an open letter to the shameless fandom

captain-charlie:

or a tl;dr about my feelings over karen jackson and her relationship with lip during this seasons because some people need to put their big boy and girl pants and get the fuck over it.

so, after seeing a shitload of opinions on thee matter, i decided to address the subject: first of all, i love karen. i think she’s a great character - a complex, realistic and flawed one at that, but great regardless. now i’m going to talk about some of the stuff i’ve seen being said about her that really annoyed me.

karen is a slut. yes, she is. but i don’t mean that in the way the majority of the fandom does. it’s not about shaming her for enjoying sex. what annoys me about this is the double standards people use regarding her and lip, when they were never exclusive and he’s the one who’s in love, not her (i’ll get on it later). pretty much every character on the show is a slut, the men included. they fuck around with a lot of people, sometimes random people, and they do it with no regard for their safety or anyone elses (as in, unprotected sex with married people). does that lessen any of them? no. it makes them flawed and it makes them human. karen has “whore” tattooed on her arm, and she sleeps around a lot. does that make her “not worthy” of lip? no, it doesn’t. he’s no saint either.

she fucked with lip’s head all season. except she didn’t. karen made it clear from the start she only wanted lip for sex because she wasn’t sleeping with jodi. once she got married, she tried to break it off with him, but lip wouldn’t listen. furthermore, once she said she was pregnant, she made it very clear that the baby most likely wasn’t lip’s, that she didn’t want his help for dealing with it and that she would be giving it up. as much as the scene broke my heart, when she tells him “you just wanted (the baby) to be (yours)”, she was right. lip had this need to prove he wasn’t his dad, but as it turned out, he wasn’t even a dad.

she’s selfish for wanting her mum to choose. oh really? karen had a dad that treated her terribly, called her a whore and turned his back on her. people seem to forget karen is a 16 year old girl, who got pregnant by accident. how dare she ask her own mother to choose between her and a baby she didn’t even want in the first place?

she gave up on lip/he gave up on her. karen didn’t give up on lip. she never even wanted lip. did i ship them? yes, and i still do. but she never told him that she loved him, she never cared about his feelings (i.e. sleeping with frank) and, imo, the only reason she kept lip around and didn’t tell him to go fuck himself was because she knew he loved her. and karen is horribly insecure - she needs to know that the people she has in her life love her. everything starts to go down when her dad tells her she’s a whore and leaves, then her mum chooses the baby over her, jodi chooses her mum over her, and at the end of the day, karen knows lip will end up choosing someone else and leaving her too, so she gets out before he has a chance to. because i do believe karen cares about him, even if i don’t think she’s in love with him. as for lip, it wasn’t about giving up on her as much as it was about letting her go. lip knows he can’t force her to stay and love him, so he doesn’t try to. there a quote that describes it perfectly for me: “you were worth the fight, but i couldn’t fight forever”.

in conclusion, stop giving her grief for treating lip like shit. karen is a scared, insecure teenage girl, rejected by both her parents and with no one to confide in and a boy that wants to be with her but because he’s in love with the idea of her, not with who she really is. i’d treat lip like shit if i was in her place too. he is no saint either, and people seem to forget that because he’s suffering. well, guess what, so is she. every time she saw her mum with the baby you could read the pain in her face because she just wants her mummy to tell her that it will go away and everything will be ok, but she doesn’t.

do is want them to be together? frankly, i don’t know anymore. a lot of issues would have to be solved for me to get on board with this ship again, but for now i think lip needs to take a break from mandy and karen and all the drama and go do something good with his life and karen needs to find someone who supports her and takes care of her and breaks through her insecurities (a grandma, perhaps?). both characters deserve nice things, just not necessarily together.

supergeekygirl:

I feel like Lip gets her, but can’t express the way he feels about her. If they were capable of communicating in an truthful way, they’d be way less messed up.

I know some people hate Karen, and I don’t blame them, but I don’t. Her point of view wasn’t explored nearly enough this season, but the way I see it, Karen pushes people away and does the worst things so she’s in control of how they see her, like she prefers them to hate her than pity her, she doesn’t let herself be vulnerable and show anything good about her, but beneath the surface she’s completely lost and alone and has the lowest self esteem. She’s unable to count on anyone to be there for her and she doesn’t let anyone in because she probably doesn’t like herself. I really hope she comes back and turns things around a bit, i’d like better things for this girl.

You know, you’re going to regret this.

you’re gonna regret this.

#s #o #s