Terry is messing with our heads...

[Anne860]

Not that it's anything new, Terry likes to mess with our heads, but I'm starting to suspect that this issue and the next one are intended by the Cartoonist to answer our questions and confound our expectations at the same time.

Think about it: In the very first scene we have an editor who voices every one of the complaints the fans have made, "It's repetitous, it's unbelievable, it's a good story but..." You get the idea.

Then the editor-who-is-a-proxy-for-the-fans, asks all the questions we've been asking, dDo Francine and Katchoo finally get to live happily ever after? What happpens to David? Did Katchoo really know who he was all along? And what's with Casey?

We get our first answer from Ashley-who-is-a-proxy-for-the-Cartoonist gives us our first answer, keep reading. ["No worries mate," As the Ozzies say.]

At first I thought this meant keep reading the series, but now I think it had a double meaning. It wasn't just "keep reading the series," it was also "keep reading this issue." Which of course we do. Ashley leaves the editor and steps into a waiting limo, and guess who's there?

Katchoo and Francine. Together and still the same people we've come to know and love. That's question number one answered, then. We also find out some of what happened during the wedding, but now the Terry raises even more confusion about Katchoo and David in the hospital scene. As if that weren't enough, Francine tells us that Ashley add extra things. Now what!?

Which brings me to the most interesting part. Francine says "'There are so many stories in SIP. Maybe they won't fit all into one book.'" Well, hasn't everyone who reads SIP thought that at one time or another? I know I have.

So maybe, Francine advises, Ashley should tell simple stories.

"'Boy meets girl...'

'"Girl likes girl,'

'Girls and boy all end up in one big house,'

'Where they raise a beautiful little girl, named Ashley,'"

Okay, that one raises an eyebrow. They all raised Ashley? We now know that David lives, but what does the above conversaion mean? Do Katchoo and Francine and David end up together? Then where the heck is he? And why did Katchoo seem so sad when she was telling Francine about David in the future? Or is that the past, since the current issue is set even further in the future, which makes it the present?

Ahhh, plotline headache! This why I don't watch Leap Years.

Okay maybe Katchoo, was just skipping over David because she didn't want to talk about it. Or maybe not. See what I mean about Terry messing with us?

Back to the issue, since we're not even halfway through yet. Here's another question answered. Was the Molly in Molly & Poo, the Molly Lane Francine's brother dated? Yep. He lost his virginity to her too. More than I really wanted to know, but okay.

Now we're back to looking at the pretty pictures. Francine and Katchoo are still bantering and arguing after all this time. Let me hear that "Awwwwwww" people. Ashley has a girlfriend. Peachy keen. =)

Someone in another thread opined that Koo was a stand in for Katchoo. I think they're right. Both Ashley and Koo could be though of as versions of Francine and Katchoo. Ashley is the beautiful, confident, happy young woman Francine might have been if her family had been nurturing instead of cold and distant, and Koo is also the happy, cheerful woman Katchoo could have been if she'd had a safe and loving home, instead of brutally raped and eaten up with rage and pain ever since.

Which brings me to the crux of this issue and how Terry has used it to mess with our heads. The story uses the same concept as Sliding Doors. (Not a bad movie. Not a great one either.) It's about the different paths our lives can take, and the people we might have been. Everyone has been urging Ashley to tell the story the way she wants to. Haven't fans told Terry that often enough? Then people complain about the direction the story later takes. Well, I think Terry has finally decided to give the people what they want. At least temporarily.

We've seen in Ashley and Koo, what Francine and Katchoo might have been, and now Terry is showing us how that might have happened. The thing I've read over and over again, on this board and in the letter column, is that Terry should dispense with the crime noir and get back to the real story. "Just a simple story about two young women who up best friends and eventually fell in love" as Ashley tells us. I can't speak for everyone, but while I've enjoyed all the stories, I've also wished that Terry would "get back to basics".

Well now that's what he's done, at least for a little while. Personally, I enjoy the ride while it lasts, and then get back to anticipating and dreading the eventual blowup, which we now know for sure is coming.

Anne
Okay, I'm done now.


"The list of victims is long. The list of those who want to help in any way they can has more than a billion names on it.

'The people who committed this atrocity thought that they were striking at the heart of America.

'They missed." -- Gail Simone, from You'll All Be Sorry! located at ComicBookResources.com

Now I'm really, really done.

[Anne860]

Whoops. Sorry about the typos and repeated phrases, people. Chalk it up to not proofreading thoroughly and just generally not knowing when to shut up.

Anne
I'm really, really, really, REALLY done now.

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Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know Man as he really is. After all, Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Aushwitz. However, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer, or the Shama Yisrael on his lips. -- Viktor E. Frankl, psychologist, founder of Logotherapy, and concentration camp survivor.

"If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution." -- #98 of the Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Was An Evil Overlord by Peter Anspach

"I'm all right the way I am! I don't have to improve! How could I improve? How, I ask you?! How?" -- Lucy Van Pelt, Peanuts Character

[Anne860]

Whoops. Sorry about the typos and repeated phrases, people. Chalk it up to not proofreading thoroughly and just generally not knowing when to shut up.

Anne
I'm really, really, really, REALLY done now.

[frosti]

You're forgiven Anne. I was writing about this on a different thread, and the more I think about it the more it makes sense. I think you're dead on about Ashley and Koo representing the more positive versions of Francine and Katchoo. And I don't think that the new arc is going to be totally set in reality. I'm thinking that it's some sort of fantasy/dream of Francine's, but don't quote me on that. If I we're correct about this, it would have to be the Francine of ten years later considering what we've been told.
By the way, I definitly think that terry is messing with us, especially with the conversation in the begining of the book.

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[This message has been edited by frosti (edited September 24, 2001).]

[~vinyldream~]

MaH-Velous!
Great thoughts Anne, I think your on a good tract of land there.


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[Thrasymachos]

A well-reasoned argument, Anne.
But the phrase "boy meets girl" is ambiguous. It might mean David and Katchoo. It might instead mean Brad and Francine. Considering that Francine's and Katchoo's reunion is at Brad's house, and that David is absent, who else but a reformed Brad would help raise Ashley? Patti Davis used her mother's surname, not her father's, as a rejection of him. In contrast, Ashley is proud to wear the name of Silver. But of course, this is all assuming that #43 is true, and it not. It is an ideal future. Perhaps only in that dreamlike future could Brad reform.

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Peregrinator in paradiso.