Current mood:	curious
Entry tags:	notes

Liir's Brain: Part 3


Take a look at the article here.

That, as you might have gathered from reading a thread or two with him or reading a couple of these, is most of Liir's childhood. He is, in all senses of the word, an unsocialized puppy. And while people are different than dogs, there is something to be said for developmental psychology and the lengths to which things can be 'fixed' at this point. As a very wise man once said 'A man is the sum of his memories, you know... a Time Lord even more so.' And while Liir's not a Time Lord (...I'd love to see what they would have made of him at the Academy, personally, but that's another tangent), it's no less true. Especially given Liir's relationship with memory and the past.

Granted, that for the first few years of his life, he was given access to other children at the mauntery. There was some socialization. It is for this reason that he's at all functional or has any idea how things work between people, though even then it's a very tentative idea since he was so very young. Also, unfortunately, the second part of socialization' was very soft in that environment: structure. The children were, for all intents and purposes, let play together and fed. There wasn't much of anything else mentioned that the maunts were doing and considering that mauntery, that means they probably weren't.

Other than this early 'base', Liir has had four major sources of 'socialization', none of which was in any way normal or all that helpful to truly understanding human interaction. Please understand (if anyone's reading) that I'm not 'downing' on these characters. They did what they did because they are who they are and life just works out like that sometimes. It's an examination of Liir's socialization, not a judgment of their actions.

Elphaba
Having covered the Witch, I'm not going to cover her much here except to say that her own erratic and often times contrary behavior in respect to Liir was a major source of confusion for him. She was, no doubt, the most important thing in his life (is, arguably, the most important thing in his life) and despite some cause and effect responses (he got her tea made up correctly; she didn't yell at him), was largely a chaotic and tyrannical mistress. Liir even remarks on her habits later in canon:

When she'd been sloppy with emotion, vivid with rage or grief--which was most of the time--she hadn't kept to a schedule. Coffee at midnight, waking up the others by slamming the larder door looking for cream! Lunch at sunset, bread crumbs on the harpsiclavier keys. Pelting through the gates of the castle, in any weather, at any hour, no matter if Liir had just laid out a couple of coddled eggs for her [...] She was obedient--yes--to herself.

He goes on further to discuss the lack of discipline introduced into his own life.

She had rarely asked anything of Liir except that he keep himself safe. [...] He'd been left alone to roam the dusty corridors with Nor and her brothers. He'd picked up reading almost by accident. He'd been clothed by Sarima's sisters.

Whatever the Witch felt for him, she didn't give him anything like a template for socialization in her behavior.

Nanny
Nanny's section is short, but important.

It was Nanny's arrival that gave Liir someone who was actually looking out for him somewhat. She scolded Elphaba for neglecting to find Liir a bed, scolded her for not telling the boy whether he was her son or not, and did her best with failing health and a failing mind to try and give him some kind of childhood. Any affection he got was mostly from Nanny, when she remembered.

That said, despite kind intentions, some of her attempts actually increased the dysfunction. Her needs enhanced the already well-laid codependant service mindset, and her mental instability made any affection given questionable. I am assuming, as Nanny is the only one mentioned to read regularly other than Elphaba, that she is the one who taught him to read... but she taught him on her old romance books (the only volumes mentioned in the text) which while providing narrative structure and social interaction in the course of a story, provided a very false idea of social interaction: an overdramatized, sexually-charged landscape made entirely of superheroic and/or superdemonic figures. Romance is very unforgiving, and his home atmosphere enforced this dramatic pressure.

The Arjiki Children: Nor, Manek, and Irji
Manek was, no doubt, a bright child. That said, he was a little sociopath, either spoiled or neglected into an abusive personality that immediately settled on Liir as a victim upon the little pudgy kid's arrival. Manek, moreso than the adults, was aware of the precariousness of Liir's status in the household and did his best to make it worse because he had his suspicions as to the Witch and her boy and who's son Liir might be. He made it a point to harm and torture Liir in different manners, either tempting him with acceptance to pain or near death or merely deflating any attempt at socialization. He also made it very clear that to help Liir was to become a victim with him, which kept Nor and Irji in line. It was Manek who put Liir into the fishwell that almost killed him and it was Manek who claimed ignorance to Liir's whereabouts when everyone realized he'd been missing for three days. Manek's death is vastly important, even if Liir wasn't conscious for it, in that the absence of Manek introduced an end to the reign of terror for him; he becomes slightly more social, more likely to run around, and even leads some of the children's games.

