#worst queerbait tournament

[worstqueerbaittournament]

Submission message for Stiles and Derek (Teen Wolf): Sterek! The showrunner even had fans vote in polls and promised to make Sterek happen if we won fandom awards! There were promo videos of the two actors cuddling on a ship...

Submission message for Stiles Stilinski (Teen Wolf): ooh if we can submit characters, i nominate stiles stilinski from teen wolf! hinted at being queer several times + there was the sterek promo, obviously no follow through

Additional propaganda Stiles and Derek: say what you want but im still not over the psychic damage of that mtv ad for teen wolf where they put stiles's actor in derek's actor's lap and had them cuddle and shit for votes. please if u have any mercy they will make it to the finals.

They baited us into voting for the MTV choise awards by having the actors literally cuddle on a boat! (Stiles' actor said "we are on a ship")! They promised us if we won, we would get more of the two actors "taking naps together"! Heavily baiting canon sterek if we vote!! AND WE DID!!! And nothing happened. I hate Jeff Davis so much JUST LOOK AT THIS

I think "all their queerbaiting was done during promo" is a BIG misunderstanding. Like yeah, the propaganda here focuses on that because that was the WORST thing they did, but it is far from the ONLY thing they pulled.

Derek bridal carrying Stiles after Stiles crashed an FBI MISSION to save his life:

Literally laying on top of each other

GIF von hereforsterekcontent

Shoving each other against walls:

GIF von summerisaknife

Putting himself in danger to protect Stiles

GIF von summerisaknife

Stiles being the only one to touch Derek after Boyd's death

GIF von reeee22

Derek literally dreaming of Stiles after getting injured by his abuser

GIF von ambitioncunningpridemieczyslaw

Running back into danger for Stiles

GIF von girlmeetssterek

Additional:

Derek can pick out Stiles scent and emotions, Scott (his best friend of over a literal decade) cannot

Derek chose to believe Stiles over the darach and that was literally the thing to break through the darach's mind manipulation

Stiles is the only character to ever call the Argents out on killing Derek's family

Stiles calls Derek "real alpha" despite Scott having had the title at that time

They have canonically had sleepovers (Stiles harboring Derek's fugitive ass not once, but twice)

Stiles is the only person to know about Derek's first love dying (besides Derek's family)

They flirt bicker constANTLY

Additional propaganda Stiles: Stiles is SO bi-coded! He has an entire conversation about attraction with a bisexual girl and when she asks him if he "likes boys", he looks like he just had the epiphany of his life! When Danny volunteers to sleep with him, he is excited and when Danny reveals he was only joking, he is genuinely hurt! AND there is the scene where he tells Scott to call him "Biles". He also jokes around with Scott that he finds his new alpha status really hot. AND DONT GET ME STARTED ON THE WHOLE STEREK THING

The Biles is because Coach was reading the names for first line and said the letter looked like a B so he said Btilinski. Stiles wanted to be first line so much that he didn’t want Scott to correct coach and risk not being first line. All other points are valid.

[kindalikerackham]

man, that worst queerbait tournament is bringing back so many memories..... to this day, I am So Sure that Misha Collins asked carver for One Thing, please, out of respect for how long he played Castiel, and that thing was to confess his gd profound love

[penworthy]

If house md doesn’t win that worst queerbait tournament then what’s the point

[juanabaloo]

VARIOUS BRACKETS - BTVS update There are so many results I'm making one mass post to cover them.

WORST QUEER BAIT BRACKETS - Fuffy lost

Fuffy (Faith x Buffy) lost to Beca (from Pitch Perfect). It was basically 70% to 30%. This means no more BTVS polls for that bracket. After watching the queerbait vs queercoding video, I agree with the results. (Bechloe also won their poll in the same tournament.)

F/F SHIP SHOWDOWN - Tillow and Fuffy both win!

Tillow beat Rupphire (roughly 54% to 46%) and Fuffy easily beat Jemily (70% to 30%), both in Round 1. Round 2 has started, I'll make a separate post later for that.

MOST HOMO EROTIC ENEMIES BRACKETS - Round 1 results

GETHAN WINS! Gethan (Giles x Ethan) has defeated Spuffy (Spike x Buffy). This ended up being pretty close, roughly 53% to 47%.

FUFFY WINS! Fuffy (Faith x Buffy) has defeated Spangel (Spike x Angel). This was NOT close. 81% to 19%.

The Round 2 matchups aren't all up yet, including the dreaded Gethan x Fuffy. I'll post and reblog when they are.

(I'm keeping an eye on a few tournaments for BTVS updates.)

[machablossom]

I really want to rant about the ending. That was one wild episode 12 and I can't say I loved it, but I didn't hate it either.

Being honest, I think I'm mostly dissapointed things didn't go the way I wanted. I usually expect from a series to let me down in some aspects, but this time I felt like there was no rush of emotions like it happened during the past episodes.

I don't actually mind about the supposed queerbaiting, though I would have wanted Renga and Matcha Blossom to become canon. Alas, a girl could dream.

However, there were many things I believe could have been better, others which were just fine, and others which could have been different altogether from the very start of the series. Overall I feel like the main plot (Langa and Reki facing up against Adam) and the main theme of the anime (skating is a fun thing to do and it's better enjoyed surrounded with friends and people you love) were developed just right. However, the way they got to the results were not the best, in my opinion.

