SHAMY FAN

Everyone, lets join in and make tomorrow :

Spaghetti Night!!! (hotdogs optional)


I was going to make spaghetti today, but i will save that till tomorrow.
Im so excited!!!

Musickat18

I'm down with spaghetti night!

Lionne

1) I have been wicked sick for the past 10 days, and only started to feel better yesterday. That's one reason I have been gone. My brain has been scrambled.

2) I don't flail. I may have been turned into a fan girl for the first time in my life by the Shamy, but I am NOT of the flailing, keyboard smashing, spazzy variety. I leave that to the rest of you kids.

3) I have taken a sizable portion of conversation to PM. That was never really intentional, but I like to keep my conversations about the show, you know, at a really high level of analysis and intelligence. For one thing, I like my conversations about the things I like to be smart, funny and you know, CONTAIN ACTUAL WORDS. I know that the .gif speak is funny, but honestly, when I see all feelings or thoughts contained in a .gif, I think... well, okay, cute... but then I have absolutely nothing witty or intelligent to say in response to them. For me, they are conversation killers.

Okay, I am soooo down with this. I know that for many Thursday night has become pizza night, but as a Shamy fan, I definitely think that Thursday night is about to become spaghetti night. Yum yum yum! Who is with me?

I totally DO NOT miss your .gifs, but I totally do miss your language lessons! I think Sheldon is a pakipot. It's pakipot, right? What is a tsundere? Is a tsundere that male version of a pakipot??! How do you pronounce both words?

All of this reminds me of Leonard and Sheldon's conversations way back in Season 1, after Leonard hooks up with Leslie Winkle. It's something along the lines of, "May or may not want me to be happy with the woman who is currently making me happy!" It's all so convoluted. The fact that Sheldon is actually having to play on the opposite side of that whole conversation just cracks me up.

I think that the show is trying to make it VERY clear that yes, Sheldon is definitely worried that Amy's campaign to make him happy and increase his feelings for her is actually working, perhaps has already worked. Sheldon has a way of not going to Leonard or Penny or anyone else for advice until he's already well and truly screwed (I'm sorry. Until he's well and truly an object attached to another object by an inclined plane, wrapped helically around an axis), so I have a feeling that Sheldon has already looked at his emotions and understands perfectly well that he's 1) happy and 2) her plan is working. Knowing that it's already happened is why he's talking to Leonard about it - he needs some help and guidance about where to go from there.

Musickat18

Lio, i actually wanted to respond to something you said in the episode thread, but didn't want to start going too OT there, so I'll respond here.

I think you're right that Sheldon hasn't ever specifically said he was against relationships. I believe he's only ever said that he finds sex unsanitary. But I'm still wracking my brain because I feel like I'm somehow still forgetting something...

I think what Sheldon has been against is ROMANCE or any other thing regarding feelings. After all, when Amy stated in TVS "it's going to be romantic" his response was "Way to kill the mood". And of course he also unfriended all of his friends on FB because they stated he was jealous. I don't think Sheldon is against the institution of marriage as a rule, but I'm betting he sees marriage as synonymous with sex and would therefore conclude it's something he doesn't (or at least DIDN'T) want. But then he found Amy, who, while still clearly interested, doesn't press him TOO hard to add a physical aspect to the relationship. I'm betting he's much more open to the idea of marriage, but only as it applies to AMY.

moyrani

Lio, get well soon. I think you've made your stance on flailing pretty clear and I respect that. I am not the type of person that will go for keyboard smashing but I am not against general spazzing. It does help lift spirits and lighten moods. I wouldn't want to go through pages and pages of it either, but I think we rarely do that here anyway. So I hope we can reach a compromise in this thread.

I think that Sheldon probably sees marriage warily due to his own parents marriage implosion. He hates when people fight because he's traumatized from childhood. He has made many a disparaging comment about how his parents treated each other. It all has cemented his general views on relationships too.

I just recalled a conversation from Grasshopper Experiment that pretty much summarizes his views on romance and marriage:

And we all know this one from TDE:
Of course, this was all before he was enslaved by the hotsy totsy from Glendale but he's lived with these notions for so long it will take him a while, or getting hit on the head by a frying pan as Jim so eloquently put once, to snap out of it.

