#literati meta

[weepynymph]

ALSO

I've just noticed when lorelai and rory are fighting about rory sleeping with dean, the exact point at which rory storms out and says 'i hate you for ruining this for me!' is after lorelai says 'but you broke up with him [dean]. you picked someone else.'

Like out everything she says that's the thing that has rory running out of the room - the tiniest hint of jess' existence. his name isn't even mentioned.

I will die on the hill that rory sleeping with dean has EVERYTHING to do with what happened with jess the episode before and the fact that she still loves him but wishes she didn't and kind of wishes she'd never met him and by extension never broke up with dean and is trying to put things back the way that they were.

[clerati]

Jess leaves town right after the accident, presumably because he feels guilty about hurting Rory (like everyone said he would). Next episode, Rory is dealing with the fallout. Everyone is blaming Jess and she hates it. Luke has left town to decompress.

At the very end of the episode, Rory says to Luke (who has just returned home) that it wasn't Jess' fault. Jess just left so fast because he felt so guilty and so much self-hate. I'm sure Luke barely got a chance to help him emotionally process the accident.

Rory never got a chance to tell Jess that the accident, that her injured wrist, wasn't his fault.

[weepynymph]

YES! THANK YOU!

Listen, I know it’s really sad that Rory doesn’t run away with Jess when he asks - that scene breaks my heart, I can barely watch it - but it was an INSANE idea born from panic and desperation and she had EVERY RIGHT TO SAY NO.

Asking her to leave Yale? To leave Stars Hollow and never look back? Rory doesn’t want that; and if Jess were in his right mind in that moment he would never have asked her to give those things up. He’s majorly spiralling and I feel for him, but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t advocate for what she wants even if it hurts him.

What Rory actually wants, what she NEEDS from Jess, is not for him to ask her to run away; but to tell her that he NEVER SHOULD HAVE LEFT IN THE FIRST PLACE. That he’s sorry he did that to her, that he won’t do that again. Instead he says

‘We’re meant to be together […] but not here, not Stars Hollow, we have to start fresh.’

and that’s not him taking accountability for how he hurt her, that’s him saying all of their problems would be fixed if they just got away from all the external factors that lead to him leaving. And that’s just not true.

‘I’m ready for this. You can count on me now.’

means less when he’s begging her to jump in the car and leave her life behind - that future is unstable, uncertain, and we already know that Rory doesn’t like uncertainty.

‘As far as I know, I could have said yes, packed my bag, and by the time I got to the car, he would have changed his mind.’

WE know Jess wouldn’t change his mind, that he really means what he’s saying, but Rory doesn’t. Her trust in him is broken, he left her and she’s terrified he’ll do it again, that she won’t recover if she lets him do it again.

And I think that’s why, despite the fact that she still loves him, she says no, that she doesn’t want to be with him. Because she does want him, but not like this.

Actually, I love it when Rory says "No." I think she should have said No more often, as a matter of fact.

[anxiouspotatorants]

Rory liked Dean but she didn’t love him. She liked going on dates with him. She liked that he’d spend time with her and watch movies with her and get along with her mother. But there was no fire, no matter how much she wanted there to be one. She couldn’t burn like she did for exploring the world and the written word. She couldn’t burn for him.

Rory loved Logan but she didn’t like him. She loved his freedom, his adventurous spirit, his lust for life. She loved how she could let herself go with him, put faith in something dangerous and not shatter. But she didn’t like how cruel he could be to others. She didn’t like how dismissive he was, of responsibilities, of consequences, of people’s hurt. She didn’t really like him.

Rory liked Jess and she loved him. She liked that he liked the same stuff as her, liked that he’d help out his uncle without bragging, and talk with her friends, and throw literary challenges at her because he genuinely wanted her opinion. She loved his honesty, his integrity, how he’d leave her speechless with his gaze and breathless with his kisses. How he looked at her, all of her, and never made her feel like she was lacking. She liked and she loved him. And it scared her shitless.

