Settle in, kiddos. It’s time to talk about queerbaiting.
Wiktionary defines queerbaiting as “the practice of creating homoerotic tension between two characters in a narrative work (particularly a television series) without the intention of ever developing it into an actual same-sex relationship or explicitly addressing the question of either character’s sexuality.” It’s basically, as I said above, “will gay or won’t gay.” YouTuber Sarah Z has a video on the topic of queerbaiting and another, more recent one on Sherlock, its fandom, and everything surrounding the queerbaiting therein, and in that spirit, I’ll use Sherlock as an example for those of you who still need a little clarification.
Even more so than other Sherlock Holmes adaptations, the BBC Sherlock spawned a massive amount of fans who were invested in the potential romantic relationship between Sherlock (Binkysnoot Crumplepants) and Watson (Martin Freeman). Not only did they posit that there could be such a relationship, they genuinely believed the show would give it to them and found clues where there may or may not have been clues. The showrunners knew this, included a lot of jokes lampshading the idea of one or both characters being gay and also making fun of their fans, and repeatedly said that the “Johnlock” relationship would not be canon. One can argue that the showrunners capitalized on the potential queer content for attention. Ergo, queerbaiting.
Full story here.