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| Thain by Lindelea | 4 Review(s) |
|---|---|
| Bodkin | Reviewed Chapter: 4 on 7/13/2004 |
| Pippin is such a typical youngest - willing to let everyone else do everything for him while he flutters his eyelashes and pouts. I don't blame Paladin for wanting to make him take some responsibility. Interested to see how this develops! Author Reply: LOL, indeed he is! Amazing how that birth-order thing works. | |
| Lyta Padfoot | Reviewed Chapter: 4 on 7/11/2004 |
| Paladin's anger is reflected in his children. Pimpernel, Pervinca, and Pippin are demonstrating classic signs of being in a troubled home. Pimpernel tries to protect, Pervinca escapes via books, Pippin is reckless. Whatever Paladin is planning, it won't be a good thing. Somehow I think it involves the Great Smials as that is the location of the stables he and Ferdi (nearly) burn down. Interesting that I thought of Paladin in my teaching class this summer. My instructor told us that first year teachers tend to reach a crisis point (stage two: surviving the teaching experience) where they 'teach as they were taught'. Paladin under pressure is parenting as he was parented, regardless of how he himself feels about how his father treated him. Its not working, but all he knows how to respond is to escalate. Author Reply: Anger is worse than a virus, very infectious. Actually, Paladin is planning a good thing and if he'd been able to stick with it--as in circumstances not forcing his hand--things might have turned out differently. (It is so difficult to write when I keep bumping up against a future that's already written!) Hope that's not a spoiler, but then you know already, I think, that it's the consequences of his becoming Thain that ruin Paladin's chances for a happy family life. When his dream dies and he shoulders his responsibility, he cannot rise above the crushing weight of the burden thrust upon him. (Thankfully Pippin, in the identical circumstance later in his own life, is able to rise and not be crushed.) Classic observation you made there. How many times do we vow we won't do what our parents did, or say what they said, and later find their words coming out of our own mouths? Thanks for commenting. | |
| Beruthiel | Reviewed Chapter: 4 on 7/11/2004 |
| Can't help feeling sorry for Pippin here, wondering what's going to happen. He may have deserved that rebuke, but I get the feeling there's worse coming. Interesting to see that Pip isn't the only one Paladin is less than pleased with, though he seems to get most of his father's ire. So Pervinca likes to bury her nose in books, does she? I just realized I know nothing at all about her. She barely gets mentioned in your other stories (Pearl too, for that matter). I know she marries Meliloc Brandybuck in 1440 (55 years old by then), and that's about it. What was she up to before then? (Just something to keep in mind for future stories.) It looks like this story is going to be quite angsty (yay! I love angst!). The family could get rather dysfunctional. I'm anxious to see how the worsening Pip-Paladin problems are going to affect the others. (Never really thought about that myself, for some reason.) This is looking to be a superb story, but I wish you'd update faster. Author Reply: I do appreciate the encouragement. Well, there's better and worse coming, just as in real life. Pervinca as I've imagined her is a dreamer with a mercurial temper. I know someone very like her IRL... She marries late in life, 'tis true, but Meliloc is her "match" and perfectly suited to weather her moods and... but I'm out of time. Dana has asked me a couple of times to write about Pervinca. We'll see. Well, considering that Paladin and Pippin are not on speaking terms before Paladin's death, yes, they do get rather dysfunctional. Thanks! | |
| Connie | Reviewed Chapter: 4 on 7/11/2004 |
| Oh, that was a hard chapter to read, at least for me. I know children need responsibiilities, and that they need descipline when they don't do as they're told; but it was still really hard to sit through Paladin's rebuke of his children. I can see that this could devolve into a very sad and disfunctiional family. All of the children seem like basicly good kids, and maybe they need love maore than a parent's constant anger and displeasure with everything they do. I need to shut up now. I have a bad habit of being very opinionated about kids, and how they're raised. Connie. Author Reply: Well, I think they need consistency along with that love. Alternate spoiling and scolding don't work well. My goodness, it is difficult to write this story, if only to show a logical progression from Paladin-loving father to Paladin-unsympathetic Thain. It's a challenge, and challenges can keep me going when I don't feel like writing at all, but still... People do change over time. The Greeks were famous for their tragedies, usually based upon a character flaw, and the ending inevitable despite the character's best intentions. I have forced that same dynamic to be in effect for this story, with the conditions set forth in earlier stories, and am not completely happy about it. Go figure. Still, am going to try to pull the whole "fanon" together with this fill-in of the missing link. Yikes. Hope it doesn't finish me! | |