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The Shepards; About time they got their own thread
Topic Started: Apr 16 2010, 09:43 AM (373 Views)
GreaseLightning
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"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."
The Shepards. Tim, Curly, and Angela. Thoughts on them? Dislikes? Post it here.

Edited by GreaseLightning, Apr 16 2010, 09:44 AM.
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Megan
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I love love love Curly. I'm a sucker for a well written Curly fic. I'm not exactly sure why I like him so much.

And Tim, how can you not like Tim? He's an amazing character. I think I really sarted liking him when Ponyboy is talking about when he and Curly played chicken and Tim 'just happened to stroll by' and then threated them to never do it again or something. It paints a really funny picture.

I'm starting to like Angela too. She probably has to be a really tough chick because of what shes surrounded by. She needs more love in the fandom.
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Jayme
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Stay Gold...
I really like Tim and Angela. There isn't much of a description of Curly, so I can't say that I have any thoughts on him. He has street smarts, but no book smarts (or so Pony and Bryon say). Tim irks me as a cool, calm and collected type of person who won't fight unless he's in a mood, revenge, or if it's necessary.

Having to live up to the expectations of two eldest brothers, Angela sure has it hard. I can only imagine the shit she has to deal with. Her parents screaming all the time, and sometimes her brothers even join in. I don't know, she's amazing for having to deal with all of that. She's not afraid of any boy, as Bryon says, which obviously means she's confident. Sometimes she's overly confident, which can result in a lot of drama for her.
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Erin
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I love the Shepards -- there are so, so few good fics about them out there.

Tim actually doesn't interest me as much as the other two. Maybe because there's actually a fair amount of stuff about him out there if you look hard enough. I see him as calm, calculating, and controlled to the point of coldness. He's a natural leader -- after all, he's able to keep track of a gang and two younger siblings while doing stints in jail. I think he doesn't really separate fear from respect, which is why he disciplines his gang so harshly.

Love Curly. We don't get a whole lot on him in the book, and he's so rarely written about, but I think he'd be an awesome character to read about. There really aren't enough good Curly fics out there. I think that, while he doesn't have rocks for brains, he's definitely not the brightest bulb in the bunch, so to speak. But I think a lot of his problem is that he's really impulsive and tends to say and do things without thinking. (Pair him with Pony and you're just asking for trouble, lol.) I can also see him being a bit of an ass around girls because he thinks he's impressing them. But I just ... I don't know what it is about him, but I love him.

Angela was probably my favorite part of TWTTIN besides the Outsiders connections. I think it's partly because we're pretty much polar opposites in personality, but I just love reading about her. Unfortunately, I can't remember the last good Angela fic I read. She's a gutsy girl, I think, but not as tough as Bryon thinks she is. Everyone has a breaking point, and I can definitely see her reaching the end of her rope, considering what she has to deal with. I can see her having a bit of a bad rep that's not totally undeserved, but is something she feels like she can't move past. Something about that is so sad to me, especially because I think she's pretty smart and could go places if she were in different circumstances.

So. I think the fandom needs more Shepard love, especially for Angela and Curly. There's so much room for development there, and I think the right writer could turn a Shepard fic into something really awesome.
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R.M.
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My image of Tim is very much Tim as written by Mars in Triangle and Holding Back the Years. That's the Tim that's cemented in my mind.

I love Curly and I hate seeing him written as a complete imbecile in fic. He's described as a miniature Tim and I can't imagine that's meant as a physical comparison only. Though I do see Curly being slightly more emotional than Tim. In my world, he's very much a "act first, think later" kind of guy. To me, that could contribute to his "not that bright" reputation. It's not that he's not smart, just that he tends to be emotionally charged and a little more impulsive than Tim. Also in my world, Curly is a one woman guy and is dating Katie Mathews, Two-Bit's little sister. Things between them work well because she knows that inside the tough hood exterior that he shows when they're around other people is the guy who's crazy about her and isn't afraid to show it when they're alone or with their closer friends and family.

I think Angela is definitely underused in the fandom. She's another canon female that could almost be used as an OFC. I haven't used her much in my own work, but the impression I have of her is that she puts on the tough girl act because of who her brothers are but isn't really nearly as tough as she would have you believe. Because of this, I think she gets herself into trouble and situations that she can't handle on her own and has to rely on her brothers to fix it. That can lead to a whole new set of problems for her because their solutions may not be the best thing for her.
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Jen
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Let's go to the ma-a-all.
R.M.
Apr 16 2010, 03:11 PM
My image of Tim is very much Tim as written by Mars in Triangle and Holding Back the Years. That's the Tim that's cemented in my mind.

