#just because they didnt make a queer ship canon doesnt mean its queerbaiting

[bewarethemoonlads]

looking through tags for my favorite characters, wading amongst the x reader fanfiction whilst i search for photos/gifsets/etc: okay this isnt so bad i can just scroll right past these no problem

me getting swallowed whole by posts that use the word Queerbaiting completely wrong: okay well, this was not unexpected but it is quite fuckign annoying

[ratstuckinamarble]

Not to be a person on here but i say with with absolute genuine intention to help. Aside of the representation angle it really doesnt matter if a ship is canon to be a valid ship. You can still ship it? Maybe i am just cynical bc i grew up with no queer rep whatsoever so if a ship was canon or not didnt matter either way, but i am a bit sad to see people believe they cant ship something bc it isnt canon.

Like i said just trying to be gnuinely encouraging and disregarding what a step it would be to have opnely queer characters on screen and queer couples. Guess i am just cynical like that and believe that queer representation is a marketing strat in many cases and just me being so used to queerbaiting i dont fall for it.

No no, I get what you mean. I'm assuming this is about me being salty about certain developments from the monster high show?

Don't worry, I'm not abandoning my ships because they aren't canon, I don't think I could do that if I tried. Perhaps I hadn't been clear enough in that regard. Besides it's not like I grew up with queer rep either. I'm actually rather used to my ships not being canon, I'm just a lot more involved in this fandom than other ones, so it's hitting me a little harder this time (plus, most of the characters I shipped in the past never ended up getting romantic arcs, that made it easier).

I absolutely think people shouldn't let canon discourage them, what matters is that your ships bring you joy or comfort. That's it. I actually really hope no one else in this fandom throws their ships aside because of these things, that'd be a shame. Fandoms flourish with headcanons and making what the source material is putting down your own, connecting it to your experiences and interests!

I've actually seen some people feel afraid to share headcanons in fear that someone will come in and complain that canon doesn't support the idea. It's really disappointing to see.

I do think ships becoming canon can matter a lot, specifically if they're creating more rep. But it's not absolutely necessary.

Feeling like queer rep is often just a marketing strategy is... understandable. Queerbating (though I feel like that word has somewhat lost its meaning) has happened far too often and left a lot of us jaded. Still, if the rep is actually there instead of just getting teased, and it's properly integrated, feeling believable and genuine? Then I'm going to be glad to see it, whether the original reason was marketing or not.

Thanks for your input anon, I'm hoping I was able to clarify some things, and perhaps remind anyone who is feeling discouraged by canon that what you make of the things you love is up to you.

[queerbloodyangel]

Hi! I haven’t seen the magicians and probably won’t but I’m interested in the drama/what’s going on?

oof sorry this has taken me so long anon, i havent been home much today and am just now getting time to sit down! i hope you don’t mind that i’m writing out a long thing, because quite a few people have asked me about it and tbh i just want to get it all down :)

so, little bit of backstory here: quentin coldwater is the main character of the magicians. the first episode of the show has him being released from a mental facility after he had checked himself in because he was “getting bad again”. after the doctor expressed concern for his well-being and said she wasnt sure he should be checking himself out so soon. he told her the only way she could stop him was if he said he had any plans of hurting others or himself, which, he didnt.

throughout the course of the show, the writers did an amazing job of showing quentin actually dealing with and talking about his depression. we saw him at his highs, and we saw him at his lows, and for a lot of people who have never seen depression depicted in such a real and non-romanticized way onscreen, it was revolutionary. i mean, it still is, some of the discussions he had with his friends about it were so fucking real that they had me in tears because yeah thats it.

anyway, along with that, quentin also was proven to be sexually fluid first in season 1 by having a threesome with two of his best friends margo and eliot. he also dated a woman (alice) for a while, though that relationship went up in spectacular flames lmao

in season 3, quentin and eliot get stuck in an alternate timeline together for 50 years. during that time quentin met a woman and had a child with her, but shortly after she died, and quentin and eliot raised the kid together, and stayed together until eliot died. time got reversed then, but because Magic, they both remembered what happened shortly after, in a quiet scene with just the two of them, because the taste of ‘peaches and plums’ reminded them, because they had lived near a peach and plum orchard in the alternate timeline. nothing more was said about it after that, though quentin and eliot remained extremely affectionate with each other.

