#het ship so good it feels like queerbait

[verycharismaticdragon]

Currently reading a Korean webnovel instead of Chinese ones and this is making me conceptualize something, let’s see if I can put it in words…

My musings started with realizing that I’ve become very used to this cnovels thing where the main pairing is literally stated in the summary. Not the case for the k-novel I’m reading, and therefore I’m experiencing Pain and Suffering, — torn between my every instinct screaming that the author is setting up the OT3 endgame, and trying to lower my expectations to avoid disappointment. (And the novel is ongoing so I can’t even get spoilers for the ending :) girl help.)

As you may’ve guessed, I found myself strongly preferring the Chinese variant; but as to why exactly it was so important for my enjoyment to know the main couple… it took me a bit to figure out.

I mean, it’s not like I’m reading exclusively for romance, okay? Fannish activity-wise, sure, I tend to get fixated on ships (though even then, not all the time), but when it comes to reading (or any media intake, really), it’s not necessarily what I’m most interested in. Among my beloved titles, there are many where there’s no canon or fanon couple I'm attached to — and more than a few where there’s a canon couple that I neither love nor hate, just accept. So why did I get so attached to the concept of being, essentially, spoiled the endgame couple beforehand?

The key word that made it click was: promise. After all, it’s not like knowing the names of the characters that get together tells me anything about if they will be interesting or boring together, if they will be good for each other or make me scream “break up!” a million times. But it is a solid promise that these two people ARE gonna be a couple. 

And thinking about the word promise reminded me of discussions on plot twists that I’ve seen on here, about what makes a good plot twist and what makes a bad one — specifically, the phrase “narrative promise” that someone came up with. Basically, narrative promise is in the set up and the build up. If the plot twist betrays the narrative promise, it will not work, and it will be hated by the audience, who’ll feel like their emotional investment into the story was mocked.

The thing about the narrative promise, and why this term stuck with me, is that it’s actually applicable more broadly than just for shock-factor plot twists. For example: what is queerbaiting, if not betraying the narrative promise that the two characters are gonna be together? The fans see the narrative promise — the set up and the build up that would be unequivocally romantic for a het couple — and expect it to be fulfilled; only to be called delusional by the very creators that gave them this expectation. 

And this brings me to the next point: the catch of the “narrative promise” is that it’s never a guarantee. You can be completely sure the author is setting up X, only for them to turn around and do something completely different. (Possibly while calling you a little bitch for having the stupidity to invest your feelings into their creation, too.) After a while, a fan learns to manage their expectations. To not bet too much on anything, even if it feels like there’s no other way it can go. To wait until the end of the season or the last chapter before allowing themselves to get attached; to hold back on deciding whether something is good or not, lest they hype up something they will want to bury and forget later.

And this is where we circle back to c-novels, and to spoiling the main couple in the summary. Except I hesitate to call it “spoiling” because, as discussed, it actually heightens my enjoyment. For a simple reason: this practice takes the narrative promise from its nebulous, uncertain status to something concrete and real. Only for this one aspect and with the minimal-est amount of information possible, but still. That’s one thing I don’t have to guess about or doubt myself on (am I seeing things? is there a heterosexual explanation another way to read this? will the author simply kill off one of the characters before the end so that they don’t have to decide whether to make them explicitly queer?), and one thing I can count on (whatever else happens in the plot, I’ll still have this). It’s easy to invest emotionally into those characters and their relationship, when you have an assurance of their happy ending.

Ofc, I’m not saying that I don’t invest emotionally into relationships or characters other than the main CP — just that it is easier. And I would even say having this one(1) hard promise makes it easier to invest into other elements of the work, too, as it makes for a sort of safety net even if something else is disappointing or painful. 

Like, say you are invested in one couple with great chemistry and one side character. In case of a pre-stated ship, even if the side character dies, at least you still have the canon couple. So it’s not like all of your emotional connection to the book is lost, and you can probably bear with the loss of that character by writing everybody lives AU or something. But if the side character dies AND the couple you were invested in gets broken up or killed off or straight-married with other ppl… then doesn’t that make the entire thing into one massive disappointment? to the point that you might even regret picking up the book that made you care only to slap you in the face?.. 

So yeah, having even just one ship guaranteed is very comforting. And then I thought, well, doesn’t this apply to another type of fiction that I’m very familiar with?

Fanfiction?

Which, since very early on, has adopted the practice of putting the endgame ship in the header of the fic. And which, probably not coincidentally, is often a response to a broken (or at the very least not brought to its logical conclusion) narrative promise. And which always felt uniquely easy to read for me… 

See, prior to getting on this little thought train, I always assumed the ease was due to pre-existing familiarity with canon. You know, not having to learn the entire new setting, already having attachment to the characters… But now that I’ve connected these dots, I thought about times I read fics for fandoms I wasn’t familiar with, and originals formatted as fics — and really, wasn’t it always about the narrative promise made solid? 

Esp with how fics make it even broader than cnovels, by having extensive tags and ratings and such. Getting into a fic, you have a pretty clear idea of what may or may not happen in the story, even if you don’t know what exactly will happen or how. And a fic can fail to live up to the premise set up by ship/rating/tags — but not completely turn its back on it. 

(Well, normally. But in those exceptional cases where tags are misleading, at least you have something to point to when saying, “this is not what I was promised”. The ficwriter can hardly claim they don't understand why you expected [ship] to happen when they personally tagged their work as containing that ship — unlike the traditional media creators, who can always play the "you were totally misunderstanding my intentions the entire time" card.)

And having a solid promise like this, it turns out, takes lotsa pressure off starting a New Unfamiliar thing. I do, in fact, trust like that! So it’s no wonder that there were periods in my life when I would only consume fanfiction, because it was so much easier than extending trust to new titles. And it’s no wonder that what brought me back to being an avid reader were Chinese webnovels that use a practice very similar to what we have in fandoms.

