It took more time than I expected....

[demiurgent]

...but someone sent me Gossamer Commons e-mail asking if Keith and Davan from Something Positive are related.

Actually, said person asserted that they were related. Because, of course, all Macintires must be related, even if one set of them has apparently been in Maine since before the Mayflower, and the other set is from the deep South.

For the record, when I was writing up Agatha in my original notes, I realized she couldn't very well have the last name of Onzeker, what with the being a maternal grandmother and being Scottish and all. I didn't want to make her anything directly associated with "Burns," because... well, because. So that let out Campbell. Macintire was the first to come to mind after that.

About three days later, I remembered Davan's surname was Macintire. After pounding my head against the wall and then insulating my thoughts with Scotch, I set out to find a new name. And then I thought "wait. Why? At the most, this'll be a nod to a strip I like done by a person I like, much the same as said grandmother's first name -- Agatha -- is a nod to T Campbell's Penny and Aggie."

Well, because surnames can cause the question listed above, before I went ahead and did it, I shot Randy an e-mail. In it, I asked, more or less, "hey, do you care if I make the lead character a Macintire on his mother's side? It's not the same family as Davan and I swear to Christ I won't ask you to do a crossover with me."

Randy's response, as you could guess, was "why the fuck would I possibly care?" Phrased somewhat differently, but the gist was clear. In a pleasant way.

So I put it in. I intended to update the FAQ to reflect the fact that no, in fact Agatha Macintire, her daughter Libby Macintire Onzeker, and her grandson Keith Onzeker were no relation to Fred and Davan Macintire, and besides -- to the cast of GC, Something Positive is a comic strip.

Only we got the updated CMS out, but didn't get the Pages implemented yet, so I'm holding off on cast page, about and FAQ changes until it's in, to give Weds a clean slate. So I assumed that either my e-mail or the forum would buzz about the possibilities and I would quash them

This particular person's assertion was... firm, shall we say. He also postulated that Trudy and Audrey (sic) were probably friends growing up. I suppose because Trudy liked to torture Barbie dolls. (Honestly, though -- who didn't like to torture Barbie dolls?) He also said he can't wait to see how Randy drew Trudy.

I told him he might need to learn patience. Though the temptation to string him along was mind boggling.

Comments

[ocarina.livejournal.com]

All the people in scotland who never emigrated are also related, and also the people who took the name without being related at all.

Internet scottish conspiracy!

[wednesday]

Weds can cut and paste old content the same as she can new content. AMEND THINGS. Do not wait on me! I commented source so that you would know where to stick stuff! Just close paragraph tags! And stuff! And...

AND!

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

AND... then I don't get use updating the pages as a means of learning the new system, do I?

Sorry. Holding until Pages ready. Neener. ;)

[sonictail.livejournal.com]

heh, it's probably for the best. better do it right the first time, which strangely enough seems to be how you're working with gossamer commons :)

but hell, I thought all the webcomic crackpots were called "indie" artists, that or we had managed to lock em up in a closet somewhere. Good to know that your comic is inspiring debate like this, conflict is always healthy!

[wednesday]

This cannot hold! How am I supposed to sleep for fourteen hours?!

[troutman.livejournal.com]

I just love it when people look for crossovers where there isn't any crossovers to find. Fans just like fancy that every fictional universe on the planet is somehow interconnected, hense the piles of crossover fanfic for TV shows.

Then again, I love the idea of shared universes, so I'm a huge hypocrite for deriding such things.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

It isn't the concept of crossovers that stymied me. It's the absolute certainty that this was the plan all along. That somehow I hypnotized Randy into literally putting a family link between his strip's main character and my strip's main character, and that Davan and Keith have known each other all their lives, and Trudy therefore knows Aubrey et al. I mean, dude.

Of course, neither Greg nor I help that well when we throw in superfluous webcomics references. ;)

[troutman.livejournal.com]

And really, it isn't THAT hard to make connections like that either, since you're such a greatly professed fanboy of SP to being with.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but that doesn't make Randy a fanboy of me, now does it? ;)