Foobonia and Points West.

The interesting thing about this year is that it's the last one in which Lynn makes Liz the focus of the toddler humour that she thinks that it's her job to supply. This is because this time next year, Liz will spend pretty much the rest of the strip filled with anxiety about her place in her parents' hearts because Elly makes the same stupid mistake she made with Michael and blows off any sort of inconvenient concern that the old child might have about being replaced with the new one and John is no help either because he won't do emotions.

The reason that I mention this is that Lynn's agreeing not to make Mike look stoopid in glasses by having Liz wear them was sort of a teaser for the girl she'd be for the rest of the strip: a needy, insecure and slightly immature little thing who behaved as if the world were conspiring to make her life awful and have her die alone, forgotten and exploited by people who don't know that there can be only one friend at a time. This leads to Liz making the same stupid mistake Mike did when she came along: being pissed off at April for asking to be born so she could steal Liz's teenage years. This is stupid because the person doing so isn't the kid: it's the moron parent who thinks that of course, siblings are put on this Earth to watch their younger ones and they should know that and stop acting like it's a big burden.

If you've been paying attention to the Super Teddy arc, it should be rather obvious that Elizabeth hasn't the blindest idea of what it is she's apologizing for and wouldn't have been especially sorry if she did know. Dawn made a really crappy and self-serving attempt to explain to her that what she did was bad and she should feel bad but that was wasted because not only did she try to let herself and the other kids off the hook, understanding that an action might have a negative consequence she should regret is not something that someone who's simply part of Lynn's psyche can manage. The closest one gets is being sorry about being punished, not being sorry about what one is being punished for.

This, I think, made Mrs Grunion's vague advice about not succumbing to peer pressure dangerous because of how it was phrased. Since Liz doesn't understand that her bus driver made the mistake of thinking "This is a harmless kid made to do something foolish she wouldn't ordinarily do because she got wound up by less harmless kids," she went on being the not at all harmless kid she actually is. Being allowed to do what she feels like doing means that she can go right on helping herself to things and expecting people to come running when she wants something and when the rights of others are pointed out, she squeals piteously about unfairness, jealousy and aggression.

The interesting thing about the New Years Day strip for 1988 is that in every way that matters, it's the last appearance of the "Lizzie" incarnation of Elizabeth. By the end of the month, we see the first appearance of a person who doesn't see herself as having many friends. We see John struggling with the concept that she wants friends that aren't related to her. We see her being needlessly fixated on her alleged ugliness. We see her not notice that most of why people avoid her is that she scowls all the damned time and they're wondering what they did to piss her off so they can avoid her melting down on them like her mother does on everyone else. We start to see someone who's too damned possessive and jealous of what few friends she does have. We see someone who wants social norms that get in her way handwaved away for her benefit. We see someone who doesn't really understand what love is.

In short, when the little girl with the twintails starts ranting irrationally about her nose is ugly and stoooooopid and she hates it because it drives people away from her and no, it's not fair to say that she's always been stand-offish and no, she isn't scowling angrily at everyone all the time and all of those pictures that show her doing so are lying, it's not Lizzie saying those things. Lizzie says twee garbage about recess being the scariest subject. Lizardbreath has finally hoved into view, gang.

As we know, we're just about to watch Elly work herself into another unnecessary lather because she, despite yearning to forbid it so as to save the world from CHAOS!!!, signed off on Mike having a slumber party. The reason she wanted to prevent Mike from doing this allegedly terrible thing is that she can't wrap her fool head around the idea of children doing something they like without her being trod into the mud and sneered at. The reason she gave everyone else is that Lizzie wasn't allowed to make an intrusive annoyance of herself; this manifested itself as John promising Lizzie that she too would either host or participate in one one day. The reason that we never saw one is that Lynn can't be bothered to keep track of plot threads and simply forgot it.

The problem is that, despite her earnest belief that it should not happen, people do keep track of what's supposed to happen and want to invent explanations that aren't "Lynn forgot." For instance, we could say that Elly was so traumatized and insulted by the minor shenanigans Mike and his pals inflicted on her that she was firmer about rejecting Lizzie's pleas to let her friends over for a night. The problem with that is that we know that April eventually gets to get yelled at for the horrible crime of depriving her parents of too much sleep. What this means in terms of the character is that John and Elly notice something that Liz doesn't want to face: she's a standoffish, possessive, clingy and sullen little twerp who thinks that she's the only friend her friends are allowed to have and thus doesn't have the same family of friends Mike and the Martian do thereby rendering a sleepover into having Dawn Enjo over for the night.

Of course, there's a holiday tradition whose purpose baffles most outsiders and, for reasons I'll get into shortly, someone who should know about this: the secret anniversary of Mike and Deanna. As it stands now, Deanna is always going to be too afraid of her mother's reaction to pretty much being made the victim of a well-meaning scam to be honest about the difference between the wedding for the heart and the scam wedding for show and also for settling down the olds. This, of course, will obtain so long as Mira is alive to threaten the Patterson family with her evil family politics. When Mira finally passes on, Mike and Deanna will start celebrating their real anniversary in late December; not only will this be portrayed as a victory for love over materialism and selfishness and falsehood, it will also afford them to cackle in triumph at a fallen enemy.

