fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2452 ]

[ SECRET POST #2452 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2452 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

[Giles Coren and Sue Perkins, The Supersizers Eat… The Eighties]

__________________________________________________

03.

[Jeff Davis/Teen Wolf]

__________________________________________________

04.

[Django Unchained]

__________________________________________________

05.

[Valiant Hearts: The Great War]

__________________________________________________

06.

[Child of Light]

__________________________________________________

07.

[Jurassic Park]

__________________________________________________

08.

[Hate Plus]

__________________________________________________

09.

[The Three Investigators]

__________________________________________________

10.

[Charlie Hunnam]

__________________________________________________

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 011 secrets from Secret Submission Post #350.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In a fic I'm doing a big part of the story is that the protagonists' mother is manipulative and subtly abusive psychologically , sort of keeping the protagonist (the oldest of her children) devoted to her and not wanting to leave her. Sort

But at the same time she appears to most people very loving and sometimes a bit indulgent of all her children. She's fairly wealthy, her family owning a prosperous company. [However since she was relegated to running the American branch of it a ways away from her relatives who are British (it's hinted that they gave her the job in the states because she did something), she has become convinced that her relatives are scapegoating her and persecuting her.]

The protagonist is her oldest son who is often charged with keeping an eye on his younger siblings, most of whom were adopted. He is very bright but is unsure about leaving home out of a feeling of obligation to his mother.He isn't completely resentful of the children and has some affection for them when it all comes down to it.

Basically I'm trying to pull off a character who can appear shallowly, to be very indulgent perhaps spoiling her children but is in reality very manipulative, controlling, and psychologically abusive. She sees her children as literally hers. They kids may be rowdy sometimes but when it all comes down to it she has a LOT of control over them.

Any suggestions on how to pull this character off?

Let me guess, it's jaybie. It sounds like she's going to be a vehicle for your issues with your own parents, so my suggestion to you is to avoid making her so over-the-top awful that she descends into caricature.

LOL....vehicle for...what?

Pffft hardly. Yeah I get frustrated with my parents lately but I wouldn't class them nearly this character . Hell I actually love them a lot and while I get really upset with them and say stupid OTT shit in my emotional state. I'd never create a character to bash them because they don't deserve that. There's a reason I go anon for complainy shit , so I can get the bitching off my chest and just forget about it.

(though really it's more my situation than anything waiting for calls is so damn boring. I even got an interview with this publishing house that was all "Yeah welcome to the team, we'll email you later!" nada. I try not dwell because it makes me sad.)

The character is actually my attempt on creating a good scary female villain that was not "turned evil because a man hurt her /made her ". Or whatever. Sort of like Lady Macbeth. I remember reading her in 12th grade English and going "man we need more of this type of female character in lit." Then BOOM, this character in her original form was born. Also I'm inspired by reading psychology and watching Criminal Minds.

(around then my parents and I were cooler with each other.)

She's not all pure evil. In her own way she does want to care about them but she sort of has a weird way of doing it. Her own original parents were fucked up in that they were all concerned about appearances being the wealthy elite, convinced themselves they were good people. She does have a hint at some serious empathy and sociopathy type issues. In this timeline I guess (it's an offshoot story of another work I enjoy working with) where she wasn't the favored child thus in her mind she's decided she's the 'scapegoat'.

I don't want her to be a caricature because , hell that's not even slightly effective. She cares about her kids in her own way. She also cares about getting whatever she thinks will fill an emptiness she feels and make her truly happy. But like any human being it's impossible to be 100% happy there's always the thing we still want.

Though you are right on one. I DO go by Jaybie online. :)

I'm impressed. It's pretty damn hard to find out one persona if they use anon half the time.

Two cookies for you

Edited 2013-09-20 02:36 (UTC)

"Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave."

Indulging materially/monetarily, controlling behaviorally.

Ah...yes nods*

That's what I'm going for. She uses behavior to control and money reward and indulge. and make herself look good to everyone .

I'm not sure how much help I'd be, but this sounds so much like someone I know I kinda wondered if you'd met her. I could pm you some things she's done along those lines, if you'd like.

In general lines, you could try researching Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, (not OCD!) or maybe Narcissistic PD, both of which could lead to this kind of behaviour. Support forums for loved ones would probably be really helpful, since they tend to contain specific complaints.

Oh?

I don't think I have honestly. Oh sure if you want you could PM me now that I'm signed in. I'd like that very much.