123sprinkles

Do you guys think Sheldon's the only boy Amy's kissed? I mean it's most likely, so I would assume it's a yes, but it's never been stated before. And if it is, Amy doesn't even remember their first kiss because she was drunk.

Sursonica

I haven't been postin much first, due to the holidays here, (today is my first day at work since last friday) and two, my internet connection at home has been severily damaged after the storm a couple of weeks back

Regarding Sheldon and marriage, I agree, that most of his issues seem to come from his parents failed marriage and endless quarrels. He reallty suffered that as a kid and seems to have transformed that suffering in a desdain for the institution itself, as relationships based on love as well.

I also do think he is becoming, at least in a very small way a bit more open to it. And the key is Amy. I think one of the reasons, besides the fact that he does really care about her, is that he sees Amy as his intellectual equal. And she does believe in it, at least since she started having feelings for him. He has seen her evolve from her finding "the notion of romantic love an unnecessary cultural construct that adds no value to human relationships" to her "this is going to be romantic" self, and I think, at some point, it's going to make him realize that maybe, romantic love isn't as "below" or "primal" since a person he admires, respects and that he considers as his equal as Amy has changed her mind (to an extent) regarding that.
When I say "to an extent" is basically, because even as Amy has changed her view on the matter,what she thinks as "romantic" is clearly off from what most people do, but that makes her notions about it, meet halfway with Sheldon's....


did that make any sense?

ETA: @sprinkes... hmmm, I would say yes, that Sheldon is her first, basically because of what Amy has said during all this time regarding her life... but is true, we've never been told so far. But, I do think she did eventually remember the kiss... I never actually believe in "alcohol amnesia" maybe because of the fact that even when I've been VERY drunk I always remember everything the next day

Lionne

Okay, in many ways I agree with you. In other ways, I don't. I'm going to split two very fine hairs here:

1) I think there's a difference between Sheldon being against romantic feelings and Sheldon being against feelings of ANY particular stripe.

2) I also think there's a difference between Sheldon being against romantic feelings and Sheldon believing he is above romantic feelings.

IMO, I think that Sheldon sees everyone around him as regular human beings, and he appreciates that they have feelings and go about their business behaving as regular human beings would - interested in love, having emotional needs, etc etc. Sheldon has always looked DOWN on that, because he's convinced himself that he's above such things. Sheldon really doesn't consider himself just a regular average human being - and when it's suggested to Sheldon by Leonard, his mothers, Penny or even Tiny Spock, Sheldon is offended. Sheldon sees himself, by way of his superior intelligence, something special and above all normal human beings. He has practiced kholinar, an alien religious practice by the way (religious!), over any human religion or mental discipline in order to suppress his emotions and human side for a very long time.

I don't think that, with Sheldon, the problem is really his aversion to sex, any aversion to love, or any bias of his against the institution of marriage. I would stress that he have never, EVER heard Sheldon say he didn't want to get married. We've never heard him EVER fail to support his friends for wanting to be in relationships or get married either. I'm not arguing that I think Sheldon is pro-marriage, actually, what Sheldon's opinions on marriage or on himself getting married are remains a total mystery - not to mention that those opinions are going to be subject to change depending on how honest Sheldon is being with himself at any particular given time, his current emotional or relationship state, and his perception of what's currently going on in his life. We have no evidence that Sheldon is against marriage - in fact, we've seen his behavior through Howard's engagement and Sheldon has never said anything disapproving about marriage being a waste of time or effort in futility or a total pipe dream, and if we've dealt with Howard's engagement for so long without Sheldon showing any negative reaction to it or making any disparaging remarks about marriage I think we can assume that Sheldon doesn't hold any hostility towards the institution of marriage whatsoever.

We don't know if Sheldon has ever thought about HIMSELF ever getting married, though. I daresay that he's probably never thought about getting married one way or the other - I would expect that his opinion on the matter is probably pretty unestablished.

