The strip's ending soon. I'm holding out hope that she'll listen to her readers. This just doesn't seem like the warm, wonderful match she's building it up as.
Sometimes an author really is the least reliable judge of their work.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've never followed the story although I've read it occasionally. Is there a plot summary somewhere?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I've posted on that blog, too, to protest the same thing. *laugh*
I'm tempted to do it myself, mainly out of residual fondness for a strip that really -was- pretty good back in the 80s-90s.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Man, I've only read the strip on and off, I followed it a lot more like 7 years or so. However, I did start reading it more constantly for about the last six months.
For me, all I saw was Anthony reappearing during the garage incident and then now them getting back together. Reading through the comments, I see I must have missed a lot in regards to Anthony's ex-wife. Many people seem to know pretty detailed stuff about what happened in their marriage beyond what happened in the last week or so.
Honestly, I barely remember Anthony as being little more than a bit player, although I *did* miss a lot.
Any idea when this elaboration happened so I can catch up? Or are people just extrapolating?
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
All the stuff they mention happened/was said about Therese...it's just been spread out over the past few years.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think it's really boring that Anthony and Liz have been paired up - of all the guys she has dated, he is the boringest.
Posts: 5771 | Registered: Nov 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I haven't read For Better or For Worse in years. Didn't it used to be a comic strip? It sounds like a bad soap opera now.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
You know, I agree with all the criticisms expressed here, and yet I still read the comic every day. Why do I do that? >.<
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
| IP: Logged |
I have thought for years that Lynn Johnston has found something she hates about me personally, and decided specifically to take the strip in the direction I would most hate. Of course she doesn't actually know me....that's where my theory breaks down.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Megan: You know, I agree with all the criticisms expressed here, and yet I still read the comic every day. Why do I do that? >.<
I am guessing that at least some of the rest of us do that, too, or we wouldn't be so knowledgeable about the storyline. Posts: 5771 | Registered: Nov 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Megan: It could be worse. You should try lurking on boards that support the old Battlestar Galactica. They *really* bash the new one and yet they have intimate knowledge of everything that happens, both in front and behind the camera.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Liz comes back home for a visit, begins working at Lawrence's landscaping business.
One of her co-workers is a creepy stalker who keeps trying to harass her.
At point, going so far as to grab and molest her.
Anthony does the one appealing, likable thing he's done in the past decade by saving Liz.
He then spoils any warm reader feelings by using this moment to hit the emotionally vulnerable, in-shock Liz with an appeal to save him from his loveless marriage to the Wicked Witch of the We-errr, Therese.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
Weird. Just went to the comic's website to read a few of the recent strips... and the characters actually blink. Very bizarre when you're not expecting it...
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I see that Johnston's retconned Candace's background too, with this week's rabidly pro-Anthony strips.
According to previous "off panel" info in the various FBoFW collections, the reason why Candace got all her piercings, tattoos, and extreme hairstyles was because she had a sexually abusive father...she was trying to make herself as unattractive as possible to him. It added a sad, poignant undertone to those old high school strips where Liz would react with amusement and confusion to Candace's latest wild look.
Now?
Candace: "Oh, I was just being rebellious towards my Mom, LOL!"
quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: I haven't read For Better or For Worse in years. Didn't it used to be a comic strip? It sounds like a bad soap opera now.
Yeah. Which is why I stopped reading.
quote:Originally posted by Shanna: I liked when Elizabeth was teaching. It seemed so right for her. I hated when she went home.
posted
For Better Or For Worse has entered that nether-realm of comics, like Family Circus or Fred Basset. They simply do not exist when I read the comics page. I simply fail to notice their existence without a conscious attempt to find them -- my brain is discarding them automatically and my eyes pass right over them.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I still read it nearly every day. I've been reading it for so long, I'm going to hang around and see how it all ends up.
As for the soap-opera storyline...It doesn't bother me. For one thing, I have absolutely NO control over it; I can't influence what happens. It's entirely up to Lyn Johnson how the story comes out. Also, I almost think of the characters in that strip as human, they make mistakes, have strengths and weaknesses just like anyone else. I guess that's appealing to me, in some way. (I'm not a soap opera fan, for what it's worth.)