I love Curly and I hate seeing him written as a complete imbecile in fic. He's described as a miniature Tim and I can't imagine that's meant as a physical comparison only. Though I do see Curly being slightly more emotional than Tim. In my world, he's very much a "act first, think later" kind of guy. To me, that could contribute to his "not that bright" reputation. It's not that he's not smart, just that he tends to be emotionally charged and a little more impulsive than Tim.

I think Angela is definitely underused in the fandom. She's another canon female that could almost be used as an OFC. I haven't used her much in my own work, but the impression I have of her is that she puts on the tough girl act because of who her brothers are but isn't really nearly as tough as she would have you believe. Because of this, I think she gets herself into trouble and situations that she can't handle on her own and has to rely on her brothers to fix it. That can lead to a whole new set of problems for her because their solutions may not be the best thing for her.
I basically agree with what RM's said, lol. Especially about Curly. Infact, despite the Curly non-lovers out there - and I know there are a few, lol - I think he deserves his own thread :P

Angela's never really interested me all that much. I don't even know why because she's a great character, but I've never had any urge to write her or really read about her. In fact, I've only read a few good fics about her and she only turns up once in my Curly fic, lol.

I think RM used the perfect words to describe Curly - more emotional. I definitely think his emotions can get the better of him and that's why he ends up doing some stupid things. Whether to prove a point or show he just as tough as Tim or whatever, I think emotions has a lot to do with it.
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aero
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The Annihilator
I am really hoping my fingers and brain decide to cooperate with me here. My whole Shepard universe is really messy and sometimes doesn't make much sense. But it works in my head, and sometimes that's good enough.

Let's start with Mrs. Shepard. She's not necessarily a bad mom, but she had kids way before she was ready. It resulted in her turning into a very bitter lady way too early in life.

Mrs. Shepard has five kids in my head, her first two being the twins Tip and Leslie. There was much confusion on Mrs. Shepard's part about who their actual dad was because she was living with one guy while seeing another. Eventually she figures out that Tip and Leslie don't belong to the guy she's living with, and that realization leads her to moving in with their real dad four years later. Nobody understands why it took her so long, but the real dad isn't impressed to learn that she's pregnant again, even though it is his kid.

So then Tim is born, and Mrs. Shepard takes on the habit of neglecting her three kids. This plants a seed in Tim's head very early on in life that he can trust no one, and if he wants something done right, he has to do it himself. He's the family's scapegoat and is blamed for everything that goes wrong, and even as he gets older and being home is a rarity, it doesn't change.

He teaches himself to suppress his feelings at an early age. But he gets jealous when he sees other kids with their parents, and he wonders what he did to screw everything up so badly. Tip, even though he has his own life selling drugs and managing his own gang, is always trying to drill it into Tim's head that it's not his fault.

Tim has a fair bit of skeletons in his closet. Both his dad (Pop) and older brother Leslie get off on knocking him around and using him when nobody else is home, and nobody would guess that he's any sort of victim because he keeps everything so suppressed and anchored under this stone-like mask. As a result of not being able to control things at home and being thoroughly disappointed with the way Tip's running that gang of his, he takes over with little difficulty at the tender age of sixteen. It provides him with a way out and a reason to not come home at night.

Most everybody he knows would say he's calm, calculated, patient and smart. He can strike fear into people twice his size and twice his age, and the art of manipulation is on his side because that's the only thing Leslie ever taught him.

However, despite Tim being so calm and collected on the outside, he's constantly fighting wars against himself inside his head. He's angry, shares his mother's bitter outlook on everything, and stupidity genuinely disgusts him. He has a hard time giving people the time of day, running his gang comes naturally to him, and the only reason he keeps tabs on Curly and Angela is because if he doesn't, nobody else is going to.

He isn't as complex as everyone makes him out to be, and he might seem as if he doesn't have a breaking point, but he does. It's just impossible to find unless you're Leslie or Pop. He shares Pop's temper, believes in his own disjointed version of God, graduated from high school and would love to get out of Tulsa.

By the time he's eighteen, he's managed to establish a pretty good bond with his brother Tip, even though the circumstances under which the bond was made have left him perpetually scarred.

Now let's move onto Angela.

It's something of a common Shepard trait to be horribly misunderstood. Tim has set a ridiculously huge standard for her to live up to in the eyes of the public, and she figures that the only way to attain it is to mimic her brother's cold and bitter outlook on everything.