The Great Big Problem is that while Gordon, Tracey, Elly, John, Connie, April and Jim know that Mike and Dee really got married in December, Liz does not. As far she she knows, their anniversary is in September and celebrates their freedom from the irrational rages of Mike's horrible mother in law. The reason why they didn't tell her relates to her angry reaction to Mike pretty much nailing it as to why she wanted to intrude on Anthony's first marriage. Just as she didn't like being told that she wanted to barge in like a vindictive idiot and call attention to herself and humiliate the evil French person who gave a clingy irritatant who thinks that the world owes her a living because she's cute her right name, she will feel all kinds of betrayed because no one saw fit to tell a chatty, easily offended annoyance a secret she simply couldn't have kept.

As you will recall, Liz hates Mike because he saw a truth she didn't want to face. What this tells me that Liz will hate the person who tells her the truth about herself for life and beyond. How dare this horrible person come along and tell her that she would certainly have been so enraged that something underhanded was going on that she would cause an argument that would take years to fix. How dare this person come along and say that no one trusted her to shut her mouth and how dare this horrible child who keeps her from being the baby bring up all the times when she shot off her fat yap. Rather than admit that she's a loose cannon who doesn't understand the delicacy of a self-imposed calamity, she's going to spend years trying to get April to admit that a loose-lipped idiot who can't shut her face can be trusted with secrets. This despite the fact that it's very likely that one of the first things she did when April graduated was to run her mouth about the time Gerald tried to get to second base while she was supposed to be babysitting. 

As we know, the Lizzie of the Early Years was sort of a dumber, shriekier and more timid clone of Sally Brown from Peanuts. Now that we're at the point where she's becoming a person in her own right instead of simply an unreasonable facsimile of some other person, it behooves us to take a look at who that person is.

The first thing that we notice about the Lizzie who attends Grade School is that she's as much an outcast as Michael is but for a different reason. Instead of being a wise-ass who is too blasted stupid to realize that all his being eager to do any fool thing just makes the cool kids feel even more contempt for him than they already had, Lizzie's natural timidity, possessive nature and sheltered upbringing mean that she's pretty much on the outside looking in when it comes to the social order.

The problem is that she shares an unhappy tendency with Elly: the tendency to blame her outward appearance for the fact that her life isn't as happy as it should be. We know for a fact that Lizzie used to be able to trade on her looks to get what she wanted and when people stopped scurrying around like mice and no one was told to let her win because she's a cutie, Lizzie simply can't hack it. Rather than accept the fact that despite being appealing in a sort of wan, clunky way that she can't bat her eyelashes or whine her way to success, she thinks that if she were pretty again, life would go back to normal.

Not, of course, that she admits to herself that that's what she's doing. The Liz who looked as if she might break free of home set herself on the teal-and-lavendar trajectory of repeating the mistake Elly made when she blew her stack because someone Franco-Ontarian accused her of consciously doing so.

Now that we're pretty much at the point where Georgia first becomes aware of the fact that Elly and the others have been aware of a scrawny, flat-chested woman with eyeglasses and chianti-red hair that comes out of a bottle for quite some time, I think it behooves us all to compare this to a certain slow-speed atrocity that consumed the first decade of this century: the Settlepocalypse. The commonality that sticks out like a sore thumb is stupid and useless John stupidly assuming that Phil is simply dating Georgia while he and Connie walk down the aisle like Elly wants them to. It doesn't matter that neither Connie nor Elly want that any longer; what matters is that John is too stupid to understand that flames can die out and that Phil was simply someone Connie had "fun" with while waiting on Ted. Once it got to be too clear that Ted would always chicken out when it came to talk weddings, Phil also became a non-starter and thus given Milborough's shallow dating pool, a change of venue was needed. When you contrast Connie's willingness to cut her losses with Lizardbreath's sheer stupidity, the older equivocating nitwit with the daddy issues comes out a clear winner.

As we all know, Liz's reaction to her parents deciding she'd had enough cuddling so could she please go away and stop trying to drain Mommy's substance is to think that the World is a terrible place that wants her to die alone. In her childhood dreams, I should think that she would be on her spinster's death-bed being laughed at by people for daring to want to be loved and be given attention. Add in a media that shows her imagery of cruel, heartless schemers who seek to destroy the happiness of innocents because they aren't worthy of male companionship and need to learn their place and it becomes rather obvious that Liz sees herself as the star of a telenovela in which she's an underdog being cruelly afflicted by monster rich women who spent their time monologuing about how mousy little non-entities like her should just sit back and accept their spinsters' graves.

