i highkey respect the fuck outta Derry Girls for giving us a cast of real, honest to God, true blue LOSERS. A lot of the time on teen shows (esp ones set in America) the kids will allegedly be "uncool crows" but they have like 2 different love interests vying for their affection, or they'll run for student council pres and be the underdog that wins bc everyone actually does secretly like them, or they have this whole other secret identity/superpower that gives them a higher sense of purpose outside of petty high school drama.
Not these 5 dumbasses though. Our ragtag group of feral misfits fail at pretty much everything they set out to do and in ways that highlight for every onlooker in Derry what incredible dumbasses they are, marinating in glaze of mediocrity and perpetual disappointment, and iT IS GLORIOUS
SO MANY FUCKING THINGS stood out in tonight’s belter of an episode of His Dark Materials, but Marisa Coulter’s meeting with Mary Malone and her subsequent Blue Screen Of Death on realising the reality of the patriarchy was something I will. never. forget.
Look at her. Look at her eyes, listen the words she uses. Marisa is absolutely fucking full of blinding rage at the truth she’s suddenly been hit in the face with. All her life she has been better, clever, smarter, and stronger than the men who dominate her society. And she has been forced to kowtow to these pissants, these simpering dull crude men, slaving constantly in labour and cunning to secure the meagrest of breadcrumbs of respect and recognition in her academic and political fields. She has been forced to swallow the bitter pill of being ineligible for a doctorate, despite the undeniable superiority of her work. She has had to submit to her papers being published under the names of male peers and them taking her rightful credit. She has had to smile and simper and be agreeable and claw her way to power and respect through the utmost ruthlessness and cunning - and even though those things were always in her nature, the mental and emotional toll it’s taken on her is crystal fucking clear. She’s destroyed her own soul to rise to her rightful place.
And then she steps into another world and meets Mary. A doctor in her own right, with academic research in her own right, with her own brilliance in her own right. No fuss. No compromise. Just recognition on the basis of merit. And she realises, in that moment, what has been kept from her all her life, and how incandescently fucking outrageous it is.
And she is blinded by rage.
I think there are people that help you become the person that you end up being, and you can be grateful for them even if they were never meant to be in your life forever. I’m glad I knew you, too.