April 24th, 2017 – 1:27am PST:

Last weekend I did a little promotion of the new LTS Twitter page by offering the first three people who tweeted there a drawing of themselves riding any creature of their choice. I expected at least one guy would ask for something uber macho, like a T-Rex, and that at least one girl would ask for something super cutesy, like a bunny or a unicorn. As it turned out, the first three people to tweet there were all women. Not only that, but I wouldn’t consider any of the requests as cutesy. The requests were: turtle, sea dragon, and (normal) dragon. Very surprising! I didn’t expect that! If you’re interested, the Twitter page is here: https://twitter.com/LTS_Comic

To be honest, I needed the practice at drawing women anyway. Drawing guys isn’t something I think too much about, but drawing women is a different ball game all together (for me anyway). When I was 11-12 yrs old I started getting serious about drawing. At one point I began to have the sense that, when I drew women, they just… looked bad. Real bad. Afterward I started paying attention to minor details, and started realizing that facial features were a critical factor I was missing, among… other things. Unfortunately, subsequent efforts bore bitter fruit. Over the next few years I swiped every JC Penny’s catalog I saw in the house, as well as a Victoria’s Secret catalog I’d seen my friend’s mother throw in the trash (someone had dumped coffee grounds on top before I’d retrieved it). That’s the thing, as a kid, you can’t ASK for tips on that stuff. You just have to, you know, work with what you have available. How else are you supposed to get better at drawing something unless you can practice??? Of course, as a kid, if you’re going to practice drawing half naked women, you gotta keep that stuff well hidden. Otherwise… well, someone’s going to find it. Tough lesson there.

While checking Wikipedia for facts on Sea Dragons, I found out that they’re into some pretty freaky shit:

“Courtship between male and female pipefish involves lengthy and complicated shows of display. For example, in Syngnathus typhle, copulation is always preceded by a ritualized dance by both sexes. The dance involves very conspicuous wriggling and shaking motions, especially in comparison to the species’ otherwise extremely secretive lifestyle. Under the threat or presence of a predator, pipefish are more reluctant to perform their dances. In addition, when risk of predation is high, they copulate less frequently, dance less per copulation, and females transfer more eggs per copulation. Although S. thyphle males normally prefer to mate with larger females, they mate randomly when potentially threatened by predators. During pipefish copulation, which signifies the termination of the courtship dance, the female transfers her eggs through a small ovipositor into the male brood pouch or onto the special patch of skin on the male’s ventral body surface. While the eggs are being transferred, the mating pair rises through the water until copulation is complete. At this point, the male assumes an S-shaped posture and fertilizes the eggs, all the while travelling back down the water column. Males possessing brood pouches release their sperm directly into them; the pouches are then vigorously shaken. The ventral seams are not opened until weeks later when the male pipefish give birth.”

I consider myself a fairly forward thinking individual, and although I support feminism, I’m extremely thankful I’m not required to perform an intricate ritual dance before a female injects me with her eggs.

However, if that WERE the case, then I would be well within my rights to ask her to go on midnight donut runs for me whenever I felt hungry.

Hold on, I’m weights the pros and cons here.