Pros: Gentle on My Mind
May. 13th, 2011 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arduinnaI was poking around Fanlore the other day, and hit the entry for Gentle on My Mind, a very long* Professionals h/c slash story about a brain-damaged Ray Doyle and his journey to recovery, by Kathy Keegan (aka Jane of Australia). (There's also a sequel by Joana Dey, but I'm not talking about that here, having never read it.)
It's a relatively long entry, but one-sided: skimming through it, it turns out it consists almost entirely of flyer blurbs for the various chapters, with a link offsite to one review, which happens to be glowingly positive, written by someone who loves the zines. Which is fair enough; lots of people absolutely adore these stories, and rec them whole-heartedly.
But. Many other people do not adore them, and it's just weird to me to see the only writeup being Jane saying that some fans are interrogating this awesome text from the wrong perspective, and a single positive review. In my experience of the fandom, pretty much everyone had an opinion about it (whether they'd read the stories or not, just based on the fairly detailed discussions), and the conversations about roamed all over the place, in all directions.
This is how history vanishes, without anyone even realizing it; have newer fans even heard of the zines, or about the controversy surrounding them? (You can still find some of the later convos on Pros-Lit, fwiw.)
To try to stave off that vanishing a bit, I figured I'd try to dig up some of my reactions from years ago and whap them into some sort of publicly postable form that could be linked to, to add another point of view to the Fanlore entry.
So here's my cobbled-together review, pulled from a few different private and list emails back in 1998 and again in 2003 and rewritten a bit to smooth things out.
In sum: I didn't like this story.
Gentle on My Mind summary
For folks who don't know the story: This starts out with Ray Doyle having been in a horrifically bad car accident, resulting in massive physical trauma, including brain damage. He's immobile and requires weeks, possibly months, of physical therapy to regain his physical strength. He also loses much of his memory, and his mental faculties are severely curtailed; his mental age when the story opens is around 7-9.
Early on, Bodie assumes responsibility as Ray's caretaker and legal guardian, and soon after he also renews their sexual relationship.
As the story progresses, Ray gains more mental ability, until he's mentally in his mid-teens or so, and forges a new life for himself with a job and his relationship with Bodie and friendships with other people.
The author wanted to tell a story about how brain damage may change people, but it doesn't make them useless, or turn off their emotional or physical needs. They're still capable of being vital members of society and of having relationships. And that is the story she tells -- it's very clear that she wants that message to get across, and it's one that resonates for a lot of people.
The story she shows underlying that is very different, focusing heavily on Ray's new "youth" and adult Bodie's strong attraction to it, to a degree that many people find very uncomfortable. /putting it mildly.
Gentle on My Mind review
There were parts of this that I liked; Jane can tell stories. I did read all five parts, so obviously it's not in the "I can't read this" category for me. But I also found that it exaggerated the stuff I dislike most about Jane's stories (a Doyle who *must* be younger than Bodie, a Doyle who's fragile and practically helpless, a Doyle who's physically small, etc.). And the focus on the sex is rampant; they hop into bed all the time. Ye gods, it's a wonder nothing fell off. (Sex with Bodie is one of the very few things Ray remembers, by some strange coincidence. Yeah.)
A story with a literally de-aged Doyle and an adult Bodie having boatloads of sex all over the place would squick me, but I'd just stop reading. This one is made worse, in a way, by the fact that it's presented on the surface as "Ray's not a child, he's a man", because while we're told that Ray's a man in a man's body who is coping with sudden disabilities, with Bodie saying that he knows he can't treat Ray like a kid, we're also watching Bodie belie that in action all the time.
Not only does Bodie pretty consistently treat Ray like a kid, the language and imagery around Ray is intensely juvenile. Bodie refers to him as "poppet", "my precious lad", "my luscious lad", and so forth; even when Ray's former co-workers at CI5 ask after him, Bodie says things like "my lad's doing fine" -- he would never have said that before Ray's injury, and it's infantalizing in its possessiveness. When Bodie looks at Ray, there may be a mention of silver hair or furry chest to "prove" to the reader that Ray's an adult, but it's followed by a mention of big eyes filled with a child's trust, or how appealing his boyish cock is, or his boyish erection, or how much boyish energy he has, or how boyishly slim he is, and how he is "ridiculously beautiful with the innocence of the very young".
