#but the gays get the best endings despite being heavily censored??? THIS is what the liberals want

[jinlian]

i've seen enough wuxia/xianxia bad or unhappy endings now that in retrospect i'm shocked that the untamed and word of honor made out in the end as well as they did

[stubbornjerk]

Why people keep telling you to block them if you support Pholo (Penumbra Edition)

Or: why jitterbug-juno really deactivated

I love when people categorize this as fandom wank. Really makes you feel like you’re putting the onus on either side of the conversation.

I’m making this post not because I want to stir up spoiled milk, but because I want it out there that this wasn’t a purity culture war.

The TL;DR version of this is that fans of color tried to tell Rab (prev. jitterbug-juno) not to post her Omegaverse (or A/B/O) fic. And instead of taking the L, she posted it on Ao3 and deactivated.

But, if you want context, well, buckle in. CW for mentions of racism and transphobia.

What did jitterbug-juno do?

Before I get into this I do want it out there that I will not be linking Rab’s fic, but I will show you this screenshot of the summary of it.

[ID: It is a screenshot of a fic, “As You Are” by Pholo.

Summary: Peter can hide his scent glands behind cologne; makeup; concealer pads. He can quash his heats with suppressants. He can divert the urge to nest and fawn.

But he can’t feign another gender’s subvocals. He lacks the anatomical capacity. Mag taught him to distract from his silence with fast, flashy words. For longer heists he relies on social convention. Traumatic mutism is uncommon, but remarked upon by enough war vets and soap operas to be widely recognized. Peter’s marks assume he’s been harmed long before they assume he’s a closeted omega. It would take quite the backwater brute to ask why he doesn’t murmur or chuff or growl.

On the 'Blanche there are the usual furtive glances. Juno makes clear to Peter that should he ever want “to talk about what happened,” he’ll be there to listen. The gesture annoys Peter more than comforts him.

‘Nothing happened,’ he wants to scream. ‘There’s nothing to talk about!’

There are 14 comments, 85 kudos, and 11 bookmarks /end]

You decide what you’re doing with that information, but honestly, I’d rather you don’t give it anymore engagement than it deserves.

There was a period earlier this June (yes, even though it’s only the 10th, at time of writing) when Rab was posting snippets of the aforementioned fic on her blog and tagging it appropriately, putting it in the attention of pretty much the entire Penumbra fandom.

What’s Omegaverse or a/b/o and why is everyone so against Rab for it

If you know what Omegaverse is, I don’t have to tell you why it’s controversial. If you don’t know what Omegaverse is, well, Fanlore said it best:

a kink trope wherein some or all people have defined biological roles based on a hierarchical system, with the terms originating from animal behaviour research. There may be werewolf, knotting, or other animalistic elements involved, or the characters may be otherwise purely human.

The term is generally written with slashes (a/b/o). Many fans, particularly ones from Australia and New Zealand, are uncomfortable seeing the term without slashes because it is also an Australian slur for aboriginal people.

I won’t get into the history or the heaps and tons of other discourses (mostly about fictional male pregnancy, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, etc.)  that go on within that. We’re here specifically on Rab v. Penumbra fans of color and we’re staying there.

Anyone who’s been in Penumbra enough to realize that everyone draws the Junoverse characters in a certain way knows that a) Juno is black, b) Nureyev is Asian, and c) as a fan you have to be aware of what you’re subjecting or saying about either of them because of the political repercussions that come with it.

And despite that, Rab proceeded to write Peter Nureyev, a gender nonconforming gay Asian male character that is widely headcanon’d as trans, into a fic using a kink trope that relies heavily on animal behavior.

Unlike most people new to fandom, Rab is aware of what Omegaverse is and is very much white. She is (and if she isn’t, should be) aware of the racist undertones that writing him in would get.

I couldn’t get a screenshot of what snippets Rab was sending out into the ether, seeing as a majority of my friends would rather not have seen any at all (I have all of the usual tags blocked so I wouldn’t have seen it either way), but needless to say, Rab got attention for it. Both positive and negative.

