"You are definitely curious. I'm not so sure it's entirely scientific."
So at first I was laughing at the Ship-to-Ship War that the E!Online TV's Top Couples poll has ignited. Down to the Final Four, the battlefield is filled with the sniping of Brittana (Glee) vs. Tiva (NCIS) vs. Klaine (Glee) vs. Doccubus (Lost Girl) camps. It's quite the mess. (Also kind of amazing that it came down to two lesbian couples vs. a gay couple vs. a heterosexual couple. There's some additional commentary in there about sexuality and fandom in there somewhere.) It's terribly amusing and like a case study of the madness (and blindness and undying loyalty) of shipping. Then in my compulsive scrolling down, I hit this:
It was the "Asia" bit. And the "China" fan chiming in. And then, at the very end, the "South Korea" shout out. There are fans of "Lost Girl"/Doccubus all over the world; in other parts of the comments, Australian fans took up the reins of spam-voting. Within the fandom itself, there's an especially remarked upon fan in either France or Italy that even the show's cast and staff know about. They're everywhere, of many ages.
In interviews, Anna Silk (Bo), Zoie Palmer (Lauren), and "Lost Girl" writers like Emily Andras (showrunner)--who have all been tweeting the fans to vote! vote! vote! and have been cowed by the response of the fandom to do just that--all express their surprise at how the Bo/Lauren story line blew up and was embraced and extolled by an audience. The Bo/Lauren story line was always meant to be a considered, weighty piece of the story--when casting for Lauren, the staff emphasized the need for there to be chemistry between the two women--but I'd be willing to bet that the development of Bo/Lauren into the current canon couple it is now had a lot to do with the fervent, eager adoption of a shipping fanbase.
I was reading AfterEllen.com's contributing writer Heather Hogan's latest "Glee" recap. Whether I watch the shows or not, I find Hogan's recaps often inspired with gut-busting genius. But where Hogan consistently cuts to the heart of the matter is on the appeal and importance of lesbian narratives. That everyone, no matter their sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, etc., needs to see themselves in stories, to have those stories exist in the public conversation, to be inspired, to be affirmed in their identities.
So when I see fans of Doccubus--of Bo and Lauren as a couple, as a bisexual woman and a lesbian who are in love and embarking on working out if they can be in a committed relationship with each other on a show that doesn't give a damn about their sexuality but is about to tread lightly or heavily into the murky waters of how to portray how these women love each other, what it means to give and take, to compromise and bend, or break entirely--from places in the world like China and South Korea, I imagine these women or girls maybe hanging their hearts and their hopes on these two fictional adult women characters who are beyond the point of angsting about the genitalia of the people with whom they want to sleep and are concerned with working it out with this one person, with the knowledge that television narratives aren't necessarily committed to making relationships work for the sake of drama.
Let me be clear that I don't have much faith in Bo/Lauren canonically staying together, at least not in an exclusive form. I looked at my "Lost Girl" tag and saw that back in September 2011 I was already pretty sure that "Lost Girl" would employ a swinging pendulum approach to the deliberate love triangle they had built. I don't think the show can risk not bringing the Bo/Dyson card back into play at some point. If they don't touch again on Bo/Dyson romantically, they'd be alienating another part of the show's larger fanbase and possibly casual viewership.
But it's also true that to re-engage the Bo/Dyson card would now be tempting the ire of a very vociferous lesbian fan community. While not all lesbian fans are fans of Doccubus, the number that are have thrown themselves at the mercy of Bo/Lauren with a shipping devotion that can be alarming in the ways that any shipping fandom can be. I've seen very weird (sometimes outright delusional) declarations and assertions defending or propounding Doccubus. Things like "Lauren is the only one Bo has ever loved" or backlash against the impending open relationship Bo is about to engage in. Shipping minds have turned to trying to differentiate and rationalize sex-as-feeding from sex-as-expression-of-love.