I can't even deal with the idea of a hairy, approaching-middle-age man having a "boyish cock" or a "boyish erection", particularly one who's spent his life in macho environments and thus would have been in for endless ribbing if that were truly the case. (Although at least, thank goodness, she didn't go so far as to say he literally had a tiny little wee-wee because his genitals never matured from early boyhood, like I've seen poor Illya get saddled with.)
The "boyish energy" struck me as toddler levels of energy in at least one scene. Ray has spent months in hospital recovering from severe physical trauma, and more months at home doing little more than sleeping, and yet he manages to run Bodie into the ground, leaving him exhausted while Ray frolics merrily away. Bodie may not have been in training for much of Ray's recovery (iirc, he was doing mostly desk work), but he was sure as hell not letting his muscles atrophy, and should have been in vastly better condition than Ray. The whole thing read like a dad coming home from the office to be faced with a rambunctious three-year-old. But three-year-olds and thirty-year-olds have very different bodies, and very different energy levels (even ignoring the whole recovering-from-trauma thing). And this scene didn't take place when Ray was mentally 7 or so; more like mentally 12.
Because even as Ray ages mentally, Bodie continues to think of him as a child -- "the 12-year-old", "the 14-year old", etc. -- and continues to be attracted to those very young aspects of him.
And to top it all off, Bodie takes control of Ray's life -- when Ray gets out of the hospital he's in his mother's and sister's care, but Bodie fairly quickly winds up being his legal guardian and caretaker early on (for no reason I can see - his mum seemed perfectly capable of continuing to care for him, as did his sister). So there's a squicky parent/child vibe going, too.
It's whiplashy, as the two stories Jane is telling are in constant conflict with each other. And it's creepy, too, because while this isn't exactly pedophilia - Ray has the body of a man in his mid-30s -- it has pedophilic signifiers all over it, and the implication is that since Ray technically is not a prepubescent child, it's totally okay to describe him as one and linger on how attractive that is. Ergh, I'm squicking myself out writing this. Jane wants to have her cake and eat it too, basically; she gets to indulge in a pedophilic fantasy while insisting it's all about adults, and anyone who sees anything pedophilic in it is wrong to do so.
Here, have an excerpt (thanks to a person on the Pros-Lit mailing list who posted this during a list discussion several years ago; I don't have copies of my own to pull from). This is from page 8 of the first "chapter" (novel), when Ray is at his "youngest", having only been out of the hospital a short time. His mental age here is anywhere from 7 to 9; his physical body is 34.
... Yeah.
The first chapter (where that quote is from) was the worst for me, opening as it does when Ray can barely speak and barely think, and where the assumed age after a fair amount of recovery is all of 9. It got a little better in the later chapters as he "aged", but not by much. It didn't help that he regressed again at one point, from a mental 15-16 back to 14. Jane's constant dwelling on his assumed age and the attributes that went with it were really offputting for me.
So in the end, while I appreciate the story she was trying to tell, about brain damage not meaning dead or nonfunctional, I was far too squicked by the underlying attitude to enjoy the story at all.
* "Very long" here means three novel-length zines and two novellas, each considered to be one chapter of the overall story. back to top
It's a relatively long entry, but one-sided: skimming through it, it turns out it consists almost entirely of flyer blurbs for the various chapters, with a link offsite to one review, which happens to be glowingly positive, written by someone who loves the zines. Which is fair enough; lots of people absolutely adore these stories, and rec them whole-heartedly.
But. Many other people do not adore them, and it's just weird to me to see the only writeup being Jane saying that some fans are interrogating this awesome text from the wrong perspective, and a single positive review. In my experience of the fandom, pretty much everyone had an opinion about it (whether they'd read the stories or not, just based on the fairly detailed discussions), and the conversations about roamed all over the place, in all directions.
