#the bait has to be in the fucking water to be queerbait

[demadogs]

some of you guys think queerbaiting is just when your favorite queer ship isnt made canon and not a literal marketing tactic used to manipulate queer people into consuming their media

[steveyockey]

do you think that -- if they WERE planning to do gay angel press initially -- part of the reason they didn't might have been the (reactionary) bury your gays backlash from fans and non-fans? in which case. twitter rly does ruin everything. :/

I’m not tied to this but here’s a hypothetical to work through that at least provides a theory on the lack of gay angel press (probably not very different from any other theory on this website but just writing it out for continuity),

okay. pre-pandemic. the arc of the final few episodes seems to have been set and 15.18 was the last piece, pending jensen’s approval. roadhouse heaven ending was a go — presumably featuring a cas cameo among other various and sundry friends. approving 15.18 introduces a problem by way of the fact that cas has just confessed his undying love for dean and there’s an expected response. but it’s fine! you don’t actually need that, you’ve been baiting fans for a decade, you can work your magic one more time with a lil wink and nudge and never have to deal with that again. ambiguous “to each his own” ending, you talk up the gay angel on one side and the bronly-ness of the last hunt on the other; everyone walks away happy. you have successfully threaded the needle of finishing off a twelve year queerbait without “caving to the fans,” high fives all around.

15.18 gets filmed. the angel is gay gay. the footage is. we don’t know what the footage looks like. there could be anything. maybe there’s a kiss with tongue. ends up not really mattering because the pandemic happens and they have to stop shooting and stop airing. no idea how much changes in 15.19 (clearly SOME stuff considering we know the folks who got chuck snapped in the silo were supposed to be shown back in the flesh and that got cut). 15.20 has to change — so roadhouse heaven becomes three person heaven (plus the cast and crew, who were already on set so no, this is not proof they could have brought a crowd of actors anyway, it’s just. weird. I don’t like this decision. strikes me as authoritative like WE told the story not YOU. anyway). putting cas in three person heaven makes winking and nudging a lot harder to do and would make the absence of an actual substantive response to the confession uhhhh very obvious. so you have to cut cas. and then maybe you have to cut other references to cas in 15.19, maybe you cut some emotionality from dean’s side in 15.18, maybe you straight up insert the moment in 15.20 where dean tells sam to stop being an eeyore about cas’s death! we don’t know how much was changed, but there was at least the opportunity at this point to dull dean’s response to the whole thing so the absence of cas in heaven is more palatable. it’s the bronly ending, but you already gave the audience the gay angel. and the gay angel is alive and building heaven with his son! no more cashing in on the queerbait but still cashing in on canon gay.

it’s november 5th. 15.18 airs. it trends higher than the biggest election “of our lives.” holy shit! gay angel! but of course the issue is the people responding aren’t the people who have been watching the show. they don’t have context for what’s going on and “turbohell” catches on. fuck. did you kill the gay angel? of course not, he’s in heaven with his son! lisa berry can post her goodbye instagram to her character because obviously billie’s dead, she’s the villain. she’s not expected to come back. but cas is... cas is different. and he’s not dead and you won’t be taking any questions on this until we get to the end, when everyone can settle down. so you have your actors gush about the episode, you leave everyone on pins and needles so they’ll come back for two more, and then! well. 15.20. cas is “alive” technically. dean is dead, as you always planned. some people are happy, some people are middling, and some people are fucking pissed at you because apparently by not outright killing off the gay angel you promised them the gay angel was coming back. any clarification you would offer here would unspool your entire plan — gay angel on one side, brothers on the other. erasing cas isn’t the same as killing him, but you can’t say that (though misha basically did in response to the rogue translator shenanigans). killing dean wasn’t even supposed to be about cas, but now everything is about cas. you took him out of the story completely and he’s still managed to take over. and all you can say is, well, it’s always been a story about brothers.

this obviously doesn’t account for everything, such as what the fuck was uriel’s actor doing? why the fuck did the show actually give us the instructions for how to get someone out of the empty and not do it? and there’s an infinite number of things that could have happened that I would simply never guess not knowing specific onset dynamics and money decisions. whatever happened that caused this clusterfuck really does suck for everyone in that writers room who was on team gay angel because, as I have said in the past, 15.18 only works due to at least four years, if not seven or more, of consciously writing the angel as gay. I hope bobo and yockey and even misha feel personal satisfaction at a job well done, but god if a single fucking interview could at least let us indulge in the victory with them. anyway, all of this is to say, yes I do think the bury-your-gays of it all definitely plays into it (and I would say, again, linking this to it chapter 2, it’s significant muschietti and co decided to make richie gay over eddie; people who haven’t read the book might not know that eddie like. literally drinks mineral water. in the 80s. he wears gucci loafers. he marries a carbon copy of his mother. stephen king would never admit to writing a gay man but that was a gay man. but eddie dies! eddie always dies. so they had some good sense in giving the gay story to the one who lives and leaving the dead one holding all the coding). and I definitely think randos on twitter making fun of the confession did not help matters. but I also think the decision to pull press cannot be extricated from the rubble of the last two episodes and everything they promised but never delivered. literally a single second of cas in the finale would have been their golden ticket! that’s far more than what jj did for star wars! but they got played at their own game by, of all things, an international pandemic. somehow a very supernatural ending after all.

