Elizabeth Keen is an amazing character and Megan Boone is an amazing actress and that testosterone fueled cesspit of a writing room does her so dirty every fucking season.
For a fandom, some of you are really fucking vicious towards character flaws like man come on now, Elizabeth Keen is a lie, her entire life, every relationship, every step has been controlled by other people, she has no grasp on who she is or what she’s doing, she’s obviously going to reach towards something familiar, she isn’t thinking “oh he’s a murdered who tried to have me killed and was planted in my life”
she’s thinking
“I had this person and he was there, before i knew all of this he was there”
Red wasn’t there. I ship Lizzington, hardcore, it is my endgame, I will light myself on fire and sink with it, but she’s never going to look at him the way she looks at Tom because Red came after, Red kick started the disintegration of Elizabeth Keen as a person, making way for whoever she is now, and Reddington is aware of that, fully aware, he’s not going to scream in her face that she’s stupid for clinging to the illusion of Elizabeth and Tom Keen because it’s not his place to belittle her feelings, fears or weaknesses, he’s going to be kind and delicate and supportive of her, even in the darkest times, because he knows that he shattered her mirror.
*I do not support Keen2, I just realistically understand that she’s struggling with a form of Stockholm Syndrome and how she would want to protect the one thing she thought was her own*
Elizabeth Keen Is Not A Child, Nor A Wayward Woman To Be Brought In Hand, Nor A Simple Mechanism Of Plot
I originally posted a version of the meta here 10 months ago, shortly after the midseason finale of S2 (2.08 the Decemberist) with it’s famous “Elizabeth, we need to talk” line said by Red and said my many to be delivered in a tone of paternal chastisement, and it’s famous comforting scene between Red and Liz on that rusted out boat. I got a not on that meta this morning, and decided to reread it. I felt it needed some focusing and some elaboration, but the ideas and misunderstandings here still seem to dog us and our fandom. And despite my outright disgust with certain of the men in charge of this show and the poor writing they have inflicted on their female main character, fighting for respect and appreciation of Liz Keen is still something that I care about. Liz Keen and her relationship with are still very dear to my heart. (Cut for length)
*
Liz and Red’s relationship encompasses so many things, it’s hard to define and they each play so many roles to the other. You can’t just simply say “it’s like this” and move on, it’s the most, perhaps only, complex part of the show, because it encompases the clearly defined, many-faceted construct of Red’s character and the ill-defined, much degraded mechanism of Liz’s character, that despite everything was built on strong foundations and still shows flashes both her unique brilliance and her human vulnerabilities.
It’s important that all fans, especially all shippers who say they care about the eventual story of both of these characters to remember that it’s their duty to look out for Liz’s wants and needs in fanon and fic and meta as well as Red’s – especially since it seems clear that the boys in charge have no intention of doing that in canon. It’s important to leave room for her human vulnerabilites, for they are a part of her strength. If she was without fear and without hope she would be nothing but a machine to forward the plot, and yet even those fundamental things have been distorted by the writers to make them plot devices. That means it’s our duty to cherish her weaknesses even more, and separate them from the “willful misunderstanding” and “endless anger” that the writers have decided to box her into to keep their plot from being revealed too quickly.
It’s important to remember that those weaknesses, that her distrust, though distorted and enlarged by the writers to make her an obstacle, are just as much a part of her as her training and hers skills, and they do not make her a child, a teenager, willful and in need of correction, do not make her need to be made to submit or fall in line. The instances when Liz accepts support and care from those around her also do not make her a child, weak, or necessitate that she take an inferior role, or mean that she owes Red, or anyone anything.
