but I'm two episodes from the end of Justified S6 (and waiting a week to finish) and my god. The frenzy the fujoshi community must have been in. I see you. I stand with you. I stand where you once stood. Your battle is mine.
REAL NOIR FICTION IS ABOUT GAY DIVORCE
I feel feral. raylan givens somehow got three divorces simultaneously and nearly got killed by some pedophile. but it was all worth it: he finally has the solemn approval of his (work) dad
for my purposes here Divorce is a not only a legal act to end a legally recognized marriage but also state of being. a feeling. an event and condition of the soul.
Divorce is a defining feature of Justified and the life of Raylan Givens. He has what we colloquially call "divorced energy" in general. he starts the series divorced (both legally and in terms of aura) and although legally speaking his divorce count remains at 1, in every other respect he gets more and more divorced as it goes on. given that his marriage count is static but his divorced-ness qualitatively increases we can infer this: Raylan does not have to be married as many times as he is divorced, and he does not have to get his divorces from people he was married to. (NOTE: I am going to pretty explicitly spoil the ending of Justified from here)
DIVORCE #1
first Boyd and then Raylan lower their guns in their final confrontation. the ultimate consummation of their cop and criminal yaoi relationship will not come to pass. in the end, they love each other too much to destroy each other, even as they yearn for a fated destruction at each other's hands. it is for love's sake that they divorce. the final longing, romantic scene of Raylan and Boyd flirting through the plexiglass in the prison visitation booth is insanely hot and may make you want to argue with me but I think the show has established perfectly well that Raylan has absolutely no problem with fucking his exes. and that's what they are, they are exes. and they will love each other forever, for after all: they dug coal togetherDIVORCE #2
Winona and Raylan have only been married once and yet they have somehow divorced each other fifty times over the course of this series. when I say that divorce is a defining quality of Raylan's life I can't emphasize enough that they were already divorced when he got Winona pregnant. Raylan moving to florida to be with her and their child, only for the show to flash forward four years to introduce her new husband, is the most final divorce of all. he picks up their daughter from preschool on wednesdays and has no real perception of her current level of education. the Raylan & Winona Question is firmly settled. Raylan is more or less at peace now with the idea of Winona divorcing him, because he has so much experience at it. but he's still vigilantly on the lookout for stupid reasons to hate her new husband because of course he is he's a fucking copDIVORCE #3
okay I lied a little, it's not technically Raylan's own divorce. Raylan eagerly facilitates Ava's divorce (spiritual, unless we count leaving your fiancee) from Boyd and keeps the secret of her survival and Boyd's son, in some small part out of regret and obligation towards her (who divorced him several seasons ago) but mostly so he can have Boyd (whom he has, of course, just divorced) to himself, and also because the idea of never knowing your dad sounds completely goated to him.for her part, Ava has gotten out completely. out of Harlan County, out of Raylan, out of Boyd. she has divorced them all despite never being married to them, and her actual husband she divorced in S1E1 with a bullet. even after the six-time season finale song chimes in to remind us "you'll never leave Harlan alive" as one last mortal peril bears down, she seizes the wheel and does it anyway. when we find her again in the epilogue she has left Harlan and all the men that were Harlan to her and she's not merely alive but thriving. aside from the obvious fear that the past might catch up when she answers the door in her last scene, she is glowing, the happiest and healthiest we've ever seen her, with an equally happy, healthy son at her side who will never have to know what she ran from. she wears divorce well, a shining crown of her triumph.
I think it is of particular note that of all these, only the gay divorce is romantic (except insofar as it's usually a happy occasion for anyone to no longer be married to a cop)
This is a real and true evaluation of one of the best modern crime TV shows ever. Love wins (?)
