#it was NOT due to it being queerbaiting

[evviejo]

repeat after me: queerbaiting is a marketing strategy. queerbaiting is a marketing strategy. queerbaiting is a marketing strategy. queerbaiting is a marketing strategy. QUEERBAITING IS A MARKETING STRATEGY. QUEERBAITING IS A MARKETING STRATEGY. QUEERBAITING IS A MARKETING STRATEGY.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Also. The whole "evil bisexualization" of/surrounding Ganondorf, coupled to the weird treatment of Sidon and the baffling arranged marriage subplot is.... yeah. I don't know.

[gh-0-stcup]

My thing is that I just do not trust a single person who was involved in the show. It just seems like a lot of PR to fix their image and foster sympathy/goodwill/interest.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

the literal fucking closet

Benton Fraser & Ray Vecchio + Closets

[aznisure]

idol au where light chokes on a fly on live television and L is the cameraman who films every second of it. also they keep crossing paths on music shows for some reason

day 7 / au ! some au details under cut

- L doesnt actually go out of his way to film light during this miserable ordeal.he simply doesnt care about light’s reputation enough to stop rolling and forgets about it the next day. a week later light sees him at mcountdown

- yes lights stage name is kira

- light presents as the perfect idol: single, kind, hardworking, rags to riches story, humble yet confident, just gay enough to queerbait but not face homophobic backlash, passionate, creative etc., when the cameras are off hes basically canon light minus the murder

- light is an all rounder and tenor. he also plays tennis in his free time. he is japanese and has been scouted off the streets. he is a kpop idol and the au takes place in korea. he is a solo idol and has never been in a group before. l is still british and misa is still japanese.

- he writes his own songs. his ego doesnt let him indulge in ghostwriters

-manager ryuk owns a ridiculous amount of chrome hearts simply impossible to buy on a managers salary. light is deeply suspicious and mildly wary of him at all times. ryuk also knows lights real personality and finds it amusing. he takes joy in a gigantic pr scandal which light will inevitably become one day

- rem dreses the way she does without looking misplaced because its in line with misas gothic/harajuku brand. ryuk looks wildly out of place next to light but noone seems to make him change. light tried, very persistently. but even light yagami has to admit defeat sometimes

- light debuted at 17 and is now 22. L is 29

- L works at all things live television and sometimes variety shows. he mainly works for idols. the media company hes signed under works with lights company. light doesnt know this until he violently cyber stalks L after the fly debacle

- they have actually been working together for 3 years without knowing each other and L has filmed light quite often due to him being the companys most popular male idol. light of course never noticed and only sort of recalls now

- L has always found light fascinating because the persona he wears is accepted to be very genuine by the general public. L always thought it was total bullshit, a masterful imitation of a real person.

- light never yells at anyone in public ever. not to misa even though he wants to rip her from his side on the thousand talk shows they go on. not to ryuk when he critiques every aspect of every bit of lights stages. not to his previous managers even though they were wildly incompetent and pissed light off daily. his reputation is everything to him. so when he yells at L in the middle of everyone at the backstage of mcountdown its a bit of a spectacle. thats the first crack L sees in lights shell and he wants to see more

- afterwards is a public apology and bullshit story about grief and a dead relative and misdirection of feelings and the game begins. L gets himself booked on as many as Lights jobs as possible with only one aim. to capture a crack in koreas sweethearts perfect persona on camera

- L doesnt do it because hes a truth chaser or whatever he simply enjoys watching light crack. and to have him crack on love tv would be to Win. light catches onto the game very quickly

[katstiel]

After just having finished Teen Wolf for the first time, I can't stop thinking about Sterek. I am just so fucking fascinated by the phenomenon of this ship.

What is fascinating about it, is that there is BARELY any textual support for the ship at all. These two characters pretty much stop interacting after 2 seasons. If I'm being honest, their chemistry isn't even anything that wild. Any overtly shippable moments between the two can be counted on one hand.

What is fascinating, is that I firmly believe this ship exists due to the meta-textual context surrounding the show. Imo there are 2 main parts to this:

1. Sterek is a perfect example of queerbaiting in the original sense of the word. Because despite not having seen the show at the time, I vividly remember the boat video circulating. If you don't know what boat video I am talking about, just search YouTube for 'Sterek boat'. It is probably the most insane marketing stunt I've seen for a show.

