There is an obvious breakpoint for any stat where it goes from “nice to be recognized for that thing” to the crippling insecurity of “will anyone love me for me.” I won’t say something obvious like there’s a downside to incredible wealth or comeliness, I’ll just point out that a lot of people tend to define themselves by their most outstanding attribute, partially because very few people have the time to develop multiple outstanding attributes. If you’re wealthy, and that wealth is not dependent on you personally putting in 90 hours a week, then you might have the freedom and time to become a champion dressagist (dressager?) and also a world class painter. But if you’re “the smart kid,” and by that I mean the skips grades and takes advanced courses and starts college at 15 smart kid, then chances are you spend most of your time developing those smarts and doing extracurricular work, and when you finally make it to CERN and discover that everyone there was the smart kid and now you’re kind of in the middle, you might suddenly develop and urge to become really good at the clarinet or rebuilding car engines so that you have something to make you stand out again.

Having women fall all over themselves to catch your eye is a fun fantasy for guys because that’s not how it works for 97% of us. It’s sad but also a little cathartic when I find a thread on Reddit where guys get to reminiscing about the one time 12 years ago when someone paid them a compliment, because it was the only time it’s ever happened in their life. That’s how far from “women falling all over themselves” it is for most guys. That’s also why harem anime/novels are so popular. The idea of a guy being able to attract/keep multiple women is such high fantasy that it makes anything that happens on the new seasons of Doctor Who seem grounded and down to Earth.

Having an S++ tier comeliness (my art notwithstanding) is going to make for some good times for sure, but Flash Drive is going to eventually enter a phase of his life where he wants something more than a relationship based on superficial attraction. Probably. Maybe it’s enough for him to know that he’s got 57 kids out there that he’s never met.

The thing about a comeliness stat is that it’s actually hard to imagine how it would work above a certain level. Strength is easy. There’s always something heavier to lift. Dexterity, Intelligence, most of the usual stats in a game are easy to figure there’s no real upper limit. Comeliness, though… there is a limit to how attractive someone can be, IMO. Like, imagine the most attractive person you can. Cindy Crawford in her prime, or Jenna Ortega or Pamela Anderson or Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld movies or Hugh Jackman or Benedict Cumberbatch or Benedict Wong or whatever you’re into. (As an aside, the Marvel movies had a lot of guys name Chris leading their casts, but how weird was it that Dr. Strange had two actors named Benedict?)

Anyway, so imagine the most attractive person you can. Now imagine someone just a little more attractive than them. Some of us can do it, probably in the form of “Monica Bellucci, but with Grace Kelly’s nose” or whatever. But here’s the thing. Imagine someone ten times more attractive than them. It’s not possible. There’s such a thing as too much symmetry, or too few blemishes, or the shape of their eyes can only be so… just right. There’s a point where someone will enter an uncanny valley of doll-like perfection and artificiality, because human brains know that other humans do have stuff like skin texture. The only way I think Comeliness can function as a ceiling-less stat is if the person in question starts to emit a mind-control aura, or pheromones, or their mere presence warps reality in minor ways.

Also, you have to figure that someone with a 4-times-the-human-limit Comeliness stat must be teetering on the edge of ruin at all times. If being that attractive requires an absolutely perfect balance of facial structure, symmetry, and every other feature, then one stray freckle or a tiny cut could blow the whole system out of balance, and they’d lose like 20 points of Comeliness in an instant.

Please enjoy the increasingly stale vote incentive.

This month, I’m closing on a new house, selling my Mom’s house, finishing packing Mom’s house, moving city to city to the new house, forwarding mail, canceling utilities, all that. And after that’s done, I get to start the process of selling my old house, which needs a little work before it can realistically go on the market.

SO. I’m going to try and do this vote incentive in stages. Currently it’s just pencils. The TopWebcomics one will update with colors and detail until we get to the no clothes versions, then that will continue over at Patreon. Also there will be a comic or two in between each version to fill out the story.

I know it’s hard to tell from just the pencils, but this is Heatwave and Jiggawatt. The comics will explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. Although I feel like even saying that much makes it easy to guess, but hopefully the journey will still amuse.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.