The problem is really with his self-esteem and self-perception, and the fact that he's spent a long time, I think, explaining that the reason he was bullied or had no friends or people didn't understand him was because of his intellect. EVERYTHING for Sheldon is about how smart he is. He did, somewhere along the line, decide to be "a man of science" and to dedicate himself to higher dimensions and standards and intelligence - forgoing everything that any "average" man of "average" intelligence could ever want or feel or need or do. I don't think Sheldon knows one way or another whether he would get married or not, because I have a feeling that being married, getting married, falling in love and all of that is nonsense for regular, average human beings to worry about and toil over, and not something that the great Sheldon Cooper would put two seconds to worrying about. He's above such things, after all.

Being a boyfriend, and falling in love with a real life human girl - that's all about feelings, and it's something that Sheldon never expected of himself, and always thought he was somehow "above." Or, I'm sorry, feelings are something that Sheldon has actually spent a lot of his life deliberately putting himself above. No one ever wanted to play with him, his home life was miserable, he was lonely and confused and misunderstood - Sheldon's the type to say, "I don't care. That doesn't hurt my feelings. I don't have feelings. I'm a genuis, I am a scientist. Science is facts and figures and numbers and there's no feelings, no confusion, it's BETTER THAN THAT. And so I am."

This is all part of his defense mechanisms.

I think that it's something he thought he was ABOVE, that he was too good for - while at the same time secretly craving it on another level. I've already posted about that maybe a week ago - that Sheldon clearly was invested in some of his relationships with women in the past, maybe even seeking out intimacy or a relationship well before a time when we acknowledged that he was. Also, we can look at how far Sheldon has bent over backwards to establish his friendship with all of his friends - Leonard, Howard, Raj and Penny - when he's lost them or they are in jeopardy.

So I actually that the truth, with Sheldon, is covert and highly malleable. I think that marriage is something Sheldon thinks he is too much of a genius to worry about or have time for. So he doesn't think about it. This is precisely the same way he looked at love or a romantic attachment. He thought he was too good for one, and totally above worrying about such a thing until Amy entered his life. When Sheldon reached the fork in the road where he simply HAD to deal with the issue, he did. He unfriended all of his friends on Facebook, asked out Penny to make Amy jealous, denied he wanted to get her back, denied he was obsessed with the problem, denied, denied and denied - and then he very reluctantly and stubbornly and adorably caved to the issue. Many people, up to actually hearing the words, "Will you be my girlfriend," probably would have sworn up and down that there was no way that Sheldon Cooper was ever going to get there, ever would want a relationship, ever would fall in love - I mean, it was totally ridiculous. No. Not going to happen.

You were in as much denial as Sheldon himself.

However, Sheldon has repeatedly shown himself to have an essential humanity despite all of his efforts to the contrary. If you believe in that humanity, and you believe in it's strength and power to conquer even a man of such extraordinary discipline, hurt, willpower, rigidity, insecurity, and intelligence like Sheldon Cooper, then you're a hopeless (and secret) old romantic like myself.

I believe that the issue is complicated - I think Sheldon would LOVE being married. Actually, I can see Sheldon taking to being married like a fish to water. I think that there's that essential humanity in Sheldon that has thought about being married, would love to be married, and that loves this whole thing of being in love. Of course, that's also the side that another part of Sheldon's personality has spent his entire life trying to deny, smoother, and "rise above." So when Sheldon "comes down to earth" with the rest of the human beings, it's both a huge loss for his ego and a huge win for his humanity. He's both happy and sad about it.

Sheldon's just a complicated guy. But I'll bet dollars to donuts that somewhere deep down inside his secret self, Sheldon would LOVE to be married.

Musickat18

Did Sheldon's parents actually divorce? I got the feeling they went through a rough patch, but were still together when he died. There was the incident of cheating, although I've also never been sure whether his parents were separated at the time...all I remember is the "bottle blonde" who tried to buy Sheldon's love with action figures.

ETA:

ha! Sorry Lio...I posted my question and THEN saw your post. So now my tiny post looks like I have the attention span of a gnat.

Anyways, Great post. I see your points. I have a question though. Perhaps, I'm still missing something, perhaps it's as simple as Sheldon separating love and sex, but hasn't Sheldon, on multiple occasions shown disdain when his friends have engaged in coitus? I believe one of those conversations is how I learned that Albert Eistein was a 'hound dog".