And, after looking into it, it seems that the creative forces behind the show actively encouraged fans to ship Sterek through Asks here on Tumblr and other social media posts.

If this marketing hadn't happened, I don't think Sterek would've ever been as big as it became.

2. Derek as a character has no real purpose in the plot of Teen Wolf, except in the 1st and maybe half of the 2nd season. He is there mainly for the gratuitous nudity and objectification. Tyler Hoechlin is shirtless in so many scenes that frankly, it's a little ridiculous. In most other YA shows from the same era, he would occupy the love interest role for the main character... Except, Teen wolf's main character is, unlike most other fantasy/ya shows at the time, a guy. More importantly, the male main character Scott's entire motivation in the first few seasons revolve around his own love interest, Allison. So obviously, Scott isn't available to pair Derek up with. That leaves Stiles. Stiles isn't technically the main character, but he is the closest after Scott.

Stiles is also queer-coded like crazy. I don't know how the fandom reacted to the S3 moment where he talks to a bisexual girl, but if I had been in the fandom at the time, I would have taken it as explicit confirmation that Stiles is bi. There is no other way to interpret that scene, and no other purpose for it to be in the show.

So we have a classic, hot love interest character with no obvious romantic partner, and a queer-coded, almost-main character. The logical result is Sterek.

So like. Without the marketing or the context of similar shows of that time, there really is no reason to ship Sterek other than a vague "their dynamic is fun" that could be equally applied to many other pairings on the show. Which, for the record, is a completely respectable reason to ship something, but it would never have resulted in one of the biggest ships on Ao3 (at one point, it was second to only Destiel) on its own.

I'm not even gonna apologize for how long this post turned out because if I could, I would write an entire academic research paper on how this ship came to be. It is genuinely a fascinating case.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hey, I just wanted to thank you for talking about the whole Taylor Swift "queerbaiting" thing. I am not a Swiftie by a long shot, and only learned about "gaylors" a few months ago. But I grew up with people insisting that I had to have crushes/find people hot. Regardless of what I said. It's really nice to see someone push back against that rhetoric that was so harmful to me and many others. It may seem small or not that big a deal, but it's genuinely huge to me to see those posts.

I'm glad it's meaningful to you but in the name of not taking credit where credit isn't due I want to specify that my objection isn't really to the idea of people shipping Taylor with her friends; I think it's very cringe, don't get me wrong, and extremely misguided given the sheer levels of heterosexuality that Taylor exudes, but I mind my business about people writing RPF every day because it doesn't affect me literally at all.

my issue is more with pretty extreme conspiracy thought being normalized among young queer people as just a fun silly little harmless thing to do, when the tactics used by Gaylors - thought terminating cliches, inventing significance and symbolism in meaningless imagery, encouraging people to doubt and disregard direct statements in favor of a "real" truth that only they can understand - is indistinguishable from qanon and other cult shit. which isn't to say that I think Gaylor as a idea is equally as bad as qanon, obviously, but conspiracy thought begets more conspiracy thought - there's a reason for the rather short pipeline from "spiritual healing" woowoo shit to antivaxxers to the far right. that's my beef here.

[yangscowlick]

Because the “shrodinger’s queerbait” nonsense will never go away, indulge me an analogy (and a long post).

wlw ships are the “made from scratch” cake in a world where we only ever expect cake mix from the box.

Say you have a show where, in the first interaction between a male and female character, there is a red box. It could be a Betty Crocker box of cake mix. Because all it takes is just one smile — one wink — one raised eyebrow— and the fans don’t question it. We’re clearly making a cake here. The box is red.

Meanwhile, you have two female characters building their own relationship that have elements that could build to romance. There are eggs in the fridge. A few more episodes, there’s flour in the pantry. Sugar. Baking powder. Queer fans start whispering…we could be making a cake here. Other fans scoff “you will read into anything. They’re just eggs! Everyone has eggs in their fridge!” Maybe so, maybe not. They are written off as discrete ingredients, nothing to see here.

That red box is still sitting in the pantry. Obviously we’re going with that one, and it’s definitely cake mix. That guy and girl stood next to each other again.

