An Interview with WEBTOON All-Star Roseoak

For years, WEBTOON has been the premiere home for vertical-scrolling web comics, with dozens of titles and their creators finding both a massive audience and a welcoming home on the platform.

Recently, I was lucky enough to speak to WEBTOON creator Roseoak, best known for two decidedly different romance series in the forms of Not So Silent and the recently released Love, Theodora, both of which have firmly established dedicated fan bases to call their own.

John Dodge: Can you just me through your WEBTOON journey?

Roseoak: I actually started on WEBTOON Canvas in high school, and I just did it as like a thing to do. I had a friend tell me about WEBTOON as a platform, and I got pretty interested in it... I got like a small audience, and I was just excited to do it...

I made a story that ended up being Not So Silent. That was like a fictionalized version of a lot of the struggles that I had in high school, and it kind of just took off from there… It was really, really interesting how it took off. I was not expecting to have this be like a full time job at any point. It just kind of was a happy accident with the way it happened, and yeah, I got the request to do a WEBTOON original, I think in like my first year of college... I was getting my undergrad degree while I was trying to make the original version of Not So Silent, and yeah, it just ended up becoming what it is today, and now I have the second WEBTOON.

JD: Did readers' responses to Not So Silent influence it, affect the story, or how you approached any of your characters?

Roseoak: Yeah, definitely. I've had quite a few interactions that have been pretty interesting. You know, I being a hearing person and writing a deaf character is kind of controversial in a lot of aspects, and I do understand that.

So that's kind of been that's been a point or a talking point, I guess, and a lot of readers were like very receptive to the Canvas version at first, but I wanted to rewrite a lot of it because I've mentioned before to some people that I really felt like some of the characters and their disabilities and just the way they were written was very infantilized, and as I grew older, I recognized that that was a severe flaw in the writing, and so I read a lot of a lot of comments, a lot of stuff that the reader said, and I took that. I went with it. I rewrote it in my own way, and you know when the originals version was initially launched, a lot of people were kind of not really liking the big changes that I had made with the characters, but after a while, people understood.

Okay, I understand why this character has completely changed because the canvas version was just not a good representation, so yeah, the readers definitely influence a lot of it.

JD: And on the subject those topics that were controversial for readers, was there any particular sequence that you found difficult to put together?

Roseoak: Well, there are a lot actually, because just illustrating sign language, the nature of it is pretty difficult at times. I've described it before as being like a form of choreography, in a sense, because whenever you have somebody who is deaf or hard of hearing in the scene.

You have to rearrange the characters in a way so that you, that person, that character could feasibly be included in that conversation and not excluded by the nature of which way the characters are. Unless it's like a purposeful thing, I think probably I would say one of the controversial moments that people were kind of like, oh, this feels like it's out of a cartoon, like a Looney Tunes level of cartoon, was there's a scene where a teacher taps Fern, the deaf character, with her foot, and is like, “Hey, why aren't you listening?” Where people were like, "Oh my gosh, is she dumb?”

But actually, several of those moments that were written into the comic were… I don't want to say inspired by, but they were based on an experience that I had with a deaf substitute teacher in my ASL class, the entire class she forgot her cochlear implant one day. The entire class when she was turned around, they were flipping her off. They were throwing things at her. They were just being so evil and like Looney Tunes level of insane to her.

So those moments when I put those in the comic, I think people are like, "Oh, this doesn't happen in real life. This is just for like the WEBTOON, like corniness of it all.” But it's like, no, that stuff legitimately happens, and I only saw like one part of it, and you know, it's a different kind of controversial. But I think a lot of people don't understand, in a sense, of how cartoonishly weird some people with disabilities and neurodivergence have to deal with neurotypical people that are people that don't have like any disabilities, and they have to deal with them and how they approach them as people, and that it can be cartoonishly evil and just like really strange.

JD: Apart from that, was there any aspect of the series or particular piece of the story that you thought readers might have misinterpreted or that didn't land the way you expected it to?

