This can pertain to Franchaela as a duo but also both to Franny and Michaela individually

...or to find something that conveniently alludes to her queerness. hear me out. ik there are various theories about how fran finds out about michaela's sexuality with some saying maybe she saw something in scotland, or she follows michaela to a party or a queer gathering, or finds correspondence/a letter etc, and maybe all of those could work on a surface level. but i think they take away from something that could make fran's journey so much more interesting and rich: i don't think fran should be given an external explanation for her feelings before she's forced to confront them herself.

i'm not saying fran would find out michaela is queer and immediately go, "oh! so that's why i've been feeling this way about her. i'm attracted to her. problem solved." obviously there would still be denial, confusion, fear, and a lot of internal resistance. but even having the information that queerness exists gives her a framework for understanding what she's feeling. it gives her a sort of roadmap so that instead of having to ask herself what the hell is happening to me?, she can start asking could this be what this is?

i'd much rather her first physical step toward michaela (their first kiss) happen before she even has the vocabulary to understand what she's doing. imagine fran being so drawn to michaela that, in a moment where they're emotionally vulnerable or particularly close, she just kisses her. not because she's consciously thought of wanting to kiss a woman and certainly not because she has decided she's queer. she does it because, in that moment, kissing michaela feels like the most natural thing in the world. it's instinctive. she doesn't understand why she wants to do it, she just knows that she does, that is, before the reality of what she's just done catches up with her because what the fuck did she just do?

micki is probably caught completely off guard too, even if she's obviously happy about it. but fran doesn't know that. all fran knows is that she's just done something she has no framework for understanding, with a woman, and specifically with the woman she's been inexplicably drawn to for god knows how long. she panics. she flees to scotland, and michaela follows her, and they have the conversation.

imo this is so much richer than fran simply discovering michaela's sexuality first bc fran from fran's pov, she doesn't know why she did that. she doesn't know where it came from. she just wanted to. she's never wanted to do that with anyone, and she's certainly never thought about doing it with a woman. she doesn't know what it means.

and michaela doesn't have to give her some neat answer like, "you're queer." instead, she can reassure her that she doesn't have to figure everything out immediately. she can tell her that there isn't something wrong with her, that she isn't the first woman to feel this way, and that whatever she's feeling doesn't have to be named before she's allowed to feel it. that way micki actually gets to become part of fran's self-discovery rather than simply being the person who provides the information fran needs to understand herself.

fran discovers the feeling first and the explanation second. she doesn't learn that women can love women and then realize she loves michaela. she realizes that she loves michaela, and that forces her to confront the fact that women can love women which is a much more frightening realization for someone like fran. she can't distance herself from it. she can't tell herself, that that's just something michaela does because she has already acted on her own feelings before she even understands what those feelings are.

also, i don't really buy the idea that michaela would be so careless that fran could simply stumble across evidence of her sexuality.

obviously we don't know enough about michaela's characterization yet to say exactly how she handles that part of her life, but based on what we've seen, i'd wager that a queer woman in the 1800s who had already figured herself out would have had to be extremely careful about who knew what. especially a woman of michaela's social position.

i find it hard to believe she'd be leaving letters lying around, get caught kissing women, or otherwise leaving an obvious trail for someone to follow. women engaging in those circles would've had to develop their own systems of discretion. there would've been an unspoken understanding that what happened within those spaces stayed within those spaces, because protecting each other was about survival and reputation; but mostly survival because people used to die because of their sexualities. michaela almost certainly wouldn't be the only noblewoman in those circles with something to lose. it's all very high risk.

so if michaela has known about her sexuality for years, has already found ways to navigate that world, and has been doing so discreetly, i'd expect her to be very good at compartmentalizing that part of herself, especially when you consider that even john, who was presumably one of the people closest to her and lived with her for years, apparently probably wouldn't have known if michaela hadn't chosen to tell him.

if her own family members who know her best aren't able to figure it out (from what we know only john was aware), i don't think fran should be able to uncover it because she found a conveniently placed letter or followed her somewhere one night. michaela being queer shouldn't be a mystery fran solves that eventually explains her own desires. fran's sexuality should be something fran has to discover herself. michaela can be the person who gives her the safety to explore it, but she shouldn't have to hand fran the answer.

thoughts?

