#I’m sorry for being sapphic on main

[indigoipsum]

My Redcliff fic has spiraled into just them being cute. I’m trying to write angst!! This isn’t cutting it!!

[peachpaws0]

Sorry that I saw a sapphic ship and went crazy, it will happen again

[goldenempyrean]

Cooking with Cuddles

〚 Notes - small lil drabble, I'm trying to get back into writing but its hard :,) sorry about the breaks/gaps, I'm doing my best :,) 〛

〚 Pairing - Supercorp 〛

〚 Summary - Lena is being whiny, Kara just wants to make her some food. 〛

〚 Wordcount - 450 〛

〘 Check Out My Masterlist! 〙

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“Karaaaaaa.”  

The Kyrptonian rolled her eyes fondly at the sound of her name being raspily whined from the direction on their bedroom. Lena had been in a whiny mood ever since waking up and showed no signs of stopping. 

“Yes love?” She called back, leaning back to take a peek into their bedroom. Kara couldn’t keep herself from giggling quietly, their bedroom door was wide open, so she was able to get a perfect view of her girlfriend who’d apparently decided to sit up and cocooned herself in their main blanket with only her face exposed - on which she wore a small, adorable pout. 

“I’m cold…” 

Kara chuckled softly, admiring Lena's adorable pout. She shuck her head in amusement, trying and failing to hold back a growing smile, “Oh really, is that so? Y’know with all those blankets you’re hiding in; I really couldn’t tell.”  

“I’m being serious!” The CEO mumbled, moving to hide her face behind a blanket as she coughed raspily, her pout deepening in response, “Karaaaaaa, please? You’re the only thing that can warm me up right now.” 

“Baby, I’m making you some food right now, you’ve gotta eat. I promise as soon as I’m done making you some delicious pancakes we can cuddle for as long as you want.”  

“Please…?” 

Oh, how could she deny that pout any longer? She couldn't resist Lena's adorable plea, her heart melting at the sight of her girlfriend wrapped up in blankets, looking so small and needy. With a soft sigh, she surrendered, "Alright, come here, you big baby."  

Lena had her wrapped around her finger and she knew it. Kara already knew exactly what she wanted before she’d even asked. 

“Come on, get on then.” She said, sitting down on the edge of their bed. 

A small grin spread across Lena’s face as she crawled out of the big blanket bundle, swapping it for the thin grey blanket they usually kept at the end of their bed. Lena wrapped it around herself before turning back to wrap her legs around Kara’s waist whilst her hands wrapped around her upper torso to hold on with. 

Of course, Kara had no problem carrying her like this and stood up effortlessly with Lena cuddling into her back, “Rao, you’re like a little koala, y’know that?” She teased, feeling her girlfriend’s head come to rest on her shoulder as they made their way back out to the kitchen. There was no doubt it was going to be a little harder to cook now that she had her girlfriend clutched onto her back but of course she’d find a way to make it work. 

“You’re so lucky I love you.” 

“I know.” 

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[breakingstanding]

I am actually devastated over Michaela… not because I care about Michael or the book, but if they’re making Francesca queer, there’s no way they’re making Eloise a lesbian (which she SO clearly is!). I saw the spoiler of Franny and thought okay they can make 2/8 queer, and then I watched and saw they made Benedict queer too! I just can’t see them doing 3, especially 2 women.

It’s so disheartening because so many people have been rooting for sapphic eloise and I think hardly anyone was wanting Franny.

I think i’m more upset with this than if none had been queer because like ugh we were SO CLOSE. We could’ve had it all. like imagine how happy we could all be right now. 😭

they’ve been setting up queer benedict and eloise since season 1 so I just don’t understand why they would do this. (sorry for venting to you- none of my friends that’s watch are caught up yet)

Always happy for a vent, and I definitely feel you! I'm personally really excited about Francesca's storyline because I really liked her this season and Michaela is EXTREMELY hot lol - but I'm also frustrated that it's the sister we've had as a side character for one season who will be getting a queer love story, and not the one we've been invested in for three seasons.

Ultimately I think the frustration we are feeling is more because this is reflective of larger issues that always pop up in fandom than being upset about not getting a storyline we wanted for a character (although I'm not going to pretend that's not a factor too!) a) There's such a pattern in fan spaces for queer people to see themselves in a character and to recognise clear queercoding, and then to have straight people come in and condescendingly say "not all characters with x trait have to be gay" - as if we have an overabundance of queer characters and are trying to get our grubby gay hands on more. So much of the discourse around Eloise amounts to people saying "not all feminist characters have to be lesbians" which is crazy to me because WHERE are all these shows that are supposedly full of feminist lesbians?? Please tell me I would love to watch them!

b) Straight fans will get all different types of characters and plotlines for the heterosexual couples and then act like queer people are being greedy if we ask for more than one for us. Just within Bridgerton there have been three straight main couples already - and of the queer siblings we've also gotten to see a cute romance between Francesca and a man, and will likely see Benedict fall in love with a woman (this is not to diminish their queerness, obviously bisexual stories are incredibly important regardless of the gender of the love interests, more just pointing out the sheer quantity of m/f love stories straight fans get to enjoy).

It absolutely sucks that we exist in a TV landscape where instead of being excited about what looks to be a delightful relationship between Francesca and Michaela we are instead mourning the loss of other another character's queer potential. It's absurd that we are so rarely allowed to have multiple sapphic characters (who aren't each other's love interest) on the same show - particularly because in real life queer people tend to flock together!

The feeling reminds me of being part of the 100 fandom nearly a decade ago. I distinctly remember when it was leaked that Clarke and Lexa were going to kiss. The sapphic side of the fandom were definitely very excited - but there was also this strange sense of dread too. I saw countless posts of people bemoaning that now that she was gay they were definitely going to kill her off - and they were right! Bury your gays was such a common trope that we could see it coming a mile off.

This has felt like a very similar reaction. Queer fans spend a lot of time dealing with subtext and are very good at recognising tropes and patterns, and we know that the chances of Netflix allowing one their tentpole shows to have two sapphic main characters is slim to none.

I hope we are wrong and things are changing for the better, I really do.

I think the best thing we can do now is swallow our disappointment and make sure we support Francesca/Michaela fiercely to prove that there is an audience for sapphic stories.

[woeismyhoe]

I'm gonna preface this by saying I have no problem with representation. I love queer stories, especially when they're organic and natural. I'm bi, and I've had fulfilling relationships with women as well as men. Honestly, I would love a spin-off on Brimsley and Reynolds. It didn't feel.....forced. the characters were new and their story grew organically. Michaela? No. I'm trying to articulate how I feel without sounding like I hate the queer community because I genuinely don't. I appreciated Benedict's story line even if it was a little jarring. He's exploring, experimenting and that's fine. It still doesn't take away from his story. But the introduction of Michaela felt like a guy punch. It felt wrong. I've never particularly like gender swapping in stories based on an original IP, because it changes a lot of dynamics. It changes a lot of story lines. And yes, it's fiction, but I'm sorry I cannot get over it, especially when it's such a blatant case of pandering. It makes me feel as if I'm wrong to question this change and I've somehow internalised homophobia. If so, then why wouldn't I hate other queer characters or be similarly uncomfortable?