[diamondcitydarlin]

its a contentious topic but i have to ask do you think ofmd's example has changed or should change the expectations for rep in GO? do you think it might change anything for lokius going forward?

I think OFMD has changed the expectations for a lot of us, tbh, across any kind of media. Main romance even aside, it's significant that the character writing, storytelling utilizes a lot of the same tropes and tone that historically have only been seen in fanfic, like having characters be openly queer and live within the reality of that while not being solely defined by it. It's a piece written exclusively by and for us, it's a piece that prioritizes us and our perspectives before anything else.

But I don't think I can personally agree that Good Omens doesn't do that too, and while I think I can concede that maybe the queerness doesn't play as central a role to the story and character progression as it does in OFMD, it's still a big part of Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship and respective characters. Them being celestial beings that are unbound from human restriction/definitions allows for even more fluidity in their interpretations, to the point that no approach is wrong or contradictory to the canon. No, GO is not perfect, both the book and the show, and no one is obligated by the rules of being a queer person to connect with it or feel like it is any way representative of their own experiences.

But it doesn't change the fact that for many people it is. For me it's the ways in which my attachment to Crowley's character has helped me find comfort in my own genderfluidity (also the rep of this in the characters of Pollution and Beezlebub and likely others I'm not thinking of now), that which I struggled with my entire life. For others, it's the fact that Crowley and Az are functionally a couple who love each other esp by the end, and everyone knows this without a need for them to be physically intimate on screen. It's not avoiding male intimacy because ew yucky gross or to avoid alienating homophobic audiences, in fact I'd argue it's not avoiding it at all and we may indeed see more of it in season 2, it's depicting a form of queer intimacy that doesn't necessitate one approach or another to be 'legitimate' or obvious, and that is just as important in telling these stories.

There are many different ways to be queer, after all, and it's divisive to try to claim only one form of expression as the legitimate way to be gay. We want queer stories, right? Then we have to be inclusive and remember that not all queer stories are going to be OUR queer story and that's okay. That's important. For instance, you may not care about Crowley's genderfluidity one way or another, you might be able to just take or leave that. For me though? It is VERY important, just as it is to many others.

Listen I understand why people are tempted to put GO under a microscope now. I know full-well how many times we've had our stories exploited and dangled in front of us like a carrot with no real intention of actually representing us beyond what can bring in views and profits. That said though, it seems to me people are devoting a lot of their energies to coming after a creator working in good faith to make his story a queer friendly piece and listen to diverse voices (even if he doesn't always get it right) while there are countless cishet male creators, corporations, PR/marketing people out there shamelessly chumming the waters with bait and a lot of these people are still gulping it up without question. How does that make sense? Why are the expectations SO high for someone who I believe has shown is actually invested in attempting to tell these stories and yet still so fucking low for the people who are actually, intentionally queerbaiting? That's not to say Neil shouldn't ever get feedback or criticism on this, but I would love to see the torch and pitchfork mob maybe turn some of their ire on people in power that are intentionally working in bad faith, bc there is no shortage of them.

Which is actually a perfect segue into L*ki show, because man I could not have designed a better example of what I'm talking about with queerbaiting and the constantly moving goal posts and the rules for me and not for thee kinda thing going on here. L*ki show queerbaited in perhaps the most obvious and egregious ways to date; I don't care if you (general you, not you personally anon or you reading this lol) don't agree, because that is absolutely what happened and your opinion does not change the insidious reality. We were led to believe via intentional marketing campaigns this would be a piece that would explore both Loki's genderfluidity and bisexuality and they intentionally put enough content in the show in that vein so that was technically true; yet for some reason there are no fem presenting Loki variants outside of Sylvie and the very IDEA of one is unfathomable to the other variants. Despite the fact that absolutely no concrete time is spent on exploring the full extent of Loki's supposed bisexuality, we're supposed to be content with the fact that he's 'inexplicably' shafted on to a fem-presenting variant of himself because maybe it's queer (if indeed we think we have enough evidence to assume that Loki and Sylvie were established as queer characters, which I would argue they were not. A vague suggestion that they've both had two genders of people interested in them does not a queer confession make as much as we might want it to, and that is by design)

So, all of that is fine I guess but if Neil doesn't make Michael and David put their mouths together at some point and/or do a sex scene then we can just throw all of GO in the garbage I guess?

Make it make sense.

