#carmen iasip

[onthecrosslook]

recent sunny requests I did! artemis, cricket, and carmen ☺️

[egonkula]

have you ever drawn carmen??? if yes where can i find, if no this is my formal request. pretty please i think she'd look so cute in yr style <3

omg I can't believe I haven't drawn her before!!!

[lixxen]

Ngl I'm thinking about the fact that Mac was actually interested in Carmen, even after he found out she was trans.

Mac literally did research into bottom surgery and how it works. He put time and effort into learning about anatomy and probably even more into hormone treatment! Mac is also notably religious! During the time she's introduced, trans people were treated way worse than they are now. So a religious guy (who is ableit a repressed closeted gay with a splash of internalized homophobia low-key) being into a trans woman while knowing she's trans is such a huge thing

Sunny typical casual slurs and peanut gallery aside, so far where I am in the series (S5E12) they've treated Carmen really well as a character. Like... Genuinely she's one of my favorite representations of trans women in media. She's unapologetically a woman who is proud of being trans, temporarily with a man who is obviously conflicted slightly but still cares somewhat about her (she's with her husband now where I'm at, but you know what I mean). He cares enough to keep her around and learn about her surgeries.

Also? Literally no character calls her by he/him. Literally none. It shocked me that they didn't have Frank he/him her. They make a point to be like "no. She's just a woman who temporarily had a dick" it feels like. Her huge dick is the only thing they genuinely poke at towards her being trans. And Mac not wanting to be open about being with her seems to stem from how his friends will react and probably internalized homophobia since we know he ends up coming out as gay

Idk guys. I think about Mac and Carmen a lot. I know she's one of the ones who come out fine in the end. And I just... I love that. RCG really popped off with her character

[dick-chugger]

I know it was meant to be funny but I love the fact that Carmen just had a huge dick. Like here's this gorgeous woman with big tits and also SHE'S PACKING. How am I supposed to not fall in love.

[charhuahuakelly]

Happy pride to Carmen in particular <3

(my piece for The Gang Finds Their Pride zine by @its-always-ziney-in-philadelphia )

[wizardwiener]

carmen being the only person to escape the gang unscathed is certified iconic and an accurate representation of trans power

[eiasisreal]

I freaking love her LOOK AT HERRR and mac is so funny in the early seasons

[earthwormstew]

silly early seasons side characters

[visorforavisor]

so, the press release for series (we don’t call them seasons my side of the Atlantic) sixteen of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia says Dee “fights for […] women’s athletics”, and FX have said this series is going to “rip into the headlines” and that “a few figures from the past rear their heads”.

so. theory time. prediction time.

Carmen’s back?

what is constantly in the news at the minute (especially in the States), supposedly threatening women’s athletics? trans athletes! I can’t think of anything else, except for the occasional claim that athletes are, ahem, artificially improving their performances, but that’s hardly specific to women’s athletics. the only thing I can think of for this to mean is that Dee wants trans women out of women’s sports. (there might be other things. I just can’t think of them.)

Carmen, of course, is the trans woman whom Mac on-and-off dates for a while early in the show and is generally super rude to, and for whom Dee carries a surrogate pregnancy. (figure from the past.)

my prediction is that Dee and Carmen (or just, you know, some generic trans woman, but it’s way better if it’s Carmen, for reasons I’ll touch on later) are competing in the same athletic event, and Carmen does better than Dee. Dee subsequently wants Carmen eliminated from said event because she’s convinced she, Dee, deserved Carmen’s spot.

of course, we the audience know Carmen’s just… a good sportsperson (series six episode one, Mac Fights Gay Marriage: she is multiple times found working out very hard at the gym), and Dee isn’t particularly, and Dee doing worse than Carmen in a sporting event would be far more down to this than at all to do with Dee being cis and Carmen being trans.

but Dee really, really strikes me as the sort of pseudo-feminist to support trans people (series thirteen episode six, The Gang Solves the Bathroom Problem: she says she’d have no problem sharing a bathroom with a trans woman)… until certain things happen. like doing worse in a sports competition than one. conditional support, right? conditional acceptance? she’d be a really, really good character to represent people who only support the trans rights that are totally and completely convenient to them already.