Roseoak: Um, I think London's character. She's one of the main four. I knew that people weren't going to receive her in the way that I thought about her. She had a moment where she went through a heat stroke, and that's actually based on an experience that I had in drumline in high school. A lot of people were saying stuff like, "Oh, well, just because she had like a medical emergency doesn't mean that she's like excused of her actions.”

I do think that was a big point where I was like, "Okay, well, there were people that caught on to it,” which I just like I find it very intriguing to watch the comment back and forth of points in the story like this, where people are like this point in the story, and no one's trying to excuse her being kind of a morally gray character, but it kind of introduced this whole idea that I was really happy that some people caught on. But not everybody, that a character can be morally gray or make really bad mistakes and still go through something and still receive sympathy as a character, while the audience is still recognizing and potentially watching the character grow from the mistakes that they made.

But some people, and it's kind of I would say it's a perfect parallel to real life, there are people that make mistakes, and then there are people in their circle that are like, "Okay, I don't want anything to do with you.” I think the readers, some of them, a group of them, see the character of London, and they're like, "I'm not interested in seeing this character develop because the mistake she made was too intense, and I just really don't care,” and that's perfectly fine.

I didn't really expect it to land like that, but I think in retrospect, I was like, this really is like real life when you're in like a friend. Group setting, or you're in like a teen clique environment where it's like, oh yeah, this character is being treated like how some people are treated in high school. So that I I would say that that character specifically.

JD: Okay, and are there any major shakeups that readers should be looking forward to in the near future?

Roseoak: Well, I don't want to spoil too much. There's a pretty big point coming up that's out on Fast Pass already. It has to do with some haircut stuff because the main two, Fern and Lewis, are known to be like, very androgynous long-haired guys.

So a haircut arc is happening currently, and some apartment stuff in the story. Some big sister making big choices, helping out her little brother. That's pretty dramatic in the context of the story. I just don't want to spoil too much because I want it to be a little bit of a surprise.

JD: So, what can you tell us about Love, Theodora before that comes out?

Roseoak: Oh man, I would say I would call Not So Silent a passion project, but Love, Theodora is like the next level passion project. I am so excited for it. I have so many people, not like a ton of people, but I've handpicked a lot of friends of mine who are all artists to help me work on it, and I legitimately feel like we could put together like a concept art book for the backbone of like an animated feature film with how much beautiful art these people are creating in preparation for this story.

I think no matter how the public receives it, or no matter how the audience receives it, I am so excited to do this. I've been wanting to write like a vampire story for a while, but I've also been wanting to write a story based around traditional and like historical witchcraft and stuff, so I was able to kind of combine it into this story. Oh my gosh, what else? I'm trying not to spoil too much. It's so… It's gonna be so cool. I think it's gonna be so cool.

Beyond the obvious sapphic romance, I think it's going to be very different from Not So Silent. I'll say that it's, it's kind of like a very dark romance story... I just think it's gonna be so beautiful, and I'm so excited for people to read it.

JD: You have built much of your brand on WEBTOON, You've started doing stuff like San Diego Comic-Con. Is there anywhere else that fans should be looking for you right now?

Roseoak: I mean, if you are down in Florida, I am often at art markets. For example, I'm looking to get into vending at conventions. Occasionally, I don't know when that's going to happen, but I do often show up at local art markets like Goblin Market down in Orlando.

I am planning on going to New York Comic Con this year… For the most part, this is really my big convention going arc at this point because I never really was going to conventions before this. But I try to announce where I'm at and if I'm gonna be vending or visiting anywhere on my Instagram, and I almost always have like prints and stickers with me. But my hope is at some point to start vending at some conventions.

I've gotten involved in this one other thing. This isn't really like a you can find me here type of thing, but I've been working on, I did a character design thing for a, what would you call it? Like a prototype of a musical. It's called Periwinkle's Delivery Service. Occasionally I've gone out to L.A. for that kind of stuff to see how that musical is going. I'm kind of all over the place, if you can't tell. I take up like weird jobs here and there, so there's kind of a little bit of an element of the unknown on where you will find me next. But big conventions like SDCC are almost always guaranteed. I will announce it when I'm going, and that's where I'll be.