Anne (@hopeless-eccentric) even posted a satirical fic, in the odds that Rab was just writing this thing to be “the first” to write Omegaverse fic in the Penumbra tags.

But, I’m assuming more than one fan of color came into Rab’s inbox and messaged her about it, but someone I know (who would like to remain anonymous) was gracious enough to take a screenshot before he sent his in and let me use it for this post:

[ID: A message to jitterbug-juno about to be sent by a sender whose name is censored with a black bar. His messages says:

“as someone who is a person of color i think the nature of the fic you are writing right now is extremely racist and attributing animal characteristics to lgbt people of color is not at all appropriate, especially when you are someone who is white. i have to ask you to not publish this fic and to reflect as to why you would want to write this in the first place, these tropes are extremely harmful and”

There are 33 characters left to write into the message. /end]

I can’t speak for whoever else sent asks about the fic she was writing. If anyone was actually not-so-gentle with her, well, minorities don’t really owe it to you to be gentle about what they can tell is bigotry-tinged behavior.

But, the message was clear: this is different from your garden variety, lily white straight male character m/m kink fantasy. This is an actual queer Asian character that a lot of queer Asian people feel attached do. Do not post the fic.

What happened next: the beginning of the end

The next morning, I woke up to most of my friends being frustrated by this post on Rab’s account:

[ID: Dated 5 June, a post by jitterbug-juno:

“Gonna leave the fandom for a while. Wishing you all well.”

The tags say the following: not sure if i’ll be back, thank you so much to everybody who’s read my fics, and who’s sent asks or engaged with my art or any of that, you’re amazing and I’m sending love /end]

That... was not what fans of color wanted, but it was definitely an action they took. Some celebrated, as they were very much wary of Rab for having caused much of the same category of drama in fandoms like Voltron: Legendary Defenders and Warrior Cats. This also meant that she was probably not going to post the fic either.

Some, myself included, were relatively pissed, as they’d wanted even just the measly bit of accountability. An apology or an acknowledgement of having been called out in private and that they’ll take time to consider why. But instead we got Rab leaving in the face of fans of color telling her not to post her Omegaverse fic.

Well. The next day...

[ID: Dated 6 June. A post by jitterbug-juno titled, “Well... that was short-lived”

“I gave the situation a lot of thought yesterday. The reaction to my omegaverse previews made me figure I should leave the fandom. It seemed like the safest option.

But you know what?

Hell.

I don’t want to leave. The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space.

Thank you to everyone who sent messages yesterday. I shouldn’t have made that post about leaving. It was really reactionary. I’m okay and I appreciate your support so much.

(bolded on the post) To those who are angry and uncomfortable with me: Please block me. If you’re going to talk about this fic on Tumblr and Twitter– and this may sound odd– PLEASE NAME ME as Jitterbug-juno or Pholo. Don’t vague me. That way people who don’t want to see this discourse can add my name to their block lists.“ /end]

That certainly was short-lived, she wasn’t kidding.

This got a lot of outrage. Again, the fic is up on Ao3 and she has not taken it down. A lot of POC were pissed and I didn’t see a single fan of color actively support what she was doing, at least, not in my friend group. Everyone started making those posts to block them if you liked the fic or Rab’s content in general, in accordance to what Rab wanted.

Perseus (@mraudiodrama) noticed/pointed out that Rab deleted the part where she said she spoke to several POC about releasing her fic, as well as the part where she said she refused to be chased out of the fandom. This was an incredibly pointed detail to edit out, according to some.

[ID: A screenshot of jitterbug-juno's last post taken 11:00PM. Much of it is the same except the following bolded words are removed: "The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space." /end]

That same day, Rab deleted her blog. I actually caught this one on tape, believe it or not.

