#how many women have been forced to get married bc they got pregnant when they were very young?

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

Man, your tags/posts about how traumatic and upsetting Dorothy's sex life really hit me. Rose and Blanche's hilarious stories and one liners are what usually stick in my head but damn, you're right. There's that That Event, & Dorothy did basically say she never orgasmed during her marriage (she definitely talked about disliking sex during her marriage). She even says at one point she's self conscious of her body during sex. And you're right that she'd def have issues with self pleasure 😔

Yep, it's one of those things that hit you harder and harder the more you think about it, isn't it?

When I say that Dorothy's remarkably healthier and more open than expected on the topics of love and relationships, I mean it. All things considered, she could have turned much more cynical and disillusioned. I mean, I've already talked about her horrid sex life when she was with Stan, and he was her first lover and her only lover for 38 years (so she had no one else to compare him to!!!).

And her love life was, if possible, even worse!! Let's remember that Dorothy's first run-ins with love and dating where:

A couple of idealized crushes (including the classic crush on her professor, Mr Gordon);

That boy she had an emotionally abusive relationship with;

Getting stood up for her senior prom by John Neretti;

Stan.

So, you know... she could have just determined she wasn't cut out for this stuff. She's prone to self-blaming, and judging from what she and Sophia say about her childhood and teenage years she wasn't a popular kid at all, so she could have convinced herself that there was just something wrong with her, and shut herself out from the world and from feelings completely. She could have given up, and I wouldn't have blamed her at all.

And instead, she's... well, she's the Dorothy we see in the show! Alright, she's pessimistic, and 'the great balloon pricker', but for all the Girls' mockery on this subject, she has her fair share of relationships and suitors! Her outlook on life in general is much more open that people give her credit for -- she smiles a lot, she's affectionate, she's active, she jokes around, and (although she might complain about stuff) she enjoys going along with the other Girls' shenanigans more often than not. She has fun! And she's much more happy than could be expected, knowing her past!

I like to think this is at least in part thanks to Blanche, Rose, and Sophia, who gave her the support she needed to start the healing process, but still -- it takes a special person to climb out of a hole like that. She could have given up on life and love, and instead she found the strength to go on living -- and living happily! She's really special, isn't she? :)

[pro-birth]

It’s so manipulative and toxic how women have to scramble over themselves to assure their “appreciation” for birth control’s part in “sexual liberation” whenever they mention issues with BC. If a disclaimer is not made on a post discussing BC problems, then people hound it for being “unrealistic” or “ungrateful” or even just plain sexist, all because BC is a sacred cow that can never be criticized for the sake of women’s equity.

Like, no, women were not liberated by birth control: they still got discriminated against for being pregnant, still got sexually harassed, still got raped by their husbands, still endured bad sex because “clitoris” is a bad word (and BC can interfere with sexual pleasure), etc. Discrimination still happened, and we’re still reckoning with the failure of our previous generations.

So many problems got swept under the rug because pregnancy and fertility were made the scapegoat for women’s problems. “You’re not getting hired/accepted into school/respected as a political force because you get pregnant -- take this pill with serious consequences for your health and social well-being, and you’ll finally be free of your own biology!!!”

Really????

Being able to safely avoid a pregnancy is absolutely a part of women’s health, and having access to safe, holistic methods even more important. Being able to make an informed decision on all options available is important. I am not against those things. So don’t even come at me thinking I hate pregnancy prevention and safe access to it.

But that is NOT what women have, even in first world nations in many ways, because not ALL of their options are available. Way too few doctors know about ALL options for family planning (such as fertility awareness based methods), and they also discount women’s voices concerning issues with birth control.

The birth control industry not only has a strong monopoly over women’s health (which influences what medical professionals learn in school), but also has a long racist, sexist history that still harms people today. Side effects of birth control are only just now being taken seriously and research is still pending! After 70 fucking years of treating women like guinea pigs whose health and sexuality is considered second to sexual availability to men! This is the liberation we fought for???

This doesn’t even get into how options for menstrual/reproductive issues like endo or PCOS don’t go beyond “use potent artificial hormones” unless you want a baby, and even then the mainstream fertility treatments are also subpar. Safe and effective non-hormonal birth control and fertility health options exist, but they are NOT common, and it is BECAUSE of the birth control industry’s grip on medicine that they are not more accessible. It is BECAUSE of the devaluation of female biology that BC has caused that women’s medicine suffers. I’m supposed to shut up and lie about how awesome it is that we have birth control for this????

And not only that, but family rights in the workplace and in academia are still a battle being fought today because women are expected to not only use birth control or get an abortion to remain unpregnant in that sexist environment, but to also overwork and overburden themselves to act like they don’t have kids at home to take care of if they want to barely keep up with their childless compatriots. Smoke breaks? Cool! Wanting a stool to sit on while heavily pregnant when working check out lines? Wow you obviously don’t take your job seriously, no raises or job security for you! This is something I am being pressured to celebrate???

There was even a recent article on how breastfeeding Olympians are being told that they can’t take their nursing babies with them to compete (which thankfully was overturned). We’re still acting like women’s biology and their motherhood are subpar and unnecessary, we still have to pressure and waste energy on convincing sexists that we deserve accommodation. In 2021. Because birth control made fertility the problem and potent hormonal casrtration the solution. You really want me to sit there and force a smile for this shit????

Could you imagine how different things would have turned out if fertility awareness were normalized in medicine rather than hormonal methods? If simply not marrying, or abstaining from sexual activity, were also normalized as options? If doctors were given the same funding and support for researching female biology rather than how to suppress it? Would our societal treatment be different? Would our medical care have been decades ahead from how it is now? Would there be less generational trauma for BIPOC women who were subjects of deadly BC trials? Would it have helped with gender relations in the bedroom, schoolroom, workroom?

We don’t know, we can’t know, because even today, our biology is regarded with minimal regard, if not contempt: BECAUSE OF BIRTH CONTROL’S MONOPLY ON OUR BODIES AND HEALTH. You want me to claim I should be grateful for that shit???

I won’t be “””thankful””” for birth control unless birth control becomes a discussion and invitation to ALL methods of family planning and reproductive medical options, and does NOT treat ovulation, pregnancy, and birth like a disease and malformation of female biology. I’m not going to apologize for saying so, because the only thing that bootlicking does is gloss over the very real harms BC has caused.

I will not be thankful for birth control until it’s part in the medical, sexual, and social subjugation of women is finally admitted to and addressed effectively for real changes. Even then, it still won’t be my cup of tea and I am NOT obligated to pretend that I am “grateful” for it.

If you feel the same, then reblog and share your stories. Don’t be silent for the comfort of others. Women need to get their voices back without the demand for “apologies.”

And before someone bitches about how privileged I am to say this when women in third world countries are dying from lack of contraception access: look up neo-imperialism’s effects on forced birth control and eugenics in those countries. Read the stories of women who were told IUD was their only option, who were refused access to fertility awareness, who were unable to get healthcare when they got horrible side effects from their BC, and/or were unable to have their implant removed because the clinic demanded money for it. Like I said: we don’t owe birth control SHIT if this is how it’s used against women.

[firelxdykatara]

You’re doing a LoK rewrite, correct? Would be really interested in hearing how you plan on fixing Suyin’s character and the Lin-Suyin conflict because……. oh boy. Man there’s a lot to unpack there. This is what happens when we don’t let Toph just raise her fucking kids for the sake of pushing a stupid as hell narrative about working women and single motherhood.

I am indeed!

In... you know, the way I'm doing most of my big potential projects, in that I have a folder with some documents that have plot notes and... some day I may actually get full, finished fics out of them (h2o AU is in there, as is my voltron!atla fusion AU, and uhhhh my book 3 atla rewrite, and a few other things), so... but I will say that the docs I have for my LoK rewrite so far amount to roughly 4.2k words of just Plot and Character Notes, which may some day turn into words of Story, hopefully.

ANYWAY, POINT IS: yes, this exists, and I have Many Many Thoughts.

Including how the Gaang kids would shake out! Cause I know I'm doing Zutara, and maybe Tokka???? Although I don't wanna just leave Suki out either... maybe a throuple??? Or Sukka having an amicable breakup before Sokka and Toph get together--maybe she already has Lin by then, and Sokka helps support her through the grief of losing Kanto???? Idk honestly, I haven't actually figured any of that out definitively yet except that Aang was perfectly happy to settle down with an Air Acolyte from one of the rebuilt temples because he grew up and out of his crush on Katara pretty easily once he hit puberty and matured a bit.

UHHH none of which is actually an answer to your question, because it's a valid one! Which is why I've been sitting on this a while (10 days I'm so sorry) bc I haven't made any solid decisions but I've been letting it percolate around my head a bit. And the more I think about it, the more I really like the Sukka -> Tokka idea (and I don't want to kill off Suki since the kids all deserve their awesome Kyoshi warrior auntie in their lives, and also I want a Sukka kid to be besties with Iara [zuko and katara's youngest] so maybe she gets with someone else after she and Sokka split? I could be talked into Ty Lee/Suki actually, the more I think about it....), but obviously having a stable father figure and a Toph who is... not what LoK made her out to be will dramatically change the Beifong family dynamic.

That said, I think I actually have a solution. (I'm so sorry for what I'm about to do.) Toph has Lin with Kanto--and he passes away when Lin is two or three, which is why she has very few memories of her father. (Although none of this 'she doesn't even know his name until she's 50+ cause Toph didn't tell her daughters about their fathers' bullshit.) Sokka is there for her through it all (all of the gaang is, of course, but you know that it sometimes just hits different when it's someone you're also starting to fall in love with, especially when there are older and much more deeply buried feelings there that are now resurfacing, because at least in my version Toph was deeply in love with Sokka when they were teenagers, but he was in love with Suki and she also loved Suki so she didn't want to mess up anything about their family or the group dynamics by making her feelings anyone else's problem), they fall in love, get married and have Suyin.

(Sokka may jokingly refer to it as a shotgun wedding, but the truth is he wanted to propose well before he found out she was pregnant, his attempts just kept getting messed up in increasingly comedic fashion.)

Throughout all of this, Republic City has been established, Sokka is Chancellor, Toph is something of a defacto police chief--mostly because, at the time, no one else was willing to volunteer, and she jokingly offered to whip the law enforcement, but unfortunately everyone else at the meeting took her seriously. However, she is also the founder of the probending league, and basically her feelings about law enforcement are complicated and she actively discouraged her kids from joining the force which is part of why Lin did. How else do you have a teen rebel phase with a parent like Toph? (Which, in this instance, means tough and firm but fair, with a 'you break it, it's up to you to fix it' attitude and very little desire to actually control her daughters and their behavior.)

Ah, but here's the rub.

