fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3510 ]

[ SECRET POST #3510 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3510 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Stephen King]

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03.

[John Green]

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04.

[American Gods]

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05.

[Charlie Hunnam in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword]

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06.

[Penn & Teller: Fool Us]

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07.

[Steven Universe]

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08.

[Questionable Content]

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09.

[Ghostbusters 2016]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 53 secrets from Secret Submission Post #502.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I honestly do understand it, beyond people complaining that platonic friendships in fiction are inherently queerbaiting. What is the difference between a close platonic friendship and queerbaiting?

Anon you read my mind because I've been trying to figure it out for the past hour after someone accused a show I just started watching of queerbaiting (and I'd never heard any accusations of it before with the show).

But I don't know, as far as I can tell the difference is "If I don't ship it, it's a close platonic friendship. If I ship it and I'm mad that it's not canon, it's queerbaiting."

What is the difference between a close platonic friendship and queerbaiting?

Generally: queerbaiting will include elements that are strongly coded as gay or queer, or otherwise imply queerness, while explicitly denying it.

It is extremely overused as a concept.

strongly coded as gay or queer, or otherwise imply queerness

See, I don't understand what that means or what would include? And I am queer.

For one thing, people are constantly pointing out "obvious subtext" between characters but when I look at it, it's nothing different than what I do with some of my platonic friends.

A lot of people use the term incorrectly and point it at things where it's not actually relevant.

I'm not sure I'm really capable of getting into how something is coded as queer at the moment but, like. There are narratives and aesthetics that are strongly associated - including internally - with queerness for historical and cultural reasons. Consciously invoking them (and obviously it's a judgment call if it's conscious or not) sort of necessarily associates the two ideas.

It's not the same as saying whether something is romantic or not. It's not proof that two characters are romantically involved. That's really not how the thing operates. Like I say, we're operating on the level of associated ideas and narratives here. It's not a question of whether the action or theme is intrinsically queer, it's a question of its relationship to the domain of queerness. So, like, it's something on the level of story, not on the level of relationships between two people.

IDK there's probably been about a million words written on the Internet about how this shit works.

here's an example out of the book I'm reading right now:

-the female protagonist is at a masked ball in the 20s. the narrator foreshadows that this will be a fateful night, that she is about to meet someone who will make the course of her life harder, but worth it in a bittersweet way.

-she trips and falls into the arms of a person. this person has a name that could either identify them as female or male. I'm expecting a male lover at this point, because she has a husband.

-it turns out to be a women. she is described with a level of detail that was only used for plot relevant beauty (her sister) and for the introduction of her husband. the women is crossdressing and part of progressive women rights group. the narrator compares her to Marlene Dietrich, an actual bisexual women.

-but no! they're only FRIENDS. and the narrator repeats this term over the next few pages, because the author knew what kind of expectation they were creating.

at this point I put the book down. it was such a blatant bait and switch moment that it was kind of staggering.

The fact that the narrator has a husband wasn't relevant then?

How would it be relevant?

Both bisexuality, and fiction about non-monogamous relationships, exist.

Bisexuality? Exist in fiction? Come on, we all know better than that. And unless a main character's gay affair is going to be the central plot of the book, them having an opposite sex spouse is a tell from the beginning that they're straight, end of story.

DA

So if I were writing a story about a protagonist who, having up until that point only been with the opposite sex, discovers their bisexuality through a same sex romantic encounter, I would be misleading the readers because I would have already established my character as 'straight' from the start? How else would these stories go?

I'd be surprised if they made up in a romantic way. at this point in the story she sees her husband for only 3 weeks every year.

plus the whole failure of their marriage was set up in a way that makes her extremely sympathethic, even if it isn't his fault.

everything points to her meeting /someone/ to cheat with. the narrator is not the protagonist btw, but her pseudo omnipresent granddaughter looking back.

how much the fans want the characters to bang each other

also friendship doesn't exist unless they're ugly

Implications implying.

Honestly, I think the problem lies in people playing up what can be interpreted as romantic or sexual tension in a same sex relationship only to come in out of NOWHERE and introduce an opposite sex romantic interest at the last second.

Like... whoops P into V because the very fact that boy and girl are in the same room is good enough.

I think you'd see a lot less complaints of queerbaiting if anyone ever bothered to write compelling relationships between men and women that don't just happen out of thin air in the space of ten seconds.

The example I always look to for queerbaiting minutes is Supernatural - and even I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as the keyboard warriors claim.

Basically, when the show has Dean falling all over himself like a teenager and flirting with a guy who thinks he's gay, or plays up the the wink wink nudge nudge subtext because slash fans will like it while refusing to actually make Dean queer...that's queerbaiting. Basically teasing your audience without ever planning on following through.

Queer coding from a historical context isn't really something I'm able to discuss with any authority but a different example might be the guy who's very feminine in dress or overly in touch with their emotions - basically hitting all the stereotypes without actually saying it, which is harmful both to the queer community who still doesn't get representation and to members of the Straight community who aren't stereotypically "straight-acting."

I have only ONCE honestly felt baited, and I'll explain the whole thing. It was a comics series with a certain well-known writer who's KNOWN for writing lots of queer characters.

Protagonist has Buddy. They were friends before the series, and Buddy is now Protag's bodyguard. There is a gay marriage storyline, where Protag is asked multiple times if he's gay. He always avoids the question.

There are moments of intimacy in the comic over and over between Protag and Buddy, but I don't buy it. I'm like, yeah yeah, bromance, whatever dude, it's not going to happen.

The series runs for something like 60 issues. In the second-to-last issue, Protag confesses his love for Buddy.

