#this is obviously explicitly about dynamics for gay men

[likealittleheartbeat]

“Sexual desire is not the only dimension of the homosexual experience, but it is the core of that experience. It is sexual desire and acting upon that desire that puts the homosexual into conflict with dominant power structures. It is where we must begin. How does one dramatize homosexual desire? Can one represent desire without words? One can ‘force on’ the audience sexual acts, kissing, embracing, looking. Or one can enact those opposites which have also been central to the experience of many homosexuals: not looking, not kissing, not embracing. Or one can enact the cause of these negations: heterosexism, which can be dramatized by acts of brutality, acts that sometimes result from the negation of one’s homosexual desire.

One of the more interesting aspects of homophobia is, as Richard Mohr points out: “People in general find gay love—kisses of parting at the train station and the like—sicker even than gay sex.” The sight of two men kissing on the lips can evoke enormous fear and hostility in some audience members. Anyone who sat in a movie theater when Peter Finch and Murray Head kissed in Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971), or Michael Cane and Christopher Reeve kissed on Deathtrap (1982), or when Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean kissed in Making Love (1982), will remember the audible, hostile response such images provoked. Everyone knows that sex between men happens, but the sight of two men kissing is often seen as a transgression of the gender order, taken by many to be ‘natural.’ A kiss is a sign of affection, of love, not merely of lust. A kiss, to paraphrase the old song, isn’t just a kiss. Hence it’s theatrical power.”

—John M. Chum, Still Acting Gay

[johannestevans]

all superheroes with secret identities are to an extent about being closeted and secreting part of your identity, which is gay, but like. batman is specifically about his identity in the closet where he dresses up in leather and engages in violent acts with groups of other men

every time joker puts a gun in his mouth. squirts his face with water. every time the riddler collars him. every time bane grips him by the throat, or croc pins him down, or penguin blows cigar smoke in his face, or ra's al ghul touches his jaw and talks about his potential

yes, obviously, he fucks women - he's public about that. bruce wayne, in fact, is very explicitly a womaniser in many adaptations. in the best of them, he's vapid and kind of a himbo, and women are charmed by his hapless appearances and unending niceness

and the thing is like. yes, bruce wayne is that kind. he is caring, he is compassionate - he notices the vulnerable and he wants to help; he listens to people, he remembers details, he's thoughtful.

and also he craves to hurt, and be hurt. he craves the strain in his body.

he aches for the scent of blood and sweat and oil and gunpowder; he wants to feel the bruises heal, wants to feel the itchiness of the healing cuts. he wants to be whipped. he wants to be beaten. he wants his knuckles to hurt from throwing so many punches.

it's not about justice. he beats up goons and tosses them in jail, and they go to jail, and then they come back and keep being goons. he puts the villains in an asylum that tortures them, and he visits the special cases. it doesn't help: that's not the point.

batman's obsession with joker is absolutely about joker's attraction to him and batman's attraction to joker but like. it's also about the fact that joker sees what he is - that he gets off on it. joker pushes him to the max bc he thinks it's funny to force him to admit it.

and the thing about arkham knight, or any other plotline where bruce becomes so obsessed with the joker that he hallucinates or imagines him is that like.

there are 3 people on earth who actually find the joker funny. one of them is the joker. SOMETIMES, another is harley

but the other one is batman. people who don't understand the batjokes dynamic (and crucially don't Get this as a crucial element of batman) don't understand that. batman finds the joker funny. and he feels so so fucking guilty for it. /but he keeps going back/.

batman's little fucking quips are the same as the joker's, he just puts on a deeper, grizzly voice. batman makes puns. batman makes lateral connections for the sake of terrible humour. he's deadpan and autistic and dry as dust, but he makes bad, bad jokes CONSTANTLY.

AND THIS IS WHY HE LAUGHS at joker like. that's what it is.

because this man's just. buried his identity four or five fucking personas deep. all his laughter is fake. most of his smiles are fake. humour is about the unexpected, and joker catches batman by surprise

it's not about joker being Good bc he isn't. the fact that joker is fucking irredeemable and cannot and will not be "fixed" is what makes him the same as batman. they both make choices to never be fixed. they don't want to be. they choose to be fucking clowns instead

[orpheusdrinkinga40inadeathbasket]

The Beatles invigorated the role of the fan because they were the first cultural product to engage holistically with the figure of the teenage girl. They emerged onto ground broken by Elvis and then outpaced their predecessor creatively and commercially. Elvis supplied an avatar for the forbidden promise of sex, but his appeal rested in how easy he was to objectify, his obviousness. Cartoonishly handsome, he was a body onto which the teenage girl could project unspoken and illicit desire. He inspired adoration, but it could not compare to the ferocious awe frothed up among Beatles girls. There is no Elvis equivalent to the term "Beatlemaniac." "To younger teenagers, the Beatles' cheerful, faintly androgynous sexuality was more approachable than Elvis's alpha-male heat," wrote Lynskey. The Beatles offered something more complex than an empty sexual template. They presented an opportunity for identification. A girl could invest her desire in the band, but she could also discover herself there. The gaze cast on the Beatles was a queer one from the start. Before American women looked at the Beatles, they had been seen by Brian Epstein, the closeted gay record clerk who discovered and ferociously advocated for the band when record executives failed to give them a second glance. Watching them play a lunch hour show at a grimy club in Liverpool, Epstein picked up on the magnetic potential of the four young men. In Vivek Tiwary's graphic novel The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story, artist Andrew Robinson closes the frame around the future manager's stunned face as he beholds the Beatles for the first time, as if he could sense his life pivoting around that one rapturous moment. "There was some indefinable charm there," he wrote in his 1964 memoir A Cellarful of Noise. "They were extremely amusing and in a rough 'take it or leave [it] way' very attractive." Upon becoming their manager, Epstein was tasked with convincing the world to see the Beatles the way he saw them: via a gaze that desired its objects without othering them. Heterosexual desire spans a chasm, coveting difference. Queer desire pulls together like elements, finding attraction in affinity. That teen girls could even feel the kind of active, demanding sexual desire evinced by their screams was still a novel concept in the early '60s, which carried vestiges of the prior decade's postwar conservatism. "In a highly sexualized society (one sociologist found that the number of explicitly sexual references in the mass media had doubled between 1950 and 1960), teen and preteen girls were expected to be not only 'good' and 'pure' but to be the enforcers of purity within their teen society—drawing the line for overeager boys and ostracizing girls who failed in this responsibility," wrote Barbara Ehrenreich in a 1986 essay. "To abandon control—to scream, faint, dash about in mobs—was, in form if not in conscious intent, to protest the sexual repressiveness, the rigid double standard of female teen culture. It was the first and most dramatic uprising of women's sexual revolution." Befuddled by the Beatlemaniacs' exuberance, interviewers and critics (who were more often than not men) pinned the scream to a desire, of all things, to mother the band. "It has been said that you appeal to the maternal instinct in these girls," began an interviewer in 1964. John cut him off: "That's a dirty lie." Joking or not, he was right. The dynamic at hand did not correspond to a mother/son model. Beatles girls wanted the way men were expected to want: unabashedly and directly, as active agents in the exchange of desire. There was nothing coy about their hunger.

Sasha Geffen, Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary

[violinn]

i’m so fucking tired of all this complaining about the mean girls movie musical.

