Oskar at 40

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Oskar at 40

Post by sauvin » Sun Feb 07, 2010 3:34 am

http://let-the-right-one-in.com/fancont ... oskar-40-0

THIS STORY IS NOT FOR GENERAL AUDIENCES. IT CONTAINS FOUL LANGUAGE AND IMPLIED IMPROPER SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH MINORS.

Somebody in another topic/thread mentioned something about the 28th anniversary of Jocke's death, with more certainly to follow in the next two or three weeks as we mark Virginia's passing, Hakan's and Lacke's (with apologies to whomever I've missed at the moment). I commented this makes Oskar now 40 years old, while Eli remains 12.

That thought stuck with me, for some bizarre reason. We've treated the idea in a remote, abstract sort of way, but I got to wondering where Oskar might be when he's 40, assuming nothing unforeseen happens. At the moment, I'm a tad busy, but what's presented here is one possible future as frustrations and disappointments mounted over the decades. The treatment is cursory and very rudimentary, and further exploration in this thread will be very welcome, even if it's only to have forum members heatedly point out where I'm way out in left field, but be advised I'll have great difficulty seeing that Oskar shares Eli's near immutability.

Assuming the forum doesn't shishkebab me for what must appear as blatant iconoclasm, I'll expand on this exploration as time permits.
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Re: Oskar at 40

Post by lombano » Sun Feb 07, 2010 4:38 am

Grim, but plausible enough. Of course Eli is right and Oskar has become more of a monster than she is.
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Re: Oskar at 40

Post by a_contemplative_life » Sun Feb 07, 2010 4:40 am

Nice job! Doesn't seem too far-fetched--to the contrary, very plausible. Said it before, say it again: the things we do for love. Who can ever know what the fallout will be?

P.S. - How long do you think it took before Oskar started procuring for her? And at what point did he start to view the victims as "piggies"? And did the rapes come before or after that time? After, I hope.
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Re: Oskar at 40

Post by sauvin » Sun Feb 07, 2010 6:20 am

a_contemplative_life wrote:Nice job! Doesn't seem too far-fetched--to the contrary, very plausible. Said it before, say it again: the things we do for love. Who can ever know what the fallout will be?

P.S. - How long do you think it took before Oskar started procuring for her? And at what point did he start to view the victims as "piggies"? And did the rapes come before or after that time? After, I hope.
I have not got the vaguest idea. All I know is, this is one possible future for an Oskar who has to live with Eli's beast.

I would surmise the first couple of years with Eli would have the usual "relationship as a work in progress" ups and downs, but the mechanics of a normal relationship, while "dynamic" enough, usually don't operate under the kinds of stresses their shared lifestyle imposes. I'd envision all kinds of economic hardships, the continuing struggle Oskar has (as intimated by far better fanfiction than mine) directly with the reality and moral consequences of Eli's beast itself, cycles of enforced absence while she hibernates, progressively greater difficulty in living "off the radar" in a world increasingly strident in its demands for proof of identiy, and so on.

I fear that what might stress their relationship the most is something that's bothered me almost from the second or third time I watched the movie: he will continue to grow, emotionally, intellectually, physically and in just about every other way a man can grow, except possibly morally and socially.

Oskar, at 12, couldn't possibly understand the long-term implications of his decision to quit Blackeberg. Would he ever return? I think it unlikely for fear of being taken in by the authorities in connexion with the pool scene murders, and as time piles up Eli's body count, fear of discovery of his complicity in her "murders". He's trapped, and in more than one way: who could want to leave the best friend anybody could ever ask for?

Would he ever willingly procure for her? If he loves her the way I think he does, yes, he might, when there's no choice. Just how helpless is Eli after a hibernation? Just how adept is she at securing another Renfield before each hibernation (is her twenty-two decade track record spotless)? How well would these Renfields co-exist with Oskar, these predators whose natures would likely invariably be not terribly dissimilar to Hakan's? How much tolerance would Oskar have for their appetites? How much tolerance would they have for him?

