I Miss the Monthlies
It is at this point where I miss the monthly letters of the For Better or For Worse website. Apparently Dawn Enjo got married and we missed it and Elizabeth’s participation in it. I was personally looking forward to seeing Shawna-Marie and Elizabeth make fun of Dawn and her wedding, as Elizabeth and Dawn did of Shawn-Marie’s wedding last June.
The last we heard about Dawn’s wedding in the strip was this one, where Elizabeth just says it is next year.
In Liz's Letter, July 2007, she said:
Dawn is getting married soon - she lives in Ottawa, which isn't that far from here.
That's it. However, if we had a monthly letter still, we could have heard about the wedding in gory detail after the fact and a little travelogue of the sights and sounds of Ottawa to boot.
Aside from missing those monthly letters the thing I find the most surprising is that the first person we see Elizabeth Patterson tell about her engagement is not Elly Patterson. That is a slight of the highest level. It makes me wonder if Lynn Johnston is going to write a story around that, or if this is just another indication of how unimportant Lynn considers marriage to be these days.
I am trying to remember if my wife considered asking people to be her bridesmaids for whom she also was a bridesmaid was payback of some sort. I don't think she did. I know the bridesmaids may think that way when they see the bridesmaids dresses Liz will pick out (but they will soon feel sorry for her when they see her ratty, 60-year-old wedding dress); but I seem to remember my wife going to great pains to try to get a bridesmaid dress that met the ultimate quality of “I would wear this dress again.” My wife did not actually achieve that feat, but at the point of presenting the dress design to her bridemaids, she did honestly believe it to be true. When I heard her say those words to her bridesmaids, I told her she was officially a bride, because only a bride would be able to say those words and believe them.
My wife did not consider it to be payback time. She considered being asked to be a bridesmaid an honour and she worked pretty hard at the weddings where she was a bridesmaid to help the wedding go off smoothly. In fact, my wife personally contacted all her bridesmaids to ask them individually. This e-mail method Liz is using, would only be a last resort for my wife.
Of course, now that I think about the way Liz behaved at Shawna-Marie’s wedding, “payback time” is perfectly in character. And if Liz behaved the same way at Dawn’s wedding, I think I have a good idea why Liz has to resort to e-mail to contact her. Dawn may be still mad at Liz from her wedding and decided to stop returning her calls. The real question will be if Dawn and Shawna-Marie are good enough friends to put Liz’s bad behaviour behind them and accept the honour graciously. Let’s hope so. I can’t wait to see Dawn and Shawna-Marie both gush over Liz’s wedding and say, “I wish my wedding could have been like this.” That would be perfect.
The last we heard about Dawn’s wedding in the strip was this one, where Elizabeth just says it is next year.
In Liz's Letter, July 2007, she said:
Dawn is getting married soon - she lives in Ottawa, which isn't that far from here.
That's it. However, if we had a monthly letter still, we could have heard about the wedding in gory detail after the fact and a little travelogue of the sights and sounds of Ottawa to boot.
Aside from missing those monthly letters the thing I find the most surprising is that the first person we see Elizabeth Patterson tell about her engagement is not Elly Patterson. That is a slight of the highest level. It makes me wonder if Lynn Johnston is going to write a story around that, or if this is just another indication of how unimportant Lynn considers marriage to be these days.
I am trying to remember if my wife considered asking people to be her bridesmaids for whom she also was a bridesmaid was payback of some sort. I don't think she did. I know the bridesmaids may think that way when they see the bridesmaids dresses Liz will pick out (but they will soon feel sorry for her when they see her ratty, 60-year-old wedding dress); but I seem to remember my wife going to great pains to try to get a bridesmaid dress that met the ultimate quality of “I would wear this dress again.” My wife did not actually achieve that feat, but at the point of presenting the dress design to her bridemaids, she did honestly believe it to be true. When I heard her say those words to her bridesmaids, I told her she was officially a bride, because only a bride would be able to say those words and believe them.
My wife did not consider it to be payback time. She considered being asked to be a bridesmaid an honour and she worked pretty hard at the weddings where she was a bridesmaid to help the wedding go off smoothly. In fact, my wife personally contacted all her bridesmaids to ask them individually. This e-mail method Liz is using, would only be a last resort for my wife.