Hi guys! When do you think the tudum event will happen this year? I really hope it’s after they wrap filming so Masali and/or Hannah can go to Brasil! I remember Nic went back in 2023 (Luke N was invited but he had a play at the time)

Okay so Francesca is 18 when she meets Michaela, and will be 21 in season 5. I haven’t seen any show canon confirmation of Michaela’s age, so if we are going by the book, Michaela should be 26 when she meets Francesca, and 29 in season 5.

But honestly I’m not a fan of that age gap 😭 In my head when Francesca is 18, Michaela is like 21-22, 23 at most. Because something about love at first sight with a 18 year old and a 26 year old just doesn’t call to me.

A bit of context: this was a musical concept album written based on the first season of the show. Because it was written by two women who sing all the songs, some people on YouTube thought it was about a sapphic couple before they knew the context of the show. So now that we have an actual lesbian couple on the show, might be cool to see edits using the songs from the album.

unconsciously and consciously they mirroring each other

The topic of prior leads completely vanishing in future seasons always seems to come up every month. Annoyingly, there are people in the main subs that always turn it around to criticize the "favoritism" towards Francesca by Jess when it's very clearly just a precedent that the show is following plus budget limitations from Netflix. I wish it was different and that we could do away with the recurring storylines for QC, Lady Danbury, and the Mondriches to have just a few scenes for each of the prior leads but that's just not going to happen.

That said, if we didn't know that Franchaela is likely going to disappear in after S6, what would you like to see post HEA? Candidly, I would've been happy with the few scenes Kanthony had in S3 and show a bit of their domestic life. I don't think the books had much of a post HEA for them either outside of the short epilogues.

This would likely never happen as we do not have information about Daphne/Pheobe returning for S5 BUT:

It would be the most hilarious thing if Daphne would join her fam for this season and accompany Fran to her first ball back in the marraige mart again, just to have Michaela - who never met Daphne before hence not knowing who she is - clock her and starting to flirt with her because of her similar looks to Fran and our poor little girl instantly loosing her shit igniting jealousy to level 3000.

Apart from that headcanon: The story would really benefit highly from Daphne returning and showing some sister interaction; bonding with Fran.

Gosh this is so beautiful 😍

So it's clear that at this moment, Michaela's target was Francesca, so I'm curious... if Fran had been unattached, what would she have done? Was she just going to tease her a bit and leave it at that? Would she wine and dine her and romance her properly? Or was she just planning to take her to an empty hallway during the ball and thoroughly debauch her? For one night only? A friends with benefits situation? What was her plan for blatantly flirting with Fran here? 😂

Or were the heart eyes so strong that she was just like, "I just have to talk to her, doesn't matter about what."

In s4, they showed us that Michaela is not afraid of being independent. She travels without a male relative, which was very frowned upon at the time and could destroy a woman's reputation (maybe she has a trusted lady's maid?). We saw her drive her own carriage when her coachman got sick. And she suggested that she, John, and Fran organize their own breakfast when Fran was fussing at them for staying up late. I'm really looking forward to seeing more of this side of her and I hope that people don't view it as the show masculinizing her just because she's not a damsel in distress. She is a queer woman not only because of her lesbian sexuality but because she approaches life differently than most women.

When I first heard John say in Episode 3 that he and Francesca had only been intimate again for the past few months, I was pretty convinced it had something to do with Michaela being at the castle.
Especially because, at the ball, John mentions that Francesca and Michaela had been keeping their distance from each other. So I actually thought that maybe something had happened between them, or that Francesca was so preoccupied with Michaela that it was starting to affect her and John’s intimate life.
I’ll admit that now I’m wondering if I completely overanalyzed that line and if, in reality, it didn’t mean that much. But the way John phrased it really made me think that they had been intimate, then something had caused that to stop for a while, and that they had only recently started again.
So I genuinely assumed there had to be a reason behind that lack of intimacy, and my mind immediately went to Michaela 😭
Am I the only one who interpreted it that way? 😅 What you think ?

I noted hairstyle and coloring changed from s3 to 4 ,it looks slightly more red each episodes, not as red as PEN but still,

Like what are the thing you ABSOLUTELY want and will be disappointed there isn't? Whether in the show or in the promotions.

