Chapter Thirteen

As I said in a previous commentary, originally Buttersby chose to leave the ranch on her own, primarily as a way to guilt trip the other alpacas into feeling sorry for her.  As a matter of fact, you can read that original scene here.  In any case, when I added the mystical elements and made it so that Buttersby was to be the “Sacrifice” of Rancho Diamante for the year, I found myself in a bit of a quandary.  Buttersby’s character still seemed very much in the “I’m only going to leave because I want to, not because you tell me to” mode, but as I had first done the revision, she had left because she was told to.  Does that make sense?

In any case, I revised the revision to make it be more of a compromise between the two approaches.  She’s still told that she has to leave, but she mentally decides she’s not going because she’s been told to, but rather because it’s what she wants to do.  As I describe it here, it seems kind of strange and convoluted to me, but I think it’s something a lot of us end up doing in our daily lives.  There are some things in life that we just don’t have that much control over.  To deal with this, I think we tend to try and come up with reasons that show that, actually, we do have control--we just happen to end up choosing to do the things we would have to do anyway.

Take my son, for example.  There are times that I tell him he needs to do something that he doesn’t want to do.  Maybe clean his room.  For the first while, he has a fit, but then (once he decides that’s what he wants to do anyway) he cleans it cheerfully.  Maybe it’s some sort of built in mental coping mechanism.  In any case, Buttersby follows this pattern in her decision process here.

Well, that about sums it up for this week.  I hope you read the deleted scene and enjoy it.  As always, if you have any comments or questions, don’t hesitate to email me and make yourself heard.  Happy Wednesday.

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