thinking of picking up writing again, but it's so damn hard when you already have a super busy working schedule.
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@maymaymay5th
thinking of picking up writing again, but it's so damn hard when you already have a super busy working schedule.
Love takes centrestage in this week’s episode… with a Gilead-style twist.
I really was going to try and simmer down on this whole topic for the evening but then I had to read this article that was at the top of my Google feed and it lit a fume around a few particular takes I keep seeing from anti's and general viewers that the THT writers seem to want to confirm.
“Love is conditional.”
Oh, okay. That’s the grand feminist takeaway now? That the only love worth having is the kind that fits some impossible moral checklist? Sure — love should be conditional on safety, respect, and trust. I’ll give you that. Especially for all the Luke defenders out there.
But this idea that June can only love someone who’s already perfect, who’s never been complicit, never compromised, never made a mistake — that’s not empowering. That’s not feminist. That’s moral absolutism in a red cloak.
Love can transform people. It’s not weakness — it’s the most human reason to fight. And it’s exactly how change actually happens.
The fake moral high ground only shows up when Nick is involved.
I’m sorry — are we seriously still acting like Nick is the only morally grey character on this show? Serena literally orchestrated rape and child theft. Lawrence designed the system. Lydia tortured women daily. But no one questions whether they can change or be complex. The minute Nick shows up with guilt and nuance and love in his eyes, suddenly it’s “how dare June still care for him?” The selective outrage is exhausting. You don’t have to ship it — but let’s not pretend it’s about morals when your fave has done worse. So why is Nick the one character in the end who’s suddenly held to a standard of purity no one else is asked to meet?
Acting out of love is a bad reason to change?
I’m begging you to live in the real world. Most people don’t risk their lives for causes they’re not passionate about. People take action because something personal cracks them open. Because someone they love is affected. Because they can’t live with the silence anymore. Nick risking everything because of his love for June and Nichole? That’s not a flaw. That’s human. That’s exactly how revolutions start.
And honestly? Luke hasn’t taken a single risk. Not one. So this image of him as the “good guy” makes me want to scream. He judged. He waited. He punished. He had the freedom to act and chose comfort every time. But sure — let’s drag the man who was stuck inside the system and still found a way to protect the woman he loved when no one else did. And who would be dead if not for him.
And this article seriously suggests Luke and June are like Katniss and Peeta. You are out of your damn mind if you think that’s the case.
Peeta didn’t judge Katniss for being changed by trauma. Peeta never resented her pain. Peeta didn’t demand softness from a woman who had been at war. And Peeta actually experienced war.
Nick is the Peeta. Always has been. Luke is Gale with a better PR campaign.
And I’ve got to be honest — I’m seriously confused (and outraged) at the final message this show seems to be suggesting, which is:
Love is only valid if it’s morally convenient. Change only matters if it comes from the "right" person. Redemption is for the chosen few — not the ones who actually earned it.
What happened to the show that made space for contradiction? That let women be angry, messy, and in love with the wrong person and still be right?
What happened to the story that was supposed to live in the grey?
Because this? This ain’t it.
Loving someone who once served the regime doesn’t make June naïve.
It makes her human.
Nick made his choices. He chose June. Again and again.
Even knowing it could cost him everything.
Real freedom isn’t about being “clean” in a dirty world.
It’s about choosing love in a world that tells you not to feel anything at all.
If you ask me, the most powerful thing about The Handmaid’s Tale was never that it taught you how to be a hero —
it showed you how to remain human in the darkest of circumstances.
The moment it shifted into a “main character success narrative,”
it betrayed the very essence of what it once stood for.
and this depressed me most
If you ask me, the most powerful thing about The Handmaid’s Tale was never that it taught you how to be a hero —
it showed you how to remain human in the darkest of circumstances.
The moment it shifted into a “main character success narrative,”
it betrayed the very essence of what it once stood for.
Love, Agency, and the Real Meaning of Feminism in The Handmaid’s Tale
⸻
I just finished The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6, and honestly, I’m heartbroken and angry.
The relationship between Nick and June has been one of the most powerful threads in the series since Season 1. Nick risked his life again and again to protect her. Their love wasn’t a fairytale—it was born from pain, danger, and limited choices. But that’s what made it real. In a world built to crush them, they chose each other. That wasn’t “being a lovesick fool.” That was human courage, emotional agency, and resistance in its purest form.