1) it’s the musical, not the original movie, so if you havent seen the musical before, things are going to be fucking different because ITS NOT THE MOVIE !!!!!! they dress different, they act diff, they talk diff, even the dynamics are a little diff.

2) people need to stop acting like the decision to make regina gay is the most angering, out-of-pocket thing in the world, because it fucking isn’t. people are acting like it’s the most absurd decision ever, and it isn’t. if you’re really that fucking upset over it, then the movie was obviously not fucking made FOR YOU. nobody is forcing you to watch it. (and i’m sure renee rapp would not want the $0.001 she makes off of your view)

istg, all i see everyday is all of these identical looking twinks complaining about how out of pocket it is, and how it doesn’t make any sense. if it was the opposite, nobody would be complaining. if aaron was gay, everyone would think it’s so cool. if there was a remake of like any other movie and they made a man gay, tik tok and everyone else would be so excited, praising it for its ingenious and its creativeness. but as soon as it’s a lesbian, people flip out. gay men have no issue iconizing all these women, until they’re lesbian.

so, here is me directly addressing some of these points that these people are making:

“it came out of nowhere” - did it really? literally the main conflict between the two sides in the movie is because regina told everyone that janis was a lesbian, and janis was like extremely hurt about it, even how many years later. it would make sense that the falling out had something to do with regina having feelings for her, or something along those lines

“regina was into aaron” - did you even watch the movie? like honestly, seriously, did you? she isn’t even into him. even if she dated him, it’s like one of the most common things for lgbtq people to have dated the opposite sex, even if they aren’t attracted to them, either for appearance, or simply not yet knowing, and this is like the most prevalent in teenagers. regina, in all honesty, did not seem all too into aaron when you look back on it. she used him quite literally as a pawn in front of cady’s face. she sat there in the one scene and purposefully used the fact that they were dating to aggravate cady. also, why are we acting like it isn’t a thing to be bisexual? she could literally just be bisexual. (just saying, y’all never seem to deny comphet when it’s a man 🙄)

“there’s no way an entire school was bullied by a lesbian” - WHAT? i’m sorry but what. i don’t even know what point this person was trying to make, but even so, they completely missed. aside from all of the things i could pick apart about this statement, i thought it was like a running joke that usually the popular bully in high school, usually turns out to be closeted (male or female). like not even saying that this is true, but this is like a popular generalization and joke, so this point doesn’t even make sense.

finally, reneé literally said she isn’t explicitly gay. she said it was just her vibes. people are getting this mad over a character who is just the slightest bit hinted about being a lesbian.

just leave it the fuck alone. let gay girls be happy over the slightest chance at representation, because we all know that gay men get almost all of it.

thank you

- a girl who likes girls and reneé rapp, who just wants a little bit of representation in something popular.

[ari-but-unhinged]

Art for Toritsuka/Hairo fic where I explored what was meant to be a crack ship and is now one of my favourite (??) ships in Saiki k- PLEASE HEAR ME OUT

(A long rant ensues so, if you don’t want that then that’s all good and you don’t have to click, but if you’re interested, then welcome to my rant about a rare pair i love!)

Of course, I started out by simply laughing at the “I hate men” line Toritsuka said about Hairo and thinking writing a crack taken seriously fic would be funny and it would be a nice break before I started this other fic I have planned that is going to be an even bigger endeavour with Saiki k x Danganronpa. What I didn’t see happening was for this Torihai fic to completely take over my brain space and end up with a fic just shy of 20,000 words.

This may not seem like a lot, but I usually only write fics in 1,000-2,000s so this is a lot for me, especially since I’m a slow writer/editor so it takes me a while.

Part of the reason I love these two together is because of the inherent dynamic of Hairo’s inspirational preachiness and how it doesn’t work on Toritsuka, and how it might be refreshing for Hairo to have someone who challenges him (and not in the fake way Teruhashi does, with Toritsuka being very upfront and honest about it). Toritsuka also, because he’s so upfront about his feelings, helps Hairo to express certain emotions like annoyance/sadness that he wouldn’t normally express outwardly. Something else too is that Toritsuka tends to be very physically affectionate, and I don’t know that Hairo is used to that (I haven’t seen any examples of him being physically affectionate in any other way than a bro way) so that could be refreshing as well. Also, also, Toritsuka is Hairo’s gym buddy who was reluctantly dragged along that day Saiki was trying to avoid everyone and no one can change my mind lol (this, in Hairo’s mind, forms a bond between them that can never be broken and he will never stop reminding Toritsuka of this when they hang out).

I just think their dynamic can be playful/fun because they’re both real with each other if that makes sense?

On Toritsuka’s side of things, he doesn’t have a lot of friends and the friends he does have he either doesn’t have any chemistry with or hate him (Saiki lol), so I think it’d be nice for him to have someone who is extremely caring/attentive to his friends and clearly cares deeply about them and shows it often. Because of this, Hairo shows interest in Toritsuka’s life, and for someone who probably hasn’t had many friends, that would mean a lot. Also the fact that Hairo cares so much for Toritsuka sets an example as to how to be a good friend/human would behave and could help him grow as a person (which are always the best friendships/relationships when they grow together rather than staying stagnant and dragging each other down). Being more caring of others and allow him to develop his interpersonal relationships with more than just ghosts, instead with real humans.

Also, I’ve taken to calling them the “errand boys” because it’s a great prompt to force two people who are polar opposites and would never interact to hang out/do an activity together, so I thought it fit them perfectly.

In the fic I changed a few things from canon (sexualities obviously- Tori is bi/queer and Hairo is gay. Although quick side-tangent- I’ve written Tori/Kaidou, Tori/Akechi, and now Tori/Hairo and all three of them either are Asexual or are often headcanonned as ace by the community/me and I just find it very funny that the horniest character is continuously shipped with them. I only realized I did this after I first started writing the fic.)

- Hairo explicitly has psychic powers (it’s something they can bond over and it’s something that plays off of Hairo’s emotions. Cue a lot of blushing not only because of embarrassment but also actual literal heat rushing to his face.)

- Hairo was raised by a single parent (His family is never mentioned so I just made one up)

- Personal headcanon, but I feel like Toritsuka might occasionally pretend to not see spirits in order to avoid getting approached.

- Toritsuka’s backstory has been slightly altered and has a lot more angst to an already pretty sad backstory (it’s played for laughs, but imagine how that would’ve felt for him :( he realized he lost two people he loved in a matter of minutes. Also, he’s a child when this happens so that’s even sadder. I honestly wonder if they died somewhere in the house or he was just there and his guardians didn’t know, like??? How???)

If this made you interested in reading the fic which this is all about, I’ll link it at the end, but if you were just here for the rant, that’s cool too! I’m obsessed with these two because they’re adorable and I must spread the gospel of Torihai.

