Red Ranger 1

Message received and understood.I try to steer clear of personal attacks but I have been known to generalise or react in an overly emotional manner so I'll try and do better in future.

Gosh, I can't believe I've never looked in here before.It's really intense, isn't it? Up until recently, I'd always been very fond of Belle.But the last few months I've just gone right off her. I remember her when she first came in and some people didn't seem to like her because she'd split up two popular couples(Ric and Cassie and Lucas and Mattie).And having her possibly indirectly accidentally cause Flynn to die a bit earlier probably didn't get many people onside.But I really liked her and I wished Sal had let her stay.She seemed so feisty and independent but you could tell how vulnerable she was underneath.She seemed genuinely surprised to realise Irene and Ric cared for her and she was probably more affected by some of Cassie and Mattie's comments than she'd have liked to admit so I was glad they eventually became friends.(I liked it when the boys left her and Mattie alone so they could thrash it out and they pretended to be fighting when they came back...which, of course, meant job done.)And remember when she'd been needling Ric about Cassie cheating on him and then Drew did the same to her, so she went round to his house and got drunk so they all had to cover for her? But this last six months or so I've just started to like her less and less.The famous "scene on the rocks" with Aden was, in my opinion, one of Belle's worst moments.I've banged on a lot about Aden's behaviour during the Axel incident but it was hardly Belle's finest hour either.Aden's just put someone in hospital so she starts flirting with him?At the start of the episode she was visibly shaken but then she covered up the fact that Aden had arguably committed a serious crime.And just prior to that scene she made a rather ambiguous comment.After Tony's given Aden a lecture and he's ignored it, Belle said (and I apologise if I'm paraphrasing)"One minute you're defending Melody and I think you're all right, then you go and spoil it by acting like a loser."Now most people would assume she meant "You seemed really worried about Melody and I thought you were all right but then you just used it as an excuse to beat up Axel."But although he seemed angry on her behalf in the Den, it's hard to call that Aden "defending Melody".Worryingly, a more likely interpretation of the comment is "I liked that you beat up Axel for what he did to Melody but then you spoilt it by acting like a jerk to Tony."It quickly became obvious that, as with Drew, she was going to stand by Aden whatever he did.Whether that's strength or weakness is a matter of opinion but I know what I think. Then there was the cheating on Angelo.Okay, Aden was the one that pressured her into sleeping with him and emotionally blackmailed her into keeping it going but at least he wanted to be straight with everyone.Belle actually seemed to be stringing them both along, telling Aden she was going to break up with Angelo and constantly coming up with excuses to keep Angelo onside.Anything Angelo did afterwards is irrelevant in my opinion because it didn't affect Belle's behaviour.The frustrating thing is that after the trial, when Belle was ignoring Angelo's calls, Irene told her to be honest with him and if she had been she'd have saved everyone a lot of heartache.But instead she slept with him in a moment of weakness and made everything a hundred times worse. And as for the development storyline...I'm probably missing the point but I couldn't care less about the whole thing.Toxic waste had been there for years, the developers were removing it anyway, yet Belle kept acting as though it was something really urgent and instead of waiting for a thorough investigation she wanted everything done now, this very minute.It just made her seem immature and annoying. Maybe they make it clear in the episodes I haven't seen but half the time I couldn't even work out what she wanted:Was it about saving lives, exposing those responsible or just proving she was right? She seemed to spend the whole incident treating everyone really badly.She blew up at Angelo for doing his job and breaking up a violent protest, even though he'd repeatedly warned her to leave before things got nasty, and continued to treat him as the enemy after he stuck his neck out to keep her out of trouble.She wanted Aden to steal for her and help her break into the place when he was either facing trial or on a good behaviour bond and would have been in serious trouble if he'd been caught.She had a go at Rachel for doing the right thing and respecting her patient's privacy and then had the audacity to claim she wouldn't have minded Rachel handing out her details to some random girl on a crusade.The only way she could get the police to help her was by sleeping with one of them. She didn't have the sense to use Annie's soil analysis as evidence and half the time she just seemed to use it as an excuse to hang around Aden.(Why exactly did she go round to his place just so he could watch her look stuff on the computer, take him to the hospital with her and then ask Annie to lie to Angelo about it?)And all because Belle was apparently the only person who could save Summer Bay from, er, being exactly the same as it had been for at least ten years, possibly more. It's interesting that I haven't liked any of her relationships since she split up with Lucas.I liked her with Ric and I liked her with Drew the first time round but there was no way they should have got back together after he slept with Amanda.The fact they never seemed to be happy afterwards just made the fact they trampled over Lucas to be together all the more annoying.My views on her and Aden are on record in several places but let's just say I don't think they're any better.Ironically, her and Angelo had promise but she ruined it by pining for Aden the whole time.Can I put in a vote for her and Geoff?I first suggested it on a thread on which couples you'd like to see together, when she was breaking up with Drew and before Nic and Mel when he'd never had a girlfriend.And then they had their first proper scene together since he was first living there and she was embarassing him into leaving(bar him shouting at her in a corridor for arguing with Don)and I suddenly thought "My god, they've actually got chemistry!"And on the rare occasion they have a scene together, I just think how sweet they are.It could happen. It's never going to happen, is it?

