#ofc i would LIKE my melodrama to be well executed

[tyrannuspitch]

i'm always getting anxious and embarrassed about my awkward melodramatic writing style but the thing is i am literally writing thor fanfiction here. this is exactly what readers should expect. getting annoyed when there's clunky pretentious melodrama in your thor fanfiction is literally like going to the woods and complaining that there are trees

[serenagaywaterford]

14) really broken and damaged. And… yeah. That doesn’t magically disappear when you hop over a border." Exactly! Let's hope that they'll spare us all any mindless fluff. g) "Mostly cos if that is ALL someone has left, it’s necessary. Gilead isn’t going to be overturned by words alone" You're right of course. I did like what they implied with the cinematic parallel between June's pen and that bomb though: "The pen can be mightier than the sword." (Well, at least in the democratic parts of the

15) world.) It's a shame that Fred returned so soon... Ah, a question: What would have happened to Serena if Fred had died? Would she have remained a Wife or what? h) "I don’t think I’d have the balls Emily has lol." Yeah, same. Plus, I doubt I would be half as good a political player as June. i) "And the confrontation scene between her and Janine in the Colonies was well done as well." Loved that scene! j) "it was just unrealistic for a prof, even an adjunct lecturer to pull aside a first year

16) student like and so that whole thing seemed a bit deus ex." I know what you mean. That was stretched out. My fav thing about her whole uni past were her conversations/interactions with Professor Dan. k) "She didn’t need Fred to have terrible ideas, especially like after she was shot and basically implied that Fred needs to go above the law and murder a bunch of people." Ah, yes. That was one of the moments that solidified to me that Serena wasn't just a "bitch", but a truly awful, rotten to

17) the core person. She brought this whole mess on herself and doesn't really have any excuse."How very Lady Macbeth of her." Apparently, I have a type when it comes to fictional "problematic faves", heh. l) "I saw a lot of criticism of Serena about how she’s a shitty mother etc etc." WUT? I'm never gonna agree with this fandom regarding Serena, am I? Thank goodness there's you, LOL. For ALL her awfulness, I think that Serena would actually be a good (and loving), if overprotective, mother.

18) "but I have to assume it’s from people who have never had babies for more than a few hours. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows 24-7. It’s stressful, frustrating, annoying, aggravating, etc. at times and it’s completely normal for new mothers to get overwhelmed and really fucking stressed out. It doesn’t mean they’re going to beat the shit out of their children" EXACTLY what I was going to say. m) "She’s an excellent writer, strong orator, talented artist and skilled gardener, and who knows

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Yeah. As much as it’s nice not to be dragged down by depressing realism all the time, I find it jarring when fluff pops up in a show like THT. And Emily’s storyline going all optimistic and fluffy (and healthy) just cos she’s in Canada would be a disservice. I know a lot of fans really want Emily to be okay (I do too!) but I just don’t think it’s so simple at this point. Holy trauma, batman. Gotta work through that. I don’t think the show is dumb enough to go so quickly through Emily’s healing, but ....meh. Ya never know.

I agree about the pen/bomb thing. I didn’t mean to imply that words are unimportant, cos they totally are. And I very much enjoyed the pen/bomb parallel too! I thought it was really important how Serena/June’s words had power, even if that was only cos they had Fred’s signature on them and so it’s not truly their power. I think the power of words is really the only way to change ideology. Cos, sure, you can change a government of powers in charge with physical force but you can’t change the underlying shit without words. Look at Serena’s power pre-Gilead. That was all words--and a little riotous melodrama lol. Speaking of words, I felt the weakest part of one of my fav eps 2x09, was the “words” bit. Like, I appreciate what they were trying to do but it didn’t make sense to me personally why those letters would suddenly make any difference.

Like, they have 100s or 1000s (presumably) of escaped Handmaids, etc already in Canada, with their own stories... and they’re still alive. Everyone knows about all the deaths and victims of Gilead, hence the refugee centres large database. I just don’t understand why a bunch of letters would suddenly change Canadians minds. Like... they have WAY more influential evidence LIVING amongst them already. And letters are simple to forge/make up. I just don’t get why they went “boom”.

I dunno. That’s just me. I thought it was a weakness of the episode. If Canada wasn’t already full of survivors with their own horrible stories, I’d get it. Those letters would be like OMG. But Canada seems totally aware of all the horrors of Gilead, and there were already 100s of protesters following Fred around. 

Maybe I missed something? Are we supposed to believe that there are actually very few survivors that are in Canada? Help! lol

ITA about Emily’s flashbacks. The bits with Prof Dan were really well done. They were my fav bits too.

I think Serena’s insinuation that Fred needs to take matters into his own hands was one of the darkest things Serena has done. I mean, in a sense, I understand why she would say that. She’s totally aware a lot of people hate her (clearly lol) and she doesn’t trust the police to actually be on her side. It’s the same right-wing paranoia that idiot privileged white people think now even though everything is the opposite in the stats. I mean... tbh, Serena didn’t technically say, “Go kill some people, you whiny baby!”. She just sorta implied it and Fred ran with it to the extreme. (Which sorta goe sback to always having really evil shit in him. Cos, tbh, executing those kids was not exactly what I got from Serena’s words. Normal people would be like, “Okay. I’m gonna go fuck them up real good for ya honey!” Like beat the shit out of them. Not kidnap then murder 2 people. I do think Serena’s dismissiveness of Fred’s concern played a role in him having to prove himself to be a man. Like, woah, man.)

(Another Lady Macbeth fan? Honestly, we may actually be separated at birth.)

I feel like people look for reasons to hate Serena that don’t actually exist. Between “She’d obvs be an abusive mother!” and “She created the Handmaids!”, they love hating her for the sake of hating her. It’s just impossible that a character can be multi-faceted and complex and do things we don’t hate, alongside things we do find repulsive. And I think misogyny plays into this need to hate her for absolutely everything bad that ever happens/could happen, while giving Fred the benefit of the doubt or a free pass cos he’s just doing what she wants, or whatever. Ah, don’t even get me started lol.

Yesterday, I stumbled across an article from a while ago about the 15 “most evil” characters on THT and ofc guess who was #1? And I just... I’m sorry, I think the the men that literally developed the entire handmaid system are maybe a little worse? Like that guy who she’s married to who has no redeemable qualities at all, like he doesn’t even care about babies? Call me crazy, but the men in power seem just slightly more evil. But hey... Ah, no, self. Stop right now. I will rant for like 3 days straight and it will not make any sense lol.