Shipper Wars: Favorite And Least Favorite TV Couples

[Annber03]

It says a lot about how notable and major some fandoms 'drama tends to be that even when you're not in that fandom, you still know about it. I have definitely heard about that whole conspiracy, and I remember the talk about a supposed "secret fourth episode", too, which is just...beyond bonkers on its face. I get people being upset, but when one gets to the point where they're coming up with theories like a "secret episode" and any other excuse or reason imaginable to avoid having to deal with the fact their ship didn't become canon...yeah. 

I never saw "Sherlock", so I can't speak to the accusations of queerbaiting that were often leveled at it. I will say that I do think some shows, once they know full well their fans have latched onto a pairing that does seem to have a strong LGBTQA+ following, do have a tendency to jerk those fans around and mess with and tease them more than they really need to or should. Either make it canon or don't, it's their show and their call, but if it's the latter, then quit with the cutesy "Oh, we just threw this in for the shippers, tee hee!" stuff while also claiming the shippers are reading too much into things when they dare to take those moments at face value and see that as an indication the pairing might actually become canon.

I know shows will often tease and drag out moments between pairings in general as it is - they've done it with straight pairings for years, too - but the teasing for LGBTQA+ pairings often tends to play out differently than it does for straight ones. And more often than not, the straight pairings do eventually become canon, there's not really much mystery or doubt over whether or not that'll happen. It's pretty much assumed at this point that it will. LGBTQA+ pairings don't often have that same guarantee. So showrunners should be a little better at how they handle teasing out any potential possibilities regarding those kinds of pairings. 

[Zella]

7 minutes ago, Annber03 said:

I never saw "Sherlock", so I can't speak to the accusations of queerbaiting that were often leveled at it.

The accusations were pretty well founded and didn't just involve Sherlock and John--they also involved Sherlock and Moriarty--and honestly, the showrunners did the same basic thing with so many aspects of the show. They'd toy with viewers and manipulate them and not even in a fun way and then act like viewers were being whiners for complaining.

The one that just absolutely broke me was they had a cliffhanger ending that made it seem like Sherlock fell to his death (which is a nod to the original stories). It was years before they finally got around to returning to the show, and I cannot even begin to explain how hyped up so many people I knew who were fans, myself included, were to see how they explained it. Hell, even my grandparents who rarely care about TV kept asking me when it was coming back, so they'd know what happened with Sherlock.

And when they did finally return, in the first episode they did a bunch of fake-out teases of what actually happened, one of which randomly included Sherlock and Moriarty making out because they really were the kings of queer-baiting, and then never concretely explained it. And those explanations were just really dumb on any logical level. And the showrunners acted like fans were whiny little bitches for complaining and calling them out on it. I was done. 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Zella

[Annber03]

20 minutes ago, Zella said:

And when they did finally return, in the first episode they did a bunch of fake-out teases of what actually happened, one of which randomly included Sherlock and Moriarty making out because they really were the kings of queer-baiting, and then never concretely explained it. And those explanations were just really dumb on any logical level. And the showrunners acted like fans were whiny little bitches for complaining and calling them out on it. I was done. 

Wow, yeah, that does sound obnoxious. Both for throwing in that random makeout session that wasn't going to go anywhere or have any significance and in just having fakeout teasers in general, instead of just, y'know, answering the big question that fans had waited so long to have answered. That's definitely another problem, too, yeah, be it with queerbaiting or any other aspect of a series. Some showrunners/writers definitely seem to be a little TOO in love with their supposed cleverness and trickery and whatnot. It's okay to just, y'know, answer questions and resolve mysteries, and have those answers and resolutions be simple, logical ones. Really, it is.

And if the fans have been accurate in their predictions of what will happen next, more often than not, that's a good thing! That means they've been paying attention and picking up the clues you've been laying down! Just leave it as is. Shows don't always need to have sudden/shocking twists to keep people on their toes and keep viewers interested. 

[Luckylyn]

There’s an awesome analysis of the  whole Johnlock conspiracy.   It was a show that encouraged fans to speculate but ultimately didn’t reward the viewers.  There was a toxic mix of show runners baiting the fandom and fans going too far.  

