Tuesday, 27 August 2024

[dreadedcandiru2]

The one where Elly uses a phrase a four year old doesn't understand to justify being an insecure idiot.

Synopsis: When April tries to remind Elly that lying about her age is wrong, she's responded to with bad wordplay that she doesn't understand.

Summary: April just learned that adults are into Do As I Say, Not As I Don't Care If YOU Find Out I Do

Comments

[howtheduck]

Normally in these moments, the adult is supposed to realize a great truth, I mean, troof, that they have not been following the very rules they have been trying to teach their children. Elly, instead, goes for a very weak pun and April learns that as a Patterson, a bad pun always outranks truth.

April's words she cannot pronounce: somefing, troof, den, dat's, hafta. Those mean April cannot pronounce "th" and "v".

April's words where she pronounces "th" are: that in the second panel.

[dreadedcandiru2]

April has learned something that her parents don't want to admit teaching her: they get to ignore rules that she cannot. Next, comes the realization that their opinion of who she is and what she wants outranks objective reality.

[howtheduck]

April has learned something that her parents don't want to admit teaching her: they get to ignore rules that she cannot.

Right. Usually with this kind of comic strip, the parents admit that and you have a feel-good moment. Not this time.

[dreadedcandiru2]

This is because John and Elly aren't really honest with themselves. After all, they are Lynn.

[howtheduck]

They are Lynn, but Lynn usually likes those "clip out and put it on the refrigerator" comic strips. I am a little surprised she did not go for the "feel-good" answer this time.

[dreadedcandiru2]

To her way of thinking, telling a nosy child to keep quiet about Mommy's vanity, self-loathing and stupidity is a feel-good response. There is a sequence in the title to the television series in which we are asked to identify with Elly when she says something horrible to Mike. Then again, the upbeat opening includes a veiled threat to people who point out that Elly and John are bound by the same rules as everyone else.

[dreadedcandiru2]

Also, Elly is into revisionist history. According to her, she just suddenly saw an ugly old lady staring back her in the mirror for the first time ever when she got back from helping John ruin road trips for everyone. Saying that this is manifestly not the case will mean dodging coffee cups at worst and months of passive-aggressive huffing that is never explained at best. Still, though, one must press on with why Elly can shove her everyone does it nonsense up her nether end.

This Sunday strip is from eleven years ago:



while this is from four years ago when she also saw the vision of old-before-her-time ugliness that is Marian gazing back at her for the first time again:



We are a year away from another reminder that Elly's idea of what her mom looks like congealed into place when she was a self-made social isolate throwing herself at paperboys:



The only consolation she affords herself is that she's programmed Liz to be as panicky, superficial and as averse to reassurance as she is:



while, of course, wondering why evil conflict causing men and hateful bad influence children fill her daughters' heads with the idea that their looks are all that matter when it's clearly not her fault that children are worried about how they look:





(Becky's fat-shaming makes a lot more sense when you understand the context: she's got an insecure idiot mother terrified of being called Tubbo herself.)

[jjamele]

1. Twice, we see Elly attempt to speak for all 40-year olds. I did not feel this way when I was forty years old, Elly, and I was less healthy then than I am today at 61. Your issues are not universal. You are not the standard by which everyone else is measured. When you say "one" does this and "one" does that, you mean "I." Just say "I."

2. You do not live in a bubble. You are passing your ridiculous insecurities and body issues on to your daughter(s.) Stop that. Now.

3. You are fantasizing getting revenge on your 10-year old. Get therapy.

4. John, instead of giving your daughter empty reassurances that you find her "perfect," how about just discussing with her how especially young people like her have a habit of articulating snap judgements, testing sensitivity levels in others, and how important it is to have a realistic view of "oneself" and not adopt the view of others. You know, be helpful and educational for once.

[dreadedcandiru2]

1. This need to project her neuroses and character defects onto all the world is why she thought everyone pitied her and wanted to frog-march a frightened four year old down Main Street. She can't see herself as the aberrant she actually is.
2. The need to make everything into a catastrophe and herself into a blameless victim will lead to her whining to her fellow failure that children only listen to the bad things she says.
3. Liz is fourteen in this one. Elly is a forty-six year old toddler blaming her bad attitude and self-hatred on other people because she's a professional victim.
4. Deepity Dawg can't pass down wisdom he doesn't have.

[jjamele]

So it turns out, the answer to "something on your mind, El?" (a question you'd think John would have long-since stopped asking, but these people seem unwilling to live with quiet when they have it despite constantly demanding it when they don't) is "I'm worried that SocietyTM is warping my daughter's body image before I get a chance to do it."

[dreadedcandiru2]

Thus, her inability to quite see that April is motivated by the subconscious dread that everyone wishes that Elly had had Becky instead of her.

[jjamele]

This is the typical "I'm pretending to be busy, stop talking to me, I even stuck needles in my mouth to show you how unavailable I am, go away now" strip that is so depressingly common.

This summer, I spent most of my time mowing lawns and landscaping around my mother's house. When I wasn't doing that I was doing school prep work. But whenever my mother wanted to play cards, it was time to do that. Whenever my godchildren showed up, everything else got set aside to be with them. With John and Elly, literally ANYTHING ELSE is a priority over spending time or even just talking to their children. They'll FIND SOMETHING to do to distract them from being with their kids rather than just BE WITH THEIR KIDS. In modern times, this is the parent at the playground who is playing Candy Crush on their phone or randomly texting people because they see that as better than watching their kids or joining in on their play. It's just so gross.

[dreadedcandiru2]

There is a panel in the third treasury from before the era of the Pattersons that explains it. We have a woman listening to children as they babble nonsense. When hubby comes home, Mommy is babbling stupid nonsense. Moral: Being around children will turn you into the same useless simpleton a child is.

[jjamele]

The father of my godchildren spent 90 percent of his time with them at the beach staring at his phone. He's in his forties and has a wife and children, but in my opinion was acting exactly like a teenager with zero responsibilities or distractions more worthy of his stupid phone. Pathetic.

[dreadedcandiru2]

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? The only person who'd think that children have nothing to say are children.

[howtheduck]

Or in the recent comic strips, these are the parents who drive their kids constantly but when they talk to them, it's just complaints about how loud their music is or to point out things on the road that they are not going to stop and see.