I guess I understand myself better now! Still wish I knew if that k-novel's author is /j or /srs about the ot3 though.

[moonagedaydreamsofrhiannon]

het ships so good they feel like queerbaiting

[outrunningthedark]

I can't wait for all the unhinged queerbaiting allegations that will inevitably come

I sympathize with those people, I really do (I think a lot of them are young enough that a m/m ship going canon feels like the "obvious" choice because TV has adapted over time), but they don't seem to understand that the only way to avoid the situation is to stop getting content altogether - on screen or off. "Well, if Tim or Kristen shut down the speculation at least we'd know." Kristen made it very clear that they were being written as good friends/their own little family in her two years as show runner and the two reactions were "wtf why is she so homophobic" or "CLEARLY she can't tell us what's really going on, so let's just wait for the truth" (and then that "truth" never came). Tim has been VERY respectful of Buddie fandom, going so far as to say he's had conversations with others about what story they're trying to tell. He KNOWS how much it would mean to a small percentage of the fan base for these two to be canon. The fact that it hasn't happened, or been suggested outside of fandom theories? Not on him. But he makes one comment about being accused of queerbaiting no matter what he does (accurate!) and suddenly there were blogs acting happy that Kristen had been given more control as if Tim taking a backseat meant Kristen could put her master plan in place. 😐 (She did. She gave them girlfriends again.)

The last thing I want to say about the queerbaiting accusations has irked me for a while. I get the disappointment in a queer ship not being canon. I get that the knee-jerk reaction can be to say a friendship "isn't the same" as the feeling you'd get from canonized romance. But if the show is writing a queer ship in a way that mimics the het ones, and that ship never goes canon...is it BAITING? Or is it a case of telling a queer love story without labeling anyone because that's the best they can do?

[invested-in-your-future]

thoughts on bumbleby?

I…genuinely can't see a version of RWBY where those two are NOT the endgame. As characters they are closely tied since the very first trailer, the beauty and the beast metaphors just literally write themselves and beyond Cinder's plot, its the single most well built up thing in Volume 1 through 3 and their trauma is intrinsically linked. Their relationship is genuinely THERE - be it in terms of each allowing themselves to be vulnerable when around each other or just how much blake subconsciously tied herself emotionally to Yang (considering how much Mercury stuff hits her in V3). Its likely the single most tangible idea in the show.

The fact that I have SEVERE doubts it would have gone ANYWHERE had RWBY not been put into a situation where it's very survival as a show is in danger…speaks miles about how RWBY is handling various aspects of itself, be it characterization or social issues…

The show is…not great with inclusivity…at all. Be it tackling it as in-story issue (be it WF storyline or how the show handles trauma) or actually being inclusive. Inclusivity is something that comes up as patchwork against critique, rather than something that's intervowen into the show. The amount of queerbait, heternormativity, ableism or just outright insensitivity is just…yeah. Till certain point show is completely oblivious just how heteronormative it is, like it takes legit YEARS before the criticism reaches the writers and they throw at the viewer "here LGBT people exist" kind of moment.

It kind of made me feel like this relationship is this "break in case of emergency" thing, where the show is absolutely afraid to commit to any sort of buildup and instead dangles it as POSSIBILITY, while also throwing in a good share of random het stuff around. You take any moment in time of RWBY existing, Monty or no Monty and you will have SOMETHING - be it the way Sun's team is used in S2 that feels like writers being scared of WLW ships that came to be or the infamous bumbleby song incident where RT released an absolutely romantic ship song during pride month and then backpedalled hard on how it means nothing for canon and how all songs totally mean nothing for canon. Or how after the absolutely charged build up in V3, you get an…entire season of trying to counter-balance it with Blake and Sun where the show tries to execute a similar plotpoint between them. Its a repeated pattern of plausible deniability.

Even if you take a moment without a controversy brewing, it always felt like the writers are AFRAID of Blake and Yang actually interacting or progressing as characters or as a relationship. Volume 4 through 8 are filled with the kinds of situations where Blake and Yang "share a scene together", but in terms of writing it feels like there's intentional artificial wall placed in between them. The characters are not allowed to deal with their separation at the end of V3 because it could be viewed as romantic, the characters are not allowed to vocalize their trauma because their traumas are intertwined and it could be viewed as romantic bonding, the characters are not allowed to to react to each other's actions because reacting to each other can be seen as romantic. So in a way you get a lot of scenes where Blake and Yang can stand together in a same scene but not really progress.

Like not even just as a pairing, you don't need a pairing to deal with character sexuality. You can still do entirety of will they won't they after having confirmed that yes Blake and Yang can be interested in women romantically. But the show avoids it till the last possible moment.

Given to be fair, that applies to more than LGBT topics - Ruby has spent her ENTIRE SCREENTIME from start of V4 till end of V8 being juuuuust on the brink of having a proper character moment where she can reflect on her trauma, for example, just scene upon scene where any kind of breakthrough is suddenly interrupted or goes nowhere. That's because the show is afraid of committing to ANYTHING overall, not just LGBT pairings. Any sort of character development, any sort of growth or change, any sort of progress. Any bigger revelation is toothless (just think back onto Salem flashback and just how it changes absolutely NOTHING in the show)

So you have basically a show where you have a bunch of characters and relationships with a lot of potential and possible build up and the show kind of does nothing with it for entire seasons. Because the show is afraid of change or progress of any sort.

Countries can fall, people can die and nothing changes.

Characters Don't. Status Quo Doesn't. Setting Doesn't.

It feels like the show is stuck. Stuck just after V3 ended. Stuck and just throwing multiple kind of redundant plotlines at the viewer to distract.

I love Blake and Yang as a pairing and I think its one thing that makes the most sense in the show. Its one of the main draws to the show for me when I still watched it.

I wish this show was THE show that lived up to the boundless storytelling potential that that relationship is...alas.

