AllyB

Tallies from my polling station showing over 70% yes! I'm so happy but also really, really sad that so many women have had to endure so much suffering over the last 35 years. That women like Savita Halappanavar, Aisha Chithira and Michelle Harte had to die so cruelly. My sadness at their deaths was tempered by anger but now that anger has receded and the sadness feels more profound. Today must be so hard and bittersweet for their families, they've won a type of justice but it will never bring the woman they loved back. I'm also proud that we as a nation faced the best efforts of the Catholic Church, very wealthy American conservatives and their naive young supporters who they flooded the country with and the alt-right mens movement. And we told them resoundingly to get out of our business. Bit of an emotional rollercoaster going on here today.

The fact that there is two of them with almost identical results mean that the margin of error will likely be tiny, 1-2%. And such a strong mandate means there will be a real reluctance among all but the absolute extremist politicians to oppose the proposed legislation. Even accounting for delays it will be enacted by the end of the year. And the legislation is designed is so there will be no clinics, it's a GP and maternity hospital service, which will make picketing abortion services almost impossible. I can't believe we spent the last few months in fear of the 'silent No voters' when it appears that all the 'undecideds' were actually Yes voters. I'd started to suspect in the last few days that some of my older relatives who had stayed silent might be voting yes and I'd hoped it was a trend. It's amazing how all the fear-mongering and horrific campaigning backfired. The No campaign really seem to have wildly misread the mood of the country and the way we think. I really hope their donors take their money and get lost. I was so angry earlier tonight thinking about all the money and effort that has been poured into our country with a goal of disrupting and manipulating our democratic process. Millions and millions of euros and hundreds, maybe thousands of young people being flown in to try and ensure we conform to some version of their morals. But yet all that money and effort gained them nothing.

The other exit poll is 69.4% . It's mad. I'm so happy, most of my friends are so happy but we are a tiny bit cautious. Polls can be wrong, not ever this wrong, but even still it's nerve wracking. We're all in absolute shock, we thought it would be extremely close and that there was a good chance we'd lose. I'm not kidding but last night every single pole in my city was covered in new No posters, No banners on railings, some churches had 'every life is sacred' banners hanging up outside polling stations (which is illegal but they still did it), the Pope even announced a trip to Ireland with a seeming intention of whipping up bit of religious fervour ahead of the referendum (though the government held it earlier than expected, possibly because of the visit). Tomorrow is going to be wonderful. I can't wait. We have a big count watching party planned with all other Yes canvassers. It was planned with the idea that we might need to spend a tense day together and maybe even commiserate together but it's just going to be such a celebration now. I'm so happy. I was 5 when this came into our constitution, I'm 39 now, I'm really glad that I'll get to spend the last years that this amendment could have affected me, free of it.

OMFG! First exit poll shows a 68% win. Can't believe it! Feeling like Ofglen 2.0!

It's all very emotional. There has even been a major passenger ferry that delayed it's crossing as the trains the voters were on in England and Wales were delayed. And there is just 95 minutes left until doors close and people we know still in the air trying to get back and into their polling stations on time. I just hope we pass it. It's been incredibly divisive and there are a huge amount of "Edens" here, with a lot of money, campaigning hard for us to retain the 8th amendment. Awful lies are being spread about by people who clearly don't even believe what they are saying but they are having some successes. To the point where they even used the image of a woman who died due to the 8th on posters claiming that the 8th would save other people from being like her!? It's a blatant lie, and a very nasty one for her family to have to hear about. Hopefully we can remove the amendment and legislation will follow (though that will also be fought against). And then the country can move on and mostly forget about it.

With regard to what would happen to Serena if Fred dies, there is only one realistic place she ends up as far as I can see. Think like a Commander. Serena is a woman who got ahead of herself, put herself on a level where she thought she could address the Commanders and work with them as some sort of equal. She seemed to accept her place in the new world order but did she? Her first handmaid killed herself, her second disappeared for months and came back in time for her husband's big moment to result in the 'partner' of the Waterford's handmaid dealing the worst blow Gilead has likely endured. She would either be executed or declared unwoman and sent to the colonies. But then again, (tv) Serena is a very, very beautiful woman. She is going to one place and one place only. Jezebels.

