#rory critical

[friendly-jester]

ashley: it's because i'm a woman 🙄

matt: 👁👄👁

[deadpoets]

GILMORE GIRLS 03.12 | Lorelai Out of the Water

[abirddogmoment]

Sleepiest animal in the world

[fandomshatewomen]

I see popular tweets about Gilmore Girls and noticed people always ignore Lorelai was a victim of her parents emotional abuse. Both Richard and Emily tried to control every aspect of Lorelai life and tried to do the same with Rory, so much so that they treated their working class boyfriends badly because they weren't upper class. Furthermore, they are both extremely racist and treat their maids poorly. Lorelai is not perfect but as victim of toxic parents it's terrible to see people defend them+

+There was an episode where Rory was excited to see her grandparents until she discovered that her grandparents lied to her and that party they invided her was actually with high society boys so that she could break up with her boyfriend who didn't belong to their social class. Later they destroyed Lorelai's relationship with Luke, who is also a worker. There is so much manipulation, gaslighting and classicism but people ignore it.

+Just saw another thing: Richard and Emily Gilmore saying white blonde rich men are 'good breeding'. Emily even fantasizes about Rory, her granddaughter, having blond, blue-eyed children. How people really say they are the real good guys of the show????

———————————————

YUPPPPPPP there’s a *lot* of classism and racism baked into that show that get’s laughed off as Emily and Richard being a product of their time and like, “harmless” or whatever. Amy Sherman Palladino pulled some similar shit in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with the lead character’s parents, only this time she added some antisemitic caricatures, you know, as a treat 🙃

• mod dyr

[spiffy-sea-dragon]

No shade, but why is Rory’s last name Keaner? I’ve never met anyone with that last name, but it feels like a very real person’s uncommon name.

Benny Weir, Sarah Fox, Ethan Morgan, Erica Jones? All sound like names you’d pick out for fictional characters. Keaner just feels so oddly specific. Keener as a surname appears to be slightly more common.

Makes me wonder if they named him after a real person.

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

This might be the smallest of nitpicks i had with Moffat's era, but my mom is a nurse and I was constantly irritated by the implications that being a nurse was less than being a doctor. Nurses do twice the physical work for half the money/praise. They have to have a good bedside manner and should have a certain kindness to them that a Doctor doesn't necessarily have to have.

There was an angle that could have been played in the actual show if the writers were interested in Rory as a character rather than a prop. We got it occasionally like in the doctor's wife with Rory asking how the doctor just moves on from death/closes Idris' eyes, but most of the time it was just played as him being a lesser version of the doctor which irritates me because there is something gendered about the concept of nursing being lesser even though nursing is not a women only field (my uncle is also a nurse).

And I know that Moffat/the writers thought exactly on those lines, like nursing somehow emasculated Rory instead of being a strength, and it would have been SO EASY to make his skill useful (which I think is why I liked the handling of Rory being a nurse the most in 7a which is ironic because I mostly hate 7a but he got to help heal both when it came to his father and in the hospital). There could have been something INTERESTING in the concept of Rory as a caretaker, Rory as the one who heals hands-on, Rory finding a purpose. This TARDIS team could have been equals, but because Rory was only ever a stand-in for the “right sort of man” for the writers, he was never going to be fully-fleshed out & never a true equal to 11amy.

[seaweedstarshine]

Hi! Long time no yap but I've been really bothered by this thing and I know you're just the person I can go to with this (even if we don't always end up agreeing at times).

I got into a tiff with someone in a comments section of a post that was about Amy (Which character do you think deserved to become a villain? or something similar). They brought up Amy's abuse of her boyfriend. I may have tried to defend Amy (key word is tried. I am officially rubbish at debating) but then I may have said something? Because they said that I (and apparently a lot of other fans) was excusing Amy's abuse because of her trauma. It got me stumped because isn't young Amy's treatment of Rory rooted in her trauma? Did I miss the memo where we separate trauma and abuse? Am I missing something?

That statement bothered me a lot because if there's one thing I never want to do it's defend an abuser. So here I am, humbly asking and hoping to clear the muddy waters.

Your really confused and disturbed moot, Tia 💌

TIA!!!!! Thanks for the ask 💌 , and I send you all the hugs.

Discussion of abuse, trauma, ableism, infidelity, and unhealthy relationship dynamics beneath the cut.

(First off… while I really appreciate your faith in my explaining skills <3 <3 <3 my passion for traumatized characters and mentally ill+neurodivergent rights doesn't make me especially qualified to fully clear muddy waters especially not knowing the full context, but I feel you, and what follows is my informed perspective!)

