#Queerbaiting discourse

[soliloqueeer]

Can we just not partake in any queerbaiting discourse in the IWTV fandom? It’s tired, it’s reductive, it’s unproductive, and simply: real people cannot queerbait.

You dont know someone’s sexuality, no matter who their current partner is, unless they’ve explicitly and publicly come out and said it. And even then, it’s not static, people can change.

[real-total-drama-takes]

submitting this before the last few episodes are leaked. mkulia wasn't originally queerbaiting because they weren't being used as marketing. they were never used as a selling point in the second season, so by definition they were not queerbaiting. what Terry is doing in twitter is queerbaiting however, because he's using the ambiguously sapphic nature of their relationship to generate outspeak and reactions that help to market the show. I don't think they were written to intentionally queerbait but Terry saw what the fandom was doing and decided to begin playing into it, therefore causing it to become queerbaiting. the discourse is silly because there is no wrong way to interpret their relationship, the writers arent malicious or anything but they also arent above criticism. people need to stop fighting everyone can do whatever they want forever and ever. also I'm exhausted so this may be unintelligible but whatever

-🐶

[brettdoesdiscourse]

Seeing someone say "real people can queerbait" is odd. Seeing them say it about someone who has been open about still being unsure of their sexuality and how they feel pressured to put themselves in a box for the internet's personal comfort is even more odd.

Regardless of how you feel about a person, no celebrity or internet personality owes you coming out. No celebrity or Internet personality owes you putting themselves in a clear box just so you feel better. If you don't feel comfortable following a person who acts a certain way, but hasn't come out then don't. But don't act entitled to personal information from someone that they might still be figuring out or might be uncomfortable sharing.

[richardsphere]

Possibly controversial Queerbaiting Discourse

So yesterday i was wandering the Reddits (as you do), when i found someone saying that a media property and allegations of a relationship within it being Queerbait. As a central crux of this arguement, they said that because the pair in question cannonically do end up together, it in fact could never be considered “bait” And now i think that maybe, we should examine the definition of Queerbait a bit further. So let’s talk about Queerbaiting, As in the meaning of the Term not the history of the trope.

Full disclosure, Im not a Gay historian. I’m only what i’d call a Queer Sloth (”I know im somewhere on the flag, but i dont have the energy to figure out where”) so my takes might not be that great or well researched. But upon seeing people that say “if they legitimately end up together, its not bait”, i feel a responsibility to make it clear that I disagree sharply with that notion, it just means they’re fishing with live bait. I think the term Queerbaiting should not be defined by wether or not they get together, nor do i believe that “the two havent gotten together yet” suffices to define it as bait either. (after all, “will they/wont they” is a classic narrative trope, and a well written WT/WT story featuring LGTBQ+ characters is a well written relationship). And also a tragic romance where they never get together, shouldn’t be considered Bait just because they never get together. Tragedy is a valid narrative tradition that the LGBTQ community should not be exempted from either. I Instead i propose that the term Queerbaiting should be used to describe “We made them LGBTQ so the Community would give us Money, but we never put in the effort to actually sell the relationship”. Characters that are Queer (or implied to be) specificly because they knew it’d attract a starging under-represented group they could then financially exploit, with only the absolute minimal effort put into selling their relationship. Queerbaiting is simply the “minimum viable product” of writing being used to make a quick rainbow-coloured-buck.  It’s the act of writing the relationship without any real chemistry because the creators know that the LGBTQ community is starving for representation, and that a starving man will eat anything. ----Edit: I made an edit for clarity, original draft directly referenced the ship that was being used as an example in the prompting reddit-post, and led to confusion in readers thinking this post was about the pairing rather then about overly-narrow use of the term Queerbait,

[mofsblog]

"This is some gay shit" Good. Silly. Fair enough. Doesn't inherently invalidate other interpretations of the relationship. Honestly yeah, it is kind of gay regardless of their canonical relationship status

"There's literally no platonic explanation for th-" WRONG!! KILLING YOU WITH AMATANORMATIVITY KILLING LOBSTERS 🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞

[a-mel0n]

everytime someone who doesnt watch 911 makes a post abt it being like supernatural an angel loses its wings

no the show isnt queerbaiting you. 2/7 of the mains are queer. one of them has been married to her wife since season 1. they have two kids. the other hooked up with his gay will-they-wont-they situationship in his house this season. they were slamming each other into the walls and panting like dogs.

