#premise was literally given out on a silver platter lol.)

[holydramon]

I see one eqg thing on my dash and the eqg hyperfixation consumes me once again

[lovelylogans]

Can I ask for more Rory salt? Right after finishing the show I didn't realize why everyone was so upset about her but now that I've rewatched I kind of understand. I'd like to hear more about your opinions on her! (Mostly bc I have 2 braincells so stuff like that flies over my head lol)

okay, granted, a Fair amount of my salt comes from the perspective of a journalism student, ie who they’re trying to portray, and also like. someone at a similar Point in their life, so. here we go. rory Salt.

like i will say she isn’t like, bonafide the Worst Character of all time, but like...... okay. like. this tracks back to one of my original and largest gripes with gilmore girls, and also a large reason of why i like the earlier seasons better than the later ones.

this post explains it very well; the early seasons (and first episodes) of gilmore girls seem to promise healing, moving forward, bettering familial relationships. the actuality of gilmore girls is the repetition of mistakes and things continuing in cycles, and often getting worse.

so, like. rory. rory’s character is established as this sweet, innocent, naive kid, with a fairly decent work ethic and big dreams to aspire to journalism and a certain level of fame (like christine amanpour, i think was the journalist she mentioned in the first day at chilton ep?) she’s smart, quiet, beginning to establish a relationship with her parents, but still a bit uncomfortable within the realm of chilton/privilege—i think this is best exemplified within the debutante episode, in which she’s uncomfortable with the premise, but goes through with it for the sake of making emily happy. same with the golfing episode with richard—she has zero interest in golf, but she gets to spend a day with her grandfather, and she wants to establish that relationship with him.

but then there’s that thing kicking in, in which gilmore girls is essentially a cyclical tragedy; rory gradually becomes more confident in herself and her abilities (becoming valedictorian, going up against paris for the speech on cspan) and in her relationship with boys; she goes after jess, and, once he leaves, lets him go and eventually is like “you shouldn’t have left me. but i’m saying goodbye to you, on my terms.” i think that s3 is where her character is strongest; she’s still sweet and shy, but she has a bit of an edge. she’s caring toward her friends, she, sure, makes the occasional mistake, but she eventually rallies from them. that’s when i like rory’s character best.

rory starts her decline in season four. this dates back to the whole cyclical thing; she’s the one who goes to her grandparents for money, echoing the original premise of the show, and a cycle starts anew. she goes to another new, prestigious school (yale) where she’s pushed to new limits. 

but rory makes mistakes. she stands up for herself, yes, namely taylor when he pushes for her to be ice cream queen, but she also has a certain level of... entitlement, i suppose. like. let’s take “die, jerk.”

(i’m gonna go briefly into a journalistic tangent here, which is especially heaped by the fact i’ve been writing a lot of reviews lately. also, it applies.)

so, first of all, she takes her mom to her job. her mom. literally think about every other job in the world and, barring a “family day” at the office, please name a situation in which that’s acceptable. right? there’s basically no other situation in which that’s a thing you do when you’re being professional. (this is a repeated gripe, by the way; she often brings lorelai along. this could have been achieved with some phone calls where she hangs up and then does her job. but i digress. this goes into a whole rant on how women in journalism are portrayed in tv shows and other media, but seriously, i digress.)

then there’s the review itself. it’s mean.

“she has the grace of a drunken dock worker.” compared her to a hippo. “the roll around the bra strap,” the line about regretting how evolution had led man to stand on two feet because it led to this night. the ballerina comes to yell at her, which is wrong, but holy god, that never even should have been published. sure, it’s partially the fault of doyle, who as an editor should have stepped in, said, “rewrite the holy hell out of this,” and given her a talking-to on how reviewing should be about the performance and not body-shaming her, because yes you can give things a bad review but not to that level, but rory is the one who wrote it. and she only begins to seem apologetic when people start to react to it other than doyle; the ballerina, her mom, emily and richard. this happens a few times throughout—rory (and lorelai) never seem to realize how mean they can get until people start reacting to what they’re doing and saying. 

she’s willing to write those things, read them, have other people read them, and put them out into the public, and doesn’t even consider the potential ramifications that it could have had on not only the dancer, but the ballet performance (which gets shut down, in part due to rory’s review) the costumer, the crew, everyone involved. yes, bad reviews exist, and yes, they can be brutal, but they’re almost never so personally vindictive and mean. she says she’s writing her opinion. look at how harsh that opinion is.

that’s part of why my opinion of rory takes a decline; being mean. another part of it is a certain level of entitlement.

because the revival is on my brain lately, let’s talk revival stuff. making it as a freelance journalist is hard. it’s hard work. it isn’t for a lot of people. especially in new york city, where the industry is so competitive that finding a job in journalism is a whole Thing. rory has a piece in the new yorker (not bad!) and is writing a piece for gq (also not bad, not bad at all!) about people waiting in line for a certain event.

now. let’s take, like, season four/season five rory, who compiled like three separate PILES of research for a story that wasn’t even hers, worked hard enough at chilton, a highly academically competitive school, to get valedictorian. rory is portrayed as a hard worker. she does what’s necessary for the job and to improve.

revival? whoosh, out the window!

she falls asleep during an interview for the gq job. she continually jets off to london to go see logan. she’s completely unprepared for a job interview, having absolutely zero ideas for any stories, despite the fact that freelance journalists are almost always working multiple stories and coming up with new ideas so they can, y’know, get paid. chilton offers her a job as a teacher if she gets her masters, but she turns it down, which, on one hand, sure, follow your dreams, on the other, if you’re continually complaining that you’ll take a job, ANY job, and get a very good job handed to you on a silver platter with the potential for more growth post that job with the addition of your masters and DON’T TAKE IT?!?!?!

plus, in the job interview, when she doesn’t get it, UNDERSTANDABLY, she calls the interviewer angrily saying that the interviewer practically promised her the job, despite the fact that it was a PRELIMINARY JOB INTERVIEW and there are OTHER CANDIDATES who DEFINITELY AT LEAST HAD STORY IDEAS. no matter how impressive your resume is, you have to at least show that you’re trying, because the whole thing in journalism (esp for those breaking into a business) is that EVERYONE has an extensive resume. that’s part of why it’s so competitive.

and still complains that she’s broke, in addition to the trust fund that we know she received at 25, plus whatever money richard left her in his will. if she was broke, she’d be living entirely above her means—those continual trips to london, living in a sizeable one-bedroom apartment in NEW YORK CITY, going out to eat very often. 

and then just??? i could ramble more (the whole sleeping with a MARRIED DEAN thing, her partnership with logan, i could go back in and ramble about how the body-shaming is continual despite the fact that they frequently eat fattening foods and make fun of sports and are only so thin bc, well, tv magic, but also because they have Miraculous metabolisms, the way that they treat their friends, to some extent, but. yeah. here is some Rory Salt.)