#and some people dont know what queerbaiting is

[wizbizzi]

*sprays myself w water* you will not have an opinion on jrwicrit while blazed

[vse-kar-vem]

why are we having queerbaiting discourse as a fandom in the year of our lord 2024 😭😭 we're just as bad as twitter oh my god

[latergatorlatergator]

destiels talking about "history" and "destiel website" over and over again like that makes it a good ship

Tumblr Top Ships Bracket - FINALS

This poll is a celebration of fandom and fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

[pinkbluehoney]

.

[simpingresponsibly]

gnf better not do that tinder stream 💀

[sparrowlucero]

what's the strange aeons opinion you disagree with?

(just to clarify: this was a lighthearted jab, i dont really care and this explanation is just for posterity. except for the clown thing. fix that) There was a recent strange aeons video that reiterated what I see as kind of poor tumblr takes on Steven Moffat's work, specifically that he 1) only writes cheap shock value without meaningful stories to make himself look clever, 2) that his work is "for men like him, who wanted to watch strong male characters who are always right save the day and ogle at some hot women along the way", and 3) that he habitually queerbaited because he didn't know how to respond to a female fanbase (1) I talked a bit why I disagree with this here; basically, I just think it was one of those things where a subset of a fandom would interpret the work as being deliberately vindictive (Ex. "We have issues with this show, so it must be because the writer is making it bad on purpose to spite us. Only a very arrogant person would do that, so it is now reasonable to see everything in this show through the lens of that ego." etc etc), and it got to the point where the actual themes and motifs of the shows would be entirely unremarked upon or outright dismissed (and it was even a bit of a tumblr faux pas to attempt to engage with them at all) in favor of trying to dissect how and why each episode and character was bad/hostile towards the audience. Because these takes were so popular and widely accepted then, they're often treated as the most objective and nuanced take now. I could get into why I disagree further in regards to the actual content of the shows, but to put it simply, I just think he's a good writer who did some really thoughtful and thematically engaging work for reasons other than, you know, trying to make himself look smart and not wanting girls to watch doctor who. (1) (I didn't really go into this in that previous post but I think it's really weird how people treat the co showrunner, Mark Gatiss, a gay man who wrote a lot of what people attribute to Moffat as a straight man queerbaiting female fans, as a non entity in this conversation. I'm not a big fan of Gatiss but, like, I don't know, give him some agency in his own art here)

[charliewrites99]

For everyone saying Jance is performative and fanservice. Let me tell you something, from a queer slovenian fan...I dont think this is performative, but if it is, them performing it is a fucking brave and amazing thing to do.

We are a more open and rainbow friendly nation in comparison to other balkan and eastern european nations, but that doesn't mean much. We accepted same sex marriage and adoption in 2023, BECAUSE there were so many people opposed to it and voted against it. Our courts had to do it themselves.

And quite frankley I don't think many older people will change their minds, but there are younger people still being raised with the same prejudices. Especially in more rural eras where church is more prominent.

We have barely any reperesentation on TV, movies or in the media. The fact that a young, "hearthrob" boy band is doing this sets a precedent that cannot be ignored.

I know this was rambley and someone else could probably explain it better.

But seriously, take your "queerbaiting" and "fan-service" and fucking choke on it. The reason why you might not get why what they are doing means a lot to some of us and is quite beautiful is because you live in a bubble where something like this can only be used for commercializing.

[kindlespark]

this is gonna be SO long and rambly sorry anyway i saw a post abt how babel does queer characters and it got me thinking abt why the tropes it uses would usually turn me off other stories but didn’t here

MAJOR BABEL SPOILERS //

i feel like i’d be more mad abt how robinramy ended up in babel if it marketed itself as queer lit at all or if its fans were going “WOW AMAZING QUEER REP” abt it. but no one told me any of that, so finding out they were gay was just a fun little bonus surprise to me. i get why ppl are eh abt robinramy not getting together/technically still being subtext (which i dont think is really true btw like the book literally says “robin was falling in love” but idk i guess if you were stupid you might’ve assumed that it was falling in love with oxford given how romantic some of the other language is (WHICH IS ALSO THE POINT bc i think robin’s friendship with ramy blurring into romance is why he romanticised like all his friendships/experiences in oxford BUT IM GETTING OFF-TOPIC)). i just think robin’s repression abt being gay was intrinsically tied to his attitudes on imperialism (wrt refusing to acknowledge anything that complicated his life until it was too late) and i don’t consider it a cop out or queerbait. like i genuinely don’t think robinramy could ever have gotten together without drastic alterations being made in terms of plot and character. plus i think it’s clear that kuang didn’t want to write a story with any kind of focus on romance at all, because it’s not that kind of book. there’s no successful het romance either, so it grates a lot less. the only reason romance is included at all is to show the ways in which white entitlement manifests. so the tragic way robinramy played out just made sense to me.