[not-with-you-but-of-you]

GILMORE GIRLS | 2.05 x AYITL “Fall”

The first and last Literati scenes ever being Jess looking at Rory through a glass frame

Requested by @thefirst3chapters

[sarabethsilver]

Jess and Rory were bound to fall apart in S3. They were two teenagers living in a crazy town that put ALL kinds of pressure on them, they were headed down very different paths, and Jess wasn't ready for a relationship at that point. They had to go their separate ways for a bit.

But what really makes them tragic? Is that all of the adults - and eventually Jess and Rory themselves - come to understand their relationship's demise as entirely Jess' fault. And this narrative is really bad for both of them.

We all know Jess' mistakes in this relationship. The show makes a point to blow them up and examine them thoroughly, often with multiple characters chiming in to talk about how terrible Jess is. A single missed phone call, concert tickets purchased for the wrong reason (??), a poorly-timed black eye, a fight with Dean, the fact he left town. All of these choices are discussed and framed as solely Jess' fault. Jess' behaviors get no context. It doesn't matter that he was working late, that Rory yelled at him throughout that dinner, that Dean threw the first punch, or that Luke kicked him out. S3 decidedly concludes with Rory, The Poor Victim and Jess, The Jerk Who Broke Her Heart. The show never re-examines this perspective.

But if you pause and examine Rory's choices throughout their relationship, she doesn't look that good. Their relationship starts with a lie: Rory kissing him, demanding he keep it secret, and then ghosting him for two months. She's really angry with him when she returns, having sincerely expected him to wait around for her while she continued to date Dean. She withdraws her friendship while Jess dates Shane. She yells at him in the street, joining the chorus of townsfolk who publicly dislike him. She eggs his car and mocks him about it. She runs away from their first real kiss with zero explanation. She scolds him for kissing her in public, prioritizing Dean's feelings over her boyfriend's. She lies about Dean repeatedly. She gives him the silent treatment after a single missed phone call. She tricks him into attending dinner with her grandma, then yells at him the whole time. She spends the entirety of Kyle's party mocking Jess while ignoring his increasingly desperate pleas to leave.

Does any of this make Rory a terrible person? No. She's a teenager, and she was in a really complicated, no-win situation concocted by her mother and a slew of Stars Hollow adults who are far too obsessed with the love lives of teenagers. Rory's a people-pleaser and she was desperate to spare everyone's feelings, unable to accept that by nature of this situation: somebody was gonna get hurt no matter what. But in trying to protect everyone, she ended up hurting Jess the most. She doesn't trust him, she doesn't prioritize his feelings, and she doesn't communicate with him. She ultimately follows along with the town narrative that Jess Ruined Everything.

The really sad thing is that this narrative is bad for both of them. Jess ends up feeling like the world's biggest failure, fleeing town without a word and ending up totally alone. Rory ends up feeling like a helpless victim, utterly lacking agency in her own relationships. She is told, over and over again, that her relationship problems were not her fault. That it's normal to sit back, make no effort, and expect to be treated like a princess by a guy who has to read her mind and do absolutely all the work. You can draw a straight line from Rory being Blameless in the Jess breakup, and Rory having an affair with her married ex a year later.

What I would give for an effort to re-examine their relationship toward the end of the series! It would have been good for both of them to understand that they were both kids, they both made mistakes, but they both tried their best. There were no villains here. Just two flawed humans who cared about each other and tried to have a relationship before they were truly ready.

[the-overreactress]

I am so fascinated by the idea that Jess is actively treated differently in the narrative than Rory’s other boyfriends. The fact that no one in the show ever calls him “beautiful,” when he so clearly is, is a part of it, but there are so many other examples of this phenomenon. Why is Jess set up so differently each and every time he appears?

