It was good. The show started good and ended well, and somewhere along the way it was no longer necessary to give a shit about them. But that old feeling, that welling feeling behind the eyes that gave these kids their power once upon a time, that will always exist. There is gratitude for the experience, but that's it. Hopefully the show made us better, even as it got worse and worse. Maybe that's all we can ever hope for. But I will tell you this, and it goes for us all -- for the horrible batshit shippers who aren't done growing and the obnoxious hate-watchers that stopped in the middle, for everybody in-between -- it goes for me and it goes for you. I don't know who Wayne Chase is, but he said this:

"If a work of art reaches you emotionally, it teaches you something about survival. You may not be able to put it into words, but you remember it."

XO. Survival is definitely the word. From the outside, from this singular situation I've been in, I would say "something about survival" is probably the best way you could say it. The show was looked down on for being about teenage girls, because the only people we're allowed to shit on are women and young people. And then just as it was proving itself, on the global stage, to be a lot more about that, it changed. And changed again. But whether or not any particular iteration of the show was something that impressed me, it did continue to teach about that. About survival.

When they asked me six years ago what these books were about, I would always say the same thing: "It's about two girls that love each other so much, they have to hold tight to each other, no matter how many times the one gets screwed over and the other is rewarded for no reason. And this is riveting, because you are always one or the other." And that ultimately the point is that you will always be one or the other, in every circumstance, so get over it. What you have a choice about is whether or not to feel shame about it. Whether or not any secret is worth the burden of having one.

And now I would say it's about how you want to watch rich people, but you also want to see them fucked, and that is a lot to ask of yourself, and of a show. It is about whether or not you can look at someone else and what they have, and find it in your heart to remember who you are, independent from your jealousy. That privilege is something to be aware of, not ashamed of. That your only shot in this life of becoming a real person is to move away from whatever's been handed to you, be that intelligence or beauty or money, and into the places that scare you, because that is how we were designed.