Untitled ALIAS ficlet (1/1)
This has been driving me nuts for a little while, because I think that poor Irina's characterisation got no help during the second half of S5. I'm still trying to work out all the implications in my head, and a lot of them are moving me towards the old fairy tales I heard as a child. So. Anyway. It's like thinking, only in fic format.
*
( Read more... )
*
( Read more... )
Thank you!
I don't think either Jack or Irina would have made it if it had been Sydney under zombie attack.
I agree completely. Poor Nadia isn't 'second best', she's worse in some respects - she's an ideal, a concept that Irina is still searching for. I think that Irina does still love the baby that was taken from her, but it's a leap to go from loving the baby to loving this whole, complete adult who has as much in common with her father as with her mother. I do think that she feels she ought to love her, but I don't think that they knew each other for long enough to have a real connection of any kind.
On a very different note, it's odd to think that Alias really wouldn't work if either Sydney or Nadia were male. The way the three First Gen Spies relate to them would be very very different.
I agree. I think that all three would be more willing to sacrifice their children if they were male - there is something peculiarly "Daddy's Little Girl" about both Jack and Arvin's attitudes to their daughters - something very, I don't know, Sicilian? I'm thinking of the Godfather here - but a boy's loss could be accepted because boys are traditionally more at risk. Girls would have been dependent on their daddies to look after them, especially after the mother deserted them, and I do think that both Jack & Arvin feel that they have failed their daughters in that respect, and that failure influences and informs their actions later on. I don't think that they would have felt the same level of personal connection and responsibility with sons.
Likewise, I don't see the Derevko line as having an overly strong emphasis on sons. This could be my own fanon reading of it, but three strong, powerful sisters would be more likely to come from a female-strong family than a male-strong one - plus we have Mother Russia, another strong female archetype - and a son would be just a bit too, I don't know, prosaic for them? Fine as a baby, but difficult to bring around to their way of thinking as a man.
Again this is my own experience coming through, but with the men so often absent - especially if they were in the armed forces - it was the women who ruled the household, and the girls who were focused on. The boys were slightly indulged and pampered - a blessing to the house, to be sure, but you wouldn't trust them with any real work. Their job was to bring a daughter-in-law to the household who knew how to handle herself and those around her.
This could be just my own personal background *g* but my grandfather was always mild-mannered and calm, and it was my grandmother who enforced discipline when the gradnkids visited. My father was in the navy, so my mother organised our tower block for cleaning and taxes etc. And I was the one who had to look after the house, not because my brother was younger but because he was a boy and couldn't be trusted to do it properly. I know, I shouldn't over-project, but given that we have next to nothing about Irina's background... *ponders*
Reply
Leave a comment