Still to be continued, but we'll see how long it takes me to get it done.Update: ETA Thursday/ Friday. I know what will get said, just not with which *words*.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Special longer bit
I've usually done these as little "strips", and once I realized I had more than would go in a "strip", I plotted it out pretty much like a Sunday one:
Still to be continued, but we'll see how long it takes me to get it done.
Update: ETA Thursday/ Friday. I know what will get said, just not with which *words*.
Still to be continued, but we'll see how long it takes me to get it done.Update: ETA Thursday/ Friday. I know what will get said, just not with which *words*.
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14 comments:
Not fair to Mike? Hmm... this is going to get interesting!
I can see why Deanna is confused by the bomb Mira just dropped; she's too close to the situation to see that Mike maybe really can't do anything about his publisher's demands on his time. What's more, Mira seems to have a better understanding of what processes shaped the Noble Scribe --- processes like trying to please a mother who's treading water psychologically.
Maybe Mira's figured out that growing up as a Patterson wasn't all it's been cut out to be.
It will be interesting if Deanna actually wants to hear that side of the story.
Not fair to Mike. What would that be?
It could be that on 2 occasions Deanna forced Mike to give up any dream that he had of opening a business with Josef Weeder.
It could be the pressure Deanna put on Mike to give up his Portrait job, or to buy his mother's house. I know people think that buying the mother's house was Mike's dream, but if you look at the strips, the thoughts about living there and raising the kids there come from Deanna.
It may be that Mira is about to address the expectation that Lynn Johnston often expresses indirectly in the strip that men should work conventional jobs that allow them to be home all the time or at the beck and call of their wives.
It could be that Mira is going to take on Lynn Johnston's belief that the wife's way of doing things around the house is always superior to her husband's.
Or, considering the subject matter, Mira may be addressing the idea that destroying your family by dumping your husband because he doesn't do enough around the house and is a little thick-headed and self-centred, is not a very smart thing to do.
There seem to be a lot of different possibilities.
howard,
It could be that on 2 occasions Deanna forced Mike to give up any dream that he had of opening a business with Josef Weeder.
And for the most foolish of reasons too; she felt threatened by his physical absence. It doesn't seem to have mattered to her that Patterson men don't have affairs' the fear overrode the evidence of her senses.
It could be the pressure Deanna put on Mike to give up his Portrait job, or to buy his mother's house. I know people think that buying the mother's house was Mike's dream, but if you look at the strips, the thoughts about living there and raising the kids there come from Deanna.
I know; she's made a hero of a sick, confused woman who feels that the world is falling to bits around her; by giving Elly everything she wants, she's twisted Mike into a shape she rejects now that he displeases her. She made him like this and she should take her lumps for doing it.
Scritzy,
I doubt that Deanna would actually want to listen to Mira's "Elly isn't perfect" speech. As I've said before, Dee seems to have placed the woman on a pedestal and would actively resist having to see eye-to-eye with her. I know this because one of her retcons praised Elly to the skies for not being controlling, undercutting her husband's authority or (most importantly) dictating to her children how they should live. She'd rather not face the fact that Elly and Mira differ in degree, not in kind.
DreadedCandiru2: Very true. But now Deanna has seen, via Elly's lapses, that perhaps Elly isn't the person on the pedestal that Deanna believed her to be. Dee may still not want to believe it, but having her child scared by her mother-in-law is probably something she is still trying to deal with. I'm reading between the lines here, but I bet that conference at school regarding Merrie's "Christmas from hell" story was very unsettling for Dee. (And probably she harbored some resentment that Mike ducked out early.)
Between that confusion and Mike being Mike, perhaps Dee will be more open to hear what Mira might have to say.
It could be that on 2 occasions Deanna forced Mike to give up any dream that he had of opening a business with Josef Weeder.
Okay, I'll admit it- I'm totally having a brain fart here. What 2 occasions are you talking about?
This is the first time. Notice Dee's impeccable timing on announcing her pregnancy vs. when she said she first suspected she was pregnant.
If you go down to 10/19/2005 – 10/22/2005, that is the second time, where Carleen and Deanna convince Mike it was a dumb decision. Ultimately though, in 02/14/07 - 02/15/07, we find that Josef Weeder and Carleen go ahead and make the "dumb decision" to buy the apartments from Lovey, without inviting Mike to go in with them. I could go into a long essay on how Carleen and Deanna have managed to manipulate the two men to keep them apart, but I will spare you.
Now that surprised me! You've got me really eager to read more.
I so wouldn't like it if Deanna was made out to have a larger part in this than Mike did. I think the greatest problem in their marriage is that they don't talk honestly about their feelings, and Deanna made herself into a very nice doormat with a lot of resentment hidden inside, and Mike is just too oblivious to see it. Don't forget, Elly the OCD cleaner and doer raised him. Has Mike ever been shown to pull his weight around the house when he was young, or did Elly do it all? Deanna let Mike the Delicate Genius slack off on his part of parenting and maintaining the house and Mike took the mile instead of the inch.
Deanna has to make Mike see this, otherwise he will be SO surprised when Deanna's seperation/divorce announcement comes out of the blue...at least for him...
Mike could have said no to buying the Patterson house if he liked living in the city. He seemed happy about it himself, even.
Though that bit about Weed and Carleen buying the apartment without Mike made sense. After the fire, those apartments probably needed a major rebuild,and even with Mike and Dee's salaries, I doubt that they could realistically sink that much money into the place to get very much return on it, at least not for a long time. They had to think of their children first, college education and all that.
Weed and Carleen could do the landlord thing better since they're childless, have much more flexible jobs, etc. Of course this would go back to Deanna saying she was preggo to destroy Mike and Weed's dreams, but really, how would she know what Mike and Weed were planning just then? Mike and Weed hadn't talked about the business plan before that date. Deanna had to say she was pregnant sometime, weird BC system or no, and that was probably the best time, since I think Deanna was still trying to get her foot into the pharmacy world, and didn't have a stable salary.
Also, Mike's interest in the place only extended as far as to making the Kelpfroths miserable, and not seriously thinking of what being a landlord would really be like on top of his career.
Oh I forgot...I really like how Mira is drawn...she has so much more personality and beauty in her than her "real" counterpart in the strip. You can also tell that Mira and Deanna are mother and daughter. Very nice!
Thanks, DoW! Anyhow, I won't respond to everybody's comments, but I will say that Mira's "not entirely" comment doesn't mean she thinks Deanna is more at fault than Mike.
I know what will get said, just not in which exact words. Had busy evenings this week.
DoW--
But Mike's dreams of traveling with Weed, etc didn't just pop up that day; it was something he'd been talking about since college, and even thought that since Dee worked in an in-demand medical field, she could easily travel with him. Although we never actually saw them having a discussion about these issues (and who gets married without doing that?!), Dee did know that Mike was a dreamer with big plans. Maybe she knew that he'd flake out when time came to make decisions (I mean, who's the one who lived abroad for six months? Dee, because she planned for it. Mike only lucked into two short trips that fell into his lap) so his plans and dreams would be a non-issue, or maybe she assumed, like all Pattersaints and honorary Pattersaints did, that what he really wanted was to settle down and imitate John and Elly.
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