One Time I Was Hanging Out With These Two Friends Of Mine, Women I Admire Very Much, And We Reached This

one time i was hanging out with these two friends of mine, women i admire very much, and we reached this twilight zone moment where we realized that each of us had, at one point:

dated a man who treated us very badly

and for whom we made many sacrifices

and who we defended to our friends

because we needed to be supportive

of his “genius”

yes, he treated us badly but he was so smart and talented that maybe it was unfair to expect him to play by society’s rules, we told ourselves

and it felt kind of embarrassing to demand something as gauche as kindness (ugh) or maturity

from a “genius”

we lived in fear of being The Nagging Girlfriend/Wife Who Doesn’t Understand Her Man’s Unique Vision.

you know, the woman from the first half of any biopic about a great man. the first wife, the one he divorces before act two.

instead we dreamed of being The Good, Supportive Girlfriend/Wife Who Knows Sometimes You Must Make Compromises.

you know, the woman from the later half of any biopic about a great man. the second or sometimes third wife, depending on how long he lived or how many affairs he had.

it was genuinely chilling, because the longer we talked, the more it felt like all three of us had been handed the same invisible and very detailed script. we are all extremely liberal feminists and yet we’d still bought the whole narrative hook line and sinker, and i don’t think any of us fully realized how fucked up it was until we heard it from each other’s mouths.

i should note, maybe, that these two friends of mine are two of the most brilliant, talented, competent people i know. they were, in both cases, just as brilliant as the boy they sacrificed for. also they were, in both cases, capable of maintaining this brilliance while still tending to their own needs like an adult and treating the people around them with a fundamental level of respect.

so in case it helps anyone out there right now, struggling white knuckled to last into the second half of an imagined Great Man biopic: there is no level of intelligence or skill high enough to exempt a man (or a woman or anyone anywhere else on the gender spectrum) from the basic requirements of human decency. i don’t care if he is moving shit around with the power of his mind like matilda, he still has to say “please” and “thank you” and consider the feelings of the people around him. if he cannot or will not do these things, he is not a genius, he is a baby. AT BEST.

also, you are not the love interest of this movie. you are the fucking protagonist.

There was no good option here.

It’s simple. Y’all saying she’s selfish and a coward but

PINK DIAMOND HAD NO CHOICE.

Let us review her options, and their outcomes :

Option A : Pink Diamond does nothing to stop the colonisation.

Outcome : The colony is completed. Everything on Earth dies.

Option B : Pink Diamond asks the Diamonds to stop the colonisation, peacefully.

Outcome : Diamonds : Don’t care, didn’t read lol.

Option C : Pink Diamond tells her subjects to stop (probably happened, so it’s almost the same as Option B)

Outcome : Diamonds : What are you doing ? Ok, you’re just lazy and childish. Give me back that colony.

Pink loses her colony and a lot of her power as a Diamond.

Option D : Pink Diamond leads an official war on her older sisters.

Outcome : Diamonds : What are you doing ? Are you serious right now ? Ok, it’s not funny anymore. You, the youngest, weakest Diamond, our little sister, is rebelling against the Diamond Authority after all we gave to you ?

The war is lost by Pink (smaller army, one incomplete colony against several), all of her army is wiped, corrupted or shattered. Actually, not only her army but also her subjects : Lapis Lazulis, Pearls, Peridots, all of her subjects are wiped and she loses everything. Earth becomes a colony.

Option E : Pink Diamond leads a secret rebellion to have another excuse to stop the colony. Her subjects has the choice to rejoin the rebellion and be free or to go back to Homeworld.

Outcome : Diamonds : The rebellion will be destroyed. Keep going.

Option F : Pink Diamond fakes her death because Blue tells her the colonisation won’t stop as long as she’s here to lead.

Outcome : Earth is left alone, her subjects are either free or alive in Homeworld. That’s what she thought would happen. But we all know what actually happened : Earth was left alone, but the rebellion got corrupted. A large part of her subjects were saved thanks to this sacrifice, because they were siding with the Diamonds, thinking they were siding with Pink. Her soldiers, her court, all of her subjects actually had the choice to be part of the rebellion or to go back to Homeworld. She saved them, when an official war would have get them all killed or corrupted.

Again, tell me what she could have done more ?

Let Earth die ? Lead everyone into a lost war ? There was not other possibilities. The one she chose was not perfect, but between all of them, it was the only one that was less terrible.

Yes, Pink was childish. But it’s also what gave her the possibility to see what Earth was, beyond a planet to make a colony. She fell for Earth and she took the best choice for Earth and her subjects : save or free them.

4K notes View Post

mari-chan11

8 years ago