Dee is repeatedly shown as the type of supposed feminist who actually is only in favour of women like her (White, rich, yadda yadda yadda) and not intersectional rights (series six episode five, Mac and Charlie: White Trash: her support of marginalised people does not extend to working-class people in the cheaper pool; series thirteen episode six, The Gang Solves the Bathroom Problem: she thinks she’s a trans ally but still refers to intersex people as hermaphrodites; series eleven episode nine, The Gang Goes to Hell: Part 1: she’s so non-compassionate to female survivors of assault that she’s willing to pretend to be this in order to coerce consent from men, which is assault; series thirteen episode four, Time’s Up for the Gang: it’s revealed that she assaulted a member of the Gang; series seven episode one, Frank’s Pretty Woman: she’s rude about sex workers).

I expect this type of behaviour includes trans people too.

I have good faith that, if they did do this plot, the show would take Carmen’s side. this is not least because they’ve taken her side literally every time she’s appeared in an episode before, but also because Sunny likes to subvert expectations and I think taking the side of the transphobes would be too obvious for them. they’d want to go against what all of the headlines are saying. they’re pretty good (in general) at not punching down.

I hope this is what that plotline turns out to be, because there are so many things I’d love to see in it. Mac interacting with Carmen again, post-coming-out? could be so fascinating! so many ways that conversation could go! I also think Mac would be pretty likely to try and take the other side to Dee on this and be trans-supportive as he likes to be the righteous one on matters where he can play the gay card (series thirteen episode six, The Gang Solves the Bathroom Problem: he insists he as a gay man deserves a special bathroom, as well as correcting the Gang on terminology for intersex people), despite the clear hypocrisy here because in previous encounters with Carmen he’s been pretty nasty about her being trans. (however, in The Gang Solves the Bathroom Problem, I really love the detail that he talks about trans people while Dennis and Dee talk about transgender people. such a tiny thing that shows Mac has been spending time in the queer community.) I’d also be very interested to see where Dennis, Charlie, and Frank stand on it. (my guesses are that Dennis would probably go against Dee just because, Frank would be very antiquated about the whole thing leading to Mac having to exasperatedly explain it to him, and Charlie honestly wouldn’t give a shit.) I also just miss my girl Carmen! give Mac some queer friends!

as a side note, I (a trans person) actually really love Carmen’s portrayal throughout the show. Mac Fights Gay Marriage is often misinterpreted as calling Mac gay for being with Carmen, but in reality the Gang say this because it’s so completely not true that this would make him gay (he wasn’t being implied as such yet really), in order to point out how nonsensical it is for Mac to call Carmen’s husband gay. it’s a sort of “well, by your absolute bullshit logic, that would make you gay too, dumbass” thing. the only two minor gripes I have are Carmen being played by a cis actor (I totally forgive them; it wasn’t widely known in 2005 that you should use trans performers for trans roles, plus it’s a cis woman rather than a cis man) and her total lack of reaction to being called a certain slur so often (not that I think the Gang wouldn’t use it, more that this pulls me out of the reality, but McElhenney, Day, and Howerton have said they didn’t know this was a slur, so that explains that). Carmen is consistently defended by the plot and writing, and people like Mac are made to look horrific in the way they treat her. I’ll write a whole thing about it one day, probably. I love her. I just love how nice she is.

anyway. this got so long and rambly, but I hadn’t seen anyone else with this theory so I thought I’d post it!

edits: fixed something I mistyped. also, someone pointed out this could be the bowling pictures we’ve seen, which would make total sense!

[fatmaclover]

a little compilation of Carmen being cute from season 1 episode 4, "Charlie Has Cancer", for @pariskim :) all screenshots taken by me! they suck and are inconsistent. im sorry

+ this one is just pretty

[lamelaybe]

he should've said this instead of his heinous pick up line

that one post by @ratcoffin69

[melad0rimagpie]

Really?

[badn3w]

I always get whiplash watching Mac's relationship with Carmen because she is the only person we've ever seen be unapologetically into Mac and in turn we see him get all nervous and giddy and it's so ahhhhh and then he immediately ruins it twice

[lovrbooy]

i draw them a lot

[deeenjoyer]

sunny episode titled 'dennis fights gay marriage' and its dennis doing everything in his power to stop mac from marrying his boyfriend while insisting the entire time that it's for his own selfish self-preservation and not because he's in gay love with mac