But in Season 6, the writers reduced Nick to a mere background character, labeling their history a “situationship.” This not only breaks character logic—it disrespects everything that viewers have emotionally invested in. Years of life-or-death devotion were tossed aside for thematic convenience.
But here’s my truth: Feminism doesn’t mean stripping women of love, tenderness, or emotional complexity. Feminism means giving women the freedom to choose, fully and freely, without judgment.
I loved June in Season 1 because she was imperfect. She made mistakes. She still chose to love Nick. She still fought for her daughter. And she did all of it while holding on to her own sense of self. That’s not weakness. That’s personhood.
Season 6, on the other hand, flattened her into an abstract figure of righteousness—who erases people not because of real harm, but because they no longer fit her narrative. That’s not strength. That’s inhuman.
⸻
📣 So let’s stop calling love a weakness.
Let’s stop telling women that to be “strong,” they must be numb, angry, or alone.
Feminism means freedom. Freedom to choose love, freedom to walk away. Freedom to be a person.
I’ve seen so many shippers feeling deeply disappointed and angry — and I understand them completely.
But honestly, I think the answer lies exactly in what The Textual Poachers says: fanfiction has power.
Fanfiction is not just about indulging fantasies — it’s about reclaiming meaning. When the official narrative abandons characters we’ve loved and followed for years, we have every right to take them back. We reshape the story, not to ignore canon, but to challenge it, to heal what it broke, and to honor what it erased.
Even if the writers dismissed Nick and June’s relationship as a “situationship,” we remember what it actually was: sacrifice, longing, mutual recognition in a broken world. That kind of bond doesn’t vanish because a script says it does.
We write because we remember. We create because we refuse to let someone else tell us what mattered and what didn’t.
In a way, fanfiction becomes a form of emotional justice — a space where readers and writers say:
“No, this was real. You don’t get to take that from us.”
And maybe that’s the most powerful resistance of all.
We should have known already after 6x03, huh? When the official channel called Nick a situationship. 🔪
wth
This literally pissed me off
I feel like Spencer Reid wrote this
“The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.”
This line from Atwood’s THT novel has been etched into me ever since I first read it. It’s messy. Romantic. Rooted in theology, philosophy, desire. It’s a contradiction — just like the book. And it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever read about love.
Because it doesn’t speak to fairy tale love. Or safe love. Or easy love.
It speaks to the kind of love that lives in the ruins with you. The kind that changes you. That doesn’t need to be pure to be real. That doesn’t need to be public to be true.
This quote — this entire passage — is the thesis of THT. Atwood was never writing about "happily ever after." She was writing about how people stay human inside systems designed to hollow them out.
And June? She survives not because she becomes cold or perfect or self-righteous. She survives because she remembers how to want. Because she lets herself love, even when it’s dangerous, even when it’s wrong, even when it makes no sense.
“We were waiting, always, for the incarnation.”
That’s Nick.
Not a fantasy. Not a savior. Not a symbol. A real man. Flawed. Quiet. Bleeding. Complicit. And the incarnation of love in the darkest place imaginable.
Loving him didn’t save June from pain. But it kept her whole. It tethered her to the part of herself Gilead couldn’t take.
I didn’t need a happy ending. I didn’t need sunshine and closure and a white picket fence.
But what I did need was an ending that was earned.
What I needed was: A woman who doesn’t walk away from the love that sustained her. A man who doesn’t get reduced to a ghost in the machine. A story that understands that messy, complicated, gut-wrenching love is not weakness — it’s humanity.
Instead, the show told us: That loving someone like Nick — someone flawed, dangerous, but loyal — is a mistake. That June’s survival means detachment. That the “real world” doesn’t have room for complex love, only correct, simple love. It told us that traditional love — clean, sanctioned, externally approved — is the kind worth fighting for. That the love that fits neatly into boxes, that doesn’t challenge the status quo, that doesn’t ask hard questions — is the one that wins.