Irji was both shy and a sheep, going along with Manek in his schemes out of fear. He was also made uncomfortable by Liir (possibly due to homosexual leanings, though this is unclear) and avoided him. Irji's affect was minimal, but I felt the need to include him.

Nor, however, had a great impact. She was a strange child, a wild child who enjoyed pushing the envelope and thinking outside of the box. She was and was allowed to be everything that Liir was not (she was not required to do chores, she was the most spoiled/babied of the children, she was often cuddled in her mother's arms, she could run free and dream and be Herself all over the place) and this really only exacerbated his differences to him. It wasn't done on purpose, of course, but it set up a very definite understanding of being Other, of not being a social equal or sharing any kind of footing at all.

The Soldiers At Red Windmill
This last one is mostly glossed over during Wicked but later becomes very important during the sequence of events in Son of a Witch. After several weeks on the streets of the Emerald City, Liir ends up making his way into the Home Guard and it's here that he feels comfortable, secure, and the regulae do everything short of making him giggle like a girl for joy.

While at Kiamo Ko, Liir would go down to Red Windmill most days and spend time with the soldiers. In the soldiers, he found a lot of things he'd been lacking:

• an adult male presence - Kiamo Ko was a very female-dominated location, between Elphaba and Sarima
  
• structure - in the army, everyone has a rank and a place and a station; you didn't have to wonder where anyone 'belonged'
  
• discipline - he was taught some things by the soldiers, songs or a bit of fisticuffs
  
• banter - something as simple as this; the only problem being that it wasn't something he was involved in and thus, nothing he ever really became comfortable being a part of
  
• acceptance - the soldiers did probably use him to know what was going on up at the keep (he has a tendency to be overly helpful to people who acknowledge his existance, funny that!) but they also laughed with him and showed him things and treated him as nicely as they could; when the soldiers took Sarima and the other children, they were nice enough to leave Liir tied up in a sack when they really probably SHOULD have taken him as well

The problem with the soldiers, however, is that they ended up acting as antagonists. As such, nothing they said or did could be trusted either; they did everything, it could be said, in order to fulfill their orders. How much this affected Liir is questionable, though there are clues in the text:

1. Liir (canonically) joins the Home Guard - whether just to keep body and soul together or because he thought it was his only chance since it was the only thing he was familiar with, Liir did in fact join the Home Guard. He joined up with the people who kidnapped and probably murdered his half-siblings and his father's family. Whether he thought the organization was still good despite one good act, there was flat out denial of those actions, or he really just didn't see another choice is up for debate.
   
2. Liir becomes a Soldier - aside from just joining the Home Guard, he takes the regulae and the ideals of the military service to heart. He works incredibly hard, he does everything in his power to be the best he can, he fights hard, he plays hard on the sports field, he doesn't go socializing, he has few friends, and when it's Lurlinemas, he stays out on guard all night by himself and refuses relief.
   
3. Liir does ask Cherrystone at two different points about his actions at Red Windmill - first when he sees him at Southstairs and then when he's taken on as his assistant in Qhoy're, Liir questions Cherrystone about his actions at Kiamo Ko. The first time he's blown off, the second time he's told 'it was just orders'. Neither of these answers really seem to satisfy him.
   
4. Liir eventually seems to see Cherrystone as a surrogate father - Cherrystone himself is the one who mentions 'being fatherly' but that relationship is still obviously there; Liir is not just an assistant to Cherrystone during his duration in the Home Guard, he is THE assistant (learning his master's schedule, setting things up, doing his work) and treats Cherrystone rather like he had the Witch. It's a very close, very intense relationship and the fact that Liir fulfilled the terrible orders he did (re: Bengda Bridge) is proof that he felt loyalty towards Cherrystone beyond just that to a superior officer.

What does it all boil down to?

Liir has had very little socialization in general and what little socialization he's had has been of a questionable and not entirely healthy nature. Most of what he's learned of interaction has either been very simple (and specific) cause-effect and anything else is not so much a comprehension of human dynamics as it is an application of observations from unreliable (limited) sources with a very narrow scope of understanding as to how the whole 'system' works.