Candi vs. The Pose

Candi vs. The Pose is a set of two comic strips released in May of 2019, which attempted to address the sheer stupidity of the controversy surrounding woke reactions to an already-several-years-old drawing by artist J. Scott Campbell, regarding Mary Jane's anatomy and pose on the cover of a Spider-Man comic.

Barking Up the Correct Tree
Mary Jane begins by asking Candi how it is that Candi and Donte are still not nearly as well-known as Peter and MJ themselves are, given both couples have been through an awful lot. Candi replies that being less popular has its advantages. MJ then speculates that this may have something to do with the fact that she and Peter in comics have been hand-drawn for years, while Candi and Donte have almost never been hand-drawn. Candi counters that this is of little concern to her. She states that due to being lesser-known, she rarely has to worry about attempts on her life that aren't Triumvirate-related. She alludes to the ending of Sodality: Instigation, when she and Dolly get taken to the death camp in Denison upon capture by the Hebbleskins, and are escorted to a room to be ritually beheaded.

She also boasts of how she can give Donte "cheesecake," whenever she pleases, and "no one outside of Missouri ever complains." This is in reference to a clip from Ciem 2, in which a woman from Missouri in 2009 complained that Vienna Dockler's spy dress during a heist scene, shot in The Sims 2, revealed too much of her shoulders and neck line, and accused the entire work of being "pornographic" based on that rather absurd criteria - in spite very little cleavage, in spite no actual nudity, and in spite of nothing else remotely indecent.

Candi goes on to explain that being made with The Sims the way she was in that comic meant that there were a lot fewer questions regarding her anatomy, such that "no one" ever bothered her about the shape of her internal organs, nor ever "thin-shamed" her waist. But she finally drives her point home by mentioning the infamous MJ pose from the Issue #601 cover, stating that no one cares if she looks stupid while sitting on a couch. While MJ is held to hundreds of unreasonable and contradictory different standards by readers and activists everywhere, Candi is largely free to be herself, save for only a few niche modesty fanatics who think she doesn't go far enough to maintain modesty.&dagger;

Candi Attempts the Pose
This follow-up was made two days later, in which Candi attempts the MJ pose in order to show how pointless the whole thing was. Due to lack of a useful pose for The Sims 4 to put Candi into, she is instead put into a pose that's only mostly the same pose. She got one leg wrong, and failed to turn her head. Since it felt awkward to her to have a Spidey T-shirt on and have the room decorated with homages to Peter, she instead filled the scene with Emeraldon paraphernalia. She also is seen wearing a septagon pin on her shirt, in the green Emeraldon symbol, while Donte is visible outside the window, flying toward a scene in a pose reminiscent of Peter swinging to a scene.

Characters

 * Candi McArthur / Ciem
 * Donte McArthur / Emeraldon
 * Peter Parker / Spider-Man
 * Mary Jane Watson


 * Triumvirate
 * Hebbleskin Gang


 * Tiderists

Locations

 * Earth-G7.2.1
 * North America
 * United States
 * Texas
 * Waco
 * Texan Triangulum


 * Marvel Earth of unknown number
 * North America
 * United States
 * New York
 * New York City
 * Mary Jane's apartment

Development
Both of these comic strips were released on DeviantArt in reaction to a fit of hysteria that hit the web around May 2nd of 2021, summarized in a video published to YouTube, titled I Cosplayed as Mary Jane to Recreate J. Scott Campbell's Cover, and Male Feminists Lost Their Minds!. It was released by Anna Mello, better known as "That Star Wars Girl." Her insights into pop culture resulted in leftist NPCs generating endless hate videos and hate threads to attack, slander, and even threaten her very life with. However, none drove them further into criminal insanity and apoplectic mass hysteria, than when she cosplayed as Mary Jane for a photo shoot. Oddly enough, other cosplayers, including "Stacey of Gotham," also attempted the pose, with more success than Anna. But also with less hate and backlash from NPCs.

In that shoot, Anna attempted to show that the pose that Mary Jane was put in on the cover of The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 1, Issue #601 was actually physically possible. Her success irritated feminist loons in particular, who had previously had a fun time raking J. Scott Campbell over the coals for his artwork. In spite this, Anna admitted in her video that the pose, while possible, was highly impractical - and very uncomfortable to maintain.

Numerous artists, made aware of this awkward revelation of Campbell's artwork being weird, made efforts to "correct" the drawing, each with their own ideas on how to fix MJ's anatomy while posing her in a way that made more real-world sense.

