#[ 𝓛 : headcanon ] ❦ 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐦𝐞 .

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not to over analyze one (1) single word,   but the way forty spits out ‘psycho’ at joe in the final episode of season 2 paired with the way love says ‘you think i’m a psycho now’ makes me think that in the heat of the moment arguments,   when love and forty are butting heads at their worst,   he’s called her a psycho as well.    a slip of the tongue,   of the real emotions that he’s bitten back for so long,   and deep down,   underneath it all,   they both know the truth of her actions and his burden.

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the only reason they didn’t have to entirely re-do henry’s nursery is because love bought all gender neutral items when she was planning for a baby. while in theory all of that is great, except that love does it to satisfy her own “woke” checklist. she never asked the doctor for the baby’s sex, and likely brushed it off because gender is something her child can choose later. i point this out, because in her head she had most definitely already decided that she was having a girl. and likely had to throw out many articles of clothing or more feminine tailored decor.

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love 100% still celebrates forty’s birthdays

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𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧  𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞  :

below  details  heavy  spoilers  for  the  last  episode  of  Y.OU  s3,  you’ve  been  warned.  this  divergence  will  not  be  going  up  on  my  carrd  until  a  few  weeks  later  to  help  avoid  spoilers.  

love  quinn-goldberg  is  an  incredibly  resourceful  woman.  the  plan  to  poison  joe  with  aconite  was  a  work  in  progress  for  months.  this  was  the  least  impulsive  thing  she’s  done  throughout  the  entire  series,  and  was  planned  meticulously.  while  i  do  think  it  is  realistic  for  her  to  not  expect  him  to  have  an  antidote  at  the  ready,  i  don’t  entirely  buy  into  it.  this  is  the  same  love  quinn  who  can  read  joe  like  she’s  looking  into  her  own  reflection.  the  same  love  quinn  who  hides  keys  in  cages  because  she  doesn’t  trust  him  even  when  she’s  head  over  heels  in  love  with  him.  

in  this  canon  divergence,  i  hypothesize  that  she  lives  through  the  aconite  poisoning,  simply  because  it  hadn’t  been  aconite  in  joe’s  syringe.  there  is  very  little  chance  of  love  surviving  actual  aconite  poisoning  at  that  dosage,  so  my  theory/divergence  is  that  the  jar  of  concentrated  aconite  had  been  switched  out.  it’s  hard  to  tell  when  joe  had  accessed  the  jar,  but  love  had  willingly  put  it  in  the  cabinet  when  he  had  been  watching.  keeping  her  actual  concoction  elsewhere.  in  the  jar  put  into  the  cabinet,  was  an  anti-psychotic  named  haloperidol.  correct  dosage  of  haloperidol  can  induce  catalepsy  which  causes  muscle  rigidity.  many  symptoms  of  catalepsy  also  look  similar  to  that  of  a  dead  body  including:  a  rigid  body  posture,  slower  bodily  functions,  decreased  muscle  control.  to  the  naked  and  untrained  eye,  this  can  often  look  like  death.  there  have  been  patients  in  the  past  ( see  allison  burchell )  who  have  been  proclaimed  dead  only  to  be  found  to  be  in  a  cataleptic  state.  

recent  research  has  shown  that  a  drug  named  rapamycin  can  rescue  from  haloperidol-induced  catalepsy.  with  that  all  being  said,  so  what  happened ?  joe  had  injected  love  with  haloperidol  and  not  aconite.  love,  had  previously  texted  someone  she  trusted  ( likely  a  quinn  family  resource ),  just  before  coming  back  to  the  dinner  table  with  joe,  to  come  find  her  if  she  doesn’t  text  back  in  an  hour’s  time.  when  her  source  had  come  to  her  aid  it  had  been  during  the  time  when  joe  had  been  out  dropping  henry  off  at  dante’s,  they  inject  her  with  rapamycin  and  hide  when  they  hear  joe  return.  we  see  joe  leave  right  after  setting  the  fire.  note,  we  never  see  love’s  body  burnt  by  the  fire.  so  before  the  house  is  engulfed  in  flames,  love  is  whisked  out  and  to  a  private  hospital  to  be  treated.

love  is  treated  and  revived  at  the  hospital.  she  lets  the  world  think  she’s  dead,  and  watches  the  way  the  story  takes  over  madre  linda.  enjoys  the  attention  its  garnered.  with  some  help,  she  curates  herself  a  fake  id,  a  fake  life,  and  everything  necessary  to  continue  her  hunt  for  joe  goldberg.  a  quinn  doesn’t  take  well  to  being  burnt.

