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Queerbait, Ryland Grace, Transphobia, and She-Ra: Queer Media and its Societal Impact on Stereotype, Marketing, and Inclusivity

Queer media has always been around whether intentional or not. One of the first LGBTQ+ ships — short for relationship(s) — was Kirk and Spock from the popular sci-fi show Star Trek. While the on-screen chemistry was accidental, fandom exploded. With the rise of fandom culture in modern media, many people turn to websites such as Archive of Our Own — commonly seen online as ao3 — for fan made content. However, the desire for “canon queer content,” or content that is queer in the original form, has only risen exponentially. Unfortunately, many countries have heavy restrictions on what is “acceptable” media to publish. This makes it more appealing to corporate higher-ups to curb LGBTQ+ representation by shoving it to the background while simultaneously advertising it as “LGBTQ+ media” in countries like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Queer media such as books, TV shows, and movies hold the responsibility of being effective, whether the producers fully understand the responsibility is left to be determined. To make effective queer media, it needs to be inclusive of various identities without stereotype, be properly advertised, and have a clear motive for inclusivity.

Queer media is not without stereotype. Bisexual people tend to get the brunt of the stereotype, as being told they are just confused is a common response to someone coming out as bisexual. According to an article for ScreenRant, “Bisexual people are often misrepresented for this reason, since TV shows and movies repeatedly portray them as being more prone to cheat, or just confused about their sexualities.” This is shown repeatedly in shows like Glee, Pretty Little Liars, and Killing Eve, all shows where the bisexual character is either shamed in liking two genders or killed off. Killing a queer character is another harmful stereotype found commonly in animation. Voltron: Legendary Defender is guilty of the “Bury your Gays” trope — defined by TV Tropes as “…the presentation of deaths of LGBT[Q+] characters where these characters are nominally able to be viewed as more expendable than their heterosexual counterparts. In this way, the death is treated as exceptional in its circumstances.” The usage of tropes in media is not impossible and is welcomed in media, but the usage of harmful tropes degrades the acceptance of queer people. A study done by the Trevor Project in 2026 found that “[n]early half (46%) of all LGBTQ+ young people reported that they experienced discrimination in the past year due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.” While discrimination hurts everyone regardless of identity, LGBTQ+ discrimination is on the rise in many countries. Queer media can convey queerness in a positive light, but only when done responsibly and with care. Tropes can be helpful to convey queerness and some disparaging tropes can be flipped on their heads, like having a biphobic character become accepting through learning more throughout the show as character development, but having tropes there for the sake of it is where the harm comes in.

Social media both hurts and heals with the development of queer media. A right-wing extremist group, Moms for Liberty, uses platforms like YouTube to publish videos of them at school board meetings and the like while reading selected passages from children’s books about gender identity and sexuality. One video goes so far as to say, “A child is a child and if you see this [as] acceptable, you belong on a national registry and not a school board.” (Moms for Liberty) The book in question was All Boys Aren’t Blue (2020), a young-adult memoir written by George M. Johnson. The book is targeted towards an older teen audience, but Moms for Liberty alludes to the book being targeted towards young children and pre-teens. While marketing books to age ranges can have issues — romantasy having one of the biggest issues with including explicit sex scenes in books targeting at the Young Adult age range that commonly includes ages 15+ — the problem of parents not liking what their children read is easily solved by setting boundaries in parenting. There is an increase in parents complaining about how their children have access to explicit material while not taking charge and demanding the sites hosting said explicit material do something rather than the parent. It should not fall on the creator of queer media to parent someone’s child. It is notable that groups like Moms for Liberty do not comment on the explicit sex in books targeted at the same age range as All Boys Aren’t Blue. Moms for Liberty are clear in their objective — sexualizing queerness — while ignoring the explicit heterosexual sex in other YA novels. Queer YA novels are not exempt from the issue of having explicit material in books, but for people to call LGBTQ+ novels with little to no intimacy “sexual” and books with explicit sexual material “spicy” is not something that should go unnoticed.

On the other side, queerness is all over other “sections” of social media. People, especially young adults, gravitate towards platforms like TikTok to find community. The internal discourse around who wears what label has not ceased with the increase in queer-identifying individuals. Topics like who can identify as a lesbian, trans rights, what pronouns are “valid” or not, and the like all surround queerness like a vicious bubble. While some discourse has some backing — say, if a flag was created by someone controversial, people will talk about how to redesign said flag — most is infighting about who gets to wear what label. Stereotype plays into the queer infighting heavily. As the dislike of being perceived as “cringe” skyrockets, the more LBGTQ+ people — especially young adults and older teens — revert to stereotypical labels of their own identities.

