| POLLY'S WARDROBE | S1 | S2 | S3 |

"Much of her pain in that breakdown is due to embarrassment, Polly tries to be someone she isn't, which is more embarrassing than when a relationship doesn't work out. That adventure was supposed to usher in the 'New Polly', one that was going to be accepted as part of society. The whole thing was shaming." - Helen Mccrory

Thoughts under the cut:

For a season that harbours a lot of iconic looks for Polly, I actually found this the hardest one to scour for these gifs. For the most part Polly can wear the same outfit for a whole episode, which makes sense partly because there's less time skipping but also since this change in style suggests these outfits are mostly new, and she doesn't have many like it. I think it's key this season to look at Polly's outfits because it's when she is most concerned with how she presents herself to society. It's a great difference from season 2 - her hair is cut and it's conservative, there are more muted colours and grays introduced, but with only subtle patterns unlike her monochromatic suits in season 1. Speaking of suits, they're nowhere to be found, another hint of her efforts at conformity. Her necklaces and extravagant jewelry pieces, proudly displayed in season 2 and tied to her heritage like the Black Madonna, are notably absent. While she still looks stunning, the personality once presented in her style is gone. It's also particularly incredible to note the method of taking a knife to the painting and the fact that she runs up to it barefoot. It echoes the Polly we've seen in previous and future seasons with her blades, and how "Young she is, when she's barefoot on the cobbles". It screams of how this is her taking back her old self, her true self, destroying what she thought she could be and being devastated by the reality, reluctantly yet instinctively embracing it.

I think the saddest part of michaels storyline in season 3 is how little it matters to anyone else. Michael tells Tommy he was molested and Tommy brushes him off and tells him to kill his former abuser. No affection given, no brotherly love. Even after the unfailing loyalty and devotion that he’s shown Tommy since they’ve met. It is never discussed again. Michaels mother never broaches the subject, and Hughes himself doesn’t even RECOGNIZE Michael as an adult. All this pain he’s been carrying, this intense drive to attain power and protection so he won’t be a victim ever again, and no one gives a shit. His tragedy is a footnote in everyone else’s story, even the story of his abuser. Poor forgotten boy with no name, no home, no family, disregarded by everyone he loves, even the narrative itself views him only with apathy.

Tom Hardy single 'handedly' destroying the character of Grace is part of the Tommy x Alfie agenda change my mind

Could the name of the Shelby sibling's mother have been Bernadette?

This might be a huge tangent and taking a lot of liberty but bear with me for a minute. So I'm currently rewatching Peaky Blinders, am on season 3 episode 4. At around 5 minutes into the episode:

Polly just entered the church to confess and is now in the confessional booth with the priest - they are talking about her name and she wonders whether god would call her pol or polly and she mentions that the voice calls her pol. The priest asks her if she hears a voice to which she answers:

"Yeah. Like Bernadette heard a voice."

And it caught me off guard because I was like 'Who the hell is Bernadette?' Because that's a random name drop, seemingly with no significance as it's never elaborated and neither is the name mentioned ever again. But the way Polly says it, the way she mumbles it as if she knows exactly what it means and what kind of darker implication it holds. It sounds to me like a dreadful comparison, something that conveys 'I'm losing it like her'. Then I remembered that there was one more Shelby mentioned who had troubles and lost her mind before she died and that was the Shelby's mother.

Now I'm aware this is quite the reach and there is no other evidence that would suggest this. So this is entirely me trying to interpret something into it. But it's weird to me to have Polly mention a random name in a situation like that and with the tonation it is said in the scene. Of course, it could be someone unrelated, some neighbor or some family friend, or someone entirely random, but why mention it then?

So either it is a reach or not, but I wanted to share it for the off chance it could be a lead and because I haven't seen anyone talk about this ever before.

so...snape fans have speculated where cokeworth is located in the england map or what it's equivalence would be. i've seen people speculate it's probably up north perhaps. maybe snape's a northerner.

however.

it's been stated multiple times that cokeworth is in the midlands. so we're thinking northampton, shropshire, stoke, birmingham.

but i prefer to think it's in the black country. mainly for these reasons:

1. cokeworth is an industrial town, even if spinner's end seems mainly abandoned, and the black country was the birth of the industrial revolution.

