.

Getting real sick of seeing variations of "the straights lost" and "LOL now you know how it feels" and "lmao straightbaiting" in regards to Tedbecca shippers' response to the opening scene of the Ted Lasso finale.

First of all, your standards are way too low. Good straightbaiting would have opened the same way but would have had Trent wander in after Ted to thank Rebecca for the use of her spare room since his dad's at his flat with his daughter, and they can't bone at Ted's because of Mrs. Shipley. THAT'S FUCKING STRAIGHTBAITING.

But also, do y'all not get that shipping is a largely queer pastime? It had to be because for the longest time shipping was the only way we could see ourselves in media. I don't know who you think Tedbecca shippers are, but especially if you are posting about it here on tumblr dot com, the people you're mocking for being hurt ARE ALSO LARGELY QUEER.

I guarantee you, many Tedbecca shippers already "know how it feels" and being cruelly misled and then treated like morons for daring to pick up romantic tropes is actually probably not that new for them.

This goldstar shipping attitude is gross too. Queers can ship whatever they want. It's shipping! It's fun! And there's no requirement that you have to ship wlw or mlm to be a queer shipper! The idea that only straight people like hetships kinda smacks of biphobia amongst other things!

Plus, as someone who's been queerbaited by media, my general takeaway was, "This sucks! I hope people don't have to continue to experience this!" not, "This sucks! I hope everyone gets fucked over in similar ways!"

Just in general, stop being shitty to other fans because they interpreted things differently or hold a different opinion of the show/season/finale. Especially my fellow Tedependents because we're awesome and better than gloating over a hollow non-victory.

biscuits 😭

Literally just staying up all night crying about the end of an era and attempting to wrangle 7800 layers of feelings into a thing that can come out in English

But I've been thinking about the biscuits

Not just the croissants she's eating in the scene where we think they've slept together (I refuse to feel baited by that scene btw, even though it and Beard's entrance made me feel like I'd ascended to a new plane of reality; the scene happened for a reason; I'm too tired to go into it; my relationship to heterosexual ships is interesting enough as it is and I don't need to develop a fucking straightbaiting chip on my shoulder and walk around with that; also Ted/Rebecca's incredibly intentional yet incredibly unconsummated-within-the-three-season-arc connection is like every femslash ship I've ever loved; I've decided to just lean into T/R's story being unfinished and to treat the rom-com leave-cute reference as a fond homage to what could be; I'm allowed to be as generous as I want to be with this show and these writers; LMAO; crying my ass off [stilted Scorpio version]; but genuinely--I can be as generous as I want to be and I don't have to hate this if I don't want to hate this)

Anyway

I've been thinking not just about the croissants she's eating in the scene where we think they've slept together, and how those aren't biscuits, but also about how she doesn't tell him she'll miss the biscuits and he doesn't talk about the ritual and he never bakes her biscuits again as far as we can tell and he doesn't give her the recipe

And it hurts but I love it

[[[[ The biscuits are his dick (-- @boglady ) ]]]]

Because it's so intrinsic to who they are that they just don't talk about this ritual engrained in the last 2.5 years of their lives, I think...and sure, sometimes we see Ted reference the biscuits when he walks in with some...but no one notices. Ted's mom doesn't notice. Trent doesn't notice. Higgins notices, but he was involved in the early s1 biscuit taste-testing, and he's all-seeing in a lot of ways so it's different. Lord knows Sassy isn't getting a biscuit even if she's gotten to enjoy Ted's actual dick a few times. Keeley is close enough to notice, but she's suspiciously quiet about it. Beard has to come over and fix Ted's oven all the time, but we never see him comment.

So how perfect is it that in everything Rebecca has to process about Ted leaving, she almost becomes another person who has taken for granted that Ted performs this absolutely deranged gesture of love in baking her biscuits every single week and delivering them to her in a pink box every day...because that's really telling. She puts a lot of work into asking him to stay. She's feeling all kinds of desperate things. She isn't at all like the people who don't see what he's been doing for her; her reasons for never mentioning the biscuits again are nothing like the biscuit-invisibility everyone else experiences. She just can't or won't say anything because the biscuits are untouchable

And in the season 4 that will exist in my head but will almost certainly never be a reality, someday, when they see each other again, he makes her some biscuits and she's so angry she can't eat them

(And then things get better and she does, but not at first)

(This is why I had to take Wednesday off work)

