Six Sentence Sunday

[delphi]

Six Sentence Sunday: Post six sentences from whatever you're working on, if you're game!

Kathleen considered herself an excellent mother, which to her meant never saying no to any of her boys. The fact that she couldn't always deliver on the yeses didn't matter. It was the thought that counted.

Of course, boys needed discipline, and that was why she had worked so hard to make sure there was always a good male role model in the house. She'd made a special effort to date from the pool of her sons' teachers, coaches and scoutmasters in the hopes that some of those fatherly instincts would take root. To her eternal disappointment, the boys never seemed to appreciate her efforts.

(Team Fortress 2 - an RP ficlet doing double-duty as backstory for a Scout/Sniper fic)

Comments

[hokuton_punch]

Oh, no, Kathleen - I don't think your strategy is a good idea...

[delphi]

It is a terrible strategy.

[raven_cromwell]

OH fuck I was full-body cringing in sympathy for these poor, poor kids! I mean A.: the uncertainty created when your mother says "Yes" to everything and then over half the time it just vanishes into vapor is bad enough.

But then! dating teachers/coaches etc. Just UGH what an unending nightmare for these kids. Even assuming these dudes are kind/generally decent, it's bad enough! to never be able to escape people and have the authority lines of teacher/mom's love interst be blurred in horrible ways. But honestly? she seems...empty-headedly flighty, which means I suspect most of these dudes are rugged and drill-sergeant-like; something about "fatherly influence" mixed with the worst most stereotypical advice from a parenting book shockingly gives me low confidence in her ability to pick well ;) Which then gets into entire other awful kettles of fish for these boys and I just wanna cocoon them.
(Craftwise, though; damn! you do such a good job of making her chain of decisions seem entirely rational while conveying to us it's a trainwreck!)

[delphi]

I am both sorry for and proud of the full-body cringe, because that was exactly what I was hoping to hit. :D This is supposed to be backstory for why one of her sons ends up taking off from home and having a life-changing 1960s psychedelic road trip with a contract killer.

[raven_cromwell]

Would 100% get in the car with the first person that offered me escape out of that house, and I'm an insanely cautious human--think one of those squirrels carefully poking the smallest possible amount of head out of a hole to do a survey of terrain before darting from one spot to another. But that woman would completely drive me round the bend. (And, if he ends up with contract killer post-his escape, makes absolute sense, too. Just about anyone would seem well-adjusted after that home life, and Lord knows he'd've encountered some wolves in sheep's clothing before--he wouldn't be scared off simply by a profession.

[delphi]

Thank you for that adorable squirrel image. :)

Fortunately for our hero, the contract killer in question is - within the cartoon mayhem standards of the Team Fortress 2 universe - probably the most reasonable and responsible stranger whose van he could have climbed into.

[perverse_idyll]

Whew. Every single thing about these 'strategies' is making the hair rise on the back of my neck. Talk about delusional parenting in a nutshell. The narrative tone makes Kathleen sound genuinely naive and well-meaning - and a monster of narcissism. This would be a killer character summary fit for a piece of original fiction, with the economy and elegance you employ to nail a certain kind of human blindness: laziness that calls itself soft-heartedness, stupidity masquerading as indulgence, and selfishness that insists every indefensible choice is only trying to do what's best for you, baby.

Weirdly, I still feel sorry for her. But I feel a hundred times sorrier for her boys. (I also wonder how many boys she'll produce by the time she's no longer fertile, and pray there are no girls, whose childhoods would be a nightmare.)

[delphi]

Ahhh, I'm so glad the description worked. That's exactly how I hoped it would land. I'm usually a little bit kinder to Scout's mother, as she canonically raised eight sons throughout WWII and into the early '60s, having lost or been left by at least two men. It's probably not her fault that her youngest has obnoxious Runt of the Litter Syndrome. But in this fic, I need her and her choice of partners to be just bad enough for Scout to take off on his own ahead of schedule.

[perverse_idyll]

Eight sons? My immediate reaction is: NO. During WWII? I can only imagine what a monster of a mother I would have turned out to be. Actually, trying to imagine myself as any sort of mother induces an adamant, standing-stones-on-a-hilltop-sized NO.

Runt of the Litter Syndrome does tend to cross over into the spectrum of survival strategies. It's interesting how often runts, given time, physically outgrow their runtiness but remain emotionally stuck in dead-last position. It means they can spend their lives struggling to prove themselves. Or constantly creating a ruckus to remind everyone they're there.

[delphi]

I know, right? Eight sons, with the older seven canonically described as a pack of mad dogs that Scout had to become a good runner to keep up with. That detail (and the fine line the cartoons and comics manage to walk with his self-aggrandizement) is what keeps Scout's loudmouth inclinations charming for me. He goes from being the youngest and smallest of eight brothers to the youngest and smallest of nine teammates, so the fact that he's always loudly trying to talk himself up...well, it just makes me want to ship him with highly competent older men who help him calm the heck down by giving him some attention and validation.