911 is not a good show. if it brings up an idea that idea will get resolved in that 45 minute episode. one of the characters said “[doubt] is like a virus” and then they cut to the beginning of The Deadly Virus emergency. buck got asked “are you in love with eddie” and stared directly at the camera when he said “no he’s straight and my best friend and it isn’t like that no matter how many people want it to be.”

[youvegotmetoblame]

it's the way these clickbait journalists are so loudly saying what used to be the quiet part. when they say "it's queerbaiting!", they mean buck's sexuality is queerbaiting. bc in their minds, that in and of itself was the promise of bddie. bc what else could be the point of buck being bisexual if not to serve the ship? if not to prop up another character's supposed sexuality?

i remember during the initial press run after 7x04 when oliver said he was getting so many comments from firefighters who weren't out yet, but who felt so seen just from that moment alone. that's what it's about. that's the representation people are acting like we're being deprived of. long time viewers, new viewers, hardcore viewers, casual viewers, so many bisexual and otherwise queer people felt so validated by this story. so grateful for it. the quiet and happy acceptance of oneself. the freedom that comes with that. a story like that isn't something to take for granted in our current environment

is it perfect? no. I, for one, hope we get to hear buck casually call himself bisexual next season and actually talk to hen about their experiences. but this is also first and foremost a procedural so I don't think they're going to delve deep into the intricacies of queer identity. using bisexuality as a pawn to say he needs to "explore" or that it was "swept under the rug" bc it's not his whole state of being and didn't get you your desired ship is transparent. buck is bisexual, no matter who he's dating, or if he's dating, he's simply going through life as a queer man. that in and of itself is representation and calling it queerbaiting is frankly disrespectful to queer fans and creators that have fought to get us to a place where we can have casual representation on screen. i honestly pity anyone who hasn’t been able to see buck’s queer joy for what it is. your loss

[top-vi]

“rhaenicent is queerbait” i really wish you people would learn the difference between subtext and queerbait.

it has been reiterated multiple times by the actors and show runners that rhaenyra and alicent’s relationship is not one that is just friendship. their love and devotion to one another was snuffed out by the men in their lives before they could discover what it really meant (for alicent at least, but that’s another post).

their story is a tragedy, and the framing of their relationship as children as romantic is not an accident or marketing tactic

[tunakitchen]

if you want to make a poll bracket for "most likely mcyt creator to roleplay a romantic relationship with another creator" there is a lot of ways to word that. you can definitely write that in less words than i did, for sure.

but "biggest queerbaiter" is not the way to word that. queerbaiting is a word that has meaning. it's a word used in media literacy, it does not apply to real people, and i have never seen it validly applied to mcrp.

because queerbaiting is an actual word with meaning, it can be, and often is, genuinely disrespectful to apply it to content creators and their characters. calling queer content creators "queerbaiters" is disrespectful. yes, even for the bit. and calling straight content creators "queerbaiters" for how they interact with their friends is, if not disrespectful, certainly diluting the meaning of the word "queerbait."

please be mindful of what the words you're saying mean. ♥️

[anxietycheesecake]

Block me now because I'll never take my queerbaiting allegations back. In fact, I'm doubling down. This was indeed queerbaiting. These bitches got a GLAAD, I can't-

[lenodrysalad]

"Eddie said he's straight! Buck said Eddie was straight! Buck said he's not in love with his best friend! They shut down Buddie in the show it isn't happening ya'll are delusional! Queerbait! Queerbait! Blah blah blah"

I feel like I'm going insane. I'm sure we're all tired of people shouting "media literacy" every five seconds, but like... Yeah, develop some media literacy, please.

I'm saying this as someone who doesn't usually like romance, despite being subjected to it in basically every piece of media. As someone who doesn't generally look for love stories. As someone who loved Buddie but didn't consider any serious possibility of it becoming canon before season 7/8, who refused to believe Buddie was truly happening until I couldn't deny it anymore: this episode is loud.

Please understand how narrative arcs work. How character arcs work. How character development works. How serial broadcast television works. Understand how writing works. Consider context; take the whole episode, the whole season, and the whole series into account instead of treating things like they exist in isolation.

I'm too tired to go through the step-by-step details of the episode to prove why these, "they said it on screen, therefore..." takes are shortsighted and ignorant; plenty of people have done that already.

But that episode, even if we do take it in isolation, is textbook. Do people really take everything characters say at face value? Do people not watch other character's reactions? Listen to what else is being said? Watch what is being shown? Consider the implications? Themes? Narrative devices?

