It's Getting Dark in Here
In order to take our hero / villain Howard Kelpforth in a new direction, I decided to let him suffer a few degradations. He gets fired from both of his jobs, one at Lakeshore Landscaping and the other at the Milborough Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Light Opera Company. He also loses his boyfriend Ross as a part of the bargain. Some person posted as Dennis (Elizabeth's gay dance partner at Anthony's wedding) the other day using some titillating language, which I presume was a lead-in to a potential Howard / Dennis relationship. Unfortunately for that person, I am not really interested in a happy ending for Howard. Dennis is way too clean cut and way too good for Howard. Law student. Ballroom dancer. Yuck. Howard is a thug. An opera-loving thug, but a thug nevertheless. I wanted the entire GLBTG community to turn against him and I took advantage of the fact that Dennis had posted (reminding me he existed) to demonstrate that even the most stalwart of Howard's potential supporters will be swayed by Lawrence and Nick to defend Elizabeth. Dennis does the stereotypical pounding of the villain in support of the helpless female. It sort of rankled me to play such a stereotype, but it served the purpose of showing that Howard is cut off from his support system. If the person posting for Dennis is reading this, sorry for abusing your character. After Howard is in prison, maybe they can have conjugal visits.
The downside of these degradations was that it made the Howard posts unremittedly dark, which takes away from I view as the main purpose of April's Real Blog, which is to snark about the abysmal writing in the For Better or For Worse strip and to do our small part in helping to correct the writing errors. My next objective was to get back to the humorous postings.
Q.N. Jones (Quincy?) doing Becky practically gift-wrapped an answer to my / Howard's problem, by creating an uncle Ralph character, who is motivated to like Howard, by Becky's endorsement and to hate Lawrence, by virtue of having a past romantic relationship with Lawrence's life partner Nick. Uncle Ralph is an electrician, which means I can place Howard working as an apprentice with him in virtually any place in Milborough I want, just long enough to snark about the characters. It was the perfect setup to allow Howard to return to the more light-hearted humorous observations I had been doing, and fits the tone of the blog better. Q.N. Jones, I bow my unworthy self at your no doubt dainty and princess-like feet (I keep imagining you're a girl, thanks to Becky. My apologies if you're not.)
I then decided to add an element of mystery to the Howard situation, by posting as his arch nemesis Lawrence Poirier doing sort of a public service announcement against Howard. As I was writing it, I was shocked at how much good common sense Lawrence was spouting. He was seriously addressing the danger of the strip Howard and was appalled by the lack of common sense being displayed by Elizabeth and April in even talking to Howard. It was surreal for me. Literally the text was ripping off my fingers as if someone else was writing it. I know now what authors talk about when say "the characters wrote themselves." It was freaking me out, man. But I digress. The only thing that was not common sense was putting in the part where Lawrence would throw in an off-reference to how wonderful Anthony was, to give a hint of doubt about whether or not Lawrence is telling the truth. You see there is no corroborating evidence as to the truth of Howard's conspiracy claims, except for the extraordinary writing and drawing that was in the actual For Better or For Worse strip. Even when I was reading it, I could not believe that LJ actually had the villain being defeated by an ear-tweaking. I was in shock when I saw it. Was she afraid that after introducing the whole fairly repugnant idea of rape, that her audience would be offended by the villain getting smacked around? Then my jaw just dropped when Anthony started coming on to Liz just after she was attacked. If you think about it logically, there is no way Lawrence would betray his childhood friends and arrange for Liz to be attacked. But, the strip itself is the corroborating evidence for Howard's story. That plus the fact Blog Becky has confirmed Howard to be gay. It should be mentioned though, that Howard has never actually declared himself to be gay. I intentionally use the phrase "my orientation" to be ambiguous. In one of the posts today, Howard mentions he had an ex-girlfriend Bea. Hopefully, this will lend some ambiguity as whether or not Howard is telling the truth or lying about Elizabeth. Is he telling the truth, or lying? I honestly do not know. I am waiting for Howard to tell me.
The downside of these degradations was that it made the Howard posts unremittedly dark, which takes away from I view as the main purpose of April's Real Blog, which is to snark about the abysmal writing in the For Better or For Worse strip and to do our small part in helping to correct the writing errors. My next objective was to get back to the humorous postings.
Q.N. Jones (Quincy?) doing Becky practically gift-wrapped an answer to my / Howard's problem, by creating an uncle Ralph character, who is motivated to like Howard, by Becky's endorsement and to hate Lawrence, by virtue of having a past romantic relationship with Lawrence's life partner Nick. Uncle Ralph is an electrician, which means I can place Howard working as an apprentice with him in virtually any place in Milborough I want, just long enough to snark about the characters. It was the perfect setup to allow Howard to return to the more light-hearted humorous observations I had been doing, and fits the tone of the blog better. Q.N. Jones, I bow my unworthy self at your no doubt dainty and princess-like feet (I keep imagining you're a girl, thanks to Becky. My apologies if you're not.)
I then decided to add an element of mystery to the Howard situation, by posting as his arch nemesis Lawrence Poirier doing sort of a public service announcement against Howard. As I was writing it, I was shocked at how much good common sense Lawrence was spouting. He was seriously addressing the danger of the strip Howard and was appalled by the lack of common sense being displayed by Elizabeth and April in even talking to Howard. It was surreal for me. Literally the text was ripping off my fingers as if someone else was writing it. I know now what authors talk about when say "the characters wrote themselves." It was freaking me out, man. But I digress. The only thing that was not common sense was putting in the part where Lawrence would throw in an off-reference to how wonderful Anthony was, to give a hint of doubt about whether or not Lawrence is telling the truth. You see there is no corroborating evidence as to the truth of Howard's conspiracy claims, except for the extraordinary writing and drawing that was in the actual For Better or For Worse strip. Even when I was reading it, I could not believe that LJ actually had the villain being defeated by an ear-tweaking. I was in shock when I saw it. Was she afraid that after introducing the whole fairly repugnant idea of rape, that her audience would be offended by the villain getting smacked around? Then my jaw just dropped when Anthony started coming on to Liz just after she was attacked. If you think about it logically, there is no way Lawrence would betray his childhood friends and arrange for Liz to be attacked. But, the strip itself is the corroborating evidence for Howard's story. That plus the fact Blog Becky has confirmed Howard to be gay. It should be mentioned though, that Howard has never actually declared himself to be gay. I intentionally use the phrase "my orientation" to be ambiguous. In one of the posts today, Howard mentions he had an ex-girlfriend Bea. Hopefully, this will lend some ambiguity as whether or not Howard is telling the truth or lying about Elizabeth. Is he telling the truth, or lying? I honestly do not know. I am waiting for Howard to tell me.
posted by howard at 12:21 AM
3 Comments:
I loved Howard's visit to Lilliput's and his innocent observations about Elly's behavior and the way she interacts with her employees. That was brilliant! :)
I was wondering who was doing the Lawrence postings. The emphasis on Anthony's heroism gives just the right touch to lend doubt about Lawrence's motives.
I must say, I hope Howard's story will end up true, but it sure is suspenseful waiting to see how it all comes together. I know what you mean about the characters telling you things about themselves.
Quicksilver Nefertiti,
This is an obscure question, but are you familiar with Canadian laws prosecuting assault? I am curious about what will actually happen to Howard after he is incarcerated, just in case LJ doesn't tell us.
Dennis jumped in to see how you would use him. Nothing was intended except maybe what you decided to do. You used the character as a point to further the direction you wanted to go. You used him well.
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