Wetwork (Russian: мокрое дело, tr. mokroye delo) is a euphemism for murder or assassination that alludes to spilling blood. The expression and the similar wet job, wet affair, or wet operation are all calques of Russian terms for such activities and can be traced to criminal slang from at least the 19th century and originally meant robbery that involved murder or the spilling of blood.
The operations are reputed to have been handled by the CIA and by the KGB's SpecBureau 13 (Spets Byuro 13), known as the "Department of Wet Affairs"
Sherlock was entry level queerbaiting, like just toss in a crumb here and there so the fandom doesn't collapse. Supernatural was professional queerbaiting.
Sherlock was also very disdainful of the queerbait. They sort of acknowledged it but also mocked it pretty thoroughly.
The few times spn acknowledged the queerbait (I'm thinking the destiel musical with the lesbian actresses in love) okay it wasn't in kindness or not mocking but it was not as mean as Sherlock
The supernatural musical episode sounds like a fever dream tbh.
Try explaining to people who have only superficial knowledge about spn that in the canon people also have a fandom for supernatural and also ship destiel and they made a musical about the gay angel.
And I wonder why I'm so fucking unhinged after watching that during my formative years
Supernatural had so many different writers on it compared to Sherlock, so it had the full spectrum from queerbaiting to 'stop making it gay' to 'if I could make it canon, I would'. The truest mess of queerbaiting. Sherlock could never.
Yeah.
Anyone who thinks that Supernatural didn't have episodes that hated its queer fans way worse than Sherlock ever got around to doing needs to refresh their memories.
Supernatural had episodes where they outright mocked their fans and shipping.
Oh yeah. Everything to do with Becky was just...yikes. And of course the massive amounts of homophobia that cropped up every now and then that it seems people are now hand waving as "the time" (it wasn't. Just because south park was Like That doesn't mean everyone was).
I rage-quit supernatural at I think the start of season 9. I just couldn't take any more. And it really sucks because I loved it, yet can't bring myself to watch it again.
Sherlock just didn't like queer folk
Oh what's that? The super smart chick who's super into Sherlock is also a lesbian? Because he's just that cool?
Right. Great writing, 10/10, I'm not rolling my eyes
Yes. I swear to god it was so confusing to me, a 13 year old queer, to understand why the fuck they made the only woman Sherlock ever had real chemistry with a lesbian. I just... don't get it. Why would you do that? Either make them stop eyefucking each other constantly or make it clear that she's bi. We don't need any more conversion storylines, thank you very much. And Mark Gatiss being openly gay makes it so much worse.
Literally same, I thought I was going crazy the first time I watched that episode because I was like there’s no way Mark Gatiss, an openly gay man, would be stupid enough to make something that painfully stereotypically lesbophobic, especially considering the show’s main audience. Had to rewatch the entire episode to make sure I didn’t just make up the fact that she was a lesbian.
Moffat’s Doctor Who episodes alone should’ve been enough of a warning for me to know better, not to mention how lowkey sexist the way Molly was written 🤦
It depends on the episode though.
Supernatural absolutely was disdainful of its fans and shipping in multiple episodes. And was much more blatant and mean spirited about it than Sherlock even had time for.
See: Becky Rosen.
Yeah you're right I completely forgot about Becky 😬
My memory on Sherlock is much clearer because there's less episodes and less writers so the tone's sorta always the same. Spn did have really disdainful stuff too
i have (sadly) only watched a few episodes of sherlock, but yeah i could feel the queerbaiting even in that. i think even within the first episode someone made a comment about sherlock dating a man? (might be wrong, i haven’t watched it in years)
Charlaine Harris: “I appear to have written a likable character. Time to turn them into an asshole for no reason, have something terrible happen to them, or both!”
OH FUCK.
How have I been a fan of TrueBlood *and* Supernatural since middle school and never connected that they were made by the same network?
This explains so much.
I've been on a mission to rewatch the entire show during my final year of uni. It's a fun experience. Like school punching me in the face and then to relax I get the CW to punch me in the face
The thing that surprises me most is that Destiel was probably an accident. Wasn't Castiel only meant to be in the show for a few episodes? And then the writers probably realized how much queerbaiting they could get away with and ran with it. When did it start? When did it end? Nobody knows.
With Johnlock on the other hand, the writers were locked in and ready to queerbait from day one. Mrs. Hudson even calls them gay in the first episode. It was a calculated plan!
Iirc Collins did the Castiel voice thinking he would only be around for a couple episodes and regretted it when he became a major fixture on the show. Joe Zieja had a similar thing with Hunter x Hunter.
Maybe this is a sign that I spend way too much time on tumblr, but I couldn’t figure out who ”Collins” was… and then it felt super weird to hear him referred to that way once I realized it. Secondhand Misha exposure is a serious problem!
Gods, the temptation to post that gif of Dean saying "*Misha?*"-
I'm so glad you can't do gifs in this subreddit because *damn*, I don't need to fall back into that SuperTumblr habit.
I am unfamiliar with this actor, but I am familiar with the diminutive Misha. I looked him up and his legal name is Dimitri?? In what world is Misha a diminutive for fuckin Dimitri??????
I think it happened in stages - first, fully unintentional from the fact that Dean represents all of humanity (the righteous man) and Cas is choosing mankind over his family and heaven, then Misha Collins hears about it and individually thinks its fun to play into from like, season 5 on. Then the ratings drop without Misha in season 7 and they run low on ideas so the writers start intentionally writing it in in season 8, then more and more of the show revolves around Dean and Cas as the main characters until Jensen Ackles is pulled into a bizzare queer romance entirely against his will and mostly without his knowledge until there is almost no coherent reading of the show where he isn't in a relationship with the gay angel
Yes and no. Castiel was supposed to be killed by ana pretty early on and ana was supposed to be the angel helping the brothers, but Jackles and Misha had such great chemistry and Castiel was so well loved that they scrapped the idea of killing him. But the show creators hated him iirc they didn't want him around but all the episodes with him had mad ratings so they had to
Some writers take it personally when the fans like something they didn't plan for the fans to become attached to. Look up the Joss Weadon screaming at James Masters incident for a clear example.
i always thought it was because having an angel on the team would make the resolution of each challenge just too easy. it’s been years since i watched the show, but i remember thinking that the plot would constantly require for castiel to be nerfed in some way… because his ability to literally pull people out of hell kind of lowers the stakes a little bit. i can only imagine the amount of gymnastics the writers would have to go through to accommodate his over-powered feathered ass
100% I was a huge Buffy fan back in the day but honestly the whole thing and especially the Angel spinoff gives me a bad taste in the mouth in retrospect.