at the end of season 3, and going into season 4, eliot gets possessed by a monster thats more powerful than any of the gods on the show, and completely unkillable. the monster also has an incredibly childlike mentality, so at one point quentin asks it if eliot’s still alive, and the monster says no. since up until that point the monster has been truthful to a fault, quentin believes it. 

episode 5 happens, and quentin and his ex, alice, are figuring out a way to kill the monster. during this period of time, quentin makes it very clear to alice that he has absolutely no desire to get back together with her, and with all of the shit going on with the monster/eliot, he doesnt even have the space to even think about them. meanwhile, eliots trapped inside his own mind, going through all of his worst memories trying to figure out a way to get out long enough to tell his friends that he is alive, and needs help. he goes through a ton of bad memories, including ones about his childhood growing up in a homophobic small town in indiana, ones involving betraying his friends, and basically anything else he can come up with. 

he realizes eventually what his worst memory is, and we go back to the scene from season 3 where he and quentin remember the alternate timeline. quentin asks eliot if they can give them a shot, because ‘we work. 50 years, who gets proof of concept like that?’ and memory!eliot turns him down. the real eliot apologizes to memory!quentin, kisses him, and he’s able to take control of his body long enough to tell quentin (eliot: 50 years, who gets proof of concept like that?

quentin: what?

eliot: peaches and plums, motherfucker, i’m alive in here)

quentin then jumps in front of eliot so alice’s attempt to kill his body misses, and the monster comes back. 

from that point on, quentin’s sole focus is getting eliot back. he sleeps once on screen, for a total of 15 minutes. he’s jumpy, on edge, exhausted, and clearly spiraling as it becomes more and more apparent there might not be a way for him to save eliot. up until episode 10, not a scene goes by without quentin reiterating that they have to save eliot, no matter what.

episodes 11 & 12 happen, and (if memory serves me correctly) quentin says eliots name once, maybe twice. he gets back with alice, and suddenly, is no longer spiraling (????) its as if eliot doesnt even exist.

episode 13 happens, they manage to get the monster out of eliot, and quentin doesn’t even spare a glance towards eliot, who’s lying on the ground bleeding out and need to be rushed to the hospital. quentin and alice have found a way to trap the monster in a rip in the universe, and take off to do that. things happen that make 0 sense, and winds up jumping into this rip in the universe along with the monster, and dies.

after his death, he winds up in the underworld, talking to someone, where he asks, “did i do that to save my friends, or did i finally find a way to kill myself?”

the person takes him back to earth, so quentin can watch his friends mourn him. instead of letting his friends actually talk about him, the writers had them sing a song as they threw their mementos of quentin into a fire, and that?? somehow shows quentin that his death was okay.

the writers (sera gamble and john mcnamara) are acting like they deserve an award or something because they killed off the ‘white male lead’, which, apparently is progressive or something. as if tv show writers haven’t been killing off mentally ill, queer characters for decades already. 

the writers didn’t tell the rest of the cast what was happening, until two days before the finale aired. the actor who played quentin (jason ralph) was under a gag order for a year, and they filmed a dummy scene at the end that had the gang realizing there was a way for quentin to be saved.

the actor who played eliot (hale appleman), an openly queer man, spent the last several weeks reassuring fans over and over that quentin and eliot’s story wasn’t over, to have faith, only to find out that he’d unwillingly been a part in this whole fiasco.

they killed off the character that honestly, probably 90% of the fanbase saw themselves in, and had latched onto with their whole hearts because of that. for a lot of us, it felt like watching a bit of ourselves die, and along with it, a love story that deserved to be told, that a lot of us believed would be told. i, personally have watched so many shows where the writers absolutely refused to make the ‘popular gay ship’ canon, and have even been part of fanbases that have been mocked for it. but this just. this shit is on a different level and i dont know what to even call it except for some bizarre take on queerbaiting that’s somehow 10000000x worse than that word can even describe.

again, i’m sorry this is so godawful long but i’m truly devastated over losing quentin coldwater. queer people deserve better, mentally ill people deserve better, and god fucking damn it so do i.

