Wednesday, 4 September 2024

[dreadedcandiru2]

The one where Brian makes with the pedestrian wordplay.

Synopsis: Lynn reminds us that she has pretty much no idea how men behave when Mike and Brian talk about how immediate marriage feels when a peer gets married. This occasions a bad pun on the part of the idiot who marries into a foreign culture because of the pea-brained racism that's only in

Comments

[dreadedcandiru2]

And here is the strip itself. As we watch Mike and Lawrence laugh at the stupid joke:

[jjamele]

I don't know what is more unrealistic in this series of strips- is it Michael going on and on AND ON about how "weird" it is that two people who are living together are getting married*, or is it Rhetta asking "do you think we'll ever get married" instead of saying something a human (and not a character in a comic strip) might say, like "maybe we should think about our future together." Since I'm bored out of my mind with the repetitive "I can't believe this wedding is happening" circle-jerk, I'll go with the latter. Rhetta might as well be asking "I wonder if Lynn plans to write in a marriage for us in the future." She certainly isn't talking like someone with agency.

*it's so "weird" that two people in their 20s who live together are getting married in the same way that it's a "miracle" that the same two people could have a child together. What astonishes these people is impressive in its sheer banality.

[dreadedcandiru2]

You know what they've siphoned of all meaning? The word miracle! By applying it to everything that they see, they remind us just how stupid Lynn is.

[howtheduck]

This stuff does not match my experience. After high school until I was about in my early 30s, I went to a lot of weddings. There was a rash of kids from high school who had been dating in high school that got married right away. There was a rash of marriages after the 4 years of college marrying their college sweethearts. Then after that I was participating in Single Groups and there was always someone from those groups getting married. After I got married, then the invitations started to die down.

What Lynn Johnston clearly did not understand was that because she got married at age 20 and then almost immediately forced her husband to move to the Dundas area far away from North Vancouver, she missed out on seeing most of her friends in high school get married. She missed seeing her friends in art school get married. What is astonishing to Mike and Lynn, would not have been astonishing to either of her kids at the same age.

[dreadedcandiru2]

Learning from that mistake would require her to realize that it was one. As her bolting the door behind her when they moved to Corbeil because the normal give and take required of her was one of the things unfair Elly fights against proved, she hadn't learned a thing.

[chocolate_frapp]

I have a hard time believing Lynn had friends....

[howtheduck]

You may be right about that. Lynn has talked about her high school friends being two older guys that left high school well before she graduated. When she lists female friends from school, she tends to mention girls from the elementary school days.

[dreadedcandiru2]

If the habit Lizzie has of being a sulking, possessive infant who doesn't like the idea of expanding her social circle is any clue:

[howtheduck]

Interesting idea. I do wonder if this Elizabeth story was based on Lynn's own experiences in high school.

[dreadedcandiru2]

Lindy can be any physical age but mentally, she's a gloomy five year old idiot child who thinks that adding someone new to the equation means that they don't like her and lie about it.

[jjamele]

Hey Lynn, what is a Friend's Get Along and how can I acquire one? More to the point, why doesn't someone with a degree in English and a talent for proofreading know when to use an apostrophe "s?"

[dreadedcandiru2]

Lindy was half-asleep in English class and it shows.

[stephanie_hawks]

Lynn Johnston should read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss (no relation to Liz Truss, the shortest-serving United Kingdom prime minister).

[stephanie_hawks]

Follow-up to my first comment: I reread the first strip. I think that what Lynn Johnston meant for Elly to say was "I have more than one friend, and all my friends get along together." I think she meant to add a comma after "I have more than one friend." I don't think she meant to add an apostrophe after the d in "friends" in "all my friends get along together." She made the comma after "I have more than one friend" a little too large, so that it looked like an apostrophe after the d in "friends" in "all my friends get along together." I don't think Lynn Johnston meant to write "all my friend's [sic] get along together." Lynn Johnston didn't make a grammar mistake or spelling mistake in this strip after all. This strip simply wasn't very well drawn. I still think that Lynne Truss's book Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a wonderful book that everyone who cares about the English language should read.

[dreadedcandiru2]

Lynn simply rushed through writing the dialogue again.

[jjamele]

Is 'Be More Understanding?' really the punchline? It doesn't even follow from a poor buildup. And this is the only family in history where a sister seeks friendship advice from her brother, or the brother is interested in his sister's dating life. This is just weird, Lynn.