Beyond Destiny, Part Six: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Foob.

[dreadedcandiru2]

As I've mentioned, the reason I'm giving for everyone finally getting their heads on straight is because they don't have a rock colossus of obdurate entitlement around to reinforce their need to be idiots; with John and his never-say-die-never-even-conceive-that-he-might-be-in-the-wrong viewpoint stinking up the joint, the others wouldn't have an excuse to ignore the conscience he never had.

That being said, it would not only affect how Elly viewed herself, it would alter how she treated her family. That would be a good thing because, as we all know, the Elly we see in the strip is all about appearances; she wants to be so many things because they look cool but doesn't have the stamina or attention span required to make her dreams come true. She tried being an author, a pet owner and a business owner because she liked the way those people looked but she lacked the skill sets and patience needed.

This would be bad enough on its own and be the source of a fair amount of angst. Trouble is, though, that she actively resists applying herself in areas in which she might excel and forge an identity for herself because she associates them with the hated identity of 'housewife'; this seems to have robbed the world of a fairly good caterer and given it a failed and frustrated author.

This, sadly, also is the inspiration behind her need to force Mike into a career path that he's unsuited for. Her need to live vicariously through her son and bask in his reflected literary light in order to make all of her self-induced hardship seem worthwhile has given birth to a third-rater scribble vomiting forth sixth-rate abuse porn.

What makes this a problem id that Mike not only confuses saying a lot with having something to say, he can't actually make a living as an author the way things are set up in the strip. Leaving aside the obvious fact that the sort of garret that Elly fantasized about and that Mike is trying to implement is regarded as a screwy fantasy by serious authors, he's pretty much making the same take-home pay as he would pouring coffee down at Tim Hortons' when he used to make a beatiful dollar at the job he resigned from because his employer asked him to make a real decision for once in his life.

This, of course, will mean that he will have to grovel to Gluttson to get a job as a junior copy editor somewhere in the man's publishing empire or teach English comp to bored housewives looking for a change in order to pay off the mortgage. Were he to do so in a manner that would relieve the stress he's inflicting on his self-loathing, self-martyring wife, she'd probably put aside her little hobby sewing school and get back to a real job pretty damned quick.

To cap things off, we can even have Elly make a stumbling apology for messing up his life because she discouraged his exploration of things he might have been actually good at because computers scared her. Her grudging realization that she wanted things for her children that they really didn't and probably shouldn't have been asked to take on would hurt at first but without the example of someone who doesn't have a conscience to stiff-arm around, she'd survive.

Comments

[clio-1.livejournal.com]

Mike could make zero dollars a year and they'd be perfectly able to pay the mortgage, if Dee kept her job and didn't open a sewing school. Since she did that, I assume Mike started making some serious cash -- and terrible authors who can churn out books that make for horrible screenplays can make a ton of money. See: Dan Brown, Stefanie Meyer, etc.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

Well, someone on Tvtropes did assume that he was in their league; perhaps in the new order, he still churns out crap but he's more honest about being a bad author. I'd rather see a cheerful huckster who's a good husband and father than a delusional idiot who thinks he's a better man than he actually is.

[josephusrex.livejournal.com]

The way his fiction is described, it sounds much like that of Joyce Maynard, in terms of both material and literary excellence. And they both just crank out the beach-reads, as though their respective muses were eating All-Bran for breakfast every darn day, which they probably do.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

They're also both probably most famous for giving head to their betters; my guess is that it'll be revealed that Mike had a brief, torrid affair with a loose parody of Timothy Findley back in University.

[josephusrex.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me: Probably Michael's very best writing (really quite good of its kind, because it's heartfelt) are his Penthouse-letter-style descriptions of what he wishes might have gone on with Weed. Hilarity ensues when Dee finds them: that might be a hell of a chapter in your book.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

Not only hilarity, I think; there'd also be the grudging realization that she's his beard. Add in Mira making an arch remark about how she was trying to warn her what she was getting into back when she picked that fight with Everyone's Favorite Multiracial Straight Gay and we're talking comic gold. If I were in charge of the asylum, Dee would end up becoming one of Southern Ontario's leading advocates for the LGBT community.