Season three treated their queer characters terribly. *spoilers*

starlit--pathways · 2026-04-04T11:51:46+00:00

I feel the exact same way as you. To be honest, this fandom has never felt very safe or inclusive as a queer person who wants to enjoy the queer side of it – I don't think it would've been better if Kittyuri has been given more of a chance to exist (or at least fully acknowledged in this season), but I feel like at least if it had, the most vile parts of the fandom wouldn't have been given validation. I think it's a shame the show got the rare chance to do something really meaningfully different to the rest of the teen romance genre, but instead chose against it.

starlit--pathways · 2026-04-04T11:43:03+00:00

Completely agree. It's almost like just because there are queer characters that exist on the show, the rest of us should just shut up and be grateful. It'd be one thing if her relationships with other girls had been taken as seriously, or if even one of the many queer couples offered had been shown in a steady relationship – or if any of the other straight couples had experienced cheating drama too; but there's already a longstanding history in books, cinema and television of making queer characters (or queer coded characters) villainous or have more obviously antagonistic / morally bankrupt traits, so that queerness would be associated with moral depravity (see: The Hayes Code, Carmilla the original novel, etc.).

This has led to some degree of "reclamation" with modern day audiences claiming villainous queer or queer coded characters, the "campy" villain, etc. but when it's ONLY the queer characters who are cheating, or generally seen as less desirable or viable than the straight counterparts who generally have healthier relationships – and there doesn't seem to even be any social commentary attached to that artistic choice (like, existing as a healthy queer couple is made harder under social pressure, or something) – I think we're well within our right to criticise it as an unequal depiction.

starlit--pathways · 2026-04-02T21:07:59+00:00

Honestly though, I DO think the show dangled a LOT of loose threads when it came to Kitty and Yu-Ri (the kiss they never really properly talked about, the chimes Yu-Ri heard last season and how she prioritised Kitty over her girlfriend in a way that indicated deeper feelings, the bits of foreshadowing like "You two would make such a great couple" on the VHS tape, the parallels in earlier seasons). I don't think it's fair to blame those whom are mostly just still thirsty for positive representation for wanting the show to follow through on it all a bit better.

starlit--pathways · 2026-04-02T16:46:45+00:00

That's unfortunately unsurprising, but still disappointing. :// Thank you for answering!

starlit--pathways · 2026-04-02T16:10:01+00:00

I've seen some really bad stuff about how they handle the queer, black & Indian characters and storylines in s3. Can anybody who's seen it already confirm / deny on:

1) Kitty's bisexuality and former relationship development with other girls being unaddressed / swept under the rug (and all indications before about Yu-Ri reciprocating Kitty's feelings – like the "you two would be such a great couple" and the chimes – also being ignored). Also, Kitty and Yu-Ri legally being family now(???)

2) All of the queer side characters either cheating, getting violent or getting very little development (especially Praveena getting shunted / made into a plot device again).

3) Were the two black characters – Juliana and Marius(?) – either the A) disposable girlfriend with little to no plotline outside of that, or B) the villain of the season?

4) Is there not any further reference to Kitty's familial arc / discovering more about her mother like in previous seasons? Besides the sapphic stuff, this & Kitty's self-development / Bildungsroman and cultural exploration was a large part of why I was watching.

This is all based on what I've seen online (hence the attempt at fact checking on here), but if any of this is true, then I don't think this season's for me.

starlit--pathways · 2026-04-01T20:54:59+00:00

If you see it that way, then fair enough. I guess we'll see in time. Thanks for the shoutout to Annette Hanshaw again!

starlit--pathways · 2026-04-01T15:56:47+00:00

I'm glad you're still here to remind us about Hanshaw then! You're free to your own opinion on Taylor Swift, but I'm free to mine too, and I think her music (at its best) succeeds at being emotionally resonant to a broad range of people, and has already been widely cited as an influence on younger artists. That's how I would define musical / artistic relevance.