Link to original fic-

[romainlettusdinnerparty]

in honor of me starting my 2947829184th glee rewatch i wanted to post a light analysis of finn hudson vs mike wheeler that i was reminded i wrote down in a time i was (sadly) much more convinced of a byler endgame than i am now,, cuz i kinda had a point

here she is:

i would love for someone to do an analysis of byler vs kurt hummel and finn hudson (would like to interject here to say someone should definitely do this and do it better with like actually siting stuff) like how a show (also explicitly about outsiders) purposefully creates an unrequited gay man to straight dynamic and how entirely different that is from how stranger things sets up mike and wills dynamic.

i mean they’re completely different shows and glee is a satire so it might be hard to compare them 1 to 1 because glee doesn’t tend to give that much weight to any relationship in its like first twoish seasons but i think its a good example for how it would be so easy to just make mike so obviously straight and not at all into will (it wouldn’t even have to be about el, with finn its not about quin or rachel, its just that hes not into men and is into women) and they’re choosing not to, they are choosing to lean into that dynamic and (this is important for this comparison) NOT in a brotherly way, not in a familial way, their relationship is never once compared to that (mike and el’s is but thats not entirely relevant here). In glee kurt liking finn is much more about his identity than it is about a romantic relationship with finn, they explore their relationship in depth in seasons 1 and 2 (and never again we dont have to talk about it yes i am bitter) but it is never not once implied that kurt’s feelings could be reciprocated, no lingering shots on finn’s face while hes watching kurt, nothing flirty, finn shuts him down multiple times, finn knows kurt likes him, its not used as a big reveal because that is NOT WHAT IS PLOT RELEVANT!!

what is relevant is kurt coming out to his dad and kurt’s overall identity and learning to stick up for himself and finn helping him do that in a BROTHERLY way (by the end of season 2 their parents are married and they are literal step brothers, there is no way to misconstrue their relationship) if wills feelings for mike were not reciprocated or at least impactful on their relationship there is no reason to make the audience anticipate mikes reaction to them, to save them for a reveal with an incredibly plot relevant lie that has to be uncovered, this has to alter their relationship in some way and literally what purpose would it serve if it was just a rejection?? why would you wait to reveal that if its only purpose is then essentially will’s identity? if the point of season 4 was to build back up mike and wills friendship, why not use that is something they have to overcome in the beginning of that season? why save it as a reveal? the actors have harped on the fact that mike doesn’t know about wills feelings so when they are rebuilding their friendship this is at least not a factor for him. (back to glee) when finn and kurt were building their relationship as brothers and friends, kurt’s romantic feelings were acknowledged as something they had to work through, they were not saved as a big aha moment because they wouldn’t have changed things. bottom line is that the reveal of wills feelings will change the nature of mike and wills relationship and there is no reason (besides like a villain origin story? thats all i can think of. cuz his arch isn’t about figuring out he doesn’t need romance or that he has the love of his family and boys arent important, he doesn’t have romance and the entirety of seasons 1 and 2 were about how much his family love him and the whole boys are stupid thing is for el) for that shift to be in the form of a rejection

[writing-for-life]

“M/M Ships Smash The Patriarchy”—But Do They?

Little disclaimer first: I don’t have a problem with m/m fics or art, quite the opposite. I’m a bisexual woman, I can find the idea of m/f, f/f and m/m interesting and yes, sexually arousing (each for different reasons though). And I’m saying this so explicitly because the idea that women need to engage in mental gymnastics to justify m/m ships is relevant to this post.

So please don’t take this personally if you like m/m, especially not if what I write very obviously doesn’t apply to you. This also has nothing to do with shipping m/m as a queer person, because the context invariably changes in most cases. This post is exclusively about the “justification” of m/m ships as something that “smashes the patriarchy”.

With that out of the road:

I’ve seen so many posts stating that m/m ships are removing “the whiff of patriarchy from fandom”. That the same dynamics would be problematic in a m/f or f/f ship, but they’re less “harmful” in a m/m ship.

And yes, of course women have been bearing the brunt of these objectifying dynamics since the beginning of time, totally true. But here’s the thing:

a) Problematic dynamics are okay to explore (not necessarily to condone, they are two different things) in fanfiction; it’s happened for as long as fanfiction (no, fiction) exists. We could go off on a whole tangent about what’s “problematic” (or not) in fiction now, and I’m not overly keen on that term, but it’d lead too far because we’d need to talk about a lot of stuff that’s not really the topic of this post.

b) Problematic dynamics don’t magically change because you apply them to a m/m ship, especially if you’re a (straight) woman heavily projecting onto characters. If there’s an age gap, it stays an age gap. If there are power imbalances, they stay power imbalances. If there’s violence/objectification/whatever else going on IT STAYS THAT. The mental leap from, “Men in m/f relationships are often, either consciously or subconsciously through what society condones, the perpetrator in that particular dynamic,” to “that’s why it’s not a problem in m/m relationships,” honesty baffles me.

So my question is:

If you want to remove the “problematic whiff of patriarchy from fandom”, but you are ONLY and EXCLUSIVELY centering two MEN in your fics, art and what you consume, are you really doing that? Where are the protagonist WOMEN that are written or portrayed in a way that isn’t patriarchal?

Too much of a stretch?

Why bring in “the patriarchy” (or whatever other justification) instead of just saying you like the idea of two men getting it on, and that you project on at least one, if not both of them? And I know many women are honest about this, so this is obviously not aimed at them.

And I’m not writing this in a vacuum—there are endless posts about exactly this, and quite frankly:

It is actually patriarchal and misogynistic to deny women the right to just feel horny when they read about/look at two guys fucking. Without justifying it in any way, or making it about something that feels performative (“We like the m/m ship because we’re queer-positive feminists”. Please…). That, right there, is internalised misogyny:

Women don’t need to morally justify their horniness. They don’t need to justify whatever they’re into and turn it into a performative event. They’re just allowed to like it as is. The end.

Why not just like what we like while still critically engaging with the question whether some of what we read and create is potentially fetishising gay/queer men instead of calling it “feminist and queer-positive”?

Because let’s face it: Straight women who ship m/m don’t like gay men because they’re gay. They like them because they project a straight woman on a gay persona that has nothing to do with actually being gay (just like most lesbian porn never had anything to do with being created for lesbians, or f/f relationships in books written by men were always serving the male gaze, but it’s easier to holler about that, right?):

At least one of them is the guy you fancy (sometimes both of them are), and sometimes one of them is (at least partly) you. It has always worked like that and always will.

But back to the main topic of “smashing the patriarchy”: We are talking about fanfiction and fanart here. YOU create it. It’s not the adult entertainment industry making billions that throws it at you. You are the CREATORS and CONSUMERS. You get to CHOOSE. And yes, that choice can absolutely be a m/m ship if that’s what you want. Again, there’s no problem with that.

But if your main argument is that you want content without the stench of patriarchy, how about actually centering women in it, at least from time to time?