Suyin is ten years old when Sokka dies, and Lin is sixteen. I'm not sure how he's killed--maybe by Yakone, to tie it into my plans for Amon and book 1. (Note that I'm not sure when the Yakone bloodbending trial happened in canon, but it doesn't matter. The timeline I'm gonna build will be completely different post-comet, and I'll eventually write it all down so that I can keep things straight.) Which would incidentally provide excellent means of having Katara have a very personal stake in the Amon conflict, and perhaps color the fight between him and Iara, but I'm getting off track. And I think Sokka being killed by Yakone, and Toph being unable to protect or save him, or deliver her own brand of justice to avenge him (because Aang is there to stop her and.... shit probably got ugly, I suspect she didn't talk to Aang for at least twenty years after Sokka's death--and this isn't to say I think Toph is particularly violent or murderous, but in that moment, she absolutely wanted to kill the man with her bare hands, and however much she may have regretted it afterwards, she took a very long time to forgive Aang for stopping her in the first place), is what results in Toph stepping down as police chief.

She didn't withdraw from her daughters or fuck off into the swamp or anything (words cannot express how much I hate that part of her canon history), but she did grieve for a very long time. Lin, meanwhile, felt like it was up to her to keep her family together, while also feeling a desperate need to... prove herself, I think. And because her mother was so adamant that she not join the police force, that's exactly what she does. I think Lin completely misread Toph's intentions, too, and believed that the discouragement was because her mother didn't think she had what it takes, when in reality I think Toph was scared of Lin losing herself in the job like she herself had begun to, and eventually coming up on something she couldn't change or fix and making the same mistakes she had.

(I think Toph and Lin have communication issues largely because they are both headstrong and willful, but where Toph thought she was giving her daughters the room they would need to make their own way, what Lin desperately craved was direction and she felt like that was something her mother simply couldn't understand.)

Suyin, on the other hand, fell in with a bad crowd like in canon. I think that what she desperately needed was attention, similar to Lin craving direction, and Toph was trying so hard not to be her own parents that she went a little too far in the other direction and Suyin began to feel like it didn't matter what she did, her mom wouldn't care, or get angry, or discipline her, or anything. Lin and Suyin butted heads a lot growing up, too, especially after Sokka's death, because Lin tried to rein in her sister's behavior and this was met with resistance and derision because Suyin felt like Lin was trying to be both mom and dad and she was neither but her big sister would never admit to being just as lost as she was and it made her furious.

So when Suyin is sixteen, and Lin is twenty-two and new to the force, The Big Rift happens. Lin catches Suyin and her gang, tries to apprehend her, gets a scar on her face in the ensuing conflict. But instead of abusing her power and sending her problem child off to her mother before fucking off to the swamp to avoid the consequences of her actions, Toph tries to actually fix things. Suyin cools her heels in prison for a while, because she was paralyzed by guilt at the time when she hurt her sister (a few inches lower and she could have slit her throat), and was still there when Lin's backup arrived.

Uhhhhhhhhhhh..... I'm so sorry I rambled for so long, BUT THE UPSHOT IS: I think Suyin learned a bit about culpability and taking responsibility for her own actions, Toph realized that her daughters had different needs than she did at their age (and I think a lot of the problem was that grief clouded her own ability to connect with her daughters, and in trying to not be her own parents she lost sight of how to be the parent her own daughters needed), and Lin, I think, had to realize that she had never fully processed the loss of not one but two fathers and had turned to her job in order to avoid actually confronting the grief that had overshadowed her childhood.

However, she did not forgive Suyin, at least not right away--and she wasn't forced or expected to. Suyin understood that she crossed a serious line, she took her lumps and did her time, and no one shamed Lin for her anger. I think, as a result, she had less reason to hold onto that bitterness, and perhaps by the time the story actually begins, she and Suyin are on much better terms, though I haven't worked it out exactly yet.

UHHH yeah I went on for days lmao. All of this is subject to change, too, depending on the needs of the story whenever I get around to actually writing it all down, BUT these are my initial thoughts, at least.

[tcthetouch]

𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒 𝓂𝒶𝓀𝑒 𝒾𝓉 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎'𝓇𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓃𝑔, 𝓅𝑒𝓇𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎 𝒽𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝒶 𝓈𝑜𝓊𝓁 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎'𝓇𝑒 𝓊𝓃𝒶𝒻𝓇𝒶𝒾𝒹 𝓉𝑜 𝒷𝒶𝓇𝑒. 𝓅𝑒𝓇𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒'𝓈 𝓃𝑜𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒.

『 jamie lee curtis. sixty-one. cis woman. she/her. 』 oh heavens, is that JUDITH MILLER from FAIR LANE i see roaming around mapleview? minnie may’s always calling them -CYNICAL & -SELFISH. i happen to think they’re not that bad! they’re a pretty cool “RETIRED” ACTRESS  and every time i’ve seen them, they’ve always been +MAGNETIC & +WITTY. i hope i see them around again! 『 may. 21. est. she/her. 』

hello my pals ! after a very long day, i am finally here with an intro for a sexy lowkey demon !

BACKGROUND:

triggers: emotional abuse, brief mention of war, brief mention of considered abortion, substance abuse, brief implication of child neglect, brief mentions of death (but like.... from old age)

So… I’m currently too tired to do the ‘whole chart,’ but… a Sagittarius. Know this.

Now, to understand our dear Judith, you must first understand her parents. Her mother was a wealthy young woman, progressive in her views on social issues… for the time. Nonetheless, she was expected to hold up the standards of the time. Her father was the younger brother of a man deemed ‘a great soldier’ who died fighting in WWII. Followed by the memory of him and his own parents’ obsession with the man, he placed pressure on himself to live up to that standard. Shame there was no war………………….

They met at Judith’s mother’s debutante ball and hit it off. It was, what they perceived to be, a match made in heaven. But that’s always easy to say – it’s harder to prove when a good night culminates in an unexpected pregnancy. To avoid any public scandal on her part, Judith’s mother and father married before she began showing and moved to Mapleview where she would become an excellent mother and he would live up to his brother’s standards by… he was still figuring it out… maybe making the next great scientific advancement? or writing the next great American novel?

Sadly, in spite of her lifetime’s worth of training, Judith’s mother… proved to lack natural maternal instinct. Perhaps it was passed down from her own mother, transgenerational trauma beginning long, long, long ago. Judith’s father was so consumed with his grand ideas that he hadn’t the time to help! Between becoming the next Walt Whitman one day and the next Albert Einstein the next, all while working for his father-in-law, he just didn’t have any time at all!

Their marriage grew strained and, as Judith grew, they made it even clearer that she was the cause. If she, herself, didn’t do something spectacular with her life, then it was all for nothing!

Her father wasn’t forced into the Vietnam War as a part of the drafting lottery. No, as it grew bigger, as the army grew more desperate, as she began slowly maturing, as his marriage continued falling apart, he voluntarily entered in 1965, when Judith was seven. Before drafting even began!

Before he entered the war, Judith was the victim of plenty of degrading remarks and the occasional Unusually Odd Punishment (think bojack horseman w like beatrice seeing ~7y/o bojack take a cigarette and forcing him to smoke all of it bc he couldn’t waste a perfectly good cigarette!). However, the remarks grew more biting after he left for “the war effort.” The two moved back to California, her mother’s birthplace, to be closer to her mother’s father – an even better source of income when his sympathies were being played on.

...but it was suddenly back-to-work, no-sympathies-for-you when the war ended and Judith’s father was still alive… and, furthermore, when the war was lost. 

With her parents’ marriage worse off than ever, Judith’s unconscious attempts to please them and live up to their expectations began sooner than they would have had the war been won. Or had her father been shot. 

Probably.

Commercials began at seventeen, but they weren’t impressive. Minor roles began at eighteen, but they weren’t impressive. It wasn’t until she was picked up by an actual agent at twenty that she began actually shining, so to speak. 

Which is actually a great accidental pun on my part, as her first big role was, much like JLC’s, in one of the first slasher movies ever made. Hoorah! But it still wasn’t impressive. It wasn’t big or prestigious, Katharine Hepburn wouldn’t have taken the role. 

But what was even less impressive? 

The pregnancy that followed shortly thereafter. 

Her first thought was to find a doctor who ‘specialized’ in such ‘inconveniences.’ Between the knowledge that a lack of maternal instinct ran in her blood, all women in her lineage getting mistreated to the point that they were simply unfit, as well as the knowledge that she would have to immediately quit the career that had just begun if she wanted to raise the child… 

But the father wound up being a hurdle. He was meant to be a one-night-stand, but he started showing up… again… and again… and again… until she relented and confessed to him that she was pregnant with his child (so she assumed, at least). He was insistent that she keep it… so the compromise became she wouldn’t abort it, but she would immediately hand it off to the man to raise on his own.

Daniel, named by his father, was born. Judith kept in occasional contact, but ultimately tried to leave that chapter behind her.

After that small bump in the road, her agent began lining up more career offers for her. They ranged from OK-I-guess to Not-Katharine-Hepburn-But-Close-Enough. So she clearly went for the latter ones!

Now, for someone who tried to stay clear-headed enough… it became pretty hard as she grew more popular, was invited to more parties, and… given the decade, was surrounded by cocaine! Thus began some more god-awful decisions, a list so long even Leo Tolstoy would put it down before he could finish reading it.

A few years through her increasingly successful career and she found out that she’s gotten pregnant yet again, this time being the result of a one-night-stand had during a borderline bender. For a few days, she obviously considered abortion again. But… how good would it be for her image if she cleaned up and had the baby… and, who knows! maybe she would break the chain of terrible mothers! if she was willing to sacrifice hedonism, then she was clearly doing something right! and… she also felt some remorse for barely keeping in contact with Daniel… so hoorah! replacement!

Turns out she also didn’t have that mothering instinct :\

But it was not, at all, for lack of trying. She never intentionally mistreated her child, Mia (named for Mia Farrow) – she had family days with her and hung out with her and… tried to figure out how to bond with her. She was never cruel like her mother or her mother’s mother or mother’s mother’s mother, so on and so forth and what have you, but… she was Innocently Insensitive. Still caught up in The Scene, there were some nights that were… very loud when she forgot Mia was trying to sleep and invited a bunch of people over. 

Some hedonistic tendencies returned and she found herself allowing a nanny to care for the child more and more often. Never malicious, never cruel, even asked Danny Devito to be Mia’s godfather… but still wound up being a really bad mom.

When Mia moved out, she was beginning to realize she was too old to continue going down the road she was on – to continue making the same mistakes over and over. One child was college-aged, the other was… somewhat older, although she’d lost track of the years. Yeah, she sent birthday cards and made calls every year, but time had just begun blurring together…

As a side-note, this was also around the time she was encouraged to write a memoir. She wound up having to get a memoirist which is a wc!!

The “best thing possible” happened when her mother died a year ago. Her father had already passed, but that was in Fresno – a quick trip. Her mother died in Mapleview, where her roots were laid. Also pls picture her eulogy for her mother like the eulogy in “Free Churro.” Anyway...

So what did Judith do?

Up and disappeared! 

It would’ve been a really excellent publicity stunt… if she’d ever returned. 

She likes to pretend she’ll never return to Los Angeles. The mountain air is so clean and crisp, life is so much simpler, people are so much less… corrupt.

Alas… somewhere in the back of her mind, has many plans to return to her old life. But she needs to make amends first, right?