Okay I think I can make my argument clear with an example. If anyone has seen the movie Love Lies Bleeding, I think they'll get it. The sexual orientation of the characters didn't matter. It felt right. And it was not important to the story. It was just an established dynamic and we could enjoy the plot easily. It wouldn't have mattered if it was a heterosexual couple or a homosexual couple, the story is largely unchanged. If Michael becomes Michaela, here's the issues I see. Who inherits Kilmartin. We've already established an estate will go to the next male heir if the current owner dies. A major part of Michael's story was his guilt over his inheritance and his imposter syndrome. His story arc taking his place in parliament. It's all gone. I mean, I know the show isn't interested in the plots other than the main character pairing but this felt so wrong. If they wanted a lesbian lead, the just make another show with original characters why force this? I'm not looking forward to Francescas season at all. I'm sure a lot of people will like it and that's their prerogative but for me, personally, the only thing keeping the story moving forward is Benedict. Maybe Eloise. But I feel like the story of the show has lost its charm and has dug itself into a hole like Disney or marvel

I’m going to try to be respectful as possible. As a lesbian, it’s deeply concerning and infuriating to me how so many people including ppl from the community have internalized misogyny and homophobia to queer women. Just because you support and don’t have an issue with queer male stories doesn’t mean you can’t be homophobic to queer female stories. Just because you’re bi doesn’t mean you can’t be homophobic. Why do you think majority of mlm stories are consumed by women? Why are the stories written and targeted towards women instead of the couple’s own community?

There’s an issue going on right now where many fans are okay and THRILLED with Benedict being bi and sleeping with a man, yet complaining about Francesca and Michaela— both have revealed that they have a potential to turn into queer stories. But no one’s batting an eye to Sophie being erased for Benedict’s potential gay partner. People are more okay with a lesbian Eloise than Francesca, and maybe because Eloise fits the stereotype more than Francesca. Why????

Maybe you need to reflect on why you’re feeling this way since you’re clearly favoring queer male stories over queer female stories. Why is a straight male character’s arc more important than a sapphic character who can go through the same arc and even MORE? Why are you okay with Benedict but not with Francesca? Why does Brimsley and Reynolds feel natural but Francesca and Michael is forced and pandering? Why is making sapphic representation pandering unless it’s based on stereotypes, but not gay representation?

This is Bridgerton. They made POCs part of the elites, it’s not historically accurate, the medicine and technology isn’t historically accurate. I see no reason why they won’t change the law at some point for it to be possible for a woman to inherit titles and estates. Even if they don’t go into that direction, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more story to explore for a sapphic character.

There’s so many variants of Michael in other stories and media, he’s not special. But Michaela?? How many stories are there even in the mainstream media where we get a happy WLW couple that doesn’t end in tragedy? Literally 0. There’s no happy ending anywhere in popular media because Bury Your Gays is the default fate of every queer female story that gets even slightly popular. You say make a new show with sapphic characters yet 90% of the time they get cancelled after the first season and this is something we’ve been dealing with for decades and trying to call out.

So again, why is a straight couple’s story more important to you than a WLW couple who can offer a more unique, nuanced portrayal of yearning, desire, betrayal to one’s self, crisis of faith, even loss of identity and room to show politics in the Bridgerton world like how they did with Queen Charlotte— and make a bigger impact on how the public perceives queer women?

You’re uncomfortable with a queer female character changing what you know and are familiar with in the books— that she can’t possibly compare to what a male character can offer. It’s ironic how awfully similar that sounds to homophobes who can’t accept the existence of queer women in society because god forbid a woman can do what a man can for a woman, or even do better.

Don’t watch it if you don’t want to. The rest of us will feel valued and seen and enjoy it together when the season comes out while you distance yourself further from the sapphic community.

TLDR; Queerness makes the story richer than any straightness will.

[heavilycaffeinatedsblog]

hey caf! don’t really have a question here but, my friend and i were chatting and i wanted to let you know, we genuinely think Dear Reader could work as a YA novel 😭 and then i started tweaking about how i would collapse if i made the cover art LOLOL just an idea but i might just make a fake book cover for it for funsies!

wanted to let you know, still thinking about dear reader constantly and look out for new possible fan art :3 dear reader is my roman empire fr

LOVE, JUP 💪💪💪💪

Omg dorki thank you for the love! I’ve had a couple people mention that idea to me (mayhaps your friend in the fic comments today lmao???) and it is literally the best compliment I could ever receive! Thank you!

Maybe in the future I’ll revamp it into a book, but right now, I just love it as a lil AO3 fic that I randomly decided to start writing. It was what lead me into this fantastic community where I have received more love for my writing than I ever thought I would see. You in particular made it so special by making my first fanart ever. I think it just being a silly lil fic is what makes it so special :)

And currently I’m working on other projects (about three years into working on a sapphic fantasy trilogy, maybe I’ll ~expose my identity~ just to promote it if it gets published lmao) but one day, if I ever do bring Dear Reader to the big leagues, you’re the first one I’ll call for a cover 💜💜

Sorry, got sappy on main, but thank u thank u thank u!

[daeneryseastar]

“laena/rhaenyra wasn’t even a paragraph why are you so mad that they were scrapped for the show?”

oh i don’t know janice maybe because it being in a historical text written 200 years after the fact by ultra religious MEN who despise women and queerness all together IS noteworthy? ‘more than fond of’ is an allegory used multiple times in the asoiaf main timeline to describe romantic feelings and you’re mad that people read that phrase the way it was intended? not to mention it’s used in conjunction with ‘while the princess misliked her stepmother’ like COME ON at this point you’re being deliberately stupid. i’m sorry they weren’t scissoring each other for 200 pages but in actuality what did you expect? acting like rhaenyra and alicent were so so in love when we were only shown a couple scenes of them getting along max during a six month period. the only way that ship will ever be canon is through the actors. the show leaves crumbs for asshats like you because they know you’ll bend over backwards to defend them. apparently it’s still okay to queerbait in the year of our lord 2k24; along with sidelining a woman of color because diversity was important until it came to fleshing out a black woman and her canon sapphicness.

laena, for the limited time we had her character, was fiery, bold, and adventurous. she claimed the largest and oldest dragon alive at 12! the show choosing to racebend her only to mitigate her affect on the plot is gross! they did it to keep the ‘what if they were in love’ guessing game and gift it to a white woman. a white woman who vehemently HATED rhaenyra. we just wanted the story to have complex and multilayered characters rhaenyra has NO FRIENDS besides the first *two* episodes that is the definition of shitty storytelling. a targaryen princess at the height of her families power the literal protagonist of the dance and you all want her to be a lonely spinster boy mom who’s not like the other girls so bad when she was literally surrounded by women all of whom she cared about dearly. multiple relationships with others helps bring a story to life and would’ve helped tremendously with making the dumb as rocks audience understand rhaenyra’s character and how she was a girls girl in a time where you really couldn’t afford to be one which is why it’s so tragic when she starts turning on them during the dance but nooo the ONLY relationship that matters is a busted up friendship that the writers have in a chokehold for no good reason and fuck everyone else that these women might care about right? fuck rhaenyra fuck laena fuck alicent fuck their kids fuck their GRANDKIDS they’re all just mostly blank slates anyway what impact is their death going to have on the narrative? next to nothing because of these fuckass decisions. let’s just all agree to throw stones at glass houses THAT would be more fulfilling for the show than half of the shit they gave us.