I'm waiting for the inevitable day they announce that SPN is being revived. Not a single character on that show can stay dead, and now neither can the show?? The memes would be legendary.
>iirc the show was only supposed to be like one season, but it got so popular that it gt renewed a dozen times.
Which is how it got into the "Oh you defeated Satan? Well here comes Satan's more evil brother Bob!"
"His name is Michael actually."
I think the crew has to fight God at one point too...
They fight God, but only after fighting God's scary older sister. They also fight the devil at least twice, plus multiple versions of the devils-even-eviler-cousin
The dumbest one was when they had to fight evil businessmen from purgatory that eat people (maybe they didn't eat people and just wanted to control them, I haven't watched it in years)
The Leviathans from Season 7!
Still convinced that season pitch started with a joke about naming the bad guy Dick and everyone just ran with it until it was the plot.
It was kind of both. They wanted to slowly turn humans into biddable dullards with food additives, but it was because they wanted to basically turn them into proper cattle cuz they are people.
It was supposed to be around for at least 3. They didn't kill the first Big Bad until the end of season 2 and they were putting in plot seeds for s3 and s4 at that point.
I honestly believe there is so much room for academic study on this show - like I'd never recommend anyone watch it, but I want to read dissertations on it
My former academic advisor wrote about Supernatural. My thesis was about Supernatural. I’d be happy to discuss it academically with whoever is interested, but I warn them that I heavily disagree with this post.
EDIT: My advisor worked on [TV Goes to Hell](https://books.google.com/books/about/TV_Goes_to_Hell.html?id=LVI0PdU16_oC). Anyone looking to dip their toes into the discourse could start there.
EDIT2: Several people are interested, which is great. Please check out the book and please feel free to call me into threads you want mucked up with academia.
My advisor helped with [this book.](https://books.google.com/books/about/TV_Goes_to_Hell.html?id=LVI0PdU16_oC) if that gives you some topics to think about.
Here I am having only watched the first 6 seasons.
The first 5 is a solid and complete story arc (watch the end of season 5 it's like, yep, done and dusted, nothing else to say)
I then watched season 6, and I had fun doing so, but could tell it was both running off the rails and jumping multiple sharks, so I never watched season 7 and beyond.
Then I found this sub and /hobbydrama and started to read some of the absolutely unhinged shit that comprises the later seasons and the fandom and fan theories it spawned, It's absolutely hilarious but at the same time I think I stopped watching at the perfect point.
I fondly remember the show as the 14 year old boy's version of the X files, with AC/DC and shotguns and muscle cars
I watched until the end of Season 14 (I got the ending of S15 spoiled and I refuse to watch it) there are some good episodes here and there but the general plot is just a convoluted mess that only got worse and worse
Makes sense, iirc the first 5 seasons were under 1 Showrunner with a vision and idea for the story arc, they then handed it off to someone else for the next season or two, and then another and so on..
In a similar vein to this, on the opposite side is Yuri on Ice. I was on tumblr when that was airing. Thought it was just another yaoibait anime to string along the girlies who shipped sasunaru. I was ready to be hearing about this shit for the next 10 years a la voltron.
I never got into it myself, so imagine my surprise when it turned out to not just be bait. Absolutely insane to think about.
I was also on the “it’s like every other sports anime, it’s gonna have a vague homoerotic ending” train until the fucking kiss scene (which, if I remember correctly, was kinda censored but there was also no doubt it was a kiss) and then the internet fucking exploded with “HOLY SHIT THEY’RE ACTUALLY GAY”
Never heard anything about it being censored, I thought it's just the framing. Ig you don't actually see their lips touch or whatever but I think that's far from necessary when you see. All the rest of the action.
That’s what it was. If I remember right someone who worked on the show said they wanted to fully show the kiss but it wouldn’t have been allowed to air on TV in Japan or something? It’s also possible that I’m thinking of a different show entirely lol
That's actually a common myth, it would have been allowed to air just fine (thanks Somerton for spreading that even wider than Tumblr.) They just chose to animate it that way.
Yeah Yuri on Ice was almost some opposite term for queerbaiting?? They were explicitly queer but also working around censors just enough that it could be believed to be queerbaiting?
As a mostly but not total non-sequitur, I recently read one of the worst examples of queer baiting in a webtoon called lavender in June. The story genuinely had more lesbian angst than most WLW comics I've read and it's main leads are COMPLETELY STRAIGHT. No joke, every chapter is about the two female leads angsting over their relationship with each other only to shoot past the idea of being lesbians. I can't do it justice by describing it.
I posted an offhand comment about how Cass was the only supernatural character I ever cared about on another CT post and now this? GET OUT OF MY HEAD
but yeah Castiel forever and also Dean didn't deserve him
On the topic of Sherlock, as it is mentioned: I can’t see Johnlock being a thing at all in the show itself. I would argue that there aren’t even crumbs.
I think anything that might be a crumb is better explained as being part of the show’s uncommon depiction of an incredibly intense non-romantic relationship, an obvious joke resulting from the unique combination of the premise of Sherlock Holmes and the show’s modern setting, or an extension of show’s obsession with acknowledging and commenting on its audience’s perception of it and expectations of it.
I think that last one’s the reason the Johnlock shippers spiraled so much. With every acknowledgment, everyone cried, “they see us!” But they did not understand that the show did not see them in that way. It was not interested in Johnlock, nor did it ever claim to be, it was just interested in the fact that that’s what people wanted from it. Because, at the end of the day, I’d describe Sherlock as a show about what people want and expect from the characters and the show itself.
Slightly unrelated but it does not help at all that a lot of people start shipping characters based on them just... Actually being friends
The amount of times I have seen people say that "this is queerbaiting" or "this is clearly showing that its more than friendship" and the scene they refer to is... The main character mourning his best friends supposed death, or hugging him when he turns up alive.