TL;DR:

(tread lightly if any triggers under ‘backstory’ are triggers for you!)

born in mapleview. parents were awful but also it was a case of transgenerational trauma so there are nuances there. father “abandoned” her and her mom to go fight in the vietnam war bc he wasn’t able to fight in wwii like his brother. came back and joined them in fresno and judith’s mom was like “well u guys lost.... cant say it was unexpected with someone like u fighting :\” judith was like “well i’ve learned i’m what ruined their marriage even tho i’m also the reason they got married so guess i’ll go make something of myself bc i want them to be proud.” eventually got cast in a halloween-esque movie, because of course. got pregnant, yeet’d it to the father, “it” being daniel. became a class-a hedonist. got pregnant again, but got clean and kept her, named her “mia”. was a pretty good mom for a while, then forgot that kids weren’t “used” to the 1980s/90s equivalent of modern-day raves. mia left for college. judith was like “wait,,, im too old 2 keep living this life omg.” mom died a year ago. was like “oh wow perfect excuse to come back to mapleview and pretend i never lived in los angeles ever in my entire life goodbye all ties and connections!!!”

PERSONALITY/MISC.:

spent the majority of her life trying to live up to the expectations set by her mom when she basically said “you better be something great to make up for being alive” + trying to unconsciously make up for ‘ruining’ her parents’ marriage.

ngl family took inspiration from the sugarman-horseman family in bojack horseman bc i just finished rewatching it and :\ i miss it :\ which, in turn, means there’s a tiny bit of muse inspo from the eponymous, but,,,,,,,, like she may not be a good person,,,,,,, but if u’ve so much as seen up to s2e11,,,,, she aint THAT bad.

further basis was fictional director kelsey jannings (of such fame as “women who love women who love recycling”) when she said that celebrities tend to stagnate at the age they got famous. and judith got famous when she was 20.

I FEEL LIKE I NEED TO MAKE IT EXCESSIVELY CLEAR THAT SHE NEVER HAD MALICIOUS INTENTS TOWARDS HER CHILDREN. she just knew she wasn’t ready to be a mother with daniel - it was terrible timing and she genuinely worried about how she would be as a mother ( considering how poor maternal instincts were... basically passed down through generations ) - and she didn’t know how to connect with mia, especially as an addict in the hollywood machine that was literally filled with drugs, thus proving her hypothesis that she would be a poor mother correct. like... I JUST NEED TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THERE WAS NO ABUSE INVOLVED. SHE AT LEAST DID BETTER THAN HER MOTHER WITH THAT ASPECT.

but, as marina once said, “[she’s] now becoming [her] own self-fulfilled prophecy. oh, oh no! oh no! oh no!”

saddie disguised as a baddie.

also spent the majority of her life as an absolute hedonist. remains one, but is currently clean and trying to remain that way... maybe...

wants to be good so very bad, but doesn’t know how to be.

in spite of said hedonistic and escapist tendencies, she does have a very strong work-ethic. you know. thanks to both her parents + her capricorn moon.

no way to avoid saying she’s selfish, though. no way to.

CONNECTION IDEAS:

** all are open to any gender

her other child (a wc on the main!)

her memoirist (a wc on the main!)

her childhood friend from when she was still living in mapleview (a wc on the main!)

some fans! idk!

arm candy. pls. she’s bi so. they can be a himbo or a herbo or a thembo. 

you see she’s decently older than all of the characters so i feel like most of this will rely on brainstorming and/or chemistry in threads

FEEL FREE TO EITHER LIKE THIS OR HMU 2 PLOT!!

[gdelgiproducer]

Speculation about an unusual birth

(Because “‘tis the season” and all that.)

In today’s episode of “Never Ask a Knowledgeable Atheist What He Thinks Really Happened”...

If the story of the birth of Jesus Christ has any truth to it, and if he really was the result of Mary getting pregnant without Joseph’s help, then it stands to reason that somebody had to be the daddy. Being an atheist, I rule out the presence of God, so the question is obvious: is there another candidate? Funnily enough, non-Christian sources from the second century do record an alternate father for the figure we call Jesus. 

Now, granted, those sources were looking to counteract the already-popular “virgin birth” story, and they were often virulently anti-Christian, so they went for the most shameful possible alternatives in that day and age: stating that Mary was either assaulted by, or had an adulterous affair with, a soldier named Pantera, and that Jesus was the result. 

 This was so persistent that it leaked into the Talmud and medieval Jewish writings. Some sources, such as the Toledoth Yeshu, garbled this story a little, combining Pantera with Joseph and giving Mary another husband altogether who abandoned her after the baby daddy’s deception led to conception, but everybody ultimately comes down on 1) there was another father, and 2) his name was Pantera.

Christian Response

Christian apologists have had answers for this story almost since it began. Many otherwise reliable scholars argue that pantera is a pun on the Greek word parthenos (“virgin”) and not a real name; in other words, detractors were making fun of the idea of Jesus being the “son of a virgin” by called him the “son of a panther,” or a lusty animal. But it has zero historical or linguistic basis. As far back as 1906, Adolf Diessmann showed conclusively that the name “Pantera” is a real name, not unusual, and further that it was favored by Roman soldiers, who used it fairly commonly.

Other much earlier sources, Church Fathers apparently unaware of the parthenos pun hypothesis, decided that rather than ignore Pantera, whose story was evidently already very widespread, they’d hide him somewhere in Jesus’ genealogy and claim anti-Christian sources were mistaken. Epiphanius claimed that Joseph’s father’s surname was Pantera, which -- by his own admission -- would preserve the “virgin birth” he himself believed in and still make “Jesus, son of Pantera” technically accurate by that day’s standards. Someone else claimed Mary’s grandfather bore the name of “Pantera.” While either is certainly possible (the discovery of an ossuary with the name “Pentheros” in a Jewish first century tomb in Jerusalem by Clermont-Ganneau in 1891 has given us additional evidence that the name was in use in Palestine by Jews at the time), this smacks more -- at least to this reader -- of two attempts to make a square peg fit a round hole.

At the end of the day, we are left with “Jesus, son of Pantera.” This would be enough by itself, but we even have an existing candidate for exactly which soldier named “Pantera” laid the pipe. (And I say candidate only because the evidence is circumstantial at best; definitive proof does not exist.)

A Grave in Germany

In October 1859, during the construction of a railroad in Bingerbrück, Germany, tombstones for nine Roman soldiers were accidentally discovered. Among them was the memorial marker of one Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, a soldier of 40 years, former standard bearer for the First Cohort of Archers, who had died at the age of 62. (Presently, the marker resides at the Römerhalle museum in Bad Kreuznach, Germany.)

The Roman names speak for themselves -- both may have been given in recognition of serving in the army as he obtained Roman citizenship, with the particular significance of Tiberius being that Tiberius was the Caesar on the throne when Pantera was discharged, and so he’d have added the emperor’s name to his own when granted citizenship -- but “Abdes” is especially interesting. It seems to be the Latin form of an Aramaic name. (You know, the language Jesus and his fellow Jews spoke?) According to etymologists, Abdes comes from Ebed, which means “servant of God” in Aramaic.

I know what you’re thinking: “Why would a Roman have an Aramaic name?” Well, a lot of poor Jews and other impoverished men of Near Eastern cultures in that day, who for whatever reason could not find viable alternatives in their native place, would hire themselves out as mercenaries. Sometimes even to the hated Roman occupiers -- after all, if you hung around long enough, you got Roman citizenship and a pension in addition to your wages, which was no small reward in the days of the Empire.

Lending credence to this theory that Pantera wasn’t strictly Roman, according to his epitaph, he came from Sidon, on the coast of Phoenicia just west of Galilee (where, you’ll recall, Jesus is reported to have lived most of his life). More than that, based on the known movements of the First Cohort of Archers, they transferred from Palestine to Dalmatia in 6 AD, and to the Rhine in 9 AD. So Pantera was not only in Palestine at the right time for Jesus to be conceived, but he wasn’t Roman by birth; he enlisted locally, from an area close enough geographically that it’s even more possible he and Mary could have met.

Tiberius ruled from 14 AD to 37 AD. Pantera’s 40 years of service would therefore have started between 27 BC and 4 BC. As Pantera would probably have been about 18 when he enlisted, it means he was likely born between 45 BC and 22 BC. He could have been as young as 15 at the probable time of Jesus’ conception, which is worth noting because, from what we know of Jewish society back then, a boy would have been learning his trade by age 10, engaged at 13 (girls would typically be 12), and married by 14 (girls, 13); precocious and unconscionable by today’s standards, no doubt, but nonetheless the reality.

So... even absent definitive evidence, we have a viable candidate for the baby daddy -- right place, right time, right name, right age for things not to be icky, the kind of background where he and Mary could conceivably have met. But what about the stories of assault and illegitimacy?

Possible Explanations

Well, let’s look at what we know about Jewish culture at the time and speculate a little based on that:

This was a patriarchal culture where, as Fiddler on the Roof puts it, marriage was decided by the papas.

Sex outside of marriage was frowned upon. Shit, women were called whores just for getting divorced. (An echo of this exists even in Jesus’ own Sermon on the Mount, where divorce for any reason other than marital unfaithfulness is considered blameworthy.)

When tax collectors were being excoriated as traitorous collaborators by their fellow countrymen, imagine how much worse you’d get it if you slept with a Jew who went on to become a soldier in the Roman army. Why, the man himself, regardless of any lover or wife, might be disowned, a practice whereby parents considered their child dead and observed the traditional seven days of mourning.

Continuing on that seeming tangent from the last bullet point, if a man died without having children, Mosaic law held that his brother was responsible for marrying his widowed sister-in-law and continuing the family line in his brother’s name. So if a disowned son “died” without having children, well... maybe his brother had to pay for that choice.

Based on that, and sprinkling in a little long-standing Catholic tradition which portrays Joseph as an old widower (bearing in mind that many people in Jesus’ day didn’t live past 40, so even approaching one’s late thirties was considered “old”), I think I have an interesting idea about what went down. 

All of it is speculation. Every single bit of it. But isn’t it funny how it basically aligns with recorded tradition, even in the Bible and apocrypha, when you strip out the supernatural elements? (Okay, that’s a little strong, but, I mean, it’s not a huge stretch. It lines up.)

My Interesting Idea

Meet Miriam. a young teen by today’s standards. Like any other young teen at any time in recorded history, she’s a force of nature, with hormones and with emotions so powerful they shock even her. (Healthy teenage development can look pretty irrational. A minor annoyance can turn into an emotional earthquake that knocks everyone in the house off balance. Not much has changed.)

Meet Ebed. Maybe he and Miriam have known each other their entire lives; maybe he’s new in town and just cute enough to catch her eye. He has ambition. He feels he isn’t destined to stay in some obscure backwater, and he wants to make something of himself. More than that, he’s hungry. But odd jobs aren’t cutting it. If he puts his foot forward to betroth Miriam, her father will laugh in his face. In their time and place, marriages are arranged, and he has nothing to offer.

If anything, Miriam’s father is more interested in his older brother, Yosef, a widower. Being a tekton (often translated as “carpenter,” but more accurately a stonemason or architect) making decent money from Herod and Rome reconstructing Palestine in their image, he’d be a sound choice for her future. So she wants the brother, big deal -- what say does she have in the matter? It’s the same family. She’ll see him all the time!