So yeah, its complicated.

[rcrisdraws]

I love seeing the results of these polls. I'm in a queer bookclub and we were discussing as a group a similar thing: some of us were adamant about preferring canon queer material over all others, and some of us preferred better writing even if it was for het or even queerbaiting.

I'm personally here for strong narratives and my preferred writing style, or a genre I enjoy more than the gender or sexuality of the characters but it was a fascinating conversation. I'm also in the minority bc I don't really "ship" in books or movies, so I know that affects my position on it. But anyway, neat to see a wider poll than my bookclub!!!

I feel pretty confident in my character/narrative writing, even though I'm always looking for critiques and while definitely just a rough draft you can message me to show you the story so far (it's a near future sci-fi racing romp), regardless of that i felt like there's definitely a certain form of... reticence when it comes to canon wlw media or media focused primarily on women, which is why I phrased the question the way that I did.

Definitely feeling like the 'good writing' bit is a double edged sword depending on people's preferences in terms of romantic tropes and character tropes in general (and I'm feeling as a writer rather predictable in terms of tropes that are to be put forth because that's what I enjoy writing), but it's double especially whenever it comes to women characters. The anxiety is that even though the trope is a well established, well liked, celebrated even, trope for queer/queerbaity media it'd either be extra scrutinized or disregarded bc of the gender of the characters. Having books like The Locked Tomb series and the flagship ship of the newest media obsession be wlw (Farcille from Dungeon Meshi) is making things hopeful though bc it is kinda the vibe i'm striving for

But yeah it's a big big big convo to be had on the topic

[thelesbianpoirot]

omg i'm soooo glad you're enjoying scott and bailey. i know the show doesn't really fit the definition of "queerbaiting" as such, but they FEEL like lesbians to me despite the constant scrotes going in and out of their lives. i think it's because they are so normal and look normal and dress normal. there are no fillers or shapewear or high heels or performances of femininity. they're just normal kinda grungey women (who should kiss). it's v refreshing compared to how sexualised and feminised a lot of female characters on tv are (even ones who are meant to be lesbians).

did you ever watch the rookie (or the rookie: feds)? there is a lesbian character who pops up on the rookie and then as the lead in the spin off, and she is squeezed into skin tight cleavage tops and dresses 24/7. she has a full face of make up at all times. her hair is glamorous and silky. she's a lesbian but i felt completely disconnected from her, whereas i do feel connected to scott and bailey (and jill!!!).

can i rec another "wow everyone looks a real human" show to you (sorry, you've got so much to watch already haha). last tango in halifax. it's not a cop show, but bear with me. it's about an old man and an old woman meeting and falling in love (again, bear with me). the reason i'm reccing it to you is their (unrelated) adult daughters who i shipped like i have never shipped anything else in my whole entire life. like it got to the point where i - a lesbian woc - was howling at the tv like "PLEASE break up with your black girlfriend and go marry your white sister in law!!!!" LMFAO. there was so much electricity between them!!! if you watch this after you're done with s&b, you'll notice that one of the daughters is the recurring lesbian from s&b s3 :)

You're right, and the writing is really solid too and the acting is good. But yeah, they look like beautiful women but a real kind of beautiful. And they aren't posing constantly, or being made up when they are supposed to be a mess. Grungey isn't the right word, because they are still feminine and well dressed and thin actresses, but still 10000% percent real. You see age, and lack of padding, and no surgery, and a normal amount of makeup, these women look like they may be your boss, or the lady at the bus stop with you or someone you see buying coffee. For women who have het love affairs I do enjoy them more than the any lesbian character played by a 23 year old straight swimwear model who can't act her way out of a paper bag and is given a story about as complex as "oooh a girl kissed me what do I do?" You're 27 stacy go finger her about it! I quick the rookie early on, the actual cases they went on were fucking stupid, I only got about five episodes in before quitting, I seriously only think this show got greenlit because nathan fillion got a bunch of money from cops to create recruitment propaganda for them. The episode where the tiny women was abusing her massive wrestler husband was pure fantasy. I can imagine they can't write a lesbian character for shit either, or dress her in anyway that says she's for the female audience. I am surprised they didn't let us have any of the women as gay or bi, at least give us gill, but no...Scott and Bailey says you will love these het women and eat these crumps of female solidarity.

Lmao I'll add last tango in halifax to the long list, today I am watching miss marple, so I don't end up marathon all of S&B before my vacation is up, but they love to give them a black girlfriend and give the two characters no chemistry, just boring token rep, so I can see even the sister in law chemistry being more interesting. If you do want to watch a crime show (of course I am predictable) with a interracial lesbian couple, one of my favorites is Pippy and Tara from Rosewood. It's a series cancelled two season in, but they are adorable and I love them. Both really femme but they sell gay to me.

[shadowfiredemonwolf]

I have seen someone respond to my point about how if sun and yang were gender swapped  Iwould still ship blacksun sun x blake 

by going well then you wouldnt care about genderbending if a rwby remake happens where blacksun does happen ( ie saying I shouldnt care about genderbending  sun and yang in a rwby remake

