#90s queerbaiting was a masterpiece

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Never gonna forget the time I had someone reblog me and say that The Sentinel wasn't queerbaiting because queerbaiting wasn't a thing in the 90s, because no network would ever allow for it.

Right up there with someone saying there was no queerbaiting in Sherlock because gays wouldn't ever writing queerbaiting.

Fandom is fucking wild.

(They're both blocked now, obvs.)

[itsclydebitches]

Why do people get hung up on whether a gay person in media is a good or bad representation of them? I'm gay and I can tell you we aren't all the same? Being gay is our 1 common trait. So as long as they're gay then you've done it. Gay people can be kind, mean, racist, open, kinky, reserved, shy, outgoing, sexist, and literally anything else under the human experience.

Because I am perpetually hungry, let's tell a story about cookies.

You are a bright-eyed, optimistic, baker in the making. Your goal is to wow the world with your culinary skills, so of course you head to The Best Baking School for your degree. Over the course of your studies you learn how to perfect a thousand different cakes, an equal number of pies, and more versions of brownies than most would even assume exist. But cookies... oh, cookies are your passion! You can't wait to learn about the wealth of cookies you can make too. Then, sure enough, that part of your education finally arrives.

Funny thing is though, it's just chocolate chip.

Surely there's been some mistake? The cookie experience is vast and nuanced! Why in the world are your instructors — supposedly the best in the world — reducing cookies to a single class about baking chocolate chip and chocolate chip alone? Hell, why are cookies so sparse in the curriculum as a whole? You're never asked to bake them as a demonstration, or practice with them, and they're definitely not a given across everyone else's baking experience. Cakes, pies, and brownies... they're the default. Cookies are comparatively rare and when you do get to study them, everyone is super focused on the chocolate chip.

Then you graduate and head out into the world, only to find that pretty much everyone is as cookie-blind as your school. A few years back you never would have found cookies in the average grocery store and yeah, the fact that there's a cookie section now is great, but it's, uh... all chocolate chip! Many bakeries still don't carry cookies at all, but when they do it's - again - chocolate chip. Chocolate chip out in restaurants. Chocolate chip at the bake sale. Your friend invites you over and proudly presents a massive sweets tray that includes a single, sad looking, chocolate chip cookie. They beam at you in pride. Isn't it so great?

"Uh..." you say. "Well..."

Every once in a while someone will switch out milk chocolate for dark chocolate, or add nuts alongside chocolate chips. One bakery was even crazy enough to exclude chocolate chips entirely! Crazy according to the press, anyway. Because for years now you've been shaking your head, wondering what exactly is so progressive about realizing that sugar cookies exist. You've found other bakers interested in cookies and, by god, there are thousands. So many flavors! Gluten free and allergy conscious! Someone even made a sweets tray that was predominantly cookies, can you believe it? The problem is, almost none of them are mainstream. Your friend baking cookies out of their personal kitchen is doing fantastic work, but their baking doesn't have the impact that those grocery chains and established bakeries do. Their work isn't going to fix your school's curriculum. Too many people still think that cookies are exotic somehow. They're not the default. And when they do acknowledge their existence, it's chocolate chip over and over. Until one of them adds those nuts and suddenly the whole country is losing its mind about how inspired, creative, progressive their baking is. Meanwhile, you're ready to scream because that baker doesn't even know that something as "exotic" as a gingersnaps exist!

The worst part? Most of these cookies are... bad. Like they exist, yeah, but good god most don't taste good. And that's the whole point of a cookie?? What is the point of buying cookies if the cookies themselves are awful? You go to these bakeries, these restaurants, your friend's house, and you try the very limited cookies on offer, only to find that they've been sloppily baked. Doesn't anyone care that the baker burned their cookies to a crisp? That another straight up forgot to add sugar? This one dropped his on the floor and still tried to serve it to you! But the overall sense is that you should be grateful for getting any cookies at all. "That cookie is an offense to my taste buds," you say and people shake their head at you, disappointed. "I liked the taste of it," one says. "If you don't like it, go buy a different cookie!" Well... easier said than done. "It's not that bad," another says, shrugging in defeat. "I mean yeah, I don't really like it, and the baker stopped making them two years ago... but I'm just happy to have had any cookie at all, you know?" You do know, but that doesn't mean it's any less frustrating. You look at the hundreds of cakes available, these bakers spending decades perfecting their recipes, and wish cookies had even a fraction of that work put into them. You find people who agree with you, absolutely, but there's this this prevailing sense that a cookie is a cookie. Any cookie will do. Supposedly.