[ID: A screen recording taken at 12:01 PM of someone scrolling down jitterbug-juno's account. The posts and asks about Omegaverse and her post about leaving and coming back are conspicuously absent. /end]

Initially, I thought she deleted all mentions of it. I wanted to see firsthand if the rumors about her deleting portions of it were true. If she added things where she was saying that she wanted to write it because she was autistic and wanted Nureyev to be autistic too, regardless of the numerous QPOC telling her not to do it.

Instead, it turned out, she deleted her blog.

And now, we're here. The fic is still up. Her blog is down. Rab's public Twitter account @nataclinn is quiet about this. Her @cushfuddled Twitter account is on private after her run-in with the Warrior Cats fandom, according to a friend. And her Tumblr @cushfuddled account has nothing but memes.

Again, I didn't make this post to stir up drama. I wasn't even obsessively making this post as a call-out because she isn't in the fandom anymore. I just want it out there that this isn't a purity culture thing that got out of hand in a fandom as niche as Penumbra. This was a case of someone being called out and failing to acknowledge it before running away. And I want all that out of the way before I say:

If you are on Rab's side of this debacle, I, a queer person of color, want nothing to do with you either.

[taxevader42069]

i’m not sure i will ever get over pegoryu. like, to me at least, it’s kind of obvious ryuji was meant to have a romance route, at least in the early stages of writing. like yosuke, the way his relationship builds with the main character is heavily implied to have something else to it. the only difference is that with ryuji, we have nothing. no scrapped confession lines, no solid proof that he was meant to be a dateable character in the game. but even just in tropes, they fit under a ton of japanese romance stereotypes. there’s a point in the anime where ryuji is handing sae’s treasure to akira, but for just a few moments, their hands linger on each other’s. ryuji knows the plan is to get arrested and have akiren fake his death, but he’s stated in the game that he was worried akira wouldn’t make it. i think the scene was meant to demonstrate that ryuji believed in akiren despite his rational fears, but they already did that with his mannerisms. he said he knew their leader would make it, but sounded unsure. he wasn’t ready to say goodbye in any way but he pretended to have confidence so their plan would work, but even so, the animation adds this detail without prompting. i understand that this is a strange detail to linger on for this long, but i’ve always thought of this scene when i think of pegoryu. if you ask me, this probably isnt the best point to say “ryuji would confess here!” because he absolutely wouldnt. he wants their leader to be able to focus, he wants him to be safe more than anything. what i do think, though, is that this is a huge turning point for ryuji’s thoughts. everything leading up to that hand hold was more likely a buildup towards ryuji accepting his feelings himself. again, like yosuke, ryuji delivers a few lines implying that he’s weirded out by gay men, or that he wouldn’t really even consider a relationship with a guy, so it would obviously be a while before this himbo of a man accepts his own feelings. but upon understanding what he felt, i don’t think he felt trapped or upset. i think he would promise himself that as soon as akiren got out alive, he would confess to him.

now, the moment akira comes back to leblanc, you’ll notice that everyone is waiting for him. however, the first person to run up to their leader is ryuji. not only does he become the first person to approach akira, he gives him a big ol hug while he’s there. he says that he missed him, and he seems extremely relieved/ happy to see akira again altogether. this can easily be read as platonic, although it’s extremely doubtful ryuji would walk up to just whoever and give them a hug in the same manner he did akira. you never see him do this with anyone else in the game, he is ONLY this touchy with akira, and that’s highlited a few times. the game makes it very clear that only one person gets this treatment. this touchiness isnt just for one scene though, there are clear times where ryuji approaches akira unprompted, as if he just wants to be with him. the infamous bath house scene where ryuji leans on akira, to which akira says “don’t touch me,” (very flustered, might i add) and the treasure chest opening animation, where he keeps his hand on akita’s shoulder supportively the whole time, even giving him a little pat on the back.

