Queerbait and Doctor Who: Trial of a Time Lady 

Every time I I read a alt-right comment from now on, it's gonna be in Dalek voice

@@K.Arashi At the end of the day, the Daleks are basically far right nut jobs in small tanks.

@@K.Arashii mean they literally are fascist buttplugs so it’s not far a leap

I mean... that does tend to be afforded to most straight couples in the sense that they start out bickering and being hesitant to be 100% real with the other.

This is exactly my stance. We were told in the final episodes of the run that the Doctor and Yaz had attraction towards each other... But literally none of the writing in any episode ever showed that. So many opportunities They don't kiss at the end, they don't even hug at the end. There is absolutely nothing there that should convince anyone that those two characters loved each other, and that's just as bad as classic queerbaiting. It's not enough for characters to state they have feelings for each other when there aren't any actions that justify or solidify it

Yeah you kinda can tell when the show runners are doing it purely for the pink quota

And that’s not even getting into the differences between Queer Baiting and Queer Coding. People get those two confused a lot

@@PaintSplashProductions As a guy who has no idea what either are, what are they? XD

@@tommynazer1800 Queer-baiting is basically trying to get views and attention for hinting at a character being LGBT when they are or never will be (look at BBC’s Sherlock for example), Queer coding is when the creators are making the characters lgbt and will make it canon later on (like in a later season or movie, game etc) or due to things like homophobia or the laws of the country they are in they can’t say it explicitly (look at a lot of media made previous to gay marriage being legal). One is made with scummy ideals and money in mind, the other is wanting to make rep happen and skirting around the things that are blocking them

@@PaintSplashProductions okay so how is dr who queer baiting? (Not asking in a rude way. I stopped watching purely based on terrible writing, direction, acting, characters, and the rest of what made the 13ths doctors run a shit show) so i never really watched enough to notice the queer bait

I still wish we could get nonbinary/agender rep outside of nonhuman characters though :,) i find the way people tend to filter queer stories through the lens of robots or aliens or angels fascinating, but after a while it’s a bit tiring only being able to see people like me in characters that are explicitly “other”, yk?

Generally speaking, GO gets a pass because it was a revolutionary level of representation when the book was written. At this point, confirming anything would remove a lot of decades old theories about the book. Some people will gain representation, but many more people will lose it. And because the director has openly stated that he does not deserve any recognition or praise from the community.

that and alongside the fact that ineffible husbands are allowed to be read as a queerplatonic/aroace relationship.

@@yumejln So are House and Wilson. So are a million buddy cop duos from the 90s. All sorts of character duos are "allowed to be read" as QPR when the evidence for it is in the form of absence of evidence for anything else.

@@Hekateras the difference is, for good omens it was confirmed to be done deliberately. i know this kinda topic is a muddy, grey area that this video itself talks about. there's a lot of contension between gay people and aro/ace people when it comes to same gender relationships that are deliberately not exclusively portrayed as romantic. the difference is, in good omens, the relationship between ineffible husbands was meant to be portrayed as deep love and partnership between each other, but it wasn't restricted to the romantic kind, because they wanted to portray that that type of deep connection isn't just exclusively romantic. you CAN read it as romantic like most people do. nobody's stopping you. but you're free to do that as much as gay aro/ace people are also allowed to read it as an aro/ace thing.

I like Season 23 but I do agree that the trial scenes take up too much of the story.

it's wild to realise that it was even worse than the destiel confession. at least castiel got to say "i love you" and did it of his own will without a straight man butting in

Yeah, I get this but as someone whose ace the idea of "depicting a queer relationship" is a bit fraught for me. How does a sexuality like mine get depicted? Is it not a real queer identity because it is inherently defined by an absence, etc. I've been burnt more than a few times by fandom on this front

@@shangc2781 little woman did ace in the context of a reaction to society’s except actions of thinking you “need” a relationship really well I think. But it doesn’t even need to be a focal point of the story. Good representation never needs to be the focus. Just needs to be present and authentic. Just depicting queer identities however members experience them.

Is one of the scenes you're counting where the doctor says "Not a bad date am I?" to yaz? or where yaz carries the doctor back to the tardis?

