hopeless romantic

I don't want to sound snarky about this (nor did I mean to go on so long, lol), but I'm older than I like to admit, so the number of interesting people I have known who have fallen by the wayside in my life vastly exceeds my liking.

It's simply a truth of life that some people you love intensely/bond with intimately don't always live lives that parallel your own, so that your lives diverge, and there's no shame in finding out that fate has sent your paths asunder.

As such, I kinda felt like Mud's story had largely played out (although I desperately hope in my imagination that she didn't fall back into being a drug user/abuser, since I had come to have considerable affection for her that was at odds with my initial qualms about just how much she reeked of being scary/cultishly cheerful).

"The Messenger," however, never felt like anything more than a henchmen. He never felt particularly human, let alone particularly interesting. The best I can do to describe him in a favorable light is to call him "intriguing," but his value in that epithet always felt like he was someone who was subservient to his true master.

It's quite possible that he might have felt like a better enemy than P.T. Westmorland/John, purely on the basis of the fact that his face was so harsh, dogmatic, and his comments were always so enigmatic, but I actually prefer our current "big bad" precisely because, aside from the lies he told about his age and origin, his reclusiveness and duplicitous selfishness actually feels more "real" and considerably less "cinematic" in terms of the ability of someone who's hiding behind "the curtain" than someone who feels quite a bit less of a humbug than "The Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz," which... describes a bit of the obviousness of villainy I've intuited both from "The Messenger," Dr. Leekie, and even Fer-dinand.

I'm actually quite relieved that "the man behind the scenes" who has been the one who has somehow put Sarah's life (and all of the other clone lives into motion) is someone I think Siobhan would have instantly recognized as being "a bit off, don'tcha think," but was someone who would have passed more easily as a bit player, except for his ability to separate women.

He never seems to have done it by being a particularly sexual creature (despite Ira's expressed jealousy to Susan).

But "patriarchs" aren't, necessarily, inherently sexual creatures (when I even imagine Mike Pence and sex I shudder!) -- they're merely men who recognize and appeal to women's secret desires and needs as excuses for why they(/we) should abandon their(/our) own agency and independence in favor of abandoning their(/our) own interests, as well as the interests of other women in their(/our) orbit, and of skulking in fear and guilt as soon as they(/we) submit that very first time (which -- apologies to all who wanted to love her without question -- is how I describe Delphine through much of the series), to own our own insecurities.

Mrs. S. knew better, probably because Mr. S, despite his violent antics around her mum when he'd had a bit too much to drink, didn't try to control her but rather encouraged her own violent interests within her "group," so that she knew precisely how to react to Ferdinand, who, in the end, was a bit of a cartoon villain to the degree that both she and Rachel knew that they needed to hope "the board" killed him, but meanwhile she was cleaning, oiling, and hiding guns at the same time she was arranging flowers for Fee's art show, since she knew she couldn't count on other men to reign in another violent man, since sometimes men fight for dominance, but most of the time, they simply arrange positions of dominance, with us women being the spoils of war.

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I doubt any woman had ever cleaned, oiled, and chambered rounds (at least until tonight?!?) against a mostly anonymous guy named "John" (a peculiar choice of name, aside from the fact that it's a common one; a biblical name, strange in the sense that it's also a name used to describe men who buy sexual services from "whores" throughout the English-speaking world).

Susan tried to kill him, but it was a half-hearted attempt at best, since a direct injection of a lethal dose of morphine wouldn't have been as easy to counter, suggesting that she, too, lacked Mrs. S.'s guts to "be a murderer" when that tenuous -- but essential -- legal bridge between "murder" and "killing in the defense of others" came to a head. (Note bene to all of the women reading this blog: it's dangerous -- especially as a woman, to rely on such a defense in any court, but killing "in self-defense" -- or even maiming for the same reason -- let alone "killing (or maiming) "in defense of others" is always going to be a more defensible action in a court of law than committing murder via giving someone poison (which is what Susan seems to have attempted, and is always seen as "premeditated," -- at least if it works) in the sense that if Sarah succeeds tonight in shooting anyone and killing them to protect Helena, there's very little chance that she'd even be indicted, since she wouldn't have premeditated the crime, says my lawyer friend.)

AKA, let's just hope that P.T.'s body never turns up, but if it should, I think that we all understand that killing a man who wanted to harvest Helena's bebes is, legally, a "justifiable act" and is precisely the sort of reason Mrs. S. took out Ferdinand to protect her chickens.