(This is a real issue I hope the show does tackle to some degree or in some form with the hopes that it isn't so black and white. When I consider Bo to be a sexual creature, I want her to enjoy whatever sex she engages in [especially since thankfully, considering she is a succubus, Bo isn't a sex "animal" driven by blind lust], whether that's in satisfying biological needs, for sport and fun, or for emotional fulfillment. I think it would be a great journey of character growth for Bo to have to either learn to navigate her own heart in those matters or assert herself and be like, "Well, actually, I just like it all." Or, on the flip side, to see how much Lauren bends, breaks, or unfolds--one of the big questions is whether or not the "open" part will also apply to Lauren. . . . I don't have much hope to get that kind of depth, but you never know!)
And yet it is also a testament to the Power of Shipping (and perhaps to Zoie Palmer's doe-eyed gazes) that Lauren as a character seems so much more prominent and present and greater than the sum of the parts that is the treatment the show has afforded her character. Alex Cranz at fempop.com points out astutely why Bo/Lauren didn't appear to have a chance of happening canonically compared to the potential of Bo/Dyson:
Dyson’s always been far better developed than Lauren. He gets whole episodes devoted to how his wolf brain works while Lauren gets half an episode devoted to her girlfriend going cray cray. Perhaps more importantly, Kenzi, the best character on the show, has been firmly Team Dyson since time began (or maybe since just the show began). Couple that with Dyson’s great exposition and the heteronormative nature of entertainment in general and there’s always been this nagging feeling that poor Lauren was nothing but a lady lovin’ diversion before Bo finds her way back to her big manly wolf dude.
It's not just Dyson who receives whole-episode arcs. Kenzi, as lurveable BFF and side kick, has had multiple episodes and subplots that allow her to flex her brains and muscles independent of Bo (and will get additional ones this season I don't doubt). Even Hale has had an episode in which his character and background and stance on Fae politics were heavily explored.
Season 3's opening episodes mostly make me blink in retrospect because suddenly we got a lot more Lauren exploration. The show, however, has taken its time dropping tidbits. A thread here, a crumb there. I have spent an embarrassing amount of time weaving fuller back stories for Lauren's character. For the truth is that the show doesn't put much about Lauren on display: not about her daily work life (is it me, or has the clinic/lab disappeared as a set and now Lauren just works out of her living quarters?), her years before encountering the Fae, her romantic life prior to Bo and Nadia (though high school seems to have featured the straight years--and yet, we've never had it confirmed Lauren is a lesbian and not a bisexual woman . . . I kind of wish she'd seen the selkie strippers now), her family life growing up (she snapped at Kenzi's making assumptions but offered up no details in clarification), or even how she's regarded in the Fae community (Dyson was almost always dismissive in Season 1; yet the Lich had heard of the Ash's acquisition of the human doctor who cured the Fae in the Congo), or about her place in the slippery world of Fae politics or her own current standing (Ash I seemed to trust Lauren with proxy power; Ash II Lachlan treated her like shit to get under Bo's skin; [acting] Ash III is almost too much of a friend[?] to get a handle on how things stand and besides Lauren is now too busy being oversexed to the point of ruining her life--excuse me while I remember Dana/Alice for a moment, sigh). But Cranz blatantly pointing out the narrative disparity in the treatment of love interests Dyson and Lauren made me pause. The odd thing was, as I recall, Dyson got the full character treatment even at a point when he was no longer a viable love interest! Insult to injury!
It could be argued, though, that the writers are aiming to keep Lauren a bit mysterious, that it coincides with the character's deep set reserve. It's true that canon doesn't always give you what you wish for and sometimes you'd rather pretend something didn't happen. That might be nearly the whole Nadia arc, actually. Maybe mystery is a good thing . . . (Yet, I don't know, I figure Bo and Lauren decide to give the dating thing a go and Bo would be curious. Then again, considering the unpleasant surprise that was Nadia for them, maybe she wouldn't be. XD Bo and Lauren have actually been marked by a lack of communication, as if they seek to defy lesbian processing. Their lack of communication has hurt them in the past. Yet their painful silences probably made the ending of 3x04 carry more weight: Bo coming clean instead of trying to hide anything, their saying "I love you" to each other and verbally addressing one of the big problems inherent in their relationship instead of dancing away from it and trying to ignore it.)