This is how history vanishes, without anyone even realizing it; have newer fans even heard of the zines, or about the controversy surrounding them? (You can still find some of the later convos on Pros-Lit, fwiw.)
To try to stave off that vanishing a bit, I figured I'd try to dig up some of my reactions from years ago and whap them into some sort of publicly postable form that could be linked to, to add another point of view to the Fanlore entry.
So here's my cobbled-together review, pulled from a few different private and list emails back in 1998 and again in 2003 and rewritten a bit to smooth things out.
In sum: I didn't like this story.
Gentle on My Mind summary
For folks who don't know the story: This starts out with Ray Doyle having been in a horrifically bad car accident, resulting in massive physical trauma, including brain damage. He's immobile and requires weeks, possibly months, of physical therapy to regain his physical strength. He also loses much of his memory, and his mental faculties are severely curtailed; his mental age when the story opens is around 7-9.
Early on, Bodie assumes responsibility as Ray's caretaker and legal guardian, and soon after he also renews their sexual relationship.
As the story progresses, Ray gains more mental ability, until he's mentally in his mid-teens or so, and forges a new life for himself with a job and his relationship with Bodie and friendships with other people.
The author wanted to tell a story about how brain damage may change people, but it doesn't make them useless, or turn off their emotional or physical needs. They're still capable of being vital members of society and of having relationships. And that is the story she tells -- it's very clear that she wants that message to get across, and it's one that resonates for a lot of people.
The story she shows underlying that is very different, focusing heavily on Ray's new "youth" and adult Bodie's strong attraction to it, to a degree that many people find very uncomfortable. /putting it mildly.
Gentle on My Mind review
There were parts of this that I liked; Jane can tell stories. I did read all five parts, so obviously it's not in the "I can't read this" category for me. But I also found that it exaggerated the stuff I dislike most about Jane's stories (a Doyle who *must* be younger than Bodie, a Doyle who's fragile and practically helpless, a Doyle who's physically small, etc.). And the focus on the sex is rampant; they hop into bed all the time. Ye gods, it's a wonder nothing fell off. (Sex with Bodie is one of the very few things Ray remembers, by some strange coincidence. Yeah.)
A story with a literally de-aged Doyle and an adult Bodie having boatloads of sex all over the place would squick me, but I'd just stop reading. This one is made worse, in a way, by the fact that it's presented on the surface as "Ray's not a child, he's a man", because while we're told that Ray's a man in a man's body who is coping with sudden disabilities, with Bodie saying that he knows he can't treat Ray like a kid, we're also watching Bodie belie that in action all the time.
Not only does Bodie pretty consistently treat Ray like a kid, the language and imagery around Ray is intensely juvenile. Bodie refers to him as "poppet", "my precious lad", "my luscious lad", and so forth; even when Ray's former co-workers at CI5 ask after him, Bodie says things like "my lad's doing fine" -- he would never have said that before Ray's injury, and it's infantalizing in its possessiveness. When Bodie looks at Ray, there may be a mention of silver hair or furry chest to "prove" to the reader that Ray's an adult, but it's followed by a mention of big eyes filled with a child's trust, or how appealing his boyish cock is, or his boyish erection, or how much boyish energy he has, or how boyishly slim he is, and how he is "ridiculously beautiful with the innocence of the very young".
I can't even deal with the idea of a hairy, approaching-middle-age man having a "boyish cock" or a "boyish erection", particularly one who's spent his life in macho environments and thus would have been in for endless ribbing if that were truly the case. (Although at least, thank goodness, she didn't go so far as to say he literally had a tiny little wee-wee because his genitals never matured from early boyhood, like I've seen poor Illya get saddled with.)
