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The Duality of Liv
🕑 Added 2023-10-01 20:51:47 +0000 UTCOlivia Fischer has been a lifelong businesswoman, but when Perry is a young teenager, she gains some limited success as a singer. Liv has a beautiful singing voice and has dreamed of fame since childhood, so she becomes very volatile during this period. Her path to Broadway is still in its delicate fledgling days, and she not about to let anything jeopardize it, least of all her impudent, irritating, perpetually needy child. This is the part of Perry’s life when he learned his mother was so much more terrifying than he could have ever imagined. A fun fact about Liv is that she never uses pet names (sweetheart, darling, dear), unless she means you great suffering.
I imagine Liv’s singing voice sounds a lot like Christine Ebersole (White Diamond from Steven Universe). Following this scene she goes on stage and announces she’d like to dedicate her song to her precious daughter, who’s sitting in the audience nervously smiling under the spotlight. She then gives a performance of After All so tender and beautiful that Perry is left awestruck, blinking back tears. There are two sides to Liv- artistry and contempt- and Perry discovers he’d much rather stay on one side than the other.
EDIT: added another drawing. Here Liv is performing Hard To Say Goodbye. No matter how his feelings toward his mother change, Perry always gets emotional when he hears his mother sing, even as an adult.
Comments
Marion
The way you describe Liv's vision of "love" and the grudge she holds again Perry for just being born, being a disappointment and being is own person sounds scarily similar to Beatrice Horseman resentment towards her son Bojack from Bojack Horseman. Thankfully, Perry is a much better person than Bojack.
thatbaldartist
God, the one claw left dug into Perry's arm as he talks to Claudette speaks so loudly. Such a small yet powerful detail. Your art never fails to amaze and inspire me :))
Lopoddity
I mean with the cost of living going up every day I just might end up in living in a microwave
Lammergayer
Perry's dad is dead iirc
Scyllarus
Oof. I definitely relate to Perry's experience here, I don't have the best relationship with my mother either. I even ended up "successful" as far as my parents are concerned, but there's always something new to criticize or compete over - so in some ways I get not being able to let go because you're hoping they'll come around, but also, from experience they never come around. Very simply, you'll never be able to fix yourself up enough to meet their standards...because the problem isn't really you, it's them. You're just a safe target for all their frustrations with how their life turned out. That being said, now I'm curious about Perry's dad! I saw you mentioned that Liv is holding her loveless marriage together - where's Dad in this picture? Is he more supportive of his son, or is he also in denial about...well, everything? ...Was Perry an unwanted pregnancy or? It occurs to me that Liv seems to resent him for taking away her future, which isn't typical of planned pregnancies - but tbh, he simply might not have been the child she wanted.
Dean
Okay this is totally unrelated to this but i just woke up and I had a dream that you lived in my microwave 😭