I would like to give my opinion on each character development, so this may take a while. Also, I'd like to point out what I would have wanted to happen, if things were up to me.

First and foremost, Adam is the character I had more trouble with. I didn't love the last beef against Langa much. I've had trouble with the entire Eve thing and the fact that he's a 30-something chasing after a 17 yr old boy, be it romantically or just skate-wise.

I know Adam's sexual preferences are never stated through the whole series but we can imply he does feel a certain attraction towards Langa beyond the skating scene and it is very uncomfortable, not to say wrong.

I loved the idea that he let go of the idea of chasing his 'Eve', to celebrate a wedding for a funeral. I am all for theathrics and drama, and his "final boss" outfit was nuts. The skateboard was awesome too! But the mere implications of him, turning into some sort of Grim Reaper whilst racing against Langa one last time are very bone-chilling, at least to me it was, again, very unconfortable.

I'd have loved for Adam to lose to Reki, OR, Tadashi and Langa to race so that the final encounter could have been Adam vs. Tadashi. That way, I think he'd have gotten to reflect on his actions and actually grow as a character rather than just be cured by the power of fun and friendship.

In the perfect scenario, he'd escape with Tadashi, he'd ditch his job and tell his aunts to go f*ck themselves, close 'S' for good and get some therapy somewhere where he could be happy skating with his beloved assistant.

On the other hand, I was hoping he'd get arrested. I hoped Kiriko got to put him behind bars and ruin his carreer both as a politician and as a skater, so that S would close. Maybe in some sort of epilogue we'd seen him come out of jail and make up with the gang, skating with them again as friends. Maybe Langa would go see him in prison to help. Idk, I feel like he needs retribution and punishment, but he was also a character who needed help.

The last part with Tadashi and the dog thing was weird and I didn't love it, but I think it works for their relationship. I won't complain, some other people here on tumblr have put it into words way better than I would have.

What I feel was the worst, worst thing they could do was have him crash their celebration party, falling ridiculously from a helicopter with a bouquet for Langa. No. No, just no. The creeps again. Ugh.

Then, I have to say the second in line who bothered me the most were Miya and Shadow.

It's silly: I really screamed in rage and pain about Shadow not getting together with the manager. I wanted all the other ships to be canon, but I knew it's Japan we're talking about and I know we'd get teased about it in the best case scenario, but the straight ship? The one they could totally go for? NO! Also, I think Shadow got played dirty, shoving him into the background after he was attacked in ep. 10. We didn't get to see any justice done to him against the dude that beat the crap out of him, if, perhaps, Shadow could beat him again at 'S', this time fair and square.

Miya, oh my poor catboy. Played so dirty as well. I liked the last time we see him when he meets with his friend again in school and they seem to reconect. But I wish we would have gotten to see them skate together again. This is very wishful thinking, but I wished we could have seen Miya a little bit older, when the others could have taken him a lot more seriously. I wanted him to do much more than just be a background character, because he deserved it.

Next is Joe and Cherry. Oh boy. Hold onto your horses, I have a LOT to say about my favourite duo.

Listen here, I wanted them to be canon. I hoped for the discreet rings on their fingers shot, or a sudden drop of any of them that they had been secretly married for the past two years or something like that. I wanted flashbacks to their trip to Paris. I wanted more of their teenage years. I wanted a date night at Sie La Luce. Man, I would have died for a kiss. But, alas, it's Japan we're talking about and I know I'm viewing the series from a western point of view.

But that's not what bothered me. What really bothered me was that all the tension that had been growing since ep. 7 between the two of them and then between them and Adam seemed to be just a stepping stone for Langa to win the tournament. We saw Cherry get slapped with a skateboard just for us, the expectators, to dislike Adam a lot more.

I would have loved for them to have the chance to reconect with Adam, be it by punching him or by accepting a heartfelt apology. Specially Cherry. Kaoru deserved MUCH better than what he got, and Joe deserved better than what we've got to see from him. The last scene we saw of them, idk, I thought it was funny and I loved how Cherry showed so little professionalism by drawing on his bf in public. LOL.

But I also didn't like it. I think they ended up being comic relief when they were two of the most wonderfully developed partners in the whole series, even if we've just got some crumbs of their relationship. Also, Joe's deep and caring personality, the whole pinning on Kaoru situation, feels like it matters so little when we see him back at the starting point, just being a shameless flirt. The advantage I see from all of it is that we've got a lot left to the imagination with them.

(Man, i would have loved to see Joe punch Adam in the face with a skateboard at the celebration party after his arrival on the helicopter).

And finally, Reki and Langa. Being honest? I actually loved them. I didn't mind there wasn't a explicit moment of romance or a confesion. That was never the point. The symbolism of their 'friendship', of their bond, is more than enough for me.

I think Langa was slightly too overpowered. As I said before, I think the beef was a little too over the top, but, mah, I've seen a lot of sports anime, its not that over the top. I'd have loved to see him snowboarding at some point, perhaps then we'd have seen Langa as a very talented athlethe and not just some random teenager with crazy skills he just pulled out of his pretty canadian butt. Then again, the little scene with his father's memory was really nice. Closure over mourning, that's a wonderful thing to do.

