calls for Asamiyacha

This reconciliation didn’t fix the larger issues, but at least it broadcast that they love each other, even if Fina doesn’t know how, at the moment, and Marta still doesn’t realize that.

So. Episode 600. An opening scene for Began, whose long game is so long that it has been lost somewhere in space, and a small make-up sequence for Mafin to likewise remind their fanbase that this game is still on. Belmonte even gets some comedy, and Tasio gets roasted: celebrations all around!

Tasio, you want to put Paula in the shop that your wife led? You want to emotionally blackmail Claudia by mentioning Mateo?

No. Way.

The not-quite-there Mafin reunion (a kiss while clinging to the precipice, basically) is cut in between Miguel and Claudia being adorable and going on a movie date, so Editing is giving us a little flashlight sign. So does Costuming: as @ignorant-rat-carcass pointed out, Marta, kissing Fina over one of her photographs, is wearing the same suit she wore when she kissed Fina over the photography manual she gave her (nice reminder, too, that Marta has always championed Fina’s growth). And there’s Prop Design, taking the cake again, as @wirepaladin observed: there’s a bouquet of white roses in Fina’s living room. As at the end of #548. #IsidroInTheHouse.

We got this. Go, Mafin! And as the scene (a full five minutes!) progresses and they say all the wrong things, I had to keep reminding myself of that.

We start with Fina’s Home Swell Chords at 00:35:07 (Mafin Drive Cut). Fina is hanging up framed photos, she seems nervous when the doorbell rings, and she is dressed in a double protective layer of armor: high turtleneck and chunky knit cardigan (white, and reminiscent of the one she wore when she broke down in front of Marta over Santiago’s rape attempt, as @wirepaladin realized).

Brunet makes the nerves clear: Fina takes a deep breath before opening the door, then scratches her nose, brushes back her hair. Marta, ever educated, asks whether she is bothering her, and this time Fina cannot say no. But she continues to be nervous: Marta looks around the apartment, Fina looks at Marta, her hands at her sides as if she wants to throw herself into her arms and has forgotten how to do that. The she crosses her arms in front of her chest, unconsciously building distance again.

Marta doesn’t want a drink, Marta wants Fina. They sit, uncomfortably, despite the white roses behind them saying “we’ve got you, you’ll get there, perhaps by episode 700” and the toolbox in front of them saying “Lesbians. Always processing, amirite?”

Marta sits so stiffly she might break, Fina (I think @bloomsberries pointed that out first) has the cardigan pulled over her hand, and again rubs her nose.

Fina admits Marta dropping by the other day bothered her, and instead of asking, “Why?” Marta apologizes for her impulse to “invade her personal space” (we do remember a Fina for whom “invading personal space with Marta” was the best thing in life. Why are these two sitting here like two strangers instead of testing that new sofa? That’s how bad things are.)

The dialog enters the twilight zone: Fina, who seems honestly frustrated with the distance she keeps creating, says she doesn’t know what’s going on. But in her next phrase, she says she knows, Marta knows, because Marta is the problem: “What is happening to you, Marta?”

And instead of saying, “That is my question”, Marta apologizes for the omitted news about the Bianca call, again. Then she apologizes for her own insecurities. If Fina keeps looking at her with this kind of disappointed judgment, she will apologize for breathing, probably.

None of this is healthy or clearing anything up, it just reiterates unhealthy patterns: Fina shifting the blame to Marta, Marta accepting the blame. Fina offering to do something (“Is there something I could do differently?” – yes, Fina, just about everything), Marta taking more blame.

The dialog continues to stay falsehood after falsehood, even if the characters may believe them at the moment, but the Writing Room must be aware that the audience recognizes them: such as, Marta wouldn’t have been insecure before (when actually, Marta was insecure a lot and Fina always supported her and never treated it as a weakness).

In turn, Marta states that post-Argentina Fina is so much more self-confident and knows what she wants, and the audience has seen that neither is true and Fina’s desperate expression agrees with the audience.

Marta continues to be frank: she feels smaller next to Fina now. And while they both chalk it up to Fina being more worldly now, the audience knows that it is due to Fina having pushed Marta away for weeks now.

