I’ll Watch Anything With Witchy Women

I’ll Watch Anything is an Autostraddle TV Team series in which we tell you what type of movies and TV shows we’ll watch, no matter what. This week, Valerie Anne is here to explain why she’ll watch anything with the promise of a witchy woman.

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I’ve always loved a powerful woman, and I do mean that literally. By the time I was nine, I was already fully enchanted by the concept of witches. Even though I’m sure there were books before this (I remember specifically a book that had spells written out between the chapters that I used to try to recreate, but that could have happened anywhere from six to 16 if I’m being honest), one fateful trip to Blockbuster in 1996 brought a movie into my life that would change me on a cellular level. I picked it up because it had four teenage girls in Catholic school uniforms that looked a bit like mine on the cover; I assumed it was about friendship, and I love stories about friendship. I had no idea what was in store, but approximately 1 hour and 41 minutes after I popped that VHS into the VCR, my life had been forever changed by the ladies of The Craft.

We don’t need to talk about how long I spent trying to change my own hair color by sheer will, how many friends I convinced to play “light as a feather” with me at sleepovers, or how in love with Neve Campbell I was/am. We can, instead, move on to a few months later, March 17, 1997, when the third episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer entitled “Witch” aired. By then it was official: I was a witch-aholic.

Of course, the Craft coven and Amy the Rat weren’t the only witches in my life. I would watch anything witchy I could get my hands on. Everything from content aimed at kids like Hocus Pocus, Casper Meets Wendy, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch to things I was probably too young to be watching like Practical Magic. Like most kids who started reading Harry Potter before their 11th birthday, I too waited for my Hogwarts letter. (Even though if one came now, I’d tear it up.) I loved a Bewitched rerun on Nick at Nite, and would often practice wiggling my nose…just in case. It wasn’t released until I was a teenager, but I was even there when Tia and Tamara turned my favorite book series into a Disney-fied version of my once-favorite book series, T*witches about, you guessed it, twin witches. And I was definitely too old to be watching Wizards of Waverly Place when it first aired, but you better believe I watched every episode.

As I grew up, I also found grown-up witches to love. I started watching Charmed at that peak intro to magic, and the Halliwell sisters took me from age 11 to age 19; they were there for me during my formative years. I could escape the harsh realities of my own life and imagine a world where I could freeze the onslaught of time with the flick of my wrists. A world where I could get a little heads up before something awful was going to happen, or where I could whip up a potion and a rhyme to undo a mistake that was keeping me up at night. I watched Willow grow up on Buffy, watched her fall in love with fellow witch Tara, and saw something in them I saw in me, even though I wasn’t ready to examine that yet. I revisited Practical Magic with a new appreciation. Most recently I’ve enjoyed such shows as Motherland: Fort Salem, which has witches for days, and a witch or three will usually show up in other sci-fi faves like Wynonna Earp; hell, even firmly sci-fi/superhero shows like Supergirl dipped their toe into fantasy by revealing that Lena Luthor is a witch.

While I did also love witches in very specifically fantasy settings like Morgana from Merlin or Regina and Zelena from Once Upon a Time, there was something about the type of magical AU that was common in the 90s and still persists today that I love. A reality that looks a lot like ours, but just with a dash of added magic. Both the original and the deliciously gay reboot of Charmed did this, so did other faves of mine like The Secret Circle (also great books), The Witches of East End, and Midnight Texas. And, as made clear by Buffy being among my first TV loves, while I love a show ABOUT witches, I’m also drawn to shows that just feature witches among other magical beings; shows like Legends of Tomorrow and the shows in the universe of Legacies and its predecessors aren’t typically considered “witch shows” specifically, but with Astra on Legends and witches like Josie, Hope and Freya in the TVD universe, there were plenty of magical women to be awed by. (Even when they weren’t treated as well as they should have been. *cough* Justice for Bonnie Bennett *cough*) And I don’t draw a hard line around my definition of “witch” – any woman doing magic works for me, including but not limited to druids like Keyleth from The Legend of Vox Machina. (well, from Critical Role, but you know what I mean.)

I even love when the concept of “our world, but magical” and high fantasy are blended. The Magicians (both the book series and the TV show) is the best of both worlds; set in a world that looks like ours but with a secret magical underground, AND set in a high-fantasy nonsense realm, depending on the day. And I’m sure you can tell from the examples I’ve listed so far, but I love witches in every genre, from the silly good times of Once Upon a Time to the dark and spooky vibes of American Horror Story: Coven. And of course, every once in a while, on very rare occasions, my penchant for watching things “because witches” bites me in the ass; not even the amazing cast of Mayfair Witches could make that show appeal to me, despite trying really hard for half a season.

I’ve always loved all types of sci-fi and fantasy – women with swords are extremely my jam – but there was something different about witches, especially the way they were often portrayed in the 90s and early aughts. The kind of badass woman who can wield a sword is someone I’d love to be around (and of course, now that I’m older I know, is someone I want to be WITH) but a witch? Witches tended to look more like me, especially in stories where a woman (or girl) found out she was a witch for the first time. I couldn’t imagine a world in which I would be strong enough to wield a sword and slay a dragon…but I could be a witch.

Some reasons I love witches are obvious; for one: magic is fucking awesome. Who wouldn’t want to be able to wiggle their nose and refill their glass of water, whisper a few words and be instantly halfway across the country, wave a wand and make a door and find your missing keys.

But if I’m going to psychoanalyze myself for a minute, I think what draws me to witchy women is the idea of having something inside you that sometimes feels dangerous but sometimes feels powerful. A secret some people have to hide because they will be misunderstood. It’s something my little closeted self saw herself in before ever realizing exactly why. And besides, when you’re a bit of an outcast, or an awkward, weird kid like I was, it makes a lot of sense to be drawn to someone with magical powers in a world where not everyone has them. Who doesn’t want to feel special?

It’s also fascinating to see what different characters with different personalities will do with power. Whether the world has rules (like no magic for personal gain…magic comes with a price, after all) or whether the witches are making their own rules, it’s endlessly interesting to me to think about who would walk that line, who would be tempted by darkness, who would use their powers selflessly, who would embrace a public image while helping people, who would stick to the shadows, who would take things too far, and what might push them to it. There’s a reason the Scarlet Witch is the most powerful avenger, and why Wandavision was my favorite MCU show.

I think also it’s the idea of having more control. In this country, society wasn’t built for women. In fact, it was built pretty specifically to keep women down, and that goes double for queer women. (And quadruple for queer women of color.) So the idea of women with magic helping level the playing field, help them take down men or systems or barriers that are trying to stop them from achieving their goals and dreams. There’s something about a team of witches holding hands and chanting their way through a problem, or a woman whose eyes glow and their feet rise off the floor as they channel their deepest depths to find the strength and power to overcome.

In the world of witchcraft, anything is possible. And I truly believe that queerness is magic, and that whether you literally do spells or just metaphorically make magic, we’re all a little witchy in our own way.

Autostraddle March Madness 2023: Trope-y Wives – Friends to Lovers

What a weekend for college basketball. And while I’d like just a second to catch my breath from it all, another 16 teams are battling tonight to see who will make it through to the Sweet 16…and, frankly, I’m on the edge of my seat. Let’s focus on something a little less stressful: the outcomes of the Opposites Attract region.

Things went about as I expected in the Opposites Attract Region. Maya and Carina of Station 19 had a dominant showing out of the gate: coming off one of the best episodes for the couple in a long, long while, they scored an easy victory in the first round. As we learned last year, the #Marina fandom is dedicated and it’s going to take a concerted effort to bring down this #1 seed.

I expected the match-up between Lucy and Kate of NCIS: Hawai’i and Kai and Amelia of Grey’s Anatomy to be the most competitive of the bracket but, to my surprise, it wasn’t. The closest contest of the round was Taissa and Van vs. Luz and Amity. I imagine Taissa and Van will get more formidable in Round 2, given the impending return of Yellowjackets, but can they marshall up enough buzz to dethrone our frontrunners?

I wasn’t surprised to see Hen and Karen pull off the upset in the #4/#13 match-up either. Forgive me if that outcome just convinces me to step up my “You NEED to watch P-Valley” evangelism. Also? I wasn’t surprised to see Ana and Mariana of Madre sólo hay dos fall to Feel Good but I was surprised by how close it was. Hopefuly someone at Netflix notices and gives the show another season.

Now we’re back with more one more region — Friends to Lovers — before we move onto Round 2. Here are the competitors.

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#1. Nicole and Waverly – Wynona Earp

When Nicole Haught first saunters into Shorty’s and meets Waverly Earp for the first time, it truly is love at first sight for the both of them. But at that point, Waverly just isn’t ready to make that admission so, instead, she’s just flustered by Nicole’s presence. She stumbles over her words. She gets tangled in her beer-soaked shirt and has to ask for Nicole’s help to get out. She comes up with preposterous reasons to keep Nicole at arm’s length. And, of course, she affirms her heterosexuality — she’s in a relationship, “with a boy-man” — but, in that moment, it’s less about telling Nicole and more about giving herself a reminder.

She just wants to be friends, Waverly asserts a few episodes later — an assertion that Nicole begrudgingly accepts — but then fate intercedes. Aunt Gus encourages Waverly to embrace freedom and to stop doing what’s expected of her. Gus reminders her: “some of the best things in life are the surprises it throws us. About what we want. Who we want.”

It’s enough to convince Waverly to embrace what and, more importantly, who, she wants. It’s enough to convince her that she should stop being afraid and do the thing she most wants to do in this world: be with Nicole.

#16. Jamie and Dani – The Haunting of Bly Manor

For most of her life, Dani’s been scared. So scared she pushed her lesbian feelings into a closet and agreed to marry a man she didn’t love. The moment she lets go of that fear — when she breaks things off with her fiancé — he gets hit by a car and dies. It feels like a cosmic punishment for her bravery. So she’s retreats in the face of that loss…haunted by his ghost…convinced that it was her and her lesbian feelings that got her fiancé killed. But then along comes Jamie. She sees Dani, truly, and begs her to let go of the guilt that she’s been carrying.

“We leave more life behind us. That life refreshes and recycles and on and on it goes,” Jamie reminds her. She notes, it’s the mortality of the thing that truly makes the moonflower…life…her…beautiful.

It’s then that Dani realizes that her fear is serves no one. She isn’t the reason her fiancé died and her feelings aren’t responsible either. She can have love with someone who returns it wholeheartedly…and that someone can be a woman. Dani can give up the ghosts of the past and embrace the promise of a future with Jamie.

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#2. Alex and Kelly – Supergirl

The bond between Alex Danvers and Kelly Olsen is forged by adversity. When Kelly arrives in National City, her brother’s been shot and she’s forced to trust Alex’s recommendation about the treatment that would save his life. Alex is there when Kelly’s forced to relive the abandonment she felt when James wasn’t there to support her during her father’s funeral. And when Alex faces challenges in her professional and personal lives, it’s Kelly that she leans on. Kelly is there when Alex receives the call about the adoption, soothing Alex’s anxiety so that she can make the most important decision of her life. When Alex doubts that she’ll make a good mother, it’s Kelly that reassures her that she will…that Alex cares too much to be anything less than great. And then, when the adoption falls through and Alex is understandably crushed, it’s Kelly that comforts her: holding her hand through it all.

“We’ve been through a lot of intense stuff together in a short amount of time, haven’t we?” Kelly asks rhetorically. But it’s hard to regret a moment of it — no matter how difficult it’s been — because that intense stuff brought them together…it forged their bond. She adds, “The closeness with you, it has felt like both the most natural thing in the world and like a revelation.”

Of course, Alex feels it too and they move from friends to lovers with a kiss.

#15. Sol and Ji-Wan – Nevertheless (알고있지만)

Sol and Ji-Wan have been best friends since middle school and, somewhere along the way, Sol fell in love with her best friend. She doesn’t dare tell her, of course, because she’s sure Ji-Wan doesn’t share her feelings. It’s a struggle to keep her feelings at bay, though. During a party with their friends, a game of spin-the-bottle breaks out and it lands on Sol and then close enough to Ji-Wan that she claims the victory for her own. Sol panics as Ji-Wan leans forward. She’s waited for this for so long but she can’t have her first kiss with Ji-Wan be like this, she can’t have it mean nothing, so she downs a drink and, quickly, makes her escape.

But, as is so often the case, Sol is so busy trying to keep her own feelings at bay that she doesn’t notice Ji-Wan experiencing the same. Sol doesn’t notice how jealous Ji-Wan gets when she goes out with someone else (even though it’s not clear that Sol realizes that she’s on dates). She doesn’t notice the comfort Ji-Wan takes in having their hands intertwined. But Sol doesn’t see any of that so when Ji-Wan drunkenly confesses her feelings, she doesn’t know what to think.

“Don’t hang out with anyone else,” Ji-Wan begs, as she wraps her arms around Sol. “Just like me, okay? Just me. Please.”

“Stop making me get my hopes up,” Sol answers to a passed out Ji-Wan.

K-dramas still have a along way to go with LGBT representation but Nevertheless feels like a tremendous step forward…not just in terms of storytelling but also because the relationship between Sol and Ji-Wan stole the show from the straight couple that was at its center. Give the people the Soljiwan spin-off we deserve, you cowards!

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#3. Syd and Elena – One Day at a Time

When Elena first invites Syd over to the Alvarez house, she’s crushing on someone else…Dani, another member of the Feminist Gamers of Echo Park. Elena doesn’t want to admit it but her grandmother is an expert at detecting romance and sets out to teach Elena proper flirting techniques. But when Penelope arrives, she reminds Elena that she’s too young to date and that education will always come first. It’s only later, when she’s alone with Alex (or so she thinks), that Elena admits to her crush.

“I just… I assumed that coming out was going to be the difficult part,” Elena confesses. “But now that I like someone, I just… I don’t even know if Dani’s gay. What if she’s not? I don’t want to be the gay girl who asks out a straight girl!”

Elena’s abuela overhears her laments through the curtain and encourages her to be bold and to be vulnerable. Love, she says, requires both. And so, Elena tries…and fails — Dani already has a girlfriend — but Syd’s there to share her cookie (that’s not a euphemism…or is it?). They haphazardly fall into a romance like Elena haphazardly falls into almost everything. And while we don’t get to see them be friends as much as some of the other couples on this list, the couple’s shared interests anchors both their friendship and relationship.

#14. Judy and Michelle – Dead to Me

When Michelle meets Judy for the first time, she’s moving her mother into the retirement community where Judy works. She and her mother had tried for a year to make it work — living together — but when Michelle’s mother broke her hip while her daughter was at work, something had to give. While taking a smoke break with Judy, Michelle laments how bad things have gotten with her mother…wondering if she gave up on joy when her husband died.

Judy can relate to that feeling but Michelle thinks it’s selfish. She asserts, “we’re all gonna die at some point, you know? It’s life — it’s what happens — but the world keeps going, and other people need you. It’s like you have a choice: you either go down with the ship or you grab a fucking life raft and you hold on, you know?”

Unbeknownst to Judy in that moment, Michelle is going to be her life raft. They become friends, sharing stories and drinks and weed, and, eventually a kiss in a photo booth like an adult Emily and Maya.

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#4. Kat & Adena – The Bold Type

Adena El-Amin isn’t a woman who cheats. She’s so certain of who she is, of what she values, that cheating just isn’t her. But then she meets Kat Edison…and Kat is just a ball of energy and enthusiasm and it’s hard to imagine not liking her (unless you’re the writers of The Bold Type in the latter seasons, then I guess it’s not so hard). It’s easy for Adena to allow her own cynicism to prevail — it’s a well-earned cynicism, after all — but when Kat comes in with her indefatigable optimism, it’s hard not to be moved by it. And Kat’s smart and inquistive and beautiful (HAVE YOU SEEN AISHA DEE?!)….and how could you not want more of that in your life?

And so Adena cheats. Emotionally first but then Kat kisses her and she doesn’t stop it. They kiss for hours and wake up together the next morning. She cheats and has no regrets.

“If I’m being honest with myself, I have been cheating for a while. Probably since I decided to pursue a friendship with you, knowing that my feelings were not entirely friendly,” Adena admits.

#13. Rubi and Macarena – Edificio Corona

For years, I’ve lamented the lack of LGBT representation in Spanish-language programming but over the last decade we’ve seen a marked improvement. What’s been particularly interesting to watch — as someone who doesn’t speak Spanish — is to see the way queer communities have sprouted up around these shows, translating them to make the more accessible to a global audiences. Perennial March Madness fan favorites, Juliana and Valentina, are the best example of this: the combination of the storyline on Amar a muerte and the undeniable chemistry between the lead actresses plus the community of fans who clipped and painstakingly translated every single scene, turned Juliantina into a global phenomenon.

Rubi and Macarena had the potential to achieve similar heights but fell short. Still, it’s an adorable story a lesbian girl (Macarena) who falls in love with her best friend but doesn’t share her feelings, fearing that doing so might endanger the friendship. Plus Rubi’s straight…she’s dating this man-child named Miguel…and obviously can’t return Maca’s feelings. But then Macarena starts dating another girl and Rubi can’t be happy for her. She pulls away from Miguel and slowly but surely, Rubi starts to recognize why she’s so jealous of Maca’s new girlfriend.

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#5. Sophie and Finley – The L Word: Generation Q

Oh, it used to be so good. Remember at the end of season one when Sophie goes to the airport…and Dani’s at one gate and Sophie’s at another…and you’re just hoping/praying that Sophie’s running towards the right one? And then they just ruined it for whatever reason? I’m still mystified by it.

Riese’s words about the couple, post-season one, capture their “friends to lovers” appeal best:

I think one of the most thrilling parts of watching television is when you THINK you’re picking up on some chemistry but you’re not sure if it’s intentional and then… suddenly, it is! Sophie and Finley were the only match-up we didn’t see coming…and also turned out to be the one with the most genuine chemistry and intimacy behind it. I never would’ve imagined these two together from the first few episodes but retroactively it makes perfect sense, much like Alice and Dana did in the first season of the original series. These two are happiest and most themselves when they’re together and are incredibly adept at providing emotional support to each other in ways other partners have been unable to.

We almost had it all.

#12. Rue and Jules – Euphoria

“Rue is in love with Jules, I think,” Gia opines early in Euphoria‘s first season. I think it was always that way. From the moment that Rue meets Jules at the party, I think Rue is in love with Jules. She’s new to this world…Jules is someone who doesn’t look at Rue and automatically think of her mistakes….and Rue loves that. Or maybe Rue just needs a new thing to be addicted to…and the warmth of Jules’ light — her euphoria — is as good a high as any. But Jules doesn’t love her — at least not yet — and so she just waits and tries to be the best friend she can until Jules shares her feelings.

They’re the best of friends. They are almost inseperable, spending most of their time at school together, hanging out and cracking jokes about the football team. It’s as close to normal as Rue’s ever been. The friendship is conditional though: Rue needs to hold onto her sobriety…”I’m not trying to become best friends with someone who’s gonna fucking kill themselves,” Jules says. Rue tries to abide by the rule or, at least, hide her rule breaking well.

Rue is in love with Jules and, for a while, she’s able to hide it but then she impulsively kisses Jules one night and the dam breaks. Though she doesn’t return the kiss at first, Jules eventually returns to Rue’s side, returning the kiss with intention.

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#6. Annika and Helena – WIR

When you hit 30, there’s always this intense period of self-reflection that accompanies it. What were the dreams you had for yourself as a kid? Are you where you thought you’d be? Are you the person you thought you’d be? Are you with the person you imagined you’d be? Are you living where you want? Are you going to have kids? WIR is about that period: with each series, focusing primarily on one character or couple (in a similar way to SKAM/Druck). Essentially, the show asks “who are we?” (“wir” meaning “we” in German). The first series is about a couple, Annika to Helena, that goes from friends to lovers to radio silent to possibly friends to lovers.

Once upon a time, Annika and her friends wrote their greatest wishes for their future down on a sheet of paper and hid it from view. On Annika’s note? A wish that she’d be with her then-girlfriend, Helena. But that’s not what happened, at least not immediately. Instead, Annika leaves for 12 years for reasons she doesn’t explain. She returns, a successful architect, to the town where she grew up and where her family still lives. And Helena’s still there too…having just bought a fixer-upper in town with her boyfriend. They’re talking about mariage and kids. But then Annika comes back and the questions that Helena’s avoided now necessitate answers.

#11. Grace and Anissa – Black Lightning

Sparks flew when Anissa Pierce met Grace Choi for the first time. The two share an easy rapport and bond over comic books and superheroes. And then, when danger threatens, they realize they share a set of values. But just as they’re starting to build something — to work their way from friends to something more — Anissa ghosts Grace. They’ve barely rekindled their friendship when Anissa shows up at Grace’s door.

Grace shouldn’t let her in. It’s too soon. Anissa’s been reluctant to commit and Grace shouldn’t give in until she knows that Anissa’s ready for something real this time. But something real has happened: Anissa’s Uncle Gambi is dead and Anissa’s searching for a reminder that she’s truly alive. Anissa shows up with tears in her eyes, a broken heart, looking like Anissa Pierce looks and wonders, “if I knew I only had one day to live, who, besides my family, would I want to spend that day with? I only came up with one name. You.” Some things are irresistible, even if you’ve got superpowers.

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#7. Dani & Gigi – The L Word: Generation Q

I’d write something else but now I’m just mad that they ruined them all over again.

#10. Alice and Sumi – Good Trouble

Soon after we meet Alice for the first time, she’s protecting a birthday cake from excited party goers. It’s for Sumi — the ex-girlfriend that she’s still in love with, despite Sumi having cheated on her — and Alice is eagerly awaiting the chance to surprise her. But when Sumi walks in with her girlfriend, Meera, it’s Alice who gets the surprise: she’s engaged! Despite the heartbreak, Alice remains her dutiful friend, planning the entire wedding and trying not to celebrate when the marriage doesn’t happen.

And you think, for a moment, that Alice will step in to ease Sumi’s heartbreak — that she’ll just swoop in and she and Sumi will get their happily ever after — but that’s not what happens. Instead, the characters work on building that friendship back, on building the foundation of their relationship back. Once that’s in place, they’re able to work towards building a real relationship…well, that is, after they showcase a fake one to help Gael keep Isabela at the Coterie.

“I know I didn’t treat you well when we were together, but I’ve done a lot of work to mend that,” Sumi acknowledges. “And I’ve been there for you through thick and thin…I’ve worked hard to earn your trust.”

Alice realizes that Sumi’s right…and that she does trust Sumi…and that she wants to be with her.

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#8. Ava and Beatrice – Warrior Nun

There’s just something about Ava and Beatrice. From the very beginning. Their lighthearted banter sizzles just a little too much for just gal pals. The way they’re the only ones who understand each other is just a little too romantic for buddies. By the time Beatrice confesses to Ava that she’s not like the other nuns (due to LESBIANISM), it feels like Ava’s already halfway in love with her already. Really good will-they/won’t-theys are rare in sapphic couples on TV, even though it’s one of the most satisfying tropes in the world. It was hard to know, for sure, if Ava and Beatrice were flirting, in their early days, or if we just really wanted it to be true. But by the second season, there’s no question about it. It wasn’t just crumbs we were gobbling up, it was a trail of bread leading us to an epic romance. Ava tells Beatrice her deepest fear, and Beatrice promises her she’ll never be alone. They constantly try to keep each other from sacrificing themselves to save the world. And when everything’s on the line, they finally stop hinting around and kiss right on the mouths. Their nunnery wouldn’t have liked it too much, but us fans? Well, watched it enough times for it to be seared into our memories forever. — Heather

#9. Kit and Jade – Willow

Kit and Willow aren’t just friends; they’re best friends. Sparring partners, training comrades, sisters in arms, best friends (wink). By the time Disney+’s Willow series kicks off, they both know they’ve got a thing for each other, but neither of them have the guts to really do anything about it — until Kit decides to run away from her future husband, and smooches Jade right on the lips on the way out. Alas, monsters! A prince kidnapped! A journey across the lands! Along the way to saving the world, Jade finds out she’s a kind of princess too, and under the power of a truth plum, Kit finally confesses that she’ll follow Jade anywhere, any time, forever, she says all she wants to do is be with Jade, that it’s literally the only thing she cares about. And Jade, well, she goes in for the slowest kiss in history, talking about how deeply in love she is with her best friends. Alas, trolls! But nothing can really keep them apart, and then finally get down to business after a sword fight that leaves Jade so, um, frustrated, she nearly bursts. They go diving off the edge of the world for each other, save each other over and over, and have the only real happy ending in the series. Willow might be over, or it might not be, but whatever the case, they’ll never take away our queer Disney Princesses. — Heather

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You have 48 hours to cast your ballot in the Friends to Lovers Region. This year, you can vote four times over the voting period (or to be more precise once, every 12 hours). We’ll be back later this week to announce who you advanced to Round 2!

