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ci5hqHello again :0)
Before we begin, I have to cough to a personal interest; as some of you already know, I understand depression. I think I first encountered it when I was seven and I've lost much of the last ten years to it.
However, for most of my life it's just been a lurking shadow, not something I've had to deal with on a daily basis.
But it gives me, I think, if not a unique, then at least a particular appreciation of this story - and I am treating the series as one story.
The causes of Bodie's breakdown aren't made manifestly clear; it's unusual for such a profound breakdown to occur so rapidly. It's more usually a slow descent into hell, but I don't think that matters, my own condition hasn't always obeyed the text books. The writer asks us to believe that a combination of drugs and mistreatment has irretrievably tipped the balance of Bodie's mind, to suspend our disbelief thus far - and so, thus far, I do.
Some readers need labels, and if you are one of them, you may have problems with this story because a diagnosis of Bodie's illness is never properly given. He exhibits some symptoms of depression, but suicidal ideation doesn't appear to be one of them, his condition is described as 'near-catatonic', but whether this proceeds directly from his mental state or is a complication of withdrawal is hard to discern. My personal view is that it doesn't matter, labels are useful for the medical professions, but when it comes to mental health, for a variety of reasons, they are often less so for the patient.
The pull for me in this story is Doyle, who believes 'Bodie always did think he was invincible. Sometimes, he almost got you to believe it as well', but is sufficiently attuned to his partner to ask 'Need to hang onto somebody, mate?' when Bodie is too lost to communicate his needs for himself.
Doyle clings determinedly to the belief that Bodie will 'probably be well in a week', until forced to concede that Bodie needs more than he can offer. The feeling of failure which attends this revelation is a common experience amongst the loved ones of people with mental illness, sometimes, as if bewildered by the perversity of the patient, the accompanying frustration is shared with the health professionals. In his turn, Bodie tries in his own fractured way to look after Doyle.
In a final heartbreak, Doyle finds himself having to admit his hitherto unspoken reservations about his partner's capabilities 'you’re not... ready, mate', but as difficult as Doyle finds this, in the end it is this very honesty which underpins the trust that has always bound them and which enabled Bodie to begin his climb out of the abyss in the first place.
For me, it's the pace of that recovery which is the strength of this story, I've not read a more realistic portrait. We live with Bodie's frustrations and humiliations as he tries to function with his broken brain. The mind does not heal quickly, and there are reversals along the way, but this story doesn't shy away from that, culminating in Doyle's unvoiced and triumphant 'You’re back, sunshine'.
As with my previous recommendation, this story isn't perfect, there are off notes, typos and minor continuity errors, but for all of the reasons above, I still think that it's a solid piece of writing. It's also that rare thing in Pros, an examination of love without lust, of the incalculable boon of having a best mate.
Series Title: Lost and Found: Stories: 'Bodie Lost' and 'Bodie Found'
Author: hutchynstarsk (http://archiveofourown.org/users/hutchynstarsk/pseuds/hutchynstarsk)
Pairing: Friendship
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/series/22689
Other Notes: At the time of writing the series is marked as incomplete, but hasn't been updated since 16th July 2012
And if you liked it, why not let the author know?
Before we begin, I have to cough to a personal interest; as some of you already know, I understand depression. I think I first encountered it when I was seven and I've lost much of the last ten years to it.
However, for most of my life it's just been a lurking shadow, not something I've had to deal with on a daily basis.
But it gives me, I think, if not a unique, then at least a particular appreciation of this story - and I am treating the series as one story.
The causes of Bodie's breakdown aren't made manifestly clear; it's unusual for such a profound breakdown to occur so rapidly. It's more usually a slow descent into hell, but I don't think that matters, my own condition hasn't always obeyed the text books. The writer asks us to believe that a combination of drugs and mistreatment has irretrievably tipped the balance of Bodie's mind, to suspend our disbelief thus far - and so, thus far, I do.
Some readers need labels, and if you are one of them, you may have problems with this story because a diagnosis of Bodie's illness is never properly given. He exhibits some symptoms of depression, but suicidal ideation doesn't appear to be one of them, his condition is described as 'near-catatonic', but whether this proceeds directly from his mental state or is a complication of withdrawal is hard to discern. My personal view is that it doesn't matter, labels are useful for the medical professions, but when it comes to mental health, for a variety of reasons, they are often less so for the patient.
