fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6442 ]

[ SECRET POST #6442 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6442 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 36 secrets from Secret Submission Post #921.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - 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.

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Not OP, but they didn't say "I think it was queerbaiting," they said "I'm surprised it's not being accused of queerbaiting."

Fandom has been misusing the word for years to mean "in a series with openly canon queer characters, my specific ship didn't get together." (Maybe the fact that it isn't happening so much with D&W means the trend is dying off?? We can only hope.)

"Fandom has been misusing the word for years to mean "in a series with openly canon queer characters, my specific ship didn't get together."

Where has this been happening? The only big ones I've seen are "in a series with queer minor characters but where the character I ship is canonically straight, they didn't magically turn gay so it's queerbaiting" isn't quite the same as the main character being queer to begin with.

It happens literally all the time, what do you mean.

All the big fandoms I can think of that had major queerbaiting whiners were ones like SPN or TW where the characters were not queer and people wanted them to be, vs. fandoms where the main characters are canon openly queer but get called queerbaiting for being the wrong ships.

If it's that commonplace for queer characters to be called queerbaiting for being both A) canon openly queer but B) in the wrong queer ships, it should be really easy to give examples of where this behavior is prevalent. I'm genuinely curious to know because I have never seen it.

I mean, technically, SPN isnt even queerbaiting (In the sense of "we are going to have a main gay character, we SWEAR! Watch us!") because well, Castiel DID confess gay romantic feelings for Dean, even if it was at the last minute.

But given that it was his literal LAST appearance? YEah, I doubt he counts as "canon queer character being called queerbait for being in the wrong ship"

Where is this happening? I’ve never seen it, only fans complaining that their slash ship of two straight characters didn’t become canon.

9-1-1

I didn't go there but from what I understand the Voltron fandom had this problem.

DA
In the comment secret OP was adamant that it was queerbaiting and Deadpool is 100% straight.

I'm also curious where this has been happening, I've never seen a fandom where the main/POV character is canonically queer that has been accused of queerbaiting (what's there to bait, then?).

I didn't say it had to be "the main/POV character", just that the series has canon queer characters in general.

I searched for the word "queerbaiting" on Tumblr, and found all these complaints in about 2 minutes: Loki/Mobius, Dean/Castiel, Loki/Mobius and Sam/Bucky, Kara/Lena, Charles/Erik, Prentiss/women in general?, John/Sherlock, this is a whole tag for Keith/Lance.

It also happened with Crowley/Aziraphale, Catra/Adora, and Luz/Amity before each of those couples actually kissed on-screen. The complaint posts would be older and take more digging to find, so I'll leave those for other people to look for if you really want to.

I don't think that's the same thing at all though?

This secret is expecting people to call queerbaiting when the main/POV character is and always has been canonically queer. So the situation is kinda different.

Surely we can agree that Loki, at least, is a main/POV canonically-queer character on the same level as Deadpool is.

I mean sure, we can count that one. Seems like the exception that proves the rule, though? The predominant trend being that most of these examples are canonically non-queer characters that fandom wishes were queer instead of calling queer characters queerbaiting.

Even the main/POV characters that once got the "queerbaiting" calls, once they turned out to be actually queer later, the calls stopped because they're actually queer. No bait.

So it's not really a surprise that Deadpool isn't really being called that.

My rule is "plenty of fans will accuse a thing of queerbaiting because their ship isn't together, yes even if one of the characters they're shipping is canon queer, yes even if that's the main character."

...and I searched "deadpool queerbaiting" to see if it actually wasn't being called that, and, welp, turns out it is.

It's not a majority view -- only got 20% of the votes in this poll, for example -- which is promising! But it's not not happening.

Do you have a screencap of the poll or something? Or can recap it? It’s locked.

I think part of the differing views on this particular movie is that the tumblr fandom isn’t the fandom; they’re not even a blip on the radar of the main fandom. Deadpool has a huge fandom, Wolverine, X Men, X Men movieverse…there are billions of fans across the main characters. Just because 20% of an insignificant corner of the fandom that is literally blocked from the rest of the fandom seeing is too stupid to understand that Deadpool is pan or doesn’t understand what queerbaiting means doesn’t make it surprising that there isn’t some large scale (or at least noticeable) outcry about something that doesn’t exist.

Now I feel like you're trying to argue with me about things I already agree with.

Since you asked, here's a screencap:

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image1.png

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-08-26 01:32 (UTC) - Expand

Yeah I know what you're talking about, hell even without having actual canon queer characters in a show fandom has been misusing the term queerbait for years.

The word shippy needs to come back in place of 'subtext' because the latter implies some form of intent from the writers, while the former is strictly putting the onus on fandom for finding a dynamic fun enough to ship, which is what happens 9/10. But because a bizarre number of fandom folk treat shipping like sports teams they like to use subtext because it makes their personal ship-vibing seem more legit instead of the personal preference it is.

Hear hear.

Just getting fandom-at-large to accept "shipping is not a contest, and your fic is not more- or less-valid based on how closely it follows canon" would solve so many problems.

This is an uphill battle that isn't getting any better unfortunately. I've shipped plenty of non-canon ships and the fandoms go from chill to utter hellscapes if they ever get popular enough for the 'this is totally intended' lot turn up. I know when I'm shipping something that isn't meant to be canon and I'm perfectly happy with that, but so many other fans aren't and it sucks the fun out of things.

Nah, people need to learn that subtext doesn't need to be intentional. That's not an intended implication of that word and used to not be taken as one. People would talk about subtext where it was understood that it wasn't intentional. I remember when people talked about subtext between Roy and Ed in Fullmetal Alchemist. None of us thought it was meant to be there, nonshippers disagreed that it even existed, and that was okay!

Lets be real though: most people are using it as the 'it's totes there and I am so smart for picking up on it' kind and that's my issue, people are not coming from a subtext argument in good faith to begin with, which I why I want shippy to come back because that is honest.

I disagree... in all of my fandoms I've always seen "subtext" used to refer to stuff that was very clearly intentional on the part of the writers.

Like, in one of my fandoms there are some really intense shippy vibes between the MC and his male best friend but that's more a result of the author not knowing how to write romance so the canon romance was totally lacking in chemistry and as a result the friendship between the MC and his best friend had stronger chemistry than the actual canon romance. Is this subtext? No, because it wasn't intentional, and we all agreed on that front. The shippy vibes absolutely existed but they were clearly not what the author intended, so we didn't call them "subtext" because they weren't. They were just "this author sucks at writing ships."

Nope, no one in fandom is using it like this and you know that. Which is why I want to take it away from fandom because they are trying to claim intent that isn't there.

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