#i love them all so much ok

[elialys]

It's interesting that it seems more proper to name P/0 child after Elizabeth than after Olivia's mother.(Elizabeth is a beautifully tragic name in the show and your fic,though.) Peter and Olivia's relationships with their own mothers are both complex but totally different. How do you understand their mother issues?

Thank you for your lovely question. I have so many feelings regarding Peter & Olivia and their relationships with their mothers. That’s a topic I’ve explored a few times in stories through the years; as someone who’s had a rather rocky relationship with my mother (to put it mildly), I know my perspective on this to be very biased, but to me, that’s the beauty of an emotionally intelligent show like Fringe. They show us just enough to get a feel of how various character dynamics are/were, all the while letting us imagine the rest.

I think it’s harder to know how Olivia’s relationship with her mother might have been, because we saw a lot less of Marylin that we did Elizabeth, and the Marylin we did see was exclusively Altlivia’s mom, who from what we know had quite a different life from Olivia’s mother. I know in this case, I’m definitely projecting my own experience. My mom also got into a relationship with someone abusive who made our lives hell for a few years, and the fallouts are extensive, long after that person is gone.

That’s why I always pictured Olivia’s childhood and relationship with her mother to be quite sad, unfortunately, since her father probably died when she was very young, then there was the abusive step dad, who she ended up shooting, only for him to traumatize her even further by sending her all those birthday cards, and then her mother dies when she was just fourteen—and I doubt those five years between the shooting and her death were happy years. But Olivia would have loved her mother no matter what, as shown on the show when she got to meet her mom’s alternate in the other universe, and the emotion of it literally broke her mind and got the other memories working.

Olivia felt strongly enough that it was her JOB to defend her mother to shoot a grown man with a gun when she was nine. That tells you so much about Olivia’s core personality (and trauma, did I mention trauma?)

Like I said, that topic is very personal to me and I have a hard time ever being objective about it, but it’s also important because of how I imagine Olivia as a mother with Etta. And that’s why I’ve always been so pained by people who misunderstand the things Olivia says about it in season 5, about her feeling like she was too ‘at odd’ and basically too messed up to deserve her little girl, and that her worrying so much instead of just appreciating having her led to them losing Etta, like a punishment.

I’m writing this right now and I don’t understand how people can misinterpret it enough to say things like “Olivia probably was cold and distant with Etta.” Like, over my DEAD BODY. She’s a traumatized human who lost her mother when she was still just a kid herself. That doesn’t mean she’s not capable of love or of being nurturing, it mostly means she probably worried herself sick over every thing and convinced herself that she was doomed to be terrible at it.

Ugh. I’m gonna need a drink before I can continue this.

ANYWAY. Peter and Elizabeth hahahaha

I think his relationship with his mom was pretty tragic and heartbreaking, too. I think that he would have loved his mother very, very much, just like Olivia loved hers, but I also think the Elizabeth he grew up with never recovered from losing her son and having to brainwash this version of Peter into thinking he was her child. We know she ended up committing suicide when he was nineteen, and from what we saw in 3x15 ‘Subject 13’, she struggled a lot with the whole fucking mess that was their life—and that was before Walter lost pieces of his brain and went insane. Now whether Elizabeth was struggling with alcoholism is up to interpretation. My reasoning has always been that the show wouldn’t have shown us Elizabeth drinking in that episode if it wasn’t meant to imply she ended up doing that a lot, so that tends to be my headcanon. Even without the possible alcoholism, I think we’re supposed to deduce from everything Peter says that she suffered from depression.

Either way, that poor man has had a SHIT childhood and adolescence. It sucks to grow up with a parent who suffers like this, it makes you feel responsible for them while also feeling absolutely helpless because you can’t really help, and also very angry because all of it is shit, honestly. In the context of the show, I can only imagine how torn and guilty Peter felt about his mother’s suicide, which happened after he left her. And that had to become that much worse after he learned the truth about his origins and realized he was basically ‘responsible’ for his mother’s ongoing misery.

Soooooo yeah. One of the things I love about Peter and Olivia is that I think they get that about each other, implicitly. Shit childhood/adolescence just shape you differently, and you can definitely tell when you meet other people who’ve had ‘similar’ experiences (can I say trauma again?) It definitely make them particularly suited for each other, as life partners and as parents.

[sam-violet]

chillin in the hot springs 🌱

+ a closeup

[kitamars]

lovey dovey (alt ver of the first one under the cut!)

[wishfulsketching]

More

[m4rs-ex3]

2x02 // 7x05

hey so this is actually my favorite thing ever actually

[slfcare]

the thing is; this world needs you exactly as you are.

[gracefireheart]

A few sketches of these guys :]

[hootyhoowoo]

A little 15 min doodle but first post of the year has to be Bingqiu!

[loser-jpg]

FUCK EVERYONE WHO SAID ANGEL WAS GONNA BE THE ONE TO DIE HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH THAT SILLY SPIDER BOYS GONNA LIVE FOREVER AND HES GONNA HAVE THE MOST SICKENINGLY SWEET SLOW BURN LOVE STORY WITH THAT STUPID GAMBLING CAT

[mildhaj]

my heart forever yours

[meziniart]

Something about science and PDAs

[lotus-pear]

bsd rewatch w my friend means obligatory art of my fav found family ever

[trauma-bot]

sin eater

[bizarrelittlemew]

calling it right now that season 3 starts like this

[gatorgrumbles]

Espio featuring boss man and that bee

[luna-loveboop]

'I've never been in a dungeon before' and 'Who's Ganon?' have literally made some of the BEST reaction panels in Lu I just-

They are very similar conversations- where a Link is pointing out/asking about something that the others have experienced and they haven't. Which is really cool to compare and contrast but they all just freak out about it

Genuinely some of the best conversations in Lu

The lesson here is that apparently the Links will always be freaked out when one of them has missed out on one of the Zelda Fundamentals™

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Art by Jojo @linkeduniverse au :)