Thoughts on queerbaiting in comics?

[DiegoPalacios]

Close friendships and romantic relationships have many differences. There are thing people would do with their couple and thing they would only say to a couple.

For example, saying "i love you"or holding hands.

If they give each other nicknames they wont choose cute affectionate things like "honey"

If they compliment each other a lot about their beauty, that is a thing too. Some female friends may compliment each other, but is not a thing that happens too much.

Some friends getting too clingy or possesive about their friend can be mistaken for that if it is a recurring thing during the story.

There are other things, but as a general rule, the key is to understand the esential differences between romantic and nonromantic afection.

[SleepingPoppy]

how should a writer handle close same-sex relationships without queerbaiting? is it inevitable in some cases?

Queerbaiting is done intentionally. Showing two people that are not in a romantic relationship but have a deep bond isn't queerbaiting, even if it comes across as queer to some people. Intentionally playing up their closeness as sort of winks to the audience, or suggesting there might be a romantic component to the closeness when you have no intention of exploring it would be baiting.

[Rasp]

Unfortunately there is a subjective element to consider. You should at least look at it from a death of the author viewpoint. Just because you didn't intend it doesn't always mean you didn't do it from the perspective of the viewer. At that stage your intentions might not matter if the story communicates something different. You cant always accurately predict the reaction of your audience but you kinda need to be prepared for it.

[SleepingPoppy]

You should at least look at it from a death of the author viewpoint.

Queerbaiting is an intentional tactic purposefully employed to attract an audiences support with no intention to deliver what that audience wants. They are baiting the LGBT audience. I don't know how to divorce that from creator intent! (Maybeyou or someone else can come up with an example that would qualify though? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I can't see it)

The only way I can see something close to someone accidentally queerbaiting would be that they mimic those qualities that appear in content that intentionally does it without being aware that thats what it is. But either way I don't think you can ignore the intentions of the people making and selling the media.

And yes, we won't always know the intentions of those making things. The answer to whether or not something is engaging in queer baiting might not always be obvious. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[Rasp]

Hence why I deliberately invoked the 'death of the author' interpretation. The purpose of invoking it is to deliberately divorce the authors intent. That's what it means.

[SleepingPoppy]

Death of the Author implies not that we're unaware of the authors intentions but those intentions are irrelevant. My point is that I don't see how they can be considered irrelevant. Maybe I'm just not understanding your point of view though.

[Rasp]

The point is to look upon the work as if we do not know the authors intent to view the work as an audience who has not read any supplemental materials and to gauge how they may react to something. This is valuable as you cannot always expect your audience to do so. It allows you to possibly make changes before they become an issue.

[SleepingPoppy]

Sure. I don't disagree with that.

[Mari]

I'm fine with queer coding, but I hate queer baiting I also hate the fetishization of mainstream BL... Porn comics are a different matter, but so many stories I read are just full of absolutely meaningless "plot" that is written so badly and just seems to function only as something to work in more dub-con. Example;

A and B are a couple. C suddenly appears and is super interested in A (usually it's the bottom, bonus points if C is "straight" but A's magic butt just draws all men to it). Nothing remotely romantic is pictured to happen between A & C. B gets absolutely enraged because A allowed C to touch him (hand on shoulder or something else absolutely normal). Rape ensues. In the end A gushes so sweet it is B is so jealous coz HE MUST TRULY LOVE HIM!!!

I have read this plot so, so many times.

[mong2]

For example, saying "i love you"or holding hands.

If they give each other nicknames they wont choose cute affectionate things like "honey"

If they compliment each other a lot about their beauty, that is a thing too. Some female friends may compliment each other, but is not a thing that happens too much.

That's a little hard to say . I tell my same gender friends "I love you" often. I've held hands and linked arms. I also hug a lot, I'm a hugger. We have called each other things like love, muffin, cupcake, cutie. My friends make comments like "nice body, nice legs" to each other too. We're all straight though.

