#pll meta

[buffyspeak]

it feels very clear to me that the reason the mona reveal was so impactful where the other 'a' reveals were just. bizarre was because the liars genuinely DID do wrong to her when alison was around. don't get me wrong, i don't believe they deserved what she did to them - but they weren't even bystanders of alison's bullying, they were enablers, and probably at times active participants of their own accord. this is tempered by sympathetic moments with the liars regarding mona (such as aria, in the flashbacks, arguing that maybe they should wait for mona before alison steers her away, or emily apologizing to her in late season 2), but it's undeniable that the early seasons were permeated with a strong theme of having to reckon with one's past mistakes. the liars had genuine flaws, made genuine bad decisions, and even as we rooted for them, as we sympathized with them, we also understood why they were targets. (again - not that they deserved what she did. but that it made narrative SENSE.)

even outside Everything Else (TM) regarding the disastrous storyline, charlotte targeting the girls made like.... 0 sense. she says she started because she realized the girls were happy alison was gone and wanted to make them pay, but by this point in the story, we, as an audience, have seen the girls grieve for alison, then fight to uncover the truth for her, then fight to protect her. yes, they all had complicated feelings - but literally who wouldn't? charlotte's reasoning just falls flat.

i never watched most of 6b and 7, but i've long since spoiled myself so i know about alex drake lmao. and it's once again just... not narratively appealing to me. like, i guess it at least makes a little more sense than charlotte did, her wanting to uncover the truth about charlotte and begrudging the life spencer had, but once again, it's just made up of plot convolution and has nothing to do with the actions of the liars themselves.

like. the liars had genuine culpability in how mona was treated before she turned the tables on them. that's what made the original story interesting! but eventually the show got so wrapped up in Big Plot Twists (tm) that it lost the heart of what made the mystery and tragedy impactful.

[jaggedwolf]

PLL Set Design

[thousand-page-dreams]

Ultimately, I think it's great that the girls are able to form a stronger, healthier friend group without Alison. Nobody is the leader, and they all matter.

In the flashbacks, it's shown that Alison picks on and insults Hanna constantly. In some moments, Alison shows warmth to the other girls, or at least appears to be having fun with them.

But with Hanna...there's hardly any. Any "affection" from Alison is backhanded.

For example: "You'll find someone who loves you...just maybe later than the rest of us."

The girls stood by while Alison bullied their classmates. The show implies that their silence makes them complicit. Almost all of the girls try to make up for this by befriending Alison's targets after her dissappearance.

(It's interesting that Aria is the exception but that's for another post.)

Aria stands up for Hanna to Alison once in one of the flashbacks, so I'd like to think this happened more than once. We only see bits and pieces of the original friend group, after all. Aria is also the least featured in the flashbacks.

But Spencer and Emily say nothing. Spencer fights back against Alison multiple times, but not usually on behalf of other people.

Should Hanna have stood up for herself? Absolutely.

Were the rest of the group also mistreated by Alison? For Spencer and Emily, of course. I think it's more complicated in Aria's case, though.

However, the other girls never apologize or even acknowledge their complicity. A conversation about it would've been nice when they reunited.

Another way to show how different they are from Ali: accountability and open communication.

[shortkingvi]

ruby alison dilaurentised her entire team

[karouvas]

For PLL: ❤️🧡💕

For Gilmore Girls: ❤️💚💖

Pll

❤: Which character do you think is the most egregiously mischaracterized by the fandom?

I think it’s between Emily and Aria, and they get mischaracterized kind of in the opposite directions yet also some of the same ones. I think general takes on Emily make her out to be more the nice sweet vanilla one when in the show there are times when she’s really prideful and judgemental and has a lot of repressed anger and abandonment/commitment that can come out in a pretty dysfunctional way in her relationships, and there’s a lot there that’s really interesting to explore imo so her being dismissed as the nice sweet one with no interesting flaws can rub me the wrong way, and then with Aria I think there are times when she gets similar treatment but then a lot of the time fans who hate her either acknowledge her actual flaws but exaggerate them x100 and make them the only thing about her or they straight up invent new flaws she does not have rather than explore the interesting ones in canon. I think in general I’ll lean towards Aria because I think hardcore Emily lovers at least tend to have a good handle on her vs not all hardcore Aria lovers are the same way to me, and also I think Aria’s rep from a general audience standpoint as being the most coddled/ having nothing bad happen to her in the show is like. Very warped view of her character and the show lol. I don’t see people saying that about Emily even if they think she’s uninteresting.