Philip has to assume that the Fr Andrei has been arrested by the FBI. Not only does he know the FBI watched their meeting but the instant he ran, he tipped off the FBI to the fact that Fr Andrei was meeting a KGB agent. He knows Andrei well enough to know that he would never have been able to escape like he was. (And we know from seeing inside the FBI that they have indeed brought Andrei in for questioning.) And Andrei knows Philip and Elizabeth very well. He has met them without disguise during their wedding ceremony. He's not a trained spy, he was stupid enough to arrange for one of the Jennings to meet with him after he suspected that the FBI was onto him. He will give a detailed description of both of the Jennings sooner or later. Probably sooner. The Jennings cover will be blown as soon as Andrei breaks and they have to assume that will be pretty much immediate and get the hell out of dodge. Where they go will be a mystery as they can't aim for home after Elizabeth's actions in going so decidedly up against the KGB faction working to destroy Gorbachev. Especially as they can't contact their pro-Gorbachev allies as Oleg has been arrested. They can't really use any safe houses as they can't be sure they are safe from Claudia, though we know the FBI also seems to have a good guess on some of them due to the rent being paid in advance. Their plan at the end of S1 was to run for the Canadian border but back then Paige and Henry were easily put in the back of the car and taken with them. Now Henry's location and Paige's anger mean it will be too risky to go to them with no guarantee their children will cooperate. They may have to decide to leave their children behind, which puts Paige in great danger as she won't stand up to questioning by the FBI and will implicate herself. Though I don't think they can make it to Canada in under 9 hours, which would be more than enough time for Andrei to have given them up. So they would probably be best to go straight to the airport and catch the first flight to anywhere out of the US and get a message to Paige that she must do the same. But Paige is angry and stupid, so who knows what she would do. And I'm not sure that P&E meeting in a hotel, putting on their duffel bag disguises and catching the first flight to anywhere would make for great tv. Even if the scenes were intercut with scenes of Andrei describing them to the FBI artist. Even if they taxi down the runway just as Stan shouts "I f*ing knew it!"

One of my grandmothers was very poorly educated to the point where she was largely illiterate. She was also very bad with money so I never really thought of her as someone who was very bright. She used to knit all the time, never using a pattern. When I was a kid she made me so many cardigans and sweaters in multi-coloured geometric patterns that were so big in the 80s. It wasn't until I was an adult and started knitting myself that I understood how very intelligent she had to have been to be able to knit like that. Without a pattern, just doing a raglan sleeve requires an excellent innate understanding of numbers. Pulling off the kind of complicated patterns she did, without so much as jotting down a note to help herself, is pretty similar to coding in terms of how you use your brain.

Henry's wishes would be immaterial. The Foley children were sent to Russia regardless of their wishes. They were stripped of their Canadian citizenship (they were born in Canada) and it's taken 8 years for a temporary restoration of their passports pending a Supreme Court judgement.

I don't think that would really happen as it would probably be very anti-climatic story wise. But I think it's interesting that there has been so much speculation that Tim Foley had been brought in on his parents' secret while Alex was genuinely clueless about it. And on the show Paige has been brought on board while Henry knows nothing. It doesn't make sense that the Centre aren't pressing for Henry to be brought into the fold. His schooling makes him potentially far more valuable than Paige. Sellati is a very, very capable actor, so there doesn't seem to be a reason for the writers to have decided against giving him this storyline. Unless it is because they want the Jennings children to have that similarity with the Foley children.

I think that wasn't a burger so much as a large soft round bread roll, also known as a bap. Bap also being slang for breasts. So she had a big bap as part of her investigation of the murder of a man killed for denigrating a woman's big breasts.

I have a boring guess. We know that the Jennings were at least in part inspired by the Foley/Heathfield family of KGB and later SVR agents who were caught in 2010. So maybe the Jennings fate will be similar. The FBI will catch them, they will be arrested, a prisoner exchange will be arranged and within a couple of weeks all 4 Jennings will be in Russia. A potentially anti-climactic ending but still one with potential for drama. It also ties with why Henry has been kept in the dark as the speculation on the Foleys is that the elder boy knew his parents' secret while the younger genuinely had no idea.

I was thinking about the boredom. We know the wives are allowed to knit and paint, presumably they can also crochet, sew, embroider, etc. I wonder are they allowed to play any games? Obviously Scrabble/Boggle is out but can they play chess? Draughts? They don't require literacy but are they considered too cerebral? Can they play Snakes and Ladders? Ludo? Are they allowed to do puzzles? Could they do Sudoku on a game board? Rubik's cube? Can they play card games? Even simple ones like Snap using picture cards? Peg Solitaire? Tangram block puzzles? Can they do a jigsaw?

