September Monthly Letters
As is my custom, I evaluate the monthly letters from For Better or For Worse for things which affect my characters in April’s Real Blog. Normally aprilp_katje does this too, but she must be busy with something to skip this ritual. It’s the first time she has skipped the monthly letters in over a year of doing April’s Real Blog. I was quite surprised. However, aprilp_katje did drop in to retcon away April’s monthly letter where she said:
Anyways, I totally blend with Duncan and even though he's with Eva, we've promised to know each other all of our lives.
As for me, I don’t particularly care if Eva is with Duncan or Jeremy Jones. However, the_berserker takes personal offence at it, and susannamoodie, who had been posting as Duncan’s girlfriend Zandra Larson, has apparently sequestered herself from posting. I hope susannamoodie is not ill or destitute or ticked off at me about that whole goat-headed baby monster story I created with Zandra in it. Nevertheless, the Zandra / Duncan relationship is the only reason Duncan is not with Eva in April’s Real Blog. I had prepared a long Jeremy and Eva break up story, in the event aprilp_katje did not retcon it. The story was basically a snark about how Eva and Duncan were supposed to have this whole “he likes her, but she doesn’t want to commit, but then eventually decides she likes him” story except it was all hidden from view and Jeremy reinterpreted some of the Eva actions of late, as clues that this whole hidden story was going on. So the snark was how Lynn didn’t bother telling the Eva / Duncan story, even in the monthly letters.
Aside from that indirect reference, my characters of Jeremy Jones and Howard, got no mention this month, as usual. So that leaves me Constable Paul Wright. He is mentioned twice in Liz’s letter.
Hooray for full-time work! That means I'll be able to keep my savings account topped up, and make enough to cover my expenses. It's excellent news. It also leaves me with my weekends free (I'll be driving to visit Paul AOAP - as often as possible), summers off, and a reasonable commute.
I really do not know if Liz’s comment about driving to visit Paul AOAP is going to be a monthly-letters only storyline, to account for the fact that Liz in the strip basically put him off until Christmas. Nevertheless, I will have to account for that possibility. Paul will have to have a few days open on the weekends, just in case Liz decides to show up.
Of course I also got desperately lonely and missed Paul tremendously. I still do, but Milborough is that much closer to White River, and I'll have a regular schedule so I can make long range plans - at long last!
The monthly letters writer doesn’t seem to know White River is not Otter County. But last month’s visit to White River wasn’t really to visit Paul’s parents, but to visit Paul alone. Oops! In fact, a scan over all the monthly letters shows Otter County has never been mentioned. That error aside, the interesting thing to note is that when Liz talks about Paul she no longer mentions the communication rituals (snail mail, phone call, IM messaging, e-mailing) which she studiously mentioned in the monthly letters from Mtigwaki. In fact, there is no mention of Paul communicating with Liz at all. In the strip, all we have seen is Liz sending an e-mail to Paul, but not the reverse, like when April would send one back to Liz. The inferred message is that Paul has started to pull back from the relationship. I have been doing that to a certain degree, but I suppose I can step it up a little.
Tomorrow’s strip: Liz stupidly wanders around in her bathrobe and realizes where she is. I am beginning to wonder if this isn’t some kind of bizarre snark of Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, with Liz playing the part of Arthur Dent.
Anyways, I totally blend with Duncan and even though he's with Eva, we've promised to know each other all of our lives.
As for me, I don’t particularly care if Eva is with Duncan or Jeremy Jones. However, the_berserker takes personal offence at it, and susannamoodie, who had been posting as Duncan’s girlfriend Zandra Larson, has apparently sequestered herself from posting. I hope susannamoodie is not ill or destitute or ticked off at me about that whole goat-headed baby monster story I created with Zandra in it. Nevertheless, the Zandra / Duncan relationship is the only reason Duncan is not with Eva in April’s Real Blog. I had prepared a long Jeremy and Eva break up story, in the event aprilp_katje did not retcon it. The story was basically a snark about how Eva and Duncan were supposed to have this whole “he likes her, but she doesn’t want to commit, but then eventually decides she likes him” story except it was all hidden from view and Jeremy reinterpreted some of the Eva actions of late, as clues that this whole hidden story was going on. So the snark was how Lynn didn’t bother telling the Eva / Duncan story, even in the monthly letters.
