#wwdits queerbaiting

[anxietycheesecake]

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

[ghostfingies]

(they're both right)

[swanparties]

someone add elphaba to the list of gay people who have been rejected when they ask the love of their life to run away with them

[veryintricaterituals]

It was queerbait, actually (A repository)

(It's almost three am but I am fuming, I've been collecting these for a while, my evidence, I WILL write a detailed post about this in a few days but I wanted to leave this here in case anyone else wanted to see how fucking deep this goes)

HYPOTESIS: Nandermo is textbook queerbaiting, not in spite the characters being queer but BECAUSE of it. The ship was used deliberately by the writers, the actors and the marketing in order to bring lgbt viewership to the show with NO intention on ever delivering on their promise.

Also the show presented itself as queer, marketed itself as queer and went to win GLAAD awards two years in a row then proceded to have no m/m or f/f couples for SIX seasons. Their queer rep were just jokes.

WHAT'S QUEERBAITING:

(I hate that I have to use wikipedia and dictionary.com but the actual articles about it are behind paywalls and I am poor)

Okay on to WWDITS

Let's talk marketing:

These are from season 3, 4, 5 and 6

Season five:

The show is over, it had six seasons, where were my m/m or f/f couples? Because I sure as hell didn't see one apart from the one episode with Freddie, that's it, that's all we got. Apart from that it was just jokes.

---

But that's not about nandermo, you say, it's just about queerness, then what about this: FUCKING HEAVY HANDED NANDERMO MARKETING FOR YEARS:

OR THIS:

How about what the show's socials were posting, this is from season 3 or 4

Now let's see what the writers were saying (this is before season 5):

The infamous that's his boss moment came from this:

But before that we had:

This is Harvey in 2022:

Here's Harvey today:

And here's Kayvan in 2022

Here's Kayvan last year:

And today:

[cottoncandysprite]

I know ppl on here are being optimistic but is this a safe space to say I haven't been this pissed about an ending since Voltron

[sunny-superstar]

dont make me tap the sign

i know it ultimately trails back to the corporations but i just wanna say i think it’s heinous that old heterosexual men are STILL seemingly always in showrunner positions for major television shows, or at least they are always the ones getting their ideas greenlit. and so the most accessible popular media (the narratives we collectively see) are determined by these dudes who do not relate to You. they don’t care about what or who You’d like to see represented onscreen. sometimes this is affected by diversity in the writer’s room, etc., but for the most part everything must be dumbed down to what THEY THINK an average middle-american audience member can tolerate—and it’s insulting to everyone’s intelligence! It’s nearly 2025 and we’re all supposed to accept that certain kinds of stories are not worth telling (on that scale) because why? because it’s potentially alienating to a demographic that already has decades of screen representation to enjoy?

SO let’s talk about how showrunners/networks are well aware of viewership demographics and the profitability of fandom. Take a show like wwdits, where a lot of its notoriety had to do with its general edginess and, importantly, its appeal to LGBTQ audiences: the creators intentionally featured a mlm will-they/won’t-they at the center of their show, to the point that it was arguably the driving force behind continued viewership. It’s the carrot on a stick. “How will we keep profiting off of these queer viewers? Make them hope. Textually suggest the prospect of a fully realized gay romance and then tease these viewers for making ~homoerotic fanart and fanfiction~ like that wasn’t the plan all along!”

Your fanwork, whether it’s drawn or written, is free publicity for the source material. You Need To Know that. Because the corporate bastards Have Known That. that’s why supernatural was on for 15 seasons. Not because the plot itself was worth that much, but because the supporters of the central gay ship MADE it profitable. And baiting them only fans the flames (basically, it drives people crazy. spn still trends on here like once a week, 4 years later). & they want you crazy. they want online engagement. they want it trending on tumblr and twitter. They believe that if they give you what you want (canon gay rep) then the show will instantly lose profitability.

So. That’s what it comes down to. Your dedication means nothing to them but job security... and if you dare to take the bait and hope for the writers to fulfill what they VERY deliberately set up, they’re gonna straight up mock you. In the end, they’re just gonna fumble all of it, because they never cared about You or even the characters and their stories. Why bother if it doesn’t seem profitable anymore, right?

God it’s all so cynical. Keep writing fanfiction. Keep making fanart. Keep engaging in fandom spaces. Do it because YOU have passion. Do it because YOU care about a story or characters that mean something to you. Do it because we, as the folk, as the common people, need to have some way to control these narratives. We need to create our own hope, even if we get belittled for it. It’s all we have to combat the cynicism.

[imagopersonal]

we had that super hot queer summer in which ofmd, wwdits and good omens happened at the same time and from that moment on everything just went shit

[jesse-pinko]

Okay I’ve never really been more than a casual enjoyer of WWDITS and I recognize that some people definitely took shipping in the vampire comedy show too seriously as fandom is wont to do but imo even if it isn’t queerbaiting the ending left a bad taste in my mouth. Deliberately marketing your show by teasing a popular gay ship that you purposefully wrote with that subtext behind it, and then not delivering on the dynamic you set up and implying that queer fans were just being delusional and entitled and perverse by wanting these two characters to be explicitly together in the year 2024… it’s giving BBC Sherlock like there’s so much contempt here for queer fans wanting to see onscreen representation of what could have been a pretty well developed gay relationship. Maybe it’s bc I grew up w this shit being the norm but I kind of think people have the right to be pissed by getting cucked out of gay rep in goddamn 2024

[karmathehalflander]

If I had a nickel for every time I was very excited for the finale of a series with some of my favorite queer characters only for it to be the worst in the series, completely destroy the ship, completely destroy any character development, and leave me feeling empty I would have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot so it’s really a shame I feel so dead inside.

I’m coming for you Venom the Last Dance and What We Do in the Shadows season 6

[p4nishers]

'ive been queerbaited too many times to hope for nandermo canon' i cant express the rage i feel reading that i really cant

[chlo67]

rising from the ashes just to put on the record that I, the girl who didn’t pick up on destial in supernatural until like three seasons in, thought nandermo was the most in-your-face endgame ship ever

[ghostfingies]

wwdits fandom fighting each other over what exactly counts as queerbaiting instead of using critical thinking to see that the creators did us dirty either way is a great metaphor for how infighting over terminology instead of uniting as queers only helps the queerphobic agenda.

[montanabohemian]

i don't know how to tell the people whining about not seeing guillermo and nandor make out that that episode was gayer than gay sex.

[veryintricaterituals]

[cottoncandysprite]

Just saw someone say the nandermo queerbaiting was done out of love....... you guys don't know Paul Simms follows Charlie Kirk and Libs of TikTok on twitter over here huh

[paleshroom]

I see people going “but they dont have to kiss or say i love you! its so CLEAR that theyre in love! not every story-”

Do you think this shit would be pulled with a straight couple