You can say the shoe is on the other foot now and the Dyson fans have to stew while Lauren gets to emotionally hog Bo to herself for the time being. We are supposed to believe that both emotional connections have equal weight and pull for Bo, but it's harder to buy into that when one leg of the triangle hasn't been given as much exposition. The short-term and long-term problems that Bo and Lauren face will a) make it hard for them to remain the de facto couple or b) allow the writers to stretch out their couple status a bit longer as they explore those issues before the pendulum either has to swing back to Dyson or c) open up the pair into a potential de facto threesome (not in a three-way sex way, but in a true polyamorous relationship pivoting around Bo).
The more I think about the display of devotion Doccubus fans are flaunting to the show and the showrunner right now in the E!Online poll, the more I wonder if Option C is going to gain more and more traction. (I assumed that this was the most probable/plausible way to really resolve the issue, but now it might become the only way. The mechanics of such a resolution, though, has so much potential to be engagingly messy in the execution. Many of the "Lost Girl" shipping wars could be solved with threesomes. Hell, all of the triangles in Season 2 could have become threesomes instead of "kill off the hypotenuse" scenarios.)
But really I'm thinking about that crazy shipping mind, how Ryan Murphy has crushed the hopes and hearts of Brittanna fans again and again, how Shonda Rhimes has flirted with lesbian fans first with one woman for Callie, then another, and then angst and drama, how "Pretty Little Liars" has been growing its fandom by being aware of its lesbian viewers and even catering story lines to them (lol, #BooRadleyvanCullen).
Lesbian viewers are really loud. When there are so few things to love and cling to, you love and cling to those few things really, really hard. Then when those things are handed back to you broken and shattered, you stop trusting narratives and storytellers and tangential fandoms to be on your side.
Lesbian narratives with recurring or main cast characters tend to have a honeymoon period right in the beginning of the romantic development where the women are in love and everything is roses and rainbows and the fandom is super hyped up and in love with the characters being in love. Then the rule of television drama steps in and the party has to end and it's break ups and the introduction of male love interests and sometimes even blatant denials of the validity of the same-sex romance.
The downer endings and retcons can feel like rejection letters from show writers. But they wouldn't hurt so much if there were enough positive stories on the other side to balance it out. Because, let's face it, those same narrative tools are used in heterosexual story lines all the time--but the Cinderella stories, the end game narratives, the white knight who swoops in, the True Love story that the mainstream extols, those are overwhelmingly heterosexual too.
I jumped on the Bo/Lauren wagon because Zoie Palmer and Anna Silk make the screen crackle with their chemistry. It was sexy. It was fun and exciting to root for two women who were actually, explicitly flirting and circling around each other in a cat and mouse game of lust. When the potential of their getting together ebbed, I lost interest, but what had been there hit on so many of my f/f kinks, all subtext of things unsaid, but with canon main text kissing and making out and sex all over my screen! It comes packaged with such little fanfare and with surprisingly little processing. By episode 8 in Season 1, the women were in bed without much note of them both being women. It was remarkable to me.
I think about now how even more remarkable that may be for someone questioning their sexuality or feeling oppressed by homophobia real and imagined. I remember my own experiences encountering lesbian narratives in that unsure space, being afraid and excited and confused and repelled and titillated and unable to look away. I think about the fact that on the show no one calls Bo a slut or a whore. I think about the fact that on the show no one ever dismisses Lauren because she is homosexual. (Just that she's human.) I marvel that Bo is a bisexual woman and her best friend is a woman and the show grounds them as the platonic touchstone of the emotional ties without an undercurrent of attraction.
And I think about those shippers.
The joy and appreciation of the Doccubus fandom are infectious and diving into the "doccubus" tag on tumblr is like being in a bubble of unicorns and rainbows and the gayest, most lesbianic stream of gif posts. However, it won't hurt my heart/ruin my life if Bo/Lauren don't work out. I'm actually much more interested in what story "Lost Girl" wants to tell in terms of its sexual politics and how it will tell it because it's not preaching, it's showing. It's saying, "Hey, look, this is a world where there are gays and lesbians and bisexuals and no one cares!" (But it's also shown me some things that made me pause and wonder what the message was; Bo barging in during Vex's bondage play time, for one--c'mon, Bo, like you wouldn't want to tie up Dyson or Lauren, yes/yes?) The sexual politics are complicated and about to become even more so. It is remarkable, really, to consider that the bisexual character on the show is the protagonist. Not some bit secondary character. Not some weekly guest star. No, we're talking about the show lead. Hell, she's a succubus and she manages to not be portrayed as a depraved bisexual!