Would Eli permit Oskar to procure for her under any circumstances? After having seen just how good life can be, even for such as herself, when there's an innocent Oskar to share it with, I think not. Certainly not at first; Eli seems to have an excellent instinct for what Oskar needs emotionally, as evidenced by her delicate handling at the film's bed scene and by her willingness to eat candy; it'd be no stretch of our imaginations for her to sense at some level that running these kinds of errands for her would have a deadly effect on his openness and innocence. I get a vague impression she'd rather die than give this up, something she may never know again if she lives to be a thousand years old. I think she'd forbid it.

And would Oskar listen? Show me a seventeen year old boy who can look at the potential consequences to his very soul (if that's the word I want) when confronted with the danger that the love of his life will slip irretrievably away if he takes no action, and I'll show you a boy who has not only vision and perspective far beyond his years, but comprehension of things many men three times his age never grasp. Oskar is gentle, loving, accepting, considerate, supportive and all kinds of other wonderful adjectives, but he's also a protector with an emotionally aggravated past. He'll do what he thinks he must, and like most of us, he'll likely think only in terms of immediate exigency.

This may prove most acute when the couple is faced with a "do or die" emergency in which Eli is unable to act, but Oskar is. He'd act decisively to defend her, and probably with overwhelming force.

On this front, then, I could see a schism developing initally between the two on at least two different levels: Eli's wavering trust in the boy who won't listen to her two centuries of experience, and Oskar's inability to live with the fear of losing her. They'll fight, and not nicely. Would Eli understand Oskar's fear? I'd certainly like to think so - she seems so much more human than so many of us - but even if she understood it completely, what could she do? Would she be able to verbalise her understanding well enough to make Oskar understand the danger she'd see?

Another front I see being problematic is sexual. As he continues to mature, he'll have needs he won't understand at first, and Eli would likely understand only empirically. Would she try to accommodate his needs? Very likely, I think; she's certainly done far more for others for essentially pragmatic reasons, and (especially for those of us who've read the book) there's no reason to believe there's anything under the sun or moon she wouldn't give him, if she could. Being unable to experience this kind of passion for herself, though, would grow old rather quickly for both of them.

Furthermore, fanfiction has suggested many times that whatever sexual passion she could feel may morph very quickly and unexpectedly into something much darker. As I've asked in this forum before, if you'd just gone two or three days without food of any sort, and are starving, could you put a freshly cooked sausage link in your mouth and not bite? Spontaneous episodes of passion seem to be very much out of the question, particuarly when she's not fed recently.

And if Oskar were to take his love to town, would Eli understand and accept it? We have no idea how jealous or possessive Eli might be. We can only hope that if he were to do such a thing, she'd be big enough to understand that this, too, is something he does because he has to, just as she does distasteful things because she has to. One can hope, but it's irrational to hope it won't spark some more fights. It'd be only natural for Eli to feel threatened by people who can give him things she can't.

I have an unclear idea that the very idea of sexuality may be complex and problematic for Eli. I've posted (but not saved) a suggestion of the nature of these problems and their effects on the IMDB board under the thread "Is what Eli did wrong?" or something of similar intent; go look, if you're not squeamish. It's not nearly as graphic as I can be, but it's still strongly enough worded.

A third front is isolation. This is not small. Socialisation is incomplete at 12. Oskar won't have even what "normative" influences he might have had if he'd stayed in Blackeberg with his absentee mother and alcoholic werewolf father. Very nearly all the cultural and social values he'll accumulate and adopt now will be either through mass media or from Eli herself. She's only twelve herself, what kind of role model could she be for social and moral growth even if she were just in stasis without being a monster!?

And what, pray tell, would a child of today learn socially or morally from contemporary mass media?

I could easily see Oskar developing a far dimmer view of people than Eli herself does, if only partially as an internal emotional defence: if they're not human, it doesn't matter if he kills them. People are what Eli wishes more than anything else she could be, the one thing she can't, whereas Oskar is human, and not overly impressed with it. Over time, as he becomes more embittered, embattled and more spiritually desperate, yes, I could very easily see him regarding people as not only dangerous to himself and his Beloved, but also as mindless grunting, squealing juicebags to keep his only love alive.

When would the rapes (or more disgusting acts) begin? Who knows? It'd take a long time for Oskar's inherent decency to tarnish and corrode enough to allow for the possibility to even occur to him, and an even longer time to permit himself it.