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, while I don't disagree that Sheldon would take well to marriage, given the fact that he's already got a contract with Amy, I don't see how marriage (in HIS mind) would be necessary.

(I feel like this reads like me being a jerk. I'm not trying to be.)

Lionne

I don't think that they ever actually divorced, no. I also think that they've made some changes to the idea of what the Cooper marriage was like since the series started. We can all remember Mary's first appearance, when she was talking about cooking with bacon grease, and she said, "He'll die before 60 but his love will be true." I thought from that that the marriage between Mary and George was fairly stable, and that George was at least a faithful husband.

I was shocked when Sheldon talked about his mother diving into religion and his father diving into a bottle blonde who tried to buy his love with action figures. Clearly, that's a point of infidelity so high that even the young child is well aware of it. It directly goes against the idea that, despite any other problems in their marriage, the love George had for Mary was "true."

Unfortunately for me, like many things in this series, things like "his love will be true" and other statements or scenes from the first 6 episodes are later directly rebutted. I think any other conversation or hint we've had about the Cooper marriage indicates that George was an alcoholic, the Cooper marriage was full of fighting and arguments, and that Sheldon was fairly well traumatized by a lot of things that happened in his youth.

Yet, YET, even though his parent's marriage was obviously a disaster for many years, we've still never heard Sheldon expressly say anything negative about marriage or about love. He's never sworn he'll never get married, he's never sworn he'll never fall in love, and he's never said that all people who fall in love are fools.

I do think that Sheldon is the only boy that Amy has ever kissed, yes. She's led a very sheltered life, and let me be honest - Amy is incredibly socially awkward, and she's not that attractive. I know a lot of you will just have a cow over me saying that, but please get a grip. Mayim is a cute girl, I think, she's got a killer smile and beautiful skin and beautiful eyes. But she also has quite a nose on her, a very pointy chin, her mousy brown hair is the very definition of mousy, and it's clear to me that she's learned very well how to do her make up to make the absolute best of her face. Even then, when i see her in the best make-up she can possibly have, I consider her no beauty - but in many ways that is precisely the point of Mayim and Amy by extension. Mayim is brilliant, cute, loving, thoughtful, vibrant, adorable, and she just has *something* about her, an inner beauty that shines through everything else.

Now, they dumb down Mayim's looks for Amy, and Mayim adds a certain awkwardness to her deliberately, and then they cover her in the most horrible, clashing, granny, ugly, insane clothing ever. I mean, EVER. But what does this matter? So what if Amy is the youngest woman ever who did not go into the nursing profession to wear those soul-suckingly ugly shoes? Amy is incredibly brilliant, loyal, obtuse as a triangle where c^2+a^2<b^2, accomplished, delightful, honest, and simply just the perfect mate for Sheldon. She has the same sort of quality that Mayim has, in fact, probably the reason that Mayim was cast in this role - she has an inner beauty that transcends her actual appearance. The type of inner beauty that will last through her whole life, when the outer beauty of lesser women has well faded, and that's is what Sheldon sees when he looks at her. Amy deserves to have total self-respect and be loved despite whether or not she's physically attractive to most people. She is attractive to Sheldon - incredibly so. That's really all that matters.

kirubreezy

The Shamy initially causes me to flail....and post gifs, then I get down to Analysis. :-)

SHAMY FAN

Regarding the Cooper's relationship.
Alot of women stay in unhappy marriage and adultery for the sake of the kids, especially really religious families. Hoping that one day they will change. I was kinda raised like that when I was a kid.
I know better know, and would never stay in an unhappy relationship.
But alot of stay to keep the family together.

Especially coming from the South, there is alot of that around here. Im not saying everyone here would do that, but I did know someone who's hushand treated her like crap, but she stayed for her kids.

If Sheldon was real, I would feel so sorry for him, being raised in a family like that. Thats probably why he is they way he is.

