Liz, Beth and Lynn: the outsiders....

[dreadedcandiru2]

Remember how Lynn thought that we all knew that Liz spent most of her time up North filled with a longing for home that we quite frankly never saw until she yelled WAIT at a computer monitor? The reason that she thought that we knew this was that she'd thought that she'd made it quite clear why Liz should feel this way. The reason why Liz was homesick is quite simple when you think about it: she was expected to blend into the community on their terms, not her own. If Liz was going to stay in Mtigwaki, what was supposed to have happened is that the grateful locals would fall all over themselves to alter who they were and how they lived and saw the world so that Liz would not be forced to do something evil and change who she was.

As we know, though, things didn't work out that way. The locals insisted on remaining what they were. As a for instance, they didn't see why Paul should have had to jump through hoops to please some shallow idiot from the big city who clearly thought of him not as a man but as a prop to show off how enlightened she wasn't. Since they wouldn't let her play her mighty whitey head games, she joined Connie in muttering about fantasy men that she made up instead of admitting that they'd witlessly destroyed something that could have worked because they have what I like to call Lucy Ricardo Syndrome. I name their refusal to entertain the possibility that they should adapt to a 'lesser' cultural norm the way I do because I remember that Lucy Ricardo never learned a single word of Spanish and would have been outraged by the suggestion that she should.

Liz's hatred of a community for daring to insist that she become a part of it on its terms clearly has its origins in Lynn's blind hostility to the demands that she become a part of Lynn Lake on its terms. The idea of taking a distant second place in their affections to their beloved Flying Dentist not only inspired her need to want to force Rod to give up the dentistry that makes people like him better than her, it is why Liz rages about how terrible it was that people from a community that she didn't want to become a part of felt no obligation to warn her that her delusions had no basis in reality.

That being said, it seems quite possible that Beth Cruikshank has the same sort of disdain for locals who refuse to bow down and worship her as Lynn does for the evil people of evil Lynn Lake. As howtheduck suggested, most of why Aberdeen, Manitoba is stocked with evil mutants who treat women poorly is that Miami, Manitoba was loaded with people who didn't quite see why the veterinarian was so bloody condescending or why they should indulge her ego-tripping. This shared disdain for hayseeds who get all snippy and defensive when someone 'smarter' shows up is most likely why Beth is captaining Team Lynn. I should think that Rod didn't see the point of alienating people any more than anyone else did. 

Comments

[josephusrex.livejournal.com]

I used to box a little, and I still remember how that "WAIT!" struck me the way I might have been struck by a haymaker that I saw coming a mile away but couldn't quite get out of the way of. I had to let it hit me, but because I'd had, like, an hour or so to brace myself for it, it didn't hurt much and just made me shake my head and say, "That all you got, chump?"

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

What makes the sheer plodding inevitability of the Settlepocalypse hurt so much is that having to remember the number of clods who didn't see any of it coming. They were astonished that Anthony's marriage imploded and that Paul turned into a cheating cheater who cheated and it shows.