Yet another front is Oskar's anger. He has it, just ask the tree in the courtyard (or in the forest, if you read the book). It mollified considerably when he gave Johnny a sock for his split ear, and disappeared entirely when Johnny lost consciousness, but that's not to say it went away, just that Oskar's basic humanity came to the fore when he realised he may have just killed this boy. The movie Oskar went home hours later still flying on whatever magic carpet came his way on the ice - one imagines he felt emancipated and vindicated. It took years to instill the capacity for this kind of violence; it won't disappear watching CSF fluid leaking out of a boy's mouth or nose or listening to Lacke's noisy death no matter how much it might have sickened him at the time, and it'll almost certainly be exacerbated by the exhilaration he felt after the day on the ice.

It's a rage that even allows him to wallop his smaller girlfriend with enough force to take another boy his own size off his feet.

The rage remains, however quiescent (or not), and as time passes with its profoundly dark and desperate moments because of Eli's "condition", it would necessarily accumulate.

Needless to say, my faith in humanity is somewhat less than total. More accurately, I have infinite faith in anybody's potential for sinking into primieval forms when appropriately stressed.

Could somebody - anybody - please punch holes in these impressions?

Edit: I've hesitated to mention this, referring to it tangentially in the story: as Oskar grows, physically in any event, he obviously leaves Eli behind in many ways. This works to their advantage with respect to being able to rent apartments and suchlike, but may work against them in other ways. Who knows what kinds of things go on behind their closed doors (that we're not going to explore too deeply here!), but they're not always going to be just kissing or hugging. As he grows older, might Oskar not start seeing himself as being a bit sick for the kind of feelings he'll almost certainly develop for her? Might he not start seeing himself as another kind of Hakan? In this respect, it may be a very good thing they have to avoid social exposure, but Oskar can't avoid himself. What his neighbours might say about their relationship won't matter much to a man who lives outside society, but he might himself start feeling guilty - dirty - every time he looks at her, might he not?

He loves her, our Oskar at 40, for what she is when she's not the beast, but hates her also for what she makes him do, whether she realises it or not.
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Re: Oskar at 40

Post by Microwave Jellyfish » Sun Feb 07, 2010 11:15 am

Poor kid is on the way of becoming a Stephen King-esque clichéd old guy.

But it's well-written and the last sentence is kinda chilling.
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Re: Oskar at 40

Post by Aurora » Sun Feb 07, 2010 1:00 pm

Aurora wrote:I'm aware that there are three things about the story as it is that I really like, but if these are changed it ruins the whole experience for me. They are:-

1.The love between Oskar and Eli isn't defined by any sexual attraction to the other.
2. Oskar isn't the next Hakan
3. The story ends where it does without any suggestion of what the future will bring for them.
Forgive me for quoting myself, but hopefully that will explain why I'm going going to criticise you story.

I'm not against fan fiction, there's a lot on here that I really like, but in general it's set shortly after the events in the book/film happened. An exception to that is kirkesque's 'Quick Bright Things' which was set many years after which I enjoyed (even if I did cry at the very sad ending). Now the reason I'm going to criticise your story is how much you've changed Oskar, he's totally unrecognisable compared to the twelve year old boy that we know so well. Basically you're suggesting that he's become a dangerous sociopath with no feelings for anyone, which is something that I find very dificult to accept. I know we've disagreed before on how potentially dangerous Oskar is to anyone and you've mentioned that Eli is a corrupting influence (that I agree with btw), but I don't believe that this would be the outcome.

Personally I prefer Hakan to this version of Oskar, at least Hakan didn't like killing...
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Re: Oskar at 40

