J-M & AF #2

[suzene]

Unless they went looking for this evidence after they were told not to use the nuns, and had to come up with a different angle to be able to tell their story. Look, I agree with you that it is a tired trope, but since Freg wrote the story to involve Aurora's MPD, and her mental illness was caused by her abuse at the nuns hands, what are the writers supposed to put in place of the nuns when editorial said they couldn't use them? It's not a great solution, but what else are they to put in?

Well, first I'm going to give the writing team the benefit of the doubt and assume that the editorial decree went deeper than "You can't have someone in a habit and wimple tied up in this scene" and excise religion from the equation completely. Hence, no mention of nuns or God or faith or sin, no "sister" anything. We do know that they can mention there was abuse going on at the orphanage itself, due to the first page of the scene. So:

- Old lady tied to chair. "Look, it's Anne [Insert Very French Last Name Here], head of the orphanage. She beat you until you stopped trying to be good for its own sake, until you stopped being good to avoid fresh pain, until you just accepted that you were worth nothing and asked for beatings to prove you were good. Would you like to show her how that feels?" Any casual reader bypasses the religious connections completely, but the long-time readers know the full origin story.

- Old man tied to chair. "Look, it's your social worker. You told him about the orphanage -- the beatings/the dark/the hungry nights crying alone, etc. You begged and pleaded to be taken somewhere else, anywhere else, but he never believed you/did nothing. You have the power now. Would you like to hear him beg, Jeanne-Marie?" Nuns? What nuns? There were nuns?

- Walter tied to a chair. "Look, Jeanne-Marie, it's the man who took advantage of you again and again with the help of that trollop..." Because if you feel that exploring sexual trauma is just the way to go wrt Jeanne-Marie, that she felt violated by what Walter and Aurora did to her -- even once Walter knew about her DID -- isn't even subtext, it's explicit on the page and the implications of its effect on Jeanne-Marie's psyche have never been touched on.

That's the result of me doing about ninety seconds of solo brainstorming. There's no way I'm going to believe two people who do this for a living -- one of whom is a fan of the book -- couldn't manage better.