The wlw relationship is now full-on batter. It was a cake recipe all along, but it’s not baked yet. The crowd that wrote off every ingredient is now saying the writers are just going to “squander” that box that could be ready-made cake mix or that they’re being “forced” to bake a cake with the very ingredients the writers deliberately bought and put in their pantry.

Now it’s in the oven, the cake is baking. That crowd will still insist it’s forced, or maybe its actually something else, or it’s rushed, or it’s pandering. Whether the writers painstakingly built a pantry to make the cake they truly wanted or they were cultivating good ingredients and realized they had the fixings for a more decadent cake and went there, it doesn’t matter. It’s still a recipe. One that fans who always have to piece together ingredients had hoped for or saw from the get-go, despite being scoffed at and disparaged. Just because that crowd didn’t see (or refused to see) those ingredients as part of a whole, doesn’t make it any less of a recipe.

And wlw fans shouldn’t have to keep writing essays to demonstrate that the wlw “cake” has all the ingredients every cake mix does, or keep pointing out that fans were ready to believe a cake was being baked when they saw a nondescript box, but that they’ll do anything to discredit or doubt the cake from scratch that’s now cooling off on the counter.

It is partly a function of heteronormativity from the audience in immediately seeing romance in any whisper of interaction between m/f characters and passing off all charged interactions between female characters are sisterly or platonic. And it also comes from writers, who are either being cautious so as not to spook corporate overlords or audiences, or who are preserving plausible deniability.

To take the analogy further, box cake mix is fine! It works! It is, practically speaking, what a lot of folks know by default. I thought I was a Duncan Hines girl once myself. Vanilla cake mix has the ingredients measured out, it’s a safe bet, it tastes like cake.

But it doesn’t mean every red box is cake mix. And it doesn’t make the cake that had to be pieced together from scratch due to censorship, caution, time, narrative build-up, what-have-you, any less of a cake.

[hainethehero]

The energy in the 9-1-1 fandom space as of ep.8x06 has been off.

The 9-1-1 official page not posting much about any of this episode (specifically the disingenuous ending of an anticipated queer r/ship) is weird... especially considering how much traction the show got when they introduced AND MARKETED the Bisexual Buck-GayTommy relationship for even more traction.

Oliver just posting some random photos from bts (i know he's had no electricity due to fires) -but then posting & deleting a story of his bizarre response to fans criticism of his latest comments on Buck's sexual habits....

I personally think the main criticism for me is how poorly both he and Tim handled this plot, and the character of Tommy. They yapped so much about being respectful about queer relationships and bisexual representation and then just ended it with a lame, disingenuous conflict after NEVER making a genuine attempt to develop said relationship after season 7. The fact that they never included Buck & Tommy's relationship as a main plot for a single episode tells me that they were NEVER going to treat this queer relationship with genuine care or respect.

Ryan just posted stuff about Eddie (kudos to him, love me some Ryan content)

Aisha posting absolutely NOTHING

Kenny hasn't posted either

Lou just saying it was an honour & dipping. (I DO NOT blame him with the bullying he's faced from buddie stans)

It could very well be the elections & how absolutely insane the world is right now. And it could be stuff that went down bts (we'llneverknow). And trust me, this isnt sour grapes, if they were going to break up eventually, im fine with it. But all I know is, it was made clear that the Buck & Tommy queer relationship would be handled with genuine care & class (Tim) and that they'd "work through their hurdles" & "working out if their relationship [barely developed by the writers/show] was worth fighting to stay together for" (Oliver) and NONE OF THAT HAPPENED.

While the Eddie scenes were amazing & I love that Ryan's getting to explore more of his character, the Buck & Tommy scenes were made to look hopeful & promising, then they lazily scraped a "It's not you it's me" bs plotline &ended it abruptly.

It's NOT queerbaiting, but it's giving, "Yes we know we sold y'all a promising queer r/ship, here it is for 2 episodes, & now, it's done. Gone. Vanished into nothing. Thanks for your invested interest in s7&8a." [Maybe it's like an advanced level queer-stringing-along- ALQSA💀😭🤣]

[serpentarius]

been trying to wrap my head around the cancellation of "Our Flag Means Death" and why it hurts so fucking much. lots of folks who are much more eloquent than I have summed it up perfectly, but I still think it’s important I add my voice to the matter. 

