madeline

I’m proud of you!

I understand you’re busy. I won’t pressure you to do ___.

I can see you’re under a lot of stress. How can I help you?

Your stress and anxiety are valid.

As a first time director, did an amazing job on directing the play! given how this was thrown in you last minute, with only two weeks to prepare and no supervision or guidance or help to assist you in the process, you pulled it off and did a truly exceptional job at that! You should be proud of yourself! I am proud of you!

I’m sorry you’ve been busy this summer. I can see you’re doing everything you can to try and make this work. And I appreciate that.

You are worthy and loved and always have been, regardless of what external sources say or don’t say.

You don’t need your dad’s praise or validation to prove your worthiness or competency at anything. You already have that within yourself.

I JUST HAD THE BEST THEORY FOR NEXT WEEK

What if the reason EJ was characterised in this horrible light is because everything he went through was filmed on camera without him knowing?!

It makes sense if Channing captured moments like:

• EJ talking to Miss Jenn about wanting Gina to shine

• EJ in the office breaking down

• EJ talking to Val and maybe verbalising (to himself!!) for the first time that he loves Gina??

• EJ on the phone trying to stand up to his dad (!!)

So when the documentary trailer premieres (or leaks maybe), everyone will realise how tough he’s had it (Ashlyn not reaching out to her cousin at all is insane to me?!) and Gina especially will have insight into why the summer turned out the way it did. Maybe her “wish” will come up again?!

an 18 year old boy being given an actual director's job that will be aired in 63 countries. he already has problems with anxiety, and you shove this whole ass responsibility on him?

but what a lot of these people seem to forget is firstly that this is gina’s first boyfriend, which means a lot of this is uncharted waters for her. she both doesn’t want to cause any difficulty for ej and also doesn’t really know how much a relationship is supposed to “affect” a person’s life. if anything, this is her caring so much about ej and wanting him to succeed so much that she’s even willing to put aside her own happiness - that their relationship brings - so he doesn’t have to worry about her as well as the cast and the mammoth task that is directing the show. he quickly abates that fear anyway by reassuring her that he’s not at all worried about them and that actually their relationship brings him comfort

i think a lot of them also miss out the crucial context of her comment i.e. the fact that it comes immediately after ej says “yeah, val’s the best”. the way gina brings up val, it’s as though she’s expecting him to say val is nothing to worry about. from ej’s pov, val’s not even a factor so of course he doesn’t say that because he feels no need, but we already see that gina is a bit anxious about his obviously close relationship with val. this is definitely gina panicking and letting her nerves about it get the better of her - which again obviously ends up irrelevant anyway, because ej immediately tells her he’s not worried about the relationship at all

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: The Interview with Matt Cornett and Sofia Wylie