#txtn

yeah, you could make an argument that it could point to a internal aversion to depicting men kissing on the writers part, but burt and irving’s story is and always has been so rich. this isn’t like the 2000/10s style of queerbaiting we’ve been subjected to for the longest time. they were first to develop an explicit relationship on screen,they describe their feelings as romantic, they want to kiss but they can’t, they can’t. turturro and walken play them with the primary motivation being their insatiable attraction towards one another. burt’s absence ripped irving apart. i’d draw one every day i couldn’t see him. a kiss really shouldn’t be the metric for adequate representation.

each and every relationship on this show is complex and rife with tension. it’s not like they’re all getting a happy ending. we don’t know how or if the mark/gemma/helly/helena quadrilateral is going to resolve. gretchen falls for dylan’s innie and dylan threatens to end it because his wife can’t love him for who he is today - how you used to be. just because they’ve kissed or had sex doesn’t make their relationships simpler, fuller, more meaningful or successful. the narrative explores everything that could go wrong when you try to separate yourself. how do you contend with yourself. who are you. who has the right to you, your body, to love you. autonomy, consent, love, fate, the self.

i doubt this is the last we’ll see of burt and irving. while there’s one episode left in the season, the show is far from over. i’m in the camp of believing the only way forward is through reintegration, that to advance the story towards any resolution within the characters they need to see it, remember it, feel it all. and when that happens, what will burt and irving do? when they finally feel it? i want to feel it.

burving is tragic and star-crossed, but they’re also the ones in the happiest position right now. it hurts to say goodbye. to not know. but i know that i loved you. i think i love you now. it’s too dangerous for us. but with the final choice i have, i can save you.

the innies entire lives being dedicated to work - you are built for nothing but labor. damona birthing retreat. innies whose entire lives and work is bearing children - nothing but labor. she’s one of jame’s. finding meaning and family within it beyond what supports the end result is discouraged and punished. robbed of personhood. you are a worker. you are a birther. how many women, including gemma, have been trafficked from the fertility clinic.

the perverse view dr mauer has of gemma. watching her perform the family motherly duties expected of her even as her hand cramps with pain and he does nothing and makes her say i love you. i’ll watch. no contribution, just surveillance. when he’s done you’re going to have to say goodbye to her. the implications, real or just suggested as a mind game, that she may have been assaulted in one of the rooms. that the men holding her prisoner have a right to her body. her final test seeing if she can confront the memory of having the agency of chosen motherhood ripped away from her without pain. dismantling the crib all by herself. doing the work. an emotionless automaton in the face of maternal trauma.

jame looking for kier in his children. treating countless women as test subjects to be the ones to bear his children for his own goals. the disposability of it all. when he’s determined they’ve failed, that’s where their relationship ends. they’re left having been the ones to carry, birth, and care for the child.

the parent/child relationship so many of the outies have with their innies. offloading the labor to their children. asking them to carry the weight of their trauma without them knowing what it is. bringing them into this world without permission. living vicariously through them. outies getting upset when innies don’t behave the way they would. dressing them. making their decisions for them. denying them full access to their body.

why are “erotic entanglements” between male coworkers impermissible but unprotected sex between severed men and women (the woman being the heir to lumon) has no intervention or punishment beyond using it as bargaining chips of shame afterward

exploited labor. the autonomy of workers ripped from them. the autonomy of women crushed into dirt. to serve the corporation. to serve men. it’s all an exercise of power

like, he has so much mystery surrounding him? if they choose to address it later…why do the train scene before that? seems rather out of order

i have no trouble enjoying the latest episode, i just think his outie kind of got ignored this season and it doesn’t feel appropriate to leave all those set up plot points fully to the imagination, especially when it would impact the decisions he’s made rather heavily