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𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞   𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐧𝐧:   𝐚   𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥   𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐬

before reading this,  please keep in mind that by no means am i a medical professional trained in any sort of mental diagnoses.   these are all extrapolations and just because i personally love doing deep dives in a character’s psyche.   while i do have a science background,  it is not in psychology,  so this is based off very minimal psychology courses,  research and personal hypothesis.   below you will find a breakdown of what i perceive to be the psychological profile of love quinn,  both as per my portrayal of her and what i reference from the show.   for the sake of this not being many many pages long,  this has been narrowed down to what i think are some of the most important disorders to note and have been simplified drastically.

ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER

love has antisocial personality disorder (ASPD).   this is what is commonly referred to as psychopathy or sociopathy.   in order to be diagnosed with ASPD,  three or more of the criteria must be met past the age of 15.   below is the list of traits taken from the DSM-5, highlighted are the five love meets:

deceitfulness is one that can be argued,  because love tends to lie in order to cover any crimes or mistakes she’s made.   it doesn’t necessarily fall into the purpose of conning or personal profit or pleasure.   but i’ve highlighted it to make note that love can be incredibly deceitful and is a tactical liar.   it’s been said time and time again,  especially in season 3 that love quinn is impulsive.   every act of aggression she has shown has resulted in death because of how impulsive she can be.   this ties hand in hand with reckless disregard for safety of self or others.   while we see a brief moment where love seems to show remorse when it comes to gil’s death,  i think that primarily stems from the fact that her plans hadn’t panned out how she had expected them too.   i view every moment where love seems emotional about a death (i.e natalie and gil) to be a direct result of fear for herself and safety rather than remorse for her victim.   below is an excerpt from the DSM outlining the lack of remorse with examples that i think are appropriate for love:

they may be indifferent to, or provide a superficial rationalization for, having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from someone (e.g., 'Tife's unfair," "losers deserve to lose"). These individuals may blame the victims for being foolish, helpless, or deserving their fate (e.g., "he had it coming anyway"); they may minimize the harmful consequences of their actions; or they may simply indicate complete indifference.

a key note that the DSM makes is that “the occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.”   i will touch on love’s bipolar disorder,  but i don’t think any of her acts of aggression and violence were during any manic episodes.   they instead stemmed from impulsiveness and irritability.

to avoid rambling too much there are a few quotes in the DSM i’d like to highlight:

Biological relatives of individuals with this disorder are also at increased risk for somatic symptom disorder and substance use disorders:   in relation to forty’s substance abuse

There has been some concern that antisocial personality disorder may be underdiagnosed in females:   i think love was diagnosed with BP but never ASPD because of this

Child abuse or neglect, unstable or erratic parenting, or inconsistent parental discipline may increase the likelihood that conduct disorder will evolve into antisocial personality disorder:   see the treatment of love by dottie and ray quinn,  primarily dottie

while we know that love is a psychopath,  psychopathy isn’t explicitly defined in the DSM and instead has been proposed as a specifier under ASPD,  so that should be kept in mind.   i will separately post how i think love fares on the PCL-R (Psychopathy Checklist Revised) separately.

to note,  antisocial personality disorder cannot be diagnosed without a diagnosis of conduct disorder before age fifteen.

CONDUCT DISORDER

conduct disorder is broken into four categories:   aggression to people and animals,  destruction of property,  deceitfulness or theft,  serious violations of rules.   at the age of thirteen was when love had killed forty’s au pair,  which points to aggression to people and animals.   at least three of fifteen criteria must be met to be diagnosed with conduct disorder,  and i will only be highlighting the ones i believe she meets:

Has used a weapon that can cause serious physical harm to others (e.g., a bat, brick, broken bottle, knife, gun):   love had used a knife to kill sofia

Often lies to obtain goods or favors or to avoid obligations (i.e., “cons” others):   as a child,  i think this was more prominent with love.   she would call them her white lies,  twisting the truth in order to get what she wanted.   i.e manipulating / gaslighting other people

i don’t think love would entirely meet the criteria for conduct disorder at first,  especially because it requires repetitive behaviour and only one major event would fall into the conduct disorder category.   but i do think this would be something noted in her profile and later re-examined when diagnosing ASPD.  in this examination,  the last criteria would be brought into play,  bringing her to a total of three out of fifteen:

Has run away from home overnight at least twice while living in the parental or parental surrogate home, or once without returning for a lengthy period:   i do think love has run away from home,  likely with forty when home got a little too much to handle.   however,  i do think this is something that would be disregarded as typical prepubescent teen behaviour and not noted until further examination of her profile

once again,  i don’t think conduct disorder entirely fits for love,  but there is evidence of conduct disorder which is what leads to the diagnosis of ASPD.