speaking of being extremely touchy,, the valentine’s day short that nobody talks about. i know i just wrote a novel on how touchy ryuji is in the game, but this is a whole different BREED of touchy. there are points in this animation where ryuji smiles and holds akira’s hand, refers to akiren as “my renren!” and most importantly kisses akira. now, in all fairness? this short was really vague with what exactly happened. you ask ryuji if you’re his valentine, to which he provides an extremely clear “yes, yes of course,” before pausing and providing a much less confident “NOT!” you converse wirh ryuji for a while, and then it cuts to the attic. you can only see silhouettes of ryuji and akira through the window at this point, but they’re very clearly holding onto each other. their faces both lean towards each other, then the short is over. that’s it, that’s all the clarification we get. i’ve seen a lot of people argue that this was a hug, and usually i could agree. with a company like atlus, it’s a lot more likely that’s all it was. the one thing that leads me to believe otherwise is the fact that they didn’t let us see. if it was a hug, there’s nothing to censor, right? if they keep a kiss subtle, or if they’re able to make it subliminal, less people get pissed, everyone’s happy. EVERYONE EXCEPT ME BECAUSE THIS WAS BULLSHIT LET THEM KISS!!!!

regardless, touching back on the point where ryuji realizes his own feelings, there’s a scene during shido’s palace arc where ryuji calls the mc after everyone leaves his place. this is another scene everyone and their grandma has talked about, but i feel like i cannot drive this point home enough: this is the point where ryuji would have confessed if he hadn’t gotten too scared. he starts to say something, but he brushes it off with a “forget it,” and it’s never touched on again. am i going to say ryuji knew he would sacrifice himself if it came down to it and he wanted akiren to know in case that had to happen? yeah that’s. exactly what i’m going to say. in the end, i think his fear of ruining things outweighed his bravery, and so he hung up.

one of the BIGGEST points in the game that just drives home the idea that they’re romantically involved is at the very beginning. during the first palace ever, when akiren awakens to his persona, he does it to save ryuji. this might not seem like much, but considering the fact that most everyone else has an extreme driving reason to awaken to their persona, and akira’s is this kid he just met, i think that says a lot. DARE I SAY, they are literally soulmates. not only that, though, because akira is also partially responsible for ryuji’s awakening. i would argue it was ryuji’s anger at kamoshida for taking away the track team, or the fact that ryuji himself was about to be killed, but i believe that if that were the case, ryuji would have awoken to his persona at the same time akira did. there were extremely similar circumstances, and the opportunity was definitely there. but instead, it’s only when akira is on the ground and encourages him not to lose hope that he gets pissed enough to get his persona. they are each other’s reason to not let hope die. that’s it that’s the post

[jupitermelichios]

So I know everyone talks about how whether DC or Marvel has the best queer representation (the answer’s still marvel 100% due to Chris Clairmont and his confused but dedicated allyship, but DC are starting to catch up)

You know what we don’t talk about enough? Which studio has the most characters who are clearly not cishet, but haven’t been allowed to come out. Not characters that you want to be queer, the characters who everyone legit forgets aren’t queer.

And now I want a list of all these characters, so that when i get my fucking genie wish and become an editor for big two cape comics, I know who to target.

I’ll start us off:

Marvel: Kitty Pryde

Chris Clairmont is on the record (in a guest appearance on X-Plain the X-Men) as saying that if he had his time over he wouldn’t make Kitty canon queer... because he had way too much fun sneaking her relationship with Rachel (and Styr-9) past the censors. It’s word of god not canon, but when it comes to the x-men you don’t get much closer to literal word of god than word of Clairmont.

Marvel: Gambit

There is basically no textual evidence for Gambit being bi, and yet there is not a queer x-men fan in the world who doesn’t constantly forget he’s canon-straight. I have seen multiple posts of people claiming that he’s canonically queer, despite definitely not being, just because of the sheer force of his disaster-bi energy.

Marvel: Cable

Look, we all know at this point that Deadpool is queer. But the only reason that that’s such a big part of his character is thanks to Cable and Deadpool (Nicieza is pretty homophobic and yet somehow managed to write both Cable and Deadpool and the definitive Red Robin comic, both featuring very clearly queer main characters). And if Wade’s queer because he’s dating Cable, then Cable must be... come on Marvel, you can do it, just apply a tiny bit of logic...