To answer the question, I've done a lot of ruminating and going back and forth on this and for now I'm not confident anything will change. Of course, that could be because even if they DO change and Loki and Mobius get a textual romance plot I'm not sure it would be as fulfilling at this point (at least for me) because I would know it was an insincere afterthought following a trend and not a genuine risk for the sake of telling a good story, as it would've been in season one. I mean, it'd still be fun because Tom and Owen would fucking kill it no matter what garbage content they were given to portray, but idk. I kinda prefer to leave this pairing with the fans who have always treated it with more respect, dignity and appreciation than the creators ever have.

idk, I guess what I'm saying is that I feel like there needs to be more consideration for nuance here. I know it's extra labor that no one should have to do, but I still think we benefit from looking into creators and teams behind the pieces of media we enjoy before setting up our expectations and levels of support. That is to say I think anyone should be able ship and enjoy combos of characters regardless of narrative intent, but I think we need to be honest about the intentions and priorities of the people in charge of writing those characters and stories and maybe be careful about lauding things as 'queer pieces' or potentially queer maybe at some point, that really aren't for all intents and purposes. Equally so, we need to recognize the creators that are making genuine efforts in good faith to tell these stories and not immediately circle the wagons and alienate them the moment they get something wrong. Is it not obvious how this would enable further capitalistic exploitation of queerness over genuine attempts to cater to it?

Anyway, it's a difficult but necessary conversation. We're not all going to agree on what the best queer rep looks like because that's going to be different for all of us and there should be pieces of media for each and everyone one of us, but for me a general rule of thumb in determining motive is how easily or not the show and characters fall into glorified heteronormativity. It happens in Loki when the farthest he's allowed to get from being masc is on a two sec shot of a file and literally nothing else allows us to believe or question he's anything but cishet male, when he's ultimately paired up with his presumably cis het female self despite the show vaguely flirting with his sexuality and establishing his first significant relationship in the plot with a man (and having him play footsie with said man under the table during a coffee date while they give each other meaningful looks and expose their vulnerabilities to each other). Now look at GO wherein characters are textually NB and use NB pronouns, wherein Az and Crowley are inseparable and emotionally intimate with each other and at no point is heteronormativity introduced into their dynamic to define for phobic audiences that they're definitely not gay though, don't worry, wherein Crowley is allowed to lean feminine in his dress and behaviors as an organic part of his character. I would argue even the het pairings in GO aren't entirely heteronormative either as both Shadwell and Newt grow past their own sort of rigid ideals of what it means to be a successful man/masculine as a result of learning from the women they love. I'm saying GO is not a heteronormative culture friendly show, and that's important.

And yeah also, there's literally another season with brand new content and stories about to come out and I think we owe it to ourselves, Neil, and GO as a whole to 'wait and see' what happens within this brand new material. Like Neil says, it may not be enough for everyone or what everyone is looking for in queer rep, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it ISN'T queer rep that is important to others. Like, it's absolutely possible to take the stance of 'well this isn't exactly what I'm looking for in a queer story but it definitely is a queer story that connects with people who experience queerness in a different way to me and that's ok because we're getting more diversified queer media in various shows and some of it is going to be for me and some of it isn't and that's ok'

[galactichoneybee92]

Thoughts on BakuDeku

I’ve been lurking in the MHA fandom for a while now, just kind of silently watching, and I have a few observations that I would like to make. Just perspectives that I would like to put out into the universe. I am on the older side of this website, much less this fandom and so I am no stranger to fandom culture. And when I say old? I mean like I was an active participant on ff.net circa 2005 so like, I’m sure some of you are older but I’m getting up there. My point? I’ve seen things.

As far as fandoms go in general, the MHA is far from the most toxic that I’ve seen but there does seem to be a few points of contention and per usual it comes back to shipping. This is nothing new but lets speak a little on BakuDeku as a ship. I warn you now, it’s not always going to be things you want to hear, but I encourage you to read to the end anyway. 

Horikoshi has fully admitted to having been a huge Naruto fan and it’s pretty easy to see the influence in his work. On that note, it’s pretty safe to say that the Midoriya/Bakugo relationship can be compared to the Naruto/Sasuke relationship. You can see other parallels (All Might = Iruka, Aizawa =  Kakashi, etc...) but for the sake of argument let’s focus solely on Midoriya/Bakugo. Personally, I tend to prefer MHA to Naruto overall, as I just like the characters better and as such I like Bakugo a lot more than Sasuke. Horikoshi has taken more time to humanize Bakugo, and while he started off being a total dick, he’s also a dumb fuck teenage boy and he’s had a lot of character growth over the last 29 volumes. 

In the Naruto fandom, much like in the MHA fandom, there were loads of fans who shipped Naruto and Sasuke romantically. If we are judging the probability of Midoriya and Bakugo becoming a cannon couple, it stands to reason that we can examine the author’s influences and infer that, no, they probably won’t. For one thing, homosexuality is still considered a controversial topic in Japan like in America, and even if the author wanted to make it romantic he would probably receive a good amount of push-back from publishers. 

Now I don’t want you to read this and think that I am at all against it. I’m not. And forever ago when I was reading Naruto I occasionally wondered what would happen if an author published a Shounen manga, got millions invested, and then SURPRISE it was a M/M romance all along. I think it would be fun but I can’t say that I am realistically convinced that it will happen. But that isn’t really the point of this post.

