In the High School Musical franchise, there’s one fact we’re all just supposed to accept: Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez are the HEROES while Sharpay Evans is the VILLAIN. But what if we’ve been wrong the whole time???
A Twitter user named @SHARPAYSAVICTIM wrote a very passionate thread explaining why Sharpay is, in fact, the victim of HSM, and it’s honestly making me question everything I know.
IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING BUT IT’S FINALLY HERE,WHY SHARPAY EVANS WAS THE REAL VICTIM OF HIGH SCHOOL MUSIC:A THREAD
— Karim (@SHARPAYSAVICTIM)
You should DEFINITELY read the entire brilliant thread in all its glory, but here is the *evidence* broken down point by point.
1. Ryan and Sharpay are extremely talented and trained performers, while the only experience Troy and Gabriella have is singing a fake-ass song at karaoke.
2. When Sharpay tells Gabriella and Troy to sign up to audition for “supporting roles,” that is seen as a bitchy move — but they have NEVER been in a musical before, so that is just a reasonable place to start.
3. Sharpay and Ryan turn Kelsi’s super-boring and slow version of “What I’ve Been Looking For” into a LEGIT BOP.
4. Troy and Gabriella show up LATE to their audition, and Troy only really goes along with it because he wants to get into Gabriella’s pants.
5. Sharpay asks Ms. Darbus to change the date of the callbacks because Troy and Gabriella should really get their PRIORITIES in order if they are going to be committed to theater.
7. And THEN they show up late AGAIN to the final audition, dressed in the wrong clothing. Oh, and Gabriella totally freezes, proving she has no fucking business being the star of a musical.
8. But suddenly theater is COOL because the hot JOCK guy is into it, even though people literally made fun of Sharpay for loving theater and making it her life’s true passion.
9. After Sharpay’s dreams are crushed, she decides to be the bigger person and tells Gabriella to break a leg (and Gabriella doesn’t even know wtf BREAK A LEG means).
10. Troy wins his game, Gabriella wins her “nerd stuff,” and they BOTH get the roles…and Sharpay literally ends up with absolutely nothing.
11. So the real message of the first movie is: “If you’re popular and you do everything, you’re gonna be great at it, but if you dedicate your entire life to something you’ll be seen as a villain and now you’re the bad person.”
12. Also, Sharpay is supposed to be some kind of terrible person but all she did was theater stuff, while Troy and Gabriella’s supposed friends LITERALLY tried to sabotage their relationship.
13. And (side note) Taylor is kinda low-key anti-feminist because she makes fun of cheerleaders for how they talk and act.
14. Let’s move on to the second movie. Sharpay is just tryna chill at her family’s resort and work on her talent show that she works really hard on every year.
15. She gives all of her classmates summer jobs and she’s basically trying to get Troy a free college education.
16. So Troy is like perfectly content to USE Sharpay, and then Gabriella breaks up with him just because he’s focusing on his future.
17. Troy bails on Sharpay and then her own BROTHER bails on her because he’s been brainwashed into forcing her out of her own damn show.
18. She wins the star dazzle award, but doesn’t act like a DIVA about it and gives her brother the trophy even though he BACKSTABBED HER.
19. And then everyone just parties in her resort and she’s a good sport about it, proving she’s a good person who doesn’t hold grudges.
20. Now, let’s move on to Sharpay in HSM 3. Sharpay has moved on from the events of films 1 and 2. She focuses on her dreams and post-graduation goals and she gets a bunch of crap for it.
21. Troy and Gabriella convince everyone to be in this play even though they don’t want to. And then Gabriella BAILS, which would be fine and all except she JUST broke up with Troy last movie for not hanging out with her.
BTW, this proves Sharpay was RIGHT to test their commitment to THEATER in the first movie by moving the callbacks.
22. So, Sharpay’s gonna step in, but her assistant Tiara tries to steal the role from her.
23. But Sharpay delivers a FLAWLESS and GODLY performance — and then Troy and Gabriella finally show up to “save the day” after Sharpay did the work and they get all the glory even though they totally ghosted.
24. Then Kelsi gets Sharpay’s scholarship for writing TWO bad shows and Sharpay didn’t get it even though she was in COUNTLESS MUSICALS.
25. Luckily, Ashley Tisdale KNEW Sharpay deserved better and did Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure where she finally gets the spotlight she deserves.
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