Well that’s probably the last time I draw a mirror in the comic. Twice the work for only twice the effort!

I’d be curious to hear Sydney’s answer to Peggy’s question. Why Sydney’ suddenly conviced that topiary is needed to fit in. What Peggy doesn’t get is that the question and answer has already run through Sydney’s mind, and instead of giving her conclusion a sanity litmus test, her ADHD brain has already moved on to solutions.

It’s weird that characters in shows almost never laugh at things that are supposed to be funny. Chandler says something funny and at best everyone smirks at him, or Tracy Jordan says some Ridikolus thing then falls over a railing on to Jenna, and Liz just rolls her eyes. I think characters laughing at funny stuff is omitted a lot of the time because then you’re betting the audience finds it as funny as the characters. If they don’t then it comes off like you think too much of your humor or your writing, so it’s safer to have all the other characters just shake their head. Sydney does a lot of funny stuff, and usually everyone just goes, “That Sydney” but this time I thought it’d be ok that it strikes Harem as totally bonkers – especially for the reason Sydney thought of it, and it’s always fun to throw Harem’s reactions to another one of her.

Thinking about it seriously, I image at some point in the world someone has made a Merkin bald cap, I can’t be the first person to have ever come up with something so superfluous. Probably for a movie, or glue one on then paint over it for art or exhibitionism, but Merkins are such a weird thing to have ever existed in the first place. I know trimming the hedge or even a little topiary hasn’t always been the norm, just check out anything with naked people in it prior to the 90’s, but the idea that someone ever thought to supplement pubic hair is absolutely bizarre to me.

When I write female characters, I do try and imagine their perspective on the world, and come at it from their view. Sometimes that has a larger impact on their personality than others. I’ve written about this before, but Maxima, Harem/Dabbler, and Sydney have personality traits that are the result of me wondering what I would be like if I had been born female. Harem for instance, loves being a woman. (Or a women?) Maxima doesn’t hate being a woman, but she obviously takes umbrage with certain societal expectations. Even little things, like how the guy is supposed to lead when dancing really grinds her gears. For some of them, their gender isn’t a huge factor, like Sydney. She likes boys but beyond that her life isn’t especially influenced by being female. All the other characters are mixtures of similar traits. So I feel I do an okay job at writing the female perspective. At least the tomboyish female perspective, admittedly. I don’t think I have any especially girly girls in the comic. The one thing I have probably missed the mark on, especially judging by some of the comments from the previous page, is that some women obviously do like body hair on guys.

I’m obviously not a fan, I think that comes from a few sources. One, I grew up on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, (and Stallone, Van Damme, Jackie Chan, etc.) and none of them have body hair. At least certainly not on screen. The lesson being the good guy has no body hair. Less hair = more good. I also grew up on comic books. No one has any body hair in comics because it’s a pain in the ass to draw, (find nearly any picture of Cyclops, Supes, or Captain America with their shirt off) unless they /do/ have body hair, like wolverine, in which case they have a comical amount. The other factor is that in nearly any movie or sit-com, body hair is played for laughs. Women not having shaved their legs, any mention of back hair, etc. Very rarely is there any mention from a woman like “Ooh, he’s got a hairy chest, I could get lost in that.” or something. On an intellectual level, I understand that is hugely the result of decades of white male perspective being sold to us as the norm, but it’s something that’s informed my psyche since birth. Essentially, I assumed that a lot of women generally tolerate it but secretly would be ok with less rather than more.

This page colored by Keith.

Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.