Friendship vs queerbaiting
“Can we stop shipping all (m/m) friendships as romance?”
First of all, no. Why should we? Shipping is supposed to be fun, and we can ship whatever we want as long as the characters are fictional. With real people it’s a little trickier but this is not about real people shipping so I’ll leave it at that. People don’t usually choose a ship, shipping happens a little like falling in love: we find ourselves attracted to the dynamic of certain characters and the ship just kind of happens.
Shipping is not activism, like people often remind here. We fans don’t need to ship the ship with the most under represented dynamic, we should ship the ship that makes us happy. It’s not homophobic if you don’t ship the popular gay ship. Its not racist if you ship the main character with the white person instead of poc bc you feel like these two have a better dynamic. And so on. But I need to add here that if a queer/interracial couple is canon but you ship them in a straight/white relationship with someone else it’s a little… questionable at least. It depends the dynamic and the history of these characters and so on, but I’m just saying that there are exceptions to the rule I just presented.
So, if you feel like friendships between two men are under represented you have no right to tell people they shouldn’t ship it because you prefer their dynamic as something else than romantic. And also: where did the idea come that they are under represented? The sole reason why so many non canon ships are m/m friendships is because THEY ARE EVERYWHERE. Plus, all kinds of friendships are shipped, f/f and f/m too but they’re much rarer in mainstream fiction which is why they are also less popular in fandom. If you think “Fandom only ships canonically straight white men”, look at Clexa for example. They only had one season together, and it got to the top of tumblr’s most shipped list immediately. Stormpilot is very popular and it’s interracial while neither is white. Don’t blame the fandom for something the creators are responsible for.
The idea that we shouldn’t ship friendships tells something about how our society portrays romance - an instant connection, physical attraction, something that consumes your soul after the first glance and makes you leave everything, even your friends and family behind. As if you were ready to die for them after one conversation, one night together, sometimes even just one look. This doesn’t sound healthy or even normal to me.
Romance and friendship are not mutually exclusive. Healthy romances are often build on friendship, and even if infatuation comes first and dating second, any couple who has been married for years will tell you that the secret to a happy marriage is being good friends too. Best friends, actually, since they have to spend most time together. Of course I’m not saying we shouldn’t ship different kinds of dynamics, I enjoy love/hate relationships as much as the next person, but popular ships that are accused of queerbaiting are usually canonically close friendships.
Drawing a line between close friendship and queerbaiting can be tricky, I admit. Sometimes even if I do think something is queerbaiting I understand the opposite opinion, sometimes not. Often, the opposite argument is something like this: “Yes, they clearly do love each other very deeply, deeper than most friends, but that’s because they’re like brothers/siblings.” And I’m like… no. I know brotherly love is a saying but it isn’t really… a thing. For people who aren’t actually brothers. Because there are two things that make people siblings: 1) Biology, as in they are genetically siblings. 2) They have been brought up as siblings, they have the same parents and have known each other since birth.
Often siblings are both, but there are adopted siblings, and biological siblings who haven’t met each other before adulthood. So if you can’t check either of these for your ship, it’s not incestuous. No matter how brotherly you think their love is. Because yes, people can form strong bonds to people outside family, but even childhood friends don’t have the experience that siblings have. They don’t have the same parents and the same happy family memories or shared trauma. They’ve never had the kind of authority that a parent is, who is close for both and able to decide who’s right about the fight and who gets a punishment, who gets the bigger cake slide etc. And when you’re biologically related the biology actually affects your relationship: it’s just part of surviving the natural selection that we protect those who are genetically like us. Also there’s a natural repulsiveness towards our relatives which prevents us from getting mutant babies. These things obviously apply to adoptive siblings too, but not to “bros”.
So if someone says that these two characters have a deep connection but it’s brotherly, sure, they can think that, but they have no way of getting actual evidence for their claim. Whereas if I think some characters are in love I can present evidence. I obviously can’t prove it unless it becomes canon, but I can make it pretty clear why I think so.
Now, I’m all for having male characters be close friends without it making them gay. We need to show that men should be able to talk about their emotions with each other, just like female friends do. It’s proven by many studies that straigh men are likely to have their girlfriend/wife as their only emotional support, and that needs to change. Male friend supporting the other when he talks about his crush on a girl: hell yeah. Male friend supporting the other when their parent dies: hell yeah. Male friends talking about games and selfcare and literature and their interests just like female friends do: HELL YEAH! I would like to see male friendships where they need each other because they have shared interests and memories and because they can be open with each other. Being physically comfortable with each other. All that.