[ilikeshitposting]

Don't you think it's funny cause actual canon gay characters in BL manga will say "I love you" but only the shounen bromance can spew out some of the most romantic shit akin to a 19th century poet writing a letter expressing his surpressed love for his lover 😭.....

hi anon, I'm really, really sorry for the late answer! the truth is i haven't watched a lot of shounen anime, or just straight up forgot about the ones that did. so i was just racking my brain trying to remember anything i might’ve seen :") and i just googled "shounen-bromances" and found out that my entire understanding of what the shounen genre was is completely wrong [i thought it just meant action-animes lol ] so I'm probably not the best person to answer this :D

BUT i have heard about this a lot and have also seen some examples! like obviously there's satosugu from jjk :) and.. almost every character from bsd.. and hide and kaneki! it was the second anime i'd watched (i was convinced that they'd both end up together, the anime really leaned into the homoeroticism lol). there's also this relationship that i feel is so underrated in bsd, and it's the novelist and his best friend (I forgot their names and couldn't find them even when i looked it up!) who are literally gay and no one can convince me otherwise [jk lol]. the things the best friend does for his novelist friend, their whole dynamic.. it's all just.. soo gay 😭 i love them so much. we never get to see the novelist's face in the anime, but i hope we do get to some day. ooh and mikey and drake (from tokyo revengers) ! to me, atleast at the time of watching, they were literally in a ceritified ™️ relationship.

none of these people are explicitly gay, but they really seem to have some sort of feelings/ affections for the men closest to them. i personally don't really remember/ know any romantic shit any characters have actually said, because, like i said, i don't really watch shounen anime, but I'm glad to see that such content does exist 😌 anime writers channeling in their inner poetic talents to churn out 'completely-heterosexual' content ✨️✨️

[sevenseasofsin]

Greetings

🖤 CHILDREN: LOOK NO FURTHER! 18+!!!

🖤 you can call me Atlas, I'm a 22 year old nonbinary trans man, he/him and they/them are equally welcome

🖤 t4t, mostly into men/masc ppl

🖤 mostly submissive but I do enjoy domming sometimes (particularly when it comes to pet stuff)

🖤 not actually a blog about depeche mode or the ocean lol (although feel free to talk to me about both of those things)

🖤 just a deep dark dumping ground for all my gay horniness

🖤 some of the stuff I know I'm into:

- masochism, degradation, humiliation, objectification, dumbification (a lot of "ations" really)

- pet and other animal play (mostly pup, also cow, bunny, sometimes a handler)

- primal, predator/prey, biting, breeding

- discipline/being trained

- free use

- praise

- intox, somno, hypno

- exhibitionism & voyeurism

- bondage (bonus points if there's leather involved)

- spit, piss (more related to the power dynamics than the actual substances)

- pit/body smell

- gloves!!!!

- Some light blood/knife stuff

🖤 things I am very much NOT into:

- age play, abdl, ddlg

- r*pe kink, hard cnc (i.e. anything beyond stuff like intox, somno, hypno)

- misgendering, detrans

- race play

- feederism

- scat, vomit

🖤 neither of the above are exhaustive lists; I can't think of everything and I'm discovering new things all the time lol

🖤 MINORS DNI (yes, even if the post isn't explicitly NSFW. None of my content is for kids.)

🖤 obviously gonna block you if I think you're a minor but tbh sometimes I just block people for funsies sorry

🖤 love you

[dreamhot]

Hello! Happy June! It's Pride and I have another question (4/30)

Today we are talking about queer representation in media. In 1894 "The Dickson Experimental Sound Film" is released, becoming the first "gay film". It was also known as "The Gay Brothers", it feature two men dancing together and it reportedly "shocked audiences with its subversion of conventional male behaviour". Unfortunately, in 1934 the USA introduced the Hays Code, which, while it didn't explicitly ban queerness, banned queerness in effect. This resulted in three decades of queer-coded villains, such as Joel Cairo in "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) and Jack Favell in "Rebecca" (1940).

The Hays Code was lifted in 1968, and the queer cult classic "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" was released in 1975, and gave a much-needed positive and FUN representation of queer people and queerness. Unfortunately, this was short-lived, as the rising AIDs crisis worsened the stigma around the gay community. This didn't stop everyone though, and in 1985 "Desert Hearts" was released; regarded as the first mainstream lesbian film with a happy ending.

Further on, the first gay kiss on TV in the UK was on "EastEnders" in 1989, "Ellen" became the first American tv show with an openly gay lead in 1997, and other show such as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" started to add recurring LGBTQ+ characters. An important show in the UK was "Queer as Folk" (1999) which was one of the first shows to depict the queer community as vibrant and alive.

Even further forward, and "Moonlight" (2017) became the first LGBTQ+ film (and the first all-black cast) to win Best Picture at the Oscars. GLAAD publishes an annual report showing how representation is changing. 2005-2006 1.4% of regular characters vs 2020-2021 the figure is at 9.1%. So, there is still a long way to go obviously, especially because media is often the main or only place that young people have an insight into the community at all.

Because of this, I want to ask you for a recommendation: What is a piece of queer media that you think more people should see? (it can be literally anything, big/small, funny/sad, smart/stupid <- just anything you think deserves to be watched!:))

(I'll go first: "Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho" (or "I Don't Want to Go Back Alone) is a really really cute Brazillian short film available on Youtube! (if you enjoy it, there is also a full-length film version called "Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho" (or "The Way He Looks"))

Happy Pride 🌈 🎉

can i mention brokeback mountain again. i mean surely most people have seen that by now but - i'd also mention the novella it's based on, which i think i reread about a thousand times in high school for some reason. the movie is almost shot-for-shot what happens in the novella, which is pretty impressive

again tho i feel as though my lack of exposure to the quintessential works is leaving me floundering here, cos suddenly i've forgotten all queer media i've ever watched. apparently. does rocketman count? cos i fucking love that movie

also this is just recency bias but i watched the mitchells vs the machines for the first time the other day and it just made my heart happy to see a main character whose queerness was simply /there/ and not presented as some massive ordeal or struggle. she just liked girls and her parents knew and were supportive and it was just, taken in stride like you'd see any other teen relationship dynamic in heterosexual contexts. and idk ... it made me happy. i hope we see more of that sort of thing going forward

[tokyokookmin]

why do you ship the boys? don’t you think it’s weird. it’s like people shipping you and your sibling like ew?! can’t they look at each other? they’re grown men, obviously they have had sex. nobody has said it is with each other. if they have not explicitly stated it , i don’t we why people have to ruin a good thing. can people not be friends without others trying to ruin it? real life ain’t a fic. unless they have said they are in a relationship, this shouldn’t be a topic sentence because what if they aren’t. who is to say you aren’t making them uncomfortable? taekook ignored each other because of aggressive shippers - stop trying to influence people. just because you support LGBT doesn’t mean everyone is gay or has sex with each other. That’s not how it works. People can be straight whilst supporting the LGBT community.

I assume you had stumbled across my blog and saw that the motive of it is to support the relationship of Jikook. You, as an Army who dislikes shipping decided to jump into my inbox to reprimand me of shipping the members.

No anon, it isn't weird to ship the boys (here I am speaking about jikook) I have been in this fandom since 2018, thoroughly observing the antics and behaviour of the members from the past 4 years. I really have been closely observing Jimin and Jungkook when they are around eachother.

The glares, the temptations to be together,to hold each other hands like GAHH I get so desperate when I see them not being able to do couples things like holding hands 😭. Just do it damnit.😵 Don't you see it? There's a difference between the way jikook act together compared to NORMAL skin ship. Theres a huge degree of difference, anon.

The members always do skinship with other tho they're reaction are way WAY more different than jikooks. See this picture below? Look at the left side of the pic, do you see the way hobi reacts when Jin had a task to kiss hobi on the cheek?

Then look at the right side of the pic, Well, if you are a jikooker you would know that this moment is EPIC. Lol. Wouldn't jk and jm have immediately kept a gap like how Jin and hobi did? Instead, jk and jk turned out blushing sooooo muchhh! It's a never-ending saga of Jikook blushing 🤣 when they are around eachother lol.

