April's Parents are Out of Town, Mine are In
My dad and step-mom are in town from North Carolina this weekend, so the next few days my posts are going to be early morning and late evening only.
Today saw the return of qnjones from sick leave. All of my characters have their main interplay with her characters, it was nice to have her back to get some of that back and forth going again.
Today's strip recycled the old "April is in a bad mood, but doesn't know why it drives people away" gag. I don't think the Lynnions, when they decided to use this gag again, realized how it made April look, considering the source of her ire is a woman who has been waiting on her hand and foot. The source of her anger should be her parents, but the complaints made yesterday were against Connie. As was analyzed in the comments for yesterday's Blog entry, April has been portrayed as being in a perpetually bad mood when it comes to school. On April's Real Blog, we have her on the yearbook staff and going to see Gerald play hockey. But in the strip and in the monthly letters, April does nothing in school, but go to school. She has no extracurricular activities, and she doesn't even go to see her jock boyfriend play sports.
I think it is because the strip has her locked into doing this afterschool job at Lilliputs. If I were April's dad, and I knew she had a college fund that would pay for her university education, I might want my daughter to do something else in high school, instead of spending every afternoon saddled down with work. Even the people I knew in high school who worked after school jobs, got to spend some money on dates or something fun.
Instead, you get this distinct element of the degree to which her parents do not trust her. She gets lectures about the internet and when her parents go out of town, it not sufficient for the neighbour to check on her, the neighbour must also live with her, and cook and clean for her. This sort of thing says, "I do not trust you. You must be watched every minute when we are out of town. And after school, you must work where we can keep an eye on you. Not only that, but you are not competent enough to feed yourself, or even to make your lunch at school. We cannot give you money to pay for your lunch at school, because we do not know where you will actually spend it."
Tomorrow's strip: Connie actually snarks on the Patterson parents lack of trust, but unfortunately April takes it as a compliment that she is doing something nice for her parents. Strip April is an idiot.
Today saw the return of qnjones from sick leave. All of my characters have their main interplay with her characters, it was nice to have her back to get some of that back and forth going again.
Today's strip recycled the old "April is in a bad mood, but doesn't know why it drives people away" gag. I don't think the Lynnions, when they decided to use this gag again, realized how it made April look, considering the source of her ire is a woman who has been waiting on her hand and foot. The source of her anger should be her parents, but the complaints made yesterday were against Connie. As was analyzed in the comments for yesterday's Blog entry, April has been portrayed as being in a perpetually bad mood when it comes to school. On April's Real Blog, we have her on the yearbook staff and going to see Gerald play hockey. But in the strip and in the monthly letters, April does nothing in school, but go to school. She has no extracurricular activities, and she doesn't even go to see her jock boyfriend play sports.
I think it is because the strip has her locked into doing this afterschool job at Lilliputs. If I were April's dad, and I knew she had a college fund that would pay for her university education, I might want my daughter to do something else in high school, instead of spending every afternoon saddled down with work. Even the people I knew in high school who worked after school jobs, got to spend some money on dates or something fun.
Instead, you get this distinct element of the degree to which her parents do not trust her. She gets lectures about the internet and when her parents go out of town, it not sufficient for the neighbour to check on her, the neighbour must also live with her, and cook and clean for her. This sort of thing says, "I do not trust you. You must be watched every minute when we are out of town. And after school, you must work where we can keep an eye on you. Not only that, but you are not competent enough to feed yourself, or even to make your lunch at school. We cannot give you money to pay for your lunch at school, because we do not know where you will actually spend it."
Tomorrow's strip: Connie actually snarks on the Patterson parents lack of trust, but unfortunately April takes it as a compliment that she is doing something nice for her parents. Strip April is an idiot.
posted by howard at 11:27 PM
1 Comments:
Why would John and Elly suddenly start to act this way with April, when they did not do so with Mike and Liz?
The trend started a little while back. The strips showing April and her gang (Becky, Duncan, Gerald) roaming about alone doing things together were usually the Sunday colour strips, since it did not provide enough material for a whole plot in a week. When Merrie was born, the Sunday colours started refocusing on Mike and Dee with a new baby strips. The weeklies started focusing on April not getting along with Becky, but there were still the occasional Sunday colour strips that showed the gang or April and Becky doing things together. This year in high school, nothing. Not one strip of April and her friends enjoying anything. It is like watching April's descent into depression and madness.
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