Pros Novel Read-Along - Waiting to Fall by Rob - Chapters 6-10

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

This weekend's chapters were 6-10 - hope everyone's keeping up okay!

So we start with the lads off to see the doctors for their respective reasons. Bodie's neck is improving, and Doyle is gaining weight - though not quite as much as the scales claim. *g* Eventually they're both fit for Macklin's attentions, and via Bodie setting them up on a double date, they head off to prove themselves. They do it - Doyle is made an active member of the squad, and finally Bodie-and-Doyle, 3.7-4.5, are off.

Doyle's first day turns out to be a doozy - it's the Purging of CI5 in fact, although it's not because it's an AU version. Williams is still killed, and Lake takes a more active role in Bodie's life than we see in the ep - and of course Doyle's role is entirely different, as he's the "new boy", and mostly trailing around after Bodie and Lake. Again they survive though, and Wakeman - Lisa Wakeman - is stopped in her tracks.

Doyle is coming on in other ways too - he realises that he's finally ready to do more in a bed than sleep in it, and begins dating "to rival Bodie", to the point of having multiple girlfriends on the go. He's also given his own flat - although it turns out to be near Ann Holly, his ex-, and this plays on his mind all the way until he and Bodie bump into her in the supermarket one day. He says he'll give her a call - he wants to explain that he was innocent all along. Speaking of which, he's also been specifically excluded from the Drug Squad op that's now after Mike Behan and his colleagues - the ones who helped to have Doyle put away in the first place.

Meanwhile, Kate Ross is worried - less about Doyle, in fact, whos nightmares are settling down with Bodie to cuddle him to sleep, but about Bodie, who's never allowed himself to get close to someone before. We're told that Bodie has a huge guilt-complex about his past, and we see that coming out in his nerves about Doyle being allowed to read his file (as he's read Doyle's), and even more so when Doyle doesn't say anything about it. Bodie was convinced that his past as a drugs-runner and gun-runner would not be at all to Doyle's taste, and now he's waiting for the axe to fall.

So - that's where we are! What did you think about this chunk? Are you happy about going with it?

I must admit that I'm less keen now. I said in comments last week that I don't like the premise that the lads don't start off as equals, and I find it hard to believe that Bodie is senior to Doyle - and certainly so much senior to Doyle (based on various bits of canon, not just "a feeling"!) I didn't like him just following Bodie and Lake around on his first day, even if it was down to Doyle that everything was solved and saved - there was just something about the way it was described that diminished him to me...

I'm also still finding Bodie a bit too think-y and "wise" in his guise as senior-Bodie. I don't by any means think of him as the monkey that he likes to play for Cowley sometimes, and he's clearly got a thoughtful side, but his role in Lake's bereavement seemed a bit much to me...

"Puddle" was cute the first few times it was used, but it got repetitive fast...

What else...? Part of my issue with this section is that I'm not keen on fics which incorporate the episodes so directly. All kinds of things can come out of the episodes, and that's why we have fanfic that's so fun to read and write, but whether I believe that fanfic is based on whether it fits with what I've seen in the eps, or in the lads, so for me it's always dicey when writers try and reinterpret that for people. It ends up feeling like someone's trying kindly explain to me what it was I actually saw...

Anyway - how about you? What did you think? *g*

Comments

[macklingirl.livejournal.com]

I must admit, I stopped reading. When I first read Waiting to Fall the whole story as a story was new to me and I saw the episodes a few years before, so I didn't remember everything from the eps. But now it is like you said, it's not a new story. It's only a way of new telling what we all know from the eps. It might be a great way for a new fan to dive into fandom and what the series later. But for me sadly it is as if there is someone who tells me what I can see in 57 episodes.

And even that I thought it okay that Doyle wasn't equal to Bodie in the first chapters (I mean he was new to CI5 in the story) now, after the training with Bodie and the training with Macklin and surviving both it doesn't fit anymore. It's only a new way to show him as a weak man and that's something Doyle definitely isn't.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, another one bites the dust!

I'm pretty sure I remember there's new original parts of the story as well - I think really it's an original story interspersed with the episodes, though I hope there's not too many more of them.

