Thursday, May 04, 2006

Goodbye Dirne

I was curious as to whether there would be any outcry to preserve the made up character of Dirne Aufkleber, since I introduced the idea last week that she and Jeremy would no longer be dating. There wasn’t any, so I did not have any guilty feelings about doing away with her today. Dirne suddenly developed the other name of Eliza, intentionally similar to Elizabeth and we find out that she used to date a guy named Tony, short for Anthony. I did this whole thing about the ambiguity of Liz’s motivations for how she deals with Anthony, by using Dirne / Elizabeth. Jeremy Jones plays the part of Constable Paul Wright and Jeremy’s future sis plays the part of Thérèse Caine. I hope it was obvious, since I played it so broadly, I would be disappointed if the people who read April’s Real Blog (which I suppose these days are just aprilp_katje and me) missed it. Dirne plays innocent, as Liz does, when we know she is not innocent in her dealings with Anthony or Jeremy. I thought the analogy was a good way for Dirne to go out, particularly with her insistence that Jeremy gets rid of his future sister, in a similar fashion that Thérèse Caine has been conveniently completely obliterated from Anthony Caine’s life, so Liz will never have to deal with her. I have been doing Dirne for over a month now, which is surprising to me considering I just planned her as a one-note joke character. But aprilp_katje and graytail088 and susannamoodie reacted so nicely to her, I kept her around and to pretty good effect, I think.

The other main storyline had to do with snarking John’s monster-sized monthly letter. I pulled it into Word and it came out as 5 pages long. Ironically, my “Howard goes to the dentist” post also ran about the same length. I have now officially snarked all the May monthly letters and this was the one I dreaded the most, because there was so much unfunny stuff in it. However, I think it turned out well considering the source material.

Tomorrow’s strip: Gary Crane introduces the idea that Susan Dokis would like to replace Liz. This makes it easy for Liz to depart Mtigwaki, but unfortunately it is yet another strip to which Constable Paul Wright cannot make a comment in April’s Real Blog. I hope that Liz addresses the issue with the good constable by week’s end. We know the strip next week moves to Lovey and Elly by May 12, possibly addressing the reason why they are together with Robin without Mike and Dee being there. If Robin is a sick boy, he can’t go to day care, so Elly comes up to stay with Robin until he is well. As I recollect the May 12 strip, Robin seemed to be healthy, so I am not too worried he is at death’s door. I am curious as to whether or not the Kelpfroths will receive the blame for Robin’s earaches. I have laid the groundwork for it, in the event that they are. In any case, I hope that Liz talks to Paul by the end of the week, because I don’t want to have to wait weeks and weeks for that conversation after Elly finally finishes her long and boring talk with Lovey.

2 Comments:

Blogger April Patterson said...

I loved what you did with the Eliza/Dirne-Liz parallels! It couldn't have been a more perfect fit if you'd planned it all along! :)

I'm rather dreading next week, since we know what lies ahead with the Friday strip.

5:01 AM  
Blogger howard said...

At least we can make fun of how much grander a grandma Lovey is than Elly. Which I actually think is true. Lovey has genuinely taken a hand in raising Meredith and Robin more than Elly or Mira or for that matter, sometimes even Dee and Mike have taken.

5:47 AM  

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