and i speak as someone who accidentally spoiled myself on You Know What in the middle of reading and i was like ugghh boooo dreading it the whole time expecting to roll my eyes when it happened but then when it did i was like. wow im actually not that mad LMFAO 😭😭😭 actually thematically the book sets it up so well that i believed that this was unfortunately the only way it could’ve gone. babel is about the loss and tragedy and grief that colonised people experience. it’s about the lengths people will go to to uphold empire and the lengths ppl will go to to tear it down like idk 😭 i guess it is bury your gays but it didnt bother me this time because i thought it fit thematically ❤️ i enjoy tragedy as a genre a lot and i would’ve made it gay anyway you know. thanks rf kuang for doing it for me so i didnt have to.

WHICH IS ALL TO SAY that i guess if you’re going into babel for the queer rep without appreciating that the story is fundamentally a tragedy it would feel like it’s just reusing tired tropes….. but i think the choices kuang made were rly deliberate and not in a way that feels like trauma porn or shock value. the book is fundamentally about the struggles of poc so the layer of queerness that was introduced felt like a subtle extension of the experiences of characters of colour in the book, and i enjoyed and related to it as a queer chinese person who kind of realised they had to prioritise their fight for the liberation of poc over queerness mainly because the idea of western queer liberation cannot be dissociated from imperialism and many aspects of homophobia as we know it was an export of christian european empire into our colonised countries in the first place and FUCK THIS IS A WHOLE OTHER TANGENT ABOUT HOW I THINK RAMY AS A CHARACTER IS EMBLEMATIC OF THE TENSION AND STRUGGLE THAT QUEER POC DIASPORA HAVE BETWEEN OUR IDENTITIES GODDAMNIT OK FORGET IT POST CANCELLED i just rly think babel’s handling of queer characters is fine and makes sense and i like it personally and maybe i will make a coherent analysis about it one day but that day is not today byeeeeeee

[atthebell-moved]

hi, i completely agree that the fandom has a problem with misogyny and often fails at self-introspection. my question is, do you have any resources/tips/thoughts on how to be better about it? even, how to recognize it in yourself the first place? "ok i'll stop being a misogynist now" is a lot easier said than done, especially for people who might not be that educated on the subject, and majority of the people in this fandom are quite young as well.

this is long as fuck and possibly somewhat incoherent bc it took so long to write but i did my best

my biggest tip for people who don't know much about misogyny is to look at your own behavior and learn how to clock what you're doing as sexist.

are you criticizing a female creator? think about why you're doing it, what the actual beef you have with them is. if it seems to be just a sense of discomfort or thinking they're annoying or overly loud or pushy, think about male ccs who act the same way and why you dont consider them annoying. are you annoyed with them for being on a male cc's stream? why? does it feel like theyre taking up too much attention? do you get annoyed with them for talking too much or flirting with guys? for gaming especially-- do you get annoyed with them for not knowing something or being "bad" at a game? think about why that is and why its just funny when a male cc is bad at games or doesnt know something.

a HUGE problem i see in this fandom is the Madonna-whore complex, repackaged as the little sister-racist dichotomy (kudos to @yourlittlemenace for that phrasing).

if a female cc is deemed to be "playing nice" (doesnt talk too much, is "nice", streams with male ccs but doesnt flirt with them, isn't "overtly sexual"), she's the little sister of the group. all the male ccs "protect" her, she literally folds their laundry, she doesnt call out how people treat her, and the fandom pretends that this is a normal and cool way to treat women who are public figures. this also goes for mom/big sister/etc. if you think you haven't done this, think about all the aus where you've forced puffy into some kind of maternal or sisterly role when it made no sense. then think about how pissed people got when she decided not to be the server therapist and was "mean" to Tommy (in lore, with permission. that she didnt even need to get. see that clip i rbed earlier from her podcast.)

