There are not enough hours in the day; how am I supposed to go to work AND read AND draw AND sew AND write AND stay up to date on all the tv people tell me I should watch AND scroll endlessly through tumblr and expect to actually get anything accomplished. I call bullshit on the entire concept of time
best moment in ofmd is “what’s her name?” “ed. his name is ed.” and mary just smiles and hugs stede so tight. there is no sadness or surprise. instead, there’s happiness, relief, and realization.
a lot of people love this moment because it’s when stede realizes he’s in love. i love this moment because for mary, everything makes sense now. from her perspective, she was trying everything she could do to make the relationship work. she was sentimental, she gave him gifts that represented their devotion, she wanted him to spend more time with his kids, and she wanted to be close to him. but stede was always distant, holding back, and wanted to uproot the life they had for something different. mary must have thought there was something wrong with her. for years, she was slowly falling apart trying to save their relationship, only for stede to withdraw even more, and eventually abandon everything she tried to build with him.
but “his name is ed” changes her perspective on all of that. everything makes sense now. stede could never love her romantically. not because there’s something wrong with her, not because she isn’t enough, not because he hates her or the children or the life they had together, but because he’s gay. she realizes that they were both trapped and unhappy. and she also realizes they can be free now, and they can love each other another way. i can’t imagine how healing that must have been for her.
being critical of academia because it’s heavily hierarchical and systemically racist, and saying that individuals within academia are in no way more qualified to discuss academic subjects than non-academics are two completely different things. sjcjdjahe i swear some people think that to get a history degree you just read like. commercial biographies and watch hamilton. idk how to tell you all this but tiktok doesn’t have a peer review process
there’s nothing profound about writing a character who’s near-suicidally devoted to taking down her enemies because she’s lost everything and then taking the last person she loves away from her and ending the show with her in anguish. there’s nothing groundbreaking about writing a character desperately struggling for agency & identity & to break away from the organization that abused her only to have her killed off in the process of destroying them, for shock value. and there’s certainly nothing new or fresh or clever about giving queer characters the tragic ending they were always “destined” to have, yet again. but whatever.