Of course, now that I think about the way Liz behaved at Shawna-Marie’s wedding, “payback time” is perfectly in character. And if Liz behaved the same way at Dawn’s wedding, I think I have a good idea why Liz has to resort to e-mail to contact her. Dawn may be still mad at Liz from her wedding and decided to stop returning her calls. The real question will be if Dawn and Shawna-Marie are good enough friends to put Liz’s bad behaviour behind them and accept the honour graciously. Let’s hope so. I can’t wait to see Dawn and Shawna-Marie both gush over Liz’s wedding and say, “I wish my wedding could have been like this.” That would be perfect.
posted by howard at 9:57 PM
14 Comments:
Hopefully, Liz will learn the same lesson my best friend did: when you are the last friend to get married, your friends will not care about your wedding, because they are already married and have moved on to married life, careers, and/or babies.
My best friend was the last in our group to marry (except for the spinsters). She had been a dutiful bridesmaid to at least six other women, fawning over every detail, allowing herself to be used and abused by the brides. When her wedding came around, these women did not care. Some of them weren't interested in even attending the wedding--they were too busy with their married lives. Some were willing to be bridesmaids, but didn't care if they were made to wear even the most ridiculous dress--they were already married and it didn't matter.
My friend wound up being quite hurt by the lack of interest from married friends--and she wasn't out for revenge or payback or anything. IRL, Liz would be horribly disappointed to learn her wedding would not be very important to her married friends. Made to wear ugly dresses, in my experience, married women merely shrug. Or say they're too busy to be bridesmaids.
Hm, this gives me some snark ideas. :)
qnjones:
Hopefully, Liz will learn the same lesson my best friend did: when you are the last friend to get married, your friends will not care about your wedding.
I would like to think that she would but Liz doesn't impress me as the sort of person who draws the correct conclusion from events. Instead of realizing that Dawn and Shawna-Marie mean well but have too much on their plates, she's going to think that she's being slighted. She was vain and silly enough to think Paul would drop everything to go down South because SHE said so so she's going to be tearfully upset because her married friends are apathetic in the face of the Settlenuptuals.
On the bright side, though, the tone of this proposed marriage has been so settle-icious to date, that perhaps Lynn will depict all the characters as having little enthusiasm for the wedding as well. I am now hoping she continues to play this without ever showing love, romance, passion, or excitement. That would be kind of awesome, actually. Asking us to buy Anthony and Liz as a great love story is all kinds of wrong. But actually depicting their marriage as one of pure practicality is kind of great, since you rarely see that AND that is all these two deserve or are capable of anyway.
It was sad for my best friend to find out that some of her friends really weren't all that good of friends after all. She didn't deserve that treatment. But I think Liz DOES deserve it--because she's been a lousy friend to everyone, except arguably Candace. When was the last time we saw Liz visit Dawn or Shawna-Marie in their own homes? Never. She only deigns to see them when they come to Milborough.
I think the most awesome thing would be if John and Elly don't care that she's getting married. I would like to see them be like, "Yeah, whatever, get married, we don't care, we already did this with Mike, why are you bugging us? Geez, do you think April will expect us to care about her wedding too?"
qnjones:
I think the most awesome thing would be if John and Elly don't care that she's getting married. I would like to see them be like, "Yeah, whatever, get married, we don't care, we already did this with Mike, why are you bugging us? Geez, do you think April will expect us to care about her wedding too?"
That would be great. I just came up with something that would be equally good: John and Elly going through the motions but thinking that they got married on the sly like Mike and Dee did. I'd say they were dumb enough to take Liz's no-fuss-no-muss crap at face value, assume she'd eloped with Awfulny and just wants a great big party this August. The fun will be watcing April blurt that out.
qnjones,
Your story about your last-to-be married friend is very interesting. My wife and I had a long engagement (because I insisted on being a June bridegroom), and so my wife’s best friend got engaged after she did and got married before she did, I think (and still do) that she wanted to be married before my wife was. The result was that she was divorced 2 years later, but nevertheless, my wife was the maid of honor for her wedding and she was the matron of honor for our wedding. However, because the weddings were close enough in time to each other, even as a matron, she was still filled with that wedding enthusiasm. I don’t know how much of a time difference there was with your last-to-be married friend and her married friends weddings, but I am curious to know if that made a difference.
As for me and my wife, we went to a lot of weddings when we were single and dating and quite a few the year we got married. Then after that, we have been only to a handful of weddings since, mainly those of relatives. The main reason for this, is that my post-wedding wife started adjusting her friends to married women, cutting off some of her single friends. Once that’s accomplished, you don’t get a lot of wedding invitations and you lose interest in going to weddings.
I am now hoping she continues to play this without ever showing love, romance, passion, or excitement. That would be kind of awesome, actually. Asking us to buy Anthony and Liz as a great love story is all kinds of wrong. But actually depicting their marriage as one of pure practicality is kind of great, since you rarely see that AND that is all these two deserve or are capable of anyway.