Marvel: Wolverine

I’m just going to leave this cover here...

Marvel: Steve Rogers

Tony’s queerness has reached the nebulous ‘we’re making jokes about it in the hopes that you’ll all stop thinking he’s queer’ status of canoninity, but Steve is still officially straight, despite the fact that him and comics Tony are definitely dating. Or were. There was a messy breakup or six. Disney decided to get around that in the movies by... aging up his kid sidekick into a gorgeous adult man who Steve will do literally anything for and then framing them like a 1940′s propaganda romance movie... Good job guys!

(That’s not fanart btw, that’s from the one AU where Tony got rule63′d and her and that universe’s steve are married)

Marvel: Storm

Boy a lot of these are Clairmont’s babies. Like I said, confused but dedicated allyship. Storm regularly does things like challenge heavily queer-coded character Callisto to homo-erotic knife fights. And whatever the writers thought was happening in the panels below. It’s really past time she came out.

DC: Wonderwoman

This is the big one. The biggest one in fact. Multiple writers have said that they consider her to be queer, but word of god is not canon, and she’s still somehow in the closet. Despite being based on two different queer women. And doing shit like this all the time. And yet somehow she’s still not canonically a lesbian, even as we move further and further away from a time when Steve Trevor mattered to anyone at all.

DC: Dick Grayson

Despite what 70 years of comics have tried so hard to tell us, Dick has never canonically slept with Midnighter. Or the Tiger King of Kandahar. Or Wally West. Or Roy Harper. Or Clark Kent. Or any of the other men he’s been heavily implied to be romantically interested in over the years. And despite the fact that his relationships with woman always end in disaster. The only comfort is the Dick is 100% the sort of person to have just assumed that all straight boys jerk off thinking about their male friends and never once stopped and questioned his sexuality for more than 10 seconds.

(there is absolutely no reason why this team-up with DC’s flagship gay character had to happen while all the men are naked, except that the creative team on Grayson understood exactly what people want from a Dick Grayson comic).

DC: Tim Drake

Did you know Tim Drake is not canonically queer? And has never once felt anything like sexual attraction to any man, including Superboy? And his crush on Dick Grayson is not in any way a crush, he was just platonically stalking and fantasising about him? Tim, like his big brother, is one of the characters who is only getting queerer with time. Part of that is that they wanted to make it clear he’s a millenial, and ended up doing an accidental Cock-Ring Ken on him. (See also Harper Row, who they made butch, with a turqiouse undercut, and then were astonished when people thought she was queer. They did eventually give in, but only once she was firmly out of the main character roster). I think Tim’s queer. You think Tim’s queer. All the characters in DC comics think he’s queer. Everyone except the editorial team at DC think Tim is queer, and it is an absolute crime that they won’t let him come out.

[paladinspride]

Hopefully this is my last VLD S7 discourse post.

I usually try to stay out of the drama but LGBTQ rep is near and dear to me and I have spent the last few days totally caught up in the discourse surrounding S7, despite my best intentions. Can I blame myself though? It is every where!  

So I am hoping if I just put all my thoughts in an under the cut post, maybe I can move on and go back to enjoying the show for what it is and creating and assuming the fanon content I enjoy. I really do like the show. I just have feelings about some decisions.

Warning, there is an essay under here:

I’ll start by reminding people, I am in my 30s and I came out as bi in the 90s so I grew up in a totally different stage of society than most of the fandom. I mention this because it is important to keep in mind that the western world was not as open and accepting as it is now and my generation did a lot to make progress happen. There is still a lot to be done, but that is another matter.

I grew up in an age where LGBTQ characters, if present, were usually evil, tortured or killed off. At best, they were a comedic side kick. When we started to get LGBTQ content, shows like Queer as Folk, were given late night time slots and considered adult and taboo.  

Shows like Modern Family were an amazing win for LGBTQ rep but animation still had/has a lot of ground work to do.

