I love that she has a blob fish friend just sitting there.
Kilroy the Blob Fish
I absolutely find it annoying when romance is prioritized over friendship but this isn’t quite what queerbaiting is. At least, not on its own. Two same sex/gender people being very close and sharing a strong connection or even having some romantic undertones that never become “official” isn’t automatically queerbaiting. Those things can happen in real life without those relationships being or becoming romantic. Queerbaiting is when the writers/showrunners purposefully insert romantic subtext into the story and advertise it as if it will become canonically romantic with the primary intention of gaining more lgbt viewership, while never actually following through on those implied (or even occasionally explicitly stated) promises. The way it is presented and marketed is an important part of what makes it a problem, hence the “baiting” part. There’s nothing wrong with keeping a relationship ambiguous, or portraying a platonic relationship as being as deep, important, and emotionally intimate as romantic ones are typically portrayed without making them romantic, but if you try to manipulate or outright lie to viewers to make them think a relationship is going to be something it isn’t in order to gain their viewership and support, only to pull the rug out from under them, then that’s when it becomes sleazy, especially if you’re taking advantage of the fact that they’re a marginalized and under-represented group desperate to see more people like them in media.
I know this is just a joke comic so “it’s not that deep” but I see a lot of people online who misunderstand what queerbaiting is and accuse shows/series of queerbaiting unfairly so I thought I’d bring it up.
The issue is that romance tends to be prioritized over friendship in media even for straight relationships, and so many romantic relationships are incredibly shallow or have very little reasoning behind them (the “I met this guy I have nothing in common with 2 days ago and we’re so totally in love let’s shoehorn in a sex scene” thing is played out so often for hetero romances) and LGBT relationships are so rare, that any subtext that even remotely hints at a queer romantic relationship has people grasping at straws. So companies use that to their advantage. They just dangle the barest hints of anything, because that’s all they need to get people. And they dare not show anything more than the tiniest of subtext anyways, because anything LGBT is considered sexually explicit by default. Just look at how much the creators behind The Legend of Korra and Steven Universe had to fight for the queer romances in their respective shows. Both almost got cancelled because the writers wanted to show those relationships (and the Korra one was even completely unintentional, the writers just kinda realized it was developing over the course of the series and decided to go all in on it).
Edit: Forgot the part where they don’t openly hint at or mention it because they don’t want to piss off the homophobes. They want to straddle that line that let’s them have their cake and eat it too.
The issue is that romance tends to be prioritized over friendship in media even for straight relationships
This doesn’t seem strange to me. Personally I do this. I’m
in a committed long term relationshipmarried, but even before that I prioritized romantic relationships above friendships. I don’t get why this is weird (forgetting the exaggerated “I met this guy I have nothing in common with 2 days ago and we’re so totally in love” part).OP said they find it annoying when romance is prioritized over friendship and how two people of the same gender who share a strong bond shouldn’t be assumed to have romantic feelings for each other, even if there’s a bit of romantic subtext to their relationship that never goes anywhere, and that that’s not queerbaiting on its own. I was trying to say that even straight relationships in shows can often be shallow at best with barely any romantic subtext, so it’s unfair to hold queer relationships in media to a different standard. Not to say that a deep and emotional bond can’t simply be a friendship between two people, and media only has so much time to develop a relationship, but given two relationships with the same amount of shallow subtext, why are the two women just gals being pals and the guy and the girl are a couple.
I think society as a whole tends to prioritize romantic relationships over friendships, and media is probably partly at fault for that. I could go on a whole rant about how this is even further exacerbated for people raised as men because men aren’t really allowed to have strong emotional bonds in friendships and so any form of emotional connection in a relationship is misunderstood as romantic advances, which is probably a major factor in the issues we see with men having trouble simply being friends with women, but that’s stepping beyond the realm of this discussion.
Basically, I’ve seen so many straight romantic relationships in shows that feel shallow or out of left field and shoehorned in just for the sake of a romantic subplot, so why is it different when people say it’s queerbaiting about two women or two men having the same amount of development in their relationship that doesn’t turn into a romantic relationship?
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That was a very interesting read. Do you have any examples of queerbaiting or portrayed relationships that are commonly mistaken for queerbaiting in shows? Being a very boring stereotypical heterosexual, I’ve never paid attention to that, and I admit I haven’t heard the term before today.