Ohh that sounds interesting. I originally saw her as being an abuser with a kind of antisocial personality disorder. But Narcissistic personality disorder I could really see her with too. I'll look up both of those thanks.

I'm sorry in advance if none of this is of any help to you.

My mother is similar to the mother in your story. I'm the youngest of two, though, and can't say a whole lot about the finer points of how she is with my brother anymore.

Money is the biggest factor in her attempts to control. She spoiled us when we were growing up and posed it to others as "I just want to give my kids everything I never had." It sounds great. And for a five year old getting a stuffed bear that's bigger than they are, it's fucking ace. BUT: it was conditioning. We were raised to rely on her to provide us everything we need. If we attempted to earn it ourselves, it would be lower quality (at 12, it's not easy for a kid who lives in a neighborhood where everyone has a lawn service, nanny, maids, and professional dog walkers to earn enough money to buy designer clothes). Then we'd be all proud of what we earned for ourselves and she'd sneer and forbid us to wear it in public because then people would think she wasn't providing for us properly. And I say wear meaning clothes obviously, because that was the most common in our house, but it sometimes applied to other things. Like the bike I bought with my birthday money when I was 13; Huffy wasn't the "right" brand. I also bought a car when I was 17 and I wasn't allowed to even have it in the driveway because it was an embarrassment.

I was always more resistant to my mother than my brother was. And not just in attempts to earn things for myself and gain financial independence: I don't like her. I'm adopted and I sometimes wonder if it's a chemistry issue because even as an infant I couldn't stand her and raised hell if she held me. So yeah...more resistant.

Fast forward to 2013 and my brother and I are around 40. I have a very distant relationship with my parents and the slightest, well, slight, can set off a grudge in my mother that results in months of refusing to talk to me. And by slight I mean I might have said "I'm sorry but I'm not following what you're talking about. You said you sent a text about it but I don't have a text from you." Three weeks and counting since that one.

My brother is...I don't even know. Something's wrong with him, nothing all that bad or anything, I just don't know how to explain it. He's shut off from other people and won't call our parents or visit for holidays or anything. That all sounds like no big deal but it's really extreme with him. He won't answer phone calls from family or attend weddings or anything. He will talk to our mother on the phone every now and then but not our father anymore because he told him to grow up and just put on a suit at my parent's 50th wedding anniversary party, which was a formal occasion and the venue required black tie. My brother showed up in jeans and a T shirt and my father's demand for a suit was a compromise since it was still not formal enough for the venue's requirements but something my father could work with to convince them to allow him in.

That was 3 years ago and when we were all together visiting my mother in the hospital last summer, my brother never acknowledged my father. My mother is the only person in our family (immediate and extended) that he acknowledges at all. He seems to love her very much, actually.

Which brings me back to money. My parents own my brother's house. They've owned every house he's lived in his entire life. If his job moves him to another city, they buy a new house for him. And a new car because apparently you have to have a new car to go into a new house's garage.

My mother constantly brings up things like the houses and the cars and all the furniture and stuff every time she talks to him. And ever since last summer when she was in the hospital, I've believed that it is a combination of guilt and fear (of not being able to support himself) that makes up my brother's love for our mother.

My parents don't own my house. Neither do I, incidentally; I rent a house because I can't afford a mortgage on a house I'm only going to live in for a couple years before my job moves me again. The fact that I've resisted my mother's attempts to buy a house for me is a huge point of contention. She went so far as to travel to the city I live in that's on the other side of the country from her and she bought a house. Then she came to my house (I've never had her here before or since) and acted like it was a surprise visit. I gave her the tour of my house, feeling like shit the whole time because the house I rent is nothing special and all of my furniture is bargain stuff. And then she told me how terrible my house was and that she'd called the movers and they'd be there the next week to pack up my stuff and move me into my new house. And let's be clear: she said it was my house, not hers. She does the same about my brother's house. And I'm sure if I hadn't kicked her out of my house right then that things would have gotten very bad. I can't say for certain, but I am happy to not live under a roof she owns and have her laying one guilt trip and manipulation after another on me as I've witnessed her do to my brother.

