#the way I went absolutely nuts for flor/jazmín

[niuxita21]

Not gonna lie, this whole "ALL Western lesbian representayshun is bad, Thai GLs are the only thing worth watching" disk horse that's been coming out is starting to feel... kinda bandwagon-y in a way that makes me a bit uncomfy on behalf of Thailand. I mean don't get me wrong, it's unquestionably true that a lot of English-language lesbian representation is not good. I just saw a tweet that listed like 5 US shows as "the only f/f wins" in the history of Western media and I'm like bruh???? To this day, my favourite f/f storyline is still Flor and Jazmín from Las Estrellas, an Argentine telenovela. That was IMO a masterclass in how to write a GOOD slow burn between 2 women avoiding every single one of the damaging cliches, with no men in the middle or dead lesbians. Argentina in general has some great lesbian representation. The YT algorithm also recently put me in touch with a storyline from a Colombian show from a couple of years ago. The writing was pretty rudimentary but, overall, no damaging clichés or dead lesbians. There is also the ship from that Mexican show that people never seem to get over. And while Spanish shows have a LOT to atone for all the atrocities they've pulled in their period dramas, they do OK with their modern-day stuff. I can vouch for 2 different shows, at least.

So yeah, while Thai shows are certainly pioneers in terms of quantity and centering an entire show on the love story between 2 women (in Western media that's only true of MSH2 because FirstKill got cancelled (but hey, that refutes the melodramatic "Netflix hates lesbians!!11!1" that also drives me nuts)), and there are bunch of things that I have yet to see in Western f/f storylines wrt tropes or the tone of the romances, saying categorically that ALL Western lesbian representation is bad is an inaccurate generalization and evidences a clearly US-centric perspective, and it's disrespectful to non-English, non-US shows that have really earned the right to be referenced as examples of what good f/f storylines should aspire to. But oh well, what can you expect from fandom.