My point, is that this fandom, like many others (And this website in general???) needs to learn the difference between actual queer baiting and a ship that just...doesn’t happen? And I’ve seen all the arguments, about how they clearly love each other and how their bond is so deep and how if either of the characters had this kind of relationship with a female character it would ABSOLUTELY be romantic. And I hear your points, but if I may provide a few of my own: 

1. There are many different ways to love in the world and they don’t all have to involve romance and kissing and sex. Do you love your family? Do you have friends that you would die for? These are relationships that people have and their just as valid in fiction as in real life.

2. Yes, if they were opposite genders than it probably would be the central romance of the mange, but that isn’t proof of queer baiting so much as a general failure to accurately represent opposite gender friendships in media. There should be male and female friendships that are just as strong while remaining platonic so this is a failure but not the failure you thing it is.  (If anyone likes Kdramas, Suspicious Partner is an excellent one that has not only a great romantic subplot but also some WONDERFUL platonic M/F friendships and it’s just beautiful) (That being said I also recommend the Taiwanese drama HIStory 3: Trapped for a wonderful M/M romance since if you’re reading this post that’s probably something you’re into) 

I think that a lot of the problems come from the fact that good romantic relationships do build similarly to friendships. You get a lot of bonding moments, the characters getting to know each other better and coming to care for one another and since media tends to focus predominantly on romantic relationships it’s easy to just get into the mindset that like, all bonding moments are leading somewhere. And in a way they are: to friendship. And then sometimes that friendship leads to romance and sometimes it doesn’t but what I’m saying is that the two look very similar. You SHOULD be friends with your romantic partner, and I think that that is why it’s so easy to ship these sort of couples. Especially when they do have an especially deep bond like these two have.

As far as BakuDeku as a couple in general, yeah, I ship it. I’ve read my fair share of fanfiction and if it did happen I would be psyched. I didn’t always like Bakugo (He’s just doing THE MOST at all times) but I grew to love him and if he continues to grow in the direction that he has been I wouldn’t personally have any problems with it. They have an interesting dynamic that incorporates some of my favorite tropes and I think it would be cool if the manga went there. But if they don’t? That’s also fine. 

There have been several ACTUAL examples of queer baiting in media that I can point to such as the Japanese ads for Sherlock (I didn’t necessarily find the show itself to be queerbaiting but the Japanese ads for the new seasons hardcore did) and while I tried hard to defend Supernatural (WAY too much of the fandom shipped actual brothers together for me to believe that they understood the value of any sort of platonic relationship) they kind of blew that out of the water with whatever the fuck happened in that last season. 

I don’t see that happening here and while I know a lot of you are set for your ship to become cannon I just want you to maybe manage your expectations. Because in my experience, when it gets built up this big, if it DOESN’T happen the next thing fans do is start ranting about queer-baiting and insulting the series and the team and I don’t want to see that because it isn’t fair to any of them. I’ve seen it happen in other fandoms and it gets real ugly real fast. 

Alternatively, if anyone has watched the reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power you will know that the creators played their cards super close to their chest, doing their best to properly develop the homosexual relationships they wanted while keeping it subtle enough that they could prevent themselves from being cancelled before the last season aired. Then they went all in and made their homosexual ships cannon in the final season because at that point the whole show was out wtf was going to happen? They’d get cancelled? It was already over. So if you would like a serving of hope to cling to, that is a thing that happened. I just wouldn’t necessarily bet on it. 

That being said, I fully support your right to ship anything you want. And if by some chance it does become cannon? More power to you. I’d be psyched. Horikoshis assistants ship the hell out of it and he clearly doesn’t mind so there is a point in your favor. But if it doesn’t? A lack of romance doesn’t invalidate the depth of their feelings for one another. Platonic love is still love and it’s still a powerful driving force in the story. Their relationship is still compelling even if there isn’t ever a kiss, or a confession. And hey, that’s what fanfiction is for. 

Remember kids: Please ship responsibly. 

[whyqueerbaitingisbad]

movies & shows

cracks knuckles* alright this is going to be more of a rant than an analysis because i’m basing this on both my research, but also how it felt to personally be baited by these shows. there are obviously more pieces of bad (almost every horror movie) and good ones but these are the ones i’ve watched.

please keep in mind that i am but one queer and everyone has different opinions.

Supernatural (CW) 2005

This show is 15 years old and just ended. From season 5 till 15, there has been tension between two of the lead characters. They were constantly shipped together and not only did the entire fandom know about this ship but so did almost all of Tumblr. On top of that, the actors and show runners knew about it as well. Which is why it makes it ridiculous that it was constantly pushed aside while the romantic coding  kept happening, even after show runners dismissed it as being intentional. The Destiel (Dean x Cas) case has been going on for years, and as the show came to its end, many fans had hope. But N O P E. Instead, we got a love confession from Cas where Dean looked like he was near constipated and the Cas was killed and sent into a fiery place that was not hell but s u p e r  h e l l.

… w hy.

