Wallflower
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
This gamer geek has a pretty little secret.
Art student and MMORPG addict Robert Ng has always been a loner, but he's recently made it his goal to make more (IRL) friends. Which is how he winds up working nights at Rear Entrance Video, shilling sketchy porn and blowup dolls as a favor to his roommate. The longer he works there, though, the more he realizes he’ll never be truly happy until he becomes the person he is online: his female persona, Bobby.
Bobby is cuter and funnier than Rob is, and a thousand times more popular with boys. Becoming Bobby IRL presents its own set of challenges, though . . . especially when you're sitting on the fence between two genders, only one of which has caught the attention of your seriously cute customer/classmate.
Dylan Ford is a six-foot Inuit comic book artist who always says what’s on his mind, and screw anyone who doesn't like it. As rough as he appears, though, Dylan has a soft spot for Rob. But will out-and-proud Dylan still want Rob if he's not all man?
(Rear Entrance Video stories can be read in any order — jump in wherever you'd like!)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Painfully shy artist Rob Ng attends art school in Vancouver and works nights at an adult video store. On the Internet he's Bobby, a girl gamer with the self-assurance that the real-life Rob lacks. When Dylan Ford, a brash, gentle, Inuit giant and one of the video store's customers turns up in the Introduction to Art Principles class, Rob admires his fearless outspokenness and raw masculinity. He also begins to experiment with allowing his Bobby persona to emerge into the physical world, balancing being male at school and at home with being female at work. But Dylan is gay and in love with Rob, not Bobby, and Rob finds there are emotional and physical risks to being female and keeping secrets. This slim sequel to Apple Polisher is explicit but sweet, and Belleau's depiction of the diverse, accepting Vancouver culture makes a violent transphobic episode all the more frightening. Discussions of using art to mask and reveal add depth to the thoughtful exploration of complex gender identity.
