A Time to Grieve
| Bodie/Doyle Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | A Time to Grieve |
| Author(s): | Nina Boal |
| Date(s): | April 1990 |
| Length: | |
| Genre: | slash |
| Fandom: | The Professionals |
| External Links: | |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
A Time to Grieve is a Professionals vignette by Nina Boal.
It was first published in Short Circuit #1 (April 1990), and then archived online at The Circuit Archive.
"A Time to Grieve" was expanded to become the novel Shadows Over the Land.
Author's Comment
1990
The vignette has the end note:
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I wrote this the day after I found out that one of my best friends had died of AIDS. "Tim Anderson" is based on a composite of two people with AIDS I knew who are now both gone. Sorry about the unnamed "certain quiz show" but my friend got me addicted to JEOPARDY, and I don't know the British equivalent. Anyway, I thank you all for your indulgence in allowing me to write this tale, and get some of it out -- and I thank the "circuit" for existing. This story is dedicated to my two friends and to all people living with AIDS.
1995
On my circuit story, "A Time To Grieve." Yes, this story is a shameless Mary Sue story. And Ray Doyle is my Mary Sue character, I admit it, I wrote the story shortly after a good friend of mine had died of AIDS; it was a way of working through my grief And one of the important elements was the queering of both characters. Two presumably straight characters turn out to be Queer. And they must suffer the consequences. But their love survives, even through these obstacles. Yeah, it's corny, slushy and romantic. But I like corny, slushy, romantic stories. So I have bad tastes. it's just one of my kinks. [1]
Fan Comments
1990
Although I sympathize with your reasons for writing your story, I'd rather have been shown Doyle caring for his AIDS-stricken friend, rather than being told. Why couldn't we meet Tim? You could serve a good purpose here. Some of us have had to deal with AIDS full frontal. What is it like? Victim's feelings? Yours? I think you could have told us all better through showing Doyle and Tim dealing with it.
[...]
On a strictly technical note. I find it hard to believe the premise that Doyle was caught out as a "closet gay," as it were, while he was CI5. Now, anything is possible but, given Doyle's training and the circumstances of CI5's tenuous standing to many, that he would continue to go to gay bars while on the squad boggles the mind. Also, especially since you've given him a lover. And one of CI5's top agents was caught and tracked down by a journalist!? Hard to suspend belief. But then, we are talking about the same Doyle who took a prototype weapon home with him and hid it in a closet. Who forgot to set his locks and got blown away. Who has a partner who calls a Spade a Spade and got stabbed twice for it because he wasn't watching his back.
- [The author replied to this comment]: Concerning "A Time To Grieve:" Don't worry. I am working on what will probably be a novel-length epic concerning the Bodie and Ray of this story. You'll get to meet Tim Anderson and see how Ray relates to him and helps him out. And you'll see how Ray is dragged out of the closet and off of C15. I've promised it to Nuthatch Creative Workshop (Jane, Kathy Keegan, etc) when I'm through. Oh, and Nuthatch now has a U.S. distributor, so we won't have to pay that ghod-awful Australian postage. "Time To Grieve" was merely a little vignette that I felt I had to get out of my system when my friend George died. [2]
I felt like I was being pushed to accept what was going on in this story. Everything was so foreign to regular CI5 work, and the story was so short that I didn't have time to assimilate what was going on. I saw Doyle's anger and distress but I never got a good feel about the relationship between him and Tim. I would have liked to have seen more of their relationship so that I could have felt the loss and distress as well. (I am such an emotional junkie!)
- [The author replied to this comment]: I agree that A TIME TO GRIEVE was a bit sketchy. But he's not playing "housewife;" Bodie doesn't live at Doyle's flat. But Doyle does cook for his dates and lovers — this is established in the program, and is one of his "androgynous" traits. He cooks for Ann Holly, why not for Bodie? I put the flower-shop thing in as a play on common stereotypes — Doyle, who loves to rumble around on motorcycles, working at a stereotypically "pansy" occupation. At any rate, this will all be expanded when I write my big epic. [3]
1995
Nina's circuit story "A Time To Grieve," in which Doyle, having been chucked out of CI5 for being queer, is comforted by Bodie after the death of the PWA he was buddying. This one is a little complicated, in that the "Mary Sue" character is Doyle himself, not a non-canonical Agent Mary Sue. So strictly speaking I wouldn't call this a "Mary Sue" story; but it has the same flaws. [4]
References
- ^ from Strange Bedfellows (APA) #11 (November 1995)
- ^ comments by Linda Terrell in Short Circuit #2 (July 1990), reply by Susan Douglass in "Short Circuit" 3 (October 1990)
- ^ comments by Alys in Short Circuit #3 (October 1990), reply by Susan Douglass in "Short Circuit" #4 (January 1991)
- ^ from Strange Bedfellows (APA) #10 (August 1995)