The part of the most recent episode that struck me most was that one of the attempts Serena made to strike up a conversation with June was to insult the size of one Handmaid's nose! What an absolutely bizarre attempt to get June to talk to her, especially as for all her many faults Serena has never really struck me as a gossipy mean girl. She also was chuckling to herself about the stupid name Prayvaganza. I think she's actually totally starting to crack under the boredom of Gilead society and is at the beginning of a mental break.

In my head Eden had this type of up bringing, though probably with even less education due to her gender/family's social status. Her parents would possibly have been Quiverfull types, though presumably the fertility crises would have negatively impacted their plan to fill their quiver. Whatever the actual details of her backstory, I doubt very much that she had 10 years of singing Let It Go while playing with My Little Pony, Barbies and Bratz Dolls to look back on and remind her of her life's diminished potential. I think she lived in a form of Gilead from the moment she was born. https://www.autostraddle.com/i-was-trained-for-the-culture-wars-in-home-school-awaiting-someone-like-mike-pence-as-a-messiah-367057/

In my experience many of the most vocal pro-life people are notoriously racist. They are out in force in Ireland at the moment as we're voting on the issue in 6 days and there is some unreal racism on display. Here's some choice quotes; “Ireland was depopulated after the Famine,” he said. “If we allow abortion it will be like the Famine all over again. Then they’ll have to get foreigners in to run the place. You don’t see many Muslims voting for babies. Don’t get me wrong. I am not being racist. These are the facts. The native Irish will become a minority. We’ll become strangers in our own land.” "3,500 Irish women travelled for abortions but only 2,500 of them were white Irish. So, they weren't all native Irish women. That's a reduction in the number." "Half of these women were of mixed nationalities So, maybe they come from a culture where that's expected of them to do and that's what they feel is the right thing to do. There weren't that many Irish women that's my point." These people don't really care about abortion, they care deeply about keeping our population static and white.

He's Commander Pryce but Andrew is his first name. Tbh, I suspect he has Eyes watching most of the Commanders and is happy to pick off any who he has no immediate need for in order to avoid any of them threatening his own power. I think he is probably one of the closest to being a genuine true believer but that his real aim is less to ensure the Commanders are godly and more to ensure his own superiority. Remember, the first Commander we saw Nick's spying bring down was Commander Guthrie. A Commander who we saw in the flashback disagree with Pryce when they decided how to treat the fertile women. Pryce was judicious enough to let Guthrie, a great field Commander, get his own way at that point but I doubt it was a coincidence that we later see Guthrie being dragged off to meet a fate of most likely Pryce's choosing. Pryce let him live as long as he needed him and then had him taken out. It will be the same with Fred. The thing with Gilead is, that the rules are so restrictive there is no Commander that won't fall foul of them at times. All Pryce has to do is keep a literal Eye on them and when he is ready, he will have everything he needs to get rid of whoever he wants. He also has the ability to move quickly if he thinks a Commander (or a Wife/Martha/Handmaid) presents a genuine threat or is about to defect but a huge part of his strategy is to just bide his time and remove the Commanders he has issues with when the time is right. Fred is definitely on his shitlist and has to be reaching the end of his usefulness as Pryce is making his disdain for him ever more clear.

Elizabeth's face was aged up in those scenes. Her Nasolabial folds and vertical chin creases were much more pronounced. It wasn't so noticeable in the shots of her face from the aisle but when she said 'Someone is making me learn,' you could see it. Her hands definitely looked too young though and I'm not sure but her neck and décolletage probably hadn't been aged up much either.

I haven't read back through the entire thread so I don't know if this has come up. But have we seen P&E in a disguise that shows them to be a completely different age before? I can't really remember it if they have. So I have the feeling that in some way, the disguises that they wore on the plane home from Chicago were the writers way of showing a glimpse of a future that will never be. Philip and Elizabeth are never going to be that retired couple, so for just a few minutes we got to see what those golden years could have looked like.

Aunt Lydia wouldn't have been allowed near her until the Commanders were satisfied they had gotten all the information they had from her. Babies are about optics in Gilead, not the true purpose of the society, the true purpose is control. Mayday presents a real threat to that control, so a chance to destroy a working arm of it is far, far more important than a single baby. If Gilead could interrogate her in a way that minimises risk to the baby, they will do that. But if she miscarries, that's just collateral damage in the far more important task of capturing everyone who helped her and hurting Mayday. She would have been held by the Eyes until she had satisfied them that she knew nothing of value (unlikely) or had given them (at least some of) the information they wanted. After that, if she was still pregnant, she would have gone to the Aunts for Aunt Lydia to start her own form of psychological torture on her.