Reki, my boy, on the other hand, I loved him. Cheering for his bf and believing in him and waiting for him at the end of the line, *chef's kiss*. The part where Langa falls over him and they hug on the ground, perfect, hilarious. The insinuation that they are both happy when they are together, yes, yes, good. The last scene with Reki and his family, I love it! I have nothing wrong to say about Reki. I love him and I'd give an arm for him.

...

Overall, it was a good series. It could have been done better. The ending could have been better. I would love a sequel anyway, if only they could focus on the plotlines they left inconclusive and, for god's sake, they kick the creepyness down a notch. For what I conclude, the entire series was meant as fanservice and they didn't imagine it would grow so big. Anyway, I will keep writing Matcha Blossom, I really loved them and I hope this is not the last we ever see of them all.

[floatingcatacombs]

Why Is CLAMP Like This, Part II

12 Days of Aniblogging 2020, Day 7

We’re back! Like yesterday’s post, I’ll be providing my thoughts on each Clamp series I read this year, for better or for worse. Buckle up.

   Clover

Often touted as one of the artsier, underrated, more mature Clamp manga, I wish I ‘got’ Clover. The childish but desolate fairytale presentation, the grim bits of backstory we’re given, the fucked up esper children – all of this hints at something deeply sinister going on in the backdrop of this world, but we never get to see it in any meaningful capacity. Sure, that’s probably the point. But I think Clover doesn’t work for me because of its medium in particular. Song lyrics are integral to the plot, repeated over and over again, taking up entire pages. Unlike the usual impossibly-detailed Clamp backgrounds, here we have solid white backgrounds and panels frequently broken up with plenty of negative space. For me at least, contextless song lyrics printed out onto a page hardly carry any emotional weight, and I’m sure the translation didn’t do it any favors. Visually, the world of Clover is so hazy and empty that it’s hard to feel like any of this matters at the end of the day. I think this manga would have better suited to either a concept album or an OVA, but it doesn’t work as is. The final two volumes are unexplained and confusing flashbacks, and Clamp has gone on record saying that the story is unfinished as is and needs two more volumes to really explain what’s going on. It’s frustrating that they pass it off as a complete work nowadays!

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 2/5

OVERALL RATING: 2/5

    Angelic Layer

Oh shit it’s Dark Tomoyo

It’s 1999 and the turn of the millennium is upon us, even if X’s prophecy of societal collapse didn’t come to fruition. Eschewing the apocalypse for technological advances, Clamp ushers in the new millennium with…a perfectly serviceable battle shounen. Seriously, the second the main character buys an Angel doll and learns to fight with it, she’s whisked into a tournament that lasts for the rest of the manga’s run. It’s nothing revolutionary, and if I had a discerning taste for tournament arcs I would probably be dissatisfied, but where it stands this is a good chaser for Clover. You can tell that we’re entering the 21st century because the trope of ‘supporting girl who expresses her adoration through violence and tackling’ is in full swing here, as well as some gay marriage jokes again. Overall, I think that the best part of my Angelic Layer readthrough was watching the scanlator group bicker amongst themselves in the last page of each chapter, as the translator despised the manga but the editor loved it.

Fangー, you really are a sissy.

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 3/5

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

   Suki: A Love Story

Oh no. nononononononono. This one’s the worst of the worst, and I read fucking Chobits. Suki is an entire manga of “what if we do the student-teacher relationship from Cardcaptor Sakura, but this time you can’t give us the benefit of the doubt on whether or not it’s pedophilia”. On top of that, the main character makes no sense as a human being whatsoever, the plot has no coherent structure, and I have no idea what tone they were looking for here. I don’t think I have a single positive word for this one. The art isn’t even good!

An element of Suki that you should keep in mind for later: “author character starts writing a children’s book series about the main character’s exploits in real time”. Somehow, a concept this specific manages to happen twice.

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 5/5

OVERALL RATING: 0/5

    Legal Drug

Depending on where you draw the line between queerbaiting and genuine faggotry, Legal Drug may well be Clamp’s first published shounen ai manga. Surprisingly, it hits a lot of my buttons. Legal Drug is a precursor to xxxHolic in that it runs on a “bratty twink performs spirit detective odd-jobs for his weirdo boss” setup. The misadventures of Kazahaya and Rikuo are pretty cute, and the fashion is immaculate, but the real quality content starts at the end of the second volume. Kazahaya, the more feminine one, is given an assignment that requires him to go into an all-girl’s school, so we get some adorable shots of him in a skirt and seifuku top. As a trans woman I have ridiculously complicated feelings about this, but in conclusion it’s good actually. What really seals the deal, though, is that after this scenario, the entire third volume is dedicated towards them infiltrating an all-boys school with a healthy dose of homoeroticism. This culminates in, you guessed it, Kazahaya having to dress up in women’s clothing yet again for a homecoming festival in order to steal a MacGuffin. It’s humiliating in a way that feels endearing for me, although I know that everyone’s got a different tolerance for this stuff. The punchline of all this is that Legal Drug got dropped immediately once this boarding school arc began to wrap up, so it ends up being the conclusion of the manga as a whole third of it, and that’s wonderful.

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 3/5

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

    Chobits

Oh goddammit.

Chobits is Clamp’s first foray into ecchi, and by god do they commit to it. In the first few volumes, we go from underaged robot nipples to another student-teacher relationship to a truly unsatisfying harem. They put their worst foot forward, and while I’m sure it’s what caused the manga to sell like a billion copies, this ain’t it. As I mentioned earlier, my politics generally lie in the pro-horny camp, but once I exit queer spaces I’m forced me to contend with this kind of shit, a stark reminder that heterosexual power dynamics and expectations can be suuper fucked up.