🧡: What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with?

I mean I think Aria as A is a fun idea to explore sometimes and I like exploring her dark side in general, but I don’t think it’s a really plausible theory for the show itself. Aria being on the A team maybe, but not her being A herself operating alone.

💕: What is an unpopular ship that you like? 

Defining this as ships that actively get hate rather than rarepairs or ships that are more polarizing … I like Spaleb more than the average viewer for sure, they’re far from otp status but I find them more compelling than any of the other m/f ships.

Gilmore Girls

❤: Which character do you think is the most egregiously mischaracterized by the fandom?

hmm… I’m going to say Emily and Richard I love Emily and really like Richard but a lot of the takes on them as actually the in the right party re: Lorelai and later seasons Rory is :// to me.

💚: What does everyone else get wrong about your favorite character?

I feel like in discussions about Rory’s privilege you have her haters who are really un-nuanced about her privilege level and think there is like. Zero difference between how Rory grew up and how Logan or Paris did, and then on the other hand you have her defenders who make valid points about the struggles she did grow up with, but I will say it sometimes really shows when said defenders are white and don’t think about the level of white privilege in things like her treatment in jail the community service, there’s a lot to unpack there and I do think Rory is very much responsible for her choices during that era as much as I am far from a big fan of Logan and prefer Literati to Rogan by a lot I do think when other Rory Stans who are Literati’s try to spin that era as Logan making Rory do everything they don’t like her to be doing it’s a bit infantilizing/taking away her agency and refusing to interact with specific parts of her character. But then I also can’t stand a certain faction of fans who call the female leads of the show out for privilege and white feminism and then hand out cookies left and right to chars like Logan and Christopher for the bare minimum so like, actually discussing how white privilege effects Rory and Lorelai does have an unfortunate slippery slope effect with the wrong kinds of people. This got off topic but basically I think different people are either too critical or not critical enough of Rory re: privilege and types of privilege.

💖: What is your biggest unpopular opinion about the series?

Are we talking opinion most contrary to general public perception or most unpopular according to tumblr opinions? I’ll try for one that I think could count for both as much as I strongly dislike Rory/Dean as a ship I would not write out the infidelity plot in end of s4/early s5 I think it actually worked really well for Rory’s character… there’s narrative framing stuff that I could’ve gone for changing but that goes into like. Dean’s framing over the course of the show being unduly positive. But basically I do think that plot needed to happen.

Ty!

[terrifyingstories3]

caleb doesn't understand hanna not talking about him in therapy because if he went to therapy he would just talk about her for hours

[the-unsea]

I’ve been thinking about my trajectory of shipping in my life.  The first couple I can remember ‘shipping’, as in they weren’t together on the show and I wanted to see it happen, was Joanie and Chachi on Happy Days.   They would eventually get married in the final season.

As I got a little older, I started liking more ‘grown up shows’.   Scarecrow and Mrs. King started a love for crime solving partnerships, it would lead to Hunter and DeeDee, then Harm and Mac.   

Bickering co-workers started with Tony and Angela from Who’s The Boss, which would lead to Rebecca and Sam from Cheers and then to Donna and Josh on The West Wing, and Chandler and Monica from Friends.

I was really invested in online fandom from about 1999-2007.   By that time, I had 4 kids and not a lot of time to focus on watching anything.

Sometime in the spring of 2018, I got so fed up with the usual posts on Twitter and Facebook being about politics and how terrible the world was.  At that time I had also become really, really invested in Lyatt (Timeless), in a way I hadn’t been since Harm and Mac in 1998.  I found my way to Tumblr, and that led me to Bellarke (The 100).   You’ll notice I have now given them a shipper name, when I was first in fandom we didn’t do shipper names.

But, since falling back into fandom, (and the huge exception to this is Naley)  I have since become obsessed with the hero/villain concept.  Darklina, Damerya, Haladriel!  I mean my hubs and my kid have been on me for 20 years to watch LOTR, and I haven’t yet!   And now my latest obsession seems to be Chuck and Blair!    I can’t help but wonder what it says about me that the older I get the more I seem to fall for the bad guy in the scenario.  I was never that way in the past.