The pull for me in this story is Doyle, who believes 'Bodie always did think he was invincible. Sometimes, he almost got you to believe it as well', but is sufficiently attuned to his partner to ask 'Need to hang onto somebody, mate?' when Bodie is too lost to communicate his needs for himself.
Doyle clings determinedly to the belief that Bodie will 'probably be well in a week', until forced to concede that Bodie needs more than he can offer. The feeling of failure which attends this revelation is a common experience amongst the loved ones of people with mental illness, sometimes, as if bewildered by the perversity of the patient, the accompanying frustration is shared with the health professionals. In his turn, Bodie tries in his own fractured way to look after Doyle.
In a final heartbreak, Doyle finds himself having to admit his hitherto unspoken reservations about his partner's capabilities 'you’re not... ready, mate', but as difficult as Doyle finds this, in the end it is this very honesty which underpins the trust that has always bound them and which enabled Bodie to begin his climb out of the abyss in the first place.
For me, it's the pace of that recovery which is the strength of this story, I've not read a more realistic portrait. We live with Bodie's frustrations and humiliations as he tries to function with his broken brain. The mind does not heal quickly, and there are reversals along the way, but this story doesn't shy away from that, culminating in Doyle's unvoiced and triumphant 'You’re back, sunshine'.
As with my previous recommendation, this story isn't perfect, there are off notes, typos and minor continuity errors, but for all of the reasons above, I still think that it's a solid piece of writing. It's also that rare thing in Pros, an examination of love without lust, of the incalculable boon of having a best mate.
Series Title: Lost and Found: Stories: 'Bodie Lost' and 'Bodie Found'
Author: hutchynstarsk (http://archiveofourown.org/users/hutchynstarsk/pseuds/hutchynstarsk)
Pairing: Friendship
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/series/22689
Other Notes: At the time of writing the series is marked as incomplete, but hasn't been updated since 16th July 2012
And if you liked it, why not let the author know?
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no subject
Date: 2015-09-25 10:56 am (UTC)As you obliquely note above, the author chose a very challenging subject for this story, not in the agent-kidnapped-damaged-on-return plot kind of way, but insofar as making what I suspect was a conscious choice to deal with various difficulties more realistically, rather than hand-waving past them. So we have Bodie wetting the bed, and not really coming back to being his "original" self at the end, and the awkwardness of coping with that for Doyle, and so on. I was a bit surprised to see you explicitly equate the issues in the story with depression, because I didn't make that connection at all when reading it, except as a later "side-effect" of what had happened to Bodie that was perhaps implied (as would be expected as part of this experience, certainly). I started off suspending belief about what had happened to Bodie, and that he might have been affected in this particular way, and so I carried on from there - that something had been chemically-induced by the drugs and that's what Bodie - and the others - were coping with. And I did have to suspend disbelief, not at all because I want things named and labelled, but because the logic of some things didn't quite follow, but mostly for reasons of story-length for the subject matter.
There are some lovely - and heartbreaking! - moments in the story. Doyle being punched with the idea that Bodie's not invincible (not, for me, cos he thinks Bodie's amazing, but because he thinks they're both invincible, deep down). Doyle coming across pictures he'd drawn of Bodie, and remembering that his hopes of getting his old Bodie back quickly were dashed. There was a particular line I liked too, beautifully written, but for the life of me I can't find it now (I'm aware of rushing this a bit cos I need to start work!) There's definitely alot of emotional potential in this story - but again I think it was slightly short-changed, due simply to its length.
