Ret-Con Killed the Snarking Star

Once I realized that the monthly letters are just snark, then I gained a new appreciation for them. Not only are they snark, but they give shout outs to the snark we have been doing. They are actually pretty good snark and in many respects follow the plotlines established in the strip better than we do in April’s Real Blog. I really don’t see the need to retcon them anymore. Of course, I can say that not being responsible for any major characters. Maybe I would feel differently if I were, but probably not. After all, I don’t have any problem with Jeremy Jones looking like a 40-year-old man, and have gotten quite a bit of humour out of that idea.

Jeremy Jones and Howard were unmentioned again. Constable Paul Wright was mentioned. I now know he is Metis (1/2 Irish) and not pure Ojibway, so I can abandon his “English is not my first language” way of speaking. Also, since he is ½ Irish, I can abandon any ideas that he would be anti-drinking. Just kidding.

I loved having the good constable play off of the Liz monthly letter writing, particularly the Pet letter, which was extremely funny (Liz tearing up over talking with Shiimsa and the different meowing sounds) and actually played extremely well with schmoosie’s Liz, who used to post regularly about Liz’s obsession with cat clothes for Shiimsa. I got retconned on the cat gift humour (the water fountain was a hysterical gift by the way, Stephanie), which kind of squished a whole plot I had in mind of having the good constable trying to find a suitable cat toy to satisfy cat-crazy Liz. Oh well. Can’t have everything, I guess.

Then the coup de grace of snark was delivered in the Deanna letter with her comment that Mike might morph into a mushroom. When I read this I thought, “Stephanie has just hand-delivered, wrapped, and given me snark on a silver platter. What would mushroom Mike be like? The obvious choice was anti-Mike, because honestly I do not know if the thought processes of an actual mushroom would be that different from Mike. Plus the Deanna monthly letter actually went into great detail about Mike’s failings, so I thought anti-Mike would play very well with that idea. The other aspect from the letters that cried out to be addressed was the myriad of slams against Mira and Wilf Sobinski in the letters. I thought this was fairly safe ground, since there is a whole background of 3 years of strips and monthly letters pointing out that the Pattersons, and in particular Deanna, do not like Mira and Wilf. This would work well with the Deanna monthly letter where she talks up her sister as a good example of what to do vs. her parents’ bad example, when Andrea Sobinski is a virtual unknown in the strip and in the monthly letters. The other aspect that worked very well with it, was that in the Mike monthly letter, he continually referred to himself as making a change or being changed. It played so well with the mushroom transformation, it was a near perfect compliment.

So, I fed hints all day, hoping to entice ellcee, who has recently become active posting as Deanna to do a story with me. As I launched into it, it was my hope that ellcee would like the idea of snarking mushroom Mike as the anti-Mike and maybe get into a little Deanna character development when it came to her reasons for praising Andrea. This proved not to be the case. ellcee started doing retcon posts that said that not only did none of the monthly letters originally contain anti-Sobinski material (Elly edited it all in), but Howard had not even come to the Patterson apartment looking for mushroom Mike and was imagining the whole thing. Normally, I try to go along with what my fellow posters post, but that was a little too far a field for me. There is no way Howard, who has been to and stayed overnight at the Kelpfroth apartment many times, would make that kind of error. Not only that, but if I went along with it, I would miss the opportunity to do all the monthly letter snark I had set up to do. So, instead of getting a posting sequence with ellcee on the personality aspects of mushroom Mike, I had to treat the ellcee posts as Deanna being too embarrassed to post what was really happening. Oh well. Better luck next time.

Tomorrow’s strip has Liz confronting April over wearing her clothes, which is actually a fairly nice lead-in from the Eva strips. April wears an outfit that reminds me of my all-time favourite line from the long-cancelled TV show, Ned and Stacey. Ned sees Stacey in an outfit and says, “That outfit tells men: Take me. Take me. Take me to the circus.” Or, nothing says that your mother only lets you shop for uniforms, like April’s outfit tomorrow. Hopefully no one will retcon it and say April never wore that outfit.