Sherlock (BBC) 2010

Just like Supernatural, this show was renown on Tumblr for not only how good it was, but its hinting at a potential relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. But again, like Supernatural, the intentional tension between the two characters was denied by producers. This caused an uproar within the fandom, and even left some people believing that, after the last season aired, it had been a joke and the producers were hiding a “secret, unaired season” because they had felt so robbed by this show that had implied something and denied it.

The 100 (CW) 2014

We got lesbians. We got background gays. We were happy. Then, all of a sudden, one of them is killed for no reason. Did it advance the plot? No. Was she fighting and died in battle? lol no. She was doing literally nothing and got shot and died. And then the producers kept bringing her back once a season in the form of a ghost or illusion because why? Because she was a fan favourite queer character. ✨bury your gays and sparingly bring them back for profit anyone?✨

Voltron: Legendary Defender (Netflix) 2016

*deep breathe* This one is a special disaster. Not only was there romantic tension and romantically coded scenes for 7 seasons, but producers, voice actors and artists working on the show repeatedly said “don’t worry klance (Keith x Lance) shippers, you’ll be happy”

. … w h e r e??? You code one of their scenes with a sunset in the background while they talk about love and then one of them goes on a date with someone who has declined his advances for 7 seasons but now in season 8 decides to do a full 180. Not only that, but you announce at a Comic Con (a convention) that a character is gay and has a fiancé, only to kill off the fiancé and never make it explicit in the show except at the last second of the last episode where he marries a no name character. 

Personally, i’d like to say a big fuck you to the show that strung me along for 2 years and never stopped saying we’d be happy to then pull the rug out from under us and call us crazy for thinking anything from the past 8 seasons was intentional.

Scooby-Doo (2002) 

While not being outwardly queerbaiting, this movie’s filmmaker has just revealed some shocking news, which wasn’t at all shocking to the gays who had watched this movie over the years. In July of 2020, James Gunn, the filmmaker of Scooby-Doo, revealed in a podcast that, initially, Velma was explicitly gay in his script, but then the studio watered it down until it became nothing. This isn’t an example of baiting as much as it is changing a character’s initial design to “better fit an audience”. The worst part of all this is that with Velma’s character having been written with a l i t t l e queer subtext, people had been theorizing about if since the movie came out, but were always yelled at by the internet for “imagining something that isn’t there”. But now, even with it being said that the initial point was for her to be gay, people have no objections to still refusing to accept it. Why?? So we can’t get the subtext gays OR the confirmed gays?? Make it make sense.

Brooklyn 99 (NBC) 2013

To have the queer characters firstly introduced without mentioning their sexualities and have it brought up naturally was so goddamn nice to see, because no one does a big deal about it unless they ask for that. This show is amazing in general but the way they show their queer characters is *chefs kiss*.

She-ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix) 2018

This. Show. My heart SOARS. It's just a remake of an old show so absolutely nothing was ever expected, but then it was sprinkled in and ENDED WITH A BANG. And it was so beautiful and real to see the struggle of two friends who care for each other and want to be together but have different visions of the world fall in love. And they also had characters with disabilities, a non-binary character and jUST SUCH A GOOD SHOW.

Kipo and The Age of Wonderbeasts (Netflix) 2020

This is a case where you go into it not expecting anything and are BLOWN AWAY by the bare minimum. And not because it’s bad!! It's mind blowing because this is the simple representation we need!! Not something over the top, but an every day relationship. It’s just two boys falling in love and going on dates and being nervous around each other, yet i was so stunned. Because it’s not shown enough. I should not be this excited over something that should be this normal. 10/10 though this show is so good for all kinds of representation.

Steven Universe (Cartoon Network) 2013

This show did so much for queer representation with its general message of loving everyone and loving who you want. Especially since it was aired on Cartoon Network, a channel for kids, it was able to help normalize something so looked down upon in some circles. It made it easy to watch for s o m e people because it's a cartoon but it's so beautiful to see these ladies so in love with each other, both platonically and romantically and we see them have a family dynamic that isn’t a “nuclear family”. Rebecca Sugar (creator) really said “lemme just break all stereotypes real quick”.

Adventure Time (Cartoon Network) 2010

It's the “knowing a fanbase shipped something so hard that the creators made it canon” for me. This relationship had been theorized by fans for years, but it had never been explicit in the show. When the finale episode came out and the two shared a kiss, it was a moment of celebration. The producer of the show said that it had not really been planned but when the episode was being made, the choice of what happened was given to one of the artists (bless your soul Hanna K. Nyströmthe). And as the show releases little bonus episodes, its latest was centered around Marceline and Bubblegum and their relationship. AND WE LOVE TO SEE OUR DOMESTIC LESBIANS BEING HAPPY AND IN LOVE.

Yuri on Ice!!! (anime) 2016

The fact that an A N I M E gave us a love story between two men is mind boggling and it makes me so happy!! Especially because it's a Japanese show and they’re very conservative about these things just makes it more emotional. The creators said they wanted to make the anime take place in a world where gay/straight isn’t a thing, it’s just love (ladies, you’re going to make me cry). So as the weekly episodes came out and fans start speculating, THEY GAVE US THE LAST FEW EPISODES FULL OF ROMANCE AND EMOTIONAL SCENES BETWEEN THE TWO AND THEN THEY GET R I N GS?!???!! You watch for the figure skating, you stay for the figure skaters that are in love.

