#'unintentional queerbaiting' thats just this

[creekfiend]

there's a doylist version of that "no look I don't ""ship"" this I just Understand that It Happened" phenomenon that I actually get a lot more often where you're like... "no listen I don't ""ship"" this I just recognize that the narrative being constructed would have been stronger for it, thematically, and the fact that whoever made this media doesn't seem to understand this makes me question how well they even know what kind of story they are telling"

ITS SO PAINFUL

[asherlockstudy]

Hii, i saw you answering an ask from an anon, the one where you said that your uncomfortable with their more "sexuall" jokes becuse you feel it's unfair to their wives? And the only reson you sport them is becuse you think they had feelings for each other long befor they got married, and if it wasn't for that then they would be plan cheaters… that kind'a made me.. sad. of course you can have your opinion and felings about them(i also don't really love the sexuall jokes. it's not really my humer, and it's not why i can't stop fixating on them and their story, i just love the connection and the love they have for each other, and the sincere moments that are unintentional, alot more..) but i think you'r being a bit harsh on them, i mean IF they were actually in a romantic relationship, then they seeme to have figured out that whole arengment with their wives, and everyone is happy.. and if they were just ,doing it for jokes and this bit that has been going on for so long, then they seeme to have that figured out as will, and they know if their wives are comfortable with that type of jokes or not. I just don't think it's fair to think that about them and limit them to that. and i think thats kind of the problem with thinking this way, and going with it( that they are actually together and just not telling us about it, as much as i've would LOVE to indulge in that..) becuse alot of things star to feel ingenue and deceptive, and i think their love, and jus ..wholesomeness, that we see alot more in like ear biscuits, where their just alot more laid back and just being themselves and being honest, and not more in their performing, and audience pleasing mode, like in gmm. ( for example, the biscuit about link's b day, i mean that was so fucking cute.. rhett meeting link's friends, and the possessiveness that he has for link, that manifests itself in so many different ways, and becuse it hurts rhett's ego to acknowledge that bit of jealousy that is so obvious on his face😂, it just comes out in little digs or just reminding link that, hay i know you more than them all combined. whenever link mentions hanging out with other people. And in this one, it was the way rhett was basically saying, even your friends know i'm different, and he started unconsciously listing why "i'm your best friend" " i know you so will" "we've been friends for forty years" "you've know them for what, a year, two years?"… Like he just had to basically say no matter how many new friends you have, i'm always number one😣and there is soo many other instances.. it's heartwarming. and it makes me want to slap link and say, hay, don't you see how jealous you'r making you'r boy, stop it😭… Sorry i got sidetracked..) i just think it deserves to be highlighted more, whether we think it's platonik or romantic..

It’s a little funny that when I answered said previous ask, I ended it by saying “I hope I am not seeing their relationship in rose tinted glasses” and yet you felt I was too harsh on them 😅 Amazing how differently people can perceive things.

Anyway, everything I said there works based on the conviction that there is something “more” and serious happening between them. It doesn’t apply in case they are just platonic friends or haven’t acted on their romantic feelings. Of course I do believe their friendship is real and deep and sweet. And that they have a right to be silly and make stupid adult jokes like bros if that’s all there is to it. (Except they make adult jokes but they are not bro adult jokes…)

The bottomline is still that I do not believe this is the case, so I don’t have much to add here. Even though you push yourself to entertain the possibility as an extemely unlikely one, it’s clear you mostly think I am being harsh / unfair to them exactly because I misinterpret everything they do based on my false conviction that they have an affair. But again what I said does not apply in the case they don’t have an affair (although it still makes them queerbaiters), except the problem - I can’t help it - is that I still feel strongly that they do. So I don’t have anything else to say on this because at the moment I can not change the entirety of my belief and we are on significantly different places regarding this matter. From my side, compared to how I think about this, I feel like your reasoning has too much Disney effect in it. For example, thinking “they can’t be doing this because that would mean they were liars or x bad thing all this time”. To me that’s Disney reasoning and, above all, the very optimistic faith that if they are truly in an affair surely they have made it work in a way that everybody (who? Their wives? Their children? Their parents?) is genuinely happy with it? I am sorry to say but to me this sounds like Disney and Dreamworks together. I love Rhett and Link dearly for keeping me company with their show in difficult times and I truly want whatever is best for them but I do consider them very flawed people, unfortunately potentially very capable of things you fear (lying, hiding stuff, misleading, putting themselves and each other above family etc).

