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Further notes on women in blue.
Dec. 28th, 2015 02:01 amTo continue on from yesterday, it's not much of a stretch of logic to realize that a person could easily develop a sort of comic set in Milborough that had the Patterson family as background characters who the principals knew little about. After all, while Elly might think that the world rotated around her desperate need to prove that her life had more meaning than chasing after children, sweeping porches or fighting for her own identity, the truth is that the world at large is just going to see a frowning, angry scold who never got very far in life and, for some reason, raised kids who were dependent on her.
What this means is that in this altered perspective on Milborough, Elly would not be seen as the hero or as central to everyone's lives. She'd be seen as something of a noisy hindrance that pops up from time to time, ready to yell and scream and whine and just generally screw things up. As by way of example, we could have one of the characters try to propose some useful civic initiative only to have that bellowing nutjob the dentist married scream about the risk to the children she lets run hog-wild because she's too damned fragile to actually supervise them. It would be tempting to point out all the times our hero had seen the sullen boy with the messy hair, the blank-eyed kewpie doll in lavender or the other little girl wearing her hair like a Romulan wander around like lost souls because Mommy is too overwhelmed to deal with normal family life but he or she would hold back because the last time shenanigans were called, the shrieking lunatic went into a bitter tirade about how no one appreciated her.
When the angry maniac with the fetish for sweeping her back porch isn't directly being a nuisance by standing in the way of something or butting in where she's not wanted or letting her tendency to have her head up her arse mess things up for her neighbors, she can be counted on to do something graceless and annoying to be disapproved of like having a big, ugly wedding for the middle child or treating the youngest like crap or fawning over her hack author son who seems hell-bent on keeping the family tradition of acting like a farmer alive.
What this means is that in this altered perspective on Milborough, Elly would not be seen as the hero or as central to everyone's lives. She'd be seen as something of a noisy hindrance that pops up from time to time, ready to yell and scream and whine and just generally screw things up. As by way of example, we could have one of the characters try to propose some useful civic initiative only to have that bellowing nutjob the dentist married scream about the risk to the children she lets run hog-wild because she's too damned fragile to actually supervise them. It would be tempting to point out all the times our hero had seen the sullen boy with the messy hair, the blank-eyed kewpie doll in lavender or the other little girl wearing her hair like a Romulan wander around like lost souls because Mommy is too overwhelmed to deal with normal family life but he or she would hold back because the last time shenanigans were called, the shrieking lunatic went into a bitter tirade about how no one appreciated her.
When the angry maniac with the fetish for sweeping her back porch isn't directly being a nuisance by standing in the way of something or butting in where she's not wanted or letting her tendency to have her head up her arse mess things up for her neighbors, she can be counted on to do something graceless and annoying to be disapproved of like having a big, ugly wedding for the middle child or treating the youngest like crap or fawning over her hack author son who seems hell-bent on keeping the family tradition of acting like a farmer alive.