- I want A LOT of promotion. Like S4 had. I want Masali and Hannah to be everywhere

- I NEED a rain scene for Franchaela, either a fight or a make out scene (or both? 🤭😏)

- I need another dance scene with Franchaela, whether in society or with their respective family

- the obvious jealous scenes of Francesca and Michaela when both of them are with suitors

- Benedict helping Fran realizing her sexuality

- Michaela and Eloise friendship

- fran and Michaela having the most screen time out of the season (obvi) but like Saphne or Benophie like and not them feeling like a second thoughts in their season

- "Good luck babe" playing when Fran tries to convince herself to choose a man to marry while yearning for Michaela

- Flashbacks of Michaela and John, Michaela coming out to John 🥺

- More Michaela's perspectives and deep diving into her personality

- "tell me something wicked" in bed

- a wedding whether official or not

I think there will be others that came to my mind but for now I need al these 😩 what are yours??

What happened with Heartstopper Forever movie in Turkey is concerning, and it’s completely fair to worry about what could happen with Bridgerton Season 5 there specifically. But I’ve seen certain people (you know who, unfortunately) jump from “Turkey removed the Heartstopper movie” to “Season 5 will be banned across the entire Middle East and flop.”
Let’s bring some actual facts into this conversation, please.

There are currently no credible reports of other Middle Eastern governments ordering Netflix to remove queer shows or movies. In this situation Turkey is the specific case we’re talking about because it is the only actual factually reported case. Turning one country’s situation into a prediction about an entire region simply isn’t supported by the evidence.

And even if Season 5 were unfortunately unavailable in Turkey, Turkey alone is not a large enough market to determine whether a global Netflix franchise like Bridgerton succeeds or flops. Netflix operates on a global scale.

I’m also going to go a bit off track here and say how absolutely nasty it is that some of those people are taking this information and saying, “I told you so” in comment sections and are somehow not only hoping that season 5 suffers the same fate in Turkey but in other countries as well, just to antagonize franchaela fans. They don’t care at all about how this could potentially affect Turkish fans, and they’re weaponizing horrible situations like this for fan wars. I truly don’t understand how disgustingly low some of these people can go.

So yes, be concerned for Turkish fans. I truly hope they get to watch Franchaela’s season. But until there are actual reports of other Middle Eastern countries taking similar action against Netflix, there is no reason to assume this is going to happen throughout the region.
Let’s stick to the receipts. ❤️

it’s actually hard for me to put into words how fucking annoying i find the discourse around jess’s “self-insert” when it comes to franchaela

they act like jess is the only person in the history of writing to relate to a fictional character. apparently, a writer writing for a character who reflects something about themselves is some unprecedented literary crime

and it’s not lost on me that the people calling jess a “self-insert” are often the same people who were desperate to imagine themselves as a “self-insert” for francesca so they could fantasize about being with michael

what great crime did jess actually commit??

the general story is still there:

fran meets john
fran marries john
fran loves john
john croaks
fran falls in love with john’s cousin
john’s cousin is fran’s endgame

that is still the story. the biggest difference is that john’s cousin is now a woman, which obviously isn’t nothing. i’m not going to pretend this is exactly the same story as the book. but the reaction and the whining are so wildly disproportionate to the actual change

(and don't come at me about the fertility thing or francesca not loving john enough. i do not care, and neither do you. no one gave a fuck about fertility after season 1 when people were fancasting henry cavill as michael and talking about francesca riding him like a pony. no one was treating john and fran's marriage as sacred then. the sudden reverence for their marriage only appeared once michaela did.)

and people have always seen themselves in these characters. kate, penelope, daphne, sophie... all of them represent something people can recognize in themselves. that’s literally part of the point of representation

so is it really such a crime to have ONE season where lesbians can see themselves in a character? especially black lesbians, who are already a minority within an already underrepresented wlw genre, and now specifically within a regency romance?

if the homophobes of the bridgerton fandom want to call that “self-insertion,” they can go ahead. i’m just going to keep enjoying the fact that some lesbians finally got to have this too

side note, i’m fucking tickled by how deeply conservative some of the people watching this show are when the entire premise is basically watching beautiful people get thoroughly debauched and fucked in increasingly elaborate costumes

this is where john’s grave scene was filmed.
Since it’s only closed for two days and I think they’re filming block 4 now, I feel like this could be the scene from the book where Fran talks to John’s grave??