Except go long enough and you feel like you're ready to lose your mind. You take some poor person by the shoulders and go, "Doesn't this bother you? Doesn't this make you furious? There is more to the cookie world than these three flavors, 90% of which is chocolate chip! And we deserve well-made cookies, not the crap they've been upholding as the next culinary masterpiece!"

But this person just shakes their head. "Well of course there's more to cookies than three flavors. There's a huge variety of cookies! I know that."

"Yes, but the world isn't selling that variety."

"Of course they are! Just last week I had an oatmeal raisin. That's amazing!"

"Yeah and how many years did it take you to find that?"

"Well..."

"And how did that oatmeal raisin cookie taste?"

Your prisoner pulls a face. "Ugh, not good. Oatmeal raisin is definitely not for me. It's hard as a rock! I really don't understand why someone would want to eat that on a regular basis."

"But it's not supposed to be hard as a rock!" you cry, waving your arms. "That's the problem! Oatmeal raisin is so goddamn rare and then the one time we get it, it was badly baked. Of course people are turned off by it. Everyone who already loves oatmeal raisin is getting pissed because their favorite cookie is misrepresented, they're unlikely to see more of them now, and everyone is still serving the most tasteless chocolate chip cookies I've ever had, acting like this is the pinnacle of cookie baking! Do you even know that a macron exists?"

The person pats your hand consolingly. "Of course I do. My roommate's sister's boyfriend used to bake macrons, you know. I don't know why you're so hung up on this. Cookies can be whatever the baker wants them to be. Provided they're a flat-ish sweet cake, they're still a cookie!"

You hang your head, giving up. "Yes, they can be so many things, but they're not. Let me know if you ever find a bakery actually making the variety you keep acknowledging exists. Bonus points if those cookies are edible. My soul if they're delicious, as a cookie should be."

"You know," they say, still patting your hand. "There's a bakery making chocolate chip with dark chocolate next year. Everyone is talking about it. You should think about buying one before they take it off the menu!"

You contemplate just walking into the ocean.

Now, incredibly long metaphor concluded... switch out "cookies" for "queer rep"! The representation matters because no, just making them gay isn't enough right now. You're right that queer people can be anything under the sun, but right now media isn't providing us with that variety. It's not enough to acknowledge that such variety exists, it actually has to make it into our books and onto our screen. Taking just characters who identify as gay and putting aside the HUGE variety of other identities for a moment (of which we are mostly lacking in terms of rep), where are the gay asexuals? The gay people of color? The disabled gays? Trans gays? Did your gay character appear for just a handful of episodes? Were they killed off? Are they nothing more than a stereotype or comic relief? Is this the only gay character in your entire story? We need to ask questions like this because though gay people can be anything under the sun, our media landscape has only shown a miniscule portion of that variety.

Today, even in 2021, our representation of gay people is still pretty limited to:

You are only coded as gay and evil

You are only coded as gay and queerbaited

You are canonically gay, but a cis, ablebodied, white person

You are canonically gay, but were written terribly/killed off/punished by the narrative/generally making the real gay people watching you feel awful about their identity

You are canonically gay, but you're not human. Gotta other the queerness by making you an alien/robot/fantasy being

You are canonically gay and that's your entire existence. There is one (1) narrative of how you knew by the time you were four, never questioned your identity after that, suffered through a family that rejected you, and now all your major arcs revolve around being gay. You are gay and that is it.

Despite being a list of six, that's still incredibly limiting. Are there exceptions to such a list? Always, but that doesn't mean the list isn't still dominating. We can look at any individual gay character and say, "Of course they can be evil/white/killed off/a joke/etc. because gay people can be anything at all," but when we look at the trends, when we look at ALL the media together, we see that gay people aren't actually depicted as being anything... they're depicted as being these handful of things, severely limiting how gayness is represented. Bad rep. If you hit up the bakery and question why there's only versions of chocolate chip available yeah, the baker can go, "But cookies can be any flavor! Including chocolate chip!" They are not, technically, wrong. The problem is not that chocolate chip exists, but that chocolate chip dominates and other flavors are rare, ignored entirely, or baked so badly it's actively damaging to that flavor as a whole. Yeah, your gay character can be mean. Or kinky. Or murdered by the story. But when so many gay characters are mean and kinky and murdered by their stories — when you're not getting other versions to balance that out and gay characters are still rare enough that it's just 1-2 characters trying to carry representation for an entire franchise — you start realizing that the claim of "Gay people can be anything else under the human experience" is an easy way to shut down the conversation of whether that variety actually exists in our storytelling yet.

