#what is queerbaiting

[disast3rtransp0rt]

"Sterek" is a great example of legitimate queerbaiting! And here's how it went down:

Jeff Davis, the WRITER and SHOWRUNNER would make tweets like this:

And for the Teen Choice Awards in 2012 he/the MTV twitter account posted videos of Tyler and Dylan on a boat! An actual boat! They were snuggling and giggling while saying things like "Sterek is real!" and "We're on a ship, pun intended!"

Jeff Davis used the potential for a canon queer relationship to win accolades and attention for his tv show, but in the end it horribly backfired. Viewership dropped significantly after Tyler Hoechlin left and the fandom felt really betrayed.

THAT is queerbaiting. Promising it, using it for your advantage as a showrunner, but never giving the audience what they want because it risks controversy.

Side Note: It's part of the reason Riverdale went so hard (and bad) on their "queer representation" at first. They were mimicking the success of TW in their format and relationship drama and wanted to be inclusive, but hadn't figured out the way actual queer people (much less queer teens who are struggling in their identity) wanted to be represented.

I don't know when everyone somehow collectively forgot the actual definition of queerbaiting but like... yall know queerbaiting was never about REAL PEOPLE'S actual identities right? It's about the MEDIA they put out.

Queerbaiting is when media hints that there will be queer rep to lure in a queer audience with no intention of ever delivering on that rep.

Queerbaiting is NOT when a celebrity experiments with gender or sexuality without coming out. They are allowed to explore!

Queerbaiting is NOT when an author writes a queer book without explicitly stating they share the same sexual or gender identity!

Queer media is NOT queerbaiting just because you don't know the creator's sexuality or assigned gender at birth!

Is the media explicitly queer? Then it's not queerbaiting! Simple as that! No one owes you an explanation of their own identity, full stop.

[youstolemyhead]

Disney: you can make your movie R-rated but their relationship can’t be explicitly gay

Ryan: oh don’t worry this is a totally platonic road trip buddy comedy

The movie: The poster says, “best friends come together”, there’s a meet cute ugly at a bar and Logan immediately assumes Wade is there to hook up with him (so does the bartender), Wade calls him honey badger, and angel baby, their road trip song is a rock ballad about being lonely and wanting to meet someone, the second act has the classic romcom miscommunication/fight, they’re having a heated fight to one of the most iconic love song duets ever, Wade says, “the Honda Odyssey fucks hard too bad you don’t” and Logan says, “oh we’re just getting started”, after that there’s a shot where car they're in is rocking back and forth for hours and then it cuts to them asleep the next morning, there’s a line about Wade having Logan’s dick in his mouth (spoken by Ryan’s daughter), there’s a scene where they’re looking at each other longingly through a window because they think Wade is about to die (even though Logan hated him yesterday), Wade is very clearly staring at Logan’s abs after his shirt explodes then makes him put on a shirt after he sees other people also looking, they save each others lives by holding hands to a Madonna song about blowjobs, Logan starts walking away until Wade calls after him and he stops like he’s about to turn around and run back and kiss him but the camera cuts off before he does, Wade introduces Logan to Al like a nervous teenager introducing his girlfriend to his mom, and the last shot is their masks sitting next to each other in their ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT

Disney: ok we have notes

Ryan: no.

The movie: *makes $1,000,000,000*

[cthulhum]

does anyone realize how crazy it is to have the actor of a mostly headcanoned queer ship say the fans were never crazy and they were right all along after 10+ years of everyone just absolutely going nuts over the said queerbaited ship

[veryintricaterituals]

It was queerbait, actually (A repository)

(It's almost three am but I am fuming, I've been collecting these for a while, my evidence, I WILL write a detailed post about this in a few days but I wanted to leave this here in case anyone else wanted to see how fucking deep this goes)

HYPOTESIS: Nandermo is textbook queerbaiting, not in spite the characters being queer but BECAUSE of it. The ship was used deliberately by the writers, the actors and the marketing in order to bring lgbt viewership to the show with NO intention on ever delivering on their promise.

Also the show presented itself as queer, marketed itself as queer and went to win GLAAD awards two years in a row then proceded to have no m/m or f/f couples for SIX seasons. Their queer rep were just jokes.

WHAT'S QUEERBAITING:

(I hate that I have to use wikipedia and dictionary.com but the actual articles about it are behind paywalls and I am poor)

Okay on to WWDITS

Let's talk marketing:

These are from season 3, 4, 5 and 6

Season five:

The show is over, it had six seasons, where were my m/m or f/f couples? Because I sure as hell didn't see one apart from the one episode with Freddie, that's it, that's all we got. Apart from that it was just jokes.

---

But that's not about nandermo, you say, it's just about queerness, then what about this: FUCKING HEAVY HANDED NANDERMO MARKETING FOR YEARS:

OR THIS:

How about what the show's socials were posting, this is from season 3 or 4

Now let's see what the writers were saying (this is before season 5):

The infamous that's his boss moment came from this:

But before that we had:

This is Harvey in 2022:

Here's Harvey today:

And here's Kayvan in 2022

Here's Kayvan last year:

And today:

[castielsprostate]

breaking the sign in two by how hard im tapping it

[imperialgrunt]

okay I don't even go to this fandom but I was watching a video on supegirl queerbaiting and am I actually supposed to believe that the writers and directors and showrunners are depicting a platonic relationship here

what the actual fuck

[whenfatecollides]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 3x14 Bad Girls

[crazy-together-reddie]

Loki just instantly doing what mobius tells him to is driving me fucking insane.

Mobius says ‘gently’ and Loki just moves the guy out of the way. No violence at all.

Mobius says ‘go ahead’ and Loki bashes these guys into a wall. Much violence.

She’s finally living up to her true title, no not the god of mischief, Mobius’ little pet.

[hypertechnica]

star trek as a concept is completely sexless. it is utterly devoid of sex. not one drop of convincing sexual tension has ever graced the screen on any star trek show. the weird unintentionally homoerotic psychosexual mind game shit on the other hand,

[saberafterdark]

what if i ended it all right now.

[faramirsonofgondor]

Today has been a wild day indeed.

[unimportant-ramblings]

NEW photos have dropped from Glinda the Good and Elphaba Thropp's engagement photoshoot. The couple is set to tie the knot, according to The Time Dragon Clock, on November 22, 2024 (via The Ozmapolitan)

[cottoncandysprite]

I know ppl on here are being optimistic but is this a safe space to say I haven't been this pissed about an ending since Voltron

[irisivys]

something about the new popular shows seems awfully familiar to me hmmmm.....

[castielsprostate]

the "i need everything gay and queer exactly spelled out for me word for word or it doesn't exist and is queerbait" crowd is going to hate venom 3

[sixteenthtry]

I know bro wrote this while pushing his glasses up with his index finger and a hand on his hip☝🏻🤓