Fans of Peter's Room

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I'm just about to write a post-canon Merricks' Twelfth Night party (2 years on from that in Peter's Room.), and I'm making some POV decisions. From whose viewpoint would you like to see the party, and why? Peter's been packed off to Selby's for the Christmas hols, sorry, I had to limit the cast a bit. The only definite decision so far is a staff POV (probably Mrs Bertie 'helping out', as she's much better characterised than Nellie). I can't promise everything will make it into the finished fic, but I'll try and write a ficbit for everything suggested.

Comments

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

THIS. That's really similar to my Ann headcanon (which does make it into one of my other fics, albeit just as a throwaway line). If anything, the daughter with the dangerous aptitude for self-immolation is Rowan, and to be fair, Forest does a good job of suggesting the resentment and unpleasantness that in real life often accompanies even willing self-sacrifice; and Rowan's is not particularly willing.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

In a family brought up in the traditions of the Service, self-immolation in the call of duty is what you are supposed to do. Karen is at it as well (in my head canon she is using Edwin and his poor motherless children as a safe excuse to run away from Oxford), not to mention poor Peter at Dartmouth, though at 13 he doesn't have much choice.

I do wonder how Rowan rationalises the bit where Giles, or their father, is going to come back and run the lot at some point. Does she see it only as a short-term stop-gap sacrifice? Though at the time, she doesn't see it as a sacrifice, she sees it as a practical solution all round and thinks she can cope with it because she is used to coping.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

In some ways Ann might be among the less self-sacrificial of them! Ginty and Lawrie seem to a large extent to have escaped the indoctrination into duty.

Yes, if she's waiting for her father to retire, she's got a good few years still to go--Geoff is said to be 48 in RMF, isn't he--and wouldn't his earliest opportunity to retire be 55 (I'm going here on my own family background, RAF not RN, but probably similar?) I mean, it's not a life-sentence, but it's quite a stretch when you're 17. I can't see Giles chucking the Service, though I entertain fantasies of his dismissal if the events of RAH ever come to light. I think Forest actually does her decision really well: she doesn't quite perceive the level of self-denial involved, partly because of the pathological coping mechanism, but also because of her youth: it's a moment where we see Rowan as youthfully impractical (how bad can it be? kind of thing); important because she so often seems mature beyond her years.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

My own family background is a farm. I remember my little sister worrying who was going to take it over "because one of us has got to" when she was about nine, and ours has only been in the family since 1920 rather than before Alfred.

Rowan is more confident and competent than Karen and Karen resents Rowan being better at dealing with fusses than she is but Rowan isn't academic and taking over the farm and leaving school is a way of not having to compete with Karen on that score. After which it must be particularly infuriating to have Karen chuck Oxford and turn up doing her own self-sacrificing step-mother bit on the doorstep.