Otherwise Engaged
In today’s strip, John Patterson was played as a buffoon, which is pretty common for him, so my characters got a lot of mileage off his emotional despair over trading in his beloved Bushwhacker. I was very tempted to go with the porn joke version of “Bushwhacker” but that joke has been beaten to death in other For Better or For Worse communities so I went with an actual bush and of course, states president George Bush.
This story was very quickly taken over by the Becky and Howard get engaged story, which pretty much defied my ability to use strip snark on it. I wrote a long essay trying to make the various aspects of the characters who should care about such a thing work, with Krystle and Thorvald McGuire together. Those kinds of posts are somewhat frustrating, because qnjones, to whom the characters belong, usually does these masterfully chaotic scenes with them in it, and I am never able to duplicate that sense of anarchy to my satisfaction. However, I took a shot at trying to explain why Krystle and Thorvald would agree for Becky to be engaged to a gay man in his 20s, which would keep somewhat within their characters as expressed in April’s Real Blog.
Marjee Mahaha is an interesting character and in her bio writeup, it says she has never been without a boyfriend since she was very young. So, I have been playing up her interest in Howard as an odd mixture of friendship with a co-worker and workout buddy with her strong desire to not be alone for awhile now. I have been throwing stuff out stuff about Marjee for weeks now to develop that idea. I have known women who believed they could convert a gay man they liked to heterosexuality, and they all met with failure, some of them disastrous failure. qnjones played up a sisterly rivalry between Becky and Marjee on that theme tonight, which enhanced the situation nicely and aprilp_katje picked up on it with a few subtly written lines from the Marjee perspective.
The only other thing running is Jeremy Jones and Dirne Aufkleber. Jeremy has such horrible breakups, and this one will be no exception. I have a series of humiliations planned for poor Jeremy.
Tomorrow’s strip: The story arc concludes as thinking about Anthony and Thérèse gets John excited for Elly. This is so heavy-handed and so obviously written by a woman. No self-respecting man would ever praise another man with “He’s such a nice guy. He’s smart and funny. He’s been a good provider. He’s hard-working and faithful.” After the smart and subtle writing of the Anthony dialogue, earlier in the week, this is pretty jarring.
This story was very quickly taken over by the Becky and Howard get engaged story, which pretty much defied my ability to use strip snark on it. I wrote a long essay trying to make the various aspects of the characters who should care about such a thing work, with Krystle and Thorvald McGuire together. Those kinds of posts are somewhat frustrating, because qnjones, to whom the characters belong, usually does these masterfully chaotic scenes with them in it, and I am never able to duplicate that sense of anarchy to my satisfaction. However, I took a shot at trying to explain why Krystle and Thorvald would agree for Becky to be engaged to a gay man in his 20s, which would keep somewhat within their characters as expressed in April’s Real Blog.
Marjee Mahaha is an interesting character and in her bio writeup, it says she has never been without a boyfriend since she was very young. So, I have been playing up her interest in Howard as an odd mixture of friendship with a co-worker and workout buddy with her strong desire to not be alone for awhile now. I have been throwing stuff out stuff about Marjee for weeks now to develop that idea. I have known women who believed they could convert a gay man they liked to heterosexuality, and they all met with failure, some of them disastrous failure. qnjones played up a sisterly rivalry between Becky and Marjee on that theme tonight, which enhanced the situation nicely and aprilp_katje picked up on it with a few subtly written lines from the Marjee perspective.
The only other thing running is Jeremy Jones and Dirne Aufkleber. Jeremy has such horrible breakups, and this one will be no exception. I have a series of humiliations planned for poor Jeremy.
Tomorrow’s strip: The story arc concludes as thinking about Anthony and Thérèse gets John excited for Elly. This is so heavy-handed and so obviously written by a woman. No self-respecting man would ever praise another man with “He’s such a nice guy. He’s smart and funny. He’s been a good provider. He’s hard-working and faithful.” After the smart and subtle writing of the Anthony dialogue, earlier in the week, this is pretty jarring.
posted by howard at 9:28 PM
5 Comments:
I think that the issue with me, is that when I am writing a character I did not originate or am not actively posting, I try to imitate their style of conversation, but I catch myself writing everyone the same way I talk. Then I have to go back and say, "OK. Thorvald wouldn't speak that way. Toss in a Norse mythology reference line here. Or Paul Wright wouldn't use that many adverbial phrases." This is particularly difficult with Thorvald, for example, because I would have never thought to have him go through the arson storyline or the exchange of children. Those kinds of details are your trademark.
No self-respecting man would ever praise another man with “He’s such a nice guy. He’s smart and funny. He’s been a good provider. He’s hard-working and faithful.” After the smart and subtle writing of the Anthony dialogue, earlier in the week, this is pretty jarring.
Not only that, but in what bizarro universe did he observe Anthony and Thérèse, together or in isolation. Do the Lynnions think their retcon power will wipe out our memory?
I catch myself writing everyone the same way I talk. Then I have to go back and say, "OK. Thorvald wouldn't speak that way. Toss in a Norse mythology reference line here. Or Paul Wright wouldn't use that many adverbial phrases."
I often find I need to remind myself that April wouldn't have the same vocabulary as I do. And I have to make her sentence structure simpler. :)
I wonder about the retcon thing too. I cannot tell if they are serious in expecting us to think about Anthony and Therese the same way John does, or if this just supposed to be another characterization of John as being completely clueless. However, I remember Liz having similar thoughts about Anthony and Therese when she visited Anthony over the summer. So, I suspect they really want us to think that way.
By the way, I really love the youthfulness you throw into the April dialogue, particularly in your Blog entries.
That was the reason for the vocabulary words? Too funny!
That's why I started the whole "words from the vocab quiz" gag, so I could get away with using words I normally would, that teens would not.
That was why I picked up that device, too. :)
Thanks for the kind words about April's language, Howard!
Post a Comment
<< Home