Leaving aside all the other aspects of Red and Liz’s relationship, the caretaking they do for each other – yes, Red does a lot more for Liz in this way, looking after her because she is in a state of deep crisis and despair, but you can’t convince me that Liz wasn’t coming specifically to check up on him at the end of 2.14 even though he shut her down but good – is a sign and function of their respect and trust for one another.
both of them are closed off, untrusting people, and Liz especially right now is hurting and defensive and so now she’s distancing herself from everyone by dismissing all their opinions as not applicable to her – except when it came to Red. Red, who can still make her nervous, whose opinion she still values even when she’s furious at him. she is vulnerable to him and listens to him when she doesn’t listen to everyone else. She accepts comfort from him and confesses her hurts to him.
Even when she’s also struggling to gain the upper hand over him in their arrangements, she tells him her secret hurts and she accepts his help. One thing you may not know about power dynamics is that when you are upset you do not owe it to anybody to be comforted. You don’t owe it to anyone to calm down, to modulate your tone. You don’t owe it to anyone to make them feel better by letting them help you. It is your choice and only your choice to accept help from anyone. They are free to offer it, but it is your choice to accept, and just like with an apology, you learn a lot about a person if you choose to refuse.
Liz repeatedly has chosen to accept that care and help and comfort, that caretaking, from Red. That doesn’t mean that she’s weak, or that she now owes him anything. She is giving him the favour of her trust by letting him care for her, and she is accepting and acknowledging the gift that Red has freely given. That doesn’t mean that Liz is subservient or that she owes Red.
Comforting some one, actual, heartfelt comforting someone you care for, even or especially in a romantic or pseudo-romantic relationship, is a platonic, non-romantic, non-sexual thing. Or it really, really should be. It says I care for you and I wish you weren’t hurting. It says your wellbeing is important to me, and I don’t only view you as a romantic or sexual object. It says I’m not just being nice to you so you’ll have sex with me later. I’m not just being nice to you so you’ll be nice to me later.
You don’t try help your friends and those you care for because of what they will owe you later, you help them because to see them upset hurts you and you want to see them feel better, when someone you love is hurting all you should want is to see them happier, not their gratitude or repayment when they are better. And, when you are trying to comfort those you care about, you must also understand that you are asking a favour of them by asking them to let you help them, and they don’t owe you the opportunity to give them care, they don’t owe you their recovery at your help.
Liz is granting her trust to Red when she accepts his love and care. She is trusting him to look after her and her hurts, and not to ask for repayment later. And knowing Red, he feels himself so unworthy of Liz and is painfully aware of his trespasses in her life. You can be certain that Red feels that it’s a gift and a privilege to be able to look out for Liz, to be allowed far enough into her life and her personal sphere to care for her and protect her. He’s not helping her because he expects to get something from her out of it, no not even her gratitude, her affection, or romantic acknowledgement from her. Red would actually be disgusted and insulted by the idea.
So maybe if the fandom can’t find a way to understand Liz’s viewpoint in this, we could at least understand Red’s and try not to expect those things on his behalf when he certainly wouldn’t want them expect where freely given. Red wouldn’t want his relationship with Liz to be choked to death or turned to dust by the dry, heavy obligations of gratitude and repayment, so i see no reason to try and push that on the both of them.
And as before, I urge you to dismiss the idea that caretaking between unrelated adults who have a relationship of any kind, friendship or codependence or romance or platonic pseudo-marriage or partnership, has anything do do with “parental” or “parenting.” Caretaking is not about parenting. It’s not about accountability, it’s not about power being more in the caretaker’s hands than the one looked after. It’s not about anybody’s bedtime, and it’s certainly not about making the other person answerable to you by stepping in the the role of surrogate parent.
Elizabeth Keen is a grown woman. She makes terrible choices, impulsive choices, life altering choices, just like all adults, as we are all human and have all acted rashly from time to time. She’s had an education and a career and a husband, and even more than that she had a father named Sam who loved her and raised her and they seemed close. Elizabeth Keen is not a child. She is an autonomous woman. She is not in the market for a new daddy. She does not need to be parented.