I loved them.Absolutely loved them.I was surprised when they got together, seeing as how they didn't get off to the best start and it looked like they were just going to be friends, but they worked really well together.They had such an innocence about them that I didn't even care about the age difference. I loved when they both really wanted to kiss each other but weren't quite brave enough to do it and when he told her she was beautiful.It's no wonder she fell for him, he was probably the first person to love her for who she really was.Hated Christine when she stuck her oar in and ruined it. It's a shame it went a bit wrong towards the end.I didn't like Geoff splitting up with her at the party.He said he was doing it to save her trouble but it was hard to follow his reasoning:Christine wouldn't have a personality transplant just because they weren't seeing each other and all he was doing was taking away the one good thing in her life.I could understand Melody not wanting to just go back to being Geoff's girlfriend after what happened with Axel but having her disappear from the show as a result was a mistake.Even if she wasn't seeing Geoff anymore, she was supposed to be Annie's best friend but she just replaced her with Ruby.We didn't get any proper resolution to the Axel storyline because by the time we saw her again he was dead and the fact no-one thought about how it would affect her just underlined the fact no-one in the Bay really seemed to care what happened to her.And by the time she did finally reappear, Geoff had forgotten about her and they didn't seem to know what to do with her. I wouldn't actually mind them getting back together.I'm not suggesting it happens in the premiere or anything but further down the line, if things don't work out between him and Nicole...But I think they need to give Melody someone else in the meantime, rather than just having her pining over Geoff. Someone nice and normal, preferably without any psychological problems, who'll bring her out of herself a bit, like a Will/Peta relationship.

^No, I'm not actually familiar with that example of the genre.Maybe I'll look it up some time.When I'm not busy writing this, of course...

Oh, I'm rather enjoying this, it's different.Looking forward to more.

I agree, that was the perfect ending.A moment of honesty that allows them to move forwards to whatever the future brings.It was well worth waiting for.

Ha-hah!Belle kissed Geoff!Oh-and then she kissed Aden. Looking forward to the next chapter.

At a time when all the couples I like seem to be splitting up or leaving and the ones that I'm not keen on seem to be getting all the screentime, these two are a breath of fresh air:A pair that I enjoy watching, that actually seem to like being with each other and who I really want to stay together. It's just a pity that after all the drama of them getting together, they've been pretty much disappeared into the background, aside from those few episodes where they were worrying about taking it further. For a while, the writers seemed to have forgotten they were meant to be going out and just written them as friend:This is, after all, the couple who had three months between their first and second screen kisses.Hope they do a bit more with them next year.

As an aside, has it ever been established what happened to Aden's mother or indeed when it happened?There seems to be a general assumption that she's dead but I'm not sure if they've ever said it.The only time I can ever remember her being mentioned is when Belle found Larry drinking and he said something like "I fell apart a bit when I lost Aden's mother", which probably means she's dead but could possibly mean she walked out on them.

Yes, Geoff's attempts to chat up Belle were just hopelessly desperate.Or desperately hopeless.Really looking forward to the next update.

^Oh yeah, the 45th anniversary bash.And my brother who lives in Boston.You remember what I say better than I do. Try and get the next chapter up today.

Oh, good update.You're writing everyone's reactions really well.

Ooh, I quite like this one.Keep going. You're never going to let Geoff get Belle, are you..?Thought not.

