Commentary On Commentary.

There’s a “debate” going on right now between various comic creators about female artists getting creepy shit said to them.  I recognize it’s mostly pointless, and your average reader doesn’t care, and probably shouldn’t.  That said I have a perspective on this issue that no one has brought up and I feel like working it out in a public forum.  I’ve talked about it before, so for those of you who actually delve into my underworld this will be OFN.

I have learned that when you read text you bring your own tone into it, which may not reflect the tone of the writer.  Most commonly I read innocuous statements as personal attacks, because my world view  tends to be very adversarial, bordering on paranoid.  I color someone else’s words with the paint of my outlook.  So now I run comments I’m not sure about past other people to help me decide if I’m understanding the intent correctly.

Sometimes I get comments about the female characters that I read as creepy.  Carol in particular, but I’ve gotten them for all the girls.  My first instinct is to delete anything that reads as creepy to me, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not sure exactly what creepy is.  Years on the Internet have blurred the lines for me, and probably made me hyper aware of certain things that other people wouldn’t think twice about.

This is as close as it’s ever going to get for me when it comes to experiencing sexism as it applies to a girl.  Although since I attribute the comic randomly between all the mutations of my name I occasionally get people asking, or assuming, that I am one.  (Jackie is my first name in case you weren’t aware.)  Anyway, if someone says they really love Carol’s full, plump, figure, or Nina’s sweet ass, or what have you, I’m not exactly sure how I should feel.  I mean, those are reasonable things to think.  The girls are flawed (depending on how you define flawed anyway.) but none of them are unattractive.  I am pleased to know that I have created characters that people can buy into to a point that they wish they could find a real person just like them to love.  It’s flattering on some level because there is a lot of me written into the main cast, even the girls.  They are as much aspects of my personality as Thomas, or Ed, are.  Jolene in particular is a mix of the childlike glee combined, with the abject terror, that I experience the world with, and she is by far the most openly adored female.

It is a very complex issue.  I certainly don’t want people to feel like they shouldn’t compliment the physical attributes of any of the characters.  I’ve spent most of my life feeling totally uncomfortable expressing my masculinity.  Never quite sure of where the line between creepy and acceptable is.  In fact, as time goes by, I don’t even think there is one rule for it.  You have to judge every situation individually and hope for the best.  That is not really how I like things to be.

I have only recently begun expressing myself openly in terms of what I find attractive in the opposite sex.  As I said before, I’ve always been made to feel like expressing that part of me is wrong.  Not by my parents, but by society;  the weirdly twisted puritanical American media that on the one hand wants you to abstain from sex, but also go forth and populate the whole world with little Christians.  It is very difficult to come to terms with when you’re base personality consists almost completely of crippling shyness.

At the end of it all I’m still not sure what to think about any of this.  I would much rather have someone awkwardly trying to compliment the girls than saying nothing at all.  I don’t want to kill the participation, or camaraderie, that sort of thing can foster in readers.  And I have come to know the regulars as decent people who mean no harm.

There’s a whole other level of discussion when it comes to Carol.  She is much fuller figured than is typical in any media.  It has taken her longer than any other character to settle in to herself physically.  I’ve received many emails from women thanking me for making a big girl the romantic lead.  Girls who felt better about their bodies after seeing a girl like them get the guy, and get him in a very confident way.  In retrospect I’m kind of sad that I didn’t push it a little further.  The fact of the matter is that I was too much of a pussy to test that boundary any further than I did.  By my reckoning she is barely even plump.

I think when a guy sees Carol portrayed as a confident, well adjusted (in so far as anyone is), curvaceous, woman they assume, quite rightly, that I find that type of woman attractive.  Then they want to connect to me, and potentially other readers, on that level as a man.  (Or woman if she’s oriented that way.)   A level I still have trouble expressing openly.  And why shouldn’t they?  It’s natural to want to connect to other humans.  Especially if your opinion is not held by the majority.

At the end of it all I still don’t really have any answers.  I just have a few tangentially related thoughts strung together looking for some kind of direction.   That said, I leave it to you to offer any you might have for me.  Be careful to save your comment before you post though.  The site is still acting funny and may try to spill it into the void if you aren’t wary.   If you have anything lengthy to ad you might want to write it in another program and past it in after.  You know, just in case.