Jeremy Jones R.I.P.

We have gotten to a point in April’s Real Blog, where a number of our regular posters have found themselves in the situation where their characters will never appear again in the For Better or For Worse strip. the_berserker, in particular, who posts as Duncan Anderson, has established that her character has gone to Barbados and is showing all signs of not ever coming back.

I had similar feelings about my character of Jeremy Jones. His sign-off by Lynn Johnston was one strip where he insulted Shannon Lake by saying she talked slowly, and April yelled at him “Jeremy, you jerk!” I noticed that when the line of people who had made comments to Shannon, came back to Shannon to apologize after her speech on the cafeteria table, Jeremy Jones was not one of them. He seems to have been set up by Lynn Johnston as the unrepentant villain. When he did not show up at the Hearts Together telethon, I knew he had been officially separated from Becky McGuire, and his cafeteria appearance was his last one for the strip.

Jeremy Jones got his start in the strip by bullying April Patterson, an event which ultimately led to his getting seriously injured when he sought revenge on April for writing the "Germy, Wormy Jeremy Jones" song to get revenge on him for his bullying. One of the most intriguing parts of the story for me, was the way Lynn Johnston ended it. Jeremy is hit by a truck and ends up in the hospital. Then of all the kids in the school, Jeremy is only visited in the hospital by April Patterson. Poor Jeremy Jones. Let us have sympathy for him and his poor home life. Only, the problem is...What would have happened if Jeremy Jones had not gotten hit by that truck? What would he have done after he chased down April and caught her? He would have beaten the crap out of her is what would have happened, and it is entirely possible it would have been April in that hospital instead of Jeremy. That would have made for a very different (and I think a lot better) story. In the year or so I have been posting for Jeremy, I have not really had any problems with his taking abuse from other characters.

I thought a good way for him to go out would be to duplicate his original story, except this time with a deadly injury, and rely on aprilp_katje to provide sympathy again, and nobody else cares. The other aspect of that story, was the idea that Jeremy Jones actually liked April Patterson, but did not know how to express it without bullying. I wanted to touch on that part of the story too, so it had to be a girl who leads Jeremy to his death.

To this end, I have been relying on a story qnjones told in one of the April’s Real Blog temporary offshoots, a community college course taken by some of the adults in the For Better of For Worse cast at the Milborough Community College and Tractor Pull. qnjones chose to portray Gerald Delaney-Forsythe’s mother, whom she named Melanie, and turned her into a super-thin, obsessed with dieting and cleanliness woman.

This is the part I adopted from one of Melanie’s posts after a long story talking about why she learned to stay thin, after another child named Ronson van Daam called her fatass when she was 6:

Almost ten years later, Ronson van Daam was my date at my sweet sixteen party. If he hadn't been smothered when that truck of tulips overturned on him during his visit to one of his father's tulip farms, Ronson and I probably would have married.

The idea occurred to me that I could recreate the situation with the character of Melanie’s daughter, Honoria, turn it into a van Daam family curse, and this time Jeremy Jones would take an unappreciated, tulip-related death to save the girl.

Of course, this is just a story coming from nowhere essentially, and the purpose for April’s Real Blog is not fiction-writing, but snarking. So the way I decided to make it work with For Better or For Worse snarking was to draw parallels with the Liz and Anthony romance storyline wherever I could. Liz and Anthony treated a lot of people poorly during the course of their romance, and Jeremy represents them. Both Honoria and her ex-boyfriend, Bronson van Daam, take turns representing Anthony and Elizabeth. Then there was Gerald Delaney-Forsythe to provide the comedy relief by making fun of anything silly going on in the strip, like saying, “Hoo!”

The other aspect of it was to make it somewhat like a Scooby-Doo mystery, with a false mask unveiling, (making fun of Elly’s nose growth over the years), and evidence gathered with the unexpected confession of the villain, when the mask has been removed.

The long term setup for this was to set up Jeremy Jones and Honoria Delaney-Forsythe as boyfriend and girlfriend. Then to establish Honoria as being a vain girl, who concentrates more on ladylike behavior and boys with trust funds, than on anything else. Then to establish that Honoria considers Jeremy Jones to be acceptable, but far below the standards of her ex-boyfriend Bronson van Daam. I have been beating those drums for a long time (months and months), to establish those characteristics, so it would not seem out of character, when the flowers finally fall on Jeremy, for Honoria to completely ignore him and what happened to him, in favour of her ex-boyfriend. This is again to emulate the story-telling with Elizabeth preferring her ex-boyfriend Anthony over everyone else, except with moments to establish the credibility for Elizabeth’s character to do that.

Overall, I think it worked out well. In the event Lynn Johnston fools me, and brings back Jeremy Jones, then I have an idea in mind which will allow him to survive, should I need to do so. Until then, goodbye Jeremy Jones.