I felt that CHICK/DIK affinity reaction to walking away or being nice to Steve was one of the strangest ones.
He was such a cunt the whole time the mc worked there. How many people in real life would have a heart to heart with such a guy just cause they saw him sniveling.
I don't think walking away was really much of a DIK move. Walking up to him, kicking him in the balls, and then walking away, perhaps...
I think this decision is about compassion. Steve was certainly portrayed as being quite the dick to the MC and Josy, but when you see someone in crisis like that, I think it's a very human reaction to want to go and find out what's wrong, even when it's someone you don't like. To not do that I think can be seen as a DIK move because even if they don't want your help, or don't want to tell you what's wrong, or their reason for being like that is one that isn't particularly sympathetic, at least you can say you did the right thing by extending the olive branch.
He chooses to exercise the inner feelings he has, based on the approval of his locus of control on those beliefs and actions.
This makes Maya's father weak, and despicable. He is not owning his prejudice or malice, he is acting on it based on what some baseless frappery is being pushed on him by an ultra conservative, neo Neanderthal organization. This is his kid, and instead of loving and supporting his own flesh and blood, he hides behind the prejudice of an outdated set of rules which have no place in the modern world.....
That is probably the best thing I've seen you write.
As an interesting parallel to this current discussion:
A girl I dated ages ago was dating a guy (prior to me) who her parents seriously didn't approve of. They threatened to disown her if she kept going with him. She ignored them, they got very upset, she left home, and eventually she discovered he was already engaged to another girl and was just messing with her.
She was very hurt, ended up going back to her parents and they took her in, no questions asked. And at no point did they actually disown her.
So they were right, this guy was a piece of garbage, but she wouldn't listen (young girls "in love" can be pretty brainless) and they didn't want her to get hurt so they made big threats (and that's all they were, threats) to try and protect her.
In the end she survived it all, the lousy boyfriend, the controlling parents, and once it was all over she saw their point.
Now were her parents overreacting, I mean she survived it and maybe learned a valuable lesson. But she could have been spared all that heartache if she listened to her parents. But how can a parent watch their child totally fuck up and just sit by the sidelines?
Just to make sure there's no confusion here, I was not the garbage guy...
So, this story can be summed up like this:
Dad: "I don't want you dating him because he's bad news and he'll just break your heart."
Maya's story, on the hand, can be summed up like this:
Dad: "I don't want you dating her because no daughter of mine is going to be gay."
There's a huge difference between disapproving the
person your child is dating and disapproving the
gender of the person your child is dating. One is more despicable than the other.
those are unfortunately words that many sons and daughters have heard and for different reasons....
However I don't doubt that the father's motives are those, but the ultimatum is about Josy.
If Josy wasn't at BR would Maya have her tution or not?
the father has no possibility to act on Maya's sexuality, the only thing he can do is to remove or hinder his daughter's "wrong" love.
and in fact the father's fault is essentially that, not the disapproval, but the blackmail, the violence he exerts on his daughter.
Making mistakes is the norm for human beings, just as sinning is for Christians.
That is not the problem of Maya's father.
an obese father may urge his son to eat healthily, an alcoholic father may urge his son not to drive after drinking.
but I didn't say that....
the father can only control that Maya doesn't stay with Josy, he can't control that Maya doesn't fall in love with another girl, that's why the ultimatum is on Josy. If Maya was in love with any other girl in college the father would have to catch them in the act otherwise he couldn't do anything, instead he just has to catch her with Josy to draw the right consequences.
The tuition will have to be paid at some point, it's not like he can put it off forever...
But at the centre of all this
is Maya's sexuality. The ultimatum is not simply a punishment for specifically dating Josy, it's a punishment for dating a girl. It's an attempt at psychological and emotional manipulation to make Maya feel that there are consequences for being with a girl, so that even if she did dump Josy, she might feel as though she has to repress any potential future feelings for another girl because of what the consequences would be; not just the loss of tuition, but also likely being shunned by her family, or at least by her parents and perhaps some extended relatives too.