​@@sothisishowusernameswork.2043 Surely asexual representation more than anything else needs to be explicit. Having the character outwardly state their disinterest or better yet use the word asexual would be a good start. Good writing would also include situations where their asexuality is relevant, like having a relationship or being hit on in a sexual way.

@@alexjames7144 Are you entirely sure this is the right comment you are replying to? Not to say that in a mean way, just I was listing examples of stuff that could mean they are gay.

And then GOES ON WITH ADVENTURES WITH HER

@@The-Busy-Beeeee yeah kinda funny how we had 2 campanions who basically died & than went on adventures with some other woman

@@mrslagowhoreusrex6300 true maybe they saw the formula and was like let's give at least two companions decent endings

On one hand you have misogynistic lesbians & on the other hand you have Sherlock. I think I prefer Chibnall

@@samrobotsin I mean, Holmes was always, since the books, asexual representation. I always felt it was insulting that people would prefer to erase his actual sexuality just because it isn't their prefered flavour of "queer" and because people don't want to acknowledge that asexuals too can have meaningful relationships without romantic interest. Really just goes to show every time that asexuals don't matter to the community at all. Which is why I prefer BBC Sherlock because it does not give into the erasing demands, no matter the pressure. No matter how much of a Trashfire the last season was.

in 2005 the showrunner was Russell T Davies, a gay man, who knew how to do genuine representation, creating characters not tokens, and characters with a greater purpose than checking boxes for pandering

@@psych0536 Yep, that's the difference. A lot of queerbaiting accusations are more a natural consequence of having hetero writers trying to do representation w/o checking with anyone queer to see if they got it right or not. To me queerbaiting is more when writers try to write queer that's lowkey enough it won't turn away any of their straight audience (i.e. homophobes). Doctor Who has had cases of both since restarting, of course, which is a shame since they mostly nailed it on their very first try.

Exactly. Jack was an amazing character and tbh, I enjoyed Torchwood more than Dr. Who.

Crowley good omens literally is the reason I know I'm feminine nonbinary. Sure they don't unpack gender theory in the text and unravel the intricacies of his presentation, but we see him explicitly be himself in different masculine and feminine forms throughout history, based on vibes. That's representation, and it changed how I view myself and my body. It was immensely empowering to see someone not in drag, just genuinely as a different gender but still themself. That's representation.

