Liz's reunion: the long, long defeat.
Sep. 16th, 2015 01:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreadedcandiru2As we know, Liz's personality has been pretty much been warped by fear of the outside world. She clings to parental figures and surrogates to protect her from any number of vague, unknown menaces because when her personality was starting to gel into the shape it would have for life, she was haunted by a shape of dimwitted malice that struck without warning or provocation and was never really put in its place. Since Elly couldn't fix the stupid that is Michael, she ended up with a child who feared being alone because alone is when the monster gets you. As Liz grew up, this developed into a vague discomfort with the fact that all of her friends seemed to be slipping through her fingers. Since she shares being negative with her mother and brother, the conclusion she came to was that they only pretended to like her.
Imagine putting someone with a fear of the outside world and a free-floating dread that people who actually like her are really laughing at her in a setting where everyone is living amazing lives without her and leaving her in a sort of dry dock of being a frustrated, isolated and confused wife and mother who finds that all the things she'd have earned by marrying the man her parents like are lies. The Liz of the present day is quite probably in the same horrid and self-willed Hell that Elly is in the reprints. She's not especially good looking, she's not a nice person, she doesn't really understand children, her husband treats her sort of like a joke and sort of like a servant, her life isn't really going anywhere and her children don't really respect her. Point that at friends who are doing better and you've got a recipe for a really bad mood.
About the only thing that can save her from the horrible realization that her limitations as a person doomed her to living the same half-life as her mother is the sort of denial of the obvious that her dad preaches as a sovereign cure for existential crises. By convincing herself that people who don't want to be her actually do, she might have a good reunion. This will put her at odds with an Anthony who knows that they don't want to be him but that's okay because he doesn't want to be them because that's risky but it'll look the same so they won't realize how different they are.
Imagine putting someone with a fear of the outside world and a free-floating dread that people who actually like her are really laughing at her in a setting where everyone is living amazing lives without her and leaving her in a sort of dry dock of being a frustrated, isolated and confused wife and mother who finds that all the things she'd have earned by marrying the man her parents like are lies. The Liz of the present day is quite probably in the same horrid and self-willed Hell that Elly is in the reprints. She's not especially good looking, she's not a nice person, she doesn't really understand children, her husband treats her sort of like a joke and sort of like a servant, her life isn't really going anywhere and her children don't really respect her. Point that at friends who are doing better and you've got a recipe for a really bad mood.
About the only thing that can save her from the horrible realization that her limitations as a person doomed her to living the same half-life as her mother is the sort of denial of the obvious that her dad preaches as a sovereign cure for existential crises. By convincing herself that people who don't want to be her actually do, she might have a good reunion. This will put her at odds with an Anthony who knows that they don't want to be him but that's okay because he doesn't want to be them because that's risky but it'll look the same so they won't realize how different they are.