Shadowhunters (Freeform) 2016

*insert me being frustrated that the actors are straight so we can move on from that disappointment*

This show really said “let’s name a whole episode after this couple because they deserve it”. But seriously, they gave us two characters whose entire plot does not center around their sexualities while still showing us the differences in a relationship between someone experienced and someone new at this. They were both powerful and amazing characters apart from each other, with their own story lines and goals but they loved each other so much omgs. SO MUCH. 

It was so great to watch.

Love, Simon (2018) 

There’s a lot of disagreement on whether this movie is good representation or not. However, we need to take into consideration that this was Hollywood’s first movie with a main character that was gay, where the story’s focus was on Simon’s love story. The biggest problem, for me at least, was that the actor playing Simon is a straight man and not queer. My problem is not with him, but the fact that there are other actors that are gay and that could have played Simon just as well. (the love interested was however played by a queer actor so ✨progress✨)

All in all, this movie does represent what a lot of queer kids have to go through: being outed at school, how they then come out, the bullying and doubt they go through.

The book is also really good.

Call Me By Your Name (2018)

This movie is so aesthetically pleasing and was able to capture the confusion and heartbreak felt by a boy who’s struggling with his own feelings towards a man. His inner conflict and joy and l o v e he feels but doesn’t know how to deal with is so well communicated through the screen and just breaks your heart because it feels so real.

But again, they could’ve gotten gay actors to play gay characters…

through having this list here, i want to show you that it’s not hard for creators to give good queer representation. the LGBTQ+ community isn’t asking for much, we just want to be well represented on screen as just a regular character, not some token queer kid there for the diversity points. having been exposed to so much queerbaiting and just not seeing any representation on screen, i always get over-excited when i see a queer character, and that’s not how it should be. it should be a normal thing, something you can find in most pieces of media, just like there’s a straight white cisgender person in everything.

and they seriously need to start casting queer actors for queer characters...

[veliseraptor]

how can someone tell the difference between queercoding and queerbaiting?

hoo boy. speaking of bait, is this bait I want to take? (I know you’re not baiting me, anon - this just means me going into some dangerous waters.) but here goes, I can do my best. 

the first thing is that it’s not necessarily a hard and fast line. there’s some wobbly greyness around it, and it’s also sort of context dependent - things that would feel more like queer coding two decades ago might, if done today, feel more like queerbaiting because of changing standards/expectations. it’s very…your mileage may vary, in a lot of ways. a la obscenity, you know it when you see it.

I’d say some of it has to do, frustratingly enough in this “author is dead” age, with intention. Is the creator of this piece of media teasing with no intention of fulfilling the promise they’re making, with the awareness that queer people desperate for representation will pick up on that teasing, pay attention, and give them credit without their ever having to take the risk of depicting anything explicitly queer on screen? or is the creator walking a line of ambiguity where they are indicating queerness but (for a variety of reasons - network or other censorship probably most significant) choose not to include anything explicit?

this is complicated by the general sexualization of queerness, I’d argue, such that anything short of “they fuck onscreen” can sometimes be considered “insufficient proof of queerness” - as long as it’s on some level deniable, people will continue to pretend it’s not there. (this is the whole “gal pals” joke.) 

(which is kind of why I have a problem with what sometimes seems to be a standard of “anything short of explicit, named queerness is queerbaiting” because it really...well, I get it, but still.)

actually, as I think about it: one could also say a difference is that while queer coding occurs explicitly within a text, queerbaiting is paratextual - it has to do with the interaction with an existing or assumed audience, and often with the marketing of a given text. 

which means that something could both queer code and queerbait at the same time, hypothetically.

this article, which is a good read going into queer coding and queerbaiting, argues that:

If the creators don’t deny it, and the characters don’t deny it, then it’s not queerbaiting, it’s queer coding.

I’m not sure I totally agree with that assessment, but I do think there’s something very relevant about looking at the way creators/actors/authors interact with assertions of queerness. and there’s a spectrum on that from outright denial to just playing coy/stringing people along - though the latter gets sticky too because an author/creator may want to avoid “authorial fiat” statements in general. so again - complicated, lots of grey.

It’s also important to note: queer coding is not automatically “good” or better than queerbaiting. queer coding can also be for something like queer coding villains - where traits coded queer are used to designate villains, and vice versa. (see: most notoriously, a whole bunch of Disney’s male villains.) 

you can read more about queer coding villains, specifically in horror, here, and a brief Tumblr post about queer coding and its negative usage here.

[michaelamimi]

Voltron season 6

I only have one complaint.

And it’s the majority of the fucking Klancers screeching “Queerbait.”

No before any of you get offended or triggered, I ship Klance too. I love Klance! But I know that the creators were no Queerbaiting us.

FIRST OFF! There is NO Queerbait because dreamworks has never acted like their get Lance and Kieth together. NEVER. So how can it be queerbaiting when they have done nothing to make lance and Keith gay or bi?