if the fandom decides she doesnt play nice, if she flirts with male ccs too much or stands up for herself or points out how unfair it is that she's being treated this way, she gets demeaned, harassed, and shunned by the fandom. consider, again, puffy. consider how niki flirted with wilbur and talked about misogyny and got called a racist for *checks notes* "speaking to schlatt and fundy" and "not being a native english speaker". she got called a slut and a queerbaiter for kissing another woman despite being bisexual.

consider how hard people went down on hannah for having said the r slur several years back versus how hard they went on dream for the same thing. and how people dug it up as a direct response to her being on stream with dream. consider how every time hannah talks about how unfair it is that the mcc subreddit treats her like trash, she has to delete all her tweets bc they harass her to hell and back and act like she's an asshole for pointing out their hypocrisy.

the fandom doesnt do this across the board; i shouldnt have to say this, but its not an everyone versus no one issue. some people do this outright and loud, some dont seem to realize theyre doing it, and a few people dont do it at all (incredibly rare, i can count on one hand the number of people who genuinely seem to try to avoid these issues, which is why im complaining).

in terms of lore, have you ever once done analysis on a female character? why do you think you haven't? the bechdel-wallace test is an (imperfect) way of gauging how a piece of media ignores women and prioritizes men. think about the fact that there are FOUR female ccs on the DSMP and they are continually ignored in favor of male characters. consider that puffy and aimsey both talked about trying to do genuine lore and getting shafted, either because no one was online and wouldn't put in the effort to stream with them or because they received insane amounts of criticism for breaking anything on the server, despite the clear lack of "no griefing" rules and the precedent that you can blow other people's shit up (tommy leveling one of puffy's builds, amongst many other examples).

a quick thing about ships: have you ever wondered why m/m ships are so popular? the general consensus amongst people who care about feminism and are into fandom studies is that for a long period of time, m/m was hugely popular because women are so rarely written as full and complete characters in any media. so people took to engaging with m/m ships and writing about them because they were the most fulfilling relationships, and because misogyny led them to be predisposed to be uninterested in female characters.

say an m/m ship is incredibly popular, something like, i dunno, john watson and sherlock holmes from bbc sherlock. lets also say the canonical media presents one or both of the characters with a female love interest. how do you think a fandom that prioritizes m/m ships and is primed to be disinterested in women as characters (either because of our society's role in teaching people that women do not matter or because of fandom's history in assuming female characters are not fleshed out) is going to react? if you said theyre going to send undue amounts of criticism her way and act like its an act of homophobia to give a canonically straight character a female love interest, congrats, you've figured out a huge component in fandom misogyny. take this, amplify it over several decades, and add the psychic damage that supernatural gave society. queerbaiting is bad but mistreating female characters in service of nonexistent queer relationships is also bad.

this is relevant in general but i also believe its relevant for the dsmp because of the complete lack of m/f ships. aside from phil and kristin, who are literally married irl and kristin isn't even on the server, there are no m/f ships that involve female creators. this is not, despite what you may think, due to the inherently yaoi nature of minecraft roleplay. this is because the creators, including the male ones, are afraid of the blowback of m/f flirting and how fucking awful people are to female ccs anytime it happens. once again look at niki. as another example, consider how notfounders harassed the living daylights out of mxmtoon for flirting with gnf on twitter. if i was a cc i would avoid it like the plague too considering how happy people are to dig shit up about them or accuse them of being a slut or an attention whore/"pick me girl" for speaking to a man.

one last thing, this is more about fanart than anything else but stop drawing women to look like teenage boys. the amount of fanart i see where i literally cannot tell if someone has drawn niki or tommy is fucking insane. niki has curves. draw her with them. if you cannot draw women or people outside a very specific body type you cannot draw. fatphobia and misogyny have a clear overlap.

i cant think of anything else and ive already spent forever on this. look into feminist media analysis. think twice about how you react to female ccs & female characters. consider not just what characters have interesting stories but who is allowed to have interesting stories. you might be neglecting someone who has a lot going on because you're dismissing a female character as inherently less likely to be interesting. you might not even know someone has an interesting story because the fandom neglects it so completely.

as a final little note: like i said earlier, if you're not familiar with gender & sexuality studies, you may not know this, but homophobia and transphobia are rooted in misogyny. the idea that gender is immutable and rigid is because of the patriarchy. this is why gendered slurs are used against queer people and why queer men in particular get accused of and demeaned for being feminine. your understanding of queerphobia is incomplete without considering how sexism plays a role.

also go read everything rayne fisher-quann has ever written but especially this piece on getting woman'd and listen to you're wrong about

[bendarius]

I was just thinking, Do you think Ben gf is real? I personally believe it's some kinda of catfish...