Why that amount of love in the eyes, why are they so flustered?

Does this seem friendly? Jk and jm having a sort of a romantic dance with both of their hands on eachother shoulders, caressing their hair. OMG. Look at the crowd at the back, all of their attention fixated towards KM. Their smiles omg 🥺🥺

KM has dropped plenty of tiny hints along the way. They have successfully told us that they are more than band mates, more than anything. They have a special corner for eachother in their hearts. Their dynamics is different. They way they both communicate is different.

It isn't a coincidence that all of those sweet, romantic moments only consistently happen to them. Why is it always them who we see interacting the most backstage and off-camera? Why are they giving so much commitment to spend time with each other if they aren't dating? Why does jikook have the most sexual tension in the group?

It's always them "being there for each other". The math is mathing

Jikookers who has had experiences in a relationship would know how strong the foundation of KM relationship is, little moments are defined as a precious gesture in a relationship. Well that's what I can say from a 10+ years long relationship. And still lasting 🥰

👏It's 👏time 👏for 👏people 👏 like 👏 you to 👏 stop 👏 blurring 👏the 👏lines 👏 of 👏 reality. 👏

I can't change your perspective on the shipping culture by just one single post but it's okay. 🤣

[shortpplfedup]

Enter Rosaline? Bad Buddy Episode 4

- Thou chid'st me oft for loving Rosaline. - For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

Well this is an unexpected turn of events. In this episode Ink arrives, Pran has a lot of feelings and Pat is confused and confusing.

KINSMEN ARE SO MUCH WORK

Part, fools! Put up your swords; you know not what you do.

Pat and Pran are obviously enjoying working together to outwit their dumbass hothead friends, arguing and herding cats by day and plotting together by night. Them figuring out a way to use the two faculties' competitive energies to actually get the damn work of rebuilding the bus stop done was a fun little diversion from the rest of this angst-fest episode...lol.

ROSALINE HAS ENTERED THE CHAT

Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit Of an old tear that is not wash'd off yet: If e'er thou wast thyself and these woes thine, Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline: And art thou changed? pronounce this sentence then, Women may fall, when there's no strength in men.

Well this is quite the reversal of the tale. We are starting to enter Pat's perspective in this second act and it turns out that Pat is one confused Romeo. His heart is telling him one thing, and I'm-not-sure-what-other-part-of-him is telling him something else. He is pushing so hard to get close to Pran, he thinks as friends. But his actions are so far beyond just friendly, and they're pulling poor Pran in a dozen different directions, especially once Ink, our Rosaline, enters the story.

It's hard to analyse what's happening in this episode because it feels...incomplete? You're off balance, you feel like you don't have the whole story here. Aof is playing coy, which is very unlike him as an auteur; usually even when he's hiding things it doesn't feel that way. This feels like a gay confusion trope and a misunderstanding trope all at the same time. Because what we see Pat DOING is very different from what he's SAYING. His actions with Pran are those of a lover, or somebody who wants to be, is trying to become a lover. But his words are 'well actually I like this girl'. It's not like we haven't seen this dynamic in queer media before, but I didn't expect to encounter it here, so it's thrown me a bit off balance.

Rosaline in Romeo and Juliet is a character who never appears on stage and in the grand scheme of things impacts exactly nothing except everybody's opinions on Romeo's ideas of love. I see an attempt to take that same idea and try to...twist it somehow? One of the constant criticisms of Romeo and Juliet is that Romeo and Juliet are not ACTUALLY in love, and Romeo's easy jettisoning of his feelings for Rosaline the minute he spots Juliet across the room is always one of the things cited in support of that interpretation. Obviously Bad Buddy only hangs lightly on the frame of Romeo and Juliet, but this idea of proving the feelings are real and true and not just a wild flight of fancy leads in all sorts of theoretical directions.

First off, there's clearly a lot that was churned up in high school for our two boys that needs to be resolved for them to move forward in any direction. Ink is a catalyst for that resolution to happen. And secondly, our boys are settling into a comfortable pattern of careless flirting (Pat) and hopeless pining (Pran) that also needs to be broken for them (and the story) to move forward. Ink is also a necessary catalyst for things to come to a head between the boys. Aof talked about making a more 'traditional y' series, but Aof is still Aof, and in his hands even 'traditional y' is gonna come with some twists and trope subversions. Pat is explicitly gay in the novel, it's not like Aof to walk something like that back. This is shaping up somewhat like the Pat/Nat subplot, but without all the toxic elements and with more gentle self-discovery involved for Pat. But that's theorising, and I try to only deal with analysis, so let me back out of this digression.

Commentary from the Chorus:

There are things vaguely in the shape of the novel starting to appear here, like Pran's jealousy, Pat's unexamined desire to get close to Pran and Pat's protectiveness when Pran is hurt. Again, the show is hanging lightly on the novel's frame, but it is starting to more obviously explore some of its story ideas.

Pat told Korn he likes somebody in Architecture. That's not a throwaway line.

I try not to go delulu and pair up everybody in a damn show but there was an energy there between Ink and Paa no?

The preview makes me feel like episodes 4 and 5 are two indivisible parts of a single subplot and that's why I get this sense of this ep being incomplete.

[avi17]

I normally wouldn't do this but you chose to put your hate and your demands in a bunch of character tags so it would spread, so:

1) No matter how angry you get about it, they're still not blood related. Yes, that includes the new movie. The word they subtitle as cousin means something else entirely, and Liu Kang explicitly says that he is an orphan who didn't meet Kung Lao until after he was brought to the Wu Shi Academy. That may have been a handy marketing line, but the characters as they are actually written in the movie cannot be related.

2) You know that generally nothing beyond first cousins is actually considered incest right? Words have meanings. Even if they did have a common ancestor 500 years (roughly 20 generations) ago, that would not make them related in any way that would actually matter. Do you even know your family tree and every branch that came from it 500 years back? I doubt it.

3) I would dearly love to know what "plenty of canon gay ships" we have. I know tumblr tends to consider it the Acceptable Gay Ship, but y'all do remember that subscorp isn't canon, right? Literally the only gay ship that can MAYBE be considered canon is Mileena/Tanya, though the one place that seems to be confirmed is in a noncanonical tower ending. Kung Jin is a canonically gay character, which is great, but he does not have a canon love interest. There may be other gay ships you personally prefer, but there are literally zero canon M/M couples in this series- which is unsurprising given that its primary target audience is still straight boys.

4) The question of how the characters see each other is a valid one, but people change the dynamics between characters in fanworks or interpret them differently every single day, including in plenty of other ships in this fandom. Saying "what if it was this instead?" is part of the appeal of creating fanworks. You're going to have your work cut out for you if you want to police all of that.

5) Stop accusing LGBT+ people of literally fetishizing themselves 😂 As pointed out above, this game in a genre that still considers straight men its main demographic does not represent us. We're not fetishizing by interpreting relationships in it to better do so.

6) .... Fetishizing race? Because the characters are Asian, in a series about martial arts with a bunch of Asian characters? Kitana is also Asian, if you ship her with Liu Kang the way canon obviously wants you to, is that fetishizing their race? There are many legitimate discussions to be had about racism in fandom but that is one of the silliest things I've ever heard.