Queer media plays into this, Glee being one of the most notable. Santana is called “Lebanese” instead of a lesbian, Kurt is a gay boy obsessed with fashion and theater, Brittany’s identity is largely ignored, and other queer characters are ploys for other stereotypes. When stereotypes are played too hard, other media finds the stereotypes to be acceptable forms of queer representation. In truth, queer media needs to have more acceptance placed into the media itself. Heartstopper, a popular webcomic-turned-TV show prides itself on being a very well-done LGBTQ+ representative media. Heartstopper is created by Alice Osman, a British local and originally published on sites like Tumblr, Tapas, and Webtoon. The webcomic had its last pages publish this year, with some relationships remaining and others separating. The characters had been through things other teens generally struggle with — social acceptance, bullying, mental health struggles, and familial turmoil. Heartstopper directly rivals Glee in the sense that Glee plays into stereotype, camp, and outlandish storylines where Heartstopper plays into realism, authenticity, and grounded storylines. Having Nick Nelson, a main character of Heartstopper, tell his mother his struggles with managing his boyfriend’s mental health is something many queer kids face. Nick and Charlie have common struggles and are both represented in ways that introduce others to queer normalcy.

Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, has a show called Thuis in which “[r]elationships and sexuality [receive a] nuanced treatment: teenage promiscuity was never presented as a social problem, but physically and emotionally abusive behavior was. Thuis thus engaged in representing the everydayness of typical teenage behavior and illustrating the importance of legal and ethical barriers rather than dismissing harmless experimenting as deviant and dangerous from a normative perspective.” (Vanlee et al.) Flanders has shown that queer media being perceived with little to no stereotype can be used as effective decrease in discrimination and that queer media is possible to create without harmful stereotypes being involved.

Marketing is also an important piece to the queer media puzzle. Queerbaiting, a term used to describe marketing and creative decisions that appeal to the LGBTQ+ community but do not reflect the content in the media itself, is a common tactic to get the queer dollar. “What [queerbaiting] is is heterosexism, the unchecked assumption that heterosexuality is the norm and anything else is the Other. It’s this attitude that, for example, causes romance advice columns like the ones I’d read in magazines as a frustrated teenager to assume everyone is interested in the opposite sex – not out of hate for gay people, but out of a refusal to check their own privilege or acknowledge the experiences of those who are different from them.” (Rose) One post by user yourlocalbadgerscales on Tumblr goes into detail about how queerbaiting affects queer people. “[W]hat matters is to acknowledge the fact that so many queer people are so desperate for the kind of representation that makes them specifically feel seen[,] so that stupid shit like whether or not a ship is or isn't canon feels like life or death to them…” When companies take advantage of a community, it feels both disingenuous and hurtful which in turn makes people less likely to interact with official means of the show. Stranger Things, a Netflix series that ran from 2016 to 2025, fell victim to the slippery slope that is queerbaiting. A popular ship between Will Byers and Mike Wheeler — Byler — was popularized rapidly in the fandom. The social media accounts for Stranger Things picked up on the ferality of the fandom and routinely published comments, images, and videos supplying people with memes about Eleven being the third wheel to Mike and Will, how Mike and Will pine for each other all the time, and commenting cheeky bites about if the two characters should kiss or not. People online took the consistent marketing and comment of Byler as incoming confirmation of the relationship being real, or “canon”, only to be hit with what some called the most disappointing finale of all time People were so distraught over the ending that when the show’s social media was hinting towards the release of a behind-the-scenes featurette, fans thought it was a different ending to the show.

On the other side of the coin is the 2026 movie Project Hail Mary by Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, starring Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace — a microbiologist turned middle school teacher turned unexpected astronaut. Project Hail Mary has been coined as a cosmic hope movie, rather than Mark Fischbach’s movie Iron Lung, a cosmic horror set in an ocean made entirely of blood. In Project Hail Mary, an alien named Rocky tells Ryland Grace he has a mate. Ryland replies with “A mate? What’s their name?” The line doesn’t give any specific direction to the gender of Rocky’s mate and is given the name Adrian by Grace later in the film. Project Hail Mary declines to advertising on the inherent queerness of Rocky and Adrian and instead advertises on the power of friendship — answering the question of “who would you die for?” while having a distinct lack of romance plot. Ryland Grace is commonly thought of to be aroace, a term combining the words aromantic and asexual — meaning he has no inclination to involve himself in romantic or sexual relationships. On Archive of Our Own, 2,253 written works exclude any romantic relationships involving Ryland Grace out of a total 3,803 written works for the movie. This is another example of marketing well done as Project Hail Mary ended up becoming a smash hit in the box office and has landed itself in the top 500 movies on the site Letterboxd.

