★ Notes on Year 2, Comic 6 - WGSS120 / HIST376: Women, Food, & American Culture ★

✓HERE WE ARE ANOTHER BLOG POST Oh man, lots of things to talk about. For example–did you know that the class Jack and Bitty are taking in this comic is based on a course at Yale called, “Women, Food, & Culture”? I wanted the Samwell version of this course (which I’ll just call WGSS for short) to be a coveted senior seminar that NO ONE gets into, let alone spunky sophomore bakers. The Goal: To force Jack Zimmermann and Eric Bittle into a cooking project because this comic is secretly a sitcom.

✓ Bitty talked about this class for a long time on his Twitter. How do the tweets and this comic line up? Right, Bitty tweeted about this class off and on for about 14 weeks or so? There’s no way I can compile all of the tweets, but HERE’S….A BUNCH!!!! FOR YOU COMIC-ONLY PURISTS!

= Food Class Update= this morning, I walked into a senior history seminar with only my bribery pie and a dream. I left victorious.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) August 27, 2014

BITTY GETS INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE CLASS

#WGSS120: Women, Food & Amer. Culture. Fabulous professor. Fascinating readings. Hockey captains who doodle defensive plays in their notes.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 10, 2014

Watching Jack interact with non-hockey people is so bizarre. I forget he has the ability to make small talk.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 17, 2014

I promise to give detailed updates on whenever Jack falls asleep during lecture, doodles in his notes, gives awkward presentations

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) August 27, 2014

Bitty starts to see another side of Jack. The side that doesn’t default into skating faster and tracking the puck and the movement of his forwards and his defense and the opposition’s goalie. The side that has to deal with non-hockey people. WHAT.

Phone Girl, please, you’re not even being subtle. Try Tortoise Shell Glasses Girl’s approach instead: blatantly staring at Jack dreamily.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 3, 2014

LIKE TORTOISE SHELL GLASSES GIRL!!!! MY FAVORITE GIRL! Ugh, she’s probably editor-in-chief of the Daily too, don’t spend time with those hockey losers.

Jack on the phone w/ his dad a while ago: french french french I’m with Bittle french french Bittle ha ha french french no…okay, bye. ._.?

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 19, 2014

They spend a lot of time together.

AND BECAUSE BITTY AND JACK SPEND SO MUCH TIME TOGETHER, THE FREQUENCY OF CHIRPING INCREASED 10X. THIS IS HONESTLY THE BIGGEST WAY THE TWITTER ELABORATED ON THE COMIC. With tons of mundane fluff. LOOK:

Me: I’ll stop tweeting when you quit teasing me Jack: I guess you’ll never stop tweeting (This one.)

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 20, 2014

Sitting in the Norris library with Jack. Trying to do an essay response for food class…and why am I tweeting under the table.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 24, 2014

oh god, so Jack just went to use the bathroom and tossed a note on my laptop. Yes I’m live-tweeting this; my life is not exciting.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 24, 2014

it’s in french OF COURSE

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 24, 2014

translation: “write your essay response” oh Lord.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 24, 2014

Okay, he’s back. I left a note on his backpack.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 24, 2014

I’ve never seen Jack have to stifle a laugh before. #NoteGameStrong

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) September 24, 2014

What did Bittle write? That’s a very good question.

After morning practice and team breakfast, on the Wednesdays before WGSS (and if Ransom wasn’t around) sometimes Bitty would force Jack to get coffee with him.

Me: Jack! You wanna get a Pumpkin Spice Latte with me before class? :) :) :) Jack: You shouldn’t be drinking those. Me: :( :( :(

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) October 15, 2014

Dragging Jack to Annie’s before class. Without caffeine I am not a southern gentleman.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) October 15, 2014

(Annie’s. The cafe from The Closet Story. I like to keep my universes streamlined.)

OMFG few things are funnier than watching Jack guess who’s playing on the radio in here. I can’t breathe.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) October 15, 2014

TOO HARD TO TWEET. He keeps guessing TAYLOR SWIFT. HELP

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) October 15, 2014

It was a rather warm autumn, wasn’t it?

Jack: It’s way too easy to make you laugh. Make sure you tweet that.

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) October 15, 2014

Our final for Food Class will involve creating a dish from an old recipe and thus: Jack:..I might need your help. >:)

— Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) October 20, 2014

An example of how Bitty is an unreliable narrator. He makes up Jack’s dialogue here to quickly convey what Jack meant by saying “Um. Bittle.” in real life.