Autostraddle March Madness 2023: Trope-y Wives – Opposites Attract

Well, it’s safe to say…in the battle of March Madness excitement, this year’s basketball tournaments have me beat. For just the third time in history, a #16 team took down a #1 seed in the opening round. The huge upset left absolutely no perfect brackets among the 20 million brackets entered in ESPN’s Men’s Tournament Challenge. The results on the women’s side are just slightly better: Mississippi State’s upset of Creighton, Princeton’s one point win over NC State (I’m still not over it), Georgia’s strong showing against Florida State have left a lot of people’s brackets in shambles. According to ESPN, less than one tenth of one percent of brackets submitted in their Women’s Tournament Challenge remain perfect (0.09%, roughly).

Our version of March Madness hasn’t reached that level of excitement quite yet. Through our first two rounds of voting, we’ve got about 9% of the participants in our challenge with a perfect bracket. But I think with the Opposites Attract region, our level of excitement is about to rachet up a few notches…these first round match-ups are tough!

Most of the voting in the Enemies to Lovers region went as expected. I am, admittedly, surprised Stupid Wife‘s disappointing showing: fans of that series have been rabid in sharing their love for the show and so to see the go out, handily, in the first round feels like a huge upset. Perennial March Madness powerhouse, Avalance, will go onto the next round but I’m surprised how strong April and Sterling performed against them. The Legends are certainly going to need a better showing if they hope to upset Villanelle and Eve in the next round.

But let’s move onto the Opposites Attract region!

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#1. Maya and Carina – Station 19

When Maya meets Carina for the first time socially at Joe’s bar, she’s become her station’s pariah: alienated from the rest of the crew for prioritizing her ambition over her friendship with Andy — who was next in line for the captaincy — and secret relationship with Jack. It’s a lesson she learned early on: watching her father, at three years old, react with scorn to her cousin losing a race. She never wanted that scorn directed at her so she kept running and kept winning…even when it hurt her, even when it hurt the people she cared about, she just kept running.

But Carina asks her to stop running, to stay in one place — next to her lover, her girlfriend, her wife — and allow herself to be loved. For years, Maya’s father had trained her to always look forward but Carina asks her to do something else: “No eyes forward. Eyes only on me,” she says as she calms Maya through a panic attack. Because that’s the lesson that Carina took from her childhood: to love people even when they can’t fully return it, to not leave when things get hard.

#16. Quinn and Isabela, Harlem

When Quinn first meets Isabela, she’s not at all what Quinn’s looking for. She came expecting a family dinner with her parents so she could ask them for money to support her struggling business. Instead, Quinn finds herself at a political fundraiser, being introduced to the candidate, Isabela Benítez-Santiago (think AOC but gay and hotter), by her disapproving mother, as a potential mentor. Quinn bristles at the notion — though, I suspect Quinn would chafe at anyone who her mother embraced so readily — but Isabela quickly ingratiates herself to Quinn…and suddenly, the person she never expected becomes the person that Quinn can’t forget.

They couldn’t be more different: Isabela, the girl who came from nothing to become an organizer and advocate who’s now running for Congress, Quinn, the daughter of privilege, who — much to her mother’s chagrin — is an aspiring designer struggling to keep her boutique afloat. Isabela, laid back and effortlessly cool (even when she’s doing something completely uncool like bowling alone); Quinn, high-strung and frenetic (especially when it comes to relationships). Isabella, gay; Quinn, straight…at least until Isabela comes along and turns her world upside down.

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#2. Emma and Nico – Vida

“Come have no plan with me,” Nico proposes to in the Vida series finale. “Some of the best things that happened to me were the direct result of having no plan.”

A while ago, Emma Hernandez would’ve greeted the idea with pure scorn. She prized order and doing everything exactly as it was meant to be done. She came to Boyle Heights with a firm schedule in mind: bury her mother, resolve all the outstanding financial issues and get back to her life in Chicago (or, to be more precise, her career in Chicago). That version of Emma Hernandez? The one that prized “perfection and power?” She wouldn’t even have indulged Nico’s nomadic fantasies.

But the version of Emma that greets Nico’s proposal is a different one than we met when she returned to the neighborhood. She’s been changed by this space, by resurrecting her mother’s bar, by her familial relationships with Lyn and Eddy…and she’s been changed, forever, by Nico’s love. She no longer needs to schedule every single moment, all she needs is for those moments to be spent with the person she loves.

#15. Ayesha and Zarina – We Are Lady Parts

From my 2021 review of the show:

Seconds before Ayesha spots Zarina, she’s outside mocking her — ignoring Momtaz’s pleas to behave — but when she sees her, she’s left slack-jawed. It doesn’t even matter that, in that first meeting, Zarina turns out to be every bit the caricature that Ayesha imagined. Suddenly, she’s every bit as romance obsessed as Amina, with Chavela Vargas’ “Paloma Negra” soundtracking her daydream. Her quick wit gives way to stammering. Gone is Ayesha’s confidence. Gone is her swagger. All that’s left is a girl with a crush.

Aside from some heartfelt teasing about her newfound softness, Ayesha’s feelings for are a non-issue within her Lady Parts’ bubble. But when Zarina questions Ayesha about how it feels to be a queer Muslim woman for the article she’s writing about the band, Ayesha clams up and asks Zarina not to go there. Sensing a story, Zarina pushes: first urging Ayesha to be a role model for queer kids, then reminding her that the essence of punk is not caring what people think. But this time — and for what, I imagine, is the first time — Ayesha doesn’t give in and Zarina allows it.

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#3. Bette and Tina – The L Word: Generation Q

At the start of Generation Q‘s third season, Tina confesses what we’ve always known to be true: she’s in love with Bette and has been for her entire life. But that admission doesn’t lead to an immediate reunion because sometimes love isn’t enough. Sometimes the person you love needs to learn how to love you back in the way that you deserve…to be, as Tina calls it, “fucking better at it.”

And to her great credit, Bette tries. She tries to get better at it…to become worthy of being Tina’s partner. As they’re locked in a walk-in freezer just before their wedding, Bette barely reacts. She explains, “I have worked really hard to quiet those parts of me so I wouldn’t hurt you and I am afraid that if I let them out, then I won’t be able to shove them back inside.”

But Bette being better doesn’t mean she has to change the things about herself that Tina always loved. Tina affirms that she loves those parts of Bette — she loves all the parts — and makes Bette promise to always be their whole self, a hundred percent of the time.

#14. Lauren and Leyla – New Amsterdam

Immediately after Leyla kisses Lauren for the first time, Lauren rushes out of her apartment. It looks, at first, like gay panic — like she’s just reacting to being kissed by a woman for the first time — but it’s not that at all. The kiss just felt normal and real and Lauren Bloom isn’t used to either of those things.

Her childhood wasn’t normal, with her absentee father and alcoholic mother. Especially after her dad died, Lauren gave her all to protecting them — her younger sister from her mother, her mother from herself — but eventually, she had to protect herself. She left for college, far away from home, and has carried the guilt of that choice ever since. The presure to make amends for that drove her to her own addiction. By the time she meets Leyla, Lauren isn’t sure that she believes in love anymore or that if it exists, that she deserves it.

But Leyla has enough hope and optimism for both of them…and she believes so fervently — in herself, in them — that eventually she makes Lauren a believer too.

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#4. Uncle Clifford and Lil’ Murda – P-Valley

It’s Murda Night at the Pynk and Uncle Clifford calls her headline performers to the stage: “Chucalissa’s new trap prince and the pole princess…Lil’ Murda and Miss Mississippi!” The crowd eats up his performance — singing along with his lyrics and Mississippi dances on the pole — and Murda starts to imagine a career outside of Chucalissa. But when a record executive shows up and promises everything he needs to level up his career, it comes with a healthy dose of homophobia. Murda stays quiet in the face of it, despite his relationship with Clifford, because being pushed further back into the closet is the price of the trap prince’s crown.

In the quiet moments with Cliff, Murda had been so sure…so sure he wanted more than random hook-ups…but Clifford knew. She always knew: they weren’t meant for the outside. Clifford’s always known who she is — even carrying the burden that comes with letting her light shine so brightly — but Murda can’t reconcile his own identity. As long as he wants to wear the crown, he may never be ready.

#13. Karen and Hen – 9-1-1

Karen and Hen’s first date is a set-up: Hen’s best friend — who, as it turns out is also Karen’s neighbor — sets them up. They don’t hit it off right away: Karen is intense and a little snooty and, though amused, Hen is unimpressed. They couldn’t be more different: Hen, a former pharmaceutical saleswoman turned firefighter/parademic and Karen, a literal rocket scientist. At one point, Hen asks if she ever wanted to be an astronaut and Karen laments they don’t let people like us go to space.” For Karen, that’s reason enough to redirect her passion but when they didn’t let black, gay, women be firefighters, Henrietta Wilson still found a way.

“That woman is not even my type,” Hen bemoans to Howie following the date.

“Hen, your type is losers,” Howie says, restraining himself from noting that her last girlfriend is a drug addict serving a prison sentence. “You need to make a change.”

A few days later, Hen announces that she doesn’t think things between them will work. She’s not looking for anything serious and Karen seems like the serious type. Karen quips back, “well, I don’t have to be serious” and there’s where the story of their love truly begins.

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#5. Lucy and Kate – NCIS: Hawai’i

When we’re introduced to Lucy and Kate, there’s already a bit of history there. History that neither of them seem eager to revisit initially. Kate is, above all else, committed to her work and suggests that she and Lucy keep their relationship strictly professional. While Lucy acquiesces Kate’s decision, she does so begrudgingly and reminds Kate at every opportunity what she’s missing. Kate’s weakened by Lucy’s persistence: “I’m given orders,” she reminder herself. “Orders that come before relationships and love and feelings.”

But when Lucy reminds Kate of that she’s more than her ambitions — she’s truly a great and genuine person — Kate gives in and finally stops resisting. Being together doesn’t flatten the pair’s great many differences — Kate’s penchant for following the rules and Lucy’s penchant for creating her own path (with one bag!) or Kate’s love of surfing and Lucy’s aquaphobia — Lucy and Kate just find acceptance, love, and support in each other.

#12. Kai and Amelia – Grey’s Anatomy

For months, Amelia Shephard, Kai Bartley and Meredith Grey have been preparing for this moment: a landmark brain surgery in their effort to cure Parkinson’s disease. The gallery’s packed with curious doctors and the entire hospital is watching — and learning — as the surgery is streamed. Everyone’s eager to watch history to be made. But just as Amelia prepares to load the micro inject, a call comes in: she’s being paged to another operating room to treat Owen Hunt — her ex-husband — for a cranial bleed. And much to Kai’s dismay, even as she stands on the precipice of history, Amelia considers walking away.

“All day long, I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out who in their right mind would have left that surgery the way you were prepared to,” Kai admits later. “And then it dawned on me: you are someone who loves her people so hard and so much that the second they’re in trouble, everything else just…falls away.”

They’ve never met anyone like Amelia and they certainly weren’t like Amelia…but they’re intrigued by the possibility that they’re becoming one of Amelia’s people.

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#6. Ana and Mariana – Madre sólo hay dos

Ana and Mariana were strangers until the two arrive at the same hospital, are forced to share the same room, and give birth to daughters on the same day. But those similiarities belie a host of differences — Mariana, the young single mother, struggling to launch her career, and Ana, the ambitious, married businesswoman with two teenage kids plus a baby (and a maid) at home — and they immediately start to antagonize each other. After giving birth, they return to their regular lives only to find out, four months later, that their children had been switched at birth. To ease the girls’ transition to their actual mothers, Ana invites Mariana to move in with her family.

Eventually, tensions between the mothers eases and the pair grow close. It’s Ana who says “I love you” and who kisses Mariana first…but she’s high and grappling with a potential cancer diagnosis so it’s hard to accept it as truth. When Mariana says it, though, she means it, and Ana reacts to the admission by casting her out of the house. Mariana apologizes and things seemingly return to normal but, for Ana, it’s like a light has been turned on…even though she doesn’t realize it right away. A possibility she never considered — that she could love a woman — now drives her decision-making: her jealousy over Mariana’s new beau and her scheme to divorce her husband.

It takes a while for Ana to give voice to her own feelings and hers to align with Mariana’s at the same time and space but it’s a joy to watch them try to get there.

#11. Mae and George – Feel Good

Here’s Drew in her review of Feel Good‘s first season:

After this opening sequence that has us ready to root for Mae, George, their delightful flirting, and their whirlwind romance, the cracks begin to form. Mae’s energy is eager and aggressive in a way that quickly loses its appeal. We realize that George still hasn’t introduced Mae to her friends. We meet Mae’s parents over FaceTime and her mom – a remarkable and hilarious performance from Lisa Kudrow – is clearly one of those people who hates themselves so much you know they hate you too. And then we learn that Mae is a recovering drug addict – and, more importantly, George learns this too.

Throughout the show’s six episodes, Mae fights to move on from her addiction, confront her familial hurt, and be the person she thinks George wants. Meanwhile, George is working to overcome her own shame, accept her queerness, and communicate her needs to herself and Mae. Hardly a moment passes that isn’t filled with their relationship’s impending doom. Both characters are just too lost in themselves to be there for each other.

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#7. Alice and Tasha – The L Word: Generation Q

There was some debate among the TV team about including Alice and Tasha in this region. Surely, their characters were the embodiment of the “Opposites Attract” trope on the OG show — differences that reverberate when Tasha shows up to save Piddles 2 — but did the ending to Generation Q third season — which, among other things, has Tasha and Alice sharing a dance together — constitute an official reunion for the pair? Admittedly, I wasn’t convinced it did…but ultimately, two things swayed me: first (and foremost), my love for Tasha which has started from the moment Papi introduced us and has persisted across generations. But also, it’s what Dana said: “the one is still out there for [Alice]” and they know Dana, in a way.

Tasha unwittingly echoes Dana when she’s called to save Bette and Tina in the season finale, “You were in love with Dana. You talked about her so much, felt like I knew her. In a way.”

Alice face flashes with recognition with Tasha’s admission. It’s evidence, from the great beyond, that Tasha is the one for her and, ultimately it’s hard to imagine Alice allowing herself to miss true love again.

#10. Renee and Pam – Batwoman

Here’s how Alice explains it to Luke and Mary in a pitch-perfect scene from Batwoman:

So…they met, fell madly in love — kissy, kissy, kissy — then Pam fell victim to some evil scientist’s experiment. Obviously Pam’s metamorphosis into “little shop of horrors” got in the way of sexy time, which was a big problem for Renee as she was a GCPD detective. Crisis of the heart. Boring, boring, boring. Ultimately, Renee called Batman, who convinced her to lure the love of her life into his trap…and he buried her deep underground away from water and sunlight to shrivel up and not die.

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#8. Taissa and Van – Yellowjackets

Long before we’re introduced to Taissa, the aspiring state senator, we see her ambition and the Type A personality that will fuel her run. As a teenager, the Yellowjackets midfielder — the perfect position for a player that values control and can contribute on both ends of the pitch — is already determined to do anything to win. Anything including icing out of a player that she thinks isn’t pulling their weight. When the team won’t support her idea, Taissa takes matters into her own hands, slide-tackling the player during a scrimmage, leaving her with a compound fracture.

Van balances Taissa’s intensity with their own goofiness. When tensions boil over between Taissa and the team following the scrimmage injury, it’s Van that diffuses the anger with her sense of humor. She keeps their relationship a secret, at Taissa’s request, but when Van needs the affirmation…that she is still loved despite her scars, they share a kiss at Doomcoming.

#9. Luz and Amity – The Owl House

Heather’s reasoning behind why Luz and Amity were one of her favorite couples of last year:

These two magical weirdos! So timid and awkward with each other at first, all blushing and brushing fingertips and missteps! And now they’re girlfriends, first girlfriends, and all the giddy wonder that goes along with that. They even kissed. ON THE DISNEY CHANNEL. But it’s not all dancing in the rain; Luz and Amity are also tag-teaming to save the Boiling Isles, their families, and their relationship in The Owl House‘s final season. They struggle sometimes, of course. Luz is used to barreling forth full steam ahead to solve her problems without consulting anyone! Amity is used to being dismissed by her mother and sometimes the rest of her family too! They’re insecure a little bit. They worry they’re not being THE BEST GIRLFRIEND IN THE WORLD sometimes. But dang, they work it out better than most adults I know! Amity and Luz are so sweet and so soft and so silly. I will love them fully long after they save the world and ride off into the sunset.

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You have 48 hours to cast your ballot in the Opposites Attract Region. This year, you can vote four times over the voting period (or to be more precise once, every 12 hours). We’ll return next week with one final first round of voting in the Friends to Lovers region.

A League Of Their Own Is Still Fighting For #MoreThanFour Episodes

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Autostraddle March Madness 2023: Trope-y Wives – Enemies to Lovers

Remember a few years back when we talked about what it means to go “chalk?” It’s a slang term that gets tossed around each year during March Madness that dates back to the days of elicit gambling halls. But nowadays, when we say “chalk,” sports enthusiasts are referring to betting on the overall favorites: the top seeds who are often thought to have the best shot of winning.

Through the first round of our March Madness tournament, voters have gone mostly chalk. With only one exception — which I wouldn’t even call an upset, to be honest — all the top seeds won their contests. The only lower seed to prevail over there opponent in the first round? Max and Esther from A League of their Own. Again, not much of a surprise…97% of our prediction brackets selected the ALOTO pitchers to advance in the first round match-up.

For me, the only real surprise of the Forbidden Fruit region was that #7 vs. #10 match-up between GAP the Series and Luimelia/Amar es para siempre. It was, by far, our closest contest of the round. Given how fervent fans of GAP the Series have been, I was surprised that they didn’t dominate their match-up. It’s a real testament to the strength of the Luimelia fandom. We’ll see if the GAP fans show up for their second round match-up with the formidable First Kill fandom.

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#1. Ryan and Sophie – Batwoman

“So, bartender chick? Fire!” Sophie Moore’s little sister, Jordan, observes from across the bar. She’s only just met Ryan but already she’s sensing the vibes between the bartender and her sister…and so she nudges Sophie in Ryan’s direction.

Her sister, with the precision of military marksman, shoots the suggestion down immediately, “Nope. Not happening. Not even an enemies-to-lovers maybe.”

Methinks, she doth protest too much. Because, the truth is — the truth that Sophie’s not ready to admit at that point (though she will later, in a conversation with Luke) — is that her feelings towards Ryan have already softened. She’s seen Ryan’s resilience in the face of injustice. She’s seen her relentlessness. She’s seen Ryan bend over backwards to protect the woman she loves. She’s been challenged by Ryan and has become a better person for it. They’re not lovers yet but they are definitely not enemies any more. Even if Sophie (or Ryan) is not ready to admit it.

#16. Velma and Daphne – Velma

In hindsight, I’m not entirely sure it’s accurate to refer to Velma and Daphne, from Mindy Kaling’s Scooby Doo prequel, as an enemies to lovers ship. Perhaps the most accurate way to discuss it is as an enemies and lovers ship…because never, for one second, does the hatred between them seem to abate. Even as they discuss the fallout from their first kiss, a fight breaks out between them over who kissed who first. When they try to discuss whether they have genuine feelings for each other, another fight breaks out — this time about the threat liking Velma poses to Daphnie’s popularity — and Daphe sweeps her leg, leaving Velma collapsed on the bathroom floor.

There relationship is a constant push and pull. Everytime you think they’re progressing towards something real, something happens to upend their progress.

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#2. Harley and Ivy – Harley Quinn

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy could have found them in almost any region of this contest. They could have been in the Opposites Attract region because Harley is erratic and extroverted while Ivy is calm and sardonic. They could’ve been in the Friends to Lovers region because, when they finally unite in the HBO Max series, they are the best of friends…who, genuinely, just want the best for each other. As Heather noted in her season two recap:

…Harley’s real war is with herself. She and Ivy started off the season as just the bestest best friends in the world who love each other so much and know each other better than anyone else and would sacrifice anything for each other, ride or die, favorite person to be with, cuddled up on the couch watching movies and bludgeoning their enemies to death together, blood and guts and staring deeply into each other’s eyes — but halfway through the season, Harley realizes her feelings for Ivy are way more than friends, after they accidentally kiss right on the mouth after escaping from Bane’s cavern prison together.

Or maybe they’re even Forbidden Fruit because, when Harley finally recognizes that her feelings are more than platonic, it seems too little, too late: Ivy is engaged to Kite Man. But ultimately, they were slotted in Enemies to Lovers because — like any good superhero story (or villain turned superhero story to be more precise) — it was important to pay homage to their origin story: when Pamela Isley, the newest inmate at Arkham Asylum, crosses paths with the hospital’s psychologist, Dr. Harleen Quinzel.

#15. Mel and Jada – Charmed

Like so many others in this category, Mel and Jada’s relationship on Charmed could’ve ended up in a different region…most likely, Forbidden Fruit. Mel and the Charmed Ones have an alliance with the Elders and Jada is a member of the Sisters of Arcana, “a group of dope rebel witches who reject the rules of the Elders and use unsanctioned magic when necessary to protect those who are most vulnerable.”

But two things push Mel and Jada over to the Enemies to Lovers region: first, their allegiances are not firm. Mel and Jada aren’t being kept apart by their allegiances; those can and do shift. When Mel finds out that the Elders aren’t exactly who she thought they were and that the S’Arcana are the villains she thought they were, her allegiances shift. But second — and perhaps more importantly — when Mel and Jada cross paths for the first time, it’s in battle. She uses her powers to steal the Scythe of Tartarus from Mel and her sisters and a fight ensues. When you use your electrokinetic powers to injure your future girlfriend, that immediately puts you in Enemies to Lovers territory.

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#3. Casey and Izzie – Atypical

Izzie doesn’t exactly give Casey the warm welcoming she was expecting when she shows up for her first day at Clayton Prep. Izzie’s heard about the new kid from Newton — specifically how Casey was suspended for punching a girl in the face — and she’s not interested in her bringing that drama onto the track team that she’s worked so hard to build. Later, Izzie attributes her behavior as being about the pressure she feels to be perfect and the pressure starts to thaw…that is, until Izzie believes her boyfriend’s story about Casey making a pass at him and things turn frosty again.

“Dude, I’m sorry. About everything,” Izzie admits when she slips into Casey’s room during her birthday party. “I was a dick and I got jealous, and I was afraid of losing someone that I love.”

Convinced that Izzie’s talking about her boyfriend, Nate, Casey promises to never come between them. But Izzie corrects her, “Screw him. No, I was afraid of losing you,” and, with a forehead promise and near kiss, the relationship between the two girls evolves.

#14. Alejandra and Veronica – El embarcadero (The Pier)

Alejandra/Alex had the perfect life or so she thought. She had a successful career and loving 15 year marriage. The future seemed bright. But then, one night, the police show up at her door and ask her to identify the body of her husband, Óscar. Alex doesn’t understand any of it…just a few short hours ago, she was talking to her husband — who claimed to be in Germany — about the future and now he’s dead…on a Spanish pier? None of it makes sense so Alex sets out to piece together the secrets of the husband she thought she knew.

The greatest of Óscar’s secrets is Veronica, the lover he’d kept for eight years in the Spanish town where he ultimately died. Alex rushes to the town, furious, prepared to hate this woman who’s upended everything about her life. But while she comes to town expecting to make an enemy, Alex finds the unexpected: happiness with her dead husband’s mistress and the young daughter they shared.

It’s a complicated enemies to lovers story made even more complicated by the fact that Veronica doesn’t know that the woman that she invites into her home and, later, into her bed, is the woman whose husband she shared.

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#4. Villanelle and Eve – Killing Eve

Technically, Eve Polastri and Villanelle are enemies. Eve is a British spy tasked with bringing in Villanelle, an international assassin. The nature of their respective work almost obligates us to consider them enemies. But at they ever really enemies? Their obsession borders on romance almost from the outset. Here’s how Kayla described it:

The first time Eve Polastri meets Villanelle, she thinks nothing of it. She doesn’t realize who she’s looking at. Villanelle, who often uses her beauty to get exactly what she wants but can simultaneously merely blend in when she needs to, unflinchingly approaches Eve in the very first episode of the series. They’re in the bathroom (gay), make brief eye contact (gay), and Villanelle compliments her hair (gay). When Eve eventually puts it together, she’s transfixed by the image of Villanelle. She describes her to a composite sketch artist with too much detail, incidentally revealing that she thinks of Villanelle as more than a target. Their relationship has always been a strange one, full of yearning and chemistry and betrayal and suspense. It’s obsession. It’s chaotic sexual tension.

But a relationship where their idea foreplay is one person stabbing the other or one person shooting the other…well…that’s feels like legitimate “enemies” territory to me.

#13. Janai and Amaya – The Dragon Prince

From Heather’s season four recap of The Dragon Prince:

In season three of The Dragon Prince, General Amaya is captured by the Sunfire Elves. Janai sees her as nothing more than an enemy prisoner. But over the course of the season, Amaya find herself trusting and relating to Janai. Ultimately Amaya joins the Sunfire Elves in their battle against their enemies, and Amaya keeps Janai from riding to her death after her sister is killed. They smile at each other a little bit. They say thanks. They hold hands. And in the between-seasons time-jump, they fall for each other!

