LOCI Fic: Till I Am Myself Again, ch. 8/?

[jeanniemctavish]

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TILL I AM MYSELF AGAIN, Chapter 8/?

Please see Prologue for disclaimers.

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Wow, Alex thinks, later. She’s so much like Bobby. How was I not expecting that? He takes after his mother, and I never really knew it until now.

Frances Goren is rail-thin, abrupt and nervous, just as Bobby described her. But she also has her son’s dark eyes

Comments

[jeanniemctavish]

Thank you! I'm so glad to hear that my version of Frances worked for you...especially that she came across as multi-dimensional. People do tend to go over the top in their portrayals of her - and now, having tried to write her myself, I can understand why, because *damn* it's hard to portray mental illness without resorting to cliche. I'm not sure if I've succeeded...the story isn't finished yet, so we'll see.

But... writing Bobby's relationship with his mom as a saga of unremitting angst and awfulness strikes me as...unrealistic, or at least a bit of a cop-out. I think one reason people like to do so is that it makes it easy to set up a hurt/comfort thing where Alex is the grounding force, the one person who can save Bobby and make his life happy again, etc. etc. But (leaving aside the fact that I don't find that a very healthy set-up for a relationship, one person cast as the other's one and only saviour) to me it's a more interesting story if Frances *isn't* totally off the rails, if some parts of her relationship with Bobby have always been good and still are, if there's a reason for him still to care about her so much beyond his sense of duty.

As a reader, I always love it when characters and situations and relationships resist pigeonholing...so I aim for that when I'm writing. It's HARD though. Yeesh. ;)

I'm glad you liked the Leonard Cohen!

Thanks again for the feedback. :)