2. the black country was known for steelworks, glassworks and cokeworks which is maybe where the town got its title from.

3. the black country suffered from high unemployment due to the closing down of a lot of industrial sites in the 60s and 70s which ties into the idea of spinner's end being practically desolate now, and also the strain on the snape's household's economic position.

4. petunia met vernon dursley and marries him. his job was being the director of a firm that made drills. which are made of steel. steelworks anyone?

5. which leads to my last and favourite theory; petunia marrying vernon who perhaps also came from the black country then decided to name their child after something close to home. a nearby town perhaps - dudley.

one thing i think is generally overlooked about tommy is that he's more of an improvisor than people give him credit for; in fact he's more of an improvisor than he is a meticulous planner. he's more often responding to circumstances out of his control than he is setting up the circumstances from the beginning. it's not that he doesn't have initial plans, it's that he's very quickly adaptable.

this makes sense if you think a bit about what it might have been like for him in the war; when you think about why all the men who served with and then under him (including his brothers, in cluding his older brother) have the level of trust and loyalty they have in him as a leader -- if i remember correctly part of what went wrong in the war was leadership unable to deal with and adapt to reality on the ground, and if Tommy and his brothers and friends survived, it was most likely not due to his intricately planned strategies but his ability to improvise in the moment.

and it's also not like his improvised, adapted plans aren't strategic and intricately thought out. it's just that he's ready to adapt at a turn of a dime. shit goes wrong and you have to change direction, or incorporate new realities, or you die.

tommy's plans basically *never* go off the way they're supposed to, because he's constantly having to adjust. and it doesn't always go smoothly for him either.

watching a Penguins of Madagascar movie and my partner goes: hey it’s the Shelby brothers

Something that I really like about pb is all the victims of the shelbys. Like, no doubt we all feel for Tommy and polly and Arthur and Linda and Jon and esme and all the rest because the show is about them. They aren’t villains, not even outside the narrative, but in many peoples’ lives they are. The show isn’t telling you to hate people like them, it’s the opposite. Why do people like them exist? What right do people have to judge them? There was a post by @deadendtracks I think about the lack of punishment-catharsis like in many gangster movies. But the fact that the shelbys are very much cruel people who shatter peoples’ lives isn’t ignored (tho I do wish they showed us a bit more of that). Harry tells Tommy “what I got was an ultimatum. Like you give to everyone. Do it or else.” And we see that the shelbys are very much in control of many things. The woman whose son Arthur accidentally killed has the right to her anger and hatred, and the shelbys’ enemies use those people against them. Usually their enemies are as big as them in the game, because ordinary people are too afraid of the peaky blinders to actually do anything. And yet despite all the pain that Tommy has gone through, we see that he doesn’t only batter enemies as powerful as him, but also leaves a pile of powerless victims (he feels horrible about it all, and he can’t control it but that doesn’t change the fact). That pub John and Arthur set afire “for the good of the company”. The shelbys never kill for pleasure, and they don’t abuse their power simply because they enjoy having it over somebody (except for Arthur). The show explicitly shows us that its not in their interests. They are not only black and bad. Tommy saves peoples’ lives and tries to protect working people and builds homes for orphans. But the matter-of-fact way that the creators use to show us the sadly unavoidable and unforgivable, and unjustifiable death that the shelbys bring (very much consciously; they accept that) is interesting to me. Nobody paints victims out of the characters (that’s part of their story, but they’re also abusers and murderers and bad men). But “you’re our bad men” too. Idk lots of thoughts.

the scenes in s2 where polly is just living normally with michael and making him sandwiches etc are honestly some of the scenes i'm most upset watching.

knowing this is the life polly would love to escape to and what she wants and yet michael watches her in a way that feels judging. athough he hasn't known her for long it's like he knows something isn't right.

even though polly's dialogue and actions are perfectly casual and normal and what you'd expect, the entire thing feels so off and uncomfortable for some reason, it's difficult to watch. It breaks my heart because in that moment you realise she's not destined for this life, and that's so perfect to introduce right before season 3 where that becomes the main theme of her arc.

