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ci5hq2010-02-02 11:39 pm
THE READING ROOM - All These Years by Angelfish
You have a photo album – one, which you showed me with a mix of chagrin and disbelief, years ago….And you asked me about my lot, and they stirred in me, as even the driest leaf stirs, as petals and newspaper cuttings do, the whispering dead. They ached and hurt like nerve-ends still firing in an amputated limb, and you saw me go pale, and you said, you don't have to talk about it. And because of that I could, a little. I told you about Kath; as my only sibling, a sliver of the truth. She paints, she's an artist. Lives alone up in Scotland. I think she was married once but... We exchange Christmas cards, sometimes with a letter in them. Sometimes not. You might get to meet her one day, mate. You'd like Kath.
CI5 agent Ray Doyle has received what should be an innocuous invitation from his artist sister, who he hasn’t seen in some years, to her first London exhibition. And with that invitation, Doyle’s carefully constructed world is slowly, but surely, crumbling away. He begins to act increasingly odd -- making tiny, potentially fatal mistakes on the job, apparently wandering all unknowing into a gay pub, and suffering blackouts.
Title: All These Years
Zine: None
Warnings: rape, child sexual abuse
Angelfish’s third fan fiction is a harrowing and sometimes heartbreaking story of romance and recovery. Her Doyle is a survivor of appalling sexual abuse and incest. He’s suffered serious psychological damage but he’s learned to compensate so well that no one -- not even his partner and best friend -- is aware. In fact, the only person still (sort of) in his life who does know how damaged he is, is his sister Kathie -- also a survior of the same sexual and incestual abuse. Unsurprisingly, Kathie is no model of mental health herself.
So you’re probably thinking…wow, cheerful choice, Josh. Thanks!
And the first time I read All These Years, I was frankly dismayed. I get squeamish about the lads being too drastically hurt, and the damage here was clearly catastrophic. Doyle functions, but his sanity is barely held together by strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff. Bodie, on the other hand, is a beautiful creation -- the CI5 version of knight in shining armor. He’s tough and tender, brave and funny and strong, fiercely protective of his partner of several years. I love the partnership she illustrates -- the friendship that has seen them through good times and bad, a friendship that has slowly turned to love of a different nature while neither was looking.
And of course this transitioning love is only making matters worse for Doyle.
In the dream, Bodie did not leave. When he stood up beside the bed, it was only to undress, which he did swiftly and in silence. Then the weight of his body came warmly to rest on Doyle's back. To conjure the biology of it, the physical detail of penetration, would have twisted the dream into nightmare and woken him – he had been too used, too degraded, to bear much reality – so his mind simply delivered the upshot: Bodie inside him, comfortably deep. Doyle moaned against the pillow and pushed up. "Fuck me," he whispered, and felt a tidal movement. "Fuck me, Bodie."
He came hard and did not wake up straight away. By the time he did, he was lying in cooling semen and sweat, and the dream flapped brilliant butterfly-wings around him, then because he was on his sanity's knife-edge and could not afford it, folded itself to a two-dimensional greyness, flipped to a single plane and disappeared.
Doyle and Bodie attend Kathie’s art exhibition and Bodie, who has reluctantly had to accept that the relationship he would ultimately like with Doyle is simply not possible -- that he must be content with their deep friendship and partnership -- is bowled over by this brilliant artist who has the added attraction of being very like a female version of her younger brother. Kathie is also a wonderful creation. She’s smart and strong and a survivor -- but she’s harder and more manipulative than Doyle. She’s not, by any stretch, a Mary Sue. As a reader I disliked and admired her at the same time.
Her green eyes fixed on Ray were as remote from human concern as a mountain-lion's. Jesus, Bodie thought: no wonder he was nervous. This one's big trouble, and as she came stalking through the last of the crowd, he took an unconscious step forward and left to half-shield him with his shoulder. About a yard from where they stood, she halted as if registering his signal but not his presence: her gaze was burningly focused on Doyle.
