#kalicia

[lonely-night]

Kalinda/Alicia in 1.08 “Unprepared”

[warningsine]

Alicia Florrick & Kalinda Sharma (The Good Wife) • Allison McRoberts & Patty O'Connor (Kevin Can F**k Himself) (2/4)

I'm not very good at talking. I never have been, but… I do need to say this. My time with you as your friend was, was the best I ever had.

[whyrish]

Was Kalicia THE ship when the good wife was originally airing or do people have poor taste. This is peak.

[ladyriot]

Babes, babes, BABES

KALICIA!

1) absolutely hit us with everything you've got a out the first drinking scene

2) any great fic recs?

Kalicia! So totally normal about Kalicia. I've got thoughts.

1) Three main points, really.

Kalinda is immediately and obviously fascinated with Alicia. Inventing excuses to see Alicia more after work? Wonderfully devious. I'm all for it.

I see what she was doing with choosing tequila specifically for this fake after-case "tradition." Gay choice. I-want-to-see-your-tongue choice. 👀🥴

I need to know where Alicia's mind was at to simply ignore that at this supposed firm tradition, no one else was there. Do you think they all hate you or are you just really into spending a private moment with Kalinda? Because, I'm sorry, have you ever been initiated into a workplace culture with essentially none of your coworkers present? Girl was top of her class in law school. Definitely smart enough to figure that one out.

In summary: sapphic

2) I did most of my kalicia reading ages ago, but the one fic I still think about all the time is Still by lunchinanelevator. Everything lunchinanelevator does slaps, though. Wide rec.

These days, tumblr's own @thescullyphile basically single-handedly keeps the kalicia tag pumping and I read all of it. Right here.

And in a quick moment of shameless self-promo, in my mission to write the "a little bdsm could fix them" fic for every ship I've ever shipped, I did As Skin Yields to Knife a few months ago. Just a little (medium-sized?) one-shot.

[armeniuslaurant]

Just a ride or die investigator and her doomed romance with a scandal-prone lawyer

[thescullyphile]

not the original tgw anon but would love to read your whole spiel on the kalicia dynamic

TWO of you? oh this just makes my day. now that I have an excuse, I will /definitely/ spiel.

I think an understanding of Alicia and Kalinda separately is the best place to start when thinking about their dynamic, whether you read it as friendship or otherwise. (Personally, I think it's pretty much canon that Kalinda at least was like, horrendously in love in a way she didn't expect.) Putting the rest under the cut because I don't want to overwhelm anyone hahaha.

Let's start with Alicia, because it's so easy to. She's the Good Wife™. In the show we get to see her break that mold, express herself and her opinions and develop her mind as she pursues a legal career with great success. All of this positive evolution has to come from somewhere though, the change has to result from an unchanged state. The Alicia Florrick at L/G is not the same person as the mom at Highland Park talking about pilates. The show answers the question of how she grows from there, but it never talks about how she gets there. Saint Alicia, good at school. Incredibly bright, driven, and still sweet. She graduates with honors, top of her class at one of the best law schools in the nation, followed by a year of smashing success right out of the gate. And then...she throws it all away. Because for all of her drive, and intelligence, she's not quite firm. She gets pregnant and Peter wants her to stay home, and so she compromises. The next 13 years are a series of compromises that take her further and further away from the person that she was. Like I've already said, Alicia is a listener. And the idea of such an incredibly bright, responsive mind essentially wasting away in her attempts to fit in to the catty and social extension of suburbia is just galling. The fact that none of her friends stick around, not one, is evidence enough to me that she was completely bereft of true connection. The fact that this was Peter's preference for her...well, it says a lot to me.

Essentially, she has been hiding herself for years, perhaps without consciously thinking about it. She's pressed further and further into this model what other people think is perfection. She doesn't get to explore herself, and she puts this moral attribution on things that truly are neutral characteristics. Alicia is not just a flower waiting to bloom, she is someone who represses the richness and intelligence and complexity of herself, usually unconsciously, in her attempts to strive for other people's ideals.

MEET: Kalinda Sharma.

