Teen Wolf Season Three Trailer

Hey, I know it’s not Tuesday, but what the hell, right?

Oh, Teen Wolf, how I love thee. I think I was torn between watching this trailer with rapt fangirl attention and shaking my head in amusement. Let’s face it, for as progressive a show as Teen Wolf is, or at least tries to be, it can delve into being nothing more than a guilty pleasure pretty quickly. There’s all the brooding, “hot” guys, and there’s the romance with badass chicks.

Unfortunately, I also worry that there may be more than enough queerbaiting in the upcoming season. Thankfully, there was nothing in this trailer indicative of queerbaiting from what I saw. I’ll admit, though, that I would love to see Sterek happen for visibility’s stake. Stiles and Derek are supposed to become closer friends this season, so who knows.

Obviously, I haven’t seen season three yet, but already I’m not that happy with it. I mean, we spent all of last season watching Jackson attempt to become a decent person who wasn’t completely reprehensible, only for the actor to leave the show. And Allison has had the exact same story arc in both previous seasons, so I can only wonder what manipulative asshole is going to drive her crazy this time around.

I should point out, however, that this is the first time Teen Wolf is going to have over twenty episodes a season, which will give the show a lot more time to develop its characters and plot. It looks pretty intense as it is. The Alpha pack has come in, and it seems that Derek’s being forced to kill off his own pack members. Speaking of dying, Scott’s mother gets her throat ripped out in this trailer, and I hope that’s in a vision or a dream or something, because I think she’s a pretty interesting character.

I think a lot of the show has been well done thus far, but it’s also had its fair share of problems, so I guess we’ll just have to keep watching to find out.

As for the very end of the trailer:

He suffers from Main-Character-itis, Allison. I think he’ll be fine.

Sexualized Saturdays: Queerbaiting

Queerbaiting happens when The Powers That Be (TPTB) of a show or other work openly acknowledge that their text could have a queer reading, but don’t ever actually make any of their characters queer. It’s when TPTB try to satisfy the slash-loving part of fandom’s need for shippy content by allowing their characters to engage in long, heated stares, share dialogue that could be read romantically, and be physically affectionate with each other—without alienating their straight audience and pigeonholing their show into a ‘gay and lesbian thing’. It’s the showrunners placing suggestive things into the text and then yelling “No homo!”

This creates a couple of problems.

First, this plays into the assumption on the part of TPTB that fans who want to see real queer relationships on a show are simply fangirls who fetishize gay relationships. They pay lip service to the idea of the ship in question, but don’t take it seriously, because they assume that the people who want it to become canon are just in it to see two hot guys (or girls) make out. This is patently not true. Although gay-fetishizers will always be a part of slash fandom, a large part of the fandom is queer, and we read these characters interactions as queer because we are desperate for shows that represent our own experiences.

Second, whether intentionally or unintentionally, queerbaiting perpetuates the idea that queer relationships are not important and that they’re not worthy of representation. It’s like, “Sure, we’ll give you some suggestive dialogue, but actually spend time telling a story about you in a thoughtful and complex way? No, we can’t be arsed. You don’t matter enough for that.”