Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for November 14, 2018

’tis always bout the image and the reputation

Yup, that was the only thing.

I think Bernice’s original assessment – “delusional” – got it about right.

But pouty pink was such a vood color on Tiffany

Oops, I meant “good”

What happened to the insightful “new” Tiffany?

The middle panel resembles a prison.

Only three days of Hate Tiffany Week left!

Sounds like our same ol’ Tiff is baaaaaack.

Can Tiff be anymore self-centered !!!

Hoo Boy. I’m feeling a “nails on the chalk board” moment coming up here.

Ironically Tiffany herself summed up the feelings of many on what’s been going on so far this week, when she told Gunther back on October 8, 2018:

Oh For Pete’s Sake!

Now if you REALLY want to give Bernice something to write about, have one or BOTH of the lads show up at Tiffany’s doorstep. And then, Let ’em HAVE at it.

OR Let Tiffany get a sudden phone call from her dad with “unwelcomed news.”

Tiffany is merely giving Bernice her public persona. Why should she give Bernice anything deeper? But, yes, this is another lame thread.

The return to the high school version of Tiffany is disappointing. And boring…

That’s really the ultimate in caring and cool how Tiffany spared her friend, Bernice by keeping the conversation more on the light, benign side rather than venturing to the dark side about her regrets of not squarely dealing with her dad and that whole Ann Eiffel thing. Tiffany is a real trooper.

Is it my imagination. or has Tiff suddenly gotten absolutely hideous?

Tiffany may not be good with the kind of things that other people care about, but she’s an absolute wizard when it comes to the superficial stuff.

Good grief. Tiff is so shallow & thin minded, she only has one side!

Tiffany will never change. Why does anyone think she will? If she was any more egocentric, she’d think she’s the center of the universe. If she was any more self absorbed, she’d singularity into a black hole. To her it’s all “me me me me”, if she drives i’d be shocked if her windshield isn’t a mirror. But i can see why her lipstick color is a huge bother to her. She doesn’t wanna go on a date with a random guy, wear ugly lipcolor and leave an ugly lip ring.

Tiff is “Mimimimi-One Note Sonata!”

Is Tiffany regressing to the the super shallow and superficial version of herself or is she just putting up a front?

(1) The numbers game is gone, today at least.

(2) I would much rather have explored what life is really like when Shannon is with TJ.

Hey, I’d be glad if TJ was written out of the story. But since GnK brought him back on Saturday, returning Shannon to him at that time, well, this inquiring mind wants to know!

Maybe Tiffany is playing along with a little psychological charade of her own. This is so over the top.

Pretty sure that wasn’t it,Tiff.

Bad lipstick destroys lives!

Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world. We’re living in a world where your job prospects are influenced by your linked in photo, you find your love by your tinder/okc photos, and it is often cheaper to get plastic surgery and good photos than body dismorphia counseling. Tiff may be coming across as shallow but acadamia is limiting Bernice’s views & opinions just as much.

wow, she makes Shallow Hal look deep! Borenice will get Boreniced fast!

Tiff has a top floor, corner dorm room! Her full allowance must have been restored. Hope they had an elevator for Bernice to come all the way up from her TA first floor digs.

This weeks episode appears to be going nowhere if not to reinforce the idea that Greg’s characters are locked into their fates. They are doomed (too strong a word?) to a never-ending persona. His characters either escape the strip (Aaron Hill, Delta, Quill) or revert to where they were in high school.

Except possibly for Brad who morphed from a “dork” into a hunky firefighter and hooked up with a babe. And even that is worthy of some speculation about with which character Greg associates himself.

I hope this episode is a prelude to some new Tiffany-Bernice relationship. Otherwise it appears to be… stale?… trite?… inane?… What is the word???

Maybe it’s just a place holder/transition strip in preparation for Thanksgiving… or Black Friday!?!?

What is sad with this arc is that Tiffany is obviously avoiding the pain and hurt of her dad’s romance with Ann, in fact his choice of her over his daughter, whom he has always been distant from. I am not mocking her, or talking about her shallowness, that troll tendency totally misses the real point of the story with Tiffany. Isn’t it obvious? Her defense against her intense internal pain and despair is to dream about unrealistic fantasies, and focus on totally superficial things like pink lip gloss. Gunther has his issues, but at least his mom loves him. TIffany is FAR more a truly sad character. I hope she can really get over and face this.

Yeeeeeaaaah, Tiffany. Thaaaat’s what held you back. So just as soon as you hurry and apply the right shade of color, watch how many pics you’ll get to be in! In fact, that one guy with the cell phone camera at the bus stop is probably ready to share your face with all 3.5 of his FB contacts and Instagram followers…

“Ace Of Shades”

“Glamour, Or Less”

“Pout! Pout! Let It All Flout!” (♩)

“Pretty In Pink-… -ish… " (♬♩)

“Two Lips Thrive, In The Right Shade”

“Oh, Maybelline, Why Can’t You Be True?” (♩♪)

“Solve For Max Factor”

“Jumbo Primp”

“Objects In My Mirror Are More Delusional Than They Appear”

“Bernie, Bernie, Quite Contrary… How Does Your Smarty Pants Self Even Know?”

“A Conversation Taking Place, Somewhere Between Two Different Wavelengths”

“Cos-metic And Effect”

“All I Have To Do, Is Preen… " (♩)

“A Rose, By Any Other Name…Would Not Look As Good On Me”

“Salmon-Planted Evening” (♬)

“Embracable Hue” (♬)

or

“Why I Was Held Back, In The Third Shade”

Brought to you, by..

