Yep, it's a two-fer for you guys! There's some mistakes *coughprofileheadscough* in my art here, but I wanted to put it up anyway, since practice makes perfect and all that. Did you know that there are no pictures of someone slapping someone else on the internet, or at least none I could find? I had to redraw the second panel a million times, especially Dee's hand until it resembled something like a hand that had delivered a smack.
What Mike did was a big controversy among the Foobiverse! Journal and elsewhere...it even made it into Mike's section on Wiki. I don't think it would have been so bad to put the same sequence of events into the FBOFW strip as it was, if Mike had suffered the consequences by having Dee and everyone else call him out on his stupidity, and possibly suffered some ill health. Really, his lungs should either be fried from the superheated air (Heat rises! Second floor!) and/or smoke inhalation. Mike also should have realized what he had done, apologized, and tried to strike a better balance between his writing and family, since he literally got a second chance at life.
I will admit, however, that when I first read the series of strips about the fire, and this was way before I found the Foobiverse, I read about Mike running back in to get his laptop, shook my head and said, this is SO what I would have done! Because yeah, I'm deathly afraid of losing all my writing and art, all my work, you know? But then I thought about it and would I really have risked my life to go back in for these things? The answer really would have been no. I would have stood outside, ranting and crying and hoping that the firemen could knock the fire down quickly and I could save some of my things afterwards. *knocks on wood*
The Deanna we saw in the strip might have done this and more or less instantly regretted it; she's not good at standing up for her own best interests. It's one of the reasons why she doesn't take Mira up on her offer to move farther away her her exploiters, the Pattersons. She knows that she probably should but she's too weak to challenge Elly and risk her vengeance.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it would have been so bad to put the same sequence of events into the FBOFW strip as it was, if Mike had suffered the consequences by having Dee and everyone else call him out on his stupidity, and possibly suffered some ill health. Really, his lungs should either be fried from the superheated air (Heat rises! Second floor!) and/or smoke inhalation.
ReplyDeleteIn real life, the Pattersons would probably take turns driving up to the hospital and yelling at Mike for being a reckless numbskull while he recovered from the damage he did himself. They'd also want to keep closer tabs on him lest he do some other wacky thing so they'd arrange matters so that he wasn't too far out of their sight. If that meant that John, Elly and April had to move into the TTH a bit earlier than they thought so he and the children and wife he was apologizing to had more room, that would have been a sacrifice the three of them would have more or less gladly made.
The way Mike was holding out his laptop, it would have been easier-- and would have sent a better message-- if Dee had whacked it out of his hands, preferrably in the direction of the burning building. I don't think it would have been in character for her to have grabbed it and slammed it into his face, but whacking the computer seems more like Dee than whacking Mike.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're a mild-mannered woman who's not particularly large or strong, it doesn't usually occur to you to hit people, because you know you'll end up hurting yourself more than the other person. Of course Dee isn't as little and weak as I am, but I've more than once had the experience of diverting the impulse to hit onto something inanimate that can't hit back. I remember once being so mad at someone over a local political issue that I snatched the hat right off his head as a substitute for smacking him. It wasn't something I thought about; I just did it. Kind of surprised me.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith JcH: Anyone over five feet is too tall.
Jana C.H.
ReplyDeleteThe way Mike was holding out his laptop, it would have been easier-- and would have sent a better message-- if Dee had whacked it out of his hands, [preferably] in the direction of the burning building.
That does make more sense given who Dee is; seeing his toy treated like that might have got Mike to thinking that it wasn't worth rushing upstairs to get it. After all, if he had his notes online like a sane person, he could pick up where he left off any old place.
Nuts! I wish I had thought of that before I drew the picture...oh well, I can't go back and retcon it. ;)
ReplyDeleteI did have Mike drop his laptop and breaking it that way with the shock of Dee slapping him, so either way, his work on the laptop is destroyed. Though not utterly destroyed, because I think it was mentioned somewhere that he had copies of his manuscript elsewhere?
As for Mike being given the Patterson homestead in order to keep an eye on him in the aftermath of the fire may make more sense than what did happen, but I think it would have been better to have everyone yell at him and having to live in a motel while searching for a new place to live like most people would have to.
Ah, go ahead and retcon! It's all part of the FOOB tradition.
ReplyDeleteWould dropping a laptop destroy all the data on it? I would think the odds are good that some computer nerd could transfer a lot of it to another machine somehow. Maybe not.
I have to confess to a guilty sympathy for Mike. His bringing the laptop proudly to show Dee was the work of an asshole, but I can't quite blame him for being insane enough to want to rescue his magnum opus. I have a book (non-fiction) that I'm not really working on, but if I had some serious work put into it I would be devastated to have it destroyed. If I ever get off my duff and get at it again, I'll have to be sure to download everything onto CDs that I can keep next to my bed in case of emergency. But how will I save all my other half-assed writing, and my decades worth of amateur artwork? Arg!
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith Georges Bizet: To be a great artist is not necessarily to be an honorable man. (For "great" read "mediocre." It works the same.)
Ooh yeah! I would be devastated to lose my stuff too. The amount of things I have, writings and research, exceeds 750 MB, so I use my myBook to back up all of my stuff. Speaking of which, it's definitely time for me to back it up again! I have two stories I'm working on...unfinished. I failed NaNoWriMo three years in a row! Two of them on the same story, even! Ugh. I'm trying to train myself into being able to finish things, hence, this blog. I usually talk a lot, and do little. Now it's time to talk and do the walk! :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'll post an alternate second panel to the above. I do have an lightbox I can do most of the work on...
...I read about Mike running back in to get his laptop, shook my head and said, this is SO what I would have done! Because yeah, I'm deathly afraid of losing all my writing and art, all my work, you know?
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on that one. One more reason for the list of reasons backing up your files is a Must Do (though you'd have to back it up in online storage or something along those lines), advice I need to take myself. I'm prone to impulsiveness so I can see myself pulling a Mike while others shout at me to come back. If I made it out alive, they'd rightly chastize me for risking my life. If I went back in my for my cats, though...
Would dropping a laptop destroy all the data on it?
Depends on how damaged the hard drive was.
Just a side note to DOW's comments:
ReplyDeleteMy husband is self employed and wanted a way to have an offsite backup of his work related files should there ever be a fire or something. He found a service called Jungle Disk that's really cheap and provides storage offsite that you can then access anywhere. If you have that much to store you should look into it, you'll be surprised how inexpensive it is.
And I think in FOOB they even mentioned he had emailed his Mom a backup of his "great novel" so there was really no point at all to him running in to save his laptop!!!
What I've always wondered is why Mike didn't grab the laptop on the way out, if it were that important to him. I mean, when the fire alarm goes off in my dorm, one of the first things I grab is my laptop - right after I get my keys.
ReplyDelete