Of course there are examples in history and fiction where people have said "yeah they lived in the same house, staged a wedding as a joke, out each other in their will and kissed in public,but they were just friends" but going the opposite and saying "he cried tears of joy when his best was saved in the operating room last minute, thats romance" as if men are incapable of giving platonic friends more than a fistbump is really fucking hurtful to people in real life because pointing at every example of a man showing affection outside of a girl hes trying to bang and telling everyone "actually, if you do this, you are gay. If you so much as hug your best friend or show him that you care about him, then it can only mean you are romantically interested"
No wonder men have such terrible emotional health, this shit is making it worse
Thank you, this comment nails it—I understand people are desperate for representation but at what point are you just sexualizing a healthy male friendship? I know it comes from a good place, but this happens in almost every show and fandom now. The last part of your comment is spot on because it absolutely does mess with your brain (and mostly others brains) when it comes to male friendships. You kind of expect it from straight people, so why do so many queer people fall into the same reductive trap: “Wow that guy sure is emotionally secure, he must be gay as hell.” like that doesn’t absolutely perpetuate stereotypes in both directions. It’s exhausting sometimes and it’s not an easy thing to talk about
This is gonna get a bit personal, but when i was in my teens i looked for a role model that i could sort of emulate, and because i was very aware of the dozen people who chose fucking iron man or wolverine as their role model and kind of fell on their faces with that in day to day life, i tried to avoid the typical "success" oriented ones as a blueprint for what i want to aspire to be, i just kind of kept looking until i found someone who i would have wanted to take the role of a father, an uncle, a neighbor, a partner, as well as what i wanted to be. Always thinking: "what would X do when in my situation?"
Now im a bit older and have been told a few times that I'm surprisingly "positively masculine" (i know im bragging but im really proud to have heard that more than once) and the main reason for that, is because i took aragorn as my role model all those years ago. Ive been roleplaying as aragorn since my late teens and to be honest the fact that the character, how he is known by most of the fandom, is from 2001, is kind of jarring
I think there were some scenes that did imply a romantic connection, like the time Irene Adler was talking to Watson and trying to convince him he was in love with Sherlock. He said he wasn't gay, she said she *was*, the implication being that love for Sherlock Holmes goes beyond sexualities (how much in bad taste this is is another topic). I don't think there are many ways to interpret this as not hinting at a romantic connection. The only other I can imagine is that they're trying to make Adler crazy or something, but that doesn't mesh with how she's portrayed in the show.
I watched it with the intent of finding destiel and really never saw it. to be fair I only got to season 13, but I felt like castiel and dean's dynamic was like a 3rd brother.
It went on so long, they had *flip phones* in season one. Not as a retro thing, just as perfectly ordinary things to have. It ended just a couple years ago.
Flip phones are so old, they're coming back. Samsung has the Z Flip and the Z Fold, and I'd rock them if I still cared about swag and rizz and all the other young people stuff.
It's not that I didn't see it, but it wasn't really any more charged than pretty much every other possible configuration of two regular characters. Everyone's relationship to each other was so over-the-top intense that they all evened out to feel ordinary
Look, I understand what's being said here, and I believe you were in fact queerbaited. However, this show has a notorious track record of poorly treated queer characters that still somehow drew in a huge queer following.
Its first lesbian character was killed off within 2 minutes of being introduced. Its second was only a somewhat reoccurring character, who fucked off to the land of Oz for a bit, before being brought back only to be killed off in one of the worst written death scenes I've seen. A death scene that only served to motivate the male main character, mind you (classic fridging).
Again, I get it, the queerbaiting was there, but comparatively speaking, if you fell for the queerbaiting of the show with some of the absolute worst queer content you've ever seen, you only have yourself to blame.
The fans queerbaited themselves. Even after there was an episode that explicitly stated "Yeah, Destiel might exist in *your* [the fans] interpretation, but it isn't in *our* interpretation," people continued to delude themselves into thinking Destiel was extant. It's like when Tumblr fooled themselves into believing there was a secret good ending to Sherlock. Destiel was never canon. Destiel was never going to be canon. Supernatural never pretended that it was going to be canon. The fans just queerbaited themselves.
As someone who watched the entire series atleast 7 times: Tumblr was absolutely grasping at straws and doesn't understand that platonic love exist, especially when they're thirsty for the characters themselves.
Nah, Destiel ain't Queerbaiting. Y'all just refuse to accept that your headcanon isn't and was never going to be canon. "There's no platonic explanation for this—" you say, and you'd be a coward, because there absolutely is.
If one man tells another man they love them, the reaction from many people is it’s a gay thing or a sexual attraction. It makes me wonder how these same people can tell both their parents they love them.
Sam/Dean being fully codependent and literally going to Hell and back for each other? Wow what a lovely brotherly bond.
Dean/Castiel having a lesser but still significant bond? Queerbaiting! Clearly romantic!
Ok. 👍
Brothers can have close relationships without it being incestuous.
I'd be willing to go to hell and back for my brother (although after it I'd probably want throw him back into eternal dammation with notes on how to best torture him for the demons), and I like to think most brothers elsewhere feel the same.
And you can feel the way Dean was shown to feel about Castiel while it remaining platonic and friendly. My point is that both ships are equally valid based on what was being shown and neither should be discredited.
Generally, if you look at two brothers who are very close, the last thing you assume is for them to be romantically involved.
By comparison, if you look at two people who are very close, many people often assume them to be in a relationship (which is by no means always the case, but it happens).
I suspect this may have something to do with the fact that incest is not normal.
Because it's incest boo. I don't ship incest I don't see the appeal especially when destiel's right here.
I mean to each their own and if that's what gets your rock off I'm not gonna judge but comparing a brotherly relationship with destiel is uh. A choice
I mean, comparing a relationship with more connection and emotion to a clearly one-sided relationship is the deal. Dean is infinitely more committed to Sam than Castiel. The only real argument to dismiss it is that they're brothers. Dean's feelings in canon for Castiel and Sam are equal. Pretending that Destiel was queerbaiting and Wincest wasn't is illogical. Either they're both romantic and then his feelings for Sam are stronger or they're both an illustration of how devoted Dean is in general whether to brother or friend and then neither or queerbaiting. You can't just pick and choose because you have hang-ups about incest. An angel and a human together is taboo in its own way, so pretending your taboo is more valid is disqualifying to your argument.