Chobits was apparently inspired by Clamp learning to use computers and getting scared by all the error messages and popups. They wished that computers were easier to use and had a more human element to them, so they…created a manga where all the world’s computers are sexy girls. Yet again we’re stuck in a worldbuilding situation where more context or perspectives are desperately needed, but Clamp’s writing priorities have them glossing over those entirely. As far as I see it, if they’re committed to writing this story about everyone being horny for their computer gijinkas, there are two ways to make the situation feel marginally less misogynistic:

1. Establish that male Persocoms exist as well, and that people develop relationships for them just the same

2. Look dude just give me a problematic robotfucker lesbian

Of course, Persocoms can only be girls and lesbians don’t exist in this world, because why should women get anything other than a sense of inferiority. It’s frustrating, it’s shallow, and when the manga finally tries to pivot from an ecchi to a romance-drama, it leaves me all the more skeptical.

The art is among Clamp’s best, but when it’s used exclusively to depict lacy fembots designed to look underage, I don’t even feel the need to begrudgingly grant them credit this time.

There’s one remotely interesting side story in Chobits, and it’s the main character’s boss talking about his former marriage to a Persocom. Hearing about their persecution and her gradual system failure conjured up nods towards the stigma around gay marriage, the slow withering of dementia, and the feeling of loss when your hard drive crashes and you lose a part of yourself too. Why couldn’t we have had more of this?

Presumably having learned the copy-paste tool in their computing adventures, Clamp lifts the “character starts writing a children’s book series about the main character’s exploits in real time” plot straight out of Suki. Once again, it fails to leave any real impact.

I mentioned that Clamp constantly drops the ball on endings, but Chobits hits a new low. The weirdest ecchi bit from the first chapter turns out to be a Chekov’s gun, and a Chekov’s gun that establishes that the about-to-be-hitched main character and his persocom will never be able to have sex, otherwise she will lose all of her memories. Our hero vows to be chaste, because love is more than sex, and that’s the end of things. One of the only things that Chobits is qualified to ponder about by the end is the ethics of robotfucking, and instead of going there, it ends with an utter cop-out. I called Clamp inauthentic perverts in the first part of these reviews, but if Chobits is them trying to be authentic, then I am not pleased with the results.

I had to see this, so you do too

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 5/5

OVERALL RATING: 1/5

  Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

Syaoran

My white whale. My Rome, laden with layers of anxiety as Freud feared the city’s layers upon layers of civilization. My castle in the sky; my copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. That which I want on some unconscious level, but am deeply terrified of ever actually acquiring as time only adds more symbolic weight to it. This is my relationship to Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, and its insurmountable nature means that this is where I must end my Clamp retrospective. Also it’s like 29 volumes and I ran out of time to get through all of that.

   BONUS: X - The Movie

I didn’t touch the adaptations of any of the Clamp works I read for this project, because it would have added so much time and half of them would have sucked. However, I did end up watching the X/1999 movie out of a sense of intrigue, after hearing divisive rumblings about it for years. As it turns out, it’s kind of great! If you can make it past the very first scene where a woman fleshily rips a sword out of herself, what awaits is a dazzling, moody, and unsettling compression of X where someone gets gorily killed practically every 10 minutes. The MyAnimeList description starts with “At the millennial edge, the concluding battle for humanity's future is staged,” and honestly I should use  “At the millennial edge” in casual conversation more often. The world runs on dream logic, with characters jumping floatily, magic looking and functioning with no consistency, and battle that run far slower than you may expect. It also feels eerily like a Batman movie at first, with our caped antihero rooftop-hopping through a perpetual night. The Dragons of Earth’s depiction of the post-human future as a vaporwave sea of buildings and ruins is so gorgeous that once again I think that there’s no competition. The movie feels slow on a minute-to-minute basis, but it has to run blindingly fast with the plot overall because the manga is so long. It also makes up its own ending, because X was nowhere close to the end at the release of this movie. As a faithful adaptation it fails completely, but that’s fine by me since it’s the later parts of the manga that fall flat. X – The Movie may piss off the Clamp fans, but this chronological readthrough did not leave me a Clamp fan, and I had a great time with it.

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 5/5

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

 _

And that’s my adventures with Clamp to date. Needless to say, I was not impressed. My takeaways from this whole endeavor is that when their work is viewed at large, it’s surprisingly formulaic, dubious in its romances, and is inauthentic in most of the controversy it tries to provoke. But hey, at least the art is nice. Hopefully someday I’ll make it past the great psychic wall that is Tsubasa and bring this post series to a definite conclusion.

[2021 update: Part 3 of this CLAMP retrospective has been published.]

[worstqueerbaittournament]

Submission message for Klance: howdy, would like to submit keith and lance from voltron (lmao)

Submission message for Bechloe: Beca and Chloe from Pitch Perfect (mainly Beca but Bechloe was the ship they baited the most)

Additional propaganda Klance: Now Keith and Lance on the other hand was a whole fucking mess that they then shoehorned in an hetero romance to try and "fix it" but by lord it was bad, everything about voltron is so fucking bad

Anyway this is my Klance propaganda : They were actually bait

Klance's queer baiting by the team was the worst!! We had to deal with NETFLIX ALSO GETTING IN ON THE QUEER BAITING!! If you searched up Kkance during the times for season 6-8, the SHOW WOULD POP UP. The directors would make jokes about it being canon, even Lance's VA got in the joke!