I think the above comment was kind of blowing the comic out of proportion—I mean it’s a 4 panel comic it’s obviously not going to be able to give great nuance but I think it’s easy to read it as “proper” queerbaiting.
Anyway, the Wikipedia page has a good list of examples if you’re interested in mainstream examples.
Ones that stick out off the top of my head I’ve personally watched were Sherlock, and Teen Wolf and Rizzoli & Isles to a lesser extent.
It’s hard to think of off the top of my head because I admittedly have not gotten into a lot of the more popular examples, and a lot of them mix together, but a typical indication that someone is using the term wrong is if they try to point to evidence inside the show of how the couple should be canon because they have so much chemistry but the creators just won’t commit and make it canon. Those are typically just people wearing shipping goggles using the word as a way to say “I want them to be canon, therefore they SHOULD be canon, but they’re not, so it’s queerbaiting” even though the creators have never at any point indicated that the two characters will ever be in a relationship in advertising, interviews, previous drafts of the script, or otherwise, and at most the actors may have joked about how the ship is popular or mentioned that they personally enjoy it (which isn’t the same as using it in marketing or promotional material or teasing the possibility of it becoming canon). Queerbaiting can also take place even if a couple or sexuality DOES become canon if it’s halfassed or skimmed over or done poorly. Some famous examples of this are Shiro and his relationships from VLD and Destiel from Supernatural.
One rather infamous case of Queerbaiting was with the BBC’s Sherlock. Watson and Sherlock have been a popular couple for decades and the show played around quite a bit with the idea. There’s lots of essays on YouTube and the net about it if you want to dig into the details, but there are many jokes in the show about Watson and Sherlock being a couple, and hints that Sherlock at least is gay/bi. The running gag is Watson repeatedly telling people he isn’t gay, but he still seems jealous of other characters who have eyes for Sherlock.
All of this seemed to pretty deliberately play into the popularity of the pairing, with even a few nods to it in the show. But in the end, nothing came of it, and fans felt that they had been “baited” into watching and driving the popularity of the show without any payoff. In hindsight, the whole relationship had only been used as a joke and a lure, which was especially galling since representation of homosexuality in mainstream entertainment was still fairly rare. Thus did it receive the label of “Queerbaiting”.
Now for an example of something that’s not queerbaiting (though it was sometimes referred to as such) we have Steven Universe. The short version is that there was a popular pairing between two female characters in the show, and one could easily assume they were an item since they lived together and were generally only seen with each other after a certain point in the show. However, their relationship was never officially confirmed and there were hints from an artist/writer of the show that they hadn’t been allowed to be as explicit as they would’ve liked about it.
So what makes this not queerbaiting? The biggest defense against the label is the context that Steven Universe as a whole was a very LGBTQ±friendly show, featuring the most explicitly gay couple in the channel’s history with two of the main characters. It also had a litany of other gay relationships and LGBT+ individuals. Further, the contentious couple was never officially disproven in the “it was all a joke!” sense of the previous example, it was just left open to interpretation. In total, it’s clear the show wasn’t using the couple purely as marketing and that the creator did genuinely care about LGBTQ+ representation.
In summation, queerbaiting isn’t just “the gay couple I wanted didn’t happen.” There has to be a deliberate effort on behalf of the showrunners to keep people watching by heavily hinting at a payoff that will never come.
If the characters you’re talking about fro. SU are who I think they are, it’s also worth mentioning than there were also a lot of hints that one of those characters was acearo or at the very least served as an allegory for the acearo experience, which iirc was eventually confirmed.
Thank you!
Hibike Euphonium anime is often accused of queer baiting even though they are just friends even on the original work.
Even though Japan still doesn’t have gay marriage, lgbt couples are well represented on their yaoi and yuri bubbles, so there’s no need for authors to be sneaky about it and use queer bait.
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There’s this “kids” show called Sakura card captor from the makers of X tv…
Seems you didn’t get the memo, 2 boys or 2 girls can’t be besties now, they must be gay for each other so fanfics can have more weight.
A guy and a girl being besties never stopped fanfic writers before. If media ain’t gonna give queer people actual relationships, they’ll just have to make their own (with blackjack, and hookers!).
I mean as someone who is acearo myself and would like to see more relationships that reflect my own sometimes too, I’d love to see more cases of guys and girls just being friends and not getting shoved into a relationship automatically.
