JESNCIN are two people

Hi, we're Jes and Cin! Award winning Indonesian twin comic artists making graphic novels for middle grade readers.

My Art | Fanart | Ask JesnCin | Inspiration | JL remix <- for my martian/john constantine/superman /dc au stuff | Hellblazer <- for the hellblazer purists |

|ORDER MY AWARD WINNING GRAPHIC NOVEL, LUNAR BOY, HERE! |

Stonewall Award Winner | Harvey nominated | GLAAD nominated | Ignyte Award Winner |

104 minutes of man and girl body swap that is non stop homophobic, transphobic, misogynist and racist where not a single joke made me laugh

VS

10 minute short about a closeted gay man swapping bodies with his dog making me teary eyed.

I feel sort of awkward asking this, but I'm just curious about if this ties into the flaws of the show you've pointed out.

I need you to know that you should not feel ashamed for asking this question because I'VE NOTICED THIS TOO and it has really bothered me! I've actually muted MAWS across social medias, but whenever something slips through, it has always been nsfw art of MAWS Lois.

Back when Cohost was still around, I peeped at the MAWS tag (to make sure I could talk shit about it haha) and it was ALL nsfw art of MAWS Lois. Just a few days ago on bluesky another nsfw MAWS Lois art popped up on my For You page! It's a thing! You're not weird for noticing this.

I do have a surprising amount to say about this. MAWS gets described as a "toddler show for adults" not just because the writing provides less intellectual nutrition than an episode of a quality kids' show like Gravity Falls, but because it fills that narratively shallow void with weirdly horny stuff. It's as if the show knows it can't keep your attention, so it gives the audience the lowest common denominator of attention by saying "look! Character hot! Character's shirt come off?? Whoaaa" and you know that's not for kids.

This deeply cringey Mary Sue article captures this vibe perfectly:

I love how this article displays a lack of understanding for why the series was moved to Adult Swim as a part of company merge shenanigans. They also basically blanket every show on HBO Max as being NSFW, like it's a sexual site? That's quality journalism right there /s.

some highlights:

Lois and Clark don't have a relationship on the show. They flirt and have doki doki moments with each other, and some of those moments have horny vibes. And to the allonormative audience, that's the greatest thing they've ever seen. Who needs the tensions and growth of a real relationship when you can just project your wildest fantasies onto these two? It's like the difference between the original Wuthering Heights book and the new Emerald Fennell directed Wuthering Heights movie. It's about dumbing the audience down and rewarding them with a sexy treat.

But I want to bring this back to why MAWS Lois specifically garners this kind of attention, because this is kind of personal. The MAWS crew accidentally struck gold in the way they designed and characterized her. She's a basic anime girl, infantilized in design and personality. But she's also an Asian tomboy.

MAWS Lois is not a traditional take on Lois Lane; the jaded adult business woman who humbles Clark and owns her sexuality. In MAWS, Lois is cute. She's scared of sending Clark a text, she acts like a child. It makes the audience want to protect and take care of her. To rescue her. MAWS Lois can be a little sassy sometimes and will save Superman by pressing a button, but she no longer humbles him in a way that feels emasculating. Oh and she's Asian too? That perfectly fits into all the ways East Asian women get fetishized and infantilized. Thank god she acts so childish right?

So now we're getting into the uncomfortable part of what makes this appealing for people.

Many fans describe MAWS Clark and Lois as having bisexual energy because MAWS Lois is a tomboy. But she's not masculine in the way butches/mascs/tomboys are in real life. Not to say that butches can't be soft, sweet and childish, but- the world is really cruel to them. Patriarchy demands that women fill the roles of traditional femininity, and once acting tomboy stops being cute as an adult, the world punishes them for it. And because of that, butches are jaded. They wear tough skin to get to where they are. The magical thing about the confidence of a butch is that it is deeply emasculating to men.

This gets weirder when men find themselves attracted to butches. They get really insecure about how gay it feels to be attracted to a woman who's confident in her masculinity. "Ugh, why does she have to be better at this masculinity thing because she had to earn her confidence through hardship while I had mine handed to me?" Man, if only there was a safe way to be attracted to such a taboo woman. If only she was cute, shy, dependent on a man and needed rescuing.

And that's where MAWS Lois comes in. She's a cute little petite Asian tomboy who acts like a child. When she feels insecure that other Loises in alternate universes achieved more than her as these radical employed feminist women, she takes pride in knowing that at least *she* has a boyfriend. When Clark is bribed by Ivo to hang out with traditionally feminine, super model women, he defends his tomboy crush. The male audience can feel good about liking the quirky adorkable tomboy who doesn't emasculate them. There's something bi about these two, but not in a way that'll challenge heteronormative roles.

We only started the deep dive for researching body swap media when we started thumbnails! The plot was already in place, but the details needed fine tuning and we wanted to see how body swaps were visually portrayed. Color me surprised when we discovered that we casually went against the grain of long standing beats in this genre.

Anyway, the announcement of the (not coming soon still in the works) upcoming novel is LITERALLY what I've been looking for. Needlessly to say VERY EXCITED to read it whenever it comes out!!!!!

yeahh Your Name has that effect! Just by changing the tone from comedy to existential romance, it got people to expand their minds on what this genre's capable of.

The film gestures towards accents since Taki leaves a note for Mitsuha to adjust her dialect when she's in his body, but (like a lot of things in the movie) those difficulties were sped by or montaged through! The possibilities of gender dysphoria in Your Name made so much more sense when I read how Inside Mari influenced it. A story that actually digs into the body horror of not being seen as who you are.

Body swaps are just so ripe for exploration! It's wild to me how much hasn't been explored for a so-called overdone trope.

We proudly announce our new upcoming graphic novel, The Switch Up! It's got the shenanigans of Freaky Friday, the intergenerational family conflicts of Turning Red, and the intermittent long distance swap of Your Name... but spanning opposite ends of the Earth. When Cahaya and Kris start mysteriously swapping bodies with each other every other day, the two discover so much more than what it takes to impersonate a different life. This is our loving tribute but also thorough critique of the body swap genre.

He’s here! Indu made it into my top picks for this month for my mobile comic shop! I think he’s in good company!

WAAAAOOW!!! Look at my sweet pastel baby boy!!