The End of Becky?
In today’s For Better or For Worse, we had the conclusion of the Becky and her music career sequence that began during the Grade 8 grad in July, 2005. Lynn Johnston seems to be in the mode not only to think of her work like a graphic novel, but considering the collections only span about 9 months, her work spans over a series of graphic novels. You would have to be an avid reader to realize that this storyline with Becky is very much a duplicate of the “Becky loves boys a little too much” sequence from early 2005. Like today’s For Better or For Worse, it ended up in a girls’ washroom. It would take at least 3 collections to follow this story if the story is collected in its chronological order. The other possibility is that Lynn is thinking of taking each separate storyline and creating graphic novels only involving that storyline. If she were to do that, she could probably fit the whole April and Becky story together in collection entitled, “My Best Friend is One of the Them – Singing Sluts.”
I decided to continue with my tactic of applying reality to the plot situation except with the twist that after April praises Becky, Jeremy Jones is the one who gets blamed for everything. I had Shannon Lake praise April for being nice to Becky, after being mean to Becky, because the strip today seemed to be like an “Oh God! We only have one strip left this week” moment. Michael Patterson praised April for making up with her reformed evil personality. And Howard went on a strange trip with Marjee Mahaha.
I spend the day with my daughter going to her first chess tournament and my son to his second year of chess tournaments. This is an event that is dominated by boys, and I found it interesting that there was a poster for a girls-only chess event posted on the wall at the tournament, specifically mentioning that it was there to encourage girls to do chess. This made no sense to me. Chess is not any kind of physical sport which requires upper body strength, nor is it unpleasant to play, so I have no idea why girls would avoid it.
I decided to continue with my tactic of applying reality to the plot situation except with the twist that after April praises Becky, Jeremy Jones is the one who gets blamed for everything. I had Shannon Lake praise April for being nice to Becky, after being mean to Becky, because the strip today seemed to be like an “Oh God! We only have one strip left this week” moment. Michael Patterson praised April for making up with her reformed evil personality. And Howard went on a strange trip with Marjee Mahaha.
I spend the day with my daughter going to her first chess tournament and my son to his second year of chess tournaments. This is an event that is dominated by boys, and I found it interesting that there was a poster for a girls-only chess event posted on the wall at the tournament, specifically mentioning that it was there to encourage girls to do chess. This made no sense to me. Chess is not any kind of physical sport which requires upper body strength, nor is it unpleasant to play, so I have no idea why girls would avoid it.
posted by howard at 10:43 PM
2 Comments:
Though, as you point out, chess does tend to skew male. It sounds as though they were trying to counteract that tendency.
My brother was always heavily into chess, and I never saw the appeal. Did you and your sisters follow that pattern?
Both sisters played chess. To my knowledge there were no chess tournaments in my section of the country; so I don't know if they would have participated in those things.
There is definitely some skewing going on though as far as cultures go. There is a much higher percentage of kids from India/Pakistan or Japanese/Korean backgrounds participating, and most of the girls who participate come from that background. These populations are very small as a part of the overall Tucson population (less 2 percent), but you wouldn't know it looking at kid's chess tournament.
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