The Band Has a Name and the Name is Stupid

Today’s snark was well-deserved. Imagine creating a character and naming that character for no other purpose than for a pun when redoing a band’s name. It has not been an uncommon practice among famous authors to name characters in such a fashion as to indicate the nature of the character. One of my favourite parts of the Book of Ruth from the Bible is that Orpah and Ruth marry Mahlon and Chilion, whose names mean “sick” and “pining”. Of course, you can tell by their names that either their parents hated them, or they are simply characters in a story, where you can tell they are not long for this world. There’s Willy Loman (Low Man) from Death of a Salesman. And one of the characters I enjoyed playing the most was Billy Bigelow (Big and Low) from Carousel. In each of these cases, the mere name of the character gave you a feel for how the author wanted you to consider them. So, what can we say about the character of Eva, we now know to be pronounced “Eh-vah”, as in forever. What does the fact that her name was created for no other reason than to name the band 4Evah and Eva, tell you about her character?

1. It tells you that Eva was created to become a member of April’s band and since she is replacing Becky, then you also get the idea she was created to become April’s new best friend.
2. Abuya, the recently given last name. I hunted through the Toronto White Pages and did in fact find one person with the last name, Abuya. In Corbeil and the surrounding area, there are no Abuyas. So I have to imagine that this name is given to Eva to connote her African ethnicity, without having to actually have Eva describe it.

And that’s all I have. She is a Becky replacement with an ethnic background. In other words, you could plug in anyone here, so long as they meet the name requirement. She could have been named “Amen Abuya” or “More Abuya” or “A Day Abuya” and met the qualifications.

After the band name snarking was done, the_berserker concluded the long-running (since last December, I think) storyline about Duncan going to trial for passing counterfeit money. qnjones began a new story arc about Gerald being fostered by Thorvald McGuire in the ways of the Viking. And qnjones as Liz popped in to say she wasn’t going to say anything, pretty much like strip Liz. I took advantage of that moment to go through the Michael monthly letters where he talked about Liz and created a post jam-packed full of “Mike on Liz” phrases, many of which are pretty funny when quoted verbatim. I popped in as Rosemary Mayes with research on Viking incest to support the foster son storyline. All the other characters I write simply commented on all those other goings-on.

Tomorrow’s strip: At long last, maybe we can get some answers to the lingering questions with Liz. I don’t know how long she can drag her feet on not coming back to Mtigwaki, but if she wants any kind of farewell, she doesn’t have any more time to make a decision. If she made a decision over the summer, then she would have to come back to say good-bye and I don’t see that happening. We have to have much Patterson back-patting before she leaves so that we can be told that she has made majour changes to them etc. That would be boring except for the whole Constable Paul Wright thing. She can’t say good-bye without giving him a good kick in the teeth. I am quite curious how Lynn is going to play this, because she has to get rid of Paul before Liz can chase after Anthony. My Constable senses are all tingling. I hope qnjones has her snarking shoes on.