Comments | drsquidlove: Someone Like You 57/61: Family portraits

drsquidlove

Someone Like You 57/61: Family portraits - Beecher/Stabler

Mar 14, 2015 15:36

Someone Like You
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove @@@ livejournal.com

Oz/Law & Order: SVU crossover

Tobias Beecher's trying to rebuild his family in the shadow of the man he was in prison. Elliot Stabler's struggling to continue in the wake of divorce while his job eats away at his soul. It makes for an odd friendship, but it works.

( Someone Like You, chapter 57: Family portraits )

svufic, ozfic, someonelikeyou

Comments 33

mazephoenix March 14 2015, 07:05:38 UTC

Aww..poor Toby. But he's right..kids get grossed out by any sex their parents have-no matter who it's with. So do adults with grown parents for that matter. Jonah's not helping though.
I do like how close El and Toby are now, it warms my heart.
What a dilemma for Toby-how can he be a part of Harry's life?
Great chapter.

drsquidlove March 17 2015, 11:41:05 UTC

Ten year-olds just aren't thinking about that stuff. And it's idiotic that adults obsess about gay couples' sex lives when they don't think that much about straight couples'.

Yeah, I told you I'd get Toby and Elliot there in the end, didn't I? Now I get to be all self-indulgent and schmoopy.

Thanks maze!

S.

sahem62896 March 14 2015, 13:28:37 UTC

Someone take the bat Toby's using to beat himself up with and use it on Jonah instead.
And yes... thank God for Elliot. Thank God the bond between him and Toby is not easily shaken by a pouting 10 year old boy.

I'm so glad to see the way Holly is bonding with Elliot again, and he with her. That's good. I'm also very curious to see what's going to happen when Elliot's brood and Olivia show up. Luckily this couple has a few allies in that section already.

drsquidlove March 17 2015, 11:46:48 UTC

Nope. Elliot and Toby have worked their way here, and it's going to take more than a sheltered ten year-old being thoroughly predictable to mess them up.

I definitely couldn't have left the story without fixing Elliot and Holly. I love writing them.

Thanks sahem!

S.

wycombe March 14 2015, 23:49:07 UTC

What a nice surprise to have this new chapter so soon after the last one. Lots of great details here. One of the things I am especially savoring is how Toby, with some expert help from Elliot, under great duress is acting like a parent instead of falling into his usual distress pattern. Elliot's admonition that this is just one of those things that a parent has to roll with, and is not that unusual, regardless of the unique aspect of this particular situation was just perfect. It was very gratifying to read that Toby was angry (!!) at the absurdity of Jonah's statements instead of internalizing them and flagellating himself because something new had gone wrong. Finally. Such a breath of fresh air. Not that it wouldn't be hard to keep one's head on under the circumstances. I guess that's why it's called parenting. It's so interesting how so much of the present and upcoming dynamic turns around Holly's attitude and very deliberate decisions about how she wants to play this. She is also handling the stress very well. Task oriented ( ... )

drsquidlove March 17 2015, 11:58:22 UTC

Heh. I managed to hit a three-day rhythm somewhere early in the posting, and that got me the drive to stick to it the rest of the way through. (Though of course, your day might change depending on what time I post.) I must say, I'm quite impressed with discipline, especially through these last few chapters, when I hadn't banked them ahead. :-D ( ... )

wycombe March 19 2015, 04:24:35 UTC

Yes, you're right on with Holly. Not only does her character stand up to scrutiny, but she and Elliot's kids give Toby and Elliot substance and challenges that they would not otherwise have (although Elliot has the extra defining and evolving framework of his work, which Toby is missing due to unsubstantiated nature of his work life. Had there been more room for it, I would have liked to see some challenges in Toby's work life that could have fleshed him out a little more, post Oz, even if were no more than just coping with being a disbarred attorney version of a rent-a-cop. That was a great line, Squid!). As you have noted, in the more typical stories of this genre, adults are little more than children themselves, which becomes very tedious after a few iterations. But Holly is more than a foil or just a kid. She is definitely a player.

drsquidlove March 20 2015, 09:00:17 UTC

Yeah, if this story was going to be infinite, I would have liked more of Toby's job. I threw in a few references early on to the frustrations of being a top-level lawyer working for a barely competent one, but there wasn't room for more. And while I was willing to spend hours researching parole regulations and NY gun storage laws and traumatic head injuries and the boundaries of disbarment, I draw the line at property law. Hell no.

Did I say something about adult characters being like children? That was insightful of me, heh.

S.

mulder200 March 14 2015, 23:55:09 UTC

I am glad to see that Holly and Elliot are getting along much better now.

And Poor Toby! Still, maybe Harry just needs time.

And having Elliot does make things better.

drsquidlove March 17 2015, 12:00:23 UTC

Thanks mulder!

Yeah, I had to fix Elliot and Holly before the end. They're too sweet together to keep them apart.

Harry doesn't have much time. The chapters are running out...

S.

Couscous salad wycombe March 15 2015, 01:18:31 UTC

One small thing. Unless a family is from the Levant or North Africa, vegan, or simply not interested in a traditional Thanksgiving menu, it is unlikely that couscous salad would appear on most US tables at TG. Maybe Holly is just throwing in her own eccentric twist on the menu. Otherwise, the couscous salad eating demographic is pretty slim on any other day of the year, let alone on TG ( ... )

Re: Couscous salad wycombe March 15 2015, 05:31:24 UTC

Sorry to riff on something so irrelevant to this wonderfully crafted story. I didn't mean to be crass. My mind just ran away with this vision of a picky and temporarily agitated child's reaction to a relatively unfamiliar food appearing at a holiday meal whose menu is an immutable construct that absolutely nobody ever EVER questions. And kids can be very funny about food. Nothing will make a kid act out like when all the adults are straining to keep a smile on their faces, expecting the kids to follow suit, and all of the kids see through the hypocrisy of it all, as they always do. It just takes one kid giving a certain kind of twitchy look to another kid over some little unspoken thing that they both get, and everything comes apart, hilariously.

Re: Couscous salad drsquidlove March 17 2015, 14:08:03 UTC

Okay. So. A few things on this. Yup, I do know that couscous is not traditional, and I know that you guys are freakin' weird about Thanksgiving ( ... )

Re: Couscous salad wycombe March 18 2015, 22:45:34 UTC

Well, of course you know what you’re doing. What was I thinking?? I can’t believe how many little things you know about the US and the setting of this story, not that people can’t travel and learn things if they are from somewhere other than they are writing about ( ... )

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