#tslocg thoughts

[laufire]

Wait fangless with consent issues? explain a bit! I’m intriqued with what you mean with tslocg

Everything about Whitney's storyline with the coach was... yeah, fangless. Meaningless. And it's not like you can't interpret some of it as her being in denial or having lingering effects but with how heavy-handed just about everything else in the show is I doubt they're actually trying to do something nuanced or long-term about it tbh.

I'm also side-eyeing how Bela sleeping with that grown-ass comedian guy was portrayed tbh. It's like nobody saw any issue there? Which granted, is tragically not uncommon, sure, but... idk. Maybe that last scene with Bela signals it'll go somewhere with it but again: this show doesn't exactly seem to have long-term goals so. Eh.

And yes they did touch on it with Bela's season 1 storyline but tbh I found it pretty surface-deep at the end of the day. They could've done more with it.

OTOH. I guess they do only have 10 episodes. So once again, abandoning 22+ episodes-long seasons has screwed us all!

[lesliesknopes]

I don’t think Bela and Eric are over yet. Yes their relationship may be (for now) but they’ll fall back together in the end. They have a lot of growing to do on both ends. Individually and together.

It wasn’t right for Eric to overshadow Bela with Dan. She has to work a lot harder than him due to him being far more privileged than her. And she is even doing unpaid work as an assistant to try and reach the top while he what… talks to the guy for a few minutes.

That being said I’m not excusing Bela cheating. But it almost makes sense for her character?? She has never been a character to do things in halves e.g going straight to fwb instead of a slowburn with Eric.

Hooking up with Dan is probably the only way she thinks she will be able to further her career. Like in season 1 when she slept with people to get into the Catullan. She has always felt like she has had to use her body in some way to achieve her goals, so she is just repeating an action that has been successful before.

I just hope one of the girls (maybe Leighton) encourages her to speak to a professional about this because what she’s doing isn’t healthy and is going to lead to a lot more hurt down the line.

And there are clearly going to be repercussions that will probably result in a break up.

One thing that I really didn’t like was that Dan is someone who is clearly much older than Bela. Why is he interested in having sex with a 18/19 year old. I know it’s legal and all, but it still feels a little icky.

[mendls-bakery]

leighton finally said “i’m a lesbian” and not “i’m gay” it’s about time

[furoruisa]

One of the most realistic things of Ep4 is how Leighton didn't know about STDs between girls.

And we don't talk about this enough is that one of the worst consequences of a sex education focused on pregnancy protection (and dicks), is that many women and nb people seriously believe that it is okay to do it without protection when your partner doesn't have a penis, which causes us to be vulnerable to contracting STDs

[onefinedayirise]

Everyone is so mad at Bela for cheating and no one's pointing out that a 35 year old man thought it was okay to hook up with an 18 year old girl because he was going to give her an unpaid internship?

[tuiyla]

So apart from seeing Leighton in more in calc, killing it with her maths genius, the thing I most want from her in season 2 is an exploration of what it means to leave her “old’ life behind. We saw in season 1 how terrified she was of things changing if she came out; she knew perfectly well how her life would inevitably change if people knew the truth. With the encouragement of Kimberly and eventually her other friends, she’s now out on campus and living her best hoe life, but as sudden as that change of pace felt I don’t mind it precisely because I think she’s still very much in the process of fully accepting the way things are going to be different. At least I hope the season is going where I think it is.

Case in point: she’s not yet out to her family. We know from the conversation she has with her dad in the car that she didn’t tell them over Thanksgiving and she shows no intention of leaving this campus bubble she’s created. Leighton being out on campus is a great step but anyone who’s had to come out about some aspect of their identity knows that coming out isn’t a single step. It’s a process you don’t ever really stop doing and now with Leighton’s life being divided into two, college and back home with her family, she’s in the “halfway there” stage in terms of telling the most important people. But she’s not showing any signs of wanting to tell her family.

