gaylor swift

Hey there, anon!

I couldn’t have recieved this ask at a better time, because I literally just finished re-watching seasons 3 and 4 of Skins yesterday! 

Thanks for sending this ask, I always love to discuss these topics and I’ve never really had the opportunity to discuss Cook and Effy in-depth before. Strap yourself in, because this is pretty lengthy, but hopefully you’ll enjoy reading my take on it. :)

Cook and Effy are a very complicated ship for me, because part of me thinks they’re very toxic and that practically they could never work as a couple. However, the other part of me thinks that they were only portrayed that way on the surface, and that in actuality, there is no basis for thinking that. Cook and Effy absolutely could’ve worked together if the show had given them that opportunity.

 OH GOD I WOULD LOVE TO TALK ABOUT CEFFY, i’m always down to talk about ceffy.

*cracks knuckles*

i don’t know why this ship that has been basically buried a decade ago has came back to haunt me these days, but listen, it’s just something that happens to me every seven/eight months, when i sit with myself and i think: fuck. cook and effy.

i think about them a lot still.

i think cook and effy are so fascinating. they had such a deeper understanding of each other, a connection that was bigger than love. they had so much burning inside them and while i do agree that being together would perhaps be way too much for them to sustain in the long run, they were also stronger together.

first of all, we can’t forget that effy was mentally very ill, and as i watch and rewatch, i think effy was actually bipolar. she had manic episodes and big crashing down episodes and mood swings, and i recently read some youtube comment analyzing the cook x freddie thing as her mania x depression, and it was a great analysis that i 100% agree with, but anyway!

that sick girl ran away from love so much because she’s always knew that love would make her weak and that it would tear all her defenses down, but at the same time, i think she expected love to save her. 

so she looks at two boys and she’s intrigued by them, and she asks them to play a game--because that was what effy did--and one of them, brave james cook, who lives life hard and fast like she did too and who, different from her, really doesn’t give a fuck about anyone. she admires him for that, she wants to be that as well.

but then this capacity of apparently not caring extends itself to her and she doesn’t know what to do with it. he sleeps with her best friend, he doesn’t give a fuck. she doesn’t know how to do it. and there’s someone else--the other boy who didn’t want to play games--that looks at her all the time and calls her beautiful and who treats her differently than the other boys did.

so she wants freddie, she wants to feel something. she decides to be weak and let the love she (really) felt for freddie, the love she literally ran from, take over her, but in the end it’s not what’s gonna save her. she’s sick, she can’t be saved by that feeling, that feeling isn’t going to get her out of her darkness.

she says love is really lovely, but she knows love isn’t going to change what’s inside her. even more, it enables her to spiral further into it.

and both times she surrenders herself completely to freddie, allowing him to try and save her with all that love, he can’t bear the weight of it. 

he either runs away or tries to run away, and who’s always left to save her from herself? 

cook, who was supposed not to give a fuck about anyone, but he does. the one fucking girl he’ll ever love, because she gave him a meaning in a meaningless life. he’s brave enough to take it, to take in all of her, and the one thing she says she always loved about him was that he was brave.

loving effy ultimately and literally kills freddie (ok, talking about how freddie was fucked up in the head is a story for another day). if effy is fire, cook rises from it (can they be more iconic?)