(Note: Twitter only shows a limited number of tweets on a feed–about 1000? I started tweeting back in JULY, and the feed starts at Sept 7th. (Don’t worry, those tweets still exist online and I also downloaded them.))

✓ HEY. Do I *actually* need to read the Twitter??? I feel like I’m missing out on things! :( Hey, dude, I’m doing multi-platform storytelling! You can read the entire comic without looking at the Twitter. You can also read the whole comic without looking at an Ask-a-Wellie or a blog post too. But–Okay. maybe I should officially revise my stance: if you want that full Check,Please! experience, you totally should read the Twitter! You’ll get a clearer picture of the whole narrative I’m trying to tell and hey, you might just have some fun. But, yo, I’m not the boss. I’m merely a comic artist offering a multi-tiered user experience. I feel like Johnson would say at this point–“Brahs. Choose your adventure.” ETA: You don’t even need to sign up for Twitter. You can just bookmark the page and check it every like, week! Also, SUPER important events will be cross-posted to this tumblr. Seriously, NBD, right? Right.

We’re all gonna be fine; it’s a just comic on the internet.

✓ BUT WHAT ABOUT WHEN YOU LIVE TWEET THINGS. ;~; HOW WILL I KNOW? I clearly need to do a whole write up on #Epikegster. Oh man. Fun fact: most of my livetweeting is impromptu and improvised! I mean, I have a general idea of when and what I want to happen, but it kind of just…happens then and there. But I should probably let everyone know a day or seven in advance when I’m about to oh, I dunno, livetweet graduation at the end of the year.( Uh don’t hold me to that.)

✓ So let’s talk about this. Why does Bitty like Jack all of a sudden RIGHT NOW. Bitty is very good at suppressing things. I’m sure the first time he met Jack–an interesting moment–he turned off that part of his brain that would allow him anything other than a casual appreciation of Jack’s … uh… character design. Plus, Jack is his teammate and his captain–and it is Bitty’s first time on an all male team. And Jack spent most of Bitty’s frog year trying to glare Bitty into oblivion. Bitty never thought that they would be friends. But it was a long summer and Jack is actually a very funny guy when he terminates PerfectCanadianHockeyRobot.exe.

✓ But was it the lighting? The flour? The Beyoncé playing on his laptop? Okay, well, first of all–it is entirely Eric Bittle’s fault that he is in this situation. What does Bitty like? Well-built young men and baking ingredients. What did Bitty do? Took a well-built young man and covered him in baking ingredients honestly I don’t know what he expected.

✓ Still. Still!! Jack is going to graduate–and play hockey somewhere in North America! And HE’S STRAIGHT. He dated Camilla Collins (I READ THE EXTRAS!! I’M INFORMED!!!) What’s the point of giving Bitty an impossible crush??? It’s cruel! He doesn’t stand a chance! A great man once said something about missing 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.

✓ Is Jack’s wardrobe entirely made up of flannel and tight dark colored t-shirts or…? They aren’t that tigh–no. No, Jack wears a lot of other stuff. But Jack is a simple guy and has officially taken the mantel of “The Protagonist’s Love Interest”. He is therefore obliged to fulfill certain “Hunk Duties” in each comic. I don’t write the rules.

✓ I am interested in hearing more about these Hunk Duties. These duties restrict apparel choice and size.

✓ WHAT ARE THEY BAKING WHAT ARE THEIR PROJECTS??? 

-Bitty compared ingredients in pie recipes he found women’s magazines–one from 1944 and another from 1951–examining how wartime and limited resources affected how dishes which might have been a luxury were prepared. He tracked down authentic ingredients and cried about how little butter he could use. 

- Jack made hard tack and johnny cakes–simple recipes that were part of the logistics of feeding a lot of men. In class he probably brought them in and muttered in a perfect French-Canadian hockey player monotone: “Yeah, these were a lot of fun to make. I’ve always been interested in strategy and logistics when it comes to different wars. Uh, yeah, so for the Johnny cakes–Union soldiers probably didn’t eat them with maple syrup, but my mom sent me some, so you can pour that on. Also Bittle saved my life with these because I can’t cook at all.” 

- They both got A’s.

✓ What happens when a Canadian and a southern gentleman run into each other in a kitchen? They both apologize yet neither move.

✓ Poll on sexual tension in panel 4. How did you feel about it? (a) Y-7 (b) NC-17. 

UP NEXT: 

#EpiKegster2014 

#Parse…#PartOne