this person gets it!
[ID: a screenshot of a Tiktok showing a picture of Reki and Langa from SK8 the Infinity with overlaying text reading: “you guys know that even if we don’t get a ‘confession’ or ‘a kiss’ it’s still not queer bait? these fuckers are heavily queer coded and it’s in your face about how skating is a metaphor for love. even if they’re not properly together, it’s obvious that they love each other, platonically or romantically. while i don’t think it’ll be out right said that there’s something going on between them, it’s definitely heavily, heavily implied that there is more to their relationship, which is not queer bait.” End ID.]
im convinced you guys dont actually know what “Queerbaiting” means at this point
Thank you!! If its not *explicitly* clear that they are ROMANTICALLY together it is litteraly the EXACT DEFINITION OF QUEERBAITING.
queerbaiting is when the creators or advertisers of a show use queerness as a way to hook queer audiences then give nothing to those audiences in actuality. remember when netflix made the voltron thumbnail shiro with a rainbow then did the absolute bare minimum in the actual show to show him as a gay man? and i think there was also one that included adam, his “love interest” who died immediately after his first appearance? that’s queerbait.
langa is literally confirmed gay (did yall forget episode 8 or what?), and kaoru and kojiro are very heavily implied to be as well (which is queer CODING at least, not BAITING). love is literally an integral part of the plot, reki and langa don’t have to be sealed with a kiss to clearly love each other, and i’m sick of people saying anything less isn’t enough. love comes in a lot of forms, and the way sk8 is showing it honestly works really well for the way the show is.
The conversation between Langa and his mother, while it heavily IMPLIES that he his gay and likes Reki is kept purposefully ambiguous after the scene so that they don’t have to EXPLICITLY say it.
Love is an integral part of the plot and if they don’t kiss that’s fine, BUT it is QUEERBAITING because of the conversation Langa has with his mother, because of the motifs in the show. Because they imply to the audience that these relationships ARE romantic, if they dont make it explicitly clear that it is, it is not good queer representation. It is not fair to queer audiences to be satisfied with an “implied” relationship or “heavily coded” character. If someone can make an argument about why its not real, as in , someone can argue that they’re feelings are not romantic because the characters never SAY that they are or they don’t kiss-then it is queerbaiting.
So i read your article and i have even more to say on this
Notice how in the tv shows that they cite as sources of True Representation: ex) Sex Education or Sense8 (these are the only ones i am personally familiar with) the relationships between characters cannot be debated. The character’s sexuality is explicitly stated on screen and the relationship that they have with another character is also explicitly shown on screen.
i don’t know how that scene with langa and his mom could be more clear. his mom asked if he liked “that person,” and if you look at the actual japanese word she used for “like” it’s literally used in a romantic sense. and langa got flustered and said yes? and why else would his mom assume it was a girl if it wasn’t a conversation around romantic feelings? it’s as clear of a confession scene as we could get when his mom doesn’t even know reki. they don’t NEED to explicitly say “hey i’m gay!” to be clear representation: after all, show don’t tell is a key rule of storytelling.
i understand that in terms of queer representation in media, each person has different standards as to what they expect to see from a canon queer relationship. that’s fine, each person is entitled to their own opinion of what they want to see. but as a queer individual, i’m sick of people demanding that relationships be clearly spelled out for them. if reki or langa was a girl, no one would hesitate to call it a canon romantic relationship already. what makes it any different when they’re both boys? sk8 doesn’t hide the queerness of its characters and its narrative. i’m sick of people casting their own expectations of queer relationships onto that and slapping the “bait” label on it then proceed to bash anyone who reads that relationship as proudly queer.
as for your definition of what baiting is: people have debated that yuri on ice is queerbaiting because episode 7 could have been a hug. do you agree? they never stated in banana fish that ash and eiji are in a relationship and the only kiss was very early on and was just a way for ash to pass on a message to eiji. is that bait as well, since no one ever really said anything explicitly? those are still very widely considered to be canon queer relationships. why is sk8 different?