One day, Ebed -- whose name I’ll remind you means “servant of God” (those Christian mystics do say the Lord works in mysterious ways, don’t they) -- visits Miriam with his usual flattering words. She knows something’s up. He tells Miriam that he’s found a way out, a way to make his mark on the world, but while it can provide for the two of them, it will expose them to shame and disgrace forever, and there’s even less chance her father will think their betrothal is a good idea. Namely, he’s joining the First Cohort of Archers. Knowing what this will mean for their relationship, even though she has known no man in the biblical sense (which makes her reluctant at first), she ultimately accepts a “proper goodbye.” Unfortunately for Miriam, in her time, place, and circumstance anyway, she was left with a reminder of his love. And the minute she knows she’s pregnant, she runs off to hang with her cousin, who just got pregnant herself under equally unusual circumstances. Running to visit a cousin in the same shape? Sounds like someone who was scared, or needed advice or time to think about what to do.

(Note that all of the above, once you strip out the supernatural angle and added frippery, is exactly what’s in the Gospel of Luke: a servant of God visits Mary with words of flattery, “tells her she’ll have a child” [I mean, he even says the Holy Spirit will “come upon her,” and don’t criticize me for my dirty mind, men considered it a divine mandate to spread their seed based on the early chapters of Genesis, whether they were consciously setting out to do that or not], she is reluctant at first but ultimately accepting of this “news,” and she immediately goes to visit her mysteriously pregnant cousin. Honestly none of this is especially different from the Bible when you remove your rose-colored glasses.)

While Miriam is off with her cousin Elisheba, her father makes the choice he’d already set his mind upon anyway, especially in light of Ebed running off to join the Romans, being disowned, and permanently taking himself out of the game (as it were): she will be pledged to Yosef. Since Ebed is now “dead,” maybe he can use his word -- the final word -- to persuade Miriam that her marriage fulfills the Law, and her children with Yosef will be Ebed’s. It’s technically not true in the least, but men thank God in prayer every morning that they were not born women and a common saying is that the Law should sooner be burnt than placed in female hands, so she won’t know the difference anyway, and if she shoots her mouth off, no one will pay it any mind, as she’s a woman.

As for Yosef’s feelings on the subject, arranged betrothals are just the way things are done. He knows his brother loved Miriam, and he feels bad, but honoring him by marrying her is what tradition dictates. He’s getting older (at least by that day’s standards), he’s been around the block once; even if he never truly loves this woman, at least there will be someone to come home to.

Word arrives at Elisheba’s: “You are betrothed to Yosef. Get back here. It’s been three months.” Now, what does Miriam do in that situation? Deciding never to return wouldn’t just disgrace her; it would put Yosef in the middle of things and leave a black mark on his reputation. Whatever she feels about him, she knows he doesn’t deserve that. So naturally, with no other choice, she goes home.

Imagine Yosef’s reaction when she turns out to be with child (from, y’know, a “servant of God,” which tradition may later call the Holy Spirit to obscure things), and throws herself on his mercy. I’d say what the Gospel of Matthew (1:18-19) says happened next wouldn’t be exactly inaccurate: “His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant [...] Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace...”

Morally torn, Yosef thinks to himself, “The Law calls for her to be stoned, but I’ve already lost one wife to Sheol. If all men call me cursed, that could hurt my chances if I ever put myself on the line for betrothal again. I could break the engagement quietly, but if I didn’t marry her, people would speculate. She might bear shame and disgrace anyway. This isn’t worth the mishegas, for either of us.”

And the angel in him, if you will, won out. Maybe he’d never be what Ebed was to her; maybe he could never ask her to love him. But the child would need a father, and she would need someone to care for her, even if only to cover her shame. Who knows? It could be a blessing in disguise.

In Miriam’s shoes, I’d be grateful. Maybe even have at least four other kids with him down the line (see Mark 6:3).

It’s all just speculation, but what if...?

[sueherman-blog]

Faught said he didn't like that rape and incest are gods will and its something we have to live with. Williams kept asking him if he believed "rape is gods will" along with "incest is gods will". Faught refused to anwser bc in the end while realizing he doesn't like rape or incest, his anwser is yes. Are woman paying attention to this? I read the comments on this article, several woman commented and believed in what he was saying. Telling us its gods will, which is equivalent to saying its gods plan. Spreading to men AND woman that its their Divine Right to rape. That God gives them permission. Who are you? What gives you the power/ right to say god gives you permission to rape and and abuse people. This argument all falls under the bill of making abortion illegal. In this artical it clearly states that rape will become legal, which is not true. Our bodies are not bound by men who can't have children. They will never know the burden of being forced to have a child you will resent.

When the subject of abortion is brought to light many believe that the easy answer is abortion is wrong. Easy answer number one: You can always put your child up for adoption. To be frank its not that easy, to carry a child for nine months then give it away. I don't know about you but how could someone expect anyone to carry a baby in your womb for nine months just to get ripped out of your arms. Only to meet this child years later. 65% of adopted children look for their birth parents (American Adoption Congress), including me. Another reason being substance abuse. If someone is using and their pregnant they shouldn't be having children. Given first hand experience, its not that easy. Drugs and alcohol rules everything when theirs an addiction. Easy answer number two: safe sex, while yes it should he practice by everyone its only 98% effective. According to planed parent hood most people aren't efficient at putting one on so that makes it only 85% safe. 15 out 100 people who only use condoms as a form of prevention get pregnant. Birth control, if taken properly, is 99.7% effective with flawless use. That means only one 1 out of 100 women get pregnant. The odds are you might get pregnant when you're not ready and be forced to have a child. As a teen it can be even worse, I bet you didn't know 3 out 10 teens will get pregnant at the bare minimum once before the age 20. Thats almost 750,000 teen pregnancies in a year. Guess what, almost 25% of teens have another child 24 months after conception. Nearly 50% of teens won't graduate high school. Lets add some more only 2% of women who had children as teens get college degrees, my mom being one of them. Keeping abortion legal helps ensure that these numbers don't go up. Having children before you're ready ruins lives, granted not all lives. My sister at age 19 gave birth, she'd only been out of the house for a year. She had a job at Walmart but lost it due to being pregnant. My brother aged now 39 has five children. The first one he had killed his dream of being in an orchestra. The second one he had forced him to exit the military. My mom had a kid but she managed to graduate high school. She got married, had the kid, got divorced. She struggled having 2 to 3 full time jobs at a time. Dropping her kid off from one day care to another. Never seeing her kid, all at the price of teen pregnancy. My mom, being the strongest woman I know got her degree at 57 years old. Statistics show that teen pregnancies don't normally end well.

Abortion is so much more then an easy way out, its a second chance.

[jackiekashian]

All sexual harassment isn’t sexual

Aside from the sexual abuse and assault I (or anyone has) lived through - there is something else. 

There is a “kind” of woman, and I am often perceived as such, that - if you grab my breast or pinch my ass I will MURDER you. Which makes rapists and gropers and douche bags of all sorts turn to OTHER methods of sexual abuse. In this case; stalling, thwarting or derailing the lives and careers of those women. 

If you don’t “let” a guy grab at you and maul you “at least a little” so he can “show you who’s got the real power” he will SHOW YOU WHO HAS THE REAL POWER. He will pass LEGISLATION to control your body. He will pass legislation that makes it possible to fire women for being pregnant regardless of her work performance. He will pass legislation to INSIST you have a baby that you didn’t ask for, want and don’t want to have. He will pass legislation making birth control harder to get so that you DO have a pregnancy and it makes your life harder. He will sell these things as “morality” ONLY for women. And only for women that he has not impregnated and might have to take responsibility for. 

In comedy, women comics are often the type of women that are harder to push around. Not impossible. I’ve been assaulted - on several levels - in comedy settings. Though my rape was “date rape” and it was in college, not comedy related. But I did tell the guy I didn’t want to do it and he DID say, “it’ll be quick” and I WAS drunk and so i didn’t physically fight him off so ... WAS IT RAPE? It certainly feels shitty. And, in comparison to TOO MANY WOMEN I KNOW, it’s not what they suffered. In comedy I’ve had several “hilarious guys” shove fingers up my ass, grab my boobs and force their tongue down my throat. And i took that, like hecklers and the occasional racist asshole, as part of the gig.  

The real slow-down was the slow-down of a career. Club owners and bookers like to sell out rooms. If you can’t “fill the room” they won’t book you. OR... that is the story they tell when they don’t want to book you :). 

If you’re a guy they like that doesn’t fill the room, plenty of work for you. Golf often helps. If you’re a woman they want to try to have sex with, sometimes that can help. Sometimes it can hinder (if you are married or make it clear you don’t). If you are a HORRIBLE guy but “fun” to a horrible guy of a club owner - you are IN!!  If you are a woman who is not going to screw them - you MUST be able to MAX fill the room FOR SURE - but yes.. you’re in. But if you are a guy they DO NOT LIKE (as much as some monster they do), but can still do the job, but you don’t fill the room, nope. And if you are a woman, in GENERAL, who can do the job but doesn’t MAX fill the room FOR SURE- nope. And this story is told and fulfilled by decent dude bookers and owners who don’t see that they’ve been sold the formula by GENUINE creeps who concocted the formula. 

This is bitching, sure... but if you scrape at it a little, you can learn how to not fall for or be the bad people that are sometimes around you. Because if you’re a comic you keep going. Because you want to do the thing. And you punch the guys that grab you. And look for other venues. There will always be work bc it’s work... but the heights reached have been stalled by the dude who takes the ladder away when you walk in the room bc he doesn’t like your type of human. 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/designing-women-creator-les-moonves-not-all-harassment-is-sexual-1142448 

[serenagaywaterford]

5) Honestly, imo it would made a lot more sense if Serena got involved with the Resistance after 2x08. She's a writer and a good propagandist, June's an editor, they could carefully go behind Fred's back. Also, Commander Lawrence is there. They could have brought down Gilead from within. Maybe I'm being simplistic, but I think it would have given a nice msg. An instigator (and impassioned supporter) of a misogynistic (and homophobic) totalitarian regime becomes a victim herself, but decides to

6) to do sth about that monstrous situation she created, even if that means that she will go down with Gilead. Then again, I do understand why the creators didn't go there. This is the handmaid's tale, not the redeemed fascist's tale. Regarding 2x10, oof. I pride myself in having a hard stomach, but that scene made me REALLY, REALLY uncomfortable (and ENRAGED). (A lot more uncomfortable than the previous ceremonies, which were terrible enough on their own, AND Eden's death* .) And given that

7) Serena has the gall to tell Fred that June hates him, because he raped her. Like bitch, stfu, it was YOUR idea! You raped her and used Fred for the penetration. And not only that, but she manipulated Fred/played him like an instrument. She knows at this point that he's a serial rapist/abuser AND in love with June, so ofc he wouldn't decline the opportunity to abuse her once again. It really is telling that June was screaming Serena's name, not Fred's. I wonder wtf was going on Serena's mind

8) to put the baby's life in danger. She could have punished June after the birth if she really wanted to. That being said, I personally think that Serena was kind of OOC in that episode. Not because she's an angel that is not capable of such hideous things. But, after taking under consideration 2x08 and 2x09, I felt that her 180° change came out of nowhere. Especially, since she took a small taste of her own medicine. She knows what abuse/domestic violence feels like. As for the marital rape,

9) it may have been clichéd, but it would also have made sense. A person that repeatedly rapes a woman, beats his wife and is okay with mutilations draws the line at forcing himself on her? Since when do creepers have standards? One last thing, because I've spammed you enough. *I mentioned Eden's death (which made me cry like a baby). How do you feel about her? Bc was disappointed that the fandom blamed a 15 year old child that was forced to marry a man twice her age. Not only that, but she

10) forgave him and kept Nick and June's secret? // END OF RANT // My apologies.

