“That panda looks like an ocelot.” “Oh my bad. It IS an ocelot.”
- – - – -
While we’re here, I want to talk about Chanelle for a moment.
As the snowball fight portion of the arc drew to a conclusion, a few astute readers questioned something of me: where did Chanelle disappear to?
I mentioned in Director Commentary earlier that I was doing a mid-stream shift to downplay Chanelle’s involvement in favor of Ricky (a more long-standing character who was becoming overshadowed by tertiary cast in terms of screentime). An unintended consequence of this is that Chanelle sort of… disappeared. She’s not visible with either the punished “Mean Kids” or the unpunished “Orphanage Kids”.
Looking back on the strips in question I feel like Chanelle’s lack of visibiity is less of a “mystery” and more of a gaping plot hole. So when I get a chance, I’m going to go back and add her in to a few key crowd scenes to make her resolution to the event more visible. But until I get around to that, I’d like to offer those wondering about Chanelle’s fate my official stance on her outcome: As Heather and Keisha’s friend, she changed sides with them when they turned on the others and ultimately avoided trouble by going along with the crowd when they set-up the “Mean Kids” with all the faked crying.
