Red Ranger 1

In case any Adelle fans are disappointed that I split them up again...sorry.Genuinely.I know it's no fun reading about your favourite couple splitting up.I wasn't even planning on doing it when I first had this idea but as it went on I realised I needed to.Given that this is the third, possibly fourth, fiction in which I've done it, I'm worried it's becoming a compulsion.

Oh...my...god.Was not expecting that ending.What's going to happen to Charlie now?What exactly happened to Angelo?Was that a moment between him and Rachel?And is there anyone left alive in Summer Bay these days?

Good that Aden knows about everything, I really liked that moment when he barged into the bathroom and Belle just freaked out.Things seem to be happy between them now...Waiting to see what happens next.

Ahhh!Glad they're all all right, looking forward to more.

Im getting sick of Geoffs behaviour at the moment. He is is soooo jelous he really needs to lighten up a bit! Well, I think the fact they're even bringing up the subject of Aden and Nicole suggests it's still a possibility.(Do I need to mention my Ric and Mattie analogy again?I think even I'm tired of hearing it.)

I disagree.What exactly did they do to rehabilitate him, get him to clean a couple of walls?There's no reason he couldn't be rehabilitated in prison:It might not work for everyone but then neither does giving him a slap on his wrist and sending him on his way.To my mind, the seriousness of his crimes warranted a custodial offence but apparently if you say you're sorry and make a big speech about your terrible childhood they'll let you off.The real problem with this argument is the complete inconsistency:His father and brother were both abused, which probably led to their crimes, but everyone seems quite happy to leave them to rot in jail.What Aden did to Axel was exactly the same as what his brother did to Ric, never mind what he did to his father and the others, but he's apparently still in prison four years on and Aden got off scot free.

Oh god!How could you leave it like that?Really want to know what happens next.

Gosh, what's happened to Angelo?And where's Charlie? Martha probably needs to tell Roman, although at least she's got Alf supporting her so she's not alone. Can't be easy without Jack. Looking forward to the next update.

That was a really good chapter.Liked Belle's fury at the opening and how it stopped when she saw how bad Aden looked.Liked Mattie consoling him as well.Wondering what the men want.

I'm finding it hard to think of another character who deliberately tried to kill someone and escaped jail. (Although there probably are some.)I get that they wanted him to stay in the show but he could have got six months, out in three without it affecting things too much.Instead, they basically said what he did didn't matter.

Gosh, that was good.Really exciting what's happening to Charlie, want to see what happens next.

I do think Aden and Nicole would work better with each other than Belle and Geoff but yeah, I doubt they'd split up Aden and Belle or Geoff and Nicole permanently, so I hope it is a load of nothing rather than a five minute relationship before they get back together with their "proper" partners.

I agree with a lot of what you say, Jody, if they really did know how long they had Celeste for it was handled appallingly.As I said earlier, the storyline might have worked if played out over months rather than days but for me it just didn't. I didn't enjoy those last few scenes, partly because Melody was leaving and I didn't want her to but partly because it felt like a completely faux happy ending and I just couldn't see it turning out well.It relied on Melody and Christine acting against every instinct they'd previously shown.I'd been worried right from the start that they were going to suddenly turn Christine nice because it would be a complete cop out.And they did and it was.When she said she'd always been proud of Melody, it was so obviously a lie I didn't know whether to laugh or throw something at the screen.(Even when she was calling her evil?Even when she dragged her up in front of the school meeting to tell them all how badly behaved she'd become?) Ever since she humiliated Melody at the school meeting and ranted almost incoherently at Miles, I've been convinced Christine isn't just a bad parent or overly strict, she's actually mentally unstable.The exorcism and kidnap attempt just proved it.Alf even said of Audrey "She's not well" and it's equally true of Christine.There's no sign she's had counselling or treatment so, however much she might want to change, I think she'd end up acting in exactly the same way sooner or later.People have suggested what Melody has been through has made her stronger and more able to stand up to her but it wouldn't work in my opinion.She tried standing up to her last time and she would have been in real trouble if Miles and Geoff hadn't been there.And now they aren't.