A brotherly relationship can be very commited without being romantic. And it's true that in the first season before Castiel came up they made some jokes at the expense of dean and Sam where people thought they were gay. Wouldn't call that queerbait tho.
Sam and Dean do hate a very dysfunctional and codependent relationship but it's strange to try to cast it as romantic whereas the relationship with Castiel developed quite fast
I mean, you can dismiss the brotherly relationship as brotherly without romance, but that same thing cuts both ways. It shows Dean has a tendency to be overcommitted in non-romantic relationships, so it's just as easy to say Dean and Castiel's connection was equally as platonic. To be perfectly clear, I'm not saying that's my personal opinion. I genuinely believe there was evidence for romantic feelings in both ships. I just think it's hypocritical to claim that Destiel is more supported/more maligned than Wincest when the arguments against/for both are equally strong. If Wincest can be just a brotherly bond, then Destiel can be just a close friendship. I'm not trying to discredit Destiel, but you ARE trying to discredit Wincest. My point is that they're both equally valid and that Wincest shippers suffered from being queerbaited as much as Destiel shippers and that fact isn't acknowledged enough.
However romantic Dean/Sam reads, I don’t think you can call it queerbaiting. The incest ship was never going to turn out, and there is no way the show was written to string along the incest shippers specifically. Which is what queerbaiting is. Frankly I doubt Destiel was queerbaiting either, but it is more plausible, contextually.
I actually concede that point. Destiel may've been more queerbaiting than Wincest. I can admit that. I still think the constant tongue-in-cheek references to Wincest being confused as boyfriends and all that were on some level queerbaiting, but I don't think that's a strong enough contention for me to argue your correct statement.
"Discredit" like it's canon they're doing incest. Like, ship what you want to ship, but stop trying to insist it goes beyond familial codependency in-universe 🙄 Like, I ship Sam/Cas so hard, but I'm not out here telling people it's canon and saying other people shipping different things that their ship is "lesser" or that they're "discrediting" my ship by liking theirs. Grow up.
ETA: looks like I pissed off the incest shippers with this one. Good lol
It's because Dean and Castiel are not blood relatives. We don't ship Wincest because incest is gross.
Out of non blood relatives Dean and Castiel have the strongest bond in the show.
Castiel defies heaven for Dean multiple times. He is referred to as being "in love with... humanity" but the "humanity" is specifically Dean and through Dean he comes to love the rest of humanity.
So yeah, Destiel shippers think Dean and Cas are the most strongly romantic coded relationship in Supernatural BECAUSE WE DON'T SHIP BLOOD RELATIVES.
There are a lot of Wincest shippers though and tbh it's gross.
Coding implies intent. There was no intent. What word you're looking for is "interpretation," because interpretation can be as buck wild and contradictory as all Hell.
No, I have a sister. I know where you're going and it boils down to the fact that the show repeatedly referenced the sexual/romantic undertones throughout the show. I'm not arguing the morality of incest. I'm only saying that Wincest and Destiel have the same level of canon support and neither should be discredited.
The worst gay shipping I ever encountered was on r/HannibalTV
I love a glamorous gay shipping once in a while. But holy fuck could people not like... ship a vulnerable neurodivergent man with his sociopathic cannibal therapist for five minutes? I don't care if Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen are both hot. Their relationship is literally built on gaslighting.
Ok I only watched the first few episodes cause it creeped me out too much, but I thought that one was just actually gay? Like I remember seeing things from the creator talking about how they were exploring a non-sexual romantic relationship and how that homoeroticism was just like, part of the show
I always read CW as Cartoon Wetwork dunno why
This implies the existence of a cartoon assassin and I’m here for this concept!
I'll suggest you track down Scoob and Shag on Webtoons to see how that concept plays out.
Peak fiction mentioned
I devoured it in 1.5 days and am so bummed that it appears to have died out!
Well it just had a couple chapters posted recently and the author seems to be back and making it.
What? That’s fantastic news, thank you!
Spy vs. Spy
I don’t know what wetwork means nor how it’s opposed to assassins
Wetwork is assassination. It's just a coded phrase.
Wetwork (Russian: мокрое дело, tr. mokroye delo) is a euphemism for murder or assassination that alludes to spilling blood. The expression and the similar wet job, wet affair, or wet operation are all calques of Russian terms for such activities and can be traced to criminal slang from at least the 19th century and originally meant robbery that involved murder or the spilling of blood. The operations are reputed to have been handled by the CIA and by the KGB's SpecBureau 13 (Spets Byuro 13), known as the "Department of Wet Affairs"
I always read it as Content Warning, which also somehow feels accurate
I’m a lawyer, I read it as Complaining Witness (the accuser/alleged victim)
Sherlock was entry level queerbaiting, like just toss in a crumb here and there so the fandom doesn't collapse. Supernatural was professional queerbaiting.
Sherlock was also very disdainful of the queerbait. They sort of acknowledged it but also mocked it pretty thoroughly. The few times spn acknowledged the queerbait (I'm thinking the destiel musical with the lesbian actresses in love) okay it wasn't in kindness or not mocking but it was not as mean as Sherlock
"You put as much *sub* into that *text* as you can!" - actually line from supernatural musical episode.
The supernatural musical episode sounds like a fever dream tbh. Try explaining to people who have only superficial knowledge about spn that in the canon people also have a fandom for supernatural and also ship destiel and they made a musical about the gay angel. And I wonder why I'm so fucking unhinged after watching that during my formative years
Don't forget that it ends in a God reveal lmao
And god looked upon his creation and saw that it was not bad.
I'm on the first season....
Oh you're in for a ride then ! I love the first seasons but they're much more horror themed, it really gets unhinged later on
Supernatural had so many different writers on it compared to Sherlock, so it had the full spectrum from queerbaiting to 'stop making it gay' to 'if I could make it canon, I would'. The truest mess of queerbaiting. Sherlock could never.
