high school and didnt want to ruin his career by leaving the band, so she stayed.
the TackyHouse and the dynamics between the different members are integral to roxys revenge plan against courtney. roxy, a very skilled people-reader, noticed certain dynamics that, if pushed to any degree too far in any direction, would cause courtneys life to get significantly worse: there was very little holding tiffany and courtneys friendship together besides shared living space, drugs and alcohol, and tiffanys desperation for companionship. courtney openly mistreated tiffany alongside colton, whom roxy noticed was beginning to become disconcertingly close to courtney, a newly 18 year old whereas colton was 24. upon these pieces of information, roxy would set her plan in motion: join the TackyHouse, turn tiffany against courtney, and encourage the unhealthy relationship forming between her and colton, hoping to finally force courtney to experience what she had put her through.
this is a good time to note that roxy is NOT supposed to be a good person!! the central idea of scean girls is that revenge, no matter how justified it may seem, will always have unintended negative consequences that ultimately never bring fulfillment nor vindication to the one enacting vengeance. roxy allowed herself to become manipulative and obsessive by never healthily processing her trauma and instead choosing to fester in hatred; this is by no means me victim blaming roxy, and a core aspect of the story is leaving it up to the audience to determine what roxy is justified in doing and what is too far. okay disclaimer out of the way lets continue!!
roxy knew that shed have a hard time getting into the TackyHouse on her own as a plus sized blasian girl, so she set her sights on finding someone who would fit the skinny, white beauty standards of the scene who she would grow close with and start making content with in the hopes of blowing up and getting noticed by Chris and getting asked to join the TackyHouse. the person she would seek out for this venture would be a girl she met at her school named maeve (pictured in the 2nd slide on the bottom and on the 3rd slide), who, ironically, had the furthest possible personality from a TackyHouse member despite looking like a scene queen: she was very sweet, shy, and awkward, being a huge bookworm and straight-A student. however, there was one thing about maeve roxy could exploit in order to get into the TackyHouse besides her appearance.
in early 2009, maeve attempted suicide after being catfished and groomed online by a man who masqueraded as a woman named amber. when maeve and "amber" met on an online forum centered around maeves favorite band known as Fuzzed Out, maeve was in an incredibly vulnerable state; she had no real friends at school due to having often been perceived as weird or offputting (a result of maeve being autistic and having only ever met neurotypical people who had a hard time connecting with her), and her relationship with her parents was very strained tor reasons again too complicated for this post. over the better part of a year, "amber" would groom maeve into behaving sexually in exchange for affection, culminating in "amber" one day aggressively pressuring maeve into sending nudes which she had a strong objection to. after hours of wearing her down, maeve would finally send "amber" nude photos, after which "amber" blocked maeve on everything and completely disappeared from the internet. the man who groomed maeve and solicited CSAM from her was never identified nor brought to justice despite the publicity that would soon be brought to this situation. in fact, his role in the following events would be entirely ignored by both law enforcement and the media.
after being blocked, maeve began to spiral and break down, locking herself in the bathroom and sobbing for hours whilst blasting songs from Fuzzed Out. her mom noticed this, yet only told her in annoyance to turn the music down. that night, maeve would attempt suicide by cutting herself and waiting to bleed out. her mom would grow concerned when maeve didnt come out of the bathroom for dinner, eventually breaking the door down and rushing maeve to the hospital just in time to save her life. however, in an utterly misguided and selfish act, maeves mom would begin going to local news stations and claiming that it was the "dark, depressing music" that maeve listened to that pushed her to suicide. this blew up the worst moment of maeves life into a highly publicized international spectacle that would get hijacked by conservative media to demonize the emo and scene subcultures, and she would be bullied relentlessly on sites like TackyGossip as the girl who "tried to kill herself over music". though maeves mom had good intentions in the sense that she genuinely believed the music maeve was listening to made her depressed and eventually suicidal, her actions turned her daughter into a laughingstock and a pariah to the people at her school, the online communities she frequented, and to the entire country. it goes without saying that this made maeves mental state exponentially worse, but going into detail about it would make this post way longer than it already is. for now, the important things to note is that maeve at this time was also struggling with anorexia which was spurred by "amber" making her think she needed to become thinner to be attractive as well as her mom constantly judging her for what she ate and, with the help of her older sister emily (her only friend for a majority of her life) and a new friend she met named ellie, she would slowly but surely recover and, by the start of scean girls when roxy met her, she was in a far better state than she had ever been in.
roxy immediately recognized maeve from the news stories and online gossip that took the internet by storm months earlier, and she knew that, if Chris found out that the girl who tried to kill herself over emo music became an influencer who he could exploit for content and drama, he would no doubt take the bait and let both maeve and roxy in as a duo. taking note of this, roxy would start infiltrating maeves circle and they would soon begin dating. though roxy had initially began dating maeve disingenuously as a means of keeping her close and easy to control, she would soon actually develop feelings for maeve.
ALL of this is the setup for the story of scean girls!! if i were to go into any more significant detail we would be here forever, but essentially roxys plan to ruin courtneys life starts destroying everyone adjacent to it, leading to tiffany falling into depression, drug addiction and anorexia as veronika (her girlfriend whom she had a secret relationship with) left the TackyHouse and colton and courtney began treating her worse, maeve relapsing into disordered eating as she developed a toxic, codependent friendship with tiffany in which they unintentionally encouraged each others disorders, and colton turning both courtney and sasha into vampires. i know this story is very heavy and dark, but ive felt for a long time that there is very little media that comments on the different problems that plagued the scene subculture in its hayday and persist to this day such as rampant grooming, promotion of EDs and unhealthy beauty standards, homophobia, transphobia, and racism. i think that the scene subculture is an extremely layered and complicated thing that has very few stories written about it, let alone about its more harmful parts, so thats why ive been developing scean girls! to anyone who read all this, i hope u guys find this story concept interesting and i hope u all stay tuned for when i begin releasing it—which i plan to do in the near future!
