>> But that means Lawrence /has/ skills he isn't even aware of, and he is using them /effectively/ in the context of the Chess Club. <<
Yes, that's true. They're ... doings, more than feelings. Like a lot of nerds, Lawrence tends to live in his head. So he thinks, "If people want to play chess, they should be able to play chess," and if there's an obstacle to that, he tries to figure a way around it. (You can see the same basic thought pattern in how his superpower works.) Sort of like emotional intelligence done with logic instead of intuition, and not from the inside out, but from a desired result worked backwards to a prerequisite action.
>> Please, please tell me his mother is not a Bradstreet relation? (private joke, basically 'not fit to raise house plants, let alone humans) <<
Not in the same way. She's not a bad person, just does not have nurturing skills and is not doing well at trying to carry an entire household by herself. Also the domestic abuse didn't help. The neglect is real and troublesome, it's just caused by her not really knowing how to raise a child rather than hating Lawrence, wanting to hurt him, or being selfish. She doesn't understand his needs, partly because she doesn't understand her own all that well and hasn't gotten them met either. "Pay the bills" and "Buy food" are perfectly clear. "Humans need to be touched" isn't. "Ask how the day went" is rimmed with bear traps and burning red flags in her mind.
>> Or, that she's willing to do some serious work to recover the relationship? <<
The main obstacles are that she doesn't realize how bad the problem is, doesn't have the skills to fix it, and has had experiences with the kind of anti-help that kills help-seeking behavior. Lawrence's mother thinks she's doing her job as long as the kid has food in the kitchen, a roof over his head, and isn't getting himself arrested. You can see different aspects of this in how she's responded to the events in various poems. She would've been offered help when her husband was hauled off for hitting Lawrence; it's standard, because a man who hits usually doesn't hit just one person. She wouldn't touch any of that, didn't trust it. But when Stan came over and just started doing things, that clicked for her. She gets cooking a meal. She's not very good at it herself, but it makes sense to her. The conversation was baffling, but she was sort of able to follow it, and she didn't bite Stan's head off. She was tentatively curious enough to poke at his school materials relating to family problems -- and solutions. So I think there's hope.
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dancing_serpent
Re: Moving chess pieces
Date: 2014-12-12 09:14 am (UTC)Yes, that's true. They're ... doings, more than feelings. Like a lot of nerds, Lawrence tends to live in his head. So he thinks, "If people want to play chess, they should be able to play chess," and if there's an obstacle to that, he tries to figure a way around it. (You can see the same basic thought pattern in how his superpower works.) Sort of like emotional intelligence done with logic instead of intuition, and not from the inside out, but from a desired result worked backwards to a prerequisite action.
>> Please, please tell me his mother is not a Bradstreet relation? (private joke, basically 'not fit to raise house plants, let alone humans) <<
Not in the same way. She's not a bad person, just does not have nurturing skills and is not doing well at trying to carry an entire household by herself. Also the domestic abuse didn't help. The neglect is real and troublesome, it's just caused by her not really knowing how to raise a child rather than hating Lawrence, wanting to hurt him, or being selfish. She doesn't understand his needs, partly because she doesn't understand her own all that well and hasn't gotten them met either. "Pay the bills" and "Buy food" are perfectly clear. "Humans need to be touched" isn't. "Ask how the day went" is rimmed with bear traps and burning red flags in her mind.
>> Or, that she's willing to do some serious work to recover the relationship? <<
The main obstacles are that she doesn't realize how bad the problem is, doesn't have the skills to fix it, and has had experiences with the kind of anti-help that kills help-seeking behavior. Lawrence's mother thinks she's doing her job as long as the kid has food in the kitchen, a roof over his head, and isn't getting himself arrested. You can see different aspects of this in how she's responded to the events in various poems. She would've been offered help when her husband was hauled off for hitting Lawrence; it's standard, because a man who hits usually doesn't hit just one person. She wouldn't touch any of that, didn't trust it. But when Stan came over and just started doing things, that clicked for her. She gets cooking a meal. She's not very good at it herself, but it makes sense to her. The conversation was baffling, but she was sort of able to follow it, and she didn't bite Stan's head off. She was tentatively curious enough to poke at his school materials relating to family problems -- and solutions. So I think there's hope.