#𝗙𝗜𝗟𝗘: // mannerisms

[doctordonovan]

my favourite thing about maeve? the fact she would never, ever, hurt anyone. she's been through so much hurt, so much pain... and yet she chooses gentleness and kindness every single time. my least favourite thing about maeve? the fact she would never, ever, hurt anyone even when her safety depends on it.

she's so good and it's part of why the universe gives her such a hard time. because she's incapable of going 'no, I need to come first'.

[doctordonovan]

[doctordonovan-a]

❀     ||      maeve looks:   3x11,  The Dress

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||      maeve && loneliness

maeve's loneliness is absolute key to understanding her.

her life, overall, has been full of professional and academic success: but it all started incredibly young. she was five and a half when the donovans started fostering her, seven-ish when they started the process to adopt her, fourteen when she left for university. so out of her entire life she only had about seven years of 'stability': yet that time was mostly just mary grooming maeve into the perfect little student.

at university she was the youngest, the quietest, and yet the smartest in every room. whilst we know from canon how much it breaks her heart how women are turned against each other:

SPENCER: She once spoke about the awkwardness of being the only woman in the department. MAEVE: When men are jealous of your success in the lab, they want it for themselves. But women want it so you can't have it. Sometimes this institution turns us against each other.

so she has a very difficult relationship with herself. she knows she's smart... but often, maeve makes the mistake of believing that's her only worth to people.

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||      maeve && affection p2 [ p1 ]

maeve is the kind whose touches are easily broken, so like resting her head on a shoulder, resting her hand on someone’s. she always leaves it easy to move away bc she assumes everyone will always want to soon. literally even her affection fully assumes everyone is a few seconds away from wanting her to leave. she gets a tiny bit bolder in long term relationships but even then, she’s more likely to rest against someone than ever being all over them. maeve just… takes comfort in people she loves’ presences and tries to memorise that comfort for when it’s surely going to be time to go

she doesn’t need loud love, she doesn’t even need constant anything ( affection / attention / etc ). she’s all about the little gestures that show how someone feels about her - quiet love means just as much to her, if not more. maeve herself isn’t the best at acting how the rom-coms and romantic anything she likes say she ‘should’ be. you only risk losing her if either trust is broken or what love language was there before is clearly fading. the moment she starts seeing proof that she’s overstaying her welcome, the more it becomes a risk she might walk away for both their goods.

basically, pushing maeve away will always do some damage, because choosing to stay is the most vulnerable she can be. if she’s shown it was an error and she was right about people always moving on from her… she’ll start preparing herself for the end of the relationship.

if she’s in a relationship with someone who doesn’t really do contact, she won’t push or complain but she would find it quite lonely if they never reach out first. it���d certainly play into her burden complex && would probably have her pulling back from the relationship. no matter how much maeve loves someone ( and she does love with her whole heart, her whole soul ) she will never stay if she does not think she is loved purely because she thinks they deserve to be with someone they do love. if she’s not enough that’s more on her than them.

[doctordonovan]

@atomiism

CHARLOTTE HEYWOOD and ALEXANDER COLBOURNE SANDITON — Season 3 Episode 3 (2023)

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||       maeve && pets

maeve really likes animals... but she doesn't feel at ease loud or massive ones. little dogs? she can cope with. medium dogs? as long as they're well trained, you'd never know she's uncomfortable. but big dogs? she has a very very well hidden fear of them that could be misread as just being tense.

it's not that she doesn't like dogs, she just had some very traumatic experiences when she was a child in foster care with a family with very big dogs. she wishes dogs nothing but the best, but is unlikely to ever be able to live one bigger than a terrier.

she does however adore cats. I've spoken before about the fact she has a pet chinchilla - bub - and she's a constant in most of maeve's verses where I can work out a way. her phd in entomology means she doesn't at all fear insects, though they're not the sort of pet she especially wants, but if any of her kids wanted pet spiders or whatever? she'd be cool with it.

in her main verse, when she lives alone (with her chinchilla) and moves a lot between universes whilst trying to heal - you better believe she's friends with every stray cat in the area and regularly makes sure they're fed / find homes.

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||      people say I was naive. I wasn't naive. I was a baby. [ insp. ]

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||      things I made for my carrd,   didn’t use,   but were too cute to delete

[doctordonovan]

@thecavclry

Anthony Lockwood & Lucy Carlyle LOCKWOOD & CO. 1.04

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||       maeve && honesty with her kids

I've spoken before about the tragedy that is maeve never letting herself be known when it comes to the negatives ( her past, her fears, her negative emotions ) but I'm stuck thinking about how that's especially true when it comes to any children she has?

sort of. with her adopted / foster children, with kids who have come from hard lives or trauma or who just... need someone to understand them, maeve will be much more open. she obviously won't tell them anything but to make them feel safe and heard maeve will tell them more than would otherwise come up. whilst in general the fact she's adopted isn't a secret - especially given how badly she gets on with mary post joe's death - it's her non-biological children who will hear first that she was in foster care for years, or how she made messy choice after messy choice when trying to work out how to live life alone as a teen.

