(no subject)

[brigid]

2-09-2023

Note how Edda's gown is both utterly skin tight, clinging to her and highlighting her curves and also extremely voluminous and billowing with every move while still clinging to her buttocks.

I'm not EXACTLY sure what's going on w/Mary's skirt there. It's got a double slit, one on each side? One side slit but she worms her legs around so it slithers over the forward facing thigh as she walks? Like is she just wearing a really long loin cloth here? Is that her dress situation? A slit up her skirt on each side with the material in the center trapped between her thighs as she wriggles her way painfully across the floor? How is she MOVING? And why doesn't she know enough to maintain a distance from dancers?

Edda and Amos flail wildly as they dance, Amos swinging Edda around and throwing her into the air only to catch her and toss her backwards etc. Really they should be swing dancing or something, but there's no sexy accordions with swing dancing as far as I know.It must be deeply, deeply unpleasant for everyone else there. Just... these two humping on a piano then careening wildly around the room legs and dress akimbo before they start humping on a chair.

How many tango salons do you think they've been banned from?

And how would Mary know they're there? She slumped off, defeated, the last time we saw her (ok, time before last). Then these two donned evening wear and went, alone, to a tango salon. She doesn't know any of their friends!t's not like she can ring up Seth and be all "Hello, my fellow adulterer. Do you know where Amos, a married man with twin children who makes his living as a cellist, spends his evenings? Because obviously it's not at home with his small children!"

McEldowney tries to have it both ways w/Amos. He is an absent minded dork with poor social skills who is extremely literal in ways that many people find baffling if not insulting, skinny and chinless and balding, and also so appealing that multiple women have tried to seduce him.Isabel Florin, famously sexy slut and amazing pianist; Xiulan Goldaming (nee Yuan), unbelievably wealthy Chinese woman and amazing cellist; Mary Rosenzweig, childhood crush and flautist.

These beautiful women have all attempted to seduce him WHILE HE WAS IN A RELATIONSHIP.

In a relationship, I might add, with an incredibly beautiful and graceful accomplished young woman who speaks French, was a professional ballet dancer with an elite ballet corp, was a professional model, plays piano at a professional level based only on private music lessons as a kid and a lot of practice, plays viola, & I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting.

I mention the private music lessons because Amos didn't just major in music. The gifted motherfucker went to Julliard. He plays multiple instruments, he composes, he orchestrates, he conducts, he does EVERYTHING. He STUDIED this shit. He lives and breathes music. Edda took lessons a few times a week and banged around on a piano in her home when she felt like it, and she's somehow on par with him, and with his intensely-trained highly educated peers.

I get it, I get it. Amos is a self-insert, a dorky nerd who is appealing to women somehow. (It's me, I'd find him appealing in real life. My husband monologued about Sauron for 1/2 an hour last night.) But yet another installment of "a hot chick throws her dripping wet panties at Amos while Edda frowns disapprovingly and then humiliates her somehow" is pretty boring. And insecure.

And the worst thing about this strip... the absolute WORST thing about this strip... is that a sultry lady slinking panel by panel toward the viewer and then being thrown awkwardly off balance should be funny! But it's done so poorly here that it's not!!!

What would have made this funny is if the thing that threw her off balance was a completely different dancing couple and one of them was dipped so Mary was avoiding their HEAD or maybe an extended arm, not a kicking leg. Like she's so focused on slinking toward someone that she doesn't notice the chaos around her and said chaos interrupts her slinking but not in a, like, VIOLENT way. And the dancers DO NOT NOTICE HER AT ALL. She's not in their world. She's just another person. That would, yes, require drawing other dancers and perhaps hinting at the existence of a back wall or something. Maybe one of those sexy, sexy accordion players (NOTE: accordion players are pretty sexy people based on the accordion players I know. Charming and funny, too).

It would also not involve what looks like a direct attack from Edda.

Again, I'm REALLY hoping that Mary is there to see someone else because dang it doesn't make sense for her to be there on Amos'. We've already established it doesn't make sense to pursue Amos. He's married, he's happily married, he has no interest in her, Edda was her best friend who treated her decently enough (except for never telling Amos to stop stalking her).

Some people might be holding out for a thruple here, but given how uptight McEldowney is about people having the wrong kind of sex (it has to EITHER be IN WEDLOCK or between two heterosexual people DESTINED TO BE TOGETHER) it's not going to happen. Given the contempt Edda feels for most women it's absolutely not going to happen.