Rosencrantz and Guildenstern walk into a bar.
The two guys: and you should know that “guys” is being used in its gender-neutral sense. (It does have one, and that sense, I think, is growing. Saying “Oh, come on, guys,” to a mixed group is not unusual, and includes the girls as much as the boys. Encourage its neutrality, says I.) The two guys, then: a terribly common and terribly ancient trope. (One hesitates and in the end does not say universal, mostly because while one is sometimes cheeky, one isn’t stupid.) It’s more interesting when stuff is happening in a—story, shall we say—to be able to talk about it, banter, crack jokes, bitch and moan—and so it’s axiomatic that two characters are more interesting than one. (Three, however, is not necessarily better than two. Four gets downright muddled, unless handled with great skill.) And because we like to be able to tell the difference between A and B, apples and oranges, a hawk and a handsaw, it’s only natural that of these two the one should end up as foil to the other—and naturally enough, vice versa. This isn’t to say that the one must always be funny, and the other dour; one stolid, and one flighty; one cynical, and one earnest; one earthy, and one spiritual; one loud, and one quiet. This isn’t to say that there’s an ur-This and an ur-That to which all such pairings hearken. Merely that, of whatever thing(s) the storyteller (story?) chooses to kick around with the two guys, well, one of them will be on the one side; the other on the other. Just the way things fall out: dichotomy, you know?
Still: it’s fun to map this pair onto that and see what overlaps we find.
—I’m spurred to this line of thought by Molly and Griffen, the protagonists of the Spouse’s sci fi slice-o’-life picaresque. Which is, perhaps, self-indulgent—but if that surprises, hell. You probably shouldn’t be reading blogs. Anyway: Griffen, of course, is C3PO, which makes Molly R2D2. That means that Dan’s Molly, then, and Casey’s Griffen. Scully would be Dan, and Mulder Casey (I’m thinking less of essence than affect, mind); Ponch would be Mulder, and Jon would be Scully. I can never remember which is Starsky, and which Hutch, but Bo is Ponch and Luke is Jon, assuming Bo’s the blond one, and that means Dana’s Bo and Natalie’s Luke, though I don’t think hair color’s all that reliable as a flag of which is which. (Xena and Gabrielle don’t really work so well as two guys, but I don’t think that’s because of subtext. Please.)
And Guildenstern is clearly Griffen; Rosencrantz, indubitably Molly.
Jenn’s between chapters, so she’s let Barry come in and do a short story, “The Argument,” which will be running at Girlamatic for the next couple of weeks. Does this mean that we now have two sets of two guys—Barry’s, and Jenn’s—standing metafictionally at either side of a stage, spinning coins? Not so much, I don’t think. (Every conceit has to break down somewhere.) But I am amused—heartily—to note the extent to which Barry adores Molly. Dotes on her. Lavishes attention upon her. Jenn loves her ladies as equally as anyone can, but Molly’s quiet, stolid, earnest, earthy, and spiritual: she’s not the showboat Griffen is. (Though Molly’s the highlight of one of the more beautiful bits of drawing thus far.) Yet give Barry the reins, and there’s Griffen, perched on the arm of a sofa, in the background, and look how Molly shines.
Then, push comes to shove and we get down to cases, I’m a Griffen partisan. So of course I’m going to be struck by something like that.
You know what I mean?
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Selling myself: Check out Dicebox!
Y'all may have noticed that there were no posts on Alas yesterday. A major reason for that is that my pal Jenn Manley Lee, creator of the excellent online comic book Dicebox, is taking a well-deserved break. While she's doing that, I'm filling in with ...