The awareness axiom of Lizardbreath

As we all know, the Pattersons’ opinion of their own moral excellence has little bearing on reality. We have Elly and April loving saving face too damned much to admit to the anger and jealousy that consume them, we have John thinking that he’s a good guy that fallen moderns don’t understand and we have Mike grousing that he would be the good kid people like if it weren’t for the fact that everyone’s trying to crush him so they can laugh at him for wanting to be happy too. What these four sad losers have in common is that they’re aware that people don’t like what they do and it bothers them. Liz is different, though.

How Liz is different is simple: she isn’t really aware that people don’t like what she does and she isn’t aware of what she’s doing to begin with. The strip that best defines Liz has her stand around watching John and his model railroading buddies do their thing. We know that she’s too chicken and also kind of too dim to ask if she can participate but she doesn’t. When John says that if she’s just standing there like a mook, she can at least try to be useful, she’s enraged. She’s not some dimwit just standing around like a wooden Jesus in a country graveyard. She’ll prove that she’s not….and then, she’ll go back to hovering around in the background with that baffled, dead-eyed frown on her face because she doesn’t know what’s going on and she doesn’t like it anyway. This leaves us with:

Axiom 5b:

Elizabeth is pretty much devoid of anything like self-awareness and tends to ascribe herself positive traits she doesn’t have.

The sibling revilery axioms

Of course, it’s not just Mike’s belief that television is ‘real’ that makes him an insufferable jerk. We also have to deal with the fact that his stupid need for the worthless approval of his idiot parents and default negativity caused him to be a willing participant in his parents’ campaign to drive a wedge between him and Lizzie. Neither of them can see it but
Axiom 3e:
John and Elly don’t actually want their kids to get along for fear that they’ll gang up and destroy their parents.
holds true and always will. The Olds may say that they want peace but they don’t mean it because they have the stupid fear that peace between the kids means ganging up and overthrowing their parents….by which they mean “forcing two idiot yuppies to face the reality that they’re not nice people and they’re not victims and making amends for that.”
The reason Mike is at pains to obey Mom and Dad and hate his sister is that he’s not very good at understanding why people do what they do. It leaves me shaking my head in bemusement that someone that poor at answering the question “What does this person want” is pretending he’s an authory but there he is, thinking his horrible kid sister is trying to be unfair to him and cheating to get the attention she’s supposed to concede all to him because he is older and he can do things and she’s weak and stupid and has the wrong parts and, no, people are all wrong when they say he’d hate a kid brother just as much because that means that he’s not a victim either but instead a selfish little creep who needs his fucking teeth punched in. This is owing to
Axiom 4g:
Mike doesn’t like the idea of being to blame for things because that’s a humiliation.
being the case.
What makes Lizzie act the way she does is somewhat different. Unlike Elly who envies or John who’s sick with pride or Mike and his slothful ways, Lizardbreath shirks from responsibility for her own reason: she lacks anything like a sense of morals. To her, what makes her feel happy is good and what doesn’t is bad. We can codify it thusly:
Axiom 5a:
Elizabeth loves unearned attention and hates to have to do things for it because she actually did like being a parasite who gets love for nothing.