#i rlly hope this doesn't come across as dismissive bc i am a certified s10 haterTM dsgsyfh

[tvckerwash]

not to detract from the point of this post (because I do agree), but the reason why failure is such a prevalent theme among not just the women, but all of the freelancers is because we already knew how project freelancer ended. they were literally always doomed to fail, so they had to be written with what we already know happened to them in mind.

for example, church asks tex if carolina was with york in like s4 or something (implying they were possibly a thing), and tex tells him that she was already dead.

north and south were always doomed to turn on one another because of recovery one and s6, and we already knew that south was never meant to get an ai in the first place.

it's heavily implied that wash and maine used to be close all throughout the recollection trilogy, but then maine became the meta and wash went insane because of epsilon.

we knew in s1 I think that tex went rouge and led a break in on a freelancer facility.

we learned that the real ct was a woman in s8 (ct? what's she doing here?) , and that she was working against project freelancer because of s7 (iirc a lot of ppl theorized that ct had a voice mod like tex did prior to s10).

wyoming and york had their rivalry established in out of mind, and we knew that york lost an eye in a training accident involving tex.

we knew that wyoming knew captain flowers somehow (and we learned in s10 that it was because flowers was agent florida).

etc, etc.

this obviously doesn't excuse how they were handled—s10 specifically is kind of a mess because miles has a habit of poorly pacing the story, so all the important stuff lacks proper build up, and we end up with rushed conclusions to arcs that come out of nowhere (such as ct being in a romantic relationship with the innie leader, there was no foreshadowing for that and we know next to nothing about either of them so we can't even be sad about it like with york and carolina) but I do think it's important to acknowledge the limitations of writing a prequel arc after we already know how said arc ended.

I think a lot about the fact that all of the female freelancers, not just Tex were designed to fail in one way or another. For Connie, she was told she would never meet the skills of her colleagues, which put her in such a position where she was doomed to snap, and a position she was doomed to be hunted down loosing it. Carolina was taunted with the brink of failure, her whole life she believed what was perfect was being at the top of it, this was only really fueled by the Director. While not directly ever said we can assume this was the only way Carolina could see herself close to her father. Then it was just taken away from her where failures piled up on her and up on her causing her to become obsessed with someone she can literally never beat. South was the control variant of an experiment, South was forced to snap constantly and was punished for doing so. She was constantly taunted like a dog. Even Ohio, all she’s ever known was failure, she and the triplets tried and tried to make themselves known for being more then bottom of the barrel freelancers, but never succeeded until they were just left for dead

Project freelancer egged all of them on so much to the point where they can only be known as their worst qualities and the writers did an excellent job at this because most of the fandom thinks of them similarly. All of their worst qualities were just fueled and fueled to the point where during the freelancer arc, you can forget their good qualities. I think South’s the best example, because so many people can’t see her as more then a backstabbing short tempered bitch, rather than a highly skilled, well organized, timed and motivated killer, who can fucking hide amongst pipes and wipe out guards without a sound, while sometimes over her head can and will defend herself. Or Carolina, became selfish with obsession, to the point where she’d betray her partner and friends, in favor of pursuing her idea of success, because in the program, there wasn’t another way

I’m in no way a South apologist, but honestly, I feel like all the female freelancers, all had such strong themes of failure in their lives, some were able to overcome it and become so great and badass, some accepted it and became happy, and some were killed for it