It’s not great when show runners tease fans but fans also have to try not to take the shows too seriously.

 I have definitely experienced being disappointed with the outcome of a ship I supported.  I shipped Angel/Cordelia on Angel and Ianto and Jack on Torchwood.  The way viewers who were hurt over how Ianto was handled were treated by the show runner was horrible.  He referred to us as hysterical women. I do think some of the anger in the Torchwood fandom was about overall questionable writing and the how the show was skewed in Gwen’s favor.  The eruption over Ianto was a straw breaking the camels back situation.  It wasn’t just disappointment for a ship being destroyed but anger over the show in general not being as good as it could be.
 

Regarding Angel I was so confused at how Cordelia’s character was handled post Season 3.  Now I know the suffering Charisma Carpenter went through with Whedon’s harassment and punishing her for getting pregnant. In that case the anger was more about how the actress was being treated than disappointment that Angel/Cordelia was ended.

[Zella]

9 minutes ago, Annber03 said:

instead of just, y'know, answering the big question that fans had waited so long to have answered. That's definitely another problem, too, yeah, be it with queerbaiting or any other aspect of a series. Some showrunners/writers definitely seem to be a little TOO in love with their supposed cleverness and trickery and whatnot. It's okay to just, y'know, answer questions and resolve mysteries, and have those answers and resolutions be simple, logical ones. Really, it is.

Yes I think that was a huge problem with the show--they tied themselves in knots trying to outwit viewers and were super smug about it while also not being especially good at it either. And honestly if they'd wanted to preserve some mystery to it, I think there may have been a way to do that in a lighthearted manner. Even just having alternate theories that made sense and leaving it up to the viewer to decide without the snotty attitude would have been okay with me. I'm a 90s kid who loved Choose Your Own Adventure books. LOL 

The upside to this is I learned a pretty valuable lesson from the shitshow that was Sherlock and now, when I see showrunners who seem to enjoy tormenting their fans, I just skip their shows. I'll never watch another Moffat show.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Zella

[Mabinogia]

12 minutes ago, Annber03 said:

Some showrunners/writers definitely seem to be a little TOO in love with their supposed cleverness and trickery and whatnot.

That is Steve Moffat to a T. He really does think he is the most clever writer ever to the point that, I really think, when fans are "on to him" ie, they figure out the twist he thinks is brilliant, he changes it. This is just my theory based on how ridiculous his writing gets the longer his story goes on. He's really good in the beginning, writes well, the story holds together, then as time passes it starts to make less and less sense, and he absolutely loves taking a classic story, Doctor Who, Sherlock, and shoehorning in his own original character who is more brilliant, more magical, more amazing than the lead (who was created by someone else).

As annoying as the queerbating in Sherlock might have been, I am glad that they kept Sherlock single and didn't give in the the shippers. For me it is canon that Sherlock Holmes is asexual and I would hate to have seen that changed because a bunch of people wanted to see Benedict Cumberbatch make out with either Martin Freeman or Andrew Scott.

I LOVED the relationship between Sherlock and Watson and never needed it to be romantic. I actually thought the little pokes from other characters about them being a couple were funny and never thought of it as queerbating because I never thought it was serious. Like not once did I ever think the show would put them together romantically. And while I do think that the show may have intended or at least teased that Moriarty might have romantic interest in Sherlock, I never thought Sherlock felt the same, at all. I saw the dream kiss as more of a bone thrown to fans because it was never going to happen outside of a dream rather than a hint at anything. 

That was one show where I didn't really ship anybody (unless you count my made up self insert character and Mycroft, but that is something better left in my mind palace). 

[Zella]

7 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

That is Steve Moffat to a T. He really does think he is the most clever writer ever to the point that, I really think, when fans are "on to him" ie, they figure out the twist he thinks is brilliant, he changes it. This is just my theory based on how ridiculous his writing gets the longer his story goes on. He's really good in the beginning, writes well, the story holds together, then as time passes it starts to make less and less sense, and he absolutely loves taking a classic story, Doctor Who, Sherlock, and shoehorning in his own original character who is more brilliant, more magical, more amazing than the lead (who was created by someone else).

