I’m really disappointed that there seems to be a general consensus (mostly by journalists and the cast/crew) that we’re not ‘allowed’ to be unimpressed with the finale. And I am speaking mostly to Troian’s quotes here. I love the woman but I think that’s an unfortunately really narrow way to look at fandom and the array of different emotions we all have. And we’re all upset for different reasons and to lump it all in with the same people who were sending her death threats about SpaIeb is really shitty.
I can be upset by a result and not send death threats. The majority of us can.
First, not everybody was in it for the same things. A lot of us were in it for the mystery. We were there to look at every single clue. We were there when they all said “everything is a clue in Rosewood” and took it to heart and wasted spent seven years theorizing, there were even Twincer theories that linked back to the earlier seasons! A lot of us were in it for the friendships and for the feminist undertones or the wlw rep which in the end left a lot to be desired. A lot of us were in it for the ships and romance. A lot of us were in it for more than one of those things, but a lot of us also weren’t and that’s not a bad thing.
The idea she’s pushing is that if you didn’t like the mystery, then look at the ships because yay endgame! But what happens when the mystery was unsatisfying, and you don’t care about the ships? What happens when the girls spent most of the time not together in the finale?
I don’t think it’s her fault for saying these things, I don’t think you can possibly understand fandom unless you’re in fandom and it’s very clear that’s never been something she’s been interested in and that’s fine.
But this idea that we all wanted the same things is really just a sad view of fandom. I agree, not everybody was going to be happy. That’s going to happen in any show no matter what. But this whole narrative about how we should only care about the work that they put in and the time they invested is hypocritical at best. Like, sure, I concede the writers did probably try to make us as happy as possible, but when you’re only listening to a select few people on twitter who kiss your ass 24 hours a day, that’s not really fair and is really just the beginning of a deeper fan-service fandom issue.
And to that, I also say, what about the time fans invested? For years, we were told that “that night” was important, and we held on to that, only to have it mean nothing. There were so many things that kept us holding on to the end because we thought we were going to get a a seven year reveal. Something that, after seven years, would knock us on our asses. Something that connected back to “that night”, to Alison, to the barn, to any of the original lore of the show. They kept that going because that was the only way to keep people holding on after Charlotte, and that does become a manipulation at some point.
The complete lack of acknowledgment for a huge part of this fandom is really disheartening. I mean, take the classroom scene. They hyped that scene up for two years. People literally spent two years theorizing about something that in the end meant nothing, that they had no idea what they were going to do with. Somewhere along the way, the ships were the only thing that mattered. They sacrificed everything else for the ships, not realizing that some of us didn’t care about them. Having ships is fine, loving them is fine, but it took over the show, and I think, in many ways, the ships are what sunk the show.
As fans, we’ve also invested a lot of time into this. A lot of us invested money into it. And without us, this show wouldn’t have gotten 7 seasons, so I think it’s kind of sucky that as fans, we’re being told that we’re not allowed to be upset if we were unsatisfied by the finale.
dededos
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
areudirty
andulkaphoto