It really, really sucks that the hurt is being compounded on us every time another queer/minority-led show gets prematurely cancelled. and for a long while, we also had to deal with the many shows that deliberately queerbaited us, which was a shitty and traumatic experience unto its own. And even though we’ve largely surpassed that early-‘00s-flavoured brand of queerbait now, mainstream queer media is still predominantly white-led. With the cancellation of OFMD, we've lost one of the very few intersectional queer shows in the mainstream. Shouldn’t we be beyond asking for crumbs at this point? Shouldn’t we get unabashedly intersectional shows helmed by and starring queer, BIPOC, and trans folks without them being axed for no rhyme or reason?

It’s exhausting at this point, honestly. OFMD has done so well in terms of viewership and engagement and fan response—almost entirely due to word of mouth and little thanks to the Max marketing team, mind you—and even still the show got cancelled? Can they make it make sense????

For me, the thing most akin to this OFMD situation was when Sense8 got cancelled. And yes, the fandom fought, and we eventually DID get a movie that wrapped things up years later! That gives me hope for OFMD, that maybe another network will pick it up, or maybe they’ll be able to make a movie someday. But what makes me sad about cases like Sense8 is knowing that the creators still had to force the narrative around the amount of time they were given. That the corporate overlords who only care about numbers and profit dictated how much time they had to wrap up their story.

And it fucking kills me that DJ only wanted one more season. One more season to complete the vision.

I'm just so mad that queer people are constantly being jerked around and used for profit and then left high and dry. And then we're given excuses like "oh there's no budget" or "oh there's not enough viewership, that's all it is". like, sure, maybe those are contributing factors, but then I look at all the useless garbage shows that have little viewership and high budgets that keep going forever and then I think "hmmmm, the math ain't mathing." It's fucking transparent; the corporations can spew all they want with their rainbow capitalism and talks about diversity, but the evidence is clear, and they can't convince me homophobia/racism/transphobia/etc. is not a factor in these decisions.

Anyways, back to OFMD. OFMD made me fall in love with fandom again. I drifted away from fandom for a while in my 20s, and while OFMD wasn't the first fandom that drew me back into the madness, it's certainly the largest. The sheer amount of creativity both within the show and outside of it has blown me away; I've read some of the best fics, seen some of the best art, and witnessed some of the most incredible creativity from people in this fandom.

And let's not forget the role of the show's creators and how they've interacted with us fans. They made us feel seen. And made us feel loved and valid, even when we were being weird and loud and horny. It's so fucking rare to see that. But they understood; understood that the show they made was for us, for any of us who've been marginalized or made to feel Othered or different or stuck in life or unsure of our identities. And they gave us so much love for it.

The story... man. The unique combination of quirky humour and bright visuals and dark, introspective moments, the gorgeous costumes and soft, lovely, unabashed queerness, and veteran actors and new actors all getting to shine, brilliant comedic actors getting to show off their dramatic chops and vice versa. For me, seeing Rhys Darby - an actor I've loved for a long time, but who I never thought I'd see in a leading role - getting to be the romantic lead in a queer role? And seeing acclaimed director/producer/screenwriter/actor Taika Waititi play opposite Rhys, as an indigenous Blackbeard? Fucking incredible. OFMD Edward Teach you will always be famous to me.

Anyways... despite my long ramblings here, I still don’t think I've been able to get to the root of WHY exactly this show has inched its way under my skin and stayed with me in the way it has. Maybe I'll spend years trying to understand it. But I DO know that it's in part to do with seeing both older queers AND a diverse range of queerness onscreen, in a way that I've never seen in media before. I DO know that OFMD has forced me to look inwardly, and allowed me to realize some important things about myself. About my own queerness, my own identity, things I'm still figuring out. I've cherished being able to see myself in Stede, in Ed, and each of the crew members. In Roach’s love for cooking, in Oluwande’s ability to mediate; in Jim’s quick temper, in the way Izzy builds walls to guard his heart. In Buttons’ quirkiness, in Wee John’s sass, in Frenchie’s ability to turn pain into humour; in The Swede’s silliness, in Lucius’ bluntness, in Pete’s soft heart beneath the skepticism. Lastly, OFMD has inspired me. To create, to write, to draw, to devour other peoples' works and worlds while I sit in sheer, overflowing joyousness at their talent.