But right now, Doccubus is in that honeymoon phase. Bo/Lauren have finally gotten together. Their very getting together and being together is, in fact, attracting whole new fans to the show who have been craving badly for a lesbian narrative to root for and believe in. Season 3's opening salvo of pushing them together, along with the spamming of fans on social networking sites of the development, has created retroactive interest in the previous two seasons from f/f fans who are looking for that next new fictional romance to fall into.
Yet the show's politics aren't the fandom's politics. (As the Shipping Wars make painfully, sometimes distressingly clear from nearly every camp.) And the show's needs cannot please everyone.
It's just that usually in this tug-of-war, it's the LGBT corner that tends to feel pushed aside.
Did I mention Bo the bisexual is the protagonist?
When demographics show that your audience is probably overwhelmingly straight and perhaps skewed toward women, who are probably almost mostly straight within that demographic, then it's not surprising that a show should be mostly oriented to heterosexual viewership/heteronormative storytelling. It is sort of an odd thing to sit back and see that it's the Bo/Dyson camp feeling shoved aside for the time being. I can understand that. My own interest in the show dropped significantly once I figured Bo wasn't in it to win Lauren, so I get that Dyson fans are waiting for that pendulum to come whipping back around.
And yet I think about those Doccubus shippers.
Particularly the quiet ones or the ones who ship behind a persona (secretly, furtively, giddily, maybe even guiltily), who need this story in a way they didn't know they needed it. Didn't know that they needed to see and participate in the story of two women not just falling in love, but being in love and expressing their love, and, yes, having actual problems. Indeed, one of the things I found refreshing about "Lost Girl" was that it skipped over a lot of the tension and angst in the courting stage and jumped their characters right into bed and then gave them all sorts of problems that weren't about "getting to a kiss" or "getting into bed." (Though I suppose the problem was "getting back into bed." Oh, Season 2.)
I didn't know how much I'd wanted to see that myself. That I want to sit and untangle a story about attractions that place the physical and the emotional on a see-sawing scale trying to find a balance, about misunderstandings and miscommunication, about forgiveness and forging ahead. It's not a perfect story. It's even been handle quite shoddily in a few areas. (Chrissake, Nadia.)
But it's one of the few stories of its type out there. For Canada. (Did I mention that 3x04 had a PG rating in Canada? PG!) For the US. For South America. For Australia. For China. For South Korea.
There are legitimate criticisms that can be leveled at "Lost Girl." It's not a show for everyone. Some will find it too cheesy to be their cup of tea. But I think it should be lauded in its simple celebration of sex, of love, of finding and being and recreating and maturing into yourself. That it is bold enough to hand its viewers a world where women love men and women, where men love women and men, where there is prejudice and speciesism that can be overcome with love and respect--even if people (and Fae) are imperfect. That the creators and producers of "Lost Girl" championed a show with a bisexual protagonist and they stuck by that vision without shame or shaming.
I think about those Doccubus shippers and I think about hearts and hope.
I feel a little afraid for them.
More stories. We need more stories. Stories that we're not afraid to embrace and put our faith in. We need stories that teach us not to feel afraid when these stories pop up. We need more stories so as not to feel as if we have to invest everything in the handful that do exist. We need more stories so that the handful that exist don't bear the full burden of trying to get everything "right." We need diverse stories to have more to believe in.
Yeah.
So for right now, "Lost Girl," even not knowing where the end of Season 3 will find Bo and crew and all their emotional entanglements, thank you. In this moment, you and I are cool.
(But, yes, if you ease up on Bo/Lauren again, you'll probably lose my attention. Sorry. That's just how it is. I know it's tough to cater to multiple tastes. It's usually why the gay character is a secondary, side bit character and not romantically attached to the show lead. Which is why it's pretty awesome that Bo the bisexual is the lead. Thank you for that, but, yes, Bo/Lauren. Or Lauren/hot woman. In which case, clearly Bo/everyone. K.)