[chronic-cynic]

@pessimisticgh0st you asked for anime recommendations, so I am obviously going to jump at the chance to give them to you. You’ve dug your own grave, sorry.

Madoka Magica - a 12 episode anime that fucks up your mind and makes you lose your will to live. A classic. It’s short, so it’s not much of a commitment, and it’s perhaps the best anime out there. I’d recommended this before, but I’m hoping you forgot everything I said about it so you go in blind. Brief summary: 14 year old girls gain magical powers and have to fight witches. Recommending this anime is always very fun :) There are also 3 movies, but the first two are recaps of the series, so only the third movie (Rebellion) is relevant. This series will not leave my mind. This is the lesbian show.

A Silent Voice - a movie about a former bully making amends to the deaf girl he bullied. I normally hate this trope, but it’s done so well here, god. It really makes you empathize with both of them, especially since they were really young when it happened. Depicts social anxiety in the most accurate way possible. Absolutely beautiful film (I think Tori would love this film). Trigger warning for bullying, ableism, suicide, and violence (I may have missed something, so be cautious). If you aren’t doing anything today, I swear to god, watch this movie.

Romantic Killer - the aroace show. Not a favourite, but it’s definitely good. It’s about a girl who has zero interest in dating being forced into a dating simulator game by a wizard. She does her absolute best to ignore the romance that is forced into her life, and by the end of the show, she becomes very good friends with all of her love interests (found family for the win). A lot of people misunderstand this show, saying it’s anti-aroace which is absolutely ridiculous because the whole point of the show is that you can’t reduce people to mere love interests, and that romance can’t be forced onto people. It does have a lot of romantic elements because it’s a rom-com, though, which makes me cringe a lot of the time, but it’s good anyway. It’s a very funny show with a strong-willed main character. Trigger warning for stalking and sexual abuse, both of which are very well handled in the show. On Netflix.

Neon Genesis Evangelion - it’s a goddamn ride. Another classic. The main characters are so well written that you feel like they’ll crawl out of your screen and live in the real world. And, if you relate to one, it’s like the show is grabbing you by the throat (this is definitely not me talking about Asuka, nope). Touches on every existential question imaginable. Gives you a headache. 10/10. You should probably look up trigger warnings because there are likely a lot. On Netflix as well.

That’s all I can think of for now.

Edit: I’m adding two more shows but neither are anime. I promise they are both worth it, though.

Daria - a sitcom that aired from 1997 to 2002 on MTV (my profile picture is the main character). I’ve been watching it for a bit now. Haven’t finished it yet but it’s very good so far. The main character is very similar to Tori, except she isn’t as miserable.

Pyramid Game - a Kdrama about a class that plays an oppressive game that picks on the weak. I don’t watch many Kdramas, but the plot intrigued me and now it’s an absolute favourite. There’s a canon lesbian character and an implied sapphic romance. It’s also an all-female cast which I love, and the main character is incredibly smart. Here is where you can find it (use an adblocker).

[radiocity]

honestly, what's your take on the l word? atp i can't tell if it's just shit but i'm too far along to stop. the 5th and 6th seasons seem to be done in a complete different tone too and there's so many problematic aspects just slapped in for unecessary drama. still.. i like the main characters a lot and it is representation at the end of the day. Maybe it would've been cooler if they just did more of a 'slice of life' thing instead of 'drama rama cheating on people is like a slip of the hand thing due to the strong nuclear force'

anyway interested in your take, what do you think are the well- and badly- handled aspects of the show, how do you reflect on the story and character building?

stay cool out there (◕‿◕)♡

MY TAKE ON THE L WORD? getting this ask made me so excited you have no idea how much I love talking about the l word. So excited in fact that I wrote 6165 words about it, sorry, I am so severely unemployed right now. here, I talk about my thoughts, some theory, and then break down some of the intrinsic problems with the show, specifically how it thinks about gender and nonconformity, race, and transgender identities, within the scaffolding of it being a show concerned with women who have relationships with other women, rather than necessarily a truth of lesbianism. i’m citing various linked sources and very loosely using an academic approach, but it’s more like a messy collage of sources than it is a fully fleshed out argument and narrative! if you want the tl;dr, I’d recommend scrolling to the final 3 paragraphs

tbh I haven’t watched it in a while but I really want to rewatch the whole thing and go back to my gif series instead of just making random sets (don’t be put off by my absence its bc I was doing my master’s degree and then I got really sick) and maybe thinking so intensely about tlw these past 3 days will inspire me into it .

I’d be really interested in hearing any thoughts on response to any of this, even though it’s not particularly well written or formulated, so feel free to drop a message/reply/response anywhere if u or anyone else is compelled to. anyway response under the cut ->

so, my opening thoughts on the l word revolve around two things: there is nothing about this show that makes it an inherently lesbian show, and that it functions as a product of its time, not in culture but in Hollywood and show running. the imagined audience of TLW isn’t necessarily the modern ‘sapphic’ audience watching things like First Kill (2022), Do Revenge (2022), or Crush (2022) which are all, generally, pointed towards a younger audience seeking things like validation and romantic projection (from what I understand, and I’ll admit I haven’t watched any of these! But I have read synopsis and seen clips, so I’ll watch soon I promise). I do think this conversation has re-emerged a little in the growing conversations about wanting sexy lesbians having sex, which is a conversation that surrounded Love Lies Bleeding (LLB, 2024) for quite a while, repeating this argument that what lesbians want isn’t romance or tension, but sex, real sex, sex on screen and sex on TV. of course, it’s a little difficult for showrunners to ‘do’ sex or sexual content without it being so brazenly for men – and here I’ll step out and say when, in this context, I discuss women being looked at and ‘male gaze’, it’s more under the original theory of laura mulvey that women are objectified by the camera as men are in control of production, and here I’ll link the article (it’s very short, but I refer largely here to section B) – and to equally appeal to women looking at women but who are, equally not free from patriarchal understandings of the ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ ways of being attracted to women. I feel a good example of how we saw this was the big tiktok-wide discussion about sapphic cottage-core as an equally white endeavour, a sort of softcore launching of racist white American ideals of frolicking on a plantation. For showrunners to produce sexual lesbian content now, it needs to contend with who will be doing its marketing for them, i.e. a lot of people on tiktok talking about how LLB is for the ‘lesbian gaze’, whatever that means, or that these things are perhaps attractive to men in general, but are specifically geared to being attractive to lesbians specifically. Actually candace Moore, in a really brilliant article (and if u want access and don’t have it… just let me know) describes, through gaze theory, the notion of the straight viewer as a “tourist” and the “traveller”. Here:

Problematizing a distinction between the tourist, who "gladly or unknowingly accepts Disneyland's versions of the world's wonders," and the traveler, who "seeks and knows how to recognize authenticity," Strain argues that perhaps these archetypes are, if not one and the same, both victims to the notion that there is an "authenticity" available to be misrecognized, or grasped, in the first place. (10) But what of the lesbian viewer? (11) At first glance it would seem that the lesbian viewer falls outside of the already-tenuous tourist and traveler distinction, being a "local" intimately familiar with this culture. However, insofar as lesbian spectators are consuming mediated images of themselves, I argue that not only do straight audiences engage in a form of tourism when viewing the The L Word, but lesbian audiences, even those from Southern California, do too. The distinction between the tourist, the traveler, and, in this case, the local-as-consumer becomes blurred. Locals drawn to the latest "lesbian attraction," lesbians enjoy The L Word's eye candy along with straight "tourists." Like straight "travelers," they seek to identify albeit illusory "authentic" elements of the representation. However, for the queer viewer, the mediated reality of the show will never match up to reality. While the tourist and the traveler of The L Word are at base one and the same, the distinction between them lies not in what they are, but what they think they are; how they conceive of their own intentions, levels of "expertise," relationships to the local culture, and the "gains" that they take away--whether they travel for pleasure or for knowledge. It is through the enticement of lesbian sex (a spectacle of attraction for straight and queer viewers alike) and through the wonderment of either "understanding" the other or "recognizing" oneself (fantasy of authenticity), through both "watching from a remove" and "being there," that The L Word captivates its straight and queer tourists.

