#And wrote her Bubbline fic for her bday lol

[stargazing-enby]

Hello Knower of All Things Queer! (Like seriously, I love you and your blog for all the info lol) Please could you tell me what the hell queerbaiting is?

Thanks! 🐸

I'm really glad you like my blog! I learn so much through the things I reblog, so I'm glad others do too 😊

I think the urban dictionary and Wikipedia definitions are pretty good tbh! It's basically a marketing technique where mass media creators add subtle cues that their characters may be queer but never actually make them canonically queer. That way, they can attract queer fans and allies—who are basically starved for representation—with the "promise" that there will eventually be canon rep, while also avoiding the wrath of their queerphobic audience.

Sherlock and Merlin from the BBC are the most well known examples, at least that I know of. I've only seen the term queerbaiting used in the context of hinting at romance/attraction between characters of the same gender, but I'm sure this also happens with trans characters as well as with other identities.

The thing is, when shows, movies, etc. hint at something that is accepted in society, like a straight* relationship, the audience doesn't need to question or analyse it. It's understood by everyone that those hints will follow through and those characters will be some brand of canon. Even if they don't end up together, their relationship will definitely be explored in some way. Why would those hints be there if not? That'd be poor storytelling.

But that's not true for things that aren't acceptable by society's standards, and in particular for queer themes. Following the example of ships, if two men or two women share intense looks, have moments of vulnerability with each other, or clearly display intense emotions for the other, there is absolutely no guarantee that anything beyond that will ever happen; that the characters will even acknowledge those emotions. In fact, in fandom spaces, anyone who DARES point out the clear chemistry between the characters—which is often being portrayed in the same ways as it's usually shown between straight characters—will have to face the wrath of all the homophobic fans of that media, who'll tell them they're trying to turn a good friendship into a queer one for their own personal agenda.

This happened with Princess Bubblegum and Marceline in Adventure Time, for example. They didn't become canon until the last episode of the show, where they kissed on the lips. Think about it. Through the show, it had been shown that the shirt Marceline gave PB held more emotional value that a plushie Marceline had owned for a thousand years that the man who rescued her during the apocalypse and raised her, only to lose himself to a curse and abandon her, had given her. Through the show, they are shown wearing clothes that belong to the other, blushing when looking at each other, singing about their feelings for the other... Hell, it's canon that they were really REALLY close before the events of the show, but PB's need to care for her kingdom made her push Marcy away. There was even a whole miniseries about Marcy becoming a mortal for a few days and growing up enough as a person that she was finally at a point in her life where she and PB could be equals and could finally "be together forever".

AND THEY STILL NEEDED TO KISS ON THE LIPS TO BECOME CANON.

Why do we have to analyse every single frame of a show and argue and write entire essays to "prove" our ship is canon before they kiss on the lips, when straight ships only have to look at each other for 3 seconds once and everyone already knows they'll be canon?

And yes, I say "on the lips" for a reason. After Ruby kissed Sapphire's face several times in a row while she lifted her off the floor in the last episode of season 1 of Steven Universe, homophobes on the Internet bullied literally anyone who dared imply they were anything more than siblings, or perhaps really good friends.

I mean, for fuck's sake. In Voltron, Keith told Shiro he loved him—he loved him—after a super intense battle where Keith risked his life to save Shiro from himself—and they STILL didn't become canon! It was the Bubbline argument all over again, except this time, instead of arguing with homophobes on Instagram about how, no, they were NOT just really good friends, we had to argue with antis on twitter and tumblr about how NO, that is NOT brotherly love! Ffs!!!!!

This has turned into a 3am ramble, but my point is that the way so many mass media creators capitalise off of queer identities while not making an ounce of effort to normalise our identities isn't just disgusting and queerphobic, it's also fucking dangerous. Because it teaches homophobes they're right when they silence us and tell us we're making things up—it teaches them that queer people identifying with their favourite characters are, in fact, forcing queer identities onto those very straight characters. It teaches them that they're rational and we're emotional.

And it's so fucking exhausting.

(Shoutout to Adventure Time and Steven Universe for making the wlw ships canon, though!!! But yeah, I used them as examples of how explicit our representation needs to be in order to count, and how this can be used in order to queerbait viewers—to give just enough hints that something SHOULD happen to attract a queer audience, but then never follow through and have the rest of your viewers be completely okay with that).

*I use 'straight' as an opposite of queer on this post

Ps. please bear in mind I'm not an authority in this topic—these are just my thoughts. Feel free to share yours!