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jdf1973 · 5 years ago

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hey! i love your meta and i keep seeing all these comments everywhere about how ian doesn't deserve mickey/how the relationship is super one-sided/he's not as in love with mickey as mickey is with him/etc etc...i'd loooove love love to hear your opinion on this!

Hi! Thank you for the kind words!

Regarding your ask, I'm going to be real blunt:

This line of thinking is bullshit.

And that's not to say that people who think this way don't have their reasons, but based on the reasoning I've seen, they generally don't seem to be paying any attention to Ian. And I think this might be in part due to the fact that many people stopped watching except for episodes when Mickey returned between s6-s9. But it's essential that we work to understand both sides—both Mickey and Ian—since they're a package deal, and they always will be. It's fine to prefer one over the other, but if you love Mickey, how can you not also love Ian and how can you ignore the love Ian shows Mickey?

So, I have this huge Ian meta in the works, and to answer this ask in some depth, I'm going to pull parts of that over here, because I think in general, people are really unfair to Ian and over-romanticize Mickey's gestures, even when they could be potentially harmful for Ian (Mexico, anyone?). So, to answer this, I want to address some of the most common reasoning I see for this claim, and from what I've seen, the focus is generally on s6-s7. So, let's get into it.

First, I think it's important to recognize that in this fandom, people so often criminalize Ian for his "betrayals" of Mickey because of Mickey's trauma—which is important and valid—but I think we often overlook Ian's own trauma in trying to justify some imagined evil Ian has done in order to paint Mickey as exclusively a victim, whether of Ian or the writers or what have you. But if you're actually paying attention to Ian, I think it's very clear how deeply he loves Mickey. Yes, he has hurt Mickey. Mickey has hurt Ian, too. But neither of them has ever done so maliciously. Sometimes we hurt the people we love, and there's no way around that. The why matters. So let's talk about a few of the things that people seem to view as unforgivable for whatever reason.

Let's start with 6x01. So first, people often write this scene off and refuse to rewatch it because they find it too painful or OOC or poorly written or whatever. But the 6x01 prison scene is actually essential to their story, and I think it really provides some insight into Ian's feelings and behavior in the rest of season six.

In the 6x01 prison scene, it is so clear to me that Ian still desperately loves Mickey. That he desperately misses him. The only time in 6x01 that Ian breaks and shows any emotion is there with Mickey. He masks it real well—tries to play it off like he doesn't and shouldn't give a shit. But then they fall into a little bit of familiar playful banter and Mickey gets all soft, and suddenly Ian's really fucking hurting and it's really fucking obvious. The way Ian says "You're in here for fifteen years" when Mickey asks him to wait? That moment was really fucking important. Because Ian didn't say no. He was looking for reasons not to wait; he knows he shouldn't want to. But he does. Because he loves Mickey. You can see it in his eyes. In the way he looks like he's about to cry, especially when Mickey pushes for an answer and tells him to lie if he has to. And Ian says he'll wait. And I don't even think he's lying in that moment. Or at all.

Because Ian Never. Moves. On.

Sure, he enters into other relationships, and maybe he even tries to move on. But he doesn't succeed.

And I mean, no one—including Mickey—should be stupid enough to think that what Mickey is asking is for Ian never to be with anyone else and to stay celibate until he's out years in the future.

I don't think for a moment that Mickey cares who Ian fucks while Mickey's in prison. What Mickey is afraid of is Ian moving on. And Ian doesn't.

Additionally, people always cite the "Svetlana paid me" moment as particularly cruel, but I think we also need to consider this from Ian's point of view. Because when Ian says this, he has just sat there watching Mickey agree to stab some guy in the eye for money with the implication that this is not the first time or the last time this will happen. Meaning Mickey has no intention of keeping his hands clean while in prison, and therefore, he's likely to serve closer to his full sentence, or at least the full eight years Mickey anticipates for overcrowding. This has to fucking hurt for Ian, who obviously still cares enough—even after the breakup—to go see Mickey more than once (this is not the first time he's gone—that is made clear in this episode).

Now, for Ian, it has to fucking hurt to watch Mickey agree to do shit that's going to keep Mickey in that prison even longer than he has to be. Because Ian still loves Mickey, and Ian is fucked up without him. Ian absolutely is not doing well at the beginning of season six, but I've talked about that elsewhere, so I won't go into it here. But Ian's really fucked up over everything and he doesn't even have Mickey to rely on anymore, and Mickey is actively sabotaging his own chances at early release, so there's no end in sight to Ian living without Mickey.

And I think all of this is important because I think there's a tendency to villainize Ian for what he says to Mickey and what he says about Mickey, but in the beginning of season six, Ian is falling apart.

So Ian's hurting and he's trying to find a way to keep it all together and he's looking for anything that can help him start to feel okay again, and he actively distances himself from Mickey. He does so because he needs to. He needs that distance, he needs to try to convince himself that Mickey's not good for him because he can't have Mickey. And maybe this isn't fair, but isn't it entirely realistic, entirely human, to try to forget the good when you know you can't have it back?