Aside from that indirect reference, my characters of Jeremy Jones and Howard, got no mention this month, as usual. So that leaves me Constable Paul Wright. He is mentioned twice in Liz’s letter.
Hooray for full-time work! That means I'll be able to keep my savings account topped up, and make enough to cover my expenses. It's excellent news. It also leaves me with my weekends free (I'll be driving to visit Paul AOAP - as often as possible), summers off, and a reasonable commute.
I really do not know if Liz’s comment about driving to visit Paul AOAP is going to be a monthly-letters only storyline, to account for the fact that Liz in the strip basically put him off until Christmas. Nevertheless, I will have to account for that possibility. Paul will have to have a few days open on the weekends, just in case Liz decides to show up.
Of course I also got desperately lonely and missed Paul tremendously. I still do, but Milborough is that much closer to White River, and I'll have a regular schedule so I can make long range plans - at long last!
The monthly letters writer doesn’t seem to know White River is not Otter County. But last month’s visit to White River wasn’t really to visit Paul’s parents, but to visit Paul alone. Oops! In fact, a scan over all the monthly letters shows Otter County has never been mentioned. That error aside, the interesting thing to note is that when Liz talks about Paul she no longer mentions the communication rituals (snail mail, phone call, IM messaging, e-mailing) which she studiously mentioned in the monthly letters from Mtigwaki. In fact, there is no mention of Paul communicating with Liz at all. In the strip, all we have seen is Liz sending an e-mail to Paul, but not the reverse, like when April would send one back to Liz. The inferred message is that Paul has started to pull back from the relationship. I have been doing that to a certain degree, but I suppose I can step it up a little.
Tomorrow’s strip: Liz stupidly wanders around in her bathrobe and realizes where she is. I am beginning to wonder if this isn’t some kind of bizarre snark of Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, with Liz playing the part of Arthur Dent.
posted by howard at 12:52 AM
4 Comments:
The monthly-letter post was sort of like a homework assignment that took the better part of a day for me to do, and having a full-time job makes it hard for me to pull these off anymore, as I don't want to spend the entire evening doing it. Maybe I'll do one belatedly this weekend, but I'm seriously considering dropping them, as I was finding less and less to have April say about them of late.
I did feel as though the pets letter was a shout-out to us though. There was the musical-vet idea, Mike giving completely unhelpful, insulting advice, and April actually insulting him. Hi, Steph! :)
The Eva/Duncan retcon was purely for the_berserker. I know she won't be happy about this, and she's also away from home until around the tenth, and therefore not available to comment. I figure we can't fight off the pairing indefinitely, which is why I gave Elly the "it will happen" line. But this way, the_berserker can decide how she wants to handle her side of the story. So, hold onto your Jeremy-Eva breakup snark. :)
It is sad to see the passing of an era, however, I understand perfectly your motivation for not wanting to address the enormous number of inconsistencies and retcons that were in this last series of monthly letters. I suppose this means that your practice in the past of specifically requesting that ARB posters not snark the monthly letters until you had a chance to snark them has gone by the wayside too.
I agree the singing vet idea was as blatant a shout out to us as there could be.
It will be interesting to get the_berserker's reaction when she gets back to the Duncan / Eva pairing. I had hoped that Lynn would show at least one strip with Duncan and Eva actually touching each other before making an announcement they were linked. On the other hand, April and Gerald have been together since 2003, and they only kiss once a year.
Yup, go ahead and snark. I might change my mind next month, but there's a good chance I won't.
Firing the snark cannons!!
Post a Comment
<< Home