She's a very smart and witty girl who can hold her own in a bitch fight as well as the fights that go on at home. None of it gets to her because she doesn't really consider her family "family". Except Tim, and she's not sure why, so she blames it on them being only sixteen months apart.

Fortunately she isn't home enough to have to deal with anything that really goes on at home. Unfortunately, she has little sense of responsibility and doesn't listen to anything anybody tells her to do. She has this innate fear of ending up like her mother, so she doesn't sleep with every guy she comes in contact with. There's no shame in shameless flirting and a few heated make-out sessions as long as things stay above the waist. Most of the guys she dates are too scared to go much further, anyways, because they don't want to end up getting gutted by Tim.

As far as school goes, she goes on and off, mostly just to get away from things when she's had enough. She has a nasty tendency of unintentionally weaving herself tangled webs, but she always comes out on top. She's a Shepard--would you expect any less?

She owes a lot to Tim and Tip, but would never thank either of them for anything. It annoys her how Tim always has tabs on her, but she is grateful because Lord only knows where she'd be without 'em. She's extremely talented when it comes to keeping herself detached from most everyone and everything, and unlike Tim, she has no wars to rage against herself because she doesn't take much of anything seriously and there isn't a lost she has to put up with.

And finally Curly.

The big thing with Curly is that he wears his heart on his sleeve. He thinks he's steeled himself to all of the issues at home, but he hasn't. It bugs him that his mom is never home, Pop's an asshole, and since he's the youngest, he gets walked all over. He hates how there never seems to be any food in the fridge unless Tip buys it, he knows Tim is putting up with a bunch of shit from Pop and Leslie, but he doesn't know exactly what it is. And he wants to keep it that way because while he cares, he knows he'll lose his head and do something stupid because that's how he deals with the things that bug him.

He's a smooth talker, and his friends think he's an ace liar, but his family knows when he's talking nothing but bull. For reasons unknown, he looks up to Tim and is constantly trying to prove his worth. He sees the sort of respect Tim gets from people, and thus Curly tries to emulate that because he's sick of people spitting on him.

Nobody really takes Curly seriously. He's the kind of person who fades into the background wherever he goes and doesn't know what to do about it. Pop taught him not to speak unless spoken to, so he generally keeps his mouth shut. That's why people think he's stupid when he's not--he's just a kid. Most of the things he does are for attention, like playing chicken and getting sent to the reformatory. Like anyone, he just wants to be noticed, even if it takes damn near getting himself killed to do so.

While he isn't sensitive, and he isn't a cry baby, he definitely feels. He's like an open book and couldn't suppress his emotions if he wanted to. One of the only things Tim has really taught the kid is how to fight, so Curly makes damn sure he's damn good at it. The only problem is that he tends not to use his head when it counts because he's always got so much on his mind.

He's a sad kid, really, full of hate and jealousy and anger. He's easily swayed and manipulated into doing what people want him to because he knows it's the closest thing to attention he's ever going to get. Eventually, when he's older, he'll get himself sorted out and realize that the reason nobody accepted him was because he could never accept himself.

And that's The Shepards as I see them.








Edited by aero, Apr 16 2010, 09:45 PM.
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Allison
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I love the Shepards, and have crafted a very detailed universe for them.

I have Tim as having a different father than his siblings. Tim is Charlie Hale's son, who was his mom's high school sweetheart at the time. When Tim's born, Paula drops out of high school and eventually marries Charlie, who vows to take care of her and their new son. Everything's fine for the first year or two, but despite Charlie providing for her, she grows bored of her mundane house wife lifestyle and starts to wish she had something more exciting. When Tim is about 3, she has an affair with Tom Brown, a guy she randomly picked up at a bar. Curly is the result, and she then takes Tim with her and walks out on Charlie.

She later marries him and has Angela with him. Tom seems to spoil Angela and Curly at first and appears to be a decent father to Tim, but only when people are looking. Tom abuses Tim, and Paula is completely unaware or in denial of this. She thinks Tim makes it up to smite her for leaving his dad or that he's just looking for attention.

Tim struggles in late childhood and early adolescence. He longs to live with his father, whom he has good relationship with. Unfortunately Paula keeps full custody of him. When Tim is 12, his father is killed in a drive by shooting. Tim struggles even more after this.

Back to the deal with Tom... Tom treats Paula well for the first few years she's with him, but as his alcohol abuse worsens, he becomes not only abusive to Tim, but to her and Curly and Angela, as well. Paula puts up with this for a while and blames herself for the abuse and justifies his abuse by telling herself she deserves it for not being a better wife or that her kids behave badly. She's in complete denial that he's cheating on her and bears the abuse until finally discovers Tom is sexually abusing Angela. This is the last straw for Paula and leaves Tom for good.