Fina saying that Marta would now have to learn to live with a woman who is her equal instead of a girl intimidated by the social status of her “girlfriend” smells like retconning, but could also be part of the long game. Because Fina up to 377 wasn’t intimidated by the social status of her wife, and Marta never unpacked it between them. (If anything, Fina was the one to uphold Marta and call the shots, from “temenos toda la vida por delante” to “sssh” in the darkroom.)

Marta, at this point, expects Fina to break up with her – “Is that what you want?” (because Marta still tries to accommodate Fina). That was, to me, the most gutting moment of the scene because that’s the amount of trust and safety Marta feels around Fina right now: she is expecting that Fina might get up and leave at any moment.

And the second most gutting thing is Fina then – and only then – being able to open up. Only then, with Marta this afraid, Fina can be sweet and generous and say, “What? No! I just needed to understand what was failing (“you, Marta, it was you and your insecurities”)!”

They get the Family Chords at 00:38:44, and Marta is so devastatingly relieved, but the pattern revealed is ugly: only at the point where Marta is broken, Fina can reach out because then she is the one with the agency to fix it, as she has usually been before she has left. And perhaps it is she who would need a shoulder to cry on or have someone tend to her wounds now, but she nips that at the bud, every time.

This Fina doesn't need an equal. She is less of an equal than Fina up to 377 in terms of emotion because this Fina cannot be with someone who challenges her. She is not the strong one. She needs Marta to be dependent and scared, and that is not a healthy pattern.

Sure, Marta may be more insecure because of her abandonment issues, but Fina has fed them copiously since her return. None of this is about concealing the Bianca call, or about how either of them have changed or not. It is instead about Fina needing control, needing to be the one to say, "I comfort you" and "Silly, why would I leave you?" – thus making light of Marta’s deep-seated fears instead of recognizing them. It is about how Marta apologizes for not respecting Fina's personal space, and how Fina's behavior suggests that such an apology is necessary. And Marta accepts it, and then she calls them "novias" (what a downgrade from “mi mujer”), and, no, this is not a healthy relationship.

Not because they wouldn’t love each other, but because Fina needs to face her trauma and subsequent trust issues to be able to have an actual relationship again. The way she (unconsciously) manipulates Marta is disturbing, and Marta would need to say stop instead of enabling it further in her fear of being abandoned. Marta is bending over backwards in her attempts to hold onto Fina, and a reeling Fina is given no clear feedback of “no. You’ve crossed a line.”

This episode made me doubt, but I still believe there is a larger game going on because both characters made false statements about their previous relationship here and continue to act out of character (Marta disproportionally scared, Fina cold unless Marta is breaking down). The audience knows that the Mafin relationship was balanced: Fina was unimpressed by Marta's status even before they were together. Marta never put Fina down over class issues. More often, Fina was the one to comfort. Marta always supported Fina's growth with pride.

I have problems believing that the Writing Room who has delivered this romance so far would do such a drastic, notable shift of a favorite storyline when there is no narrative gain in sight. Why ruin them for nothing?

And I think beyond the white roses and the double-breasted suit and the True Flutes, this is in the performances. Brunet can play cocky and suave and strong if she wants to (Fina always had a bit of that), but Fina right now seems lost, scared, and shut off, with small moments of reprieve only when Marta is on the floor and Fina herself is the one to call the shots.

Marta, over the family chords calling herself “childish” for her fears (fears that Fina caused), is not met with Fina saying, “Of course you aren’t childish, your feelings are valid!” but with a joking “The tables are turned, now I am comforting you!” (when Fina has usually been the one to comfort Marta all along)

Pelayo purposefully gaslit Marta; the way Fina is characterized at the moment, she engages in acts that gaslight Marta, but from a point of survival instinct and wounded feelings: none of it says "I *want* to hurt and destabilize Marta", but all of it says "I cannot be vulnerable, I am scrambling away from anything that would open me up".

And the way it is written and performed places those impulses on an instinctual level where Fina's own reasonings ("but I am independent! How does Marta dare to infringe on that!") are shown as preposterous and off-kilter (How can Fina get mad at her partner dropping by her apartment? How can Fina ask Marta what has happened when the one who has changed completely is clearly Fina?).