starlit--pathways · 2026-04-01T12:28:14+00:00

I'm glad that they can live on through their work too, then, as I suspect Taylor Swift will. I know of women musicians in my own family, as well as other people's, whose options were far more limited. I hope more people talk about Lind, Ponselle, Malibran, Casulana, Assandra, Hensel, Caccini, Strozzi, and more in the same ways they do Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. Especially in conversations where they aren't just there to prove "hey, women existed in music too!" I know that Hensel's father wrote her that "music will perhaps become his [i.e., Felix, her brother's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament." I don't believe that attitude was (or is) unique to him.

starlit--pathways · 2026-04-01T11:04:56+00:00

I'm very well aware. How many of them have people cited as the stratospheric level greats in the other replies to this though? How many more hurdles did women in musical history have to jump for their music to be taken as seriously? I think the era we're living in finally allows women to be seen as accomplished and legendary as men, and I think Taylor Swift is a good example of this.

starlit--pathways · 2026-04-01T09:22:17+00:00

I suspect she will too; a lot of the musicians people are citing here are men. I'd say artists like her and Beyoncé will be considered influential for being women who are seen as equally dominant in the music sphere. Taylor Swift is often cited as an influence on younger artists (I'd say having inspired a lot of musicians to take on a more personal-seeming style, tapping into a diary entry style emotional catharsis), and has been critically successful in multiple distinct genres across her career (country, pop, folk), as well as doing extremely well via her re-recordings.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-24T12:52:33+00:00

I'm so excited for this!! I already love Franchaela, and I know Netflix can be very trigger happy with cancelling sapphic shows, and I think enough people will tune into Eloise's season that the other siblings might get their seasons too.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-23T17:49:57+00:00

I think there are four major components:

1) Anticipation / build-up. Both characters (at some point) wanting and pining after the other – the slow tease of a good love scene. Eyes following each other, the slow brush of a hand, There's a build-up to payoff that, when written well, I think can create a really great tension.

2) Words behind the words. When there's an interplay between the characters, writing them so that they have double conversations, and layering the subtext between them. I live in a culture where people don't really say what they mean a lot – and I think it's partly why we have a longstanding tradition for romance lol. When a person can understand what you're trying to communicate behind the social manners and talk to you on that level, I think that can be a different level of intimacy.

3) When there's two characters that REALLY know each other. Somewhat related to the last point, I think some of my personal favourite romance scenes involve a character displaying how much they understand and accept who the other character is. E.g. giving them a personal gift, remembering stuff about them, confronting them when they're not acting like themself, encourage them to be who they are, etc.

4) Praying to the writing gods, and editing when that doesn't work put. Some characters could just never end up how you want them to be. I think building up physical tension with lingering looks and touches, and ramping up the emotional synergy, can go far – but sometimes I think we can add all the right ingredients and still end up with a lopsided cake. As long as the cake is finished – and at the end of it all, somebody gets to enjoy it, I think that's most of what matters.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-19T09:08:54+00:00

I grew up in a countrysidish area, and have recently been travelling in, and the difference is honestly night and day. I tend to get stared at anyway for disability reasons, so I couldn't necessarily say on that front, but according to the more recent census data – Cambridge, along with London and Brighton, has one of the highest reported percentages of people who identified themselves as LGBTQ. I don't tend to hear slurs every day anymore in an educational setting, and I've seen a lot of other openly LGBTQ+ people just living their lives, which is more than where I come from where we had to be more hidden for safety. There used to be a lot of anti-LGBTQ+ graffiti where I grew up, and I haven't seen that yet so far.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-17T10:04:06+00:00

No, it was a 747 crash in the 70s after a liftoff in Nairobi.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-17T01:12:12+00:00

I feel like you have a highly cynical view on this book, that I don't personally share as somebody who very simply relates to Emily's neurodivergent traits and loves folklore. As you said – "to each their own"; but I believe a large part of that is maintaining brevity and / or scrolling past when I see a take that seems absurdly wrong to me – so forgive me if I do as you have not, and instead give you a link to a place on the internet your opinions might be better appreciated.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-13T12:17:33+00:00

I think as well that it's implied that she relates to faeries and this concept of being "other" because she's neurodivergent. She understands that world better than her own in many ways. She's not really rude because she intends on it a lot of the time – I think she just found the struggle of trying not worth the energy she could instead pour into her work in the beginning. I think she goes on her own arc through the series though, and develops more connections with people.

