What’s the age of consent in Toronto?
'Cos she turns sixteen this April.
She’s 15? I guess I better turn the meter to “really guilty”.
Yes . . . that does seem to be the theme of this strip. Michael and Gordon both married childhood friends, and they’re all thoroughly domesticated. That might be a little off-putting, I suppose.
No, it sounds spectacularly bad. FBOFW is sort of a “chick strip”, and until I read this thread, I never gave it much thought beyond the five or ten seconds a day that it takes to read it.
But I do always read it, because the characters change and experience life situations (and because Liz is a babe), and occasionally you get something poignant like the stories about the grandfather that remind me of watching my own father suffer the ravages of age. If those are gone, I’m gone.
Let me phrase it this way: Anthony was relatively inoffensive when they were all kids. The offensiveness I feel now comes from the fact that he’s been married, became a father, got divorced, experienced life for 10 years out from high school…and he’s exactly the same person he was back then. IF he were still 16, he’d be inoffensive. What’s offensive is that he’s in his mid-to-late 20s, a father, an exhusband, a supposedly responsible adult, and he still acts like a 16-year-old in matters of the heart. He has not grown in those 10 years. At all. He married Terese on the rebound from Liz. His suburban Canadian programming said that married couples have children, so he badgered Terese into getting pregnant. He couldn’t deal with Terese pursuing her career and wanted her to tie herself to a home and a child she didn’t want in the first place. He apparently continued to pine for Liz all through his marriage (as Terese’s fights with him at various times make clear). When Terese finally left him, he goes straight to Liz, expecting that she’s somehow waited for him for all the years they never even lived in the same town. The idea that Liz actually went on to start a career and a life of her own never occurred to him. The fact that only an hour or so had elapsed from her attempted rape by a co-worker before he blurted out his heartfelt and eternal devotion never rang falsely to him.
It all adds up to an overwhelming loathing of Anthony on my part. The whole picture is of a hapless man-child who keeps putting himself in positions where he’s almost demanding that other people make decisions for him, and then he gets to complain about how those decisions affect him.
What Jodi, lisacurl and jayjay said.
Plus which, Liz does not seem to be into Anthony very much, if at all. She was head-over-heels with Paul, in her own dippy way, and even when she was keeping Warren at arm’s length, it did seem as if she had feelings to fight. With Anthony, she just sits there blinking her eyes and letting her lips swell, not picking up on any of his preening or his puppy-eyed gazes. She just seems indifferent to him.
Also also, a few weeks ago, Liz accompanied him to collect his daughter from daycare, and mused to herself that Anthony being a single dad with a job and a house made her feel “so unaccomplished”. Case closed: if you don’t have a suburban life with a kid, you’re not fulfilled. What kills me about this is that Liz staying up north could have been so much more interesting! The happy ending was being set up last spring: fulfilling job, eligible SO and assimilation into another community. Conflict would have been the mixed-race marriage, but that would have been worked out. Instead, Lynn created unrealistic conflict, just so the Nice Guy can “win”.
Anthony just comes off like a Promise Keeper. I had teachers like that, before they were called Promise Keepers, and I wouldn’t wish them on anyone.
Dammit, I keep seeing this reference. Could someone please post a link to a picture of a “pornstar mustache”? Because if mine is one, it’s coming off.
Might as well go with the classic, John Holmes (link is safe for work as long as your workplace doesn’t scan for the word “porn”)…
Oh, and Ron Jeremy (not really safe for work…there’s a slightly revealing photo down the page).
Thanks, jayjay. Mine doesn’t match either of those, but I’m not feeling entirely secure.
Yeah, what all those people said. I was hoping that Johnston was setting up the strip with Liz’s teaching up north as having her be someone to seriously follow a dream, to not feel like she had to fit the standards. Yet she spent much of the time pining over men, then led Paul to believe that she was sticking around so he set up a transfer (and then she had the gall to be shocked about misleading her on a new transfer?). She had what I would have thought would be a really fulfilling job up there for her, one that could make her feel really accomplished, but she kind of tossed that out the window. I guess she was a “city girl” above all.
And if anyone had pulled Anthony’s move on me in the same situation as Elizabeth after the near-rape, that would have killed any possible inklings of romantic/loving feelings I had for that person. That is just so not the “I’ve always loved you/please wait for me!” moment, especially when you’re a married guy with a child hitting on a (romantically involved?) childhood friend.
I was pulling for Paul too. I don’t think that my reaction to seeing my beau at his old friend’s house would be “How could you!” I would need just a leettle more evidence for the reaction that Liz seems to have instantly.
From my own preferences the list, in order, of the people that I would like to see Liz with are as follows: Warren (or Paul before his unforgivable crime of hanging out with a childhood friend ), any other male in Canada, any female in Canada, some of the rocks in Canada and finally, Granthony.
There is a lovely essay about Anthony here: New Smithson! - Shaenon K. Garrity — LiveJournal . I got this from the The Comics Curmudgeon over at http://joshreads.com/ , which I learned about here. I think it sums up my feelings pretty well, and even gave me new reasons to dislike the schlub.
I love that essay. Shannon puts it all down perfectly!
the foreshadowing started before paul met the teacher replacement.
it started when april emailed elizabeth that anthony was getting divorced. that was when eliz. started on her, “i’m to far away from my loved ones” rant. then she started looking for jobs closer to home. then telling paul, teacher replacement, etc.
I was always pulling for Paul, too. After all, his last name is Wright. As Lynn Johnston made clear a couple of times, he’s Mr. Right!
I’ve always been pulling for Warren.
He’s a helicopter pilot doing a lot of backwoods flights.
Lynn Johnston (if you read her short bio in one of the collections) is married to a man whom she met as a helicopter flying dentist who went from backwoods settlement to backwoods settlement provided dental care.
I figure she introduces a character who’s too much like her real husband and there’s as likely a candidate as any, right?
Today’s strip really pissed me off. Elizabeth “guided their journey”? Elizabeth is to blame for the fact that her boyfriend cheated on her and none of her so-called friends told her? I’m done reading this stupid strip.
I’ve seen the rest of the week’s strips. It just gets worse from here, Jodi, so get out while you can.
Link? Please?
Never mind. I just realized you probably work at a newspaper and you’ve seen them pre-press, so you won’t be able to link to anything…
There are spoilers directly on this livejournal page, and links to the actual panels for this week. So if you don’t want to see what happens between now and Friday, no clicky.