But that’s not The Handmaid’s Tale. That’s not the story Atwood wrote. This story was never about choosing the man with the cleanest résumé. It was about breaking the rules — all of them. About surviving in ways you’re not supposed to. About loving in ways the system can’t predict, and therefore can’t control.
Nick and June were never traditional. They were never safe. But they were true. And they were dangerous to Gilead precisely because their love didn’t follow the rules. Because it wasn’t handed to them — they built it. They bled for it.
So when the show decided that love like that had to be sacrificed for something simpler, more acceptable, more palatable — it didn’t just abandon Nick and June. It abandoned the point.
But that’s not the book. And that’s not The Testaments, either — where love and loyalty still survive in the background, where the human heart remains a factor.
So yeah, I’m disheartened.
Not because Nick and June didn’t get a romantic ending. But because the writers refused to give them a narratively honest one. Because they pretended this story was never about love — when it always, always was.
Atwood understood that choosing to love someone who is difficult, complicated, flawed — especially when you are too — is one of the most radical things a person can do.
It’s not blind. It’s not passive. It’s a conscious, daily act of seeing someone fully and still saying: yes, you. Especially when the world tells you that love is dangerous. Or selfish. Or futile. And that love —not the violence, not the vengeance — is what ultimately broke Gilead.
And that, to me, is what real feminism is about. Not perfection. Not purity. Not moral absolutes. Choice. The power to decide who you love, how you love, and what you’re willing to risk for it. To say: this is mine, and I choose it — even if it’s messy. Even if the world tells you not to. You own it. Out loud.
And that’s what hurts the most: June never got to make that choice. Not fully. Not freely. The show skirted it, deflected it, passed it off in glances and silence. And in doing that, it robbed her of what should’ve been the most radical act of all — choosing the flawed, complicated love that made her feel alive.
And that’s why I’ll never accept a version of this story that treats love as weakness. That frames complexity as failure. That suggests safety is more noble than honesty. That tells us simple is more righteous than real.
Because love isn’t less valuable when it’s complicated. It’s more. And choosing it anyway? That’s the most radical thing she ever did.
Atwood's "Offred" fearlessly admitted she would've done things for that man. Things he didn't even require from her. She admitted that she felt safe with him, that they were passionate together.
None of it is demeaning because that's how we act when we're in LOVE, when we DESIRE. That's not a "woman" thing, it's a human thing, so it shouldn't be viewed as embarrassing for a woman to feel those things, to accept them and enjoy them to the fullest. Especially when we are lucky to be with a person that actually wants us as we are, doesn't try to change or control us in any way. A person with whom we can just BE.
I don't get why it's so hard to understand that THAT is what drew us to that story. It's not just because it's romance, and we are women and of course we like romance (ugh), it's because of the type of love it shows.
Love that doesn't restrain, doesn't hold back, doesn't tell you what to do, doesn't stop you, doesn't possess you. It's a love that IS, that STAYS, that TRUSTS and it's TRUSTFUL, that GIVES and most of all, only requires for you to be on the other end.
It's such a wasted opportunity to have shown us this for an entire 6 seasons run, just to tells us that, in the end, it never fucking mattered.
Well, it didn't to them I guess, but it did to me. It will always be important to me, and thank God I got both books to remind me, it IS canon, and it WILL forever be.
on soulmates
f. scott fitzgerald / friedrich nietzsche / florence and the machine / andrea dworkin / kiersten white / euripides / audre lorde / phillip pullmann / bob hicok
Nick x June - The Handmaid's Tale - Season 1, 2017
Okay i did not read the books, i only watched the show SO LET ME BE DELUSIONAL IN PEACE OKAY?
ALSO PROBABLY HANDMAIDS TALE SEASON 6 SPOILERS AHEAD MAYBE NOT IDK.
The way Nick and June just LOOK at each other?? The tension??? The “I would burn the world for you but we can't” energy??
THEIR EYES HAVE MORE SEX THAN HALF THE ACTUAL SEX ON TV.
And meanwhile June’s husband???
I’m sorry but he’s just there. Like a tree. A supportive tree, sure, but a non-sexy, beige tree. There’s no fire. No ache. No “meet me in the shadows and betray our regime for a single kiss” vibe.
Nick walks on screen and suddenly I can’t breathe. June says ONE WORD and he’s already undressing her with his soul.