The characterizations in All These Years are very, very good. Though this Doyle is flirting with a complete breakdown, on the job and in most of the scenes where he interacts with others, he is recognizably Doyle -- tough and efficient and wryly self-aware. He recognizes he’s too damaged to give Bodie what he needs, he fights his jealousy of Bodie’s deepening relationship with Kathie, and he tries to be happy and supportive of the two people he loves best in the world, but as Bodie’s feelings for Kathie deepen and he inevitably withdraws some of his attention and companionship from his partner, Doyle slides closer and closer to the edge.
When Bodie and Kath announce their engagement matters reach crisis point.
It’s a relatively simple story from a plot standpoint, but the emotional and psychological complexity turn this into something very strong and rather unique. The writing is some of the most beautiful -- even sublime -- I’ve read in the fandom.
But Angelfish does have her weaknesses. There is a scene with Ann Holly that feels forced, and another scene with Murphy that seems to come out of nowhere. And typically she rushes endings. Here, in the climactic scene between Doyle and Bodie -- the scene we’ve waded through 230K to get to -- she gives it to us second-hand and abbreviated.
The trolley was halfway through the double doors into theatre, Doyle barely conscious from bloodloss and pre-med. The medical staff in attendance were not impressed with Bodie's timing but they were ghosts to him, voiceless, barely visible. Those who dealt with repairs to Cowley's small army on a regular basis were not deeply surprised at the big, pale man's short and unequivocal declaration, nor that it somehow brought Ray Doyle smiling back from the brink.
The first time I read it, I howled my outrage.
There are some problems with pronouns -- sometimes it’s unclear who’s speaking -- and not everyone will enjoy the omniscient POV (although I personally think it’s appropriate for fan fiction in that mirrors the camera -- and I think she handles it very well). The other problem is her inability to end the story. The final scenes of reconciliation -- the reader pay-off scenes -- are hurried, and then we have three distinct endings. Two of them are gorgeous. One of them feels tacked on -- and taught me to read fan fic endings first. A lesson I firmly adhere to.
(As a matter of fact, I chopped the final ending of All These Years off when I printed it out long ago and had pretty much forgotten about it until I started writing this summary and realized that ending might come as a jolt to some of you. So, er, sorry about that!)
Despite my initial discomfort, I’ve read this story many, many times. It’s now one of my all-time favorites -- probably within the top five. Funny how that sometimes happens. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the rec!
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And I'm not big on this sort of, to me, over the top angst. That she then adds a sister who is used as a substitute (can a person really fall in and out of love like that?) only made it worse. It made Bodie seem either shallow or callous.
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Obviously some people are perfectly happy with the characterisation, but while it's interesting enough in itself, I don't really see either of the lads from the eps here, and it seems unlikely to me that either would have survived such heavy emotional baggage as is portrayed to work successfully (ie, not fall asleep in trauma/fall apart in trauma/blackout etc on the job and get themselves killed) in CI5... I wanted to buy it all, but... just couldn't...
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This is one of the things very interesting to me -- both about fan fiction and maybe my own experience with it. On my first reading of the story, everything from the flowery language to the emotional damage Doyle had sustained really bothered me. As you say, how could he possibly function in CI5 like that? Could those cracks in his pysche possibly be healed enough for him to be one of CI5's best? (And to that, I think yes -- people have a great gift for hiding the truth from themselves and for suriving and even thriving without it).
But I did admire the writing very much, and I was so emotionally gripped (even while mentally arguing against her character reading of Doyle) that I had to read it in pieces. It felt so disturbing and intense. I was irritated and I was moved -- I wouldn't even think that combo was possible. *g*
On subsequent readings -- or maybe as I became more relaxed about AUs and different portrayals of the lads -- I was able to buy into the story dynamics. I could believe, at least for the space of this story, in this particular Doyle (for me, her Bodie is right on target). And I was able to go along with this idea that until Kathie's invitation, until he became aware that Bodie loved him, Doyle was okay. Once Kathie returned, forcing him to confront old memories -- and his own desire for Bodie put him in conflict with the harm that had been done to him -- he began to unravel (blackouts, etc).