There's an awful lot packed into a relatively short story here - I think it could easily have been a novel-length fic, and I'd've liked to see such major issues dealt with in more space and time, to be honest. Packing them into fewer words means that there's alot more "tell" than "show", with the balance heavily on the former, which is a writing style I struggle with. Helen Raven's Heat-Trace, for instance, and Kate MacLean's Redemption both deal with one of the lads sliding into depression by showing not telling, and I can't imagine either of them as shorter stories in order to create the realities that they do.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-25 10:56 am (UTC)So for me, I think the reason I didn't like this "properly" comes down to its length for the subject matter. I think there's so much to say about the experience being written about, that it really needs the extra length for justice to be done. Conversely there were moments added that were described in more detail - Bodie forgetting to wash his hands after having a piss - that I don't want to know about as a reader cos they're such ordinary squicks that if there's going to be info left out, I'd rather it was that!
It's also that rare thing in Pros, an examination of love without lust, of the incalculable boon of having a best mate.
Well, there's a reasonable amount of Pros gen fic out there, just less commonly read and discussed in the slash-based forums like CI5hq! We'll have to disagree on whether this is a 'pro' or 'con' of this particular story. *g*
Bodie forgetting to wash his hands
Date: 2015-09-25 08:29 pm (UTC)And yes I agree, I also thought it would benefit from being a longer story, but that's a big ask. Not everyone is capable of writing to that sort of length and I don't believe that that should deter them from tackling more challenging subject matter.
My own experience is that, percentage wise, Pros fic is heavily slash, more so than I've found in other fandoms. But hey, no one says I'm right!
RE: Bodie forgetting to wash his hands
Date: 2015-09-25 08:44 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, Pros fandom is pretty famously a slash-based fandom. There are people writing gen out there (clearly!), but unless you hang out in those specific forums, you're going to be surrounded by slash, and those of us who just see slash in the eps, and want to see slash in our fic. I must admit it's one reason I've not read much fic by this author, for instance - there are a very few gen authors I've come across who write well enough that it's like watching an ep - and for me that means well enough that I see the lads together, "slashed". *g*
I don't think for a minute that Doyle would even hesitate about Bodie washing his hands or not - it's seriously minor stuff beside the fact that he's been kidnapped, drugged to oblivion, institutionalised to try and get him to snap out of it, and Doyle's just kidnapped him from that institution... That's why it was one of the details that seemed odd!
I think this subject matter could certainly have been tackled in a shorter fic, but as you say it takes a great deal of skill, and I think to do it justice a shorter fic just can't cover as much ground as this one tries to. Examples that I like, for instance, are Castalia's Can't Answer that Question Sir (http://www.thecircuitarchive.com/tca/archive/1/cantanswer.html), and Bistokids Daring the Sea (http://www.thecircuitarchive.com/tca/archive/14/daringthe.html).
RE: Bodie forgetting to wash his hands
Date: 2015-09-25 09:03 pm (UTC)I write slash, but I also write stuff which isn't, and not just in this fandom, although whether it's any good is anyone's guess!
I'm not sure I could write 'gen that can be read as slash', because I'm writing the lads as straight, but I expect there are other writers who can
RE: Bodie forgetting to wash his hands
Date: 2015-09-25 09:14 pm (UTC)Lol - so were the scriptwriters, and so are the gen authors I'm talking about. *g* What I mean is that their characterisation is so spot on to the episodes, that what I see in the episodes is also there in their stories. And what I see in the episodes is slash (without trying, btw - I'm not one of these people who can "put on slash goggles" to watch a tv show. It's why I don't write for any other fandoms in fact - I need to see the slash beyond anything else in a show, and I don't, except with Pros. Who just lurve each other. *g*
RE: Bodie forgetting to wash his hands
Date: 2015-09-25 09:31 pm (UTC)I certainly agree, it's not much of a step to the left to see slash within Pros. Maybe it's because my own friendships tend to be flirty that I don't see it in the shows, but whatever the reason I don't.
But when I read slash, I believe the relationship the author sees, enough to have been seduced into writing my own.
I suppose it goes back to what we've discussed before, every story is as much about what the audience brings as the storyteller, whatever the medium.
RE: Bodie forgetting to wash his hands
Date: 2015-09-26 05:04 am (UTC)gen authors on the net?
Date: 2015-09-26 07:33 am (UTC)There are gen authors for Pros on the net, some, like me, write both, but you could try the FanFiction.net Pros archive, there are quite a few gen stories there. There are also some on A03 - you can filter for them - and you might be interested in this yahoo group:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/PROSfanfic/info
:0)
RE: gen authors on the net?
