#not me writing a fic about lorelai and luke raising jess and rory together

[madeofstardust17]

Okay but what if Luke had raised Jess? What if Liz decided it was too much for her and left baby Jess with Luke and fucked off to New York? What would change in Jess personality? Would he still have flunked high school? I think it's pretty safe to say that at least he would have had a nice childhood, I trust Luke would've done his best, but this still means Jess would have abandonment issues, with both parents out of the picture. What would change? What would stay?

[thelillykane]

for the character questions please do: jess mariano, pacey witter, meg manning, cordelia chase and buffy summers

jess~ 

How I feel about this character: my best friend amanda gets all the details but i can sum it up by saying that for a solid month i cried about (for) jess mariano every single day. cried. randomly. without warning. cried myself to sleep. i had a dream where jess had done something he shouldn’t have done and luke gave him a hug and i could feel that hug when i woke up. it was warm and engulfing and just a really solid, reassuring, you-are-loved hug. (all this crying happened while i watched gilmore girls second half of season 3 through season 4. it was a very emotional time i love jess) 

All the people I ship romantically with this character: rory gilmore. 

My non-romantic OTP for this character: LUKE, paris, lorelai (did he and michel ever interact? god, they would’ve driven each other mad) 

My unpopular opinion about this character: in season four when he drives to yale and he’s like…you know…y’all know the scene with him and rory. that’s uhhh bad. he should’ve chilled out and taken a chill pill. i love him still but those are the facts. he doesn’t give the girl anytime to breathe or think during this and it was so rough to watch 

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i wanted him and april to pal around so much and give luke All The Stress. wanted him and rory to kiss, in an angsty and forlorn way while it was snowing and you could see their breath in the cold, cold air and it wasn’t about logan (who i love, but that’s a separate thing). wanted him to be a better boyfriend (this should maybe go in unpopular opinion but he spends like all of season 2  & a lot of 3 doing these hella things to get rory’s attention and then when they’re dating he’s like “nah i refuse to go to the town whatever-the-fuck festival with you. like, bitch, you knew she liked this stuff when you were trying to get with her don’t give up now) 

PACEY MY BOY~ 

How I feel about this character: i love him so much (he has also made me cry. a lot. thanks season 3 (after d*wson has been himself and he’s not with joey and pacey is visibly so sad god i cried a lot) all the love in the world for my boy, pace. and he’s such a good person too (he is, as you once said about pjo, the brightest timeline version of logan echolls) 

All the people I ship romantically with this character: JOEY POTTER everyone else can step! the! fuck! off! 

My non-romantic OTP for this character: JEN LINDLEY, audrey, his little season 5 cooking pals, but mostly jen their friendship is underrated and a goddamn delight.  

My unpopular opinion about this character: alright so when he was first introduced and he was like…hella pursuing that teacher i was not into it. the teacher plotline was derivative and gross, period, but they wrote it to make it seem like pacey was the aggressor in the relationship and i couldn’t stand it. this was just for like a few episodes before he became My Boy. also that goatee was the worst and i still am mad at him for it

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. uhh the fuck doesn’t he have a boat in the finale for??? where is his boat!!! the call back to him and joey!!! wheRE IS IT 

meg manning~ 

How I feel about this character: god she deserved better. legitimately kind and an angel 

All the people I ship romantically with this character: listen….fucking nobody on that show is good enough for her. i have read fic where she dates women, rightfully, as she is a lesbian (i have a soft fic idea that i’ll probably never write where her and jackie date and raise their kids together)

My non-romantic OTP for this character: veronica!! also god….she would not take any of logan’s shit for a single second just like she never took any of veronica’s and he needed that. i needed to see that. 

My unpopular opinion about this character: n/a 

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: wish she had never dated duncan, or died, and quite frankly the whole abuse storyline was poorly handled, and yes, i do have a Million grievances. basically wish she wasn’t shoved to the side to make “””room””” for duncan & veronica to date. 

cordelia chase~ 

How I feel about this character: delight in buffy & angel season’s 1-2 & season 5. mid season 3-4 cordelia didn’t…feel like cordelia to me when i watched. it felt like the writers stripped away a lot of her essence in order to make her into this….maternal pod person. which she could’ve been while still being herself. it’s hard to describe it and i haven’t sat down and fully watched angel since i was like 14 or smth. and then season 4 is a whole different mess aside from that, because, you know, joss is a misogynist. i love her that should be the takeaway maybe 

All the people I ship romantically with this character: angel!!!, doyle, (she’s into women though, gotta say)  

My non-romantic OTP for this character: fred! gunn! lorne! WES! dennis the ghost! buffy! harmony (totally fooled around at least)! giles! 