Speaking generally first, harm done in media is best examined by the impact on the audience, with a different lens than harm done to real people. While relatable experiences in media can be useful and validating and incredibly important, you can’t be “defending an abuser” when the abuse is fictional. It's actually normal for traumatized/ND/mentally ill people to project onto mentally ill villains, when villains are the only significant representation for those stigmatized symptoms in a media landscape that excludes and demonizes us simply for existing. RTD can't stop people who hallucinate from reclaiming the Master's Drums and projecting onto the Master, for example — 90% of the best Doctor Who psychosis fic by psychotic authors is about the Master, whether RTD likes it or not. It's not true crime.

(This is speaking generally. Amy Pond is very much not the Master.)

Abuse is a behavior, and there can be many reasons for it, but reasons based in trauma don’t make it not abuse (some forms of generational trauma can propagate abusive parenting styles, when the parent thinks abusive parenting is normal, or lives entirely vicariously through their child). This absolutely should not be taken to mean trauma correlates with abusive behavior; rather that abusive behaviors from traumatized people are more likely to present in specific ways.

Abuse is also a targeted behavior, based in control — not consistently displayed C-PTSD symptoms as seen in Season 5 Amy Pond through many aspects of her life. Mental health symptoms don't become abuse just because they hinder one partner from meeting the other partner's needs. Any life event can do that.

Without knowing the context of the arguments, this is the aspect of their relationship I've seen you talk about before (which I also feel strongly about), and what I assume is what you were debating? So, here I will talk specifically in regard to Season 5.

We all know Amy — she's never attached to Leadworth because she never wanted to leave Scotland, no steady therapist because none of them stick up for her, can't stick with one job yet her first choice is a job that simulates intimacy because her avoidant behavior (a known trauma response) isn't sustainable to her wellbeing. Rory knows her fears of commitment stem from her repeated abandonments, it’s why he’ll always wait for her, and it's why he blames the Doctor “You make it so they don't want to let you down.”, who apart from having caused a lot of her trauma, has actively taken advantage of her being the “Scottish girl in the English village” who's “still got that accent,” because he wants to feel important, so yeah, I think interpreting Amy's issues (and how Amy and Rory transverse them) as Amy abusing Rory indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of their relationship, as well as a misunderstanding of the (raggedy) Doctor’s role in Amy’s formative self-image (which of course she works through in Season 6, but I am sticking to Season 5).

Abuse is always based in control. That just doesn’t fit here. While Amy's detachment from her real life includes things like calling Rory her “kind of boyfriend” (which she is upfront about to his face; differing commitment levels isn't abuse, though it can be a relationship red flag for both parties IRL) — her Season 5 disregard of Rory’s feelings occurs only in response to the fairytale embodiment of her trauma. It's never a response to Rory; it's a response to the Doctor, who stole her childhood and led her by the hand to her death. She cheats on Rory with the Doctor in her bedroom full of Doctor toys, drawings, models, she made from childhood to early adulthood.

(And yes, like many repeatedly-traumatized people, Amy is prone to being sensitive and reactive. Take her “Well, shut up then!” line in The Big Bang; but given Rory responds to this by hugging her, clearly he doesn’t take it as her actually dismissing him. He knows her better than that.)

And by no means do I meant to imply this is fair to young Rory, poor Rory, who's left struggling with the feeling that his role in her life is in competition with the role of her trauma (aka the Doctor). But not every unhealthy relationship dynamic is unhealthy because of abuse. Labelling Amy's treatment of Rory in Season 5 more accurately isn't the same as excusing her harmful choices — but making mistakes is part of being human, Amy's mistakes are certainly understandable, and she works through them out of love for Rory.

If there's one thing to say about Moffat women, it's that Moffat allows his female characters the same grace that the male characters *coughTENcough* have always had, to hurt and struggle and make realistic mistakes and overcome those mistakes and to heal without being demonized.

Amy isn't perfect, but she is a fully realized character, and her story gives us a resonant depiction of childhood trauma.

[grandadtwelve]

how I think different pairings of nuwho companions would get on:

(not including characters who have already met in tv show canon)

engaged to be married:

jack + river: i mean come on. they’re obsessed w each other, they go shopping together, they commit crimes together, and they torment the doctor together

jack + clara: specifically jack and immortal!clara from post-s10. they’re not in like a committed romantic relationship, they just have an intensely romantic friendship, a lot of sex, got drunk married in space vegas, and then just never got a divorce

best friends, literally inseparable:

rose + donna: I KNOW donna would have rose in tears w laughter 24/7. they’d have so much fun and talk so much shit together and the doctor would never know peace again and okay: HEAR ME OUT. If rose fell in love w metacrisis!ten…. I think she also would’ve fallen in love w metacrisis!donna. That’s all

rose + bill: rose at 19 and bill at 19 would be besties, but bill would have a MASSIVE crush on s4 rose <3 they have a lot in common and rose finds bills awkwardness and sense of humor enormously endearing