If you don't want to read all that TL;DR, then at least give Adaline a listen! "Lost Girl" used "Keep Me High" for the opening love scene in 3x04, but I've gone on to adore and loop "Rebels of Love" and "Stereo" especially. A lot of the songs off the Modern Romantics album are really fun, groovy electronic pop tracks. "Lost Girl" is just making me fall in love with many Canadian things apparently. Should I be living in Canada?! But it's cold!
Oh, Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year to those who celebrate it! For me it's basically just the time of year to eat bánh tét and bánh chưng. XD Yummy!
It was the "Asia" bit. And the "China" fan chiming in. And then, at the very end, the "South Korea" shout out. There are fans of "Lost Girl"/Doccubus all over the world; in other parts of the comments, Australian fans took up the reins of spam-voting. Within the fandom itself, there's an especially remarked upon fan in either France or Italy that even the show's cast and staff know about. They're everywhere, of many ages.
In interviews, Anna Silk (Bo), Zoie Palmer (Lauren), and "Lost Girl" writers like Emily Andras (showrunner)--who have all been tweeting the fans to vote! vote! vote! and have been cowed by the response of the fandom to do just that--all express their surprise at how the Bo/Lauren story line blew up and was embraced and extolled by an audience. The Bo/Lauren story line was always meant to be a considered, weighty piece of the story--when casting for Lauren, the staff emphasized the need for there to be chemistry between the two women--but I'd be willing to bet that the development of Bo/Lauren into the current canon couple it is now had a lot to do with the fervent, eager adoption of a shipping fanbase.
I was reading AfterEllen.com's contributing writer Heather Hogan's latest "Glee" recap. Whether I watch the shows or not, I find Hogan's recaps often inspired with gut-busting genius. But where Hogan consistently cuts to the heart of the matter is on the appeal and importance of lesbian narratives. That everyone, no matter their sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, etc., needs to see themselves in stories, to have those stories exist in the public conversation, to be inspired, to be affirmed in their identities.
So when I see fans of Doccubus--of Bo and Lauren as a couple, as a bisexual woman and a lesbian who are in love and embarking on working out if they can be in a committed relationship with each other on a show that doesn't give a damn about their sexuality but is about to tread lightly or heavily into the murky waters of how to portray how these women love each other, what it means to give and take, to compromise and bend, or break entirely--from places in the world like China and South Korea, I imagine these women or girls maybe hanging their hearts and their hopes on these two fictional adult women characters who are beyond the point of angsting about the genitalia of the people with whom they want to sleep and are concerned with working it out with this one person, with the knowledge that television narratives aren't necessarily committed to making relationships work for the sake of drama.
Let me be clear that I don't have much faith in Bo/Lauren canonically staying together, at least not in an exclusive form. I looked at my "Lost Girl" tag and saw that back in September 2011 I was already pretty sure that "Lost Girl" would employ a swinging pendulum approach to the deliberate love triangle they had built. I don't think the show can risk not bringing the Bo/Dyson card back into play at some point. If they don't touch again on Bo/Dyson romantically, they'd be alienating another part of the show's larger fanbase and possibly casual viewership.
But it's also true that to re-engage the Bo/Dyson card would now be tempting the ire of a very vociferous lesbian fan community. While not all lesbian fans are fans of Doccubus, the number that are have thrown themselves at the mercy of Bo/Lauren with a shipping devotion that can be alarming in the ways that any shipping fandom can be. I've seen very weird (sometimes outright delusional) declarations and assertions defending or propounding Doccubus. Things like "Lauren is the only one Bo has ever loved" or backlash against the impending open relationship Bo is about to engage in. Shipping minds have turned to trying to differentiate and rationalize sex-as-feeding from sex-as-expression-of-love.
(This is a real issue I hope the show does tackle to some degree or in some form with the hopes that it isn't so black and white. When I consider Bo to be a sexual creature, I want her to enjoy whatever sex she engages in [especially since thankfully, considering she is a succubus, Bo isn't a sex "animal" driven by blind lust], whether that's in satisfying biological needs, for sport and fun, or for emotional fulfillment. I think it would be a great journey of character growth for Bo to have to either learn to navigate her own heart in those matters or assert herself and be like, "Well, actually, I just like it all." Or, on the flip side, to see how much Lauren bends, breaks, or unfolds--one of the big questions is whether or not the "open" part will also apply to Lauren. . . . I don't have much hope to get that kind of depth, but you never know!)