Post by a_contemplative_life » Sun Feb 07, 2010 2:22 pm

sauvin wrote: I would surmise the first couple of years with Eli would have the usual "relationship as a work in progress" ups and downs, but the mechanics of a normal relationship, while "dynamic" enough, usually don't operate under the kinds of stresses their shared lifestyle imposes. I'd envision all kinds of economic hardships, the continuing struggle Oskar has (as intimated by far better fanfiction than mine) directly with the reality and moral consequences of Eli's beast itself, cycles of enforced absence while she hibernates, progressively greater difficulty in living "off the radar" in a world increasingly strident in its demands for proof of identiy, and so on.
I agree. BTW, don't be so critical of your own writing.
sauvin wrote:I fear that what might stress their relationship the most is something that's bothered me almost from the second or third time I watched the movie: he will continue to grow, emotionally, intellectually, physically and in just about every other way a man can grow, except possibly morally and socially.
The way I see it, if you view Oskar and Eli's future as a pie chart, with possible outcomes making up the pie, the scenario you've painted, or something like it, would occupy most of the pie. I think only a very small wedge would represent a future Oskar who is morally intact. The pressure to turn him the other way is quite great, one would imagine. And this is why so many people prefer to stop thinking about Oskar & Eli when they are on the train. Most folks don't like the idea of Oskar becoming another Hakan.
sauvin wrote: Oskar, at 12, couldn't possibly understand the long-term implications of his decision to quit Blackeberg. Would he ever return? I think it unlikely for fear of being taken in by the authorities in connexion with the pool scene murders, and as time piles up Eli's body count, fear of discovery of his complicity in her "murders". He's trapped, and in more than one way: who could want to leave the best friend anybody could ever ask for?
I agree--not at 12, he couldn't really foresee all that would likely unfold if he stayed with Eli. On the other hand, no one could really fault him for choosing Eli over what he had.
sauvin wrote:Would he ever willingly procure for her? If he loves her the way I think he does, yes, he might, when there's no choice. Just how helpless is Eli after a hibernation? Just how adept is she at securing another Renfield before each hibernation (is her twenty-two decade track record spotless)? How well would these Renfields co-exist with Oskar, these predators whose natures would likely invariably be not terribly dissimilar to Hakan's? How much tolerance would Oskar have for their appetites? How much tolerance would they have for him?

Would Eli permit Oskar to procure for her under any circumstances? After having seen just how good life can be, even for such as herself, when there's an innocent Oskar to share it with, I think not. Certainly not at first; Eli seems to have an excellent instinct for what Oskar needs emotionally, as evidenced by her delicate handling at the film's bed scene and by her willingness to eat candy; it'd be no stretch of our imaginations for her to sense at some level that running these kinds of errands for her would have a deadly effect on his openness and innocence. I get a vague impression she'd rather die than give this up, something she may never know again if she lives to be a thousand years old. I think she'd forbid it.

And would Oskar listen? Show me a seventeen year old boy who can look at the potential consequences to his very soul (if that's the word I want) when confronted with the danger that the love of his life will slip irretrievably away if he takes no action, and I'll show you a boy who has not only vision and perspective far beyond his years, but comprehension of things many men three times his age never grasp. Oskar is gentle, loving, accepting, considerate, supportive and all kinds of other wonderful adjectives, but he's also a protector with an emotionally aggravated past. He'll do what he thinks he must, and like most of us, he'll likely think only in terms of immediate exigency.

This may prove most acute when the couple is faced with a "do or die" emergency in which Eli is unable to act, but Oskar is. He'd act decisively to defend her, and probably with overwhelming force.
I agree, I have always thought that Eli cherished Oskar because of his good qualities, and she would want to preserve them, I think. Oskar's slide into amoral depravity would probably start due to some exigent circumstance where she was in extreme need, and go downhill from there.
sauvin wrote: On this front, then, I could see a schism developing initally between the two on at least two different levels: Eli's wavering trust in the boy who won't listen to her two centuries of experience, and Oskar's inability to live with the fear of losing her. They'll fight, and not nicely. Would Eli understand Oskar's fear? I'd certainly like to think so - she seems so much more human than so many of us - but even if she understood it completely, what could she do? Would she be able to verbalise her understanding well enough to make Oskar understand the danger she'd see?
Maybe. I see a lot of tenderness and humanity in their relationship, too.

sauvin wrote:Another front I see being problematic is sexual. As he continues to mature, he'll have needs he won't understand at first, and Eli would likely understand only empirically. Would she try to accommodate his needs? Very likely, I think; she's certainly done far more for others for essentially pragmatic reasons, and (especially for those of us who've read the book) there's no reason to believe there's anything under the sun or moon she wouldn't give him, if she could. Being unable to experience this kind of passion for herself, though, would grow old rather quickly for both of them.

Furthermore, fanfiction has suggested many times that whatever sexual passion she could feel may morph very quickly and unexpectedly into something much darker. As I've asked in this forum before, if you'd just gone two or three days without food of any sort, and are starving, could you put a freshly cooked sausage link in your mouth and not bite? Spontaneous episodes of passion seem to be very much out of the question, particuarly when she's not fed recently.

