El Goonish Shive

Abnormal? Plaid, stripes, polka-dots.

Yep. White people can have blue hair, Japanese people can have red hair. Tedd is mixed-race and has purple. (Actually it was originally supposed to be black under the principles of Purple Is the New Black, but Dan and the early fans liked the purple look and he changed his mind to make it canonically purple, then decided that in his verse hair can be any color.)

I thought it was Japanese have technicolor hair.

I think what made me get taken aback was that natural blue and purple hair don't exist in the real world among anybody so it goes unremarked as just another aspect of an anime-inspired world.

But red hair exists in the real world but not really among Asian people so that's what triggers my "this is abnormal" alarm. My very late alarm, considering I was around to see Parable start.

Edit: Bear with me, it's one in the morning.

Edit^2: Found this piece of commentary.

I actually wanted (the hair of Nanase) to be a mix of red and black, but I could not get it to look how I wanted, so I just made it red. That is basically why (the hair of Tedd) is purple, too, except his was not going to be a mix. Basically, weird hair colors are natural in this universe because I did not know how to make black hair look good.

Edited by fredhot16 on Feb 14th 2021 at 11:36:11 AM

I questioned whether pink was considered a natural colour because everyone took it as a sign of feminine presentation when Tedd did it, even those who didn’t know him. If pink were a natural colour in that universe it logically shouldn’t have that connotation.

Actually, how common are abnormal hair colors in this world? Tedd and Edward, sure, but I think mostly everybody else has normal hair colors.

Doesn't mean that the colour couldn't still get a connotation. Especially when the people you're talking to know it's not your natural colour.

I think the current party, where Jay was the pizza girl?

Yeah, I was referring to the current party, where Justin wanted a female form so he could totally-not-flirt with the hypothetical pizza guy.

Oh right, that part did feel jarring. (curse this comic's pacing...)

Didn't someone quit the comic over it and everything?

Red hair does, sure, but very rarely is it Nanase's bright crimson. But then, Claire and Clinton's red heads in Questionable Content are more vivid than they would be in real life, too, so you could call that artistic license if Nanase weren't Japanese. Instead, it's You Gotta Have Blue Hair.

They've been getting more common. I refer again to EGS's entry on YouGottaHaveBlueHair.Webcomics, and the commentary from when blue-haired Rich was introduced.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Feb 15th 2021 at 10:41:45 AM

So today's strip got posted, and the author commentary mentioned that he was originally going to have Nanase just awkwardly apologize - and it was one of those situations where the character's reaction overrode the original idea, as Nanase was carrying a lot of guilt over that whole situation.

And my guess is that Tedd is now reevaluating the choices her mom has made - not necessarily to the point of Easily Forgiven, but actually open to forgiving her, rather than slamming the door in her face.

Edited by ironballs16 on Feb 15th 2021 at 11:32:36 AM

Wait a shit, we didn't learn who the model was!

Smokeycut (I literally mentioned her name last page), and here are the posts about that.

It seemed to have been the last piece of straw on a ship close to collapsing.

She did say she'd stick around in the thread, though.

Edited by fredhot16 on Feb 16th 2021 at 2:10:56 AM

Stupid kids.

Akiko's outfit is kinda cool, no lie. Also, very useful spell I wish I had.

Poor Luke's still in "OMGWhatamIdoinghere" mode. I look forward to his turn even so.

Edited by AliceMacher on Feb 17th 2021 at 5:34:03 AM

I'm sure one of you is disappointed.

George continues to be the best part of this Q&A.

George thinks way, way too much about the private lives of other people and has too much imagination for his own good. I love him.

Has anyone thought of something to ask these dorks?

I was thinking, “If you guys had a personality based affinity for some kind of magic, what kind of spell would you get?”

But then I visualised:

George: Eh, it’s fun watching other people do all that transformation crap and be frankly terrible at hiding it, but it’s not something I feel any need to do myself. A nosy bastard like me would probably get some dumb spell for figuring out when other people have magic or something (stares hard at Luke).

Luke: *sweats*

I’m kind of dreading Larry’s answer to the above but I’d love to know Rhea’s. It would be nice if we learned a bit more about her.

The other thing I thought of was asking about Cheerleadra’s backstory. George must have a theory by now.

Edited by PapercutChainsaw on Feb 19th 2021 at 2:09:25 AM

Honestly, I'm not sure George is wrong about the "everyone is so chaste as to be borderline asexual" part. It's a weirdness about EGS's relationships that has been a thing for years.

Also "who they are not related to" is becoming more and more of a factor as the series goes on, especially with Tedd. By this time 2025, Tedd won't even have a romantic relationship in their life anymore because it turns out Grace is their half-sister twice removed and Sarah is their great-grandniece.

I think Shive has the issue that all the characters are teenagers cos he was one when the comic started but now he's in his thirties and writing about teenagers banging each other is a bit awkward.

And yet he's entirely comfortable with drawing fanservice of them.

It’s also possible that depictions of actual sex or anything beyond kisses or cuddling just doesn’t float his boat in general. He obviously likes the aesthetics of big boobs, exaggerated figures, and a whole bunch of more niche fetishy things. But those things don’t necessarily equate to liking sex. Even when characters kiss it’s usually fairly chaste but emotionally charged rather than horny.

Grace, Elliot and Susan have all come across as being a bit ace-coded to me at times even though literally none of them are. The closest to a canon ace character is Tensaided who from Dan’s description seems to be a biromantic demisexual “ almost asexual”. Actually wait, I just remembered Archie who we will probably never see again. Poor guy, I hope he’s doing okay.

Isn't Susan canonically aegosexual (or autochorissexual, as Shive put it), which is a type of asexual? I later found out I was aego my self so it stuck in my mind.