And yet it is also a testament to the Power of Shipping (and perhaps to Zoie Palmer's doe-eyed gazes) that Lauren as a character seems so much more prominent and present and greater than the sum of the parts that is the treatment the show has afforded her character. Alex Cranz at fempop.com points out astutely why Bo/Lauren didn't appear to have a chance of happening canonically compared to the potential of Bo/Dyson:
Dyson’s always been far better developed than Lauren. He gets whole episodes devoted to how his wolf brain works while Lauren gets half an episode devoted to her girlfriend going cray cray. Perhaps more importantly, Kenzi, the best character on the show, has been firmly Team Dyson since time began (or maybe since just the show began). Couple that with Dyson’s great exposition and the heteronormative nature of entertainment in general and there’s always been this nagging feeling that poor Lauren was nothing but a lady lovin’ diversion before Bo finds her way back to her big manly wolf dude.
It's not just Dyson who receives whole-episode arcs. Kenzi, as lurveable BFF and side kick, has had multiple episodes and subplots that allow her to flex her brains and muscles independent of Bo (and will get additional ones this season I don't doubt). Even Hale has had an episode in which his character and background and stance on Fae politics were heavily explored.
Season 3's opening episodes mostly make me blink in retrospect because suddenly we got a lot more Lauren exploration. The show, however, has taken its time dropping tidbits. A thread here, a crumb there. I have spent an embarrassing amount of time weaving fuller back stories for Lauren's character. For the truth is that the show doesn't put much about Lauren on display: not about her daily work life (is it me, or has the clinic/lab disappeared as a set and now Lauren just works out of her living quarters?), her years before encountering the Fae, her romantic life prior to Bo and Nadia (though high school seems to have featured the straight years--and yet, we've never had it confirmed Lauren is a lesbian and not a bisexual woman . . . I kind of wish she'd seen the selkie strippers now), her family life growing up (she snapped at Kenzi's making assumptions but offered up no details in clarification), or even how she's regarded in the Fae community (Dyson was almost always dismissive in Season 1; yet the Lich had heard of the Ash's acquisition of the human doctor who cured the Fae in the Congo), or about her place in the slippery world of Fae politics or her own current standing (Ash I seemed to trust Lauren with proxy power; Ash II Lachlan treated her like shit to get under Bo's skin; [acting] Ash III is almost too much of a friend[?] to get a handle on how things stand and besides Lauren is now too busy being oversexed to the point of ruining her life--excuse me while I remember Dana/Alice for a moment, sigh). But Cranz blatantly pointing out the narrative disparity in the treatment of love interests Dyson and Lauren made me pause. The odd thing was, as I recall, Dyson got the full character treatment even at a point when he was no longer a viable love interest! Insult to injury!
It could be argued, though, that the writers are aiming to keep Lauren a bit mysterious, that it coincides with the character's deep set reserve. It's true that canon doesn't always give you what you wish for and sometimes you'd rather pretend something didn't happen. That might be nearly the whole Nadia arc, actually. Maybe mystery is a good thing . . . (Yet, I don't know, I figure Bo and Lauren decide to give the dating thing a go and Bo would be curious. Then again, considering the unpleasant surprise that was Nadia for them, maybe she wouldn't be. XD Bo and Lauren have actually been marked by a lack of communication, as if they seek to defy lesbian processing. Their lack of communication has hurt them in the past. Yet their painful silences probably made the ending of 3x04 carry more weight: Bo coming clean instead of trying to hide anything, their saying "I love you" to each other and verbally addressing one of the big problems inherent in their relationship instead of dancing away from it and trying to ignore it.)
You can say the shoe is on the other foot now and the Dyson fans have to stew while Lauren gets to emotionally hog Bo to herself for the time being. We are supposed to believe that both emotional connections have equal weight and pull for Bo, but it's harder to buy into that when one leg of the triangle hasn't been given as much exposition. The short-term and long-term problems that Bo and Lauren face will a) make it hard for them to remain the de facto couple or b) allow the writers to stretch out their couple status a bit longer as they explore those issues before the pendulum either has to swing back to Dyson or c) open up the pair into a potential de facto threesome (not in a three-way sex way, but in a true polyamorous relationship pivoting around Bo).