And if Oskar were to take his love to town, would Eli understand and accept it? We have no idea how jealous or possessive Eli might be. We can only hope that if he were to do such a thing, she'd be big enough to understand that this, too, is something he does because he has to, just as she does distasteful things because she has to. One can hope, but it's irrational to hope it won't spark some more fights. It'd be only natural for Eli to feel threatened by people who can give him things she can't.

I have an unclear idea that the very idea of sexuality may be complex and problematic for Eli. I've posted (but not saved) a suggestion of the nature of these problems and their effects on the IMDB board under the thread "Is what Eli did wrong?" or something of similar intent; go look, if you're not squeamish. It's not nearly as graphic as I can be, but it's still strongly enough worded.
I agree that Eli would do what she could to please Oskar. To what extent she could understand it, is hard to say given the perpetually 12 yr-old scenario JAL has painted. Also, I would not rule out her ability to experience some form of sexual pleasure. Whether that could happen and what would happen if it did is very speculative. Thank goodness. :oops:
sauvin wrote:A third front is isolation. This is not small. Socialisation is incomplete at 12. Oskar won't have even what "normative" influences he might have had if he'd stayed in Blackeberg with his absentee mother and alcoholic werewolf father. Very nearly all the cultural and social values he'll accumulate and adopt now will be either through mass media or from Eli herself. She's only twelve herself, what kind of role model could she be for social and moral growth even if she were just in stasis without being a monster!?

And what, pray tell, would a child of today learn socially or morally from contemporary mass media?
All that I would add is the possibility that with Oskar as her companion, Eli might try harder to become "normal" to the extent she's able. I think she'd want Oskar to be as happy and "normal" as possible, so maybe she would change and become more of a human being. Develop some interests and goals beyond the impoverished existence she'd been living before she met Oskar. And if she couldn't do that, she might have a big enough love for Oskar to tell him, at some point, that it would be best for him if he left her. I don't think she'd want to see Oskar decay in front of her; that would depend on how selfish she is. Or, of course, they might decide the only option is to turn Oskar.

sauvin wrote:Yet another front is Oskar's anger. He has it, just ask the tree in the courtyard (or in the forest, if you read the book). It mollified considerably when he gave Johnny a sock for his split ear, and disappeared entirely when Johnny lost consciousness, but that's not to say it went away, just that Oskar's basic humanity came to the fore when he realised he may have just killed this boy. The movie Oskar went home hours later still flying on whatever magic carpet came his way on the ice - one imagines he felt emancipated and vindicated. It took years to instill the capacity for this kind of violence; it won't disappear watching CSF fluid leaking out of a boy's mouth or nose or listening to Lacke's noisy death no matter how much it might have sickened him at the time, and it'll almost certainly be exacerbated by the exhilaration he felt after the day on the ice.

The rage remains, however quiescent (or not), and as time passes with its profoundly dark and desperate moments because of Eli's "condition", it would necessarily accumulate.
Probably right. *Sigh*

sauvin wrote:Needless to say, my faith in humanity is somewhat less than total. More accurately, I have infinite faith in anybody's potential for sinking into primieval forms when appropriately stressed.

Could somebody - anybody - please punch holes in these impressions?
I wish it could be me. :cry:
sauvin wrote:Edit: I've hesitated to mention this, referring to it tangentially in the story: as Oskar grows, physically in any event, he obviously leaves Eli behind in many ways. This works to their advantage with respect to being able to rent apartments and suchlike, but may work against them in other ways. Who knows what kinds of things go on behind their closed doors (that we're not going to explore too deeply here!), but they're not always going to be just kissing or hugging. As he grows older, might Oskar not start seeing himself as being a bit sick for the kind of feelings he'll almost certainly develop for her? Might he not start seeing himself as another kind of Hakan? In this respect, it may be a very good thing they have to avoid social exposure, but Oskar can't avoid himself. What his neighbours might say about their relationship won't matter much to a man who lives outside society, but he might himself start feeling guilty - dirty - every time he looks at her, might he not?

