#barlissa brainrot

[tableintheteacherslounge]

Stolen looks when nobody’s watching 🖤

[tableintheteacherslounge]

Wow barbara that’s such a totally normal reaction to your friend having sex with someone else

[tableintheteacherslounge]

MELISSA WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT HER LIKE THAT

That’s not just “I’m listening to you”

That’s I’m hanging on your every word

Every movement, every expression

Because I love you

[tableintheteacherslounge]

I will spend this entire week (month? Forever??) thinking about Barbara’s speech to ava about her relationship to church and choir in 03x05

And right now that’s thinking about how Barbara is friends with abbott’s more colourful teachers

Now call me a member of the alphabet mafia but when I hear colourful I think gay

And when I think gay I think jacob and melissa

Jacob her work son, her gardening buddy, who she’s taken under her wing, who despite homophobia from the other church sisters she would never share in that. Sometimes she has old school values (see the mom with the bitch tattoo) but not with this.

Melissa her work wife, though not canonically queer (yet), her closest colleague and if we’re talking people Barbara is friends with at Abbott well Melissa is number one.

And of course colourful could mean shady, not of the lord if you will. And well Melissa does plenty that could be side eyed by those women. But not Barb. Despite the importance of her faith, despite up until now it seeming as though she were perfect saint barbara woman of God. Despite that she still lets in, bonds with, forms a partnership with this woman who doesn’t align with her values, who she’s judged for befriending. But it doesn’t matter, because Melissa matters more.

One of the things that really gets me about their partnering, about their relationship, a reason I love barlissa so much, is that on paper they shouldn’t work. They shouldn’t get along, Barb should be wary or judgey towards Melissa. Mel should find Barbara boring and too prim and proper. But that’s not who they are, they’re not on paper, they’re nuanced and real, with emotions and experiences that shape who they are including their relationships. It’s two people who shouldn’t get on but who actually care for each other earnestly and have done so for a long time.

[tableintheteacherslounge]

You ship barlissa because you want melissa to have a girlfriend and barbara happens to be there

I ship barlissa because of the connection those two women have, because Melissa would kill for Barbara and ran after her to check she was okay, because they have their own little slice of heaven together at the end of every year, because it is possible to like two people at the same time, because they shouldn’t like each other but instead can’t exist without the other.

We are not the same

[tableintheteacherslounge]

I’m not saying I know their characters better than the abbott writers but Barbara and Melissa have definitely known each other longer than 15 years

[tableintheteacherslounge]

The way melissa repeatedly told gary she didn’t want to get married and he didnt listen

But she neglected to tell barb about the fireman hookups and she was upset she didn’t know

The man she loved couldnt even listen to the most important things but the woman she loves her best friend thinks everything is important enough to hear

[tableintheteacherslounge]

How the workwives fight in 0308 SHOULD have gone:

“You wanna know why I didn’t tell you? You imagine telling the person you’re in love with that you’re sleeping with someone else”

“I don’t have to imagine. I’ve been doing it since the day we met”

and scene