The Return of Shannon Part II
Today’s strip was a little depressing, not only because I had misread Shannon’s apartment as being real, but because Lynn Johnston seems to have no idea having Shannon mention sanity raises all kinds of issues. My boy has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and one of the big issues he has is withdrawing from what is going on around him and not interacting with the other kids or paying attention in class. When Shannon said she did this and was praised as a genius by April for doing this, my initial thought was, “Someone really hates Shannon to put this kind of coping mechanism on her. No wonder Shannon does not have any friends.” So, I opted to make it an imaginary apartment sexual fantasy and brought Howard and his shamp-Ohs directly into contact with Shannon for the purpose of retconning what I thought was very poorly done on the part of the strip.
Constable Paul Wright is visiting Elizabeth Patterson. I noticed in the April monthly letters, that Elizabeth and John talking about Elizabeth started distancing themselves from Paul and from Mtigwaki. Elizabeth went to visit Paul at his place and the descriptions she came back with were very clinical. She also had supper with Paul’s uncle and it could have been the description of a dinner with any generic Ojibwe family. But the things I noticed in particular, was Elizabeth insistence that Paul and she pretend they were not interested in each other. He cooks while she marks papers. He has to go visit his Mtigwaki family when he is in Mtigwaki. The biggest thing in the letter is that Liz does not have a single observation of Paul that is a compliment to Paul. This is a stark contrast to the previous letters. Then John Patterson’s comments basically point out that Liz is coming back because the novelty of teaching in the Northwest has worn off. All these things spell doom for the Liz-Paul relationship. So, I have been playing up all these aspects during his visit to Liz. qnjones brought back the book Cats For Total Morons Like You and Liz had Paul read it. The excerpt from the book was pretty fun to write.
Tomorrow’s strip: Artists respond to food, or Mike pretends to not hear his wife. This will be difficult to snark.
Constable Paul Wright is visiting Elizabeth Patterson. I noticed in the April monthly letters, that Elizabeth and John talking about Elizabeth started distancing themselves from Paul and from Mtigwaki. Elizabeth went to visit Paul at his place and the descriptions she came back with were very clinical. She also had supper with Paul’s uncle and it could have been the description of a dinner with any generic Ojibwe family. But the things I noticed in particular, was Elizabeth insistence that Paul and she pretend they were not interested in each other. He cooks while she marks papers. He has to go visit his Mtigwaki family when he is in Mtigwaki. The biggest thing in the letter is that Liz does not have a single observation of Paul that is a compliment to Paul. This is a stark contrast to the previous letters. Then John Patterson’s comments basically point out that Liz is coming back because the novelty of teaching in the Northwest has worn off. All these things spell doom for the Liz-Paul relationship. So, I have been playing up all these aspects during his visit to Liz. qnjones brought back the book Cats For Total Morons Like You and Liz had Paul read it. The excerpt from the book was pretty fun to write.
Tomorrow’s strip: Artists respond to food, or Mike pretends to not hear his wife. This will be difficult to snark.
posted by howard at 11:44 PM
3 Comments:
I think you are completely correct about the anti-Sex relationship. When Paul picked up Liz and they did not kiss, it was a direct contrast to when Mike picked up Deanna and they did; showing Paul and Liz were appropriately chaste compared to the married Mike and Liz. You are probably right, the whole thing is an anti-Eric backlash. Fortunately for us, it is a very snarkable backlash.
Hope you can have some fun with the small Howard set-up I put in today's entry about Mike an' Dee. :)
Thanks for the Howard setup. I had been thinking along the same lines, and your setup worked nicely with it.
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