My unpopular opinion about this character: mostly just the weird character stuff i mentioned above. 

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: me, chanting, wish she hadn’t died! wish i could turn back time and write angel season four myself the story arc is so gross & unfair to her i hate it so much men are the worst 

buffy summers~ 

How I feel about this character: the most important fictional character of all time. the best female character ever written. i love her so much she is strength and heart and forgiveness and kindness and snark and everything else wonderful and human 

All the people I ship romantically with this character: none of these characters deserve her but uh, spike angel and faith. probably in that order.  

My non-romantic OTP for this character: giles!!! tara!!!! anya!!! dawn! cordelia! oz!!! (w*llow and x*nder are fucking trashcans but sometimes they’re cute to her and every twenty episodes they’re kind to her but mostly they suck and are the real villains of btvs) 

My unpopular opinion about this character: NONE she is sunshine and light, although, okay, my unpopular opinion is that i love season 6 so much. it’s such a great arc for her i’ll fight everyone 

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: if…the show…had let her be happy and have real, genuine friends who cared about her (as in not w*llow or x*nder)…that would’ve been the shit.  

[frazzledsoul]

What are your top 5 most unpopular Gilmore Girls opinions?

Oh, boy. Here we go.

5. It is in everyone’s best interests that Christopher and Lorelai have almost nothing to do with each other at this point.

I don’t know how unpopular an opinion this is (probably um, not so much) but it would have remained extremely uncomfortable if they had remained on friendly terms with each other. Every time they are in the same space, they end up reliving their adolescence and it’s fun for an afternoon, but it also keeps them from ever really growing up. As long as Lorelai’s there to enable him and help fix his mistakes, Christopher will never become a real adult. As long as he’s around, she’ll just end up making extremely ill-advised spur-of-the-moment decisions because she wants to relive her youth again. They’ll just keep repeating the same pattern that their early parenthood forced on them: Christopher gets off scot-free due to Lorelai’s long-standing attachment to him, while she’s left to pick up the pieces and each spontaneous decision causes massive emotional damage to everyone around her.

So to put it more simply, Christopher’s a shitty friend because he can’t help being who he is. All of the stuff I just mentioned caused them to have extreme boundary issues that would end up hurting any future relationships either of them might have.

And then there’s the Luke issue. It won’t really ever be okay for Luke and Christopher to be around each other again. As far as Luke is concerned, this is the person Lorelai more-or-less cheated on him with. Their relationship could never really survive unless he was sure he could trust her. So Lorelai cut off contact. I don’t think Luke forced her to do this: it was her decision because it’s healthier for everyone involved. Including Christopher.

Of course, this might change a little bit once Rory has that baby. I think that’s healthy, too, and it has been a decade, after all. It won’t ever be like it was, though, and that’s still a positive thing.

(BTW, I would love a fic written about this that wasn’t too angsty and didn’t make Christopher out to be a total villain, if anyone feels inclined)

4. Zach is a great husband for Lane. Yes, better than Dave would have been.

Lane and Zach appeared to have the happiest, most functional relationship in the revival by far. I thought he was fairly sweet and supportive in the last season of the original series as well. It’s a little sad that they didn’t achieve music superstardom, but in my head they’re involved in musical projects that we didn’t quite hear the details of. Sometimes it’s better to let go of one’s wildest dreams for these characters and just be happy when they are.

3. Season 7 isn’t that bad.

As someone who followed the show when it was on, I can tell you that ASP had not only been toying with the idea of Christopher/Lorelai for years, but she often gave off the impression that she preferred that pairing. More to the point, there simply was no quick fix for what happened at the end of season six. Luke was going to be devastated, and he was going to have to not talk to Lorelai for a while. The season 7 writers could have avoided doing the L/C pairing, but based on what had been set up in the show to that point, it’s not surprising that they went ahead with it. We were going to have to deal with it one way or another.