Date: 2015-09-26 08:10 am (UTC)RE: Bodie forgetting to wash his hands
Date: 2015-09-26 08:18 am (UTC)The first is Gil Hale (http://www.gilhalefic.com/the-professionals/) - that's her actually, still-running website, thank goodness!
And I think most of these links should work to Dinah's Fic (http://web.archive.org/web/20011201121533/http://www.prosfanfic.de/dinah/) via the Wayback Machine.
ETA - oh good, and I see Fiorenza's given you the Yahoo group link.
RE: Bodie forgetting to wash his hands
Date: 2015-09-26 01:16 pm (UTC)Re: Bodie forgetting to wash his hands
Date: 2015-09-26 05:27 pm (UTC)Examples that I like
Date: 2015-09-26 09:00 am (UTC)I've read them both now, and of the two, I prefer the second, but for me they both miss the point, these aren't portraits of living a recovery.
You already know I have some mixed views on Castalia's 'Can't Answer that Question Sir', and there are some dubious aspects to it. I'm assuming the hospital is CI5, not only because of Kate Ross' involvement, but also because I can't think of any other establishment which would allow Doyle to spend the whole night in the observation room; and while the NHS (and therefore presumably CI5?) has policies on physical restraint, it is much more likely that they would be chemical in nature, and that Bodie would be kept in what amounts to a medicated stupor.
For me, this one is rather gothic and falls into the 'romanticising' category.
Bistokids 'Daring the Sea' is easier to fathom because 'CI-5 doctors' are actually mentioned in the text and the story also implies that whatever happened to Bodie, he's not so much being treated as debriefed. In which case his welfare is probably not the priority. It's a nice little vignette of a talk down, and who isn't happy to see Tommy in a fic? CI5 operates to its own rules in all things, so Doyle might well be able to keep his promise that he 'Won't let anything happen to you', although, in this case, that might well mean fighting Bodie too.
But in Doyle's implacable rescue, I think it's very much like 'Bodie Lost'.
I believe P. R. Zed's Lost Souls (http://hatstand.slashcity.net/zed/lost.html), which also features Tommy and an unstable Bodie, comes from the same Chicken and Egg challenge.
RE: Examples that I like
Date: 2015-09-26 09:16 am (UTC)Ah, but that wasn't what I gave them as examples of - I gave them as examples of the way such difficult subjects as capture/torture/mental attack, which is what Bodie Lost/Bodie Found is actually premised on, can be very effectively and intensely dealt with as shorter fics. My particular point in the comments above is that it's difficult to do justice to such a huge subject if you want to go from one end of it to the other (cause - experience - recovery) in a single, relatively short fic. Although it has its moments, in my opinion BLBF doesn't do justice to the subject as both a story and an experience. So the two fics I linked were examples of stories that tackled the subject matter, and tackled it very well from a story pov because they weren't too ambitious about it.
But then I think we've established that you and I have very different tastes in stories/writing... *g* I'm not fussed about identifying the hospital in Castalia's story, for instance, that's not really relevant to the story I'm reading there. Just as well we all have these different tastes though, as has been said many times before - gives us more to chat about!
identifying the hospital
Date: 2015-09-26 11:49 am (UTC)It's the way the institution is run which bugs me, I am a bit picky about realism. Not nit-picky, so if I can alibi it by seeing it as CI5, I can let it go. But if something couldn't happen that way in the 'real' world, it throws me in a story.
I get equally irritated when the law gets bent in stories, people acquitted of charges inappropriately, or wandering in and out of gaol without so much as a 'by your leave', no differentiation made between being on remand and being sentenced.
So I get really irritated with Doyle and his 'partner' in When the Heat Cools Off. (I'm also suspicious of his hair cut, but I filed that under nit-picky, since they did make an effort with that!)
Can't believe I'm the first comment here
Date: 2015-09-25 08:19 pm (UTC)I'm not sure if it's the stories or my mental health which is the problem. I know some people have already told me that they're unlikely to drop by because the issues are too close to home.
