I just need eveyone to know that if you are a Harry Potter fan casually like nostalgia and the occasional watch or read because you liked it when it came out I have no beef with you.
BUT OMFG
• If you are a ‘I come up with reasons why bullies who had 3 pages of book time are lgbtq icons and are kissing’
• or ‘Harry potter is my grand hyper fixation here’s why it’s super extra really good and has no flaws’
• or ‘I project my own feelings onto these characters so bad I’ve ship of theseus’ed them into well written well thought out diverse characters and forgetten how bland they are and I Defend them with my life’
• or ‘I think that a rich racist white boy should kiss the girl he bullies and calls slurs because actually he’s just misunderstood’
AND THEN YOU COME ONTO MY BLOG AND TAG MY ART OF MY BLORBOS WITH YOUR SHIPS THEN YOU SHOULD EXPLODE.
This has to stop happening I don’t care who you are you can get your deer symbolism somewhere the fuck else.
OP IS TRANS. OP ISN’T WHITE.
If op was in Harry Potter they’d be named some shit like ‘ feminia biologico’
Stop coming on here with your transphobic racist ahh fandom. This has been my Ted talk.
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On one hand it's kind of funny on the other hand it's mostly just in enraging that I'm just stating basic facts about how the Public Domain works that anyone who knows anything about the public domain will be able to tell you instantly, but people don't believe it suddenly because it's about Mickey Mouse now instead of an obscure character like Dr. Bird who doesn't even exist on a single Wikipedia page so now all of a sudden it seems that these basic statements that have always been true about the Public Domain for as long as it has existed seem completely unreasonable and miraculous and can't actually exist in our capitalist reality.
I promise you, the rules of the Public Domain do not suddenly cease to exist just because we're talking about Mickey Mouse instead of Gunga the Mars man.
It has gotten to the point where the fearmongering misinformation about Mickey Mouse is making people think that the Public Domain doesn't even actually exist in the first place and that these rules have never applied! The Disney propaganda is retroactively destroying the Public Domain in people's minds! Make it stop!
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Alrighty, time to get into my theory about how each of Rory’s three main love interests represent different versions of the bad boy trope! So, I’ve seen some discourse about how certain characters are not actually bad boys and how others are and how that relates to Rory, and it made me go into this big reflection over what defines the bad boy archetype and how it’s changed from iteration to iteration. Long story short: it made me realize that all three of the boys (yes all of them) are one version each. So here’s a massive rant where I explain how that works, with Dean as the «good boy gone bad», Jess as the «bad boy made human» and Logan as the «rich bad boy».
Note: I am writing this as someone who ships literati, so know that my analysis will be biased. That being said, I want to focus on how the boys inform the bad boy archetype (and the other way around) and not on the value of their relationships to Rory. So think of this as a defense/deconstruction of certain characters rather than another round of «who should Rory have ended up with?».
Out of all the boys, Dean is the one who is rarely defined as a bad boy, and with good reason. Seasons 2 and 3 played him up as the «good» against Jess’ «bad», he is routinely described as the perfect first boyfriend (and by Lorelai no less), and he’s the one with the most traditional small town outlook on things (liking the concept of a housewife, being a chaste boyfriend in the first round, getting along with the parents etc). But that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people despised him by the end of the show, since he cheated on his wife with Rory and made her the other woman. And I think this very action is what solidifies him within the good boy gone bad-trope. I haven’t found a lot of writing on this sub-trope (although one could argue it falls under the face-heel turn trope), and it has very vague limits, but I believe that it exists anyway. A good boy gone bad is a male character that started out in a piece of fiction as all around «good». He respects rules, gets along with parents, might even be a bit of a «nice guy» with/without the entitlement. But something in the story (sometimes a build up) will trigger the good boy’s transformation into a bad one. Sometimes it’s getting sick of being an outsider/underdog, sometimes it’s triggered by romantic conflict. I would argue that this transformation begins for Dean when Jess and Rory get together. While Dean has been a jealous and arguably possesive boyfriend before he breaks up with Rory, he still hasn’t done anything that properly makes him a “bad boy”. But once Rory and Jess are a couple everything changes: he threatens Jess in private, insinuates that he can manipulate the situation to his favour and that he can «steal her back», physically fights Jess at one point and arguably marries Lindsay in part to rouse jealousy in Rory. This transformation is fulfilled once he has sex with Rory for the first time while still being married. He might continue keeping the good boy image, and his infidelity is definitely turned into something that harms Rory’s image more than his, but his actions still qualify for the subtrope. (I also want to note that Dean is introduced in season 1 with a leather jacket and love of motorcycles so… do what you will with that information)
