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Of course, the irritating thing about Anthony is that Lynn still dares to claim that he's an obscure and unexplored figure because the reading public (and, since she doesn't read the on-site biographies because touching office equipment will doom her to a life in the steno pool, her) don't know much about his background. This is nonsense because we all know Anthony. We know him quite well indeed. That being said, there is a figure of mystery in the strip whose nature and background is not readily known or knowable: Deanna. She might be at centre stage but we don't really know enough about her childhood to explain her quite as well as we'd like. Fortunately, she's left clues.
The first clue is that we have to remember that the whole ugly mess that was the weddings for heart and for show were not inevitable. Deanna could just as easily have stayed with her aunt and explained to her mush-headed fiancee that his belief that both of them paying separate rents was too 'expensive' was and is the deluded ravings of a nincompoop who pisses away money like an imbecile because he's the creation of a lunatic spendthrift who regards having to save her money as the cruelest torment her evil mother ever inflicted on her. Instead, she used his stupid ignorance of the world as a means of side-stepping a needed confrontation with her mother as regards a problem. We spent the better part of 2001 watching her put Patterson after Patterson between her and actually having to confront her mother and we spent the rest of the strip watching them be used as fall guys because she might dislike her social-climbing monster mother, she sure hates actually having to say so or to do anything constructive about it.
What this tells us is that there is a broad pattern in the Sobinski family of which the Pattersons are only dimly aware which probably goes as follows:
This means that she's fortunate to have married into a family that regards compassion as being a defeat. Actual humans might actually pity the poor fool she calls a mother.
The first clue is that we have to remember that the whole ugly mess that was the weddings for heart and for show were not inevitable. Deanna could just as easily have stayed with her aunt and explained to her mush-headed fiancee that his belief that both of them paying separate rents was too 'expensive' was and is the deluded ravings of a nincompoop who pisses away money like an imbecile because he's the creation of a lunatic spendthrift who regards having to save her money as the cruelest torment her evil mother ever inflicted on her. Instead, she used his stupid ignorance of the world as a means of side-stepping a needed confrontation with her mother as regards a problem. We spent the better part of 2001 watching her put Patterson after Patterson between her and actually having to confront her mother and we spent the rest of the strip watching them be used as fall guys because she might dislike her social-climbing monster mother, she sure hates actually having to say so or to do anything constructive about it.
What this tells us is that there is a broad pattern in the Sobinski family of which the Pattersons are only dimly aware which probably goes as follows:
- Mira does something gratuititiously stupid and showy and tasteless in a failed attempt to 'prove' to an uncaring world that she's a bigger deal than she actually is.
- Wilf realizes that he married crazy and self-hating and carries the weight for his lady like a man is supposed to.
- Deanna interprets Wilf's acting like a man as weakness because he never did what he 'should' and threatened her with harm.
- Deanna would get all butt-hurt about the big mess and not do anything about it because she hates confrontation MORE than she hates dealing with her mother's nuttiness.
This means that she's fortunate to have married into a family that regards compassion as being a defeat. Actual humans might actually pity the poor fool she calls a mother.