( because I brought up the idea of a remake to them ) 

but here is a thing I bet if in original rwby bb direction change didnt happen and blacksun did ( like say erase the bb teasing moments in v7 onwards like nora comparing renora to bb 

and when blacksun reunited  blacksun happened)

and say there was a rwby remake  if say that rwby remake had gender bent yang and sun and in that remake bb happened they would get pissed ( I know that so I am holding them to that standard of not budging on no genderbending (  

good writing and ships are more important then lgbt representation 

it doesnt matter that there are only a few same sex ships canon or shows in general  good writing is more important than that representation

it doesnt matter that bb was more popular then blacksun ( popularity doesnt mean there is evidence appeal to popularity is a fallacy

and you dont get to claim if a ship is popular it deserved to be canon and only apply that claim to  just same sex ships

if you go on a tangent complaining about how if there is a popular same sex ship and they dont become canon

and instead they are paired with someone else you dont get to attack shippers of a popular ship or pretend its different

all I see is people who make it about the genders involved or acting like lgbt rep is most important thing ignoring the writing which is actually more important

 if say a same sex ship was teased for years but then all of a sudden that ship was thrown out and ignored and a het ship was forced in  they would be pissed crying queerbaiting  no amount of going but  look at how many times a  same sex ship  didnt happen blacksun shippers have a right to bash bb 

bb being a same sex ship doesnt make it exempt 

it doesnt matter how little lgbt rep are in shows etc

all that matters is the buildup

its not even like bb not becoming canon means there would be no lgbt rep in team rwby since they could still make freezerburn or white rose canon ( if thats all they care about is genders involved sorry but quotas arent important I recall someone trying to argue that if you kill off a gay character who is part of the main cast you have to replace him with another one when no you dont

gay people arent exempt from dying in shows they are characters who happen to be gay its not automatically bury your gays for a gay character to die

)

bb feels like a direction change even if bb was planned it doesnt change that it had no buildup in the story  something being planned isnt the same as building it up look at how i met your mother for example they planned for the ending for years but the characters ended up developing to the point they moved past that ending but they kept to it which feels like regression

they gave blacksun so much that it even if bb was planned they should have abandoned that plan

( the people who  defend it on the basis of lgbt rep ( I am sure that there are many ) or who shipped it because they wanted lgbt  are the ones who shipp based on the genders involved who care about that kind of stuff while claiming that people who criticize bb in favor of blacksun are the ones who care about that

they go there are tons of shows where het ships become canon as if we give a damn 

they claim that if bb was m/f you would ship it with no basis

and it feels like projection given all the times I saw people complained about het ships becoming canon instead of the w/w ships they claimed would have been believable

 I could easily say that  they would not ship bb if it was m/f   they would instead ship blacksun seeing it getting years of teasing etc

 or that they if yang and suns genders were swapped they would ship blacksun

[farklelucas]

im so sorry but. yall really put on your clown shoes for this one.

[akookminsupporter]

I'm gonna play devil's advocate here and say we shouldn't keep interpreting fanservice as only queerbaiting. Fanservice has been a phenomenon in kpop for ages now and, considering how homophobic Korea was and still is, that fanservice did not start out as queerbaiting specifically. Fanservice was not meant to attract lgbt people, but to facilitate a way in which het girls could fantasize about their idols without feeling like their idols were unavailable. Unless I'm reading your comments wrong..

I've talked about fanservice and queerbating? I don't remember. But I can see your point. Is or was queerbating a well-known concept in South Korea? And I don't ask this as a form of insult or to call them ignorant but for example, in my country it's not a well-known concept. Or it wasn't. That would be a good way to start this conversation.

But I honestly don't know if started out that way. From what I researched at the time, fan service is a concept that originated in Japan, which sought to please the audience. That was or is its main objective.

Now here's the part I don't understand, two Idols flirting on stage, giving the impression that they are a couple, with suggestive touches between them and in some cases kissing each other, are pandering to the audience? That's taking the concept too literally, if we remember that this originated in Japanese anime and manga.

I think that's why fanservice in K-pop was taken or understood as queerbaiting, especially by the Western audience, it's not exactly what they were trying to do but it is what they ended up projecting ?maybe I'm wrong. 

Assuming that by doing all that they would be pandering to their audience, wouldn't they be assuming that their audience likes gay themes, gay couples (this specifically about fanservice with male Idols)? A pretty bold assumption, especially if we also remember that their main audience was Korean with all that implies.

You say maybe it was applied to make it easier for heterosexual girls to fantasise about their idols without feeling that their idols were unavailable... by suggesting or pretending that two male idols are a couple... so, here I can apply my theory about ships? That is a fetish for some people? I don't know if fetish is the right word. But it is a fantasy of many heterosexual women, isn't it? That's why a lot of them like to read yaoi manga, some watch gay porn, m/m fanfic etc. Is the attraction, often sexualised, of same-sex relationships, especially between attractive men.

I understand when fan service is them doing aegyo or acting cute, but the part about making two idols act like they're a couple, i don’t.

I want to make one thing clear, there's nothing wrong with that, and I mean homosexual content or content that has homosexual suggestions, but I find it interesting that the most common way they seem to do fanservice to please their audience is by doing something with sexual connotations. homosexual connotations.

clearly I don't know much about the subject and have more questions than answers or opinions, don't hate or insult me, if anyone wants to add to the discussion my ask box is available. 

[sherokutakari]

Things I don't like about Slyki:

It feels rushed

I think Loki and Sylvie work better as siblings with the way they act, both combativly and friendly

Saying they're bi but still giving them a romance the hets could overlook bc it "passes" annoys me (and before anyone screams biphobia, I'm happy to break down my feeling about this in a similar context of why sexy clothes can be liberating for irl people, but still sexist as hell and not empowering at all in fiction bc it's still a writer's choice to portray them that way,)

Loki's arc is supposed to be about learning to love himself and grow, not learning to love an iteration of himself from another timeline and still not learn things about himself bc of it

The actors' chemistry is just straight up not there for me in a romantic sense. The Lemantis scene literally made me go "oh god please don't. Okay thank you yes comfort without romance, thank u bbs." and Loki's thing right before he was pruned didn't feel genuine. Whether bc it was a trick or just, again, a chemistry thing, idk, but it felt very Not Good to me.

Not 100% a Lokius shipper (why does everything HAVE to have romance?) but the way Loki and Mobius play off each other feels more flirty and like it could go somewhere than Loki and Sylvie

Again: Why does everything have to have romance???

