UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

9 thoughts on “542 – Catching Up”

  1. Keith

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

    1. Dawn

      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. Scarsdale

      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. Keith

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

  2. ConcordBob

    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. Otaku

    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. Crazyman

    Partners in crime! 😈

  6. TKG

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

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542 – Catching Up
Posted on April 9, 2025 by Dawn

On love, hate, or just plain giving a damn.

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Clint
Last week I put a poll up asking what you readers would choose when faced with the same “one bullet” decision Suzie had to make. By an overwhelming margin, most of you opted for shooting Muriel. Couple that with the previous poll’s runaway answer that you didn’t care what her reasonings were, she needed to die, and I’m beginning to get the feeling y’all don’t like her much! I’ve mentioned before how I’m fond of my grey areas in terms of heroes and villains, but it’s true that I’ve been building up Mrs. McCarty as the big antagonist of this first storyline since we were first treated to her delicate countenance and dulcet tones at the end of Episode 2. If there’s a sin on my part here it’s maybe that she’s an “easy” villain, displaying few redeeming qualities. It’s entirely possible that the presentation is skewed so that you’re only seeing her at her worst, but let’s face it — it’s not much of an accomplishment to get people to hate her. I just hope there’s enough twisted motivation evident in her actions that she doesn’t seem driven by pure madness. Unfathomable madness can be sort of boring in a villain, as is the whole idea of “doing it for darkness“, i.e. evil for evil’s sake. It’s been pointed out (and perhaps not unfairly so) that Muriel and her posse come off more as caricatures than actual people. Is this a bad thing? Does every mook in fiction need or deserve a backstory? Should the writer(s) make you value them as characters, or is it enough that you want to see them fail? On the other end of the spectrum, how much time as a writer do you need to devote to a character before your audience wants to see them succeed? Or at least not die? I have it on record that at least one reader felt sorry when Zeke met his end, and there was a comment back towards the beginning of Episode 5 where someone hoped “the ranch hands” (which I took to mean Brett & Lacey) would survive unscathed. But I’m fully accepting of the idea that putting Brett in mortal danger is not necessarily going to get the same sort of rise out of you folks as I’d get if Suzie or Frank were in his place. For that matter, how many of you would care about Suzie or Frank being in mortal danger? That’s a good question, and one I dearly hope at this point would be answered with at least some of you giving a damn. You don’t have to love them, necessarily, but I’d like to think at least a portion of the current hate against Muriel is related to some feeling of wanting the young miss Zane and her crew to get through this intact. This is one of the hardest things about writing a story, and at the same time one of the most crucial things. The twists and turns of your plot, the richness of your world… all of it still hangs on the balance of your characters being people your audience feels like they can give a damn about, whether that feeling is positive or negative. Then on top of that, you want them interested in seeing your protagonist(s) win and your antagonist(s) lose, even if your intent is to horribly subvert that and let the bad guys win. Or you might be George R. R. Martin and just play with your audience’s feelings the way a cat plays with a yarn ball, never letting them get comfortable. Dawn had to stop reading that saga because by the third book she was feeling downright abused by the constant obliteration or undermining of everyone she had allowed herself to identify with… but now of course she’s getting to watch it all over again on television. I digress, though, because GRRM certainly makes you care, otherwise it wouldn’t hurt so much. The death of any story is if the reader remains no more invested in it than if they were reading an iPhone tutorial, and the tricky part about this is that the only way to discover whether you succeeded is to put it out there and have them experience it. Even if you have some friends, an editor, and/or a writing club to give feedback on your work, the ultimate test still rests in tossing your tale to the mercy of total strangers and seeing if your carefully baited lines reel ’em in. So in that sense, I’m quite gratified that Muriel McCarty seems to have struck a chord (or discord, if you will). I like my grey areas, but then even a series as grey as Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones has a place for its “Joffreys”, right?