Dreamworks got flack for Gobber saying, “And that’s why I never married,” in HTTYD 2 and that was super vague.

Conservative groups were adamant that children’s content be free of “discussions of sexuality.” Gosh forbid, someone be gay so any references had to be vague and nearly undetectable. LGBTQ content was heavily censored and often out right forbidden.

Legend of Korra’s Korrasami pushed the envelope and broke ground but it’s rep was still at the very end of the series and quiet enough to sneak by censors.

Right before I watched VLD, I watched Yuri on Ice and was so moved that there was a well written animated series that depicted a same sex relationship where it wasn’t played for comedic effect, tokenism or tragedy.

When I finished YOI, I got sucked into VLD by the fan art. When I watched the show, Keith and Lance’s relationship intrigued me and I had fun imagining scenarios where they could end up together and live in domestic bliss.

The fandom ate it up. There was so much K/lance content to create and consume and so much positive response to it, that I fell in love. They became an OTP and I have dedicated my blog to them ever since.

However, this whole time I have been cautiously optimistic about the likelihood that K/lance could become canon because I imagined the crew would have a fight on their hands to make it happen. My experience with representation in media made it hard for me to let myself hope.  

But I let myself believe because of LOK, Disney having a gay character come out on one of its youth series, and shows like One Day At A Time.

Shipping meta didn’t help.          

But I tried very hard to keep my hopes in check and remind myself that fanon isn’t canon and that I am hear for the fanon. Canon would be nice but it is not the end all be all. I had to repeat this to myself a lot.

The last little while I have found myself growing exceptionally tired of “KICK” and shipper’s insistence that K/lance will be canon because I knew the fandom was getting their hopes up and that fanon and canon are separate things and I didn’t want people to get their hearts broken when fanon wasn’t represented in canon.

Also, I wanted people to focus on creating and consuming fanon content rather than scouring the canon for proof and engaging in petty ship wars, but that is some people’s idea of fun, and I can’t judge them for enjoying the show differently than me.

Anyways, despite my reservations, I let myself hope.

Then we had Shiro’s reveal. I was so excited that we were getting a strong persevering leader and POC as LGBTQ rep in a children’s animation that I didn’t even care that the likelihood of K/lance was diminished for me because there was no way I could let my self believe that we could have three characters in canon m/m relationships.

But then I watched S7 and the rep fell a little flat for me, but I was still happy there was enough insinuation that m/m youth could see themselves in Shiro.

But then they gave Ezor and Zethrid a coded scene and killed them and Adam.

I don’t think the show runners did this with any ill intent. I think they were clueless to the fact that they were committing a dangerous trope.

The show is about war, yes, and people are lost in war, but we need to have enough LGBTQ characters in animation, media in general really, that the loss of one is not such a blow.  They should have predicted the fandom outrage, but I don’t think they did, and now they are on the defensive, seemingly making things worse.  

I also felt queer baited. And I don’t use that term lightly. I have defended them against queer baiting in the past because 99% of the time, the feeling is the result of the fandom building hype by reading into things and spinning things the showrunners and Vas said and not actually baiting.

And that happened again here.

But I feel like the showrunners contributed to it this time.

But I also am not sure how they could have shut it down.

I kind of wish they would not have said anything about Shiro at SDCC and just let the viewers interpret the scene for themselves. LM and JDS saying Adam and Shiro were engaged doesn’t mean anything if they don’t show it in the show. That was their mistake.

If they were not sure they would be able to give explicit rep, they should not have said anything about it. I don’t think people would have cared as much that there was not LGBTQ rep if we were not expecting it.

I get wanting to make everyone happy and being inclusive and not wanting to spoil anything or shut down ships but ugh it made an ugly situation. I  don’t know how they could have been more honest without spoiling things though.  

(But if they really didn’t want to shut down ships, why write Lance and Keith in any romantic arcs at all? They knew how popular the ships were to make some changes? I suppose the verdict is still out on whether A/llurance and K/acxa are gonna be cannon though so I really shouldn’t assume and get upset about that yet)

The fandom is partly to blame for the hype and perceived queer baiting in the past. If people didn’t ask questions that put show runners and VAs in awkward spots or spinning things said, the hype might not be so extreme.  