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

there is a slight reference by dottie to the fact that love has borderline personality disorder in season 3,  and for this reason i think that love does already take medications to treat her BPD.   that also means we don’t entirely have a full picture of the extent of love’s BPD.

similarly to ASPD,  BPD also has a set number of criteria that must be met in order to be diagnosed.   highlighted below are the following that i believe love exhibits:

going through this one at at a time below:

love clearly has a problem with abandonment,  and i think this stems from her attachment to forty.   she’s had multiple scares where she’s thought that she would lose her brother,  and a part of her fears come from that.   we see her frantic effort to avoid abandonment with how desperately she keeps joe around.   even more so,  when she had told joe about her paralyzing james,  it wasn’t to kill him.   it was to convince him to stay with her despite it all.

i think both love and joe do this.   it’s very clear that all of love’s personal relationships are incredibly intense,  seen with joe and forty primarily.   the idealization of these relationships is what leads to her intense connections.   and i think,  if time had permit,  she would have ended up devaluing her relationship with joe when he turned more and more into a man she didn’t want. 

i’ve touched on love’s impulsivity more than once,  so i think it’s self explanatory at this point.

i think that love lacks a sense of self.   she has grown so used to molding herself to become what everyone would like that she doesn’t have a real version of herself to fall back to and this results in this unstable sense of self.  as per the DSM:  There may be sudden changes in opinions and plans about career, sexual identity, values, and types of friends.   i think this is very clearly seen with the shift in love’s friend groups,  and her going from an independent woman to a very motherly,  homely figure in season three.

both her reactivity of mood and her inappropriate,  intense bursts of anger are seen time and time again in season 3 when she suddenly snaps.   like a boiling kettle,  she seems to blow in a second’s time.  “the anger is often elicited when a caregiver or lover is seen as neglectful, withholding, uncaring, or abandoning”   which is often the case when love snaps due to joe.

note this excerpt from the DSM that adequately explains love and how she develops her intense interpersonal relationships (point two):

They may idealize potential caregivers or lovers at the first or second meeting, demand to spend a lot of time together, and share the most intimate details early in a relationship.

a common co-occuring disorder is bipolar disorder,  which i believe love has shown signs of as well but will not be touched on in this post.

lastly,  to note:   “borderline personality disorder is diagnosed predominantly (about 75%) in females.”

to wrap this up,   once again,   i am not a professional and this is not an actual diagnosis.   all my information is taken from the DSM-5 and a few quick searches online,  very basic very bare bones.   i will reiterate time and time again,  that mental illness doesn’t make a murderer.   at the very least,  not the mental illness we talk about in terms of everyday society and mental health.   but a murderer’s psyche is not of the norm so this is an exploration as to how she would possibly be diagnosed if given the chance.

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forty’s death was the death of love’s sanity, send tweet

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one day i’ll expand on this more, but i’ve gone back and forth between whether l.ove shows remorse after watching the newest season. and looking back at it, for the most part, i don’t think she does. or not in the way you’d think ? all her meltdowns afterwards are always more selfish at their core. it’s fear and her anxiety about being caught that causes her spiral. she never has an actual emotional breakdown about the loss of a life, rather the endangerment of her own and her family’s

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if forty was alive he would’ve been the one to walk love down the aisle, not Ray

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                   𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄  &  𝐓𝐇𝐄  𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇  𝐎𝐅  𝐉𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒  𝐊𝐄𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐃𝐘

James  Kennedy,  is  Love’s  late  husband.  Married  on  July  27th,  2016  and  passed  soon  after.  There  is  a  running  theory  that  Love  herself  had  killed  James.  This  headcanon  will  build  off  various  forms  of  that  theory  and  what  I  incorporate  into  my  portrayal  of  Love.   So  that’s  to  say  that  not  all  of  this  is  entirely  original  or  unheard  of,  unfortunately  I  don't  have  the  links  anymore  but  it  is  easily  searchable  !  This  headcanon  is  subject  to  change  with  any  new  information  in  season  three. 