Their queer baiting was the worst for anyone who was even looking for an ounce of queer rep in that show. The only queer rep we got was a man who died after not even 5 minutes on screen, and shoehorned in the credit scene of a gay wedding of a character that was neither Keith nor Lance.

I do not know Agatha and Sophie, so I can't argue that klance was bigger bait or not, I just know voltron was mean lmao. the creators said stuff like "lance will be someone's first choice!" (meaning NOT ending up in a relationship with allura bc she very much chose another guy over him) and heavily implying he would be Keith's 1st choice (or a guy in general bc of point number 2). point number 2: they also released official art showing how super cool and diverse the main cast was! race! gender! LGBT - they had shiro (who was......canon gay but that's a whole other can of worms) and lance hold the sign with LGBT on it and then did absolutely nothing with that w lance at all (he hit on allura, so obvi he's not gay, but at least bi or smt) (UNLESS you count the scenes where he's flirty with keith). I just remember going into the last few seasons being like "klance probably won't be happen be honest with yourself there's like no queer kids shows!! but damn like it so could tho!!! because of how much it's been teased both in the show and by showrunners like I can't have no hope with the way the producers talk about it!" lmao I should have had no hope, but i genuinkey believed there was a possibility it could happen. and actually I discovered after the fact that i think one of the writers for the show who was the main advocate for klance (they had a lot of diff writers for eps, which led to lots of character butchering but ANYWAY) left not terribly long into the show I believe bc he didn't like the direction it was moving in and didn't want to be tied to the show anymore. so it's not like fans just made klance up either - it was written into earlier episodes with the hope and plan to continue developing later, and then just nothing ever happened with it besides INTENSE teasing it to keep queer fans around. esp after shiro's relationship was literally only a flashback and then his fiance thing or whatever got blown up before we even got to watch him interact w shiro as we knew him in present time in s7, so I think they kept being like hmmm klance and the stuff about lance being a first choice before s8 to keep ppl around. also esp bc klancers made up such a big portion of the fan base. then they made a horrible szn and ended it w a flashforward to shiro marrying some random background character who maybe had 1 line? I just remember hitting the flashforward and being like uhhhh who is this dude??? but they did that to hit those diversity points wow first gay marriage in a cartoon or smt idk it doesn't count to me really. so anyway voltron in general is queerbait lol but klance is because it started out as a legit possibility and then they said sike! but only maybe sike bc u guys are mad at us burying our guys in s7 so maybe klance could still happen haha okay now we're serious no it's not happening. anyway I think klance is p bad queerbait and a vote for them is a valid vote, not just u liking the ship.

Here is my really boring and incredibly dry argument for #KLANCESWEEP:

There are countless examples of the Voltron showrunners queerbaiting when it comes to Klance. I will leave that argument and discussion to others. Instead, I would like to focus on why/how I believe Klance is the more significant instance of queerbaiting, despite Johnlock's queerbaiting being markedly more famous.

Queerbaiting is when a shows teases/hints at a character(s) being queer, but then never actually follows through on making the character LGBTQ+. Queerbaiting is, above all, a marketing technique; the show dangles the possibility of a queer romance in order to "bait"  a queer/ally audience into watching, and then continues to dangle or drag out the possibility of a same-sex romance in order to keep their audience hooked and continuously profited off. Queerbaiting takes advantage of peoples' hope and optimism, and that's why the betrayal stings so deeply once the queerbaiting is realized.

I argue that one of the major components of queerbaiting is that the show/writers must never explicitly confirm that there will NOT be queer romance. Queerbaiting is only sustained so long as the illusion of possibility persists.

Now, there are plenty of nuances to this.

If a showrunner comes out and explicitly states that there will be no queer representation in the show, this statement alone does not absolve the show of any queerbaiting it previously did. But, it DOES blur the lines for what can reasonably be defined as "actual" versus "willful" queerbaiting and subtext in the show going forward.

okay let me drop the pseudo-academic tone and just put it bluntly. what i'm trying to say is that, if a showrunner explicitly says "NO GAY ROMANCE," but the show's audience continues to insist and read for gay subtext anyway, and then the audience feels betrayed when the show ends with no queer romance --- at a certain point, wouldn't you argue that it's the fans that are actually baiting themselves, and not the show itself? this is what i mean by "willful" subtext.

As early as 2010 (this article/interview was posted the day of the first episode), the Sherlock showrunners explicitly stated that there would be no romantic relationship between Sherlock and Watson. Between 2010 and 2016, the showrunners repeatedly stated in multiple interviews that Johnlock would never happen.

I am 100% aware that I was drinking nothing but Kool-Aid while Voltron aired. I absolutely baited myself with desperate hope each season. But, in my weak defense, the flames of my Klance delusions were very much flamed by the promises made by the Voltron showrunners, who repeatedly floated the promise of queer representation in the show and spoke about Klance in the same breath. Klancers didn't bait themselves out of thin air; they desperately clung to the rope the Voltron writers threw us, and we were pulled in: hook, line, and sinker.

-

TLDR:

Queerbaiting involves willful deception and deliberate misinformation on the part of a showrunner/show.