---------

I think I have to put a read more here! Eep!

“Then again, I do understand why the creators didn't go there. This is the handmaid's tale, not the redeemed fascist's tale.”

I had to laugh IRL there. Cos, it’s true. It’s June’s story, technically speaking, not Serena’s. And I dunno but I feel like I suspect that’s where they eventually want to take the show. But S2 is too early for that? I personally don’t know why. There’s no law an American programme must go one for 14 seasons. It could easily be a 4 season series. Or 3! But I’ve read things that Hulu wants to keep it going as long as possible. Huge mistake, imo. Organically speaking, Serena changing course after 2x08, or even, at a push, 2x09 would have made much more sense than this “will she? won’t she?” BS they keep doing with her. I think she’s come around in a way she hadn’t before by the finale (or Eden’s murder). But it still doesn’t seem like it’s something she’ll carry through with--especially without June. It’s interesting how much Serena relies on June for incentive/encouragement. Basically everything Serena’s done in resistance since mid-S2 has been because June has done or challenged her or said something to prompt her. I feel on her own, she would be ~meeker. Even things like, “Hey, so I know this way to possible save the baby... what do you think?” is clearly her going “Please say what I want to hear!” It’s like she can’t just do it herself. She needs June’s input. June was calling almost every shot in 2x08. In 2x09, when left to her own devices, Serena folded. It took June screaming at her in 2x13 for her to do anything about reading. So, without June around I feel like Serena will just go back to old ways. Which is ridic cos she is an intelligent, powerful woman when she actually has the balls. The only thing Serena manages to do on her own is assault, hate speech, and war crimes lol. The easy shit.

That said, I kinda like how they ended 2x08. I loved Fred seeing the rose on June’s bedside and putting all the pieces together and seeing that as the true threat: Serena and June as friends/partners in rebellion. The beating scene was horrific too, mostly cos I’m not one of those weird fans that was sitting there cheering, “YAY I’M SO GLAD SERENA GOT BEAT! SERVES HER RIGHT!” (I just... want to throttle every single person who’s said that. Not necessarily cos I wuv woobie Serena sfm but because way to miss the point of the entire series.) but the aftermath was even worse, imo. June reaching out and attempting to maintain the bond, but Fred managed to break Serena really easily. Like it’s just so awful how easy it was for him to snap that bond, cos he knows his wife and her pride, etc. It was ... so manipulative and evil genius. (Although it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out, Freddie boy.) It was just such a prime example of exactly how they maintain power in Gilead and how they managed to get it working: estranging women from each other. And it was just such an apt way of visualising the concepts June talked about in S1 about keeping women at arm’s length of each other, suspicious, etc. in order for men to keep power. So, in that sense, I thought it was well done. But then... I was like, “OH FUCK THIS. NOT AGAIN. FUCKING SERENA. WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT. WHY CAN’T SHE BE STRONG LIKE JUNE. UGH.”

I dunno.

Yeah. 2x10. I was “lucky” to have seen that scene ahead of time... so I was prepared when it happened during the episode. But it was still repulsive. Aside from the nonsensical writing of the whole thing, it was just gross. And I think maybe you’re the first person that when talking about this has mentioned how grossed out you are by the other Ceremony scenes. So many people just... don’t really mention them. I remember the article about 2x10 and how the showrunners were saying something along the lines of “Is it really that big of a deal when the same thing has been happening the entire time?” Nobody reacted the same way those times, because the Handmaids are quiet and well-behaved during their rapes, even though, on some level I think Serena and some other wives (IIRC) are completely aware of how terrible it is (Serena even admits as much...but does it anyway uuuggghhhhh.) This is the only time June ever fights back and suddenly not only are Fred and Serena faced with the brutal reality of the act but as the audience we are as well. It’s easy to look the other way when nobody is crying or struggling but WHAM. Fuck that. This is gross and horrible and here is what it REALLY is. And it’s hard to swallow.

June crying Serena’s name was probably the absolute worst part, cos it just makes it crystal clear that everyone knows exactly who is responsible for that rape. June knows who has the power, whose idea it was, and she knows the only one to stop it is not Fred. (God, I fucking hate Fred but like you said, he was totally played by Serena. I don’t let him off the hook for it but really it was her idea, 100% and he just thought “Hell yeah! Sounds good!”)

I feel like as much as Serena understood the Ceremony is pretty bad generally, I don’t think she recognised it as “real” rape until that moment. I feel like a lot of those Gilead people are just so willfully blind and selfish and horrible that they actively refuse to see things. Like Serena’s weird ass enthrall about child brides. I know some of that was to get back at June but she seemed genuinely awed by how beautiful it all was. NO BITCH IT’S NOT. IT’S CHILD ABUSE AND SEX TRAFFICKING. 

I just have given up trying to understand why Serena would do such a monumentally STUPID and DANGEROUS thing if she honestly cared about the baby--which, incidentally, I do believe she truly loves Nicole and babies. As crazy as that is. Even if her love of Nicole specifically is totally a self-centeredness. But she loves babies. Babies above all else apparently, including other women. And she’s not an idiot. Baby health aside, that is a HUGE crime in Gilead to rape a pregnant Handmaid for any reason. I’m supposed to believe Serena is just so massively upset about June’s false labour that she goes mentally insane, even after being subjected to the similar treatment like a week earlier? It’s a huge, nonsensical risk on basically every single level. 

I’ve come to the conclusion, considering all those things you did, it was just bad writing. Her 180 just... is bonkers. I give up. I don’t think there’s any way to logically get from 2x08/09 to 2x10 without taking some leaps. Do I think Serena would punish and abuse June for humiliating her? Absolutely. That’s her MO. She lives for that shit. But rape? It... I dunno again. Fucking weird. I don’t know if it’s on purpose or what, but I do find it interesting that after that Serena never raises a hand to June again, when she had some opportunity. She still punished her by separating her from Nicole but she never physically assaults her again. (Not that I’m saying she’s a changed person or anything. I just thought it was curious but I don’t know if it was deliberate on the show’s part or just a symptom of lack of real opportunity.)

ITA re: the marital rape too. I see no reason Fred wouldn’t escalate to that. It’s all Joseph Fiennes fault. Which is probably what pisses me off the very most. He decided that was just too much for his character? C’mon. That’s too much but what Fred does in the next ep is peachy keen? Oh, right, because in 2x10 we can blame Fred’s behaviour on his evil wife. It’s not really his fault. I see. But you can’t blame Serena for him raping her. Ugh. So, cos, Fiennes doesn’t like it, we lose way more context for Serena--who, lbr, is the more important character in this whole series out of the two of them.

EDEN. OMG BB EDEN.

I’m with you. I was actually pretty disgusted at fandom’s response to her. SHE IS A CHILD. But all these Nick/June shippers were going hogwild attacking her for getting inbetween their precious self-insert fantasy relationship. (I have a particularly low opinion of Nick/June shippers primarily because of their reactions to Eden, tbh. Before that, I was like whatever, each to their own.) This is a story about women and girls in a horrible society, and the focus seemed to be on tearing apart this female child for something she had zero control over. I never got the “Eden is evil and gonna fuck shit up for Nick (and June)!” vibe. She seemed to be a regular girl caught and raised in a misogynistic awful place and just lost. I absolutely ABHORRED the way Nick treated her the entire fucking time. (I honestly hate him so much, and most of that again is due to him since the forced marriage, both in the way he was with Eden and with June. And the number of fangirls fanwanking away all his shitty fucking behaviour and throwing Eden under the bus didn’t help my attitude.) 

She’s a KID. FORCED TO MARRY A GROWN MAN. A man who it wouldn’t kill to just be straight up with her and a little bit kind. Fuck. (Serena’s grooming certainly wasn’t good either. Like, seriously lady, shut up. Stop pressuring the kid to fuck an adult man who hates her by telling her “Well maybe you can like it too!” AHHHHH.)

To me, aside from the babies/children, Eden was the most truly good character on the entire show. She was patient, kind, caring, FORGIVING, loving. Completely innocent bb girl. And then she gets fucking murdered for kissing a boy she actually likes and wants to be with. Which, was ........... wow. Gilead’s hypocrisy killing a pious young girl, presumably fertile... Yikes.

And that little girl was more brave than ANY other character. And maybe some of that is teenage thinking but still she was staring down death and refused to back down. Sure, it’s unreasonable, and an adult likely wouldn’t have made that decision... but also what was her option? Repent... and become a Handmaid? That would have been her fate since she’s an adulteress and fallen woman. And since she truly believes in goodness, and God, and Heaven (presumably), she sees it as a way for her and Isaac to be together. Meanwhile, it took a literal death sentence for Nice Guy Nick to actually recognise he could have maybe been a bit kinder to her. Then she’s asking for HIS forgiveness. AH. Eden bb.

I have a lot of feelings about Eden, and the way fandom treated her. Even when she was killed, fans were still calling her stupid and annoying for her choice--likely the ONLY real choice she has EVER had for herself. (I think that concept gets forgotten.) Like WTF sort of world do you live in that you watch a show about fascism and female oppression and turn around and bitch out the YOUNG GIRL strictly for being a young girl in a fascist society?

But hey, this is the same fandom that calls Janine annoying and crazy, and says Serena deserves to be beaten and mutilated by her husband/Gilead. Way to miss the point of the entire show. But that’s a totally other rant for another time, heh.

Also, anon, NEVER APOLOGISE FOR YOUR RANTS. They are so wonderful to read cos I completely agree! And it’s just such a relief to see reasonable people around these parts. 

[thalialancaster]

➰ ( LYNDSY FONSECA, CIS FEMALE, SHE/HER ) *✧.:°░｡ —- is that THALIA "LIA" LANCASTER ?! you know them, right? they are the 380ish year old VAMPIRE !! they’re known for being SPIRITED & LOYAL - but i’d be careful if i were you because they’re also MELANCHOLIC & STUBBORN. 

i have a problem. i swear i’ll stop soon. before i hit the limit. cross my heart. but anyways here’s my new kid, lia <3

trigger warnings: death, violence, death of a child, fire, attempted rape. if i missed any let me know.

so thalia here is the daughter of one @adriianvl and a past life of @charlottesryder​, one of two kids.

when adrian “died” and fled his kingdom, charlotte had just recently become pregnant and was still unaware. with the help of one of adrain’s knights who wasn’t terribly loyal to the new king, charlotte returned to her own family’s kingdom, where she would end up giving birth to twins -  Vincent Æðelwine and Thalia Adria.

