Blandthony Agonistes: the ultimate example of "Tell, don't show"

As you know, Lynn has released excerpts from her planned biography of Anthony Caine, thereby fulfilling in her mind her obligation to bring the character out of the shadows. I should think she fully believes once we read his tragic story, we will no longer question the rightness of the Settlepocalypse. Given what we've seen, though, it's going to take more than she can do to make him presentable. The samples we've been given are quite simply the most blatant attempts to rewrite history Lynn has made to date. By leading off with his being "abandoned" by his mother and spending his teenaged years allegedly relying on the inconstant Elizabeth as the sole source of stability in his life, Lynn clearly wants to demonize his family to ensure that he prefer the company of Sheet Shaver and JSTF to his own parents, not to mention giving him trust issues. As has been pointed out though, there was no sign whatever that this was happening when he first appeared. This is telling because Lynn would never have passed up a chance to out someone as an abusive jerk. Every so often, you see, Lynn would have a Patterson wring his or her hands about how awful a certain parent must be to mistreat a swell kid like Gordo/Candace/Becky. What's more, Liz was unaware of his existence until junior high but Lynn has him following her around since first grade. This is as odd as his blind acceptance of his father's supposed claim that Mother Caine "threw" him away. As he would himself do to Therese later on, Daddy obviously bullied Mommy into letting him keep Anthony. In both cases, an emotionally distant control freak reacted with rage at the prospect that a will would gainsay his own. In both cases, the father made sure that the "evil" woman who rejected a "Nice Guy[tm]" would not "ruin" his child with her odd ways. If "stranger in his own home" means what I think it does, both men married a passive dullard who could be relied on not to challenge the masculinity of a Caine. What's more, his father preferred the children of his own personal Lizardbreath to Anthony. This, of course, bodes ill for Françoise's future. Like Anthony himself, his daughter will be explained away as an ungrateful little brat to the passive idiot girl's credulous parents. She too will seek out her birth mother and build some sort of relationship despite parental disapproval and both will build some nonentity into a paragon of virtue.

All this, of course, presumes that Anusthony is telling the truth in the first place. The man we've seen is not trustworthy so I should think that what we'll read is his 'truth' which is more true than all the facts in the world.

This leads me to believe that the strips in the Reload that do not demonize John and Mike for having penises or vilify Mira for letting her ambition come between Mike and Twoo Wuv will be spent whining about the sad, lonely, ill-used little boy with the freckles who follows Liz around like a lost puppy.

The saddest part of all of this, though, is the knowledge that a lot of gullible people will swallow this tale of woe hook, line and sinker. Lynn's plans to expand her mail server are obviously inspired by her knowledge that the Inmans of the world will post long, awkward, illiterate letters telling the bad picky-faces to stop hating Anthony. Pleading his case merely because he had a crummy childhood is, of course, an absurdity. Even if his bio were one hundred percent true, it only explains what we've seen. Since he clearly lacks the impulse to regret what he's done, his past does absolutely nothing to excuse his multitude of sins.