OMGCP salt blog

By definition you can't accidentally queerbait. Queerbaiting is specifically using a same sex pair from the show to market the show to queer audiences with no intention of ever following through on a romantic relationship.

There is officially licensed Destiel merch signed off on by Kripke. Teen Wolf had a commercial with the actors for Derek and Stiles draped over each other talking about being "on a ship." Both shows actively used scenes between them as marketing while actively mocking fans for wanting them together. Sherlock has multiple characters refer to Johnlock as a couple, including characters we're supposed to believe are never wrong about human behavior and pushed those scenes in marketing. Then they acted insulted when fans saw them as a couple.

That's queerbaiting.

Done on accident it would just be queer subtext. Done because they had no other choice due to censorship is queer coding.

The specific meaning of the word is really starting to get lost and it's a pretty important one to keep accurate. It describes a very specific phenomenon that was done repeatedly and maliciously for decades and is meant to examine that specifically.

Like, he's already dead, Emily! 😅

- Jewish-coding and Black-coding ignored and erased e.g., character’s experiences are intentional allegory for Jewishness or Blackness, but people insist it’s about queerness instead.

- The desire to see Black and Jewish characters humbled. This is usually in retaliation for some perceived wrong due to a white character. Gets worse if said characters are successful in their fields, then it’s portrayed as “punching up”.

- Ethnic features being erased (skin lightened, curly hair straightened, slimmer noses ect).

- Discussions about antiblack/antisemitic tropes in fandom spaces dismissed because “real bigotry is more important” (“real bigotry” is then never discussed).

- When the main characters are Black/Jewish and yet the fandom won’t stop talking about that fucking white guy.

- Black/Jewish characters made out to be mean, usually depicted as bullying the poor white character (bonus if the “agonisers” are men).

There's some people in the comments saying "fandoms have always been like this" and others saying "No, it's worse than it was." And both are to some extent right. Fans (or at least a small percentage of fans, and the larger a fanbase gets the larger a group this will describe) have always been Like That; but they did not always have the level of access to creators and actors that they have now.

The notion that a performer needs to be constantly available to public scrutiny, that their personal information should by default be available to any rando with google, is pretty new. It used to be that actors would only be expected to engage with the public on limited, specific, and controlled occasions, usually with security provided. Now they're being asked to rawdog exposure to the mob 24/7 on their own.

(Also, production companies have always always always been exploitative cowards, just to get that straight; reading the biographies of literally any actress from golden Hollywood years makes that clear. It's just, again, more public now.)