To be clear, I don’t fault Leighton at all here. She’s very freshly out to her friends and the campus itself and is just enjoying not having to hide and fuck suburban moms in secret. But I think it’s interesting to think of what direction Leighton and her relationship with the Murrays might be leading into, particularly now that she’s successfully made it into Kappa. That’s right, I’ve been leading up to the sorority question all along. I believe Kappa will play a major part in Leighton facing her remaining demons and coming out to her family. I come to this conclusion because Kappa so far has been emblematic of Leighton’s aspirations and the perfect New England family the Murrays have envisioned. We saw early on in season 1 how intense Leighton was about rushing Kappa but here in season 2 we find out that her mom was a Kappa, too. And, in light of Nico’s expulsion and the subsequent dent in the great Essex Murray family dream, Leighton is even more hell bent on making it to Kappa, explicitly because it will please her mom. Though she’d expressed interest in Kappa long before this, I’m taking the liberty to infer it’s always been about her mom and more generally the Murray family’s ideals.

We’ve only seen the whole Murray family interact briefly in the Parents’ Weekend episode, and within that the brief but all the more impactful one-on-one scene between Leighton and her mother. In that scene, a lot is implied about Mrs. Murray and their relationship, too much to really dive into in this post. What’s important is that we see Leighton joke about her mother’s “quirks” and take it back immediately, and in turn her mother comparing the two of them with the sort of contempt reserved for rich housewives of dysfunctional families and their only daughters. Come season 2 and Leighton has her mother in her phone as “The Babadook” and yet admits that the rush means so much to her because it’s a way to appease the Babadook herself. And, like I said, a way to play into the Murray family ideal.

Going back to the point of this post which is Leighton’s coming out, I think this now explicit connection between making it into Kappa and trying to live up to Murry family expectations doesn’t bode well for Leighton. I say that because both episodes, in season 1 and now in season 2 that dealt with her intensity about Kappa have shown Leighton turn into a worse version of herself. In this latest episode it was of course her being a total bitch to Natalie; more generally to everyone she’s hooked up with recently because she failed to inform them about her chlamydia, but Natalie especially. So concerned with Kappa and a successful rush, Leighton completely disregarded Natalie as not only a past partner but as a person. And though the public shaming that came her way was probably enough of a comeuppance for Leighton, she still ultimately gets Kappa. After all, isn’t that what she was so preoccupied with even at the KissMass party? Not so much the public shaming of it all or even that her sexual encounters with women are now public knowledge, but how it affected her chances at Kappa specifically.

I did find that curious, that lack of concern with the lesbianism of it all. Not because I think we need Leighton to still be cautious about her queerness on campus and at Kappa, but because season 1′s sorority episode also saw her lose sight of everything else in favour of this ultimate Kappa goal. I’m of course talking about the fact that, because of the conversation(s) she had at Kappa, Leighton gave in to comphet and went on that date with Cory, even having sex with him despite herself. A true low point for her in season 1, now here she is in season 2, now out to the campus but still giving into the sorority dream and giving her own best self up in the process. Sure, Leighton is more so her authentic self now but we’ve seen how the promise of Kappa compromises her character. The influence that Kappa and Quinn have had on her so far is decidedly bad - maybe inadvertently so but by playing into archaic notions that the very essence of Greek life is built on, also inevitably so. Side note: the Kappa head bitch is called Quinn, really? Driving me mad on purpose.

All this to say, now that Leighton is a Kappa and she can tell her family and make them happy in the process, I think it will only lead to her having to confront the very issue she was sobbing to Kimberly about at the end of last season. Kappa is the representation of the Murray’s perfect Essex family ideal, incredibly fragile after Nico’s fall from grace. It’s the representation of the life Leighton always thought she’d have, the one she should have and the one she not so long ago in season 1 thought she could only get by playing into heteronormativity and repressing her true self. Leighton’s still very much terrified of things changing, just like she told Kimberly, and she’ll be realizing that soon enough. There’s no way she can have her Kappa life and present this straight front to her parents while also now having a taste of what being out feels like. I simply don’t believe that after that low point in season 1 being so closely tied with Kappa, that after emphasizing her mother’s connection with the sorority so much and after seeing what it all brings out Leighton, after all this Kappa won’t play a role in Leighton eventually coming out to her family.