[knightofbalance-13]

https://thoughtfuldreamercreatorduck.tumblr.com/post/178356941317/knightofbalance-13 @thoughtfuldreamercreatorduck

Well Yeah but thats Not the point. There is literally a word for it being used for queer relationships. I dont Really See your point to be honest?

My point is that if that is all queerbaiting is: Then it means nothing. Gay people don’t get special treatment, just like straight people don’t get special treatment.

Well ühm… what? Just so i understood everything youre saying that one gay relationship means the show itself cant be guilty of baiting? Queerbaiting is, at least how i understood it, to tease something explicitly between Two characters and than Not go through with it.

And WR (nothing against the ship) just doesnt have the Same build up?

Is your auto correct weird or something? Or is that “uhm” with the symbol above the u a word I don’t know. If it is sorry but I have no idea what it means.

Yeah, the issue is that term implies that the creators teased an LGBT pairing but never delivered one. If they deliver but not the one you wanted: That doesn’t look like queerbaiting to me. It just looks like another sunk ship.

And to make my point clearer: Bumbleby doesn’t really...have any canonical ship tease or build up. Everything you listed was interpretation and that...doesn’t count since anyone can interpret anything from an piece of media.

Really a sigh? Is it this painful to Read my comment? I tried my best to Not Sound condescending or arrogant or something you know? Am I really that horrible to endure that you Need to put upon the extra Time you use of your spare time to write this comment, which i Hope no one forced you to Read or even comment on, on a actually resolved discussion, the extra seconds to add a sigh?

No, I’m just tired of shippers using interpretation as evidence in ships. I was tired of it when I was a shipper.

It’s nothing against you, it’s general exasperation.

Well Yeah… Thats kinda the point. Hints Not confirmation. Its like that in the entry i copied and entered.

... Was it? Sorry I might have missed that. I was in a shipping community that treated using teasing and such as canon evidence. I just assumed all shippers were like that.

I am Not pushing bumblebee to become Canon. Would i be overjoyed if it does? Yes of course but i wouldnt rip RT a new One if it didnt. When did i say something like *I RIOT IF BB DOESNT GO CANON* Seriously when? Cause that was Not at all my intention.

Sorry again, I might have missed that but I have literally seen people threaten the writers over shipping so I’m kind of touchy about it.

Do we REALLY Need to force this to becoming a BB vs BS thing? Because it looks like you try just that. I was Not trying to do that. What point does it have here?

Sorry I didn’t mean to. It’s just easy to counter one side with the other.

My point was “This can be done for literally the exact opposite so this isn’t a good argument.”

I didnt want this Post to be about another Ship war i just Wanted to point out that something that gets in your words like being okay with Ghosts has some reason with it. Thats why i decided to Not go into the other reasons and just Make a Quick overview of some that came at the Front of my head.

That might be our difference: I almost never consider queerbaiting to have a valid reasoning. That just because it may have a reason to exist doesn’t mean it actually does or that it’s a good reason.

And AGAIN when did i say that? Look you appereantly seem to misunderstand some Things so Let me explain…

Please do: No one ever explains anything to me.

This Post was mainly just me trying to Show that there ARE reasons behind the overused queerbait threat. Can it be overused or wrongly used? Yes of course but there is some sort of ground work set that DOES have a Form of valid argument.

Okay then. As for me: those reasons don’t work. Why? Because the word carries an implication of double standards against LGBT people but from a shipping perspective, BB is being treated the same as what is considered it’s straight counterpart.

For me it wouldnt count as queerbaiting till they just Make Fun of bumblebee in the Show: something like Sun kissing Blake while ridiculing Yang. (THAT would be something we’re i would snap but mainly because Yang is my favorite character and she doesnt deserve any more shit, but thats beside the point)

Yeah, that is shitty no matter what.

