For anyone who's counting, last year's meltdown that Dee remembered (unseen in-strip) implied:- Liz would never have kids / never get married because she'd rejected Anthony
- Deanna and Mike, with one of each, have a complete, balanced family and are done having kids
- April who? BTW - not the first time April was ignored - before/ at start of July 2008 (pre-divergence), Elly was saying she was "done" parenting
ETA for more: Monday. I've been a bit busy this week and have a full evening ahead.
20 comments:
Yes, as all people in the Patterworld must have one child of each gender, and preferably one dark haired child and one light haired child.
I think Dee's hair is drawn too attractively. It's a much better hairstyle than the one she had in the strip.
I guess I'm not very good at drawing bad bowlcut-with-80s-tapering hair :-)
It looks like a cute pixieish style that a young working mom might actually have. Maybe she finally went to a good stylist in the last year and a hald.
It seems to me that Liz, while knowing that Deanna is under pressure, doesn't quite know how badly she has it. It's sort of like how you have John aware that Elly isn't right but not quite aware as to the extent. As you said, they can't quit being Foobs cold turkey; the Kool-Aid has to work its way out of their system. That being said, it's shaping up to be a lovely Christmas if you love pointless rows.
I'm curious - how are you going represent Mira? Will she be the evil, manipulative, pushy woman who always has to get her way that we saw in FBOFW, especially in the Mike and Dee wedding arc? Or will she be the kind, sensible woman that just wants what's best for her family that we see in the Foobiverse letters? Or will she occupy a middle ground? In other words, will she still be kind of pushy, but, deep down, she just wants Dee to be happy, and wishes they could have a better relationship? It'd be nice if we could see that dealing with middle-ground Mira could be irritating, but she's not the malevolent force that the original strip shows her to be.
I've honestly never had that big of a problem with Deanna, other than that she needed to bitch-slap Mike years ago.
Like many women, she's tasked with being the primary caretaker in so many aspects of her life, and to boot, she has mother and mother-in-law issues, a GFN husband, and two kids who aren't necessarily bad, but they're needy - all kids are needy. Plus, she works full time.
I don't have kids, and my husband and I divide the labor equitably, and we're still overwhelmed sometimes.
As for Mira, I think it's easy to make her the goat - most people are more complex that simply all good (Pattersons) or all bad (non-Pattersons).
I suspect that Mira isn't a bad egg, and I would love to Dee to break off from Elly and develop a bond with her mother.
I think many of Dee's problems are brought on by herself. She thinks she "needs" appetizers, and didn't ask anyone else to bring food. She seems to have a very strict idea of who she needs to be and what she needs to do.
mana_g, ae Since I take the in-strip events as having happened up until the July 2008 divergence, Mira isn't exactly sweetness and light.
She kicked up a fuss about mother-of-the-bride dresses, tried to micromanage Deanna's (to her knowledge real) wedding dress, and other stuff I can't remember offhand. There was definitely a loud argument at the old apartment.
On the other hand, some of the strips showing her to be overbearing really showed others to be pretty sensitive.
She tried to give baby stuff Mike & Dee didn't want - so what? She *gasp* actually wanted to see her grandkids during the holidays. She (& Wilf) have sacrificed their holiday control by coming to the Pattersons' gathering each time I've seen. Guess what? In real life, every couple I know with kids splits time during the holidays (each year or on different years) to get to see both sides of the family.
And under the assumption that most of the wedding prep seen in 2008 was getting set up before the divergence, she even agreed to help sew last-minute flower girl dresses for the aunt of her grandchildren.
She *is* pushy, but there's definitely more to her than that. And once I get 24 December rolling, more will be shown.
echo I think Dee would need fewer appetizers if she weren't searching for things - like trays of food - that would keep her parents out of her hair :-)
There are better examples of Elly being "done" with parenting and ignoring April... like April 2007 when Elly and John were dancing because their parenting was done now that April was 16 (and a lot of behaviour afterwards that suggested that they were already empty nesters, and didn't have a daughter that still had more than two years of high school left).
