brigid: (9CL)
[personal profile] brigid

2-6-2023

A hoof.

She has a hoof.

Anyway...

I cannot restate this enough times: Amos had an engagement ring in his pocket (for Edda) when he met with Mary to proclaim his love for her. He then vomited, which proved he loved Edda.

You know, normal relationship stuff.

But he was hung up on her into adulthood. She was the what-if for him and he’s the what-if for her apparently.

People growing & changing is GREAT and it’s an interesting story.

That’s not what we got, though. We got Mary being humiliated so Amos can declare his love for Edda.

Edda wasn’t “his universe” in school. They both had crushes on other people, she actively dated a lot of guys. That’s normal. And it’s ignored. And that's a shame, because "friends realizing over time that they love each other and also are IN LOVE with each other" is really interesting. "Two people always destined to be together drift into a marriage and kids and perfect career together" isn't that much fun. I mean, it CAN be if they have to overcome obstacles but they didn't have any obstacles but themselves.

And the ultimate “punchline”, apparently, occurs the Monday after that story line is seemingly resolved because this man SUCKS at pacing.

Or we’ll have another week of them declaring undying love with legs splayed all over the place. I really am not in the mood for a week of Amos describing how much he loves Edda using the most florid, purple prose he can possibly dredge up. Somewhere their battered thesaurus is weeping over its broken spine and dog eared pages.

Meanwhile, here Edda is looking like a Barbie doll that's fallen out of a toybox, hips moving in ways human hips can't move. It's so important that her entire leg be visible that McEldowney mangles her foot (hoof) and has a speech bubble coming out of her cootch/Amos' lower back so it's not obscuring anything.

Which brings us to, you know...
brigid: (9CL)
[personal profile] brigid

1-14-2023

This is not a bad payoff but the setup was far too long.

I'm also impressed by the fact that there's actual backgrounds, actual physical things they're interacting with.

But I feel compelled to note that the last time they were in present-day they were on an isolated tropical beach, and now they're at some lake where it's warm. Just how much traveling do they do? Especially as this scene could be set anywhere. It could be set in Central Park. It could be set in their living room. It could be set at a party where people are talking about how they learned about sex (a frequently hilarious conversation). Instead they are isolated, occupied only with each other. No friends, no family members - including their own kids.

Which, I mean... we had an entire extended story line about how badly they want to conceive children and the final (?) scene is them as adults who have children but the children aren't there.
brigid: (9CL)
[personal profile] brigid

12-03-2022

In actual history in this strip these two Had A Moment after Edda had a ballet recital that Amos played piano (even though he's a cellist) for. They both promptly had a series of misunderstandings/freak outs, broke up, and proceeded to have a will they/won't they situation that had absolutely no heat to it whatsoever because neither ever actually had a relationship with another person.

(I'd forgotten he played piano for that story and I don't remember when he's ever played piano or any other instrument again outside of "I want my characters to fuck on a piano" story lines)

The entire time they've been in a relationship it's been relentlessly obvious, up to and including Amos sucking her toes in public while people, including a police officer, watch and provide commentary.

I don't understand why we're seeing these characters from the back, unless it's meant to imply that we're peeking at them, seeing over their shoulders into something intimate? Or are we even seeing them both from the back?

The way Edda's head, neck, and torso are arranged I keep having a hard time telling if we're actually seeing her back or if we're seeing her front. You know those optical illusions of the old woman/young woman or the duck/bunny? You see one then your vision suddenly flips to the other one? That's what keeps happening with Edda's torso for me. Part of it is because she's so straight on visually. She's not turned toward Amos at all, while he's turned toward her. Not much, but a bit. You can see his shoulder sloping to indicate that.

Are they facing in the same direction, or is she facing toward us and speaking to him over her shoulder while he has his back to us? Either way her anatomy doesn't work.

It's nice to see some care given to Amos. He looks like a character and not an afterthought, an accessory.

The conceit of the second two panels is cute, that the gutter is meant to hide their kiss from prying eyes. It should be wider, though, to cover more of their mouths because what we see is kind of gross. There's three gutters and they could have gotten progressively wider, more like a censor bar. I didn't need to see that their lips are slightly parted, the better for Edda to suck in Amos' enormous upper lip which is brushing sensually against her uvula.

Or is his upper lip just mashed up against hers like a sack of firm pudding?

Because that's a huge upper lip and all McEldowney needed to do was have their heads tilt enough we could pretend they weren't meeting each other straight on. Which is how most people turn their heads when they want to do more than a chaste peck, anyway.

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