[lingeringscars]

spencer having a home. spencer feeling safe. spencer being around people that make her feel comfortable. spencer being loved for everything that she is. spencer getting to spread the warmth that she has inside of her to people that share it. spencer getting to receive warmth and love and care. i

[cancerian-woman]

Now I have to know, what are your favorite rare pair ships? What are some that surprised you but you can see?

that's fun!

Tyler and Kim (the hybrid girl from his pack). Kim was really short-lived character, but I think she and Tyler would've been perfect longterm!

Tyler and Rebekah. A temporary fling between the two of them would've been fun for the drama.

Elena and Liam. It was nice to actually see her have interest in anyone other than the Salvatores. I don't he was as bad as the majority of the fandom makes him out to be. I said it once a while ago that Elena's storyline was wrapped after they made her chose a brother and stopped being a doppelganger but that's another post (daily fuck you to julie plague) Elena has really interesting ships. I do like Elena and Lucien too though! That i'm learning about.

Peyton and Jake - Not as rare as the others but very small compared to most OTH ships. Owen and Brooke is one of my favorites too

Last one Samara and Emily from PLL.

Tbh, I don't think I've been super surprised by ships. I think I'm more surprised when people aren't accepting to headcanons or fanon. Living under the idea that canon is the only way media can be presented. If I am super unaware of a ship, I like to read metas so I can learn what someone else could've seen that I missed. I think that's one of the fun parts in fandom. Learning ideas from another. I hope answered this right!

Thank you for the ask!

[zalrb]

Could you do a ranking your favorite scream movies and why?

Scream

I'm not really sure if this needs an in-depth breakdown. It's iconic. The originator. The ultimate make-fun-of-and-pay-homage-to-movie-tropes movie. The first phone call, Drew Barrymore dying in the first 5 minutes? The dialogue, the meta, the balance, it's just all so well-done.

Scream 2

Randy is correct, this one is inferior to the first but it is a great sequel and not an inferior movie. I love the Ghostface reveals, they're very fun and funny, they're so close to being my favourite (but Billy and Stu reign supreme) the conversation about desensitization and art imitating life was carried throughout and carried throughout well. Joshua Jackson and Sarah Michelle Gellar having their small roles in it is great 90s teen pop culture reference.

Scream 4

Scream 3

I'm going to talk about them together. I put Scream 4 before Scream 3 because I think Scream 4 is technically tighter and the reveal of Jill Roberts being Ghostface was more interesting than Roman's reveal, which was kind of a jump the shark moment. Scream 3 had some good elements, like Sidney getting attacked on the set of the movie-within-the-movie so her life has become blended with pop culture, and in a lot of ways the third movie is the most meta considering the actors in Stab are given the same complaints about Stab that the actors in Scream had about the movie, i.e. the constant rewrites. Roman having to do the Stab movie before he could do his romance is what happened with Wes Craven, he had to direct Scream before he could do the movie he wanted so while Stab is a movie about the characters' lives, Scream 3 is kind of a movie about what's going on with the cast. That's deep-dive inside baseball meta. But it's not very fun. It is certainly more fun than Scream 5 or 6 but it kind of drags, Sidney is hardly in it because Neve only worked 20 days, and the supporting characters aren't nearly as engaging, not like how Randy was, or even Tatum and Halli.

Scream 4 didn't feel as laborious, it's light on the meta compared to the first three, but it's back to that kind of light, tongue and cheek vibe. Emma Roberts niece to Julia Roberts playing Jill Roberts who is tired of being Sid's cousin is a very big wink. Rory Culkin being in it, great choice. Having Adam Brody and Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin and those girls from PLL and Degrassi TGN do cameos were all great pop culture references. It also delivered on the "modern horror film" rules in a more satisfying way to me than Scream 3 did on the trilogy rules, like the deaths being more gruesome or "shocking" for the time and for the franchise like Jill shooting Trevor in the balls, which wouldn't have happened before.

Scream 5 + 6 are equal to me

I find them equally joyless and charmless tbh, I have the same "meh" attitude towards both of them.