Reasons I will still absolutely fight you if you try and say Sylki is a "bad ship":

"It's incest!" Literally how. They are the same person from entirely different timelines, and entirely different individuals bc of it. Like that's the whole point. Look me in the eyes and tell me Croki is also the same person and therefore "basically siblings." Also I know y'all still shipping Thorki. Y'all ain't slick. (And I'd argue that's not incest either but I digress,)

"It's selfcest!!" ... yeah? Why is that bad? Go read some opinions about Loki x Jotun Loki that have been floating around since 2011 and get back to me. That's like a Whole Thing. Plus Idek why selfcest would be bad bc it hurts literally no one, but go off I guess

"It's queerbaiting!!" Look okay I get it, and as said above, I'm not a fan of how they're handling Loki's queerness bc the ship is total Het Comfort Food, but a bi person being in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender does not suddenly make them straight. Also Loki is canon genderqueer, even in the MCU now. His relationships can't be anything BUT queer. Die mad about it.

"It's not gay like in thought it was gonna be, so it's bad!!!" ?????¿¿? Get over yourself??? I'm a little disappointed too, but how about we don't fetishize queer/mlm relationships so much, hmm? Take a deep breath and go outside for half an hour. Let a bee land on you. Bc guess what. Even if it was Lokius/Loki² with another male presenting Loki, it wouldn't be a "gay" ship any more than Sylki is "straight" . The boi isn't cishet.

Anyway I have a lot of feelings about this ship (that I don't even like??) and I love Sylvie so fucking fight me

[thedeviljudges]

not an ask but your post on queerbaiting in response to @quillsandscreens 's post on gahan being headcanon hit the nail on the head! I don't really have a say in the convo bc im straight but my very straight ass could spot the queercoding from MILES away. I was so baffled when some others couldn't see it. It's all there, subtle but very intentionally framed. And had Gaon being a woman, the straights would've shipped the two to the ends of the earth without any change of script.

100% on point. so this is just me rambling here, but i tend to generalize in terms of straights just bc well, they're dominant and think everything is about them most of the time. so that's not to say everyone (like yourself) does not see the relationship within tdj. however, a good majority don't because they get to be blinded to all of the ways they are not negatively impacted by being queer. on top of that, if you're not within those circles of queer communities, there is so much context you miss out on, and that's a whole other level of overlooking.

underrepresented communities build specific context, discussions and language for each other to pick up on. (very poignant example of this is that is a little more mainstream is the fact that many women and their friends have no issue calling each other a bitch, regardless of whether it's out of love or not. but the minute a man calls a woman one.... nope. bc women understand the context in a non-threatening way. men, on the other hand, do not use that shit playfully and even if they try, it's uncomfortable).

so there is a lot of coding that happens with characters bc 1. there are rules/laws in place that prevent it being stated or could actually harm the crew/production/ability to get funded and 2. it's its own song and dance, the ability to create nuanced, subtle gestures and lines to show a character for who they are without uttering a singular word is absolutely incredibly bc of those limitations.

hets are so used to things being explicitly stated. they've never had to read between the lines. it's always handed to them, so no wonder that skillset isn't sharpened. they're under the impression that if it isn't said word for word, it must not exist and the intention was never there to begin with. but it's all about overtones (look at the stuff going down with venom right now and fans vs critics, which tells you a lot).

at the end of the day, people will see what they want to see, and they will fail to ignore context clues in favor of their own biases. and there are those even with queer characters and fans, yes. reading to much into things and stretching out things for a smidge of representation, but the difference there is that we are never given that to begin with. we've always had to find representation, and so that became the code of conduct, especially in conservative societies that are still battling queer rights.

you're absolutely right that if gaon had been a woman, everyone would've eaten it up. i'm still surprised tdj is still as popular as it is, but i know that it'd be significantly moreso if there was straight scenes involved. but thank god we weren't given more bc the entitlement and downright nasty behavior hets displayed with the gaon/soohyun scenes before they all realized she died...... i will never forget that. literally i will never forget how fucking curl and nasty they were because they couldn't let ONE show be for the gays. and the only reason for that is mainly bc of jinyoung and their obsessive need to be a self-insert with their kpop favs.

on top of that, they really did love the gaslight the entire fandom, even here on tumblr, about how wrong we were, how we turn everything gay, and we're misogynistic bc they couldn't take a damn minute to read/find analysis posts. like, i'm genuinely tired of straight people having the monopoly on what they think is right/wrong, and using misogyny and other social justice issues to call us crazy/delusional. maybe if we had openly queer tv and films for us to enjoy, we wouldn't feel the need to create and find context in the content we love and consume.

and just to reiterate in general, not pointing figures at you anon, tdj is NOT queerbaiting. it's queercoding, and fandom really needs to learn the difference.

[holding-out-for-an-antihero]

Destiel, Reylo, and Schrödinger's Canon

It’s now been over a year since the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and nearly 4 months since the Supernatural finale aired. As someone who’s involved in both fandoms, it’s been really striking to see the similarities of what happened with the Star Wars fandom and Reylo compared to what’s currently happening in the SPN fandom with Destiel.  And while these are obviously two very different ships and fandoms with different dynamics at play, I do think the two situations have a lot in common. For instance-

Both Destiel and Reylo are the largest ships in their respective fandoms, but they’re also very divisive with vocal groups of fans who are against these particular ships. Additionally, the fandoms themselves are split among different factions of people who have very different (and fundamentally incompatible) ideas about what both these franchises are REALLY about (Reylos vs. The Fandom Menace, Hellers vs. Bibros/Bronlies).

Both Destiel and Reylo are made canon at the end of the story with a heroic sacrifice culminating with a love confession/kiss, respectively, only for one of the characters to be immediately killed off.  Like, IMMEDIATELY. Now, this in and of itself isn’t weird. Lots of couples become canon right as a franchise is ending, and plenty of love stories have tragic endings. However, what makes these two instances truly bizarre is . . .