Well, it's just that seeing him as straight is just UNIMAGINABLE to me. I know people are saying he can be bi/pan but Camp Cretaceous never gave us ANY possible hint of Ben liking girls... Also, I doubt they would officialize Ben as bi or pan someday. So, if he's not coded as bi/pan or officialized as it, we kind of just got queerbaited :( ?

It is not about he ending or not with someone, the thing is that the whole girlfriend reveal felt just like a way of trying to make the viewer stop doubting about Ben's queerness in general. I say that bc is kinda of obvious fans ALWAYS saw a lot of queerness in his character since the beginning of the first show, and is ingenuity to think they arent aware of the viewers' opinions about Ben...

Ps: I love ur blog so much🙌❤️

i think its clear what i think considering i wrote that fic....and no we didnt get queebaited. that would need the crew to promise that there would be more lgbt and we were never told that. its okay to read them as gay. to be fair staight is still the default but he also wasn't shown to like guys either (subtext isnt proof, didnt drop lines like "i mean i think hes cute") meanwhile darius w the beautiful boy line and how desperate he was to keep ben could be read as some kind of proof. i see him as gay no matter what because him liking girls is unfathomable to me....i seriously dont think he has a gf. if anything it wont last bc why are you long distance dating your first gf...scared of sharing irl moments w her?....

i want to work on the benrius subtext analysis. it makes me feel better that people on the crew actually see it too bc i feel less insane. but again crew art isnt official (thank god bc of that kenji darius yaoi satire) or reflective of the shows plot. itd be great if there was some benrius hint but im fine with just reading into their interactions. ben does feel gay to me in many ways with his identity and feeling comfortable in himself but with that theme its very easy to equate it. im just glad theres room for interpretation due to how he presented his gf. in the end its just abt perception, i think theres a reason who we dont rly learn a lot abt his gf. just cause he says he has one is like.....very much room to think otherwise

and thank you so much! i appreciate it, even though im not as active anymore benrius still has a huge place in my heart and i cant wait for their future interactions for real. ill always love them bc of how much chemistry they have. i like ships that have canon chemistry bc its so much easier to imagine a future w them.....hopefully benrius goes down as one of the most coded gay ships trust

[hotchfiles]

i dont think paget is clueless, im pretty sure she knows people ship jemily as a romantic couple and want that to happen

what i do think is that she has no idea how badly hyping up interactions between a queer ship and then have it be nothing much (queerbaiting) is seen within fandom

shes there going “yeah they are gonna have some sweet moments and people who want them as a couple will find these sweet” and the reaction shes gonna get will not be what shes expecting lmao

[ghoulishcraving]

on the theme of queerbaiting and hannibal i have OPINIONS and idk how well ill be able to express them on writing and in english but here we go

i get why some call it queerbaiting, and, although, i myself consider it canon, HEAR ME OUT

I'm going first to put the example of a real life artist, yoongi, from bts, this guy has consistently answered to questions like "what's your ideal woman" by saying "a person like...." or even saying things like "the gender doesnt matter much to me, it's the personality.....", has lyrics on his songs like "either a girl or a guy I'll make you come with my tongue....", and even said on a radio show years ago that he liked "the macho type" in guys, but he is still not considered queer by the general audience, he is not queer, except to queer fans like myself, bc we see that and obviously that means the man is not straight but to the general public, to the straight public he never said explicitly that he is gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer, anything so he is "not gay".

because the thing about queer identities is that they will be denied as long as there is the slimmest chance to do it, as long as there is not a direct rotund answer.

that happens with hannibal, it doesnt matter how obvious is, because there isn't an explicit acceptance or declaration of queerness and there isn't an explicit kiss or sex scene or confession between will and hannibal.

and that is something that we do not realise as much because of the niche audience it has, but if this show blew up, and its audience reached a more general audience we would see the denial of hannigram everywhere.

because even on the "is hannibal in love with me?" we do not get a rotund yes, we get a metaphora, a rephrasal, a reinterpretation, that can be interpreted as platonic. as a platonic obsession.

because even when both actors wanted a kiss it didnt happen it stayed platonic

and what confirmed for me this idea was the treatment of margot and alana's relationship.

we have a show, about the fbi, about a serial killer about violence (traditionally directed to men) protagonized by two very attractive men (usually done to attract a women audience), that plays onto queer topics spectacularly and has a blatantly obvious queer story (for queer people) but it's not a romance, and they never explicitly portray both men as queer, the only (explicit) relationships they are shown having is with other women (therefore not risking the lose of interest or hate from a straight audience that wants to be/men the protagonist or desires them/women) but the moment they introduce a lesbian couple we dont even see how they get together, we barely see anything about them as a couple but we do have a sex scene, wich would be something liked by a straight men audience, ignored by a straight women audience, and liked by a queer audience (confirming the queerness of the show) but without risking the proclaim of the two protagonists.