Season 7 definitely has its awkward moments, but I think it gets better as it goes on. Luke had been such a jerk the previous season that they had to build him up again and make him a great guy. He stops fumbling with the parenting thing and is a great dad to April: he finally stands up to his child’s mother: he’s there for Liz and Lane and Zach. He’s able to finally ask Lorelai for help and to come through for her when she needs him. Lorelai is most awkward for me in the early episodes but I think she does start to improve once the show hits the middle stages and the LOVE TRIANGLE ANGST is dialed up to 11: ten years on it’s a lot easier to actually enjoy a lot of what goes on. I think that Logan and Rory actually become a couple you can root for throughout most of the season. The last third of the season I think is mostly classic GG and as good as the show got in its first five seasons.

2. The breakdown in parental responsibilities re: April between Luke and Lorelai in the revival wasn’t an indication of dysfunction on their part, but was fairly typical parent/stepparent behavior.

There is so much missing information in the April/Luke thread in the revival that it’s often hard to get much of a grasp on what’s going on. Why does he seem to be the only parent providing for her education? If he’s putting forth that much effort, why did he mysteriously not attend her graduations? Why are Lorelai and Rory almost rude to her? Why does Lorelai seem to think she’s spoiled? Did she get up early and attend the “real” wedding we didn’t see or could she not make it for some reason? Blah blah blah. But I digress.

Oddly enough, the thing most people seem to have a real issue with is when Luke brings up April’s graduation gift and Lorelai seems to imply that April is spoiled because of how much Luke is paying for on her behalf and suggests that she get a job instead. She offers to help pay for the trip and Luke says he has it handled. For some reason, this gets twisted into Luke being closed-off and refusing to let Lorelai participate in April’s life by not letting her pay for something she disapproves of anyway, even though we are told shortly afterwards that it was Lorelai’s idea that they split up responsibilities in this way.

And oh yeah, this is shortly after Rory has invited herself home, when she has no job or plans to get one, even though she mysteriously has access to enough money to rent an apartment of her own. I don’t know about you guys, but Lorelai seems to be a wee bit hypocritical on this one regarding who in the Gilmore/Danes brood is really spoiled. (Good thing Jess seems to have his shit together).

All of this is kind of beside the point. This is the sort of discussion that is fairly common between parents and stepparents. I have two stepparents and four adult stepsiblings: when we have a problem, we go to our actual parent, not our stepparent. The one that isn’t technically related to us can have opinions and they can advise, but they aren’t the ones making the decisions. All of this is perfectly normal. Lorelai never wanted to supplant April’s mother: she just wanted a chance to be involved in her life, to be able to meet her and spend time with her and know what was going on with her. She’s getting to do all of those things: she wouldn’t have these opinions about April’s plans if she didn’t know what was going on with her. There’s a big difference between “you can’t meet my child” and “I have this one expense handled, but thanks.”.

(as you can see, I have way overthought this one. I’ve contemplated writing a fic about it to fill in the gaps, but I’ve never done that before, so IDK)

1. It is perfectly fine for Luke and Lorelai not to have kids of their own. It’s also perfectly fine for them not to want them.

I often think I’m missing something in the fandom because I still fail to grasp why Luke and Lorelai not having kids is such a big deal. I just wanted them to be together and for Christopher to leave them alone. The fact that they didn’t settle on a traditional life together makes sense to me because when they finally settled down together, they hadn’t done much of anything traditionally anyway. They had both been married: they had both raised kids on their own. It makes sense to me after Lorelai had ended things with Luke and married someone else solely because of the marriage issue and found that it wasn’t going to give her what she wanted that she backed away from those things. I think she regretted making their relationship all about marriage and all the pain the Christopher interlude caused Luke: more than anything, she just wanted not to lose him again. Luke just wanted what she did. So she purposely made their life together not about that, and it was a good life. Add in what may have been some turbulent adolescent years with the almost-stepdaughter and it’s easy to see why they didn’t want more.

I think a lot of fans conflate their communication issues with the fact that they didn’t have kids. There’s this mentality in some quarters that they desperately wanted to get married and have kids but were afraid to talk to each other about it, so it never happened. While I think miscommunication the one time Luke tried to discuss it is something that happened, it’s not really the tragedy some fans want it to be. The main reason it never came up is because it wasn’t a priority and they were (!) happy with their lives as they existed.

I kind of imagined they went on to a traditional family life when the series first ended, too. Sometimes I get wistful when I read fics about it. But I also think it’s okay that it didn’t happen.