she knows how much of the world, of badness, they've seen and they need someone who can carry their burdens too.

for any biological children, she protects them as much as she can. she tells them things when they ask - truly ask. but maeve's partners in general tend to be people who have dangerous careers / lives and maeve tends to take on the role of the more stable / permanent parent. to her, that means that they need that image of her, an image that might be damaged by them realising she's just another deeply damaged person who doesn't know how to exist.

maeve has spent her entire life playing roles for others. she likes to think she's outgrown it by the point in her life where she has a family of her own but honestly... those bad habits never entirely disappear. she will always be flawed and one of those flaws is the part of her that never believes she is worthy of love as she is.

she loves bio and non-bio children equally, but there's a tragedy in the fact that as good as a mother as she is, she will always keep that one little bit of distance.

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||      it's all about the little gestures

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||       maeve && ballet

maeve doesn't talk much about her youth - anything before her first phd was completed (at a little after 19) left up to imagination. when the donovans first fostered her at 5 1/2, it was meant to be temporary, by the time they decided to adopt her at 7... knowing it was purely because of how much potential girl had.

they wanted her for her brilliance, but admitting that wouldn't make them seem like the best of people.

so her life until she left for university at 14 was full of structure. classes with people older than her, hours reading and taking every extra class she could. she needed normal hobbies too - mary said - if only for the appearance of her doing anything expected of her age.

at 6, she was gifted a celtic harp from her adoptive paternal grandmother, a skill she continues through her life. but early in her fostering, alongside swimming lessons and learning to sign (to make up for her near constant silence), they'd signed her up for ballet too.

it wasn't something she'd thought she'd like, nothing she mentions as an adult. but from 5 1/2 to 19, it was something maeve absolutely thrived within. she wasn't just good: she was truly very very talented at it.

at 19 however, despite only seeing her once or twice or year, mary put pressure on to quit ballet and focus only on what mattered. to focus only on academia. due to that pressure - and her first heartbreak from a girl she'd been learning alongside - maeve quit ballet.

as an adult she did try other dance classes here and there, keeping it up as a rare little treat or hobby, but it was something that hurt her deeply to give up/

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||      I wonder when it’s good,   how bad it’s gonna hurt

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||      maeve && dance

okay but maeve is a spectacular dancer. it’s the one hobby she started when she began university ( a shy, terrified 14 year old who’d literally only had 7 years with her adoptive family before being shoved into the 'real' world ) to learn people skills and just… stuck with it.

she doesn’t do it much in general since she’s not comfortable with strangers that close to her, but she knows a multitude of dances and is so talented when it’s someone she’s comfortable with. need to quickly dance with someone undercover? at a formal event? she’s your gal.

as with many things in her life, it's not a skill maeve will bring up or mention despite how it's something she really enjoys. it's also partly linked to her very first girlfriend at nineteen - and whilst that relationship ended in maeve's first heartbreak, she got a hobby out of it all the same.

[doctordonovan]

❀    ||      maeve && a relationship overview

I'm stuck thinking about the kinds of people maeve always seems to fall in permanent love with. the people with the worlds on their shoulders, who always carry the burden of some version of making the world better. but also the heartbreak of her ever being fragile enough to ask them to stay and them still leaving, only to regret it later when they realise how rare && big of an ask it is coming from maeve ( someone who never asks for anything ). just for them to come back and she's the one who is gone / has her walls back up and is burying herself in her work.

if maeve breaks enough to ask someone to stay && they don't, that's something she's going to internalise as a reflection of her worth to them. yet she'll never blame them for it.

despite maeve’s habit of being attracted to people in a position of power   (  though the definition of this varies by verse  )   it’s never because of the power.   it’s because of the type of people they are.    she has this…    habit of forming her own absolute love for someone who is always part of a bigger picture.    a picture she’s insignificant in comparison to.    how she loves these people because they’re so good they have so much to give and so much to do and she’s okay with accepting that she’ll never be their all and how she assumes she’ll always love them more than they can love her.

this isn't to say maeve's loves have only been healthy or good. until her coma her relationships were all messy, all in their different ways. bobby was a control freak, her first girlfriend wouldn't leave the closet, etc.

why is this? well at the core of it, maeve missed all the vital socialisation she should have had growing up. going to university so young - always being surrounded by older people - she didn't get to just have crushes or little dates or the times to learn about love as she deserved.

she was thrown into the deep end of growing up && she learns that like in all parts of her life, she's only worth something to people as long as she has a use.

but it doesn't make her jaded. she doesn't stop wanting love and she certainly never stops giving it. it just means she's had a lot more toxic situations find her because she was still learning that sometimes love isn't a good thing - sometimes it's very much the opposite of safety when it comes from the wrong person.