petraandelova

[petraandelova]

Right? Like, bitch, you pretended to be paraplegic for years just to guilt trip and emotionally manipulate Petra. And I’m 100% certain it was her idea for Petra to fake a disability in the first place, and she probably bullied Petra into it. 

I know Magda’s there first and foremost for comic relief, but it would be really great if the show would also outright acknowledge her as the abusive garbage she is. Let Petra reflect on it and how it’s impacted her in a more serious moment (she’s still allowed to have those, right?), and let someone give Petra credit for working to be better than her mother (instead of giving all the credit for her efforts to other people). And then get Magda out of her life forever. 

Magda has some nerve “Petra faked a disability” oh worm wheelchair woman?

[petraandelova]

Like mother, like daughter

+

[petraandelova]

[petraandelova]

[petraandelova]

Remember how JR originally left thinking nothing about their relationship was real? That Petra never loved her and was only using her? 

But then she was told Petra was in danger, and she rushed back to help, and now she really understands. JR understands because her heart was beating with the kind of fear Petra has constantly lived with, because the gun that almost killed Petra was in her hand and a perpetrator of abuse against Petra was bleeding at her feet. Reading Petra’s files was one thing, but now JR’s felt it viscerally.

JR understands why Petra is the way she is, she understands that Petra is dealing with a lot of trauma, and she understands that Petra has changed for the better and wants to change even more. JR even understands that their relationship was real and Petra really does love her. 

But understanding isn’t enough, because Petra still hurt her. JR is allowed to process that in her own time, and she has no obligation to put herself out there to potentially be hurt again. It’s not her responsibility to ferry Petra through her growth into a more emotionally healthy person. That’s work that Petra has to keep putting in. And I know she will.

Please, give me another chance.

[petraandelova]

jane the virgin - i thought it was just cover since you were working together.

[petraandelova]

I’m everyone’s type. 

Dedicated to @petramos​. 

[petraandelova]

I love Jane The Virgin! Petra is the best character!

[petraandelova]

I’ve never seen anyone not like Jane before. It’s honestly a turn-on.

[petraandelova]

Honestly, I’m impressed and proud of Petra for managing to be a somewhat functional adult human after what she went through in... well, in general, but especially in the first part of s3.

Locked-in syndrome is utter nightmare fuel. Petra was completely trapped in her body, unable to move or speak or do anything for herself yet fully conscious and aware of everything going on around her, and she was like that for THREE MONTHS. This is someone that’s used to being independent and self-sufficient and needs to be in control of everything and doesn’t trust easy, but she was completely at other people’s mercy and had to be fully reliant on them to care for her, down to the most intimate detail. 

And all of that is horrifying enough, but unlike most locked-in patients, she was forcibly drugged into that state. By her twin sister. Who suddenly appeared in her life and spent months gaining her trust and trying to make her think she finally had family that cared about her. And she didn’t have people to support and comfort her while she was locked in her body because her twin was pretending to be her. And nobody noticed. Nobody seemed to care about her enough to notice. She had to watch Anezka masquerade as her, creating chaos, ruining her relationships, holding her children and bonding with them in the effortless way that eluded her because of her postpartum depression, or just straight up banging her blackmailing asshole assistant right in front of her.  

And every time the clock ticked by and Anezka hadn’t made it back to drug her again, she had hope she could finally escape. A finger twitch here. A toe twitch there. But Anezka always arrived just in time to throw her back into a cloud of darkness. And when she woke up again, she was still trapped in her motionless, voiceless hell while someone else lived her life. And days crept into weeks crept into months. 

The trauma from something like that doesn’t go away easy. We saw a little bit of her PTSD, but we didn’t see her recovery process because of the time skip, and we don’t know what kind of lingering effects are still there. How long did it take for her to stop being terrified to fall asleep, scared that she’d wake up trapped again? Does she have nightmares about being frozen in place while the world continues on around her and nobody notices she’s gone? How many times has JR had to talk her down from a panic attack because she woke up and her arm was numb from sleeping on it wrong?

How’d she learn to trust anyone again? At what point did she finally begin to feel safe? Actually, nevermind, we know the answer to those two questions. She still hasn’t learned to trust, and she still doesn’t feel safe. And a big part of the reason that’s the case is because the people responsible for hurting her are still out there trying to hurt her years later.

[petraandelova]

Of course I have to analyze this. The way Petra just kind of... resigns herself to death. Her survival instinct is a mile wide, but for once she doesn't try to talk her way out of it or fight back. The best relationship she's ever had is in shambles, the woman she loves never wants to see her again, and it's her own fault, all due to her inability to be honest, her pathological self-protectiveness. Unsurprisingly, she's absolutely devastated. But I don't think the resignation is only about JR.

I think this is also a sign of her bone deep exhaustion. We saw it when she found out Magda had been near the girls again, and JR found her breaking down in the stairwell. As she said then, she's tired of always having to be on her guard. She feels like it's never gonna stop.

Of course there's a gunman from her past ready to kill her the second her girlfriend leaves her. It's so typical. Her life is a series of explosive detonations, and no matter if it's her or someone else setting them off, she's never left with a moment of peace to sort through the emotional fallout. It's always one crisis right after the other. And this particular crisis, a gun wielding hitman, catches her in a moment of grief and self-loathing, and she's just... done.