Also telling was the Sunday strip in Oct 2007 where she's looking at photos and refers to her "two" kids. Sure only Liz and Mike were present and the comment was directed at them, but it rang very much like Tom Bosley's closing speech in Happy Days (where he refers to having two children) or the Simpson's running gag where Homer forgets to count Maggie only to be reminded immediately of his third child.
I think it's also important to note that Mira only picked up her current personality during Mike and Dee's faux wedding (and has been the sterotypical bad Mother-in-Law ever since). Before that she wasn't really portrayed as pushy at all.
You're right that "April who?" has been a recurring theme. The last one, just before the teal & lavender nightmare, however, is etched in my brain.
I'd like to think that April was in her room with the window open while her mother was gardening with Elly, and that was part of what led to her contribution to the divergence from FOOB to Foob's Paradise.
errgh. gardening with CONNIE.
"Three children, Homer. We have three children.
"Oh, Marge. The dog doesn't count as a kid!"
Mira was portrayed very well up until the wedding: she was kind and understand when Dee was in the hospital, allowing a stranger to visit her and share his story; she was nice to Mike when he came to visit for Christmas, and joked and laughed with Dee; Mike willing stayed with Dee's family one Christmas when the Pattermanse was too crowded (can you imagine him diong that now?). Not coincidentally, she also used to be drawn to be much more attractive than she is now.
From all of this evidence it seems that perhaps LJ was re-writing Mira negatively in the way she re-casts John? After all, her changing views of her own family come up again and again in our (over) analyses. :)
I think it's not just a matter of the Kool-Aid washing out of Liz's system either; she grew up in a pretty disfunctional family, and to be honest, didn't we all?
I figured the implication there was that Dee and Mike either can't or won't have more kids; not that they aren't going to because having "one of each" makes them a full family.
I do wonder what's caused Dee to be so anti-Mira, though - but then, she's been drinking the Kool Aid too...
anodyne - I wouldn't bet on Elly having an inside track on anybody's future plans.
Given that Elly seems to be the main Authour Avatar, as well the family compositions of the Patterworld, it wouldn't be surprising if she thought "one of each" is right - no more, no less. The Foobiverse's foefic, IIRC, bluntly asserted that.
oh, and Dee went sour on her mom when she married Mike - they hid the real first marriage to let her think they were doing something she disapproved of, Deanna called Elly her "mother in love" and has tried to emulate her - same house, school, environment for her kids, and there was either a strong implication or an outright statement that they made sure Dee's parents found out last that Robin had been born.
There's definitely fodder for something here.
Sarah-- If we all have dysfunctional families it means dysfunctionality is the usual way families function, so they're not dysfunctional at all. In other words, families suck and we'd all be better off raised by raccoons. Or in Canada, beavers.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith E.G. Forbes: Never spoil a good story with too much truth.
Maybe Mira at some point started to disapprove of Deanna and Mike's Marriage? Maybe when she found out that Mike was trying to be a writer (and as we all know, artists chase their arts at the expense of real things, like money and security...)
As for Elly's snapping, how about "Dee's threatened to take them abortion pills every time she starts bulging, and Liz has become a dike. Why else would that girl run away from Anthony?" Worse thing is, I could actually see Liz saying "thank God I've become queer" because of that.
And Deanne's odd hours? She works at Walgreens, probably has to put in a bunch of midnight hours because it's hard to find qualified workers for that time.
A few catch-up thoughts...
godozo, that just doesn't strike me as what they'd say. It was *Elly's* breakdown. If Liz had gone on a rant, now wouldn't Dee remember that as important? (Plus Liz does like guys.)
And I can't have Elly go that far off the rails. Particularly, that's very crude - Foob's Paradise is a not-just-SFW, but newspaper-grade-S FOOBfic. I warned the Comics Curmudgeonites that it was that tame when I first started posting :-)
However, Elly going off the rails with *those* speculations doesn't fit with how she's being/been developed here. Her break with reality is along the lines of imagining that they are living the Strip of Destiny, not her imagination meandering in completely different directions
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