And the artistry at the moment, I find, is in telling this story ("Fina is trauma timebomb!") through the characters insisting and believing that they tell another story ("Marta cannot deal with Fina's gain in status!"), while the deeper truth underneath - the one that the audience sees - pulls at them.

Look at how the scene ends: Marta admitting, “I was afraid I’d lost you” and Fina joking it away “Silly, you won’t lose me, I’m crazy about you”, and, fine, one small kiss and then she leans back in her seat, with her cardigan over her turtleneck. “crazy about you” used to be “I will almost kiss you at the store, until we need to invent an eyelash story for Tasio”. It used to be “let me show you my darkroom and take half-nudes of you over lunch break.” Now, it’s “novias”.

And, sure, Fina has a framed photo (back from when she started out, over the Doña Clara countryside excursion) of Marta to pin to her wall, but that is the image, not the woman in front of her, and even though they get the True Flutes once more, with the bouquet of white roses perfectly centered behind them (00:39:19), and they get to touch hands, and foreheads (nature is healing!), that photo frame is still a barrier between them.

And Marta saying “I’m an idiot!” and Fina replying “yes, you are” rings off: because with the little trust they have right now, both are too close to actually meaning it. I expect the other shoe to drop still.

But look at that forehead touch and how it frames the Queer Lady Rohrschach painting in the background: I still see two women in dresses from the shoulders down.

First slight: Fina – covered up in her turtleneck armor even at home – calls Clauda and says her apartment is “ready for visitors.” Yet she invites Claudia first, and not Marta, who walks into the store right then, the world’s happiest dead fox around her shoulders and in her matador epaulet outfit.

Queer Lady Rohrschach (as per @bloomsberries) side question: what do you see on the painting in the background? Two peacocks, or two women, one brown one white, in narrow halterneck dresses that fall down to knees?

(yes, I know this is oddly specific. Yes, I am aware I came out of this particular test as “Christ could you be any gayer? Show me Marta with that business folder under her arm again and we’ll talk.)

Marta is business touch here, Claudia clearly deferring to her as her boss, which contrasts with the nearly three minutes Marta gets with Digna towards the end of the episode. Marta is still in her fighter outfit, but Digna is amplifying Fina’s perspective (Digna says, “We don’t have secrets between us”), thereby increasing Marta’s insecurities, and making her believe that she is the one to blame for her current crisis with Fina.

The scene already starts with a rare full profile take, exposing Marta as someone looked at, and not someone identified with.

On the surface, it’s about Marta concealing that Bianca call, but it is not addressing the reasons for it: Marta’s fears, caused by Fina’s standoffishness interlaced with just enough moments of warmth to have her hold on.

Marta says she feels like a child because she can’t assimilate that Fina was capable of falling in love again after leaving her. In the Mafin OTP setup, this does not compute, and the audience, who has watched Mafin unfold as OTP, looks at it with Marta’s perspective.

Digna insists that Fina suffered, thought she wouldn’t see Marta again, and had a right to rebuild her life. But that is not the point because: of course that’s right, and still the love to Marta should have weighed more, in symmetry to how Marta thought she would never see Fina again and found she was unable to move on even when she tried it, having a affair but not falling in love. (I think that symmetry is part of the dramaturgical setup and we will eventually learn that Bianca did not parallel Marta).

Digna underlines, “Fina chose you”, with Fina’s Haunted Flutes at 42:16, and she adds “She loves you, with everything that entails”. Yet what Marta and the audience experience is that Fina says she chose Marta but does mostly push her away and doesn’t react to her feelings, and that is precisely not what love entails.

Marta, cornered, compares hiding the Bianca call from Fina to Cloe hiding the Rosario call from Marta, which is not comparable: sure, both wanted to keep the woman they want to themselves and away from another, but Cloe knew Marta was desperately seeking Fina. Fina is not desperately seeking her ex. One hopes.

Marta remembers she was mad at Cloe but then realized that Cloe acted out of rejected love/desire and then Marta empathized with her. “Well, then you already know how Fina feels,” is Digna’s conclusion.

