#and the stuff we got with bess and addy as well as bess and george i think should take precedent

[flythesail]

I miss so much on an initial watch and 4x09 was definitely another one where I liked it on the first watch but needed to rewatch to FULLY appreciate it.

[thebeastofblackmoor]

speaking of confronting her past in a real way- there is a level of irony that the plot lines of so many of the main characters focuses on the trauma they have and needing to confront and heal past it. Nancy with her identity and family legacy secrets, nick with his unjust prison sentence and losing Tiffany, George with her absentee dad, alcoholic mom, and having to be the bread winner and raise her sisters, Ace has had his family explored and has had focus on what he considered inadequacies- and yet all Bess endured before coming to horseshoe bay is glossed over as almost a footnote without anyone being like “hey bess that’s a lot of trauma, I think you need some help and support.” I feel like all Bess’ choices since the Marvin’s exiled her are heavily informed by the pain of that abandonment and no one in the show addresses it. Like she finally got her dream only for it to be cruelly taken away by her abuser. Then she fell for odette because odette was showing her love and it felt safe in a way to pursue something that could never be real because then you can’t lose something you never really had. But then she suddenly had to lose it and say goodbye without being able to properly prepare herself. And then she turns to magic both as a way to belong to a family within the women and white and also looking to magic as a way to harness her power after feeling so very powerless at the hands of Stephen and all the abandonment she faced and couldn’t prevent. Plus the fact that she felt like she had to lie to lisbeth which resulted in her losing her, a pain we know she still holds onto due to the burning sorrows. Like so much under the surface and she does not get the attention she deserves. And as much as I like addy, the romance feels superficial in light of all Bess does have going on and as to offer as a whole.

I KNOW it’s horrible! Everyone else has their own complex and meaningful pasts and family relationships and Bess’s past is just brought in in one episode to eliminate her entire family dynamics and then is never mentioned again -_- garbage tbh. I do agree that it seems like a lot of her choices are informed by her past, especially the moment when she left George with the shard of Odette’s soul, but I wish it would be more explicit and that we would see more of Bess’s thoughts and insecurities. Her being drawn to magic and the women in white does make sense when dissected, and even though I hate the witch stuff personally, it could have been done well if they’d tied any kind of emotional weight to it and made it a metaphor For some kind of coping mechanism or support system. But nope :( and totally agreed on Addy, there are a lot of great concepts there and tons of potential, but right now their whole relationship is still just light and physical