A Busy Week
Meetings Meetings Meetings at work. Then my group, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Chorus did a concert Thursday, Friday and have one this Sunday afternoon. And the most perilous of all, my boy did a Boy Scout Camporee without me, although I did drive down for the final closing ceremony bonfire tonight. As I write this, I can hear my daughter and her friend having a sleepover (better called an awake-over). Despite this personal action, when aprilp_katje announced that she was going to be absent on April’s Real Blog for the first time in centuries, I thought it would be fun for there to be a lot of posts waiting for her when she got back.
In the olden days of April’s Real Blog lore, the real-time posting was a fun, but tricky thing to do, but also a great source of lots of posts. My idea was that I would take the 3 characters I post the most and have them go to Corbeil, where aprilp_katje had established April was to rescue April. I figured I could use my 3 characters to get some interplay and differing perspective, and I threw in qnjones’ Becky, because she had been pretty much the only person/character who continued to do post interplay after aprilp_katje departed. Not only that but qnjones is superb at real-time posting. I figured if qnjones dropped in, she would see the action and get inspired. The other possibility was that aprilp_katje could return before I got done, see the action and get inspired. That did not exactly happen, unfortunately. I can’t really complain though. We haven’t done a real-time story on April’s Real Blog in a long time, and I had set it up so the 3 characters could interplay in case no one appeared. They were different enough from each other; I thought it worked out OK anyway.
As I was writing it, I decided to use a running joke of powdered sugar, and imply there was something intimate about it. The nice thing about April’s Real Blog and the way we have played up Elly Patterson’s love for pastries, the appearance of powdered sugar could also simply mean the people have been eating pastries together. It was fun to play them together where it could go either way, depending on how people interpreted my powdered sugar innuendo.
Lastly, I put in my interpretation of how I thought Lynn Johnston had planned to do April’s story with Gerald. She dropped hints Jeremy was interested in April, hints April was nervous about Becky around her boyfriend, and hints that Gerald was not all that nice a guy. I think if she had the time, the story I projected might have been the one she would have done.
Tomorrow’s strip: Best (of worst, depending on your perspective) of the pets. Or, a series of drawings once again demonstrating Lynn does not know how to draw domesticated animals.
In the olden days of April’s Real Blog lore, the real-time posting was a fun, but tricky thing to do, but also a great source of lots of posts. My idea was that I would take the 3 characters I post the most and have them go to Corbeil, where aprilp_katje had established April was to rescue April. I figured I could use my 3 characters to get some interplay and differing perspective, and I threw in qnjones’ Becky, because she had been pretty much the only person/character who continued to do post interplay after aprilp_katje departed. Not only that but qnjones is superb at real-time posting. I figured if qnjones dropped in, she would see the action and get inspired. The other possibility was that aprilp_katje could return before I got done, see the action and get inspired. That did not exactly happen, unfortunately. I can’t really complain though. We haven’t done a real-time story on April’s Real Blog in a long time, and I had set it up so the 3 characters could interplay in case no one appeared. They were different enough from each other; I thought it worked out OK anyway.
As I was writing it, I decided to use a running joke of powdered sugar, and imply there was something intimate about it. The nice thing about April’s Real Blog and the way we have played up Elly Patterson’s love for pastries, the appearance of powdered sugar could also simply mean the people have been eating pastries together. It was fun to play them together where it could go either way, depending on how people interpreted my powdered sugar innuendo.
Lastly, I put in my interpretation of how I thought Lynn Johnston had planned to do April’s story with Gerald. She dropped hints Jeremy was interested in April, hints April was nervous about Becky around her boyfriend, and hints that Gerald was not all that nice a guy. I think if she had the time, the story I projected might have been the one she would have done.
Tomorrow’s strip: Best (of worst, depending on your perspective) of the pets. Or, a series of drawings once again demonstrating Lynn does not know how to draw domesticated animals.
posted by howard at 12:02 AM
3 Comments:
Sometimes you can't tell which stories people like or don't like, and sometimes you can tell very clearly. Such was the case with this story.
Although I enjoyed writing the epic "Corbeil Rescue" quite a bit, and loaded it to the brim with snark, it seems clear to me from some of the reactions I have gotten (or actually the lack thereof) that the extraneous story-driven stuff is passé on this Blog. There was a time when an effort like that would have met with some sort of comment, if for no other reason than the sheer length of it. No longer, apparently. Oooh a pun. "No longer".
When I last received positive character comments, it was never for Howard or Jeremy Jones, but it was for Michael and Constable Paul Wright. Howard and Jeremy were story-driven, but Michael and Constable Paul Wright just made comments. Lesson learned.
Comments only from here on out, I guess, if I can muster the energy after all the energy wasted on that story.
I went back to November, 2005 to read my O. Ranga Tan deleted scene from the last time aprilp_katje smacked down a storyline of mine, and it is still pretty darn funny.
But then I read my Corbeil rescue sequence again, and it is not funny at all. There are loads of strip references in it, but it is a dreary piece. I don't know how I could have thought it was good.
Novemeber 11, 2005 was O. Ranga Tan, in case you are interested in reading it.
I read the comments back then which caused me to have to delete that scene. At the time, I had decided Elly would have an audition for new best friends for April. aprilp_katje made the presumption that Elly would pick Eva, and thus it would pervert the character as being one Elly was thrusting on April, as opposed to one April picked herself. I had intended my O. Ranga Tan story, instead.
At the time, I had been posting on ARB for about 5 months then, and she was very protective of how things went in those days, taking great pains to preserve timelines and the such. And I guess she didn't trust I wouldn't screw things up.
I have been doing this now for 1 year and 10 months, and there are so many days now where I am the only participant in ARB, I was taken aback to discover that things have essentially not changed since November 11, 2005. The comments written to me back then squelching my audition story, I could literally copy and change "best friend audition" to "Corbeil rescue" and they would fit perfectly with the comments that were made to the "Corbeil rescue." She still doesn't trust me after all this time.
I got a bone tossed to me that said by a memo the ear-tweaking result of the Corbeil rescue was allowed. There's no way to make officially-sanctioned humour funny, and my latest stuff has reaked. I think I will pop in if someone wants to play, but otherwise I am going to take a little break to refresh the creative juices.
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