On the pecking order.
Oct. 13th, 2016 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreadedcandiru2I should think that the thing that is not the Pattersons' terrible table manners that most annoys an outsider is watching them make a whole load of glum wailing about how everybody loves someone else the best. Time and again, we have to watch X be friendly to Y and have Z come along and moan "Now Dawn loves Candace/Shawna-Marie best and she doesn't love me at ALL!!!" owing to a very stupid way the Pattersons have of seeing the world. Just as Mike is still convinced that sharing the spotlight with his siblings means that he's chased away from it and kicked and laughed at for wanting love he can't deserve, Liz can't live in a world where three isn't a crowd because of what we can call the forty-sixth Foob Fact:
Foob Fact Forty-Six: The Pattersons are obsessed with who has the most power in a relationship because they're convinced it's not them.
What makes it all the more annoying is that they're so obsessed with the vision of being packed onto the curb to be hauled off with all the other obsolete trash is that they can't speak English properly. I should think that someone's Freudian slip is showing when Elly insists on calling "family dynamics" "family politics" because of that obsession with who gets to be Lord Muck. Given their reliance on biased sources (as was evidenced by Liz being told Therese's back-story by two men who fear and hate what she represents) and their lack of curiosity, we end up contending with yet another Foob Fact:
Foob Fact Forty-Seven: Owing to a collective drive towards solipsism, the Pattersons tend not to be especially well-informed or overly concerned with the proper use of certain words.
(It should be noted that Lynn herself has this tendency. She seems to be so fixated on avenging herself on the evil people who tell her that she doesn't know what she's talking about and being proven right all the time that she unfailingly misuses "vindicate" where "validate" makes more sense.)
Foob Fact Forty-Six: The Pattersons are obsessed with who has the most power in a relationship because they're convinced it's not them.
What makes it all the more annoying is that they're so obsessed with the vision of being packed onto the curb to be hauled off with all the other obsolete trash is that they can't speak English properly. I should think that someone's Freudian slip is showing when Elly insists on calling "family dynamics" "family politics" because of that obsession with who gets to be Lord Muck. Given their reliance on biased sources (as was evidenced by Liz being told Therese's back-story by two men who fear and hate what she represents) and their lack of curiosity, we end up contending with yet another Foob Fact:
Foob Fact Forty-Seven: Owing to a collective drive towards solipsism, the Pattersons tend not to be especially well-informed or overly concerned with the proper use of certain words.
(It should be noted that Lynn herself has this tendency. She seems to be so fixated on avenging herself on the evil people who tell her that she doesn't know what she's talking about and being proven right all the time that she unfailingly misuses "vindicate" where "validate" makes more sense.)