Pulling away from the academic angle, I don’t agree with the idea of LLB being for a lesbian gaze, nor do I think that TLW was ‘for’ lesbians more than it was ‘enjoyed’ by lesbians – a show that can hit as many audiences at once is a good thing. dennis cass for the slade in 2004 wrote that the L word “often feels like it’s not about being gay at all” and that a lot of what the show presents is pretty removed from any lesbian experience as we know it, additionally writing on bette and tina’s marriage counselling that they “aren’t merely in couples therapy, they’re seeing one of L.A.’s hottest personal gurus—that you not only forget they’re lesbians, but that they live on Earth.” A pretty accurate read for how removed a lot of TLW is from anything, and, to me, sort of bypasses any notion of ‘representation’ by just how fantastical it is. ginia bellafante also wrote in 2009, after s6 aired, that “’The L Word’ is a Sapphic Playboy fantasia in which women with wrinkles or squishy thighs or an aversion to lingerie appear to have been flagged down on the freeway with urgent instructions to move to Seattle”. basically, yeah

TLW itself is very clearly appealing to its heterosexual audiences at the same time it appeals to lesbians, even through the same mechanisms – the character’s conventional attractiveness, their skinniness, their lack of bras and how you can 9/10 times see their nipples through their shirts, and all the lesbian sex shown in as much detail as they could get away with – and that is the core driving force of the show in a lot of ways. we can’t really have another TLW today for the same reasons that all media from the early 2000s has shifted to give women more complex characters, arcs, appearances, and functions – and that’s a good thing, obviously – which in turn demonstrates the lack of these things the characters in TLW actually had. At its core, it’s sexy and men are the people behind the companies getting it on TV, not necessarily specific men but the shadow of patriarchy and how women exist on the screen. This isn’t to say media creation and output has become a liberal utopia for women’s rights, but rather there has definitely been a shift in how women exist on screen and what roles they were given before – think easy fast and furious, or megan fox in transformers, or even how very popular musicians styled themselves and appeared to the massive; Shakira, Jennifer lopez, Britney spears, etc – which, to me, reflects a way in which TLW capitalises off the straight heteropatriarchy in its desire to show sexy women at all times, always available to be ogled. in a way, this sorta aligns with bellafante’s observation that the show had ‘never aligned itself with the traditionalist ambitions of a large faction of the gay rights movement’ (written in 2009, 6 years before gay marriage was legalised in the us) – the liberator in the l word is sex, and that’s what all the characters are constantly aiming for, nothing else. Similarly, the show gets so obsessed with defining who or what a lesbian is (throughout the whole of s1 as they look for signs of lesbianism in jenny, with jenny at that party, or with dana talking about her ‘gaydar’, and so by doing this it turns lesbianism into a visual brand, something that be hidden in plain sight, appeasing both the hetrosexual viewer and the lesbian seeker - Martina Ladendorf describes a branding of lesbian identities through TLW in a form of “thingification”, and so “the representations of lesbian identities are discursively displaced and the identity position “lesbian” is partially filled with new meanings in the televised text of The L-word.”  Ladendorf offers a far more generous reading than I do – to me, a lot of TLW needs to extrapolate lesbians from their womanhood and vice versa, creating a sort of woman who is a lesbian, rather than, simply, a lesbian

naturally, the l word is inherently a misogynist show , and in a lot of ways I think it’s unavoidable to think about when it comes to discussing schematics or opinions of the show, it’s a show full of, in the words of liz feldman in this interview, ‘beautiful lesbians with just nothing but time on their hands… and just somehow also money’. Obviously, the stereotypes the show puts forwards make it feel pretty cheap at time, and when the show ventures out into attempting to either tackle or just include plotlines about poverty, racism, transphobia, infidelity, (or plotlines it totally avoids, like conversations on butchness, gender non-conformity, or transfemininity), it honestly just gets stranger and stranger, not to mention the very active racism present in the show, via how pam grier’s character was written, handled, and expanded upon when she was by far one of the most skilled and seasoned actors on the show. a lot of issues I and other people have are through this lens, and hence why a lot of the pushback focuses on how little was understood about trans people in mainstream media back then, or how the show was just such a landmark moment that it was purely reflective of the times so it’s just nit-picking to be pointing out all its negative parts, which isn’t a sentiment I agree with at all, and instead I think of the l word as being both progressive and problematic for these reasons. Even as an addition, I feel like TLW is why we just don’t really need more tv shows like the L word… because we have the L word, and it’d be nice if we could have something different

so, when I talk about and recommend the l word I usually put it in these terms: season 1 is a phenomenal piece of storytelling and such a compelling way to create and introduce a show all about lesbianism to a world that is not filled with parallel lesbians, but rather is the only show on air in the world doing that exactly, and, following that, season 4 gets a little art deco and experimental as it pushes its characters through new, meaningful struggle, like tasha working in the military under ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ (fuck the army though), max living his new reality as a trans man (yeah it was dealt with horribly), bette dating jodi and this inviting so much conversation about art, disability, and deafness into the mix, and, in other ways, jenny and tina working together on her show, helena’s… gambling addiction or whatever, kit’s nonsense relationship shane’s nonsensical relationship. Imo these two seasons show the best of what the L word has to offer, which is, in S1, a sensitive introduction that pushes jenny through the wringer as she really becomes herself and takes hold of her destiny, and then in S4, these characters all essentially performing at their apex, in love, making mistakes, trying again, to the best of the l word’s ability to show any of this (relatively speaking, it’s the best TLW ever gets)

with all this in mind, I do think the show thrives in really profound ways at times. The real hook of it is, and always has been, season 1, which is just this ferociously strong exploration in television about such a serious sensitive topic, jenny’s coming out. a lot of criticism sort of facetiously responds to jenny’s character by focusing on her writing quality (which I honestly thought was fine lol!), and will ignore sincerely engaging with her in favour of laughing at how bad her character became as the writer’s lost the plot more and more, but I really do think that jenny in the first two seasons was just phenomenal, and mia kirshner’s fantastic meditative performance just stole the entire show for me. In season 1 as we are introduced to the show and their world through jenny’s process of coming out and ripping her life apart at the seams to live her ideal life (even if it was very explosive with marina and didn’t end well), which I just thought was such captivating writing about that moment of choice, where a character has to decide whether or not they’ll live their easy life or do the difficult thing. one of the scenes I have always come back to is in s1 where jenny has sex with tim and cries afterwards because that moment for her is the one where she realises she just can’t do it anymore, and seeing that in the show was just really otherworldly for me, I loved it and I thought it was amazing, and then later on in season 2 where jenny asks shane to cut her hair for her – a real splitting off from her regular, comfortable life, to ‘become’ a lesbian in heart and soul, was again just another moment where the writing and directing teams could really show some muscle in just how good the show could be, before dropping all presences and going back to whatever drivel they’d been doing. As a more technical note on the show, the inconsistent directors and writing is really hilarious, and sometimes the drop in quality between episodes is… staggering, to say the least