As I say, Bodie's illness isn't named. He doesn't have problems with suicidal thoughts, which is a classic symptom of depression, and for some may rule it out, but I did recognise a lot of my own problems in his. Particularly the slowness of mind, my friends tell me I repeated myself quite a lot because I couldn't track a conversation. Now I just blank in the middle of them because of memory problems and I still do completely forget having spoken to someone on occasion, but no where near as often as I used to. So my reasons for thinking of depression are just because we all bring our own personal baggage to a story and that's some of mine.
RE: Can't believe I'm the first comment here
Date: 2015-09-25 09:03 pm (UTC)As I say, Bodie's illness isn't named.
Well, it's not given a specific name, but I thought it was fairly clear from Drugs of all sorts, pumped into his agent, inducing paranoia, terror, extremely realistic hallucinations and other horrors that it wasn't supposed to be anything clearly diagnosable. But as you say, everyone brings their own interpretation to stories - and as you also say, that means not everyone goes for more difficult stories or themes. I generally need to be in the right mood myself. *g* Alot of people explicitly talk about Pros and lj and fandom as their "happy place", and prefer fic with happy endings and relatively straightforward dilemmas - there's not many of us who like the hard stuff... *g* Which is a shame, cos there's often alot of interesting themes to talk about in that sort of fic. Still, maybe it was just a timing thing, and everyone will jump in tomorrow! *g*
saying something untactful?
Date: 2015-09-25 10:02 pm (UTC)I've had it stop conversations dead in their tracks in real life, and MIND have put out some hilarious 'how to talk to colleagues after a breakdown' vids to address that very issue. And like I said, it's too close to home for some.
I happily read gen, and things like Silence=Death by M. Fae Glasgow (http://www.thecircuitarchive.com/tca/archive/10/silencedeath.pdf) which I would definitely NOT recommend as happy fic.
I love Pros (since 1977) but I like good absorbing writing, as I've said elsewhere, I don't have a particularly sweet tooth, a steady diet of saccharine would put me off :0)
no subject
Date: 2015-09-25 11:16 am (UTC)I also felt that the second story should have been longer, more filled out. Things move along rather quickly, in jumps and starts, rather than in a smooth flow.
second story should have been longer
Date: 2015-09-25 07:35 pm (UTC)Yes I can understand why you might feel that, in some ways it reads more like a report than a story.
[Doyle] realizes that Bodie is not healed, yet, at the same time. expect him to react as if he was.
I can only speak for myself, I'm a person not a generality, and you may have had different experiences, but in my own experience, Doyle's behaviour isn't uncommon. Especially if you are otherwise, that is physically, apparently fit.
My own condition has left me with short term memory problems. I'd spent the better part of two years talking to my ex-boss about this, she's seen at least two occupational health reports, has made arrangements for me to have adjustments to cope with my disability at work, and yet, after a change in managers, she has reported to my new manager that I lied to her when I told her I couldn't remember something that had happened 72 hours earlier.
I've discussed this with people with similar conditions, as I say, you may well have run across different experiences, I don't claim mine are universal, but amongst my peers this attitude isn't uncommon. We liken it to someone having a broken leg and everyone saying 'yes, I understand your leg is broken, but why can't you run?'.
To me Doyle comes across more as bewildered than callous, he has a certain relationship with Bodie, which he's grasped has changed, but doesn't seem to know how to react to this. Doyle has no experience with or training for disability, in the end, to my mind it's Bodie who withdraws because he doesn't know how to 'be' with Doyle anymore.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-25 03:55 pm (UTC)First off, I am happy to say that I found the writing itself to be rather better than I had expected, given the things by this author that I have seen in the past. I had a much easier time reading and following, despite some typos and technical things; I'd say the author has been working on her skills and I applaude her for that!
That said, the second story in particular left me completely cold, at the end, despite the very emotionally warming portrayal (mostly) of the partnership. I just cannot get my disbelief to suspend long enough to let me go with the idea that Cowley, in light of all the author has done to impress on the reader just how badly damaged Bodie is, would let Bodie return as an active field agent. The man has had his brain scrambled - with drugs nobody seems to know much about. He is physically damaged, and not in the way where one can measure recovery with enough surety to say with any confidence "Yes, you are healed, and your healed parts WILL take the strain you are going to put them under."
