Timeless
It’s Mid-September in For Better or For Worse and we start to see the free-floating leaves which typify any Lynn Johnston autumn strip. I suddenly have the impression that Lynn is trying to match the new-run to real time. Elly has gone to Anne (not Annie) Nichols’ house with little Lizzie (not Mike). For a brief moment, we think that “homemade organic food and cloth diapers” Annie is demonstrating a more energy conserving solution than a clothes dryer, sorry clothes drier. However, we learn differently as Anne answers Elly's question, and Anne gives us a series of woes including a startling one involving her son, named as Richard and not Christopher.
Lynn Johnston appears to be free-floating in the time stream. The appearance of Richard Nichols, puts the chronology of the strip in the 4th year, especially with the line “I’m out of diapers.” In the fourth collection, Annie has gone to disposable diapers, after using cloth diapers with her first child, Christopher.
I had thought with the predicted introduction of Farley in October, Lynn Johnston was going to go for strips in the second year, because that is when Farley was introduced in the strip. But now I have no idea. It seems to me that Lynn Johnston has completely forgotten she had the story of Richard’s birth in the 3rd year of the strip.
The thing which makes this the most curious for me, is we have already seen Lynn make a comment about reprint strips she could not include because there was a typewriter in them. This means she must have looked at the reprint strips. Perhaps even read them. So, how could she get the idea that Richard has already been born? Did she just look over strips looking for typewriters, and eliminate those? OR was she lying to the interviewer when she said that, and she just happened to notice 2 strips had typewriters in them, so she decided to exclude them?
Lynn Johnston appears to be free-floating in the time stream. The appearance of Richard Nichols, puts the chronology of the strip in the 4th year, especially with the line “I’m out of diapers.” In the fourth collection, Annie has gone to disposable diapers, after using cloth diapers with her first child, Christopher.
I had thought with the predicted introduction of Farley in October, Lynn Johnston was going to go for strips in the second year, because that is when Farley was introduced in the strip. But now I have no idea. It seems to me that Lynn Johnston has completely forgotten she had the story of Richard’s birth in the 3rd year of the strip.
The thing which makes this the most curious for me, is we have already seen Lynn make a comment about reprint strips she could not include because there was a typewriter in them. This means she must have looked at the reprint strips. Perhaps even read them. So, how could she get the idea that Richard has already been born? Did she just look over strips looking for typewriters, and eliminate those? OR was she lying to the interviewer when she said that, and she just happened to notice 2 strips had typewriters in them, so she decided to exclude them?
Regardless, the appearance of Richard Nichols means that the timeline for the 29 years of For Better or For Worse is not sacred. Any character is fair game for an appearance. And if that is the case, I want Fiona Brass to visit in a new-run. This strip really needs someone like Fiona to liven things up.
posted by howard at 11:21 PM
18 Comments:
I guess in this world, we are just going to see every character coming over to spend the day with Elly and her snot-nosed brats? Regardless of whether they should be at work (Connie) or at home waiting on the dryer repair man (Anne).
I totally wanna see some Fiona Brass.
howard,
Regardless, the appearance of Richard Nichols means that the timeline for the 29 years of For Better or For Worse is not sacred. Any character is fair game for an appearance.
She could easily salvage the whole mess by declaring that these aren't the same people we saw last August. Not only do I want to see Fiona show up, I also want to see a Sunday strip like this:
RetJohn and RevisedElly watch a "Wedding Disasters" show and notice that the bride, whose has chosen a lavender and teal color scheme, has the same name as their toddler."
He could then go on to point out that his older namesake out in Milborough is a whacked-out loon who runs around like an old-time railway engineer in his off hours while RevisedElly hopes her nose doesn't swell up like a turnip. Just call their town Eastgate, Ontario and she's in business.
qnjones,
I guess in this world, we are just going to see every character coming over to spend the day with Elly and her snot-nosed brats?
That's probably how they're going to introduce Farley Prime: Old Lady Baird will come over and mention that her dog had puppies and would Mike like to take a look.
howtheduck, maybe Lynn has convinced herself that she really did freeze the characters' ages for the first three years of the strip [though forworse has shown this to be not the case in her collection recaps], and thus decided that anything in the first three years is fair game for the first year of new-run time.
april_patterson,
Lynn's thinking that the first three years of the strip were Year One when they actually weren't does seem to make the most sense. This way, she reconciles her strip's chronology with her refusal to do research.
qnjones,
I guess in this world, we are just going to see every character coming over to spend the day with Elly and her snot-nosed brats?
When Lynn gets settled into a formula, she has a tendency to stick with it. I guess the old-time Elly who almost never left her house and who used to talk about how she craved adult conversation, is gone.
dreadedcandiru2,
RetJohn and RevisedElly watch a "Wedding Disasters" show and notice that the bride, whose has chosen a lavender and teal color scheme, has the same name as their toddler."
He could then go on to point out that his older namesake out in Milborough is a whacked-out loon who runs around like an old-time railway engineer in his off hours while RevisedElly hopes her nose doesn't swell up like a turnip. Just call their town Eastgate, Ontario and she's in business.
That would work. Or they could do like Marvel Comics did and call it the Ultimate Universe. All the same characters as the Marvel Universe, but different.
aprilp_katje,
maybe Lynn has convinced herself that she really did freeze the characters' ages for the first three years of the strip and thus decided that anything in the first three years is fair game for the first year of new-run time.
Maybe. However, the part that confuses me is that Lynn needs those reprints in order to take her vacations. The implication from the arrival of Richard Nichols is that reprints involving his birth or with Anne Nichols raising Christopher Nichols as a super-mom cannot be done. She is effectively erasing the old Anne Nichols character in her super-mom stage. That’s a good chunk of reprints that Lynn can’t use for her vacation.