^I think we did know about Aden's abuse at that point, it was after Larry had told Rachel about it and after he'd started living at Roman's.It seemed to be one more step on the road to the kidnap incident, with Aden wanting to punish someone for his abuse, he seemed to beat up Axel as a substitute for his grandfather and then do the same with Larry once he discovered his true place in things. I do wish they hadn't killed Axel, it was a waste of a character who still had potential, although I think his friendship with Aden was pretty much dead in the water:I can only remember two scenes together after the beating, both of which involved Aden getting physical with him, and his reaction to his death was practically non-existent, he was, perhaps understandably, more bothered about Larry being involved.I agree I don't want to see Aden and Geoff become friends, it would be too out of character, keep them just being civil.The scene where Aden came to pick Belle up for the formal was pitched perfectly:Aden unable to resist the opportunity to wind him up and Geoff giving him a "Oh, I've got to deal with you again, have I?" look.

You've probably got a point, again, on at least two levels.Thinking about it, I do tend to get into Aden's head more than other characters, possibly because there's often more of a difference between what he's thinking and what he's doing.I tend to let character's words speak for themselves a bit but we do sometimes need the thoughts behind them so I'll do my best to remedy it a bit.

It's a shame you're not continuing with the collaboration but I look forward to your "alternate endings".

Good one-shot.It was sweet and romantic.

Oh my god!I did not see that ending coming at all.Really great twist.I loved the start, when Belle was willing to risk putting herself in pain to comfort Lizzie.Can't wait to read what happens next.

Oh crikey, let's see if I can remember this...They found out that one of the prison guards was working for Johnny so Mattie and Belle worked out this plan where Lucas posed as one of Johnny's gang and told the guard that the gang member who killed Rocco was getting jumpy, so he'd pass the message on to Johnny.And Ric paid one of the other prisoners to spy on Johnny so when he rang the gang member to find out what was going on they found out who it was.Then Peter and the boys descended on his house and found him burning blood-stained clothes or something.I think they got the guard to squeal as well.

Ohhh, I was worried she wasn't going to tell him and because they'd been arguing he's going to think that's why she's acting strangely.Looking forward to the next update.

Actually, given that the news about came out before Kym Marsh's real-life tragedy, I am wondering if it's still going to happen.

Okay, so we've finally seen her departure over here.And her last scene was both better and worse than I expected.They did manage to get almost everyone important there to see her off, I'm glad she got moments with Alf, Jai, Annie and especially Geoff and a little moment of semi-reconciliation with Nicole.(It's easy to forget they were actually friends for a bit.)I wish Ruby had been there:They were supposed to be friends but they didn't have any scenes together all year.I wish too they could have found a way to have a farewell with Kirsty, they were both in the previous episode and we missed out on it when she left town.Other than that it was fine...until the end when we didn't actually see her leave! She just wandered out of frame while we were left watching Geoff and Nicole argue! Which brings me on to her reason for leaving.I'm sorry but what were they thinking?They spent the preceding weeks if not months stressing how badly living with her mother had screwed Melody up, then sent her right back to her mother so she could potentially screw her up again?All the arguments against it were completely valid:She couldn't trust her, just because she wanted a relationship with her mother didn't mean it was actually possible.Christine may have seemed to have a personality transplant but she apparently turned over a new leaf once before, after the assault when she [presumably] dropped the charges against Geoff and let him and Melody see each other, only to turn up again worse than ever.Losing Melody was a shock to her and made her do what it took to get her back, but now that she's got want she wants I can't help thinking everything would go back to normal pretty quickly. And what was all that stuff with Melody's gran about?Are they suggesting Christine only treated Melody like that because that's how she was treated?If so, it just shows once again what an incredibly forgiving person Melody is-when Aden found out that his father(not even the person who abused him)had as rubbish a childhood as he did, his response was to try and kill him.More realistically, I can't help remembering when Nicole's mother came back:She was glad to get back on speaking terms with her but didn't even consider going back to live with her because she knew nothing would change.When Irene moved to the Bay, Fin and Damian gave her a chance but kept living with Michael and Pippa because they'd had too many false dawns and couldn't trust her.If the whole thing had played out over months instead of days, with Melody getting to know her mother again whilst still living with Miles or at least living in the Bay where her friends and her new family could keep an eye on her and then Christine had asked her to move away with her, it might have worked.But instead they just let Christine take her off to another country where she could do whatever she liked to her and no-one would know. "I've come full circle" says Melody just before she leaves.She's right and that's not a good thing. It feels as though all the months living with Miles have been rendered meaningless, she's given up all the new relationships she's built for a filial affection that's just appeared out of nowhere, letting herself be sucked back into the dysfunctional family she escaped from.At the end of the Melbourne trip, she was talking about how hard it is without people that care about you around.But the very next thing she did was go to somewhere even further away where she only knew one person, who we'd seen time and time again can't be relied upon.And the worst thing is, we'll probably never know what happened. Slim though the chance may be, I hope she's happy.No, actually, I hope she's miserable and she comes back.If they want to do it without undermining her exit(even though it was rubbish and deserves to be undermined), I think they should have her mother die shortly after their reunion, a la Bruce Campbell, so she has to come and live with Miles.So long as it doesn't leave her too angsty.I want my Melody nice, happy and most importantly in the show.