The more I think about the display of devotion Doccubus fans are flaunting to the show and the showrunner right now in the E!Online poll, the more I wonder if Option C is going to gain more and more traction. (I assumed that this was the most probable/plausible way to really resolve the issue, but now it might become the only way. The mechanics of such a resolution, though, has so much potential to be engagingly messy in the execution. Many of the "Lost Girl" shipping wars could be solved with threesomes. Hell, all of the triangles in Season 2 could have become threesomes instead of "kill off the hypotenuse" scenarios.)
But really I'm thinking about that crazy shipping mind, how Ryan Murphy has crushed the hopes and hearts of Brittanna fans again and again, how Shonda Rhimes has flirted with lesbian fans first with one woman for Callie, then another, and then angst and drama, how "Pretty Little Liars" has been growing its fandom by being aware of its lesbian viewers and even catering story lines to them (lol, #BooRadleyvanCullen).
Lesbian viewers are really loud. When there are so few things to love and cling to, you love and cling to those few things really, really hard. Then when those things are handed back to you broken and shattered, you stop trusting narratives and storytellers and tangential fandoms to be on your side.
Lesbian narratives with recurring or main cast characters tend to have a honeymoon period right in the beginning of the romantic development where the women are in love and everything is roses and rainbows and the fandom is super hyped up and in love with the characters being in love. Then the rule of television drama steps in and the party has to end and it's break ups and the introduction of male love interests and sometimes even blatant denials of the validity of the same-sex romance.
The downer endings and retcons can feel like rejection letters from show writers. But they wouldn't hurt so much if there were enough positive stories on the other side to balance it out. Because, let's face it, those same narrative tools are used in heterosexual story lines all the time--but the Cinderella stories, the end game narratives, the white knight who swoops in, the True Love story that the mainstream extols, those are overwhelmingly heterosexual too.
I jumped on the Bo/Lauren wagon because Zoie Palmer and Anna Silk make the screen crackle with their chemistry. It was sexy. It was fun and exciting to root for two women who were actually, explicitly flirting and circling around each other in a cat and mouse game of lust. When the potential of their getting together ebbed, I lost interest, but what had been there hit on so many of my f/f kinks, all subtext of things unsaid, but with canon main text kissing and making out and sex all over my screen! It comes packaged with such little fanfare and with surprisingly little processing. By episode 8 in Season 1, the women were in bed without much note of them both being women. It was remarkable to me.
I think about now how even more remarkable that may be for someone questioning their sexuality or feeling oppressed by homophobia real and imagined. I remember my own experiences encountering lesbian narratives in that unsure space, being afraid and excited and confused and repelled and titillated and unable to look away. I think about the fact that on the show no one calls Bo a slut or a whore. I think about the fact that on the show no one ever dismisses Lauren because she is homosexual. (Just that she's human.) I marvel that Bo is a bisexual woman and her best friend is a woman and the show grounds them as the platonic touchstone of the emotional ties without an undercurrent of attraction.
And I think about those shippers.
The joy and appreciation of the Doccubus fandom are infectious and diving into the "doccubus" tag on tumblr is like being in a bubble of unicorns and rainbows and the gayest, most lesbianic stream of gif posts. However, it won't hurt my heart/ruin my life if Bo/Lauren don't work out. I'm actually much more interested in what story "Lost Girl" wants to tell in terms of its sexual politics and how it will tell it because it's not preaching, it's showing. It's saying, "Hey, look, this is a world where there are gays and lesbians and bisexuals and no one cares!" (But it's also shown me some things that made me pause and wonder what the message was; Bo barging in during Vex's bondage play time, for one--c'mon, Bo, like you wouldn't want to tie up Dyson or Lauren, yes/yes?) The sexual politics are complicated and about to become even more so. It is remarkable, really, to consider that the bisexual character on the show is the protagonist. Not some bit secondary character. Not some weekly guest star. No, we're talking about the show lead. Hell, she's a succubus and she manages to not be portrayed as a depraved bisexual!
But right now, Doccubus is in that honeymoon phase. Bo/Lauren have finally gotten together. Their very getting together and being together is, in fact, attracting whole new fans to the show who have been craving badly for a lesbian narrative to root for and believe in. Season 3's opening salvo of pushing them together, along with the spamming of fans on social networking sites of the development, has created retroactive interest in the previous two seasons from f/f fans who are looking for that next new fictional romance to fall into.