In conclusion:

[raviposting]

Okay so I’ve seen a lot of conflicting responses to Buddie this episode, from it being clear to people that they’re getting together, to thinking the writers have unintentionally messed things up to thinking it’s purely queerbait.

And I get the different responses, I do - tbh I’m somehow in two camps, where I simultaneously believe it’s a slowburn but I also think it’s bait. And those are two very different opinions to have and it got me thinking about why we have these different responses as fans to the possibility of a queer ship (namely two men who would presumably be bi/pan) being canon. 

While people talk about how it’s just people wanting two characters to kiss or entitled fans - sure, that’s existent in every fandom, but I think there’s also a very real fear from queer fans who don’t want to get their hopes up and I d on’t love how the conversation has shifted to calling queer fans stupid for having hope, so I kind of wanted to break it down into 3 aspects that I’ve noticed: 

How writers portray bi characters and why that makes fans hesitant to have hope

What queerbait actually means as a concept

How much “slowburn” has changed in procedurals

1. How writers portray bi characters

Something I’ve thought about a lot are the bi characters I’ve seen on TV - Darryl (CEG), Sara Lance (Arrow), Lucifer (Lucifer), just to name a few. These are great characters imo and I think you’d have a fun time watching but a thing to note is that all these characters were established as bi within the first season of their respective shows and they all fairly quickly fell into a clear romantic ship as well (with the exception of Sara as she spanned multiple shows). It may have taken time for them to say the word bisexual, but it was still clear these characters were queer fairly quickly on. You could maybe argue that Lucifer was a slowburn, but then (while it does not take away from him being bi/pan so do not use this as an excuse to be shitty about him) it’s a m/f ship which is still not the point of my post, to find a m/m or f/f ship that has that same treatment.

Some writers have done it - like for Valencia in CEG, or Petra in JTV - when they saw that fans read them this way, but trying to find those characters were few and far between, and when I looked at popular queerbait ships (whether or not they actually are queerbait) it’s usually ships where the characters are largely viewed as bisexual. A lot of times this also comes with pushback from both straight and to be frank, other queer fans as well. Straight fans don’t always see the signs that queer fans do, so to them a queer character who hasn’t been explicitly clear from the start comes out of nowhere. And what I’ve seen from certain queer fans are concerns that people aren’t appreciating the canon queer characters in a show - and I think there is a conversation to be had about that, but I don’t think the response should also be about then demanding less representation for people either. 

If we go back to 911, people talk a lot about how it has canon queer characters, which it definitely does - Michael, Hen, Josh, Karen, and David are all canonically gay/lesbian and that’s awesome, and we absolutely should talk about fans (white fans in particular) ignoring these characters. It also does not change the fact that none of these characters are bisexual and that is the representation people are looking for. Both of these things are true - these characters are often under appreciated in canon AND people deserve bisexual representation. They don’t contradict each other and to act like one negates the other does a huge disservice.

And even if a character was made bisexual in the canon text we don’t get that slowburn. This may be true for things like Leverage, or LOK, but there’s also a real fact of censorship that affected these shows and the fact that general audiences may not understand the queer text tjat the writers intended. It doesn’t make the writing any less wonderful or the ships any less poignant or beautiful or important, and there’s ofc shows like She Ra that made this more obvious (or the.....mess that was Supernatural that made it. Half true?) but these are still real things that should be acknowledged on why people are so hesitant to call it slowburn - because it’s something most queer fans haven’t SEEN DONE, because m/f ships will get that care for slowburn when it’s done but it’s not done for m/m or f/f ships in that same capacity.

2. What queerbait is

This one’s fun because I don’t think many people understand what it is, but queerbait is very dependent on the intentions of the writers/creators/etc. - which tbh can be hard to gauge, because a genuine intention that ended up not happening or someone baiting fans or someone trying to support all ships and not be rude all have very different intentions but to a fan who only sees bits and pieces of this person on social media, it can be hard to gauge.

Honestly with how much the 4th wall gets broken because of social media now I’d personally say we’ve probably moved into a different definition of queerbait - unintentional vs intentional - because we’re at a point where a show knows what ships are popular and at what level of excitement fans are for it - but that being said, there’s still a clear spectrum of intent. And imo? I don’t think 911 has that intent of queerbait - whether it’s a slowburn or they have a different vision for buddie that I (probably) won’t agree with remains to be seen, but this show usually treats its storylines with care. Are they perfect at it? No, definitely not, I definitely think that they’ve dropped the ball a few times (especially with just how many characters they have lmao), but they also clearly do their storylines with earnest and with genuine care for these characters.

Is 911 getting them together? I want to say yes. I don’t think this was always the plan, just something that they decided along the way, but I also don’t think that changes anything about the ship. A lot of people point to Tim Minear being vague about the ship, or the actors and their interpretations, but 1. We have no idea what they’ve been told about Buddie moving forward and 2. No show runner is going to spoil their show that much. 911 may be keeping quiet because they have a different plan for buddie, sure, but also maybe because they’re still figuring out how exactly they want to do this and/or they want to make this slowburn and don’t want to give it away.

3. Slowburn in procedurals

I feel like this is something that procedurals have started shying away from, but slowburns used to be very common - Bones, Castle, their ships didn’t get together for literal years, but that’s just not something that many shows do nowadays, even for m/f ships. Even things like Deckerstar will have the characters get together after ~3 seasons and explore the relationship onwards, whereas a few years ago, y ou’d pr obably be watching a sh ow and it’d take them 7 seasons to get together. My assumption for this is that shows are afraid  of getting canceled, but there’s been a pretty big shift in getting a couple together after say, 6 seasons to now getting them together about halfway through the show. I don’t think either one is bad or good - in good writers’ hands, either can be amazing - but that shift has made it so that a lot of younger fans in particular, I think, don’t fully recognize slowburn when they see it.

911 as a show tends to run pretty fast - it kind of has to with its depth of characters they have - but when they do have slower running storylines they really do make use of that as well. Bobby’s addiction is something that’s always going to be present in his character, May’s suicide attempt was brought up again front and center after 3 seasons, even Chim’s dynamic with the Lees was brought up again and it was reinforced again that they’re his family. There are certain storylines that have to be continuous and aren’t a one and done type of thing, and that includes Buck and Eddie, especially if you want to establish them as queer to a general audience who doesn’t think about these things.

And honestly, despite my fears, I think they are laying groundwork there. We have Buck learning to be more confident in his relationships, we have Eddie ready to date and learning to follow his own heart, we have Buck and Eddie both establishing that Buck is family and will always be there for Christopher. These are pretty big steps to do for a ship and we’ll obviously have to see how the show goes forward but they’ve already insinuated Eddie and Ana are breaking up, I’m sure Taylor and Buck may last a season and be over, but we do have to see what this next season brings. Do I think they’d say this? No, definitely not.

tl;dr: 

911 is a show with good viewership, but there’s always a possibility they can’t continue with their season and then their promises would feel like a lie. Or they may still be hammering out the details as this season hasn’t been written. Or they may just simply not want to spoil their show,  or they don’t want people criticizing a story before it’s finished, all of these could be reasons. The showrunners, writers, actors, ultimately they owe nothing to us as a fandom to potentially spoil their series, or do something, change it or their schedule for it, and get accused of bait. 