Which, again, is not what we see because precisely what Fina cannot do is that kind of empathizing.

Fittingly, Marta says she feels lost, and Digna’s advice of “Open your heart to Fina, admit your weaknesses” may seem solid on the surface, but in terms of the setup, it is once more the opposite: because Marta has been open (while Fina hasn’t), Marta has admitted weaknesses (while Fina is unable to at the moment). And, fittingly, Marta looks up uncertainly over the modulated Meander Motif at the end of the scene – just as the audience looks uncertainly at Digna, gaslit along with Marta by a kind advice that does not fit the situation at all.

Claudia is visiting and praising Fina’s very nice apartment (the set crews love Fina: they gave her an entire darkroom set, now they are giving her an entire apartment set. The lesbian toolbox is still centerstage and I hope those curtains close well because someone might look in from that nice balcony visible through the windows in case that sofa will see some action down the road).

To Claudia’s “How I missed you!”, Fina is able to reply, “I missed you, too,” and give her a tight hug.

The empathy is only off around Marta – because Marta is the one who can disassemble Fina with just one look. But the walls also come up around Claudia when Claudia remarks that Fina seems sad lately, and there is a pointed pause and side look when Claudia asks whether Fina misses Argentina. She says no in a way that means yes (or at least, to paraphrase another lesbian classic, “There are things I miss about it.”).

The audience gets an insight into Fina self-world here: she feels she doesn’t fit in (Claudia immediately asks about Marta, recognizing her importance), that she and Marta don’t really connect and have been unable to pick up where they left off, that the issue is Marta not adapting to a changed Fina, and Fina’s experiences in Argentina.

Woooot. Hold your horses. If SdL were a regular soap, I’d say “sloppy writing” and drink myself into amnesia, but this is SdL, and it is too opposite of what the audience knows and sees to be true to be unintentional.

The audience has seen and heard Fina say that she is different and that she cannot and does not want to continue on from how things were (and much of that may be Fina wishing to be different deep down, but she is still the same woman who would die for Marta even if she has become a photographer with a chip on her shoulder meanwhile). The audience has seen that Fina actively sabotages connecting with Marta, even if not consciously; the audience has also seen Marta adapting to everything despite not being in agreement (e.g. Fina moving out) or being insecure (Fina not making time for her), and the audience has also seen that Fina has not shared any of her Argentina experiences, other than Bianca, and only because Marta found out, and then she didn’t want to share more when Marta asked.

So this is a scene about Fina, to Claudia, giving insight into her thought processes, and the audience can see that her impressions don’t add up with her behavior.

“Our love should be above all that,” a frustrated Fina says over the little Love Meander Motif (00:35:46 in the Mafin Drive Cut) and that love still seems an abstract thing for her that she values, but cannot access at the moment. And it is Claudia walking around that apartment, alone, while Fina bustles in the kitchen, who gets the Fina Happy at Home Swell Chords and Little Love Motif Changed to Major (00:36:12).

The scene changed to Mabel and Salva, and him avoiding a chance to sleep with her when she clearly wants to: lovers miscommunicating (with Nieves walking in and quickly out again, too).

This parallels Fina and Claudia and then Marta ringing unexpectedly at the door. And Fina’s first expression is discomfort.

Her eyes still drop down Marta’s body then...

...but when Marta – standing in the hallway lit like a dreamboat – says, “I couldn’t stop thinking about here, I just needed an excuse to drop by and talk” while giving Fina a sad, longing look...

...Fina’s expression closes off fully (but caged, not cold. Something is panicking beneath the surface there, I'd say).

And instead of saying, “Claudia, you know I love you, but here’s your coat, remember what we talked about, Marta is here and looking at me like *that*, there are priorities,” Fina uses Claudia to block Marta’s offer of reconnection and talking (something she has just told Claudia she misses from Marta!).

And we’re back to Fina saying things, but her tone saying another: “Come in,” over an annoyed little sigh, and Marta stand around awkwardly like a forgotten bourgeois Christmas tree in July, with a box of pastries in hand, and Fina’s “Would you like something to drink?” sounds obliged.

