Shenny HQ

Remember, children: spiders (and Raj) are not to be trusted:

---

Whoever made this logo, misspelled the word "greasy."



I do not have greasy hair. I am the Future Mrs.Wolowitz.™

I'm sure you've considered changing your surname. Marrying fictional characters sounds like an interesting idea!

"Hmmm, decisions, decisions...She's got to go, but do I call up the Order of Taraka or the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad?"

"Go for the lovely, lethal ladies, bro..."

Redefining character assassination. I'd love to see what Tarantino would do in one episode!

...Penny buys a new tracksuit for the gym. Yellow is a nice cheerful colour. Shame about the ninjas, but who knew that softball skills translated to swinging a katana?
...Sheldon has a deep philosophical conversation about hamburgers in the car with Raj, punctuated by the need to shoot somebody in the face. He then frets about the cleaning.
...Howard and Bernadette hold up a diner, and are last seen heading for Vegas. They may have a news reporter as hostage in the trunk.
...Amy gets mown down by a deranged stuntman. He backs the car up a few times just to make sure.
...and Leonard wanders into the wrong pawnshop, never to be seen again.

*cue music - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hLIXrlpRe8 *

For Louise...
Look! I even found a goddamn ferret!
(I think)
[attachment=163]

---

Or whatever the hell that is...

I don't know where I first got this idea about Howard & ferrets, but I'm pleased that it's become a part of HQ mythology

I think it's because I'm an animal-lover and I want all the characters to have pets.
(the REAL characters, that is. Not the ones who would dissect them or give them diseases!!!)

I think it started when my friend and I went to this funny little indoor petting-zoo here in Busan, and they had white ferrets, and I got to hold one of them. I'd always been told that they stink and they don't really make good pets, but this one was okay-ish.

I just love this idea of Howard having a pet ferret and carrying it around in his messenger bag

I still think Raj would be more of a cat person than a dog person. And maybe Sheldon would have a hundred-year-old tortoise from the Galapagos, or something unusual like a fruit bat or a marsupial of some kind, like a sugar-glider.

Also, there is somebody on FF.net whose screenname is Wolowombat, and I think that's freaking adorable...

His daemon would be a ferret, for sure. Sheldon and something like a flying fox would work, it's the same large-eyed look of affront.

This is all very cute! I like that expression 'Howard owns his geekery', (Sheldon does as well), but L is ashamed of being himself. Maybe this is a cultural thing, but 'wing man' and the way Howard has tactics for meeting women, like a hunting party, are new to me.

Is this a singles bar thing, we don't really have those. I've known a few guys who hussle every woman they meet, they see it as playing the odds. So Howards tactics do work for him occasionally. He is so happy after meeting Christy.

---

Even if Bernadette were a more interesting and less unpleasant character, I still wouldn't care for that whole storyline; because Howard in a permanent longterm relationship undermines the whole idea of Howard. This doesn't mean that I want 10 seasons of him being rejected by women (that's the type of strawman argument one hears from the Canons), it simply means that keeping the characters single leaves more possibilities open, whereas having them permanently coupled-up is a narrative dead end. But more importantly, Single Howard is just so FUN, and that was the essence of his character!

Yes, there's the cheap irony of "the sleazy/promiscuous one is the first to get married and ends up being the most devotedly monogamous", but there's nothing especially meaningful or original or impressive about that turn of events; "the reformed playboy" is a very, very old trope which goes back to at least the 1600s and can be found in pretty much every paperback romance novel, ever.

I wouldn't have minded seeing Howard have some dates that went well instead of going badly, but the main point is that I don't want to watch weddings on a sitcom, period.

IMO, most of Howard's "questionable" behavior towards women would've resolved itself with nothing more than time and experience; there's no need for some big epiphany. I know I've mentioned this before, but Howard already seemed to have cooled it a bit by the end of Season 2, which would be a natural outcome of him and Penny getting to know each other and feeling more comfortable with each other. You don't need a lot of drama and self-recrimination (or punching) to reach that point.

I don't see why we can't have a Howard who gets the message that Penny is not going to hook up with him, but continues to be a freewheeling bachelor. That's some very natural, low-key character development. That seemed to be the state of affairs at the end of S2.

This is another area where making the characters younger might've helped; you can hardly argue that everyone needs to get married and settle down ASAP if they're 22 instead of 32 and not even finished with their studies.

Flirty Oversexed Howard is a marvelous creature and there no was need for that part of his personality to die; just maybe be modified a bit as he learns to be more comfortable with the people around him and more aware of how to properly interact with them.

I see little evidence that New!Howard (or New!Raj) actually understands women better; he's just repressed that flirty part of himself like an alcoholic avoiding a drink. (Insofar as this can be considered the same character at all; which I don't.)

Granted, I also ship Howard/Raj in a shippy way, and I believe it could work, but not with these writers. In this context, I'm fine with that ship remaining in the realm of fanfic.

"The promiscuous guy who just needed to find the Right Woman™" is an old stereotype and there's nothing very compelling about it.

This brings me back to "nothing bad is actually going to happen to these characters, because they're fictional." Therefore, Flirty!Howard and his sexual misadventures don't worry me. I assume he'd figure things out eventually, and in the meantime he's a hilarious character. And maybe he'd be a bachelor forever, and he'd enjoy it, and he'd meet women who enjoyed that lifestyle, too, and---gasp!---he wouldn't end up laying in a ditch and dying of syphilis, or whatever.

Even if it had been handled well instead of poorly, I have zero use for the whole Bernadette storyline or for any characters being permanently coupled-up, and I think it's especially damaging in the cases of Sheldon and Howard, because it strikes at the heart of what made them so entertaining in the first place. Their singleness (two very different styles of singleness) was one of their core, defining features.

The early seasons actually contain some pretty good examples of *subtle* character development, on a level that I would consider appropriate for a light mainstream sitcom. But then, TPTB started using a sledgehammer to swat a fly.