jack + amy: oh god…. rip rory you will never recover from this

martha + rory: doctor friends!!! logic oriented people who are more aware of the damage the doctor is capable of than some of his other companions!! they get along great in literally every situation you could put them in

martha + clara: i don’t know why but I think they’d be kind of perfect? really good teamwork but also they’d just genuinely enjoy each other’s company. martha knows how to tell clara to chill out w out getting her mad and clara tells martha she can do better any times she mentions ten or mickey

martha + bill: pure vibes. they have a very similar response of bafflement to the doctors bullshit and I just think they would have a great time

river + clara: okay. personally i think mel and clara had a toxic homoerotic whirlwind friendship that ended in disaster and heartbreak and probably some jail time. post-s10 clara and river don’t exactly pick up where they left off but they definitely still adore each other and have a wonderful “human who has been made immortal/given an augmented lifespan by means of gallifreyan technology” trio with jack

river + bill: river is bills adoptive mother/grandmother. end of story. river adores her, is so proud of her, spoils her at every oportunity, and bill thinks she’s the coolest person she’s ever met and can’t believe she’s married to the doctor

casual friendship:

rose + martha: they’re friends! but they come from very different backgrounds and i don’t think they’d actually have much in common

rose + amy: again, they’d be friends but just wouldn’t end up hanging out much! they ALWAYS back each other up in arguments though

rose + rory: I think they’d both find each other really sweet! don’t really have any other thoughts abt them

jack + rory: jack flirts w him, rory pretends to be annoyed but it actually genuinely flattered

jack + bill: bill is entertained by him and they have some wlw/mlm solidarity moments but eh, they never get super close

donna + amy: would rly rly rly enjoy making fun of the doctor together. that’s it

donna + clara: clara would just sit back and watch donna tear into every villain/threat/etc they came across and find it extremely entertaining

donna + bill: they have not stopped laughing since they met

rory + clara: they’re both calmed by each other’s presence in the face of danger! rory knows clara has a plan, clara knows there’s someone around who’s better at making sure no one’s hurt or left behind

respect/functional but not close:

martha + river: they’d work well together if they needed to but they literally could not have less in common

donna + rory: eh! again, not much in common. very different energies

amy + clara: idk why but these two just don’t work well for me in my head? they don’t dislike each other but it’s just kinda like. Yeah ok

indifference:

martha + amy: I think martha would be a little irritated w amy’s lack of planning amidst crisis but otherwise they’d be like. Okay

outright dislike:

rose + clara: idk where to put these two cause: clara would drive s1 rose out of her mind w her control issues, rose with her possessiveness over the doctor, clara would get patronizing and rose would get immature. however s10 clara and s4 rose would be an INCREDIBLE team and it wouldn’t matter how they felt abt each other, they’d solve any and every problem you threw at them

donna + missy: the only reason no one’s dying is because missy finds her entertaining. the verbal sparring would be legendary but donna is way too moral and way too protective over the doctor to not absolutely hate missy

amy + missy: amy is used to rivers chaos so she’s not as stressed out by missy as other companions might be but um. Still definitely not a fan.

rory + missy: he wants absolutely nothing to do with her which includes getting close enough to kill or be killed

*mid fight* are we abt to kiss rn?: 

rose + river: good god can you imagine? i think rose would immediately go for how she acted w sarah jane and river would be flirty in a ?condescending way? but there’d be an underlying tension that everyone else would be terrified to point out

river + missy: enough said.

someone is getting murdered:

rose + missy: absolutely not

martha + missy: after what simm!master did? it’s on sight sorry

jack + missy: i want them to get along so bad but. same issue as the above unfortunately

[undead-knick-knack]

A perfect song for Dorym in these trying times 💙💚

[emmafallsinlove]

derry girls au but with rory, paris, lane + dave as james.

[petersteelegroupie]

I know Rory Culkin ate his role in Lords of Chaos because I’m still thinking about that shit a week later wow

[friendly-jester]

this is such a heartbreaking ending to the crown keepers story but i truly believe they will meet each other once again. might not be for awhile. but they will. they're a family.

[saltygilmores]

Thoughts While Watching Gilmore Girls, 2/18 “Back In The Saddle” (more glorious filler) Part 1

The episode begins with an uninteresting Friday Night Dinner intro that has nothing worth writing about, except we see Richard again, and I feel like I haven't seen Richard in a really long time. (This is a Richard-centric episode, which is fine with me).

They fixed the Tomatos Sign? Say it ain't so!

Oh, the other chalkboard.

I recommend you all look up a woman named Valerie Campbell on TikTok or Instagram. She worked on the show and shares a lot of behind the scenes stories. I can’t seem to find this specific post again, but if you care to dig around yourself, she had a little story about the crew member that actually designed this sign.