This newly-canonized romance between two of the central characters is NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN IN THE STORY. We don’t see the surviving character really react to or process the other character’s death, and no other characters ever bring it up in any substantial way. Instead of treating it like a major story development, it’s instead treated like a weird little story blip that happens and is then immediately forgotten about by everyone.

This results in a weird tonal disconnect between the story the creators think they’ve written and the one they’ve actually given us. They think they’ve written a happy ending (Dean’s in Heaven! Rey’s a Skywalker!), but what we really got was an unacknowledged tragedy with no catharsis whatsoever (Dean never got to speak his truth to Cas; Rey is still alone & her soulmate is dead). Which feels super shitty, and not in a good way like a well-written tragedy.

Furthermore, the romance is barely addressed by the creators themselves. It’s not mentioned in marketing, interviews or convention panels with cast/creators etc. It’s almost as if the very people who created the storyline are embarrassed or ashamed of it and are doing their best to pretend it didn’t happen.

The weirdness of everything leads to the rise of various conspiracy theories (some of which are eventually shown to be correct) within the fandoms involving edited-down scenes, last-minute ADR, alternate cuts with better endings, and actors being secretly unhappy with their character’s arcs.

Of course there are additional factors to consider (in particular, the impact of homophobia on the SPN ending).  But I do think it’s interesting that an enemies-to-lovers het ship from one of the largest franchises in the world and a queerbaiting slash ship from a long-running television cult classic both botched their endings so badly and in such similar ways.

Finally, speaking personally as someone who was heavily invested in both these ships/fandoms, these endings serve as nasty reminders that these franchises aren’t for people like you- the female fans, the queer fans, the anyone-who-isn’t-a-straight-white-dude fans. It’s for those REAL fans who watch & interpret the show/movie in the Correct Way™.

[meggannn]

obviously left hand is not perfect but good lord. i feel like trying to claim its queer-baiting is almost raging that it doesn't have a easily palatable "happy" ending. the story works bc it is a tragedy. i also feel like using online modern shipping terminology is, idk detrimental or disrespectful to the text almost? idk... like so what if they don't easily slot into some "canon" romance trope, it feels like disregarding the in text connection that's there by the end of the book. ANYWAYS SORRY i just had a ???????? moment seeing that last ask.

I got the sense the people claiming it was queerbaiting were young so I didn’t want to be too harsh, and I made mistakes when I was young too and still do so I won’t judge, but queerbaiting seems like the wrong bone to pick with TLHOD. I would understand a claim of Burying Your Gays a little more, cause Estraven does die and BYG has a media history that stretches back decades, except its impact is lessoned when you’ve got a planet full of other gay characters who DID survive the story, and in fact the cishet guy (is he even het?) is vastly outnumbered by all the living gnc characters who do just fine living and raising kids long before and after he enters their lives.

if TLHOD was promoting itself as a modern day romance published in 2022, I’d understand the critique. but it wasn’t; it’s a dark political scifi fantasy and it never advertised romance. modern language doesn’t always fit historical contexts or needs and that’s fine, language and terms will always evolve, but thinking critically about the words we use and why is important, as is not jumping to the closest modern lingo we have to describe things made in an entirely different time period or literary context. not that TLHOD is so foreign to be undefinable in today’s words, and assigning modern fandom lingo to old works can be funny sometimes, but I wouldn’t take someone seriously if they walked up to me and told me a fifty-year-old book and Ursula K Le Guin, who has been dead since 2018, queerbaited them in 2022.

[key-to-my-heart]

see i feel like rainbow high is right on the line between queer baiting and accidentally queer coding bella and jade

like it’s obvious bella and jade were built on a close friendship. theyre in the same dorm, they were shown to be very talkative with each other in episode 2, and obviously their relationship grew when bella comforted jade in episode 4.

episodes 7 & 8 show clear closeness between jade and bella... almost a little too close. to some it may seem platonic but obviously jella grew to be the fandom’s biggest ship, being pure opposites, it obviously gained lots of love! and then that is where the ship name “jella” came, from the fandom!

seems like sliiight queer coding

but then... with jella being the biggest ship, obviously the official rainbow high saw and they must’ve thought “Jella? a cute best friendship name? sweet! we just have to use this in the vi life about them”

and then that’s where they start crossing over the line into queerbaiting. idk it’s not like voltron level queerbaiting or how it is in some animes but like

mga KNOWS this is a big ship. a pairing that is shipping romantically. gays. the LGBT. and they grabbed our romantic ship name for platonic uses??? what. WHAT.

i wasn’t too mad abt it bc i took it as a hint like omg jella is now subtley canon??!?! like they aren’t obligated to make a big deal out of it bc i’d rather have casual romance than some over dramatic stereotypical gay couple. but also gays do receive the treatment het relationships get like holding hands, kissing, getting married, going on dates, having kids, etc. so like. idk idk

but still. it’s still on the border. and if jella doesn’t go canon soon i will be very very mad. they have made statements like this

idk. it’s just very interesting. i have a feeling they might go canon. i was worried how they’d do it/if it would even happen if bella didn’t come back. but with bella back and with these statements, i think there’s a semi good chance idk. this talk happens far too often than it should, not that we should have to talk about it, but i just really hope they happen. i just REALLY hope it happens in a casual, nice, pleasant manner. i hope they get the same treatment as amaya x river does. also speaking of... there haven’t been many jella posts from the official RH lately? usually the tease content before they give it to us so idk. IDK SJSJS this is just facts opinions and theories all mixed together.

but yeah. if they’ll tease amaya content, stella content, krystal content, new dolls and more, then i hope THESE teases happen, too

[itsclydebitches]

I’m wlw. While, I’m not going to shame WLW members of the FNDM, bumblby pisses me off. V6 skipped development for both characters for the sake of “confirming” it, but I thought there scenes in V7 were cute. At first. Then it felt like RT dangling gay keys in front of my face. Now they’re attached to the hip while giving the het. ship (Renora) independence. Yang doesn’t care what Ruby thinks and only Blake was upset by her fall. What are your thoughts?

