Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Pattertonia

Click to enlarge.

18 comments:

DreadedCandiru2 said...

This is the part of the story where Rod comes in....Rod Serling, that is.

I can see it now: "Submitted for your approval: Elly Patterson. A woman who played with time until she ran out of it. A woman who never knew what she had to be grateful for trapped in her own body. A cautionary tale taken from The Twilight Zone."

DreadedCandiru2 said...

Also, I noticed that all our fix-fics have Elly needing psychiatric care at one point or another. Weird, huh?

Joe England said...

I sense poetic justice... maybe.
At any rate, those doctors should really put her in a laying-down position so that her jaw doesn't hang open and her mouth doesn't dry out.

howard said...

I suppose this is an explanation for the straight reprints?

April Patterson said...

"Submitted for your approval: Elly Patterson. A woman who played with time until she ran out of it. A woman who never knew what she had to be grateful for trapped in her own body. A cautionary tale taken from The Twilight Zone."

Everything is better with Rod Serling narration. :)

April Patterson said...

Also, I noticed that all our fix-fics have Elly needing psychiatric care at one point or another. Weird, huh?

Logical extrapolations. :)

April Patterson said...

At any rate, those doctors should really put her in a laying-down position so that her jaw doesn't hang open and her mouth doesn't dry out.

They will, but this is Milborough hospital. :)

April Patterson said...

I suppose this is an explanation for the straight reprints?

Magic 8-Ball says, "Outlook good." (The definitive follow-up strip goes up Friday.) :)

Anonymous said...

I'm hoping this will be one of the fix-fics where "Only evil people become mentally ill/Insanity is caused by lacking moral character!" attitude on display in more than a few of the others is absent.

April Patterson said...

I'm hoping this will be one of the fix-fics where "Only evil people become mentally ill/Insanity is caused by lacking moral character!" attitude on display in more than a few of the others is absent.

I don't THINK I'll be conveying that attitude, but I may be too close to my project to see it objectively. It's definitely not something I'm trying to put out there.

DreadedCandiru2 said...

It's not as if Elly's being singled out because she's a bad person as much as she has a genetic predisposition to problems with her circulatory system. I should think that she's been misdiagmosed as being catatonic when she's just had a mild stroke. Being taken care of and becoming the focus of sympathy might actually be something that she'd want.

john said...

So at what point do people start making dumbass plays on "aphasia" and calling her crazy?

April Patterson said...

So at what point do people start making dumbass plays on "aphasia" and calling her crazy?

Heh. As I was drawing Elly in that last panel, I had some definite Grandpa-Jim flashbacks...

I should think that she's been misdiagmosed as being catatonic when she's just had a mild stroke.

...Which is why I included the part about the doctor having said she's catatonic. I wanted to ensure her condition wasn't interpreted as stroke.

Joe England said...

What caught my attention was the line about how they were having dinner at home. I honestly don't follow the strip that closely, so it was a revelation to me that April is still living with her mother part-time. It makes me wonder, what was it like sharing a home with this woman who has done these things to you? What do you suppose dinner conversation was like?
"How was your day, honey?"
"Today was good. I think I aced the test, I had a nice talk with my professor, and no one I loved tried to wipe me from existence or saddled me with caring for all my nieces and nephews while they hijacked the rest of my family for over a year. Say, this is good kiesh! Could you pass the apology, please? Or are we all out?"
"You're never going to let that go, are you?"

Yeah, April, I'm sure she slipped into that coma by utterly mysterious means. Best go flush the pills before the police investigation...

April Patterson said...

What caught my attention was the line about how they were having dinner at home. I honestly don't follow the strip that closely, so it was a revelation to me that April is still living with her mother part-time.

April's school term (at Guelph) ended at the end of April. At most, she would be staying at the TTH May, June, and July, as she made plans to spend August with Uncle Phil and Aunt Georgia in Montreal. I suppose it would have made sense to have April find another place to summer--with Mike et. al. at the Pattermanse, with John at whatever bachelor pad he has... And maybe she was on the verge of doing so after having spent a solid month with Mommie Dearest.

Yeah, April, I'm sure she slipped into that coma by utterly mysterious means. Best go flush the pills before the police investigation...

:snerk::

Anonymous said...

Let me guess: she attempted another time warp. However, she didn't have any access to the spellbook, so she attempted to cast it from memory. This being Elly, it backfired horribly.

In fact, let's sweeten the deal: April was living at home with her in order to supervise her, ensuring that she couldn't pick up another spellbook. Elly self-righteously saw this as unforgivably backwards -- how DARE that picky-face martian act like SHE was the child here, like SHE needed supervision?! So, in attempting to cast another time-warp, she improvised a line or two about "getting rid of the problem" -- she wanted to eliminate April entirely from the timeline, as she was CLEARLY the only reason she was caught.

She tried to cast out the "problem". The thing that was making her life miserable. The magic, having a keener understanding of the real root of the problem, took care of it.

Your classic Hoist By Her Own Petard scenario. Elly clearly hadn't learned a damn thing from the first time, and thus made matters worse with another ill-fated attempt to 'fix' them to her liking.

Holly said...

At any rate, those doctors should really put her in a laying-down position so that her jaw doesn't hang open and her mouth doesn't dry out.

Oh, I don't know...she's had her jaw hanging down and her mouth wide open for the 30 years of her life we saw on display, and possibly most of the years before that. A few more decades can't hurt.

WV: Unsorra. I'm unsorra that this has happened to Elly.

Godozo said...

I'm thinking more along the lines of the spell caster's mind was forced to go through the thirty-or-so years of aging, whether she lived through it or not. Another thing in the small print that she didn't read (probably thinking she'd be able to live through the whole thing as a younger version of herself).