To Dean’s small boy charm and questioning of Rory’s ambition, Jess is intelligent, well-read, and supportive of her dreams to go to Harvard and then Yale. To Logan’s excess/debauchery, inherited wealth, and willful misunderstanding of Rory’s dissatisfaction, Jess is successful through his own hard work. He’s creative, calm, cool, and empathetic, but understandably frustrated and confused by Rory’s decisions.

He always stands in opposition to the others, even so much as to hold a similar space his family dynamics as Rory (generational fodder for their families to place unwanted or unnecessary expectations). It’s really startling to see how often this occurs in both positive and negative ways.

Like, what was the reason(s)? I want to know.

[clerati]

No, no. You don't understand. Jess is taking Rory out on a *date*. This is him trying to look "nice" for her. He's channeling his inner-Dean. He has no idea what he's doing. He doesn't know how to dress casual-preppy. He hadn't figured out yet that he doesn't need to change to impress her, because they haven't even had Teach Me Tonight yet. That's why he looks like that!

thinking about how they styled jess the worst they ever did for one of his most featured episodes

[frazzledsoul]

So I'm thinking right now of an issue that often came up on the Gilmore Girls subreddit, and that I often heard from L/L fans who intensely disliked Jess, which is that Jess was presumptuous to tell Rory in S6 that he "knew her better than anyone", that he only idealized the Rory he knew from high school, that he didn't know or understand her current circumstances at all, that he had no right to encourage her to go back to Yale, and that only Logan really understood the real Rory and knew what was best for her, because (and this is my absolute favorite part of the argument) "Rory likes having nice things and spending money."

I mean, objectively, some of these things are true, because she's spent the last year with Logan and Jess hasn't had much contact with her since high school. And yet...is she happy? Does she want to stay where she is? Is her relationship with Logan doing her much good? Is he doing much of anything to help her claw herself out of that hole? Is he encouraging her to go back to Yale? Is he giving her the push that she needs to fix her life?

And really...can Rory's personality be boiled down to someone who likes to spend money? Because in S6 as in the AYITL era, it seems more of a cushion that keeps her from moving on than anything that's really improving her life, and she only is able to move on when she embraces her roots and returns home to her mom, to Star Hollow, to furthering her goals, even if she doesn't plan to stay home permanently.

ASP writes Logan as part of a toxic cycle, yearning for independence but unable to let go of the advantages he'll have to give up if he leaves. This seems to be a settled reality in AYITL: he can't leave, and she doesn't want to stay in his world, because she'd have to give up too much to live there. Her life is outside of there, and Jess is always an implied part of that future. Logan can't help her claw herself out of that hole because he can't find a way out of it himself.

(Let it be known that S7 does not follow this blueprint and I think Logan can be better than that, but that wasn't in the original game plan).

And Jess? Well, he already did claw himself out of a life he didn't want. So he does know Rory better because he knows why she isn't happy, and he is the right person to inspire her to change her life.

So don't be mad at my boy. He was right!

[butchjess]