[b-etter]

Why do they keep making new Scream movies?? Don't they already have enough meta commentaries on the slasher genre???

PLL Original Sin did the same thing with the overwhelming movie references

Meta is cool and whatnot, but Scream meta was cool about 4 movies ago

Unless, of course, money

They should talk more about that on the next movie

They probably already said something similar about the Stab franchise, who knows

Ghostface will always be my fav slasher, but I'm never gonna need more than the first movie for that

[jaggedwolf]

So to see Hanna actually engage in a therapeutic experience (involving, note, scary warnings and a lot of shadow back-talk; exactly what Hanna would actually experience in this environment) and then come out the other side having gained a fair measure of control—over the Alison we’ve all got in there, that speaks for her troubles; a major reason they all loved her in the first place was how she embodied those energies for them, so she could stay clean—is itself fairly therapeutic to watch.   You don’t think of Hanna as being the heavy lifter, generally, but that was hard work, down to the huge defensive pushback right before she broke. I don’t think this particular move is necessary for the other girls—although Spencer’s going to need something similar just because her rage is so controlled, and therefore uncontrollable—but it’s the truth that of all of them, Hanna missed Ali the most and has the most to gain by saying goodbye.   For Spencer it’s as simple as letting go of ambition long enough to let somebody else win. For Aria it’s looking herself in the mirror and realizing she’s just a kid. For Emily, it’s learning that getting half of what you want is bullshit compared to wanting something you deserve. But for Hanna, it’s ripping herself down the middle and throwing away half: Standing in the wreckage of what’s left, and continuing to stand.   You think that letting go of grief is going to be this sweet goodbye thing and the person floats away into the clouds and a tear rolls down your cheek, but if it were that easy you would just do it. Grief counseling works the same no matter how you felt about the person, obviously, but the toughest ones are the ones that are both, because it’s not a quiet sad cloudy tear, it’s a burning acid storm.   The hardest ghosts to give up, the ones we hold onto the longest, are the ones that hurt us the most, because they’re knit the furthest down into our bones; they hold on strongest, jealously clinging, when it’s time to go. When you love somebody, that’s about them—but when somebody abuses you, that’s about you, so your memories of them are more powerful than the person ever was, because it’s part of what makes you who you are.   Letting go of somebody you hated and loved means doing major surgery on your own self, burning off the parts that don’t work without losing anything you should keep. You can do the easy part after the hard part. This was the hard part.

Jacob Clifton, Destroy Everything You Touch Today: Watching Pretty Little Liars 2A

[thousand-page-dreams]

In the homecoming episode in season one of Pretty Little Liars, each girl is with the wrong guy. 1. Aria dances with Sean despite liking Ez/ra. I do think Aria and Sean would’ve been cute, though. Though anyone is better than Ez/ra.

2. Emily brings Toby to the dance, though she likes girls and Maya.

3. Spencer is on a date with Alex, who never appears after season one. I do wonder when the producers decided to pair Spencer with Toby, since they don’t interact until the second half of the season.

4: Hanna is with Sean. I actually liked Sean in his brief time on the show, but he has “disposable YA boyfriend” written all over him...

But Caleb won’t be introduced until the second half of the season. So perhaps the writers were considering Lucas and Hannah as a couple? 

Lucas is clearly contrasted with Sean, the nerdy loner vs the popular boy. And both Emily and Spencer date Alison’s bullying victims. 

Hanna defends Lucas to Mona in the season one mid series finale. It’s an arc of growth for her; she backed away from standing up for him against Alison in the past. Hanna is popular too now, but she’ll always be a better person than Alison.

I liked Haleb in the early seasons, but I enjoyed Lucas and Hanna more, and always wondered if the show would’ve paired them together.

[worldsdumbestlesbian]

Before I begin this, I want to make it clear that Aria shouldn’t be working for A.D and that I don’t support what she’s doing to her friends.

Anyway…..

