I saw a few mentions throughout the main page and YMMV about Nathan's hovercraft full of eels and his family's culpability in that, and wanted to move that stuff here to talk about rather than just sticking it in an edit reason.
I deleted these because, as far as I can tell, there is a perfectly good reason why Nathan's wife and daughters don't tell him about his translation gaffes, which is that they have learned that he won't listen to them. In their specific case, he also might punish them (with The Verse or otherwise) for arrogance, or disobedience, or insubordination, or whatever other reason he feels like.
Nathan refused to listen to people when they tried to help or criticize him, reacting with disdain and even outright hostility. People stopped trying to help him because there was no point, and his daughters are no exception. When he then tries to blame other people for not correcting him, it doesn't speak to any fault of theirs, it just reinforces Nathan's inability to accept fault in himself and his methods or beliefs.
Anyway, that's why I removed these entries. I think the girls have a good reason to steer clear of doing anything that Nathan might perceive as being above their place, and I think Nathan brought the poor communication on himself by refusing to listen when he had the chance.
One could also extract Poor Communication Kills from the fact that none of the viewpoint characters ever think to inform Nathan on a lot of the things he's doing wrong (such as the entries under My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels), as he explicitly points out several times.
Strawman Has a Point: Nathan's frequent "I fail to understand why nobody informed me that [X]" complaints are meant to characterize him as a stubborn fool who refuses to aknowledge the need to adapt, but he's right. His wife and daughters spend a lot of narration remarking that his ways are uneffective at best and counterproductive at worst due to various factors he's seemingly unaware of (such as the My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels entries on the main page), but it never occurs to any of them to try and, you know, actually inform him of these factors.
From My Hovercraft (main page) ...(although to be fair to him, it never occurs to his wife or daughters to actually inform him of things like this for some reason)
I saw a few mentions throughout the main page and YMMV about Nathan's hovercraft full of eels and his family's culpability in that, and wanted to move that stuff here to talk about rather than just sticking it in an edit reason.
I deleted these because, as far as I can tell, there is a perfectly good reason why Nathan's wife and daughters don't tell him about his translation gaffes, which is that they have learned that he won't listen to them. In their specific case, he also might punish them (with The Verse or otherwise) for arrogance, or disobedience, or insubordination, or whatever other reason he feels like.
Nathan refused to listen to people when they tried to help or criticize him, reacting with disdain and even outright hostility. People stopped trying to help him because there was no point, and his daughters are no exception. When he then tries to blame other people for not correcting him, it doesn't speak to any fault of theirs, it just reinforces Nathan's inability to accept fault in himself and his methods or beliefs.
Anyway, that's why I removed these entries. I think the girls have a good reason to steer clear of doing anything that Nathan might perceive as being above their place, and I think Nathan brought the poor communication on himself by refusing to listen when he had the chance.
For reference...
Alternate Aesop Interpretation
- Strawman Has a Point: Nathan's frequent "I fail to understand why nobody informed me that [X]" complaints are meant to characterize him as a stubborn fool who refuses to aknowledge the need to adapt, but he's right. His wife and daughters spend a lot of narration remarking that his ways are uneffective at best and counterproductive at worst due to various factors he's seemingly unaware of (such as the My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels entries on the main page), but it never occurs to any of them to try and, you know, actually inform him of these factors.
From My Hovercraft (main page) ...(although to be fair to him, it never occurs to his wife or daughters to actually inform him of things like this for some reason)