Tarna of the Jungle (Concepts/Censored)

What started out as a "Man I'm in the mood to draw more ladies getting in on, oh hey, I recently has a discussion about Tarzan and it's problematic themes, especially the closer your get to the original source material... lady in a loincloth would be hot."

THEN I TRIED TO DRAW IT. Jianna Porter came out pretty much how I pictured her - I figure she's getting field-credit for a college semester/class, probably something involving  Anthropology/Archeology... or Geology. There's lots of reasons why a bunch of college students and Professors would be in the middle of a remote jungle and not all of them involve being eaten by cryptids.

Then I got to Tarna and instead of coming out as a loin-cloth clad, jungle-conquering amazon, she uh... WELL, she's wholly naked (in the uncensored version of this image), a little malnourished, she's missing a few teeth, she covered in scratches - mostly old, she has more body hair than most male Tarzans have previously been depicted with, and she appears to have broken her nose at least once. And I love the shit out of her.

Clearly there's still a lot of disbelief being suspended to make her existence possible, but my brain skittered away from "Impossibly well groomed and healthy" almost immediately. I'm not ruling out the possibility of polishing this all up and eventually drawing some stuff involving these two ladies acting like bonobos, but I think a lot of lice shampoo and toothbrush lessons will be involved first. I figure the "Oh I suddenly speak roughly 5 languages after a month of interacting with humans again after 15 years in an ape-riddled jungle" aspect will pop up, because communication and verbal (preferably enthusiastic) consent means a lot to me. That suspension of disbelief needs to do SOMETHING.

And I do get a kick out of the idea of Tarna loving t-shirts, like, they're so soft and swishy and flappy and you can use them to carry extra berries!
Pants may take more time and patience to convince her to wear..  she'd probably like skirts but I doubt anyone brought any. Then again who bring a 'SWAG' t-shirt to a jungle?
Well... I guess Bro-types can be scientists too. Or it was ironically purchased.

Anyway, meet Tarna and Jianna, and some notes to myself.

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