I hope this makes sense, and I know what fuller says and that the man just need a bit of cheering to write and post hannigram porn on his social media but honestly for me, what a creator, producer or actor post on their socials do not count bc it's not on the show, and again it allows deniability, it isn't canon

most of this is basically how I see the show translates onto a publicity and commercial sense, I myself consider hannigram as completely canon but still I'll always say that not putting a kiss on screen had nothing to do with the purity of the bond, or the complexity of their relationship and more to do with its marketing and the possibility of losing audience over it.

although in the end the audience of this show is the queerest I've seen hajfjdbnrnf

[13eyond13]

Hello, new Death Note fan here. First, thanks so much for this blog of yours. Because it came out 10+ years ago, I'm afraid will hard to find any active DN acc until I came to your blog. I understand more about Death Note's characters and story thanks to you...💐

I just start DN anime and manga last year (I know it's so late), because many people said in reviews that DN is not that good and mostly overrated. After finishing it, I think, how wrong that opinion was....

Do you mind if I ask some questions :

- Is Beyond Birthday became like that because of A's suicide?

- I read somewhere that Death Note (especially L and Light's relationship) is subtext mlm like Hannibal NBC & Merlin BBC, do you agree?

- One of my friend is DN fan since 2008, and every time she watched (more than 100x) L's death, she still cried. And coping it with read L/Light fics, are you like that too?

- "L and Light are both ace and aromantic", do you agree?

- Until the end, does L figure out it was Light = Kira the whole time?

- If Mello and Near work together from the start, can Light got captured more early?

- If Light were female, do you think L/Light ship will be more common?

- Until now, have you found any couple (canon or non canon) from any media (books, tv series, movies, anime/manga, etc) that the dynamics remind you of L/Light?

- "If Ryuk were an ikemen, than Light/Ryuk ship will be more popular than Light/L", do you agree?

- Do you prefer L as top or bottom or switch with Light? Why?

- In what moments that you start ship Light with L?

Sorry for my long ask (got too excited) feel free to answer whichever you want to. Thanks @13eyond13 ....

Hi! Aw, thanks for the kind words, and I'm so glad my blog is still helping new fans out that way somehow! 😊

Let me try to quickly answer your questions here (sorry if the answers aren't very in-depth, I don't have a computer with me currently and I'm just replying to you with my phone)

- Did Beyond Birthday become like that because of A's suicide?

This is not something that is commented on directly in the novel, so it's up to fan interpretation and headcanons for that! There is only one sentence about A, and we actually don't even know if A and B knew each other or interacted with each other in any way:

Personally I DO think it's fun to imagine it's part of B's past that he and A did know each other and that it did affect him somehow, but I'm not sure if his character was actually written with that notion in mind.

- I read somewhere that Death Note (especially L and Light's relationship) is subtext mlm like Hannibal NBC & Merlin BBC, do you agree?

I think you can definitely easily read homoerotic subtext into their relationship, but I also believe most of it was not really intentionally put there by the manga creators Ohba and Obata. I think SOMETIMES there were deliberate suggestive jokes and whatnot in the manga that indicated there was some level of awareness that things between them could be seen as suggestive – like when Matsuda is questioning them only sharing their cell phone numbers with each other, and when Misa questions L's orientation whenever he handcuffs himself to Light. That doesn't mean that reading them or their relationship in a shippy way isn't valid or legitimate or interesting to do! Just that I dont think it was written with the writer knowingly going into things like "ohoho time to slyly queerbait the audience!" or something. I think Hannibal's creators were extremely deliberate with everything homoerotic that goes on between Will and Hannibal for example, but I think it happened a bit more unintentionally in Death Note originally.

- One of my friend is DN fan since 2008, and every time she watched (more than 100x)  L's death, she still cried. And coping it with read L/Light fics, are you like that too?

