A/N. This is the time of year when I do not want to be in Ontario (oh, the cold!) but I thought I'd write about everyone's favorite ONT-Step-family.
I don't own the characters... but the tired old plot they use to make this series is owned by me. That's right. Next time anybody else wanting to use a Brady Bunch styled concept has to come through me first!
Mwhahahahahahahaha! (is carted away to mental institution).
I was inspired to write this after watching Derek's School of Dating and Things That go Bump in the Night
The Patterns of the Venturi's
There were certain patterns that became seemingly unbreakable in the Venturi-McDonald household.
Marti - in emulating her older brother Derek (Smerek) - fell into the pattern of finding and dating the most egotistical, apathetic jerk in her school time after time. Nora recognized the pattern as early as fifteen but she didn't listen to her. Derek was forced into talking to her about it too, but by that stage, the pattern was too strong to break.
By age thirteen Edwin fell in the pattern of going to Lizzie for relationship advice about everything. He'd come to her asking about what to say, what to dress like, where to go... finally before he had planned to 'pop the question' to his latest girlfriend at nineteen and while asking about what tie to wear on the big night, Lizzie cried out "Oh for Pete's sake!" in exasperation and grabbed him and kissed him right there on the spot. They hid it pretty well for several months before questions from George and Nora on why Lizzie was be pregnant and why neither of them had been dating for a long time finally brought things out to the open.
Derek, he'd fallen into a pattern of his own. Perhaps a pattern of denial... or of laziness... as soon as school finished he applied for university as close to home as possible, so he would still get to hang around and be king of the household. Casey left immediately to jet-set around the world. It wasn't until Nora brought up the contact she'd had with Casey, that she'd met a "wonderful young man" in Finland and she was going to stay there another six months that Derek almost choked on the lasagna he was eating, excused himself, took the car and came back two days later married to a girl named Daisy who was strikingly similar to Casey. Eventually the poetry readings and late night walks got too much and it was all over in time for Casey to come back refreshed from her travels to ask what she had missed when she was gone.
Nobody breathed a word of it.
Eventually the patterns finally were broken. Marti settled down with a nice guy more similar to Edwin than Derek. Edwin stopped asking Lizzie for relationship advice, seeing as they were to be married themselves and Derek moved out of home and down to Florida, only seeing Casey and "Mr. Finland" at family events.
And in the end none were more relieved of the breaking of these destructive patterns than George and Nora were.
Personally, the way Edwin relies on Lizzie to always back him up is just adorable in the show (and that hat in 'Things that Go Bump in the Night'...)
My first LWD fic. Leave a note! Say Hi!