You want to know the only person on the show MORE repressed and emotionally reluctant than Alicia? It's Kalinda. We never see what she was like as Leela, but as Kalinda, she is a force to be reckoned with. I know a lot of people put stock into the idea that Kalinda is all morally grey and shady or whatever but if you look at the series that is not at all the case. She is fiercely, breathtakingly loyal to Will and Diane, and somehow, inexplicably, she extends this to Alicia as well. The woman that holds everyone at arms length and denies all connection except where she professionally expresses herself (but come on, she would die for Diane or Will without a second thought and that extends way beyond professionalism) meets Alicia Florrick and cannot help but be drawn by her into the most meaningful friendship and connection to someone else that she's ever experienced. And this is CANONICAL.

Because for all of their individual difficulties in you know, those things like expressing their emotions and being genuinely themselves and whatnot, Alicia and Kalinda understand one another and are really drawn to one another intuitively. Insert three paragraph long digression on their first drinking scene together that I can provide if asked lol.

What do they get out of their friendship with each other? Like I said, they're both listeners, but Alicia is at this pivotal point where she is becoming something new and she is so alone and it is so difficult but she's being brave and doing hard things. There is NO ONE that she can talk to. And Kalinda just...listens. And there's something about Kalinda that draws Alicia to honesty, and there is a relief in feeling like she doesn't have to be anything in particular because, as I said, there's this image of Kalinda not being someone that you have to be morally responsible to. Alicia doesn't have to care about impressing her. And so she talks. And unbelievably, she finds herself connecting to someone who is so different from her and it is genuine and it is real and it is everything that she didn't have in her old life. It is without expectations of a 'certain her.' And it's just what she needed.

(They're so different but they're so the same. Alicia may have remade herself for others, but Kalinda remade herself for herself. Really they're two sides of the same coin with desperation leading to invention as Alicia starts on the same path at the beginning of the series that led Kalinda from Leela to Kalinda but I can talk abt that another time).

As for Kalinda, she gets someone who is struggling to find the difference between nice and kind and how to navigate a world that has become unfamiliar. Someone who is earnest and (mostly) honest (because for all of her obfuscations, she never really lies to Kalinda. She's always honest with Kalinda). All of Kalinda's connections are premeditated, balanced by the transaction of what each party can do for one another. And Alicia...doesn't want anything. She doesn't want to know about Kalinda because she's looking for leverage to manipulate her or for more information about xyz job-related-things. She's just curious. She wants to know about Kalinda for the sake of being interested in her as a person, no ulterior motive. Granted, Kalinda doesn't often indulge even Alicia's curiosity, but she gets much closer than she does with anyone else.

At the end of the day, two people who are unlikely friends find not just what they were looking for, but what they needed, in one another. And sure, it gets endlessly more complicated and I could talk about that too, but at the start, it is just two women who are more or less adrift. And by chance they work together and defy expectations of everyone by their unlikely pairing. And their friendship blossoms with humor and honesty and this unrecognized 'this is important to me' aspect that makes every scene with them so unique and captivating to watch.

Honestly that's not even my whole spiel but this is getting pretty long so sorry about that. But if you want more, you know where to find me! I'm just getting started! (and if you've read this far you should check out ao3 for fic because there are some great ones out there. I'm riling up TGW engagement whereever I can hahaha).

I'll be here if anyone would like more questions or commentary or meta or whatever you would call this! But I am truly so delighted to talk about this show (and especially alicia and kalinda)

[traceykibre]

user serenasoutherlyns' fanfic recommendations!

I updated my fic recs for the first time in at LEAST a year, so here's my most recent fic recs!

unsentimental<- I don’t even go here but this is the best fanfiction i’ve ever read

claire/jack

I hope we’re not going to have a problem

claire/margot

all I need is a taste

abbie/toni

ficlets by eastberlin

abbie/alex

balancing act

olivia/alex

shorts by VerySpecificRandomThings

olivia/casey

some of murphy’s not so obscure laws

miracle on 89th st

alex/casey

somewhere i can rest my soul

the trouble won’t wait

kryptonite

sigourney weaver

serena/casey

firsts

this is all olivia benson’s fault

tracey/kelly

modern times

lana/kalinda

big time

alicia/kalinda

you have not yet learned to crawl

alicia/cary

outside the frame (is what we’re leaving out)

[actualhumancryptid]

adgfhjjkll Alicia offering Kalinda the seat at the bar. Oh this is what I missed ALL SEASON.

tune in next time for my live slug reactions to a first watch of The Good Wife, where I fail to mention anything that isn't related to Kalinda Sharma and Alicia Florrick's relationship, despite it being a law procedural.