Something About Lizzie
Today’s strip in For Better or For Worse showed Liz giving up her clothes to April, packing to leave, and making a sly observation about something her father is going to say. It actually portrayed Liz, I think, in a fairly good light, which is a nice change from the depressed and hungover Liz that has graced the pages of my newspaper for the last several days. I thought of the clothing gift as a symbolic indication that Liz has finally given up Milborough as her home for Mtigwaki. There certainly has been enough strips to indicate things heading in this direction. The “Elly at the pow-wow” sequence concluded with Elly pronouncing it to be Liz’s home, and Lynn has gone through the trouble of establishing a 1st nation boyfriend for Liz to tie this all together.
Then the Saturday strip came out and in 5 short panels destroyed that whole concept. In panel 2, Liz tells us that she plans to be working up north for a couple more years. So, Mtigwaki is then not actually Liz’s home, and it is just a temporary job. If the strip ends in 2 years, then it won’t make any difference. We won’t get to see the next job, and Liz will no doubt take Jesse Mukwa to the point where he is being taught by Gary Vance in the senior class, so there won’t be any hurt feelings when she decides to leave. I was mainly surprised that after all this hoo-hah about Mtigwaki being home, about Liz being accepted as a “star” in the town, that Lynn would back off on this basic idea she had worked so hard to establish for Liz.
The next 3 panels of the Saturday strip destroyed any conceit that I had that Liz viewed her relationship with Paul as being anything more than convenient, with her comment to April that she hasn’t fallen in love with anyone and then kissing on her dad. I got a definite queasy feeling about this, since I had done the “April is my best friend” post just today.
The For Better or For Worse website added Constable Paul Wright to its Who’s Who list, and as ellcee has pointed out over on the Foobiverse’s Journal, it makes a point of saying that Paul no longer lives a long distance away from Liz. It is kind of like the mysteriously moving Milborough. When you deal with nonexistent places, they can apparently move at random relative to other places. The question for the future of Liz is whether or not she will fall in love with the good constable, or if she will continue her stand-offish ways.
What it boils down to is this: Liz does not consider Mtigwaki to be her home. She considers the job to be temporary. Liz is not in love with Paul. If anything, she is in love with her dad. So down the road, it is entirely possible that Liz will not be in Mtigwaki and Liz may not be with Paul. This made me feel entirely justified in the posts I did yesterday, where I pointed out those very things, based on previously existing Liz information.
Then the Saturday strip came out and in 5 short panels destroyed that whole concept. In panel 2, Liz tells us that she plans to be working up north for a couple more years. So, Mtigwaki is then not actually Liz’s home, and it is just a temporary job. If the strip ends in 2 years, then it won’t make any difference. We won’t get to see the next job, and Liz will no doubt take Jesse Mukwa to the point where he is being taught by Gary Vance in the senior class, so there won’t be any hurt feelings when she decides to leave. I was mainly surprised that after all this hoo-hah about Mtigwaki being home, about Liz being accepted as a “star” in the town, that Lynn would back off on this basic idea she had worked so hard to establish for Liz.
The next 3 panels of the Saturday strip destroyed any conceit that I had that Liz viewed her relationship with Paul as being anything more than convenient, with her comment to April that she hasn’t fallen in love with anyone and then kissing on her dad. I got a definite queasy feeling about this, since I had done the “April is my best friend” post just today.
The For Better or For Worse website added Constable Paul Wright to its Who’s Who list, and as ellcee has pointed out over on the Foobiverse’s Journal, it makes a point of saying that Paul no longer lives a long distance away from Liz. It is kind of like the mysteriously moving Milborough. When you deal with nonexistent places, they can apparently move at random relative to other places. The question for the future of Liz is whether or not she will fall in love with the good constable, or if she will continue her stand-offish ways.
What it boils down to is this: Liz does not consider Mtigwaki to be her home. She considers the job to be temporary. Liz is not in love with Paul. If anything, she is in love with her dad. So down the road, it is entirely possible that Liz will not be in Mtigwaki and Liz may not be with Paul. This made me feel entirely justified in the posts I did yesterday, where I pointed out those very things, based on previously existing Liz information.
posted by howard at 12:11 AM
4 Comments:
I have an alternate way to view the strip today.
Teaching up in Mtigwaki a couple more years may be Liz simply sticking to her original plan, and not revealing thoughts she may be having to the contrary.
She says she hasn't fallen in love--yet. We can take this as she's in the process of falling in love, but doesn't really want to get into this with her baby sister while Daddy's driving her to the bus station.
I suspect today's strip is meant to create suspense. ::yawn::
Adrianne, yes! "Close to her vest" sprang to my mind, too--again! This is so Liz!
I guess I should have put the :) next to the comment about being in love with John. I intended that to be a joke. Yes, my children do kiss me. My daughter is particularly into that. She doesn't like being kissed though. She just likes giving kisses.
As for Mtigwaki, much about the situation (coming back to Milborough all the time, keeping clothes at mom's house) speaks of it being a temporary job. But then there was all this stuff in the strip about Mtigwaki being "home." If Liz has thoughts to the contrary, she does not appear to be taking action in that direction. It was a good opportunity for Liz to say that she considers Mtigwaki to be her home, and she didn't. In fact, she said the opposite. If I go just by what she says and does, then Mtigwaki is not where Liz plans to work for the rest of her life. This "playing close to the vest" thing essentially means that you believe that whatever Liz says in the strip or in the monthly letter is a lie, and she is protecting her true feelings, which are really the exact opposite of what she says and does. I am not sure Liz is that complex.
As for her relationship with Paul, she may be starting the process of actually considering him for a relationship. All this Warren talk tells me that she had him in the back of her mind the whole time she was dating Paul. The line in the monthly letter pretty much spelled it out. "Now that I know my relationship with Warren is over, I am just now considering my future with Paul" is the way I read it. She has never said she is in love with Paul, or even in like with him. In fact, she has told everyone that the relationship is not serious, just nice. She didn't tell Warren off when he offered the helicopter ride. She only did so, after Paul told her he was falling in love with her. It was almost like she was saying to Warren, "I just got a better offer than yours." If I go by what Liz says and does, then I would say Liz is not in love with Paul and if she does fall in love with him, she is only now starting to consider that as a possibility. I am not sure how she was thinking of him before, but it was clearly not for a long term relationship. It appears that she has chosen Paul over Warren for no other reason than he likes her and he pays her more attention than Warren did.
I don't know if my daughter takes after her mother or not. The Mrs. is not into either giving or receiving kisses these days, but she was not always that way. My daughter will probably change when she hits puberty.
We did have one very amusing moment a couple of months ago, where my daughter challenged my wife to kiss me for 10 seconds with her counting off the seconds. My wife didn't make it to 10 seconds because she started laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.
As for the Pattersons, they are definitely passive agressive. They take whatever is given to them, but they never pursue. If a guy in Mtigwaki developed an interest in Liz, she would probably choose him over Paul because he was closer.
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