Elly is thought-bubbling all the things that are serious considerations for real women in the real world who are not her- for Elly, having no clothes and no crib means going shopping, but she wants us to believe it's a crisis that she doesn't have stuff she can buy in fifteen minutes months before the baby is due to be born. Having "no room" is solved by taking some of Elizabeth's. A real woman might be thinking about the cost of daycare, or making ends meet and getting the bills paid while also cutting back on hours; Elly is thinking about the loss of her fake status job and "getting tied down again" like the selfish, self-important miserable little twat she is. John at least is living in the real world - he's well aware that a new baby will be much more Business As Usual than a major change to Elly's life. He probably also knows Elly well enough to realize that all of her thoughts are utter nonsense about what a disaster a new baby will be for HER.
If she would take stock of objective reality, Elly would end up facing something that goes against everything she's ever believed about the world: she's got it damn good and always has.
She wants so desperately to believe that she's a contributor to the household finances and that her work outside the house has real value and could have even more if the world were not constantly sabotaging her with children and ironing and vacuuming and cooking. If I were John or an acquaintance of Elly's I'd be much more convinced that Elly is secretly overjoyed at being pregnant because it gives her another deferment from being in the real world which does not hold regular ticker-tape parades for people who participate in the job market.
It goes deeper than that, I think. I don't see a woman who is capable of seeing good things happening to her. Every day is always Doomsday and everyone is out to destroy her because she is there. It really is the worst thing in the world to be her because she is her own worst enemy.
Someone needs to tell her It’s time to stop thinking nobody appreciates you. You don’t appreciate you. You are being a fun-sucking mombie and your whole family is either walking on egg shells around you or stopped giving into your pettiness.
Even in that context it is too many words. “I can live with that” is less pretentious. On TV it would need a laugh track because the sentence would be startling coming from a 4-year-old.
This need to turn a child into a joke machine takes us clean out of the story. It speaks to the reason April nearly died, though: Elly clearly thought that April wouldn't say "HUM! The gate used to be easier to open. Let's go inside and ask if someone can play again" like every child ever would. I have a theory as to why she doesn't get kids and it's called always being late to the party when stuff happens to them. It's why Elly calls bad stuff that gets resolved by the time she stops doing something useless a story.
There is no sense that Lynn understood how kids picked up language even after having two of them. There are details that she missed. It’s amazing to me because I was very aware of how my kids picked up language. We still use some of my son’s catchphrases from his toddler days.
Today's attempt to Talk To Children:
( ... )
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Elly is thought-bubbling all the things that are serious considerations for real women in the real world who are not her- for Elly, having no clothes and no crib means going shopping, but she wants us to believe it's a crisis that she doesn't have stuff she can buy in fifteen minutes months before the baby is due to be born. Having "no room" is solved by taking some of Elizabeth's. A real woman might be thinking about the cost of daycare, or making ends meet and getting the bills paid while also cutting back on hours; Elly is thinking about the loss of her fake status job and "getting tied down again" like the selfish, self-important miserable little twat she is. John at least is living in the real world - he's well aware that a new baby will be much more Business As Usual than a major change to Elly's life. He probably also knows Elly well enough to realize that all of her thoughts are utter nonsense about what a disaster a new baby will be for HER.
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If she would take stock of objective reality, Elly would end up facing something that goes against everything she's ever believed about the world: she's got it damn good and always has.
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She wants so desperately to believe that she's a contributor to the household finances and that her work outside the house has real value and could have even more if the world were not constantly sabotaging her with children and ironing and vacuuming and cooking. If I were John or an acquaintance of Elly's I'd be much more convinced that Elly is secretly overjoyed at being pregnant because it gives her another deferment from being in the real world which does not hold regular ticker-tape parades for people who participate in the job market.
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Someone needs to tell her
It’s time to stop thinking nobody appreciates you. You don’t appreciate you. You are being a fun-sucking mombie and your whole family is either walking on egg shells around you or stopped giving into your pettiness.
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Actual child: "oh, ok."
Child in this strip, speaking like a middle-aged woman or a sitcom kid: "I think I can live with that."
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This need to turn a child into a joke machine takes us clean out of the story. It speaks to the reason April nearly died, though: Elly clearly thought that April wouldn't say "HUM! The gate used to be easier to open. Let's go inside and ask if someone can play again" like every child ever would. I have a theory as to why she doesn't get kids and it's called always being late to the party when stuff happens to them. It's why Elly calls bad stuff that gets resolved by the time she stops doing something useless a story.
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Which says something stupid about her.
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Especially startling because she can suddenly pronounce the "TH" sounds, as opposed to the "F" sound of the prior panels.
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We do the same, with toddler pronunciations. Some were so cute!
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All Lynn ever heard was Aglaglagla. Reason: she never outgrew being the five year old who hated being around babies.
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Lynn is Angelica in Rugrats.
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But without the indulgent idiot mother.
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