So, why is Nancy the way she is?

So it’s hard NOT to be familiar with my character, “Nancy Ryman”, at this point. What with all the commissions I’ve bought of her and posted because hell if I’m gonna actually draw something that nobody’s likely to look at.

While it’s as likely as anything else that I’ll actually do something regarding the story, that is to say, startlingly unlikely, I did at least want to explain a few things that I was thinking of in regards to her design, and the relationship she shares with the main male character of my stuff, Elliot Raymond. I’ll start with an explanation of something I’ve noticed about the kind of shows you and I both tend to watch because it’s pretty important to explaining Nancy.

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Ecchi shows with any sort of romantic element are mostly fuckin’ boring.

Yes, you’ve seen my site, so you’ve noticed that what I say above does not seem to quite gel with the kind of characters I do the most with and like the design of the most. The fact that I find ecchi shows to typically be boring has very little to do with the fact that I don’t like the character design… at least in terms of appearance.

It’s because I can pretty much give you the entire plot of any given one of them from start to finish without even watching them, solely because they tend to follow the formula I’ve written out below for reasons that I will explain my guesses behind. See if this checklist reminds you of anything you’ve seen.


1) There is a guy. His personality is pretty much unimportant to anything that follows.

2) There is a group of girls with various personalities.

3) You, the viewer, instantly and correctly pick the girl that he will end up with at the end of the story simply by figuring out whose personality is either the very worst, most violent of the bunch or at the very least meshes the least with the male character’s (you can also typically write off the bustiest characters outright).

4) There is fanservice. There is also agony from the viewer as you repeatedly wonder why the often more interesting secondary characters are not the love interest.

5) There is a LOT of meandering about while the guy and the girl from Step 3, due to their obvious incompatibility and/or due to various contrived coincidences outside their control, fail miserably to make any progress in getting together until the last couple of episodes- and if you think the girl is going to make any moves toward that happy ending yourself, stop doing drugs.

6) Somehow the guy and the girl get together.

7) Some jackass with poor social skills screencaps most of the secondary characters and throws them up into a gallery. (This step can be excised from 2005 on.)


I have my theories as to why all of this is the case. All of this could be any of the following-

-Some sort of wish fulfillment fantasy. After all, if the main character pairs up with the violent tsundere asshole, the hot busty girl with a much more pleasant personality is still open, no?

-Hey, they gotta stretch the show to 12/24 episodes SOMEHOW, and “Main Female is a violent, psychopathic bitch who will punch the living hell out of you for blinking at another woman AND at herself the wrong way” is a REALLY easy way to ensure that there’s (*Number of episodes* - (*Number of episodes* - 20 minutes)) of constant strain in the relationship.

-Anime fans are idiots.

-Writing original plots is hard.

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I HATE the typical “tsundere” character. Forgive me if I do not happen to find a psychopath who shouts and behaves as if she is going to beat you to death the moment you step out of line, typically unintentionally unless it seems like the story is running too smoothly, to be the kind of person I would want to get within 100 feet of, let alone spend my life with. That’s not romantic. That’s the typical plot to an episode of COPS.

Well, as you may know, one of my favorite things to do is to take fairly well-established character archetypes and screw around with them a bit. One of my favorite things to do is to take said character archetypes and think- “How would most people actually react if they knew someone who had these traits?”

So I decided. I’d try giving Nancy most of the outward characteristics I associate with tsundere characters.

So let’s make no mistake about the following.

Nancy is kind of a bitch.

An outside observer who doesn’t know much about her and is just kinda looking at her from a distance would mostly see a loud, rough, violent woman who swears CONSTANTLY, throws out a lot of insults, and is completely full of herself in regards to her appearance and how badly she can kick your ass, made worse by the fact that she IS really good at punching peoples’ lights out and is known in-story for getting into a LOT of fights, always coming out on top.

Her would-be love interest, Elliot, is very aware of all of this.

Elliot tries to stay away from her as best as possible, and in early meetings, has nothing on his mind except “how do I get out of this without getting my face smashed in”.

This is a fact that is not lost on Nancy, and she tries very, very hard to convince him that they need to get together, but she is also very bad at doing so without coming off as overbearing and scary about it.

And this is where things diverge a bit from most ecchi stories.

You’ve noticed in my commissions that Elliot’s not always with Nancy. See, Elliot has at least some personality, and he’s outright stated to be fairly successful at what he does, and has a confident, positive demeanor that endears him to women, in addition to looking pretty good on top of it. In short, Elliot is in a position where he is capable of picking and choosing who he goes after- he in fact has multiple sexual partners that aren’t Nancy before the two of them eventually get together (and for that matter, so does Nancy)- and KNOWS that he has absolutely no reason to just pick Nancy by default. Make no mistake, either, he has the balls to tell Nancy this to her face once annoyed enough.

There’s your switch. There’s your plot. It is not the guy’s job to do all the legwork to make a relationship happen, at least not entirely. No, it is the goal of the TSUNDERE to prove that she’s more than just a violent thug who’s just going to make her would-be lover’s life miserable in the long run- and to do so before Elliot makes good with his warning that he could find another once he decides to go to the effort (which is less ‘Elliot is lazy’ and more ‘He’s happy as he is and is fine with waiting to go steady with someone’). I’ll go into more detail about how exactly Nancy isn’t quite like most tsundere-type women if I draw her again, but a few important parts involve how she makes it clear that, among other things, she NEVER gets into fights with anyone who doesn’t have it coming, would absolutely never hurt Elliot (barring acts of extreme dipshittery that YOU would kick his ass for and that he would not perform), can be perfectly feminine when she wants to be, and has her own hobbies and aspirations that are actually quite in-line with his. In short, she’s not just an exaggerated personality trait- she’s a human. A flawed one that is clearly overcompensating, but one with ultimately good intentions that she’s just a little too eager to fight for.

I’m just saying, it’s more fun to write, and makes for a much more fun female character to work with.