I go, "What, SERIOUSLY? You pull this shit at the second-to-last issue?" But I calm down. Buddy is written in a way mostly reserved for straight dudes, I figure it's just whatever, doomed love or whatever.

Last issue. Time jump. Buddy is now drunkenly confessing HIS love for Protag. He lunges in for a kiss... and Protag totally rebuffs him, because he's running for a Republican candidacy and anyway, Buddy has turned into a wife-beating drunkard since the last issue, while Protag has just kinda become a jerk. The comic ends with them both miserable, all their efforts coming to naught, they're both terrible people, the end.

I was so fucking mad. Does it even count as queerbaiting if the two characters DO turn out to be queer for each other, they just have a "rocks fall, everyone's a dick" ending? Or is that just plain douchey writing? All I knew was that I was so mad to be teased with gay jokes for fifty straight issues, only for it to be a "surprise! Miserable endings for everyone and no queer relationships allowed!"

Especially since it was that writer, which a lot of people really like. It actually led to me swearing off him for a while, because man, it's not often I get that mad over a stupid comic book!

Merlin is a good example I think. They built up elements of the Merlin and Arthur relationship specifically to draw in the slash fans in Season 1. Then, because they'd rather over-egged the pudding, they had to completely rein it back for the following seasons. It really ruined the flow.

I have no opinion of the rest of this comment, but I'm going to use the phrase "over-egged the pudding" whenever possible now

speaking as bi person: the difference is whether or not the fans want the characters to bang

The thing I usually notice is lots of scenes that, in an M/F pair, would be part of a 'will they or won't they' framing. You know, they end up standing very close and staring deeply into each others eyes for a long moment; they have a symbolism-laden conversation about passion or devotion or w/e; they encounter a pair of characters who either look very similar or have a similar dynamic but are in an explicitly romantic relationship...
All that sort of thing.

The relationship between Julian Bashier and Elim Garak is a prime example of queerbaiting.

AFAIK the writers didn't like the fans reading into Garak and Bashir as becoming a gay couple, so they wrote the characters going from best friends to barely interacting.

I also heard that Alexander Siddig(Bashir) started phoning in his character instead of putting his all into it because he was upset about that change.

isn't that the opposite of queerbaiting? from the way you describe the situation, it sounds like they had no intention of including gay subtext in the characters' relationship and deliberately began to write the characters differently once they found out that people were (from their POV) misinterpreting the friendship. that sounds more like queer repelling than baiting.

NAYRT

It's a little more complicated than that even, because a lot of the reason the relationship comes across so gay on screen is because of how it's acted - in particular, Andrew Robinson is almost explicitly playing it gay - so you have a situation where the creative process itself is more complicated.

That said, it's not like Andrew Robinson made the idea up out of whole cloth. Those themes did exist in the characters, and it's kind of shameful how hard the writers ran away from it once they saw how it was played.

I don't think that all fictional platonic friendships are queerbaiting, but as media has become more aware of slash and slash fans, I've seen the same pattern repeat multiple times:

There will be a canon friendship which the writers never intend to ever make romantic. However, as they are attractive white dudes who spend a lot of time together, they are inevitably slashed. Slash fans squee and write fic, which brings in more slash fans.

(Also LGBT people, who have some degree of overlap with slash fans, but no one is sure exactly how much.)

At this point, TPTB realize they've got a new audience section on their hands. Their goal at this point is to keep and grow that audience, while not alienating anybody who will be squicked out by an actual same-sex relationship playing out on the screen.

What follows is a protracted game of wink-wink nudge-nudge that plays out on social media sites and at conventions, both of which skew young and presumably less likely to be offended by teh ghey. Actors, writers, and/or producers will make vague but suggestive statements about how these guys are "so close" and "subtext" which they will imply might, eventually, become text.

Pro tip: they have no intention of ever letting Destiel, or Sterek, or whatever popular ship become text.

The whole thing relies on a level of plausible deniability. It's "all in fun" and "cheeky" and anyone who expects actual major queer characters and/or relationships is obviously "overly invested."

Well, you yourselves did all you could to foster that investment, because invested fans write fanfic and meta and squee all over social media and bring in more fans. You teased the fans when you had no intention of delivering.

Part of the problem is that the stereotype of the slash fan as a heterosexual female means that it's easy to write off the complaints of queer fans as "just upset their favorites aren't going to get together." We're "overreacting."

No, we're reacting perfectly appropriately to the message: that while we're good enough to tease in order to build their audience share, we don't actually deserve to be the hero, rather than the sidekick or the one-off guest star.

If they ship it, it's queerbaitimg.

That seems to be the level of logic required these days.

I think it came from a shift over the last decade. It used to be, same sex friendships would be written with gay jokes or they could play up relationship drama as if they were a romantic couple, and it was always obviously not going to happen. But then people started asking why, criticizing the inclusion of queer themes with no actual queer people in sight. Which I am in favor of. But it's not because the gay jokes were a promise the creators failed to deliver on *cough*spn

I think there are still shows who should get this criticism, because tons of creators still see queerness as a punchline or a way to add drama while not actually representing any one who isn't straight. But as the culture shifts and creators include more queer rep, I think this argument holds less weight.
Including queer subtext with no intention of following through is not a crime in itself.
But fans are using it as a bludgeon to make their ship canon and it makes me want to burn down the Internet.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3510 ]

queerbaiting?

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NAYRT

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ayrt

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Watch Star Trek Deep Space Nine and you'll see it in Garak and Bashir!

Re: Watch Star Trek Deep Space Nine and you'll see it in Garak and Bashir!

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