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As I mentioned the other day, the real problem Lizzie had with being flower girl is that she felt as if she was pretty much in a sort of shark cage with like a million eyes staring at her and judging her in a harsh and unfair matter. This sort of dread of standing on her own in the middle of a crowd of people who will not relent in their cruelty towards her is pretty much why she's an anxious mess. The reason that I mention this is that most of the other female characters in the strip are hindered by the same crippling fear.
To begin with, Elly feels as if she's the only person in the world who actually cares about saving the town hall from the forces of team sports. The nightmare fantasy is not the one in which people pass her by, shrug and wonder why no one seemed to have seen fit to tell her that she's a day late and a dollar short before going on with their lives; her nightmare is that grown men and women will swarm on her and act like horrid first graders as they sneer and tell her that her theater has to go away because she can't catch a ball with a back hoe and is too unsteady to skate, ski or ride a bike.
Similarly, Annie feels as if she's the only person on Earth who cares about the life of misery and isolation that awaits Leah if her horrible disfigurement is not corrected. Just as the Old Glory Insurance parody ad on SNL tells the senior citizens being tricked into buying insurance against being killed by robots that people who say that that's all lies and nonsense are robots trying to lure them into a false sense of security, Annie thinks that the people who tell her that things will work out for everyone are actually setting her up to be tarred and feathered for somehow cursing Leah due to moral laxity.
The reason that we have to take the self-defeating load of nonsense and lies about made-up armies who have nothing better to do with their lives than act like Milborough is somewhere in freaking Westeros is that we're not dealing with rational fears. What we're dealing with is Lynn unconsciously inserting her own fear of not fitting in with the crowd and thus getting torn apart into the mix. Since it's too deeply embedded in her psyche, we'll be spending the rest of time watching a Patterson woman live in fear of isolation and worthlessness.
To begin with, Elly feels as if she's the only person in the world who actually cares about saving the town hall from the forces of team sports. The nightmare fantasy is not the one in which people pass her by, shrug and wonder why no one seemed to have seen fit to tell her that she's a day late and a dollar short before going on with their lives; her nightmare is that grown men and women will swarm on her and act like horrid first graders as they sneer and tell her that her theater has to go away because she can't catch a ball with a back hoe and is too unsteady to skate, ski or ride a bike.
Similarly, Annie feels as if she's the only person on Earth who cares about the life of misery and isolation that awaits Leah if her horrible disfigurement is not corrected. Just as the Old Glory Insurance parody ad on SNL tells the senior citizens being tricked into buying insurance against being killed by robots that people who say that that's all lies and nonsense are robots trying to lure them into a false sense of security, Annie thinks that the people who tell her that things will work out for everyone are actually setting her up to be tarred and feathered for somehow cursing Leah due to moral laxity.
The reason that we have to take the self-defeating load of nonsense and lies about made-up armies who have nothing better to do with their lives than act like Milborough is somewhere in freaking Westeros is that we're not dealing with rational fears. What we're dealing with is Lynn unconsciously inserting her own fear of not fitting in with the crowd and thus getting torn apart into the mix. Since it's too deeply embedded in her psyche, we'll be spending the rest of time watching a Patterson woman live in fear of isolation and worthlessness.