I suppose part of this is the willingness to believe. Because I've read other stories where Doyle has been abused -- even from quite good writers -- and they never convinced me, nor moved me. I do not see that in Doyle of canon. At all. Yet for some reason, Angelfish convinced me to go along with it in this story.
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Certainly for the space of a story I was convinced. It's not something I see in canon -- and for all that I love angst, I tend to write the lads much lighter -- but I think those skills of persuasion is what effective writing is largely about.
And yet no matter how good the writer, every work will not please every reader. It's a difficult lesson for writers to absorb. *g*
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Yes, the first person intro sets us up for a completely different story, really. I'm glad it doesn't last longer than that paragraph.
Characterisation...I always find Doyle the hardest for writers to get "right." Meaning to draw him the way I see him. There's something more elusive about him...I'm not sure that there are contradictions in his canon character so much as a complexity that doesn't easily translate into prose?
Not that Bodie isn't complex, just that I'm happier with more versions of him, I think.
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Yes, she does this well -- also I like how Bodie is the catalyst for both brother and sister's healing process. The unconditional love and loyalty -- his almost super-human restraint -- is a large part of why both Doyle and Kathie begin the process of true recovery.
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I can absolutely go along with the idea that Doyle was somehow abused as a youngster - that temper of his comes from somewhere (although of course it doesn't necessarily follow!) - but... it's something about the way it manifests, or the way he handles it or soemthing... But we all have our own readings of the lads, so what's true to one person is bound to seem wrong to another, and I guess that's what's happening here...
I think my ultimate Doyle-psychologically-damaged story is probably Heat-Trace, which I think is brilliantly done - and even though it's actually an AU I think HR has captured Doyle and what his reactions would be all the way... The sense of heavy melancholy and foreboding that runs through it works better for me than Angelfish's verging-on-melodrama atmosphere too - absolutely as powerful, but somehow not so over the top to me...
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That's a great comparison. HT is another story I really had problems with -- in fact it took me multiple starts before I could finish it. Now I love it, but I think it's utterly insane. As in close to crack fic. Some of it is just amazing -- and so well done -- but the characterizations are just (for me)...daft.
But she does really capture mental and emotional breakdown -- and the scene where Doyle is preparing to kill himself is absolutely chilling.
She's another one who skips over some needed bits fo dialog and scenes, though, I think. It's been a while since I read it.
Sometimes I end up really liking a story I initially disliked -- depending on the reasons for the dislike -- which always surprises me.
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Certainly not, Doyle, I agree! *g* But aside from that unlikely first person bit, I think the rest of the poetic flight is lovely.
Summer, and the sycamores in full leaf in all the dusty squares. The heat of the air made a virtue, a pleasant change, of Doyle's shot-out windshield, and he tore grinning down the Southwark side street to the pickup point where his partner was waiting in the road, affectedly ignoring his approach. Doyle stopped the statutory three inches off his right kneecap. "Oh, it's you," Bodie said when the screech of brakes and tyres had died, examining the jagged hole. "Someone been shooting at you, old son?"
That intro always makes me smile -- we see similar moments of dangerous fooling in canon -- and the dusty scent of sycamores makes it pop alive.
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Certainly not, Doyle, I agree! *g* But aside from that unlikely first person bit, I think the rest of the poetic flight is lovely.
It certainly would have worked better if she hadn't written it in the First person.
That intro always makes me smile -- we see similar moments of dangerous fooling in canon -- and the dusty scent of sycamores makes it pop alive.
I guess I'm of the mind that a little of that sort of thing goes a long way. I've noticed that with each successive story she's gotten a little bit more wordy. Granted, they're lovely words, but still, for me, too many. I find myself muttering "Get to the point."
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I agree. That kind of thing generally works better from an omniscient narrator.