You wanna talk about queerbaiting? Tray Xena and Gabriella from Xena Warrior princess. THAT was queerbaiting because the studio ACTED like they would get Xena and Gabriella together JUST to get more views.

Y’all think it’s queer baiting because you got your hopes up and we’re too delusional and invested in a ship to realize that it will never become canon. Just like Shieth will never become canon. Or ANY Shaladin ship will become canon.

Secondly the voltron crew aren’t going to focus on romance. It took them six seasons to even show any of the characters kissing. And we all saw how that turned out. So their not focusing on romance. Which is good!

Now will you all take a drink of water and chill the fuck out?

God I can’t believe I gotta deal with little brats.

[animentality]

Alright I finished watching the first episode of Free!

I can’t believe I sat down and watched the whole goddamn episode.

I can’t believe I’m watching Free!

The last time I saw it, I was in high school. I used to watch it under the desk in Oceanography because no one gave a fuck about the final science credit of your senior year. 

Anyway, so I was blasted with a wave of cringe, at first. 

Because Jesus, this again?

Shirtless guys swimming, saying their weird “the water is alive” and stilted phrases about wanting to win, and connect with each other.

All that shit is still gay, but i’m really not in my squee mode anymore, and i’m not sure if i ever really was. I said some top tier cringe shit, but I wouldn’t say I was ever all exclamation points and keysmashing. 

So Free!’s new cast of shirtless guys didn’t really impress me. 

But. 

While it feels a little tired, dated, and a little old....oh I don’t know.

I still found it charming.

I find Tokyo to be an intriguing plot which could potentially be actually interesting, if it’s different than what we’ve seen before. 

I think that Asahi is a nice addition to the cast, as well as Kisumi and Ikuya, who looks like he might have some beef with Haruka.

Additionally, it was teased that Ikuya might actually be better than Haruka.

Which could be REALLY interesting. 

But in general, I...I still like the stupid universe of Free!

It feels very innocent and light-hearted, I think.

On Free!’s darkest day, it’s still like, iCarly levels of dark.

It’s bright and sunny most of the time, the animation is bright and smooth, everyone has the same face.

You can criticize the shallowness of the plots, the lack of character development, and relationship development, and these are valid criticisms. 

But Free! for me anyway is just an inviting universe. 

You can vacation there and enjoy the stupidity while ignoring the shitty real world. It’s not so much about “ah hot dudes” anymore.

I’m not sure if anyone watching Free! right now is only watching it cuz of dudes in swim suits.

I mean, everyone looks the goddamn same? They have same face syndrome, their bodies are essentially the same, with the same shape and form, just different heights or slightly different builds. 

We’re all here because we care about the cast, right? 

Because we have been casually following and living in this dumb little swimming universe where they don’t kill off our favorite characters, forcibly impregnate lesbian characters, have long elongated war arcs. 

it’s nice.

it’s pleasantville anime, it’s an anime dedicated to light-heartedness and only the occasional worry about plot. 

it’s a fanfic. 

it’s like a casual coffee ship au.

I didn’t need anything else from it.

As embarrassed as I was, watching it, and feeling my inner 17 year old sigh, I did quietly enjoy my twenty three minutes watching Free! Dive into the Future.

But there is ONE legitimate criticism I do have.

And it’s...how long are they going to tease relationships?

I’m...happy to see Makoto and Haruka are still close, Haruka and Rin are still thinking about each other, and it looks like Ikuya and Asahi might be heating up for a big fight, but come on.

If this is the last season.

And god. please.

two seasons was enough, but three was too much. four is overkill. 

if this is the last season....just do it.

by this point, there shouldn’t be anyone watching this show who wouldn’t be ok with it.

and if you’re going to go out, go out in 20gayteen. 

seriously.

i don’t know how they can edge themselves so hard. 

it’s ridiculous. 

i will not be satisfied with this series’ queerbaiting.

i mean, i never was. i always resented it. 

but free starting days was as close to canon as we ever got, what with makoto almost coming out to haruka in their pool scene. 

and while it felt a little queer-bait-y, it also felt almost like a confirmation too, which made it less frustrating. 

but now...

i mean you can’t do three full seasons of this. 

it’s not like supernatural, where you can pretend destiel is canon, or not,  because it’s not relevant to the story in the end. 

free! is based purely in relationships, specifically, friendships that could’ve been a lot more than that. 

if by this point, we don’t progress further than the usual teasing?

i mean, then what was all this for?

i know you’re gonna say money, which is valid, but narrative wise.

we didn’t need this third season. season 2 was important because it was their final year. from a character perspective, you did need it. 

but this, i mean, they created ikuya and asahi FOR the free starting days movie. 

so this drama is just made to keep the series going. 

but if you’re looking at it from a narrative perspective, unless we get real relationships and real final story conclusions, which let’s be honest, mostly revolve around who ends up with who, then it’s utterly pointless. 

and i know you’re thinking why would you write such a long rant post about a swimming anime that should be dead and buried?

well. 

i dunno, i didn’t have friends in high school. i hated high school. i was manic depressive. this is what i watched on wednesday afternoons so i could feel like a normal person who wasn’t angry all the time and upset with people.

and even now, i still have a little fondness for it, even if it’s a frustrating thing. 

so to sum up, well. 

i dunno. they probably won’t canonize any ship, just tease them all. 

and then we’ll just be left with nothing, but hey. the ride at least will be light-hearted enough to distract us for twenty three minutes from our utterly pointless lives.  

