![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniI've written about this before. Here's a comment I wrote on the subject, three years ago:
One good thing about the holiday, though, is it gives comic strip writers, who have to produce 365 mini-stories a year, a writing prompt, and cartoonist Dana Simpson (of "Phoebe and her Unicorn") has risen to the challenge quite well, addressing both the weirdness and potential sweetness of the holiday.
Here's the weirdness I remember so well -- it's, oddly, both comforting and disturbing that the exact same traditions I took part in forty-two years ago can still be a "timely" subject for humor: "Phoebe and Her Unicorn" 2 February, 2016. Though, to be honest here, the really great thing about V-Day for a kid of single digit age, is that you can spend hours playing with paper, scissors, and glue, and get praised for it, instead of groused at for making a mess.
And here's the sweet side. Consider this one a Valentine to my circles: "Pheobe and her Unicorn," 4 February, 2016
*I still believe that the "valentine" heart is one of the best graphic design symbols our human species has come up with -- it's a shape that's been found carved into cave rocks from over 30,000 years ago. ... 'Course, there's a hypothesis that it was not associated with the central organ of our circulatory system, back then.
I kind of liked the day when I was a kid, if only for the reason that a couple days prior, teachers would break out construction paper, scissors and glue, and just let us go at it. ... And, in terms of graphic design, hearts are pretty cool* -- so many possibilities. But even back in that day, the dime-store bought cards many kids bought made me o_O at the hyper-sexualized Betty Boop type characters... And that was even before I was really aware of sexual implications.
One good thing about the holiday, though, is it gives comic strip writers, who have to produce 365 mini-stories a year, a writing prompt, and cartoonist Dana Simpson (of "Phoebe and her Unicorn") has risen to the challenge quite well, addressing both the weirdness and potential sweetness of the holiday.
Here's the weirdness I remember so well -- it's, oddly, both comforting and disturbing that the exact same traditions I took part in forty-two years ago can still be a "timely" subject for humor: "Phoebe and Her Unicorn" 2 February, 2016. Though, to be honest here, the really great thing about V-Day for a kid of single digit age, is that you can spend hours playing with paper, scissors, and glue, and get praised for it, instead of groused at for making a mess.
And here's the sweet side. Consider this one a Valentine to my circles: "Pheobe and her Unicorn," 4 February, 2016
*I still believe that the "valentine" heart is one of the best graphic design symbols our human species has come up with -- it's a shape that's been found carved into cave rocks from over 30,000 years ago. ... 'Course, there's a hypothesis that it was not associated with the central organ of our circulatory system, back then.