So yeah, as Ian's trying to put his life back together and find a purpose to keep himself alive (and I do mean this literally), he says some shit. What he says isn't actually about how he truly feels about Mickey—it's about trying to convince himself that he no longer needs Mickey; that he no longer loves Mickey. That doesn't mean he doesn't still feel it. In fact, I think it's evidence to the contrary. Because even in his new relationships, Ian keeps going back to Mickey. Ian's entire basis for understanding relationships is Mickey. Even though he had kind of had others. And I think this is significant. Because Mickey was the only one who ever really meant anything to him.

And then, people seem to hold it against Ian that he didn't commit to going with Mickey to Mexico, but of course he didn't. And he shouldn't have. I think Mickey would easily agree with that. Ian left Chicago with Mickey because he loves Mickey. He wanted to go with Mickey, to be with Mickey forever. And so he made a spur of the moment decision that he hadn't thought through because he loves Mickey and he wants to go. That doesn't mean it was a good idea.

Because Ian's stability was still so new at that point, and he hadn't actually thought through what leaving would mean for himself and his mental health. And I don't even really read the "This isn't me anymore" line that people seem to get upset about as about Mickey at all, but more about Ian's own penchant to run, to leave everything behind, to stop taking his meds. It wasn't about not loving Mickey enough or not wanting to be with him; it was about Ian being stable and being afraid to lose all that, because he didn't yet trust himself not to fall apart because of the situation and because of Ian himself. Not because of Mickey.

This is obviously a miscalculation on Ian's part, though. Because when he gets home, he completely falls apart. And I don't think that actually had as much to do with losing Monica as it did with losing Mickey. I've talked about this before, but Ian doesn't do well without Mickey. He was fucked up at the beginning of season six; he's fucked up through the end of season seven and through season eight, really, after letting Mickey go. And I think Ian's lack of stability when he loses Mickey should really tell us all we need to know about how much Ian desperately loves and needs Mickey.

But too many people put their blinders on and are only willing to see the way these moments affect Mickey. And yes, for Mickey, Ian did abandon him. And yes, for Mickey, it may well have felt at some of these moments like Ian didn't love him enough. And I do not discount Mickey's feelings here. But when we can see both sides and the toll these things take on both of them, then I think it's incredibly unfair to pretend that Ian doesn't love Mickey enough. Because that's bullshit if you're paying any attention to Ian.

And honestly, I think people also tend to over-romanticize Mickey's love for Ian. People sometimes act as though every moment Mickey was off screen, he was just sitting around pining for Ian; never entering into any other relationships, never having sex with anyone else, never trying to move on. And yeah, we didn't see it, but I think that's fucking ridiculous, and Mickey was probably getting out there once in Mexico just as much as Ian was. Yes, Mickey's love for Ian is deep and beautiful and genuine. But I think Ian's is too—Ian being with a couple of other guys when he couldn't have Mickey doesn't make that any less true.

Ian loves Mickey deeply, and he always has. But sometimes loving someone isn't enough to set a match to your life and leave it all behind.

And yes, I am deliberately using Fiona's words here that everyone hates her over. Because she was right. And she wasn't talking about Mickey himself, she was talking about the situation—something we can deduce because she calls Ian's attention to it immediately that Mickey didn't get out of prison, but rather he is a literal escaped convict. Meaning if Ian goes with him, Ian is commiting to going on the run for the rest of his life. Leaving everything he knows behind. His brand new stability. His job. His family. Everything except Mickey. And it is okay that Ian isn't ready to give all of that up.

Sometimes even the deepest love for someone is not enough to give up everything you are and everything you have. We should not hold that against Ian. For Mickey, Ian was the one thing worth hanging onto at that particular moment. But Ian had more than Mickey to think about. That doesn't mean he loves Mickey any less or not enough. It just means they were in different places and were not in a position to be together because of it. The timing couldn't work.

Faulting Ian for prioritizing his mental health is unfair, and not something Mickey would be okay with. But people see Ian falling apart at the end of season seven and beginning of eight, and they think that means everything Ian said at the border was bullshit.

But what I see is a deep, uncontrollable pain triggered by the loss of Mickey, the love of his life, and the loss of his mother—both permanently, or so he thought at the time.

Ian is private and he struggles with showing and being honest about his feelings even among his family. But if you pay attention, he is fucking broken after losing Mickey. Both in season six and in seasons seven and eight.

But then, there are also people who seem to just hate Ian to hate Ian, and I think this is generally where these sentiments come from. In the eyes of people who truly believe Ian doesn't love Mickey enough, nothing Ian ever does will be good enough.

But Ian LOVES Mickey. He has since season one. That has never stopped. That has never lessened. Mickey has always been Ian's one, and always will be. Just like Ian is Mickey's one, and always will be.

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