The Project Hail Mary fandom has exploded, especially on sites like Tumblr. “For many fans, contact with other group members is an inherently participatory aspect of one’s fan identity, and a significant aspect of the pleasure of belonging to a fandom comes from engaging in activities such as “fan talk”. This involves, among other things, engaging in online and offline discussions with fellow fans, producing fanfiction, fan art, and other media objects, attending conventions, and cosplaying.” (Dajches et al.) While Stranger Things has supplied its fandom with increased anger and spite towards the creators for the blatant queerbaiting done online, Project Hail Mary has none of the anger and spite because there is no reason for it. The marketing team for Project Hail Mary focuses on the friendship between Ryland Grace and Rocky, two characters that could have, for all intents and purposes, ended up romantic. Marketing the storyline versus marketing a relationship creates clearer expectations as to what the media in question involves, and marketing authenticity over a false narrative to sell more merchandise has shown time and time again that people want authenticity in their media rather than playing the long game while the queer dollar is pulled along.

Having motive for inclusivity is also important. With many forms of queer media showing inclusivity for the sake of being inclusive, it is harder to find authentic forms of queer media. Authenticity is highly valued in LGBTQ+ spaces, but when media doesn’t respect those spaces, it becomes harder for people to feel like those forms of queer media are safe to enjoy.

One example is the popular book series Harry Potter by JK Rowling. Rowling has fallen to multiple controversies as of late for posting transphobic tweets on her X — formerly Twitter — account and using royalties from the books and movies to fund anti-transgender bills in the U.K. Fans of Harry Potter have a very large divide, splitting them into people who enjoy the work but refuse to engage with the official media in any official way, people who enjoy the work and interact with some official media, and people who enjoy the work and interact with official media consistently. Fanworks for Harry Potter have fallen under criticism as well, with people fighting over if interacting with fanwork is supportive of JK Rowling’s views or not and if people interacting with fanwork constitutes support of Rowling’s beliefs. There is a complexity to the situation many are unwilling to acknowledge. For many young queer adults, “[Q]ueer readings reflect a complex process that provides both a space for finding community and resisting the dominant hegemonic discourse, while also serving to remind LGBTQ+ fans of their marginalized position within society. Because queer readings necessitate finding queer subtext or underlying themes within mainstream media content, LGBTQ+ audiences may be reminded that their community is not yet fully accepted within the cultural hegemony.” (Dajches et al.) When JK Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay in 2007, she encouraged readers to “question authority” (BBC) though it is clear we are not to question her personal views in 2026. JK Rowling shows through past quotes that she stood firmly with the queer community at one point, though if it was a façade is something people may never know. Many feel that her inclusion of a gay character is pandering to LGBTQ+ people to have them feel included in a story that had no focus on queer identity. A story does not need a focus on queer identity to be popular within queer spaces, and with Harry Potter being focused on feeling excluded, made a martyr, and defying the rules, it found itself popular in queer spaces before “Gay Dumbledore” became a canonical idea. Gay Dumbledore felt more like a retcon of a character that didn’t need a retcon but maintained its popularity in the fandom. People still use gay Dumbledore as an example of Rowling’s acceptance of queer ideology, but her disparaging comments towards transgender people remain a consistent counterargument to her supposed acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community.

On the flip side, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power shows a clear development of queer characters. While She-Ra herself is a spinoff of He-Man, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is exceptional in its queer representation. Adora, the main character is a lesbian who is battling her own self-acceptance while leaving the Horde, a group Adora grew up in alongside Catra, her best friend-turned-enemy. Other characters in the show are both explicitly and implicitly queer. Bow, a male sidekick is thought of as a trans man but is confirmed to be bisexual by showrunner ND Stevenson. The show also portrays characters with incredibly human emotion even while in a fantasy world. Adora and Catra are consistently shown with a veil of romantic charge, but the veil occasionally slips to show just how far Catra will go for recognition from authority figures or Adora. “…the relationship between Adora and Catra, who begin as best friends, become complicated enemies, and, by the show’s finale, confess their romantic love and kiss one another. Though queer representation was not as explicit in the first season of the show, it became more prevalent as audiences reacted positively to it[.]” (Cummings)

Queer representation does not need to be a consistent forefront, but what it does need is a reason to be portrayed the way it is. She-Ra shows its reason for representation through the storyline having a focus on self-acceptance, assisting those who need help, and accepting others where they are. When Adora destroys the Sword of Protection that allows her to turn into She-Ra, it was viewed as a form of internal rebellion. She had seen the damage done by the idea of protection and determined fate and rebelled against the idea. Internal rebellion is something many queer people face, the fight to rebel against the things they are brought up to believe or to keep believing, whether it be political, religious, or other ideas.