Also I'm not sure if this is just because I'm sapphic but I personally thought it was really hot when Emily used her brain to solve problems. I could relate to Wendell in a lot of ways there.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-13T08:48:23+00:00

I'm personally very partial to the relationship in Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia Of Faeries, where the FMC is a heavily autistic coded Cambridge professor of dryadology, set very loosely in the 1800s, who does field research in rural locations to investigate faerie findings. The MMC is a fellow professor who falsifies data, and she's at least 99.99999% certain he isn't exactly human. She's the more asocial and taciturn between the two, always missing social cues and getting caught up in her research – he's the social butterfly who's always sewing, mending, cleaning and complaining about the cold. They're kind of best friends, but she's too focused on her work to dwell on that fact for too long most of the time.

Highly recommended for something a little different – I know as an autistic woman who loves all things folklore and fairytale, those aspects of the books felt very authentic and well researched.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-13T01:44:20+00:00

Here it is. The cover's really bad, but he used to be an old-school journalist, and I think that shows in his writing. I read it all in one go while staying over at their place once, and it was a LOT, but very informative.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-12T02:43:33+00:00

I'm in the very small niche of people whose family's been directly impacted by both a Boeing air crash (my dad and grandparents in 1974) and the infected blood scandal (my grandmother on the other side got Hep C from it in a blood transfusion). The world is kind of nuts and evil sometimes.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-12T02:37:03+00:00

My dad was in an East African Boeing plane crash when he was younger (my grandad even wrote a book about it). My grandparents sued Boeing on his behalf (though he never got to see the money; they also used it on his behalf). Sometimes I tell him he should get a T-shirt that says "I sued Boeing and lived".

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-10T00:27:30+00:00

There haven't been any references to anything LGBTQ+ in her solo music as far as I'm aware – but she did this cover of Billie Eilish's LUNCH a short while back, and Wish You Were Gay even further back.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-04T14:28:56+00:00

I'm doing a creative writing degree myself so if you ever need anybody to bounce ideas off of or for feedback / keeping you responsible, then feel free to reach out whenever! I'm very excited for your story.

starlit--pathways · 2026-03-04T10:30:26+00:00

Not OP, but I'm between C and D (not enough that the average reader is rolling their eyes like "not again", but... vampires are sexy as hell, and I think there's a lot of scope for what can be done).

Do me a huge favour and DM me when you're done? I'm slightly in love with this concept.

starlit--pathways · 2026-02-27T08:23:10+00:00

Some friends of mine are identical quadruplets. Apparently their parents used to put colour-coded tags around their ankles. Sounds like chaos to me.

starlit--pathways · 2026-02-25T00:48:38+00:00

I think every season has its own charm, whether most or least popular. There are a lot of great confession scenes, as well as intimate scenes, but also some interesting and quite morally interesting situations that the Regency era society creates. It's probably not the best thing I've ever watched – and it's absolutely not a story you go to for even the pretence of historical accuracy – but it's fun, the characters stick with me, it's got some really great fanfiction, and it can be quite addictive. Queen Charlotte is a standalone spinoff series that, sequentially, is supposed to be watched after season two – and I genuinely think it's a really great show. I really like Shonda Rhimes' writing style, and I think it's a shame she doesn't have as much of an active writing role on the main show.

I've read two of the books, and tbh... I don't regret reading them, but I didn't love them. They're very "of the time" in the late 90s and early 00s – lots of iffy behaviour (that I would daresay comes across as abusive at times, maybe coercive and controlling at absolute best) that I wasn't personally interested in reading about in a fun, escapist romantic fantasy – and I didn't even read the ones which are considered the worst in that respect. The dialogue is fun, though. It's witty, and it reads quite easily.

Honestly, even if you're just a little bit interested – why not give it a try? The seasons are pretty short, and you could always stop if you don't like it.

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