It's not enough for the baker to acknowledge that yeah, of course there are hundreds of cookie flavors and of course cookies taste great! They've actually got to learn how to bake them properly and fill up their store with them.

[butchbarbieagainstterfs]

It's funny how terfs trying point out problematic things in stephen king's books but jkr has problematic things in her books, like how voldemort's mother used love potion on his dad, Snape is creepy dude who takes his anger out on teen who cannot help if his dad was dick, slughorn has this creepy vibe with favourite students, in movies they change a poc character to white person and jkr was very disrespectful to native Americans culture and beliefs, there's probably more.

Yeah. Like I fully acknowledge Stephen King has problematic stuff in his books. I’m reading The Shining at the moment and there have been a couple of points where I cringed at his use of certain language.

But, in fairness, at least he has some of the defense of many of his books being written like 40+ years ago when the world was less progressive and certain things were acceptable then that aren’t now. The Shining for example was published in 1977.

JKR first published HP in the 90s and while, yeah, things weren’t massively progressive then either, that still doesn’t mean you can act like her books are somehow unproblematic masterpieces.

People are even defending her queerbaiting with Dumbledore because “in the 90s gay content was censored!!”

Fair enough but what’s her excuse for refusing to write in an acknowledgement of his sexuality in the Fantastic Beasts movies 20 years later and mocking people who took issue with that on Twitter like a toddler?

[tsutomi-goshiki]

heya, it's me again your bnha hater NYAHHAHAHAHAHAHA i won't change my mind: bnha IS overhyped, but i like hearing your opinions about anime. you seem to have watched a lot and to know your thing. what anime do you find overhyped?

what’s with the NYAHAHAHA? that’s funny.i remember you, anon. and fine, you have your opinion about it, i have mine. no problemo.

overhyped anime, huh? let’s see:- one punch man(it’s good. it’s funny as heck. it knows what it’s doing. amazing job at animation and it is drawn wonderfully. but definitely overrated).- sword art online (GOSH. this anime. i gave it a 2 in mal, wrote a long ass review about it, thus getting bashed for it, but do i regret it? heck no. SAO is a no-no. it only looks good on the outside - it looks fantastic omg, and it sounds amazing too - but it lacks of a good plot, good characters, everything else. terrible. would not recommend to anyone)- akame ga kill (BAD. really bad. i could make a list on why i consider this anime bad. garbage. too overrated)- yuri on ice (yaoi queerbaiting at its finest. don’t get me wrong, i like the characters, okay? i would die for victor, but let’s not lie and call it a masterpiece. this anime only got famous because of the main pairing, let’s not pretend otherwise. it’s certainly NOT the best sports anime - heck no)- mirai nikki (NO. JUST NO. delete this mess)- pokemon (i’m a 90s kid so i have a soft spot for it, but it’s objectively not a good anime lol it’s my childhood, though)- naruto (10 real episodes 127892748694 fillers. it starts good, but quickly becomes meh)

Feel free to contradict me, anon /winks

[on-the-fourth-gay-of-christ-blog]

okay so ive been reading up on the emp theory and i take back everything nasty i reblogged/liked about season four sucking ass. moffatiss have been brilliant, up until this season. why would they fuck this up so badly unless they’re planning something? why would they make such weird, inconsistant changes throughout the season? why the dissapearing lamps? the blood? the fucky explosion? they wrote a brilliant crime drama. they wouldn’t- nay couldn’t- ruin one of the most internationally loved tv shows. they just wouldn’t. to be fair, there may have been queerbaiting (and im like 90% sure there was). there were empty promises, and they went back on their word in previous seasons (the spurt of blood, etc.). sure. but they have done brilliant, incredible things. left us breadcrumbs, so we could finally piece together their masterpiece. and honestly, im a little dissapointed in the fandom. we are supposed to be the cleverest people out there, and all most of us has done (myself included) is complain about plotholes, mistakes, and soap opera-esq tropes. i think they expected us to put it together, not tear them apart. and, yeah, im mad too. there was almost no indication that there was a deeper, underlying mystery. but i realised that thats what this show is all about. this show teaches us (or tried to) that you need to look deeper- look at the tiny, easily missed details to solve the case and save the life. this is what they tried to show us, and we couldnt do what they expected- we couldnt be, collectively, sherlock. and that makes me really sad.