I’m a straight guy and my first best friend was a girl. We never had any feelings for each other, and I’ve continued to have many platonic female friends over the years. I also would like to see more of that in media.
I agree. I’m bothered by it from two different angles. On the one hand, we’ve got so many instances of people with no chemistry or anything being shoved into romantic relationships because they’re a guy and a girl so obviously they’re in love; and on the other hand two girls making out is just gals being pals but a guy and a girl making eye contact is enough for them to be soulmates.
Let guys and girls be just friends and don’t make people jump through extra hoops to justify the existence of queer relationships. That’s all I’m asking for.
i think that what you are talking about might be related to Amatonormativity (and maybe Allonormativity a bit too)
My bi partner is still slightly annoyed that she’s had to settle for a man because none of the lesbians wanted to be with a bi girl.
That’s kind of sad.
For both parties.
Right?
I had to settle for you because nobody else wanted me
Gee I love you two.
Obviously I know nothing about the guy’s relationship, but that’s a huge red flag to me. That said, who knows, they may have a very loving, healthy and stable relationship, and this is just a jokey gripe she makes for funsies.
We do have a loving and stable relationship. Complete with kids and a mortgage! And we still fuck like rabid apes.
fuck like rabid apes
You mean painfully, with jerky twitches, difficulty swallowing and ultimate brain death?
Not sure about literal brain death but pretty much.
SICK! Super happy for you my dude! Was worried with what you’d said, but, obviously, that’s a single sentence.
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It’s bisad.
NonMelancholy
I’m not saying she feels like she settled, just that I wouldn’t have met her in the first place if she had been accepted by any of the women who she met before me. Candy’s loss though.
My bi partner is still slightly annoyed that she’s had to settle
I wouldn’t have met her in the first place if she had been accepted by any of the women who she met before me.
I understand that I know nothing of your life. And I’m sure it’s going fine. But the way you’re framing it while defending the relationship seems like you need to have a bit more of a talk about it.
What i mean is she wasn’t looking for a male partner when I met her, but there I was: tall, handsome, charming, sensitive, well spoken, 8 inch dick etc etc. And now we’re 15 years in, have multiple children and still find time to bump uglies at least 4 times a week. I know she’s into girls, but it doesn’t make her less into me and I can still make her sound like brain damaged livestock. So thank you for your concern, but we’re good.
as long as you’re feeling settled-for, that’s what counts
My aunt once told my (then) 10 year old sister to “just marry a man you can stand”. We keep wondering when aunt Wendy is going to kill her husband. He’s a dick.
“just marry a man you can stand”
My uncle in law married the first woman who would have him. He didn’t think long or hard about it, just thought that to be the most expedient and simple. Thought that all women were good and kind and reasonable people like his mother and sisters.
She’s been a complete demon to him, totally solipsistic and money-obsessed, and is not only working him into an early grave but is also stressing him out such that he looks like he’s in his late-eighties. He’s only 64.
Never took to the idea of sex outside of marriage or an LTR (= min. 6 months, usually 12 or more), but daaaaaang… people need to percolate more before filtering down into a cup.
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that’s gonna be a fun nursing home confession one day
👍
I have a bi ex who broke up with me because she knew her lesbian friend group would ostracize her for dating a man. The queer community can be incredibly discriminatory against the bi part of itself
It’s always been the case unfortunately. Biphobia is as rampant among the LGBT community as homophobia is in the world at large. All the things that homophobes do to gay men, they’ll happily turn around and do to bi men.
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Yeah my partner and brother are both bi and there is a strong sense that they’re being made to pick a side. I have no problems with her having a girlfriend in addition. Honestly it’d be good for her, but I also think she wouldn’t be terribly successful going into it with a male partner and several kids. Maybe with other bi women but they’d probably think she was unicorn hunting.
The queer community can be incredibly discriminatory against the bi part of itself
Or the trans part of itself. Or the questioning part of itself. Or probably the lesbian and gay parts, let alone the +. It sucks, but it turns out queer folks are just, well… Folks. So we gotta work on that.
sad to see that the scene from chasing amy still rings true
settle
Uh. I hope she isn’t using that particular word when talking about you friend.
No but if they’d not been so discriminatory I wouldn’t have met her in the first place.