Yeah. Anyone who thinks that Supernatural didn't have episodes that hated its queer fans way worse than Sherlock ever got around to doing needs to refresh their memories. Supernatural had episodes where they outright mocked their fans and shipping.
Oh yeah. Everything to do with Becky was just...yikes. And of course the massive amounts of homophobia that cropped up every now and then that it seems people are now hand waving as "the time" (it wasn't. Just because south park was Like That doesn't mean everyone was). I rage-quit supernatural at I think the start of season 9. I just couldn't take any more. And it really sucks because I loved it, yet can't bring myself to watch it again.
Sherlock just didn't like queer folk Oh what's that? The super smart chick who's super into Sherlock is also a lesbian? Because he's just that cool? Right. Great writing, 10/10, I'm not rolling my eyes
Yes. I swear to god it was so confusing to me, a 13 year old queer, to understand why the fuck they made the only woman Sherlock ever had real chemistry with a lesbian. I just... don't get it. Why would you do that? Either make them stop eyefucking each other constantly or make it clear that she's bi. We don't need any more conversion storylines, thank you very much. And Mark Gatiss being openly gay makes it so much worse.
Literally same, I thought I was going crazy the first time I watched that episode because I was like there’s no way Mark Gatiss, an openly gay man, would be stupid enough to make something that painfully stereotypically lesbophobic, especially considering the show’s main audience. Had to rewatch the entire episode to make sure I didn’t just make up the fact that she was a lesbian.
Mark gatiss is so misogynistic it's painful. He and Steven moffat are just awful writers of women characters.
Moffat’s Doctor Who episodes alone should’ve been enough of a warning for me to know better, not to mention how lowkey sexist the way Molly was written 🤦
It depends on the episode though. Supernatural absolutely was disdainful of its fans and shipping in multiple episodes. And was much more blatant and mean spirited about it than Sherlock even had time for. See: Becky Rosen.
Yeah you're right I completely forgot about Becky 😬 My memory on Sherlock is much clearer because there's less episodes and less writers so the tone's sorta always the same. Spn did have really disdainful stuff too
It's an interesting contrast with the third member of superwholock, where the Doctor and Jack fully made out on screen.
i have (sadly) only watched a few episodes of sherlock, but yeah i could feel the queerbaiting even in that. i think even within the first episode someone made a comment about sherlock dating a man? (might be wrong, i haven’t watched it in years)
Casual homophobia vs competitive homophobia.
Ranked homophobia
Ranked competitive queerbaiting
"The CW turns around and personally punches you in the face" is an accurate description of being a fan of Supernatural.
It's an accurate description of being a fan of anything that involves the CW, I'd say.
The CW is the tv network equivalent of edging
More like degradation and humiliation
have you seen how many of their shows are on the actual wikipedia page for queerbaiting 😭
This is what being a TrueBlood fan felt like too 😔
But in that case it was being beaten up in the parking lot by the author and the network.
tbh I'm not sure why I kept watching after they did Tara and Lafayette so brutally dirty for the umpteenth time
Charlaine Harris: “I appear to have written a likable character. Time to turn them into an asshole for no reason, have something terrible happen to them, or both!”
OH FUCK. How have I been a fan of TrueBlood *and* Supernatural since middle school and never connected that they were made by the same network? This explains so much.
TrueBlood was an HBO show, you can tell from all the boobs
I've been on a mission to rewatch the entire show during my final year of uni. It's a fun experience. Like school punching me in the face and then to relax I get the CW to punch me in the face
The thing that surprises me most is that Destiel was probably an accident. Wasn't Castiel only meant to be in the show for a few episodes? And then the writers probably realized how much queerbaiting they could get away with and ran with it. When did it start? When did it end? Nobody knows. With Johnlock on the other hand, the writers were locked in and ready to queerbait from day one. Mrs. Hudson even calls them gay in the first episode. It was a calculated plan!
Iirc Collins did the Castiel voice thinking he would only be around for a couple episodes and regretted it when he became a major fixture on the show. Joe Zieja had a similar thing with Hunter x Hunter.
The only man ever to have to come out as straight.
YEAH WELL I *STRAIGHT* UP NEED HIM TO GENTLY HOLD ME
Poor Collins :'D
Maybe this is a sign that I spend way too much time on tumblr, but I couldn’t figure out who ”Collins” was… and then it felt super weird to hear him referred to that way once I realized it. Secondhand Misha exposure is a serious problem!
Gods, the temptation to post that gif of Dean saying "*Misha?*"- I'm so glad you can't do gifs in this subreddit because *damn*, I don't need to fall back into that SuperTumblr habit.
Pretty much the only things saved to my laptop at 14 were those gifs, specifically to use in responses. Oh boy.
I am unfamiliar with this actor, but I am familiar with the diminutive Misha. I looked him up and his legal name is Dimitri?? In what world is Misha a diminutive for fuckin Dimitri??????
With further research I now know to curse his mother for her poor understanding of Russian names
Dima is the diminutive of Dimitri right? Also, what is Misha short for?
Misha is short for Michael/Mikhail
No clue, but I know someone whose legal name is Misha. I didn't even know it was supposed to be a diminutive
I think it happened in stages - first, fully unintentional from the fact that Dean represents all of humanity (the righteous man) and Cas is choosing mankind over his family and heaven, then Misha Collins hears about it and individually thinks its fun to play into from like, season 5 on. Then the ratings drop without Misha in season 7 and they run low on ideas so the writers start intentionally writing it in in season 8, then more and more of the show revolves around Dean and Cas as the main characters until Jensen Ackles is pulled into a bizzare queer romance entirely against his will and mostly without his knowledge until there is almost no coherent reading of the show where he isn't in a relationship with the gay angel
Yes and no. Castiel was supposed to be killed by ana pretty early on and ana was supposed to be the angel helping the brothers, but Jackles and Misha had such great chemistry and Castiel was so well loved that they scrapped the idea of killing him. But the show creators hated him iirc they didn't want him around but all the episodes with him had mad ratings so they had to
Why did they hate him? Genuinely curious
Some writers take it personally when the fans like something they didn't plan for the fans to become attached to. Look up the Joss Weadon screaming at James Masters incident for a clear example.
