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

[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.