Well. hrm. the way they all connect to each other. like it’s all starting to look like a circle of some sort. jess as rory’s mirror/reflection/narrative foil but also jess as he pertains to luke and jess as he pertains to lorelai. luke breaking the church bells luke who says he was troubled but they gave him a chance and just bc a kid has issues doesnt mean they don’t deserve that. luke who is a figure placed against the rest of the town, just in the sense that he is not like them, he does not hold their values, he doesn’t even sound like them. which is of course a result of scott patterson’s new york accent, but adds to this theme anyway. and they use jess to build this picture, because they walk the same and talk the same and they’re stubborn—independent to a near self-endangering degree—and emotionally repressed in the same way and luke himself admits that he spent more time working at his dad’s shop than he did at school, which jess also does. but jess and luke are also. very very different when you get past these similar values that are maybe ingrained into them through different circumstances and same genetic makeup. and in their differences you get a lot of jess and lorelai’s similarities. when it comes to their family dynamics and how it’s affected them in particular. it’s made them independent yes, but it’s also made them hypervigilant, almost paranoid in the way they are allergic to accepting help and especially accepting help from the people who hurt them. jess only goes to his mother’s wedding because luke asks him to, lorelai only asks her parents for money because rory needs it for school. and they, and this is where they differ from luke, don’t know how to trust people and so they don’t know how to talk to people. where luke’s particular brand of emotional constipation comes from a general cluelessness as to how to do it—which is why the tapes helped him so much—lorelai and jess’ come from emotional responses to the situations they grew up in. while it was different—lorelai growing up rich, jess growing up poor—the effect it had on them still resulted in something similar. lorelai with her overbearing manipulative mother and (emotionally) absent father, and jess with his neglecting manipulative mother and (in all senses of the word) absent father. the ways that, despite their effort to distance themselves, they still end up with similar mannerisms to the parent they have the most conflict with (lorelai and her controlling nature + that scene where they have the same nighttime routine, jess and his love for books + tendency to run away). and of course, their romanticism. their big confessions and period drama-esque speeches and, yeah, i do think in a way jess was asking rory to marry him in 4x21. come with me. let’s get married. luke and rory both being the most important people in their lives. literati+javajunkie where they are all melding into each other, and luke is rory and lorelai is jess but on the surface level dynamic luke is jess and lorelai is rory and they are all each other. on accident. by sheer nature of making jess as a character for the sole purpose of interfering with luke and lorelai’s relationship (which means he is important narratively to them both) and by making him rory’s love interest/foil (because ASP casted him before she even had the idea for the character) you have now made an accidental blending of them all together. he is like a skeleton key of a character. Okay. okay.

[disasterbiwriter]

*peeks out from between fingers*

My brain is hatefully piecemeal writing meta wondering if Rory and Jess would have ever worked out because I'm not sure their values align.

Not their tastes. Not their personalities. But their values.

[weepynymph]

Just noticed a lovely little costume detail in this scene and had to share.

Under their fleecy coats Rory and Jess's shirts are pretty much exactly the same shade of purple. I like to kind of read that as a subtle visual cue that while they might be in opposition on the surface (arguing about Luke and the chalk outline prank), under that there's this inherent kinship between them. It's like they're LITERALLY cut from the same cloth.

(Even the way Jess's coat is buttoned up and Rory's is open implying that he's more guarded about his inner self at this stage - god I love the costuming on this show!)

[clerati]

I never thought about it before, but something else happened at Sookie's wedding. Christopher and Lorelei get together (even though he's technically still with Sherri), tell Rory, and then Christopher bails to stand by Sherri due to her pregnancy.

We know from dialogue that Rory feels betrayed and abandoned by this. I wonder if that had anything to do with her inability to leave Dean despite kissing Jess...

[weepynymph]

Oooo see I always thought of it as a little fate moment. I mean narratively it’s HELLA symbolic. Very much in the same way Jess crashing the car Dean built her is some extremely on the nose symbolic writing (which I still love of course).

But I love the idea of her fiddling with it on the bridge so that it falls off! Almost as if she doesn’t feel right wearing it in that moment and so subconsciously feels compelled to take it off.

Speaking of Rory's bracelet, what do you guys think? Did Rory subconsciously and absentmindedly remove it herself while she was sitting on the bridge with Jess? Or did it just fall off in some kind of Fateful accident?

[anxiouspotatorants]

Actually you know what I need to rant about this: while literati is technically a good girl x bad boy dynamic it is written so incredibly well and avoids so many pitfalls and stereotypes that it makes a good girl x bad boy hater like myself (I’m only half joking — I don’t think any trope is inherently good or bad but I tend to dislike most pairings with this dynamic) fall head over heels for their story and relationship.