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No there is a difference I guess. Like personally I love brooklyn nine nine and Kevin and Holt are my all time favourite couple, period. It doesn’t matter if they are gay or not, they are just perfect. But on the other hand I had to quit modern family midway because I can’t tolerate cam. Mitch is a very good character but Cam feels very over the top. Online I have seen that people just love cam and sure he has his moments too. But I cannot stand him in general. So I believe there is a psychological line for every one. Now people may differ from my opinion and I have no qualms with that, entertainment is for enjoyment and it is actually beautiful that different people have different tastes. I just shared my opinion.
To me, that just applies to relationships in shows in general. Some are just completely unnecessary, and sometimes that extends to queer ones too, but it’s not the queerness that is to blame, it’s the forced or uncomfortable romance.
I think romance is overused in shows in general, but I suppose it makes sense since it does make up a lot of people’s existence, so I guess it’s something to be tolerated.
For the straight relationship being unnecessary bit, I think Pacific Rim did it right.
When it looked like they were about to do the whole “let’s make out while the search party finds us” bit, I was going “oh come on, don’t do it, it’s completely unnecessary. I came here for mechs vs kaiju punch fests, I don’t care about some bullshit romantic d plot”
I know plenty of people who were pissed they didn’t go there, but it’s completely irrelevant.
Plenty of hetero couples on screen have 0 chemistry and it ruins the shows or movies a bit for me… Really, if it’s not necessary to the plot, why have romantic things at all? Why does the generic white guy on the screen need to have a wife and 3 children never see? It doesn’t come up during the plot points, nobody else mentions them, so why?
Don’t even get me started on the gay panic certain producers of Star Trek had and forced awkward hetero relationships that made no sense and were almost never mentioned…
I totally agree. We want to see human to human connections and not something shoved down our throats, make it believable and we will gladly like it
I’m on season two of Resident Alien and I love how (so far) the relationship between the sheriff and the deputy is growing deeper and more intimate and loving yet carries not an ounce of romance. If they hook them up I’m going to riot.
I am a fifty year old man. If my wife were to leave me or pass away, what I would miss is the caring and loving relationship with someone I can trust and talk to. The romance I can live without and sex is easy to get.
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I can’t believe the amount of people in the comments that have never seen queerbaiting, I guess none of them watched Supernatural
You can’t convince me that Naruto and Sasuke were not meant for each other. Hinata and Sakura have like 0 chemistry with them.
You can’t convince me they don’t angry fuck on the side
SASUKEEEE!!! NARUTOOO!!! I bet that original dialogue was for their scrapped sex scene
I never finished supernatural. What was the qieerbaiting in that? I swear to the gods if you say “Dean didn’t fuck Sam” I’m gonna lose all hope in humanity.
Did you never make it to season 4? Castiel and Dean are probably the most popular ship for that show.
…Wat. Dean is VERY straight and Castiel is an amorphous asexual agender “beyond human comprehension” concept possessing a human body. Just because Jimmy the dude he’s possessing is a dude doesn’t make it a dude. That’s been a thing the whole series with demons swapping from male/female bodies and seducing people in both. Cas doesn’t have a gender, or sex, or preference. Did tumblr go THAT fucking crazy over gay sex in supernatural they turned an agender asexual philosophical embodiment of an idea into a romantic love symbol? Holy reaching, Batman. Literally
Also I got to like, two seasons before the end, I think
If you watched that many seasons and you didn’t see the Castiel and Dean queerbaiting, you are never going to see queerbaiting
Have you tried entertaining the thought that you’re expecting things where they don’t logically make sense? If you want a real example of queen baiting look at The Magicians. It had one of the most emotional deepest bonding episodes between two of the male main characters who -
SPOILERS AHEAD
lived an entire life together, decades, kids, I sobbed. And then they killed one of them right before they could get together. THATS the shit you should be upset about. Not this weird ass very clearly fanfiction between a straight man and an asexual.
Here’s a good breakdown of The Last Great American Queerbait (yes that’s a nickname for Supernatural): https://youtu.be/-Q0eX9Rrah0 And here’s a video about all the problematic queer representation in the show: https://youtu.be/XPgrZTax5Nw
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Really funny that you bring up The Magicians actually because Sera Gamble was a showrunner in both shows #girlBoss #queerbaitingQueen
I REALLY REALLY wanted Q and Eli to get together at the end. Fucking peaches and plums man
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The character is not canonically ace, he has several love interests but some people interpret him as ace
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You me an everything to me.