Slade, I am beginning to think you know me far too well and I'm now wracking my brains trying to remember when I mentioned going to a Doctor Who convention.Let's just hope I never go mad and post one of my Home and Away/Survivors crossovers on here.(Isn't it strange that we now live in a world where people might understand what that means?) Hopefully the next chapter will be up some time today.

I had a feeling when they said Tony was going to get a surprise that Jed wouldn't be dead.Glad they didn't bring him back just so they could kill him and hope we see him again. Given that this is Coronation Street, we can be reasonably sure Tony's going to get his comeuppance. I'm hoping it'll be soon but I've a worrying feeling they might leave it dangling until Carla comes back from maternity leave. Not really liking Steve and Becky as a couple because I liked him and Michelle and I don't like him cheating.Mind you, given that JD was giving her interested looks the other day I wonder if they're going to end up together.

I'm surprised given that I like him and Scarlett that I think Daz and Victoria would be quite cute together.I wish she was a bit older though because it is faintly dodgy. I think the reason Debbie's staying away from Sarah is because she's worried it'll disrupt both their lives if she's sent to jail because of Shane.

Very amusing, good work. Geoff and Aden are terrible liars.And now you're going to have me spending all day trying to remember who's taller than who...

Okay, you've probably caught me in the wrong mood, when I'm going to admit that any ending that has Aden and Belle living happily ever after(?)is going to leave me cold. BUT that was a very well constructed story, the ending was probably appropriate for what it was, you obviously put a lot of thought into Aden and Belle's characters and their relationship and what they need from each other and if they'd been written a bit more like that in the show then I've a feeling they wouldn't set my teeth on edge quite as much as they do.And I would actually be interested in reading a sequel because there seems a lot unexplored. And I LOVED Annie's little cameo.

Oh dear.It does look as though we're going to have to agree to disagree but, apologies, I'm still going to have my two pen'orth.Regarding the sociopath thing, I'm surprised to find that most if not all of those do actually apply to Aden to a certain degree.What I think it means is someone with different values:not only does he often see nothing wrong with the way he's acting, he expects no-one else to see anything wrong as well.It was interesting that even when Belle came to see him at the clinic, he still seemed to be expecting her to "see sense"(my phrase, not his)and agree with what he had done. Now, I don't know what constitutes a breakdown and I'm not sure if anyone else reading this does.But to say that he didn't know what he was doing or wasn't in control of his actions does seem to be going a bit far.It's not as though Aden was lashing out blindly, he was pursuing an agenda that was consistent with his earlier beliefs and attitudes.He also seemed to be capable of quite complex thoughts and of adapting to changes in his situation. When Rachel turned up, as she said at the time, he crossed a line, not just by targetting an innocent bystander who got in the way but by moving from passively refusing to help his father to actively preventing him from getting help.He had enough understanding of the situation to contact Belle(how we don't know)and tell her he was going to be out of town so no-one would come looking for him.(And was able to do so in a way that didn't cause her to suspect anything was wrong, although she did have other things on her mind at the time.)He was also able to see that people would be looking for Rachel and so had the foreknowledge to hide her car. The moment where he tries to inject his father is possibly the only moment when he seemed to be acting out of manic desperation, since it did seem to be a spur of the moment decision.It's telling that that was the only time Belle's words seemed to have any effect on him, suggesting it was the only time he wasn't certain of his actions.Would she have been able to talk him round completely if the police hadn't turned up?Maybe and that in itself suggests he was still capable of making considered decisions. But even when he was at the clinic and his behaviour had become more that which people would consider normal for him, he still believed what he did was right for an awfully long time. Sorry to bang on.

I'm sorry you saw it that way because, um, that was actually me trying to be reasonable.I wouldn't consider Aden evil but, without trying to labour the point or make extreme comparisons, I'm just using it as an example of someone committing a crime, murderers are often human as well.Slade just made a good point about the fact that everyone seems to think Aden's abuse lets him off the hook but no-one thinks the same about Larry. As I said before, my main problem with this argument is the length of time Aden's actions lasted.If he'd lashed out at his father in anger, even killed him, you could argue that was a moment of madness or a simple reflex.But spending two days sitting there watching him slowly die seems a bit of a long time not to have second thoughts.

