{"id":3359,"date":"2013-08-19T17:49:09","date_gmt":"2013-08-19T21:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/?p=3359"},"modified":"2013-08-19T17:49:09","modified_gmt":"2013-08-19T21:49:09","slug":"birthdays-and-whatnot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/?p=3359","title":{"rendered":"Birthdays and Whatnot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday<\/span><\/span> was Funnies Script-Writing Day. It\u2019s something that happens every so often, when I run out of Funnies scripts to draw. Last Funnies Script-Writing Day I concluded the Tomaw storyline, drew two standalones\u00a0 and started the push for the next big storyline. You can obviously conclude that on Saturday<\/span><\/span> I had to continue with the next big storyline, which was scheduled to start tomorrow<\/span><\/span>. I was stumped however.<\/p>\n

My original plan was to only include three characters in this storyline. That meant there were six main characters I had to write out. I\u2019ve known for months that not everybody would be involved, but I didn\u2019t stop to think about why some characters would be sitting out. When I started writing on Saturday<\/span><\/span> I realized that I had no plausible reason for four characters not to help out and a fifth character\u2019s reason not to participate was contingent on sitting out one of the characters that WAS supposed to be involved. \u00a0The latter was solved by simply switching the characters\u2019 places since I wasn\u2019t really attached to one participating over the other.\u00a0 Of the four others, I\u2019ve decided to add one to the storyline because I realized he simply had to go. For the three others, I created a situation that conveniently wrote them out. However, just dropping the situation in cold felt TOO convenient. It was almost worse than not giving them a reason at all to stay home. \u00a0I needed to give a little setup.<\/p>\n

All it took was one new strip and a rewrite of one of the lines in a strip that I\u2019d already drawn for the storyline, but it makes all the difference (to me at least). \u00a0Because I want the storyline to start on a Tuesday<\/span><\/span>, I wrote another standalone for this week and used it as an opportunity to set up another gag in the storyline. Despite being last-minute inserts that I squeezed in for purely expository purposes, I like the gags. The best thing though is that the situation I created to write the three characters out actually gives me ideas for the main story.<\/p>\n

All this talk and so far, nothing about birthdays. Well, I wanted to start with the writing bit, but liked \u201cBirthdays and Whatnot\u201d as a title better than \u201cWriting and Whatnot\u201d. I can do that. Anyhoo! So what\u2019s up with birthdays? You\u2019ll note that Thursday<\/span><\/span> (August 15th<\/sup>) was Big Oonch\u2019s birthday. It follows Nektara\u2019s birthday (August 9th<\/sup>) pretty closely. That\u2019s because Big Oonch and Nektara are characters I created specifically for friends of mine whose birthdays are, you guessed it, August 9th<\/sup> and August 15th<\/sup>. Last year, when August 9th<\/sup> fell on a strip day, I decided to make that Nektara\u2019s birthday and made a strip out of it. This year, August 15th<\/sup> fell on a Thursday<\/span><\/span>, so I continued the tradition. Zo\u00eb was also created for a friend, whose birthday is actually today, but as Monday<\/span><\/span> isn\u2019t a strip day, she doesn\u2019t get a birthday call out in a strip this year. That\u2019ll be for another year. For now, Happy Birthday Lyne!<\/p>\n

With all that said, I thought it\u2019d be fun to set the birthdates for the other Funnies characters, so here they are:<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Barnaby \u2013 February 2nd<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Tomaw and Nolan the Pickle Patch Bandit \u2013 February 12th<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Deema \u2013 March 17th<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Skitter \u2013 April 2nd<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Red Rich \u2013 June 25th<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Todrick \u2013 July 1st<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Nektara \u2013 August 9th<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Big Oonch \u2013 August 15th<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Zo\u00eb \u2013 August 19th<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Clive the Pickle Patch Bandit \u2013 October 3rd<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Popkin \u2013 November 14th<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Clive the Pickle Patch Bandit \u2013 November 18th<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Sass \u2013 December 21st<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Crismus \u2013 December 25th<\/sup>
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Cyran \u2013 Unknown<\/p>\n

Why is Cyran\u2019s birthday unknown? Because it\u2019s the same date as mine and I don\u2019t like sharing that information. For those of you who know, well now you can celebrate Cyran\u2019s birthday in secret as well. (Don\u2019t post the date in the comments suggest!)<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s all for now. Have a good week, y\u2019all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday was Funnies Script-Writing Day. It\u2019s something that happens every so often, when I run out of Funnies scripts to draw. Last Funnies Script-Writing Day I concluded the Tomaw storyline, drew two standalones\u00a0 and started the push for the next big storyline. You can obviously conclude that on Saturday I had to continue with the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Birthdays and Whatnot","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-3359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carja-corner","tag-monday-blog","category-7-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ageofanimus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Carja.gif?fit=200%2C197&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1UaSI-Sb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3360,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359\/revisions\/3360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ageofanimus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}