UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

9 thoughts on “542 – Catching Up

  1. Some friction, but yeah. IRL, I’d like these two…they should have kids. 😉

    1. I might have to draw out what their kid would look like. First thought is that their kid would look like Ongo Gablogian from “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”

    2. He’s pushing 60, she’s maybe 30, more likely less. Chuck is most likely shooting blanks, and besides, he’s talking to her like a baby sister than a love interest.

      1. Up in these hills, sometimes family is all y’gots. 😉

  2. It is really hard to have a favorite character, as there are so many good ones. But I think Rosa is my favorite. Chuck is a good accomplice in sneaking work, but not much for romance. Uugh.

  3. I mean, if they don’t have at least an inkling of what’s going down, I’m actually disappointed in Clearstream. If anything, I’m starting to wonder if they caught on and realized “Wait, we can use this.”

    Because of course they can. 😉

  4. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    I’m way ahead of you – I’ve been waiting for you to catch up. From November 2020:
    I would hope for nothing less – her and Chuck have the potential for a great deal of positive mischief.
    Speaking of which, I received the email notifying me that my order for the NSFW “Chuck and Rosa Finally Do It” (age verification required) limited edition hardcover is going to be delayed due to the pandemic. I think it’s really cool that you’ll be adding some additional stretch goal goodies when it ships – thanks for all your story and art.
    As for the inscription, ” We owe it all to you ” will be sufficient.

  5. Partners in crime! 😈

  6. A crime so perfect she went full on wall-eye!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

 

542 – Catching Up

Straying off-topic

One of my favorite moments in Jaws has nothing to do with a giant shark attacking people. It’s a slow, quiet scene in a dining room between a police chief who’s had a really bad day, and his young son responding to his father’s brooding by imitating his oh-so serious countenance. Eventually the father notices and a bit of a game plays out, and by the end Chief Brody might not be entirely cheered up, but you can see him remembering and contemplating that there are still good things in the world. There are no explosions. There is no blood. There is only the most tangential relation to the main storyline. Nothing earth-shattering is revealed about anyone… a father and son care about each other? The mother watching on is charmed by their antics? Big whoop. And yet Spielberg recognized that cutting it would have been a criminal act. It’s somehow magically both completely off-topic and yet completely crucial to the narrative. I don’t claim to possess anything approaching that level of instinct, but somewhere along the line I composed a scene where Chuck tries to share his stash of old sweets with Rosa, and it felt right. A reader might well ask what the hell this has to do with zombie ranching, perhaps even going so far as to declare their time is being wasted with inconsequential padding. Well, maybe. Come to think of it, I may have gone over this exact same argument before, when I brought up the idea that not every Chekhov’s Gun has to fire. That entry is getting on towards three years old, now, and oddly enough predates some of the “guns” that have gone off, such as the lawn flamingo playing a role in the Zane/McCarty confrontation, the Z Tracker, or the thought of the siege house moat being filled with zombies. Does that mean Chuck’s jar of honey will be playing a vital narrative role in the months to come? I’ll let you speculate if you want, but I wouldn’t think too hard on it. Right now it just stands as some more (hopefully entertaining) interaction between Chuck and Rosa, and I’m content to offer that up since I’m still of a mind to think it serves a purpose. It might seem off-topic, but Jaws made moments like these work, I think precisely because they possessed a certain organic feel that gets an audience invested in the characters as real people rather than just human-shaped enablers of plot. That and the whole honey thing is pretty fascinating. So thanks, Chuck, for again serving as my human-shaped enabler of factoids. When you’re involved it seems like nothing’s off-topic at all.