I don't think the author means to show Doyle as a weak person - in fact she points out that it was down to Doyle that they were able to catch Wakeman. It was Doyle who got information from Billy, and Doyle who spotted Lisa Wakeman at the end and stopped her - and a third thing too, but I can't remember what it was right now! He disabled Bodie's telephone bomb too - though the emphasis seemed to be more about how he'd got it wrong every other time and only accidentally got it right this time because he thought Bodie was joking... *headdesk* It's the wording of it somehow - like telling us that Bodie's impressed with Doyle's abilities only emphasises that Bodie apparently already has those abilities and is in a position to judge - it emphasises the imbalance of power between them, to me... But like I said, I don't think that was necessarily the intent...

[macklingirl.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it is me and not the story with the problem here. I need something to distract me at the moment and a story I can remember is not really good to do so. I can't stop thinking about work while reading this story because I can remember the story-line too well. There is nothing really new for me. But I'm sure there will be better times soon.

It's like I said before, I think it is a really good story, well written for readers who don't know the series to good. I mean, Rob writes her whole story around the episodes and so there isn't the excitement to discover something new. (Oh hell, once again I don't know for sure how to say what I mean)

I think I'll give it a new try next week. :-)

[jinkyo.livejournal.com]

*raises hand* This is exactly how I experienced my first read of this, as a brand new fan. I don't even think I had all the episodes in hand when I started reading, let alone watched more than the few I found on YouTube.

I've fallen behind on the read-along as this has been a particularly busy time at work, but am hoping to pop in as I can. The appeal of this story for me is that I have seen the show multiple times now and I am putty for bed sharing and slow burn. Waiting to Fall has a ton of tropes that I love.

[ali15son.livejournal.com]

For the fourth time of trying i put this story away, it's one of those fics that i am never going to finish. This is not the Doyle that i like nor can i see my Bodie as i like him so it's a relegated story from me.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I wasn't expecting to see you again this time, to be honest - you were very adamant last time that it wasn't your cup of tea! So well done you for trying again!

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!
Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).

[jat-sapphire.livejournal.com]

I did feel that Doyle was more recognizable in this chunk. I was interested in the nightmares Bodie started having and how he misses cudding Doyle. I am amused by how many stories highlight how Ross does not feel they make good partners.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh interesting - I feel a bit as if he's gone the other way in some respects, though there were glimpses. Maybe it was because he wasn't smiling or being pro-active at all in the first chapter/s, and at least now he is. I think I can see where Bodie missing cuddles is going... *vbg*

The Ross thing is interesting too - I'm trying to think of other stories that say the same thing though, and can't right now... do you have examples? I remember stories where Ross isn't written favourably - but then most women aren't written with much sympathy in Pros fanfic! I never like the way Ann Holly is slated either (she's a villain in this story too), when I think Doyle treated her pretty badly to be honest...

[jat-sapphire.livejournal.com]

I wish I remembered titles. There's one in which Ross is so intent on breaking them up that she hires a prostitute to seduce Doyle and gets a guy from MI6 to try to cozy up to Bodie. Both her agents say it won't work. There are a couple of Krisser's stories too. There's someone else's story that IS Ross's report about 3.7 and 4.5's psychological states.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Blimey, that first story sounds a bit extreme! Why would Ross want to break them up, is what that makes me think! I can see her trying to convince Cowley, but that's to protect the lads and that first plot sounds more like it would endanger them...

I think I remember the report-format story about the lads, though for the life of me who it was by...?!

[tinturtle]

There's one in which Ross is so intent on breaking them up that she hires a prostitute to seduce Doyle and gets a guy from MI6 to try to cozy up to Bodie.

Er. Wow.

[jat-sapphire.livejournal.com]

Yeah. She says to them, "You can't own other people." One of them says, "But it sure is fun to try."

I mean, they ARE dysfunctional in this story, but undermining them is no way to help.

[tinturtle]

I didn't read chapter ten until I was working on catching up late last week, but I wanted to mention somewhere how much the following bothered me:

For a moment or two Bodie wondered whether he should tell Lake the whole story, but quickly realised that it was not his story to tell; but he had to counteract Day's malicious tongue, so he told Lake what Doyle's life inside had been like, outlining only briefly the sexual harassment, the anti-police antagonism and the final, attempted sexual attack that had been very nearly murder.