The "boyish energy" struck me as toddler levels of energy in at least one scene. Ray has spent months in hospital recovering from severe physical trauma, and more months at home doing little more than sleeping, and yet he manages to run Bodie into the ground, leaving him exhausted while Ray frolics merrily away. Bodie may not have been in training for much of Ray's recovery (iirc, he was doing mostly desk work), but he was sure as hell not letting his muscles atrophy, and should have been in vastly better condition than Ray. The whole thing read like a dad coming home from the office to be faced with a rambunctious three-year-old. But three-year-olds and thirty-year-olds have very different bodies, and very different energy levels (even ignoring the whole recovering-from-trauma thing). And this scene didn't take place when Ray was mentally 7 or so; more like mentally 12.
Because even as Ray ages mentally, Bodie continues to think of him as a child -- "the 12-year-old", "the 14-year old", etc. -- and continues to be attracted to those very young aspects of him.
And to top it all off, Bodie takes control of Ray's life -- when Ray gets out of the hospital he's in his mother's and sister's care, but Bodie fairly quickly winds up being his legal guardian and caretaker early on (for no reason I can see - his mum seemed perfectly capable of continuing to care for him, as did his sister). So there's a squicky parent/child vibe going, too.
It's whiplashy, as the two stories Jane is telling are in constant conflict with each other. And it's creepy, too, because while this isn't exactly pedophilia - Ray has the body of a man in his mid-30s -- it has pedophilic signifiers all over it, and the implication is that since Ray technically is not a prepubescent child, it's totally okay to describe him as one and linger on how attractive that is. Ergh, I'm squicking myself out writing this. Jane wants to have her cake and eat it too, basically; she gets to indulge in a pedophilic fantasy while insisting it's all about adults, and anyone who sees anything pedophilic in it is wrong to do so.
Here, have an excerpt (thanks to a person on the Pros-Lit mailing list who posted this during a list discussion several years ago; I don't have copies of my own to pull from). This is from page 8 of the first "chapter" (novel), when Ray is at his "youngest", having only been out of the hospital a short time. His mental age here is anywhere from 7 to 9; his physical body is 34.
"You're off to bed is what's happening," Bodie told him. "Come on, no arguments. Kiss Mum goodnight and I'll tuck you in."
Ray stretched, kissed Irene's cheek and stumbled up the stairs. He had had a busy day; the zoo in the morning with his Mum, lunch and a trip to the cinema with Lauren [sister] in the afternoon, an enormous dinner and Space Invaders with Bodie in the evening. He had won all but one game, and they had been betting for real money, a quid a go. The green eyes shone and Bodie longed to hold him, but with Irene in the kitchen there was no way.
"Right, brush your teeth, mate," Bodie said, mock-sternly as he put the light on in Ray's room. The old room where he had slept thirty years before. "Got to look after your choppers, don't want to end up at the dentist, do you?"
"Dunno," Ray said thoughtfully. "Have I ever been before? What do they do?"
Bodie tousled the unruly curls. "Yes, you've been before, and you didn't like it much. They mess about with your teeth, so you'd better look after yours, hadn't you? Off you go and brush 'em. And here." He reached for green pyjama bottoms. "Chuck your clothes in the laundry bin and put these on."
Good as gold, Ray took the pyjamas and headed for the bathroom, and Bodie stood in the middle of a room littered with Ray's things. Soccer ball, loose puppy biscuits, a scatter of gum cards, a DC superheroes comic. Ray could not read well but he could follow a story and there was every reason to believe that his reading would improve with practise.
[...Bodie] turned to see Ray, clad in the green brush cotton, stretching brown, supple limbs over his head.
Tousled and ridiculously beautiful with the innocence of the very young, he came to be cuddled and wanted to be kissed too. Bodie had held him so rarely since the accident, and crushed him in a fierce embrace until he yelped. "Mum says I have to go to bed now?"
"Bodie says so too," Bodie said firmly. "You couldn't stay awake down there." He kissed the soft, smiling mouth again. "You taste of toothpaste."
"Can't taste you at all," Ray complained. "Shoulda kissed you before." He gave another huge yawn. "M'tired." But he cuddled closer, holding on tight. Bodie's hands stroked every inch of smooth bare back, petting the lovely, muscular little buttocks, too late realising that Ray was becoming aroused. "M'awful hard, Bodie," the husky voice murmured against his neck. "Hurts a bit. Sort of aches. Do I have to do it in the bathroom like usual?" The green eyes were anxious as he lifted his head. "I do that so Mum won't know."