so yeah. the news of this cancellation is upsetting and hurtful and disappointing. And it's making us cry, and it's making us grieve, and may make us hollow and numb at times because we've lost yet another thing we love so deeply before it was meant to go. It's so much more than "just a TV show". It means more to us than any passive mindless idiotic mind-numbing bullshit - because even though there's a time and a place and a purpose for that type of media, it's the thought-provoking work, the work that creators pour their entire hearts and souls into, that hit us deep in our own souls. The work that changes our lives. The work that has the ability to save lives, as I know OFMD has done for so many. 

please know I'm sending immense amounts of love and strength to those of you who are also hurting. we'll get through this, one way or another, and I'll keep up with the hope that we'll get more someday; but in the meantime, I'm holding you tight. ❤️️🫂

[ghostofanovelwriter]

I wish to god that the writers room had done a better job at establishing Benedict’s sexuality earlier on in the series because now fans have it in their heads that in order to “properly” vindicate his pansexuality (Luke confirmed this in an interview) they have to completely change the narrative of Sophie’s story and take away her autonomy as a woman so that it’ll fit into their precious mlm regency fantasies.

Making Sophie a crossdresser during or after the ball literally does nothing to advance the plot. It makes no sense that she would dress as a man to attend the ball when the entire point of her going was to fulfill her dreams of entering into society recognized as a lady rather than a bastard. She and Benedict only reunite because he saw her as a lady in need of being saved from being raped, and her refusal to be his mistress speaks on so many levels on her identity as a woman and being treated as lesser due to such that wouldn’t work if Benedict was under the impression she was a man.

I think the writing really did fuck itself over waiting this late to confirm Benedict’s sexuality since now it’ll just seem like it’s queerbaiting or retconning the entire thing during the next season. At the same time, i also think the issue lies with the fans and their inner biases not allowing them to reason that pansexual people are capable of ending up with members of the opposite sex that doesn’t invalidate their sexuality.

[cezqstar]

haven’t been active in the rykter fandom in awhile, but i’ve seen quite a lot of opinions floating around on here & twt that i had quite a lot of thoughts about!

someone said the show is queerbaiting… and i genuinely cannot believe how anyone can see a character figuring out his queer identity and only see the matherik ship & dumb it down to queerbaiting.

edit: i want to clarify this part i said on queerbaiting because i didn’t articulate my thoughts in depth. at the end of season 2, mathias initiated a kiss with erik ultimately implying his queer identity. and his season 3 storyline has confirmed him as a queer character, who is crushing on erik & struggling with acceptance whilst getting bullied by his ex-best friend. however, erik’s pov is open to interpretation, which leaves a lot of space for fan theories (that i eat tf up) but at the moment, that’s all they are. fan theories. erik’s actions can be interpreted as both platonic & non-platonic, and i don’t see the show dangling matherik in the audiences faces. since they’re very focused on mathias’ story and his perspective rather than erik’s. whose own story seems to focus on him hanging around the wrong crowd and his questionable behaviour. it leaves the storyline open to go down two very different routes: erik could have his own queer realisation and the two of them eventually end up together. or mathias’ has unrequited feelings for his straight (or aro 👀) friend but those feelings helped him with his own queer journey to acceptance. and i think with how they’ve set erik up, it could genuinely go either way and make sense.

^^ that’s why i believe the queerbaiting claims are a stretch.

it’s become very clear why people began watching rykter: matherik. but people NEED to remember that the show is not solely about them. it never has been. this show is about the chaotic lives of ‘sheltered’ (i can’t think of the word i’m after) teenagers who all have the capability to be stupid, immature and selfish. which yes, includes felix as one of those characters and yes, includes erik as a teenager capable of being a bad person at times.

these teenagers are also all (well almost all) capable of redemption. mathias has proved his own ability to be redeemed after his s1 antics, erik will surely have his own redemption path regarding his current s3 antics and thea is currently having her redemption this season. just because erik has been generally good in the first two seasons, doesn’t mean he isn’t prone to poor decision making & shitty actions. remember: they’re all 15-16 years old.