Other motives for including queerness are to show a reality others may be disillusioned to. POSE, a TV show about the African-American and Latino LGBTQ+ communities in the 80’s and 90’s, exposed how the AIDS crisis affected non-white communities and the queer culture surrounding African-American and Latino people during that time. While POSE may be a work of fiction, the stories they tell are all based in some form of truth: LGBTQ+ people in the 80’s and 90’s were faced with extremism from all sides, and the display — while it hurts to watch — is highly impactful to people today and shows how inclusivity and solidarity remain key to support to queer people around the globe. Not all queer media needs a hot button topic to be effective queer media, but all queer media needs to understand the deeply traumatic history it is based in.

In conclusion, queer media can be split into many different subsects, but the way the characters are portrayed gives the media its legs. When LGBTQ+ characters are given depth, personality, and a storyline not revolving around their identity, they feel more fleshed out and human. Giving a character a queer identity for the sake of it, like with Dumbledore in Harry Potter, shows a lack of care in the character and their identity. With Heartstopper, Charlie Spring’s past with bullying over his queer identity not only gives him a reason to be cautious about himself — something he works through over the story — but it gives him the ability to be joyous over Nick’s identity when he comes out to Charlie. Project Hail Mary isn’t classified as queer media as the story doesn’t revolve around Rocky or Ryland Grace’s identities as neither are disclosed to the viewer. Their identities are theirs, not something that is specifically stated or shared with the reader or viewer. When people ship Ryland Grace with Simon from Iron Lung, the consensus is that this is not worldly possible but is a sandbox to play in — exactly what media is meant to be for. Media is a sandbox to be manipulated and played with, but with rules to make sure everyone has fun. Queer media relies on marketing, and Stranger Things’ marketing is where the show broke the rules of the sandbox. The allusion to queerness broke the mystique of the show and the joy viewers found when watching and consuming media from the show. Effective queer media consists of authenticity, clarity, and inclusivity. Where some forms of queer media fail, others excel, and those forms of queer media are where people should take their conclusion of what “good” queer media is.

Works Cited:

Cejer, Autumn. “Why LGBTQ+ Representation Is so Important in Media.” ScreenRant, 4 June 2022, screenrant.com/lgbtq-representation-media-important-why-queer-families/. Accessed 14 May 2026.

Bury Your Gays - TV Tropes, tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays. Accessed 15 May 2026.

“🚨 GRAPHIC WARNING: Mom Reads Book From Public School Library.” Moms for Liberty, YouTube, 24 Oct. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3HoWWAuHdI. Accessed 14 May 2026.

Vanlee, Florian, et al. “Understanding Queer Normality: LGBT+ Representations in Millennial Flemish Television Fiction.” Television & New Media, vol. 19, no. 7, 11 Jan. 2018, pp. 610–625, doi:10.1177/1527476417748431.

Yourlocalbadgerscales. Tumblr, 11 May 2026, www.tumblr.com/yourlocalbadgerscales/816344979019628544?source=share. Accessed 14 May 2026.

Rose. “How Do We Solve a Problem like ‘Queerbaiting’?: On TV’s Not-so-Subtle Gay Subtext.” Autostraddle, 2 May 2021, www.autostraddle.com/how-do-we-solve-a-problem-like-queerbaiting-on-tvs-not-so-subtle-gay-subtext-182718/. Accessed 14 May 2026.

Archive of Our Own, Organization for Transformative Works, archiveofourown.org/tags/Project%20Hail%20Mary%20(2026)/works. Accessed 14 May 2026.

“Letterboxd’s Top 500 Films.” ‎Letterboxd’s Top 500 Films, a List of Films by Official Lists • Letterboxd, letterboxd.com/official/list/letterboxds-top-500-films/page/2/. Accessed 14 May 2026.

Dajches, Leah, et al. “Harry Potter and the Self-Concept Clarity: Examining Fandom, Queer Readings, and Self-Acceptance among LGBTQ+ Fans.” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 73, no. 2, 21 Feb. 2025, pp. 255–275, doi:10.1080/00918369.2025.2469576.

“Entertainment | JK Rowling Outs Dumbledore as Gay.” BBC News, BBC, 20 Oct. 2007, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7053982.stm. Accessed 14 May 2026.

Cummings, Kelsey. “Queer Seriality, Streaming Television, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.” Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images, vol. 2, no. 1, 20 July 2022, doi:10.3998/gs.1547.

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