Mickey + watching Ian sleep

In these dreams it’s always you:

the boy in the sweatshirt,

the boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me

from jumping off the bridge.

Oh, the things we invent when we are scared

and want to be rescued.

omg i’m kinda late to this sorry, but a few days before you sent this i was talking to @holymurdock about this which is kinda perfect lol

so i don’t think i fully disliked her, but her scenes were just difficult for me to see for some reason. i did understand a lot of her motives though, and maybe that’s why i found it so hard.

however, no matter how i felt about her, the first time i watched shameless i was LIVID about what happened with the baby. i was sitting there so confused at lip because she NEVER said the baby was his. she never even implied it. she just didn’t say the baby *wasnt* his because she genuinely didn’t know. it made me mad when people were telling her to keep the kid. that was her baby, if she wanted to give it up for adoption she could - remember she is a teenager with not much money and a mother who couldn’t support karen, never mind a baby (ik sheila did a good job in the end, but it’s reasonable to have thought she wouldn’t). karen also knows that she’s got problems herself, and shouldn’t be responsible for another person.

what makes me mad about karen hate is that it’s similar but opposite to debbie hate. let me explain. people will say debbie was wrong for having her baby at all, that she was stupid and should’ve listened to fiona and shouldn’t have expected any help from her family, forgetting she was a teenager who made a similar ‘mistake’ (depending on how u look at it) that many real life teenagers make. however, when karen is very against having the baby at all, when she wants nothing to do with her teenage pregnancy, basically doing what everyone wanted debbie to do, she gets hate. she gets told she was being horrible to lip, that it was his baby too.

the reason i think this is is because debbie’s baby daddy ran off, but karen’s (if the baby had been lip’s) baby daddy was willing to stick around. the moment a man is involved, the baby is no longer the woman’s according to some. it drives me crazy. it’s SEXISM. pure sexism.

i’ve always related a lot to karen because of her relationship with sheila and a lot of the decisions she made (NOT daddyzgirl tho, lol) but i always found her very interesting. she definitely fell victim to the shameless writers not knowing how to write a woman without having some sort of man involved, but i always liked her. daddyzgirl was something i always hated her for at first, but upon rewatching and finding some deleted scenes i want to explain my perspective.

i’m not defending her at all and if anybody thinks i am they’re wrong, but i think there’s a deleted scene that shouldn’t have been deleted because it adds to the situation a lot (https://youtu.be/EA03ifDH2MA?si=JPjMzvML-52WojeD, 1:35) this scene shows frank praying, and as he is praying, he starts describing karen in a very sexual/pedophilic manner and it changed my whole perspective. not only that, but looking back and seeing how karen would flirt with frank and he would be interested and even after the incident in 1x11 he still admitted interest. i get karen shouldn’t have been flirting, but in that situation the adult shouldn’t feel any sort of way about it and should walk away. that’s my view. the fact that he was always interested in her makes me feel sick, and it’s not that frank deserved to be raped, because that is undoubtedly what happened, but i’ve seen people hate karen and pity frank in that situation and i truly find frank to be disgusting for it. karen was a sex addict and was neglected and starved of attention, and while i don’t think what she did was right i think she was a kid who needed help.

anyways, that wasn’t the point of the post, the point was more with karen’s pregnancy and you’re 100% right about that. not ONCE did karen say the baby was lip’s, she only teased mandy saying she was fucking with lip the whole time, but when it was actually happening i never saw it that way. i forgot the episode but there’s a scene where they’re on the l and karen says, “who says it’s yours?”. people see her telling lip that she never said it was his in 2x11 and they’re furious, but it was the truth. she didn’t. and if i were her, a kid who just gave birth with a ton of people she asked to leave watching her, i would be screaming, especially because of how angry lip was. she never said it was lip’s and they always had the intent of putting hymie up for adoption, but people missed that. i hated sheila for stealing hymie and for choosing him over her daughter and i don’t think she did a good job, but that’s just my opinion. jody was also a predator and she let karen marry him at 16, and when she was 17 with brain damage she knew jody had raped her and she let him leave with her. that terrified me, but people still see it as, “well karen deserved that. she was a bitch!” when she absolutely didn’t.