i’ve seen a few people suggest that the rykter writers are ‘getting off’ on or ‘enjoying’ the homophobic abuse that mathias has been subjected to, but i think that’s a massive stretch. and an extremely poor outlook on the shows writing in my opinion. many people forget that even though norway is a progressive country that homophobic shitheads still exist. and the way mathias is being treated by someone as horrible as felix & no one saying anything due to being ‘sheltered’ followers is quite real.

and when someone as jealous, hateful & spiteful as felix who clearly puts up with his own share of prejudice gets to put someone else down (someone who he also feels ‘betrayed’ by), he’ll jump at that opportunity in an attempt to make himself better and stronger. from victim -> perpetrator. i understand the frustration around this season focusing on felix quite a lot but people need to stop seeing his storyline as ways to ‘excuse’ his actions and moreso to explain them & simply SHOW his life. they seem pretty hellbent on showing you that he’s a shitty person regardless of his home life & personal issues.

anyways rant over! time to disappear again lol. feel free to disagree with anything i said. always happy to have a discussion!

[sepublic]

Actually it's utterly hilarious to me how Hayley Wong, storyboard artist for The Owl House, posted one of the first pieces of Lumity art ever on this site during Season 1A; So before we even got the trailer for Grom and whatnot. And the whole time she had to clarify in the caption below that it was just fanart, that she didn't know anything about how the show would go due to being an artist and not a writer, she wasn't making any promises nor guarantees. And like you get it because you want to avoid accusations of queerbaiting and disappointing people, while also establishing limits and boundaries. Uh-huh. Just covering one's bases.

...And then Enchanting Grom Fright comes out later that year and it turns out Hayley boarded the whole scene with Amity's fear only to dance with Luz. And with how long production takes place and how far ahead of time it happens, that means she did and knew all this when she posted that Lumity fanart in early 2020. Meaning she could've just as easily NOT included that whole disclaimer and not suffered any consequences for the fairly quick payoff that happened afterwards. Utterly amazing. Like again professionalism and standards and whatnot, plus avoiding giving out spoilers by framing it as just a guess but. Legendary.

[forgiveness-in-the-misery]

This whole thing pisses me off maybe more than it should but it’s been an issue for me for a fucking while.

I watched The Magicians and had to fucking settle for gay longing and “we both loved him” between a man and the lead’s girlfriend.

I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and had to settle with finding out Whedon could only make one person in the friend group gay so he chose Willow because he’s never seen a gay friend group.

I watched Gotham and got to see plenty of lesbian romances and kiss scenes but had to settle with gay man being treated like a freak nonstop then shot then proclaim the man he “thought” he loved is just a brother to him.

I watched What We Do in the Shadows and had to settle for Paul Simms saying in disgust “who even wants to see that?” About two men kissing and rant about how immoral two men on the show simply kissing would be due to one being the other’s “boss” and how things don’t always have to be gay.

I can genuinely keep fucking going.

Welcome to Night Vale was the first fucking time I experienced a gay romance in a story.

So no choke if you’re going to flood the Agatha All Along tag about being queerbaited because you wanted to see Rio and Agatha fuck raw in a show on Disney and you’re mad at being “forced” to see gay love instead

Lesbian tumblr tends to always be the most fucking homophobic transphobic sexist self hating shit hole I swear to fucking Christ. If you bitch about that episode not having lesbians this post is for you.

I hate you and you’re a bigoted piece of shit.

[frogfacezombieboy]

I think it's pathetic that Milswancas are now resorting to sending each other anonymous asks claiming they switched side. It's even sadder that they're being so obvious about it and didn't even bother to do the research.

Like, I understand that some of us might have Byler doubt. I even understand that due to traumatic experience from queerbaiting, some of us don't think Byler will happen.

What gave them away is a Byler suddenly becoming a Milswanca shipper.

I wasn't here during S1 so I couldn't be certain what we had seen then, but

In S2, we got to see that Mike had a "Will voice", how he treated Will differently from his other two best friends, how he called El every night for 353 nights but dropped her completely on night 354 and 355 (she came back on night 356 so I didn't count that), the "Crazy together" scene, the "Best thing I've ever done" scene

In S3, we got to see how unhealthy Milswanca was (to the point that 5 different characters also thought so), how they didn't have a single thing in common, how Mike immediately backtracked after he hurt Will ("I'm not trying to be a jerk") and even ran after him in the rain to apologize but couldn't apologize to El for lying to her until 5 episodes later, the open-eye kiss vs the "Not possible" scene