That's a pretty good summation of him and his work. I didn't realize he was the writer for it at the time, but he was also responsible for the deeply frustrating Jekyll, which has the same MO and flaws. I shudder to think what he did with Dracula. 

[Luckylyn]

Corey and Shawn on Boy Meets World and Turk and JD on Scrubs we’re basically played like platonic boyfriends.   Even though the characters were straight the shows would make jokes about the friends almost being like a couple.  Turk and JD even had their own love song called “Guy Love.” That never felt like baiting to me.  

[SVNBob]

5 hours ago, Zella said:

And when they did finally return, in the first episode they did a bunch of fake-out teases of what actually happened, one of which randomly included Sherlock and Moriarty making out because they really were the kings of queer-baiting, and then never concretely explained it.

Yes they did.  That was a version of events as written and told by an in-universe fan-fiction writer writing "real people" slash* of Sherlock and Moriarty.  And another character, Anderson, berated that author for going that route in her writing.  Partly because they were supposed to be coming up with theories about how Sherlock survived the fall and the slash diversion was from out of nowhere, and partly because he was a Sherlock/Molly shipper.

*This is a thing in our reality as well.  People do write slash fiction where it's the actors, not the characters they portray, that are getting it on.  The Supernatural fandom has tons of cases.

[Luckylyn]

I never watched Supernatural  but I have heard stories about the intensity of that fandom.  I think it even reached a point where the wives of the actors were being attacked online.
 

 I enjoy shipping but I think shipping real life actors goes too far.  Even in figure skating there’s an ice dancing pair Virtue/Moir where a whole fandom has developed based on the theory they are secretly married and have kids even though they have made it clear they aren’t a couple.

Sarah z did a video analyzing the Supernatural fandom and the fallout from the season finale with a focus on Destiel shippers. 

 

[Zella]

7 hours ago, SVNBob said:

Yes they did.  That was a version of events as written and told by an in-universe fan-fiction writer writing "real people" slash* of Sherlock and Moriarty.  And another character, Anderson, berated that author for going that route in her writing.  Partly because they were supposed to be coming up with theories about how Sherlock survived the fall and the slash diversion was from out of nowhere, and partly because he was a Sherlock/Molly shipper.

*This is a thing in our reality as well.  People do write slash fiction where it's the actors, not the characters they portray, that are getting it on.  The Supernatural fandom has tons of cases.

I was talking about that they never concretely explained how Sherlock survived in a logical fashion, not that they didn't  explain the kiss. 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Zella

[Luckylyn]

15 minutes ago, Zella said:

I was talking about that they never concretely explained how Sherlock survived in a logical fashion, not that they didn't  explain the kiss. 

It was frustrating for fans who spent the hiatus speculating only for the show runners to refuse to provide a solution to the mystery they created.  They treated fans who put thought into solving it with contempt.   My theory is that they wrote themselves into a wall and couldn’t come up with a big surprise twist that the fans hadn’t already thought of so they just refused to explain how Sherlock survived.   One of the things that made fans hold on to JohnLock as a possibility was a belief that the inconsistencies on the show had meaning and was leading to something.  But in the end the inconsistencies were bad writing.

[Zella]

5 minutes ago, Luckylyn said:

My theory is that they wrote themselves into a wall and couldn’t come up with a big surprise twist that the fans hadn’t already thought of so they just refused to explain how Sherlock survived.

I agree. I would have probably been less contemptuous toward them and less frustrated with the writing and show decisions myself if they didn't have such a smug, condescending, hateful attitude toward their fans. It made me much less willing to have a charitable explanation for whatever they'd done. 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Zella

[Winter Rose]

It's long but if anyone has the time, might I recommend

I say this as a fan of the show, I do think this guy made good points. It's not really about shipping, it's mostly a critique of the writing, especially Moffat's habits. I don't deny that those showrunners, in a general sense, tended towards asking for the audience's investment and then punished them for caring. How Sherlock survived the fall, for example, I think what they made a mockery of was for people trying to answer how Sherlock did it rather than making fun shippers with fake Sherlock/Molly and Sherlock/Moriarty scenes. I do think they at least thought they were giving those shippers a treat, and I've seen plenty of gifsets use those Sherlock/Molly and Sherlock/Moriarty scenes. Interestingly enough, TJLCers tried to claim that as proof of Sherlock/John being real because Sherlock/John didn't have a fake make out. So if the showrunners were making fun of shippers, TJLCers were all too happy to join in.