About Interpretation… You know this works both ways right? All the interactions of Sun and Blake can be seen as friendship too. (As a side Note Adam didnt even aknowledge Sun existed till he saw him at haven, just felt like saying that)

For the sake of this discussion, I agree. ...I have no stake in this war aside from whatever gets the writer’s the least hate. And that’d probably be no ships canon at all.

Anyway if you want to Really reopen this already closed thing and try and turn this into a Ship war, why dont you just Message me personally when i get the Time between eating, sleeping, work and living i answer to it and we talk like this like the civilised humans we are. Besides this Can be seen by everyone and i think titan and katie are just about as done with this thing as i was. (Very Happy this got resolved peacefully btw)

I had no idea this was finished at the time.

Hell I chewed Titan out for his outburst since he’s a friend right after that post.

This was just apparently my toxic fandom paranoia going out of control. Sorry this got so bad.

[priceforrottenjudgement]

whenever shit like this happens people start debating if it was even really queerbaiting and start accusing people of just being mad because their ship didnt become canon. in the case of voltron i literally gave zero fucks about ships. i wasnt really into the fandom, i had seen all the episodes, but i didnt ship anyone in particular. and then they announced that one of the main characters was going to be lgbt and even have a partner! i got really excited and thought “maybe i can get invested in this”. yeah, luckily i didnt, because we all know how that turned out. 

so many people (usually straight people, but also a surprising amount of lgbt people) like to reduce outrage over queerbaiting to ships, because it makes it seem like something you dont have to take seriously. god forbid lgbt ppl just wanting to see people like them in a positive light in media.

is it still queerbait when the gay couple DOES appear, but one of them dies after 2 minutes? thats a thing i’ve heard a lot, because apparently the creators and a few fans think its not. they announced a gay couple and a gay couple was kinda on screen. i mean, you cant go against that logic when they reduce it to that, but the announcement of shiro being gay and having a boyfriend was a big thing at comic con. they saw what kind of impact it had on the crowd and online and they knew it would have that kind of impact. yet they still killed one half of the couple in under 5 minutes of screentime after KNOWING the fans were excited and hopeful for lgbt content. hyping something up like that and ending up giving the fans that little is still queerbaiting. its just all the more insulting when they justify it by saying the show isnt about romance, yet manage to fit in 3 brand new happy straight couples.

another thing that comes with all of this is fans saying stuff like “oh those nasty shippers are assaulting and harrassing the actors on social media!!! just because their ship isnt canon!!” which just isnt true 90% of the time. it is never right to go after the actors when they have little to no power over the storytelling. and most upset fans know that. making your disappointment and sadness known is something completely different than ‘insulting innocent actors’. the criticism is almost always directed exclusively at the people who are actually responsible for what happens on the show. like producers, writers, directors and, you know, people who loudly said they werent going to queerbait, knowing full well they would be killing a gay dude after what felt like 10 seconds.

same as with married couples, you cant hold an actor responsible for what their employer does. nobody should force somebody to take the criticism for what their spouse did on their own either. the situation changes however, when the actor/spouse involves themselves in the discussion and makes attempts to defend the behaviour. i’ve seen at least one actress defend it and respond to criticism of queerbait with the literal words “there was queer content, just not thee queer content you wanted” well DUHHHHHH nobody wanted the bury your gays trope, of course they are upset, there is no need to make this sound like yet another “youre just mad because your ship didnt kiss” kind of thing.

i’ve seen this happen a few times now. sometimes creators never explicitly state there would be a gay couple and never interact with people who ask about it, but will still capitalize off of fans who would love to see it happen (naruto). sometimes creators never explicitly say a gay couple is going to happen, but interact with fans who ask about it FREQUENTLY, capitalize off of them and also shape the marketing in a way that alludes to possible lgbt content (sherlock). and sometimes people straight up say theyll have a gay couple, promise there wont be any queerbaiting, capitalize off of this AND OTHER couples liked by fans, enjoy the wave of euphoria from lgbt fans, congratulate themselves for ticking off that specific box only to kill one half of the couple at the earliest possible moment and give all the happy moments to three straight couples they apparently had no time for (voltron, duh.). queerbaiting comes in different forms and with different intent. 