Yet the show's politics aren't the fandom's politics. (As the Shipping Wars make painfully, sometimes distressingly clear from nearly every camp.) And the show's needs cannot please everyone.
It's just that usually in this tug-of-war, it's the LGBT corner that tends to feel pushed aside.
Did I mention Bo the bisexual is the protagonist?
When demographics show that your audience is probably overwhelmingly straight and perhaps skewed toward women, who are probably almost mostly straight within that demographic, then it's not surprising that a show should be mostly oriented to heterosexual viewership/heteronormative storytelling. It is sort of an odd thing to sit back and see that it's the Bo/Dyson camp feeling shoved aside for the time being. I can understand that. My own interest in the show dropped significantly once I figured Bo wasn't in it to win Lauren, so I get that Dyson fans are waiting for that pendulum to come whipping back around.
And yet I think about those Doccubus shippers.
Particularly the quiet ones or the ones who ship behind a persona (secretly, furtively, giddily, maybe even guiltily), who need this story in a way they didn't know they needed it. Didn't know that they needed to see and participate in the story of two women not just falling in love, but being in love and expressing their love, and, yes, having actual problems. Indeed, one of the things I found refreshing about "Lost Girl" was that it skipped over a lot of the tension and angst in the courting stage and jumped their characters right into bed and then gave them all sorts of problems that weren't about "getting to a kiss" or "getting into bed." (Though I suppose the problem was "getting back into bed." Oh, Season 2.)
I didn't know how much I'd wanted to see that myself. That I want to sit and untangle a story about attractions that place the physical and the emotional on a see-sawing scale trying to find a balance, about misunderstandings and miscommunication, about forgiveness and forging ahead. It's not a perfect story. It's even been handle quite shoddily in a few areas. (Chrissake, Nadia.)
But it's one of the few stories of its type out there. For Canada. (Did I mention that 3x04 had a PG rating in Canada? PG!) For the US. For South America. For Australia. For China. For South Korea.
There are legitimate criticisms that can be leveled at "Lost Girl." It's not a show for everyone. Some will find it too cheesy to be their cup of tea. But I think it should be lauded in its simple celebration of sex, of love, of finding and being and recreating and maturing into yourself. That it is bold enough to hand its viewers a world where women love men and women, where men love women and men, where there is prejudice and speciesism that can be overcome with love and respect--even if people (and Fae) are imperfect. That the creators and producers of "Lost Girl" championed a show with a bisexual protagonist and they stuck by that vision without shame or shaming.
I think about those Doccubus shippers and I think about hearts and hope.
I feel a little afraid for them.
More stories. We need more stories. Stories that we're not afraid to embrace and put our faith in. We need stories that teach us not to feel afraid when these stories pop up. We need more stories so as not to feel as if we have to invest everything in the handful that do exist. We need more stories so that the handful that exist don't bear the full burden of trying to get everything "right." We need diverse stories to have more to believe in.
Yeah.
So for right now, "Lost Girl," even not knowing where the end of Season 3 will find Bo and crew and all their emotional entanglements, thank you. In this moment, you and I are cool.
(But, yes, if you ease up on Bo/Lauren again, you'll probably lose my attention. Sorry. That's just how it is. I know it's tough to cater to multiple tastes. It's usually why the gay character is a secondary, side bit character and not romantically attached to the show lead. Which is why it's pretty awesome that Bo the bisexual is the lead. Thank you for that, but, yes, Bo/Lauren. Or Lauren/hot woman. In which case, clearly Bo/everyone. K.)
If you don't want to read all that TL;DR, then at least give Adaline a listen! "Lost Girl" used "Keep Me High" for the opening love scene in 3x04, but I've gone on to adore and loop "Rebels of Love" and "Stereo" especially. A lot of the songs off the Modern Romantics album are really fun, groovy electronic pop tracks. "Lost Girl" is just making me fall in love with many Canadian things apparently. Should I be living in Canada?! But it's cold!
Oh, Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year to those who celebrate it! For me it's basically just the time of year to eat bánh tét and bánh chưng. XD Yummy!