Sorry for me ranting on

Musickat18

The Cooper marriage was definitely not a happy one...I kind of tried to steer clear of it in my fic, TBH because I didn't want the story to be too unhappy. Because good grief, from what we've heard, Sheldon did indeed have a hellish childhood. (If we add in the bullying)

No wonder he's so emotionally broken. I think, and I don't think I'm alone, that Sheldon is actually a very sensitive person. So sensitive that his only recourse to deal with such rejection and fear is to build a wall 50 feet tall and 20 feet thick around his heart. I have thought this since before the introduction of Amy actually. It's quite obvious that Sheldon loves his Meemaw, and also pretty easy to guess, based on what he's said, that she was a person in his life who loved him as he was. He felt safe in his feelings of familial love for her.

I almost forgot where I was going with that...but I remembered. I wanted to lead in with that to say that I believe it is quite possible that Sheldon is a romantic of sorts. And what I mean by that is not that i expect him to start spouting sonnets or read Jane Austen novels, but that deep down, marriage and companionship is something that he values as a necessary social construct.

kirubreezy

As to his views on marriage....didn't he say in a recent episode, that he doesn't get the hype or doesn't understand the reason for a big/extravagant wedding, just 'slip on the ring and be done with it' or something to that effect...

So I think he does believe in marriage to some extent at the very least (that was a very ambiguous sentence, I know)

Lionne

See, I think that's a point that the Quad Squad, championed mostly by Meg, as been arguing for quite a long time now. Your defense mechanisms and how you really feel are two different things. I haven't heard Sheldon ever say something degrading or dismissive about marriage or love even as a defense mechanism or in a state of denial. To me, if he hasn't even said something like that as part of a front, I don't think it's nearly what he feels deep down underneath. I have seen and heard zero, absolutely zero, evidence that Sheldon has any particular hostility towards the idea of marriage as either part of his external persona and defense mechanism or part of his internal belief or value system.

I would not go so far as to say that Sheldon is a romantic. Maybe. That's something that I swing back and forth on all the time.

There's a reason Sheldon's been informally diagnosed as autistic by the viewing public at large - he does lack empathy, he does not understand sarcasm (though at times he can be very sarcastic), he has been emotionally aloof, he doesn't care remotely about a lot of his friend's inner turmoil or problems. He often has no idea when he's actually insulting someone. He is undemonstrative and doesn't like to be touched. He's a man of science and oftentimes hard cold facts. There's a certain part of his development that was definitely wounded and/or delayed that has a lot to do with his home life, being a genius, and going off to school and dedicating his life to science and learning at a very young age.

That said, I find that there's a certain romance in what Sheldon does for his career, and in the depth and intensity of his imagination. Sheldon is, by far, the most imaginative character on the show, and one of the only characters whose imagination we've spent a considerable amount of time in. We've seen Leonard imagine dating Penny again or getting Penny to work - all of which took place in a realistic fashion. We've seen Raj imagine getting together with Bernadette - very romantic, featuring a song and dance number, but still realistic. Sheldon's imagination takes him to different planets, places with two moons and Gorgons and lush vegetation. What he has to hold in his mind and be able to imagine just to understand and explore black holes and outer space, quantum mechanics and the laws of physics - his capabilities would probably absolutely floor us if they really showed them. In that sense, with what he's mentally capable of, what I think Sheldon spends most of his time thinking about and dreaming about and considering in his mind, I think Sheldon's more of a romantic than I can possibly imagine.

Sweetheart, that barely even comprised a complete paragraph, much less any sort of "ranting on."

I realize that the rest of the world, and most of the boards in this forum and such that I visit, writing more than one sentence or a post with more than 3 lines of text is TOTALLY CRAZY TOWN OMG WHY DON'T YOU SHUT UP ALREADY, but that's not the way things are here. At least not when I'm around.

From my perspective on your post, you should not be apologizing for ranting on. You should be apologizing for not ranting on longer and saying more.

If you want to apologize for "ranting on," you need to put some serious effort into increasing your ranting abilities. I mean, seriously. Snap with it, girlfriend. Expand your expectations of what a good solid rant is LIKE, and RANT ON. I have made a thorough examination of your post. Not once, NOT ONCE, did you even turn on your CAPS LOCK. Are you serious? A rant is not a rant if you haven't even brought down the power of the CAPS LOCK! You know, you want to argue, especially if you want to argue with someone like me, you better turn that CAPS LOCK ON BABY and bring out the CRAZY EYES! We are going to RANTVILLE.