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Panel 1: Shen is sitting at his screen tablet, holding his tablet pen. He looks at you, smiling, and says “Wanna know one cool thing about being a comic artist?”
Panel 2: Shen is now standing upright, the tablet pen having become giant in his hand. How gestures outwards with his other hand and says “You can draw yourself however you want!”
Panel 3: Shen magically "ting"s his forehead with his tablet pen, changing himself into a Sol Badguy-esque buff dude with a belt and a ponytail. He says “For example, I can draw myself like THIS!”
Panel 4: Shen again magically "ting"s his forehead, changing himself into a girl with a sweatshirt-dress, gym shorts, and choker. He says “OR like THIS!”
Panel 5: Shen winks, does a peace sign, and sticks his tongue out, saying “Bet THIS makes you feel some funny new feelings about me, huh??”
Panel 6: Life now has to hold a raging and frothing-at-the-mouth Shen as he yells “Bet THIS would make it easier to get you to go to my PATREON!!!” and points at you, trying to fight you. Life is saying “Calm down, man!!”
It’s just winking, isn’t it?
Oh, ok. Thanks. I still don’t really understand, is it supposed to be the “>” symbol or is the eye doing that literally?
The symbol is used in emoticons like this: >_o to mimic the wrinkles that show up when you’re scrunching your eye closed. Nerd artists use the same symbology in comics.
I see. Would you say that the banner picture of this: https://www.openbsd.org/ is an example or is it just similar?
It’s the same I think, in the picture you linked, the pufferfish looks strained, causing it to close one eye. At least, that’s my interpretation
Uhhh possibly? I think it’s clearer with Shen because the open eye is just a circle like a letter “o”. Here’s an example of Hobbes squinting
you can see it’s similar, and presumably not inspired by the symbols, so there’s a precedent :)
Sort of both, I think? I’m guessing it started out as an emoticon, literally represented by a
>character, but comic artists started mimicking the look of it.Unresearched speculation on my part; Take it with a grain of salt.
I will accept your speculation as absolute truth. The matter is decided in my mind.