Marta realizes it. Claudia realizes it (thank you for that "Girl, WHAT?!" face, Ms. Moreno).

Marta realizes Claudia has been asked over first because apparently with Claudia, Fina can relax and be imperfect, but not with Marta.

Marta leaves, elegantly and heartbroken, and Fina does nothing to stop her. Well, she says “You can stay” in a tone and facial expression that say, “You are unwanted.” Even as they are are giving off another blue/red combo that is diluted and bright.

But again, Brunet manages to make Fina not transport as intentionally mean, but as lost. Fina so desperately wants to be someone other than her former self she rejects, that self that needed people and was happy in Toledo, but Marta keeps reminding her that she is still that same person underneath and that that person is very much worth loving.

Marta says she likes the apartment, Fina rolls her eyes as if she doesn’t trust that statement. Ouch, the disconnect.

Claudia apologizes and says she would have left, and Fina says, “No worries, you see how things are.”

We see how you make things, Fina. Things aren’t like this on their own. And Fina places Marta’s gift – “Pastries!” – on the couch table with another annoyed huff, next to the ones Claudia already brought, as if it were a personal attack that the woman she used to consider her wife, the woman with whom she dreamed of sharing a living space, stops by to see her to talk.

Why does this visit – which starts like a PWP AO3 entry until Fina messes it up – feel like an attack to Fina?

The Writing Room is piling on the (intentional) incongruencies, and the puzzle piece that will have the image depicted come into view is still missing (but I still believe that it is coming, down the road).

The Mafin crowd trying to figure it out, exhausted by the missing puzzle pieces:

There’s a red herring about Cloe hiring a photographer for the BdlR party who we know will have an accident so Fina can take the job, and Marta is present for that, but more than placing that intel, the scene underlines Marta’s sadness.

Cloe, in her Old Dependienta Look How Former Fina I Can Be blouse is happy with how negotiations are going and, from that standpoint, asks Sad Marta what is wrong.

And while Marta tries to deflect at first, she’s at the point her troubles with Fina once more with most very wrong person after Don Agustín.

Saved by Digna walking in!

But Digna, too, wants to talk about Fina, so Marta gets a chance to show the audience her headspace, just like Fina, with Claudia, offered an insight into her headspace in #598.

Marta is bothered by Fina’s unwillingness to talk and to accept her visit, and she fears that Fina will not forgive her and is instead pushing her out of her life – a serious fear that Digna brushes away without giving it the concern it deserves, and which stems from situations the audience has witnessed repeatedly since Fina’s return. So Marta (and the audience) feel left along and insecure about a worry that is well-founded, while being told that it is not well-founded.

Fina isn’t one to hold a grudge, Digna says. Fina is different now, Marta replies, illustrating once more that Marta doesn’t even know how to adapt, and to whom (even though she is – other than what Fina states – willing to do so, she just gets rebuffed by Fina every time she tires).

Digna insists that Fina is the same, only stronger, which may be a fact from Digna’s perspective, or wacky writing, since Fina is hardened and reticent and standoffish and so afraid of letting Marta in, but not of that is a sign of strength, merely of a toughness that points towards Fina’s fear of vulnerability underneath. And Digna, as a mother figure, should be able to see that.

Marta’s world view is starkly at odds with Digna’s: where Digna says “Stop worrying,” Marta says, “I fear Fina will end up leaving me.” (which might be a hook for a constantly dismissed and denigrated Marta to leave Fina instead, in a few episodes, because she cannot take the constant slights any longer and cannot make herself even smaller to accommodate Fina).

Fina calls, and Belmonte combines a skyward soap-look with a tiny smile of relief that actually makes the dialog unnecessary in under half a second.

We also get the True Flutes Love Motif underneath (00:13:44 in the Mafin Drive Cut, with added strings at 00:13:50, highlighting the moment further) to drive home the connection: Fina wants to talk, but Marta looks scared more than overjoyed.

Digna says everything will be all right; Marta just offers a nervous lip bite. (how bad have things gotten if the thought of a date with your wife have you be this afraid what the outcome might be?)