Practice makes Elly angered and confused.
Apr. 28th, 2013 02:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreadedcandiru2I'd like to direct your attention to something else just for a second so that I can use it to point out another reason why Michael is doomed to fail. Remember how the Pattersons took Farley to obedience school? Remember how they clearly blew off the instructor's advice that they needed to keep on reinforcing what he taught them instead of acting like total idiots and assuming that since he passed, they could go back to ignoring him because that's the perfect way for him to slide back into his bad habits? Since we didn't even see the person say this, it seems fairly obvious that the poor creature is thought of as being unteachable because his owners are morons who cannot understand that mastering something doesn't mean that you can quit doing it. Mastering something means that you have to keep on practicing so your skills do not atrophy.
Not, of course, that skills maintenance is the only reason to keep in practice. As an example, the need to become a better trumpet player that spurs Phil on to keep tootling away and making poor Elly's life miserable. Unlike his stupid, lazy older sister and her belief that once she learns something, she doesn't need to improve herself, Phil is in competition with the man he was yesterday and he doesn't want to lose to that guy. He's got way too much pride in himself to ever let that happen. Since Elly doesn't and can't understand that because she has no pride in herself and simply wants to throw her hands up in despair and yell about unfairness when the going gets rough, she ascribes his need to succeed to wanting to torment her.
That being said, the crippling self-hatred and fear of failure that makes her moan about how people expect too much of her is not the only reason that practice makes her feel persecuted. We also have to remember there's a defiant six year old kid inside her that resents being told what to do. When we combine a stubborn hatred of being told that she has to do things that are boring and hard like everyone else with a fear that she can never actually do so, we end up with a poor student who drifted through her life thinking that once she'd managed to do her evil teachers the favor of pretending that she cared about their boring mush, she could stop learning things. To her, Phil's incessant playing of bees and bops and encouraging Mike to follow his path means that learning just keeps goes on and on and that's just not faaaaaaaaaaaaair!!!! Fortunately for her, though, she growled and berated and threatened and demeaned her way into getting the scales to balance and now Michael has the right attitude: things that take effort to accomplish are worthless because one has to endure pain at some point in the process. Better to be happy and never do anything.
What this all means is that as I type this, she's probably howling in anger because the April of 2013 has the evil, selfish habit of not listening to sensible people like Eva Warzone and Uncle Hayseed McTurniptruck out at Exile Farm who tell the child what she needs to hear, she listens to awful people like Phil who tell her crazy things about how she should have enough pride in herself to not settle for mediocrity and suburban ennui.
Not, of course, that skills maintenance is the only reason to keep in practice. As an example, the need to become a better trumpet player that spurs Phil on to keep tootling away and making poor Elly's life miserable. Unlike his stupid, lazy older sister and her belief that once she learns something, she doesn't need to improve herself, Phil is in competition with the man he was yesterday and he doesn't want to lose to that guy. He's got way too much pride in himself to ever let that happen. Since Elly doesn't and can't understand that because she has no pride in herself and simply wants to throw her hands up in despair and yell about unfairness when the going gets rough, she ascribes his need to succeed to wanting to torment her.
That being said, the crippling self-hatred and fear of failure that makes her moan about how people expect too much of her is not the only reason that practice makes her feel persecuted. We also have to remember there's a defiant six year old kid inside her that resents being told what to do. When we combine a stubborn hatred of being told that she has to do things that are boring and hard like everyone else with a fear that she can never actually do so, we end up with a poor student who drifted through her life thinking that once she'd managed to do her evil teachers the favor of pretending that she cared about their boring mush, she could stop learning things. To her, Phil's incessant playing of bees and bops and encouraging Mike to follow his path means that learning just keeps goes on and on and that's just not faaaaaaaaaaaaair!!!! Fortunately for her, though, she growled and berated and threatened and demeaned her way into getting the scales to balance and now Michael has the right attitude: things that take effort to accomplish are worthless because one has to endure pain at some point in the process. Better to be happy and never do anything.
What this all means is that as I type this, she's probably howling in anger because the April of 2013 has the evil, selfish habit of not listening to sensible people like Eva Warzone and Uncle Hayseed McTurniptruck out at Exile Farm who tell the child what she needs to hear, she listens to awful people like Phil who tell her crazy things about how she should have enough pride in herself to not settle for mediocrity and suburban ennui.
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Date: 2013-04-28 05:20 pm (UTC)Another scenario: if Elizabeth fell in love with someone from Mtigwaki, Elly would probably would have pretended to be nice while wailing to Connie why she didn't marry a "nice boy like Anthony" or such nonsense.
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Date: 2013-04-28 05:49 pm (UTC)That's a bet you'd win. Elly and John might make high-sounding noise in public about how she was heading for heartache but over coffee, the truth would out and we'd get a rant about ingratitude, selfishness and awful people like Mira who call her and John greedy, self-centered, low-expectation-having mother(boxcar)s.
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Date: 2013-04-28 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-29 01:41 am (UTC)Although if it WERE lesbians, it would at least "out" Elly as a hypocrite.
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Date: 2013-04-28 09:21 pm (UTC)This represents more patience than Elly will ever have, so she'll forever be resentful of those who become experts in their field.
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Date: 2013-04-28 09:24 pm (UTC)