Freedom is...

As is my usual practice, working on APoS Derry has kicked my mind into gear and brought up a possible reason for why Brendan is so hated by his mother. He's not his Da's son. Not sure how far I'm willing to go with this, yet, but I've already set it up that Ma changed after his birth. She became obsessed with cleanliness. She was always distant with him. Discusses how the other children she bore were little trouble coming out, but Brendan took more than two full days. She's never happy with him.

What's more, he doesn't look like his father; he says he looks more like his mother. He has health issues no one else in the family shares. And he consistently goes his own way without real regard for the consequences.

The idea may have been creeping around in the back of my head for a while, now. I got a hint of it when, in New World for Old, he learns one of Paidrig's sisters-in-law was raped and treated like a slut to the point she killed herself. Even into the 70s and 80s, in societies as tightly moralistic as those in Derry, rape would have been seen as the woman's fault unless she was beaten to a pulp or killed, so him mother would never admit he's the product of anyone but his father.

Hell, in some parts of the US, it's still that way, despite the progress in thought. Even now, I hear the occasional story of a teenage girl being kicked out of her home for becoming pregnant, usually by God-fearing assholes. The same type that kick gay kids out while screaming they'll go to hell. The normal Christian crap.

If this does go into the story...and I'm not yet certain of it...I don't think I'll reveal it till the third chapter. That's subtitled Home Not Home, and I need to keep that in my head because it fits. Brendan is using an assumed identity and begins digging deeper into his family.

I've also worked out how Brendan hears his father tell one of his stories. I'd already flirted with the idea, but I know where to put it and how, and why no one's known about it. There was just the one; the rest, he was too drunk to make real sense. Same for when he sang. So the student recording him shrugged it off. The one good story is noted in their files, when Brendan calls to ask about it, and they let him hear and make his own copy. But the school administrators felt no need to seek out the man's family to let them know. It's not like the school was using it for anything.

Just another casual slap against the Catholics.