The rescue fantasy conundrum.
The interesting thing about Gordon's half of the Valentine's Dance arc is that he's not really doing right by the person he's trying to help because he's living out a stupid rescue fantasy that gets in the way of thinking clearly or acting properly. He doesn't ever learn to see the girl he's trying to impress as a person because that would tend to put a damper on thinking of himself as a white knight on a steed saving a fair maiden. Just as Mike wants to tune out the buzzing noises Martha makes lest he have to face the indignity of admitting that he's a jackass who doesn't especially want to learn anything about the pretty object dangling off his arm, Gordon is all wounded and junk when it becomes clear (at least to us) that Allyson is a girl with low enough self-esteem to take a rotter like Peter back but not low enough self-esteem to see Gordon as anything other than a stupid, churlish dolt.
The reason that I mention this is that when he and Tracey become Sourballs Versus The World, he hands the baton off to Anthony so that he might spend the rest of the strip hoping to rescue Elizabeth from whatever dangers the Pattersons tell him she faces. If we were to look in on him today, we could well expect to see him try to rescue her from discontent by suggesting that maybe she should just accept that certain people are simply going to go off to their birth mothers and it's nothing personal.
The reason that I mention this is that (as aprilp_katje recently suggested) Lynn might herself have rescue fantasies given that they're not depicted as a ridiculous and irrational hindrance that most people have no time for. In the real world, people would see Gordon not as this great guy whose generosity Allyson pissed all over but as a pea-brained meddler in a trucker cap who got Allyson into all kinds of trouble playing hero but since Lynn doesn't live in the real world if she can avoid it, we're expected to feel sorry for him when reality kicks him in the teeth again.
The reason that I mention this is that when he and Tracey become Sourballs Versus The World, he hands the baton off to Anthony so that he might spend the rest of the strip hoping to rescue Elizabeth from whatever dangers the Pattersons tell him she faces. If we were to look in on him today, we could well expect to see him try to rescue her from discontent by suggesting that maybe she should just accept that certain people are simply going to go off to their birth mothers and it's nothing personal.
The reason that I mention this is that (as aprilp_katje recently suggested) Lynn might herself have rescue fantasies given that they're not depicted as a ridiculous and irrational hindrance that most people have no time for. In the real world, people would see Gordon not as this great guy whose generosity Allyson pissed all over but as a pea-brained meddler in a trucker cap who got Allyson into all kinds of trouble playing hero but since Lynn doesn't live in the real world if she can avoid it, we're expected to feel sorry for him when reality kicks him in the teeth again.