I don't remember it being a particularly fascinating story, but if you want to hear the story of Sign Guy, go on and find Valerie.

Thinking about the time Rory took a slice of unbuttered unsyruped French toast on the run like it was a god damn pop tart. You weirdo.

LG: Look at the handwriting on that sign. It's so precise. So determined. It's focused Luke. RG: That's Jess' handwriting.

That tone of suspicion again. Sigh.

You know what, I won't pile on Lorelai too much for this comment, because it was lighthearted and not dripping with passive aggressive sauce for once. You win this round, Gilmore.

Couldn’t have killed you to throw in a “that’s so thoughtful/cute/sweet” or something though.

I love how blasé they are about their notions that either Luke or Jess could have such gorgeous handwriting. Neither of them are marveling even one bit over that skilled graphic design. Sad lack of shock, wonder, and awe.

Lorelai is very much NOT Team Jess and is actively trying to destroy this adorable friendship. Being a Lorelai and Literati supporter at the same time seems like a paradox of sorts? But hey, according to Tumblr, I'm just a big ol woman hater for saying Lorelai is evil. Continue, Lorelai. Lay some old fashioned Dean Lust on us. It's what the people want.

Rory looks thrilled to see ButtZilla.

Drop yourself off a bridge.

Lorelai: Please please please eat with us Dean!

So much said with so little in her tone of voice alone

From left to right: Wetting her pants in excitement to have Dean for breakfast/ thinking about covering his naked body in maple syrup; a man wondering if this will be one of the rarest of days when the Gilmores pay for their food; Hello Darkness My Old Friend; and Buttzilla.

I've got something you can eat, Dum Dum.

JOKES ON YOU BUTTZILLA! JESS WROTE THE SIGN! YOU'RE GONNA EAT AN OMELET THAT YOU ORDERED OFF A SIGN THAT JESS WROTE!

Mind your own business, AssButt. Your necklace is stupid and so are you. Your mother doesn't love you.

"Next time I get you all alone I'm going to give you SUCH a spanking, young man."

Poor put-upon Brad. One day, Brad will rule the world, and the peasants will be sorry. Our usual Chilton crew that consists of Rory, Paris, Madelyn, Louise, Brad, and one rando (some 30 Year Old Archie looking dude) are gearing up for a Business Fair. They have to invent a product appealing to high schoolers. Rory is the CEO, and they have an imaginary 1 million dollars to imaginary market/produce/and distribute it. They also have to find a responsible adult to be their "business advisor". Richard will eventually join them and muck things up. Everyone else's negligent dads are too busy working and Rory's deadbeat dad Crusty is off somewhere trying to impregnate some chick named Sherry and wouldn't know how to Business if his life depended on it, so Richard it is. But this is the 2000s, so surely someone's mother could also have business experience?

Paris and Madelyn suggest Rory's mom, seeing as she "Runs a hotel", but the girls wouldn't know that Rory's mom regularly leaves her shift in the middle of the day to do things like look at coffins. Not a good role model. Joyous filler nonsense.

Rory: LOL yeah I guess. Let’s have someone look at Lorelai’s “books”. The Independence Inn and Stars Hollow are both an accountant's wet dream.

I neglected to include Brad in my poll of Gilmore Girls characters whose quietly bubbling anger will one day no longer stay contained until they snap and murder somebody.

She's definitely not, but Paris threatens her so Rory promises to ask her anyway.

The people of Stars Hollow are incredibly angry and violent. Don't let their sweet faces fool you. Try to take away their coffee or twinkle lights, or fuck up their wedding invitations, and you'll be sorry.

[abirddogmoment]

sleepiest string bean in the whole world

[rubeum-et-nigrum]

gilmore girls is a show about a hardworking teenage girl with a passive personality and good grades being told she is special and has something other people don't so much that she internalised it and can't let go of that self image,

gilmore girls is about a hard working teenage girl with a passive personality and good grades turning into a woman who believes she should be allowed everything she wants (including people's husbands) and is continuously told she still has all the potential she did when she was a child, while she actively refuses to change.

and i think that's kind of cool, bc as far as i'm aware it's accidental. like the writers accidentally wrote the masterpiece of a modern day smalltown tragedy. it's so realistic as well, the downfall is so human. rory gilmore is truly THE WORST and that's kind of cool .

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

fix-it fic for me is literally just either "holy shit canon really glorified this guy's horrible behavior so I've gotta give their love interest/friends a better ending" (i.e. glee, ofmd, etc.) or it's "i can feel the author's unintentional prejudices/hang-ups/etc. digging their fingernails all over the writing of this character that had so much potential so I've gotta wrest them away and fix some shit" (i.e. doctor who, avengers, once upon a time, the magicians, supernatural, narnia, etc.)