Crowley was one of the people who started my trans guy gender journey lmao

As an ace person and a fan of GO the book who did NOT like the show, here's where you're misrepresenting the "it's queerbaiting" position. It's not about whether it's explicit - for the most part. (Warning, this post gets long.) The actual reasons many feel it's queerbaiting: - The TV show retains book moments of in-universe homophobia (such as Aziraphale being called actual gay slurs) and adds some new controversial material like them being mistaken for a newly broken up couple as a joke. This video already explains why "mistaken for couple as a joke" is not unambiguously a progressive element. - The show adds new scenes that reads as deliberately UST-ish, like Crowley slamming Aziraphale to the wall. - At the same time, the show adapts OUT scenes that read as more unambiguously tender or physically affectionate, most notably Crowley taking Aziraphale's hand just before they face Satan. (Read the book!!!!) - (In general, retaining specifically gay slurs and microaggressions but refusing to confirm canonical gayness isn't necessarily queerbaiting, but like... it's not a great look.) - There is explicit heterosexual rep in the story (Newt and Anathema; hell, Madame Tracy and Shadwell) but no explicit gay rep. Having explicitly gay characters to contrast Crowley and Azi with would be a way to convey that they're not gay, but still definitely queer. The show does not do that. - As a result, you end up with an ostensibly "queer love story" that fails to establish its queerness overly enough that it stops being easy to dismiss. (Again, having them hold hands LIKE THEY DO IN THE BOOK WRITTEN DURING THE AIDS EPIDEMIC would have gone a long way towards fixing that. I'm not saying they adapted it out out of homophobia - seeing as they seem to have adapted out Crowley resurrecting the dove out of sheer cluelessness/apathy - but whatever the motivation, the end result is weaker for it.) - Neil Gaiman's "I wouldn't exclude that they're ace or trans or nonbinary" quote wasn't in a vacuum. It was specifically in response to a Twitter user asking if they were gay. So he DOES exclude that they're gay (that's implicit), but doesn't exclude that they're [smattering of other queer labels]? The explanation is also a poorly thought-out mess, because surely "they're not human men so they can't be gay" should hold for the other labels too. Yeah I don't feel great about that supposed rep. - Neil Gaiman has been inconsistent when talking about the ship. He has both talked about it as "a love story" and supported a Twitter fan's assertion that it's a nice example of a deep platonic friendship that you really don't need to read romance into. He has also stated that fans can interpret the text however they like... but still made sure to softly shoot down the idea that they're gay. - Neil Gaiman has been a tad too self-congratulatory and smug about he way he wrote their relationship, challenging fans to spot a "secret" hand-holding scene in the show, and fans can't seem to agree on where it was (as mentioned above, the canonical hand-holding during the dramatic climax of the story was adapted out!), which by itself is already VERY baity. He also responded to a fan's (polite!) criticism of the lack of overt love confession by glibly saying that he'd hoped the various Ho Yay-y lines he wrote knock kissing or hand-holding out of the park. Glibness or arrogance from a straight writer about the writing of queer rep in response to a queer fan's criticism is not a great look. Is "queersplaining" a thing? It kinda is now. - (Really, if Neil Gaiman just didn't say anything on Twitter, there'd be almost no accusations of queerbaiting, I assure you. Literally most of it is happening because after release he kept saying shit like this: twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1168947785883951109?lang=en ) Some final thoughts: TV-only fans who aren't aware of the exact things Neil has said on Twitter and the context in which he said them, and who haven't read the book (I imagine most show fans haven't, that's the way it usually is with adaptations), and who only heard through word of mouth of Neil confirming something on Twitter, could be forgiven for thinking "Is it queerbaiting?" is a silly question. The evidence for it being queerbaiting, as you see, relies mostly on analysing what was adapted out or in, and Neil dancing around the issue on Twitter while raking in accolades. (And yeah, in the context of the above, lack of being explicit rep really doesn't help.) So that explains why "most" fans seem to think that or why TV GO is popular with the queer and specifically ace communities. My position is very much not uncommon among the old book fandom. But we tend to grumble among ourselves so as not to spoil people's fun. Also, every time I as an ace fan have tried to talk about my dissatisfaction with it, I've been slammed with hyperbolic nonsense like "It's valid even if they don't have hard sex onscreen!" Or they point to irrelevant things like unrelated queer rep Neil has supposedly done. Neil is a fandom darling right now, so it's impossible to criticise him for anything without fans taking it extremely personally. Whatever its flaws, TV!GO IS a good story with definite queer vibes, and I'm happy for the people who could find something in it. I'm just tired of being told that if I'm not happy with it as queer rep, it's because I'm one of those fans who just wants to cancel progressive media for being imperfect and for whom nothing is ever good enough, or that I'm spitting in the faces of nb people or other aces or whatever. Nah, it has very real elements of queerbaiting and personally as an ace I'm not happy with handmedown "rep" I seemingly only got because "asexual, trans, or nonbinary" was more nonthreateningly abstract to the author than "gay". (Does he know gay ace people exist, I wonder?)