So much of what makes the two of them work is the contrast between how others perceive them and how they truly are. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people who understand who Rory is as a person (Lorelai, Lane, Paris, Richard and Emily to a certain degree for starters), but she's constantly met with the expectation that she just does good and is supposed to make everyone proud 24/7. Stars Hollow as a group especially are big on this, as seen f. ex. through how Taylor takes Rory's one comment about an inappropriate DVD and twists the whole thing into a censorship crusade and makes Rory its poster-child even though she wants nothing to do with it and tells him so repeatedly. But instead of hearing Rory disagree with him (like he would Lorelai and Luke) he assumes that she actually agrees with him - and why shouldn't she when she's the perfect sunshine paragon of good who would never disagree with her elders? Also her grandparents treat her as incredibly fragile and childlike, like she must be too innocent to ever do anything wrong and so whenever she does something it has to be somebody else's fault (usually Lorelai, but occasionally Jess or whoever else was present). Time and time again Rory is treated like something innocent and naive and weak — but not by Jess. He sees her as a person.

And it obviously goes the other way too. Jess is treated like shit by pretty much everyone else. Either people hate him unprovoked or very much provoked (he did do a lot of pranks in his first few weeks and while I'm a Dean-hater I'm not blind to how much Jess picked fights with him), or they’ve simply given up on him. He tells Rory himself that every authority figure he had back in New York gave up on him too, from teachers to principals to his very own mother. But Rory doesn’t treat him like a lost cause, she treats him like the smart, brilliant and asshole-ish teen that he is. By having faith in him she also often holds him more accountable than others. Where f. ex. Lorelai or the other adults just roll their eyes, Rory physically drags Jess into doing his shifts at the diner. While others write him off, Rory chews Jess’ ear out for not helping Luke more and for willfully making enemies out of the Stars Hollow adults.

They don't put each other on pedestals or below each other. Jess doesn’t try to make a sinner out of Rory and she doesn’t try to make a saint out of him. There’s genuine respect between them. They expect each other to have integrity and treat others with kindness and honesty, and the rest is good old chemistry and common interests.

I particularly love how in so many of their scenes (especially pre-relationship) when they spend time alone they just get to be these goofy nerdy kids. They argue about controversial authors and dig through records shops and eat hot dogs and make fun of each other and try to make each other laugh. It’s not just sexual chemistry as it too often is in a dynamic like this (and often uncomfortably sexual when writing teenagers - looking at you Gossip Girl), and not just well written intellectual chemistry — they have platonic chemistry too. A hell of a lot of it actually.

While I don’t think ASP wrote them through a purely deconstructionist lens on the good girl x bad boy dynamic (if she did plan on writing the dynamic at all), there is something to be said about how where many around them treat them like stereotypes they treat each other like people. To so many people, Rory is a perfect small town princess, a little miss sunshine with booksmarts for days but too delicate and sweet for anything with grit and weight. To a lot of the same people and many more Jess is a pathetic brutish and maniacal lost cause, hell personified in a chainsmoking leather-wearing teenager. But to each other they are actual human beings. Kind and mean and flirtatious and scared and reckless and smart. Rory really thinks that with the right motivation and mindset Jess can be the kind who does (and at the end wrote) incredible things. Jess really believes that with a little more practice and support to step out of her comfort zone she can be the amazing journalist she wishes to be.

They don’t have this stupid «we’re so bad for each other but we can’t stay away» thing that too many trope users rely on and don’t even justify in the plot. Everyone else might think they’re not fit for each other, but they knew they were each other’s person from the very first day.

[not-with-you-but-of-you]

Nothing to see here, just Rory and Jess holding the phones to their hearts after talking to each other

The first picture represents the moment Rory finally begins thinking about acting on her feelings for Jess, and the second one, her resolve to let go of them. It’s Jess who calls on both occasions, but Rory is the one ultimately making the decisions. Of course, she already liked Jess way before she goes to see him in NYC, and will go on loving him long after declaring it’s over (and that she’s not going to pine!), but it all starts and ends with a call.