Lynn has been playing Anthony and Elizabeth as an imitation of her and Rod according to her interviews. There is definitely an element of that which comes out, particularly Rod’s supposed line about “You take on Lynn Lake and I’ll take on Aaron” that sounds much more like a marriage of practicality than love. I would not be surprised if this is the way it ends up.
When was the last time we saw Liz visit Dawn or Shawna-Marie in their own homes? Never. She only deigns to see them when they come to Milborough.
According to her last set of monthly letters before they were discontinued, Liz visited Dawn in Ottawa. As to whether Dawn’s wedding was in Ottawa or in Milborough, we do not know. As for Shawna-Marie, she actually lives in Milborough, so Liz really has no excuse for not visiting with her. Prior to her wedding, the last time she was mentioned (not seen) in the strip was when Liz borrowed her boyfriend’s motorcycle leathers to ride the motorcycle to work in the summer.
DreadedCandiru2,
That would be great. I just came up with something that would be equally good: John and Elly going through the motions but thinking that they got married on the sly like Mike and Dee did.
That would be pretty funny and it would be a great slam of the Mike and Deanna marriage mess. So, there's no way Lynn will do it.
howtheduck:
That would be pretty funny and it would be a great slam of the Mike and Deanna marriage mess. So, there's no way Lynn will do it.
I know but I can still dream about it.
Liz would be horribly disappointed to learn her wedding would not be very important to her married friends. Made to wear ugly dresses, in my experience, married women merely shrug. Or say they're too busy to be bridesmaids.
(Sorry I don't know how to italicize to quote)
Do you honestly think LJ would be up on this bit of info - that the last to get married gets the shaft from friends? Liz's friends will be dying to help plan and put their lives on hold to work around the clock to make this the best wedding evah. I am sure she doesn't know any recent brides, just like she doesn't know any little kids or teenagers. Well maybe she does, she just doesn't pay attention.
anonymous,
The HTML tags for italics are
[i]message to be italicized[/i], except replace the [] with <>.
I am sure she doesn't know any recent brides, just like she doesn't know any little kids or teenagers. Well maybe she does, she just doesn't pay attention.
I can't remember any of Lynn's staff getting married recently, although a number of them have kids. But as her website shows in the Making of the Strip, Lynn does her plot development sitting on a chesterfield.
Yeah, asking a"friend" to be a bridesmaid is just all kinds of wrong. Liz comes across like a snooty society girl where friends are back-stabbing cats. All the while, putting on the "gushy, sweetie" facade.
Again, friendship is not something any of the Pattersons are very good at--too self-centered.
debjyn,
The story-telling problem is that we are expected to believe that Liz has been keeping regular contact with Dawn and Shawna-Marie over this period of time and they are great friends. Even when Liz had her monthly letters, she rarely mentioned them, although it did occur more often than in the strip. In the archive of strips since 2003 (or the Houston Chronicle archive back to 2001), Dawn and Shawna-Marie appeared at the 2005 New Years’ Eve slam-Thérèse fest. Even there, after she got the gossip, Dawn and Shawna-Marie deserted Liz leaving her to mope and complain to herself about how Thérèse was ruining the party for her. By making her point about the misery Thérèse was causing Elizabeth, Lynn inadvertently made it look like her friends abandoned her.
The next appearance was last years’ wedding for Shawna-Marie, which was marked by only a single conversation between Dawn and Liz and Dawn and Shawna-Marie done before the wedding ceremony. Having Anthony and Liz run off may have been intended to romantic, but it also gives you the impression that Liz didn’t really care if she offended Shawna-Marie or not.
That’s it. 2 times in the last 7 years and not all that friendly even then. Lynn has two difficulties as a story-teller. (1) She has to remind the readers who these characters are and (2) She has to convince us that Liz is friends with them. It is on part 2, where her story-telling shows the most failure and she continues to do poorly. “Payback time” may be amusing to Lynn, but would be offensive to most brides without a little :) following it
I don't think Liz actually typed the "payback" part--hence the stoppage of her dreadful onomatopoetic tick-taps. (Memo to Lynn: that's too subtle. Should have composed the frame so that Liz's hands are visibly not typing.)
aprilp_katje,
I don't think Liz actually typed the "payback" part--hence the stoppage of her dreadful onomatopoetic tick-taps.
I expect that you are right, Lynn was continuing this week's theme of unspoken or uncommunicated humour.
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