tbh s1 functions well as a drama-comedy mix because those scenes, as well as tina and bette’s fertility journey, is spliced within the rest of the nonsense going on, which I felt crafted this really enjoyable diametric swing throughout . arguably more than anything, jenny’s coming out was the best and most meaningful part of the show, and I really haven’t seen much other lesbian media hold a candle to it (though I could name a few). What they did with jenny as the show went on was disappointing to say the least, but s2 had a lot of heart in it as they attempted to have her coming to terms with her abuse (naturally, having finally discovered herself in s1) and focus more on what makes her happy – her writing. As the show continued to develop and jenny’s character just morphed into this unrecognisable thing, I even still think mia kirshner could perform such a charming take on it that I never really aligned myself to a lot of the jenny hate people joke about

other drama aspects in mind, like bette and tina’s marriage falling apart, bette’s other relationships (bette always seems to be the one facing the ‘serious problems), and even dana’s cancer and subsequent death, I thought were generally handled… ‘well’. Dana’s cancer worked interestingly within this as, while it was kind of bizarre, I think the relationship between alice and dana was a real life force on the show for a  while, and that whole situation meant that alice could go through some real, meaningful growth in her character which she’d been a little starved of to that point. perhaps my thoughts are that when the show focuses on cheating as the only method of things falling apart, that’s when it really starts to fumble, because cheating at that level is such a sitcom-only esque plotline that removes a lot of reality you might be looking for and finding charming in these shows. Equally, I just think cheating can be quite an alienating plotline!

But, to talk about writing alone, my god it gets shit. Various parts of the writing I remember disliking off the top of my head are dana’s season 2 girlfriend which turns into a weird trope of the pretty girls vs the ‘uglier’ one (her then-gf), when the max arc is in full swing (though I’ll be clear as well and say I loved Daniel Sea’s acting within the role, however bad the writing was), papi and the racism that guided the writers in constructing her character, the random plotline of the guy living with shane and jenny in season 2 (though I thought it could have been really interesting, almost a meta comment on men watching lesbians, men watching the l word, men watching lesbians in media).  Helena’s entire character was a little baffling to me, and while I did enjoy her at times and thought she was a hilarious addition to the cast, I just had no clue exactly what she was doing. Parts of the shows ideology itself is equally harmful, like alice and dana shopping for strap-ons (bc alice is bisexual and therefore loves penetrative sex, and dana is a lesbian and therefore doesn’t), or just that the shows ensemble cast reflects the background, and everyone is cis white thin feminine, etc.  until they’re not, like ivan or papi, or Dylan..? (or a character’s non-whiteness function as a sort of ethnic flair to them, say papi and carmen being Latina and that being their exciting ‘exotic’ traits), that floods the show with a very recognisable sort of white Hollywood liberalism, and if we can understand and comprehend that, we get a good working frame for the rest of what’s going on. as alice and tasha were arguing about the military it was, of course, them trying to suggest that alice is this very liberal character who disagrees with the war and tasha’s politics, but not enough to…. Break things off with her. Instead (fashion tumblr user steps in) she even joins in this roleplay and dresses more femininely around her, growing out her hair a little and everything – and alice in general usually had a pretty fluid sense of style, so it was an… interesting choice. And then Jamie shows up for some reason (and is similarly one of the very few reoccurring Asian characters on the show – her, Catherine (one of helena’s stupid love interests) and adele (who is not serious); actually to make a side note on how this show was received, there was even a petition to get the character’s from alice wu’s Saving Face (which is a brilliant movie, and you should watch it) to be on the show and bring more Asian representation, from autumn 2008)

One episode I think is pretty good for reading the ethos of how TLW engages with women who aren’t their ‘ideals’ is shown is, imo, episode 3? 4? of season 1, where lacey is harassing shane for moving on from her. Lacey is one of the very few characters who leans a little more into being gender nonconforming, yes still with the full face of makeup, but with heavy punk-ish eye makeup, short hair, leather jacket, a demanding attitude, (and she’s not fat, but definietely has more weight on her than any of the verrrrry skinny main cast), and all-in-all embodies a kind of paltry attempt at TLW at bringing in someone with more of an edge, perhaps a modern day masc we might imagine – she’s really one of the only women I can think of on the show, let alone women that shane gets with, who isn’t an ultra-feminine character with long hair, tall, skinny, petite frame, etc. devoid of reality, the show really pushes on her as this over-demanding woman who reactedly badly to shane using her and moving on, and of course the show is trying to show us that shane uses people without much care for them, but doing so through lacey lets you sympathise more with shane than it would if they’d brought in a far more feminine woman who could play that damsel in distress role through looks alone. Lacey’s problems are like a pet or a child’s wherein you do what they want (in this case, another 1 night stand) to appease them, and then you get them off your back. The writing itself is very bizarre, but the fact that they used a woman who was just a little left of centre from the standard the show had set of these beautiful women in Hollywood, demonstrates enough

likewise, to go from here and talk about gender non-conformity, one of the strangest lines on the show was always kit in season 3 episode 9 saying “It just saddens me to see so many of our strong butch girls giving up their womanhood to be a man” – why she said that, I don’t know, some sort of meditation on her bizarre relationship with ivan perhaps? But that relationship fell apart because ivan was… not a man… and couldn’t be a man… whereas max is a man and could be a man, so I just don’t know.

Kit: Why can't you be the butchest butch in the world... and keep your body? Max: Because I wanna feel whole.

and he is so punished for that split away from butchness into transness, even by the woman who is notably placed outside of the lesbianism of the show – which is arguably worse than having one of the lesbians come at him for it, as kit is more or less representative of “the rest of the world” in these types of conversations, pushing max away from transition while the lesbians of the show, the ones who, you would imagine, have had some sort of intersection with transness once before (again, notably shane, who, as part of her traumatic backstory, was mistaken for a boy when she was a teenager and was paid by men to give them a handjobs) . instead the show curiously places kit there as some voice of reason, and the rest of the lesbian cast are kind of fast and loose with the whole thing. when they do talk about butchness in s3e3, it’s just bizarre. Pre-transition max pulls shane with him to unpack the car as “us butches”, and carmen giggles and jokingly calls shane a “big butch” even though, again, she’s the closest thing the show gets to reoccurring butchism, and is likely seen and imagined as butch by a lot of the people watching . at dinner later on in the episode, they make a joke about him not being “stone butch”… as if that’s a way of measuring masculinity rather than a sexual identity, before shane interrupts the conversation to say “You know what, what difference does it make whether someone is butch or femme?”. again, she is the butchest one at the table, and very notable not butch, but has gone up so close to the border before, you really wonder… why. Why there is such intense resolution to not make her butch, but really it’s because TLW functions in the absence of the butch – alice eler puts it succinctly: “The L-Word asserts that a “femme” lesbian woman is more desirable than a “butch” lesbian.”