(I'm fuckin' losing it)

btw Noah’s stuff at the panel gives me no byler doubt at all bc if I was noah I would be 100x worse and I would make everyone think that I was a milkvan endgame truther. i would get “MIKE AND EL 4EVER” fake tattooed on my chest in papyrus font and then rip my shirt open at the panel like that one gay werewolf meme. i would be hyping up milkvan at every turn. i would say that Will’s love is completely unrequited and Mike and El are soulmates and that I heard ~rumours~ about a season 5 timeskip to a Mike and El wedding. i would say that mike and will are going to be Best Friends Forever. i would say that the milkvan kiss scenes are the “best and more genuine displays of romantic love in the show”. i would have a straight pride t shirt with mike’s face on it. i would talk about how the painting was solely just to get Mike and El back together and how the reason why Will was between them in that post-Nina shot is because they’re both so grateful for will showing them how much they love eachother.

just to make the straightbait THAT much better. just to Really pull a fast one on ppl. then again being that obvious might actually make more people think byler is endgame LMAO

i'm glad you brought up the issue with gender selectable ros. i know authors do it with the intention of being more inclusive, but it really doesn't do anything for diversity and representation. a lot of the times, these characters end up being one-dimensional because it's hard to develop a character when so much about them have to be left blank. other times, they come across as having been written with a male character in mind. and this has to do with the fact that they tend to be masculine. and while women and enbies can be masculine, almost none of these characters are feminine, even though men and enbies can be feminine too. so it's easy to think that they have stereotypically male traits because they were written to be male. it doesn't help when authors slip and use he/him pronouns when coding them in.

authors also don't take into account that male characters are almost always prioritized over female ones. look at the tags for any if, and it'll likely be dominated by the male characters. if the choice is there, a lot of people will choose to have a predominantly (if not completely) male cast because these people tolerate female characters at best, and if there's a choice not to have them in the story at all, they're going to choose not to have them. and this gives way to even less diversity.

i don't think there's any benefit to having gender selectable ros. authors are better off writing fleshed out characters. and authors would do well to reflect on their attitude towards female characters. i understand that they don't bring in the same engagement their male counterparts do, but i would hope that most authors write because they have a story to tell. and if that's true, a lot of them need to start reflecting on why women have such little presence in their stories. is it because there's no room for them in the story you're trying to tell (which can be true) or is it because you don't care enough to write about them? and that might seem harsh, but i think we're at a point where these questions need to be asked.

I don’t even particularly blame authors btw. It’s just a vicious circle.

Audience have a responsibility in this. They just ask questions or seem interested in white boy#1…. There is never people interested in the female li.

So here comes the circle.

People ask more content about white boy, and they send ask after ask of just about them. Author obvs just respond to the questions they get, which gives even more content for white boy, which again causes more people to be interested in white boy, and so on.

Authors are just in hard place, I don’t think they have a favorite character, I mean they created all of them. They probably wish all their characters would be loved the same.

And tbh. I don’t know which one is more work…. To make a character gender selectable. Or just have a full fleshed on character with a set gender. I would have to ask for authors opinions on that.

It’s a really hard topic. Cause at the end of the day most authors do what they can to make everyone happy and this is just a hobbie. And I appreciate them very much so it’s hard for me to be too critical about it

I mean…. If I had their talent I would go around straightbaiting everyone but that’s just me lmao

ted lasso might be the first show to successfully straightbait the audience and make the gay/poly relationship a more plausible ending than heterosexual romance

As someone who was not invested in them and didn't care one way or another what i will say is that watching that finale for the first time I FULLY believed tedb*cca were about to get it on, multiple times lmao. The straight baiting with that damn gas leak was REAL and even though it's (cough...kind of funny to me 😭😆, as someone not invested in the ship who also thinks a lot of those shippers have stepped way over the line in the way they've treated the creators and therefore did sort of deserve it...I say as I go hide...) I also did feel bad for them on that one, haha.

The royk*eley post-breakup sex to end the episode only for them to not be back together in the next one was also bait-y I guess, though I am still unsure why any royk*eley fan (of whom I count myself among) wanted them to randomly get back together that fast after roy's sort of shit apology and without resolving literally any of the issues that led to their breakup. I remember after that episode aired i wrote a LONG rant about how they better not be back together just like that (because everyone was saying they were, like it was fact)...and then I cheered when they thankfully were not. like even as someone who sees a path forward for a rk reunion, it would've been terrible writing. Also, at least that was foreshadowed by Keeley telling Rebecca she'd have to be at her worst emotional low to do something so stupid (kiss rupert) - as Roy walked down the stairs. OPE. So I feel less bad for those shippers for that particular moment (they did do rk dirty plenty of other times during the season that I DO agree with being frustrated about, lol, this instance just isn't one of them) because I do think the narrative was clearer about where that was headed and also, the writing was kind of on the wall for them at that point. By even the halfway point of the season rk endgame no longer made realistic sense.

which is all to say...you are definitely right and though I am firmly an eventual ot3 endgame truther, I do think the most plausible relationship between the three of them immediately post the show's conclusion is Roy/Jamie. In my head they get together first and then Keeley joins in down the road after her hot single girl era.