In S4, we got to see even more of that unhealthy relationship, how this time El was also lying to Mike, how he couldn't even write those 3 words to her, how when he finally said it El was filled with enough anger to break out of Henry's hold, while having so many Byler scenes I can't even include them all in this part (but the most special scene was the final scene of S4 with the 3 endgame couples and El standing alone)

Now, before S5, we got a plethora of BTS pictures indicating Mike was spending a lot more time with Will while El was nowhere in sight, churchgate, the original four news, the Miwi casting

So if any of those supposedly "used to be Byler but switched side" people could point out when and why they suddenly thought Milswanca was better, they could try to convince me.

[leighlew3]

What were the aspects of Supergirl (show in general or character) that resonated with you personally?

First and foremost, Kara herself... as someone with a ton of trauma, who would have every reason to do not so great things or wield her power for evil, yet does good things and channels her energy into trying to help people -- she's amazing. She is someone who feels isolated a lot of the time and struggles with anger issues but ultimately is such a light and a good person and somebody that just wants to do good for the world, even when it's not always appreciated or understood. Even if it means constant self sacrifice.

I relate to pretty much all of that.

I also loved the idea of Supercorp obviously, because it was such an epic tale in how they were so similar but so different and so inherently fated to be side by side. It could've been so successful if canon romantic on the show instead of just baited. Taking the decades-old lore of Super vs Luthor and instead turning into Super & Luthor -- a story of hate turned into a love story -- that's an incredible concept, and so rich and full of so much storytelling potential. Them just being friends is the 'lite' version of turning that lore on its head. But to go even deeper would've been nothing short of revolutionary.

Alas, instead they chose to tarnish the show's legacy and taint the good it DID do elsewhere in LGBTQ representation (because YES a show can have ancillary rep but still queerbait a lead dynamic -- especially when it's bait that existed before any other rep was even introduced on the show) ...by choosing to be one of the worst examples of queerbait in TV history (due to all of the romanic tropes and parallels and teases and lack of denials by TPTB who very clearly wanted people to stay tuned in based on hope for canon endgame since that very first Clois parallel in 2x01). It was also just an absolute waste of creative potential and true travesty that ultimately only hurt the show and cast and fans and everyone involved, whether everyone is ready to admit it or not.

Anyway, I enjoyed the fact that so many of the characters -- from Kara and Lena (these two especially), to Alex, Nia, and Kelly... so many of them came loaded with one form of trauma or another, but they still were ultimately inherently good people, a great example of 'found family', and heroic as heck in the end, no matter how dark it got at times for some. In large part because they had each other. I mean, I wish they all weren't LITERAL superheroes or supernatural by the end because I think the show (amongst numerous other issues) lost sight of their own messaging that "anyone can be a hero even without powers" but -- they really were inherently such good / ripe characters, the women especially (plus Brainy and J'onn).

Sure, they all (again, the women especially) often were sadly let down by superficial or just plain poor writing and overall creative direction a lot of the time, especially in the end -- but at the core, everyone could find something to relate to in at least one character, if not multiple characters, and that's great.

I know much like fans of Dana Scully in the 90s, a LOT of girls/women were inspired to get into STEM over this last decade now because of Katie McGrath's portrayal of Lena Luthor. And even more people related to Lena's trauma as a survivor of lifelong abuse at the hands of her family and especially her unhinged brother. Seeing that someone can slip into darkness as the result of years of sadistic mind games and abuse of all kinds but still come out the other side a hero, empowered, and a good person who helps others and is capable of loving and deserving of being loved? That's beautiful, and Lena offered that to SO many viewers, so it's no wonder she was a top fan favorite second only to the lead herself. And seeing how that impacted people, was so very moving.

Seeing people impacted by Alex's coming out arc in Season 2 was amazing. Having the first trans superhero on TV was amazing. And so on...

Look, there's a lot the show did wrong. In fact, possibly more was done poorly or wrong than well or good, overall, unfortunately. Alas, there were some little sparks of light to be truly appreciated.

But again, for me, I connected most to Kara's story, her strength, her dichotomy, and her indelible sense of HOPE... despite every reason at times to give up. And to the Kara/Lena love story, in all its infinite, incredible, and still mostly untapped potential.