We are all so quick to judge Aria because she’s working for A.D and hurting her friends for the sake of fucking Ezra. I think we all need to understand that Ezra screwed Aria up a lot. Ezra was her hot English teacher she had a crush on, this is normal for a teenager. What’s NOT normal is Ezra engaging in romance with a teenager. EZRA IS A PREDATOR! This is why Aria never shuts up about him! Her first real boyfriend was a predator! This is why whenever she dates someone else, it never lasts long- she always goes back to Ezra. After Aria found out he was stalking her & her friends, she was upset for awhile- but she still went back to him! No matter what Ezra does, Aria will go back to him, she feels like she has to be with him, that there’s no other option. This is exactly why she would go join the A team- the exact thing that’s ruined her and her best friends life’s since she was a teenager- she feels like she has to be with Ezra, because he manipulated her at such a young age! If you start young, literally anything can become addictive.

[karouvas]

For the ship game: Aria/Alison and Aria/Alex Drake

Aria x Alison

Whether I ship it or not: I obviously do a lot! They’re one of my favorite pll pairings/dynamics. I’d say they’re my favorite Aria ship rn (sometimes Sparia ties with it depending on my mood) and in my top 2 Alison ships (with Monison).

Why I ship it or not: They’re just a very intriguing relationship, I love anytime pll creates a sort of homoerotic mirroring effect between the girls so things like Aria wearing the red coat, parallels between their home lives (their being groomed by Ezra, their home lives where one of their parents was unfaithful but even though that was Byron for the Montgomery’s and Jessica for the Dilaurentis’ the gendered dynamics in the marriage are similar imo, and both girls are kind of regarded as More Adult (the correlation between that and them being groomed Spencer is also a comparison there rather than Hanna and Emily who have comparatively more stable/supportive guardians but this isn’t about Sparia or Spalison I just had to mention it), and being kind of the vortex of controversy and attention (although those aren’t really positive) while their brothers are kind of sidelined. So in terms of that theirs a lot going on to dig into, and then Alison’s treatment of Aria in the flashbacks is very interesting because she treats her so much more like an equal than the other girls, I mean she does see Spencer as an equal in a way but that’s based on their rivalry and with an understanding that Alison wants the upper hand. With Aria she just seems like she wants her to be there in a way that’s .. simpler isn’t the right word. But I think Alison likes being reflected in Aria vs her conflicted feelings about being reflected in Spencer or Hanna and that’s interesting to me. I also think I enjoy when Aria’s forgiving nature and open mindedness is brought out in her dynamics with morally ambiguous women which I think is why aside from Spencer most of my ships I feel strongly about for her are with more morally duplicitous female chars, Alison Mona Jenna Alex in descending order tbh. (I also find Aria’s sharp edge / parts of her char that conflict with her “sweet/nice” image very interesting and those are also emphasized in these and by her finding Alison so compelling by). And all the liars visions of Alison are very interesting and more than a little gay, but Aria’s “you know why I picked you right” scene is especially ripe for analysis imo.

My opinion on their canon potential (chemistry, canon interactions, etc): Oh I think there’s quite a lot of canon basis for especially Alison’s side of it between the photographs she secretly took while Aria was sleeping, which when we think Jason took them were meant to assume is out of a warped sense of romance and then his words about Alison’s tendencies to hide things really sound like they’re about internalized biphobia and being in the closet, the cosplaying as an Aria look alike and then taking on aspects of an Aria persona with Ezra, a lot of her treatment of Aria being a lot more.. seeing her as an equal rather than a subject or rival. On Ali’s side it’s very easy to make the argument imo. On Aria’s side the relationship is super intriguing and I can read stuff romantically but in the way you can kind of read all the liars as at least a bit in love with Alison / they all kind of talk about her and imagine her in hallucinations in that way. In terms of chemistry I think theirs is good, it’s maybe not the most chemistry in any pairing between the girls like I think if you compared Sasha’s scenes with Janel or Troian with her scenes with Lucy she probably has a higher level of chemistry with the former two (but also that’s a bit unfair because Janel and Troian just have copious amounts of chemistry with like. Everyone (except Keenan in Troian’s case)). But there are plenty of scenes especially in the flashbacks (the first secret is crazy in this regard) where I’m like. Girlfriend behavior, maybe accompanied by close face watch (the scene where they wreck Byron’s office especially + all of the first secret especially).

