something I've noticed in these reactions against franchaela (for the uninitiated, the wlw main couple from the upcoming season of bridgerton) is that a lot of the things that some of these people are pressed about are the things queer people have to put up with 99% of the time when it comes to media representation
they are finally getting the experience of what it is to not be the center of mainstream media attention and they hate it
I saw a reddit post today where someone said they "didn't have a problem" with it and they "weren't homophobic" but their issue was that this couple had two seasons of sideline development whereas "other couples" did not (mainly eloise's upcoming romance, which is what most of these people are pressed about, since they have a huge need for eloise to be allo het on main)
op said that they were asking for "fairness" and that it's very obvious that these "unequal" treatments are knowing choices by the show's writer (not the books writer) who is herself a queer woman
and I may have responded because, the thing is, that's what all queer people go through with representation all the time
queer characters are always sidelined or underdeveloped or hinted at without being explicitly depicted or not given the same amount of time or care as everyone else by allo het writers, but the audience that's waiting for that is expected to go make fanwork about it and calm down
which is, in tow, how it's been for so long that, for a very very long time, queer themes in media were seen as something "fanfic-y" because that's where most of it had to be housed in, since mainstream media didn't give it room
to make a current example of how this is still a thing, when the interview with the vampire show became popular and people started learning about the books and anne rice and her lore, they immediately assumed that anne rice's issue with fanfic was queer depiction of her very canonically queer characters, and not the whole copyright situation
mainstream media has been so consistently allo and heteronormative that fanwork became the only space for that to change for such a long time which made it became synonymous with slash in people's minds
but when we have the opposite thing happen, when a queer show writer decides to push for some representation in her mainstream show (not a show that was made and aimed from day one at the queer audience, a show that was mainstream), suddenly there's a problem and suddenly they remember equality is good and suddenly the writer's identity is a cause for concern in bias
it's like when fat activists started developing body positive spaces and thin people suddenly were in there like "but what about us?"
and the comparison isn't even fair to bridgerton, because the exact same thing that's happening with franchaela (francesca and michaela, for the uninitiated) is what happened with polin (penelope and colin)
those two had two seasons as side characters of two other couples in which to develop their relationship and their dynamics, especially with the character attention to penelope and her background, which is what has been happening now with francesca
and just like at that time, because of this two season development in the sidelines, the polin season was pushed forward, which caused benedict's season to be pushed back, meanwhile benedict's small development on the side wasn't with his would-be wife, that storyline happened entirely on his season and not before
but nobody was crying for benedict or said it was "unfair writing" that penelope got so much screentime instead of him or said it was a problem that polin got development and a setup when benedict and sophie were nowhere to be seen together yet
but now franchaela is a problem, wonder why that is
this whole bridgerton situation is such an interesting place of observation for media studies and how queerphobia behaves in people who swear up and down they don't have a bias but it's just that, before now, they never had to be confronted to their own privilege
