A+ Members: Help Us Seed Our March Madness Brackets With Your Favorite Fictional Couples!

Early last year, I started plotting out a course for March Madness. Developing a theme, finding couples, reaching out to the fandom. And then the pandemic took hold and the ground shifted beneath us. All I wanted to do was read about COVID and do whatever we could to protect our families and communities. I had to learn how to transition to working from home and how to guide my nephews through virtual learning. All of a sudden, debating the finer points of why I’d ranked one couple higher than the next and which couple deserved to move to the next round, didn’t seem like the best use of time.

But it’s been a year… and dammit… after the year we’ve had, we deserve the joy of debating which lesbian couple is better and who should’ve been seeded where. So we’re bringing back March Madness this year… and we’re exploring new ways to make the experience more fun and interactive for our readers.

That experience starts now.

Welcome, A+ readers, to the 2021 March Madness Selection Committee.

“What’s a selection committee?” you ask.

Good question. Allow me to put my basketball nerdery hat on.

Yesterday, a group of ten athletics administrators arrive in San Antonio, Texas to pick the 64 teams that’ll participate in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. Part of that work’s been done for them — 32 teams are automatic qualifiers for the tournament by virtue of having won their conference tournament — but the selection committee picks the other 32 using a series of convoluted criteria. Then, after the committee’s decided on their 64 teams, they rank them all, one through 64, and seed them in four regions. This year, those seedings won’t matter as much because the top women’s seeds will not host opening round games on their campuses, but still, seeding is the hardest part of the selection committee’s work.

This year, for Autostraddle’s March Madness, you’ll be the selection committee.

Below you’ll find candidates in the four regions of this year’s tournament: Classic, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Baby Gay and Grown. For the purposes of this tournament, classic is any show that ended its run on or before 2016 and “Baby Gay” is limited to couples featuring high school or college-aged characters.

Your task, if you choose to accept it, is to rank them. Be the Autostraddle March Madness selection committee. Drag and drop your selections as you see fit.

Did Spencer Carlin help you come out as a Baby Gay yourself? Pull South of Nowhere‘s Spashley up to the top of the list. Are you fervent in your belief that season six of The L Word never really happened? Drag Shane and Jenny way, way down the list. Make whatever choices for whatever reason seems right to you. There are, of course, more options than slots in the bracket, so not everyone will make the final cut.

The rankings system will close at 9AM (EST) on Monday morning and you can come back to Autostraddle later in the day for unveiling of the full bracket.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

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Natalie

A black biracial, bisexual girl raised in the South, working hard to restore North Carolina's good name. Lover of sports, politics, good TV and Sonia Sotomayor. You can follow her latest rants on Twitter.

Natalie has written 424 articles for us.

37 Comments

  1. lmao this is so involved! I want to participate but dang I haven’t seen a lot of these shows.

  2. I did base my opinion off of gifs, Heather Hogan’s recommendations, and mostly fanfiction because I haven’t seen a lot of these. Does this make me qualified? No. No not all. But I felt very strongly about the Sci/Fi category, most of which I have seen. Also I have strong feelings about Rosario Dawson playing a lesbian. I am impatiently waiting for Picard to come back to see if next year my biggest crush may be allowed on this list. Prayer circle everyone for a wlw story on Star Trek. I know we had Jadzia, but I need MORE.

  3. ok I am dense and don’t read instructions well, is the top of the list or the bottom of the list better? <3

  4. I LOVED THIS!! I have now told no less than six (6!!) people in the last hour how much fun I had! This is just so freaking delightful in every way. Thank you Natalie!

    My top in every category:

    Classic
    Tasha and Alice

    Baby Gays
    Rue and Jules

    Sci-Fi
    Catra and Adora

    Grown
    Emma and Nico

    (Not trying to sway votes!! Just sharing!!)