In tlw, butch and femme are always roles played rather than realities lived, so it defaults to femininity being ‘standard’  - and this is where, imo, a lot of reaction to max’s transition hinges on. If the show can’t allow any character to firmly be ‘butch’, so when a character takes on butchness as a passage to realising his truth, that he is a trans man, it pulls out all the ugly thoughts and feelings held by certain lesbians about trans men who were, previously, identifying as lesbians/butch lesbians. Here, it really creates a perfect storm for TLW to uphold dangerous ideology (how they showed max’s transition was horrible), and justifying their cis lesbian audience’s response (they got angry that the only character who transgressed gender went ‘too far’ with it, essentially, living his truth in a way they didn’t like). I imagine, if TLW had functioning butch characters on the show, this all might’ve played out differently, but if TLW let go of its standard of femininity, then it… isn’t sexy, becoming too lesbian and too trans and alienates its non-lesbian audience, getting too deeply invested in its lesbianism than it is with its glamour. An interview with Ilene chiaken that gets thrown around a lot is here: on max, “She’s our first real butch on the show — a fabulously attractive butch, but nonetheless a real butch,” Chaiken said. “And we deal with the issue of gender. We wanted to tell that story, a big story in the gay community and, in the last couple years, a huge story in the lesbian community.” it’s an interesting statement for sure– gender transgression has always been a part of lesbianism (read any book ever), and with the advent of the internet and online communities – afterellen being founded in 2002 – more conversations could be had by lesbians from all walks of life, from any economic background or lived reality of race, ability, anything.  jack halberstam writes interestingly in Transgender Butch about butch/ftm borders that,

The distinction that some butches need to make between lesbianism and butchness hinges on a distinction between sexual and gender identities. Lesbian, obviously, refers to sexual preference and to some version of the “woman-loving woman.” Butch, on the other hand, bears a complex relation of disidentification with femininity and femaleness and, in terms of sexual orientation, could refer to “woman-loving butch” or “butch-loving butch.

butchness, and max’s ex-butchness, is never truly interacted or responded to in the show – ivan states he doesn’t mind being referred to as a he, shane half-heartedly defends butchism by asking her friends to stop talking about it, and max finds himself as a man through a meaningful identification with butchism and ‘disidentification’ with femininity to then finding a reidentification with not just masculinity, but manhood, which lends way to him truly discovering himself. Curiously, in response to this, this reidentification is one step too far, and suddenly its actually ok to be butch on the l word. The rest of the cast seems to ask him over and over again, why by a man? Why not be butch? But in the world of TLW, to be butch and to be trans are both radical acts of nonconformity, to disidentify is to no longer be the thing that sells, so you very fundamentally cannot do any of it – lisa the male lesbian in s1 is played for laughs as a transmisogynist  punchline, and carmen giggling at the idea of shane being butch (and thus disidentifying) demonstrates that this is equally hilarious.

from this angle, i feel that TLW functions primarily as a show about women attracted to women, not lesbians attracted to lesbians (lesbian as gender, as identifier, as being). Immovable womanhood is the centre of everything, constructing familiarity, and to stray is to exit safe perimeters that TLW establishes within unradical, conformist, cisgendered white femininity. candace Moore, again, writes that TLW “positions lesbianism as a sensibility, not a sexuality. This is particularly important because as a sensibility, lesbianism can potentially be co-opted by straight viewers.”

of course, it would be remiss to fail in mentioning that much of this discussion about tlw’s association to butchness is very much within whiteness as well – we can argue that tasha is a stud even if she never says the word herself, her specific attraction being to “girly girls” and her riding a motorbike, always with a more masculine wardrobe, and being in the……. Army………. Really aligns her with this sentiment. I do think she’s a stud, but this being off the back of the show’s depiction of max sits so strangely, and we can’t ignore that her blackness is so instinctually connected to how they wrote her – in a world where no one else can be a butch, why then is the only dark skinned black lesbian more masculine leaning than the rest of them? yes, racism, and all tied in to her nationalism and dedication to the army. It’s certainly an interesting choice for the writers to make and, while she is one of my favourites in the whole show, I definitely have a lot of pause with why she was written and created the way she was, and what she offers the show politically – she holds space as a particularly vulnerable body, a dark skin black stud lesbian, but maintains the status quo of the country and of American imperialism. What’s the message? Even the most unavailable of lesbians can still be patriots??? the individual's physical unfuckable body is still acessible through american aligience?

As later seasons continued to get worse, parts I did really enjoy were tasha’s entire character, molly’s entire character, seeing tina ‘get her life back’ as it were and return to painting, jodi’s entire character, all the music featured, and bette and tina getting back together was really well written and laurel holloman and Jennifer beals are just two very strong actors steering that ship, and random moments throughout I really enjoyed (specifically bette’s professional life gave a lot of breathing room for the show to have other funny little characters, like her office assistants etc) that I’m struggling to remember here rn tbh but generally even as the show was getting bad, the more ridiculous things got the more fun I was having, but the later seasons ‘drama’ was a little painful. If it had started as a drama and then shifted into something more palatable, I think it would’ve been great, but really anything that wasn’t season 6 would have been fine.. just such an unforgiving and cruel way to end the show, and I thought adding jenny to the mix of toxic sad relationships after leaving her straight life and coming to terms with her abuse was such a mean-spirited and cruel way to end it IDK! And this is why the l word FAILS as a sitcom, bc at least usually (to my knowledge) the  idea is that at the end… they’re kinda happy and stepping into another new life with some stability and lifelong friends!!! But instead TLW said fuck you and I hate you

anyway yeah closing thoughts… if you watch TLW without even thinking about representation I think it’s an easy watch, bc what I was watching it for is psycho lesbians who don’t act normally and that’s what I got. All caricatures of themselves or whatever they’re performing in the shadows of, and, in a way – and maybe this is a little weird to say – but I think the lesbians in the show are, to me, like watching a species of lesbian that I myself am not. Which is a shame because, if I recall correctly, a lot of those musical performances in the show were about exposing the world to lesbian music that broke the norm and went against the stereotype of music people associated with lesbians at the time, showing them on the cutting edge of new sound, which somehow did not cross into the actual meat of the show at all. And I haven’t spoken at all about it here, but a lot of those musical features are my favourite parts of the show and made some of those scenes just electric, magical parts of storytelling on tv

