Pros Novel Read-Along - Painted Angels by Angelfish - Chapter Ten

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Hello! *g*

Painted Angels by Angelfish.
Cover art by firlefanzine

Chapter Ten
Doyle is back in Derby, with Gabe, and as the chapter opens he's staring down his old street asking Gabe "uncertainly" which house was his. A boy on a bike shouts casual homophobia at them, and Doyle stops him sharply and tells him to watch his lip "you little shit". Gabe has already been called "the usual" racist names.

Doyle remembers his house then, but when Gabe tells him his mum still lives there, decides that he doesn't want to see her again. He's visited Gabe's mum, and his father's grave (he came across the Desiderata on someone else's grave, and decided he liked it and would have it on his wall one day), and he and Gabe have gone hiking as they did when they were much younger friends. Doyle talked endlessly about Bodie The way you talk when you're falling in love, he realised.

Doyle goes back to his B&B, and to bed - only to be woken by a knocking on the door. It's Gabe - Cowley has called his mum's house, trying to get hold of Doyle. Bodie has been involved in "an incident" and he's missing, presumed dead. Doyle doesn't believe it, says he'd know "in here", as sure as Gabe knows God. Gabe helps him hire a car and gives him money so that he can get back to London fast, and just before Doyle leaves, he kisses him "mouth, open wide in silent passion" on his lips.

So... what d'you think? *g*

Comments

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

I do agree with you on many of the non-Doyle things e.g.. I doubt if he’d forget where he lived (unless he actually wanted to forget) and the author is still making him far too wimpy and weepy in this chapter which he really isn’t. But I do feel it’s possible that the trauma (one perhaps which bordered on a nervous breakdown?) he suffered where everything in his life had changed or ended and was associated with extreme violence, could have led to the position where he just couldn’t bear to go back there and that included seeing his mum again, especially when, until recently, he thought that his father was still alive. And his mum has let him down on two basic and fundamental levels: failure to protect him in the family home and failure to accept his homosexuality. And fanon Doyle (and Bodie) seems pretty insular in a family sense e.g. when he endures a near death experience it's Bodie and Cowley who are at his bedside, not family members, and it's Bodie who takes him home from hospital.

And maybe Gabe's care of Doyle is just him reverting to type, caring for people is how he earns his daily bread and butter and what he does well *and* he does actually care a lot for Doyle. Yes, maybe he shouldn't treat Doyle like a child and I'm not sure why the author's written it that way.... perhaps it's what we all do when we care for people? Kind of infantasize (? is that a word?) things a bit in order for the care to be less embarrassing, more easy to give and receive as you would do with a child? Who knows? The author's writing style is strange in that most of it is really good but then, sometimes, she lets herself down and writes the main very tough characters in an unrealistic, unrecognisable way.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Yes, I get that he's supposed to be so traumatised that he's perhaps doing things that we wouldn't expect. That's what trauma is, after all, it's something else controlling the way we behave, making us "not ourselves". And the lads do seem to reject families in general in the eps (except for Doyle's comment about Bodie's shoes - "I bet your mother's feet are cold."!) So I can go along with that set-up. I struggle with the idea that bolshy-Doyle's response is quite so passive and uncertain though, I really do. Do we ever see him uncertain like that in the eps? (I know, we don't see this happening to him in the eps, but still...)

I can see Gabe perhaps acting the way he does with Doyle, I think I struggle to see Doyle reacting the way he's shown to react...

I don't know that people necessarily "infantalise" those who need help as a general rule. Speaking carefully and sensitively is definitely a thing, but... And again, it's not so much what Gabe does and says, as the fact that the author's written Doyle as needing that... Back to the trauma-makes-us-different, perhaps...

As you say though, I think it's the mixed-up writing that's what's really making me dizzy though - one minute Doyle is tough and competent, the next minute he's facing something where it seems his competence should kick in, but the author seems to want us to believe that it doesn't for whatever reason. And I'm not sure she's convinced me enough that the trauma will beat Doyle's competence...

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

Do we ever see him uncertain like that in the eps? (I know, we don't see this happening to him in the eps, but still...)

The only time I can think of is when Barry Martin in Rogue is shot by a third party at the end of the episode. Doyle, who is about to shoot him, is very dazed/shocked/disbelieving in what's just happened when he says I never shot him. It came from the ship.

[jat-sapphire.livejournal.com]

I think part of what this chapter is meant to do is to let Doyle and the reader know that he really is past that trauma, for the most part. Forgetting where his house was (though he remembers how to get there from Gabe's so the memory problem seems temporary) is one way he's really let go of the place he was beaten; seeing his father's grave and deciding not to see his mother ... I guess I wanted him to see his mother because the way she now remembers Ray's "sin" and injury could have also reflected back on how Ray has processed the trauma. My experience suggests that she may still see it as his own fault, or their estrangement as his fault, and I guess I didn't need to read that. I read through a bunch of linked blog posts on estranged parents support groups and how they can reinforce blaming the child. If that's the way it would go, maybe I would have made Angelfish's choice, but it feels like the boarded up window and the refusal to visit are foreshadowing, but the trend of the plot is away from Derby.

The mystic feeling that Bodie must be alive is too romantic for me. A feeling like that in a predominantly realistically grim story makes me more anxious rather than less. Actually, that may be how I am supposed to feel.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Forgetting where his house was (though he remembers how to get there from Gabe's so the memory problem seems temporary) is one way he's really let go of the place he was beaten
Interesting thought, but I'm inclined to see it the other way myself - he's still blocking memories, and not really accepting things for what they were, and that's perhaps reflected in the way that he won't face his mum either. He's faced his father's death by going to visit his grave, and he's face Gabe and their relationship by meeting him and coming to Derby with him, and recreating something innocent that they did as friends, but he still won't face up to his mother's role in his life - perhaps symbolised by the blocked window in his old house. You know, if you want to do that kind of interpreting! *g*

I agree that the mystic feeling of Bodie still being alive seems at odds with the more gritty reality that we've been presented with as their relationship elsewhere though...

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'd forgotten about that. Really, he knows Bodie is alive? I never buy that, in any story. I could see not wanted to think of them as dead, or holding in your mind that they have to still be alive. But not into mystical feelings.

[jat-sapphire.livejournal.com]

It could be written, but I think it won't work in the last few paragraphs of Chapter 10.

The world of the story needs to make room for it. Maybe Bodie just KNEW where Doyle spent the night. Maybe they always know when one of them is outside the other one's door. Maybe Doyle used to know when Gabe was unhappy and when he was serene. I mean, we have psychic-bond-with-wolf stories. But this one hasn't made the room for this, or else I need a call-back to remember it so I'm thinking, "Aww!" instead of "Oh, come on!"

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

True. Just look at all K/S stories. It's just taken for granted. But there does need to be a backstory has to how and why the characters have the ability.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I think it's the whole soul-mate thing, isn't it - that when you're with the one you really love, you have an awareness of them that even extends to a distance, and their absence is like missing-limb syndrome. So if you don't feel like you're missing a limb, then they must be still alive...

I just don't think the author's set up that kind of relationship between them yet... they're getting there, but they're both still uncertain of each other - and in fact Doyle's just resigned from CI5, come to think of it!