Consider that maybe, just maybe, characters can be unreliable narrators, or believe something to be true only for that belief to change later. These things don't happen in one episode. There's such a thing as set-up, foreshadowing, the starting point of a plot. 911 is a serial drama, therefore it is going to have A) long-form story and character arcs, and B) drama.

Characters are not going to move in straight lines, or talk in therapy speak, or solve every problem in an hour. They are not always going to be right, or self-aware, or truthful, or rational. Direct dialogue does not equate to honest dialogue.

Also, saying, "well in real life, people do this, I do that, their feelings would be this, yadda yadda yadda" means nothing. Your experiences are not universal, and more importantly, this is a work of fiction. Realism is whatever the story says it is; it's going to do whatever creates the most dramatic, interesting, developmentally beneficial, or emotionally satisfying story. Whether you like that story or not is irrelevant to the fact that stories are not going to cater to all your expectations or real-world experiences.

To people pointing to Tim or the actor's interviews as "proof" they're shutting down Buddie: again, please understand how broadcast television works. They are not going to tell us everything that's going to happen before it happens. They are going to play the neutral zone, the "wait and see," the "will they/won't they." They are going to lie. That is television production 101. You can compare what they've said in the past with canon and list all the contradictions, misdirection, and twists you didn't see coming because they didn't spoil it for you. Watch the show. That is the canon.

They're also not catering to fandom--people they already know are devoted to the show, familiar with Buddie, and consistently tuning in. They're introducing the idea of Buddie to the general audience, people who likely haven't considered the possibility before. The GA has to see that Buddie is an option, so the show needs to manifest it as if it's a brand new concept. This episode pulled the pin on that grenade in a very obvious way; the idea that Buck could be in love with Eddie and that Eddie could not be straight has been planted. The next seed will be Eddie's feelings. Now the show needs to water it and let it grow.

One last thing. Been seeing a fair amount of hand-wringing and condescension over people interpreting this episode differently. As if this is some sort of "gotcha" for bad writing, baiting, or people being stupid. Listen, genuine complaints about this show's writing aside, different interpretations or inferences are completely normal. This isn't unique. That is how people interact with stories, through personal biases, experiences, emotions, and expectations. That isn't inherently a bad thing. It's totally fine to have your own views; media is all about interpretation.

However, it is also true that just because you have an interpretation, that doesn't make it true. Not all interpretations are equal in their validity, evidence, or warrants. The show has an intention, it has a story in mind. If you don't see it, sure, that could be a failure of the writing, but it could also very well be a failure of your analysis, especially when the show hasn't finished telling the story. Looking at one thing in isolation and forming your whole conclusion based around that makes for poor critique.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see who's right.

[fakemouthstaticpilot]

For the 825194751992 time:

9-1-1 DID NOT QUEERBAIT YOU!

JOURNALISTS BAITED YOU!

YOU BAITED YOURSELVES!

Tim said back in s4 to write fan fic.

Kirsten said Buck & Eddie were just friends.

Buck is canonically queer and still hung up on his ex-boyfriend.

Eddie is CANONICALLY straight.

[real-total-drama-takes]

okay holy shit i'm so sorry i really don't know what i was on when i posted my shitty ass take about yuri, so sorry about that

anyway: i think we need to put the term queerbait on the top shelf until these infants figure out what it means. no mkulia isn't queerbait canonically but terry mcfuckface is queerbaiting us over on twt

-lesbianon (i sincerely apologize for my previous actions)

[tevanbuckley]

the life cycle of this buddie getting shut down in s4 theory is exactly what I meant when I said the fandom is queerbaiting itself.

people take a snippet of bts info that they have almost no context for -> extrapolate wildly -> the theory spreads, more stuff gets tacked on -> it spreads even further, now minus any context -> it gets ingrained into the fanon lore and treated as a fact -> ppl get their hopes up, then feel cheated if/when nothing comes of it.

in less than a day we’ve gone from oliver saying bi buck was pitched to him at some point in the last couple of years but got squashed by someone above him, to people saying that the shooting/will was definitely originally an explicit love confession.

To be clear we’ve no idea what that version of buck’s coming out would’ve looked liked. Hell, depending on how early it got scrapped, the writers might not know much beyond buck = bi.

and I’m not saying it’s not plausible (to a degree at least) but some of you are acting like oliver leaked a deleted buddie confession scene in 4k. When all he did was make a pretty vague reference to a storyline that never was.