[TheThoughtfulBoxful]

I was going to comment something similar abt this... telling someone "i love you" isn't inherently romantic imo, and frankly it depends on the context when it comes to hand holding.

but thank you @DiegoPalacios @SleepingPoppy !

[DiegoPalacios]

guess some people and groups of friends are more comfortable doing those things. I hug my family and some friends too when greeting them. (that or a "cool" handshake mixed with a fist bump).
Fun fact, in my country we greet women with a kiss in the cheek.

i was just pointing out things that could be seen as "homoerotic subtext" in fictional works.

[DiegoPalacios]

Maybe i saw it like that out of habit of the way we use the word "love" in my country.

We have 2 different words for the term "i love you". One is used for platonic affection and the other one exclusively for romance (or for loving things like shows or food)

"te quiero": it shows affection, but not in a romantic way.

"te amo":exclusively romantic

[JRHoch]

I'm waiting for the time when we hear about "straight baiting."

[JRHoch]

You mean, you're straight, for now.

[mong2]

@DiegoPalacios We're female so maybe that's why there's more affection showing (I mean girls do go to the washroom in groups LOL)? Ohh yeah then "I love you" would be different in your case. Since in English it's just the one phrase

@JRHoch Umm no I know what gender I'm attracted to. And let's not get off-topic

[HGohwell]

The different customs and intricacies of friendships and relationships is one of the many reasons why queerbaiting is about marketing and homoerotic subtext is about content.

Japan, for instance, has several different way of saying "I love you" and "you" that help infer the exact nature of the relationship. There's a huge difference between "I love Miku like I love chocolate" and "I love Miku as the love of my life" in the language that can't always be translated with a simply subtitle saying "I love you".

And no relationship is ever the same, some intimate relationships are more physically affections that others, as are some friendships. Lots of teenage girls around here refer to each other as babe. When I was in high school hugging was a big thing and I hated it. Some couples are super lovey dovey touchy PDA, some aren't. Some friends link arms, some don't. Content is very subjective.

Marketing is obvious. You can usually tell if it's a marketing issue, because someone will announce something. Voltron announced Shiro was gay, then gave fandom 0 content but a dead ex and a shoehorned in epilouge. Rowling announces in huge press events about Dumbledore but won't actually give even the slightest hint in canon. Sherlock and Merlin had carefully edited trailers to tease some kind of scandalous situation or potential confessions, often tweeted with the shipping name tag. And the fact that many of these claim they're doing something ground breaking by including LGBT people when actually they're just declaring it, makes it all the more annoying. I mean, if we're just saying stuff and it doesn't have to be in canon, I might as well declare my webcomic is a murder mystery. There is very obvious intent there and not just a bit of dialogue that could imply something.

@JRHoch I've yet to see a show marketed as het that turns out to have no het relationships at all but if anyone spots one please let us know.

[Trevor]

there's a word for it, it's called a platonic relationship, you know how you're parents say "I love you"? Same sort of thing, only it's your friends and not your parents

[Kura]

Me being tired of queerbating and wanting actual comics with queer characters and queer rep was one of the reasons I started my comics and tend to read more stuff by independent authors and artists.

[borzoiteeth]

Was surprised to see this topic come up and no one linking this video. It gives a good summary (as well as anyone can with this mess) to the (mostly) North American history side of it (If anyone knows of any that does similar coverage of other countries, please tell me).

Something to keep in mind, some works may seem queerbait but depending on the cultural context, it might have been the best the creator was allowed to do at the time.

However these days you can generally tell if its queerbait if not via the text itself- but how the creator, studio, etc act when asked questions. Real representation will not tease the audience. One would understand not spoiling if a pair of characters get together- but teasing if they are actually gay, bi or straight... its queerbaiting.

As for Sherlock, I can't go into detail because its been years since I've watched and I'm not going into again just to address this. They did do a lot of queerbaiting. The baiting they did was using a lot of writing/framing codes. Not just "fans wearing paranoid shipping goggles" on, like they used well known cues for gay relationships that have to hide behind censors. If you are curious to what kind of codes that would be, well, this video gives you a good introduction!