#then that cannot be queerbaiting because thats a human person

[wren-kitchens]

im annoyed and a little pedantic so can i just say as a blanket statement

queerbaiting is when the promotion for a FICTIONAL STORY intentionally hints towards two characters having a romantic relationship, without any intention to follow through in the show, in order to get queer people watching without discouraging the homophobic enjoyers of the show

queerbaiting is NOT:

a celebrity who you think is queer because theyre gnc or they have a 'vibe'. that is a real person and they cannot queerbait

two friends of the same gender pretending to flirt with each other for fun. those are real people and they cannot queerbait

a show with two characters of the same gender who are canonically friends that YOU PERSONALLY think would be better in a relationship. that's not bating, that's shipping, and subject to opinion

there are more but those are the main examples of people misunderstanding what queerbaiting is and being mad at something that isn't actually a problem

[ouyangzizhensdad]

As an aroace person who enjoys qlc more than the novel, mostly bc its more ambiguosly romantic and thats more apealing to me as a somewhat romance repulsed person. I also find so frustrating that a lot qcl-only western fans are just... unwilling to engage with qcl and perhaps more importantly mdzs as chinese media, made in china by chinese people. And this is an issue in most if not all non-western media fandoms, bc western fans (mostly from usa and europe tbh) just cannot stop imposing their own cultural views/values/etc.

They are consuming non-western media through their own western (and often time priviledge, bc living in the global north/1st world is a priviledge, even if you a marginalized) cultural and historical context and assume their views/morality/whatever to be universal.

Their refusal to understand that cultural relativism is a thing actually, is annoying at best and harmful at worst.

Hi anon,

I mean I think I just need to reinforce that my response was not about whether aroace people can't prefer or choose to interpret the relationship in cql as queerplatonic etc., it was just about the fact that "asexual" has long been used as a descriptive without reference to "asexuality, the identity label" and that this was how the author was clearly using it in that quote. If you've studied in the social sciences or humanities you likely have encountered the word used as a descriptive, and being offended every time it's used in that manner is going to make for a very exhausting time, in my opinion, on top of making it more likely to misinterpret what the author is actually trying to convey.

That being said, while I think "queerbaiting" is a complicated term to use when talking about danmei adaptations, I do see a conflation between "this relationship could be interpreted as queerplatonic/aroace" and "you can't call this queerbaiting/gay subtext because it's queerplatonic/arorace". By this I mean that unless a story confirms that characters id as aro/ace (either by using id terms or by describing what underlines these id terms) or by having them discuss their relationship in a manner that in some way explicitly confirms it, it is open to interpretation every possible way: close friends, friends with benefits where the benefits are not confirmed on-screen, gay romance that is not confirmed on-screen, gay romance that includes sex that is not confirmed on-screen, queerbaiting, queerplatonic, etc. etc. If people prefer to interpret cql!wangxian as aroace and enjoy cql because they can project themselves into what is shown on screen, then have fun with it. The origin of the Bechdel test was that it allowed her to be able to interpret or extrapolate a relationship between two female characters as a romance: everyone except straight people have some forms of implicit or explicit criteria by which they find themselves able to lean into certain interpretations or extrapolations. But that interpretation needs to be divorced from larger discussions of context of the production of the series as an adaptation in relation to the Chinese media industry and censorship. In that context, the intentional removal of explicit references to the romance and the sexual life of the two characters is relevant.

[wilburzgutz-inactive]

im not gonna show the whole thing because it's just saying domt ran ya/oi ot yu/ri if your noe mlm/wlw which is very basic knowledge but

guys..we're better than this right..RIGHT?? 1. i cant speak on the lesbian thing much but PLEASE look up the definition of fetishizing..please 2. THOSE ARE REAL PEOPLE..theyre just havin fun it's your fault that your thought they were gay/dating

GOD how does tiktok consistently have no brain cells at any time. tommy saying that he “gets lesbians” means that he gets that they like women because he likes women too!!!! that’s not fetishization thats support!!!!!! him not being scared to talk about lesbians helps normalize lgbt discussion !!!!!!!!!!! how do people not see that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and the dream + george “”””queerbaiting“””” thing is probably one of the stupidest things i have ever heard ever. for the love of god THATS A HUMAN PERSON. REAL PEOPLE CANNOT QUEERBAIT. queerbaiting is a marketing trick that FICTIONAL TV/MOVIE CORPORATIONS use to get lgbt audiences to watch their shit without explicitly saying the characters are gay so that they dont have to censor their work because apparently we still live in a world where people’s basic right to exist is deemed mature material !!!!!!!!!!!!!!