i need to scream!!!

s4 recap going into season 5…

we found out 001 is behind all the evil in the whole show. brenner is dead. el’s powers are back. everyone is reunited. the battle is clearly laid out ahead of our main characters, they don’t even have to set that up.

and sure, the battle of hawkins is going to be huge, but ST has shown us time and again that they’re going to spend lots of time on relationships even amidst life or death situations.

taking byler/melvin out of the equation, what relationships do they have to focus on now? once max is saved, lumax has clearly fallen back in love and will be reunited. jopper is basically married at this point, robin seems to have gotten her girl, jancy seemed mostly okay……

i’m just saying. i’m just SAYING… mike has been paralleled with brenner (“you can fly”, urging el to find vecna and fight him, etc). brenner is dead and el is framed by herself in the final shot of 4x9.

literally the ONLY thing that makes sense at this point AT ALL is for s5 to be byler’s romance season. i’m talking long flirty scenes like we saw with steve and nancy in s4 (probably a lot more angst tho bc have you seen these boys lmao). i’m talking romantic look after romantic look. i’m talking, as one wise melvin put it, a massive straightbait!!!

and yes, they still have to resolve jancy/stancy, but i doubt that’ll take up enough screentime to be THE central love story of s5. we already did that in s1/2.

even if melvin is endgame, what would their love story be in s5? mike finally said those three little words, so where could their relationship go now, growth wise? they’re weirdly distant rn but how could that even get resolved in a satisfying way other than a breakup, since they already had the big ily monologue?

as viewers, our reaction to this show is holy shit, these are kids and this is traumatic for them please give them hope. so the audience roots for them, wants them to win, and to be happy and healthy. and for eleven, someone who is…ahem…LIKE PAPA in some respects is not gonna be the healthiest partner for her at the end of the day. i just don’t feel like any audience will be satisfied seeing her go thru no personal growth and gaining no independence from mike by the end of s5.

TL;DR: i’m not saying they’ll do it bc who tf knows, but literally, everything about this sets up a byler s5. the relationships are the core of the show, and the current relationship setup of s4 makes nOoooOoOooo sense if we’re not looking at a byler centric s5.

You have become the Ronance mutual... enough so that I'm genuinely considering if I should watch the show.

i’ll take the ronance mutual badge of honor for spreading the ronance agenda lmao

if you haven’t watched the show at all, i’ll have you know that ronance is only so far in s4 since robin was introduced in s3 - in the best way because they deadass straightbaited everyone into thinking she’s going to get with a guy so for once the straights could know how it feels

now her and steve are the power duo of besties, the lesbian and a himbo with kids

back to ronance, i just can go on and on about why this ship makes the most sense instead of pairing nancy with steve who has already said he doesn’t have feeling for her anymore (not to mention that he liked robing because she wasnt nancy)

and for robin, it’s canon she has a crush on a girl named vickie but we deadass saw robin talk to her once in the entirety of vol1… while robin literally followed nancy around like a puppy and was paired with her the entire 7eps of vol1… not to mention she wore nancy’s BRA at one point

duffer brothers, which one do you think am i going to ship ???

tl;dr give my poor 80s lesbian a journalist girlfriend and let them be happy

annatwig replied to your post “annatwig replied to your photo “who the fuck made this entry...”

I have no problem with people reading both Flint and Anne as bi, as long as they don't start this argument that there's no way these characters can be gay bc of their previous relationships with the people of the opposite sex. But insisting the writers don't understand the concept of bisexuality (hello, Eleanor?! anyone?!?) is just another level of... arrogance?

i mean it’s realistic too. not every single gay person has had same sex relationships from the get-go, nor did they know they were gay for most of their lives. heteronormativity is still a huge problem nowadays-- not to mention back then! and... more importantly, James and Anne’s stories are actually two distinctly different stories, so the show isn’t simply recycling the same gay experience between two characters? James has always been gay and aside from the implied sex in the carriage (which was left open on purpose lmao straightbait guys seriously did you not get it), the only other sex scene he has with Miranda was put there on purpose to show that he’s very obviously not straight (plus the entire scene was really sad too)

while for Anne, her story was explained across a span of episodes as she gradually came to realize she’s in love with Max and that she’s a csa survivor and felt indebted to Jack for rescuing her. it’s not a blanket statement there’s actual development and backstory to how their sexuality came to be??

funny how Eleanor’s bisexuality was immediately erased by everyone save for some parts of fandom (and the show, obviously). not a single review site remembered or cared about the fact that Eleanor had a past with Max, it was always about her and Vane or Rogers, so... who exactly is participating in bi-erasure right now...?