Haha oh wow 100x! I'm not like that personally because I had L's death spoiled for me by a comment I saw on the very first episode of the anime, so I knew it was coming! I was still really upset about it of course, he IS my fave. But actually Light's death in the anime gets a stronger emotional reaction from me than L's. I think I only ever cried during Death Note at that part where Light is thinking about his younger innocent self while he's wounded and running away, something about it gets me every time... And yes, I definitely wanted to read a lot of fics to resolve all my messy feelings about the two of them afterwards!

- "L and Light are both ace and aromantic", do you agree?

I can see why people might see them that way, though it's not my personal headcanon for them! It's one of those things people can decide for themselves rather than something I think there is an objectively "correct" answer about, really.

- Until the end, does L figure out it was Light  = Kira the whole time?

I'm not 100% sure if I'm understanding your question correctly. But I think L is always something like "PRETTY DARN SURE" Light is Kira, though he also knows he needs to have the concrete proof to back that certainty of his up. He DOES know it without a doubt once he actually has his heart attack and sees the look on Light's face in the manga, though! He thinks something like "I knew it! I wasn't wrong..." before his eyes close. Which in some way is maybe a small comfort, to know that he was able to solve this ultimate mystery for himself and know he was definitely correct about it before he died.

- If Mello and Near had worked together from the start, could Light have been captured more early?

A very good question! I unfortunately feel a bit too rusty on my successor arc plot stuff to know how to answer this one well, but I do think that Near and Mello made a very effective team whenever they collaborated, for sure.

- If Light were female, do you think L/Light ship will be more common?

I don't know if it would be more COMMON necessarily, but perhaps it would just have a slightly different sort of fanbase and legacy as a ship? I think a lot of people kinda like, and have always liked, how gay it is though? and I don't know if that really hurt the ship's popularity so much as maybe increased it even. But I'm definitely not an expert on this stuff or anything, hahaha

- Until now, have you found any couple (canon or non canon) from any media (books, tv series, movies, anime/manga, etc) that the dynamics remind you of L/Light?

Not exactly like it, no! It's quite unique to me in many ways. MAYBE the closest thing I can think of right now is NBC Hannibal, simply because of the unresolved tension and morbid dark humour and constant innuendo and cop/criminal investigative sort of stuff going on between them? But I think canon Hannigram was darker in some ways than I find canon Lawlight to be, and the parallels aren't exact by any means...

- "If Ryuk were an ikemen, than Light/Ryuk ship will be more popular than Light/L", do you agree?

Hahaha, I feel like it would be more popular as a ship than it currently is, but I'm not sure it would eclipse Lawlight! I feel it's hard to beat the antagonistic chemistry L and Light have simply due to how their roles are set up in the story as the detective and the criminal and whatnot.

- Do you prefer L as top or bottom or switch with Light? Why?

I prefer it when they take turns in fics and don't stick rigidly to one thing or the other! I think maybe because it seems realistic to me that they'd want to experiment that way with each other, and also because I just find it more interesting to read smut if they're doing stuff in a variety of ways.

- In what moments that you start ship Light with L?

I think I basically immediately felt a strong tension and chemistry between them. But I was introduced to things via the anime, and the rain scene definitely seemed extremely shippy to me and like "there's no way they weren't into each other" hahah. I think the rain scene was the main reason I went looking for shippy content about them afterwards. But I find that the manga is actually shippier to me than the anime sometimes, even though that rain scene isn't in it. Maybe because to me it feels a bit more like they're mentally and emotionally on the same page about things more often in the manga, and both seem pretty aware of the sly mind games they're playing with each other the whole time. And Light stays very fixated on and oddly reverent towards L after his death in the manga as well, which ultimately remains probably the shippiest thing about them in canon to me...

[sky-kenobye]

⛵️ Five Fandoms, Five Ships ⛵

Get to know the blogger, via five different ships from five different fandoms!

Thanks for the tag @underacalicosky !!

Putting it under the cut because this is LONG, sorry.

I love them your honor. Doesn't even have to be romantic, I just want to see them being obsessed about each other. I'm also a pretty big obianidala fan, hence why I added her too. (I'm a multishipper really. I have my otp but there's a lot of ships that I enjoy)

1. Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker(/Padmé Amidala) (Star Wars)

When I first watched star wars (not that long ago, I only watched it because I wanted to see the sequels in theater lmao) I wasn't a big fan of the prequels so I mostly ignored them, but then a couple years ago I randomly rewatched them in the middle of the night and suddenly I was obsessed. I'm not even sure how I ended up on AO3 (did I go look for obikin? Did I stumble on it? Idk) but eventually I started reading Pining in Preschool, then realised that @palfriendpatine66 was on tumblr, I started interacting with more people around here, and now I'm (slowly) writing fics, and I'm having the time of my life here, so thanks Pal!