But, you see, most so called friendships that are popular as ships and accused of queerbaiting, are not what I just described. These friendships are codependent. If the other died or was taken away from the other the other wouldn’t just be sad for a year or so, but they would lose their grip of life and themselves. They are contradictory, and the characters are bad at describing their feelings for each other, unaware whether the “friendship” is mutual, surprised when the other shows that they care. They are full of misunderstandings, and the narrative seems that there’s something that they’re going towards. Normal friendships are solid and stationary, and while they do change with time and circumstance, they’re not constantly evolving as if what the people involved have right now is not what both want.
Friends have fights over petty things, and sometimes just can’t be around each other. These characters usually fight - if they fight - because they leave things unsaid and the viewer is forced to think: what did they mean to say? There’s tension, neither of them knows how to quite be around the other but they need them like they need air. It is sometimes even shown that even if the other is in a relationship with another person, they can’t share the most important parts of their life with that person - they need their “friend” for that. As if love was just physical, no common interests or chemistry needed.
Obviously there will always be some things that can only be shared with a certain person and that person may not be your lover, but at least in my opinion it makes sense if your romantic partner is the one who gets you the most. Especially if the love is supposed to be ideal or even supported by the audience which mostly is the case in fictional romance. And if the “friends” have most in common with each other, have shared their most vulvenerable moments with each other and seem to have romantic chemistry to many of the viewers, why not make them a couple? Because they are both straight men? (Or women, but most often men since most main characters are men.)
The argument against queer ships is usually just “not everyone is gay”. Yes, well, obviously not. Some people are straight, that’s true. They don’t feel attraction to the same sex even if their life depends of it (So I’ve heard. As a bisexual myself this sounds like a weird concept. Whatever.)
And the conversation continues: “I think these two men you ship together are both straight, so they can’t feel attraction towards each other.”
“Fine, that’s your opinion. But how do you prove that?”
“He slept with a woman/flirted with a woman/ loved a woman etc.”
“Bisexuality. Exists. Also, some gay people try to date the opposite sex before they admit they are gay, because society teaches that’s the normal thing to do. They could be in denial, or pretend to be straight so they don’t get beat up or something like that, it’s often hard to be queer. But once again: BISEXUALITY EXISTS.”
So, the person saying they’re straight is usually just basing their thoughts on heteronormativity, thinking that they’re straight until proven otherwise. Fandom, on the other hand, looks at how the character acts around different genders and bases their opinion of their sexuality on that.
Back to “Not everyone is gay”. What do people even mean when they use that phase? I look at the fictional universe that I love and see zero canon queer people, or maybe two minor characters that were in one episode. The world is filled with characters, and I’m only pointing at a few of them and saying that they seem to have potential for a romance, why not? Straight people already have almost every popular character, is it really too much to ask if we could get one or two too? That’s not everyone.
The fans don’t want the show/book/movie to become a romance suddenly, we’re in this fandom because we like the thing that makes it what it is. We’re just asking to acknowledge the romance that literally is already there. WE’RE NOT ASKING FOR A SEX SCENE. We’re asking for something that could make the people who watch/read the thing from their heteronormative viewpoint see that it was actually queer all along. So that they would stop ridiculing us queer people for “seeing things that aren’t there.” Something very small will do: Hannigram didn’t even have to kiss because everything needed to make a romance were already there, they just needed one conversations to make it clear that yes, Hannibal was in love with Will and yes, Will did ache for him too. Simple. Korrasami just walked off together in the end. With both cases the fans were happy, and it proves that the idea that “fangirls just want to see two men fuck” is wrong. We just crave to be represented.
The final argument against the queer interpretation is: “Relationships are complex, and sometimes you don’t fall for the person who seems to be the perfect match for you.” Yes. Real life is complex. Sometimes love is just physical, often you don’t fall for your friend. BUT. As a writer, you’re not trying to recreate real life. You’re showing things and emotions that are important to the story, so why make a multi season/movie/book arch for a relationship between two men if you’re just going to pair them off for someone else?
As a person who’s into writing I get really confused by these things. One of the first lessons I learned that I still hear daily is: “show, don’t tell”. If you’ve shown us the two men falling for each other, telling that one or both of them suddenly love someone else won’t fix it. And if every other character in the universe seems to think these two are a couple then it’s not very hard for the viewer to see that too.
I am tired of hearing about “platonic love stories”. The creators have called so many popular ships that, as if it somehow excused their queerbaiting. Platonic and love story are each other’s opposites, and platonic love stories don’t exist - unless they’re talking about the platonic concept of love: that humans had four legs, four arms and two heads but they were too powerful so the gods divided them in two, and that’s why people need a soulmate. But usually they don’t mean that - however, sometimes they do. Thank gods for Hugh Dancy. But when creators literally call the ship a love story between two men yet insist it’s not romantic, it probably aren’t the fans who are reaching. If it’s a love story, let it be a love story.