If a showrunner encourages a queer ship, or makes vague promises of queer representation, then it reasonable for the show's audience to assume that a queer romance will happen. When a queer romance does not happen, this is clear-cut queerbaiting.

But if a showrunner explicitly states that a show will not have a major queer romance, then the show's audience should reasonably assume that the show will not have the queer ship they favor. If shippers continue to insist that their ship will come to fruition, and continue to pin their hopes on their ship, then the lines between who is actually baiting whom become very blurred.

Johnlock fans knew going into the show that John and Sherlock would never have an explicitly queer relationship. Fans continued to read for subtext, and maintained hope. The lines of queerbaiting become blurred, as it was not entirely clear if the show was actually baiting its shippers, or if fans were the ones baiting themselves.

In contrast, Klance fans were repeatedly encouraged by the showrunners, Netflix's marketing, and to some extent the VAs that Klance was possible (and that queer representation would firmly happen), and so Klance shippers were repeatedly strung along each season, up until the final season when Lance and Allura started dating and the Klance ship was torpedoed once and for all. (Do not talk to me about post-canon Klance, I am willfully defiant.) This is a firmly clear-cut case of queerbaiting.

In summary, Klance is the more textbook case of queerbaiting. It matches all the elements of queerbaiting: there was the willful deception by the showrunners, which encouraged Klance shippers specifically to hang onto the show, allowing Voltron to profit off its Klance audience. It's true that Klance shippers also continuously baited and deluded ourselves; but in our defense, we were following the example and promises set by the show itself.

Additional propaganda Bechloe: Ok for a little propaganda, since you may have forgotten pitch perfect, I want you all to know I first saw it as a 16-17 year old at gay youth group and can you imagine my fucking surprise and bafflement when they werent lesbians. Like basically thru the whole movie I was like “fun lesbian film nothing out of place just waiting for them to actually be gay” I know this was mostly the youth group organizers fault but I still think pitch perfect should have to answer for their crimes

I could talk so much about this but I want to point specifically to this promo for pitch perfect 3:

Bechloe - Pitch Perfect 3 Promo

Bechloe is REAL!

YouTube

and they then proceeded to give chloe an absolutely godawful love interest and like really overdid it (they also tried to give beca one too but anna kendrick was having NONE of that)

IIRC, Beca and Chloe were supposed to be lesbians but Universal vetoed it and made them give Beca a male love interest. Whether that changes things is up to you.

Even more Klance propaganda under the cut:

@klanced pretty well summarizes why Voltron was *more* queerbaity, but I think we should also consider what it means to be *worse.*

Make no mistake, the Sherlock team was.... for lack of a better term.... almost gaslight-y in their press, by disregarding the subtext that they themselves had written. But they were consistent. And their messages as showrunners did bear through, even as they were being cruel. Most importantly, Sherlock never needed the people they were baiting, so they could act aloof. That distance was horrible, but nothing like Voltron.

The relationship between Voltron and its fans was toxic, parasitic. Voltron couldn't have stayed around for that long without dragging its queer-baited audience behind it. It was a Netflix show, and those are always so close to the hangman's axe. It was the online fervor that sustained it.

And so, they had to appease the fans, pay the piper. But they had their own ideas for how the story would bear out, and each creator wanted something differently. In the end, they consistently used marketing tactics to imply something that could have been possible, if not for distinct creative voices that instead weakened the queer stories until they were watery piss.

Anyway, this was rambling. Vote Voltron for dangling queer alignment and ambiguity. Vote Voltron for pretending to be an ally. Vote Voltron for the stupid fucking LGBTQ banner that has Lance on it. Johnlock hurt, in a distant way, but Klance was worse.

I actually said this earlier on a different post, but I'll say it here too:

Its completely reasonable to think Klance was originally planned. Their interactions in the early seasons seemed a little too romantically coded to be something completely made up by fans. Thats why Klance was so popular, because it seemed all too possible.

However, when Dreamworks forced the creative team to change the story in order to keep Shiro alive instead of permanently killing him off like they originally planned, their entire story got fucked over. Seasons 3 and 4 were too far into production to stop and completely redo them, it would have been too expensive, even though it was the logical course of action. Instead, the producers had to make serious last minute changes to the story in order to keep Shiro in the picture. As a result, Shiro and Keith's switched places in the show, and Keith was almost completely written out of seasons 4-6 because Shiro was never supposed to be there. Any and all possible plans for any sort of development between Keith and Lance were thrown out the window because Keith wasn't there.

But as previously said, Voltron wouldn't have survived until the end without the rabid and feral online Klance fandom. The writing was very rapidly going to shit because there wasn't enough time to properly rewrite seasons 3 and 4 in order to meet Dreamworks' demands, and every season that followed suffered because of the decisions made for seasons 3 and 4. Everything was being improvised, and the storyboards for season 8 weren't finished until MARCH 2018 because of how behind schedule they were.

(I feel like the creative team don't get enough credit. Sure the show was a MASSIVE flop but their working conditions were less then ideal. Its impressive they got anything done on time due to the constantly changing ideas.)

The VLD producers knew that the Klance fandom was the only thing keeping the show alive, and continued to use Klance as bait until the very end. The VLD producers willingly enabled the notoriously toxic and violent Klance fandom with thumbnails and HotTopic merch, and allowed it to reach a point that the lives of their cast and crew were being threatenedby the rabid Klance fandom, just to get the ratings they needed to stay afloat.