Keming is hard.
Do you mean Kerning?
But by spelling it Keming you’re making a meta joke?
This is some level of obscure typographical humour that I’m surprised so many people get.
Am I just a word format humour Luddite?
There was (is?) a subreddit called r/keming about bad kerning.
What’s a subreddit? Is that like a community?
/s
I recently read an interesting article about a team of anthropologists researching this matter. Before, everybody thought that reddit was this completely fictitious mythical thing. Their work showed that there very likely was an actual interweb platform called reddit. Some even believe that it might still exist, hidden in a corner, a mere shadow of its anecdotal glory. It’s interesting how this - superficially - myth shaped our language. I’m a tad vary of that article though, because it feels like it could have been the hallucinations of a language model. Or, it could have been my hallucinations. How am I supposed to know? What even is reality? For all I know, what ‘we’ call reality could be nothing but the fabrications of my mind with you being a subconscious projection of a conflicting fragment of my self. Or as the cool kids call it, an NPC. I won’t claim that I understand the lingual leap from that concept to the Nuclear Pore Complex, but, anyways … where was I … ah, yes: devilled eggs are an abomination. Why on Earth would my subconsciousness, or any demented part of it, invent devilled eggs and then fabricate people who, at least pretend to, like them, when they factually taste bad, and I am allergic to mustard? I think it’s safe to conclude, that my subconsciousness is an asshole. Q.E.D.
by spelling it Keming you’re making a meta joke?
Does it count as kerning when it’s hand-written?
Technically, no. The kern is/was the overhang of part of a letter over a type block’s edge. But, if we can make the jump and can apply the concept to digital fonts, then I can make the jump and apply it to handwritten text.
“with whom I have no meaningful connection with”
Oh it hurts to read.
Author confirmed as member of the Department of Redundancy Department!
I don’t know why, but I read her voice the same as the hydraulic press guy saying “what ze fuck”
It would be nice if the people who post these comics would give credit to the artist.
What kind of top is the one our blue girl is wearing?
probably layering a spaghetti strap cami over a tshirt
edit: if you’re also curious about the necklines, the tshirt is crew and the cami is sweetheart
Username checks out
Idk if you guys know this but you can have a best friend without FUCKING THEM, YOU FILTHY FUCKING ANIMALS
A real friend wants their friends to be happy. Maybe think about that next time you selfishly decide not to go down on them.
Boooo don’t make this sort of joke at strangers you nasty slime
Booooo don’t throw this sort of insult at strangers you beautiful soul.
My soul is not beautiful
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and my pet beholder happens to think your soul is beautiful.
Read the rest of my comments on this website and you’ll see that pretty much everything I say makes someone angry at me. Maybe your pet will reconsider
Maybe my beholder has a thing for incidental antagonism?
what is this thing next to her on the couch? I want it.
Is there a Plush of this?
Thank you :D
Gays and plushes, like peanut butter and jelly.
…Also thanks
I’m not gay ._. I just like plushes
A friend.
It is the rotting corpse of a fish that lives in the higher pressure of the deep ocean after being turned basically inside out by being pulled up to the surface by humans trawling the seabed.
It is a mascot for how we humans fuck shit up for our own amusement, right up there with the pug.
Hey op, who is the comic author ?
Blobby and Friends :)
Blue Eye Samurai, where the mc binds her chest and hides her neck, talks about being born different from everyone else, and insists on he/him pronouns. Then the producers are like “yeah she just pretends to be a guy because it makes her life easier”.
I think you’re underselling it a bit. The implication is mc would be killed for not following customs etc… Not so much “easier” as “possible”.
that’s a fair reason for the character to cross-dress, but I’m talking about the author’s motivation
Ah It doesn’t matter what gender any person is, but if two people have a strong bond, and one of those people has a strong bond with someone else too, an unfortunate part of being human is that there’s only so much of one person to go around. Can’t spend all your time with everyone. You have to pick someone. I know a magical man like that, there’s not enough of him to go around. Everybody wants him. He has to pick someone. Otherwise the best he can do is have parties all the time so everybody can be around him all the time.
Can he not start a harem?
I wish he would. Problem is women get jealous. That’s human nature. One of his ex-girlfriends actually committed suicide because she perceived that he had broken her heart.
Wait is that the plot of School Days anime?
I’m generation X. Your question is foreign to me.
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