But however right or wrong it was for them to play with subtext, they were clear that playing was what they were doing. And when it got to a point where denying became more of a "Okay, it's not funny anymore, we're really NOT making Sherlock and John a couple", there was some expressed acknowledgement that maybe they had gone too far in the past. I seem to recall it being in an interview, I want to say a couple months before S4 aired. I think they didn't expect certain parts of the audience to take it as seriously as they did or apply how "maybe we're lying, maybe we're not" the writers were about other aspects of the show to a ship. But that didn't mean they weren't adamant about not putting Sherlock and John together. Steven Moffat also wasn't the only showrunner here, Mark Gatiss was too and what ended up resulting was a gay man being accused of queer-baiting his own show.

[Hiyo]

Quote

There’s an awesome analysis of the  whole Johnlock conspiracy.

Watching this video made me think

1) I'm so glad I was never on Tumblr

2) It's making me start to dislike the Powerpuff Girls lol

[JustHereForFood]

 

19 hours ago, Winter Rose said:

So when S4 aired, and Sherlock and John were still NOT canon... all hell broke loose. From attacks on other fans, including the Sherlock/John shippers who simply liked the ship but didn't believe in canon, to hating the actors whose non-Sherlock or John characters dared take attention away from Sherlock and John's love, and then the general love/hate relationship with the writers. The writers were either bad for denying the ship or lying because it would've been a spoiler, but still queerbaiting for not following through on a promise that they never made.

And then there were others who refused to let it go, from imagining a secret fourth episode of S4 would put Sherlock and John together to S5 revealing S4 had been all a dream, or Mind Palace, and S4 was written bad on purpose. If there's ever a S5, it was always such that it wouldn't be for many years - it's been five years already. I have a really hard time believing they'd leave the show in a fever dream when there's no guarantee they'd ever get to reveal that. I find it even harder to believe anyone would write a show badly ON PURPOSE.

I think by season 4, even the writers were over the show and there was a lot more to be critical about, so I wouldn't place fans' frustration with the show mainly on the queerbaiting. 

I for example did lowkey ship them and read a lot of fanfiction, but I knew that they were never going to get together in the show. I just wished the writers would stop with the cheap jokes, but by season 4 I also wished that they would write a good story again, not just constantly congratulate themselves how cleverly they wrote the previous seasons.

 

19 hours ago, Zella said:

I never shipped John and Sherlock and that fandom could be really unhinged, but the showrunners were really bad to queer-bait and then do shocked Pikachu faces when people assumed there was an implied relationship or attraction there. 

Yes, and not just surprised, but sometimes dismissive and insulting.

 

9 hours ago, Luckylyn said:

I enjoy shipping but I think shipping real life actors goes too far.  Even in figure skating there’s an ice dancing pair Virtue/Moir where a whole fandom has developed based on the theory they are secretly married and have kids even though they have made it clear they aren’t a couple.

Ugh, shipping real people is gross, and writing fanfictions about them even more gross. I can't believe some websites allow it.

[Hiyo]

I remember one Youtube video tried to convince us that Glee's Lea Michelle and Dianna Agron were lovers in real life.

The smoking gun?

They obtained video of them taking a lunch break on the set and one of them asked the other if she wanted a salad for her lunch.

I kid you not.

Unless that is some secret lesbian code for sex that I am not aware of?

[Bastet]

17 minutes ago, JustHereForFood said:

Ugh, shipping real people is gross, and writing fanfictions about them even more gross.