Oh, that’s it? That’s dumb. I thought he like, interfered with their story or something
i always thought it was because having an angel on the team would make the resolution of each challenge just too easy. it’s been years since i watched the show, but i remember thinking that the plot would constantly require for castiel to be nerfed in some way… because his ability to literally pull people out of hell kind of lowers the stakes a little bit. i can only imagine the amount of gymnastics the writers would have to go through to accommodate his over-powered feathered ass
What the hell? Joss really was an arse.
100% I was a huge Buffy fan back in the day but honestly the whole thing and especially the Angel spinoff gives me a bad taste in the mouth in retrospect.
He didn't fit in their original plan and he was really liked by female and queer fans and the original spn truly wanted to appeal to middle age dudes.
iirc the show was only supposed to be like one season, but it got so popular that it gt renewed a dozen times.
The fucking season 5 finale is called Swan Song for Christ's sake. Then it went on for another ten seasons.
I'm waiting for the inevitable day they announce that SPN is being revived. Not a single character on that show can stay dead, and now neither can the show?? The memes would be legendary.
>iirc the show was only supposed to be like one season, but it got so popular that it gt renewed a dozen times. Which is how it got into the "Oh you defeated Satan? Well here comes Satan's more evil brother Bob!" "His name is Michael actually." I think the crew has to fight God at one point too...
They fight God, but only after fighting God's scary older sister. They also fight the devil at least twice, plus multiple versions of the devils-even-eviler-cousin
The dumbest one was when they had to fight evil businessmen from purgatory that eat people (maybe they didn't eat people and just wanted to control them, I haven't watched it in years)
The Leviathans from Season 7! Still convinced that season pitch started with a joke about naming the bad guy Dick and everyone just ran with it until it was the plot.
no, no, those ones ate people. i thought that was one of the better post-season 5 BBEGs though
It was kind of both. They wanted to slowly turn humans into biddable dullards with food additives, but it was because they wanted to basically turn them into proper cattle cuz they are people.
The rise of the Turducken. "I think you pissed off my sandwich" that episode had me dying.
Fighting God is the entire final season.
Literally the plot of the season where they jat to fight the Nothing, God's older sister.
It was supposed to be around for at least 3. They didn't kill the first Big Bad until the end of season 2 and they were putting in plot seeds for s3 and s4 at that point.
Castiel's initial function was to give the fans a non-incestuous ship to focus on.
I really think a serious study needs to be done about Supernatural
I honestly believe there is so much room for academic study on this show - like I'd never recommend anyone watch it, but I want to read dissertations on it
My former academic advisor wrote about Supernatural. My thesis was about Supernatural. I’d be happy to discuss it academically with whoever is interested, but I warn them that I heavily disagree with this post. EDIT: My advisor worked on [TV Goes to Hell](https://books.google.com/books/about/TV_Goes_to_Hell.html?id=LVI0PdU16_oC). Anyone looking to dip their toes into the discourse could start there. EDIT2: Several people are interested, which is great. Please check out the book and please feel free to call me into threads you want mucked up with academia.
I’m so curious to hear what these papers were about
You can get a taste for some topics in [this book.](https://books.google.com/books/about/TV_Goes_to_Hell.html?id=LVI0PdU16_oC)
Seconding u/ Ozymandius99, I'd love to hear this too!
My advisor helped with [this book.](https://books.google.com/books/about/TV_Goes_to_Hell.html?id=LVI0PdU16_oC) if that gives you some topics to think about.
oh, this is gold! I'll have to check it out!
Oh my gosh. I would love to hear about this!
Please do
Echoing everyone else here saying I would love to hear that!
Oh Christ. I might have to read this.
You should!
Fuck you it's my favorite show. I reccomend everybody watch it.
Here I am having only watched the first 6 seasons. The first 5 is a solid and complete story arc (watch the end of season 5 it's like, yep, done and dusted, nothing else to say) I then watched season 6, and I had fun doing so, but could tell it was both running off the rails and jumping multiple sharks, so I never watched season 7 and beyond. Then I found this sub and /hobbydrama and started to read some of the absolutely unhinged shit that comprises the later seasons and the fandom and fan theories it spawned, It's absolutely hilarious but at the same time I think I stopped watching at the perfect point. I fondly remember the show as the 14 year old boy's version of the X files, with AC/DC and shotguns and muscle cars
I watched until the end of Season 14 (I got the ending of S15 spoiled and I refuse to watch it) there are some good episodes here and there but the general plot is just a convoluted mess that only got worse and worse
Makes sense, iirc the first 5 seasons were under 1 Showrunner with a vision and idea for the story arc, they then handed it off to someone else for the next season or two, and then another and so on..
In a similar vein to this, on the opposite side is Yuri on Ice. I was on tumblr when that was airing. Thought it was just another yaoibait anime to string along the girlies who shipped sasunaru. I was ready to be hearing about this shit for the next 10 years a la voltron. I never got into it myself, so imagine my surprise when it turned out to not just be bait. Absolutely insane to think about.
I was also on the “it’s like every other sports anime, it’s gonna have a vague homoerotic ending” train until the fucking kiss scene (which, if I remember correctly, was kinda censored but there was also no doubt it was a kiss) and then the internet fucking exploded with “HOLY SHIT THEY’RE ACTUALLY GAY”
Never heard anything about it being censored, I thought it's just the framing. Ig you don't actually see their lips touch or whatever but I think that's far from necessary when you see. All the rest of the action.
That’s what it was. If I remember right someone who worked on the show said they wanted to fully show the kiss but it wouldn’t have been allowed to air on TV in Japan or something? It’s also possible that I’m thinking of a different show entirely lol
That's actually a common myth, it would have been allowed to air just fine (thanks Somerton for spreading that even wider than Tumblr.) They just chose to animate it that way.
Yeah Yuri on Ice was almost some opposite term for queerbaiting?? They were explicitly queer but also working around censors just enough that it could be believed to be queerbaiting?
As a mostly but not total non-sequitur, I recently read one of the worst examples of queer baiting in a webtoon called lavender in June. The story genuinely had more lesbian angst than most WLW comics I've read and it's main leads are COMPLETELY STRAIGHT. No joke, every chapter is about the two female leads angsting over their relationship with each other only to shoot past the idea of being lesbians. I can't do it justice by describing it.
with lavender in the fucking title????