Season four, which landed this month, opens with the two of them getting engaged in an elaborate and romantic ceremony that nearly made me swoon right out of my skin! You might think it sounds like a cop-out, to miss out on their courtship, but actually it sets them up to have one of the most mature queer relationships on TV.

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#5. Ava and Sara – Legends of Tomorrow

Soon after Time Bureau Agent Ava Sharpe meets Sara Lance for the first time, she’s taken hostage by Julius Caesar. The Bureau’s attempt to undermine the Legends has failed and they’re forced to rush to the rescue…both to stop Caesar from rewriting Roman history and to save Agent Sharpe. But when Sara arrives to rescue Ava from her captors, she isn’t exactly greeted as a liberator. Ava can take care of herself, she assures Sara, despite all evidence to the contrary. At the moment, it feels so far away…the moment when Ava and Sara will get past their differences and fall in love…but, really, it’s the just the start: the first rescue of a lifetime of rescues.

>Here’s Valerie on the start of this enemies to lovers ship:

Sara and Ava were at odds almost immediately, but in that sexy kind of way? They were both fierce women with opposing objectives: Sara wanted to protect her team and Ava wanted to enforce the rules that Sara’s team was constantly breaking. Ava was the first woman in a long time to be able to go toe to toe with Sara Lance. Did it frustrate Sara? Yes. Did it scare her? Maybe a little. But did it intrigue her? Definitely. And I had to agree.

As the season went on, it became clearer and clearer that these two had feelings with each other. Ava went on a mission with the Legends and started to understand why they do things the way they do. Sara spent more time with Ava and started to understand why she viewed these rules as important to keep people safe. They started to learn that the other’s strengths didn’t have to be an opposing force, but that if they teamed up, they could just be doubly strong against their common enemies.

#12. April and Sterling, Teenage Bounty Hunters

April and Sterling started out as friends and then became enemies before finally becoming…well, whatever the age-appropriate equivalent of lovers is. Sterling tried to introduce April to new people and April took that as Sterling not wanting to be around her anymore and, instead, pawning her off to new people. April was left heartbroken and the pair went from friends to each other’s arch-nemesis. It happened in the fifth grade and April’s still smarting over the slight.

Once the truth of what actually happened back then is out, tensions starts to ease and feelings start the come to the fore. Still, though, the relationship doesn’t come easily. Here’s how Valerie talked about the couple in her review of the show:

one thing I love about Sterling and April as they figure out their feelings is that neither of them have really internalized the homophobia they are surrounded by. They have smartphones and the internet, they’re growing up in the era of shows like One Day at a Time, Euphoria, and The Bold Type. (I just realized I don’t actually know what teenagers these days are watching but everyone on the CW is gay so my point is, they’ve been exposed.) April is already fully aware she’s a lesbian by the time she is forced to confront her feelings for Sterling. But April isn’t ready. Not because she’s ashamed of who she is, but because she’s afraid of the backlash

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#6. Adora and Catra – She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Adora and Catra didn’t start out as enemies. They were the best of friends, inseparable almost, training together in hopes of one day conquering the world. But when Adora defects from the Horde to join the Rebellion and to claim her destiny as She-Ra, Catra feels betrayed and lashes out in response. Adora’s absence gives Catra the opportunity to lay claim to the mantle she once held: now she can be the favorite, she can now be the best. But even that pursuit is thwarted and Catra responds with more fervor, attacking Adora and hew new friends…over and over again for four seasons.

But, as Valerie noted in the roundtable about the series finale, Catra earns her redemption:

And also I love that Catra had to earn it. She didn’t just apologize and be forgiven. And her first act of redemption wasn’t even to try to win Adora back; she sacrificed herself to save Glimmer. It was FOR Adora, yes, but Catra didn’t expect to survive. She explicitly told Adora not to come back for her. So she didn’t do it for the reward, or for the praise. She did it because she finally understood. She did it because it was the right thing to do. And the parallels between Catra punching Adora’s first Not!Catra friend in the face, then literally sacrificing herself to save Adora’s last Not!Catra friend…THE JOURNEY! THE GROWTH!

#11. Vi and Caitlyn – Arcane

Vi doesn’t trust Caitlyn at all when they first meet. They’re too different: Caitlyn’s a sheltered top-sider who grew up with wealthy overprotective parents, while Vi’s forced to grow up too quickly in the Undercity slums. Vi might be the one in prison but its Caitlyn that’s just a criminal in a fancy uniform…after all, it was the Piltovan enforcers — of which Caitlyn is a member, much to her parents’ consternation — that killed Vi’s parents. They are enemies, forced to forge an uneasy alliance to get what they each want: freedom for Vi and help navigating the Undercity for Caitlyn’s investigation.

But as they navigate the Undercity, the tension between them starts to ease. Caitlyn recognizes exactly how sheltered she’s been and how, perhaps, Vi’s distrust of top-siders is well-earned. Likewise, Vi realizes that Caitlyn can be trusted…because even though Vi ditches her and even though she persists in calling Caitlyn “cupcake,” when the chips are down — or, more precisely, when Vi’s about to be killed by a cyborg — Caitlyn comes through and saves her life. It’s the start of something between them…if only Netflix would give us Season 2 so we could know exactly what that something is.

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#7. Valentina and Luiza – Stupid Wife

Luiza remembers Valentina as an antagonist…a fellow law school student who seems to delight in making her angry. She remembers Valentina as the girl who mocks her commitment to her studies, who decries her as immature. She remembers Valentina as the person who endangered her life when she had no choice but to ride home on the back of Valentina’s bike. That’s how she remembers Valentina and, as it turns out, that is precisely the problem. Because when she wakes up the next morning, it’s 10 years later, she’s married to Valentina and they have a small child and Luiza can remember absolutely nothing besides having hated Valentina.

Luiza is diagnosed with “dissociative amnesia” likely brought on by some sort of trauma. Her memory of the last 10 years could come back but it could be gone forever. She stays with Valentina, for the sake of their son, but she keeps Luiza at a distance. It all leaves Valentina understandably heartbroken but she persists in trying to reclaim the love they once shared. It’s a well-done, if slightly soapy, journey to the rediscovery of love.

In a contest of tropes, Stupid Wife might be the trophiest of all…which makes sense given that the series has its origins in the world of fanfic (rumor has it, the original treatment was an RPF about Camila Cabello and Lauren Jauregui).

#10. Alicia and Leighton – The Sex Lives Of College Girls

One night, feeling suffocated by compulsory heterosexuality, Leighton Murray decides to booze it up on the Essex College grounds and, of course, she gets caught. She tries to buy her way out of punishment by calling on her father — a noted Essex alum — but the University President insists that she take some accountability. Her punishment? One hundred hours of community service at the college’s women’s center. Again, Leighton tries to avoid punishment but the center’s volunteer coordinator, Alicia, refuses to budge: if Leighton wants credit for 100 hours of community service, she’ll have to work for the full 100 hours. Leighton, begrudgingly, agrees and, as Leighton commits to her efforts, slowly but surely, the tension between the two eases.

Much to her surprise, Leighton finds comfort in the women’s center and she tries to integrate her friends from the center — Alicia, Ginger, and Tova — with her roommates and her friends in Greek Life. Predictably, it’s the last part that makes it complicated: a drunken frat boy insults Alicia and Leighton is forced to drag her away from a likely fight. Leighton apologizes, dismayed by what happened and insisting that she’s never seen them treat anyone else like that.

“Of course you haven’t,” Alicia retorts. “I’m just this queer girl that they can’t fuck but you? You’re this pretty, blonde, straight girl who they actually think is worthy of respect.”

And, in that moment, words fail Leighton. She can’t express exactly how wrong Alicia is…so, instead, she just pulls her into a kiss.

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#8. Haniwa and Wren – SEE

In the post-apocalyptic dystopia that SEE imagines, most of what’s left of humanity — just 2 million people remain on the planet — exists without their sight. The people that maintain their sight, which included Haniwa, are considered heretics and the Queen sends her armies to hunt them. But it’s not the Queen’s army that first gets hold of Haniwa, it’s her stepfather’s brother, Edo, who uses Haniwa to draw out his brother. Edo sends his chief Lieutenant, Wren, to watch over his niece.

The pair grow closer while Haniwa’s held in captivity. At once point, Haniwa even tries to escape but, because she can’t bring herself to kill Wren, she can’t get away. As Wren guards a chained Haniwa, she’s seen for the person she is. Haniwa recognizes that, despite her assertions to the country, Wren can also see.

“How do you know?” Wren asks.

“I’ve spent my whole life hiding it, just like you. I know what it looks like,” Haniwa maintains (they’re still talking about sight, right?).

#9. Maze and Eve – Lucifer

Like a few other competitors in this region, Maze and Eve could have been slotted in virtually any region. Truth be told, I really wanted to do a “fake dating” region and Maze and Eve were on a list of potential competitors (unfortunately, “fake dating is a woefully” underused trope on television). But, really, where else could we put one of the strongest demons to ever exist…and the right-hand of Lucifer…but in the Enemies region?

When they meet, Eve is with Lucifer and while the two eventually become friends, Maze first greets her with a dagger to her chin. Eve is Eve…that Eve…who lived together with Adam in the Garden of Eden until she was tempted by Lucifer. And Maze is one of the Lilim, one of the many demons born to Lilith, Adam’s first wife. At the time, Eve is obsessed with Lucifer and doesn’t recognize Maze’s crush on her even Maze she sings “Wonderwall” to her. Believing that the thing keeping her and Lucifer apart is a world ending prophecy, Eve tries to prevent it but ultimately, she ends up unleashing a whole host of unintended consequences.

“I’ve realized the way I’ve been acting with Lucifer is the exact same way I’ve acted with Adam. You know, I keep trying to change myself to be this person I think they want me to be,” Eve admits.

Maze insists that she’d never ask Eve to change because she likes who Eve is but Eve admits that even she doesn’t know who she is yet…and she needs time and space, on her own, to figure it all out.

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You have 48 hours to cast your ballot in the Enemies to Lovers Region. This year, you can vote four times over the voting period (or to be more precise once, every 12 hours). We’ll welcome the weekend with a new region and a new round of voting.

I’ll Watch Anything About Women Bullying Men

I’ll Watch Anything is an Autostraddle TV Team series in which we tell you what type of movies and TV shows we’ll watch, no matter what. This week, Heather Hogan’s here to tell you why she’ll watch anything about women bullying cis men. 

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One of the great gifts of my young life was the fact that my parents had no idea what was and was not appropriate for a child to watch on TV — so when I was in kindergarten, I convinced my dad to rent the VHS of 9 to 5 for me. I was too young to understand that it was a movie about three women raining down justice on an amalgamation of the sex pests who dominate corporate workplaces; all I knew was that I loved Dolly Parton with my whole heart and Dabney Coleman’s Franklin Hart, Jr. was making her very uncomfortable. So when she walloped him, kidnapped him, and tied him up in her house with the help of her friends, I cheered as hard as when She-Ra fought the eeeevil Hordak. From the video box, I learned the words ” sexist,” “misogynistic,” “egotistical,” and “bigot” — and, thus, a baby misandrist was born.

As a grown gay woman, my fondness for stories about women who bully cis men has only grown over the years, to the point that I could, at any moment, rattle off a seemingly endless list of movie moments, TV episodes, and book quotes on the topic.

Period dramas? How about in Gentleman Jack, when Anne Lister shoves her walking stick in the face of an abusive minister and snarls that he better leave town and never look back. Comedies? How about when Elle Woods eviscerates her ex-boyfriend, Warner, after winning her law professor’s court case and saving the day, with the very words he used to break up with her at the beginning of Legally Blonde? Reality cooking competitions? How about when Padma Lakshmi snaps at a male chef to “clean up his station and his act” and when she wheels around and mocks Richard Blaise’s bird nest of a hairstyle when he condescends to Top Chef‘s current contestants. (“I’m worried about them cooking these birds,” Blaise says. “I’m worried about your hair,” Padma looks over her shoulder and quips. “Speaking of soaring to new heights,” judge Gail Simmons giggles.) Romance? When Carol Aird sarcastically salutes Richard when he tell her to get Therese home safely, when Carol asks Therese if she misses her boyfriend and she says, “I haven’t thought about him all day,” when Sarah Paulson slams the door in Harge’s face. Action? Mad Max: Fury Road and Set It Off; you don’t even need the dialogue.

Sappho’s sacred socks, even Jane Austen couldn’t help herself”: “Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is the strongest argument in favor of matrimony.” And: “In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.” And: “What are men to rocks and mountains?”

If there’s a story about a woman bullying a man, I’ll watch it. If it’s a genre I don’t care for, I’ll watch it. If I have to sign up for yet another streaming service, I’ll watch it. If it happened 50 years ago and I have to acquire the DVD, I’ll watch it. If it’s past my bedtime, I’ll watch it. If I have a migraine, I’ll watch it. If it’s sixteen seasons and I need to see them all to fully appreciate it when the moment of feminine bullying arrives, I’ll watch it. I’ll watch anything, any time, any place, any season, forever wherein a woman bullies a cis man.

Because most stories, like real life, aren’t like that. Our stories are about white men. Heroic white men we should idolize. Terrible white men who did “great” things, and with whom we should sympathize. Movies and TV and novels, sure, but also statues and monuments and songs and legends and history books and sermons and lectures and the names on every building on every college campus around the entire country, on every bridge, on every highway. There is an entire mountain where I grew up dedicated to some of the worst white men in history. Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, leaders of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It towers above the smog of the city of Atlanta, over Cop City. We humanize white men over all other people, we reward those who tell their stories — and so they get more stories, and more humanization, and more power, and more stories, and and and.

The real Anne Lister lived her gender nonconforming life out loud, and was attacked, endlessly — sometimes physically — for it, by men. Padma Lakshmi heard the reverent “yes, chef” directed at white men in every kitchen in the world a million times before she clowned on Richard Blaise’s hair. Only 27% of the United States Senate, Elle Woods’ ultimate goal, are women. I don’t need to tell you how many women were forced into the closet or psychiatric institutions for their Sapphic leanings in the 1950, by men. And I don’t need to tell you how many women are flattened to a vagina, or a womb, like they are in Mad Max, by men. And I don’t need to tell you how many times Jane Austen — Jane Austen! — was shut out of publishing, by men.

I watch women bully men in stories the way I watch dragons fly in stories: with awe and longing, a fractured dream, an out-of-grasp fantasy.

My family was Southern Baptist, in rural Georgia, in the 1980s when I watched 9 to 5: Witches were off-limits, but I couldn’t help myself from replicating Judy, Violet, and Doralee’s majestic imaginary tea party where they dressed as sorceresses and toasted goblets to Mr. Hart’s demise. I roped my friends into playing it at recess. “I’ll be danged if I let myself be stopped by three dim-witted broads!” imaginary Mr. Hart would say. And we’d whack him with plastic baseball bats, covered in foam. We were little girls, drunk on Capri Sun and the hope of our own power. Oh, how we cackled.

Autostraddle March Madness 2023: Trope-y Wives – Forbidden Fruit

Well, the men’s and women’s NCAA tournament brackets are finally here. At some point later today, I’ll sit down with my printed copies of the bracket and try and map out the future of the 136 teams in the field. I’ll take extra time with women’s bracket, though…in part because there feel like there are many more unknowns with this year’s tournament than have been in past years. But also? I’m trying to convince my Autostraddle colleagues to join me in a bracket competition and I can’t embarrass myself in front of them…particularly not after my second place finish in WNBA fantasy basketball last summer.

Already I’ve got a ton of questions running through my head: UCONN and Stanford have looked vulnerable at differrent points of the season, could we see upsets for them in the Field of 68? Can Caitlin Clark’s heroics carry Iowa through this tournament? With a their soft schedule, is LSU overrated at the #3 seed? Is Olivia Miles going to be back for Notre Dame? Does UNC carry the chip on their shoulder — thanks to being underseeded at #6 — into the tournament and pull a few upsets? For which of the 16 host teams will home court advantage be a true advantage and who is about to get vanquished on their own home court? Can anyone, anywhere, beat South Carolina? I have so many questions that need answers.

But when it comes to Autostraddle March Madness, today’s the day we start getting some answers…as we kick off the voting in the Forbidden Fruit Region. Remember, these couples were slotted in this region primarily because there are forces, mostly outside their control, that strive to keep them apart. To limit the potential participants, I created a firm rule: the couple has to have been featured in a new episode that’s aired since January 2020. Now, let’s check out the competitors.

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#1. Emily and Sue – Dickinson

Early in Dickson‘s first season, Emily and her beloved, Sue, don men’s clothing and sneak into a lecture at Amherst. There, a famous geologist recalls the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and how it left Pompeii buried in ash. Later, in bed, Emily finds kinship with the volcano’s victims: “That’s how I feel sometimes. Like I’m frozen. Like I’m…trapped.” And, try as Emily might to write their way our, she is trapped. Trapped beneath the crush of societal expectations. Reduced to stolen moments with the woman she loves. But then Sue drags her fingertips against Emily’s bare skin and slips her hand beneath her nightgown. As Emily writhes beneath her touch, she is reminded that whatever forces the world exerts upon them, their love is the volcano.

#16. Astha and Peeplika – The Married Woman

Soon after Astha confesses her love to Peeplika’s husband, he assures her, “I am not your destination, just a path along the way.” He doesn’t live long enough to realize how right he was. In their mutual mourning, the two women find themselves drawn to each other and eventually share a kiss. For Peeplika, it’s nothing: she’s a modern woman — so many people call her that, their voices dripping with derision — who falls in love with a person’s soul, not their gender. But for Astha, it spurns a great awakening…a realization of what it means to love and to be loved. Everytime Astha’s with Peeplika, every time she touches her, every time they kiss, she tastes freedom anew. With Peeplika, Astha has found her destination.

But, they remain constricted by a seemingly inescapable truth: they live in a 1990s India where their love is outlawed and where societal norms imprison Astha in a loveless marriage.

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#2. Cal and Juliette – First Kill

By the time Cal steps into the walk-in pantry with her for their spin-the-bottle make-out session, she knows exactly who Juliette is. Thanks to a misplaced blood capsule and a test with a silver bracelet, Cal knows for certain that Juliette is a vampire. She sees her opportunity: to stop being the family’s lookout and to finally get her first kill…the first step towards becoming the greatest monster hunter who ever lived. But when they kiss, Cal’s hand drops from the stake she has tucked in her jeans and onto Juliette’s face, pulling her deeper into the kiss. For as long as they can, they both supress their innate desire — for Juliette to bite, for Cal to kill — and pour into each other.

While their instinct ultimately overrides their lust in that moment, the rest of the series is a battle for their love…over their instincts, over their families, over expectations, over the supernatural world, over everything that’s striving to keep them apart.

#15. Addy and Colette – Dare Me

Among nearly every other participant in this region, we find ourselves hoping that the couple will overcome whatever obstacles stand in their way. But sometimes, those obstacles exist for good reasons…and, certainly, the obstacles — professional ethics, the law — that are supposed to keep Colette French, the head coach of the Sutton Grove High School’s cheerleading team, from fraternizing with one of her students, qualify as just. Too often we romanticize these tropes — reconciling that it’s all fiction and the chemistry between the two characters is just too magnetic to ignore — but particularly when it comes to teacher/student relationships, we shouldn’t. It’s gross when Ezra Fitz does it, it’s gross when Colette — who is already married, with kids and a sidepiece — does it too.

Colette is grooming Addy…for what, besides covering up a murder, we may never know…but that particular piece of fruit is forbidden for a reason. The more we romanctize it — the more queer fans lay their scenes over sultry ballads on Youtube — the more we normalize bad behavior.

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#3. Anne and Ann – Gentleman Jack

On their final trip to London, Ann and Anne have encountered a near constant parade of people telling them no — perhaps justifiably so, in some circumstances — and people judging their relationship. Captain Sutherland calls it “unnatural” and begs Ann to leave this and return with him and her sister to Cliffe Hill. But even if Ann sees some logic in Sutherland’s reluctance to manage her own affairs (Ann’s had her own doubts, after all), the attacks on her relationship…the suggestion that the love she shares with Anne is anything but pure…make her impervious to his logic.

Later, with her future in hand, Ann smiles as she climbs into the carriage next to her wife. She slides her hand over Anne’s and promises to sort out their wills soon. She apologizes for her moments of doubt but Anne rebuffs her.

“We are the only people in the whole world, on Earth, who want us to be together,” Anne says. “It won’t be easy — it’ll never be easy — but we’re both still here.”

#14. Mia and Meredith – Vampire Academy

From Valerie’s review of Vampire Academy‘s first few episodes, aptly titled “Peacock’s ‘Vampire Academy’ Teases a Queer Forbidden Romance:”

… just when I was about to issue the show a citation for unlawful lack of queerness in a vampire property, I caught A Look™. Mia, an ambitious socialite Moroi, and Meredith, a tough-as-nails Guardian, have a bit of a spark, their exchanges layered since they both tend to test boundaries using barbs. But something about the other softens each of them, and even though as of right now Mia and Meredith are mostly foils to Lissa and Rose, respectively, their moments have been meaningful enough that I can guess (or, at least hope) where this is headed, and I like it. Especially because “bitch who is a secret softie” is one of my favorite kinds of characters. And the idea of two of them together?? I don’t hate it!

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#4. Carson and Greta – A League of their Own

As the Peaches’ season approaches its end, Carson wants to take Greta out…she needs to take Greta out. She needs their relationship to be something besides the two of them, hidden away from public view, stealing kisses behind locked doors and opaque windows. They have to venture out in the world so that once the season is over she’ll have some public affirmation that their romance wasn’t all a dream.

Greta sees the world differently, though. She knows what it means to live in this time as a woman who loves other women. She got careless once before — at 17 when she first fell in love — and, though she escaped relatively unscathed, her girlfriends’ parents had her committed. But she allows herself to be persuaded by Carson. Their first date goes swimmingly…they even get free pizza out of it. But the second, at the bar, ends in Greta’s nightmare: with the danger of being gay in 1943 having shown up at their doorstep.

#13. Frannie and Marguerite – The Confessions of Frannie Langton

There are a million reasons Frannie and Marguerite should not be together: because Marguerite is married, because Marguerite and her husband are trying for a baby, because Frannie is a servant and Marguerite her mistress, and because this is 1820s London and an interracial relationship — between two women, no less — remains forbidden, by social convention, if not by law. But one night, after a “misunderstanding” with her husband, Marguerite reaches out as Frannie tucks her into bed. She trails her fingertips up Frannie’s arm, pulls off the shawl Frannie’s wearing to expose her shoulders, and kisses her. Frannie returns the kiss but before more can happen — because Marguerite knows how forbidden this is — Marguerite turns away and bids Frannie goodnight.

The next day, the ever-bold Frannie confronts her mistress, asking, “What if, what if I could say I wanted it? What if you could say that you wanted it too?”

“Some things cannot be done in the light,” Marguerite replies.

“Then let it be done in the dark,” Frannie answers.

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#5. Raelle and Scylla – Motherland: Fort Salem

Early on in Motherland, the lines are drawn: on one side, the US Army, with its membership of conscripted witches, on the other side, the Spree, a group of whiches who protest that conscription by any means necessary. There is black and white, there is good and evil and sides must be chosen. And, for a while, it looks as though Raelle and Scylla are on the same side of the fight. But eventually, the truth comes out: Scylla is Spree…and her affair with Raelle — her love for Raelle — were her taste of the forbibden fruit.

“I chose you!” Scylla shouts, as she prepares for what feels like certain death. “I had orders to deliver you. I chose you instead of them. I chose you.”

#12. Ellen & Pam – For All Mankind

Ellen shares the news of her selection to become the permanent NASA adminstrator before she and Pam climb into bed. She’s almost indifferent to the news, much to Pam’s dismay. This is everything Ellen’s ever wanted — a chance to lead the agency, to set a course to Mars — but Ellen insists she’ll decline the appointment when the time is right. Once upon a time that job was what Ellen wanted but now all she wants is Pam.

But while Ellen imagines a life with Pam, the political world is imagining one where she becomes the first female president. Pam overhears a conversation between Larry (Ellen’s beard) and the president’s political affairs advisor and she realizes that she’s the thing standing between Ellen and the possibility. Only one dream is possible at a time and Pam can’t deny Ellen hers.

“She knew it was her or your career but you couldn’t have both,” Larry admits to Ellen’s dismay years later when she’s in the Oval Office.

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#6. Shelby and Toni – The Wilds

“I do family. I do Jesus. I do pageants,” Shelby Goodkind says, describing herself to one of her fellow retreat participants. It’s her entire identity and remains so even after a plane crash strands the girls far away from home. She prays as they search for water. She interjects her pageant-ready effervescence anytime the group’s mood gets too low. And when girls turn their shellfish dinners into jokes about lesbians and cunnilingus, Shelby reacts, lashing out with the “hate the sin, love the sinner” bullshiit she’s been taught her whole life. These are her beliefs, this is her whole identity.