Abruptly Bodie could barely speak. "Oh, sweetheart, you don't have to hide that from me, do you? What would you like?"
"Remember--" Ray was rosy and breathless. "D'you remember the way we used to play in bed, before? I miss it something awful. Get all hard just remembering what we did."
"Of course I remember," Bodie said huskily. "I remember all the time, and it makes me just as hard. We'll play like that again when we've moved house. But for now... We can play a little bit, but only if you're quiet. Promise to be quiet? If Mum hears she'll get an awful shock, won't she?"
... Yeah.
The first chapter (where that quote is from) was the worst for me, opening as it does when Ray can barely speak and barely think, and where the assumed age after a fair amount of recovery is all of 9. It got a little better in the later chapters as he "aged", but not by much. It didn't help that he regressed again at one point, from a mental 15-16 back to 14. Jane's constant dwelling on his assumed age and the attributes that went with it were really offputting for me.
So in the end, while I appreciate the story she was trying to tell, about brain damage not meaning dead or nonfunctional, I was far too squicked by the underlying attitude to enjoy the story at all.
* "Very long" here means three novel-length zines and two novellas, each considered to be one chapter of the overall story. back to top
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Date: 2011-05-13 09:04 pm (UTC)(If Joana Dey is who I think she is, she asked me to edit -- back then we didn't say "beta" -- her sequel. I told her that I couldn't, because I disliked the original so.)
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Date: 2011-05-13 10:03 pm (UTC)I have no idea how her sequel was received, strangely. When I was reading through the convos on Pros-Lit looking for my posts and that excerpt, I noticed at least one fan of GOMM saying she hadn't liked the sequel because it was too different; Joana had brought Ray forward more in age and ability, made him more independent, and the dynamic had changed too much for that fan. So I suspect it may have been too much of a middle ground - people who disliked the original wouldn't read it because they would have no reason to want to pick it up, and people who loved the original wouldn't get the same emotional hit off it.
It's a pity, if so -- she put so much into that! But like you, I couldn't even read it. I do not want to go back to that universe, ever.
Tangentially, wow, reading those convos on Pros-Lit made me miss list days even more than usual. Actual story conversation! With differing viewpoints, along a whole spectrum! And people just having a discussion in spite of it! <3
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Date: 2012-02-24 12:02 am (UTC)I loved writing it, and even now I'll get the odd email about it. It's one of those "to each his own" universes :-)
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Date: 2012-02-23 11:57 pm (UTC)Joana Dey is/was me, Shoshanna: Dana Jeanne in good ole Lompoc California.
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Date: 2011-05-13 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-14 01:04 am (UTC)I love, love, love the way Fanlore is set up, with room for everyone to have their say, so no one feels like they have to somehow incorporate everything into a neutral whole - because man, how could you? But yeah, it does require that people actually step up and add their view of things. So I figured, hey, someone's got to be the one to do it. *g* Although it helps a lot that I knew I had stuff written up from when I'd actually read the stories; I wouldn't trust my current memory of them.
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Date: 2011-05-13 11:10 pm (UTC)So, thank you for putting part of your review, with a link to the rest, right on the GOMM Fanlore page. Newer Pros fans looking for fic really needed that info in order to make an informed choice.
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Date: 2011-05-14 02:06 am (UTC)So hopefully, yeah, they can make a more informed choice now!
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Date: 2011-05-14 02:41 am (UTC)It's even more important for your review to be on that page, then, because I'm imagining how upset I'd be if, based on the only-positive fb, I made a point of tracking down and shelling out a substantial amount of money for those zines, only to get a very unpleasant squick in the eye. So, yay you! <3
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Date: 2011-05-14 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-13 11:16 pm (UTC)I remember the days when people could discuss and argue and chat about stories, with all different viewpoints, without fear. :) It seems like a long time ago!