For the next couple of years, Paula gets a job and does the best to provide for her three children. She changes her last name and the names of her children back to her maiden name, Shepard, to distance herself from Tom. But even though her intentions are good, she finds herself in similar positions she's been in before... picking up random men, having one night stands, etc. While she does genuinely care about her children, they often get brushed aside for her latest romantic interest and she's rarely ever home.

Around this time, Tim begins get involved with gang and eventually form his own. With his mother gone most of the time, he has very little supervision and plenty of time gang activities outside of her knowledge. He drags Curly along with him in a lot of this.

Also due to the lack of parental supervision, Tim takes on somewhat of an authority role with his younger siblings out of necessity. He's continually keeping an eye on both of them because if he doesn't, no one else will.

Paula becomes pregnant again with her latest boyfriend, Lyle's, kid. They get married quickly, and Paula, though not enthusiastic at first, begins to look forward to having another and a family again. Nine months later, a baby girl they name Melanie is born. Everything is honeymoonesque for a while, but then when Melanie is 1, she dies unexpectedly from and unknown cause. Lyle and especially Paula take this hard and much tension begins to build up in there marriage and lots of fighting follows.

That's it for the background info on my Shepard verse...

Now to take a lot at them as individuals:

Paula-Paula has always meant well and really does love her children. Motherhood was thrown at her at a very young age, and in some ways, I think she resents not getting the opportunity to enjoy her freedom in adulthood and this comes through in her encounter with men. When she is around to parent, she's fairly lenient with her children and is often times a best friend type of role, allowing her kids to smoke and drink freely at home. In fact, she often joins them. Overall, she may seem to put herself over her kids, but in the end, she would do anything for her children. Melanie's death pushes her over the edge, though, and she becomes miserable and psychotic.

Charlie-Charlie is a genuinely good guy, and if Paula had it to do over again, she probably would've stuck with him. But while his character has many redeemable qualities, he takes up many dangerous gang activities and eventually gets himself killed in longstanding gang fued. Like father, like son, eh? He's a good father to Tim and does his best to be there for him from a distance, despite Paula retaining full custody due to his history of drug abuse.

Tom- Tom is pretty self-explanatory from his actions. He's abusive, controlling, and manipulative at his worst. At his best, he's charming and romantic.

Tim-Tim is a very bitter young man who was forced to grow up way too fast. There's a lot of resentment and spite in him, and he channels a lot of his angst into running his gang. His gang becomes his escape and outlet from his shitty life. He appears calm and in control on the outside, but is very nervous on the inside and completely unsure of himself. Because of this, he feels the need to establish a tough, unshakable front. Despite appearing firm and tough, Tim does have a soft spot for Curly and Angela and cares about them a lot. He'd never admit it or say it, but he does love them and cares about them a great deal. For this reason, he takes it upon himself to keep an out for them and even set boundaries for them when he feels he needs to.

Curly-Curly has always been a wild child. He's very impulsive and loves to have a good time. Unfortunately he tends to act on every impulse before even registering a thought in his mind, and this drives Tim crazy. Tim hopes that Curly will one day take on more leadership in his gang and is continually trying to train him do do so, but Curly's never been much of one to be in charge of anything. He's just in it for the kicks and excitement. BUT he does have a serious side and if he spots to take the time to think, he's actually very intelligent. He's very passionate and falls hard in relationships. He doesn't always make the best of choices, but you can't help but love the guy.

Angela-Angela is very much her mother's daughter and takes after her in many ways. She's witty and smart, but like her mother, often resorts to using her body to get her way with men. She's very troubled and unsure of herself as a person and continually is trying to find herself. Unfortunately, this results in her getting herself into a lot messes--some of which even Tim can't pull her out of. She admires and looks up to Tim, and because of this she adopts his coping mechanism of having a tough front, but she certainly does have a breaking point. I see her as an innocent little girl when she was young. Definitely sweet and charming, but like Curly and Tim, she was thrown into a world she wasn't ready for at a very young age.

Lyle-Lyle is a bit sleazy, but does have a few redeemable qualities. He does provide for Paula, but pretty much ignores Tim, Curly, and Angela. His daughter Melanie's death turned him even more bitter than he already was. He and Paula both take it very hard and turn to taking out their frustration on each other.

And that is my mess of a Shepard universe in a nutshell.
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