She's not really thinking. In her right mind, she wouldn't put her children through that. Part of the reason she didn't tell the truth in the first place was so she wouldn't risk prison and separation from them. But even then, there's still a part of her that thinks Magda was right, that her children would be happier without her, that she'll only ruin them. And what just happened with JR further drives the point home: all she does is hurt the people she loves.

She's so tired of living on edge, of fighting for survival, and sometimes she hates herself for what living like that has turned her into, for the way it makes her hurt other people, and for just a moment, dying doesn't seem like such a bad option.

two times petra fought back and one time she was too heartbroken to fight

[petraandelova]

two times petra fought back and one time she was too heartbroken to fight

[petraandelova]

been trying to post a gifset but it won’t show up in the tags because this website was designed by barbarians

[petraandelova]

I made a (probably incomplete) list of traumatic things Petra has been through as a refresher for myself, and it requires a cut because it’s so long. Like, buckle up, buttercups. Also, campaign to get Petra back into therapy, y/y?

she grew up in extreme poverty with no familial support system

she was raised by an emotionally abusive (and sometimes physically abusive) mother that exploited her artistic talents for money

her first boyfriend turned out to be an abusive violent criminal

she broke up with the criminal boyfriend because her mother lied about him cheating, and then she saw him throw acid in her mother’s face and spent years thinking he meant to attack her

she saw her mother get hit by a car during the acid attack, and her mother constantly told her the injuries were ALL HER FAULT as a manipulation tactic

she fled her country in fear under a false identity, and a henchman of her scary ex threatened to reveal her location unless she continued to pay him off

she arrived impoverished to a new country with a (pretending to be) wheelchair-bound mother, who convinced her she should basically pimp herself out to rich men to get them out of poverty

she had multiple miscarriages, including one that was late-term

her husband was diagnosed with cancer

her husband emotionally checked out of their marriage and fell out of love with her following the late-term miscarriage and cancer

she went through the messiest of messy divorces full of mutual emotional abuse, manipulation, and blackmail

she got physically assaulted when she tried to end a clandestine relationship

because of the divorce, she wasn’t able to pay the henchman keeping her location hidden anymore, so he turned up to threaten her with a gun in her face, and she had to defend herself and hold him hostage because she couldn’t go to the police about it

she lived in fear and anxiety her violent criminal ex would find her, so she rekindled a relationship with another ex for safety, but he gaslit her and left her as revenge for leaving him

her violent criminal ex turned up, and she discovered her mother had been lying to her for years about being wheelchair-bound in order to manipulate and guilt trip her

the ex that physically assaulted her faked his death and kidnapped her to the everglades, and she had to distract him with “please don’t feed me to the alligators” sex, and she accidentally killed him in self-defense when he tried to kill her

she allowed her abusive mother back into her life because she had no one to turn to for emotional support in the aftermath of her kidnapping and almost murder, but then she found out her mother almost killed another woman, and her mother blackmailed her into covering it up

her violent criminal ex turned up again, had surveillance on her, and forced her to marry him so he could smuggle weapons into the country

she allowed her abusive mother back into her life again because she needed help dealing with the forced marriage/smuggled weapon situation, and the first thing her mother did upon seeing her was shame her for going to therapy

she watched her mother get a hand blown off by a grenade 

her mother killed her ex’s henchman and coerced her into covering it up and burying the body (all while she’s pregnant with twins!), which forced her to sabotage her first almost-friendship and also led to her having a temporary psychotic break of stress/guilt hallucinations

just as she finally came clean about everything to her ex-husband, her mother framed her for the murder and had her arrested 

she had postpartum depression after her twins were born, and when she visited her mother in prison to see if it ran in the family, her mother told her she was going to be a shitty parent and the best thing she could do was give the children away

her long lost twin sister suddenly appeared in her life and gained her trust and made her feel like she had family in her corner, but her sister was actually plotting with their mother, and she was forcibly drugged into a paralyzed state while her sister pretended to be her (which included sleeping with her ex-husband and assistant, sabotaging her friendships, and raising her children), and nobody noticed any of this FOR THREE MONTHS 

when she lashed out at her ex-husband for not realizing someone was pretending to be her, he responded by gaslighting her and making her doubt her reality, which further enhanced her trauma and paranoia

her ex-husband went to prison, and she was left to raise baby twins on her own for three years without any familial support and while dealing with postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress disorder

she had reason to suspect her gross hate fuck buddy was a murderer and thought he was kidnapping her (and honestly, just dating him in and of itself was probably it’s own trauma because he really was that ick, and it was definitely a sign her self-worth was in the pits and she was just desperate to finally be somebody’s first choice while dealing with years of her ex-husband’s boomeranging affections)

her sister held her at gun point and almost drowned her in the ocean (with the original plan being to tie her up, lock her in a storage container, and pretend to be her again)

her mother and sister set up shop in the room across the hall from her to terrorize her, plot against her, and use their proximity to her children as a threat

she accidentally killed her sister when her sister threatened to harm her children (evidence also suggests her sister and mother might actually have been intending to kill her that same night), and she covered it up and claimed it was 100% self-defense, but a blackmailer kept working to dig up the truth and get her arrested, constantly keeping her on edge

the blackmailer broke into her home to murder her and nearly succeeded in shooting her... just minutes after the love of her life broke up with her and said she never wanted to see her again

to be continued...

[petraandelova]

[petraandelova]

[petraandelova]