to address the “you”/I in what “I think”, and this one actually is TMI, when I first watched the L word, it was when I had really just finished coming to terms with my own lesbianism back in late 2021, early 2022 (I was gay and trans before this, but hiding from myself and my sexuality and my gender in complex ways, living a sort of double life online and offline – this was more an unforgiving reckoning with who I was vs what the life I was leading looked like). i was finally letting myself think about it holistically, reflecting on conversion therapy and how I navigated my desires and my identity. I wrote a lot of melodramatic diary entries and was trying to figure out how to handle a 3 year long semi-formed, confusing, and impressively undefined ‘situation’ship I was in with a guy while I was living alone during a gap year. all I really did in this time was go to the gym, go on walks, go to therapy, and think… a lot. by the time I started watching TLW I had come to terms with my lesbianism (and its inextricable relationship to my gender), but watching jenny go through something I had basically been in the thick of myself (just without all the sex and the cheating and the sex and the sex and the sex), and was, at that point, yet to experience the real horror of, meant a lot to me, and, just from some reading online, I’ve understood too how the early seasons of TLW really helped a lot of other lesbians come out to themselves or start thinking about where they might sit in relation to lesbianism. again, TLW fails time and time again at any sort of political radicalism, but when you’re so, so painfully alone and you don’t really have anyone to talk to about these desires, or even have the strength to talk about these things out loud, I do think somehow the unabashed desire flung around the screen of TLW does one thing, and that is to declare that lesbianism doesn’t have to be in your head, and that even good change can be really difficult when it’s something like this, and that, to me, was the best thing TLW added to the conversation about lesbian TV and reflects, for a lot of lesbians who find themselves trying to navigate repression and abuse, the experience that we’re still moving through: taking hold of our lives with our own hands

beyond that, beyond being a story about transformation – which I do think really permeates the first season (dana coming out to the world and to her parents; shane learning how to love or whatever the fuck genuinely; tina and bette trying and failing and trying to live the life they’d always dreamt of; marina navigating her own bad relationship through a sort of uncaring outwards desire;  bette ‘choosing’ the wrong path from her married life and cheating; kit re-entering the world of professional music and working hard to get into that music video thing situation – I think s1 is just such a rare gem of tv, that had so many flaws in it and so much was mishandled, but it came to it all with a lot of heart. But still that same angle is what alienates it from reality and sets it up as this fantasy land of woman-who-engage-in-lesbianism and abstractifies lesbian reality to make way for lesbian (or straight) fantasies of standard hegemony with a little zest. As it goes on however, it falls so hard to the more difficult aspects already clear at its start, and dramatizes their sexual escapades and relationships endlessly in a way that gives, says, and does nothing. jill dolan describes it well, albeit more positively than I have here: “part of the fun has become to simply go with it, to enjoy its excesses of character and plot and to tolerate its rather sweetly absurd attempts at relevance and authenticity.” and you really can ‘go with it’ for a while, but to put it shortly, TLW is not a show worth following to the end of the earth

[the-bee-graveyard]

It kinda pisses me off how everyone's talking about how this is "the golden age of queer reprsentation" or whatever, and everyone talks about how many queer shows, (and movies if you count Red white and royal blue) are popular right now. But it's only really mlm representation or mlm centric content. Like Heartstopper, Interview with a vampire, Our flag means death, Good Omens, and Young Royals are all mlm centric shows, and sapphic shows usually either get canceled or they never reach the kind of popularity. I think the only one I can think of is Arcane and I think that's because it's got so many other moving parts that are so fantastic snd interesting that even the straights love it. And Cait and Vi's relationship isn't really overt yet, so to speak.

And the thing is we all know why this is happening. We all know what this is about. Or at least I thought we did. But when you bring this up you often get people being like, "oh stop causing conflict between wlw and mlm!" Or "stop trying to pit queer people against each other!" Like.... no I'm not doing that, I'm pointing out that misogyny and lesbophobia exist.

Honestly I am literally begging queer men to care about sapphics for once. Like please acknowledge that misogyny exists and we are affected by it. Please acknowledge that the way we are percieved and treated is different from you because we experience the intersection of homophobia and misogyny.

Sorry for ranting. I'm just so tired.

Never apologize for ranting!

Well it’s undeniable that queer representation has gotten better over the years, we are nowhere near in the golden age of queer representation! Where are the lesbians, the trans/non-binary characters, the poly characters?

And yes we have shows like Yellowjackets and Arcane who have main character lesbian rep and haven’t been canceled and are quite popular, they still haven’t reached the levels of popularity of mlm shows.

I’m very happy for my mlm friends for finally getting the representation they deserve! I am only hoping that wlw can see that kind of representation for themselves.

[bohemian-nights]

i will honestly never forgive them for the whole lady danbury mess in QC. totally unnecessary and extremely difficult to sit through for so many reasons.

but yeah it’s a pattern with the writers atp to put bw in unfulfilling AT BEST situations. “but that’s how it was back then!” well i don’t want to see it! why is it only happening to the black women? and also, there is nothing realistic or period-accurate about this show, so that argument doesn’t even hold up.

i’m still holding out for black Sophie but i’m trying not to get my hopes up. i honestly thought the people latching on to the Michaela theories were just (at least some of them) racists coping with their favorite lead having a bw love interest bc it seemed totally illogical, right? like i thought they’d have to be completely insane and out of touch to actually do it. but then they did.

i’m queer! sapphic/bisexual specifically. i am always looking not just for queer representation but for good wlw love stories with happy endings bc we are severely underfed! but holy shit! bridgerton’s main audience is middle-aged heterosexual women. what the hell were they thinking???

sorry. this is getting into rant territory. i was going to ask you what chance you thought there was of us actually getting a black Sophie but then i realized i actually don’t care anymore and you probably don’t either. Bridgerton dipped majorly in quality this season anyway, imo, so it’s probably best to check out before it gets even worse.

The last part especially because there isn’t anything left enjoyable about this show. It’s quite literally gone off the rails.

I stand by that the ones who leaked this crap and are salivating over this are racist assholes who never wanted Sophie to be Black because all of them have voiced in some fashion or another their preference for a non-Black Sophie and/or how there are “too many Black people on the show.”

They’ve got their wish in part because I doubt Sophie will be Black or even Black-ish now, however, their prize isn’t anything worthwhile.

Making Benedict bi at the millionth hour when Sophie is supposed to come into the picture makes no sense unless you are going to put in a MMF love triangle which isn’t the premise of AOFAG and cheapens Benophies love story since Benedict always just wanted Sophie/TLIS.

Regardless of what they do Jess is a shit writer and show runner(I mean look what she did for Shonda’s favorite girl). Next season is hardly going to be award winning...

Now as far as this gender-bending mess goes, Franchael’s book is very gender specific and dependent on Michael being a man. So there is no way that whatever they put out will remotely resemble When He Was Wicked.

Bridgerton canon has also established that gay marriage is illegal. Not to mention that really isn’t an any reason to change it, in fact it would be be counterproductive to change that considering the basis of their society is built on women being second class citizens and the continuation of the family line through the union of a man and a woman.

You can’t exactly do that in a society that allows two women to marry. Two women in 1815 can’t make a baby either, so I really can’t see how they’ll write a happily ever after complete with a legal marriage for this OC couple they’ve created.

I should say there is nothing wrong with queer rep. That’s not why I’m disgusted and disappointed. There was a way to add it, but they went about it the wrong way

Season 1 they should’ve established that gay marriage wasn’t a problem and created an OC couple or couples which they could do a spin-off or two on or hell made Gregory bi this season(his book literally has a gay plot), but instead they went out of their way to establish that gay people were persecuted and have to hide their love which was only reinforced with Queen Charlotte.

Essentially they’ve roped people in and switched their narrative up all because Jess wants to play self-insert, Julia Quinn only sees dollar signs, and Shonda has severe self-hate issues.

Honestly at this point I feel like both of these decisions were done to keep a Black woman from playing Sophie.

