academic jargon drains me so much. i’ve just spent all day at a review for one of my classes where everyone presents drafts of their papers and like this one dude’s essay was literally just: “framework” “discourse” “narrative” “conceptualizing” “unpacking” “hegemonic power relations” over and over and over again like wot u talking bout mate i’m already asleep
(one former academic applauds enthusiastically). Quote from Primo Levi, one of the world’s most lucid writers: “The purpose of writing is to communicate, to convey information or feelings from mind to mind, from place to place, and from time to time. Someone who is understood by no one conveys nothing, is only a voice crying in the wilderness. When this happens, the conscientious reader should be heartened: if you do not understand a text, the fault is the author’s, not yours.”
A lot of us feel doubt about our sexuality from time to time, and this is completely normal. But just because you might spend a while just crushing on one gender, it doesn’t mean that your attraction to other genders doesn’t matter. The way you feel about a particular person NEVER invalidates your sexuality.
I find all labels problematic. The notion of “continuum” (that I discovered when I first started studying sociolinguistics) strikes me as preferable to the label “bisexual”. I believe that most people (including many people who strongly define themselves as gay or lesbian) through their lives move back and forth along the continuum that has “exclusively same-sex attracted” at one end and “exclusively other-sex attracted” at the other end. At this point of my life I would place myself somewhere near the lesbian end of the continuum, but at different stages of my life I have loved three men, lived with two of them, had a child with one of them, been attracted by three more. Yes, my deepest (”truest”) loves, and deepest heartbreaks, have been in relationships with women. But I kept moving back and forth, instead of making a direct journey from one end to the other.
In a fannish context, queer baiting (or queerbaiting) is a term used to describe the perceived attempt by canon creators (typically of television shows) to woo queer fans and/or slash fans, but with no intention of actually showing a gay relationship being consummated on screen.This is done either by introducing a character whose sexuality seems, early on, to be coded as something other than one hundred percent heterosexual, or by indicating – be it ever so slightly – that two same-sex characters might possibly be attracted to each other. (x)
Queerbaiting is the practice (mainly in film or television writing) to hint at, but then to not actually depict, a potential same-sex romantic relationship between fictional characters. The potential romance may be ignored, explicitly rejected or made fun of.
The derogatory term “queerbaiting” is meant to imply that this is done for the purpose of attracting (“baiting”) a queer audience with the ultimately unrealized suggestion of relationships that appeal to them.[1]The concept arose in and has been popularized through Internet discussions among the fandom of popular films and television series.[2] (x)
The importance of representation is underscored further when it comes to the insidious practice of “queerbaiting.”
Queerbaiting is a contentious term within online fan spaces. The word came into existence in the past five or so years, but the practice itself stretches back much longer. It refers to the concept of showrunners and writers adding homoerotic subtext between two characters, usually leads, in order to attract LGBTQ audiences to the show without ever intending to elevate the subtext to an actual relationship. This often goes hand-in-hand with the show’s cast and crew encouraging fans to support and create fanworks for these non-canonical relationships, never truly ruling out the potential for these pairings to become canon. (x)
I feel like this needs to be said out loud once again because some people in fandom seem to be confused about what queebaiting is.Queerbaiting is done by canon creators,not fans and let us please remember that Black Sails canon creators told us literally that Silver and Flint loved each other:
‘ It is genuine and it is complicated, in the way that it’s always complicated when you love someone.’
“It was a complicated relationship with a lot going on under the surface. Starz gave us the freedom to allow some of these relationships to exist without specific labels and to embrace that people don’t always say what they’re feeling and exist in the space that people don’t even know about themselves.”
and the rest of it here and here. Steinberg and Levine never implied that Silver is straight and said more than once that there were feelings.They gave us full freedom to interpret Silver as bisexual and created 4 seasons of canon content to support that.Hell they supported us as fans to think for ourselves and interpret as we choose,they gave us more subtext than any other canon creators ever. Silver’s bisexuality is a valid interpretation.
That is basically what bothered me about the latest discourse-using big words without understanding their meaning and telling fans that seeing him as anything but straight is offensive to all.We queers and bi’s embrace our bisexual disaster John Silver as our own and we have reasons and writers blessings,so lets just I dunno chill and move on?
Representation
must be unambiguous to be effective therefore I don’t think john silver qualify
even in the slightest bit as bi rep and that is one undeniable fact BUT imo a
queer reading of silver (and his
relationship with flint) finds very steady footing in the canon of the show and
that is another undeniable fact. The number of times the shows draws parallels
between both silver and flint and their respective love interests is so
substantial (and sometimes so so so so blatant) I don’t see how anybody would
be able to dismiss it without being either hugely unobservant or intellectually
dishonest. Silver is an ambiguous character in every possible way and of course
it is not mandatory to read him as bi if you aren’t interested in doing so or
don’t like the implication of it or whatever your reason is, but it is unfair to
deny the fact that such a reading is supported (I’d say encouraged) by the show
itself. It’s very easy for the straight audience to read silver as straight because
of his relationship with madi, but it eludes me how anybody with a grasp on
what bisexuality is could ever take that relationship and deem it as necessary
and sufficient prove of his “straightness” in a show like black sails that has
established a queer frame of interpretation for its text (and consequently its
subtext). There are plenty of intentionally blurred and ambiguous same gender relationship
in media and there are plenty of characters whose sexuality is left “open for
interpretations” and that fandom headcanons as lgb, but silver’s case is
different from the majority of those ones because he exists in a context that
is explicitly queer and saying that reading him as bi encourages queerbaiting
ignores how profoundly such reading is influenced and relies on that specific context.
writing fic when English is not your first language means having 18 tabs open like
It also means one or more of the following.
Sending friends emails with lists of questions about American/ British English usage
Pestering native English speakers with two or more near-synonyms, begging them to tell you which is the most appropriate in a specific instance
Sending unsuspecting friends uncontextualised or almost-uncontextualised sentences, where words that you are not all that sure about are preceded by a question mark
Finally, finding a good beta reader and cherishing them for your entire life, more so if they know next to nothing about the fandoms you’re writing in.
mici's campfire 