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I think at this point I was starting to move away from it, but for a long time I didn't want the characters in OP to appear sexy, objectified by the reader in any way. I think it was a reaction to all the horny imagery in mainstream comics. I wanted to show women's emotional lives without all that stuff. But of course, without that stuff it's an incomplete picture. I think OP started to get truly romantic when I worried less about what I was leaving out, and more what was important to show. Jane's little bit of frustration gesturing to her own body is particularly unsexy, and maybe that's the problem she's trying to identify. Her goal of love and fulfillment is stopped up by all these exclusions - ways of doing it wrong - resulting in a big nothing. Just a lone person posing in a way she thinks is self-explanatory, putting nothing forth, taking no risk, wondering when the magic will happen.
5 thoughts on “#611 – songs to pass the time”
ValdVin
I really enjoy Eve’s Girl I know pop-in on that third panel.
John Spain
The instinct to purposefully leave things out of stories always creates gaping holes that you don't notice until you're halfway done with whatever it is you're writing.
kev
Chekov's gun-that's-not-there?
Tessa
I think most writers (of any character-driven or dramatic storytelling, anyway) are somewhere in an intense grapple with this reality at all times, and hopefully slowly moving further and further toward the acceptance of true risk. (Can't say I'm fully there yet personally.) Your experiences will always play a role in what you make.
seann
I think you nailed the absence of sexualization. I realized it, not when Hanna is in the park, but when Eve was in the shower and her breasts were so… eh, there. So when you have jane above, slightly shapely its noticable but not overt. And its an appreciated part of your world!