Cowley would absolutely keep him in CI5 and have him do other things, his experience alone would be invaluable. But to risk the life of other agents by sending him back out into the field, with no way to gauge, to measure, to know that he won't choke? Is irresponsible in the extreme. Trust on a personal level is one thing. Risking others' lives on the strength of that trust is a whole 'nother ballgame.
seen by some as odd reasons, I suspect.
Date: 2015-09-25 08:02 pm (UTC)I think they're quite valid reasons :0). I actually think Cowley would put Bodie back in the field, partly because mental illness is not a disbarment to returning to active duty in many dangerous jobs, so it happens in real life, and partly because he does exactly that after Wild Justice.
However I take your point about the unknown nature of the drugs, I work on the premise that Cowley has already knocked Bodie back once for being insufficiently fit, so I assume Cowley has faith in the rigor of the testing he has in place.
We none of us know where our breaking point is, until we break. Maybe Bodie is stronger for understanding his mental as well as his physical limitations.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-25 09:11 pm (UTC)Yes, I tend to agree with you here - I think there's only so much damage that someone can be seen to have undergone before sending them out to face high stress situations becomes impossible.
(I could have sworn I saw a reply to this post somewhere that compared Bodie with Tommy McKay, and this fic with Wild Justice, but the comment seems to be gone - and what I was going to say was that I don't think those apply in the same way as Bodie's physical and mental state in this story. McKay was almost hyper-functioning, whereas Bodie's thought processes are shown to have slown down; and in WJ again Bodie was physically capable - and when they thought he was slightly off-parr, they questioned whether he could continue. At the end, Bodie had proven not only that he was physically and mentally quick again, but that when the crunch came he wouldn't break - he released King Billy, he chose the rational path and he chose it fast.
What comes to mind for me is Cowley's speech to the new recruits - that if they make a genuine mistake he'll back them - unless that mistake puts the lives of ordinary civilians at risk, and that's another thing that Cowley couldn't guarantee by putting Bodie back in the field as an active Grade A agent...
no subject
Date: 2015-09-25 09:09 pm (UTC)I agree and think this applies to all the stories I’ve read by this particular writer (e.g. I think her First Impression Series is excellent):
Sometimes, sitting out of doors, raising his head from his book with a small breeze of wind passing as if in reminder, he looked automatically over at Bodie to check on him. Sometimes Bodie was simply staring abstractly. More often he watched the birds, engaged if very quiet. Other times, he leaned back, eyes closed, face turned to the sky, and Doyle grew very still. There was something terribly un-Bodie-like about such preternatural stillness. They seemed almost like sacred, silent moments.
It’s mature, insightful and I feel she's a serious observer of people and knows her characters. (That’s quite rare isn’t it? I can't think of many writers I could say that about.)
And beautiful, tender moments which you can read as pre-slash, slash or neither. That's another thing I like about this writer's work: the ambivalence is intriguing, similarly to 'show not tell' it makes the writing more interesting, more challenging and enables the reader to make of it what they will:
At such moments Doyle wished he could just stretch out his hand and reach Bodie somehow, wherever he was and whatever was bothering him. To bring him back, that wounded part of him, so he could be whole again in his almost too-confident way, his brilliance and his supreme, nearly arrogant skill.
pace of that recovery which is the strength of this story
I don’t know if it’s the pace of the recovery or the interaction between the two men which is the strength of the story or maybe that's what you're saying?. It’s been mentioned elsewhere that the story and treatment of Bodie’s ‘depression’ might have benefitted from being longer but I’m really not sure. At first I thought ‘yes’ but then I thought if it’s too long then a story about depression could just end up being depressing(!) and maybe that isn’t what the writer intended, though of course the reader can interpret it in any way, I suppose! But I think, given that the story wasn’t that long, the writer handled a difficult subject with care and understanding and Bodie's reaction to it was exactly how I imagine he would react.
Many thanks for your review.
pace of that recovery
Date: 2015-09-25 09:38 pm (UTC)I think my view of the story is heavily coloured by being in Bodie's place, I'm lucky, I was never as ill as he is at the beginning, but I do understand a lot of what is told and shown.