But this time it feels like the show runners went with it?

Did marketers encourage the hype for ratings though? Definitely. I don’t trust marketers. There goal is to get people talking about the show, be it good or bad. It’s important to remember the show runners and the marketers are separate. Netflix pulled some shady moves with the posters and that whole folding picture thing.

And that brings me back to K/lance.  

For awhile now I am have been thinking they pulled a Zutara with K/lance and S/hallura, (Zutara is the pairing of Zuko and Katara from Avatar the Last Airbender, and the plan was for them to be canon but studio pressure suggested the audience related to Aang more so they shifted gears and made Kaang the canon romance in the last season instead).

S/hallura could have been such a beautifully written loves story of two fierce leaders and no one can tell me they don’t have chemistry and corresponding arcs.

So I was surprised when it was revealed that Shiro was the LGBTQ rep.

This made me think maybe Shiro and Adam were to be just friends and K/lance was meant to be canon after all, which is why so many of us saw canon potential in S1-3) but then it got shut down for any numbers of reasons and they decided to make Shiro the rep instead.

Barlee recently tweeted that Shiro was always meant to be the LGBTQ rep and they had to fight for what they showed though.

So this combined with the fact that they had to fight to show what little they did and the insistence that Shiro “is the rep,” makes me think K/lance isn’t happening for sure.

And I am sad about that. And that is ok. I am allowed to be sad about it. My sadness that my ship won’t be canon should not dismiss my concerns about the bury your gays trope though. They are two different issues and I am sick that people are undermining the argument because of who people ship.

I am also sad, that Barlee’s tweet suggested that LM and JDS did not get to tell the story they wanted to tell because of studio meddling. I’d really love to know what that story was.  

But I will get over it and go back to creating and consuming content for K/lance and VLD because the world that VLD created is rich and inspiring to me. I love exploring the what ifs and alternate story lines the VLD universe has to offer because that is the part of fandom I enjoy.

I enjoy the canon too, but it is just one story in a list of endless possibilities.

[notanicequeen-blog]

An Explanation, and Romantic Frustration

Hi there, assorted people. I'm Elsa, and I am not an ice queen. And today, I'm going to talk about something that is probably more common in television than in text-based mediums, though I imagine it exists in basically every sort of medium. It's a pet peeve of mine, and as we're all aware, this is my blog, so I can write about whatever I damn well please.

So, what is it?

Queer baiting.

'But what is queer baiting?' you might ask.

You've most likely seen or heard or read something where there are two characters that are the same gender, and they're close. Like, really close. There are long, soulful stares, lingering touches, rather suspicious overprotectiveness, a certain preoccupation with each other… If they were different genders, if would just be assumed that at some point, they would screw each other's brains out, but in their native medium, they are rather explicitly best friends. Within the fandom, they are probably a very popular pairing, or even the most popular pairing.

Other characters probably make jokes about how they need to get a room or how they act like an old married couple, but despite that, you get the distinct impression that they will never actually be together in a romantic sense. In fact, the entire point of the jokes seems to be for the not-couple in question to scoff at the idea.

This is queer baiting. If you watched the BBC Sherlock series or anything beyond season four of Supernatural, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

(TL;DR: queer baiting is the writing equivalent of playing gay chicken and then shouting, "NO HOMO!" at the top of your lungs and pounding your chest.)

Is it problematic? Yes. How come? Let's get into that.

Queer baiting implies that homosexual relationships are dirty and need to be hidden, like filthy kinks or fetishes that must be kept away from the civilized world; they can only be whipped out in private or when they can be easily explained away. Because god forbid two men love each other without a woman being thrown at one of them whenever the bromance gets a bit too close to losing the B (unless you go the Supernatural route and just kill one of them every few episodes). God forbid two women be together if a man can't climb into bed with one of them whenever someone in the audience starts to side eye the relationship.