He loves her, our Oskar at 40, for what she is when she's not the beast, but hates her also for what she makes him do, whether she realises it or not.
Yes, he might. Or his love for Eli might be so strong and shining that he would view any expression of that as beautiful, even if you and I would be taken aback. He's the only one she's got, and he knows that she's a lot "older" than 12.
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Re: Oskar at 40

Post by lombano » Sun Feb 07, 2010 3:00 pm

I'm afraid the only hole I can punch in this is the one about moral growth - my view is that at twelve this is largely complete. Yes, as people get older they'll appreciate nuance more, become more aware of the long-term ramifications of their actions, etc. But the basic cornerstones - a basic sense of fairness, etc, will either be there already or it's too late to do much about it. The Connys of the world merely become more sophisticated. In handing a sock to Conny, and in striking only once despite being tempted to murder him, book Oskar shows himself to be morally above most adults (and above film Oskar also). Thus Oskar would not lose out too much on moral growth solely by virtue of being isolated from society (the killings are another matter), but as for social growth you' re completely right. Even his lonely existence in Blackeberg was more socially normal than a life alone with the strangest child on the planet.

The Oskar in this piece is certainly very different from the one in the original story, but three decades of life with Eli is plausible as a cause for such change. Even this Oskar is not sadistic, he merely despises human beings, seeing them as worthless beings he will not hesitate to destroy if it's expedient. He's not a serial killer that kills for pleasure (sadists are probably born, not made). We know Eli did not seek a helper in him, but circumstances will inevitably mean he'll have to help sometimes. The seeds of Oskar's dehumanisation are there already: his society was destroying him, with everyone around him feckless at best (the school, the police, his parents, Tommy) and an active, enthusiastic participant at worst (the Forsbergs, Martin). Not everyone will be as strong as Eli to indefinitely resist such a toxic cocktail of having, on the one hand, powerful reasons to have a low opinion humanity and, on the other, needing to kill, hide, etc.

I'm not convinced Oskar would ever want something sexual with Eli, and my gut feeling is he wouldn't (but I don't know any boyfriends of twelve year old vampires that could enlighten me), that he would feel attracted to womanly curves and so on.

Perhaps this Oskar is worse than Hakan, but Hakan had lived with Eli for maybe a couple of months, not nearly thirty years.

The outcome in this piece is not the only conceivable one, but it certainly seems a possible one to me, which ties in with how I see the ending as profoundly bittersweet.
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Re: Oskar at 40

Post by gary13136 » Sun Feb 07, 2010 5:31 pm

All I can say is----WOW! :shock: I doubt seriously that Oskar, if he was real, would ever have reached this mental state, much less the age of 40. Eli would have killed him long before now--mercifully, I think. The only other possibility might be to turn him before he arrives at this point. But Oskar in this condition just isn't acceptable to anyone. Makes Hakan look like a saintly choirboy.

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Re: Oskar at 40

Post by PeteMork » Sun Feb 07, 2010 5:33 pm

A poster on the wall of John Hemingway’s office in the bus terminal, came immediately to mind when I read this.
“Life is a Dark Ride”

You have certainly filled in all the grim blanks, and presented a plausible outcome to their relationship. I only see one potential flaw. Eli had spent over 200 years alone. You yourself have described the resulting despair and anger in vivid detail in “The beast at the pool.” It took Eli 200 years to discover Oskar, despite all her victims, who, once entranced by her (as was Oskar when he brushed her cheek) , wanted to give her something or wanted comfort from her (The old lady in the book). This suggests that she was VERY selective in picking a soulmate -- and she wasn't really looking. (I’m sure we could all make better life choices if we had a 200-year-long list of prospects :twisted: ) My point is, everything Eli saw in Oskar when she carefully chose him out of this long list, was long gone before Oskar was sitting at the bar. She would have either left long ago, or nomed him in disgust, and gone on with her miserable life. The situation you depict is way too unstable IMO to have lasted that long, remembering what Eli is capable of when she gets pissed off –- or is “disenfranchised” again ;) .

The whole outcome of their lives is clearly dependent on the balancing act between what you think love is capable of, and the stark reality it is up against. I really don’t have a clue as to whether child love, protected from the “slings and arrows” forever, would be able to survive Oskar’s being turned into a monster. But your guess is certainly as valid as anyone’s here.

Well written and powerful, as usual.
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