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Date: 2011-05-14 02:22 am (UTC)And seriously, seems like forever ago. *nostalgic*
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Date: 2011-05-13 11:34 pm (UTC)Seriously, you're going to post this to Fanlore, aren't you?
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Date: 2011-05-14 02:36 am (UTC)Seriously, you're going to post this to Fanlore, aren't you?
I put up this post on a fast break at work and added a link on Fanlore, meaning to go back tonight and put some quotes in, maybe -- but
\o/
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Date: 2011-05-14 01:39 am (UTC)I was never able to finish reading GOMM back in the day. I was lucky enough not to have promised anyone a response, so when I got too squicked I could just bail.
I think you're more than fair, contrasting the progressive story she's apparently trying to tell (brain damage doesn't equal uselessness, etc.) with the adult/child story she actually shows (zoicks). I don't think I would have been quite so evenhanded--given what seemed to be a complete abandonment of realism, I never got a good sense of story #1 at all. It was as if that was just gestured at vaguely as she proceeded into the depths of story #2. Because if she really did want to write about how a brain damaged person is still a member of society with an adult's needs and rights, why is the 'brain damage' so patently, iddishly fantasy-fictional?
I mean, as you say here: Jane's constant dwelling on his assumed age and the attributes that went with it... the real-life concept of "a mental age of #X", as I understand it, is actually shorthand, reflecting a more complex reality of changes in certain brain functions, reactions, attitude, etc. It doesn't mean that somehow someone becomes #X again in its original (or stereotypical) entirety. But Ray does, he "becomes" a unified, perfectly-regressed 9 (or whatever), and progresses in a unified, perfectly re-enacted process. Each of his assumed age ranges is easy to pin down, happens all of a piece, and brings with it a parcel of sexually-fetishized attributes. This sort of thing seems to shuck any faithfulness toward story 1 in favor of nothing but story 2. And story 2 didn't seem to have any of the positive potential elements of story 1.
Now, granted, I don't demand--and never have required--some kind of specious verisimilitude in my slash. But I do think that actually telling story 1 would require at least some, and the story doesn't bother, which led me to infer that it really wasn't about story 1 at all.
(And really, where my verisimilitude-jones does come out all the time is when presented with the sudden shrinking/fluffifying/ unacknowledged de-aging of a character. Doyle is NOT TINY. He is NOT FRAGILE. He is OLDER THAN BODIE. Etc. So when he almost-inevitably is shown turning his giant tear-filled eyes and trembling lower lip up up up to Big Butch Bodie... well. You know how I get. So this story, which, on top of the other things that squicked me, basically makes a huge meal of this process as the entire main premise... er. No thanks, I couldn't possibly, I'm full.)
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Date: 2011-05-14 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-15 06:02 pm (UTC)Deej1957 on LJ
Date: 2012-02-23 11:54 pm (UTC)http://www.thecircuitarchive.com/tca/archive/5/lifegoes.html
My email is DanaJNorris AT gmail DOT come
I don't have a dreamwidth account, but I'm Deej1957 on LJ
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Date: 2020-11-29 02:02 pm (UTC)I just came upon the sequel on AO3. I dove into the reading because the synopsis sounded interesting but within the first paragraph, realized that at minimum, I should track down the original story - because I was a bit lost.
So I googled and founded the Fanlore article and this post. I started at Fanlore. As a new fan, there is a low probability of me ever reading zine-only fic. So, the Fanlore article, outlining the 6 part zine novels actually answered many of my questions right away.
I also use Fanlore to read the "negative space" of many offline/out-of-print classic pros novels (synopsis, reviews, the stuff that *is* online for print zines I can't actually read). Given the summaries for the series - and what I've sussed about the Pros fannish culture at the time (very talkative very opinionated folks back then), I was immediately struck by the lack of negative reviews.
Ha! I say negative reviews with all love - as in - Pros fans are highly opinionated! Some of my personal favorites stories have scathing reviews.
Anyway, just wanted to say thanks again for posting this entry to help fill in the "negative space" of what this series was all about.