This is a serious betrayal of Ray's confidence, and it is so joltingly offhand--it is never alluded to again, at least as far as chapter 15. Possibly there is a generational disconnect involved in my reaction. I'm often troubled by what I see as unaddressed consent issues in older fanfic, and my strong feeling that this behavior is not okay might be related.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Hmmn - in this particular case I wouldn't say it was a betrayal of Doyle's confidence. As it says, Bodie had to counteract Day's malicious tongue, ... outlining only briefly. He's responding to accusations that are already being made, not talking about it for no particular reason, and he's doing it because what Day is saying about Doyle is worse, and something that Doyle would hate people believing about him. Lake's already guessed that there's something behind what Day's been saying, and Bodie doesn't want him thinking that Day's 100% correct, so he has to respond somehow. Basically he's described as saying "Yeah, a couple of them tried it on with him, and as an ex-cop he wasn't popular. They tried to rape him - nearly killed him." It doesn't say that Bodie said any more than that - and that's all he'd need to say to counter Day's accusations.

I wouldn't say it was offhand either — there's a whole scenario with Day and Doyle, and then the conversation with Bodie and Lake as prelude, leading up to Bodie having to say something rather than let Lake believe what Day's spreading around. I strongly suspect it will come up again at some later point - whether explicitly or just in Lake taking Doyle's side on something because he knows what really happened.

I really don't think the above falls into "unaddressed consent issues", because if I was Doyle I'd rather Bodie scotched the rumours. But I think there are alot of things from 40-50 years ago that all of us would wince at now. There are alot of things that changed a long time after Pros that I wince about! In the UK (and US) it wasn't illegal for a man to rape his wife until the 1990s. I still vividly remember my reaction to the 1988 Jodi Foster film, The Accused, and the way the attitudes to the gang-rape of a woman in a bar, cheered on by even more onlookers, was echoed by real-life judges saying that women wearing short skirts were to blame if they were raped, even in the 1990s. So it's true that men were involved in assuming alot of consent for all kinds of reasons because society wasn't there yet - and obviously I'm just giving dramatic examples, but still. And Prosfic was being written surrounded by these attitudes, and much older ones too. Bodie and Doyle, realistically, would have grown up with those attitudes — and we do see them in the eps, even if we don't like them.

And sadly the generations still aren't disconnected enough, if you ask me. Women still aren't being paid equally, they're still not free to walk home from work at night in the expectation of being safe from attack by men, and they're still harrassed by men who only see them as sexual objects — it's just that now there's a whole new online forum for men to use as well. The right wing, led by such as Donald Trump, which tends to be anti-women (and anti-consent, of course), has been risiing now, in these generations, after years of suppression by Bodie and Doyle's generation. Women in the 1980s were very much aware and fighting for issues of consent — that's how and why the laws finally changed, and where the basis of the next generations' beliefs come from. But it's like everything, it takes soooo long to work its way through people.

I can't believe that women still have to protest for their right not to be attacked by men, that non-white people still have to protest about being targets of racist abuse, and that people still have to think twice about being open about their sexuality. I thought that was all being sorted out when I was in my twenties - but it's somehow all still with us, forty years later... I want a bigger generational disconnect!! *g*

[tinturtle]

Women in the 1980s were very much aware and fighting for issues of consent — that's how and why the laws finally changed, and where the basis of the next generations' beliefs come from.

Yes, the efforts of women in the previous generation are the reason things have improved somewhat, which is the reason younger women notice things that might not have registered in the past. As an example, when my parents saw the movie Revenge of the Nerds in 1984, both my father and my mother liked it a lot. When I watched it about 20 years later, I couldn't see past the attitude to women in general and the consent problems with one scene in particular. My mother, having been bombarded with this stuff and worse, was less sensitive and presumably, more concerned with frying some of the bigger fish that her generation had successfully fried by the time I reached adulthood. (Mmm, tasty patriarchal fish.)