This is all speculation at this point but I think Leighton is bound to make a few more mistakes as a result of her devotion to Kappa before she sees this house of cards crumble and is forced to realize that all this is part of the life she doesn’t want to have anymore. I definitely think it will take time before she’s ready to be out to her family and therefore rid of the expectations the Murrays may want but she doesn’t, but I think it will come eventually. The arc I see for her right now is doing the Kappa thing, going too far, getting called out by her roommates, having a mini-crisis about what it is she really wants and realizing that it’s not Kappa. It’s not what her parents expect of her and it’s not the life she was once so terrified of losing by being different. Nico being gone from Essex adds extra pressure on her to make her parents happy but that will just make this story all the more interesting. And I realize that there’s only so much the remaining six episodes can do, especially with all the three other main girls having their own things going on. Kimberly with her financial problems and looking for solutions, Bela with The Foxy, and Whitney on her self-discovery journey both in terms of academics and relationships. In this sense, I think the season so far has given Leighton the loosest storyline so far, but because of everything I’ve written in this post I believe that will focus on the Kappa journey and an eventual coming out to her family. Building on what these four episodes have established and this last one in particular is the only way to give Leighton a tight storyline this season.

In my opinion, anyway. But I’m just a very recent fan who spends too much time thinking about fictional lesbians and not a TV writer, so who knows. I just had this thought of Kappa being the key, first in a negative then positive way after rewatching the latest episode and remembering the sorority’s role in Leighton’s season 1 arc. Now that the show has looped it back to Mrs. Murray and rushing being something Leighton does for external validation reasons, I just can’t see it going well and can’t see it not tying into her ongoing coming out process.

[ggukcangetit]

ok I have one more take. regarding bela and eric

[attackoneyebrows]

there’s a lot of polarizing takes on alicia and tatum but it’s really not black and white like alicia is better for leighton’s personal development, but kinda reinforces this weird notion that gays all have to be super open / showy about it and on the other hand, tatum has great chemistry w leighton, and is pretty chill abt giving people their own space to process things, but is also just kinda an asshole.

like you can make the argument that alicia didn’t give leighton enough space and could have handled it better (also valid that she didn’t wanna feel closeted again) or that tatum has the propensity to be less of an asshole over time with leighton’s help (but also does leighton wanna be dragged back into that world again) but at the end of the day people are all things good and bad.

personally i’m not ultra invested in either relationship - i mostly just care about leighton’s own char development, which felt super rushed in the last 2 eps but whatever that’s a whole diff topic.

[danystargaryens]

I dont think i’ve ever been more fucking tired of a trope then 2 friends that are women falling in love with the same guy. or friend 1 breaks up with Said guy, and then friend 2 dates him.

[laufire]

the lack of self-awareness of some people smh 😔

[scre6m]

LEIGHTON/ALICIA BACK?

[cinnamorwll]

𝙬𝙚𝙡𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙮 𝙗𝙡𝙤𝙜… ᕱᕱ

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[mendls-bakery]

the fact that alicia only hit leighton up again after she heard she came out makes me fucking hate her and tatum was so chill when leighton wasn’t out to her dad “there’s no timeline on coming out” she was superior on that front she just was 🤷‍♀️

[trademarkstraggler]

Ok yep just watched them while working and that's fucked :)

I havent seen the new tslocg eps yet but reports are not looking good in the beric arena

[randomcactaceae]

no thoughts just TSLOCG EP 5 WHERE THEY KISS!

i'm obsesseddddd