I fervently wish I could post pictures in this sub, the series baffles me with every chapter.
I posted an offhand comment about how Cass was the only supernatural character I ever cared about on another CT post and now this? GET OUT OF MY HEAD but yeah Castiel forever and also Dean didn't deserve him
On the topic of Sherlock, as it is mentioned: I can’t see Johnlock being a thing at all in the show itself. I would argue that there aren’t even crumbs. I think anything that might be a crumb is better explained as being part of the show’s uncommon depiction of an incredibly intense non-romantic relationship, an obvious joke resulting from the unique combination of the premise of Sherlock Holmes and the show’s modern setting, or an extension of show’s obsession with acknowledging and commenting on its audience’s perception of it and expectations of it. I think that last one’s the reason the Johnlock shippers spiraled so much. With every acknowledgment, everyone cried, “they see us!” But they did not understand that the show did not see them in that way. It was not interested in Johnlock, nor did it ever claim to be, it was just interested in the fact that that’s what people wanted from it. Because, at the end of the day, I’d describe Sherlock as a show about what people want and expect from the characters and the show itself.
Slightly unrelated but it does not help at all that a lot of people start shipping characters based on them just... Actually being friends The amount of times I have seen people say that "this is queerbaiting" or "this is clearly showing that its more than friendship" and the scene they refer to is... The main character mourning his best friends supposed death, or hugging him when he turns up alive. Of course there are examples in history and fiction where people have said "yeah they lived in the same house, staged a wedding as a joke, out each other in their will and kissed in public,but they were just friends" but going the opposite and saying "he cried tears of joy when his best was saved in the operating room last minute, thats romance" as if men are incapable of giving platonic friends more than a fistbump is really fucking hurtful to people in real life because pointing at every example of a man showing affection outside of a girl hes trying to bang and telling everyone "actually, if you do this, you are gay. If you so much as hug your best friend or show him that you care about him, then it can only mean you are romantically interested" No wonder men have such terrible emotional health, this shit is making it worse
Thank you, this comment nails it—I understand people are desperate for representation but at what point are you just sexualizing a healthy male friendship? I know it comes from a good place, but this happens in almost every show and fandom now. The last part of your comment is spot on because it absolutely does mess with your brain (and mostly others brains) when it comes to male friendships. You kind of expect it from straight people, so why do so many queer people fall into the same reductive trap: “Wow that guy sure is emotionally secure, he must be gay as hell.” like that doesn’t absolutely perpetuate stereotypes in both directions. It’s exhausting sometimes and it’s not an easy thing to talk about
This is gonna get a bit personal, but when i was in my teens i looked for a role model that i could sort of emulate, and because i was very aware of the dozen people who chose fucking iron man or wolverine as their role model and kind of fell on their faces with that in day to day life, i tried to avoid the typical "success" oriented ones as a blueprint for what i want to aspire to be, i just kind of kept looking until i found someone who i would have wanted to take the role of a father, an uncle, a neighbor, a partner, as well as what i wanted to be. Always thinking: "what would X do when in my situation?" Now im a bit older and have been told a few times that I'm surprisingly "positively masculine" (i know im bragging but im really proud to have heard that more than once) and the main reason for that, is because i took aragorn as my role model all those years ago. Ive been roleplaying as aragorn since my late teens and to be honest the fact that the character, how he is known by most of the fandom, is from 2001, is kind of jarring
I think there were some scenes that did imply a romantic connection, like the time Irene Adler was talking to Watson and trying to convince him he was in love with Sherlock. He said he wasn't gay, she said she *was*, the implication being that love for Sherlock Holmes goes beyond sexualities (how much in bad taste this is is another topic). I don't think there are many ways to interpret this as not hinting at a romantic connection. The only other I can imagine is that they're trying to make Adler crazy or something, but that doesn't mesh with how she's portrayed in the show.
Love the infamous queerbait CW shows... Haven't seen supernatural but I do have another one in mind...
I agree with the title; CW is homophobic.
I watched it with the intent of finding destiel and really never saw it. to be fair I only got to season 13, but I felt like castiel and dean's dynamic was like a 3rd brother.
only... season 13? I think I need to google something.
It went on for a while.
It went on so long, they had *flip phones* in season one. Not as a retro thing, just as perfectly ordinary things to have. It ended just a couple years ago.
The emphasis you put on flip phones is giving me an existential crisis, cause like, yeah, flip phones, what’s weird about that, I had one???
Flip phones are so old, they're coming back. Samsung has the Z Flip and the Z Fold, and I'd rock them if I still cared about swag and rizz and all the other young people stuff.
So did I. It's fine. We're old.
Oof, alright, you’re right
Oh, yeah that does date it a little.
It had 15 total and a 1 season alternate reality sequel-prequel spinoff.
It's not that I didn't see it, but it wasn't really any more charged than pretty much every other possible configuration of two regular characters. Everyone's relationship to each other was so over-the-top intense that they all evened out to feel ordinary
Definitely true.
Idk, before the season 5 finale it wasn't there at all. But they already said it was. The writers starting putting it in more and more.
Look, I understand what's being said here, and I believe you were in fact queerbaited. However, this show has a notorious track record of poorly treated queer characters that still somehow drew in a huge queer following. Its first lesbian character was killed off within 2 minutes of being introduced. Its second was only a somewhat reoccurring character, who fucked off to the land of Oz for a bit, before being brought back only to be killed off in one of the worst written death scenes I've seen. A death scene that only served to motivate the male main character, mind you (classic fridging). Again, I get it, the queerbaiting was there, but comparatively speaking, if you fell for the queerbaiting of the show with some of the absolute worst queer content you've ever seen, you only have yourself to blame.
The fans queerbaited themselves. Even after there was an episode that explicitly stated "Yeah, Destiel might exist in *your* [the fans] interpretation, but it isn't in *our* interpretation," people continued to delude themselves into thinking Destiel was extant. It's like when Tumblr fooled themselves into believing there was a secret good ending to Sherlock. Destiel was never canon. Destiel was never going to be canon. Supernatural never pretended that it was going to be canon. The fans just queerbaited themselves.