Totally creepy.  The only time I ever read fanfic was back in The X-Files heyday - much of it was rubbish, yes, but there were some fantastic stories that did a better job exploring Scully than the show's writers ever even thought of - and some 25 years later I can still remember sitting back in utter disbelief the first time I came across a piece that was about Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, not Mulder and Scully. 

[Mabinogia]

7 hours ago, Luckylyn said:

My theory is that they wrote themselves into a wall and couldn’t come up with a big surprise twist that the fans hadn’t already thought of so they just refused to explain how Sherlock survived.

I 100% believe that is what happened, and what happens with most of what Moffat writes TBH. 

20 hours ago, Zella said:

I shudder to think what he did with Dracula. 

That was the stuff of nightmares. I tried a few times but I could never get past halfway through the second episode it was so forking pretentious and absurd. 

2 hours ago, JustHereForFood said:

Ugh, shipping real people is gross, and writing fanfictions about them even more gross. I can't believe some websites allow it.

I have to admit I have done it once. Not for broadcast, it was for myself, and I don't actually ship them in a way of every expecting it to happen, there was just a dynamic there that I was fascinated with and the fanfic I wrote for myself was my way of exploring it. It is not something I would ever put out for general consumption though. That's where I think it gets weird. 

[scarynikki12]

The only good thing that I've found to come of real life shipping is this bit from John Oliver years ago.

On the topic of fictional shipping I rewatched One Tree Hill recently and was delighted and relieved to discover that I still enjoy Nathan/Haley. There was a lot (A LOT) of stupid in their relationship over the 9 seasons but the good stuff was really good. A personal favorite moment is when he got Haley a mountain of Ho-Hos for Valentine's Day when she was pregnant with Lydia. He also got her diamond earrings but the Ho-Hos took priority.

I also used to take sides in the Brook-Lucas-Peyton nonsense but now I'm firmly Team Brooke and Peyton BFF Forever while Lucas can fall off a cliff. 

[Annber03]

I love that John Oliver clip XD. "'When do I at least get to have a go?' Wait, what?" 

[scarynikki12]

1 minute ago, Annber03 said:

I love that John Oliver clip XD. "'When do I at least get to have a go?' Wait, what?" 

"Click on this and call me back IMMEDIATELY"

[Luckylyn]

I have a soft spot for Nathan/Hayley on One Tree Hill.  I really thought show’s decision to rush the characters into marriage would ruin them but despite some rough patches they were a pairing I really enjoyed.

I was also on Brooke’s side.  Lucas and Peyton repeatedly broke her heart and acted like she didn’t have the right to feel anger about it.  She could be petty but she had valid reasons to be hurt.  She started as the mean girl but I think she had more heart than a lot of the other characters. She and Nathan are similar in that they both could have gone the villain path but ended up maturing into good people.  I enjoyed the Haley/Brooke friendship more than either of their dynamics with Peyton.  I feel like I was supposed to see Peyton as the good girl and Brooke as the bad girl and side with Peyton.  Yet Brooke’s the character I was more attached to.

[scarynikki12]

8 minutes ago, Luckylyn said:

Lucas and Peyton repeatedly broke her heart and acted like she didn’t have the right to feel anger about it.  She could be petty but she had valid reasons to be hurt.

Going to put on my Team Brooke hat from back in the day for just a moment. In my rewatch it did annoy me all over again that Peyton confessed that she still had feelings for Lucas at the end of season 3. Brooke had mentioned that she wasn't miserable and bedridden while Lucas was out of town. She had expected to be but was surprised and happy to discover that she wasn't codependent after all and was able to miss him without sacrificing her own identity. Peyton chose to hear it as Brooke didn't give him a second thought while he was gone, decided it meant they should break up, and confessed that she still had feelings for Lucas. Then she was surprised when Brooke got pissed. In that moment she honestly thought that her confession would lead Brooke to dump Lucas and he'd come running back to her. It would have made way more sense for Brooke to come to a realization that she wanted to end the relationship on her own (maybe she sees how Nathan and Haley look at each other at their vow renewal and realizes that she doesn't feel forever about Lucas). Then MONTHS later, Lucas and Peyton realize their feelings have been rekindled. I know OTH was all DRAMA about that triangle but there really wasn't a reason to revisit it. Especially since it once again hurt the Brooke/Peyton friendship. 