The show has literally gone on 3 seasons without including Black women in a leading romantic role. We weren’t asking for much. We weren’t even breaking it up by ethnicity and saying that Shonda(who is a Blsck woman herself) needs to cast a Caribbean, an Afro-Latina, a Black American, and an African woman. We just wanted someone fully Black to play a leading woman who gets a happily ever after.

Sophie would’ve been the perfect time to include us in this supposedly progressive show that cares about diversity. Sophie’s story is really just spicy Cinderella which would’ve been a breath of fresh air, but that is too good for us apparently.

When you factor in how Lady Danbury in the other Blackish women on this show are depicted, they really seem to have a problem with showing Black women being openly loved, desired, and fought for.

It is what is though. I don’t really care what they do at this point because the show reached its peak with Queen Charlotte. The best days are behind it, but yeah, they’ve lost me as a viewer…

[goldenempyrean]

Sharing Without Caring

« Day 17: "Did you just drink from my glass?" »

« Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Reader »

« Notes: this is a day late and its VERY short so I’m really sorry about this. Day 18 is just being cleaned up but it’ll be up today for sure :D »

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“Did you just drink from my glass?” You sniffled as you groggily looked up to see Natasha lower the drink from her lips and set it back down on the coffee table infront of you.

Natbquirked her head as she raised an eyebrow in question, “Yeah? We always share drinks.” She shrugged, “Did you not want too?”

“No, no. Its not that. Its just you’ll catch this crap now.” You yawned with a pout, scooting up from your blanket bundle on the sofa to rest your head against her thigh. There wasn’t much point trying to avoid getting too close anymore. She’d already pretty much secured her fate with that sip. Not to mention the fact you’d probably been coughing all over your main shared duvet for most of the day anyway.

She only smiled, letting her hand come to run through your messy hair, “I guess I will.”

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[alisahaibaaa]

right so I switch between hyperfixations a lot and tend to change focuses every few weeks so sometimes I’ll go a few days without being active on one blog. here are all of them! (will be updated if I make more)

@alisahaibaaa <- main blog (will rb a mash of stuff! mostly untagged. sorry. it’s usually dcu and pjo content, some naruto and other medias, and general shitposts here!)

@girldadevanbuckley <- 911 show side blog

@creepercleo <- hermit & trafficblr side blog (most active here)

some quick things about me!

my name is amihan (I’m Filipino), but I also go by miha (mee-ha)

I use she/her and he/him but I’d rather you just pick one set and stick with it instead of using it interchangeably! thanks 🤍

queer as hell but don’t ask me to specify further than sapphic. I’m also Catholic!

[the-stabbiest-dragon]

hi, I saw you say this term in a post about biphobia, and I wonder: what does ‘bi lesbian’ mean ? I’m new here and I’m also not from western countries so I’ve never actually heard of any dynamic terms in the lgbtq+ community. I would appreciate being educated on the matter thank you 🙏🏾

hey, no problem! essentially, it's just one of many ways people will combine labels when they feel like they overlap, or that both describe their identity in different ways. lgbtq+ labels were invented to describe shared experiences, rather than sort people into neat little boxes, and because humans are so complicated and diverse very few of us actually fit into one label perfectly. for most of the bi lesbians I know or have seen on here, it means that although they have attraction to multiple genders, either the main focus of their attraction is sapphic or wlw, or they strongly identify with other aspects of lesbian culture (butch lesbian culture especially has been historically tied to various trans and nonbinary identities, particularly in the states) because of a bunch of factors to do with small but vocal exclusionist and separatist groups in the queer community and lesbian community in particular, people who get more fluid with their labels specifically around lesbianism get a lot of negative attention, which sucks. sorry if this was kind of a lot, but thank you for asking!

[dyemelikeasunset]

I absolutely love Dom and Mor. I’ve never really found myself enjoying sapphic stories before, despite being a lesbian (tho I think I fall on the ace/nonbinary? Scale lol so maybe that’s got something to do with it). I dunno but I find a lot of sapphic stuff in general is just… missing something? Or maybe it was just never actually meant for a lesbian/sapphic audience?

But these two, I’m so invested. In fact when I think about it, I always come back to you for sapphic/lesbian stories and art, I dunno how you do it but I think you put so much love and care into developing characters and their personalities that it really shines through. I remember also falling in love when you first posted the elf girlfriends, Nat and Ell? But yeah the fact that you play with a diverse range of identities too, like all the way from butch to high femme, is stuff I just rarely see anywhere else, if at all.

Sorry it’s a long ask haha, but basically I love Dom and Mor… more than anything I’ve seen on main stream media, and I love all your work so much, thank you for making wonderful art 💜

wow I don't know what to say to this... thank you!! thank you very much for sending such a sweet message

I'm not knocking other wlw/sapphic media but I also never felt fully satisfied by them either. They just weren't to my tastes?? And it took me a really long time to get around to it, but I think finally taking things into my own hands has been really motivating for me!! It's strange that there aren't more comics about proper adult women who are dating, who are realistically queer, and drawn with the art style I'm aiming for-- I'm really hoping to fill that niche!

Thank you for also loving Nae and Ellie!! I miss them, but at the moment I need to let Ocean of Cycles incubate a little. The project kinda overwhelmed and got away from me, so doing a more focused project with Dom & Mor (and their backstory!) has been really good for my creativity

You made me ramble LOL but I just want you to know this really spoke to me and helped me feel really good. I keep going through dips of low self esteem about D&M and questioning if I'm really doing a good job, or if I jumped the gun. I'm not asking for validation, but when the validation comes, it means a lot to me, thank you from the bottom of my heart

[redheadbigshoes]

I prefer to date other lesbians because of their gender/self expression and how they carry themselves (along with shared experiences).

I posted on reddit a few weeks ago, asking the question, ‘Is being les4les biphobic?’ Not even a few minutes after I posted the question, I was getting comments. The majority of them were actually very supportive, but there were many who commented, calling me discriminatory and naive🙄

I’ve seen posts on subreddits about bi4bi and never saw any negative comments. Like, once I voiced that I’m a lesbian who prefers to date other lesbians, I’m treated like a dumbass. It pisses me off.

Sorry for the little rant, I saw your post about les4les earlier and I needed to get this out.

This is completely understandable because your preferences don’t really have anything to do with other sexualities.

Obviously people are going to react badly to someone who’s les4les 🙄 a lot of non-lesbian sapphics have the main character syndrome and love to insert themselves in things they weren’t mentioned at all. They love making things about themselves. They cannot really think that maybe someone’s reason to be les4les has nothing to do with any other identity.

It’s always this shitty hypocrisy. Because when it’s a les4les then these people are all like “you biphobic piece of shit” and “you’re generalizing bisexuals” (said les4les only is les4les because they want someone with more shared experiences, which has absolutely nothing to do with bisexuality).

But when it’s someone being bi4bi the same people are all like “you’re absolutely right” and “yeah lesbians suck you should only date other bisexuals” like whaat? Do you hear yourself?

Not even gonna start saying how the way they respond to us is only making lesbians more sure to only want to date other lesbians lol

I’ve even seen someone responding a les4les talking about wanting someone with more shared experiences with something like “what more shared experiences a lesbian could have that a bisexual doesn’t?” Like totally ignoring the fact that we’re also not attracted to men so when it comes to that it’s not the same experiences as a bisexual.