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sassenach082 · 1 year

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So I just wanted to let you know that I am still thinking about Tom and his dad's relationship. I have just now finished another reread of I'll ride and just. You wrote their relationship with so many facets I am in awe. Tom thinking his dad does not love him, thinking he is not enough, basically raising his sibling and trying his best to defend them. Meanwhile Bill constantly criticizing but still loving his children so much? I loved reading the scene where Bill carefully cradles Tom's face and softly brushes away his hair after the bird strike, first from Tom's perspective and later on Mav's? Beautiful. Just in general, Mav observing this whole clusterfuck and still knowing that Bill loves Tom, that he cares for him?! I also truly think Bill might not have known how well Tom did in a) the Academy and b) in the Navy/his career so far. I love seeing Mav standing up for Tom and just hammering it home how good Tom is, how excellent he is. I think Bill just decided against actually finding out about Tom's talents and capabilities the second Tom decided to go Navy instead of Marines, you know? That five year period of them not talking? Or maybe he just needed an outsider's perspective and judgement on Tom. And what I really really love? I know you said it in multiple other answers already, but Bill being kind of nice, warm, patient (grandfatherly?) with Bradley is so jarring to see and makes the whole strained relationship he has with his children so bittersweet. We know he struggled with the end of his career and differentiating between career and family, but ultimately he is capable of being a family person and he is really good with Bradley. About Bradley's clay medal, about all his tank questions, when he attends Bradley's T-Ball game. It's so sweet and just gives all of this heaps of complexity because he is not just this strange bad dad who did not want to be a dad. Like yes we see him more lenient/slightly more supportive with Tim and Rachel and Sarah but it is not the same. Oh and I am 100% sure that the moment that cemented to Eleanor that Pete was family and only has Tom's best interests at heart was when Pete argued with Bill during Thanksgiving. That scene makes my day, how he casually speaks up, does not back down, Pete ends the discussion not Bill and how Pete immediately compliments Eleanor's cooking afterwards. Just Pete showing his Mav-side: being polite and charming after standing up for Tom and showing his slightly feral side. Just. I am genuinely in awe how you depict all kinds of relationships with so many layers. So realistic and wholesome!

Nonnie this lives in my head rent free, just so you know. Please allow me to talk a bit more about who Bill Kazansky is as a person, and why I actually love him a whole whole lot despite how complicated the man is, because you really only see him from Pete & Tom's perspective, but the fact that Bradley loves him in about .5 seconds is kind of a clue to who he really is deep, deep down.

Spoilers under the cut!

One of the themes of this story is, "What does it mean to be a father?" There are so many different ways to do it and it often has nothing to do with blood relations. But Tom is definitely learning what exactly it means to be a father through his relationship with Bradley, and it's kind of going to be a key going forward because he has a different perspective he didn't have before Bradley became such an integral part of his life. Ditto for Pete, just in a different way, and his relationship with Viper is equally complicated just in different ways.

Bill is a very multifaceted guy. I think it's important to think of him in the context of his life experiences. He fought in the Vietnam war and that really changed who he was, fundamentally, as a person. PTSD is definitely on the table, even though our understanding of PTSD has changed so much in recent years and back then they only sort of knew that it was even something that happened (shell shock, battle fatigue, etc, we all know what they actually mean is PTSD, something they understood much better by studying veterans of the Vietnam War).

Coming home for Bill was hard. Loud noises were hard. Sudden movements were hard. The dark was hard. Cars backfiring were hard. Screaming was hard. And he lived in a house with little kids at the time all of them clamoring for his attention because Daddy was home, and I think that probably just about killed him, and there is definitely a lot of guilt there. Deep down he knows he wasn't the kind of father they needed back then; couldn't be, was incapable of being, because he was so traumatized by what he saw/experienced/had to do in the name of his country.

To me, Bill probably took as many opportunities to not be home as he could. He would have had nightmares, flashbacks, the whole nine yards. He would have been irritable and short tempered and easily triggered, and I think he probably yelled, and he probably felt so guilty afterwards that he wanted to die. I feel like he probably clung to his wife a lot and sobbed into her shoulder at night when nobody could see him, and I think Eleanor probably struggled so much to take care of her kids and now suddenly have her sweet, caring, wonderful husband reduced to this broken man who was a shadow of his former self. His nightmares probably woke the whole house until he started to avoid sleeping, and that probably just turned things even worse.