In slightly less scathing terms: homosexual relationships are already frowned upon in real life, and queer baiting encourages that attitude.

On top of that, it shows that the writers are cowards. They're willing to exploit the idea of a same sex relationship if they think it will attract a larger audience--to dangle it around like a carrot on a stick--but when it comes to committing to writing an actual same sex relationship, an endless line of love interests that are probably made of balsa wood and wood shavings are paraded through. Despite the fact that it's the characterization that the writers wrote themselves, they are too cowardly to just follow through and let a relationship happen.

(Let the record show that I am just using 'writers' as a stand-in term. I am aware that sometimes it's the producers or the network or whoever else forbidding it.)

Now, I know this kind of makes it sound like I expect all close platonic relationships to turn romantic. I promise, that isn't the case. If they were just going to stay as platonic soul mates or whatever you want to call it and they just told anyone making a big deal about it to piss off, I would be cool with that. I am bothered, specifically, by the idea of them being in a relationship being treated as something sinful or forbidden or as a joke.

Not all is lost, though. It's important to remember shortcomings, but it's just as important to still remember the successes.

When it comes to cartoons, the writers of Adventure Time consider Princess Bubblegum and Marceline to be a couple, and at the end of The Legend of Korra, the writers implied as heavily as they could get away with that Korra and Asami were a couple by the end. In both cases, though, the networks forbid them from just stating that outright.

(This is one of the few ways that Korra getting dicked around by the network actually helped, as the last season was relegated to online streaming, which undergoes less rigorous censoring.)

The Dragon Age and Mass Effect series of video games both have bisexual and homosexual romance options, though in the case of Mass Effect, the homosexual options for male characters were rather… uncreative. (Humans. The options were all humans, in a series where all the fans want to screw aliens and/or robots.) The Fable series of games has always let the player marry whoever they please, regardless of the player character's gender. In the Sims games, characters are all bisexual by default, save for an incident where homosexual relationships were removed on Nintendo consoles. As a personal recommendation, Gone Home involves walking the main character through a string of clues and journal entries to put together her younger sister's coming-out story.

Queer As Folk and Dante's Cove are both shows that reveled in their gayness in their times, and both were rather ahead of the curve for it (admittedly, I can't really speak for the quality of Dante's Cove). The Originals, Smash, Shameless, Spartacus, and a host of other shows all have openly bisexual or homosexual characters and relationships.

The Kids Are All Right, Saving Face, Shelter, and Pit Stop are all films about, or at least dealing heavily with people in homosexual relationships. And with sites like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc., shows and movies like this can be found pretty easily. (The Babadook will be your guide.)

The Heralds of Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey have several homosexual couples that show up, and The Last Herald-Mage trilogy (one of the foundational trilogies of the series, as it explains several key aspects of lore) follows Vanyel, a gay man. (As a caveat, the final book in the trilogy involves a fade-to-black style gang rape that seems to exist largely just to put Vanyel through more shit, and I found it to be in rather poor taste.) Homosexual relationships are becoming more and more accepted in YA literature, as you'll see in Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan, Keeping You A Secret by Julie Anne Peters, Adaptation by Malinda Lo, and Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, and a host of others.

The most recent run of Transformers comics has finally begun to include gay relationships. Questionable Content is a webcomic that has been around since basically the dawn of time and includes gay and bisexual characters, and even includes a bisexual woman who is actually involved with another woman, rather than her bisexuality just being a detail tacked onto her backstory. Tripping Over You is a quaint little webcomic detailing the attraction and building relationship between two boys through high school and out into the real world during college.

Queer baiting is problematic and it's still running far more rampant than I would like it to be (if you hadn't guessed, I would like for it to not exist), but the LGBTQ community is not invisible in fiction, and it's getting more visible by the day. I don't know about you, but I'll take my victories where I can find them for now, and I'll be happy in the knowledge that not every writer is too chicken shit to follow through on the relationships they started.