#anti Dean forester

[stellaluna33]

It's interesting to me that, while Dean is very respectful to Lorelai herself, he is at several points pretty disparaging about Rory's relationship with her. "Well, you just feel that way because your mother feels that way," and "I say I love you, and you want to think about it? Go home and discuss it with your mother?"

And Jess is less respectful to Lorelai herself, but he never says anything against Rory's relationship with her, never seems annoyed or resentful of it. He sometimes expresses resentment about Lorelai's hatred of him, but never about Rory's closeness to her, even though he could have at various points and even though he probably doesn't understand it. And it's interesting to me, because Jess antis would probably assume that he's the one who would be saying things like the quotes above, trying to drive a wedge between them, but he never does. It's the "nice" guy that Lorelai likes so much.

[sarabethsilver]

Dean Forester: Hello, girl I angrily dumped in public seven months ago! I know I beat up your boyfriend last week, but now that we're at a funeral it's the perfect time to tell you that I'm engaged to the girl I've been dating for four months.

Rory Gilmore: Uh, aren't you both 18?

Dean Forester: FUCK YOU, YOUR BOYFRIEND TREATS YOU LIKE DIRT AND I HATE YOU.

Narrator: And Rory would spend the next year feeling very, very sad that she let this prince of a man get away.

[emmafallsinlove]

#same jess same

[jessmalia]

Mal's Gilmore Girls rewatch: Application Anxiety 3.03

[jessmmariano]

Jess’s ‘get in there and make me my supper’ line towards Dean in the dance marathon episode is so underrated because that’s exactly the type of girl Dean wants and Jess could tell. He probably didn’t know about the Donna Reed thing, either, he could just tell.

[frazzledsoul]

The primary reason Lorelai prefers Dean to Rory's other boyfriends (to the point where it seems that Lorelai is enjoying the relationship far more than Rory is) is because Dean is so controlling and demands that Rory spend every waking moment with him, to the point where she doesn't have time for any outside interests or friends. Rory can't be swayed by the rich kids at Chilton or their hard-partying lifestyle that got Lorelai in trouble if Dean monopolizes all her time (the only person she socializes with there is Paris, another outcast). Her only real friend at Stars Hollow High is Lane, another sheltered only child with a highly constricted social life. Rory is constantly negotiating with Dean to get him to go to events, because he doesn't want her to go alone or to spend time with other people. Much of their time is spent just hanging out with Lorelai, with Dean as a sidekick to Rory and Lorelai's domestic routines. Dean keeps Rory's world small, tied to Lorelai and Stars Hollow, with no room to contemplate life outside of the bubble that Lorelai created. He heavily micromanages Rory's social life and Lorelai likes that, to the point where she is constantly encouraging Rory to not do anything to upset him, to anticipate his wrath, to forget about her attraction to Jess who she tells her doesn't really like her because he moved onto Shane when Rory wouldn't take him seriously as an option. She needs to stay with Dean to make Lorelai happy, because Rory (unwisely) views her as having better judgment in romantic matters and she wants to please her mom.

Jess is a threat because he reminds Lorelai of the person she was when she was a teenager, wild and rebellious and itching to escape from the life she didn't want. Jess is not made for Stars Hollow: he represents all of the art and the literature and the worldly adventures that Rory dreams of experiencing someday. He's a force that's going to pull her away, and Rory is sexually and intellectually attracted to him, having outgrown the safety of her tightly controlled relationship with her dimwitted beanpole of a boyfriend. Jess doesn't want to be part of Stars Hollow life, he wants his time with Rory to be with her only, and if she wants to do the cheesy town stuff that's cool with him because he doesn't seek to control her every waking moment. He can have his interests and she can have hers and their time alone can belong to them and both Lorelai and Rory...have a hard time adjusting to this. There's definitely some middle ground to be had here, but Jess doesn't want to do what Stars Hollow expects him to do because they hate him anyway and I'm pretty sure Rory was his first serious girlfriend, so he was out of his depth even if he wanted to conform...and he was too emotionally damaged to be much good to anyone at that point anyway. That said, Rory does seem to make an effort to socialize the most among the Stars Hollow crew while they are together and do her own Chilton stuff, so maybe it was in her best interest not to be tied to someone who insisted on controlling every single thing she did.

Logan is a mixed bag, because prior to getting involved with him Rory was alone for an entire year and hated it. She struggles at the paper, doesn't make any real friends at Yale except for Marty, comes home every weekend, and eventually gets involved with Dean again because she wants to relive her youth before realizing they actually don't have anything in common. She's sucked in by Logan's lifestyle and his hard-partying ways but she hasn't really let herself be involved in this kind of thing before, so she enjoys it until she doesn't. Logan doesn't actively seek to control her, she's always there by choice, and he never tells her she can't hang out with other people or do things on her own...but she still gets subsumed by him because it's what her primary experience of being a girlfriend is. When Jess goes to find her in Hartford, she has no idea of what to do in the city because even though she's lived there for six months, she still defaults to doing what her boyfriend wants to do.