In spite of how often Jess is defined as the bad boy of the show — and by other characters in the show at that — a lot of viewers don’t actually think of him as one. And that’s understandable. I think a lot of people in my generation and onwards have grown up with very simplistic iterations of bad boys that follow the formula to a T. They’re aggressive, violent, wildly sexual and usually downright toxic (see: After-series, Jacob post-transformation in Twilight, 90% of erotica novels). And the women in these stories usually exist to «give in to animalistic urges» and heal the bad boys with their love. Taking even the quickest glance at Rory and Jess shows you how this is not the case. He’s more basket case than sex god, is repeatedly denied second chances at love with Rory, and has to heal and improve without her, out of frame. But I don’t necessarily think this makes him less of a «bad boy». While I despise the overuse of the term «realism» in popular media analysis, Jess is arguably a «realistic bad boy». He embodies most classic bad boy tropes (if not all of them), but each trope is then humanized within him. Jess gets into fights, but the two moments we know about in detail are with a bully and with Dean (and both fights are initiated by the others, not Jess). He’s the first boyfriend that Rory acknowledges/explores her sexuality with, but they never technically consumate (and good for Rory, the Keg! Max! scene is a massive yikes). He’s a high school drop-out, but because he worked too many shifts at Walmart. He reads classic literature (yes, a lot of bad boys in media do this) but is a total nerd about it (see: Bukowski v Austen). He has mommy- and daddy-issues, but they are fleshed out and given the space to exist on their own rather than as in relation to Rory and making her love him more. And while he heals through love, it is not through the active romantic love of Rory, but the familial love of Luke and his eventual love for himself. A crucial factor for Jess is that he gets to exist outside of the romance. His most important relationship in the show is perhaps not with Rory but with his uncle Luke. It is this relationship that introduces him to Stars Hollow and it’s this relationship that officially heals him. The last time we see Jess in the original run, when Rory admits to trying to hook up with him as revenge against Logan, Jess claims that he deserves better. And he does. He’s a human, and more than that, he has spent years working to become the person he has become and to get a chance at a loving and respectful relationship. Jess still loves Rory enough when he lets her go to not hold a grudge, but he also now loves himself enough to know he deserves better than to be the other guy twice. He is the bad boy made human.
But whenever people argue that Jess isn’t a bad boy, they usually claim that another boy in the show is. And while I still think Jess is a bad boy, I don’t think that means that Logan isn’t one. Logan simply fits into a very specific subtrope: the rich bad boy. I can’t trace the origins of the rich bad boy, but my (and probably many’s) first introduction to the trope was Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl. Where the classic bad boy has a problem of reputation and in some cases specifically struggles economically, the rich bad boy is partly bad because of his wealth. The daddy issues come from a tyrannical capitalist father who expects his son to be a carbon copy. Instead of a motorcycle he drives limousines and expensive cars. His sexuality is informed by lavish parties, a casanova-lifestyle and general hedonism. While the classic bad boy drags the woman «down» into his world, the rich bad boy drags her «up» into his world of wealth and «civilized» violence. The woman exists to bring the rich bad boy «down to earth». To teach him values of fidelity and kindness, and to show him he is more than his money/work. And as a reward the woman gets to live out the materialistic fantasy: expensive gifts, exclusive balls, luxurious trips around the globe, you name it. If the classic bad boy is about the inherent eroticism of anger/violence, the rich bad boy is about the inherent eroticism of wealth. And Logan fits this archetype to a T. His initial relationship with Rory is «no strings attached», he apologizes with expensive gift giving, and he introduces her to exclusive hedonistic circles like the Life and Death Brigade. He cheats, he recklessly gets into dangerous situations to simply feel something, he has a dysfunctional relationship with his father, and he loves Rory partly because she simultaneously does and doesn’t «belong» in his world. I also think that either end for him (breaking out of his father’s shadow or falling back in it) is realistic for the rich bad boy. Which end he gets simply depends on whether the author desires an endgame relationship for the rich bad boy or not.
So that’s it. Mind you, me categorizing Rory’s boyfriends as different kinds of bad boys doesn’t necessarily mean I would tie them exclusively to that trope. The Gilmore Girls writers did an incredibly good job at writing fleshed out characters that grew outside of their stereotypes and created their own molds. And one could argue that if you make the definition of a bad boy broad enough, most flawed boyfriends will fit into the trope in some way. That being said, I’m currently standing by my analysis. Not only do I think it’s fun to view the guys through such a lens, I think it helps flesh out Rory too. She isn’t necessarily drawn to ‘bad’ men, but her track record does show that she deals with a lot of inner conflict about her love life, and that this is externalized with incredibly flawed (and sometimes ill-timed) relationships to men who have a lot to figure out themselves. Honestly I’ll probably pull a full analysis on her love life one day too, just not yet.
At the end of the day I think who people root for depends on what kind of bad they’re either drawn to or willing to excuse. If you like the idea of someone going mad/bad with love, you might prefer Dean. If you like a character who is undeniably human (as in has good sides but can be so so so flawed), odds are you’re a Jess-person. And if there’s just something about grand gestures and finding a «real» person in a sea of «fake», you’re probably a fan of Logan. It really is a case of personal preference.
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