[justanearth-boundmisfit]

Re: Destiel. I loathe fans who spam on Twitter, but I think most care about Cas but esp. Misha. I see a lot of support of him so that makes most Destiel fans ok in my book. They gloss over the treatment of Cas but maybe they get more entertainment than bitterness out of spn so I can't fault them lol U know what pisses me off? Tptb. Surprise right?? I just saw the qotd of filming on twitter and I'm like really? They can bait the shippers all day and night long but the moment people bite and 1/2

2/2 ask questions or talk about it they’re crazies, disrespectful and destiel doesn’t exist. Yeah… Can’t wait for the unspoken words of Dean… They’re probably gonna be about mary, crowley, the pie he didn’t eat or a motw from 3 seasons ago.. the most Cas will get is prob. a “u should have followed us, ur fearless leaders”. And then D/C fans will still be the delusional ones. This is more queerbaiting than every single stupid dirty joke Misha has made on Destiel in 9 years combined. Fuckers.

Under the cut, for long reply

Hello anon! Well yes, tptb are pure bs. But they have been doing it since day one. Spn queerbaiting is nothing new. Heck I think I this point there must be serious studies about it. At the beginning was meh, we knew they were doing it, some fans thought that deancas were endgame (some still do), and they let them do it. Of course they have been thousands of complainings about it, but the truth is that the majority of the fans, as I always say it, eat their crumbs. Spn wouldn’t be on his 13th season without his rabid fandom. A fandom that complains (included myself) about anything and everything, but at the end sit their asses to continue watching. But I have to stop watching spn because, gods because so many reasons, but above all the writing, the characterization was really a downer for me. The show was only giving me pain, I should enjoy a show, not dread it. I’m still holding on Cas because I love him and I love Misha and his acting. But if not for that it would`ve been sayonara ages ago. They bait the shippers, but the shippers take the bait, made 2000 slo mo gifs about it, 234 metas, then eat it, and say: yes more please! with a smile. Yes tptb are assholes, but who let them? If a fucking mixtape was more important that, Idk, Cas’ depression for example? 

This thing with the ship and shippers…it’s a really though topic, everyone has their opinion, and the fandom wars are on a high point now more than ever. You know the difference between a few years ago and now imo? We loved the characters, seriously that’s it. And you could tell me “but shippers love their characters too”, yeah not so much. I think they love the characters as couple, not as individuals. An incredible painful example is Cas’ death, destiel shippers didn’t mourn him, they were expecting the man pain from Dean. That’s not love. Well at least for me it’s not. I started shipping dean and cas, because in the early seasons, they were really well written, and were amazing characters tbh. Dean wasn’t a complete asshole and Cas wasn’t broken or used as a punching bag, they have their issues ofc, it’s spn after all, but they still worked together. The story of the angel falling for the man that he rescued was a good one, and the chemistry was there in spades. For me it was progressive and slow, heck I liked Lisa for Dean tbh. I have never shipped a m/m couple before, not because I think it’s wrong (before some fucker think that), but because I didn’t see the same magic that I saw later with dean and cas. I still don’t see it in other ships. But in the middle of season 6 is where spn lost me. I saw what they were trying to do with Cas, and when Dean said to death “kill him already” that was the final strike for me. So I started living in fanon and with the memories of how great dean and cas were at some point. Now all I see is an alcoholic hunter with anger issues that mistreats Cas again and again, and Cas that is broken beyond repair, takes the abuse. And I know it’s the writers fault, and I hate them even more for that. Not for destroying my ship, but for how shitty they treat my beloved characters, how they destroy them individually. 

Look, I defended destiel shippers now and then, but at this point I don’t know if I can anymore. Of course amongst the rabid are really great people, of fucking course! Not all of them are obsessed, there are shippers that truly care about Cas (or Dean). But if the majority continue buying the bs that tptb are selling, then this is going to be an endless path of pain and hate. Because you know why they post that board tainting the shippers? Because it works. Surely later they are going to call shippers delusional, and destiel doesn’t exist, and they are assholes for that. But when the waters calm down the shippers are going to come back for more. Sad but true.

We don’t know if Misha is coming back, nobody says anything, they are playing with that too the fuckers, and Misha, that surely is still under contract can`t say anything. Besides I don’t see Misha a la Mark S., been all wanker about it to be honest, he wouldn’t do that. I wish, oh how I wish, that Misha has a great project other than spn, and he could say fuck you to tptb. He deserves better from the show and from some fans too.

This got long and a mess and I’m sorry. I hope you get my point. Hugs anon!