I've been wondering if I wanted to keep watching after June's dramatic escape and all too fast recapture. And I've thought of a reason. I think that this season will end with Fred facing the fate we learn befell him in the novel. I suspect that Nick who we know is an Eye spying on Fred for Commander Pryce, is why Fred already appears to be on Pryce's shitlist. Nick could be just reporting every single potentially incriminating thing Fred does, but he could also be fabricating Fred's activities in order to imply he may have had a hand in June's escape attempt. This also potentially explains how Nick had been able to visit June during her time at the BG. He's an Eye working for Fred's superior, he has a lot more autonomy than an ordinary driver would. I just really hope that June is somehow able to use the new way of thinking that she learned while at the Boston Globe to play a part in Fred's take down. Going back into that house will serve an excellent purpose if it lets her help destroy it from within. And if Fred is executed in a political purge, what happens to Serena. From what we know in the novel, I fear that Jezebels would be her fate. She is a very beautiful woman, a former celebrity (of sorts), and from Gilead's perspective an uppity woman who arrogantly sought to insert herself into Gilead's rise but was married to a traitor (who maybe she led into that betrayal). She sounds exactly like a perfect candidate to be a "star football player" passed around the different Jezebels. Not a fate I'd wish on anyone, even a woman like Serena. But realistic given what we know happens in the future of Gilead.

I have a slight fear that the posters here are giving far more thought to the sequence of events around Omar's compromise and capture than the writers have done. I have a suspicion that these episodes are written showing "what" happens on screen with less thought given to the off-screen "how" and "why" that leads to what we see. In fact, it struck me at the start of the episode that in the time between June's recapture and the opening scenes, she would have been interrogated repeatedly about where she has been and who helped her. Gilead wouldn't have messed about and accepted some badly thought out, inconsistent story. The odds are June would have compromised the Guardian who helped her in the hospital, the man who drove her to the Boston Globe and those offices themselves as her safe house. If she somehow managed to come up with a clever story about where she has been that didn't compromise her helpers, and managed to stick with it, we needed to be told that. Because that would be an amazing achievement. But I don't think the writers are thinking each logical step through. I lost a lot of faith in them when they had the Mexican ambassador tell us that Gilead, with it's wilful ignorance of best baby making practices, is somehow a world baby making leader. It showed that they are prioritising drama over thought out storytelling. There hasn't been anything quite so egregious since then, though there are little signs like Moira escaping to Ontario rather than Quebec. And now a complete side-step of the fact that Gilead would be desperate to know absolutely every detail of June's escape. This show is mostly very well acted, the cinematography is mostly beautiful, the direction is mostly great, it is based on an excellent novel, and has numerous very well written scenes. All of which go to cover up for the fact that most of the story arc that is coming as an addition to the novel is really, really bad. I'll keep watching for the excellent acting and the fact that there are elements of the novel's plot that I am quite looking forward to seeing, but I'm wary and have very little faith in the writers' ability to plot.

Of course it is. But they are also very aware of optics. At the time that they would have been expelling the Jewish population their hold would have been less tight than it is now and the last thing they'd have wanted to risk was a sudden uprising of ordinary people. Sending the Jewish people to Israel to fulfill one of the steps that must precede the second coming would have had the believers whipped into a joyous frenzy. While ordinary people would have thought it was a crappy thing to do but not that bad really on the scale of things. Some people, especially LGBT and women, might have had feelings that included serious envy at the get out of Gilead card they'd just been given. Actually, in terms of the ordinary people rising up. I wonder what happened to gun control. No way would any of the econopeople be allowed firearms (apart from the men who have Guardian jobs). So I assume that the second amendment was ripped up along with the rest of the constitution. That must have sucked for many Gilead followers!

My suspicion (all speculation, not spoilers) is that Omar's family have been taken due to new laws in Gilead against inter-racial marriage. I suspect the family will be declared criminal, Omar will be sent to some sort of colony for people of colour and Heather will of course become a handmaid. The fate of Adam is less obvious. Either he will be placed with an adoptive family or, considering the obvious follow through for such a racist law, he will be sent away with his father or into some sort of orphanage for mixed race children (such places have existed in many countries, like the Stolen Generations in Australia). Of course this means that Hannah would also be very likely to face the same fate. It might be an interesting way to tie June and Heather together as they would be more desperate than ever to save their children. As it's one thing to have your child forcibly adopted to someone who will cherish them and another to think of them in some awful form of internment. It would also give June some sort of personal purpose to be back in Gilead, as maybe her "deal" with Serena (your baby is safe so long as mine is) will serve to buy Hannah time.