@@Hekateras I don’t expect to change your mind. I think you are coming at this from the position of being pretty cynical of Gaiman. Yes he has said people can read them as friends/nonromantic. He also *has said people can read them as gay.* He’s consistently been of the position that readers/viewers can read the characters however they want. I don’t perceive Gaiman as trying to shoot down the gay interpretation more than other interpretations - that’s just the one he gets asked the most. His position has always been very consistent: he himself does not view any angel or demon as matching any human label, but he is thrilled when readers/viewers see themselves in the characters, whether that’s in terms of neurodivergency or gender or sexuality. I also fundamentally disagree with your premise about overtness. If we only count queer rep as valuable when it is so overt that straight-cis-allos can’t deny/dismiss it, then we are letting the obliviousness of non-queers determine what stories we value. And non-queers can be quite oblivious. You’re right, Good Omens is not that overt. But there are multiple ways something can be valuable. This was why I brought up genderfluid fans who see themselves in the way Crowley approaches gender - that affirmation and validation they feel has value. We can acknowledge that Good Omens *didn’t* accomplish overt representation or the benefits that come from that, while also acknowledging it *did* accomplish letting some very underrepresented subsets of the community see themselves represented. Aziraphale’s journey in the show is very queer coded. He goes from attempting conformity with the other angels, who treat him as other and mock him for his otherness, to rejecting heaven and its rules in a way that’s celebrated by the narrative. The homophobia he experiences is a part of that queer coding. I don’t think removing those elements - and thus making him/the adversity he faces less queer coded - would make the show better. It makes sense for you to be disappointed about the show. It wasn’t what you wanted it to be. I’m not saying you should like it, or that your disappointment isn’t valid. I get that the fandom is likely overrun with show-focused fans, and that your position is getting misrepresented and strawmanned. I appreciate that you’re trying not to ruin people’s fun. My one qualm is that it sounds like you think the fans who are happy about the show are only happy due to naive unawareness. We’re not. Yes, I read the book (before watching the show). I know the changes, including the loss of the handholding at the climax in exchange for a visual of them both supporting Adam. Yes I know the context of the twitter thread. When someone asked him to “acknowledge that in human terms they are gay/bi/pan” he responded by saying not to exclude the the idea that they are ace or aro or trans (web.archive.org/web/20190804161510/twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1137370226931228672 ). The idea that the options he listed are in addition to the options in the previous tweet is implied. And yes, I know Gaiman considers “You go too fast for me” more emotionally impactful than a kiss or handhold. I happen to agree with him, and so do others (ofmindandheart.tumblr.com/post/186428083399/lovetourmaline-kedreeva-greenbergsays ). You can feel differently! But us finding that scene compelling isn’t because we somehow don’t know better or that we forgot handholding exists - it’s because we genuinely found it more compelling. It’s possible to look at Gaiman’s comments/changes through a thoroughly cynical lens and feel disappointed. It’s also possible to see all of this as it is and feel legitimately joyful. Both are valid ways to feel. Neither requires a lack of awareness.

If we didn't live in a society that bent over backwards not to show queerness I could be happy with undercurrents and subtleties but we don't. They're just used as shields by studios and producers who are afraid of losing money so the fact that, in 2019, even creators who are not homophobic are still trading in plausible deniability makes me frustrated.

When the episodes were fresh in my head, for better or worse, I would have been able to point out every single instance of subtext. Twas very scant tho, and frankly the writing was so bad that I wasn't sure if it was subtext or just bad text.

I feel like the bad writing and god awful acting didn't help

That's my main issue - I made myself watch every single episode, in hopes that it'd improve, and the only reason I even thought it'd be an option is because I saw it online. I saw *no* sign of Thasmin prior yo the specials, so it just felt forced and rushed, to me - like a cash grab bc Chibnall realized the fans wanted it

_* sighs with disgust *_ well, russians...

There were some things I didn't say about t.A.T.u because of RU-vid monetisation. But I didn't know about this one. 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

@@katherinegural4470 ? tf u mean 'well, russians...'

@@JamesWoodall oh. Well… now you know.

​@@alicec1533 I think it means exactly what it seems to mean.

The algorithm is the Daleks on Earth… seems fitting

SO REAL AND TRUE!!! I fucking love dean and Castiel's love story in supernatural, even though it was (at least from 2010-2016) heavily queerbaited. Their story isn't compelling because two gay guys kiss, (there are plenty of canon queer characters on supernatural to varying degrees of success, none I care much for for the reasons you state above) destiel is compelling because it's about A LITERAL ANGEL choosing to sacrifice his relationship with heaven and GOD HIMSELF to live on earth with his best friend. That's compelling as fuck!!!! It's not about where they are on the queerness spectrum, it's about the story they tell (religious trauma, generational trauma, familial trauma, repression, and how those effect your found family relationships) and how that resonates. Also it's hot.

Shh! Don’t draw attention to it 🙊

We really need "kayfabe" to be more in use.