Unwittingly, Toni challenges all of those beliefs and the identity Shelby’s clung to her entire life by just being herself. Toni reminds Shelby that, at least in this moment, she’s free. She notes, “you’re on a deserted island a million miles away from whatever bullshit expectations that you left behind. You know, you’re free here, Shelby, and if you’re not taking advantage of that, then I don’t know what the fuck to tell you.”

#11. Jackie and Leslie, Hightown

There’s a memorable scene in the movie, 28 Days, where one of the rehab patients asks their counselor how they’ll know when they’re ready to start dating. The counselor ponders for a moment and then shares his rule of thumb: “when you get home, get yourself a plant. Then, in about a year, get a pet. And then, if, in say…two years, the plant and the pet are still alive…then you can start to think about having a relationship.” That struck me, both then and now, as a little excessive but I get the point: in the early stages of recovery, it’s important for the focus to be on yourself. That time is about a newly sober person finding their footing again and you never know how injecting a new person into that dynamic will turn out. It’s dangerous.

But Jackie Quiñones doesn’t care. She just lost her best friend and thinks she’s already hit her rock bottom. Now she’s in AA meetings, she has a job she’s excited by and good at, and she convinced she’s won. She’s beat her addictions. And for while, that feels true, but never more than when she’s with Leslie. When Leslie weaves their fingers together, when she pulls Jackie into a kiss, when Leslie asks for permission to go down on her, she forgets how dangerous this could be.

And, if we’re being honest, so do we.

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#7. Mon and Sam – GAP the Series

For years, Mon has imagined this moment: the moment when she’d be reunited with the person (Sam) she’d been in love with most of her life. They’d met by chance over a decade ago: Mon was playing with a puppy in the street and is nearly struck by a car. Sam saved her -and, in turn, Mon saves the puppy — Sam’s puppy that she can’t keep — by adopting her. Mon fell in love with Sam then and has been pining for her ever since. She’s worked to reunite with Sam, hoping love will spark between them, and secures a new job at Sam’s company to facilitate that reunion. But, on her first day, the Sam she encounters doesn’t offer the warmth that Mon recalls. She’s cold and indifferent. Sam invites the company’s staff into a conference room and castigates out two employees for their office romance. She fires them and reiterates that employee fraternization is not allowed at her company.

That edict isn’t the only roadblock for the couple: Sam has just a year to turn her company into a success before her grandmother withdraws her financial backing. After that, her grandmother insists that Sam must focus on becoming a wife (by marrying her friend and business partner, Kirk) and becoming a mother.

#10. Amelia and Luisita – Luimelia/Amar es para siempre

As someone who grew up watching (and loving) soaps, I’m always interested in making sure that the genre’s represented in March Madness somehow. But none of the American soaps were offering much in the way of queer content: Kristina has been MIA on General Hospital, Chanel and Allie’s relationship was upended by Lindsay Arnold’s departure on Days of Our Lives, and Y&R‘s Mariah and Tessa have had their entire baby adoption story happen off-screen. So in thinking about which soap, outside the US, to highlight: I wanted to pick the one that seemed to be doing the most, the one putting their queer couple front and center.

Luimelia seemed like the obvious choice.

The love story between Luisita Gomes and Amelia Ledesma is one that began in the ’60s and ’70s in Madrid, Spain on the telenovela, Amar Es Para Siempre (Love is Forever). On their way to fashioning an epic love story, Luisita and Amelia grapple to overcome the era’s blatant homophobia and conservatism. Their story offered the same care and the same screentime as Amar Es Para Siempre‘s straight couples. But what’s more impressive is that the network behind the novela recognized the fandom developing around these two characters and created a spin-off, Luimelia. Over four seasons (!!), Luimelia tells the story of Luisita and Amelia’s love…only this time, it occurs in modern-day Spain.

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#8. Hattie and Ida B. – Twenties

Technically, when Ida B. shows up on Hattie’s doorstep and pulls her into their first kiss, there’s nothing forbidden about it. After Hattie passes a monologue from one of Ida’s manuscripts to her friend, Nia, for an audition. Ida knows instantly who’s responsible for the words she’d long kept from view finally getting out and she promptly fires Hattie from her job as a production assistant. So, technically, the problematic aspects of this relationship — the power imbalance — are no longer a problem. Technically. But if we’re being honest, we’d admit that the boss and her assistant had been heading down this road, long before Ida shows up on Hattie’s doorstep…and that’s where things get murky.

When Ida invites Hattie to an advanced screening, we know where this is going. When Ida slides a white blazer over Hattie’s slight frame and notes how good Hattie looks, we know where this is going. When their hands touch during the screening or when Ida places her hand on the small of Hattie’s back to lead her out, we know where this is going. And when Ida invites Hattie to stay at her place — and Hattie ignores calls from her ex to stay — they both know where this is going too.

#9. Max and Esther – A League of their Own

When Max first spots Esther at Bertie and Grace’s party, she doesn’t approach her right away. She takes a long look — her interest is obvious — but then relents. She’s still in awe of the space she’s in, a place queerness is cherished and celebrated, and just a little overwhelmed. But also? She’s been trying so hard to be who everyone else wants her to be that she hasn’t established her own identity…and before Max approaches this woman and tries for something real, she has to assert who she is.

“You know, for a long time I felt like I had to be my momma. And part of me is. But a lot of me isn’t. And now I can’t talk to her. I don’t want to go through that again with you,” she tells her Uncle Bertie. She thanks him for the suit but acknowledges, “this is how I wanted to wear it.”

The understanding gives Max her swagger back and she immediately approaches Esther and insists on a dance. As they dance, across town, there’s a bar being raided. A bar that’s playing host to people just like her and Bertie and Grace. Ironically, it’s the nearby train tracks — built to keep the town segregrated — that likely keeps them safe. The danger hasn’t come for them yet but it’s 1940s America and for queer black women, it remains omnipresent.

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You have 48 hours to cast your ballot in the Forbidden Fruit Region. This year, you can vote four times over the voting period (or to be more precise once, every 12 hours). I’ll be back on Wednesday to introduce you to the competitors in the Enemies to Lovers region and to share the winners from this opening round.

ALSO!! Over the weekend, several readers reported issues with accessing our Trope-y Wives bracket challenge so we’re extending the predictions period until Wednesday as well.

Autostraddle March Madness 2023: Fill Out Your Trope-y Wives Brackets Now!

For the past four years, I’ve had this idea in my head about creating a March Madness devoted to our favorite tropes. And every year, for the past four years, I’ll sit down and try to make it work. Tropes feel ubiquitous in queer fandom but when it comes to television, there aren’t many shortcuts for matching tropes with couples…so you just have to watch the shows. But it’s not enough to just find a trope; to make March Madness work, you have to find 17 couples to fit that trope. It’s a lot of work and so, for the past four years, I’ll doubt whether I can pull it off and just pivot to something else.

This year, though, it’s happening.

*Insert Michael Scott gif here*

We’re doing it.

Autostraddle March Madness, Trope-y Wives edition, is here!

Autostraddle March Madness is back for its fifth year and, just like the Division I NCAA tournaments, we’ve expanded our field to include 68 couples. Those ships are broken down into four regions:

• Forbidden Fruit – These are couples that, for some reason — be it the regressive laws of the time period or the rules of nature or prior commitments or whatever — should not be together…but we still cheer for them anyway. Well, some of them.
• Enemies to Lovers – A classic, right? For some of them, “enemies to lovers” fits…they were really genuine enemies…but for most, it’s like, “anatogonist to lovers.” Still an all-time fave, no matter what you call it.
• Opposites Attract – Two remarkably different people brought together by a shared passion.
• Friends to Lovers – Sometimes you wake up and you realize that the friendship that you’ve coveted for so many years was meant to be something more.

As the NCAA tournaments will next week, we kicked off this year’s Madness with our First Four match-ups to determine the last four couple to qualify for the first round. We gave the responsibility for determining the outcomes of those match-ups exclusively to our A+ members. For the last 48 hours, they’ve been deciding which couples escape their play-in games and make it into the Field of 64. Here’s what they decided:

We had our closest match-up of the First Four in the Forbidden Fruit region. Much to my surprise, our A+ preferred Jackie and Leslie’s ill-conceived relationship on Hightown to Miranda cheating with Che on And Just Like That. Maybe our A+ readers don’t like Che…which, I mean, I get it…or maybe they really want Starz to announce when we’ll finally see the third season of Hightown (seriously, WTF, Starz?!).

Over in the Enemies to Lovers region, it was an easy choice between two similar storylines, as April and Sterling of Teenage Bounty Hunters easily defeated Candace and Lilly from Astrid & Lilly Save the World. They don’t get to move on here but I hope Candace and Lilly’s adorable enemies to lovers ship sails for a long time in fanfic.

In the Opposites Attract region, our A+ readers gave an easy victory to Harlem‘s Quinn and Isabela. I wasn’t surprised by this outcome at all given that Quinn’s a main character on Harlem while Fabiola’s just a supporting character on Never Have I Ever. It’s been quite the year for Juani Feliz…first she gets to make out with Grace Byers on Harlem, she’s probably going to make out with Niecy Nash on The Rookie: Feds and she picks up a win in Autostraddle March Madness. Victories abound!

And lastly, despite the lobbying from some of my Autostraddle colleagues in the comments section, Jamie and Dani from The Haunting of Bly Manor scored an easy victory over Sabi and Olympia from Sort Of in the Friends to Lovers region. Does that mean our A+ Readers are all #TeamWolf or — *gulps nervously* — #TeamBessie? Or maybe it’s just the moonflower monologue from Bly Manor? That gets me every time.

So now our bracket is set but before we get to the voting part, it’s time for our annual bracket challenge.

If you’re new here, the bracket challenge is a predictions contest. You look at our match-ups and decide who will advance before any additional votes have been cast. How do you know which couples to pick? That’s completely up to you. Pick your faves. Pick whatever couples you’ve seen trending on social media or whose clips keep showing up on your FYP. Head over to YouTube and track down clips of the couples you’ve never heard of. There’s no method to the madness.

Just remember to get your picks in ASAP. The bracket challenge will close on Monday, March 13, just before voting in the first region begins. With each round of new voting, I’ll update readers on who’s leading in the bracket challenge.

Join the bracket challenge now at: autostraddle.challonge.com/tropeywives!

Reality Show “Love Trip: Paris” Ends With a Lesbian Knuckle Tattoo and Intact Relationships

Love Trip Paris — the incredibly queer dating show on Freeform that shipped four “American girls” to France to find true love because France is romantic and full of berets and bridges — wrapped up this week with a solid collection of delightfully unhinged behaviors, including lesbian contestant Caroline bravely tattooing her knuckles with the name of the French girl she’d fallen for. At the series’ end, my fave Josielyn Aguilera ended up open to a future with Patrick but mostly choosing to love herself (leaving me personally pining for her fleeting connections to Josephine and Aickel), while Rose’s suitor turned out to be mostly just scheming for a visa and therefore unworthy of the engagement ring she’d brought along on this trip.

But two couples actually insisted to the camera that they’d found true love with each other: genderqueer lesbian Caroline Renner (she/they) and her French suitor Lisa; and pansexual mental health podcaster Lacy Hartselle and her French suitor Bastein Buffat.

But what are the queer Love Trip Paris Francophiles doing now??? Are those couples still together? Let’s discuss!

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Love Trip: Paris – Where Are They Now?

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that every couple who “matches” on a dating reality show is unlikely to actually still be dating when the edited show debuts 6-18 months later. Well, unless it’s Love is Blind and they actually got legitimately married on the reality show, in which case there is a 50/50 chance they’re either still married and will stay that way for the forseeable future OR they’re still married but will be getting divorced within a year. After three seasons and 17 couples produced by Love is Blind, four couples remain together. Are You The One?, which has declared a total of 90 couples to be soulmates, has produced only seven still-together couples. With 44 seasons between them as of mid-2022, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette have produced six still-intact marriages. Perfect Match, which just concluded its messy first season, produced zero (0) couples, although some did attempt to date briefly following the series’ conclusion.

Perhaps what these shows should’ve done was ship everybody to Paris to go on moonlit walks past the Eiffel tower with French suitors, because Love Trip: Paris actually managed to do what those shows couldn’t: deliver a 50% success rate for its contestants.

“I think that love is really important to the French,” Rose told Hollywood Life. “I think in the U.S., dating is much more casual, which is okay for some people. But the French really take things seriously almost to an extent we weren’t really expecting.”

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Are Caroline and Lisa Still Together?

Caroline found her way onto Love Trip Paris after answering an ad that was “looking for lesbians that speak French.” They told The CT Insider that seeing the ad felt like fate: “I was like, that’s my whole brand, and applied.” They connected immediately with Lisa, one of the first woman suitors in the house.

Lisa was very possessive and jealous about Caroline speaking to or dating other people, despite the premise of the show being “dating other people,” an attitude which was especially visible when the French suitors got together to diss each other’s chances of getting dates with the people they wanted to get dates with. For example, Caroline went out with Margot, a very hot pink-haired masc lesbian with the word “insane” tattooed on her neck who took Caroline on a date to a cat cafe. Caroline previously had said their type was a “Megan Rapinoe-esque look” — and Margot was definitely their type. Lisa was so annoyed by this circumstance that she nearly fled the show but instead simply decided to show up an hour late to her date with Caroline.

But Lisa’s connection with Caroline was so strong that even Margot and her cuffed t-shirts could not stop Caroline and Lisa’s love train from leaving the station. In fact, Caroline’s heart was so set on Lisa that she got “LISA” tattooed on her knuckles on their last date of the season

Surprisingly enough, at the present moment, Caroline Renner and Lisa are in fact still in a relationship. Apparently they broke up for six months but got back together and are now living the dream!!!

Although Lisa and Caroline are currently long-distance, Caroline is planning to move to Paris eventually and they still consider Lisa their “goofy beautiful amazing hilarious” love. They also remain friends with Margot, who is a barber! Cheers!!!!!

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Where Is Josielyn Aguilera Now?

Josielyn, a bisexual trans model/actor who’d never before been in a relationship, cascaded through several flings on the program, from a promising beginning with Gessica to a baffling multi-date experience with Mirko, a bad person who just wanted to win the show even though there was no way to actually win the show. Finally she ended the show ready to “see where it goes” with Patrick, a late-season suitor who she’d felt drawn to immediately. While lamenting her inability to make a connection and the impact Mirko’s terribleness had upon her soul, Love Trip: Paris treated us to a little supercut of all her strong connections — with Gessica, Aickel and Josephine — that really made me wish we’d seen more of all those relationships!

“This is a big thing and a real big moment and I feel like I just want people to see that I’m just like any one of these other girls trying to figure out love and romance,” she told Hollywood Life about appearing on the show as a transgender woman. “I deserve love and respect, and so does everyone else, and so do other trans men and women out there. It’s so huge that we’re able to show this experience on TV and on Freeform and on this platform… I just want to be myself. I definitely feel like the biggest thing for me was that I felt like I was 100% myself with these girls. I felt like I was never judged. I felt like I could just be me. It was the best experience for me.”

At the current moment, Josielyn is no longer in Paris, she has returned to Los Angeles and recently appeared in an episode of Quantum Leap. I can’t wait to see what she does next!!

When asked on instagram who was the best kisser, Josielyn gave that honor to Josephine, who she wrote “will forever be the one that got away.” :-(

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Are Lacy and Bastian Still Together?

I’m going to be honest that due to my bias as a person, I did hope Lacy would end up with a woman. Alas, she managed to allegedly find true love with Bastien, despite rumors that he was “in it for the wrong reasons” and already had a girlfriend outside of the show.

But! After taking a picturesque hot air balloon ride at dawn with certified hunk Amaury and having a seaside picnic that for some reason involved an actual clay vase of flowers upon a blanket, Lacy decided to choose Bastien because she felt connected to his soul.

And now, according to her instagram, she and Bastien are together and she’s moving to Paris, her favorite city in all the world, where Bastien this very day made her a kale salad, which is nice.

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And Finally, Rose

Rose isn’t as active on social media as Josielyn, Lacy and Caroline, but it appears that the show’s lone heterosexual is still beautiful and fantastic and perhaps currently in Paris!

In conclusion, au revoir!

“There’s Nothing I Can’t Do”: Harlem’s Jerrie Johnson on Tye’s Self-Discovery and Breaking the Binary

Photo of Jerrie Johnson by Corey Nickols/Getty Images for IMDb

Jerrie Johnson is very grateful for the opportunity to play Tye on Prime Video’s Harlem, but they know that it wasn’t just luck that got them to where she is. “I manifested this exact thing, and I was so happy and excited that my manifestations met with Tracy’s [Harlem creator Tracy Oliver] manifestations and also the manifestations of the girls all coincided in a way that we can be co-collaborators and co-conspirators in bringing this thing to life,” they told me over Zoom. We talked on a sunny afternoon and Jerrie as always looked flawless in a patterned jacket from their beautiful apartment in New York City.

This is an interview that I’ve been trying to make happen since before the season aired, and I was worried it wouldn’t happen. I met Jerrie last year after Harlem season two was announced and I told them during that time that I would love to interview them for Autostraddle when the time came. Despite playing a queer female character, she shared with me that they had never been interviewed by a queer female interviewer. It isn’t hard to believe, but I knew that I had to use my platform to amplify their voice, because it is a voice that everyone should hear.

With Tye, the go-getter, entrepreneur and all around boss running her own tech company, who doesn’t have time for love but also loves to have sex, Jerrie realizes she has an opportunity to change the television landscape. For so long, Black women in Hollywood haven’t had the chance to evolve how the world views us. But in playing a character like Tye, who is “able to be free and able to be nuanced and able to like, have some of that feminine and a lot of that masculine energy,” they can subvert preconceived notions. “What I love is that we’re dismantling what a leading lady is, what an ingenue can be, especially for Black women,” she explains.
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“No one’s trying to make any commentary on queerness,” they say of Harlem. “It happens because we never see a queer person living so freely as a person on TV. So then people are like, oh my God, I’ve never seen this. We have so many different reflections or depictions from shows like Friends and Sex and the City where not only is there no Black people, there’s no queer people. But this is New York and I’m like, I can’t go to Starbucks without seeing a queer person, let alone a Black queer person.”

There is still a narrow view of what it means to be an out, queer woman in the entertainment industry. Think about many of the queer female actors we can name off the top of our heads. Many of them don’t have the opportunity to present themselves in any kind of range. Jerrie pointed out that many queer male actors are allowed a spectrum of expression that queer female actors haven’t gotten to yet.

“My experience of queer women is, if they’ve presented this feminine thing, then they feel like they have to continue presenting this feminine thing, or they’re only gonna get certain roles and vice versa, right? If I’ve presented this masculine thing, I have to keep this up. And so even in the queerness we see so much binary for women.”

Through their portrayal of Tye, but also in life and how she portrays herself, Jerrie is challenging what it means to be an out queer, Black actor in an industry that doesn’t yet know what to do with people who don’t fit neatly into a box.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna be wearing or who I’m gonna be in the next hour. You know what I mean? And so, I think clothes are an expression of that,” they say. “This binary is so new and so American and so beneficial to the patriarchy and white supremacy, that I feel like it would be a disservice for me and my legacy for me to feed into any type of binary,” she adds.

And as Jerrie continues to carve her own path in this industry, one thing remains clear, they are going to do it their way. “I just hope that we are getting to a place where we allow black actors to be transformative! I’m just asking that I can play the full spectrum of what I have to give. And if there’s something that I don’t know how to do, there’s nothing that I can’t learn how to do, period. I think it’s all about having people out there who are thinking more expansively about how we’re presenting people, how we’re writing things, how we’re casting things so that people can see people like me in more of a nuance across different mediums in the industry.”

Read more of our conversation below.

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Sa’iyda: Let’s just start with a basic overview of Tye’s arc this season.

Jerrie: Tye, this season is in maybe a dark night of the soul. Like there is a person who loves structure… who has benefited from knowing in work, right? Like, if I take this step, it’s gonna lead me here, then if I take this step, it’s gonna lead me here. And there may be some, you know, nuances or some things along the way that lead to maybe that direct thing not happening.

But I can get close. In terms of personal life and love. It’s like, okay, “I don’t understand this because I’m doing this, this, and this, and technically it should leave me here, but I’m not there.” And I think really with the big, moment of reflection was what Brandon said to her in the apartment in season one about her not having love in her life. And I think she spends season two contemplating that, and maybe being in denial about it. There’s like an air of being in denial, but also there’s an air of I can fix this — I can fix things because that’s what I do. I don’t think she’s coming from the most healthy place.

Sa’iyda: Absolutely not.

Jerrie: She’s just grasping at straws. Literally, that’s what the season is about. “Oh, I can try this!” “Oh, I can date this person and then do this.” “Oh, I can find love if I just do this.” And it’s just like, but you have no guides. You have no love guides. There’s nobody that you are conferring with to let you know that these are the steps actually to take for you specifically. Not what you saw somewhere, not what you’ve read in a book, not what your friends are doing, but what you need to do. So I think that is the missing link. So right now she’s just… Trying to make it better. Trying to prove him wrong and yeah, grasp, grasp, grasp, grasp, grasp.

Sa’iyda: I mean I love how naturally it progresses. Especially because Tye being Tye is so like, “I have to do this” and “I have to do this, and this is how it’s gonna go.” Like she decided to go spend the weekend with her married couple friends and was like, “oh God, is this what my life is gonna be like?” Spoiler alert: Honey. Yes. That is exactly what your life is gonna be like.

You could see that she was like, oh no. Oh no. This feels too, too comfortable. I can’t sit in the comfort.

And I think that said a lot about her character. Comfort is not a place that she operates from naturally. So then to see the comfort that she feels with Amy because there’s no pretense — how it creates a very seismic shift in her that doesn’t come off as seismic.

Jerrie: I was gonna say too, she’s benefited in her life from not being comfortable. And her idea of comfort comes from this small town in the South where people aren’t doing anything. You know, people are stuck. And so like, that is what comfort to her means. “Well, if I’m comfortable then I could have stayed home.”

But she sacrificed her home life and sacrificed her comfortability. Now she’s in this maybe unhealthy relationship where she doesn’t identify the need for comfort when it comes. And so it’s like, oh, if it’s not, “go, go, go get, get, get” or chaos or even like easy, because sometimes comfort and easy aren’t the same thing. So if it’s not that, then not only do I not want it — I don’t see it, cause I don’t recognize that I need it or that there is a need for it.

Sa’iyda: Yeah, absolutely. And it was so heartwarming because Tye is not the character to have the meet-cute moment, to have the like, “oh, do you wanna come over and cuddle?” 

So to see that, that’s kind of where she ends up, because she was so determined to find it, and went about it the wrong way… to then have it kind of sneak up on her and give her a one, two sucker punch at the end was really satisfying as a viewer.

Jerrie: I thought it was beautiful, too! Because I feel like, what I love about the writing is that just like in life, everybody gets to experience everything.

So whereas we might assume that Quinn or maybe Angie will have a meet-cute moment, not Tye, Tye gets that [other thing]. And… and we’re satisfied. Just as we might assume that only Tye gets the queer moment and then Quinn gets it and we’re satisfied. Right? Because it shows complexity, it shows dualities. It shows the dichotomies that we aren’t used to seeing, especially in Black storylines, where it’s like, you are serving this purpose.

And if you’re not serving this purpose, then… I mean, a lot of storylines, but specifically Black storylines, we are finally becoming more expansive on a more macro scale and not just like the three shows that have these certain characters where it’s still very hetero.

Sa’iyda: I’d love to talk to you about the relationship between Tye and Brandon.

One of my biggest gripes this season was that they were not more deeply explored. I think there was something so interesting there, because why did what he said to her, send her in this existential spiral if she didn’t care about him as much? There was room for conversations of compulsory heterosexuality, where we kind of live in these spaces. Especially as Black women where queerness isn’t something we see modeled and thusly we can’t conceive of life that way. So we fall into these kind of situations, but then she has to get out of it.

Jerrie: We went from, I mean, they wrote 10 episodes. And then Amazon said sike, it’s eight. Because they have a new comedy order where, you know, all comedies are going down to eight episodes.

Sa’iyda: I hate the eight episode season! It’s not enough to develop.

Jerrie: And the crazy thing is, I’ve revisited the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and I’m like, oh, they had six seasons, but each season was like 22-26 episodes. And it’s like, you really get to see these characters develop.

So I think there’s a part of that, like, I think there was gonna be, some more introduction of other people so that we could explore the Brandon thing more. So I think it all had to happen for Tye in a shorter time, but also as backstory. Because Tye’s love story had to take precedence.

But I feel like Tye loves the life that she has now. It’s a very curated life, though. And so I think there’s something about somebody who may know you more deeply than these people —  who you’ve been through from maybe kindergarten to high school — which is more years than, than you have spent with, with these… this group of people right? That’s 18 years or so.