(Now I want to write this from Bill or Eleanor's POV but it will honestly break my heart so maybe not but I digress as I often tend to do).

It makes me a little sad that some have asked if he hit his kids... I think Bill is the kind of guy who is terrified of hurting them, and so he distanced himself while he tried to get his head back on straight. Keep in mind this was the 60's-70's so talking about it was out of the question (they just didn't DO THAT back then, you know? Not regularly or in any way accepted by society). He was trying to work through it all on his own not wanting to be a burden.

What Bill needed was help, therapy, a healthy outlet. What he got instead was more training, volunteering to be out in the field as much as possible because that was normal to him. He knew how to function there; he did not know how to function in a warm house in a soft bed with a loving wife and little kids who just wanted to be with him.

And Tom? Well, he remembers. He was born in 1961, so baby Tom remembered Daddy before Vietnam. Maybe not anything sharp or exact, but to a young Tom (because believe me, little kids remember deep down even if they don't have a specific memory), it would have been so jarring having this stranger with his dad's face in his house, because where was the guy who cuddled him? Read to him? Why is daddy mad all the time? Why is he yelling? Why doesn't he love me?

Meanwhile, Bill eventually got better or as better as he could get in the context of the time period. Functioning, you could even say. Everyone telling him to just forget Vietnam ever happened while people spit on him etc (I do not envy Vietnam veterans, many of whom were drafted, having to go through what they went through, but I'm trying to stay on topic here). So, being a logical military man, he probably compartmentalized like hell and just locked it all away (Sound familiar? Looking at you, Thomas).

Then his girls were there, and they weren't wary of him like the boys had learned to be because they'd been far too little, and it was probably so relieving to him that they could just know him as he was now and not how he was before. And that definitely plays into the dynamics between the whole family, and why Tim gets away with what he does because it's hard for Bill to reprimand him as much as he does the older boys, because that's his baby, but it also frustrates him because Timmy often goes to Tom when he needs things and not him by virtue of Tom being there all the time and Bill only being there sometimes.

Anyway, the point is, William "Bill" Kazansky is a deeply traumatized person who puts up a good front of being America's Golden Boy, Decorated Colonel, Celebrated Military Officer, Beloved By His Men For Sticking With Them In The Trenches. But deep down he's just as broken as everyone else.

And then Ellie comes along and it's a balm to his heart because she just loves him to bits and pieces and doesn't give a flying fuck about family history because she's three and convinced she's the center of the universe (as all three year olds are wont to do). Bradley then enters his life, and he's young and desperate for attention and reminds him so much of Tom that it breaks his heart a little bit, because once upon a time Tom asked him a million questions an hour just like Bradley does, and he wants to talk about tanks and the Marines and what it was like to ride in helicopters (a topic most in the Kazansky family avoid, because they are perfectly aware that the Vietnam War was not a cakewalk).

Anyways. I guess what I'm trying to say is thank you for noticing that Bill is a human being and a complicated one at that. I tried to make him as human as I could and I've read so many articles about the Vietnam War I feel a little crosseyed sometimes, but he's not a bad guy, not at all. Just an idiot sometimes, but then again, aren't we all?

Also, while we're on the topic, Bill Kazansky likes Pete Mitchell a whole hell of a lot even if it's grudging. Pete was the first person in literal years to call him on his shit to his face (who isn't his wife, anyway), and while he didn't enjoy it at the time, it definitely made him sit up and pay the fuck attention, not just to Pete, but to Tom, too.

Do with that information what you will.

#sassy answers asks #spoilers under the cut #only read if you'd like more insight on bill kazansky as a person #this one kind of got away from me sorry for word vomiting #i'll ride kazansky family #let's chat about bill kazansky shall we #he's become one of my favorite characters #and to think he was just supposed to be a casual side character in the first writing of my drafts #oh how the tables have turned

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