More broadly I've seen versions of Peyton's "I was just trying to be honest" about confessing romantic feelings for another character's partner. This trope needs to stop. There is literally no reason to be honest about having feelings for someone in a relationship. At best you've just created an awkward situation and at worst you're going to lost friends. If your feelings are real, and not just passing attraction that's being blown out of proportion, then you can absolutely learn to compartmentalize and put them aside. Is honestly really so important that you'd (going back to Peyton) sacrifice a lifelong friendship on the chance that your confession will get you a new boyfriend? Yes, Peyton and Brooke were on a tv show so of course they were written as moving past it and renewing their friendship but in real life they never would have recovered. 

[andromeda331]

1 hour ago, scarynikki12 said:

More broadly I've seen versions of Peyton's "I was just trying to be honest" about confessing romantic feelings for another character's partner. This trope needs to stop. There is literally no reason to be honest about having feelings for someone in a relationship. At best you've just created an awkward situation and at worst you're going to lost friends. If your feelings are real, and not just passing attraction that's being blown out of proportion, then you can absolutely learn to compartmentalize and put them aside. Is honestly really so important that you'd (going back to Peyton) sacrifice a lifelong friendship on the chance that your confession will get you a new boyfriend? Yes, Peyton and Brooke were on a tv show so of course they were written as moving past it and renewing their friendship but in real life they never would have recovered. 

This yes! Please writers make it stop! 

[ABay]

RPS really took off with boy bands, I think, and then spread. The thing is that it isn't RP, it's the personae RP perform in public because that's all you actually know unless you're friends in real life.

Bouncing off the Daily Show bit above, for example, Stephen Colbert was a regular correspondent on TDS, then became the character he played on the Colbert Report, and now he's the host of a nonsatircal talk show. All of them shared the same name and all of those are equally constructed public personae. There's certainly overlap with the "real" Stephen but they're also distinct from him and each other. IMO the closest viewers will ever get to seeing the "real" Colbert was during Covid when he was doing the show from a room at his in-laws' house and then an office. That was also a performance, though. As we used to say in pro wrestling fandom, if it's on TV, it's a work.

Does every fan fic writer get that? Of course not. Every fandom has its share of people who have trouble distinguishing between reality and fiction.

Edited May 17, 2022 by ABay

[Ohiopirate02]

16 minutes ago, ABay said:

RPS really took off with boy bands, I think, and then spread. The thing is that it isn't RP, it's the personae RP perform in public because that's all you actually know unless you're friends in real life.

 

The first time I encountered RPS was with the actors from Peter Jackson's LOTR series. The deep camaraderie between the actors made people immediately think "gay."  It icked me out and I was quick to close that tab on my browser.  

I know it also took off with One Direction, and spawned the writing career for Anna Todd.  She went from writing OD ff on Wattpad to having that ff published and a movie made out of the first book.  

[Laina]

Too many fandoms and too many couples to list. It'd be better just to pick a fandom and ask if I like any pairings or disike any pairings in it.

[SparedTurkey]

I liked Spencer & Caleb on PLL and I liked Hannah and Caleb on PLL. Both worked for me. I would have also accepted Mona & Hannah if Mona didn't run Hannah over. And I hated Emily & Alison and had no feelings about Emily & Paige.

I liked Stef & Lena on The Fosters as a couple but not necessarily as parents.

Roseanne & Dan on Roseanne were 40s couple goals - as a couple and as parents.

The wives on Big Love were better together than with Bill.

Xena & Gabrielle were the most beautiful unofficial couple of the 90s. Couple goal.

[roamyn]

On 5/16/2022 at 6:34 AM, Luckylyn said:

I never watched Supernatural  but I have heard stories about the intensity of that fandom.  I think it even reached a point where the wives of the actors were being attacked online.
 

 I enjoy shipping but I think shipping real life actors goes too far.  Even in figure skating there’s an ice dancing pair Virtue/Moir where a whole fandom has developed based on the theory they are secretly married and have kids even though they have made it clear they aren’t a couple.