The question then is: Is Lynn Johnston intentionally rewriting the history of her strip to a different chronology where super-mom Anne Nichols does not exist? OR is Lynn Johnston writing whatever she wants without respect to her own strip's time line?
Okay, so, now I'm confused. What is the real truth of the original chronology of the strips? At what point did Lynn really freeze the ages? Did she really do that? I don't have any of the older strips at hand.
howard,
Is Lynn Johnston intentionally rewriting the history of her strip to a different chronology where super-mom Anne Nichols does not exist? OR is Lynn Johnston writing whatever she wants without respect to her own strip's time line?
I'd say a little of both, actually. It seems clear that Lynn would be happiest if RevisedElly were to look on and cluck her tongue at poor, down-trodden AnniePrime and her delusions of being June Cleaver. That way, she can have a great reason to hate RetJohn: the fear of becoming a Stepford Smiler.
qnjones
Okay, so, now I'm confused. What is the real truth of the original chronology of the strips? At what point did Lynn really freeze the ages? Did she really do that? I don't have
any of the older strips at hand.
aprilp_katje is the expert on this, so she can correct me if I have this wrong.
In Collection Two, Lizzie has a party for her second birthday. The very next strip shows Mike celebrating the end of school, so the timing is consistent with Liz’s currently stated birthdate of 26 June 1981, except that the time of the strip was about June 1981. Lizzie has lost two, rather than three, years between this point and the present day.
In Collection Five, Elly identifies Liz as being four years old, and she would have had her 5th birthday for that year--thus placing her birthday in 1980 and not 1979 as it had been before. That’s one year lost.
Lynn maintains continuity on all of Liz's school grades from there through the end of high school. However, for some unnamed reason, Liz and all of her friends turn 16 at the end of grade 11, in 1997. That’s the second year lost.
DreadedCandiru2 said...
It seems clear that Lynn would be happiest if RevisedElly were to look on and cluck her tongue at poor, down-trodden AnniePrime and her delusions of being June Cleaver.
Eventually modern Elly did get to that point, when she accused Anne of being a jailer and not a wife. I guess we will find out this week how much tongue clucking there is going to be.
That's a good summation, howtheduck. Also, as Mike was in kindergarten when the strip began in 1979, if his school grades had stayed consistent, he'd have finished grade 12 in 1992 instead of 1994. I believe forworse found a point in the collections where his school grade became vague, but I don't recall which point that was.
Re. Liz, Lynn went back and forth a bit. For instance, there is the strip where April complains because Liz is 11 (not 10) years older than she is. And in 1999 and 2000, the official website gave Liz's age as 19 and 20, respectively.
aprilp_katje,
Also, as Mike was in kindergarten when the strip began in 1979, if his school grades had stayed consistent, he'd have finished grade 12 in 1992 instead of 1994.
I think it is fairly safe to say that although 2 years have been lost since the beginning, there is no evidence of Lynn's often-mentioned 3-year freeze.
I think it is fairly safe to say that although 2 years have been lost since the beginning, there is no evidence of Lynn's often-mentioned 3-year freeze.
Exactly. It wasn't a freeze so much as a slide. :)
Okay, thanks. I didn't remember a 3-year freeze and have often wondered if this was something Lynn made up in her head, or what. Your explanations have helped tremendously.
One item of note: when I was born in 1977, my parents were upper-middle class and decidedly not crunchy granola types. But they were cheap. So they used cloth diapers. At the time, other parents looked at it as a normal, less expensive, but more burdensome choice. The parenting books my mother owned then talked about cloth diapers as the standard choice, and disposables as the "newfangled convenience." My parents gave up on cloth and paid for convenience later on.
However, Lynn has always acted like Anne had to be some out-there dogmatic freako to use cloth diapers, and that this choice was unheard of. Yet it was not an uncommon or especially odd choice in the late 1970s/early 1980s, when disposables were just coming to dominate. It was seen as a little old-fashioned and thrifty.
I wonder if things were really so different in the greater Toronto metro than they were in the New York metro at the same time? Or was Lynn imposing her own "you must be a lunatic" attitudes on Anne/Elly?
qnjones,
I wonder if things were really so different in the greater Toronto metro than they were in the New York metro at the same time?
I cannot speak for 1977 or 1979. I was a baby in the 1960s, and my mom only had cloth diapers as a choice. She hated them. They leaked and they smelled and you were constantly washing.
My dad in his second marriage was married to a woman who had 2 babies in cloth diapers. This was about 1975. Before they were married, I remember being introduced to her in her apartment, and I remember very well the apartment reeked of baby diaper smell to the point where I could barely tolerate being there. Of course, I was a teenager at the time, and my tolerance level was low. She would have preferred the disposables, but as a single mother of 2, thrifty was the key player.
My kids were late 1990s babies, and we went disposable and the wonderful world of the Diaper Genie, which would eat and deodorize your diaper, so there was virtually no odor. However, we did know a few parents who did cloth diapers, and I was told the leakage problems of the 1960s had largely been fixed. The vast majority of parents I knew used the disposables.
Or was Lynn imposing her own "you must be a lunatic" attitudes on Anne/Elly?
I am not sure. There is clearly some point in history at which disposable diapers became inexpensive enough so that cheapness was no longer a question. Your parents made the transition, when you have said they would rather be cheap. Lynn Johnston would have had the money to jump to disposables at the first opportunity. Since she has a difficult time understanding anyone’s perspective but her own, I can see her take this stance, even though the disposables were not as affordable to other people she may have known, especially up in Lynn Lake.
Yes, maybe Anne would have been unusual/bizarre in Lynn's circles, and that's all that matters.
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