GINA’S SELF WORTH JOURNEY (requested By Anon)

A Roadmap of Lucaya: Season 1

We all know Maya liked Lucas for a long time (and that the “she only liked him to see if he’s good enough for Riley” thing is bullshit). But when did he start liking her? When did it start becoming obvious?

In other words, I thought it’d be fun to map out the Lucaya story from the pilot until Texas, and see what we can see. Since this will take a while, I’m going to focus on season 1 only in this post; season 2 will come soon.

So, let’s take a look at the Lucaya moments, big and small, and then we’ll talk about them in a broader sense.

Pilot: The sloppy joe thing. Farkle uses sloppy joes and chicken pot pie as obvious metaphors for the girls (sloppy joe = Maya, chicken pot pie = Riley). Lucas is eating a sloppy joe, as is Maya. I personally don’t think this necessarily means Lucaya, but it’s an interesting minor observation. (It’s also a callback to a Boy Meets World episode and Cory and Shawn have a verrry similar lunch food=girls conversation)

Boy: The start playing their “game” of teasing each other.

Father: The game continues. Maya seem almost jealous when she can’t get Lucas’s attention back onto her as she’s teasing him while he walks away with Riley. At the school dance, he brings her a rose. She comments that he puts thought into their game; he agrees.

Maya’s Mother: Lucas shuts Farkle up when he starts putting his foot in his mouth in regards to Katy not showing up to Maya’s art show.

1961: The first time Lucas is outright supportive of Maya: he encourages to keep trying with her art.

We see more of their game when discussing his great grandfather - Maya sings a song about it, and Lucas doesn’t seem to mind. Likewise, Lucas is thrilled when he finds out Maya’s family comes from the Clutterbucket name.

And things start to get interesting here: Maya’s grandmother May seemed to have a “missed opportunity” - the theme of the episode - with Lucas’s grandfather. (Likewise, there’s a hint of this with Riley and Farkle’s grandparents.) While this connection is between the grandparents and not the kids, this is all VERY eye opening.

Crazy Hat: The birth of the first hahurr. It comes after Maya spent a day (offscreen) alone with Lucas.

Flaws: Lucas picks up Maya to stop her from doing something she might regret. Maya later jumps on his back to stop him from doing the same thing.

Friendship: Lucas appoints Maya as his Secretary of State, and it’s very clearly spelled out that it means he thinks highly of her. She helps put together a video for him that means a lot to him.

Their games continues, when Maya sings a song about him and he plays along on his harmonica.

First Date: There’s an interesting exchange between Farkle and Lucas about dating the girls, and Lucas says if Farkle started dating one, he’d start dating the “other one.” Moments later, Maya approaches him and he greets her as Other One.

He ends his date with Riley (that they’ve been on for all of 2 minutes, poor Riley) because Maya’s upset and encourages Riles to go to her.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t address this, even though I honestly, truly don’t know what to make of it:

Maya is wearing a yellow top, and Lucas is in a bright turquoise. In the background of the scene, there’s a boy and a girl at the water fountain (I think?), and she’s in a bright turquoise dress; the boy is in yellow.

So what does it mean? Possibly nothing, but it’s sooo strange. They’re not explicitly focused on, but they are very much in several shots, and it’s a little distracting and hard not to notice. I’m not saying this automatically means Lucaya, but...god it’s bizarre. If they were both in blue, or more neutral colours, I’d chalk it up to coincidence. But yellow and turquoise? That shit’s intentional.I just don’t know why.

Okay! Now that we’ve laid out the Lucaya moments, what can we gleam from this?

Well, it seems to me there’s been small nuggets of Lucaya from the early days. They start playing their “game” as early as the second episode, and it ramps up throughout the season. Lucas never seems to be genuinely upset with her about any of this; in fact, her encourages her and often joins in in some way.

Crazy Hat seems to be the turning point: they spend time alone together, and Maya hahurrs him, which quickly becomes a staple in their relationship. And to make it more interesting, we see them get more physical with each other directly after that episode. Interesting development, huh?

We’ve seen that despite their teasing, Lucas is protective of Maya and her feelings pretty early on. We also have it spelled out for us that he thinks highly of her - in the same episode where he takes Riley on a seemingly romantic princess horsey ride, no less.

Lucaya is low key in season one, but it’s there. We see their relationship develop and grow as the season progresses. Season 2 is where everything ramps up like crazy, but there are some eyebrow raising moments in season 1 for sure.

like i love klaus baudelaire cos hes everything little boys r told NOT to be ….. hes so delicate & emotional, he cries like every 40 pages, he loves reading and learning n hes really proud of that, hes so soft and physically affectionate with the people he loves, he always says what he feels and he doesnt mind being protected ….. these are all traits u find in GIRLS in most childrens books which is why klaus is so important, he teaches little boys that u can be soft AND heroic AND a boy at the same time which is a lesson boys or men for that matter are rarely if ever taught

okay hear me out

adrien and marinette are partnered in health class and become parents of a fake baby for a final project

they both become way too invested in the baby, which is funnier when it’s just a sack of flour

marinette constantly dresses it in new clothes she’s designed every day

adrien insists on doing a family photo shoot or having a family portrait commissioned

a stranger bumps the baby and they both immediately scream in panic

when there’s an akuma, whoever has the baby immediately has to try to find the other person to hand it off to because no of course they can’t leave it alone it’s a BABY but they’re nowhere to be found