-‘Genetic Makeup’. The only makeup that allows you to save face!

-

‘Levi Stress’… Your face’ll look good!… In the Right Genes…

- by…

Attitude Assurance Adjusters…

a bunch of Oil Companies…

And, okay, maybe also by…

PBTV viewers like you!

I got so used to Tiffany having some depth, I forgot that her character could be like this. But it makes sense she would go in to this mode during an interview.

4

Three days in a row of the “traditional” Tiffany. I am not sure why. It seems to be a bit of a regression for her character. Why might this be?

1. Luann1212 suggested above that perhaps Tiffany is covering up and avoiding the myriad of feelings she has about the variety of issues she has been facing. That could be a very good explanation.

2. One thought I had was that perhaps we readers have grown too accustomed to long, elaborate plot lines in “Luann” and have forgotten that for a lot of years, “Luann” was not particularly plot driven and was a “joke-a-day” comic. Perhaps we are simply seeing Greg return to the simpler “joke-a-day” concept for some of his efforts? Perhaps he is going to alternate a bit…. sometimes plot driven, sometimes “joke-a-day”?

3. One other thought I had related to timing. Thinking back to when these panels may have been conceived and written… perhaps the more “traditional” approach is simply a reflection of that timing. It seems that perhaps this would have been written in late Summer or early Fall… perhaps Greg was just feeling a bit of “melancholy” about the end of Summer and this guided him into visiting his characters in a more “old-school, traditional” sense for a while? This might also explain last week’s Shannon arc to a degree as well.

Not sure where (if anywhere) this arc will lead. Perhaps tomorrow there will be a knock on the door…. and then we can contemplate who the “mystery” character may be. :) I think it would be very interesting if Piro suddenly showed up. Bernice and Tiffany seeing Piro at the same time in the same space…. that would allow for some plot development.

This really doesn’t make any sense.

If anybody remembers “Legally Blonde”, “Clueless”, or any of the “Brat Pack” movies, the main protagonist/‘heroine’ characters in them didn’t stop their “glamour” and/or superficiality, they just changed the when and how of their application of it.There may be other fictional works similarly written, in the same vein, out there, as well. Tiffany now, though, willingly uses her skills in Social Butterfly-ology to help people out … she’s still working on her Masters in “Real Life Studies”. Though, she’ll probably will still be working on it, for a goooood while yet, ha ha ha!.

-

So Tiffany is still Tiffany, but now just maybe 20% less flakes.

Plus, for an entertaining combination trail mix of nuts and flakes, you’ve gotta make the right pairings. One week, the class buffon is the hero going up against the school bully, one week the school bully pales in comparison to an even bigger bully, the main character plays ‘straight man’ to the ‘Squidward-like’ overachiever, the ‘overachiever’ battles the ‘Delusional Glam’, the ‘Delusional Glam’ seems more socially aware than the ‘clueless nerd’ and the ‘low life’, the ‘low life’ looks like Mr. Rogers, compared to the ‘Vixenish Mom’, on, and on, and etc…

You would think if Tiffany was in competition with some other woman for magazine covers and movie roles, she would notice what those other women were wearing. As for lipcolor endorsements, it makes no sense at all if the Pouty Pink lipstick producers did any kind of advertisement, they would not remove Tiffany from consideration because she used their product. The signs point to Tiffany being rejected for reasons other than lipstick color.

Has Tiff even TRIED for any acting jobs or modeling jobs since she left high school? Or even done any theater at Moony Uni? As far as the Evenses have let us see, all she’s done is cry on Gunther’s shoulder and obsess over her father. (OK, she called out Ann on the lingerie scam. A one-shot Evans special, apparently.)

She’s baaack! :-D

biggest regret in life? that would be a suitable question for a much older person who has less time or resources to pursue untried paths. College kids look forward to the things they might do, not backwards to the things they did; for a youngster, there’s always time to do things differently, correct mistakes etc.

How much different could Pouty Pink be from the pink lipstick color she is wearing now? They are both pink.

And she’s back! The deeply shallow Tiffany we’ve come to loathe. Welcome home Tiffany.

Ah, Tiffany…Humble as ever…

She’ like Paris Hilton. totally uneducated,untalented and vain. But has daddys money. She would probably be a porn star in real life.

I start to wonder if this Pouty Pink lipstick is linked to some memory of Tiffany’s past.

Tiffany is avoiding.

Everyone is so critical of our unattainable sex symbol. Her push up bra brings hope and thrills to a weary imagination. Her perfume transports you to Shangri La. Her make up is a technicolor fairy tale world to be mesmerized by. Now, thats the Tiffany who is the real star of this strip.

In this age of “gotcha” questions, I wonder if Bernice will ask something that Tiff will casually brush aside, causing her to POUNCE !

I suppose some women look good with pouty pink lip color. But Tiffany has always been more of a Basic Red kind of girl. At least, she’s drawn that way….

I hope Tiff drops the charade and becomes real again. Otherwise, what’s the point of this arc?

Wait for it….Tiff may get real Friday or Saturday.

she’s attempting to break into the most shallow industries on the planet, modeling and acting, why would it be surprising that a shallow problem could lead to failure.

Hey, guys. For those of you lamenting the return of the shallow, old Tiffany, you won’t be disappointed in tomorrow’s strip. Preview now at Arcamax.com (www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/luann)!

Forecast: Bad weather coming. Let’s hunker down in Tiffany’s suite for a few more days until the storm has passed.