More disappointment

[zustifer]

I want to like this webcomic, which is reasonably well-drawn, amusingly-conceived, and very clever, but... the protagonist. I am made irrationally angry by heterosexual male creators who insist on mary-suing (Okay, not quite mary-sue; what's a term for this? Galatea-ing?) up their female pinups characters with all the positive attributes they can possibly think of, but oh noes she is too smart and therefore socially awkward in an adorable way! That is not cute at all, sincerely! It is also totally irrelevant that she is half-asian and has big tits for some reason!
False character flaws. What a burden. It troubles me that this kind of shit mars up the potentially really pleasant surface of an otherwise fun work.
I mean, for serious, check out the too-small button-down halfway down, as well as the obnoxious sleep-splay-boobs on the shot immediately to the left. COME ON.

Comments

Re: Sorry

[dresdencodak.livejournal.com]

As far as failure goes, Kimiko does get turned into a tree, upstaged by a Jungian clone of herself, killed by her own rocket pack, beaten up by The Author's minions, deported from her subconscious, and invents a way to see the future only to find out she ends up soulless and alone. It's never meant to be serious, obviously, but it mostly has to do with my opinion that tragedies are funnier than comedies. Having bad things happen to a character is one of the most classical ways of getting your audience to empathize with them.

Whether or not I succeed at this is another story, and clearly with you guys it isn't the case. Oh well, I'll keep trying.

Re: Sorry

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

No, no, I mean, I read it, I understand; it's just that I'm saying that the failure doesn't _stick._ Do you know what I mean? She doesn't have to deal with the consequences of any of them. Being turned into a tree isn't permanent, presumably she gets to sleep again, etc.
I completely am down with your viewpoint; I'm just saying that a major component of failure is consequences.

Re: Sorry

[dresdencodak.livejournal.com]

In the context of the comic, though, I don't think showing consequences to getting killed or turned into a tree would be very meaningful. The focus isn't so much on how Kimiko deals with failure, but rather how these failures come about. They're self contained illustrations of personal folly, like a Twilight Zone episode or something like that. Kimiko may act these out for us, but ultimately each of those stories isn't about her.

Okay, I think I'm done overanalyzing my own dumb comic. I need to get back to drawing the next one. :)

Re: Sorry

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

Good enough, thank you for commenting. I appreciate it.