It's incredible how they make it all seem so unnatural and that's down to some sort of body language I would love to understand. But it makes me sad.

Peaky Blinders (4x01)/The Idiot-Fyodor Dostoyevsky

peaky blinders (2014, colm mccarthy)

oh I was having such a good thought as I fell asleep last night but I’m not able to recover all of it now that I’m fully awake. But I’ll do my best.

we don’t (to my memory??) know the circumstances under which Arthur Sr and their mother met.

I feel like Tommy is rather blasé about the ordeal. It’s a step or a thing to be done.

(yay I remembered the other half right about here)

but, with their parents being from different backgrounds, I wonder if it wasn’t the same arrangement. Wild girl that needed to be tamed and wed off to help form some kind of alliance.

some of that makes me think (we have no description but I always picture Tommy’s mother as having long dark hair) that he knows John is a batter man than their father and will at least treat her well, which also would make sense as to why, despite Esme appearing closer to John’s age, that Arthur wasn’t the candidate as the eldest brother (and Tommy wouldn’t pair himself off that way) because with the way he’s behaving he reminds Tommy too much of their father, so marrying off John solves two things at once.

So, in some way, yes in S5, Tommy is running away from the reality of losing Ruby, and putting stock in things that we know aren’t going to work (but in the same token the things the doctors were doing at the time like the gold salt we now know didn’t work either) but I think he’s also looking for familiarity and comfort. He’s a scared boy inside looking for comfort and theres no Polly to turn to so he looks for the next closest person that can understand.

Hi! I just wanted to thank you for following me! I love LOVE your fic “an echo, a stain”, so many feels from that fic.

Hope you have a fantastic day!

First of all, thank you so much for your kind words about an echo, a stain; there aren't many higher compliments than that something I'm writing is evoking feels :D <3 Second, you're so welcome! I'm BIG here for Tommy Shelby content, so I was like "O hai gimme" looool. Also, seeing all your Peaky Blinders / Tommy stuff had me thinking about him vs. Astarion, particularly, of course, A!Astarion, and interesting thoughts about possible intersections of these two super compelling, at best morally grey characters. Their journeys are so different, and I think their alignments / dispositions are, too. At the same time, though, I think they have a lot of the same goals -- and I think, at least, the version of Astarion I'm writing about in an echo, a stain hardly resembles Tommy at all on the surface, but is very much motivated by a lot of the same things, and those journeys have interesting parallels, particularly as they appear in later seasons of Peaky Blinders. Anyway, just some rando early-morning thoughts. Thank you so much again for taking the time to let me know you're enjoying aeas; I hope YOU have a fantastic day! :D <3

I do think you can set up a contrast between Arthur talking about being a good man (whose hands belong to the devil) -- this idea that he's inherently good, that's his natural state, but he does bad things; and Tommy, who never claims to be a good person, only that he's doing good work, and that he recognizes a need to change, but keeps putting it off to some future moment when he no longer needs to do bad things. Tommy never claims goodness for himself; on the contrary, he tells the assembled fascists that unlike Lizzie, he belongs at that table with them.

either way you take the pill - pettiot - Peaky Blinders (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

Between S4-E4 and S4-E5. A slice of Michael's thoughts during the night after he chooses not to warn Tommy of Luca and Polly's ambush.

Michael was a quick study: brother, son, accountant, obedient child. Only Michael never really knew what Tommy wanted him to be. At least he thinks he knows what's to be done to be a good son.

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Michael Gray & Tommy Shelby, Mentions of Mrs Johnson, Mr Johnson, Henry Johnson's Brother, Father Hughes | Resentment, Fear, Disassociation, The Lasting Legacy of Catholicism, Regret, Post-Rationalisation, Symbolism, Dysfunctional Family, Triple Drabble

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