She needs love and support and validation like any human man or woman, as you would receive from your friend or partner or spouse. She needs someone to be in her corner, and also to tell her the truth about her life and her choices the way you would hear from your friend or husband.
Of course caretaking is not the same thing as romance. It is, however a huge part of strong, lasting partnerships – whatever kind of partnership, platonic, romantic/sexual, or pseudo-romantic. It’s about a depth of feeling. It’s about a level of trust. It’s about valuing each other and making a safe place to explore and experience your feelings, a safe place you might not otherwise have without that other person in your life, being there for you.
Liz’s stubbornness, her independence, her ready fury and her inability to face up the gravity of the situation are all parts of her struggle with her reality. Sometimes these facets are exaggerated by the writers because it’s convenient for them, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t valid at their root. That doesn’t mean she’s a rebellious child who needs a firm hand or a new father figure or a domineering romantic partner. She needs her fear and her anger to be respected and acknowledged. She needs to be reassured that the trauma that she’s suffered was real, that her anger is valid and healthy, that she will be loved and supported even if she “acts out” or is “too bitchy/snarky/angry/cold.” And Red has provided that care and support for her these two years, and she has grudgingly, slowly made herself vulnerable to him by accepting that from him.
Caring for someone isn’t just about loving them and supporting just exactly as much as they “deserve” and withholding from them when they “don’t deserve it.” That would be emotional manipulation and abuse. That’s what Liz suffered at Tom’s hands during what we were shown of their marriage. I don’t understand why anyone would want to see Red treating her the same way.
A woman is not a child. A woman who seems “unstable” is not in need of a new patriarch. A woman is not defined by her biological material alone, especially when she already had a parent who raised her. And an “angry” woman is not an ungrateful woman. Liz’s function in canon may be set up to be a mechanism of delay who “gives in” to the truth of Red’s motives and meanings to move the plot ahead again, but in fanon she need not be tied to those strictures. Her fears and reservations are valid at their origins, and Red gives plenty of cause for concern and doubt and does little to prove himself – because that also isn’t convenient to keeping the story plodding along at a tortoise’s pace – so her objections shouldn’t all just be tossed aside unexamined because they’re inconvenient to you. Liz also shouldn’t be punished for “stubbornness” that’s equal parts valid and fun-house mirror distortion for the purposes of plot-hole plugging.
The show is hung up on the idea of “answers” about the past, saying “it’s all about her father” and “it’s all about her mother” and “it’s all about the fulcrum” and “it’s all about Red’s mysterious past,” or Liz’s or both of their pasts together. They’re trying make sure Liz is defined by her past, by these big mysteries. They’re trying to make the pull of these “answers” all important and magnetic. But it’s all a lie. It’s all unimportant. Just like The X Files isn’t about “The Truth” but about a couple of dysfunctional FBI agents wandering around the country in rented Ford Tauruses trying figure each other out, Liz’s story is about her discovering herself in the present, not the past. Maybe the boys writing the show can’t remember that very much of the time, but fandom can try to keep in in mind.
The question of “who is Liz?” can’t be answered by her parentage or her original nationality or even by her memory of the accidental death of her father. It’s answered by her actions in the here and now, it’s answered by who she’s loyal to, how far she’s willing to go to protect those she cares for, it’s answered by her integrity and perseverance in the face of corruption, dishonorable conduct, constant threat and fear. Liz not a child. Liz is not a plug for a plot hole. Liz doesn’t need to be put in her place or be “made to give in.” Liz doesn’t need to look to the past to learn who she is, she’s living her answers right now.
Liz has the right to be pissed at Red. Liz has the right to lash out at Red. Every time Liz gets rightfully mad at Red, everyone says she should just shut up and do what he says, which is bullshit.
Want to know what Liz would have learned if she had "shut up" and let Red speak? NOTHING. Because he refuses to fucking tell her anything every time.
He always withholds information from her. He has never once responded to her pleas for answers, so why the hell do you think it would change now?
