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Gilmore Girls but it’s just memes (Part 3)

*other parts can be found here.

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Running in circles,  chasing our tails, coming back as we are.

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The concepts of place and belonging come up over and over for so many characters in Gilmore Girls, and something Rory and Jess have both done is seek out unique places that interest them. Rory takes the opportunity to explore "funkier" places than the standard tourist attractions when she's in Europe with Emily in Season 5, and Jess would rather go to a restaurant that's "funkier" than a ubiquitous chain. They're both introverted, observant people who appreciate places that are off the beaten path, whether in books or music or physical locations.

When Rory unexpectedly shows up in New York, Jess doesn't know why she's there but immediately thinks of places she'd like. Even in Stars Hollow, Jess brings Rory to the lake, his sacred place for solitude in a town he isn't overly fond of, the first chance he has. It's really quite a vulnerable thing for his character to do, especially at that point! When Rory visits Jess at Truncheon in Season 6, it's again a unique setting where Jess is a lot more comfortable than he was in Stars Hollow and a place that draws Rory's interest. When Rory is somewhere that truly feels like home to her, she's also eager to share it. She wants Emily to see where she and Lorelai used to live at the Independence Inn in Season 1, she's adorably enthusiastic about showing Yale to Anna in Season 5, and she's happy to give Logan a story-filled tour of Stars Hollow in Season 7.

However, Rory doesn't have any favorite places in Hartford when she's with Jess in Season 6. She's just been going along with what her grandparents and Logan do in the months she's been there, and she admits she didn't really spend time in town when she was in high school. When Jess shakes his head in amused disbelief in this moment, in addition to everything else he observes that tells him something isn't right, maybe he's recognizing that Rory isn't engaged with her interests in Hartford and doesn't seem to feel at home there, and yet that's where she lives. Jess knows how important Rory's interests are to her, and he knows the value of truly feeling at home because he finally has that, so it's all the more reason for his character specifically to ask, "why?"

(This was inspired by seeing a few of the aforementioned scenes in one place in this lovely gifset (link) that features Literati and Quality Time.)

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Hi grandpa.

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-Spring series-

Jess Mariano

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I think it's really interesting that when Lorelai hears that Lane moved out of the house her first reaction is "poor Mrs. Kim." I wonder if she's at all aware of the parallels between her situation and Lane's in that moment

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GILMORE GIRLS 1.05 | Cinnamon's Wake

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Lorelai’s diner talk was one of the best side thingies (stories? It wasn’t really a story though)!

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-Spring series-

There's no Such Thing as Too Many Strawberries: a novel by Sookie St. James

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Gilmore Girls + Spring [x]

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GILMORE GIRLS (2000-2007) || ATONEMENT (2007)

(x)

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literati rewatch: 2.13 A-Ticket, A-Tasket

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It's interesting how in A-Tisket, A-Tasket, Rory goes with Jess because he bought her basket, 'because it's tradition', and Jackson buys back the basket from Kirk because he originally was to have lunch with Sookie. In both cases someone unexpected buys the basket, but Rory doesn't try to correct it to the original plan. Interestingly, it is also the moment where the bracelet Dean made for Rory falls off her wrist. The picnic goes against the original plan but arguably, both Rory and Sookie have lunch with the 'right' person. Similarly for Lorelai, all the wrong guys try and buy her basket, but Luke buys it to save her from a bad date, and is the right guy all along.

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Heyyyy, I'm back with more messy, nuanced meta that nobody asked for and will probably just piss people off again, but whatever, I can't help myself, apparently.

I want to start out by saying that, concerning Luke and Jess's fight in S4 over whether Luke kicked Jess out or Jess "got himself kicked out," I am more on Jess's "side" here. But I have this irritating need to see things from other people's perspectives and figure out why they do the things they do. Luke is acting like Jess wronged him by leaving without a goodbye and never contacting him, and insists that Jess got himself kicked out. I see Luke as a generally good and straightforward man who is not usually INTENTIONALLY manipulative, but he is, despite the façade of taciturn practicality, a VERY emotional man who feels things VERY strongly, so I think he must FEEL like this is true. So, why does Luke FEEL like Jess abandoned and discarded him when Luke was objectively the one who told Jess to leave in the first place? One of the things Luke keeps bringing up is the "agreement" they made way back at the end of S2, when Jess said he "wanted to come back" and live with Luke again, and during the fight when Luke does kick Jess out it seems clear that Luke does not understand the way Jess's situation spun out of control. The situation from his point of view was that Jess COULD HAVE honored the agreement (if he CARED), but CHOSE not to because he DID NOT CARE. And no longer cared about Luke PERSONALLY. That's how he sees it. It's not TRUE, but that's how it looks TO HIM.

