Pointless Arguments 101

So hey.  I know how you tumblr folks aren’t strictly what you’d call “fans” of the brentalfloss comic, but this latest strip (from a writing standpoint at least) is one I’m kind of proud of.  While I wish I’d found a better way to visually tell the story, I feel like we did pull back the curtain on who Cass is a little bit which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while.

Yes, she’s still a bit of the stereotypical, angry, webcomic female archetype but, right from her inception, I felt like she had the right to be frustrated, both with the industry she works in and with Brent himself.  With this strip, I wanted to deal with how, because of systemic sexism, Cass feels that she has to be a consummate professional almost at all times and, even when she works her ass off, she will still sometimes be reduced to her gender.  Her major beef with Brent isn’t that he makes sexist jokes (although she doesn’t love that either) it’s that he represents the ability of men to make a joke out of something and not only get away with it, but get paid and respected for doing so.

In this strip, we let Cass react in a less than perfect way because, if the roles were reversed, I think I’d bash my head into my piano every now and again, too.  I think it’s also worth noting that anyone who has ever been commissioned to create a piece of art has dealt with something like this - where they’ve poured their whole self into the work and gotten a really curt and unhelpful response in return.

Cass is the character in the strip that feels the most human to me and she is the one who comes closest to my own voice.  I’m looking forward to writing more strips focusing on her story and figuring out how she fits with everyone else in the comic.