And so, instead of the thought of like, “what are people back home thinking about me? Are they proud of me, or do they see that I’m killing it?” Where it was just an idea, just a thought. To have that be right there and for it to be like, this is actually what we think. We don’t care about your business. We don’t care about that. We care about if you have love in your life, if people are looking out for you or why did you leave and not have conversations.

And so I feel like there is a little moment of that when he comes to the house… I think for me as an actress, there’s a way that I can get really deep into stuff. But also it’s like they remind you of the comedy too, right?

It’s finding the balance of: this can be a really dramatic moment for me, and I feel like going there with you, so I’m gonna go there. Then let the people [behind the scenes] tell you, okay, well less emotion about this or whatever.

I think, I personally am still trying to find the balance of like, knowing maybe we’ll get that satisfaction, if we get a season three where Tye can really go there, right? I think that’s always the thing that I’m working with, is knowing that we don’t get a lot of on camera time. Having that backstory be present, but also not trying to pour all of it into the times that we do see each other. Especially if it’s not serving what is actually happening now.

Sa’iyda: I think with Tye, we’ve always seen the go, go, go. The busy, busy, busy. My personal favorite was the Puerto Rico trip where she kept trying to reclaim her lost youth, and to disastrous effect.

Jerrie: Give her some drugs!

Sa’iyda: I never tried to chase drugs on vacation, but as a person who is now entering their late thirties, because that’s kind of where the characters are sitting, it felt a little too real. Your body’s like, no, you can’t.

You haven’t gotten there yet! [Jerrie turned 29 in January]

Jerrie: There’s stuff that I — I’ve always really had an old soul, so there’s stuff in college that I was like, I’m not doing it. I didn’t drink until I was 22. Okay? I was like, whatever this rubbing alcohol that y’all poisoning your bodies with, I don’t want it. I’m not doing it. I’m not getting into that habit. So I was never that kind of person. [On vacation] you see people are like, I bought the drinks! Then it’s like after the first night, everybody’s like, yeah, last night was crazy, so we’re just gonna chill. And don’t let somebody be going through a break-up because then they want you up all night.

We see that Tye needs this just as much as Quinn does, right? Because now something also is escaping her. And so to go on this vacation and to expect these girls to also be the same high energy or you know, whatever. It just feels like, oh girl, girl.

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We could have talked forever, but all good things must come to an end. Season two of Harlem wrapped this weekend on Prime Video, where you can watch all the episodes.

Francesca Farago Only Stayed On “Perfect Match” ‘Cause They Let Her Date a Woman

Swimwear entrepreneur Francesca Farago continues manifesting chaos on Netflix’s reality competition dating program Perfect Match, which unites singles from various Netflix reality shows to discover if they’ll have better relationships with each other than they had with whomever they were dating on their previous Netflix dating reality show. As discussed last week, Perfect Match‘s Francesca Faragao has made no secret of her bisexuality on a program that in fact boasts several bisexual women in its cast, and this week she told Variety that she was actually ready to depart the show until she learned they’d let her match with a woman.

“I reached a point where I wasn’t sure if I wanted to remain in the house anymore because I just didn’t know if there was someone for me there,” Francesca told Variety. “I knew who was there, men-wise, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can waste anyone’s time by continuing to match with these men that I know I’m not going to get along with.’ Then, I found out there was a possibility of me being matched with a female, and I was like, ‘in that case, I will stay for that.’ I wasn’t even sure if it was going to happen because it was a heterosexual show. But I’m glad that it happened, and I’m glad that that relationship happened as well. I just kind of switched up the game.”

But not every surprise about the game was a good one. While on the Viall Files podcast, Francesca revealed that she felt blindsided by the show’s sleeping arrangements. She’d thought men and women would be sleeping in separate houses, rather than sharing beds with each other. “When the rules were dropped that we had to match up and go sleep in the same bed, I bawled my eyes out for a day. And that wasn’t shown.” Apparently, she regretted having to share a bed with her ex on Too Hot to Handle, and didn’t want to do it again.

Francesca’s “Perfect Match” Journey Lead Her To Abbey Humphreys

Farago initially matched with Dom Gabriel of The Mole, and despite her determination to ensure he was unable to bond with any woman besides her, she ditched him quickly when Love is Blind‘s Damian Powers showed up on the grid.

Damian, a 31-year-old man with the personality of a flat fountain soda, is best known for shamefully declining to wed Giannia Gibelli, thus inspiring her to flee the venue in her wedding dress and trip in the mud. His infamy continued building in After the Altar, when, despite the fact that he was allegedly still dating Giannia, Francesca showed up at their cast reunion as Damian’s date. Unfortunately for Damian, his spark with Francesca on Perfect Match, while initially powerful, eventually dimmed for Francesca, who didn’t like how he kissed her arm.

Francesca was thus delighted to find herself sent on a date with Abbey Humphreys of Twentysomethings: Austin.

Both women are immediately delighted to be paired up — Abbey had been following Francesca since her season of Too Hot to Handle and can’t believe that Francesca is even prettier and more photoshopped in person.

“You’re like so hot,” Francesca says to Abbey, fingering her extensions. “I’m trying not to, like, stare at you.”

I noticed that the program was packed with bisexuals when the cast was initially announced but, like Francesca, I was unclear if said bisexuals would be given the opportunity to scissor each other. Francesca told Variety, “I think that was something that i kind of guided [them] towards during filming.”

Perfect Match’s Very Bisexual Episode

Francesca and Abbey’s date and eventual decision to match was not Episode Eight’s only nod towards their very bisexual cast. Kariselle also initiates a conversation with Joey about her bisexuality, saying she appreciates his validation and asking if he thinks his family would be cool with it too.

“They don’t give a fuck,” Joey responded emphatically.

Kariselle says her last love before Joey was a woman and she needs Joey to know that if she does end up marrying a man, “that doesn’t automatically make me straight. Like I’m still bi.” Joey says he is on board, and any man who isn’t should go fuck themselves. “It’s 2022, people should get their heads out of their asses,” he declares astutely.

As the episode continues, Francesca and Abbey’s relationship is tested when they completely fail their first couples challenge, which involves a blindfold and hay bales. Francesca can’t get too mad at Abbey, though, ’cause “she’s so cute.” That’s all we see of their relationship in this week’s batch of episodes, and the preview for next week’s final drop does show Francesca and Kariselle sucking face in a swimming pool, Francesca flirting with Will, and Francesca saying “don’t disrespect me like that, you piece of shit,” while Abbey kisses noted menace to society, Bartise from Love is Blind.

Francesca is In a Relationship With Jesse Sullivan

However, the real reason Francesca Farago seems unable to settle on a suitor on Perfect Match may have been that she’d actually already found her perfect match: Francesca is currently in a relationship with TikTok star Jesse Sullivan, a trans Dad with 2.9 million followers and although they weren’t dating while Francesca appeared on Perfect Match, they’d already met and connected.

According to their TiKTok storytime, Francesca and Jesse met in 2020 when Francesca was assigned to interview Jesse for a TikTok Pride feature — they clicked and started dating, but their relationship stalled when Francesca had to move back to Canada for four months due to Visa issues. They tried and failed to make it work long distance. After some months jaunting around Europe, Francesca returned to Los Angeles, at which point she’d already signed up to appear on Perfect Match. Francesca and Jesse kept hooking up and seeing each other casually in the lead-up to the show’s filming in Panama.

Francesca said that although she learned a lot from her experience on Perfect Match, the minute she left that villa, she texted Jesse something like, hey, are you still single, I’m traumatized and I want to hang out. They’ve been together every day since and are currently renovating their dream home.

“He’s just a nice normal Dad,” she told Variety. “He’s so sweet. To have these aspects of public hate from that just proves that the more representation we have, the more positive it will be because people will see that we’re just normal people.”

On the Viall Files podcast, Francesca said that “he’s definitely the one, 100 percent.”

“Perfect Match”‘s Francesca Farago Pulled Out a Woman’s Tampon With Her Teeth and We’re Obsessed

Netlflix’s latest reality television dating competition program, Perfect Match, is just barely “so bad that it’s good.” It lacks the genius Netflix has somehow consistently delivered with its reality competition television department — the irrational romance of The Ultimatum and Love is Blind, the goofy innovation of The Circle or the horny ridiculousness of Too Hot to Handle. But what Perfect Match *does* have is a collection of talent from all of those programs — and from The Mole, Sexy Beast and Twentysomethings: Austin, none of which I’ve not seen — several of whom are bisexual, including Francesca Farago. You wouldn’t know it from the plot of Perfect Match, though!

See, Perfect Match is attempting to sort these Netflix Reality Stars into allegedly perfect opposite-sex pairings. Contestants must be “matched” by the end of the day — meaning just like on Noah’s Ark, one (1) man and one (1) woman have agreed to spend the night together —  in order to remain on the show. Every day they compete in really stupid games to test their compatibility with their chosen matches, and the winners earn a date and also the chance to choose new contestants to bring into the house to replace the previous evening’s rejects.

Unfortunately, there is no room in this paradigm for Perfect Match to explore what would be the perfect match for me and a television show: girl-on-girl action. Two of the contestants at the show’s open (and a few who’ve yet to join), Francesca Farago and Kariselle Snow, are in fact bisexual and yet have not made out. (Kariselle actually appeared on world’s greatest reality television program, the bisexual season of Are You The One?) Kariselle immediately latches on to The Circle winner Joey — they apparently hooked up in the past and also both really enjoy yelling and PDA.

And then there’s swimwear entrepreneur Francesco Farago. In the same way that someone tall and strong and team-oriented might be told they should be play basketball, everything about Francesca’s physical appearance and personality suggests that she should be out here Influencing. She was born to Influence. Like she popped out of the womb with an Airup endorsement deal. Anyhow, Francesca famously hooked up with Hayley on the first season of Too Hot To Handle, thus losing cash for her cast. (She also had a romance with a boy and I forget his name who cares.) 

Following her season of Too Hot to Handle, Francesca began dating fellow influencer Demi Sims. Everything I know about this relationship I learned between the hours of one and two AM several months ago and was like… wow in 2003 this match-up would’ve been a Maxim photoshoot but here in the bold new world of 2023, it’s an actual relationship!! Wow!!!

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Anyhow they broke up. (Francesca is currently dating influencer Jessi Sulli, who identifies as “plant based” and trans.) Unlike Kari, Francesca is immediately OUT AND ABOUT on Perfect Match. At the first night’s cocktail mixer, an opportunity for our men to wear loafers without socks and for our women to wear very intricate microphone-friendly bikini-ish contraptions, Francesca asks Zay (of The Ultimatum) if it is a “red flag” to him that she has “dated women,” because Zay’s ex, Rae, is also a bisexual. This is a very bizarre question but okay. Anyhow, Zay says it’s not a red flag, in fact it is “honestly attractive.”

But Francesca’s most notable bisexual chaos move occurs during a beach game in which contestants have to guess whether or not their partner answered “fact” or “cap” to various statements like “I’m still hung up on an ex.” If they loose, a bucket of water is unleashed on their head.

Nick Lachey laid out the true/false statement: “your partner said that they have had a sexident in the past.” I immediately googled “what is a sexident?” and Urban Dictionary informed me that it is:

An accident that occurs during some type of sex act. For example, skinning one’s knee on a car door while having mad passionate car sex.

Surprisingly to me, a person with really poor hand-eye coordination, not everybody on this beachy stage reported undergoing a sexident of their own. But our very own Francesca Farago dared to come forth and boldly share her own experience, one which LIT UP our Office Slack for the majority of this very morning:

   

I’M SORRY BUT ….

THAT IS NOT A SEXIDENT

THAT IS A MOVE

Harlem’s Jerrie Johnson and Meagan Good on Making the Queer Best Friend More Than a Trope

Friendship is truly one of the most important things in life. Your friends are there for you when no one else is with a sympathetic ear and an open heart. That’s probably why so many television shows are focused on friendship. In my humble opinion, some of the best friendships on television are on shows that feature Black female friendships. If you go back and watch Living Single, it’s STILL a pretty perfect show.

When Harlem premiered in 2021, it joined the pantheon of Black women friendships on television. No matter what happens in their personal lives, the four friends at the heart of the show — Camille, Tye, Angie, and Quinn — always have each other’s backs. Their friendship is what drives the show forward, and it’s what keeps it grounded. Season two is no different; in fact, the theme of friendship is ramped up as each woman discovers that when you need them, your girls will ALWAYS be there for you.

Harlem season two started airing this weekend on Prime Video. I had the immense pleasure of talking to Jerrie Johnson (Tye) and Meagan Good (Camille) ahead of the season premiere. They are both incredibly talented and freaking GORGEOUS with the kindest hearts. See what they had to say about the power of Black female friendship, Black joy, and making the queer best friend a part of the everyday television landscape.

This interview was lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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Sa’iyda: I got to watch the season early and it was awesome, so congrats on an amazing season two. My first question is for Meagan. Why do you think it’s important to portray women’s friendships on television, more specifically, Black women’s friendships on television? Because that was such a big part of the season.

Meagan Good: For a lot of reasons. One, I feel like it’s such a gift. It really is one of the best things that God has given us on the planet, and I think that when Tracy talked about originally taking this show out, she had created this show before Girls Trip and she took it around town and everyone was like, “Yeah, but is Black women friendships really a thing that people are going to want to watch?” And she’s like, “Yeah, but what about Girlfriends and Living Single and blah, blah, blah?” And it wasn’t until Girls Trip made 150 million that they were like, okay, what’s that show you had again? I think that it’s really important that we celebrate each other, we celebrate each other’s wins, that we’re able to cover each other, pray for each other, not be jealous of each other, be there at our darkest moments to lift each other up, all the things that friendship is.

But I think what’s unique to Black women is what we experience in the world as Black women, whether it’s something that we’re dealing with in the show where you’re not getting the same medical care… There’s a young woman who just passed away who was like, I want to say she was like 27, and it was her second baby. She kept saying that something’s wrong, something’s wrong. They’re like, you’re fine, you’re fine. You’re strong. She passed away. So looking at the things that happen specifically in our experience, not to say that they couldn’t happen to someone else, but just at the same rate that young Black men are dying on the street from police brutality, there are things that are specific and unique to our experiences in life.

Celebrating our strength, celebrating our moments where it’s okay to be weak and lean on each other, celebrating all the things that are very specific and unique to us, I think, is important not just to us, but for other people to see as well because I think it strengthens us all and it lets us know how truly capable we are and how amazing we are and how much endurance we have, but it also gives us the permission to not have to work that hard. We should be also covering each other, not just Black women, but all women.

Sa’iyda: Yeah, for sure. And Jerrie, one of the things that I love so much about this show is that the queer best friend is a part of the friend group and not just the designated best friend, because I feel like that’s a truth that we’ve seen so many times.

Jerrie Johnson: Yes.

Sa’iyda: And there’s always the sassy black friend and the sassy queer friend. But in this show, Tye is just one of the girls. How does it feel to get to play not only the best friend, but one of the main four characters?

Jerrie: I feel like I give main character energy, so there’s no way that I was going to be anything else. I mean, they would’ve had to rewrite the script, and I’m being quite honest about that. So I feel like, I don’t know, it’s like when you’re in a house, that’s your house. You’re not excited to be in the house because it’s just your house. That’s where you live. I mean, there can be excitement around it, but that’s just where you live. So I just feel like it’s the natural way that things are supposed to be. I’m just happy that I get to be in this seat for such a pivotal moment in TV history.

Meagan: And I’d like to add to that, too. I think at the end of the day, these women are very specific and they’re very fully formed human beings. The same way that you get to see Camille explore her love life, or Quinn explore her love life, or Angie explore her love life, I don’t think it’s about the love life and who you’re dating. I think it’s about the individual and what their experience is in dating and what are they struggling with. What is their trauma? What is their day to day? What are they doing at work? What’s their situation with this or that? I think it’s about exploring the characters, and that’s a part of it. [When] you are a part of the friend group, you my girlfriend, you my homegirl. Who you date has nothing to do with it and so I love that.

Sa’iyda: This is one of the first shows where the best friend is… in the main core characters of Insecure, there was no queer character. There was no queer character on Living Single.

Sorry, my cat has decided she wants to say hi.

Meagan: Hi, baby.

Sa’iyda: So Harlem is really kind of the first, if not one of the first where it doesn’t matter, but it matters.

Jerrie: And I think there is a layer of… It’s a microaggression of homophobia that can happen when you have a queer person, for me as a queer woman, entering into groups of straight friends where people are skeptical of like, “Oh, do you like me because you like women and I’m a woman.” Right? The fact that that’s not a thing, that nobody’s skeptical of “whether or not you are attracted to me because you are into women.” Which is a horrible assumption that people make, which is why then when you see either the queer person is in the back of the storyline, or it has to be that the queer people are together because queer people and straight people don’t mingle in real life. And it’s like, what? That is silly.

But that’s why I think it is, as you said, such a pivotal moment because it’s just like, oh yeah, we’re together and nobody has an air of skepticism around anybody else. It just is what it is.

I think there was such a taste and a hunger for the show because it was the first time. I mean, that’s one of the reasons I was like, oh my God, the queer best friend is 1, 2, 3, 4, not 5. Her love life is just, her very messy love life, is—

Jerrie: Don’t talk trash about Tye. Thank you.

Sa’iyda: But it’s allowed to be messy in a way that usually on a different show, whether it’s white, Black or anything else. Camille’s love life would be allowed to be messy, but Tye would have to be perfect.

Jerrie: Right.

Sa’iyda: We get to have the queer character that has the messiest love life of the bunch, which makes for more fun, in my opinion! And the character doesn’t fall into those tropes of just being there for the comic relief moment.

I’ve noticed that as a group, you all have become very close, and there’s something palpable about the joy that you all bring to the characters. A season so focused on joy, how did that feel? Especially when we live in such a precarious time of television, when we don’t know if there’s going to be a next season just because of the way things are going. Would you feel settled if this was it?

Meagan: If this was it? No, I wouldn’t feel settled. I would feel settled that we made something that we’re all really, really proud of and we played characters that we’ve really wanted to play, and we’ve brought things into questions across the board that haven’t been discussed traditionally and have been glazed over or made caricatures or just touched on the tip, but not really gone down the path.

Jerrie: Just the tip. (laughs)

Meagan: I think that, just the tip, but I think in that sense, I would feel settled and proud, but I wouldn’t feel settled in the sense of, I think we have a lot more to do and I think we found a unique way of addressing and going into these spaces with disarming people and making them say like, oh yeah, we should be talking about this. I think we found a really unique way to have a lot of fun and to have a lot of heart and to have impactful conversations that create safe spaces for other women to feel seen and heard, and they should be.

Jerrie: I feel like I wouldn’t feel settled if this is a last season. I think the questions that you’re asking about Tye being such an amazing character in this time of television, I think what I love about the character is that we didn’t start off with, life was so hard and now she’s gay because everything was just horrible. You get to know her first, which is something that we don’t usually do with characters like this, if ever. So I think that it would be important for people to now dig into what is that life that Tye was running away from in Georgia?

And so I would feel like Tye was left hanging, if this was the last season. I would feel like for just the conversation as a whole… it’s like, yeah, we knocked on the door and we’re like, oh my God, hey, this character is here, but we didn’t get the house tour.

I want us to have the house tour.

Lesbian Weddings on TV: From Carol and Susan to Bette and Tina

The history of the TV lesbian wedding starts with Friends and takes a long and winding road towards this very day, when the Lesbian Television Titans Bette and Tina will be getting (re) married on the season finale of The L Word: Generation Q.

Let’s take a look back at all the weddings that have carried us from then to here.

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1996: Friends, “The One With the Lesbian Wedding”

31.6 million people tuned in to see Newt Gingrich’s half-sibling, Candace, officiate the ceremony between Ross’s ex-wife Carol and her partner Susan — the first lesbian wedding on American television. (The first same-sex marriage was between two men on Roseanne.) After Carol’s parents bailed on the ceremony — a staple of lesbian weddings on TV — Carol wanted to call the whole thing off, but instead Ross proudly walked her down the aisle. Two network affiliates refused to air the episode, and despite the buzz and high ratings, only four people called NBC to complain. It probably helped that Carol and Susan did not actually kiss at their own wedding. But Lea Delaria was there and the hats were ICONIC.

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2002: Queer as Folk, “The Wedding”

In typical QAF fashion, a bulk of this episode — the first same-sex wedding on cable TV — was consumed by the gay male characters making disparaging jokes about lesbians! The couple faced numerous obstacles on the way to the symbolic aisle, including Lindsay’s parents refusing to help pay for her wedding despite covering her sisters’ three weddings because Lindsay’s wasn’t “real.” There’s mix-ups with every element of the ceremony itself, leading Mel and Lindsay to call the whole thing off. But the gay boys rally together to save the day and provide a splendid little venue where the officiant declares them “married in our eyes.” They walk themselves down the aisle.

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2005: The Simpsons, “There’s Something About Marrying”

The first same-sex wedding in an animated series arrived during a time when marriage equality was a hot-button issue following the success of several anti-equality amendments during the 2004 election. Inspired by San Francisco’s 2004 same-sex wedding bonanza, the plot concerns the Simpsons’ home of Springfield legalizing same-sex marriage to improve their waning tourism industry, which leads to Homer starting a side-hustle as a gay wedding officiant and Marge confronting her own homophobia when her sister, Patty, turns out to be a lesbian. Gambling websites were posting odds on who’d come out in the episode and 10.5 million tuned in to witness it, the season’s highest ratings. Although the wedding ended up getting canceled mid-ceremony when Veronica turned out to be a cis man who’d posed as a woman to succeed at golf (the mid-aughts, everybody!!!), it was still lauded by GLAAD and queer media, and Homer did marry other lesbian couples throughout the course of the episode.

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2009: All My Children

“For most of Bianca Montgomery’s life, love had been hard to come by and, in the rare instance where her affections were requited, the romance took place almost entirely off-screen. But with Reese Williams, Bianca was finally given the opportunity to love another person, on-screen. Their love story started (off-screen) in Paris — the love-at-first-sight story that Bianca deserved — but became real when the couple (and their daughters) reunited in Pine Valley.

Soon after Reese’s arrival, it becomes clear how serious this relationship is: they have a new daughter, Reese has secretly designed and built Bianca’s Parisian dream house, and Reese tearfully proposes to her “beautiful Bianca.” They share deep kisses…a far cry from the chaste kisses that Bianca had previously been afforded.

Originally, the couple planned to host a commitment ceremony in Bianca’s hometown but once Connecticut legalized gay marriage in October 2008, the celebration moved to a couple of states over. Bianca and Reese exchanged vows on Valentine’s Day 2009 in the first ever same-sex wedding on daytime television, but, sadly, their marriage was annulled shortly thereafter.” (Natalie)

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2011: Private Practice, “Heaven Can Wait”

Technically this is the first lesbian wedding on a network TV drama, but most remember Callie and Arizona’s wedding on Grey’s Anatomy as the ceremony relevant to that specific milestone. After a 20 year secret relationship, Addison’s mother Bizzy and her girlfriend Susan chose to marry despite Susan’s dire diagnosis of stage IV ovarian cancer. Addison performed a Hail Mary surgery on Susan at Bizzy’s urgency, which Susan emerged from feeling better — well enough to participate in the wedding Addison planned for them both. However, it turned out Susan wasn’t actually better at all, she was just trying really hard to make it to her own wedding. She collapsed and died after the ceremony, and Bizzy’s grief led her to commit suicide shortly thereafter. Bury Your Gays at its finest! 

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2011: Grey’s Anatomy, “White Wedding“

The first lesbian wedding in a network drama between two long-running characters was bittersweet. Callie struggled throughout the episode with her homophobic mother who reminded her that the marriage wasn’t legal, they’re just “playing dress-up,” and then refused to attend, which also meant her father couldn’t attend. Callie, in the grand tradition of seemingly all lesbian brides on television, decided to call the whole thing off after the minister had to cancel. But again everybody rallied! Miranda gave Callie an inspirational talk and the father of Callie and Arizona’s child, Mark, walked Callie down the aisle. Callie’s Dad showed up late for the party and it was beautiful and nothing hurt!

The weird thing about this wedding was how it was paired with Meredith and Derek’s storyline: they met a baby they wanted to adopt and decided that very day to just bop in to City Hall and get married to enable them to perform a legal adoption, even skipping the Calizona wedding to do so. It’s unclear how the show itself intended this juxtaposition to land, but it ended up feeling a bit like straight people flaunting their privileges while two queer women struggled to find joy despite their relative lack thereof.