I don't think any if my past fandom brainrots reached my current level so I'm pretty sure I'm here for the long haul (at least it's not stopping anytime soon).

It's not super obvious here but I'm actually a huge Marvel fan (well, the MCU, I've never read a comic), and especially Captain America. Stucky is just, 🤌 so tasty (a lot of similarities with obikin actually imo). I'd like to talk to whoever thought "I'm with you 'til the end of the line" was a straight sentence to repeatedly say to your bro throughout an entire century though. Like?? I'm all for relationships that defy the boundaries of platonic and romantic, but still, that's kinda gay.

2. Steve Rogers/James "Bucky" Barnes(/Peggy Carter) (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

The first MCU movie I saw was actually captain america 2 (and not the first one lol) in theater, and I was instantly hooked, though since Endgame I've been less into it, since my fav is gone (and I have to agree with tumblr on that one: they're making too many movies and shows, I can't keep up 😩)

(And I'm still super salty about what they did to steve in canon, they should have killed him off instead of whatever the fuck that was, honestly)

I also added Peggy because she's great, and polyamory is so much better than love triangles or shipping wars. (I'm not polyamorous but I believe in their beliefs. I think it's because of the aromanticism)

Same as with obikin (and stucky too tbh) I don't really care how they love each other, I just care that they do. They're the most important person to each other, be it romantic, platonic, familial, idc.

3. John Watson/Sherlock Holmes (mostly BBC Sherlock, but from the RDJ movies and the books too)

I've obsessed over (non-existent) clues during the last season, and deluded myself into thinking they'd become canon, alas, it didn't happen.

I've translated a couple of fics in french for that ship, but I've never written for it (I thought about it tho), and I've read a lot. That's the fandom where I've read some of the best queerplatonic fics, and that's my favorite interpretation of the ship, especially sherlock being some flavor of aroace.

4. Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)

I love them as a queerplatonic relationship, and I genuinely think that's what they are in canon, the haters can suck it, that's not queerbaiting even if they dont become a canon couple.

Okay, I'm starting to see a patern here. Am I really that predictable? You can just copy-past what I said above.

(I'm fully on board with them being a couple though)

Hey, a straight ship! With a woman not added as a second thought!

5. Elizabeth Bennet/Mr Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)

Not quite the same vibe as the others, but I've read sooo many fics and books (straight up published fics lol), I've watched a bunch of different adaptations (even the one with zombies)... The worst part is that I think I've only read the og book once, oops.

I actually inherited that fandom from the women in my family lmao. My mom, sister and sister-in-law are all obsessed with it, so I read it to see what all the fuss was about and, yeah, I get it.

And that's it! There are other fandoms I'm into, and other ships in those fandoms, but that's pretty much it (the main one that's missing is Dinluke, the others are mostly smaller ones).

I'm not super actively in those fandoms (apart from Star Wars obviously) but i come back to them now and then. Usually I re-watch it then binge-read a bunch of fics (while my main fandom stays in the main spot in my brain) then I let it go again until it comes back (while obikin still stays in the main spot).

Also Harry Potter used to be my main obsession but JKR kinda ruined that for me so I'm not really into it anymore (hence why I didn't list it even though I have written fics for it).

Anyway that was way too long, if you've read all of this then props to you!

I'm tagging: @cottonraincoat @fem-anakin-skywalker @kingdomvel @ineffable-snowman @arobiwan (and whoever else wants to do it because I'm nosy and I want to know stuff about people)

[raisinchallah]

since you are a queerbaiting scholar, I have a question that I don't remember if you've ever covered. Do you think the t'hy'la footnote in the Star Trek TMP novelization could be considered an example of queerbaiting or is it just too iconic to fall under that category?