THATS the disgusting part of all this. Whether Klance was originally planned as endgame or not, the producers used its popularity to keeping their already declining show running at the expense of the safety of their cast and crew.

I know next to nothing about BBC's Sherlock and Johnlock and whatever, but what the VLD producers did was sinister. Putting their creative team through both production and online HELL for some ratings, and it blew up in the most humiliating way possible. They did alllllll that, just to get one of the worst endings to an animated series of all time. Literally everyone hates them for what Voltron became, putting the lives of their creative team in danger was for nothing.

And obviously the producers can't completely blamed for the show's outcome, Dreamworks ruined their original plans. But continuing to use Klance as a marketing tactic while your fans are getting out of control and your creative team is being put in danger is just appalling. It was in their power to tell the Klance fandom Klance wasn't endgame, and that probably would have quelled the fire, but instead, with every season, they threw more and more gasoline into the dumpster fire.

So if you haven't already, vote Klance in this poll.

(I'm linking my source for all this info here. Its a video essay that I totally recommend watching. Super duper interesting.)

[worstqueerbaittournament]

Submission message for Steve and Bucky: Does Stucky count? Steve and Bucky from Captain America

Submission message for Charles and Erik: Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (aka Professor X and Magneto) from anything X-Men

Additional propaganda for Stucky:

Stucky: "Of course, this is still a rollicking adventure tale and no adventure is complete without a love story.....the longest, most tortured one in Marvel history" - Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (writers of Captain America movies + Avengers Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame)

"from the meet cute to the tragic separation, their bond has all the elements of a classic romance." - Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely

"Just as Jeph and Tim’’s earlier Daredevil: Yellow, Spider-Man: Blue, and Hulk: Gray all dealt with the major love interests in, the heroes’ lives, so too does Captain America: White. Steve and Bucky are each other’s soulmate." - Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely

“So you have a character in Captain America who is searching for the only thing that he has left from his past that has any meaning to him, and that’s Bucky; and people have interpreted that relationship all kinds of ways and it’s great...we will never define it, as filmmakers, explicitly." - The Russos (Captain America: Civil War press)

"You mean, aside from Cap and Bucky?" - Anthony Russo (co-director of Cap 2 and 3 and Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame) when asked about romance in Captain Amierca: Civil War

"Moderator: But you already had a romantic B story with Cap and Bucky, right?

Anthony: We sure do

Joe: We still do

Moderator: Did you ever had to dial down the sexual tension on set?

Joe: Why would we?" - Anthony and Joe Russo (directors of Cap 2 and 3 and Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame) at a screening of Captain America: Civil War

Just a few examples directly from Marvel and the writers and directors.

#between these two?? stucky hands down#yes both were called love stories but stucky wasn't called a love story just once

also to add on stucky became so huge and widely acknowledged by audiences you had stuff like bbc making a stucky fanvid

major companies like starbucks and astroglide tweeting in support of them as well as celebrities and big media outlets constantly writing articles about them (typically about why they should be made canon)

like stucky was featured in time magazine cuz it was the basis for the 'givecaptainamericaaboyfriend' thing that happened on twitter which ended up trending at number two worldwide

and not only are they mentioned in wikipedia's page on queerbaiting but wikipedia also has an entire page dedicated solely to the ship

Additional propaganda for Cherik

Okay but Cherik (Spot 12) is so incredibly queer I can’t even—

Like straight up they have a kid together because Professor X siphoned off Magneto into his brain and then they did a mind meld thing and Onslaught came out of Professor X like Athena from Zeus.

There was a recent story arc where they defeated Onslaught and the guy who defeated Onslaught straight up said something like ‘Professor X and Magneto aren’t doing anything because they have a soft spot for their murderous joint kid entity’. Please bear in mind that this guy is also straight-up Professor X’s son and a telepath.

Also this comic book cover is literally the gayest thing I have ever seen.

Magneto is a bara daddy for 0 reason and Professor X is supposed to be dead, yet looks like a twink having the absolute time of his LIFE.

Also in a marvel comic specifically for celebrating canon queer couples there’s this stunner of a panel:

Why is this not canon again???

God, the matched Hellfire Gala outfits are making me insane in the membrane.

For context here’s literally THEE couple of the X-men universe at the exact same party:

They’re complimentary— even they’re not fucking MATCHING. For the love of god just let the old men kiss holy shit.

[worstqueerbaittournament]

Submission message: Mean Girls  - Janis Person who submitted Janis here. Yes, I meant the movie. The whole time it is implied she's a lesbian only for her to end up with a dude lol

Submission message: Supercorp! Lena and Kara from Supergirl!