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2013: The Fosters, “I Do”

“Stef and Lena Adams Foster are the closest thing we’ve ever had to a lesbian Coach and Tammy Taylor in our lives. Their love was the stabilizing force for everyone around them, especially the gaggle of children that were always running in and out of their home. Sometimes they even made time for themselves! Their wedding was extra special because it was the first lesbian TV wedding after the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act in 2012, and because it took place on the network that started out as a megaphone in Baptist bigot Pat Robertson’s media empire, before it became ABC Family, and then Freeform. Knowing an interracial lesbian couple got married on his former network absolutely ruined his day! It also made us cry, but for good reasons.” -Heather Hogan

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2015: Last Tango in Halifax, “Old Ain’t Dead”

After being praised for the love story granted to late-in-life lesbian Caroline, her wedding to very pregnant Kate (the only woman of color on the show) was immediately followed by Kate getting killed in a post-wedding car accident. Sally Wainwright (who later went on to be the showrunner for Gentleman Jack) defended her choice at the time as a way to bring Caroline closer to her mother. As Kaite Welsh wrote at the time, “she has killed off a queer woman to redeem a homophobic, judgmental snob who refused to go to her own daughter’s wedding.” A heartwarming event followed by a devastating death, this was one of many that contributed to the LGBT Fans Deserve Better movement of 2016 that challenged the Bury Your Gays trope. It also brought back memories for fans of Los Hombres de Paco, who saw Silvia murdered directly after her wedding to her girlfriend in 2010.

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2015: Glee, “A Wedding”

Definitely the only lesbian TV wedding where the happy lesbian couple invited their gay male friends to join the ceremony in a double wedding held in the Indiana barn where one of the brides was born, Brittany and Santana got hitched mere months prior to the federal legalization of same-sex marriage. It honestly seemed extraordinary at the time that a network show would dare to have two queer OTPs, let alone give them a double wedding — and while it was a lot of fanservice, the fans deserved it for our service. The ceremony included an acknowledgment from officiant Burt Hummel of how unjust it was that they had to travel to Indiana from Ohio to marry legally and an affirmation of the importance of marriage equality. Jennifer Coolidge, Gloria Estefan and Gina Gershon performed “I’m So Excited!” and that was pretty wild. Bonus: Sue Sylvester manages to manipulative Santana’s Abuela into changing her mind about skipping the wedding, thwarting the lesbian TV wedding trope of “at least one relative missing bc of homophobia.”

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2015: One Big Happy, “A Tale of Two Hubbies“

This NBC sitcom was heralded as the first to have a lesbian lead since Ellen but debuted to middling reviews and ended up swiftly cancelled. It centered on two chronically single thirtysomethings: Lizzie, a lesbian who has a baby with her best friend Luke (a straight man), but finds their co-parenting best friendship threatened when he falls for Prudence. In what ended up being the series finale, Luke f*cks up and misses his wedding to Pru so… Lizzie goes ahead and makes it happen all on her own, marrying Prudence herself to stop Pru from getting deported. Despite the frustration that a lesbian is sacrificing her own shot at marrying someone she’s actually dating with in order to help straight people, it was the first time we saw on TV a lesbian being able to exploit the institution of marriage for practical rather than romantic purposes, which is equality! (The second time was a year later on Shameless, when V married Svetlana.)

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2016: Hollyoaks, Episode 4444

British soap Hollyoaks sent Esther and Kim through several rounds of drama before the two finally tied the knot in an effort to prove to everybody and themselves that they were in it for real this time. Unfortunately Kim is kidnapped mere hours after the wedding, causing Esther to think Kim has left her, but then she returned a few weeks later.

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2017: The Last Man On Earth, “Gender Friender”

This sitcom about the sole survivors of a pandemic that wiped out most of humanity in 2020 (lol) saw the mid-final-season wedding of Erica and Gail under some interesting circumstances — their fellow survivor Carol complaining that Gail was spending too much time with her girlfriend’s children and not enough with her “legal grandchildren” (because Gail had adopted Carol in the previous season because Carol wanted her twins to have a grandmother), thus over-valuing a relationship that wasn’t legally binding. So Gail and Erica fight about it — Gail says they already live together and raise a kid together and all they lack is a “stupid piece of paper.” Erica doesn’t think the piece of paper is stupid! So Gail eventually caves and the very next day, they’re married by Tandy, who mostly uses his officiant duties to further his own storyline about trying to prove that he’s a feminist, peppered with jokes about bushes, strap-ons, penetration and scissoring!

It says something, maybe, that even when you live in a society of seven (7) grown adults with no recognized government, the concept of “legal marriage” still holds such immense weight.

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2018: Steven Universe, “Reuinted“

“When Garnet revealed that she is actually a fusion of two lesbian gems, Ruby and Sapphire, it threw the entire cartoon-loving queer world into chaotic raptures. We’re only used to bad surprises! This was the best surprise! They stayed fused together, almost all the time, but they got married as their solo gem selves. It was groundbreaking for sure, the first all-ages series to have a queer wedding! It was on Cartoon Network for heck’s sake! And it was also revolutionary for the way it flipped gender expectations, and then used Ruby and Sapphire’s wedding reception as a showdown for one of the series’ scariest Big Bads. “I am the will of two gems to care for each other, to protect each other from any threat,” Garnet says, powering up her fists in her wedding dress. “No matter how vast or how cruel. You couldn’t stop me 5,750 years ago and you can’t stop me now!” The power of love, emphasis on power!” – Heather Hogan

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2018: Sense8, “Amor Vincit Omnia“

This is the first lesbian TV wedding with a trans bride but it’s also unique for how queer it felt: not simply because Nomi shared a consciousness with a bunch of other pansexuals in attendance but also their non-traditional wedding garb, the gay fairies handing out weed brownies and the gloriously diverse raucous dance party that followed. The techno lights on the Eiffel Tower. And afterwards, all the sensates retiring to their respective hotel rooms for one final, ecstatic, incredibly graphic, super-queer, beautiful, smashed-together sex scene, culminating in body-swapping leading to a giant pile of naked sweaty bodies fucking spliced with flashbacks from the whole series. It was an honor to witness this orgy, I still can’t believe it happened at all.

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2018: Orange is the New Black, “Be Free“

Consider for a moment that getting “prison married” is likely one of gay marriage’s earliest historical incarnations and you’ll understand the importance of this toxic union between Piper Chapman and Alex Vause. Conducted by Nicky in a DIY kippah and tallit the day before Piper’s unexpected sudden release, this hasty little occasion was full of heart and a (surprisingly unusual) example of chosen family upholding and creating their own traditions with the tools they have to do so. Its lack of legality would dog Piper throughout her post-release season as her loved ones question her loyalty and dedication to Alex.

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2019: Gentleman Jack, “Are You Still Talking?”

“Anne Lister’s wedding to Ann Walker is generally considered to be the first gay wedding in Great Britain. In fact, in 2018, a blue plaque — indicating it as a place of historical significance in the UK — was placed at Holy Trinity church in Goodramgate, York, where Lister and Walker married in 1834. It was the city’s first LGBTQ history plaque, and it’s rimmed with a rainbow. Gentleman Jack depicted Anne and Ann’s wedding beautifully, at the end of the first season. They took communion together and exchanged rings, quietly, in their own pew, promising love and fidelity for the rest of their lives. Their union granted Anne Lister’s her greatest wish, and it was as swoony as she — and we — had imagined it would be.” -Heather Hogan

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2020: The Chi, “Foe ‘Nem”

Dre and Nina’s wedding in The Chi‘s third season premiere did something more TV lesbian weddings really ought to do, which is follow up the ceremony with very hot wedding night strap-on sex. “We never, and I do mean literally never, get to see black queer sex scenes like that on television,” said Carmen of the scene. “I joke a lot about how great Lena Waithe’s sex scenes are, but more than that — they are important. It takes a stand that we’re here, too.”

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2021: Wynona Earp, “Old Souls“

“One of the best things about Wynonna Earp‘s queer characters is that, while Nicole was seemingly introduced to be Waverly’s love interest, and Waverly’s love interest she was, over the course of the show’s four-but-should-have-been-more seasons, Nicole became inextricably intertwined with more characters than just Waverly, more plotlines than just their relationship. To the point that, if Waverly and Nicole had broken up, neither of them would have been able to disappear into the parking lot of no return. But luckily, they did not break up, and instead got engaged and spent the series finale planning, saving, and executing the big day. It was Wynonna’s show, but Waverly was Wynonna’s world, and Nicole was Wynonna’s best friend, so it didn’t feel out of place for this big, beautiful gay wedding to be the centerpiece of the last episode. They were surrounded by family, of both the natal and chosen variety, with fellow queer people, and with empty chairs symbolizing those who couldn’t be with them. It was a beautiful conclusion to their journey.” – Valerie Anne

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2021: Legends of Tomorrow, “The Fungus Amongus“

“Legends of Tomorrow did something with Sara and Ava’s relationship that happens too rarely on television (partially because TV shows with queer leads don’t tend to run as long these days…) It took these two already-out, adult queer characters and introduced them as perfect strangers, then slowly, over the course of many seasons, followed them through meeting, butting heads, making up, flirting, courting, dating, fighting, moving in together, getting married, and eventually planning to have a baby together. (A baby made up of their joint DNA because aliens.) Ava went from enemy of the week to co-captain, and that really got solidified in Season 6. The entire emotional undercurrent of that season was about Sara and Ava’s relationship; Sara was going to propose to Ava but got interrupted by an alien abduction, and they spent the rest of the season fighting to get back to each other so they could get married. On TV all kinds of couples get engaged then married two episodes later, so it felt unique for many reasons, including the long buildup and eventual wedding. It was a celebration of their queer love for each other, and they were surrounded by their found family, and it was a beautiful, genuine moment. One of the best in the long run of the show. And honestly, after how Season 7 ended up going, probably should have been their series finale.” – Valerie Anne

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2022: The L Word: Generation Q, “Looking Ahead“

Prior to Bette and Tina’s big day, The L Word franchise had racked up a bevy of unrealized engagements: Tanya and Dana’s “first corporate-sponsored lesbian wedding” was canceled when the brides both fell for other women, Shane left Carmen at the altar in Canada, and Finley interrupted Sophie and Dani’s wedding to declare her love for Sophie.

But then along came the Season Three finale of The L Word: Generation Q. (For which the recap will be finished posted later today!) After years of on-and-off dating and one marriage and divorce already behind them, one of television’s more storied lesbian couples promised to spend the rest of their lives together, in front of a lot of their friends, their daughter Angie and, of course, Ilene Chaiken.

Woke “Yellowstone” Cowgirls Kiss, Ruin Real Americans’ Favorite Show

Until this week, the only thing I knew about the TV show Yellowstone is that Republicans fucking love it. I have guessed a few things from the commercials, such as: Kevin Costner is the prickish president of the Wild West, and the father/grandfather to a lot of dillholes in cowboy hats. There’s a bunch of horse-riding involved in Kevin Costner’s machinations. Another woman one time pulled a knife on whoever Piper Perabo is on the show. And I think there’s a prequel where Helen Mirren goes around pointing a shotgun at a lot of men, saying, “Get your ass outta here!” It’s the only show people from my hometown post about on Facebook, which says way more than any summary I could give you. This past week, especially, Yellowstone viewers have been in absolute hysterics on social media, screaming WOKE! WOKE! WOKE RUINING WOKERS! Which, of course means something gay happened.

I watched only the one episode, “The Dream Is Not Me,” because Yellowstone is like five seasons long  — and so now here’s what I know: Kevin Costner is actually the governor of Montana and the patriarch of a cattle ranch. Piper Perabo is his love interest/antagonist. His assistant is named Clara, and he finds out she’s gay at the same time we do: when he peeps her kissing another woman, who’s wearing the most enormous lesbian belt buckle you have ever seen in your entire life, at the county fair. He’s not bothered by it, and actually uses their big gay public affection as an excuse to do some of his own boring straight public affection. I don’t even think the belt buckle girl has a name. Maybe I should give her one. Patty. No, Patti. Clara and Patti kiss in the background so Kevin Costner and Piper Perabo can kiss in the foreground (behind his cowboy hat).

So by my mathematical estimation, that’s 48 hours of Kevin Costner on a horse doing cow things, and two seconds of Clara and Patti smooching. Alas:

Even Yellowstone has gone woke, and gay!

Sellouts! 🖕

— Aubrey Huff (@aubrey_huff) December 20, 2022

https://twitter.com/Fuzzy_DunIop/status/1605298638300893202

Disney ruined Willow, Yellowstone went woke, everything is woke. I’ve had enough of liberal bullshit. I’m rewatching the sopranos.

— Kenny Powers (@kennypowersok) December 22, 2022

https://twitter.com/supracer71/status/1606984164246519808

https://twitter.com/Vito772424/status/1604672698495291392

https://twitter.com/doesntworse/status/1607451230397403136

Yellowstone is trying to go #woke They are feeling the audience out this season.

— Lori (@LoriLit30300097) December 24, 2022

One other thing I noticed during my one-episode watchalong is that Kevin Costner’s family are THE VILLAINS. I think maybe this show was already WOKE??? Either way, you can’t fight the moonlight. Good luck, Clara and Patti!

You can stream the first four seasons of Yellowstone on Peacock and the most recent season on Paramount+, which you probably know as the Star Trek/Good Fight app.

Looking Back at the Queer Episodes of “Say Yes to the Dress”

When my fiancee and I got engaged, the first thing my son said to me was, “we have to go to Yes to the Dress!” I promised him that the next time we went to New York, we would absolutely schedule a trip to Kleinfeld Bridal, the home of Say Yes to the Dress.

I’ve been watching Say Yes to the Dress since it premiered back in 2007. I’ve always been obsessed with weddings and all that goes into them, and I love low-stakes drama, so a show like SYTTD is perfect. It’s a study in the human condition, and there’s a lot of really pretty dresses to look at. What’s not to love? As one of TLC’s most popular shows, it was always on, and over time it became one of my comfort shows. I legit signed up for Discovery+ just so I could watch SYTTD because I had watched the limited amount of episodes available on Hulu a million times and was bored. As a result, my kiddo became as enamored with the Kleinfeld crew as I was. My fiancee has also been subjected to watching the show ad nauseam, and now she has opinions and favorites as well.

In July of 2021, my kiddo, fiancee and I, along with my best friend, were all set to spend 90 minutes at Kleinfeld. My Say Yes to the Dress dreams were coming true, and I couldn’t wait. I did go in knowing I wasn’t going to “say yes” because we haven’t set a wedding date, but I wanted to get an idea of what was out there (I’m a Gemini moon/Libra rising. Indecision is in the stars for me). We had a lovely time with our consultant Amber, who was not only an absolute pro at picking out dresses but also at dealing with a queer couple. She didn’t bat an eyelash when I introduced her to my female fiancee; she was more confused by how adamant I was about not buying a dress that day.

I always find it interesting to look at the progression of how the staff at Kleinfeld handles LGBTQ+ brides. When the show started, same-sex marriage was only legal in a handful of states. One of the first episodes with two brides is “Family Dynamics” from season three, which aired in 2009. Middle aged brides Beth and Joy come in looking for pantsuits for their “informal” wedding. It’s hard to tell what flummoxes the consultants more: the mere existence of two brides or finding pantsuits in a store full of wedding dresses. Even though consultant Sarah isn’t new to the store, the couple is her first same-sex couple, but she insists it doesn’t matter. The challenge for her is going to be finding a wide-leg palazzo pantsuit at Kleinfeld. When Sarah pulls SYTTD mainstay Randy into the quest for pants, he also insists that even though there are two brides, they won’t be treated any differently, unless that bride is looking for pants.

Because this is one of the first episodes featuring a same-sex couple (they never say the word “lesbian” or even “queer” in later seasons) there are a lot of these affirmations that the brides won’t be treated any differently. It feels like overkill when you’re watching it now, but it was likely reassuring back in 2009 for brides who may have been afraid they’d be treated differently at the store. Here’s the problem: There’s only one suit in the store, and the two brides aren’t sample size. Joy, who says she never saw herself in a wedding dress, is more easily convinced to try one on than Beth, who is pretty firm on her desire for pants. “It’s like squeezing a 10 pound sausage into a five pound casing,” Beth admits after attempting to try on the only suit. Thankfully designer Amy Michelson is doing an in-store trunk show, and she designs the exact kind of outfit Beth is envisioning.

I’ll admit I don’t know everything there is to know about bridal fashion. But I know Say Yes to the Dress, and Kleinfeld is usually at the forefront of what’s new and trendy. It boasts over 1,500 dresses in the store, which means it really is the best place for options. So while there’s always some new “it” dress, the option for someone who wants pants is seriously limited. Also, as with all mainstream fashion sectors, bridal fashion is historically fatphobic and limited in its sizing options, especially when it comes to stores like Kleinfeld that rely on sample sizes, further limiting options for brides who don’t fit a conventional image.

In season 15, episode two, brides Jaimee and Lisa come in looking for outfits for their wedding. Jamiee wants a dress, and Lisa wants not a pantsuit, but a wedding jumpsuit. This episode aired in 2017, and unlike in 2009 when Beth’s pantsuit wants were seen as inconvenient, Lisa now has options for jumpsuits. Wedding jumpsuits have grown in popularity since the late 2010s, and even though consultant Shay had a total meltdown over the idea of finding a jumpsuit (or even a two-piece set with pants) for Lisa, he was able to do so without having to have something customized.

There are a lot of things that changed for same-sex brides between 2009 and 2017 of course. The main thing being that same-sex marriage became federally recognized in 2015. But even before that, the slow trickle of legalization across states in the earlier part of that decade saw more brides going to Kleinfeld for their wedding dress dreams. After that first episode, it became less about the fact that two brides were welcome in the store and more about the fact that wedding dress shopping is hard, no matter who you’re marrying.

When two brides come in together, it means they want a level of coordination, which is hard, because they are ultimately two individuals with their own styles and opinions. So when the consultants are running around and freaking out, it’s because they’re being tasked with something difficult: How do you blend two different styles into something that looks cohesive? Some brides want to see what the other is wearing, and some don’t, which poses a fun challenge. We see this in Jamiee and Lisa’s episode, as well as in a season 16 episode featuring celesbian chef Cat Cora and her then-fiancee Nicole. It’s sweet that they want that element of tradition.

Tradition, of course, is baked into the bridal world. One of the first things the consultants say is: “tell me about the groom.” Over time, that question became “tell me about your fiancee.” It may seem small, and to be quite honest, I don’t even know when the question changed. But it’s a big deal when it comes to inclusivity. It may cause more of a guessing game, especially when you get a queer bride without her partner, but it shows you how far we’ve come.

In 2017, Say Yes to the Dress had another first in the name of inclusivity and progress. Episode four of season 15 introduces audiences to Gigi, Kleinfeld’s first transgender bride. Paired with Shay, the store’s first male consultant (who is a gay Black man), Gigi showed the store (and audiences) that trans women can be just like any other bride. Much like in season three, there is a lot of explaining as to what it means to be a trans woman, geared toward straight, cis viewers. It’s uncomfortably invasive for those of us in the know, but when you think about the people who watch the show, it makes sense. They ask Gigi and her mom when she first knew she was trans and what it’s like to be the parent to a trans woman. One question Randy asks Gigi’s mom is “did you ever think you’d be here?” to which she honestly answers that it’s a journey. Cringey as it is, it’s an important step to show a Latina trans woman who has an affirming parent in her life.

The way they presented Gigi paved the way for Chloe, a trans woman bride in a same-sex couple who we meet in season 20. Chloe’s trans identity is presented as fact, and while they go into her backstory, there are less invasive questions from those around her. Chloe’s story comes from her. (Fun fact: We had the same consultant!) She’s clearly still finding her way, but she’s so excited, and again, it shows viewers that trans brides are just like any other brides.

Tracking these changes on SYTTD goes to show that progress can be found in unexpected ways and places. A few episodes before Chloe’s in season 20, there is an episode featuring a throuple who are all marrying each other. One of the brides is married to a man, and they both fell in love with another woman. The wedding is between all three of them, so not only do you have a two-bride wedding but also a poly relationship. It’s presented as a matter of fact instead of being sensationalized, and while their entourage admits the situation is unconventional, they’re very accepting of the union.

When you juxtapose that against another season 15 episode, it’s fascinating to see how our understanding of polyamory has evolved. In episode nine, we meet Jennifer, a woman who is in a relationship with a man who is married. Due to some personal mental health issues, his wife is no longer able to be intimate and allowed him to be with other women. Consultant Debbie is aghast, which to be fair, same. This is the same network that airs Sister Wives, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but to see them being so open when most people may not be accepting was cool and kind of fascinating.

Say Yes to the Dress is definitely more than just a show about wedding dresses. It gives you glimpses into parts of the world that you may not see in your everyday life. It shows people that no matter who you are as a bride, it’s all overwhelming. But when it’s presented in a way that makes queer people less of a spectacle (save it for the dresses), it’s a weird place to find affirmation.

Whenever there’s an episode with a queer bride, I always get excited. Even if I’ve seen it before (which at this point, I have), it still brings a bubble of excitement to my chest. My understanding of my queerness has evolved significantly since the first lesbian brides appeared on Say Yes to the Dress. I don’t even remember seeing some of those early episodes, even though I was watching the show. Back then, my queerness was almost a secret, and now here I am preparing to walk down the aisle for my own same-sex wedding. And I knew that when I walked into Kleinfeld with my future wife, we would be welcomed with open arms.

“Dead End: Paranormal Park” and “Heartbreak High” Are for Autistic Queer Girls

The following article contains spoilers. 

As much as I hate giving attention to cis white men, I’d like to start this piece by talking about them. Specifically autistic cis white men.

Autism representation is, overall, scarce. Our lack of visibility in media, professional fields, and other areas of life tells us that we don’t matter in a world that privileges neurotypicals. Regarding television, the three, and some of the only, well-known examples of representation include Atypical, The Good Doctor, and The Big Bang Theory. All of them focus on cis white men and are played by non-autistic actors. All of them have some sort of interest in science, which feeds into this stereotype that all autistic people are scientific geniuses (personally, I suck at science). All of them are made for the entertainment and consumption of a neurotypical audience. Atypical portrays autism as a tragedy for the autistic individual and a burden for the neurotypical people around them. The Good Doctor feeds into the harmful “autism is a superpower” rhetoric, further othering neurodivergent people and categorizing us as “less human”. Hell, Sheldon Cooper, the autistic in question from The Big Bang Theory, isn’t even autistic. But his “quirkiness” ends up being the butt of the joke so many times to a point where autism becomes acceptable only if it’s diluted and comedic.

This is all the more reason why Dead End: Paranormal Park and Heartbreak High, two shows that came out in 2022 and fulfill all my autistic queer fantasies, are groundbreaking.

Dead End: Paranormal Park, an animated series created by Hamish Steele and based on the graphic novel series, DeadEndia, introduces us to Norma. She’s Pakistani, bisexual, passionate, shy, and creative. And she’s autistic. From the start of the show, her autism is apparent. When she comes across Barney, the show’s protagonist, he tries to tell her that they already know each other and have attended the same school. Bluntly, Norma simply states that she’s “bad with names and faces”, which is a common autistic trait. Her special interest is Pauline Phoenix, an actress in the show’s universe who ends up being important to the plot. In another episode, Norma and other characters have to create a “human knot”. The physical touch, closeness, and movement overstimulates her, which leads to her having a shutdown. Norma struggles with socializing, and much of her character development involves her breaking out of her shell.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Steele goes into depth about the development of Norma’s character:

“One is that when I wrote the webcomics, I tried to make her “hashtag relatable.” I just thought this was everyone’s experience of life. So many people reached out and said, “Hey, I headcanonned her as autistic!” or “Great representation of anxiety.” I got so many comments like that when we came to write the show, I thought, Norma is autistic. So we had a consultant; we had autistic people on the crew. But every time I sent scripts or notes, the consultant said, “Wow, Hamish, you must have done so much research.” I was like, “I mean, a bit, but not really.” Long story short, I was diagnosed with autism during the show’s production, basically, thanks to Norma, because I was just writing my experiences.”

Norma isn’t a character whose differences are set up for watchers to pity or laugh at. Nor is she used for “diversity points” — her character is treated with dignity and respect. She’s also a badass fighter of evil spirits and demons who’s a part of a fantastic dynamic duo. As a Latina, it’s refreshing to see a nonwhite autistic character. While there’s been rising conversations concerning autistic women being overlooked, autistic people of color are often excluded from them despite also being routinely dismissed and underdiagnosed. This is because our health isn’t taken seriously, because the blueprint for the diagnostic criteria is largely based on autistic white boys. Autism research is extremely deficient in research that shows how autism can look different in varying groups of people and how it intersects with race and gender. Norma’s character is refreshing, and breaks this idea that autism has a “certain look”.

The 2022 reboot of Heartbreak High, based on the popular 90s series of the same name, follows the lives of multiple high school students. One of these characters is Quinni, who’s literally sunshine personified. Often styled in bold accessories like a cottagecore necklace or glitter hearts on her face, she experiences her emotions, like happiness and excitement, very deeply and isn’t afraid to demonstrate them through flapping her hands or flashing a wide smile. There are many other scenes of her stimming, something that is still stigmatized, like her playing with the rings on her finger or rocking back and forth. When Quinni’s accused of having a “lazy kebab vagina” in the first episode, she doesn’t understand the slang the rest of her peers seem to know, spends a tremendous amount of time researching it, and abruptly asks Amerie, a main character in the show she barely knows prior to this interaction, to inspect her vulva in the bathroom.