@rcvcnaant​ & @thclcssc​ are honorary godparents even though neither of them knew, bc charlotte was soft for adrian’s people

charlotte’s brother, who had no children of his own, took them as his heirs. 

she’s only been in love once 

she was 14 when her soldier ( who was about six years her senior ) first caught her eye - already spending most of her days training with the soldiers and spending very little time acting like a "proper princess" as her grandmother continued to point out, she was fairly certain she'd never take a husband. at the time he had spent more time flirting with the maids than paying attention to the princess, which further affirmed her belief that she'd remain alone. she was 16 and had nearly given up on romance and simply settled for friendship, the two were often paired off as sparring partners bc many of the others were either "afraid to hurt the princess" or had lost to her and their pride wouldn't let them do it again. it would often happen that one of the two couldn't sleep and would sneak around to wake the other up for more practice and they'd end up training until they passed out in the stables. on one such night while they were sparring he stole a kiss - and then proceeded to use her shock against her and win the round - it became a more common thing and turned into the two sneaking off and stealing kisses they never went all the way tho, he didn't want to take advantage. she was 18 and all of her grandmother's attempts to find a "suitable" husband for her had failed ( no one wanted a wife that could best them in a fight eoijdsa ) when her soldier went to charlotte to ask for her blessing in marrying thalia - she outranked him by that point, and he'd asked the king as well, and he'd saved up his wages so he'd have something to his name, and was going to surprise thalia ( when she returned from a hunting trip with her brother and a few other soldiers ) with a simple ring if given their blessing. unfortunately their kingdom was once again attacked before she could return, her soldier cut down on the battlefield and left to die. charlotte personally went through his things with the news reached the castle, finding the ring and a half finished speech he'd been working on. to this day thalia wears the band on a chain around her neck, long enough to be hidden beneath her shirt.

on their 19th birthday vincent took the throne and lia was knighted, half acting as an adviser to her brother when battle was at hand ( which was more often than you’d think )

through out their lives their uncle ( adrian’s brother ), and later his heir, would stage attacks against their kingdom, in a move to show that they were still the top player.

thalia was also training to work as a sort of assassin, training with the soldiers and knights but also working with another trainer that had seen potential in her whenever she had a bit of spare time.

she had a group of about five knights that were more hers than her brother’s - they’d fight for their king but they’d die for their knight princess.

she was gravely wounded in a battle and left by the enemy to die of her wounds. she half-wished to die in hopes that her love would be waiting for her - unfortunately, she’s not that lucky.

she was turned by a vampire that pushed her to give into darkness, and the two of them along with her knights ( who had also been turned ) managed to infiltrate her father’s family’s kingdom and completely destroy it.

they tore through guards and soldiers and any that stood against them, and by the end of the fighting flames burned around them. as the flames grew higher lia came back to herself, heart breaking as she stared in horror at what they had done. she ordered her men to help anyone they could - women and children, anyone that hadn’t died - only to be cut off as the vampire that had turned them snapped the neck of a child and dropped the body at her feet and said “to what end, little princess? so they may grow healthy and strong and tell stories of the demons that did this? you still wear your brother’s colors, spare a single life and you will bring ruination to your home.”

she’s still haunted by that night, and several other terrible deeds he forced her to commit before she finally escaped his grasp.

she stayed with him for nearly three decades, him reminding her that she needed him. she knew little of this so-called ‘shadowworld’ and didn’t know how to survive in it. she gritted her teeth and bore his abuse until one day he attempted to push too far - she was lovely, he wanted her, she owed him. 

he’d managed to tear through her clothing before she got ahold of one of his fingers and bit it clean off, calling to her men the second his hand left her mouth. while he was older and stronger six pissed knights vs one man meant the odds were not in his favor. 

the six of them trapped him in a cave, five waiting while one went to find a warlock willing to seal it so he couldn’t leave - he’s been there for well over 300 years, surviving on rats and biding his time.

lia and her knights stuck together for a while after that, but eventually parted ways - they still get together every few years to catch up, though in more recent years two have stopped showing up lia is worried but hopes they just moved on oefijds

she came into possession of her father’s sword and ring about 100 years ago when one of her nephews tried to sell them for a bit of cash. she stole them before he could bc hell nah fam.

she knows about her mother’s curse and is actually in town looking for her - little does she know her dad’s in town too, along with the woman that she looked up to from all her mothers stories when she was a girl.

a small side-note: when startled she has a terrible habit of turning to dust/ash. pls don’t spook her, and pls don’t sweep her up. she’ll return to normal soon enough.

idk if i missed anything, i probably did. if you’ve got questions hit me up!!! like/reply to this or message me ( here or on discord ) if you want to plot <3

[bibbleboo]

Could we get some headcanons/more background on Abbey and Doyle’s kids? 🥺👉👈 I love the premise of this AU

YEEEEE (im just gonna ramble a bunch about the backstory i have so far but ill put it in bullets so its easier to follow lol i apologize for it being long as fuck-)

OKAY SO,,, first of all,,, doyle and abbey timeline,,,, [i am looking respectfully]

in this au, they get back together and have a sort of ‘lovers pretending to be enemies’ chaotic on again/off again hookup thing off to the side just between the two of them thru like Most of the final season, they try to keep it a secret (especially doyle who doubts the saturdays would be hAPPY if he was seeing her again) but in the end, saturdays ofc find out, probably are unsure about it at first, but she gains enough of their trust to be there for the big finale battle in the weird world mansion.

when shit goes down and argost becomes the vessel for the two opposing kurs (regular kur, and the anti kur from zak monday) and they like. explode his matter or w/e, i imagine instead of kur just completely disappearing, the ‘anti kur’ gets shot back to its universe, while original kur gets forced into a new vessel in this universe... the closest of which happens to be the unborn child abbeys unknowingly carrying. basically, what if the two kurs just LOOKED like they evaporated but actually did what happens when you try to like tape two same sides of a magnets together and they YEETED-

So thats how we have Parker, their firstborn daughter! and this... also implies ‘Parker Monday’ exists which. 8^) i havent thought about yet so forgive me on that but hoo, 

they dont know parker is kur, they got no idea and rly just assume kur is gone for good. but after they find out abbeys pregnant (which is a huge emotional trip for both of them in its own right) they do eventually sort of agree they dont want their kid exposed to that whole world of mystery. like, ik its a vital thing to the whole family, and ik these two people were probably voted least likely to ‘settle down’ in high school, but i cant imagine they didnt escape the kur/zak situation without a LOT of trauma, so while the saturdays stay in the cryptozoology field, doyle and abbey slowly pull away from the mystery and mercenary stuff, and also instead of going for big dollar lifestyle settle with ‘independently wealthy’ parenting.

also, neither of them really . grasp the concept that theyve even started a family, and are ‘together’, and that this is REAL, until around when she gets pregnant with their second daughter, Kendall. and then theyre like. oh nooo wait are we actually like boyfriend and girlfriend EWW-

when kendall is born parker is 3, and the next like 10+ years are pretty smooth sailing. as far as what the kids know/see, they probably know the cryptids when theyre little but. (tw animal death sORRY TO BE DARK I JUST??????) idk,, how long komodo dragons live/how old komodo already is and i definitely dont know Anything about giant prehistoric birds and am not even sure if science knows that lifespan, so. im not sure how long they could really be in each others lives??? i almost imagine parker would have memories of them that she assumes she remembers wrong, like “oh yeah they used to have a lizard and a bird... my imaginative little kid brain thought they were a komodo dragon and a dinosaur”, and as for fisk im still working on it but i . actually kind of imagine he might have a much longer lifespan (since lemurians are like ancient or w/e? and also if hes by dna like a gorilla cat or w/e gorillas at least live long af) and also feel like once he got older and settled down a bit he might live somewhere in the woods, maybe even his old tree? and the saturdays see him ALL the time obviously, but hey zaks gotta go to college eventually, a gorilla cats gotta eat bugs in forest, we all have to grow up and leave the nest sometime,

so idk the last time parker has actually seen fisk and she might assume he was an imaginary friend or smth but, 1. if i do write a fic they absolutely have to meet again, 2. overall the vibe is they know the saturdays are cryptozoologists, like, the same way josh gates does destination truth, seeking answers and studying, they dont really. know that theyre REAL. to them its like, a hypothetical science. (this is also part of why they dont realize parker is kur, she isnt around cryptids and therefore whenever her powers would actually show up they wouldnt be recognized) anyways parker isnt embarrassed or put off by it but just thinks its a little wacky, meanwhile kendall is obsessed with the world of mystery/paranormal/cryptic lol

speaking of the girls personalities;;;

parker is like. not really normie/preppy, even if she seems it at first glance, shes nice and has a good head on her shoulders but also is a teenage girl (inherently unhinged) and shes THEIR teenage girl (+5 feral) so despite her success and charm shes also very witty/crass when she wants to be, and deep down shes closer to the kind of person that would on pure inexplicable instinct put something random in your mouth when you’re yawning so you bite down on it afterwards. or like. that video of the girl singing in the bathroom while her friends curl their hair and she grabs the curler to use as a microphone before realizing its burning hot??? shes. the voice of reason, but the voice is usually shrieking in fear, making a cursed joke, or half the time whatever shes saying is actually smart. she kinda wants to go to college and travel, but struggles with indecisiveness and anxiety, so she has no idea where to go, what to major in, etc. and is again kinda just livin thru the typical teen life in that regard

kendall on the other hand is like. weird kid culture, the kind of kid that believes they are secretly a new supernatural creature each year (mermaid phase, werewolf phase, alien phase, etc), probably completely accidentally starts cults or witch covens at school (didnt realize teaching peers how to become ‘blood brothers’ and ‘make potions’ from puddles and stolen school supplies would be taken so seriously by parents) , very into emo/scene/punk/alt culture but not rly in an overtly dark/edgy way, more of a having fun and expressing self way. she wants answers for everything, really loves mysteries and being open minded, and definitely a rebel/adventurer at heart, even if she gets naive or in over her head sometimes.

the girls get along well! parker is not dismissive of kendall she just. isnt really into the same stuff/is more freaked out by it most of the time, but she would tag along on certain adventures, especially if it was to keep her safe. and kendall definitely directs gentle mockery towards parker a lot but does see her as a good role model and guiding figure, their bond is really strong!

other details !

doyle and abbey prob decide to say fuck it and get married after kendall is born, they probably have a few rough patches but nothing is more important to them than the kids now and in the end they understand each other better than anyone else so . canon tension idk her! family ftw! power couple! they intimidate the teacher during parent teacher conferences together hand in shady little hand !

their parenting style is exactly what one would imagine, 70% fun and sass and controlled chaos where theyre the bigger children than their children, 15% ‘this is how you hack the government and dual wield swords-- i was not supposed to teach you that im sorry’, and 15% actual guidance / emotional depth / etc. flaws might be overcoming their own immaturity for the first few years, and then being lowkey overly protective (while claiming they arent, but just bc you semi jokingly tell parker she should join the football team doesnt mean you dont actually hide 60% of ur life from her and check that her bedroom windows are locked every night and have 24 people listed in her school emergency contacts and used to cut up her food till she was 7 and-)

so abouT THE BABY BOY (Phoenix), 1. his middle name is leonidas bc im gay and i love emotional turmoil babes , 2. fully unironically the idea behind such a late pregnancy is abbey would be mid fourties when hes born right. so like. [has two kids] ‘ok birth control time’ [when theyre teens many years later] ‘ok im old enough to stop taking this’ [the hyperfertility curse that plagues many women rears its ugly head with one last hoo-rah]

and finALLY a very quick elevator pitch of what id write an actual fic to focus on;;; kendall sneaks into the attic to look for old shit bc they BOTH know their parents have been hiding stuff over the years, she finds things like a cryptopedia (now offline), the claw, maybe even a piece of the kur stone, and ropes parker into the long haul of figuring out what all this stuff is. and ofc the second they ever find the naga relic and parker comes face to face with it, [rest in rip] time for mom and dad to find out and all this kur shit to start ALL over again-

[feministbynature]

I don’t really post on here, but I just found myself inspired after watching “Plus one” so here are my thoughts on the ep...

