Mental Health Day A2
So I wrote the first scene here exactly as it was except for the last line, which Flo added. And that obviously changed my plans for Frigg and Syr’Nj drastically. The earlier version of the plot would’ve been a new, subtly nicer Frigg (“Frikk?”) creating awkward situations that she’d have trouble living down later and that Syr’Nj would have trouble explaining in the moment. This version sends the awkwardness in a much funnier direction.
Still, the way we dropped this on readers in an outside-the-main-flow story led some readers to consider this whole tale fanfiction, and Flo even joked about that in the alt text, though I think Flo had a higher opinion of fanfiction and what it could do than some readers did. This mildly annoyed me, as I don’t really know how to write out-of-continuity or “skippable” stories. I mean, I guess I have the capacity, but you know what I mean: if it’s not something I can see as possibly in continuity, I’m not that interested. I want everything I write to be mandatory reading! That’s why it was just as well that Flo was the one handling the AaAs, for the most part.
Make your own calls here, but I’ll say this: Flo identified Frigg as queer long before this story began, and Syr’Nj is closer to straight but nothing if not curious. (You may recall Flo’s attempt to canonize an earlier encounter between the two, though I think this story works better if you don’t treat that strip as canon.)
. . . I guess “gardening” WASN’T a euphemism.
I was trying very hard to read it as an extended metaphor, but got lost in the second paragraph.
For what is worth, I think the idea of Syr’Nj’s potion turning Frigg into a “G-Rated Frigg” was funnier.
That idea reminds me of that whole One Punch! debacle between Batman and Guy Gardner, which -as most of you know- gave Gardner a split personality: One personality would be Gardner’s usual loudmouth Chad persona, and the other being that of a mild-mannered softy. And that gag made Guy Gardner bearable for a while. I think something similar would have had worked here as well.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of the potion turning Frigg’s brutishness into horniness. I just like the other idea better.
Are “alter-verse” stories essentially skippable?
I honestly don’t know what you mean. If you mean this story, it’s not really an alter-verse tale, it’s as real as any other tale in Guilded Age. If you mean the stuff that’s set in Sepia World and/or Cyberia, um, definitely not? Ask an Adventurer’s sort of perpendicular reality you can maybe skip, but most of it’s a lot of fun. I can’t think what else would qualify except guest strips that don’t always mesh with the continuity.