One of the highlights about Quinni for me is how her experiences show the difficulties of dating, especially dating neurotypical people, as a neurodivergent person. Many autistic people, myself included, have a hard time connecting with other people and often feel isolated others as a result of the world disabling us. One of Quinni’s main storylines is her relationship with Sasha. As soon as Quinni tells Sasha she is autistic, Sasha immediately questions her and says that she’s too “emotionally intelligent”. When they go on a date, the restaurant they go to is overstimulating for Quinni, which disconnects her from the present and obscures everything Sasha’s saying. As the pair are leaving a bookstore event, with Sasha annoyed and wanting to party, Sasha complains that she wants to be a “normal teenager” and Quinni’s autism is “a lot for her”.

Disability rights activist, one of Marie Clarie‘s 2022 Women of the Year recipients, and autistic model, actress, and writer Chloe Hayden plays Quinni. During an interview, Hayden explains that she’s waited “all her life” to play a character like Quinni, and aims to have viewers see themselves on screen in a way she’s never seen herself on screen growing up.

Dead End: Paranormal Park and Heartbreak High prove that we are capable of telling our own stories. Seeing Norma’s and Quinni’s nuanced portrayals of autistic queer teen girls heals the confused, scared, and incredibly lonely autistic queer teen girl I once was. And I’m so damn happy so many others are also feeling the same way. I’m optimistic about the future of autistic storytelling, and I’m excited to see what will come from these powerful foundations.

Daniel Sea on Max’s Return to “The L Word: Generation Q”

It’s hard to find a balance between skepticism and positivity. It’s hard to know when change is superficial, marginal, placating, and when it’s substantive. I have such big dreams for our world — on-screen and off. I vibrate with frustration, I vibrate with hope.

As you probably know, Max — one of the most meaningful and maltreated characters on the original series — has come back to The L Word universe for a one episode appearance on Gen Q. When we last saw Max, he was pregnant and alone, mocked by friends who were never friendly. He was a cautionary tale of what happens when transmasculine people dare to assert their genders. All the while, Daniel Sea, the real trans person playing the character, faced similar treatment behind the scenes.

When I first reached out to Daniel three years ago, I felt like there was a story that wasn’t being told. The initial Gen Q press tours were all about how much progress the show had made since the original series — while repeating the mistake of misgendering Daniel. Progress is rarely as linear as we hope, nor is it possible without an honest reckoning with the past. References to Daniel’s transness on Instagram were vague but they were there if anyone cared to look. Most people didn’t care.

Throughout the process of our initial conversations and our formal interview, I was lucky enough to get to know Daniel, the person. I wanted clarity on their gender, but I learned so much more. One of the highlights of my time writing for Autostraddle was doing that interview, getting to play a part in deepening our understanding of this moment in trans TV history, and, best of all, developing a friendship with Daniel.

And now they’re back on The L Word. And Max is getting a happy ending. And it’s happening in an episode that has a nonbinary director and a nonbinary writer. This one correction, this one apology, this one episode is not everything. But it is something. It doesn’t erase the past — nor should the past be erased. Instead it adds a new layer.

I talked to Daniel about this new layer. I hope you enjoy reading our chats as much as I’ve enjoyed having them.

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Drew: How have you felt since we did our interview? I’m wondering where you’re at with things like public perception and your sort of return to having a public image.

Daniel: I mean, I never meant to go anywhere.

Drew: (laughs) Right.

Daniel: It was a convergence of reasons that kept me out of the public eye. And it was significant to do that interview with you because it happened in such a caring way. There was a mutual respect that made it feel good and like it was meant to be happening. It took us a while to feel comfortable and figure out how to do it. I was careful and also you were careful. And that set a tone that everything else has been able to build on which has been amazing.

Drew: Has there been an increase in fan messages?

Daniel: I think there was an increase when there started to be an increase by me. What happened was because I’m Gen X I was unsure if I wanted to engage with social media at all. I only started my Instagram account when I went to Standing Rock in the service of hopefully putting stuff out. And after that I started to use social media a bit and I think that’s what initially put us in contact. I’ve grown to appreciate it as a place for people to contact me and to foster community with people who want to reach out. I like to be there in that way. It’s one of my side jobs. To help people along their journeys and just be there to hear their stories.

Drew: For any trans person with any sort of platform, you’re never just an actor or musician or whatever. You take on a role in the community that can become challenging to find boundaries and balance but it can also become the most meaningful part.

Daniel: Yeah and I think coming out of punk rock and riot grrrl-adjacent spaces, my association with social media will always be fan zines. So for me it’s always about having pen pals. I try to bring it back to we are community with each other as quickly as I can. I mean, it’s wild that I can represent this thing for people —the first time they saw themself reflected or the first time they saw themself on TV — but I try to be clear that this is what we all do for each other. It’s just a version of what we do in queer community.

Drew: How did the return to The L Word come about?

Daniel: Well, it’s a chain of events. I had a meeting with a friend of mine, Jenni Olson. She’s a queer film historian and filmmaker and ran Frameline.

Drew: I love Jenni! I interviewed Jenni!

Daniel: A genuinely amazing person. She came over to my best friend’s house to buy a silkscreen for a fundraiser thing and we saw each other and decided to meet for coffee. She had read the interview that you did with me and we just started talking about the misunderstandings that can happen regarding gender and generational stuff especially when it comes to media. As a historian I think for her it was very important to talk about this and check in with me. And through that process I realized that I really wanted to act again. So she introduced me to a few people, one of whom was Marja. We had a great general meeting but I didn’t think anything Max-related would come of it. It was just nice to meet and talk. We had a really generative hour long conversation. I also met with Thomas Page McBee who I’ve known about through mutual friends. We got to meet and talk and I just kind of put my desire out there. There wasn’t a space for me back in the day and I thought it was because I was doing something wrong and I wasn’t good enough to be part of it. Reflecting back it was actually more about transphobia and ignorance around nonbinary identities. But because of our interview and seeing that there’s more space in the industry now, I wanted to make it happen. So I just let them both know that.

Then Marja reached out to me this past springtime and said, “I have a dream to bring Max back and to see him thriving and happy. And I want it to be an equally healing experience for you. What would you need for us to make that happen?” She wanted to repair the harm of the past and to see Max happy. Marja loved that character and told that to me in our first meeting. Max represented not just transness but also a type of queerness and underground alternative culture for her and, I think, a lot of people.

I thought it through and then listed some basic things. No diva stuff but just things I’d need to feel comfortable coming back. I talked to Scott Turner Schofield who does this kind of advocacy. You know, for trans people my age you don’t really expect the mainstream to do anything. So it was kind of incredible to hear how there’s like on-set safety and people doing advocacy. You can have someone by your side to help you!

I also said I would like to talk to Showtime and the publicists to talk about what happened in the past that was harmful to me. Unbeknownst to them — there are new people working in those positions — but just to make sure it didn’t happen again. It felt important having played one of the first transmasc characters on TV to say what happened. I did it in a very caring and kind way and they were great. They listened. They apologized even though none of them were there. They heard what I was saying and assured me it was different now.

And then there were things like getting to see the script beforehand in case there needed to be adjustments. Because there was so much in the original series that was problematic that I had almost no input on even if I tried to have them change the harmful stuff. Everything I asked for this time was honored down to costuming. I mean, the whole scenario has just changed. The old crew was largely supportive, but we’re just in a different time culturally.

Drew: Speaking of crew, what was it like no longer being the only trans person on set? How different did that make the experience?

Daniel: It was great. It felt like I’d been waiting for this moment my whole life and I didn’t even know it was possible. I only worked two days so I didn’t get a chance to get to know the crew as a whole and I’m not sure how many trans people were working in general. But our director, Em Weinstein, is trans, the main writer, Nova Cypress Black, is trans, and then I got to work with Leo and Armand. Do you know Armand Field’s work?

Drew: Yes! They’re so good on Work in Progress and the new Queer as Folk.

Daniel: Yeah they’re great. Everything was just so different. Even down to the costuming, nowadays we don’t have to invent anything. There’s a precedent set. They’ve had years of experience working with transmasc actors and are like this is what we can do with the shirt, we can do this and that. Our old costume designer was amazing and always so supportive of me using whatever I wanted but we had to figure it out together.

Drew: Beyond any sort of missteps, there is just a difference between showing up on set and getting to just be an actor versus when you show up on set and you have to be an actor, a costumer, a set decorator, a consultant. I remember you talking about this in the original. And it often wasn’t from a place of maliciousness — they just didn’t know someone like Max so it fell on you to do all these other roles.

Daniel: Let me represent the underground queer. Let me teach the PR people. All of that. And it’s fine. We all do it as culture creators. You do it. I do it. That’s what we’re doing in this work. But it is kind of wild to come in and just be able to go to my trailer and work on the scenes while, at the same time, still being included in the larger creative process with other people who understood these things in their own way.

Leo and I were super into having this intergenerational queer connection. We wanted it to feel like this really affectionate, connecting moment where Max is encouraging and moved by Micah. This is how it is for queer people. We are each other’s family and sometimes pretty quickly you can have these bonds. That was really special. And also to show Max in this beautiful relationship with their partner which we didn’t see a lot of it in the past. I was very happy with the casting of Armand Fields and the way it felt with us all on set with Em. Everyone was so committed to this moment. At one point, Armand said, “Welcome back to your franchise” as if it’s Marvel or something. And I realized so much of what I experienced in the past was trying to prove I was a part of something because they always tried to make it very clear that I wasn’t really a cast member because I wasn’t a woman.

But these people — Em, Nova, Armand, Jillian, Leo — they all just made it really clear that they were happy I was back. It was a dream. I mean, I cried several times. And working in that environment with Nova and Em and these actors, it was the most fun day acting I’ve had since I was doing improv when I was young. Because we got to be innovative and try different things and people were supporting each other. There was no competition. It was exactly what you’d want queer and trans filmmaking to be. And I have to point out that of the five people I’m naming, four of them are BIPOC and that’s significant. They’re all from different backgrounds and I don’t want to generalize but for me that didn’t go unnoticed. And they’re all just uniquely amazing people. They were kind and encouraging. Armand was so affectionate. It felt like a special moment for all of us and for this character who they all seemed to love.

Drew: What was it like being Max again?

Daniel: It was fun! For me it’s like a spiritual thing. Because he’s a side of me. I put myself into him and fought really hard for the good things that were included. And I just think he’s a nice guy and I love to see him happy with a cute kid.

Drew: I mean, you know how I feel. I think people so often remember the missteps — to be generous — that happen toward the end and I really am such a firm defender of those early episodes with you as Max. And I do think L Word viewers got a chance to see Max, the person, before the writing and ignorance took the character places that were stereotypical. I think that’s why the character and your performance as him has the legacy that it does. Because there was so much to hold onto that felt positive and real and human.

Daniel: Even the style of some of the first ones because a lot of the people were filmmakers. Like the road trip with Jenny captured a lot of my trans experiences. Dealing with stuff on the road, bathroom stuff. I mean, I still deal with bathroom stuff. Just the other day I had people screaming at me in the bathroom — nothing has changed. But the dreamy element, two people on the road, the promise of going off to the city. It’s also class stuff along with queer and trans experiences.

Drew: There’s a moment in this episode when Shane apologizes to Max and it feels like an apology from the show itself. Had you previously received apologies from anyone who was a part of the original show along the lines of this fictional apology?

Daniel: I did take that moment as a meta way for the show to apologize to me as an actor and for Shane to apologize on behalf of the original characters to Max. I also think it’s meant to serve her character since she’s on her own journey of growth. But to answer your question, I received an apology from the Showtime PR people — even though they weren’t there back then. And I received apologies from a couple of the actors.

Drew: So this moment was a reckoning that hadn’t happened that often before in real life. Is it fair to say that?

Daniel: Yeah. For me, as someone who believes in the healing power of art — which sounds very corny—

Drew: No, I love it. Be corny.

Daniel: We will take that apology to mean everything because it’s not about me, it’s not about Max, it’s about our community and the system at large that makes harmful things happen whether people know it or not.

Drew: I’m really fascinated by the way that the original series starts with Bette and Tina having a baby. It feels like this moment of assimilation. The first show about lesbians is on TV and here is our central couple and they’re having a baby. They’re being domestic. They’re fitting into this normative lifestyle. And then by the end of the show when Max is having a baby, it’s not shown that way — it’s a circus freak show.

But now all these years later we get this storyline — for better or worse — of domesticity. And I’m really interested in the way in which it suggests that now it’s trans people’s turn to fit into this version of assimilation. On the one hand you can read it as these basic sort of stepping stones of representation — the ways in which society wants marginalized people to conform — but on the other hand it’s not like Max settled down with a cis woman and is modeling a heteronormative life for Micah. Max is in a t4t relationship where one of their kids is biologically from Max, two are biologically from his partner, and the third they’re fostering.

I don’t know if you have any thoughts on this. But I was watching it and just felt like what an interesting cross section of queer media that shows how things are cyclical and shows how you can chip away within the details to be a little more representative, a little more inclusive, a little more radical even.

Daniel: My wish was for Max’s present to reflect more of a life like mine. I don’t hang out with mostly cis people, I don’t hang out with mostly white people. Diverse is such a weird word but my community is mixed and diverse in all sorts of ways. That’s my queer community. So I wanted to reflect that kind of queerness and to show a mixed family background as someone who was raised by gay men as well as my mom and different stepdads. Not that Max is me but I wanted that. So I did request that Max’s partner be on the trans/nonbinary spectrum. But this was created collectively and I want to give all the credit to the writers. Those requests might have already been planned. It was just important to me that Max and his partner better reflect my own queer community.

Drew: It’s really beautiful that some of the subtext you gave to Max in the original series— Well, it wasn’t subtext, because a punk poster in the background is text. But let’s call it soft text. The soft text you brought to Max in the original feels really validated and fulfilled and made more explicit in this window into his life. That feels really special.

Daniel: These gestures toward a certain way of moving through the world, a certain politic. I brought an Audre Lorde poster from home. I did the same thing bringing posters.

Drew: (laugh) You’re like, I know I don’t have to anymore but I still want to be involved in the set decorating!

Daniel: (laugh) We have this gorgeous Audre Lorde print that my friend made. And it frames the beginning of the scene. I like having these gestures. And it’s especially meaningful to fill out the world in this way when you’re already working with the text of Nova Cypress Black, a Black trans writer. I think of writers in the best scenario as holding space for what is possible.

For me, this is the most exciting part of the whole thing. Because again on that set the way the actors worked together with the crew holding that space, it wasn’t competitive. It was all about mutual support and collaboration.

Drew: No more lobsters pushing each other down as they try to get out of the pot.

Daniel: Exactly! It was what I always wanted it to be like. It didn’t have to be scary. We could just do our best and help each other.

Autostraddle’s Favorite Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer TV Couples of 2022

Love love love! Love! Is not a lie! At least not for these fictional characters that make up our list of Favorite Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer TV Couples of 2022! (And for me, personally, captain of this team.) This is one of our most fun lists to make at the end of every year, and always somehow the most divisive. Just a friendly reminder that these are the personal favorites of our TV Team — and we would sure love to hear your personal favorites in the comments!

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Bert and Gracie, A League of Their Own

Shelli Nicole: Excuse me but they are fucking PERFECT. A hot brown skinned Black couple that is glowing in love and happiness?! YES PLEASE. I think I love them so much because it’s clear that they have moved through life together. Like, together together. I am so happy we didn’t have to see the pain or sadness of their story that they may have had but saw the beautiful phase of love they were currently in and WHAT A FUCKING BEAUTIFUL ONE IT IS! I Love them, I LOVE them, EYE LOVE THEM!!!!

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Ryan and Sophie, Batwoman

Nic: Y’all, the way I didn’t dare hope too loudly that #Wildmoore would become canon lest they go the way of many a subtextual couple before them, but I needn’t have worried! The Batwoman writers said, “we see you, we hear you, we’re going to give you the enemies to (jealous) friends to lovers you deserve.” It still blows my mind that we got to watch two Black women fall in love in front of our very eyes…ON THE CW. And not just fall in love with each other! Fall in love with themselves!

We watched Sophie navigate and ultimately question what being a Crow meant as a Black woman, because merely knowing Ryan Wilder was enough to open Sophie’s eyes to the multitude of injustices dealt out by that organization. We watched Ryan fight with her ownself about being vulnerable and letting someone new take down her carefully crafted walls brick by brick. Sophie is one of the very few people who SAW Ryan Wilder; who saw her struggles, her pain, her joy, her love, her selflessness, and didn’t leave. Sophie helped Ryan realize that she could be soft and still be the hero Gotham needed.

I could go on and on about how much these two mean to me, but you can read the recaps for that. Instead I’m going to yell about a few of my favorite Wildmoore canon couple moments we got BECAUSE THAT FIRST KISS?! The quintessential denial of feelings before accepting them! The clumsy first hookup leading to a broken lamp! One of their birth moms letting themselves in and catching her child’s girlfriend half naked! Normal girlfriend things! I only wish that we could have had more time to see Wildmoore in their settled couple stage. You know Alice would have weasled her way into multiple date nights!

But real talk, it was such a joy to witness these two grow separately and then together, and eventually allow themselves the happiness they both deserve. Let Black women be happy, shows!

Valerie Anne: It has been a long time since a couple has given me butterflies the way these two did, especially in this last season. Their banter dynamic was next-level and their first kiss felt so well-earned that I almost broke a lamp about it. And then every moment of them together after that was fun, stressful, flirty, sexy, all the best things. Also…have you SEEN Javicia Leslie and Meagan Tandy? They were a gift to us all and I will never, ever forgive the CW for taking them away from us when they were ramping up to even more side-by-side fight scenes, hilarious barbs, and epic smooches.

Natalie: There’s a moment in the season premiere for Batwoman’s third season when Ryan Wilder slides an envelope back across the table to Sophie Moore. Inside that envelope is the identity of her biological mother — the one that she thought had died, the one that she now knew just didn’t want her — but Ryan’s not interested anymore. She’s got the cowl, Mary, and Luke…she doesn’t need anything else.

“My whole life I wanted a family, I wanted answers, I wanted to belong to someone and for someone to belong to me,” Ryan reflects, before reaffirming her decision to keep the envelope’s contents a secret.

It’d take time. To be blackmailed. To deal with family mayhem. To have an ill-conceived one-night stand. To passive aggressively respond to the aforementioned ill-conceived one-night stand. To battle supervillains. To blow up trucks.* To carry the world on your shoulders. But eventually, Ryan would come to see that the person that she was always meant to belong to was sitting across the table from her the entire time. She’d realize that there was space for her to battle the hard world and savor the softness of love. Ryan Wilder belonged to Sophie Moore and Sophie Moore belonged to Ryan Wilder…their hearts always knew even if their heads didn’t.

It is a tragedy that we didn’t get more of them — I’ll be forever mad at the CW for denying us another season — but I’ll always savor what we got.

*Do I find Sophie Moore the sexiest when she’s showing off her skills as a military marksman? I’m sorry (#notsorry) but I do.

Carmen: The thing about Ryan Wilder and Sophie Moore is that I have spent more time thinking about this one couple than I probably have about… any other couple on television in years? Maybe, ever? I went back into fan fiction for them. I saved gifs to my phone for them. I even learned what a fan cam was (listen, fan cams were not around the last time I fandom’d in the Glee years, our internet did not allow). And that’s the point, isn’t it? I loved Ryan and Sophie like I have loved no other television couple since I was in the closet, since watching the piecemeal possibility of a television romance was like breathing in fresh air and just as vital to my survival.

And yet, I still have not been able to put them into words. It’s inadequate to say that watching Ryan and Sophie was like granting myself the permission I didn’t know I needed to be seen, because when Ryan and Sophie were good it was like watching fire come from the edges of my fingertips and consume me, but also as if I was the fire itself.

Ryan dropped her an octave range to say “Women, you’re hard to please,” she wrapped an itchy blue fire blanket around Sophie’s shoulders, and I was stuck weeks. It was so effortlessly chivalrous, so casually Black in its courting. The night Ryan talked about the exhaustion of being a Black woman expected to save the world, only to be comforted with a kiss by another Black woman who loved her — who really, truly loved her — who had fought her own family’s homophobia to save herself and knew exactly what that exhaustion means? I cried. Because that’s not just recognition. That’s… everything.

Ryan and Sophie were the central couple of a CW superhero show, they saved Gotham, and good for them. But this year Batwoman wrote a romance that saved a part of me that I didn’t realize still needed saving. And thank you will never be enough.

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Lucy Tara and Kate Whistler, NCIS: Hawaii

Nic: If you told me in the year of Beyoncé 2022, I would have a couple from an NCIS property on a queer “best of” list, I probably would have laughed in your face. When I heard tell of* (*read: saw my Twitter timeline exploding) about “Kacy”, I apprehensively binged the entire first season. It was cool to see real time spent on out queer character on a CBS show, but until the finale, I probably would have written it off as just “cool.” But in the lead up to season 2, when even the cast had gotten aboard the good ship Kacy, I started to wonder if this would be different. And oh, it has been.

Season 2 is still airing at the moment, and so far we’ve gotten to see Kate and Lucy navigate a new relationship while working together, learn each other’s quirks, literally and figuratively lean on each other for support, and in episode 207, communicate openly and honestly about what forced time apart might do to their relationship. I might eat my words, but after that conversation on the beach, I have a good feeling about these two going forward. I love a procedural (*waves from season 9 of my Criminal Minds first-time binge) and it’s been the biggest surprise of my year to see a queer couple treated this well on a long-standing network franchise. Plus! They’re so stinkin’ cute together, y’all!

Natalie: Back when queer television representation was in its infancy, Hollywood — or at least the side of it that cared about LGBT people — liked to funnel its gay characters into respectable careers. The gay character would be police officers, veterans, first responders…something that immediately conferred respect. It was a well-intentioned effort to ingratiate queer characters (and by extension, queer people) to a straight audience. How could anyone hate this gay character when they saved a kid from a burning building or solved the murder of a beloved community member? How could anyone hate gay people when they too could be heroes?

Today we recognize that all those depictions also fed — and continue to feed — into a mythology about police and the military. They help perpetuate this idea of cops and service members as inherently good and trustworthy and sincere in their pursuit of justice. They are copaganda…NCIS: Hawai’i is copaganda…and I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that. It’s easy to forget sometimes — I am, admittedly, perpetually charmed by Kate Whistler — but let’s be honest about the space they occupy.

That said, I still think Kate and Lucy are a couple worth embracing. With each episode, the chemistry between Yasmine Al-Bustami and Tori Anderson’s characters grow and they fit together perfectly. Their relationship isn’t without angst or tension — particularly once Kate’s girlfriend comes for a visit — and both characters come to the table with their own baggage but even those moments feel authentic. You never get the sense that the show is manufacturing drama for the sake of drama. The comforting, the open communication, the sharing of space, both at home and at work…it feels like a very adult relationship in a way that we hardly ever get to see. I’ve been relishing it.

And listen…I’ll admit, there’s something about this couple existing, in this franchise, on this network (which still ranks last among broadcast networks for LGBT characters) that I just find astounding. During the first season, I kept waiting for the moment that Kacy would take a backseat to a newfound relationship for Jane or Jesse’s marriage, but that moment never came. NCIS: Hawai’i is continuing the series’ tradition of centering one romantic relationship…and this time, that relationship is between two women. I never would’ve imagined. What’s more? When you combine screentime with the show’s ratings, I’m not sure there’s a lesbian pairing on television that’s watched by more people that NCIS: Hawai’i’s Kacy. That, in itself, feels like a reason to keep your eyes on this pairing.

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Uncle Clifford and Lil Murda, P-Valley

Drew Burnett Gregory: This is always the most challenging end of year category for me. I have a hard time finding couples IRL I want to ship let alone couples that have to fit into the dramatic arcs of narrative television. Despite being a romantic, I’m just not much of a shipper. When it comes to love triangles, usually I’m rooting for the protagonist to choose whoever makes them happy — or make it a throuple.

This is all to say… when I say I ship Uncle Clifford and Lil Murda that means something. I care DEEPLY about these fictional characters and their love. I did in season one and that only increased in season two. I mean, come on, when Keyshawn questions why all Murda wrote was “I love you” to Clifford and Murda says, “Keyshawn, that’s the only thought.” MY GOD.

I really appreciate that this season gave them time apart, time for Murda to confront his past, and ultimately return to Clifford ready to have a real relationship. Yes, Clifford has some walls up but they’re there for a reason. She knows how she deserves to be treated and she isn’t willing to settle. Murda acknowledges that and meets her where she deserves. I can’t wait to see them properly together in season three.

