I've always wanted to talk about how the gilmore girls fandom dismiss the parentification rory faced just bc it came in a sparkly pink label where she got to enjoy other perks like eating whatever she wanted and getting cool clothes and books.
now this is NOT lorelai slander, she's a flawed but well intentioned mother, and she did the best she could. I just wanna tap into the psychology of it all and how the fandom treats rory so unfairly.
the fandom is all about nuance and "two things can be true" unless it comes to rory and are just devoid of any empathy towards her even when she was a teenager! the scene where lorelai drags rory to a trip after the max incident was the most annoying thing ever for me bc of the lack of empathy people have for her.
maybe it's extra triggering to watch the responses for me bc my mom often treated me like a therapist too and would get upset when I acted like my age and refused to play her emotional caretaker (she also did the waking me up in my sleep to emotionally dump on me thing 😭)
but rory dealt with the situation the BEST she could for her age! she didn't ask lorelai about max the whole trip and only did when they got into bed, lorelai gets angry when she's not being allowed to sleep (which is something she literally did to rory like hours before) and flips the switch to teenage daughter after treating her like a best friend up until that point, how is rory not supposed to be confused? lorelai blurs the lines like crazy here, rory is her teenage daughter who she pulled in the middle of the night to help her get over the breakup, but also didn't share details, but also wanted rory to just go along and not be upset as a child.
two things can be true, lorelai provided for rory, made sure she had everything, and loved her, but it can also be true that rory was often put in situations where she had to take over the emotional caretaker role and wasn't allowed to be upset at situations or let her emotions out. she was expected to be the mature one in their relationship.
the scene was the perfect example of why rory turned out to be such a people pleaser in the later seasons and I wish the fandom understood this
people deny that she was parentified bc "lorelai didn't intend to" and it would make her look like a villian, but parentification isn't always intentional / or some calculated move. lorelai didn't mean to hurt her, but you don't have to mean to hurt someone to hurt them.