It’s fine to speculate just please stop presenting it as if tim minear is in your dms.

[pigfartsviatardis]

Was discussing queerbaiting recently with a friend because we’re watching Once Upon A Time (trash, but shockingly well written trash in the first 3 seasons) and obs we both ship swan queen. I mean. Come on.

But we noticed that from the start of s3 onwards, there was noticeably less shippy stuff between these two. There’s still a bit here and there because a) lesbian mums and b) chemistryyyy… but it felt like the writers were intentionally backing off from that pairing and putting genuine effort into the male love interests for both characters.

You might think that becalming the swan queen ship would have annoyed or disappointed my friend and myself, the shippers. But tbh we both agreed that it was actually nice to see a writing team see a popular queer fandom ship, go ‘oh whoops that’s not endgame’, and actively NOT bait it.

Obviously everyone here is aware of the Golden Age Of Queerbaiting, the late 2000s/early 2010s; even if you’re too young to have actually battled through it, it’s deep tumblr lore. We all know the repeat and egregious offenders from that time - destiel, merthur, johnlock, whatever the main one was on teen wolf - and how gleefully these shows would dangle queer rep in front of our twitching little noses.

Recently, I’ve noticed a more insidious trend: the Male Friendship Scarcity Myth. The most glaring recent examples are nandermo (WWDITS) and jayvik (arcane), both of which were popular ships after the first season(s) of their shows aired and were subsequently given increased screen time and shippy scenes/storylines. In the case of nandermo, the romantic feelings (at least from Guillermo) were textual. Both pairings were given ambiguous endings where they were together, but not confirmed as, yknow, together.

And then both showrunners, after the shows ended, decided to step up to the mic and give a heartfelt little speech along the lines of ‘men are allowed to be friends without it being sexual, and it’s actually really important that we show this, because we need more representation of close platonic brotherly male friendship in media’.

Anyone who was around during the aforementioned Golden Age Of Queerbaiting, or in fact anyone who consumes popular media at all, knows that this is horseshit.

It’s only ever close platonic brotherly male friendship. Or at least, 95% of the time. Everywhere you look, from major fandom shows to mcu movies, platonic male relationships are often front and centre. That’s nearly always the canon. How often does a major mlm ship actually go canon??? Hardly ever. Even destiel didn’t; cas’s feelings were confirmed last minute, but the official canon dynamic between him and dean is still brotherly bffs.

Are these friendships often the subject of intense fandom shipping? Yes, as literally any close relationship between any two characters of any gender always will be. People like shipping! But the official canon, and the gospel truth held up by poorly disguised homophobes in fandom, is nearly always strictly platonic bros.

Anyway. All this to say, I’ve been disillusioned recently seeing this myth pop up in every comments section on any jayvik-related content, that we have a lack of male friendship in media (we don’t, we have a lack of male friendship that isn’t queer coded to super turbo gay hell and back in media). I was even more disillusioned seeing the exact same rhetoric being spewed by those involved with WWDITS, which is ironically a show jam packed full of close male friendships THAT INVOLVE CASUAL SEX. The call was truly coming from inside the coffin on that one.

So, unexpectedly and somewhat depressingly, swan queen and OUAT have been a balm for the soul in the midst of all this. No queerbaiting (at least not where I’m up to), just good old fashioned straightwashing. At least it’s honest 🤷‍♀️

[allaboutalf]

If you’re one of the people saying 9-1-1 is queerbaiting, I’m going to assume you’re not very bright. Or a typical straight fetishizer who appropriates issues that our queer community faces as a way to throw a tantrum when a fanon ship doesn’t go canon. Someone who doesn’t care about the community or support queer shows, but will be all performative cause you think it will guilt people into giving you want you want (or give you an excuse to be a toxic bully).

Cause 9-1-1 is queer as f. It always has been and always will be. Hen, Michael, Buck, Josh, Karen, David, Tommy. And that’s just main and reoccurring on the OG show.

Ignoring all of the queer characters and relationships and claiming queerbait cause the one straight male character you like isn’t making out with a man is frankly offensive and gross.

Just cause you shipbaited yourselves and ignored what the cast and crew were doing - took analysis beyond having fun in fandom and twisted what was happening on screen to say the show was doing something it wasn’t and refused to acknowledge the actual story - doesn’t make it queerbaiting. 9-1-1 cannot queer bait, it’s already queer.

Ship whatever you want but don’t appropriate queer issues to try to justify your toxic behavior.