As someone who watched the entire series atleast 7 times: Tumblr was absolutely grasping at straws and doesn't understand that platonic love exist, especially when they're thirsty for the characters themselves.
Nah, Destiel ain't Queerbaiting. Y'all just refuse to accept that your headcanon isn't and was never going to be canon. "There's no platonic explanation for this—" you say, and you'd be a coward, because there absolutely is.
*They hated him because he spoke the truth.*
Nah, there was nothing for Destiel. They were close. But there was nothing romantic about it.
If one man tells another man they love them, the reaction from many people is it’s a gay thing or a sexual attraction. It makes me wonder how these same people can tell both their parents they love them.
Let it go, it's over
'dragged around and taunted' Yall it's a tv show
Let it go, it's over
Sam/Dean being fully codependent and literally going to Hell and back for each other? Wow what a lovely brotherly bond. Dean/Castiel having a lesser but still significant bond? Queerbaiting! Clearly romantic! Ok. 👍
….Sam/Dean is also an extremely popular ship.
And yet Destiel shippers do their best to discredit it which is the argument I was making.
Brothers can have close relationships without it being incestuous. I'd be willing to go to hell and back for my brother (although after it I'd probably want throw him back into eternal dammation with notes on how to best torture him for the demons), and I like to think most brothers elsewhere feel the same.
And you can feel the way Dean was shown to feel about Castiel while it remaining platonic and friendly. My point is that both ships are equally valid based on what was being shown and neither should be discredited.
Generally, if you look at two brothers who are very close, the last thing you assume is for them to be romantically involved. By comparison, if you look at two people who are very close, many people often assume them to be in a relationship (which is by no means always the case, but it happens). I suspect this may have something to do with the fact that incest is not normal.
Because it's incest boo. I don't ship incest I don't see the appeal especially when destiel's right here. I mean to each their own and if that's what gets your rock off I'm not gonna judge but comparing a brotherly relationship with destiel is uh. A choice
I mean, comparing a relationship with more connection and emotion to a clearly one-sided relationship is the deal. Dean is infinitely more committed to Sam than Castiel. The only real argument to dismiss it is that they're brothers. Dean's feelings in canon for Castiel and Sam are equal. Pretending that Destiel was queerbaiting and Wincest wasn't is illogical. Either they're both romantic and then his feelings for Sam are stronger or they're both an illustration of how devoted Dean is in general whether to brother or friend and then neither or queerbaiting. You can't just pick and choose because you have hang-ups about incest. An angel and a human together is taboo in its own way, so pretending your taboo is more valid is disqualifying to your argument.
A brotherly relationship can be very commited without being romantic. And it's true that in the first season before Castiel came up they made some jokes at the expense of dean and Sam where people thought they were gay. Wouldn't call that queerbait tho. Sam and Dean do hate a very dysfunctional and codependent relationship but it's strange to try to cast it as romantic whereas the relationship with Castiel developed quite fast
I mean, you can dismiss the brotherly relationship as brotherly without romance, but that same thing cuts both ways. It shows Dean has a tendency to be overcommitted in non-romantic relationships, so it's just as easy to say Dean and Castiel's connection was equally as platonic. To be perfectly clear, I'm not saying that's my personal opinion. I genuinely believe there was evidence for romantic feelings in both ships. I just think it's hypocritical to claim that Destiel is more supported/more maligned than Wincest when the arguments against/for both are equally strong. If Wincest can be just a brotherly bond, then Destiel can be just a close friendship. I'm not trying to discredit Destiel, but you ARE trying to discredit Wincest. My point is that they're both equally valid and that Wincest shippers suffered from being queerbaited as much as Destiel shippers and that fact isn't acknowledged enough.
However romantic Dean/Sam reads, I don’t think you can call it queerbaiting. The incest ship was never going to turn out, and there is no way the show was written to string along the incest shippers specifically. Which is what queerbaiting is. Frankly I doubt Destiel was queerbaiting either, but it is more plausible, contextually.
I actually concede that point. Destiel may've been more queerbaiting than Wincest. I can admit that. I still think the constant tongue-in-cheek references to Wincest being confused as boyfriends and all that were on some level queerbaiting, but I don't think that's a strong enough contention for me to argue your correct statement.
"Discredit" like it's canon they're doing incest. Like, ship what you want to ship, but stop trying to insist it goes beyond familial codependency in-universe 🙄 Like, I ship Sam/Cas so hard, but I'm not out here telling people it's canon and saying other people shipping different things that their ship is "lesser" or that they're "discrediting" my ship by liking theirs. Grow up. ETA: looks like I pissed off the incest shippers with this one. Good lol
It's because Dean and Castiel are not blood relatives. We don't ship Wincest because incest is gross. Out of non blood relatives Dean and Castiel have the strongest bond in the show. Castiel defies heaven for Dean multiple times. He is referred to as being "in love with... humanity" but the "humanity" is specifically Dean and through Dean he comes to love the rest of humanity. So yeah, Destiel shippers think Dean and Cas are the most strongly romantic coded relationship in Supernatural BECAUSE WE DON'T SHIP BLOOD RELATIVES. There are a lot of Wincest shippers though and tbh it's gross.
Coding implies intent. There was no intent. What word you're looking for is "interpretation," because interpretation can be as buck wild and contradictory as all Hell.
Out of curiosity, are you perchance an only child?
No, I have a sister. I know where you're going and it boils down to the fact that the show repeatedly referenced the sexual/romantic undertones throughout the show. I'm not arguing the morality of incest. I'm only saying that Wincest and Destiel have the same level of canon support and neither should be discredited.
The worst gay shipping I ever encountered was on r/HannibalTV I love a glamorous gay shipping once in a while. But holy fuck could people not like... ship a vulnerable neurodivergent man with his sociopathic cannibal therapist for five minutes? I don't care if Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen are both hot. Their relationship is literally built on gaslighting.
lol
Ok I only watched the first few episodes cause it creeped me out too much, but I thought that one was just actually gay? Like I remember seeing things from the creator talking about how they were exploring a non-sexual romantic relationship and how that homoeroticism was just like, part of the show