with naruto the creator most likely never wanted to make them a couple and never expected people to see any romance between them, so it was never publically addressed, but they sure saw that lgbt fans bought a lot of merch with the two of them on it and also really liked the vaguely shippy moments, so why not make money off of that.

with sherlock the creators have alluded to wanting a gay sherlock in the past, repeatedly vaguely hinted that something incredible and unbelievable was going to happen, knowing full well fans would believe that it was about gay rep and also knowing full well it would never come and at the end laughed at the fans for believing them and claimed they were seeing things that were never there. but they still took all their money, ofc.

with voltron they were apparently out for the lgbt money and clout. its so easy to get lgbt fans on the hook when you just promise the smallest possible representation, creators have learned that by now. but for some reason they havent learned that making false promises and driving up hopes will backfire extremely when the actual content doesnt match the hype. so now its of course the fault of the fans again, because they read too much into it, they had too high expectations. no word of apology for driving up those expectations though. that never comes. newsflash: nobody in their right mind believes a dead gay man with little to no screentime is good representation.

there is a reason why lgbt fans are perpetually suspicious when they are promised new lgbt representation. its like reaching a hand out to someone only to pull it back at the last possible moment and then laugh at the dumb idiot who went in for the handshake.

[lilacblue-boy]

The Final Problem

EDIT: I’m rewatching it atm and fuck this is too beautiful to be queerbaiting, loose ended bullshit.

And yes, the end could be canon Johnlock, but we do need it to be explicit to be accepted by the world.

In case anyone wants to know my opinion on this.

For everyone who says “Stop whining about your ship” and everyone who hates all of season 4:

I have never been a “oh god johnlock is so cute” shipper or anything like that. But I still found my way into TJLC by seeing the obvious here and even more so by seeing how amazing the people in this subcommunity of our lovely Sherlock family are.

I realised that I wasnt just seeing some subtext and having a gut feeling, Johnlock had lots and lots of Meta and subtext and it was really all there.

And now it turns out all that was queerbaiting? It’s devestating.

I myself am queer af and when I started watching this show I didnt know yet. However I have been in some shit places throughout seeing it for the first time and.. well, whatever yesterday was. It has helped me through a lot and I identify with Sherlock a lot, and I see parts of me, my relationships and my loved one’s all over, because this show shows so many of its heros and villains as human, broken, imperfect, but also brave, loving and kind. And that’s why I fell in love with it and this fucks me up so much.

Because seeing what this means - all the voices saying bad things about the show, the fandom, Johnlock were right - just doesnt make sense to me. I’m not in the place to loose this right now, but I cant just “look over it” and love it the same.

It just doesnt add up. They had reason, opportunity and nothing hindering them to make it canon. They didnt need a great big kiss or smt, a simple “I love you” wouldve been enough. Hell, did you see the ending? They had everything but the three words that wouldve made this explicit and canon. And it doesnt add up.

I absolutly loved this episode, so I did with TLD. TST was kind of fuzzy at bits and there are SO many things that dont add up still, but I did love this season. The writing wasnt awful, no, it was beautiful. “Your life is not your own, keep your hands off it.” “It is what it is” “The roads we walk have demons beneath and yours have been waiting for a very long time” all these are AMAZING.

So why dont the episodes add up? Why do all of these promises made not add up? “I just like elephants”? “I meant her playing so many characters”? What about “love conquers all”?

Either this is a GENIUS plan ending in an episode 4//series 4 special//episode 3 version 2

Or this is not only queerbaiting but also cruel and a badly writing storyline

I most sincerly hope it’s a genius plan. Because what do we say about coincidences?

TL;DR: Season 4 had too many great lines and plot aspects wasted on a story arch that doesnt add up and questions that go unanswered. Hopefully this is a genius plan as to another episode/special/second version to TFP or we are all fucked. Queerbaiting is not okay and pathetic, if that’s what this is the show that saved my soul and kept and keeps me going just broke my heart. Let’s see.