User blog:EnglishBoy3/Theory on Lynn Loud Junior

Theory on Lynn Loud Junior
I’m probably walking into dangerous territory by doing this but after some thought and consideration I decided, you know what, let's do this. Now AnimationFan15 made a post earlier about a fan asking Jared Morgan about Lynn’s lack of development, and the response was that Lynn had some untapped potential. But what exactly did he mean by that?

It’s no secret that Lynn is one of the more misunderstood characters on the tv show, and this theory is something I came up with by looking back on past episodes. Now in the episode Insta-Gran, one line that stood out to me was the exchange between Lynn and Myrtle. Lynn was unhappy about the luck being washed out of her clothes and Myrtle said ‘Who needs luck, when you have skills like yours’ before pinching her cheek. From this statement, Myrtle believes Lynn is a good athlete but the question is does Lynn believe that? My theory is that Lynn suffers from a lack of confidence.

Lynn is known for doing her good luck rituals before games, but why is that? Well she feels that without doing this, she can’t win because she doesn’t have enough faith in her abilities as an athlete. Now the infamous eposode No Such Luck revealed more about Lynn than I originally thought, we saw her invite Lincoln to her game but she was desperate for him to come. We learned that Lynn stresses the importance of her family being there, and I think their presence eases a bit of her anxiety when it comes to big games. Afraid she’d flop, she has her family at her side for support but what if this game was bigger than the ones before it. Lincoln had not attended any of her previous games, and so why was it important he attended this one? Well this must have been more nerve wracking for Lynn than the other softball games because Lincoln’s presence wasn’t required before. I think her unbeaten streak played a huge role because her good form would have made her team favourites going into her match against the opposition, and this particular game could have been much bigger and more important, it might have been hyped up by people and she was afraid she wouldn’t be good enough. Lynn needed that support and belief in herself and so she became desperate for Lincoln to attend, because he would be able to provide her that self belief that she could succeed, and with desperation she threatens him with a bat to get him to come to her game. In this episode, we also saw her doing her rituals which I have explained earlier but one thing to point out is what happened after the game. Her team lost, and she blamed Lincoln for defeat. Now superstition played a big role but I feel like she was also releasing her frustrations and anxiety on Lincoln. But why? Well when she lost that game, she had a massive dip in confidence, and again she needed to restore that confidence. She noticed the fact that Lincoln coming to the game coincidentally was the one she ended up losing, and used superstition to try and release that negative energy. It’s possible she was trying to convince herself that Lincoln was the problem, to try and rid herself of her dip in confidence and get her act together.

Lynn went on to win her next two games since telling the boy not to come, and that’s a result of her confidence being restored now that she had asserted the blame onto something else to try and cover up her anxiety. The finals had her team losing for the majority of the match, and Lincoln was watching in a squirrel suit. Now here was similar to when she lost that match, things were going wrong and Lynn’s lost confidence. Lynn no longer has anything to use to get rid of her lack of confidence in herself, Lincoln isn’t present and now the thoughts are rolling to her that she’s not good enough. People know that Lynn hates to lose, but why? Well because losing to her means that she’s not good enough, that she’ll never be good enough to succeed.

Now enough of No Such Luck, the next episode to cover is Net Gains. At the beginning of the episode, Lynn again is doing her good luck rituals before entering Vanzilla. Lynn Loud Sr revealed that she was getting ready for basketball tryouts. Was it possible that she doubted in her ability to make tryouts and get on a basketball team? I think that it was possible, which was why she needed to do that ritual again, she needed to build in that confidence and self belief, she needed to believe she could do it and these rituals were the only thing giving her confidence. Here it is different though because she doesn’t have the backing of the entire family, and her rituals were longer than in NSL. She needs as much luck as she could get. Then Lynn makes tryouts and ends up on a terrible team. One thing I’ve noticed about Lynn is that she’s pretty confident when it comes to teaching others about sports as proven both here and in The Longest Yard, though she fails to succeed in both cases. In Net Gains, Lynn learned the value of teamwork but she was more confident in basketball than in baseball. You could assume she did her good luck rituals off screen. Anyway, the next episode of discussion is Lynner Takes All. One thing I noticed was when Lynn was positioned to possibly lose to Lana, she went outside and said ‘You want to be the mayor of losertown’. This could just be her talking to herself about her own lack of confidence in herself at times. Lynn went on to finally lose a board game and again her anxiety crept in, and she became extra competitive with her siblings to ‘get her edge back’ is what she said. Obviously she needed to get her confidence back again, and the way to get your confidence back in games, is to keep playing. All athletes when they have a dip in confidence, they have to keep playing games to try and build that confidence back. It’s a similar concept for board games though Lynn’s lack of self confidence isn’t just in board games but in whether her passion for sports would lead her to success.

In Insta-gran, that’s right, we’re coming back to this. Lynn has items she considers lucky. Why? Because it makes her more confident going into games. One thing I noticed is whenever Lynn is playing sports with her family, she’s confident. Why? It's because she's with the people around her that she loves, she feels free to play with them without having any real worries or concerns about not being good enough. Lynn said in Lynner Takes All that her family were number one, meaning that they were the most important to her and their presence helped to ease her anxieties.

So that about covers Lynn’s superstition. What about her roughhousing? Well I just think this is Lynn being playful and taking it a little too far at times. Sitting Bull may probably teach her to be a little more gentle when roughhousing with younger kids, I doubt it would remove her roughhousing completely since it is kind of a part of her character.

So Lynn needs to learn to believe in her abilities as an athlete, and not to take roughhousing too far?

That covers my review on Lynn but have I answered every question? Of course not. There are still some questions about Lynn I’m not too sure of yet but my theory of Lynn’s superstition is probably the biggest question many had about her.

Now first I want to say that this is NOT a defense of Lynn as a character. I didn’t write it to convince people she was good or bad, I just wanted to give my thoughts on why Lynn possibly is the way she is, and who I think she really is. Another thing I want to say is that this is just a theory and in time, episodes of her will come. This post could either be a stroke of genius or absolute stupidity.

Leave your thoughts if you have any. Do you agree with the theory? Do you have another theory?