  5. I can’t look at Brittana (or Santana Lopez, or Naya) without getting choked up. I feel like I’m still in some weird stage of denial. Posting this here because I feel like A+ members and #GaySharks are the only ones who understand :(

    Woof.

    Anyway, so many great couples to choose from, which is amazing!

    Spashley will always hold a special place in my heart because I was a young, confused teen when I watched SoN; barely able to identify why my heart fluttered seeing them together on screen haha. They really did pave the way for all of my future on-screen wives ♥︎

  6. Gonna share my top as well!

    Classic: Brittany & Santana (runners-up: Carmen & Shane)

    Sci-Fi Fantasy: Nomi & Amanita (runners-up: Kelly & Yorkie)

    Baby Gays (which at first I read as ‘bad gays’ and was like wow ok…): Casey & Izzie (runners-up: Sue & Emily)

    Grown: Emma & Nico (runners-up: I can’t quite remember but I think I put Sophie & Finley?)

  7. Love this! I am confused, though, about how Ruby and Sapphire got categorized as baby gays? Weren’t they technically like thousands of years old already when they met?

        • Sure, but when the show starts they have been together for thousands of years which is why I was confused.
          I still put them on the top of my list! Something entirely new is like the best song of all time so I can get with the baby gay sentiment.

          • oh yeah, totally! i was definitely thinking of them in the Something Entirely New era for some reason.

        • Yeah, I mean the flashbacks of Ruby and Sapphire definitely are what I think of as “Baby Gay”, but in the article above where we rank things, Natalie says: ““Baby Gay” is limited to couples featuring high school or college-aged characters.” So I just thought it was funny.

          But then again, maybe in gem culture, Ruby and Sapphire were the equivalent of college-aged? Who knows!

  8. Also doing my top picks for each category.

    Classic
    Santana and Brittany (runner up Naomi and Emily)

    Sci/Fantasy
    Marceline and Princess Bubblegum (runner up Korra and Asami)

    Baby Gays
    Elena and Syd (runner up Emily and Maya)

    Grown
    Kat and Adena (runner up Stef and Lena)

  9. When I first saw the title, I thought this was going to be about fictional couples from books instead of TV! Oops! I haven’t watched enough of these shows to rank things, but this looks really fun.

  10. Do these selection lists appear in random order for everyone? so if i only ranked the few couples i actually know and left the rest as is, and other people did the same, it wouldn’t skew (and give a disadvantage to the couples appearing lower in the list)? or would it and i should just not submit and leave it to those who know their game?

    • Don’t worry, Natalie’s got it all figured out! Vote for your favs and let the math do the rest :)

  11. Ok this is the cutest idea ever. I haven’t seen all of the media here so I feel a liiiiittle bad participating but I can’t resist lol

  12. Classic: Cosima & Delphine

    Sci-fi: This one was HARD but in the end Nomi & Amanita edged out both Catra & Adora and WayHaught. BUT THEY ALL DESERVE TO WIN </3

    Baby gays: Syd & Elena

    Grown: Petra & JR

  13. I haven’t watched all these shows, but I have very strong feelings about the ones I do know! And it is utterly unfair to expect me to pick favorites from Emma & Nico, Stef & Lena, Lister & Walker, and Petra & JR.

  14. I feel that there should have been a line that we raised the couples that we knew about above. That way the couples that we didn’t know about wouldn’t be penalized in comparison to each other.

  15. The category I am most familiar with is Classic which is making me wonder if I myself am entering ‘classic’ territory.

  16. Abby and Chris have my whole heart and I am deeply concerned that they’re not in anyone else’s comments.

    Hoping for an underdog story here

  17. That was really difficult, but I love being able to weigh in on the seeds this year!

  18. This was so hard! But I did enjoy reminiscing about all the couples from shows past. Can’t wait to see the brackets and start voting!

  19. This was really tough, I didn’t know a few of them but I enjoyed reminiscing and thinking about some of the best standout ships I used to, and definitely still do, stan.

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