#me; *cries exhaustedly abt my sweet summer child*

[howyoumakemeseemyself]

shelley + olivia; a fucking primer 

it’s a multi-faceted issue but the first thing has to come first; olivia’s abusive af to both shelley and roman (understatement) and i want it to be made clear that nothing i say hereafter is meant to excuse or condone anything she did. i also want to encourage anyone dissenting or wanting to debate any points to pls be courteous; i’m an abuse survivor and victim blaming in particular makes me really anxious bc of Circumstances(TM). i don’t know y’all’s stories but these are sensitive issues and we’re all in this together, thank you in advance. 

anyway, i think olivia’s outward treatment of shelley might be the easiest place to start. she’s incredibly controlling and manipulative, hiding her away in the attic and putting boundaries in place basically to keep her alone (and vulnerable.) i could list a million examples but i just rewatched that ep where shelley gets the earrings and olivia berates the fuck out of her until she cries :( it’s bad and shelley knows it’s really, really bad, which is part of the reason why she’s so grateful for roman in the first place. 

i have theories about the olivia’s motivations and why she takes the actions that she does, but honestly it’s a lot to unpack and i don’t want to derail too much here ahaha. hoooooooowever, if someone else like perhaps an olivia blog wants to tackle that, by all means go for it ♥ ( @motherolivia this seems like a good place to tag u ;) ) 

how shelley carries herself is a direct effect of how olivia treats her. it definitely also has to do with how she’s perceived by the world and the treatment of her classmates, but how olivia makes her feel only exacerbates it. even within the confines of the godfrey estate, in her own bedroom, she’s still slouched over as if she’s trying to make herself look smaller; she still wears the wig (and still wears the wig to purposely cover the right side of her face.) i can’t remember any point where we see her actually relaxed outside of maybe some interactions with roman (that scene in the car with peter and letha comes to mind) and that’s just. so sad to me ugh ugh. 

honestly one of the hardest things to hear is shelley talking about jenny snubbing her and being like ‘my first assumption, of course, is that it was my own fault.’ i think as hard as it probably is to separate trauma induced from olivia herself and trauma induced from people in school being fuckin horrible to her, olivia’s also complicit af in shelley’s self-image and insecurities bc she’s. y’know. shelley’s mother lmao. 

we see shelley pushing back against olivia during some encounters, but it’s obvious that she’s used to being bullied/manipulated into submission, and olivia is someone she’s come to fear. (honestly, olivia can be such a loose cannon and absolutely terrifying sometimes, i don’t blame anyone for being afraid of her.) it’s easier to just bow her head and let olivia have her way, lest things get miraculously worse.   

the thing is though, despite all of this, it’s be disingenuous to say that all shelley feels towards olivia is blind hatred. this is for a few reasons. i think that she’d hate olivia much more fully and completely if shelley knew of the extent to which olivia abused roman, but that conversation hasn’t happened yet so as of now shelley’s feelings are more complicated than that. 

olivia’s manipulated shelley into making her think that she needs olivia to continue existence especially in the beginning. this is common for gaslighters (ie; ‘you’re nothing without me’), and a very hard train of thought to break out of, especially if the gaslighter is someone you depend on for safety or financially. shelley may or may not be conscious of this but feels that from a logical standpoint, without olivia (or roman at least), she wouldn’t be safe in the grove which keeps her close. as time passes, especially through s2, she comes to realize that she can survive on her own, which makes returning to her harder (and this is where i insert the disclaimer that i’m not even done with 2 yet so bare with me >>)

if shelley is aware of said manipulation and despite all of the awful treatment, it’s hard for her to say that she doesn’t love olivia. love is kind of a complicated feeling on its own, but once you add in all of the godfrey madness that just....makes it so much worse lmao. there’s definitely a bit of obligation involved (ie; i love you because you’re my mother and i should) but it goes deeper than that. 

shelley knows that something like love isn’t easy for her mother in general--she straight up says this to her face in yet another fucking gut-wrenching scene in s2, telling her; “you loved me the best way you could.” i think she was being genuine about that, and i think that she holds less against olivia than maybe she should tbh. see; the first part of that heartbreaking quote; “it must have been hard for you to have me as a daughter. i understand why you kept me hidden away.” 

like ok first of all, ow. 

secondly, i was so grateful for this entire moment because when shelley and olivia are together they’re never acknowledging the elephant in the room and the layers going on within their dynamic. all of this stuff that was just implied for a season and a half finally comes to light, and it’s only when shelley’s about to die that something’s actually said. i think that she means this too; i think she’s more resentful than she lets on, but she gets that their situation and her condition specifically wasn’t ideal, olivia just didn’t know how to love shelley the way that she needed to be loved, and that this really was what was best in olivia’s mind. 

there’s also a part of her (that she’s working hard to keep quiet) that’s grateful for everything olivia has done for her, olivia brought her into this world, saved her, kept her and let her live in the house, even though she was doing it in a sometimes extraordinarily shitty way. as said though, she doesn’t forgive olivia for the years of endured abuse--she tells pryce that she wants olivia to think that she’s dead right before dropping the previously-quoted love bomb on her (the duality of which made it one of my favorite shelley moments i was like yessssssss) and that’s completely fair and valid lmao, i think that you can understand why something’s happening and i think that you can even love someone but that doesn’t mean it’s a good place to be, or that their bad treatment of you is excused. not forgiving her does feel counterintuitive to everything she knows though, so she frequently catches herself especially when thinking about the past. she knows that there are unforgivable things, and she’s working hard to like not feed into guilt that olivia herself essentially planted within her. 

anyway, this is way too long already and i haven’t finished hg yet so i’m just gonna chill ♥ tl;dr, “my love and my hate for you are infinite” was like the most fitting tag for olivia for a reason, okay bless.