But it also doesn’t change why fans are wary of this storyline either, and I wish people would have more nuance and compassion for fans who are worried about queerbait (whether they think it’s not queerbait and dislike people worrying about it or if they do and are calling people idiots for believing it). There’s a lot of reasons why fans are wary and don’t want to have hope, and it’s not necessarily about 911 specifically as it is a pattern of writing seen in other pieces that have fans worried. These things can all coexist and I wish we as fandom in general could acknowledge that, because pretending that they don’t and criticizing each other/people’s intentions or knowledge when they have certain expectations also doesn’t do much to help.

[incomprehensiblelentils]

@loved-the-stars-too-fondly​ tagged me in a ship meme! I will try to make this interesting lol.

1. First ship

It’s a tie between Aladdin/Jasmine and Simba/Nala, because I saw both of these movies about the same time as a little kid. And my sixth birthday cake had a picture of Aladdin and Jasmine on it, and I used to tell stories about them to myself on the playground, but I had plushies of baby Simba and Nala with magnetic noses that could “kiss.” 

2. First OTP

I am taking this to mean “first fic you felt strongly enough about to produce content for or engage with in a creative/fandom way,” in which case that would be Michael/Mia from The Princess Diaries. I wrote one (1) bad fanfic when I was 13 (about how Michael proposed and then Grandmere threw a fit BUT then he saved her life while they were horseback riding) that’s still on ff dot net somewhere, and I read basically every fanfic for them that was available on ff dot net. I still have an enormous soft spot for them and I reread the books every few years.

3. Current favorite ship

Since I’m on a Dimension 20 kick right now, even though I haven’t read much fanfic yet I’m going to say both Fig/Ayda from Fantasy High and Ricky/Esther/Sofia from The Unsleeping City. Fig/Ayda is incredibly cute because Fig is a tiefling with shapechanging ability who had a string of questionable romantic encounters with much older men before meeting Ayda, the teenage curator of a magic library who is also an autistic Black phoenix. Fig is very impulsive and brash, but also emotionally closed-off and insecure, but she starts bonding with Ayda because Ayda thinks she’s really cool and admires her bravado. Fig doesn’t know what to do with someone who’s so intimidating but cool who seems to really like her, and, well, you can watch this scene where they get together, it’s very good. It contains Fig vomiting into a bush, then saying “I think you’re perfect the way you are,” then skateboarding away in a panic. It’s maybe the most accurate sapphic rep I’ve ever seen.

Ricky/Esther are just two incredibly nice people who get together in The Unsleeping City, but I think that they should also get together with their friend Sofia because of reasons. I genuinely think the canon supports this reading quite a bit.

4. Your ship since the first minute

I have a fun story for this, which is that literally since day 1 of Korra, I wanted her to have a girlfriend (post date: 12/7/11), and the second Asami showed up I was like eyes emoji. And then I dropped off the show after the first season for a few reasons, kind of assuming they would never do an f/f couple and casually shipping Korrasami sort of out of spite, but THEN my friend messaged me immediately after the finale like DUDE YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED. And that was honestly one of the emotional high points of my fandom life.

5. Ship(s) you wish had been endgame

I have...many! Bering and Wells from Warehouse 13 is paramount, obviously, because that is a wound in my soul from which I will never recover. Cartinelli from Agent Carter slightly less so, but I think that was truly the last time that I had real hope for a canon f/f ship. I think Matt/Foggy/Karen should have all been romantic together because Matt/Karen by themselves has weird vibes and I don’t like it. Obviously I think Fitz should have died in the series finale and Skimmons should have been canon, and as far as I’m concerned he died of a brain tumor after that and then they got together. (Daniel is also involved still, he’s a chill dude and I like him and it’s fine.) 

6. Ship you wish was canon

Grace/Dani from Terminator: Dark Fate, because wow did they shoehorn in an incredibly hilarious attempt at mommyzoning Dani (didn’t work, it’s still gay fuckos). But it would’ve been nice if they’d just leaned into it and let the horny lesbian ghost that possessed the screenwriters make it explicitly gay. Also I think Cameron/Donna and Gordon/Joe from Halt and Catch Fire should have been canon because that show is already basically about the world’s messiest polycule anyway, and Joe is canon bi and already treats Gordon like a booty call, and Cameron and Donna act like either romantic partners or bitter/awkward exes, so like. c’mon. Also I think Daisy/Robbie should have been a thing.

7. Ship that most of the fandom hates but you love

Natasha/Bruce is cute COME AT ME. Age of Ultron is a bad movie but they could have been cute!!!!

8. You don’t even watch the show, but you ship it

Uhhhh. Most things I end up secondhand shipping I end up consuming the canon for eventually lol. I was secondhand shipping Cameron/Donna from Halt and Catch Fire last year because my friend was watching it but then I just...also watched it lol. Uhhhh. The Killing Eve lesbians seem fun I guess? I’ll get to that eventually.

9. Ship you wish had a different storyline

I’m digging deep for this one, but Buffy/Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think they had SUCH a cool dynamic that kind of stopped getting explored after season 4, and it’s a bummer. I don’t think they’re like, endgame or true love or anything, but I think they’re sort of the messy pair that can’t completely disentangle from each other, and maybe they don’t even really want to? I think that they couldn’t live in the same house or anything but that they meet up and hang out and probably fuck every couple years, and it’s good.

10. Favorite ship(s) that’s endgame

GAMBIT/ROGUE GOT MARRIED IN THE COMICS. I’M SO PSYCHED. I don’t know if Karolina/Nico from Runaways counts as endgame but I love them, and I also love Gert/Chase. I’m rewatching Nikita and am delighted to know that Michael/Nikita is still very good. Priya/Tony from Dollhouse is also very good. Daisy/Daniel was honestly the best outcome SHIELD could have realistically given me and I was quite happy with it. I don’t know if Magnus Archives ships count but I really like Georgie/Melanie (we stan sapphic accidental apocalypse cult leaders). Oh and I like all the canon Avatar: The Last Airbender ships too.

EDIT: I FORGOT MY BELOVED ARAGORN/ARWEN AND WILL/ELIZABETH (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN).

I’m tagging @swiftzeldas @toriasimmons @dollsome-does-tumblr @theomenroom @zenithofdork if you wanna!

[whyqueerbaitingisbad]

movies & shows

cracks knuckles* alright this is going to be more of a rant than an analysis because i’m basing this on both my research, but also how it felt to personally be baited by these shows. there are obviously more pieces of bad (almost every horror movie) and good ones but these are the ones i’ve watched.

please keep in mind that i am but one queer and everyone has different opinions.

Supernatural (CW) 2005

This show is 15 years old and just ended. From season 5 till 15, there has been tension between two of the lead characters. They were constantly shipped together and not only did the entire fandom know about this ship but so did almost all of Tumblr. On top of that, the actors and show runners knew about it as well. Which is why it makes it ridiculous that it was constantly pushed aside while the romantic coding  kept happening, even after show runners dismissed it as being intentional. The Destiel (Dean x Cas) case has been going on for years, and as the show came to its end, many fans had hope. But N O P E. Instead, we got a love confession from Cas where Dean looked like he was near constipated and the Cas was killed and sent into a fiery place that was not hell but s u p e r  h e l l.