Again, sorry if none of this is any use. Basically, a parent like that is a nightmare and it gets worse with age. I spent my teens hating myself because she always told me how terrible I looked. And by that she was talking about my hair, which I wasn't good at styling myself. I just didn't want her styling it because A) "that's for little kids" and B) she would rip my hair out by the roots when she brushed it. To this day no hair dresser can make me even notice what they're doing because I'm immune to all feeling on my scalp after a childhood of having her literally rip my hair out every night before bed. I finally realized, many years later, that she has no sense of what other people feel, physically or emotionally. She genuinely thought my tears and screams begging her to stop were for attention, even those times when we were the only people in the house.

OH! And we traveled a lot when we were growing up. So when we had grown up and moved away, she kept my brother in the same town (for the first 12 years or so) by saying she'd only pay for one trip a year and if we moved away, then that one trip would be just to come home to her. Like I said, it worked for 12 years with my brother. A lot less for me because I went into a career that included travel and honestly, I'd be happy to never go "home" again. And by "home" I mean the most recent place my parents live, since it isn't where I grew up. We moved every few years and I think I was out of their house maybe a year before they moved somewhere else. And they took my brother with them and I honestly believe it's because he was scared to be away from them. She's threatened our whole lives that being away from her would somehow make our lives worse or, when that didn't work with me, that we'd be hurting her more than she could bear and did we want that responsibility, etc.

My mother has more friends than anyone I know. Everyone loves her, and she puts on a hell of a show about what a great parent she is. I've had some of her friends tell me that they wish they could be as close with their daughters as my mother is with me. I have no idea what she tells these people because we're not close and I've never done anything during any of my very few and infrequent visits to give the appearance that we're close. The fact is that she's emotionally abusive and only cares about her children for what they can do for her image and I avoid her as best I can without hurting my father more than he can handle.

Oh, and in his defense, he's actually a good guy. He really means things "I want my kids to have everything I never did" and he wishes my brother would stop wasting his money on whatever it is he's wasting it on and put a roof over his own head. My father, who was a way from home a lot, never really saw until the last 10 years or so how manipulative and controlling she is with us. His awareness has caused some problems for them and if they live long enough, it's not likely they'll make it to their 60th anniversary.

First of all thank you so much and I'm sorry you had to put up with all that.
*hugs*

It does look like good help to me actually.

In my work there is no father, and the oldest son plays a role as the "man of the house" There's an element of fantasy in the story's premise which I didn't mention because it seemed unrelated to the question I was asking. The protagonist is protecting a dark secret of hers.

There's also a thing with one of the children, who's actually a cousin of the protagonist who the mother used to take care of. The mother decided she wanted that child and the parents weren't fit. basically it's hinted at that she killed them after the sister in law got a nanny for the child.

That...sounds like my great grandmother, actually. [Though she also added a heaping helping of physical abuse to the mix - and treated all three of her kids that way.]

Can you maybe try adding that whenever she gets upset she 'becomes' an 'invalid'? That was one of the biggest guilt trips my g. grandma would pull whenever her kids did something that upset her.

ooh interesting.

What do you mean 'becomes' an invalid though?

AYRT

She would fake being an invalid, and make sure they knew it was their fault it'd happened, etc.

Mind you - I never met the woman, this all stuff I heard from my grandmother [her daughter] who was the only one to *not* stick around [and how she did that is a whole different, not terribly pleasant story.]

Honestly, this question really boils down to "How do I write well?" and I'm not sure how much help anyone can be. You pull a character off by making them realistic and when the character is a villain, that's an extra challenge. Like a previous anon said, try not to make her too over the top. Remember that villains rarely think of themselves as villains, they think of themselves as Doing the Right Thing from their point of view. So when she does something terrible, there has to be a logical reason for it, even if the logic only exists in her own head.

But that's the same as what you'd be doing for every character.

I sometimes get a little worried over a specific aspect of a story and start asking questions like "I want to give off this impression, any thoughts" .
I was concerned about maintaining a balance between indulged with material things and abused psychologically. Worried that a reader would be like "abused? no way she's just strict, besides she gives them stuff" or something.

I do agree with the justification thing (which is why as a DP fan I loathe the show finale which had the main villain refer to himself as evil.) So basically it's like"we're all the heroes of our own story" right?

Yep, pretty much.

FWIW, I think it'd be more useful if you solicited concrit after you've finished writing. People could tell you how they think such a character should be written, but really, it's not going to be as effective as you handing over the complete work (or at least key scenes) to a trusted beta and saying, "Hey, I wanted Character X to come off like ______. Is that the impression you get, or do you see Character X as being someone different?"

Proof's in the pudding, so to speak.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2452 ]

A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

TO ANON

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question

Re: A writing question