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Harley and Ivy, Harley Quinn

Valerie Anne: If you had asked me seven years ago if one of my favorite shows would be an animated DC property featuring a Batman villain I would have laughed in your face. I’ve never cared for the Batman properties (except LEGO Batman) and too many female DC villains have been…one-dimensional. If you had asked me SIX years ago if I’d care about any version of Harley Quinn that wasn’t Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, I would have denied it a thousand times. And yet! Here we are. And I’m head over heels for this animated version of Harley Quinn, and, more specifically, her relationship with Poison Ivy. I love their dynamic so much. It’s like the black cat/golden retriever dynamic but turned up to eleven. See also: the best friends to lovers trope! Also a big fan of that. The show is funny and lovely and their relationship is so fun to watch.

Heather Hogan: I joked the other day that Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy have a healthier relationship than Bette and Tina — but honestly, I wasn’t kidding? Season three of Harley Quinn allowed Harley and Ivy to each grow as people and supervillains, and also to grow as a couple. Plus, despite the name of the show, it was Ivy who really got to pursue her dreams this year, with Harley’s full support. (You know, until she turned the entirity of Gotham City into a zombie plant army.) Harley and Ivy are kind of the perfect story of two best friends falling in love, and figuring out how to make the transition from being each other’s favorite person to being each other’s favorite person + sex + building this whole new thing (a relationship!) together. They struggle with it sometimes, but they always talk it out, process deeply like the bisexual queens they are, find a way to be on the same team, and forgive as easily as they love.

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Juliette and Cal, First Kill

Valerie Anne: I don’t care if the internet at large hated this show. I loved it. I enjoyed every second of its overdramatic, cheesy, vampy story. I loved how unhinged it was, I loved the heavy-handed Romeo & Juliet metaphors, I love the forbidden vampire/slayer romance, I loved that Elizabeth Mitchell said the line, “You ate my mother?” with an earnesty only possible from an Emmy-nominated actress like herself. I’ll forever be mad that show didn’t get more seasons, because I think it had the potential to be the queer answer to Twilight. (Well…queer-er. Twilight is pretty gay in its own right, and all vampires are queer, but you know what I mean.)

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Dani and Gigi, The L Word: Generation Q

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya: Listen. Do they technically break up ALMOST IMMEDIATELY in the third season? Yes. Does that preclude them from being one of my favorite couples on television for the second year in a row? NAY. Am I rooting for a Gigi/Dani/Nat throuple or at the very least threesome even though that went horribly with Alice? MAYBE SO.

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Carson and Greta, A League of Their Own

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya: I am EXTREMELY on the record as being a huge fan of a homoerotic haircut moment, and that’s literally how Carson and Greta start their courtship. I’m also a sucker for a height difference relationship, and they check that box as well! I am ultimately happy with where things end up between the two of them, because I always prefer deeper and more emotionally complex storytelling to just like a blanket happy ending.

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Villanelle and Eve, Killing Eve

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya: They’re not your typical couple, sure, but this was never your typical show, often blurring lines between genres and tones. I am one of the rare homosexuals who actually liked the end of this series, and I feel like the version of a “relationship” that we finally got between its leading characters feels right for them as characters and for the series as a whole. It’s brutal, impulsive, erotic, violent, and thrilling. At last, they get to consume each other.

Riese: While of course there are… problems with the final five minutes of this couple’s story, I’m still thrilled that we got to witness them consummating their four seasons of cat-and-mouse prior to its bitter end. Just walking down that country road nudging each other playfully? I never thought we’d get to see it, and then we did.

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Kai & Amelia, Grey’s Anatomy

Riese: It’s been a minute since I had any earthly idea what was taking place at Seattle Grace on a week-to-week basis, but this ship brought me right back. Partially because Kai is pretty dreamy and ER Fightmaster is my style icon, but I also love this character who’s committed to research ’cause they aren’t into working with patients. Also, Amelia was apparently “conceived as a queer character” who was supposed to be dating a female doctor in the first episode of Private Practice, but “that never made it into the final edit and we’ve only seen her dating men.” So you know, it was a long time coming! Anyhow I love how they’re competitively nerdy with each other and how Kai lowers their head and takes Amelia’s head in their hand and then they kiss!!!

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Luz and Amity, The Owl House

Heather Hogan: These two magical weirdos! So timid and awkward with each other at first, all blushing and brushing fingertips and missteps! And now they’re girlfriends, first girlfriends, and all the giddy wonder that goes along with that. They even kissed. ON THE DISNEY CHANNEL. But it’s not all dancing in the rain; Luz and Amity are also tag-teaming to save the Boiling Isles, their families, and their relationship in The Owl House’s final season. They struggle sometimes, of course. Luz is used to barreling forth full steam ahead to solve her problems without consulting anyone! Amity is used to being dismissed by her mother and sometimes the rest of her family too! They’re insecure a little bit. They worry they’re not being THE BEST GIRLFRIEND IN THE WORLD sometimes. But dang, they work it out better than most adults I know! Amity and Luz are so sweet and so soft and so silly. I will love them fully long after they save the world and ride off into the sunset.

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Max and Esther, A League of Their Own

Heather Hogan: I’m that kind of tender queer that drives everyone else up the wall with my love of sweet, sweet, sweetness. But oh, Esther and Max are something else entirely. Obviously I was getting a swoon off of them when they danced together at Grace and Bertie’s party and Max woke up in that hat with that lipstick kiss on her cheek. But when Max and Clance showed up at the factory and Esther was the PITCHER for Red Wright’s All Stars? I literally screamed at the TV. I SCREAMED. By the time Esther had antagonized Max to the point that she was launching a baseball across the factory floor and hollering about IS THAT LOUD ENOUGH FOR YA, I was too in love with them to function. Max is never wrong-footed! She is so sure of what she wants, so driven, so positive she’s going to get it. Then she sees another women who HAS IT, and who danced all over her the night before too. Esther goes from giving Max nothing, not even a hint of a smile, to giving her literally everything. And when Max pulled Esther in by the collar of her unbuttoned jersey in the dark of the baseball field parking lot? Reader, I melted into a useless puddle of lesbian goop.

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Autostraddle’s Favorite Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans TV Characters of 2022

Every year, our TV Team complies a list of our favorite and least favorite TV characters. (See: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016.) This year, we’re trying something a little different! This year, we’re not writing about our least favorites because there’s so many favorites to choose from! As always, let me remind you: this is not a list of the categorically BEST LGBTQ+ TV characters. It’s simply our TV Team’s own personal favorites of 2022. We hope you’ll share yours in the comments!

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Gracie, A League of Their Own

Shelli Nicole, Writer: I shall tell you that I love Gracie more than any other queer character on TV this year. I love vintage shit, but it so rare that I can see any semblance of myself in it. I loved Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and was so hopeful I’d see a Shelli — but I didn’t. Same with all the other vintage fueled shows that we all tune into — Mad Men, Fargo — but I didn’t see Shelli. When Gracie walked onto the screen all I wanted to do was scream. There on my screen was this funny, sweet, beautiful, thick, brown-skinned, queer woman who I saw myself in. I just wanted more of her on the screen and they gave it to me. They then gave her this solid, real, affirming love and made her this whole character and I just wanted more and more. So shout out to Gracie and ALOTO for finally letting me see myself in the past ‘cos that just gives me mad hope for pop culture in the future.

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Mercedes, P-Valley

Drew Burnett Gregory, Writer: Literally my only note for P-Valley’s stellar first season was to have more queer women. Never could I have dreamed that the second season would fulfill that wish with my favorite character! There’s a reason people come far and wide for the Mercedes Experience. She’s the best dancer and, alongside Uncle Clifford, she’s who makes The Pynk.

This season, her failed retirement and injured arm force her to confront her life and her future. She gives in to longtime customer Coach’s offer for “sponsorship” and ends up in an entanglement with Coach’s wife, Farrah. And if this wasn’t enough she also spends the season reconnecting with her daughter — and continuing to face her mother.

Brandee Evans is incredible as Mercedes. I’m often drawn to characters who feel like they have to perform strength but this only works when the actor has a beating heart of emotion underneath. Evans makes Mercedes’ desires our desires, her failures our failures, her triumphs our triumphs. It’s a standout performance on the best show on TV.

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Quinni, Heartbreak High

Valerie Anne, Writer: I wasn’t sure what to expect going into Heartbreak High, but I ended up finding all these Australian teens very endearing. I especially loved Quinni, an autistic queer girl with a non-binary best friend. She is so sweet and friendly. She’s a great friend and she’s a passionate nerd and even though I’m not autistic, I related heavily to a lot of her anxieties and thought it was so sweet when Darren knew how to look out for her and support her. I shared her excitement when the girl she liked said she liked her back, and I felt rage when I saw said girl start to treat her badly. Her sadness made my heart weep, her happy stims brought me joy. Quinni felt like a brand new character, and also a long overdue one, and I am glad she exists.

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Shelly, Minx

Drew Burnett Gregory, Writer: This 1970s period piece about a feminist who ends up creating the first porn magazine for women is a delightful romp. Sure, its politics might be a bit trapped in the decade it takes place, but it pushes just enough to let its pleasures be enjoyed.

The charming cast is one of the show’s best features and with no one is that truer than Lennon Parham. She plays Shelly, the protagonist’s married sister, and it’s a real testament to Parham that she takes this archetype and makes her human. She’s not just the buttoned up housewife who has a queer sexual awakening — she’s someone who was always this free and simply didn’t have an outlet to place that freedom. She’s more comfortable than her feminist sister when it comes to sexuality — in general and her own.

Her hookup with model then manager Bambi happens toward the end of the season but hopefully in season two we’ll see a lot more of these two together and a lot more of Shelly.

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Max Chapman, A League of Their Own

Nic, Writer: A League of Their Own rocked my world this year, and a huge part of that was thanks to Max Chapman. She is everything to me. You know that thing where you’re watching a show, but you’re also kind of uncomfortable because it almost feels like you’re intruding on private moments you weren’t meant to see? That’s what it was like for me watching Max, because everything from her joy to her pain to her fear to her vulnerability felt so…real. I laughed with her when she joked around with Clance. I felt that same tightness in her chest when she overheard her parents talking about her sexuality. I was proud when she made that suit her own and walked into Bertie’s party and into a whole new side of herself. And the queer love Max got to see through Gracie and Bertie, and experience with Esther? I couldn’t have hoped for more. Honestly, Max’s mere existence is one of my favorite things about A League of Their Own, because while the film focused exclusively on the Peaches, there were Black women at the time who had the same dream; Max is those women and I’m so grateful for her.

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Managing Editor: Among all the things A League of Their Own does right in its first season, going way beyond nostalgia is its finest achievement. Nostalgia can be a trap, and A League of Their Own doesn’t fall into it, instead offering up new characters, new stories, and new themes for its world to explore that the original movie doesn’t even touch. Max Chapman exemplifies this, opening up A League of Their Own’s world and bifurcating its story into two equally immersive and complex threads that sometimes touch but don’t always have to because they also stand so strongly on their own. Max’s arc across the first season covers queer love, fraught and touching familial relationships, and bone-deep friendships. So much of the emotional core of the show belongs to Max.

Carmen Phillips, Editor-in-Chief: It’s Max’s ambition for me. Ambition is often thought of as a cold emotion, and I don’t know that many people would bring it to top of mind to describe anything related to A League of Their Own, a show best defined by its warmth. But Max Chapman? She’s ambitious. She is dreaming a dream that has not even happened yet, that may not even be possible, and she is so single-focused on reaching into the suns and stars and dragging the moon itself back down to the baseball diamond if it means that she gets to pitch, that’s she’s not even a good friend or niece all of the time. In another person’s hands, Max as written could easily be unlikeable, instead she walks away with the whole show — and that is the power of Chanté Adams.

Max’s ambition could have swallowed her whole, but it forced her to confront the thing she kept burying inside of her instead. If Max had not finally confronted her queerness, tried to answer the puzzle that was eating at her, she wouldn’t have landed at Bert’s door. And several internalized gay panics (and a few hurtful moments) later, if Max hadn’t come to trust Bert and find her home in a queer family she never knew she had, she wouldn’t have been at the party to meet Esther. If she hadn’t met Esther, she wouldn’t have ended up pitching that factory game. She wouldn’t have ended up in the Negro Leagues, living her dream.

I love that Max’s ambition brought her to herself, that it brought her to her family, and that through them she ended up exactly where she was meant to be all along. It’s better than any romance, a fairy tale worth believing in.

Heather Hogan, Senior Editor: I think Max Chapman might be my favorite lesbian TV character ever, actually. I obviously don’t have anything to add to the representation conversation that Carmen didn’t write gloriously in our A League of Their Own recaps. What I’ll talk about is the incandescent joy of watching Max’s story unfold with such care, thoughtfulness, and precision over the course of the first season. It’s a story that has literally never been told on TV or in film, and to make it land, to make it really count, Max’s entire world had to be full and believable. Her relationship with Clance, first and foremost. Her relationship with her mom and dad, and then with her Uncle Bert and Aunt Gracie. And also her relationship to her sexuality, to her gender presentation, to her hometown, to baseball.

Chanté Adams brought all of that to life, with a smile as bright as Christmas morning. I laughed with her, I cried with her, I came out of my seat and charged the TV — right alongside Clance — cheering for her. I love that Max isn’t perfect. That she’s allowed to make some selfish decisions and learn from them, that she’s allowed to get caught up completely in her dream and realize how that affects the people she loves too, that she’s allowed to still be figuring out how she wants to dress and wear her hair, who she wants to sleep with and love. And it’s so rare and wonderful that we get just a hint of all the factors that go into all of those decisions. What makes her feel like herself, what keeps her safe, what brings her to life, what counts as home. I want Max to have everything. I want Max to have the whole world.

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Greta Gill, A League of Their Own

Nic, Writer: Look, all I’m saying is that D’Arcy Carden made a DECISION to say “Do you want me to stop?” the way that she did. The lewks and the Looks. The swagger. The humor. The rare moments of vulnerability. I LOVE HER, YOUR HONOR. – Nic, Writer

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Luz, The Owl House

Valerie Anne: From the very beginning, The Owl House has been a nonstop source of joy for me. It combines all the things I love: misfit stories, magic, training montages, found family feels, and, of course, queerness! Luz and Amity go from enemies to crushes to girlfriends over the course of the seasons and goodness gracious it’s so cute to watch. But Luz herself has been such a delight to watch. She’s optimistic and charismatic and open-minded. She’s a problem-solver and just an all-around joy. But she’s not perfect. She makes mistakes. Like, a lot of mistakes. But she tries her best to learn from them. Her number one goal is to help the people she loves, and I love that about her.

Heather: I know all I do is go on and on about how cartoons are the best queer storytelling happening on TV these days, but it’s only because it’s true! The Owl House proved it once again in 2022 by telling the kind of LGBTQ stories no one else is touching with a ten foot pole. I’m talking about a bisexual lead, a lesbian girlfriend, a queer shape-shifting sister and her nonbinary love interest, a nonbinary old flame rekindled, a pansexual kinda mom, and the greatest most supportive best ally mom in the entire world. But it’s not just the quantity of characters. The Owl House is digging deep in its final episodes to shine a light in the darkness for queer and trans kids who need it desperately right now, and Luz is the glow.

She’s a bisexual Latina nerd who felt alone and unmoored until she filled in her found family. She’s someone who has experienced intense grief that will last a lifetime, and experiences all the depression that goes along with such huge loss. Trauma is always lurking just around the corner in Luz’s world. But even in her darkest moments — and they are dark-dark — she fights for hope, and she believes in the love of people around her even when she doesn’t believe in herself. Luz is my kind of hero. A deeply sad badass who’s also somehow full of optimism. Plus! This season! She finally got to kiss the girl, after climbing her tower to rescue her! My Prince Charming!

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Robin, Stranger Things

Valerie Anne: Maya Hawke has me completely under her spell. I find her effortlessly charming no matter what character she plays, but Robin Buckley is especially delightful. The way she was introduced as just constantly making fun of Steve was perfect, and the way she accidentally got entangled with the main plot by way of being good at puzzles (and Russian) was so fun. And then she just…kept showing up. First for her buddy Steve, and then for the rest of the crew as she got to know them. Shipping aside (and believe me, I do ship), Robin’s scenes with Nancy were some of my favorites of this most recent season, and I’d tip off a canoe and into the Upside Down after either of them any day, without hesitation.

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Elora and Willie Jack, Reservation Dogs

Natalie, Writer: “Y’all ever feel like we just went from being kids to women overnight?” Bear’s mom, Rita, laments after a rare night of relaxation at the IHS conference.

Her fellow Auntie nods in agreement and adds, “And no one even asked us.”

No one ever asked Willie Jack or Elora if they wanted to be women. They were kids, they were happy. They hung out with their crew. They tossed spitballs at each other in class. They had dreams of being wizards. But then Daniel died and their entire world shifted. They went from being kids to women overnight and no one even asked them.

“It’s like everyone’s walking around in the sunshine and we’re just in the darkness,” Willie Jack admits in “Offering.”

In the first season of Reservation Dogs asked Elora and Willie Jack to carry much of the emotional weight following their friend’s death. Bear and Cheese grieve the loss too but for Elora and Willie Jack, the pain lingers close to the surface, inflamed by any contact. They’d all lost a friend but, as Cheese notes in his impromptu eulogy, Willie Jack lost a brother and Elora lost her hope. The grief persists in the show’s sophomore season.

Paulina Alexis remains a revelation as Wilhelmina “Willie Jack” Jacqueline. Her task is a tough one: because while she’s grappling with this grief, Willie Jack’s also the source of so much of Reservation Dogs‘ humor. Her dry wit offers a respite from the heaviness of the grief. She moves effortlessly from the humor of a run-in with “an old hippie dude that’s done a lot of acid” to one of the most affecting scenes of the season when she prays to the spirits.

Devery Jacobs delivers too, not just in front of the camera but behind it. As Elora, she tries to escape to California — to outrun the ghosts that are haunting her — but even that trip proves traumatic and she is compelled to return once she finds out her grandmother is dying. It feels like too much for one person to bear but Elora bends but never breaks. As Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, she pens “Mabel,” which gives Elora space to contemplate her future and to consider a new way to deal with her grief. The script and the performance are as good as anything on television this year.

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Hélène, Killing Eve

Kayla: What can I say; I am who I am. And who I am is a person with a deep appreciation for mean moms. Or, in this case, killer moms. Since I couldn’t choose Adult Shauna from Yellowjackets because she “isn’t” “canonically queer” I GUESS, I am going with the minor, mysterious, arresting character Hélène, who is as hot as she is scary. We may not have spent very much time with her, but I’ll never forget it.

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Lupe García, A League of Their Own

Riese: I love everything Roberta Colindrez has ever done and will ever do — but this character specifically really got me in the heart. Colindrez is such a deft performer, and she portrayed with nuance a woman tugged in myriad directions, fighting to stay true to herself and be seen for her unique skills and talents while also battling expectations and sterotypes around race and femininity that threaten her ability to succeed in 1940s America. Her friendship with Jess was probably my favorite relationship on the show, and that scene in the bar with Carson talking about their inter-league hookups is like — wow! I love television!

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Ryan Wilder, Batwoman

Carmen: I’m still not prepared to say goodbye to Ryan Wilder. Batwoman was cancelled over six months ago, and really it just comes down to that. We should not have had to say goodbye to Ryan, so soon. As the first Black lesbian superhero to lead her own show, Javicia Leslie captured lightning in the bottle. No, not enough. She was the entire storm. She was the universe, tilted on the axis of her megawatt smile and inescapable charm. As Ryan, Leslie carried so much on her back —expectations of a fandom that eventually shed its racist skin to become a beacon and home to Black queer nerds; action sequences that actors twice her size and muscle mass would balk at; becoming an example of leadership among her cast, all while living alone during a pandemic thousands of miles away from home. And that doesn’t begin to discuss where I believe she shined brightest, as a romantic lead as one half of one of the only handful of Black lesbian couples to lead their own show, and the first to do so on network television. She did all of that for us.

If this is my goodbye (for now) to Ryan Wilder, I also want to say this: of all the things that Batwoman got right in its second and third seasons, dedicating its final run to expanding Ryan’s world — including a her birth mother (played by the legendary Robin Givens) and her brother, was an exquisite choice. It’s rare that a show recognizes that to really center itself on a Black character also requires building out a Black ecosystem for them to thrive. Slowly but steadily Batwoman became the Blackest superhero show on television this side of Black Lightning and providing those layers of nuance allowed Ryan to be sweet, protective, at times goofy, emotional, and take the audience along on the ride because she was the hero of her own community and her own story, first and foremost.

Sometimes I think we flew too close to the sun. I still have the Batwoman Funko Pop on my shelf. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to let go.

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Alice, The L Word: Generation Q

Riese: I know everybody’s bummed about Bette Porter’s departure from The L Word: Generation Q universe, but one of the results of this cast shuffle is that now Leisha Hailey — a queer actress who’s been out since the jump — gets top billing. Alice’s growth from the original series through Generation Q feels relatively authentic, especially as we start Season Three with Alice single again, on another haphazard and obstacle-ridden quest for love or something like it, with her still open to unconventional possibilities.In a roundtable we did a few years back about Lisa the Male Lesbian from the original series’ first season, Grace Lavery described Alice as “gentle and curious, excited as she often is to experience new genres, new ways of being and representing, but always defensive too, never quite allowing anything to land.” I think what we’re seeing in the new series is her willingness to let things land, or to walk away with clarity when they don’t. In a franchise where growth or earned change is hard to come by and ret-cons are more popular than revisions, Alice continues to delight and evolve.

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Taissa Turner, Yellowjackets

Carmen: (Specifically Adult Taissa Turner) Famously, I am not a horror girlie. That is the biggest compliment to Tawny Cypress’ intensely focused performance as adult Taissa Turner in the first season of Yellowjackets — I am not a horror girlie, and yet I sat through all ten hours of Yellowjackets in a single weekend, through ghost stories and wolf maullings and the ever-present blanketed threat of teenage cannibalism, just to watch and see if she’d finally crack.

I mean no disrespect to Jasmin Savoy Brown’s performance as teen Taissa trapped in the woods, she’s become a fan favorite for good reason — her performance of brutal overachiever Tai who slowly realizes that she cannot tight fist her way into control of this maddening scenario is as epic as it is effortlessly queer and addictive. But Cypress has the unenviable job of recreating the shallow veneer of Tai being back in charge of her own life in the after, only to lose it all, all over again. It’s a knife’s edge pressed against flesh, if you blink you’ll miss when it finally pierces what’s beneath.

I, for one, most certainly did not blink.

Valerie Anne: Teen Taissa Turner is the hot, bossy girl I would have been terrified of and in love with in high school. Adult Taissa Turner is the hot, bossy woman I would be terrified of and in love with if I knew her in real life. I love that two queer actors portray her; Jasmin Savoy Brown and Tawny Cypress bring unique perspectives to these two stages of Taissa’s life while also having undeniable similarities. Yellowjackets feels like two shows in one sometimes so sometimes the two Taissas feel like two different characters and I love them both with a fiery passion.

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Anne Lister, Gentleman Jack

Heather: You know what I love most about Suranne Jones’ Anne Lister? She is the WORST so much of the time! Gentleman Jack would have been unwatchable if the show tried to canonize Anne as some kind of modern day saint living in a coal mining world. She was not that. She was brave as all hell, that’s for sure, living her butchy gay life right out loud in the mid-1800s. And my lord, yes, the homophobia and sexism she constantly ran up against but that she never let slow her down. And her willingness to get her heart broken over and over and over again looking for true love.

That stuff is seriously heroic! But she was also the kind of person who was digging coal pits and sending kids down to work in them 24 hours a day, relentless and reckless in her pursuit of wealth, a firm believer in upholding the conservative systems of power that most of us are still working hard to dismantle today. How amazing is it to watch a lesbian TV character that you both look up to and also know you would fist fight in the class war? We never get to see that kind of nuance with queer women on TV. I’ll be bummed if we don’t get a third season of the series, but also I feel lucky beyond belief that this version of Anne Lister ever even existed at all. I’m not sure we’ll ever see anyone like her on TV again.

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Uncle Clifford, P-Valley

Natalie: In “Demethrius,” we see the fallout from the shooting of an unarmed black man by police through the eyes of our protagonists. We watch them react as people across Mississippi are galvanized into action. As Granmuva Ernestine watches it all unfold from a stool at the Pynk, she entreats Uncle Clifford to join the protests. But as much as she might agree with the protesters and as “big as [her] mouth is,” Uncle Clifford stands firm, responding, “Granmuva, errybody can’t protest. Some niggas just need to keep the strip clubs open.”

It’s a flip moment but hearkens back to the thing that makes Uncle Clifford such a compelling character: she is someone who, unquestionably, knows who she is. Even as she brushes against a world that’s never been fully prepared for her, she claims the space that is her birthright. It’s a confidence that her mother instilled in her early, handing her a Gucci pocketbook at three and daring anyone else to take issue with it. Uncle Clifford is noteworthy both for what she represents — one of the most prominent non-binary characters to exist on television — and what she inspires. Every moment I spent with Uncle Clifford this season was a reminder not to dim my own light and a challenge to live as my most authentic self, detractors be damned.