#and I'm so used go being queer baited and/or have shows cancelled with queer relationships | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

supervisionx · 2 months

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I keep seeing posts that Hannibal is queerbait (not necessarily on Tumblr but it's really prevalent on Twitter and tiktok) so I'm going to break down how it is NOT queerbait under 'keep reading' (long ass rant ahead)

I'm going to use Supernatural and Sherlock as an example because they are both pretty infamous for queerbaiting, but this isn't to make fun of those shows altogether.

In both Supernatural and Sherlock, the main 'ships' are between Sherlock Holmes / John Watson and Castiel / Dean Winchester. In their respective shows, there is almost nothing stopping them from getting together. In both cases, they are friends, have good chemistry, spend a frequent amount of time together, and do not have any significant others. The only thing stopping them from being in a relationship is that one or both of them are presumably straight or are simply not in love with each other.

In Hannibal, however, one is an FBI agent, and the other is a serial killer. There is an in-show reason that would stop (especially Will Graham) from wanting to be in a relationship with the other despite personal feelings. Even in earlier seasons, when Will Graham did not know Hannibal was a serial killer, Hannibal was still his therapist.

Next, what makes the queerbait stand out especially in Sherlock and Supernatural, is that every time anything is suggested between the two popular ships, it is often played off as a joke.

Think of the scene in Sherlock where John fumbles asking Sherlock if he has a boyfriend. The scene where Sherlock is about to kiss Moriarty is presented as a flashback by a crazy fan (making fun of the viewer for thinking Sherlock could be in a male/male relationship)

In Supernatural, there is a scene where castiel is alluded to being teleported naked on top of Dean's car, dialog such as "Get out of my ass" "I was never in your..." and an awkward pause. These are all one-off jokes, scenes, etc. Meant to allude to queerness without having to actually commit to it.

In Hannibal, however, no scene that alludes to queerness is played as a joke. Hannibal is genuine when he says he cares for Will, when he is worried the other man has died, the constant touches, and where he compares their relationship to Achilles and Patroclus. (Do I even have to mention the "Is Hannibal... In love with me?" Scene?)

"But Hannibal and Will never kissed / never had a relationship!"

Okay, it's fair to be upset that the pair never kissed or had a full relationship established, but you have to remember Hannibal was canceled. Sherlock and Supernatural both came to their conclusions naturally and decided to continue never establishing a proper relationship between their queerbaited characters.

(I'm not counting that scene where castiel says "I love you" to Dean and gets sent to Super Hell as a relationship. You could argue that this makes Castiel explicitly queer and therefore not queerbait, but it still feels more like executives doing the same thing as the joke part of this argument; not wanting to commit to making him queer and throwing in a one-off line. Plus, this does not excuse baiting Dean as queer and baiting the relationship between Dean and Castiel as more than friendship)

However, Hannibal never got to reach its natural conclusion. More seasons were planned, in which the creator of the show explicitly stated he wanted to explore the relationship between Hannibal and Will more in those seasons before being canceled. Being upset that they never kissed / had a relationship does NOT mean the show was queerbait.

#hannibal #supernatural #bbc sherlock #queerbaiting #hannibal fandom #hannibal lecter #nbc hannibal #will graham #long reads #long post

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queerxqueen · 2 years

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was absolutely amazing! It was well spoken, well written, and I agree with everything you said. Narratively speaking, the most logical is Byler endgame. But my main concern is that despite it making narrative sense, that the Duffers will not do it because they will cater to M*leven. It's a huge cash cow and their fanbase is very loud and popular, despite the relationship not being as good since S2. So my question is that do you think the Duffers will cater to them or do what they please?

Ahh thanks so much for your message, glad you enjoyed it!

I totally understand the doubt--while it makes narrative sense, we've seen lots of shows sidestep narrative impact in favor of heterosexuality. So I get why so many people are wary of getting invested for fear of disappointment.

However, I really think that the Duffers are following the story rather than the money on this one.

For one, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe season 4 is the first season where they've known going in that they would also have a season 5. For other seasons, they had to tread lightly for fear of being cancelled; they don't have that fear anymore, because the story is going to happen no matter what, so this is the first season they can truly do whatever they want. I believe this is why we're seeing Byler overtly instead of in subtext: they have that freedom now.

If they were going to go the Mileven route, there is no purpose to some of the plot lines. I genuinely don't know why they'd even introduce the two issues of Mike not telling El he loves her and Will crushing on Mike if they were going that way. If they wanted Mileven to be endgame with an arc for Mike about learning to express himself, I think they would have approached it in a different way and perhaps been more obvious about why Mike is having trouble with it.

The secretiveness about Mike's motivations in his weird behaviors are part of why I'm so convinced about Byler. If it were about his parents or masculinity rather than Will, they would have shown him struggling with that rather than showing him bonding with Will. They would have no real reason to hide his motivations.

On the other hand, it makes complete sense to push off revealing Mike's motivations until Volume 2 if it's going to be revealed that he's queer, to keep the audiences that might be upset about the end of Mileven engaged. I genuinely think they've delayed explaining his actions until volume two for the precise reasons you've stated. I would love to believe they're straight-baiting, that Byler will be canon and they're just stringing along the casual viewers to get hooked on season 4 before the big reveal.

Because the alternative to them straight-baiting homophobic audiences into watching is that they're queerbaiting us, and I really really don't want to believe that. It doesn't mean it's impossible.

Last, I should point out the obvious, that there's a lot of money to be made off queer people, so even if they are concerned with cash-grabbing, that doesn't rule Byler out either. With the success of Heartstopper and other queer content on Netflix, there is reason to believe Netflix sees this as a risk worth taking. They might lose some homophobic viewers, but they will likely gain even more queer viewers who would be more loyal and more engaged than the casual viewers anyway.

Whew, that was a long one.

Send me more Byler/ST asks??

#Byler #byler evidence #stranger things #stranger things 4 #anon #byler analysis

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