Assess this sentence?

[Madame Manga]

I can't see what's wrong with the original plural... [snip]

'The strongest of us have' denotes that small group of us who are strongest, and we have these frailties. Same implicit sense of even as above: even we the strongest have them, and others less strong also have.

Yes, the limited plural was my intention. A small group of us may be characterized as 'the strongest', but they are not free from flaws. My nagging little internal editor kept coming back to the phrase, however. "The strongest of us have our fragile spots," can be defended grammatically. It just rang sour to me.

If you use a possessive pronoun, 'our' is much better than 'their' because it includes the speaker, which is what you want. In fact, I think 'their' is borderline ungrammatical here, because 'us' is third person, so 'the strongest of us' should also be, and the frailties belong to the same person(s) so should be 'our', not 'their'. To use 'their' implies that 'the strongest of us' has singled out someone in our group who is neither you nor me: again not the implication you want.

As I said above, 'their' is more than borderline ungrammatical in this case, IMO. I liked all the implications of 'our'. It fits the character, it fits the sentiment. I may yet shoehorn it in. ;-)

I saw a totally different issue when I read your original statement, and would therefore shy away from "frailties". Frailty to me implies a shortcoming or a flaw. Having someone else as a necessity doesn't seem to be a flaw to me. I know it is a perceived weakness to him, but if my lover told me that this was his "weakness" I would rejoice.

My character has an ex-husband who took advantage of her love for him, so yes, she is prone to see excessive devotion as a liability. This statement foreshadows later developments--it's an important one both within the scene and for the story as a whole.

I don't want to enrage anyone with too much summary, ;-) but I should probably also mention that in the previous scene, our hero came upon her while she was talking on the phone with a man he considers a rival, and as a result he lost his temper. He accused her of liking the other guy better and accidentally broke something in his anger. The scene in question is his apology to her.

Gauche, I am happy to inform you that I don't agonize over every line. Even if I ought to. ;-) I feel a need for some severe dissection on the SDC...if I ever wrote anything short enough to fit a twenty-minute crit. I'm not sure I can ever put this on Lit, though I'm posting it chapter by chapter on story forums and my website. Maybe I could excise the sex scenes and just post those. ;-)

Thank you to everyone who responded!

MM

 

[The_old_man]

Even as Herculie's had his heels, or Samson his hair, each of us has a weakness.

 

[MathGirl]

A plethora of assessments

Good grief! MM asked that a simple declarative sentence be assessed. I'd say that we have not only assessed the ass off of that thing, it's been thoroughly frisked, turned inside out, spun dry, and swatted over the fence.
MG

 

[champagne1982]

Re: A plethora of assessments

[...] swatted over the fence.
MG

Oh! To be a rug,
Hung out to air,
Swatted.

Carrie
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