[edsbev]

MISSED U SO MUCH BELL CAN WE HESR SOME THOUGJTS ?

im guessing thoughts on the s2 trailer and to be honest with u there are very little thoughts in my head but i'll say that

1) this season actually looks like it could be a lot of fun

2) the jjpopekie trio looks rlly cute but short-lived. i think john b and sarah will join them pretty early in the season, but thats not too bad bc i know the john b/sarah scenes will be a snooze for me so it'll be nice seeing them as a group

3) the jjkie in the trailer kinda just seems like bait to me, like they threw in a couple scenes to appease that fanbase, but i'm still a lil worried they might go in that direction toward the end of the season. they might develop their friendship more tho which'll be nice

4) im SUPER excited for pope this season. i have a feeling he'll drive most of the jjpopekie plot, and will probably be a main plot driver with john b (hoping they won't disappoint me)

5) still looks like kie is not getting her own storyline :/

6) jjpope will continue to be unintentional queerbait <3

[gaycatastrophe]

20, 29, 16, 6 for the ask meme!

20. What is THE destiel song?

oh god okay so you've just picked the question that I could write an entire thesis on and unless you picked this one because you've seen me rambling in the tags about it I am SO sorry because this is about to become a really long post.

THEE Destiel song has to be Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode. It encapsulates the Too Muchness of their dynamic because the song is fundamentally about putting all your faith and devotion into one person as if they were your God. "Someone to hear your prayers/ someone who cares." As I said in the tags of this post,

Like Dean the faithless man prays to Castiel only and Castiel angel of the lord lets this man take the -el suffix meaning "of God" out of his name and chooses Dean over Heaven again and again and even literally decides to become God. For Dean. I know this has all been said before but literally guys (gn), they are each other's Personal Jesus, cmon.

The song is also specifically referenced in the show, by Dean. So in 5x02, the episode immediately preceeding Free to be You and Me, Cas has to call Dean's cell to learn where Sam, Dean, and Bobby are and then when he meets them in the hospital Dean says "since when do angels need to reach out and touch someone?" The hook of Personal Jesus is, of course, "reach out and touch faith," but it's plausible based on that alone that the reference was unintentional. But like. "Feeling unknown/ and you're all alone/ flesh and bone by the telephone/ lift up the receiver/ I'll make you a believer" -- the song's narrator is asking their love interest to pick up the phone. In the most god-complex-y way imaginable. (And a split second after Dean asks this as Cas is starting to explain, Bobby interjects, "enough foreplay!") Imagine if Cas had understood the reference at the time.

This makes me feel insane because if you think about it for even half a second it's so horny. Like I just can't wrap my head around any watsonian explanation for Dean making this song reference thats not either (a) he's flirting intentionally or (b) his brain is making a subconscious association between Cas and this song. And the song, particularly with the music video is so horny in specifically such a Dean way. The video is in a southwest/Spanish setting (technically it was filmed in Spain but aesthetically they’re clearly aiming more for southwest American cowboy), there's horses, it's implicitly supposed to be set in a brothel according to the Wikipedia page, and the members of Depeche Mode are all dressed in cowboy hats and leather.

I mean the music video was released in 1989, watch this and tell me you can't imagine ten year old Dean glued to a shitty motel TV completely entranced by this video and young enough to not be sure why he likes it so much. Why was this reference written in to the episode if Dean is straight? I mean it's queerbait I get it but it's a pretty subtle line if you're not extremely familiar with the song already, so. Why?

29. Was Dean going to say "I love you" to Cas after the purgatory prayer?

Hooooooooo boy. Good question! That scene hits either way, is the thing. I don't think Dean was going to say the exact words "I love you" there, but I do kind of think Cas stopped him from saying more in person because of the Empty deal. Dean's prayer in that episode - the fact that he begins it with "I hope you can hear me" - he's not sure as he's praying that Cas is even still alive.

I think Cas was guarding both their hearts by preventing Dean from repeating that emotional vulnerability, because even if he wasn't going to say "I love you," a repeat of that sort of raw unguarded apology and forgiveness from "still beautiful" Dean Winchester, but this time face to face, coupled with the relief on Dean's features from knowing Cas is alive and okay, mightve done Cas in anyway. : )

16. Which fanfic trope would you force onto Dean and Cas in a canon episode?

Cas possessing Dean. I promise I only want this the normal amount. No further comment. :P

ok ok ETA you don’t understand, it fits the themes!!!