Meanwhile Janis from Mean Girls IS queerbaiting: She’s presented as a lesbian throughout the film. She gets very emotionally attached to girls and tries to sabotage them after they ‘betray’ her and become more interested in boys/popularity (Regina in the past, Cady during the film). Proudly declares herself a “big lesbo” to half the school during her trust-fall scene. Wears a suit to Prom and kisses her gay best friend Damien, they both show complete disgust afterwards. But in the LITERAL LAST SCENE OF THE FILM, she’s shown dating a guy and kissing him. ((I also haven’t seen the musical yet, so I can’t comment there)) Vote Janis, she’s the only right answer.

janis is a complicated character because while i do agree her writing sucked, and having someone so clearly coded as lesbian end up with a dude fucking sucks ass, i don’t think the actual intention behind janis was to bait the audience. mean girls was written based on the non-fiction book “queen bees & wanna bees” by rosalind wiseman. MANY of the characters in mean girls are based around the archetypes that book presents, janis being the “alternative girl” who feels ostracized by the other girls and therefore takes on a more nonconforming rebellious personality to make it seem like she CHOSE to be ostracized. her ending up with a guy then makes perfect sense if you follow the guidelines set by the book. of course you don’t have to follow the guidelines the book sets up and i think doing that uncritically is a really BAD idea (the book predominantly focuses on straight white teenage girls so it’s not exactly great for representing… literally any other kind of teenager, as the movie shows) but i do think janis wasn’t supposed to be read as actually gay and is a more nuanced situation than just being straight up queer baiting. basically like. she’s bad, but the WORST queerbait of all time? ehhh?

[worstqueerbaittournament]

Moving into round 3!

Feel free to submit propaganda via asks! I'll do my best to add everything from previous rounds, but I cannot promise that I will remember/catch/find everything again!!

Left side will be:

Stiles and Derek (Teen Wolf) vs. Stiles Stilinksi (Teen Wolf)

Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (X-men) vs. Steve and Bucky (Captain America)

Right side will be:

Keith and Lance (Voltron) vs. Beca and Chloe (Pitch Perfect)

Janis (Mean Girls) vs. Lena and Kara (Supergirl)

[worstqueerbaittournament]

Round 2 - Left side winners

Round 2 - Left side

Winners

Stiles and Derek (Teen Wolf)

Stiles Stilinksi (Teen Wolf)

Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (X-men)

Steve and Bucky (Captain America)

[worstqueerbaittournament]

Round 3

Stiles and Derek (Teen Wolf) vs. Stiles Stilinksi (Teen Wolf)

Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (X-men) vs. Steve and Bucky (Captain America)

Keith and Lance (Voltron) vs. Beca and Chloe (Pitch Perfect)

Janis (Mean Girls) vs. Lena and Kara (Supergirl)

[worstqueerbaittournament]

Round 2 - right side winners

Round 2 - right side

Winners

Keith and Lance (Voltron)

Beca and Chloe (Pitch Perfect)

Janis (Mean Girls)

Lena and Kara (Supergirl)

[karinyosa]

i don't think reading sophie and agatha as sapphic/lesbian goes against sge's original goal of subverting fairy-tale tropes at all. you can easily read the choice between tedros and sophie as a conflict about heteronormativity, which would absolutely subvert fairy-tale tropes and correct me if i'm wrong, would also make it subversive of amanormativity anyway? and like the tags above me said, sge totally totally becomes super amanormative later on, it was like one of the most het/amanormative book series i ever read, so it would still very much be queerbaiting if you read them as aspec. like they talk about straight marriage sooooo much after book 1. the point of calling them queerbait is to say the book series never delivers the subversion it promises in book 1 and i think that's true in both cases. it is literally one of the worst queerbaits ever, it's so funny how bad it is about all of that and it deserves to be in this poll

elsa/anna and henry/emma don't kiss on the mouth, but agatha and sophie do. i don't think you can only mouth-kiss people you're romantically/sexually interested in, but it would be disingenuous to say that that's not a queercoded act in media. darling charming and raven queen are also in this poll and they do this exact thing for very similar thematic reasons, and they were not contested.

the kiss is absolutely not the only case for queerbait in sge. my original ask alone mentions multiple other instances of baity moments, not to mention the dynamic itself being very queercoded from the outset (outsider girl who doesn't conform to beauty standards girl with bestie feminine/frilly/pink girl who also does not fit in but is more secret about it). agatha and sophie are compared in universe to explicitly romantic motifs by one another. sophie refers to agatha as her prince for a good chunk of i believe book 2. might be book 3. she embroiders a pillowcase depicting agatha as her prince on it like that is crazy to me. that's not even all of it, the prince quote above is super queer. there is so so so a case to be made. you don't have to share that interpretation, it's definitely not the only one to come out of the series with, but saying that there isn't a case at all feels willfully ignorant

I have to contest the Sophie/Agatha queerbait

The entire POINT of the series is that Agatha has to question whether or not she values friendship over love. The trope of true loves kiss was thus applied to represent her choosing Sophie's friendship over her crush on Tedros. That kiss is the only evidence towards the "bait," and the entire point of it was to subvert the idea of romantic love saving the day. It's like how Emma saved Henry in S1 of OUAT or Else saved Anna in frozen.

IMO when you ignore what that series is trying to do (play with the way fairy tales emphasize society's need to rank love over friendship) it feels dismissive of the very real aspec issue with amatonormativity and people ranking friendship as less important than romantic love.

Oooohh interesting, thank you for pointing that out!

[worstqueerbaittournament]

Welcome to the tournament for the worst queerbait ever!! You can submit any pairing or character that falls under the queerbait definition via asks (anon or not, whatever you prefer!)

Tagging tournaments, I hope that's okay

@foundfamily-tournament @mosthomoeroticenemies @punchable-bot-showdown @dragon-tournament

[worstqueerbaittournament]

You can vote however you like, but maybe keep in mind that this tournament is about the worst queerbait and not your favourite ship. Winning is not a good thing.