Coming back for another point, people LOVE toxic relationships in media. I personally HATE the trope that Faith turned evil because she was romantically in love with Buffy and Buffy didn’t return her feelings. The body swap adds another level of toxicity that the Faith’s a lesbian crowd love. I truly don’t like the trope of the evil guy/girl that couldn’t have the good girl protagonist and snaps. It’s literally my least favorite writing trope. I also think in Faith’s case it’s reductive of a complex character.
Shippers in general can just be really aggressive/toxic. There are plenty of people that think that Faith is bi or a lesbian and are completely normal about it there are plenty of people that see her and Buffy as having had a thing in season three and are normal about it. The people that aren’t normal about it are people who think that they are the other half to each others souls and neither of them have never had a meaningful connection outside of each other. Not because they feel this way, I disagree but I don’t care but because these people can be aggressive when their ship/perspective is challenged.
Oh god THANK YOU. I HATE the cliche of the villain is in love with the hero. I'm not saying it can never work, but it is so childish when that is all anyone's go to from batman and the Joker to the Doctor and the Master, and it is often homophobic as they often portray the villain as a creepy perverted gay cliche too.
I can't stand it when it is the go to for straight relationships either. That's a big part of why I loathe Spuffy. It was so infantile to make out Spike was just obsessed with Buffy because he wanted to bang her. He and Buffy actually had a good dynamic that was more unique of a male villain and a female villain who genuinely hated each other, but nope they had to ruin it and make it lowest common denominator porn in s6 that demeaned both characters.
Meanwhile bisexuals I think have a somewhat odd place in terms of being represented. Sometimes they are seen as more acceptable by straight people, in spite of the bigotry they can still be subject to. I suppose it makes sense in a way as a straight person perhaps can still fantasise about them more easily or they can relate to the bi person's straight relationships?
This can lead to gay people saying they are bi or gay characters being presented as bi to fit in. Examples of this include Samantha Fox, a full on lesbian who said she was bi as she was afraid being gay would ruin her male fanbase. Similarly I have always felt that Captain Jack Harness was only made bisexual to make him more digestable on a family show back then.
He was pretty obviously gay. He has virtually NO long term relationships with women. Okay he maybe flirts a bit with them, but yeah he's basically written as gay. I know bisexuality is a spectrum and not everyone is 50/50, but even then in Jack's case you could take out his minor flirting with women and nothing would change about his arcs or character. Granted his grandson is an example of one of his straight relationships being important, but even then gay men do have kids as well for various reasons.
That said however lots of straight people will still see a bi person as "just experimenting" and not see their sexuality as valid, so it's not like their sexuality is accept. Indeed plenty of famous bisexual people like Amy Winehouse are still seen as straight because their most famous relationship was straight.
However at the same time many gay people I think come to resent bisexual people for being the more acceptable face of LGBT, and as I said I think a lot of lesbians feel that a bisexual female character going off with a man is "a lesbian being made straight" so yeah they often come down harder on bisexual characters or insist no matter how stupid it is that a bisexual character is a lesbian, making them EXACTLY the same as the straight people who see it as just a phase.
Xena and Gabrielle are the funniest example of this, the way both are clearly bi characters but the lesbian fandom insist that they were both lesbians in the closet LOL. Indeed one could say lesbians stole Xena and Gabreille from the bisexual community. Why are they always brought up as a big deal for lesbians? Why aren't they bi icons? I'm not saying that lesbians can't feel represented obviously or enjoy them just as much, I'm not a tribalist, but it is funny that bisexual people who Xena and Gabrielle actually represent are NEVER mentioned in terms of the shows impact?
So yes bisexual people are in this weird in between place of actually being more represented, with characters like Xena, Gabrielle, Captain Jack, White Canary from Legends of Tomorrow, Susan Ivanova from B5, Constantine etc, that's FAR more mainstream bisexual characters than gay ones, because people thought the writers thought they could get away with that more, yet ironically nobody ever sees them as bisexual and indeed people will say calling them bisexual as homophobic ironically.