I think this does get better in the seventh season, because she did gain a little bit of independence after she got back together with Logan, but also because he's elsewhere, his entire supporting cast of characters isn't around, and she's forced to make friends on her own and deal with things that don't revolve around her significant other. (Also, their relationship is relatively stable, so even though there is tension with Marty and Lucy, it's not really an insurmountable obstacle). She seems to have learned by that point it's okay to argue with your partner and not have it be the end of the world and to have parts of your life that don't revolve around him, either.

Of course, that is not ASP, even if it was something that needed to happen. It seems that the patterns set up early with Dean and Lorelai controlled Rory's life for a long time and negatively influenced how she interacted with the other guys. Remove AYITL from the equation (yes, please) and it puts Rory in a position to reconcile with Jess on the campaign trail or afterwards, because she's finally able to entertain the thought of maintaining an independent existence while being part of a couple.

[autumnrory]

do people ever think that rory has certain expectations about crushes and relationships because her first boyfriend is so obsessed with her and instead of being viewed as unhealthy everyone tells her it's just being so devoted and loyal etc and she thinks it's supposed to be like that because that's the only frame of reference she has LIKE she knows dean for four+ years and he NEVER stops being obsessed with her so of course she thinks jess will be waiting for her to figure things out (and he himself says "like dean would've done") and of course she thinks jess will call regularly because she's used to dean who calls 14 times in a day and she thinks jess will be reliable and show up when expected because she's used to dean always coming around even when he has not been asked (or explicitly asked not to as in 2x16)

like to be clear rory doesn't even have high expectations here lol like unfortunately for a variety of reasons and with lack of communication jess seems like he's at the opposite end of the dean spectrum because he's in some ways more lowkey in his affection and he does not have many true connections with other people so ofc he doesn't really know how to do things "right" in a romantic relationship and like basically rory feels like she's gone from one extreme (even if it's not acknowledged as such by rory or anyone around her) to another (even though despite his mistakes jess is much closer to a normal boyfriend throughout their relationship than dean) so like she never really got to adjust to a completely different vibe. remember when she was so sure jess would be mad at her for being friends with dean because she's so used to being screamed at for such things?

or even like with the affair. like i do maintain rory does have some responsibility as does anyone who knowingly gets involved with someone in a relationship, BUT overall not that much compared to some situations because dean lied and manipulated her. and so like her bratty response is very un-rory like imo because much as fandom likes to say she's a spoiled brat she virtually never acts like that any other time. but again she says "he's my dean" because as i said he has never stopped being obsessed with her, he literally became friends with her again after the breakup with the hopes that he would get between her and jess just like jess got between her and dean. in part she thinks of him as hers because she wants to justify this horrible thing to lorelai and herself but also....dean never let go of that relationship, he never moved on, he proposed to lindsay immediately after fighting jess, he drunkenly moped over her the night before his wedding to lindsay like! rory who had been abandoned by jess, who she arguably had a much more intense love for, sees dean who is still "there for her" and still wants to pursue her in spite of their circumstances and thinks that's how it's supposed to be. if even one person had told her dean's behavior was wrong, she might've given the relationship a second look, but that never happened, so she never got to realize it's the opposite of what a relationship is supposed to be

[starshollowconfessions]

[gilmoreposting]

Rory thanking her boyfriend for not being mad at her for wanting to spend a night alone is genuinely such a terrible sign. All she wanted to do is have a night in and do laundry, and her boyfriend thinks his a "saint" for allowing her to do that???

[stellaluna33]

I think about that conversation where Rory calls Dean "safe" a lot. Like, in what way is Dean "safe"? She, with the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, is comparing Dean's predictability with Jess's unpredictability, of course, but Dean had also dumped Rory TWICE by this point (and would dump her again!) and blamed it on her both times! He blames every problem in their relationship on her, actually! How is that "safe"?! But I've been thinking about it, I think a lot of it comes down to Rory's issues with control. Rory as a character likes to have all her ducks in a row, everything listed and planned (though she occasionally veers to the other impulsive extreme, which is interesting). She doesn't like feeling out of control of herself, her feelings, or what happens to her. So, in contrast to how I might feel about it, Dean constantly blaming her and breaking up with her feels "safe" to her because she can tell herself that SHE chose the outcome of the relationship. Everything is her fault, which means SHE decided it would be this way. Dean broke up with her because SHE didn't appreciate him enough, and that was her choice! Dean is mad at her because SHE studied too much or talked to the wrong person, and that was her choice! Everything is her fault means Nothing is Dean's fault equals "Dean never did anything bad to me." If Dean yells at her, it's because she deserved it, which means that everything is the way it's supposed to be! Predictable input-> output. Safe. It's what she chose. Rory is in control of her fate!