Who would have thought hell would freeze over and I would find myself giving Chris Carter credit and literally wanting to thank him for not completely screwing up an episode and finally giving us something that he has been dangling as bait above our heads for literally decades?!? ATTHS!!!! That should be the title of the episode because let’s face it that’s the main thing that I am taking away from this episode 😂 but that’s just me, one track mind and also no tolerance for Chris Carter’s “did they didn’t they” bullshit. Philes have withstood it for ages and I’m glad the game of torture is finally over. Apparently this is going to turn into a love letter ode to Chris Carter because right from the get go it felt like a proper xfile, I got that reminiscent chill way deep in my bloodstream when the doppelgänger appeared, nothing like things that go bump in the night with loud music in the background to raise my Adrenalin level to a high. The first dialogue between far fetched theory Mulder and rational medical doctor Scully  as they battle it out cerebral style is how we like our x files! Or at least how I like mine. It also continues Mulder’s theme of claiming the x-files as “theirs” as states in the last episode “This”. These cases are collectively Mulder and scullys bread and butter, and as much as Scully puts up a fight in trying to discredit Mulders whacky enthusiasm over the idea of doppelgängers Scully is intrigued enough to jump into a car with him hit the I95 south to get to the bottom of this phenomenon wether they are mental illness or else... and Mulder is gracious enough to extend her the first go at discrediting him by allowing her to conduct Arkie’s first interrogation at the jail. Bringing Karin Konoval back is yet another mark in Chris Carter’s favor, her fabulous acting abilities as both male and female deranged and mentally ill just blew my mind!  The whole theme of the episode evil minds evil forces borderline mental illnesses was just the thing that Xfiles has been known for and allowed for the frameworks in which Mulder and scullys mind work to kick into high gear ringing true to my ears. And now let’s talk foreplay! Cause there was so much of that interweaved with comedic splatters that I had to rub my eyes in disbelief that Chris Carter actually possesses these abilities (and why has he not used them more frequently?? They are equally as supportive of the show as the angsty ones if u ask me).- Asking for a couple of rooms and not just one assisted to get these two where we wanted them, together in each other’s arms, and it also ties in with the bureaus policy of agents sharing a room. the scold on scullys face as she tells Mulder she is glad to hear all he wants is some shut eye could be seen as an older prudish version of Scully minus the eye roll and skip in her step. But in the aftermath of the episode it reads to me like a married couple that the man is feeling frisky and the woman is just not feeling it that night so she sternly puts him in his place. Let’s face it right now Scully is leaning towards her medical theories to try and make sense of this case and the subject matter is hitting her, she sees more in Judy than meets the eye, and so I kind of understand this scene and appreciate it. Especially since we get the eyebrow foreplay when Mulder asks if that bed is nice and comfy as he comes through their adjoining rooms making it clear that he is still frisky and would rather be in that bed with Scully rather than chasing the case as needed. That actually says a lot about Mulder, sex with Scully is better than weird ass theories (I wouldn’t argue with that). I kind of got catapulted back to “rain king” when Mulder denied blatantly that he stared at Scully while someone pointed out the sheer attraction to him. And here we have Judy clearly seeing the connection between our two agents from just being in the same room with them for a few minutes. And also her twin brother who asks Mulder if he is “tapping” that tasty red head. Everyone sees it and at least they are not denying it even though they aren’t yet addressing the elephant in the room. I found it quite interesting that Special agent Dana Scully as well as Doctor Dana Scully who has fought men with guns and other social deviants and has conducted multiple surgeries and autopsied dead bodies in the past would get so flustered while dealing with a psych patient and her own mortality and aging. I think this was a critical comment about how society brands women as useless and nothing more than their labels, a woman who hits her 40’s is apparently less worthy bcs her womb is no longer functioning.   The fact that she can turn to Mulder for the cold harsh truth when it comes to insecurities shows just how Dana Scully has progressed from the woman who’s catch phrase was “I’m fine Mulder”. She no longer feels the need to hide from this man, she trusts him in more ways than one. And how endearing is it to hear him say “u have still got it going on”. The man speaks the truth! (Bless). And I don’t know if Chris Carter had “tony Orlando and dawns” song in mind when he wrote knock three times but that completely fits in with the solicitation of one Fox Mulder who tells Scully he is just a door away if she should ever want to get it on 😂 and let’s face it, it’s hard to resist the upper arm and torso muscly built of Mulder in that tank top 👅 Knock three times: Hey girl what ya doin' down thereDancin' alone every night while I live right above youI can hear your music playin'I can feel your body swayin'One floor below me you don't even know meI love youOh my darlingKnock three times on the ceiling if you want meTwice on the pipe if the answer is noOh my sweetnessMeans you'll meet me in the hallwayTwice on the pipe means you ain't gonna showIf you look out your window tonightPull in the string with the note that's attached to my heartRead how many times I saw youHow in my silence I adored youOnly in my dreams did that wall between us come apartOh my darlingKnock three times on the ceiling if you want meTwice on the pipe if the answer is noOh my sweetnessMeans you'll meet me in the hallwayTwice on the pipe means you ain't gonna showI can hear your music playin'I can feel your body swayin'One floor below me you don't even know meI love youOh my darlingKnock three times on the ceiling if you want meTwice on the pipe if the answer is noOh my sweetnessMeans you'll meet me in the hallwayTwice on the pipe means you ain't gonna show Continuing with the progression in scullys character I love the fact that she can come into Mulders room and just ask to be held, it’s a little reminiscent of the bed scene in I want to believe where Mulder offers to take the burden, curse god so that Scully can have a break and sleep peacefully. At that given point in time Scully might be cursing god for the pain that is in human mortality and having the ultimate stop be at heavens door so to speak. Mulder undressing in freak out mode and scullys naked shoulder bobbing from above the sheets is the moment that the fandom will forever be screaming about because we finally got a literal confirmation that our duo are doing it!!! (Enter mental freak out and jumping up and down with ecstatic overtones). And there we have it, the afterglow of sex apparently agrees with Scully as she has become the calm and rational no longer haunted by the ghosts that seeped in to her psyche beforehand. And apparently sex with Scully agrees immensely with Mulder as well who movements before his freak out smiled at himself in the mirror. He’s always been so harsh with himself so it was a touching moment. And that last scene, if you mute it and watch scullys facial expression as she shoots off Mulders invitation of a second round of bed wrestling u can see that she is flirting and contemplating it even as she is saying no. I would put more emphasis on the part where she is shooting him down if it ended with just that, but hey, I just call it a knee jerk reaction which was erased momentarily cause let’s face it Scully will now forever be drawn to that damn afterglow of sex with Mulder!!! And now that I have all of the positives out of the way, it’s inevitable to put aside the truly bad dialogue that was held between Mulder and Scully in bed. Had it been anywhere else I would have shrugged it off but Chris Carter, dude, the spooning was probably hurting your retinas and so u thought u would try to distract us with words that were just plain and simple garbage! (Lucky for us we can hit the mute button and just relish in the intimacy and the love that is Mulder holding Scully close). Here is the 💩 that Chris had to inject (I mean how can u get your characters so spot on in all of the other scenes and then fuck up the scene with the best potential??? This is the mystery of CC himself one which we might never really understand)- insinuating Scully thinks Mulder wants children and with a younger woman! 🤦🏼‍♀️ I mean sheesh! He has stuck by Scully for so long and looks at her like a love sick puppy!!! This whole Scully doubting Mulder when it comes to their personal ship is something that will never ring true to me. - Also the stupid question asked by Scully - are we going to spend time together (when they are retired) - as if the x files is the only thing that keeps them together. Has Chris forgotten he wrote a whole damn movie where Mulder and Scully were living in the same house, sharing a bed and not working at the FBI? I know Scully is talking after retirement but seriously man when would Mulder never be part of scullys life? - What’s stopping u from having another kid??? Like are u fucking kidding me dude?? Mulder knows what Scully went through to actually get pregnant (or try to get pregnant) that is not a line he would ever throw her way! And Scully saying she wouldn’t have anyone to have a kid with even if she wanted to? 😡😡😡 I would like to throw “per manum” in Chris Carter’s face and smash his nose with it! Mulder will never say no to scullys request of fathering her child no matter how uncomfortable it might be for him (which at this point I don’t even think this element even exists between them anymore). - Sorry not even Scully saying “we will think of something” as an answer to Mulders question what will we do if we  lose our jobs, which ultimately leads to sex can salvage this scene!!!  I want to see the original script of this scene because it seems that dialogue was cut form it, it kind of is all over the place near the end which is such a chris Carter move, leave the social criticism dialogue in, super glue it with some sort of Shippy elusive declaration and try to get away with it knowing fully well it’s less than perfect. But he gave us the sex, and as a PHILE I have over the years gotten accustomed to blurring the parts and selectively choosing the strong points of the episodes so I am choosing to focus on the physical closeness on this one rather than the flaky words. Ending with a few comments that I had that don’t fit into any long argument 🤷‍♀️ - let’s face it Scully can even make the words “gestalt gestven syndrome” sound like foreplay and totally sexy (and is anyone else wondering how many takes of that they had to shoot because Gillian just kept messing it up? I’m counting on seeing this scene in the blooper reel 😂- The mature  version of Scully, skeptic as she might be is willing to subscribe to the notion better safe than sorry while popping the bread pills- It was nice to see the actual scene on the road where the bear story happened 🐻🐻🐻- Chris Carter with his sexist dick/sword collection scene at the diner 🤢 - And seriously who has that amount of ammunition in his home???? 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

[amaryllisblackthorn]

oh yes he was doing this to protect her from olivia all along what a swell guy

Alexis: If you -- If you hurt me, it'll just make it worse for you.

Julian: [Laughs] How could it possibly get worse, Alexis? You've already destroyed what we had. I mean, I would have -- I would have saved you from that prison because I loved you. I mean, I managed -- [Sighs] I managed to pull the only piece of physical evidence that they had against you from the PD. I did that for you, because you were my wife, and what did you do for your husband? You wore a wire, and you got me to confess... When all I ever did for you was try to change, Alexis. I mean, I -- I gave you my heart...my life. I -- I gave you all my love.