LET THEM BE TOGETHER. LET THEM DO CRIMES. LET THEM FUCK!!!
If this show doesn’t give us what we want I’m writing fanfic out of pure spite.
They are out here acting like war-torn soulmates in the middle of a dystopia and STILL can’t get 5 minutes alone without someone interrupting or society collapsing???
BABES. THIS IS AN INJUSTICE.
June is out here risking her life, screaming at power structures, smuggling people, and Nick is just standing in the rain looking like he’s about to confess eternal love or rip off his coat and kiss her against a wall.
THEY’RE IN LOVE. LET THEM BE TOXIC. LET THEM BE MESSY. LET THEM HAVE ONE NIGHT OF RELEASE.
I’ll wait. But if episode 4 doesn’t deliver, I riot. Or write smut. Same thing.
FUCK. LUKE.
He can pack his boring-ass beige button-up, sip a lukewarm cup of Canadian government coffee, and go braid Moira’s hair in peaceful irrelevance because June?
June needs to be with Nick "I’d Burn Gilead for You" Blaine.
Like bro, Luke had YEARS. YEARS!!!
And all he gave us was guilt trips, confusion, and passive-aggressive trauma invalidation.
Meanwhile Nick???
Soft voice. Intense eyes. Absolute devastation every time he looks at her.
New Bethlehem Nick is PEAK HOT.
Diplomatic. Dangerous. Emotionally repressed with simmering passion underneath?
Sir, build June a life there. You already built a home in her chest.
Also… the baby???
The sacrifices???
I need therapy.
LIKE SIR, YOU HAVE POWER NOW. DO SOMETHING HOT WITH IT!!!
Nick, baby, you’re a Commander. You’ve got:
Access.
Authority.
Smolder.
A tragic backstory and incredible jawline.
USE THAT TO GET HANNAH OUT.
GET JUNE IN.
THEN GET. 👏TO. 👏FUCKING.
Like bro. You’re literally one stolen key and one whisper to Lawrence away from starting the greatest forbidden lovers’ revolution in dystopian TV history.
Meanwhile June is out here sobbing in the rain, writing trauma poetry in her eyes, waiting for a real man to commit one sexy rebellion.
AND YOU’RE STANDING THERE DOING THAT LITTLE “LOOKING AT HER FROM A DISTANCE WITH A PAINED EXPRESSION” THING???
ENOUGH.
Save Hannah.
Steal June.
Raise Nicole.
FUCK. IN. A. DUSTY. DYSTOPIAN. ROOM. WITH. A. SINGLE. LAMP. ON.
Honestly? I’ll write it myself if the show doesn’t.
I’m MAD.
JUNE is probably mad too, she hasn’t had a real orgasm since Season 2!!
Nick is out here Commandering like a sad little simp in a tailored coat and the writers are like:
“Let’s focus on Aunt Lydia’s diary instead.”
NO.
Give us:
Window sex
Desk sex
“We shouldn’t be doing this but do it anyway” sex
“We are broken people but somehow whole together” sex
Until then?
We riot.
We manifest.
We write fanfic with unholy levels of detail.
It's a sweater weather and sweaters are meant to be removed.
my brain tumor for the past 2 weeks
“It’s one thing to fantasize about a perfect proposal or an expensive gift; that’s high-maintenance, sure, but it’s also par for the course. It’s asking something from a man, but primarily it’s asking him to step into an already-choreographed mating dance. But asking to be thought of, understood, prioritized: this is a request so deep it is almost unfathomable. It’s a voracious request, the demand of the attention whore. Women talk ourselves into needing less, because we’re not supposed to want more—or because we know we won’t get more, and we don’t want to feel unsatisfied. We reduce our needs for food, for space, for respect, for help, for love and affection, for being noticed, according to what we think we’re allowed to have. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we can live without it, even that we don’t want it. But it’s not that we don’t want more. It’s that we don’t want to be seen asking for it. And when it comes to romance, women always, always need to ask”
— Jess Zimmerman, Hunger Makes Me (via brosandprose)
how the old gods lose their powers because people stop believing in them, but there’s nike, the goddess of victory, and she’s like even more powerful, just strolling up on olympus in limited edition air force ones