6. Which character should have never died?

Yeah I'm gonna have to copy your answer here and say Charlie, that one really hurt and felt so pointless. Kevin, on the other hand, should have been brought back to life and left alive and well after that. >:(

[spn asks]

[dashiellqvverty]

like i joke and i jest about how i love being queerbaited but like. what it’s really about is that so often the gay stories and characters that do exist are just incredibly boring!! like 5 seasons or 6,000 years of pining or whatever, whether it’s deliberate bait or straight writers unintentionally writing a friendship that comes off as romantic (and i do think there’s a discernible difference, although sometimes (often) unintentional relationships eventually become deliberate bait), is almost always going to be more compelling and enjoyable for me than half-written recurring characters who feel like they exist just to appease gay audiences and don’t have any substance to their relationships. 

and obviously the ideal situation is to get to a point where gay relationships can have all the complex narratives that straight couples have in tv and movies like i would love 6 seasons of will-they-wont-they on a sitcom with gay characters or an epic slow burn romance or something!! but you don’t generally get that with canon gay characters and that sucks and sometimes it is just more fun for me to imagine steve & buckys story as a romance than to sit through something because it has a gay person in it and thats not progressive or healthy but the stories that dont get told almost always have so much more substance than the ones that do

[cumdumpstiel]

been having some thoughts about queerbaiting? like how people use the word and what it really means in tv today.. honestly the term “queerbaiting” is kinda loaded and imprecise and imho what people consider queerbaiting is more often than not unintentional. not to say its okay, or that it doesnt still count as queerbaiting, but its usually not a Marketing Ploy as such. queer audiences honestly arent that much of a draw and there are better ways to appeal to straight liberals. much more often its simply straight writers, producers, and actors getting in over their heads and then reacting badly to criticism.

most queerbaiting takes the form of simple jokes that straight people think nothing of, but that send signals (intentional or not) to gay viewers. for example, putting two male characters in an unexpected pseudo-sexual situation, such as one falling on top of another and their faces getting very close; the camera lingers on their shocked expressions and the audience watches them stammer and act supremely awkward about it.

straight people eat that shit up! its super funny because Of Course these two characters arent like, gay for each other!! that would be truly absurd!!!! its just funny to watch them be put into Gay Situations with the ironclad knowledge, which only a straight person can possess, that their favorite characters could never actually be non-heterosexual.

the problem with this (besides uh. homophobia) is that its super ambiguous! since its no longer socially acceptable to be unambiguous about your homophobia, the new and improved version of gay jokes rely on implications and assumptions, rather than just calling somebody homophobic slurs. theres usually no actual, textual No Homo moment, just the suggestive situation followed by awkwardness from the characters involved.

the humor rises directly from the assumptions of the straight audience that 1) the situation is uncomfortable for these two obviously straight men on account of their obvious straightness, and 2) the ensuing awkwardness is only natural and a clear no-homo signal.

where straight audiences see a reassuring no-homo moment, though, gay audiences are very likely to see sexual tension. the scene itself would be an undeniable marker of UST if it were between a man and a woman, acted and shot and presented in exactly the same way.

for straight people, the gender of the characters involved is hugely important in determining whether a scene should be read as sexual/romantic or platonic/funny, but gay audiences dont have those kinds of restrictions since we already kinda blow those out of the water in our own lives. also we’re fucking starved for depictions of ourselves so we’re very attuned to subtext and subtlety, we dont require passionate onscreen lovemaking or even a single kiss to see romantic or sexual love between two characters.

we latch onto these kinds of scenes and they mean a lot to us even though they were never intended as anything but cheap gay jokes. so when a show makes these kinds of jokes consistently, constantly, ad fucking nauseum, there starts to be a split between gay and straight viewers. where straight audiences see two dudes living their lives and getting up to wacky hijinks, gay audiences see a fucking volcano of sexual tension just waiting to erupt.

and when it just continues to not erupt, season after season... thats when it becomes clear that: CONGRATULATIONS, YOUVE BEEN QUEERBAITED! the writers werent actually trying to build up a slow-burn, tender romance between two men who mean the world to each other and have a soul-deep bond that no love-interest-of-the-week ever seems to be able to come between. nope, they were literally just making gay jokes this whole fucking time. 

was it intentional? probably not. does that make it okay? absolutely not. is it homophobic as hell? you betcha :)