#lem feel free to rb and add your thoughts im p sure this was intended for you LMAO

[g1deonthefirst]

tbh, i feel like ppl who leap to paint wake as a "bad mom" are doing it from a place of misogyny. as you said, Gideon's feelings towards wake are totally valid, but imo we should talk more abt how wake being so desperate that she had to impregnate herself with the material of her enemy is actually horrifying. of course she wasn't going to have any maternal feelings towards g; she already had pash, and the whole pregnancy must have just felt like a massive violation on every level

i think this is actually responding to @pyrrhadves' post more than mine, and i don't want to speak for him, but i definitely agree with this. the tendency to reduce characters who are mothers (and even female characters who aren't) down to "good mom/bad mom" is common across fandoms but i think it's particularly egregious here; wake never wanted to be a mother, was clearly desperate to do anything that she thought might kill john and dismantle the nine houses that had been persecuting non-house peoples for nearly ten thousand years, and was also clearly traumatized by the act of impregnating herself and giving birth (the reproductive equipment and the notes to augustine and mercymorn in the river bubble come to mind). and the trauma of this is a continuation of a larger theme of autonomy violations and reproductive trauma that we see throughout tlt. obviously you can feel however you want about choosing to impregnate yourself specifically to kill the baby (though i think that a lot of people ignore wake's motivations for doing so and try to make it out to be less complicated than it is), but to reduce her whole character "gideon's awful mom" is a real disservice both to a complex and interesting female character and to tlt's overarching themes.