My opinion on fanon interpretations/fandom around it (Favorite widespread hcs, pet-peeves, etc): Mostly that it’s massively underrated? Attribute that partially to I think a lot of fans are disdainful of Aria and don’t really think of her as a char Alison would be fascinated by or give a lot of thought to that, and Alison’s really polarizing as well, plus the fact the writers didn’t do much with the dynamic after Alison came back with the exception of 7.04. But I don’t remember a take about them I thought was *wrong* I just think they’re underrated/underexplored.

Aria x Alex

Whether I ship it or not: I ship it, not majorly because Alex as a concept isn’t super developed, but the things I like most about her are related to her fixation with Aria and the choices she made regarding her in 7b.

Why I ship it or not: I enjoy Aria’s whole 7b plot a lot and Alex is a contributing factor to it, and also like I said the Aria obsession piece made Alex more interesting to me and the Sparia compare/contrast is fun.

My opinion on their canon potential (chemistry, canon interactions, etc): well they don’t interact on screen a ton but Troian essentially plays Alex like Spencer but very British and more explicitly sapphic, “I’m so evil and skanky and I think I’m kind of gay”, so yeah I think they’re good on the chemistry front. And Alex Drake’s actions really only make sense if she was into Aria because why else would she kidnap Ezra of all people? Rather than idk, Peter Hastings? Too funny

My opinion on fanon interpretations/fandom around it (Favorite widespread hcs, pet-peeves, etc): n / a I haven’t seen that much and what I did see I mostly agreed with.

thank you!

(Send me a ship and I’ll answer these questions about them)

[sulietsexual]

Idea for a meta - what would be a trait/s of each of the liars that annoyed/irritated you throughout the show's run? Anything you wish was handled differently in terms of their individual development?

Hanna

For the most part, I adore Hanna and don’t find a whole lotof flaws in her character which irritate me all thatmuch. However, one thing I do often want to smack her for is her completeinability to think before she speaks, honestly, some of the things which comeout her mouth are far too blunt andunsubtle, and she really would be better off putting a bit more thought intoher words. I also find her habit of playing dumb somewhat irritating, as sheactually is quite intelligent, but thankfully she seems to have lost this traitduring the time jump, and now doesn’t hide her intelligence.

Spencer

I love Spencer, but there are a couple of aspects to herpersonality which bug me. For starters, her ridiculous one-track mind drives me nuts, the way shezeroes in on an A suspect and, no matter the evidence against, pursues themwith single-minded vengeance which gets old fast,especially since she is so often proved wrong. Like, I understand that Spenceris the audience avatar in this respect, she is supposed to lead us to the redherrings, but her ferocious conviction that personx is A is so annoying, especially when she railroads over friendships andrelationships because of it.

I also have issues with the fact that Spencer can be a bully,often pushing the other girls around – in particular Emily – and openlydisliking when someone questions her authority (usually Hanna). This is a traitshe shares with Alison, and it makes you understand why Alison saw her as athreat.

Aria

The thing I find with Aria is that she doesn’t really exist outside of her relationship withEzra. Everything about her, her personality, her storylines, her desires, her wantsand needs, they are all tied to Ezra.And I hate that, because she had such potential to become a great character,but instead, she is literally defined by her relationship.

So, of course, my biggest annoyance with Aria is also tied toher relationship, and that is how destructive, self-destructive, secretive,horrible and venomous she can be when it comes to her and Ezra. She literallythreatens to have her father fired because he is (rightfully) trying to removeher from the influence of her relationship, she is rude and volatile to herentire family because they (rightfully) oppose her relationship, she constantlylies to her friends regarding the relationship, and is just all-around ahorrible person. And this is the ship which is her endgame. As if there wasn’talready enough yuck in this show.

Emily

I kind of find Emily annoying in general??? I’m not sure ifit’s because of her as a character or the way in which Shay portrays her, butshe’s always been my least-fave of the Liars, although I could never put myfinger on why. I do find her to be a little bland and under-developed. And shehas a bit of a judgmental streak which is annoying. I by no means hate her, butI’ve never really connected with her or found her particularly endearing (Istill think she deserves better than Alison, though).

The only thing I wish were handled differently re the girlsdevelopment is for Aria to actually develop and grow outside of herrelationship. As said before, she really doesn’t exist as a character withoutEzra, which does her character a huge disservice. Emily, too, could use a tadmore development. But Spencer and Hanna are both superb characters,well-developed, multi-faceted and utterly endearing.