you’re right, karen and debbie hate is similar in the sense where they’re hated for situations people missed a lot of details on, and a lot of the hate is based in sexism. the two are actually incredibly similar and i could go on about it for days and never get tired. they both made mistakes, bad ones, but people neglect to realize they were extremely traumatized, fucked up, teenage girls who needed help but rarely ever received it. in s3 karen reveals she was almost sex trafficked and all of her money got stolen after she had to leave because sheila wouldn’t pick her. and the hate wouldn’t even bother me as much as it does if people would understand the characters they’re hating on or hate the male characters for their shitty actions, but i don’t see it happen as often.

eek!! yes i have many… and a lot of them are pre-canon because i’m a sucker for pre-canon

i’ve written about this before (and never published it lol), but i could see one of ian’s first memories being around debbie’s birth or her actual birth. frank said something about most of his kids being born in the gallagher house, and i believe debbie was born on the same table she gave birth to franny on. ian was really excited to be a brother because of lip’s influence, and when he held debbie for the first time, he kept calling her “my baby” and getting defensive when anyone tried to take her away (which was reasonable considering he was only four and couldn’t really hold her properly without help). when they got older, maybe five and nine, they would play together with the barbie lip took from the 99¢ store and ian’s g.i. joe, debbie was very bossy and kept interjecting whenever ian tried to do anything because she had a specific plan.

whenever frank would come home wasted or monica would be having another episode, ian would grab debbie (like he does in 2x08 and 11x07) and comfort her. he would convince himself that, yet again, he was following in lip’s footsteps and helping debbie, but a part of him knew he too wanted that comfort because he didn’t often get it.

debbie has painted ian’s nails… on several occasions. when they were kids and debbie would do it, ian would insist she picks a color that wouldn’t be noticeable and would pick it off his nails before school the next day. when ian got older and debbie would do it, he didn’t really care what she did and would keep it on (even if he ended up biting it off later). maybe as an emt sue would tease him, but he’d just brush it off. franny ends up painting his, too.

around two, maybe more, times, debbie would come with ian to the milkovich house. ian would go over to study with mandy (and sneak into mickey’s room to “go to the bathroom”), and debbie would talk with mandy. she felt really cool doing this, and on the walk home debbie would excitedly tell ian about how awesome she thinks mandy is. this is around season two

while working at the kash and grab in the summer, debbie (and sometimes carl) would walk there from the public pool and debbie would convince ian to give her money for some candy or a drink. ian always intended on doing so, but he would pretend to put up a fight to irritate her.

anytime ian (or any of her siblings) was sick or hurt and needed to stay in bed, debbie would sneak into his room and talk to him like he has terminal cancer and weeks to live. ian always found it sweet, even if he would playfully roll his eyes and tell her to get out.

when debbie was pregnant, she would send ian photos of her baby bump. she wouldn’t often get more than a “❤️”, but she appreciated it considering she felt so alone, but always knew she’d have her brother.

because season ten confirmed debbie’s a stoner as an adult (twice, lol) i can imagine her smoking on the porch with ian like she did with sandy. he’d talk about mickey, she’d talk about franny, they’d laugh about their other siblings.

half return

safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet.

You have not made that place yet. You are here. You are here. You're

still right here.

after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is

a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me

tight, it’s getting cold. We have not touched the stars,

nor are we forgiven, which brings us back

to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,

not from the absence of violence, but despite

the abundance of it.

I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was

the princess,

cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,

young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with

confidence

but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,

while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,

and getting stabbed to death.

Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.

You still get to be the hero.

it all started when aria (m4ndysk4nkovich) posted this on tiktok (also on tumblr here), which was a post showing the women in shameless and yankee candles ms. sk4nkovich associated them with. this has been a trend on tiktok, with other people doing it with other fandoms, such as the 2000s show, gilmore girls. since this slideshow included shameless women, it included controversial characters such as monica, sheila, karen, and debbie. this should not matter, as it is about candles. why would controversy matter. one user on tiktok was very offended that ms. sk4nkovich would do such a thing as associate monica gallagher, who has a history of substance abuse, with nice smelling candles.

this user even went as far as to accuse ms. sk4nkovich of being dumb, however, in the process caused ms. sk4nkovich to question the users intelligence as they could not spell dumb properly. the last image shown depicts this user making a post mocking ms. sk4nkovich, here is the post:

wish i would have known you then // monica gallagher + fiona, lip, ian and debbie

- BAD DOG. YOU'RE A BAD DOG. - I BITE. IT'S ALL I KNOW.