get weemsical

❝ ― 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 i want the truth? of course i do. but the world isn't always black and white. there are 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐲. ❞

→ CARRD. HEADCANONS. MEMES. SHIPS. VERSES.

btw when i say that she's oriented toward morticia in her first scene in s1e1. i mean she is quite literally sitting with her face and body pointed toward morticia almost the whole time. look:

a little while ago i actually realized that, despite posting a ton of dialogue from this scene, i never actually posted the clip/talked about the whole scene in the same way as i've done, for example, the crackstone fight. so here is the parents' weekend scene where morticia and gomez visit wed at school. the following notes are more or less a restatement of past headcanons, but collected in one place and talked about in depth.

this scene is really the root of how i see the morticia/larissa relationship. specifically because of this scene, i find myself somewhat at odds with other morissa shippers in that i see their original dynamic as being deeply toxic, and their current relationship as being extremely tense and ambivalent. it's not something i'm capable of overlooking just for a ship, tbf. in this scene, we see larissa making herself fairly vulnerable in ways that she does not typically do. the first example is when she says, "some of us better than others." from the look on her face, it's obvious that she thinks morticia should or already does know this fact--that larissa had a bad time at nevermore--and i think it's also obvious from morticia's reaction that she does know perfectly well larissa had a terrible hs experience--because she reacts by insulting larissa. this is literally such mean girl shit, guys. it's not a nice thing to do in response to larissa saying that she was unhappy. it's a fairly mild insult ("you always filled a room with your presence... like a stately sequoia tree") but it's obviously meant as an insult because gomez, #1 all-state champion wife guy, who is always matching morticia's energy in any given scene, pulls an "ooh!" face afterward. larissa responds by again making herself vulnerable: she says, "and i guess that would make you the lumberjack." this is a defense of herself, an exposure of her own emotional wound, and a pointed remark on what morticia has just done. she is saying that morticia is the person that cuts her down. it seems pretty clear to me that this is a very old dynamic that morticia expects larissa to just... go along with, given that her response is to laugh and purposely misinterpret larissa's remark, saying "there's that biting sense of humor that i always adored," as though larissa had insulted her back--even though larissa did no such thing. all she did was, quite accurately, point out that morticia said something mean. larissa does as larissa always does: she deflects the conflict by smiling back at her as though all is well. it's a great moment because you see wednesday looking between morticia and larissa and clearly understanding, for the first time in maybe the whole show, that they don't like each other, and that larissa is not actually morticia's ally against her. also, note rapid larissa blinking as they go into the remark about the talent show. :)

when morticia notices her picture is gone, she REALLY OBVIOUSLY notices that larissa must have ripped it out. it's not even subtle, there's literally shreds of paper still attached to the binding. (larissa must have panicked when she realized she left the yearbook out and saw morticia go for it, lmfao.) what's interesting here is that morticia deflects from that fact, and its evidence of larissa's ongoing hurt and unhappiness, in much the same way as she deflected from the earlier fact of larissa's hurt feelings and bad experiences. obviously, standing in front of her own kid and husband isn't the place to hash out hers and larissa's bad blood, but the way she handles it in the moment strikes me as extremely telling: she redirects the moment by making a sexual comment to gomez. this is what i call her "homophobic slay" moment. LMAO. i think you can make a reasonable argument from the text that she's responding to larissa's historic jealousy of her relationship with gomez--that is, if you're a "larissa wanted gomez" truther, which i am not, for reasons i will talk about below. but i think the lesbian subtext/homophobic slay explanation frankly makes more sense and fits a bit better with the utter inappropriateness of her response. don't get me wrong--gomez and tish are always inappropriate--but. they haven't been inappropriate in this way in front of larissa before. they were actually quite well-behaved when they dropped off wed! imo, morticia has always been aware, either consciously or unconsciously, that larissa had/has feelings for her, and that this underlay their negative and jealous dynamic. when she's confronted by evidence of larissa's sincere emotions, just as she did with the "lumberjack" remark, morticia has to turn it around on her somehow--sort of make it larissa's problem, rather than anything wrong with morticia and her own conduct. so with the "lumberjack"/"biting sense of humor" exchange, morticia reframes the response as "we're just playing our usual catty games, and if your feelings are hurt, that's on you--see? didn't i just say i adored your sense of humor? i'm being nice!" with the torn picture, she turns it around and makes it larissa's problem by highlighting and underlining the fact that she's married to gomez and passionately attracted to him, in a way that she never was/will be to larissa. "i didn't hurt your feelings, you hurt your own feelings, and you know i'll never be with you, so stop it!" i also think there is a completely purposeful and catty gross-out element to what she is doing because she knows that larissa is gay, even if larissa never explicitly came out to her. she is quite literally telling larissa that she wants to borrow her personal yearbook to go fuck gomez on top of it. that is like a very weird and yucky thing to do, girl!!!!!!! but for me, it makes sense as an expression of her discomfort with larissa's former/continued attraction to her and as a re-affirmation of her own heterosexual orientation against the destabilizing challenge of larissa's homosexuality. many a lesbian has had similar experiences with nonlesbian women, lol.

moving on to the "professional" section of the scene where they're all talking about what they're actually here for, which is wednesday, lol... this is one of the only scenes in 2 seasons of the show where larissa speaks directly to gomez. i cannot emphasize enough that they barely speak or interact at all... and this scene does not give hetrissa truthers much hope, frankly. they exchange 2 sentences on the basis of a misunderstanding and i cannot interpret the faces larissa is making while gomez talks as anything but her having a significant Oh My God, He's An Idiot moment. please do not take this as me insulting gomez's character. in virtually all adaptations, he is exactly this sort of daffy and not particularly tuned in to the moment. but this is larissa in a professional setting trying to talk about the well-being of his child, and she reacts with some bafflement and surprise to his failure to understand/engage on this level. she does not look at him any longer than necessary and i cannot say i perceive a single iota of longing, desire, or even emotion beyond "... bruh" in those big blue eyes. this is honestly why i cannot believe in any way that larissa was or is attracted to gomez. he does not exist to her until he says something stupid. the whole beginning of the scene she was oriented toward and responding purely to morticia, much the same way that she is in her first scene in s1e01.