I love Toy Story 2 for a lot of reasons, but one thing is near the end when Buzz tries to awkwardly give Jessie a compliment, so he says “Hey uh… I like your hair” and she just picks him up like “Thanks, you’re mine now!”

the gmw writers really showed their inability to think outside the box and I have gone on a million rants about this (mostly to myself in my room lol) but just to pick up one of the many things that made me roll my eyes: when Maya is asked why she likes Lucas her response is he’s a nice/good guy and that’s all she says. And while I don’t begrudge her that, I do find it a little ridiculous that that is all the writers could come up with when there are at least like 5 obvious reasons (very clear/present in canon) for why Maya likes Lucas:

1. He challenges her, and honestly as far as I can remember he is the only one that does actually go toe to toe with her. (Lucas:”You wanna tangle with me?”/ Maya: “You think you can take me?”)

2. He makes her smile and laugh despite herself. Maya enjoys interacting with him. It’s all over her face when they play their little games or she teases him. She gets a thrill from flirting with him (and, yes, it’s flirting. It’s so obviously flirting that if you look flirting up in the dictionary you’ll find a picture of the “mad dog” scene where Lucas is asking Maya “well, what do I seem like to you?”)

3. He supports her (”I don’t want that for Maya, I want her to be happy” “They’re taking away something you’re very good at”) like homeboy was actually fired up about the arts program because he knows how much it means to her and that support resonates with her (she literally can’t stop staring at him when he says that and when Riley tries to get her attention she’s in a daze)

4. He KNOWS her, arguably better than the people who have known her for a lot longer. Lucas sees Maya and her selflessness even when others don’t (“Maya did that for Riley because that’s who Maya is”). 

5. He gets her! He’s been in her shoes before, making a mess of things, getting into trouble and letting his anger at the world get the best of him (This isn’t just shown in the show, I think he even straight up says this to Maya at one point) They also both see themselves as their friends’ protectors. In so many ways, they really are two sides of the same coin. 

6. She is attracted to him. Body language y’all. Maya is always finding herself leaning into Lucas’s personal space, yanking him towards her, touching him unnecessarily and ya! I’ll say it! He totally turns her on. When he gets all strong angry boi she finds that shit hot. That’s literally in canon.

To conclude, when Maya is asked if she likes Lucas it’s fucking dumb that her only response is “he’s such a nice guy” when her response could have been “I can’t explain it, he makes me laugh” or  “He’s the first guy in my life that’s ever been supportive and showed they cared about me” or “I feel like we just understand each other” or even “I don’t know why, but I’m drawn to him.” Literally any of those responses would have been more in line with what we are actually shown. 

(also, all these things that Maya likes about Lucas are very distinct to her relationship with him- they are NOT the things Riley likes about Lucas, which does pretty much amount to “he’s a good guy.” Hence, another reason it’s total BS that Maya only likes Lucas because “she’s turned into Riley”) 

Anyway, I just wanted to make this post because I’ve been thinking about season 3 a lot lately and just how messy and all over the place the writing is. I hate that the writers lost sight of the natural arc of the show, I hate how they wasted everyone’s time with the triangle arc by essentially just invalidating the feelings Maya and Lucas had for each other, having literally no one experience growth from it, and putting all the characters back to square one. And I hate that they didn’t take the great opportunity that was before them to subvert tropes/expectations. Legitimizing Lucas and Maya’s feelings for one another would have allowed all three characters in the triangle to grow, develop and be further fleshed out as characters. And, also, it would have meant that Lucas isn’t just Riley’s love interest and Maya isn’t just Riley’s unlucky sidekick. When you have a chance to give characters nuance so they can break away from 2D tropes/clichés seize on it! That’s what makes entertaining stories! The writers walked themselves into a storyline, realized that relationships were inevitably gonna change and characters were inevitably gonna get hurt (which is okay! why do the writers avoid hurting Riley at all costs? disillusionment and disappointment is simply an unavoidable part of growing up) and then turned around and ran to the exit rather than deal with the actual consequences of the story they set up/developed from (arguably) season 1. It was cowardly, lazy writing and that’s on that.

chat noir, trying to make fun of himself: lol adrien is a nerd

carapace: fight me bitch

you guys don’t understand how much these fictional stories and fictional characters fill me up with joy and make this insane stuff we’re going through bearable

woody: alright, listen up you little sh*ts.

woody: not you forky. you're an angel and we're thrilled to have you here.

EVERY TIME LUKE SHARES THE MIC WITH SOMEONE - 5/?

I just don't think I can handle seeing Anne and Gilbert interact. I will literally die but like ok I guess