Luke does SOOOO many things that he does not want to do out of a sense of duty towards the people he cares about. His parents both got sick and died when he was fairly young, and he was the one holding things together, trying to hold his little sister together, and he didn't WANT to do ANY of that. But he DID because he CARED. Luke does not seem to understand that he and Jess are, despite their similarities, very different. Their situations have been very different and their personalities are not the same. This is emphasized AGAIN during these same episodes when Liz arrives. Luke expects Jess to do exactly what HE has always done and to play the same role (man up and manage Liz as best "we" can, because that's "our" job) and he cannot see that Jess's relationship with his mom is (and indeed HAS to be) very different from his. Jess didn't WANT to go to school. Fine. Who does? (Only freaks like Rory, that's who) But Luke had ASKED him to, and Jess AGREED (way way back), so Jess neglecting to do his duty means, in Luke's mind, that he DIDN'T CARE about HIM.

And the most obvious difference Luke DOES see between Jess and himself is that Jess is SMART, like Book Smart, in a way that he himself never was. Jess is ALWAYS reading and always "studying" SOMETHING- he burns with insatiable curiosity- and so the obvious conclusion to why a kid like that flunked out of school (as so many ADHD kids have heard so many times...) is that he "just wasn't trying hard enough," and the obvious reason WHY he wasn't trying hard enough is that he just DIDN'T CARE, and Jess's defiance about the situation didn't help. Jess's defiance was just him clinging desperately to the edge of "this is fine" while his life was going up in flames around him, but Luke didn't know that!

I really do think that, when Luke told Jess he "had to go" when he refused to go back to school, Luke assumed/hoped that his ultimatum would "scare him straight." The idea would be that Jess presumably (hopefully) liked living with Luke (loved Luke) more than he hated going to school, or at least liked living with Luke (loved Luke) more than he hated the idea of being homeless, but that's not how it worked out. Luke did not understand how desperate and hopeless Jess was feeling, and so do you know what LUKE thought had happened? Luke FELT like Jess would RATHER be homeless than live with him. THIS is why Luke jeers about Jess's living conditions in his squalid New York apartment. Because he TRULY FEELS like Jess would RATHER live in squalor than live with him. "You hate me that much?" Luke really does think that Jess hates him that much, and it HURTS him to think that. (He is SO WRONG about ALL of this, but this is GENUINELY how he FEELS, and this is why it's such a tragedy.)

The final ingredient in all this is Time. "Time heals all wounds," they say, but that's only true if the wound isn't infected, and this one IS. Luke has been festering in this hurt for MONTHS by this point. He may have started with "I failed him," but after the initial shock and dismay wore off, he's been dwelling over and over on all the things he interprets as Jess NOT CARING and rejecting all of the love and care Luke thought he was clearly offering. It's like he's been picking at it, so by the time Jess comes back, the wound is WORSE than fresh: it's angry and swollen and red, and sensitive to the very slightest touch (and Jess is the same).

Anyway, this is why I think the "I'm here, Jess. I'm always here," was SO important. Because he needed to SAY IT! They BOTH needed to outright say it! Because they both THOUGHT the way they felt was "so obvious" to the other one, but it wasn't, and that was a big part of the reason why it got so bad between them in the first place. They both needed to hear the other one say that they were WANTED, and that's why it's a satisfying conclusion to me, despite the way Luke had previously messed up. He always meant it, even when he made Jess feel like he didn't (just like Jess always appreciated Luke, even when he made Luke feel like he didn't).

"This is an explanation, not an excuse." Please do not take this as me saying "Luke did nothing wrong!" He did SO much wrong, not only at this point, but in everything that led up to it, haha. But I also think that his actions made sense TO HIM. SO MANY fights between family members (and humans in general) are like this. Families are messy, people are messy, LIFE is messy. Both Luke and Jess are very messy, but I love them a lot and, more importantly, they love each other a lot too.

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Hep Alien aka Lane, Brian, Zack, Gil & [former member] Dave

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gilmore girls meme: [1/07] friendships/dynamics | lane, zack, brian and gil (hep alien)

“Listen, if that pretentious little snot in Coldplay can walk around comparing himself to Bono, we can compare ourselves to the Foo Fighters.”