oh unequivocally like for clarification for people i guess who have a more narrow and specific definition of queerbait i do think it like kind of dodges around the entire central conceit of hoped for "gay representation" or something that is not really the lens i think its viewed thru in 70s fandom the way it was in 2010s as in like the way people frame queerbaiting they want characters to join this pantheon of confirmed gay characters fitting a mold of existing gay characters on tv to some degree and nobody was assuming like from that tease that kirk and spock would be portrayed as a couple in future movies or anything the way the queerbait dance between creator and fandom was portrayed in 2010s queerbait discourse but i think it was probably the first and most high profile attempt to date for a creator to try and mediate the relationship between the media property shippers and ship haters through like a direct communication of like canon material i guess like i would have to go on a pretty big deep dive back into some of the random star trek zines ive looked at to find sources again im struggling to find it right now but i know i read some various responses from fans at the time and kirk/spock shippers did react negatively to the footnote in much the same way people reacted to like ship tease jokes in classic queerbait tv shows on tumblr which i found really interesting people did think it was trying to shut kirk/spock shippers down just as much as people thought it was energizing them and speaking to them it really threads the needle so perfectly by like opening the door to a whole new type of possibility and whatever to the types of people who want that while also in text saying theyre not lovers hah hah isnt that weird which i think some fans also felt uncomfortable about because it was like shining a light on their niche corner of the fandom letting people know there were people who thought the relationship between kirk and spock might be romantic but again ive only read like two accounts of this so i honestly have no clue how widespread each type of reaction was i wonder if it also like re inflamed fights about if they do or dont have sex lol because that was a whole thing which is slash was for people who believed it was sexual vs kirk&spock was like homoerotic friendship to nonsexual romance fanfic and these were bitter fandom divides as well but of course and like this isnt to paint it all in a negative light but i do think the dissenting voices get a bit lost in the history and i thought it was kind of fascinating how similar a lot of the weird mediations felt to like some actor at comiccon 2012 saying well i dont know but it could be romantic you know it creates the perfect vessel for everyone to see what they want thru it so i think in many ways it was groundbreaking queerbait but also tbh did it better than anything else like truly stoking the fires of fan speculation and probably introduced a lot of people to the idea of "the premise" and planted the seeds in their minds to begin with and again few other queerbait texts are out here inventing special words that mean lover for the characters to call each other few people that bold like again somewhat different context but it does kind of feel like a first of its kind broaching into that messy dynamic between fans and the powers that be as they sometimes called them and truly a fascinating iconic piece of queerbait history

ok upon further looking i believe i must have read a scan of "a careful analysis: the roddenberry footnote" by christopher randolph (a pseudonym for della van hise the author of killing time) that was printed in the star trek zine naked times issue #3 but i have been unable to locate an actual link to the full text beyond the excerpts from fanlore here [x]

[cowboy-robooty]

Opinions on shoujos or eroticas?

you mean just the genre of shoujo and general erotica? With shoujo I love it. Shoujo manga makes the world spin 'round. I think one of the most powerful quotes in the world is "why dont you go read some shoujo manga and get some emotions". I adore shoujo but i only like girl x boy when there is girlseme. This may seem offtopic but bare with me here, I dont give a single fuck about queerbaiting. I'm a gay man, so im allowed to say that. I could not care less if the gay couple is canon or not because yeah it sucks that like a company is actively trying to pander without pulling through, but i usually hate pandering yaoi anyways since i will only ship things if god tells me to via divine vision. i dont care i dont need my ship to be canon to keep sailing along. But you know what actually pisses me off? SEME-BAITING. AND OHHH MY GOD IT IS OBVIOUSLY IN YAOI BUT IT IS SO FUCKING ABUNDANTLY PREVELENT IN SHOUJO MANGA IM GAGGING. IT MAKES ME FUCKING SICK. I GET SEME-BAITED SO OFTEN ITS ACTUALLY FOUL LIKE THAT SHIT MAKES ME SO FUCKING MAD IT MAKES ME UNDERSTAND WHY EVERYONE GOT SO UPSET AT VOLTRON. LIKE YOU CANNOT DO THIS TO ME. YOU CANNOT MAKE MY BEATIFUL GIRLSEME SUDDENLY UKE OUT OF NO WHERE. IM GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU. i think that girluke is disgusting and foul and genuinely is something i think im incapable of enjoying. All the power to people who can like it, but I am incapable. I love shoujo..... im always looking for more to read... it's just hard bc theres so much seme-baiting... but things have gotten better. Since you guys must have also noticed that a lot of romance anime has shifted towards being anime for lonely teenage boys instead of anime for lonely teenage girls so SQUEE!! BOYUKE!!!!!!

as for erotica i love it why would i not love porn manga? I dont like nor consume real life people porn for a myriad of reasons, but i loooooooooveee drawn shit. I'm yet another statistic proving that people who are by definition "asexual" but dont use the lable (bc its gay) are the freakiest mfs out there.