I’ve touched on their relationship quit a bit over the years, on and off, so I’ll try to summarize those big thoughts here: 

I like the ship. I’ve always liked the ship. I’ve never been a die-hard fan like some, but as soon as I entered the fandom and realized they were a thing I went, “Oh yeah, I can see that. I’m on board!” 

Which isn’t to say I’m always a fan of how people engage with them. It’s a fact that every major ship in any fandom is going to have its annoying, dramatic, and toxic elements. It’s also a fact that RWBY has developed a reputation for being particularly vitriolic. I think a lot of the hate towards Blake/Yang stems less from what we actually got in the canon and more from bad experiences from a small subset of fans. Not everyone. Not even the majority. But enough that casual fans, Blake/Sun fans, those who dislike the ship, etc. have reached a point where bmblb is a) so incredibly prominent and b) at times so heated that even a fellow shipper can grow frustrated at the state of the “RWBY” tag. This then bleeds into our reading of the canon material. After all, if you’re frustrated about seeing this pairing so often in fandom spaces and/or you’ve had a bad run-in with someone who ships them, seeing even more of them on Saturday will exacerbate those feelings. 

This is a frustration that’s increased as the show still refuses to make the relationship canon. Crafting scenes each week where something semi-romantic occurs, but isn’t enough to confirm a relationship (like the forehead touch) creates a branching number of annoyances, from “Oh my god how is this still not canon” to “Here’s another week of the whole fandom claiming it is canon.” Those “dangling gay keys” are a problem both for those desperate to see the relationship confirmed because they love it and those desperate to see the relationship confirmed so the characters can begin focusing on other aspects of their identities. “Attached at the hip” feels too close to queer baiting for comfort while simultaneously too narrow a depiction of Blake and Yang. Surely they have concerns and relationships outside of each other. 

I agree entirely that the relationship was rushed in some respects. However, there’s a post somewhere in the depths of my blog where I argue strongly that queer relationships should be allowed to be rushed, simply because so many het ships are too. I stand by that. I understand the frustration of moving from the two interacting primarily as teammates to suddenly holding hands, but that’s a gap that appears in many, many non-queer pairings. Jaune is a great example. Though we introduced Pyrrha’s interest in him from the get-go, he was running after Weiss for his whole time at Beacon, got a little closer to Pyrrha, she suddenly kissed him, and then... we’re meant to believe they were madly in love? His grief is certainly written in a way to imply as much. The cultural expectation of the guy losing the girl just fills in the rest, we didn’t actually see it on screen. So I both agree and disagree. I always want RWBY to be better written, but I also don’t want to hold our queer pairings to standards we don’t demand of the het ones. That way lies a lot of excuses for why it “can’t” ever happen. I’d rather have poorly written and rushed representation than no representation at all. 

Agree entirely about there being a problem with Yang’s fall. Blake’s reaction was fine. The lack of reaction from everyone else was not. As I said in my recap, you can’t prove their love by taking love away from these other relationships. Making Ruby seemingly care less about her sister will not convince me that Blake cares a great deal. Though this is a problem RT has across the whole cast, tying into that “attached at the hip”ness. Characters tend to have one (1) relationship and that’s it. RT really struggles to write a cohesive group, instead creating a collection of duos that happen to inhabit the same space. I can see places where they’ve been trying to correct that this volume  — Yang speaking to Ruby about Summer, Nora talking to the girls about Ren  — but moments like Blake’s talk with Ruby really struggle. In that, these characters haven’t spoken in seven seasons, so all Blake has to say is a generic, ‘I believe in you’ that comes across as stilted and unpersuasive  — we can see the writers trying to convince us that Ruby is The Best and that these girls have a relationship when they... don’t. And scenes like Yang’s fall show us that these underlying struggles are still at work. RT doesn’t know how to craft a scene where everyone reacts because Yang is a well-rounded person sporting a deep and unique relationship with three other teammates. They know how to craft a scene where the one (1) relationship takes centerstage and everyone else becomes cardboard cutouts. 

As for renora’s independence, I need to side with RWBY on this one. The entire point of this arc is that Nora realized she is also attached at the hip and wants to do something about it. That’s a good thing! Whether or not RT actually manages to write a relationship where they’re together without being entirely co-dependent remains to be seen, but splitting them in this last episode was a good start. Similarly, the show did separate Blake and Yang for the majority of this volume and now may have separated Yang from the group for a significant length of time. That’s not the same thing as the girls realizing they need space like Nora did... but then, they aren’t in an acknowledged relationship like Nora is. I don’t think it’s fair to compare them when Yang and Blake haven’t even reached the point where they’re talking about their relationship, let alone what that looks like going forward, and therein lies my real criticism. In order to see the depth RT is trying to give to renora, they have to actually make bmblb canon first. It all comes back to that. The question of queerbaiting, how they find healthy boundaries, how they compare to other relationships in the show... there’s no real groundwork to discuss any of that until we can say, 100%, that they are, in fact, a couple. 

[hamliet]

when does a relationship become queerbaiting? theres a book that i really like and the 2 male leads characters have a lot of storylines and arcs where they get closer and i think some of the tropes used can be similar to the typical romantic tropes, neither of them end up with anyone at the end of the story since its more about found family and the long journey the whole cast goes through. they even get shipped by another character as a running gag. personally i always saw it as being open to interpretation but recently the revised edition of the original novel came out and there were several lines those 2 characters had about each other that were kinda toned down, i didnt think much of it but i saw a post about how it was clearly baiting and the author was being homophobic for toning it down. i didnt think it counted as baiting since as far as i know, the novel was never advertised as anything with romance and the author never pretended they were gonna end up together. i am definitely a little weirded out by the decision to change those specific lines but a lot of the story stayed the same, including a lot about their relationship so idk what to think.

i guess im more confused on if it counts as baiting, or even substext??

