PLAYING ON THE LINKS

I know I shouldn't trifle with referencing dopey, politically slavish BEAT-posts, but since I didn't get an answer to one of my dissenting posts, here it is.

So on this BEAT-post, "culture critic" Samantha Puc goes on for a while about how certain toilers in the MCU have cagily announced that someone in the heroic ranks is gay, but they're not quite ready to "out" him or her. I certainly hope it's the new "Captain Whose Name May Not Be Spoken," because with her there's no history to mess up. But Puc, in the course of assessing the MCU's history with LGTB stuff, cites a link labeled as "accusations of queerbaiting."

Except that it's not, you know. It's a weirdly unfocused complaint that shippers of a gay Captain America and a gay Bucky didn't get their needs satisfied by AVENGERS ENDGAME. Hello? Bueller? How does this subject relate to the Wiki definition of queerbaiting?

a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then not actually depict, same-sex romance.

Xena and Gabriele-- that's queerbaiting. It's obvious that during the production of the XENA series, the producers observed that a lot of fans liked the idea of the two heroines being warm for each other's form, and though the two were never stated to be lesbians, there were numerous scenes in which they were shown together in intimate situations. One transparent episode even showed another warrior-woman, Najara, attempting to "steal" Gabrielle from Xena. The signs, however submerged, were still clear.

Neither the essay to which Puc links nor anything Puc wrote supports the idea that the MCU's versions of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are gay for each other. I'm not saying that the MCU-stewards wouldn't do so if they felt it in their interest.

But the signals are not there, and all people Puc can create is a lot of noise.