And Jess... She could control absolutely nothing about Jess. She couldn't control how she felt about him! She didn't want to fall in love with him, and she fell anyway. She was simply overwhelmed by it, without her own consent. She couldn't control her feelings, and she couldn't control the outcome of their relationship either. Jess leaving had nothing to do with her! But instead of that being a consolation, it was terrifying, because that meant there was nothing she could do about it. Jess crashed into her life and her heart and then was gone like a summer storm, and she was just as powerless to prevent either one. And she had found that kind of thrilling once upon a time, but now he's lost and what's to prevent him from slipping through her fingers yet again? It's out of her hands.

Her feelings for Dean are manageable. They're not going to overwhelm her and make her feel out of control. He's nice to her, because when he's not nice, she deserved it. This is what "safe" feels like.

[silas-lehnsherr]

I feel like there’s a juxtaposition of Rory’s final scenes with Dean and Jess at the end of season four. Both of them essentially proposition her (in slightly different ways). When Rory says no to Jess, he leaves. But when she says no to Dean, he finds an excuse why she shouldn’t be saying no and keeps going until she relents. I feel like that tells you a lot about their relationships with Rory. Ultimately, one respects her feelings and the other doesn’t.

[weepynymph]

ALSO

I've just noticed when lorelai and rory are fighting about rory sleeping with dean, the exact point at which rory storms out and says 'i hate you for ruining this for me!' is after lorelai says 'but you broke up with him [dean]. you picked someone else.'

Like out everything she says that's the thing that has rory running out of the room - the tiniest hint of jess' existence. his name isn't even mentioned.

I will die on the hill that rory sleeping with dean has EVERYTHING to do with what happened with jess the episode before and the fact that she still loves him but wishes she didn't and kind of wishes she'd never met him and by extension never broke up with dean and is trying to put things back the way that they were.

[anxiouspotatorants]

I think a (not big but still there) part of why Jess was having such a hard time admitting that he worked at Walmart was that he would have to admit that Dean was working for the independent mom-and-popstore movement (at least pre Soda-shoppe) while Jess anti-establishment-counter-culture-wannabe-punk-rock Mariano himself was working for The Man

[roeyliteratiforever]

I find it so weird when people think that the reason you prefer Jess for Rory and as a personal preference for yourself is because you are attracted to unavailable men. 🤔 I hear this opinion a lot and it's just weird to me. I have been in the same relationship for the last 8 years and is very available. I love Jess the most because of how much he grows, and learns from his errors. I love their connection and how he pushes Rory to be the best version of herself. I love that he owns up to his mistakes and feels bad about his mistakes and instead of gaslighting Rory he changes his behavior and tries to do better. I love how Jess and Rory inspire each other and motivate each other. I love how despite having shitty circumstances in life he turns it around and makes it positive. I love how instead of minimizing Rory to be his mistress he waits until she is ready and is there for her as a friend without any strings, he is there for her no matter if they are together or not. His love for her is unconditional and while he wasn't perfect his love for her is so genuine and you can feel that. I am also a sucker for best friends to lovers and pining but that's another subject. It's just a weird take I've seen some people have, just because we like Jess best doesn't mean we want unavailable men there is so much more to it than that.

[frazzledsoul]

I think what the current nostalgic era of Gilmore Girls fandom misses when it romanticizes Dean building Rory a car (to the point where his fangirls ignore every other aspect of his controlling behavior and barely contained rage because he did this one thing) is that this gift, much like Logan giving Rory an expensive purse she didn't really want or need, is more about what the giver gets out of it than what the recipient does. Rory was never into cars or showed any real desire to have one. Unlike most teenagers in sleepy small towns, the youth of Stars Hollow don't really spend their time driving around aimlessly and walk to wherever they need to go. For everywhere else outside of Stars Hollow, Rory can get there easily by bus or by having Lorelai drive her. I don't think we ever saw her driving the car, she still seems to take the bus everywhere, and once it's gone nothing in her life changes. She was happy to have the gift because Dean put a lot of time into making it (just as she was happy to get the purse because Logan attached significance to the gift) but she didn't really cherish using it.

(The only teenager who is really, really attached to his car is Jess, who cherished the freedom and independence it offers him, grieves when it is taken away, and is willing to brave the wrath of everyone he's hurt to get it back. Dean and Rory don't yearn to escape at this point in the way that he does).

However, because Dean spent so much time on this gift, he has it to lord over Rory's head. It's another reason to demand every second of her time and attention and justification for his anger when he doesn't get it. It's another reason why Rory will eternally owe him her affection and why nothing she does will ever be good enough for him. Richard was right about the car all along: it was extremely inappropriate for Lorelai to allow Rory to accept it because of what Dean's going to expect in return.

What's significant about Logan giving the Birkin bag is that he picks up right away that Rory doesn't really notice the significance of the gift but isn't angry. Rory sits him down and tells him she loves him, but she doesn't want to put him in the position she was in and doesn't expect reciprocation if he's not ready for it. This doesn't save their relationship but it does seem to be a tiny step forward for her: she's through with the tit for tat routine she went through years earlier. So I guess she did learn something, after all? Don't tell the showrunner.

[autumnrory]

“the verbal thing comes and goes.” jess + not being monosyllabic