I guess I'm interested enough in the story that I want to hear the ending, for better or for worse. Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I keep waiting for Michael to hear something scratching at the back door, go to check it out, and discover that Farley actually made it out of the stream years ago and has just been taking a very long nap.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I only get to read it off and on (every few weeks) so I had picked up that Anthony had left Therese and was again dating Liz..
..but I know nothing of this "attempted rape to gain pity". How far back was that, and what happened? (I don't really want to read by through all of them....)
Posts: 9538 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
It was in 2005. That strip that Ela linked to is close to the end of that storyline (or that chapter of that storyline). Puffy Treat sums up what happens in the post below Ela's link.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Tstorm: Also, I almost think of the characters in that strip as human, they make mistakes, have strengths and weaknesses just like anyone else.
That used to be true. In fact, it used to be that even characters who were initially "bad" in their first appearances like Jeremy Jones or Mrs. Dingle would be revealed to have hidden vulnerable, human sides...the message was to never judge anyone too harshly. We don't know their full story. One-note characters tended to be used for only short sequences, dropped and never mentioned again.
Then came Michael's marriage to Deanna. Suddenly Deanna's mother (who had been portrayed as a pretty decent sort in her sporadic panel time before) was transformed into a loud, abrasive, pushy, thoughtless, bigoted harpy! And always directly put in comparison to quiet, loving, warm, thoughtful, saintly Elly Patterson.
Guess which of these characters is the fictional avatar of the strip's author?
From then on it became worse and worse...one-note, one-dimensional "baddie" characters began to populate the strip...always so that the a member of the Patterson clan could be lauded in contrast.
Or worse, Anthony, where it's more there's such an astonishing lack of traits to praise, so his ex-wife is made out to be the epitome of evil.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
As a character, Anthony kind of fascinates me because he's so completely blank. He's never even had a hobby. He's aggressively dull; that's, like, his thing.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Tom: This week revealed he has an extreme interest in 1980s vintage shorts.
Aagh. The "Therese was -evil-" storyline is continued today. Liz divulges to Candace that she somehow knows that Therese has two manipulative, emotional blackmailing parents who pressured her into going along with a lot of Anthony's wishes and goals despite her not sharing them in the slightest.
Is this a lead-up to some possible compassion for Therese?
Nope! It's just more proof that Therese "took Anthony for all he got!"
What did she get? Anthony has the house, the money, the unconditional love of all around him... Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think Lynn is dancing around not being able to say in a family paper that Anthony is just astonishingly good in bed.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
If Candace asks Liz "I'm not SERIOUS about him, I just promised him total lifetime commitment on Sunday" Patterson about that, I will love her forevermore.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I think Lynn is dancing around not being able to say in a family paper that Anthony is just astonishingly good in bed.
::very nearly spat coffee all over his computer::
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
It occurs to me that one of the biggest thematic problems with FBOFW right now, even more than the tone-deaf writing of Elizabeth, is the fact that no one in the Patterson family has a real job anymore. They don't do anything, so their lives lack any sort of narrative urgency.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah. Come to think of it, the last "work" seen in the strip was Elly shaving fuzzballs off of old bedsheets.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think part of the reason why I've never seen what the big deal about this strip is I've never consistently read it.
And, given how many freaking books there are and how much they cost, that's never going to happen now.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes. Have been since the strip's inception. Though it normally only comes up when there's a reference to "Remembrance Day" or paying things with a "cheque".
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I stopped reading when a lot of strips seemed to focus on the dog and his hilarious animal hijinx. At least Garfield has a good artist or twenty running things.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I can't get over just how petty and bratty this week's strips makes both Liz and Anthony seem.
"You know what cruel things that evil Therese did, Candace? She actually told him to dress in attractive clothing! And eat his food in a civilized manner! TSK! Doesn't she know that men are eternal 11 year olds, and it's up to us lady-folk to smile and approve of everything they do?"
Come to think of it, hasn't Elly been portrayed as giving clothing and table manner advice to Liz's Perfect Model of a Father and Husband for decades?
posted
I feel bad for Therese. She didn't want the house and Anthony made her get one, she didn't want the kid, Anthony made her have one. Also, she was the one with the job and stuff. It seems like if anyone took anyone for all they were worth, it was anthony.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