Oh boy, what have we started?Okay, firstly my problem with the Tam incident, and I realise this is a result of me psychoanalysing it far far too much, is that in retrospect it pretty much looks like a substitute for sex.(And as for the drinking, no he didn't force her.But it was a kind of peer pressure. She looked surprised and uncertain when he gave her the drink but she went along with it because she liked him.) Axel.I would definitely call that pre-meditated.We don't know what happened when Aden found Axel, he might have confessed, he might have said something that made Aden realise he was lying, he had tried to force himself on Belle immediately beforehand and Aden pulled him off(but then people believed Annie's claims because he'd done something similar with Tam), some people have suggested Aden might have known something about Axel we didn't(although that raises the question of why he was friends with him).But the way he exited the Den, telling Belle "If you see Axel, tell me", he'd obviously already decided to do some damage.My main problems are firstly that Aden never showed any remorse and secondly that no-one in Summer Bay seemed particularly bothered about what he'd done.In fact, Belle actually seemed to soften towards him after that which raises a few questions. What he did to his father and Rachel I probably wouldn't call pre-meditated.He didn't go to the house with the intention of killing his father or allowing him to die and he neither planned nor wanted to kidnap Rachel, it was just a case of wrong place, wrong time.However, while he was(is?)undoubtedly troubled, I'm not entirely convinced about him suffering a breakdown or not being responsible for his actions.He found out his father could have stopped his abuse so he wanted him to die.That is a conscious choice.Despite claims he was a different person, his actions seemed consistent with his earlier attitudes, his beating of Axel and his statement a few weeks earlier that he wished his grandfather was still alive so he could make him pay.Let's not forget he kept Rachel and his father prisoner for nearly two days.That's not a moment of madness or a spur of the moment decision.He could have ended it at any time.Did he deserve to go to jail?Well, it's all right saying "It wouldn't have helped him" but since when was a sentence supposed to help the perpetrator?And I don't think having a reason for your actions automatically translates as being not guilty.If someone commits murder and they've got a motive, you don't say "Would going to jail help them?", you say "Does their crime justify this sentence?" Regarding the earlier comments about who knows what, I think people's attitude towards Aden pre- and post-trial has been very badly written.When Aden came out of the clinic, people like Alf and Irene, who didn't like Aden before he kidnapped their family and friends, pretty much welcomed him back with open arms.It was if no-one cared what he'd done or why he'd done it.I wanted to know how people reacted to him at school but we got about half a scene of Matthew taunting him at the surf club, causing him to skip school rather than put up with it.And then when he did go to school, we didn't get a single scene of him there.There was a very strange scene during the trial where Rachel was expressing her regret that she wasn't allowed to say anything to help Aden and Tony and Jack just sat there not saying anything.What exactly did they make of it?Did they know why Rachel was trying to help Aden after what he'd done to her or did they just accept it? And then Aden's speech at the trial was written as something major but nothing happened as a result. He said that if he told the court what happened to him everyone would know but no-one's said a word. The only person in court who didn't seem to know already was Nicole and she hasn't said a word either. Did the papers report what had happened?Are we supposed to assume everyone in Summer Bay knows and they're all too polite to say anything?"There's going to be consequences,"said Roman when he saw Aden at the police station.How I laugh at that line. Going completely off topic, those two incidents, the kidnap and Axel, seem to be part of a curious affliction going around at the moment, storylines being abandoned instead of resolved.When Irene and Geoff tried to split up Jai and Annie, there was no real pay-off, we just saw Geoff standing next to Jai at the surf carnival as if they're suddenly friends.Which is why, and people who've seen beyond UK pace might be laughing at me now, having just seen Nicole's revelation at the Halloween party, I'm not expecting it to be mentioned again.

Loved the opening scene and the sudden realisation that they were in the kitchen.Belle and Angelo's memorial was kinda sweet as well.

I actually quite like the fact that the threads have been combined.Before there was a feeling that if you saw something in the anti or appreciation thread that you disagreed with you weren't allowed to present an opposing opinion.At least here there's room for a proper discussion.

They've been using that word in Coronation Street for donkey's years.I remember Jim McDonald calling Liz that which must be about fifteen years ago now.I had to look it up...

Wow, that was a really powerful chapter.Well done.