Beyond Destiny, Part Twelve: Retiring The Enemies List.

[dreadedcandiru2]

We've all noticed how John loved to get all pompous and pious about how Becky couldn't possibly being a C-lister celebrity because she'd traded a career for friends and fun and how April used to eat his pile of bullshit up because it made being a jealous twit bearable. As I said months ago, it's sort of easy to come to the conclusion that our boy told himself that same lie when he was cut from a moderately-famous country and western act for being a daydreamer, a giggle-puss, a sass-mouth and, above all, a lazy prima donna who thought he rated higher than he actually did.

This sort of stupidity, as I stated, is more or less the template upon which the Pattersons' need to despise their betters was forged. Instead of admitting that they are weak, silly, greedy and stupid, the Foobs malign those possessed with the drive to get ahead they lack by assigning to them motives from their own pitch-black hearts.

Since a new creative team would see no real need to, for instance, presuppose that Mira eats babies and steals greaseburgers because her being an actively domineering blowhard gets in the way of Elly's being a passive-aggressive, domineering manipulator, it would be fairly easy for the two women to find common ground: hating the idiots they'd passed off as their younger daughters' best chance at a happy life. Granted, this would mean assassinating a man who's only been a name up until now but with the cool new Mike around, it'd be fairly easy.

Another thing that would be fairly easy would be to have Elly channel J Jonah Jameson and admit that she resents Thérèse because she did what Elly always wanted to but never had the stamina or skills to pull off. We could even have a little animosity between the two based on the fact that Thérèse confused Liz with a gold-digger; the strip would be fairly interesting to read were Elly to pull off a nifty by saying that Liz was sort of too nice (with 'nice' clearly meaning 'passive') to be doing stuff like that. One smirk from Liz and we've got comedy gold that people can get behind.

Speaking of situations in which 'playing nice' was just another way of saying 'being a passive doofus who's too lazy to do anything to solve a problem', what needs to happen in any sort of new order is an in-strip resolution to Mike and Dee's feud with the Kelpfroths; Mira scared the crap out of them by doing the very dangerous things called 'getting to know them', 'finding out what their deal was' and 'working out a reasonable compromise' when it was clear that Mike and Dee liked things the way they were. Part of the process of becoming people worth knowing would be, well, finally admitting to being a dick to them instead of pretending that they were high school kids taking on the uncool principal and his wife.

In keeping with the whole 'no longer acting like spoiled teenyboppers' theme, we'd have one final, permanent reconciliation between April and Becky; the muted acceptance to a muted apology would be a kind of nice way for the characters to walk off into the sunset. This, of course, would be owing to the fact that the next step in the strip's evolution is to do what Lynn should have done in the first place: turn John and Elly's kids into extras. More on that next time.

Comments

[josephusrex.livejournal.com]

This is good stuff. As I was reading it, though, the idea for a weeks-long arc came to me: Mira, Thérèse, and Becky machine-gun the whole boiling of them. We see a couple of weeks of prep, as they assemble their weapons and devise a plan to bring all their victims together in one soundproof room. Then on a Sunday we'd have the grand budda-budda-budda-budda-bow, culminating with the three women standing over a pile of steaming, smoking, staring corpses, and Thérèse saying, "Well...that was fun." Becky: "Zomigod, that RULED!"

Over the next few days, Mira organizes the disposal of the bodies, and this gets done (with great enjoyment and laughter). In the foreground of each strip, for the several days until her body is butchered and turned to sausage and bacon, Elly stares lifelessly out at the reader.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

And after they were done that, they could swing down South and take out the casts of other strips that have lost all reason for existing.

[josephusrex.livejournal.com]

I can just see it: Mira saying, "Okay, girls, most perishable parts first. Harvest the brains, the sweetbreads, and don't forget the fries on the boys, even if they are pretty small. We'll cook them all up and take them to the church supper tonight. The plucks, we'll freeze, and make haggis out of them later. Then the boys' carcasses, we should hang outdoors for a few days and let them get nice and high; the girls should hang in the smokehouse because of the higher fat content."