LNH/META: Trinity

[Andrew Perron]

(Weirdly, this hasn't shown up in at my newsserver yet.)

On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 4:41 PM, Rob Rogers <robrogers72 at gmail.com> wrote:
> You seem to be asking two equally interesting questions
> here: which are the "LNHiest" characters, and which are
> the LNHiest series.

It's true.  And there's another question that I didn't quite express...

> In terms of characters, the one who comes immediately to
> mind is Cheesecake-Eater Lad.  In fact, I think you could
> define an "LNH story" as one in which a character whose
> super-power is to make and eat cheesecake not only
> appears, but is _taken seriously_ by the other characters
> as one of the most experienced and dedicated members
> of the team.

For example, Cheesecake-Eater Lad is, to me, completely emblematic of
the LNH - but in a different way than the aforementioned.  It's sort
of... ah, I know!  The difference between iconic and characteristic:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/61

Basically, I see Cheesecake-Eater Lad as a characteristic LNH
character.  He's the Platonic ideal of what LNH characters are like -
the ridiculous concept, the long, straightforwardly-descriptive,
hyphenated name ending in "Lad", the fact that he's a fat guy in a
chef's outfit who's also an accomplished ninja, and the amount of
characterization he's gotten and plots he's appeared in, not despite,
but because of all of the above.

Whereas I see Limp-Asparagus Lad, Writer's Block Woman, and
Easily-Discovered Man - and, really, their supporting casts too - as
iconic LNH characters.  While they definitely share characteristics
with C-EL, they're each quite distinct - and they each appear
primarily in their own series written by their own author, which may
or may not have something to do with this status.  They have their own
mini-universes around them, but these intersect with and enrich the
greater universe.

Both are necessary, and both are awesome.  Of course, it's pretty
different when all the options are distinct individuals, and I suspect
that it's "actually" more complicated than this, but this is as close
as I can get at the moment to how it works in my mind.

> Then there's WikiBoy, who really does embody what the
> LNH is all about -- he's simultaneously a parody of
> super-heroes and the Internet.

This is true.  WikiBoy is definitely the LNHiest new character of the
LNH's Modern Age, Or Possibly The One Before That, It's Always Hard To
Tell.

> Finally, there's Sister State-the-Obvious.  It's always tempting,
> when faced with characters that have apparently ridiculous or
> limited powers, to write them as either character traits (she
> always says the obvious) or handicaps (she can only say the
> obvious, so she can't ask questions, or speculate, or even say
> thank-you, unless she really means it...)
>
> But the fact that she says the obvious, and ONLY the
> obvious, is a power, and it's a pretty impressive one, when you
> think about it.  If anyone else calls you a schmuck, you can
> take it or leave it; it's that person's opinion, after all.
> But if Sister State-the-Obvious says you're a schmuck,
> then that means it is obvious to the entire world that you
> are.

Hmmmm.  You know,

> Thank you very much!  To me, however, the series that best
> represent the LNH are not necessarily those that follow the
> adventures of a single character, but those that reach into the
> very, very large pool of LNH characters, pluck out several,
> turn them into a cast and develop them over time.

And this, of course, falls into the above.

> I think the standard-bearer for this is probably "LNH Triple Play."
> I thought I was a pretty good writer when I began creating stories
> for the LNH, but I was immediately humbled by the quality of
> work Jeff McCoskey was producing -- and those stories have
> continued to hold up well over the years.

I really need to go through that series.  The main problem with
including it in an LNH archive trawl, of course, is that it intersects
with so many crossovers - but then, that's like saying "the main
problem with reading these very good stories is that you have to read
even more good stories", so.

> I'd also place "Constellation/Dvandom Force" into this category.

I wouldn't quite call Dvandom Force one of the LNHiest series.  It's
an excellent series, and if I suddenly became an eccentric billionaire
Dave is probably the first I'd pay the salary of, but it's more a
merge of the LNH style and his own, also quite distinct style.

(...I love Dvandom Force.)

> And I'd cite both "Limp-Asparagus Lad," which you mentioned,
> and "Miss Translation" as series that simultaneously advance
> the stories of their title characters and develop a really
> interesting and eclectic supporting cast (Jamie Rosen
> deserves special recognition for turning Time Waster Lad
> and Sleeps-With-Anything-Alive Lass into people I
> really wanted to know more about).

Oh, goodness yes.  The main reason Miss Translation doesn't get as
high marks as the above series is that it never got the chance to
follow through with some of its biggest character and plot moments.

> And that's one of the reasons why I keep coming back
> to the LNH.  Well, that and the fact that I left my
> umbrella around here somewhere...
>
> --Easily-Discovered Man Lite
> --Dated a girl from Trinity once...

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, time to dive into Looniverse Adrift.