How Do You Solve a Porno Like Dale Cooper? (Patreon)

I thought maybe there was a way to make it subtle, tasteful, more suggestive than porny.

I was wrong.

Or, if there is a way to do it, I just don't know what it is. So back to the drawing board!

I asked Jonny if he had any suggestions and he immediately came up with shirtless axe throwing. "He uses axe throwing to solve Laura Palmer's murder," He assured me. Sex and the City had a whole scene of him playing tennis topless so I figured I could get some good reference material pretty easily.

I got this far before realizing that I didn't know what kind of axes he was throwing, or what setting he should be in, so I looked for the original scene.

It was strangely absent from youtube. There were no photos on google. This seemed VERY unlike the internet. Eventually I found out that Johnny had remembered the scene incorrectly and Dale Cooper had, instead, thrown small rocks. This just didn't have the same sex appeal. Strike two.

In my photo searches, I learned that Kyle Mclaughlin has a really nice ass. Like, REALLY, nice.

Like woah.

And Dale Cooper is always wearing a trenchcoat, so maybe a classic flasher pose was the way to go?

It was cute, but I was having trouble finding the right expression. I needed to know this character better. Youtube fan edits to the rescue! 

Watching this video didn't help me get a good reference for the illustration, but it *did* make me fall in love with Dale Cooper. He's fucking adorable. He's earnest and sweet but also weird as fucking hell. This video even prompted me to try watching Twin Peaks again. 

I would rather die than watch that pilot again but, since it's David Lynch, I figured that watching an episode out of order probably wouldn't make it *much* more confusing than it normally would be. So I told Johnny to show me whatever episode he thought I'd like best. I still didn't like it. But no one can say I didn't try.

What I saw as enough to convince me that this wasn't the right pode for Dale Cooper. The pose is fun and flirty, and Dale Cooper is very much NOT that. So I kept searching.

I came across this.

I wasn't sure why this snagged my attention. It's not sexy, really. But it has that sweetness that I found so charming about the character.

Watching the end of Fire Walk With Me and talking to Johnny about the series as a whole made me realize that one of the most loveable things about the character of Dale Cooper is how much he humanizes Laura Palmer. He doesn't reduce her to just evidence (as usually happens in mystery shows.) He doesn't get a creepy crush on her (like Ballard in Dollhouse.) He's dogged in his search for her killer not as a means of getting vengeance, but to right a wrong and to protect a town that he immediately falls in love with.

So I thought an image of him protectively holding Laura Palmer would be right for the character. Would it be sexy? If I did it right, I thought it could work. 

One thing that I get from these shows is sense of security. These are shows about good people trying to protect the innocent and make the world a little better. It's not a talked about a lot, but a sense of security *is* sexy. Sex is inherently vulnerable and it's hard to get into it if you're anxious. Many of our traditional courting acts are linked to shoring up our most basic evolutionary needs.
Fancy dinner=We aren't in danger of starving!
Chocolate= Salt, sugar, AND fat? Definitely not going to starve!
Seeing scary movie= Danger was nearby but this mate protected us!
Being given gifts/having money spent on us= Plenty of resources to go around!

So I think a guy being protective in a not-overbearing way could definitely be hot. And I think I was right.

Of course, now this means I'm actually doing something deeper than just sexy pictures of sexy people. I'm actually illustrating the appeal of these characters and, by extension, the shows they're in. Because I gotta be all thinky about stuff *eyeroll.*

Kidding. Mostly.

It's more work, of course, but I'm excited by the challenge and I think it'll give the pieces a more universal appeal.