Okay we make fun of the Skyler hate a lot as we should because wow the misogyny was working overtime the misogyny was grinding but it does genuinely make me see red like I really cannot overstate the degree to which Walter ruined her life… imagine being married to and in love with someone for like sixteen years building a life with them having kids with them trusting them completely and then one day out of the blue they start selling METH and KILLING PEOPLE and sexually and emotionally abusing you and turning your family against you to isolate you and cover their own ass and then they get your brother-in-law killed and up and die protecting the twink they were emotionally cheating on you with leaving you to take all of the heat from law enforcement and the public and your own grieving family who blame you for letting it go this far and you can’t even mourn your shitty dead husband or your old life properly because of public scrutiny and because it was probably all a lie anyways he EXPLODED her life!! She’s all alone he left her with no support system her relationships with her son and with her sister will never ever be the same!! He ruined her life!! He ruined her life!!
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The more I think about it, the more heartbreaking the line: "I forgive you, by the way. For sleeping with Doug."
First, Stede doesn't talk about sex. He's angered by Calico Jack's questions and insinuations, and he's very clear that "Ed's past is Ed's business." He seems to have zero issues with his crew doing whatever they like with whomever they like, but it's clear he's not participating or particularly talking about it with anyone. We know his married life is loveless, and that he's a closeted gay man who's in love with another man for the first time ever, so sex is a difficult topic for him.
And the one time he explicitly mentions sex, to his wife, is to drunkenly and resentfully forgive her for sleeping with another man. It's harsh, and not just because he's drunk—he emphasizes it. He breaks the statement into two sentences, so that she's very clear what he's forgiving her for. She even seems shocked by it—this isn't something he does. From what we see of their married life he's oblivious and distant and awkward, but he's not cruel.
The whole sequence from the art opening onward is juxtaposed against the Ed and Izzy scene where Izzy bullies Ed back into becoming Blackbeard and eventually the Kraken. So this sequence is Stede's "Kraken" moment, as the scene escalates from the embarrassing meanness at the art opening to the cruelty in private.
But Stede lives in a different world than Ed, and his society is shaped by "cutting remarks." Where pirate violence is physical, Stede's is mostly verbal. He knows how to use language against people; it has been done to him, and we see him do it to the French ship, to Izzy, and to Chauncey. He’s very emotionally attuned and he’s adept at getting the knife in when he wants to. He uses it carefully, though, usually in defense either of himself or someone he loves. But if he were to become a bully, he’d be horrific.
We never see Stede being deliberately vicious to someone who doesn’t deserve it, and he's being deliberately vicious to Mary, a woman as thoroughly trapped in that marriage as he is (even more so, because she has very limited options for escape). What we know, which Mary doesn't yet, is that his viciousness is coming from the ache of what he left behind.
Stede was able to try to reconcile his return as "doing his duty" for his family, and what he finds is that his family have moved on. Not only that, but the wife whom he was at least imprisoned with, who at least shared in some degree his discomfort and unhappiness and was obliged to make it work with him as far as they both could, has found the love and pleasure that he's denying himself. He's isolated in a way he wasn't before. He wants to isolate her again so that at least he still has some kind of companionship, even if it's just in suffering.
Mary's fears are clear. If Stede decides that she can’t be with Doug, he has a LOT of power to stop her. He’s a wealthy male landowner; he legally owns her and the children. He can ruin Doug and he can make her life hell. He legally and culturally has a lot of control over her sexuality. I don’t think for one minute that Mary ever feared Stede their entire life and she fears him now.
It is cruel, and it's not Mary's fault. Nor is this who Stede is, or who he wants to be, though it's clearly a sign of who he can become. Again, like the scene at the art gallery, the scene between them is important to develop how repression and self-loathing can warp a person, even someone as genuinely kind as Stede. He is so desperate to “do the right thing” that he’s twisting himself up into the very kind of man who has hurt him. And beneath it is the longing for Ed and the love and passion that he’s denied himself.
That this all pushes toward a breaking point where Stede and Mary are finally able to understand each other, and Stede is finally able to say that he's gay and he's in love with Ed, makes that moment much more powerful. Mary was perfectly ready to hate him and at least save herself, but she helps him find the words to express who he is and what he feels, and who he wants.
The poison turns into positivity.
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new Good Omens fanfic...
Quite Contrary
Rating: Explicit
Chapter 1/?
Summary: The plan is ready, everything is in place, and Aziraphale is about to prove that he’s quite capable of running the Second Coming all on his own, thank you very much.
There’s just one problem—and it goes by the name of Mary Magdalene.
(It also, on occasion, goes by the name “Anthony J. Crowley.”)
Read on AO3
****
This is the "Crowley was Mary Magdalene" fic I've been dying to write. I started it as a crackfic to blow off steam after my last WIP nearly killed me, but it's gaining more plot than I thought it would (surprise surprise). I have the majority of it drafted already though, so I expect to be able to post regularly (as long as the last few chapters don't fight me).
Read the tags and enjoy!
(smut will start in chapter 3 by the way)
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