#black cracks

[honeybunhoe]

Dear world, black does crack.  Trust me lol...

[katrinapavela]

Maya's face was filled with so much pain when Olivia left the room, it was like she HAD to put on a front for Olivia :(

Combining with this related question from the 5/5s:

5/5 were moved by Maya’s unselfish act; knowing Olivia she used reverse psychology to motivate her to put herself & Eli, & her past with them behind her, to live for herself. The mother who remembered fondly every detail of her childhood showed up as she mourned her relationship with Livvie, having hurt her so & never seeing her again. It’s very telling that her mom acknowledged they were destructive to Livvie’s life & wanted her free of them both, while her father still wanted a hold on Olivia.

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That’s exactly it. Maya was putting on a front to help Olivia move on, in a sense. But it was still painful to do. Olivia didn’t get to express her pain and sense of loss in the instinctual way she wanted to. Black does crack, and hers was cracking up in that moment. I thought it was interesting that, at first, Maya is a bit taken aback by Olivia’s burst of tears—a very motherly instinct. She quickly pivots back to the tough act, which in a sense, I understood. Maya was in chains in prison! Now, of course she is there of her own doing, but she’s also been Rowan’s victim as well. Olivia, though being on the outside all this time, has been in her own prison of fear—caused by the same man! But Maya figures that reminding Olivia that it could be worse—and therefore she should suck it up and remind herself of the ways in which she is still fortunate enough to move on—was the better way to go in that moment. I don’t believe that Maya is a complete dick.  I actually hope that she plays a key role in getting Olivia back in S4B. I so badly want Olivia to have some feminine support in her life that is not conditional. Maybe something can come out of all this familiar mess.

There was on thing that hurt me about that scene (well two things, but I’ll talk about one). The emotional toll of Olivia’s sacrifice goes unacknowledged because it’s seen as necessary, or required for moving on. It creates a hardness in her that convinces her that her tears, or instinctual way of grieving is selfish or self-indulgent. The hardness helps her adopt the Cyrus Been role, thereby fixing yet another crisis and helping her friend. But the sense of selfishness of her grief compels her to deny herself the right to access Fitz’s attention in the Oval. 

More on that in the next q&a, coming up.