The self-image gap.....

One thing I've noticed over the years is that Lynn seems to have no real idea how other people perceive the strip; as an example, she spent years not realizing that a lot of people really hated the idea of Anthony and Elizabeth rekindling their high-school romance because it never occurred to her that people hated how limiting that concept was and how much they despised the person she was trying to depict as a sympathetic male lead who'd gotten in over his head. The problem as I see it is trying to determine why this might be; since she gets sort of evasive and testy when confronted, our best bet is to read the strip to see what's going on in her mind. What we see a lot of the time is a character being chided for worrying about superficial things like their appearance or how other people might interpret their behavior; that is, of course, when the critical opinion of others is not dismissed out of hand. It would seem that life is too short to please people who care enough to ask questions; it's best to accept the ignorant praise of the Connies of the world who don't care enough to want to help.