I Married a Cartoon Character

I‘ve always had suspicions that She Who Must Be Obeyed was more than she seemed. I first noticed it at the 2000 Toy Fair in New York, where we both had our photos taken in a Sanrio instant photo sticker booth. The end product was a 4 by 5 inch sheet of little stickers of our faces, surrounded by Sanrio cartoon borders: mine was Badtz-Maru, hers was Hello Kitty. The size of the stickers and the lo-res quality of the camera and printing blew out most of the detail on her face, leaving just the shape of her head, her hair, smile, and glasses, not unlike what you see pictured above.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but every now and then I’d see something that reminded me of She Who, like this image of Doctor Girlfriend from the brilliant The Venture Brothers. She hasn’t worked the Jackie O look in years, but I’ve seen that look on her face when she gets into attack lawyer mode. (While I look nothing like her, I’ve got Dr. Girlfriend’s voice down perfectly.)

While watching Read or Die (both the anime series and the movie), I noted her resemblance to the main character, Yomiko Readman. It didn’t hurt that she was a book fanatic.

I also learned that all of these animated characters were classified as meganekko, or “girls with glasses” (not to be confused with mega neko, or “giant cats”). I saw resemblances everywhere, most recently in the Shortpacked! web comic, where she bears a startling similarity to protaginist Amber O’Malley:

He Who Will Not Be Ignored is a big fan of the Brawl in the Family web comic because it’s about his favorite video games. When he ordered a t-shirt from them, the box it arrived in had a hand-drawn character on the side. When she learned that the authors would provide custom drawings by request for orders placed by a certain date, She Who requested not just Princess Peach from the Mario Brothers games, but “Princess Peach the lawyer.” This is what arrived on the box:

He Who’s reaction was “Mom, that’s you!” Now even my son could see it.

There’s no getting around it, we live with a carton character, but a very sweet one (for the most part). But I knew that from quite a while ago, as would anyone who has seen this:

I know better than to ask that she call me “sir.”

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4 Responses to I Married a Cartoon Character

  1. Bryan says:

    Does this make you her Peppermint Patty?

  2. maggie says:

    I think this is really sweet.

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