| abstract
| - In the eyes of fandom, a show's major selling point is that its principals are Schoolgirl Lesbians... but oops, it was just a Romantic Two-Girl Friendship after all! The viewers have been Ship Teased; and now that the writers got their attention, they can write more comfortable (to them) relationships. The lesbian Subtext may not even last beyond the opening credits. The is pretty common in Bishoujo fandom, where the Romantic Two-Girl Friendship develops for a number of unintentional factors. One could say that audience likes girls in large quantities, and seeing two girls acting cute, even at each other, is better than one. One could also point out that far more attention is put into the interaction and communication between the girls; while a relationship with a guy just "happens" with most development offscreen. And if they're the only people you see but the show still maintains particular tropes, the audience is sometimes led toward an imagined payoff that might not be there. Often, this is coupled with a young age for both characters as well as the lack of any actual 'sexuality' in either character, barring concessions, as this outcome is harder to rationalize for an adult character. Note that any romantic relationship with boys, on the other hand, is considered completely serious at any age. Yes, it's hypocritical. Tends to raise the hackles of a show's Yuri Fandom, who tend to crop up more infrequently, but also makes them paranoid in the long run. Any male friend of one of the girls becomes the Sword of Damocles; a possible route of escape for the writers via Last-Minute Hookup. So expect malevolence. It takes frustratingly little for a male character to become a love interest. A single scene, a Where Are They Now? Epilogue, can instantly make Canon to overturn entire seasons of interaction. An ironic result of this is making a relationship explicit can result in enough fuel for viewers who oppose the Shipping to simply scoff that any evidence of the pairing is "just Fan Service." The fact that a great many shows avoid portraying relationships in significant detail muddies it further: so many other shows cop out at the last minute, so why should this one be different? The writers won't ever admit anything anyways. Outside of canon this trope is invoked a lot especially in H-doujins due to a rather persistent tendency for male writers to be intimidated by the idea of girls who don't find them sexually attractive (though generally only mildly). This is the reason why a disturbingly large number of popular lesbian characters and characters who are popular in part because of their near lesbian tendencies are depicted in huge amounts of heterosexual porn with a random male insert or more and very frequently in the form of rape instead of with each other. Compare Faux Yay. Related to the Sweeps Week Lesbian Kiss. Examples of Bait and Switch Lesbians include:
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