One of Jessica’s early story arcs that I threw out was one where she started working at a Hooters style restaurant to earn extra money, and annoy her brother. I actually wrote a fairly large portion of it before I gave up. The main reason was that, at the time, I was drawing the comic on a device the size of a post card and didn’t think I could render such an establishment convincingly. There was also the problem of getting the characters to go there willingly. Jo and Thomas would be too embarrassed, Carol and Nina wouldn’t be interested, John would annoy the staff, Mike would be too desperate, and so on. Ed would be the only one who would potentially be forced to go there and it didn’t seem like it would lead anywhere good ultimately. It was going to be one of the ways Jessica displayed her intelligence as she slowly took over the place, made it more successful, and eventually bought it. There were just too many reasons not to do it then, and even now.

Eventually I hit upon the idea of the coffee shop, which had a lot more going for it, and here we are. The cast finally got a place where they could go and talk outside of work, with its own cast of colorful characters, as all sitcoms should have. Rulette’s, or the library, could have been, and have been to some extent, the same kind of place, but the reasons you go to places like that tend to be more narrow than a place where you eat. Basically it makes for a nice little hub where all the other locations can point to when it makes sense for them not to be open.

Still, in some alternate reality Jess became the ruler of a boob themed empire, much like I have.

So many people have expressed contempt towards Evrina that it had me thinking about the woman who inspired a lot of her character, especially early on. I wasn’t the best of friends with her, but I did come in contact with her many times at one point, many years ago, mostly via a mutual friend. I am so accustomed to being friends with people that others find absolutely repellant that I never really gave her personality all that much thought outside of how it might be interesting in a fictional setting. I always felt like the outward personality she had was an act she put on to keep people at an emotional distance. Additionally she basically fetishized bad behavior in a sexual way, so there was that too. I eventually lost all contact with this person, but would see them out and about on the internet sometimes, and passively paid attention to how they were doing. At one point they found love and their personality did a 180 from strident to essentially blandly normal. They abandoned most of their online activity and faded into the background noise. Unfortunately their partner suffered through and eventually died of cancer. It was a difficult thing to observe and, obviously, a terrible thing to live through. Eventually, after the wounds began to scab, their old personality reasserted itself. I found myself wondering which version of them was the real them. I very much tend to default to the idea that we wear a mask for certain occasions, but have a true self that we always are. As time has gone by though I’m not sure that’s completely correct at all, or for everyone. I think it might be more close to correct to say that we are both the mask and the face under it. Both personalities are aspects of ourselves and we tend to choose one as our “real” self, but they are both our “real” selves in actuality. I’ve heard it said that we are what we do, so what we do when we are wearing our public face IS what we are as well.

I should also say that Evrina isn’t some kind of one to one copy of this person. Like all the characters she’s a sort of amalgamation of many similar people I mixed together to get a character I had a use for in my own story. Neil, who many of you might not remember, is very loosely based on the mutual friend between the Evrina inspiration and myself. He and I used to work together quite a lot but he eventually took a very different path after having an extended brush with viral success. The audience he cultivated during that time became so extremely toxic that I felt it was a good idea to cut all ties for when it eventually turned on him. I actually don’t know if that ever happened, or what exactly he’s up to now, but he randomly appeared in video I saw on youtube a couple of weeks ago and I felt like my choice was validated at least as far as his audience was concerned. In his case what I wonder about is if the person he is now is actually him being true to himself, or if it’s an act constructed to fool his current audience. It’s exactly the kind of dangerous game I would expect from him, but I’m honestly not sure. At this point even the act of asking such a question is far too dangerous, so that relationship will just have to be one of the many I’ve lost along the path of my own life. It doesn’t make me happy but it is, as they say, what it is.

My intention was to circle back to Neil at some point, since he was clerly established as one of Evrina’s cohorts, but there are so many plates spinning in this literary circus that I don’t always have time to go back. They’re just off camera, spinning away, while I deal with whatever plates have my attention. At the very least I think Neil has probably visited the shop at some point and not gotten along all that well with Ramon. The idea that he strains Ramon’s saintlike personality amuses me. That may, or may not, become “canon” at some point, but it’s floating around in my mind at least.

What is also floating around in my mind are thoughts of other tasks I have to complete, so I’ll leave you with all that mess and wish you a pleasant weekend. I hope you remain safe and alive, so you can return on Monday to see what sort of nonsense this new development will cause. Until then, give a hoot, don’t pollute.

Posts authored by Jackie

2800 Double Crossed.