Believe it or not, whatever my personal feelings on the subject, I was originally going to have Aden apologise to Tam and them put it behind them.Then I thought "Nah, Aden wouldn't apologise, he'd get embarrassed and put his foot in it."

I liked Aden a bit when he was first living with Roman and seemed to be change but after the way he behaved during the Axel incident I just accepted I wasn't going to like him.I'll put up with him if he behaves himself but that's as far as it goes.I think possibly his biggest problem is that he's almost incapable of admitting or accepting when he's done wrong.Which is why he's never apologised to Geoff or Angelo for the way he treated them, why to this day he thinks there's nothing wrong with what he did to Axel and why he needed a counsellor to point out that no matter how bad a parent something is you don't go around trying to give them a lethal injection and why he was able to stand up in court and go "I know I shouldn't have done it but he let me be abused so I had a good reason." With regards to reparations, as a result of her spending her wedding day tied up in a shed watching a man experience liver failure, Rachel and Tony were left with an awful lot of costs for a wedding that never happened.So if Aden really did want to make it up to her, instead of expecting(or at least hoping) that she'd just go back to liking him after an obligatory apology, he could have offered to reimburse them, seeing as how it was basically his fault. (And I notice someone's fixed that header...)

Hey there, doola.Yeah, I'm going to try and argue some points.I've written essays about Aden's guilt or innocence but surely if he had had a "complete mental breakdown" then he wouldn't have stood trial in the first place, he'd have been judged unfit to plead.And to my mind, his actions were entirely consistent with his normal attitudes and personality and he knew exactly what he was doing. Anyway, my main problem is that I don't think Aden ever really faced up to what he'd done.I really think he doesn't want to think about what he put Rachel and Belle through.That was why he left when Rachel was reluctant to be friends with him again(she didn't refuse his apology), because he didn't want to think about the fact he had a right to do so.And that's why, despite the apology, he started treating Belle like the enemy, abusing her over her relationship with Angelo and criticising her for giving evidence, because he didn't want to face up to what he'd done to her.Although he did eventually say that he understood he'd put her through a lot, after they reunited, that was when she'd already admitted she still loved him, so he knew it was safe to do so because she wasn't blaming him. As for his attitude towards Larry, I'm not really sure how sorry he feels about what he did.He accepted that what he did was wrong and that Larry didn't deserve to die but that was as far as it went.At the trial, he said that he couldn't feel any sympathy for Larry over him being abused because of what it meant for him, which is probably how he still thinks.I actually think he's holding onto that anger and resentment as a sort of crutch, believing that he was justified in his treatment of him.That was why he couldn't handle seeing Larry at the hospital, because he needed to be able to feel bitter about him, which he clearly did during their conversation.A Larry who was genuinely sorry, and whose apology seemed to me a lot more heartfelt than either of Aden's, was something he couldn't handle because it meant he was wrong to treat him the way he did.And that was why he couldn't tell him he loved him, because that would mean admitting he'd been wrong to hate him.(It's interesting that his counsellor actually suggested that there was nothing wrong with hating Larry for what he did, he just didn't deserve to die for it.) But then I think about things way too much.