Sooooo I am not the best person to ask about this, because I’m a cis woman who has thus far in life only been attracted in a romantic sense to cis men. I can talk a bit about baiting as a general concept in fiction, but you should definitely take it with some grains of salt. 

Baiting, for me, is like deliberately playing up an aspect writers have no intention on delivering on. Usually this is done for ratings, to tease fans, fanservice, etc, but without payoff, it is just bad writing. Red herrings are good in writing, but only can be successfully used if the actual result is more satisfying than the herring. This applies to writing in general, not just to romantic ships. However, when the baiting involves historically underrepresented groups for no reason other than to get fans to spend money consuming the story, I think we can all agree that becomes something more grotesque than just bad writing: it’s insensitive, socially irresponsible, frankly hurtful. 

Some common examples are Bridgerton which has a gay character, who is extremely minor, yet they played up this character in advertising. Also, Rizzoli and Isles I think actually had its producers mention deliberately playing up the lesbian subtext to hook the audience without ever intending on following through. 

That said, context also matters. Like, there are aspects of the culture of the work’s author, the target audience, and such that come into play here also (so like, romantic tropes differ by culture. For example, enemies to lovers is common in Asian stories but less in the west, and the “girl who pursues a guy” is extremely common in Japanese shonen in particular, while it is very much a cringe trope that almost never results in romance in American fiction. So if a writer reads, say, tropes that are common in America into a Japanese work and says it’s baiting, that’s quite possibly not the intent even if it may have been the experience of the reader. So even if there was no intent, there can still be hurt, and that hurt can be real, if that makes sense. 

The definition of what constitutes ‘baiting’ varies. I do think that, in true Tumblr fashion, the term gets thrown around a lot and loses its intended meaning, or is so rigidly defined that creators can meet the letter of the “not a bait” requirement while ignoring the spirit of it.

To start with the latter: regarding something hitting the letter of what most wouldn’t consider baiting yet not really the spirit, let’s look at The Rise of Skywalker. This movie had a genuine lesbian kiss in it... between two characters we’d never seen more than a glimpse of while others are celebrating around them. Since it has a kiss, it’s not baiting, right? Well... the director deliberately said in the lead-up to the film that he included it because he “wanted LGBT people to see themselves in the film.” If “see yourselves in the film” is like a nanosecond of background, then, like... idk. Baiting or not, it feels icky, and I know some people consider it baiting and some don’t even if they don’t like, love that representation. But I think this is more queerbaiting than like, Nobara and Maki, who don’t have explicit romantic coding. 

Going back to the former, in terms of ‘queerbaiting’ losing its intended meaning... I think there are a lot of really poorly written romantic ships out there, often het, while a lot of same-gender relationships are really well written regardless of whether there’s romantic coding within the text. The main emotional energy in stories with 90% male characters (as frankly many if not most stories are, great job world) is probably between two men. There’s just so much more potential with well-written characters who share a lot of screen time, so of course people are going to ship them. In my opinion, this does not inherently make it baiting, but it certainly creates an environment that lends itself to baiting even if the writers aren’t intending to do this. 

Like, you could say the main emotional energy in BNHA is Bakugou and Deku. However, Bakudeku is 100% not queerbaiting. It’ll never be canon romantically (I don’t even ship it lol). There has been nothing to imply romance between them even if the main emotional message can be seen in their development. Deku/Ochaco is likely to be canon, but there is a significant lack of genuine emotional energy between them (the story’s plots and themes don’t coalesce around their relationship), so it’s probably going to feel forced. In contrast, Naruto/Sasuke had an actual kiss in canon, which while played for laughs is a lot more direct romantic coding than anything between Bakugou/Deku. I actually don’t think the majority of Narusasu is baiting, but I definitely think that one moment in chapter like 3 was really poor fanservice for yaoi fans, and has not aged well at all. 

It is also the case that fans can confuse headcanons with what is actually in the text, and that just never ends well. For example, Clover and Qrow’s ship in RWBY: a lot of people read Clover as gay, which led to “bury your gays” outrage when he died. A member of the crew stated explicitly they had never intended for Clover to be a love interest for Qrow, and truthfully here was nothing strictly romantic in their relationship--nothing like a kiss or a declaration of love or a parallel to another romantic couple. Hence, I don’t personally consider it queerbaiting or bury your gays, but a lot of fans felt that it was and their pain is legitimate even if I think textually the argument isn’t there. The one thing I do think is true about this in particular is that there was also no strict platonic coding, which encourages headcanons. Clear writing, yo. It can help. 

Note the word “can” not “will,” because strict platonic coding doesn’t always fix things, either. In what was probably a reaction to the outrage over Clover’s death, you had extremely blatant platonic coding of Ruby and Penny’s relationship this season leading up to Penny’s death. Ruby refers to Penny as “our friend” three different times, wherein “friend” sends a platonic message and “our” sends an even stronger message that it’s not about the two of them despite the fact that their friendship is one of the sweetest and most interesting in the show. A lingering Ruby-Penny hug then is followed by a lingering Penny-Weiss hug, then Yang, then Blake, etc. The writers went out of their way to hit people over the head with “platonic” and yet they have still gotten accusations of bury your gays and queerbaiting because people will see what they want to see in a story. 

Seeing what you want to see in a story also isn’t inherently bad. People who are underrepresented are going to have to read themselves into stories because Lord knows writers ain’t incorporating them well enough if at all. It’s why “Mary Sues” are common in fanfiction, which is primarily written by people who are not straight white men: because where the hell else are we to see ourselves in fiction? So essentially the macrocosm of culture creates this problem, both in terms of baiting and the misuse of the term, and the only fix is a shit ton more good representation.