Alexis: If -- If you...love me... ...if you've ever loved me, please, please, please don't do this.

Julian: No, no, no, no. Alexis... Alexis, I loved you, and you betrayed me, so now you're gonna die... by the same knife that Helena used to kill your mother. [Chuckling] I mean, isn't -- It's so morbid, isn't it? I told you it was morbid. I told you to get rid of the knife the day you brought it home, and what did you do? You didn't listen to me, did you? No, because you know better. You always know better, Alexis, and that's why -- that's why you trusted the cops over your husband. So now you're gonna die because -- because you just couldn't love me enough.

Alexis: When they find me dead, they're gonna arrest you. Anna, Jordan, and Paul -- they heard the confession. It's an open-and-shut case.

Julian: No, Alexis, they're not gonna find your body. They're not gonna find your body.

Alexis: [Gasps] [Crying] Sam. What about our daughter? Please don't do this to our daughter. Please.

Julian: Sweetheart, shh. Shh. Shh. Shh. Shh. I'm not gonna tell Sam anything. It's okay. But I will tell you this. You set the wheels in motion for this. You did. I mean, if you would have just believed in me like you promised you would at our wedding, you would be free, I would be free, we [Sighs] -- we would all be free, okay, sweetheart? Here's what's gonna happen next, okay? We have to take the next step. We do. You left me no choice, Alexis.

lovely highlights from when julian tried to kill alexis. my favorite part is how he claims it’s her fault for not loving him enough.

some gems from before he tried to murder her:

Alexis: No. But I understand that trust has been broken on both sides.

Julian: Well, that's why I'm here. All I want is to... repair the damage we've both done to our relationship.

Jordan: How does she not punch him in the face?

had to include Jordan’s comment bc true

Alexis: Even when you found out that I hung on to the bloody shirt?

Julian: Yeah, well, I was a little bit angry and disappointed that you broke my trust, but, Alexis, I love you, okay? I always will.

Julian: You know, Alexis said some pretty horrible things to me, about me, but you know what's crazy is that all it would take is one word, one gesture, and I would... I would go running back. 

Julian: What, because you've never lied to me?

Alexis: Oh, now I'm the liar?

Julian: Well, there is the question of that shirt that you were supposed to destroy, and you ended up keeping it instead.

Alexis: Ah, yeah, right. Got me on that one. What else? Nothing. That's what I thought.

Julian: Okay, we--

Alexis: So let's just move on to your lies, shall we? And all the promises that you broke.

Julian: As I was saying, we've both done a lot of things to damage the trust between us, so we need to start... rebuilding it.

Julian: This could be a life-altering moment for the both of us, so if I knew without a shadow of a doubt that you were having my child...

Alexis: What would change?

Julian: Well, it might give me incentive to keep you out of prison. Or I might be willing to do things I might, uh, not otherwise be willing to do. Prove to me that we're having another child together... ...changes everything.

Julian: Jurors are -- are sympathetic to pregnant women. This could totally work to your advantage.

Alexis: Oh, now you're helping with my defense strategy? I don't need your help.

Julian: Come on, Alexis, your -- your trial is weeks away. I mean, Diane has plenty of time to poke holes in their case, and, of course, I will assist in any way I can.

Alexis: Any way but confessing. You're a real peach, Julian. I'm gonna be sick. And it's not because I'm pregnant, it's because of you.

Julian: Alexis... our baby... our baby was conceived in love. Your being pregnant is a sign.

Alexis: [Chuckles] Of what?

Julian: We're still connected. We always will be. Get some rest. 

this being of course after he thinks she’s pregnant. he’s still going to let her go to trial for a crime he committed what a peach 

Alexis: Why would I want my child anywhere near someone who lets someone take a fall for a murder they committed?

Julian: Come on, Alexis. Diane is gonna get you off. You're not gonna serve 20 minutes, much less 20 years.

Alexis: I've already spent 24 hours, so your -- your 20 minutes sailed by long ago! And you know what else? I shouldn't have spent one second in there for what you did, and you could have cleaned it up.

Julian: How far along are you?

Alexis: We're not having this conversation. Get out.

Julian: I'm not going anywhere.

Alexis: Yes, you are!

Julian: Alexis, we need to make plans.

Alexis: We do?

Julian: Yes!

Alexis: Do we?! Do we need to make some plans? Really? What kind of plans, Julian? Like how I'm gonna arrange for my prenatal care when I'm incarcerated or how you're gonna raise the child? Because my plans don't involve any of those things, nor do they involve any of you.

Julian: What are you saying?

Alexis: What is unclear about this?

Julian: Okay, if you're gonna get rid of the baby, because you're angry at me...

Alexis: There are so many things wrong with what you just said, I don't even know where to begin. Let me just start with "because I'm angry with you." I'm not angry with you, Julian. You didn't forget to take out the trash. You betrayed me!

Julian: That's not what happened.

Alexis: You married me under false pretenses!

Julian: What?

Alexis: You said you would get out of the mob, when you didn't.

Julian: I did get out!

Alexis: Leaving organized crime for the duration of my wedding ceremony is not getting out! Anyway, you're still in --

Julian: Alexis --

Alexis: So what difference does it make?

Julian: Alexis, please.

Alexis: Second of all, I'm not thinking of getting rid of this baby. I'm thinking of how I will keep this baby away from you. I will fight you in court and make sure that Sam or someone else that I trust has custody of this baby. Actually, you better make sure that somebody kills me in prison. Seriously. Because I will never allow my child anywhere near you!

Julian: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I would never hurt you.

Alexis: You're hurting me now! You've done nothing but hurt me! You've hurt our family, you hurt everybody, and there doesn't seem to be any sign of it stopping!

Julian: Shh. You need to calm down.

Alexis: No, I'm not gonna calm down. Why should I?

Julian: Well, for the baby's sake --

Alexis: No! Don't you... ever mention this baby again. These last words that we've just uttered will be the last ones that we talk about when it comes to this baby. You may not be punished for what you did, and I may spend the rest of my life in prison, but I promise you -- I promise you -- that you will never, ever get anywhere near this child!

Julian: I can't believe all of this anger and hate coming out of what should be an amazing moment.

Alexis: I wonder why.

Julian: Alexis, you're having our baby, okay? And all you can talk about right now is how you're gonna keep me away from my own child?

Alexis: I'm going to prison because of you! I-I don't understand how that doesn't register in you. But, then again, you don't take responsibility for your messes anyway. You don't even do your own dirty work. You had Carlos kill Duke. And anyway, who cares? What does this even matter? Because we're done here.

Julian: We are not done! No, we're not! Alexis, we're not done, because despite -- despite everything that's happened between us, I-I-I love you.

Sonny: Alexis, please. Explain to me. What's he doing here?!

Julian: Alexis doesn't owe you any answers. You see, I'm her husband.

Hallucination Carlos: It's fate. She's out of jail. You two are all alone. It's the perfect opportunity to rid yourself of the one person who could send you to prison for the rest of your life. Kill her. Kill her now.

Julian: Well, I knew the, uh, I knew the court would go easy on you. If I would have been arrested, I probably would have been forced to stay in jail until my trial.

Alexis: Probably.

Julian: Well, I at least wish you would have let me know about your arraignment. You know, I could have been there to support you, to post bail for you.

Hallucination Carlos: Now, you -- you need to make her death look accidental. Poison, maybe. Antifreeze, drain opener, oven cleaner. I don't know. She's already sick. Just make her sicker.

Hallucination Carlos: One little slip in the bath water. No one will ever know. You'll grieve for a while. But then you'll be free. You'll have your children -- Sam, Lucas, little Leo. You'll have your life.

Julian: I don't feel guilty, okay? Just the opposite. You're the reason I am in this position.

H Carlos: I'm not the one who almost ratted you out to the police. Dead men tell no tales, right? No. It's my former attorney, a.k.a. your wife, you need to worry about, considering Alexis got arrested for something you did.

Julian: If she would just -- If she would just let me explain --

H Carlos:  Are you serious? She is furious at you. You are so lucky she was handcuffed to that table in the interrogation room.

Julian: Just shut up, Carlos. Just shut up!

H Carlos: No, no, amigo. You need to listen to me. Your wife could very well turn you in. You made the mistake of falling in love. And now it's come back to haunt you.

Julian: Look, Alexis wants me to turn myself in for murder. She knows what I did. She has the proof. I mean, she has me backed up into a corner, and I-I-I just don't see a way out.

H Carlos: You don't? Julian, my friend, there's always a way out. Never say never, my friend.

Julian: No, no, no, no. No, because that is not an option.

H Carlos: Oh, it's always been an option. You've just been too weak to see it.

Julian: Well, I won't hurt Alexis.

H Carlos: Can't or won't?

Julian: Alexis is my wife! We were married barely six months ago! I-I took vows with her!

H Carlos: Well, some promises we can't keep.

Julian: Okay, Carlos. She is the mother of my child. She's my wife, okay? She -- She loves me unconditionally.

H Carlos: Really?

Julian: Yeah.

H Carlos: Unconditionally? Because all I see is a once strong and powerful man reduced to a lapdog! You do tricks for her. You come when you're called. But the second you step out of line, she threatens to leave your punk ass.

Julian: Yeah, well, we're working through that.

H Carlos: There's nothing left to work through. Alexis is gonna throw you to the wolves to save herself.

oh wow, nothing to do with olivia! 

H Carlos: All this talk about changing your life, living for love -- That was just talk. First chance you got, you ran back to the organization.

Julian: Well, I had to go back! Ava was in trouble!

H Carlos: You don't have to lie to a dead man. You went back because that's who you are. You love it. You love giving the orders. You love the power. You love breaking the law, getting away with it. Come on. You don't want a quiet life with a lawyer wife. You want to keep right on doing what you're doing. That's why you got rid of me. 'Cause I got in the way. I could have testified against you, so you murdered me.

Julian: No, no, no. No, no, no! No.

H Carlos: But you pushed Alexis too far this time. She let you maneuver her into keeping quiet about Duke's murder, but she can't live with mine. So now you have a dilemma. How do you shut her up? Who am I kidding? You know exactly how to shut her up. After all, you had no trouble killing me when I became inconvenient.

still nothing to do with olivia!

there are some from after the attempted murder but i think this is enough to speak for itself

there’s no retconning or whitewashing what julian did. not only did he try to kill her but his behavior towards her even before that was atrocious and made me extremely uncomfortable. he became emotionally abusive towards her. he tried to make it like she shared an equal amount of blame for damaging their relationship, when it was on him and him alone when he murdered someone using her dagger and let her take the fall for it. then he just completely blamed her entirely at the docks bc she didn’t love him enough ha !! 

nothing he did here had anything to do with protecting alexis from olivia. it was entirely about julian protecting himself and the narrative at the time was very clear about it. 

even if they tried to excuse the attempted murder they cannot excuse the way he treated her. 

almost forgot to credit http://tvmegasite.net/day/gh/transcripts.shtml for the transcripts (which i tweaked a bit here and there for my purposes)