The story tends to get strong reactions from people with experience of mental problems, I think, because of that.
I like the way we actually live with Bodie trying to muddle through, at lot of stories skip that bit, or romanticise it. But we see bO
RE: pace of that recovery
Date: 2015-09-25 09:44 pm (UTC)RE: pace of that recovery
Date: 2015-09-25 09:47 pm (UTC)I think my view of the story is heavily coloured by being in Bodie's place, I'm lucky, I was never as ill as he is at the beginning, but I do understand a lot of what is told and shown.
The story tends to get strong reactions from people with experience of mental problems, I think, because of that.
I like the way we actually live with Bodie trying to muddle through, a lot of stories skip that bit, or romanticise it. But we see Bodie becoming frustrated, knowing he's not what he was, the bit that always strikes home for me is:
Bodie noticed it, a little at first, more so as time passed: that little extra pause, to see if he understood something. The kindly instead of snarking tone. The slower speech, careful explanations, and awkwardness. As he grew better and better, it began to annoy him more and more.
I never noticed my best friend doing it, but as I started to get better she would admit things like I'd repeated myself constantly, but everyone had just put up with it. And there were other things I began to notice which gave away how concerned everyone had been. It can be quite sobering to discover all of that.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-28 06:54 pm (UTC)I found a lot to love. Little bits like this sentence, "Bodie seemed particularly interested in birds…” which is so bittersweet! or painful descriptions of how it used to be, what they miss. I found it hard to read in places because it hurt so much, (Bodie’s admission about what he wrote in the book comes to mind) how the author picks up details of painful change, particularly once it seems that Bodie is indeed permanently altered. Being present as each realizes exactly what they had and what they lost. The author made excellent plays on their need to protect each other - showing how each fights to make sure their partner is safe. Love hurts.
I thought that the author was very adept at showing Bodie’s state of mind. As in the part mentioned above about people being “nice,” and this passage:
I didn’t see Bodie’s problems being about depression - I thought that he was “broken" by the drugs his captors used, chemically harmed. After he is well enough to think about and recognize the changes in his life, then I see depression and anger. I also have depression. I am glad that we can be open about it! As they say, ‘You’re only as sick as your secrets.”
no subject
Date: 2015-09-28 06:55 pm (UTC)I think it encapsulates...the heart of the story
Date: 2015-09-28 07:40 pm (UTC)I agree with you, this scene really does contain what the story is really about. That the two of them can get past any problem, once they know what it is.
They do in canon, Bodie's investigation of Ann Holly for example. The line I like from that scene is:
Ray stopped breathing for a moment, because until that simple, heartfelt declaration, he’d thought it was only him.
Because they have been travelling in parallel lines; closer than they realised. I also liked a line from almost the very end of the story:
[Doyle] wanted, for once, to return to the serious, stilted conversations they’d had partway through Bodie’s recovery: the honesty and forthrightness they’d shared, however briefly, because they hadn’t been able to communicate through jokes. He wanted to say, I’m not going anywhere, sunshine. Ever.
I think it's very poignant that, although Bodie lost so much of himself, when he recovers the armour needed to be what he was actually robs him of something important. It isn't that Doyle cares any less, or that they can't 'read' each other, but they can no longer just talk about what they're feeling. It's all back to being between the lines.
I didn’t see Bodie’s problems being about depression
Date: 2015-09-28 07:16 pm (UTC)No, I'm not sure they are, the author never pins a label on them. And he's not suicidal, which is very common with depression.
I have depression, or at least I'm recovering from it, and a lot of what Bodie goes through resonates with me. Particularly having to adjust to your limitations and how other people react to your new self. And the frustrations of being less than you were.
I liked the two passages you highlight as well, to be honest, I hadn't picked up on 'birds' and 'birds', but of course you're right. And I think it's particularly interesting to consider that the Doyle we all know and love is largely a product of stress.
I also appreciate the childlike way the author describes events round Bodie, when Bodie himself is childlike. It's written very much on the level at which Bodie is operating at those moments.