#but they should be mad at frank in the exact same way and theyre NOT. THEY'RE JUST NOT!

[literaturebf]

this has already been said about a thousand times before but i think the showrunners and writers are evil for making monica out to be this huge big bad villain for abandoning her kids as if frank didn't do the exact same fucking thing. as if frank didn't do worse every single time he showed up in that place if he bothered showing up at all. LIKE HELLO

[mandy4ever69420]

which one of lip’s relationships is your favorite?

like.. romantically? i mean i like most of lip's love interests he kind of has fantastic taste in women and keeps fumbling so horribly.

probably karen. as a romantic narrative and overall for impact. i really enjoy how they both wanted the same things but expressed those at the exact worst fucking times and it blew up in their faces. eg: karen tries to ask "what are we?" when lip's in the "we are just buddies who screw" phase of his fucking problems and accidentally pushes her away, and then he drops the "i love you" when she's not in a place to hear it that fucks everything up a second time.

i like how the weird intense and specific way that karen unintentionally broke his heart pretty directly reflects in the things he does wrong and ways he can't commit in later relationships. especially with mandy. which i've discussed in some tag rants maybe i should convert into a text post or something. and i like that it was never going to work and it's not really either of their faults and it's also both of their faults. YEOWCH . and that he pretty much never calls anyone else his best friend again

but i mean -> flipside i really like how that resolves into how his relationship to tami works because she is someone who just will not take shit from him and. i don't happen to personally believe that theyre in love with each other i think it's nice that they ARE just close friends who are committed by accident. sort of the opposite of how he and karen really were in love with each other but could not for the life of them commit

i will say i have a quiet personal bias towards amanda just because i think she's so fucking charming and weird. i loved her gambit to get lip cash and that it's a pattern. i thnk some people were put off by her for reasons relating to class and the way she boytoy'd him more aggressively than anything i've ever seen but i thought it was extremely fun. (people being put off by her might also just have to do with preferring mandy. which is fine. but for me doesn't detract from the charm of amanda) but also because i take her side so fucking aggressively when he fumbles her because it is IN PUBLIC and she TRIED. to like, communicate and be on his level and she tried to make things clearer before. like. if she shot him point blank i would betray my lifelong principles and no snitching policy so she wouldnt have to be alone in prison. I mean what. (also my immense sympathies to her for being adopted by a white family. i've read about how badly that can go)

i mean also i liked that scene were lip gets briefly overcome at amanda's terrifying weird sorority thing bc she's pretty and nice and she likes him and there's candles and atmosphere and then he's moved by the kiss until all the other sorority girls start celebrating and he realizes (incorrectly) it was just to show off ("i want those other girls suicidal with envy"). amanda being a normal amount of guarded about her feelings pre-sabotaged her later for when she tries to actually clarify because lip already felt a little spark of hope and then snuffed it before.

but non romantically probably i like professor youens best. off the top of my head. weirdly enough his relationships to other family members (except frank) kind of never move me as much as any other specific 1-on-1.

but um. i really liked how intensely he latched onto youens as someone who could really understand his isolation and tendency towards self destruction and i really liked that when youens DUI'd and fucked up someone's house and traumatized that woman it was so sympathetic to youens. because DUI is one of the most fucking INFURIATING crimes to me. personal pet peeve it just makes me so mad. so i like being put into a situation where i'm forced unexpectedly to sympathize really hard with someone who does it. not because any of the harm caused was less important, but because you have his very human perspective through the eyes of someone who is like desperately attached to him.

and after youens died i loved the horrible melancholia of lip being at his funeral and hearing how careful and decent he was to all these other students. because lip was sort of realizing that he wasn't necessarily a special case to youens. and it's a sort of immature heartbreak on his part, because not being the only person he cared about doesn't mean he didn't care, and it doesn't even mean you didn't have a real special understanding with this guy supporting you. it just feels lonely in a real little kid way. like he got so attached. and then he's on the outside again, because youens' family is in charge of his affairs and stuff.

&& when youens' daughter says she's glad her dad was such a good dad to lip! both because this hammers home how he can't help but feel left out of the life of someone he trusted and looked up to & because of the misplaced guilt he feels. like, she was guilting him on purpose, but it's not his fault. it probably also brought to mind how lip felt when frank went to karen's parent teacher meeting and not his. so after years he's suddenly back on the opposite side of that. man. sorry these are all so fucking sad it's just something lip is good at.