What makes her innate and almost genetically hard-wired feeling of inadequacy worse is that she's lousy at picking up on social cues. Not only did a long-undiagnosed visual impairment mean that she never learned to read facial reactions at all well, Elly's need to sentimentalize a really hoorible time in a human being's life and fear of being bereft of purpose led her to get locked out of pretty much every loop. Add in how Elly isn't really good at giving advice and you can see why Liz really never twigged to what was going on around her. She doesn't know how to read body language and she sucks at looking at the big picture because her mother is letting her own issues get in the way of being a mother. She thus turned to a 'convenient' source of good advice: network television. The problem is that the goggle box is just as bad a parent as Elly and just as likely to fill impressionable minds with mush-headed ideas.

This isn't just why Candice and Dawn had to sit her down and explain that Anthony didn't just happen to show up places where she was because he announced his intention in a way not thought of in the philosophy of Zack Morris. It isn't just why she didn't see that Eric was a player until it was too late. It isn't just also why she didn't admit that the people of Mtigwaki weren't lovers of adultery because they didn't want to get involved in a domestic because they ain't stupid. It's pretty much all the reason why she still sees Thérèse as a soap opera monster who spends her days clubbing seals and plotting the ruin of plain Janes because that's just what people who make Liz feel inadequate DO.

The real reason for this need to see Thérèse as a soap opera monster plotting her ruin is because that made more sense than her rival being....well....her!!! As Anthony's Liography clearly indicates, what Liz will always see as an irrational monster who hates her for no other reason that being a bad person is pretty much a Franco-Ontarian Lizardbreath trying her damnedest to prove herself to her own bloated vermin parents owing to coming a distant second place to a son who was never born at all. Her major malfunction is that she sees a passive little thing like Liz as being a manipulative man-eater who wants HER to die alone and unloved and to laugh at HER misery because she looks like someone who's got everyone fooled into thinking she's harmless because that's how cruel people who want people to die alone operate. Right now, as we speak, the poor woman is telling her boyfriend about the blonde monster with the rich dentist daddy who has a whole town wrapped around her finger just like on TV! Why, she even managed to turn Thérèse's own child against her, she's that devious and selfish!!

Thus does the trick box amplify the horror caused by the narcissism of minor differences. Liz and Thérèse would have found it hard to get along in the first place because they reminded each other of what they most hate about themselves. A medium that proves the worst just made a bad situation far worse.

Of course, being a suggestible clodhopper who never learns from his mistakes seems to come naturally to our boy Mikey. He is, after all, the child of a woman who never quite understood that her idiotic refusal to stop fussing over the Lizzie of the Early Years is as directly responsible for her becoming the frowning, blank-eyed and baffled mess of the Middle Years with the laser-like focus on alleged flaws and refusal to admit that she could be loved as is John's stupid inability to see that his being an insensitive clod matters. As a recent strip shows us, Lizzie is starting to resist Elly's tendency to be a big freaking show-off by trying to turn her into a God-damned kewpie doll. While the dough-headed woman in the ponytail seems to think that her baby is rejecting all the love in Mommy's great big heart and trying to keep her from expressing herself because she HATES her poor mother who only wants to be recognized and so on and so forth, anyone capable of seeing through a child's eyes would tell you that we're dealing with a small child who doesn't want to be pawed at by a clumsy oaf who acts as if she doesn't have nerves. This is why when Liz started to dress herself, she started to aggravate her block-headed mother by dressing in a nondescript manner so as to avoid Mommy making the cooing noise of appreciation that she associates with pain. The problem is that while she wished to avoid the awkward feeling Elly's approval brought, she still expected to be fussed over by all and sundry and developed a feeling of inadequacy because she was no longer the center of attention. Fold in the default feeling of negativity that seems to be encoded in Elly's DNA and the accompanying need to focus solely on the bad while discounting the good and it's kind of no wonder we're going to be spending the next fourteen years or so watching Liz look at a mirror and declare herself to be too ugly and stoopid looking to be allowed out in public.

Of course, John and Deanna's crooked little game of family politics and the resultant real estate shenanigans didn't just affect Mike, Elly and April. Liz too had her life messed up somewhat. While I do make somewhat of a meal of the fact that most of why she didn't want to leave home until she pretty much had to was that she didn't want to write rent checks to Mike, that isn't really what motivated her. As this section of one of her retcons:

I think I'll be spending my March Break looking for a different place to live. I'm looking forward to the time off, but I'd like to be out of the house and on my own again. Since Mike, Dee and the kids moved in, this place hasn't been the quiet refuge I'm used to. I love my niece and nephew, but kids all day at school and kids bouncing about at night have made me less than pleasant. In fact, I'm downright grouchy!

attests, Lizardbreath shares her father's need to have a cozy little alcove somewhere where she can reign supreme and not be disturbed by small children, pets, picky-faced siblings or parents who don't see that she's a grown woman. The sad thing is that she stupidly allowed herself to be talked into renting out the sort of basement apartment that was never really going to be April's Sweet Suite anyway so she ended up repeating the pattern of being the slobby daughter to old people. As for now, she's had about, ohhhh.....five years of bouncing children underfoot to sour her mood so so much for that. My guess is that she's currently making the same sort of 'Did we ever thank you?' comment that Elly made to Marian and getting a different answer. Marian might have been a bit of a stickler but I don't think that she was trolling for compliments like Elly is.