Exploring Eva Part I
Today’s For Better or For Worse seems to giving the beginning of what are the first strips to show us the Eva / April dynamic at school, since Eva’s original hairclip-loving first appearance. I am not sure what to make of Eva anymore. During the band rehearsals and the beach trip, Eva was completely silent, indicating no personality at all. This is the second time around where she has had a dialogue with April, and the recurring theme is one of hate and April worship. I will run it down:
1. The point of the whole boys / cars / cell phones = cowboys / horses / guns metaphor ended up with Eva making fun of the boys and a mention of wanting to punch someone out.
2. Today’s strip indicates Eva seems to hate her brother, and an over familiarity with April, to the point of suggesting she would move in with April, if her brother moved back.
3. In tomorrow’s strip, Eva attacks Becky McGuire, someone with whom she has no history whatsoever, seemingly for no other reason than because Becky used to be April’s best friend. This makes Eva seem very pitiful.
The other confusing aspect of Eva was this whole subplot of Duncan likes Eva, but Eva doesn’t know if she likes Duncan, which seems to have played out in the monthly letters only. The only hint we have seen of it was Duncan staring at Eva just after she joined the band. In today’s strip, Duncan is mysteriously gone when he was always at lunch with April and Gerald before, and with tomorrow’s strip we can see that Duncan never joined April and Gerald for lunch. Eva has replaced Duncan as the token black April friend.
It is as if, the Lynnions have Eva to replace Becky, but do not know what to do with her. Sometimes I get the feeling they are trying to play Eva as the “sassy black girl”, without having any idea what that kind of character is really like.
1. The point of the whole boys / cars / cell phones = cowboys / horses / guns metaphor ended up with Eva making fun of the boys and a mention of wanting to punch someone out.
2. Today’s strip indicates Eva seems to hate her brother, and an over familiarity with April, to the point of suggesting she would move in with April, if her brother moved back.
3. In tomorrow’s strip, Eva attacks Becky McGuire, someone with whom she has no history whatsoever, seemingly for no other reason than because Becky used to be April’s best friend. This makes Eva seem very pitiful.
The other confusing aspect of Eva was this whole subplot of Duncan likes Eva, but Eva doesn’t know if she likes Duncan, which seems to have played out in the monthly letters only. The only hint we have seen of it was Duncan staring at Eva just after she joined the band. In today’s strip, Duncan is mysteriously gone when he was always at lunch with April and Gerald before, and with tomorrow’s strip we can see that Duncan never joined April and Gerald for lunch. Eva has replaced Duncan as the token black April friend.
It is as if, the Lynnions have Eva to replace Becky, but do not know what to do with her. Sometimes I get the feeling they are trying to play Eva as the “sassy black girl”, without having any idea what that kind of character is really like.
posted by howard at 1:02 AM
2 Comments:
Yeah, it's a shame there's no close female-friend character they've been able to develop slowly over the course of more than a decade. Oh, hold on, yes there is--Becky! But Becky must be viewed as the spoiled, only-child, overly ambitious, cheating-in-school outcast. And meanwhile, Eva vacillates between having no personality and being just strange and incoherent. Bleah.
It suddenly occurred to me that Stephanie, reading this sequence of strips and getting ready to write the April monthly letter for September may have thought the same thing and said, "Gah! The only friend April has that is not a jerk is Duncan." Then she goes on to write all that Duncan praise in the monthly.
Either that, or we have this whole school sequence and Duncan doesn't make an appearance, and Stephanie said, "Gah! You can't replace Duncan with Eva." Then she goes on to write all that Duncan praise in the monthly.
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