… w hy.

Sherlock (BBC) 2010

Just like Supernatural, this show was renown on Tumblr for not only how good it was, but its hinting at a potential relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. But again, like Supernatural, the intentional tension between the two characters was denied by producers. This caused an uproar within the fandom, and even left some people believing that, after the last season aired, it had been a joke and the producers were hiding a “secret, unaired season” because they had felt so robbed by this show that had implied something and denied it.

The 100 (CW) 2014

We got lesbians. We got background gays. We were happy. Then, all of a sudden, one of them is killed for no reason. Did it advance the plot? No. Was she fighting and died in battle? lol no. She was doing literally nothing and got shot and died. And then the producers kept bringing her back once a season in the form of a ghost or illusion because why? Because she was a fan favourite queer character. ✨bury your gays and sparingly bring them back for profit anyone?✨

Voltron: Legendary Defender (Netflix) 2016

*deep breathe* This one is a special disaster. Not only was there romantic tension and romantically coded scenes for 7 seasons, but producers, voice actors and artists working on the show repeatedly said “don’t worry klance (Keith x Lance) shippers, you’ll be happy”

. … w h e r e??? You code one of their scenes with a sunset in the background while they talk about love and then one of them goes on a date with someone who has declined his advances for 7 seasons but now in season 8 decides to do a full 180. Not only that, but you announce at a Comic Con (a convention) that a character is gay and has a fiancé, only to kill off the fiancé and never make it explicit in the show except at the last second of the last episode where he marries a no name character. 

Personally, i’d like to say a big fuck you to the show that strung me along for 2 years and never stopped saying we’d be happy to then pull the rug out from under us and call us crazy for thinking anything from the past 8 seasons was intentional.

Scooby-Doo (2002) 

While not being outwardly queerbaiting, this movie’s filmmaker has just revealed some shocking news, which wasn’t at all shocking to the gays who had watched this movie over the years. In July of 2020, James Gunn, the filmmaker of Scooby-Doo, revealed in a podcast that, initially, Velma was explicitly gay in his script, but then the studio watered it down until it became nothing. This isn’t an example of baiting as much as it is changing a character’s initial design to “better fit an audience”. The worst part of all this is that with Velma’s character having been written with a l i t t l e queer subtext, people had been theorizing about if since the movie came out, but were always yelled at by the internet for “imagining something that isn’t there”. But now, even with it being said that the initial point was for her to be gay, people have no objections to still refusing to accept it. Why?? So we can’t get the subtext gays OR the confirmed gays?? Make it make sense.

Brooklyn 99 (NBC) 2013

To have the queer characters firstly introduced without mentioning their sexualities and have it brought up naturally was so goddamn nice to see, because no one does a big deal about it unless they ask for that. This show is amazing in general but the way they show their queer characters is *chefs kiss*.

She-ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix) 2018

This. Show. My heart SOARS. It's just a remake of an old show so absolutely nothing was ever expected, but then it was sprinkled in and ENDED WITH A BANG. And it was so beautiful and real to see the struggle of two friends who care for each other and want to be together but have different visions of the world fall in love. And they also had characters with disabilities, a non-binary character and jUST SUCH A GOOD SHOW.

Kipo and The Age of Wonderbeasts (Netflix) 2020

This is a case where you go into it not expecting anything and are BLOWN AWAY by the bare minimum. And not because it’s bad!! It's mind blowing because this is the simple representation we need!! Not something over the top, but an every day relationship. It’s just two boys falling in love and going on dates and being nervous around each other, yet i was so stunned. Because it’s not shown enough. I should not be this excited over something that should be this normal. 10/10 though this show is so good for all kinds of representation.

Steven Universe (Cartoon Network) 2013

This show did so much for queer representation with its general message of loving everyone and loving who you want. Especially since it was aired on Cartoon Network, a channel for kids, it was able to help normalize something so looked down upon in some circles. It made it easy to watch for s o m e people because it's a cartoon but it's so beautiful to see these ladies so in love with each other, both platonically and romantically and we see them have a family dynamic that isn’t a “nuclear family”. Rebecca Sugar (creator) really said “lemme just break all stereotypes real quick”.

Adventure Time (Cartoon Network) 2010

It's the “knowing a fanbase shipped something so hard that the creators made it canon” for me. This relationship had been theorized by fans for years, but it had never been explicit in the show. When the finale episode came out and the two shared a kiss, it was a moment of celebration. The producer of the show said that it had not really been planned but when the episode was being made, the choice of what happened was given to one of the artists (bless your soul Hanna K. Nyströmthe). And as the show releases little bonus episodes, its latest was centered around Marceline and Bubblegum and their relationship. AND WE LOVE TO SEE OUR DOMESTIC LESBIANS BEING HAPPY AND IN LOVE.

Yuri on Ice!!! (anime) 2016

The fact that an A N I M E gave us a love story between two men is mind boggling and it makes me so happy!! Especially because it's a Japanese show and they’re very conservative about these things just makes it more emotional. The creators said they wanted to make the anime take place in a world where gay/straight isn’t a thing, it’s just love (ladies, you’re going to make me cry). So as the weekly episodes came out and fans start speculating, THEY GAVE US THE LAST FEW EPISODES FULL OF ROMANCE AND EMOTIONAL SCENES BETWEEN THE TWO AND THEN THEY GET R I N GS?!???!! You watch for the figure skating, you stay for the figure skaters that are in love.

Shadowhunters (Freeform) 2016

*insert me being frustrated that the actors are straight so we can move on from that disappointment*

This show really said “let’s name a whole episode after this couple because they deserve it”. But seriously, they gave us two characters whose entire plot does not center around their sexualities while still showing us the differences in a relationship between someone experienced and someone new at this. They were both powerful and amazing characters apart from each other, with their own story lines and goals but they loved each other so much omgs. SO MUCH. 

It was so great to watch.

Love, Simon (2018) 

There’s a lot of disagreement on whether this movie is good representation or not. However, we need to take into consideration that this was Hollywood’s first movie with a main character that was gay, where the story’s focus was on Simon’s love story. The biggest problem, for me at least, was that the actor playing Simon is a straight man and not queer. My problem is not with him, but the fact that there are other actors that are gay and that could have played Simon just as well. (the love interested was however played by a queer actor so ✨progress✨)

All in all, this movie does represent what a lot of queer kids have to go through: being outed at school, how they then come out, the bullying and doubt they go through.

The book is also really good.

Call Me By Your Name (2018)

This movie is so aesthetically pleasing and was able to capture the confusion and heartbreak felt by a boy who’s struggling with his own feelings towards a man. His inner conflict and joy and l o v e he feels but doesn’t know how to deal with is so well communicated through the screen and just breaks your heart because it feels so real.

But again, they could’ve gotten gay actors to play gay characters…

through having this list here, i want to show you that it’s not hard for creators to give good queer representation. the LGBTQ+ community isn’t asking for much, we just want to be well represented on screen as just a regular character, not some token queer kid there for the diversity points. having been exposed to so much queerbaiting and just not seeing any representation on screen, i always get over-excited when i see a queer character, and that’s not how it should be. it should be a normal thing, something you can find in most pieces of media, just like there’s a straight white cisgender person in everything.

and they seriously need to start casting queer actors for queer characters...