#how come i can discuss homelander’s trauma until i’m blue in the face and it’s great

[blindmagdalena]

I do feel like it's important to also acknowledge that she's deeply traumatised and broken, but Maeve's also very much a shitty person for most of the show too. Starlight even calls her out more than once on how callous and selfish she is, like how Maeve's response to seeing a young woman crying in the bathroom after being sexually assaulted by someone she looked up to was to tell her to suck it up or she'll look weak. I know she's hardly the poster child for healthy coping mechanisms, but she's definitely no saint.

why does she need to be a saint? who ever said she is?

nothing in the show ever tries to tell us that Maeve is a good person. just a damaged one. most of her arc is the discussion of how she used to be a good person, and how she does want to be again.

to me, the callous and jaded version of her we see in s1 is incredible character work. it makes for SUCH an interesting moment when we see that contrasted against her begging Homelander to save flight 37. even two, just these two, please. of course, her begging falls on deaf ears because Homelander is more cruel and dispassionate about human life than Maeve will ever be, and ultimately she gives in and leaves with him, but i feel like that entire sequence SO succinctly sums up why Maeve is the way she is, and what their dynamic is.

“suck it up or you’ll look weak” was a caring moment for Maeve. that was the moment we knew she saw herself in Starlight. she didn’t mock her. she said ‘if you’re going to survive this, you’re going to have to be stronger.’

was it a kind response? a compassionate response? of course not. but at this point the show was illustrating to Starlight exactly what kind of world she has entered. everyone was awful, greedy, perverse, cruel, dog eat dog from the ground up. they’ve been exploited, and now they exploit in turn. a cycle of abuse.

Maeve said it herself: she gave away pieces of herself until there was nothing left to give. when they met, she had nothing left.

and yet. Starlight changed that. Annie reminded her of what it felt like to care about more than her own survival, which for a long time was the only thing she could afford to care about. i know we love Homelander around here, but i think we’ve lost the sense of how truly horrific living under his thumb must have been for her. how it eroded her capacity to care when again and again and again, in exactly the way we see it happen to Annie, she failed to prevent his cruelty.

Maeve serves exactly the narrative purpose she’s intended to: she shows who Starlight could become, and ultimately helps prevent it.

i don’t want saints. i want compelling, nuanced characters. Maeve IS that.