Why throw mere strikes when you can throw curveballs, right? Lowell is the man with something that looks suspiciously like a plan… except there’s no way he could have planned for it.
Lowell. Admit it. You like the stories he’s in.
…
I can fix that, you know.
Yep, I bet they give him a job back. Lowell in the middle of this he knows so much that SportsMart WANTS to keep a lid on… they’ll probably give him, oh, Mal’s old job, maybe.
Lowell: “I’m a contractor working on commissions, but I want the stability of a full-time position in the main office. [saved.]”
Lowell being a doofus is amusing. Lowell being a *player* I LIKE. Though if the player gets played, that’s cool.
But I want to see something where his knowledge of woodland living actually makes a difference.
He’s got the raccoon tribe in the wings. Just you wait….
that sure is the Lowell we all know.
now i wonder how THAT discussion will go for sure.
Wait, What?! Moments are always fun.
three out of four isn’t bad lowel you were so close.
They’ll have to rehire him or Lowell can leak it all to the press. Give him a job, make him sign an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) and pay him, and Lowell is effectively gagged. So for ten or so minutes he can have a job…
All he has to do is have a clause put in saying if he’s fired before a certain amount of time has passed the NDA is null and void and then he’s guaranteed at least that long on the job.
“Lowell. Admit it. You like the stories he’s in.”
I for one readily admit it, though I suspect other readers might be reluctant. Yet during Lowell’s absence, I was struck by how some of those readers kept asking about him, and speculating about when and under what circumstances he would return. And no wonder: whenever Lowell is on, there’s always the potential for anything he says or does to lead to the situation turning banana-whip nuts (sounds like a dessert, and now I want one!).
Admit it: You care about Lowell. You may not LIKE him — most of the time he makes that difficult, if not impossible — but you care just the same, almost in spite of yourselves. Lowell is the kind of character who evokes ambivalent, contradictory reactions: aggressively unappealing, almost willfully alienating all around him (and the reader). Yet there is also a vulnerability there, a clear longing for the acceptance and belonging that elude him, which elicits one’s sympathies and draws you to him, even as you’re appalled by and deplore his behavior. It’s that reluctant compassion that leads you in a weird way to root for him.
All of this makes Lowell arguably the most interesting, if aggravating, character in the Hubrisphere. Certainly it is with great interest that I have been watching the present story unfold, wondering how it will all play out. Even more, wondering what impact it will have on Lowell, and the kind of person he may become — or perhaps already is.