In "Barking Up the Wrong Tree," the fact that Candi and Donte have been through many difficult circumstances being largely ignored by the leftist hate mob due to their obscurity is shown to be a blessing in disguise, while MJ analyzes how her and Peter's popularity in Earth-1218 has worked against them. Candi addresses that she can pose however she wants, and has no need to fear what "detergent-eating zombie fools think," in reference to the Tide Level Rating System joke first created on Facebook, then codified on Uncyclopedia.

"Candi Attempts the Pose" continues this trend, by having Candi and Donte switch places with MJ and Peter, to see if they can get better results. Candi finds the controversy to be "boring and pointless," and refers to the loony feminists as "shrieking eels" that are "desperate for relevance."

Both comics were generated in The Sims 4, and then run through different Photoshop techniques. Other than edge softening, "Candi Attempts 'the Pose' " mostly stuck with embracing a straightforward game look aesthetic from The Sims 4. "Barking Up the Correct Tree," meanwhile, used a posterization filter to make Candi and MJ's conversation look more like panels from an actual comic book.

Distribution
"Barking Up the Correct Tree" was released on Sunday, May 9th of 2021. It completed editing around 6:49 PM EDT, and was released to DeviantArt a short while thereafter. It was followed up by "Candi Attempts 'the Pose' " on Tuesday, May 11th of that same year, with the last relevant edit being at 8:36 PM EDT.

Reception
As of May of 2023, "Barking Up the Correct Tree" received over 800 views on DeviantArt. "Candi Attempts 'The Pose'," by contrast, got only 629 views. However, it was favorited twice.

Trivia

 * Putting Candi in the MJ pose proved near-impossible, as there was no way to get the model in The Sims 4 to agree to turn her head properly using the custom pose that was the closest pose in-game to the actual MJ pose. Even getting her to pose as closely as she did to the actual pose proved a logistical issue, as her custom height made her clip through the sofa.  Several mods and cheats later, she was able to somewhat pull off a pose similar to the MJ pose, but without the proper effort to turn her head correctly.


 * Mary Jane insulting Candi for usually being drawn with The Sims, while it may be hilarious given the hypocrisy that she's also drawn with The Sims in "Barking Up the Correct Tree," is a joke that became dated in 2022, when Candi started being depicted with AI-generated imagery.


 * &dagger; While Candi has had immodest moments in her life, the only time she has ever been publicly immodest has involved situations where she was forced into that situation by others.
 * Candi's incident in middle school was brought on by Don the Psycho, conspiring toward it with several bullies that hated Candi. She was most bothered by the cover-up, as police refused to pursue charges on anyone.
 * Her first time having sex with Danny on a hot tin roof of a garden shed happened behind a run-down house, in the afternoon, with plenty of trees protecting the couple from view. The area, save for the lovers, had been largely abandoned.
 * Her tryst with Danny in the science room at school was after most of the school had been abandoned. There were no security cameras in that room, and the couple needed only fear discovery by a janitor - who never discovered them.
 * This same thing happened with the couple when they had sex in the shower stall of the girls' locker room at that same high school, in an effort to "erase" Candi's middle school trauma.
 * And again in the school library.
 * Candi and Danny were caught a few times while in Danny's bedroom, when they had the false pretense of security. However, the Loffin family was largely apathetic about catching them.
 * Candi has been walked in on with Danny by Miriam several times; but Miriam ensured that Erin never discovered what was happening. In a similar vein, Candi tolerated Miriam's questionable sexual choices.
 * While Candi and Tyrone had sex in the woods several times, they were never discovered in the act. They emphasized privacy.
 * Candi's partial immodesty after her arrest was due to her clothes being burned when Drop-In set the police car on fire.
 * Other than being strip-searched when incarcerated, Candi has generally maintained modesty outside of prison settings.
 * The times Candi has been naked in public most often were when escaping after being captured by Affadidah's goons, as they intended her to be stripped before being ritually beheaded. She usually made finding clothes to wear a top priority upon escaping.
 * This also applies to when she and Dolly were captured and taken to the Denison death camp.
 * Behind closed doors, Candi has been seen immodest or outright naked by several suitors. However, she never intended for any film of herself being immodest to leak anywhere.
 * The only time she volunteered to be publicly nude with the intent of being seen by an audience of more than one, was after being tricked into agreeing to it for a figure drawing art class one time, in which she intended to honor her agreement, and then vowed not to do it again.
 * Candi was never a full-time pin-up artist intent on being seen in pin-ups publicly, nor did she ever go out of her way to become a porn star, as her sister Miriam did at one point while in China. In public, Candi has arguably been far more modest than either Miriam or Marina, given that Marina did engage in a few trysts with other rock performers in backstages where she didn't have adequate privacy.
 * However, Candi's behavior in private has often been implied to be almost as wild as that of her sisters - provided she's with her chosen love at the time, and is assured that the two have their privacy.