Sarah z did a video analyzing the Supernatural fandom and the fallout from the season finale with a focus on Destiel shippers. 

We dan be very intense.  But no real fan bashes Gen or Daneel or Victoria (tho she & Misha are getting divorced)

I’ve really never heard of this bashing of the wives.  In fact, at Cons they’re almost as loved as the guys.

And I agree, RPS is too squicky and crosses so many stalky lines, as is incest.  (Unfortunately a lot of SPN fans ship Sam/Dean).

[Danny Franks]

23 hours ago, roamyn said:

I’ve really never heard of this bashing of the wives.  In fact, at Cons they’re almost as loved as the guys.

I've no clue about Supernatural, but I remember Stephen Amell's wife getting some hate from the crazier Arrow fans who were obsessed with the notion that Amell and Emily Bett Rickards should be a real life couple.

Of course, the inconvenient fact that Amell was married wasn't the only obstacle to that one.

[Avabelle]

On 5/17/2022 at 1:31 AM, Luckylyn said:

I was also on Brooke’s side.  Lucas and Peyton repeatedly broke her heart and acted like she didn’t have the right to feel anger about it.

Yes to this! The most frustrating part of the entire storyline was the one sided writing and eventual retcon of Brooke sleeping with Nathan while he was with Peyton to justify what Peyton repeatedly did to her. Clearly the fans weren’t buying into the relationship on its own so that giant anvil was needed. 
 

Also, I still believe to this day that Lucas never loved Peyton. In the beginning he idolised her but once he got to know her and Brooke it was clear that He ended up passively settling with her after EVERYONE told him he had to. If ever there was an example of a show don’t tell couple it was these two. Lucas was a spineless idiot and Peyton should have wanted more for herself. I don’t even support the Brooke/Peyton friendship because Peyton was a such a terrible friend. 

[scarynikki12]

7 minutes ago, Avabelle said:

The most frustrating part of the entire storyline was the one sided writing and eventual retcon of Brooke sleeping with Nathan while he was with Peyton to justify what Peyton repeatedly did to her.

I hated that. That retcon was so far away from subtle that even the most vocal anti-Brooke viewers were calling it out. And it really didn't make sense within the established story because Brooke's personality was such that she would have thrown it in Peyton's face back in season 1 after getting cheated on. 

Also the retcon was used to make Haley insecure and jealous about Nathan's sexual history that ultimately went nowhere. It wrapped up with Nathan reassuring her of his feelings and commitment and her finally coming to terms. Ok, but at this point they're married, recently renewed their vows, and were weeks away from having their first kid. Haley freaking out about the girls Nathan slept with before her screamed of sexist "pregnant women are so unreasonable cause hormones" attitude. It would have made for a better story if she'd been upset that the tape had been discovered and witnessed by people without Nathan and Brooke's consent. She could still have been uncomfortable about it existing, which is fair and understandable, but suddenly acting like Nathan might be a minute away from dumping her because he'd had sex before their relationship was stupid.

20 minutes ago, Avabelle said:

I still believe to this day that Lucas never loved Peyton. In the beginning he idolised her but once he got to know her and Brooke it was clear that He ended up passively settling with her after EVERYONE told him he had to.

We were definitely supposed to see Peyton as Lucas' The One no matter the state of their relationship in the moment but they did lean too hard on the telling rather than the showing. A lot of this came down to the acting. Hilarie and Chad were both at a point in their careers where they were most believable when they could use their real life emotions in scenes. That's why Brooke quickly became a legit alternative for Lucas, as Chad was allowing his then love and affection to show in their scenes. It made Lucas look like he genuinely fell for Brooke after getting to know her while the intended "I love you forever" angst wasn't landing in scenes with Hilarie. Hilarie, too, was at her best when she was in friendship scenes with the characters. So the One Tree Hill intended Great Love Story may have worked on paper but fell flat in practice. If Hilarie had left in season 6 but Chad had stayed, or vice versa, I don't think they'd have ended up together at all.