The  biggest  giveaway  to  something  unnatural  being  done  to  James  comes  from  the  line  that  Love  says  when  explaining  the  situation  to  Joe:  doctors  couldn’t  figure  out  what  it  was.  While  medical  mysteries  are  most  definitely  real,  to  think  that  the  Quinn  family,  with  all  their  resources,  weren’t  able  to  pull  together  doctors  to  figure  it  out  seems  a  little  strange.  Instead,  it  sounds  like  the  doctors  themselves  were  paid  off  or  bought  to  not  reveal  what  the  real  cause  of  death  was.

The  death  itself  is  accidental.  This  part  is  completely  based  off  another  Redditor’s  post,  so  credits  to  them  for  catching  this  tidbit  about  James’  mysterious  detox.  To  recap,  we  see  Love  and  James  talk  about  children  and  not  being  able  to  afford  children  in  episode  six.  The  scene  comes  to  a  close  with  James  saying  he  doesn’t  feel  well  and  Love  is  quick  to  respond  with  “you’re  just  detoxing.”  Fast  forward  to  the  next  scene  where  James  comes  to  Love  to  tell  her  that  he’s  sick.  She  repeatedly  denies  it  and  looks  incredibly  grief  struck  but  her  expression  can  also  be  read  as  oddly  guilty.  It’s  easy  to  think  that  his  detox  is  related  to  substance  abuse,  or  some  LA  juice  cleanse,  but  an  online  poster  had  mentioned  how  maybe  Love  had  made  him  detox.  We  know  that  Love  is  impulsive,  and  we  see  her  say  it  herself  in  the  season  3  trailer.  We  also  know  that  Love  is  entirely  consumed  by  the  notion  of  having  and  starting  a  family.  So  when  James  is  so  hesitant  to  have  children,  almost  immovable,  Love  poisons  him.  

This  isn’t  entirely  out  of  character  for  Love.  We  see  Joe  hesitate  with  biting  into  the  muffins  she  brings  him  in  the  last  episode.  It  takes  Love  eating  one  and  reminding  him  that  she  didn’t  poison  it  for  him  to  follow.  We  also  see  the  subtle  ways  in  which  Love  trades  salt  instead  of  sugar  in  what  she  baked  Joe  when  she  was  upset  with  him  about  lying  to  her.  So,  it  is  theorized  that  James’  detox  comes  from  Love  regretting  her  actions  and  convincing  him  to  go  on  a  detox  that  cleanses  his  body.  

To  add  to  that  theory,  we  know  that  Love  kills  to  protect  someone.  This  poisoning  would  be  outside  of  her  moral  standards.  That’s  why  I  believe  she  regretted  it.  Love  Quinn  isn’t  one  to  show  much  remorse,  but  holds  herself  to  a  very  high,  personal,  moral  pedestal.  This  checks  off  none  of  her  boxes,  so  she  tries  to  re-do  it  and  fails.  To  note,  in  the  episode  where  she  finds  out  he’s  sick,  Love  keeps  saying  “you  can’t,  you  can’t,  you  can’t  be  sick.”  Because  according  to  her  calculations  –  he  can’t.  She  really  did  try  to  make  it  better.

Lastly,  there’s  some  foreshadowing  of  this  seen  in  Joe's  first  monologue  at  the  start  of  the  show.  I  looked  into  this  and  drew  my  parallels  due  to  a  comment  online  about  it,  so  a  kiss  to  the  big  brains  out  there.  

We  already  know  all  the  parallels  to  her  name  are  endless.  The  foreshadowing  with  The  Dark  Face  of  Love,  him  rambling  about  love  before  meeting  Love,  etc.  If  you  read  the  entire  opening  monologue  substituting  “love”  for  “Love”  it  takes  on  an  entirely  different  meaning.  In  particular,  when  Joe  says  “love  turned  to  poison”.  While  this  is  in  reference  to  various  parts  of  their  dynamic,  it  could  imply  things  about  Love’s  past  as  well.  

I  think  she  got  away  with  it  with  two  routes.  One,  being  money  and  the  control  the  Quinn  family  has  in  the  city.  Second,  being  that  some  things  are  so  unlikely  in  the  medical  community  that  they’re  often  considered  as  the  absolute,  very  last,  option.  Or  not  considered  at  all,  maybe  they  just  didn’t  look  into  foul  play.  And  once  again,  Love  ran  free.

In  conclusion,  she’s  fucking  wack  your  honour.

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i like to think that after she undoubtedly survives madre linda,  love moves to paris in pursuit of joe and after his downfall opens a fine dining restaurant.   to be noted,  we know from season two that love bakes when she’s upset or stressed.   so for her to open a bakery is very telling.