neckspike

NeckSpike

@neckspike

contemplating a crab's immortality

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neckspike
@neckspike
yumeirochaser
@yumeirochaser
frenemymine
@frenemymine

The trend of people who aren’t genre fans watching/reading BL/yaoi thinking it’s meant to be “representation” and freaking out is baffling

Especially the last guy dinging it right off the bat because it’s “aimed squarely at the fujoshi market”. Yeah no shit dummy did you think you were sitting down to watch an Oscar-nominated drama about the gritty realities of the gay experience? How did you even get in here? Please understand that these are essentially sexy aliens who look and behave like men only to the extent that it is attractive to the audience which is 99% female and 1% sexually repressed bisexual men. My God. Sorry for party rocking discoursing, everyone

E: Fitting that this is all Tasogare Outfocus reviews because IMO it’s the flipside of guys stumbling across BL and getting mad that it’s woke. It’s not even in the same conversation

neckspike
@neckspike

"I watched a romance drama and it was melodramatic and unrealistic???"

Yeah? No shit, that's what most of them are like.

neckspike
@neckspike

BL, geicomi, and LGBT are different marketing categories at the book store. There is crossover and overlap between categories but they all have their own defining features. If you want realism and good representation you don't pick up a random geicomi and then complain that it's all unrealisticly beefy dudes pissing on each other, that's what you signed up for.

yumeirochaser
@yumeirochaser

i'm gonna be real, if you're experiencing romance media in general, be it straight/BL/GL, it is like 99% of the time gonna be very cheesy and fetishy tropes, even in the more "wholesome" works. that's what people like about it. that's what normies like about these things lol they are always meant to be a fantasy. what i mean is, if you want something realistic and nuanced, you might want to look elsewhere. this doesn't make them inherently bad or evil or whatever, it's just cheesy shit people love for fun. it's not even just The Straights, people of all sexualities love themselves some trashy jank. it's normal.

and even then a lot of these works DO have nuanced and realistic depictions of romance, bc the romance genre is huge as hell, but that doesn't mean everything is gonna be groundbreaking healthy representation for the same reason lol

neckspike
@neckspike

BL is Romance with all the problems and warts of the larger genre.

Also far more men read and create BL than people assume. There are cis hetero women but they're in the minority at least on the English speaking side of fandom. A paper from a few years ago found about 14% of women who responded to a survey IDed as straight. It's not the biggest sample (I'd love to see more done!) but the results are similar to what I observe in fandom spaces. More than half women, bi/pan solidly the most common sexuality followed by asexuals and exclusively gay people at around the same rates, and then straight trailing way behind.

yumeirochaser
@yumeirochaser

yeah, i think the stereotype of like, those Dumb Evil Straight Women being the majority audience for romance works is kind of a fallacy. they def are the most "socially accepted" and therefore most explicitly aimed for demographic for these things in marketing, but romance works are liked by just about every group. like, there's a TON of LGBT+ people into these things, including BL, yes, including even problematic BL there. it's an interesting deal

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in reply to @frenemymine's post:

frenemymine
@frenemymine

I wouldn't even say that reaction was misogynist! I mean the media is absolutely fetishistic. @Mightfo left a comment below that I thought was a very good read; I think it's ultimately a matter of people having different expectations based on their prior experiences

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Mightfo
@Mightfo

I dont think its clearly mockable.

Like for Twilight Out of Focus(which i havent watched yet but was going to when it finished), based on things animefeminist said I thought it was not the same type of anime that would immediately end up with generic sexual assault tropes(assuming im understanding some of whats being mentioned in your screencaps)- they emphasized the focus on consensuality and sweetness.

Also, terms like "yaoi" and "bl" get very genericized so that its easy for people to think that they dont default to just being stuff for fujoshis. People will say something is "yaoi" when its any gay romance stuff especially when its actually for gays.

Given the use of terms like these, its absolutely no surprise people would walk into stuff expecting their generic definition of "yaoi" and then being shocked that 95% of yaoi anime pulls generic rape tropes that turn off a huge amount of people who would otherwise be interested in gay stuff.

Or like looking for gay animes in the early/mid 2010s, i remember seeing Sekaiichi Hatsukoi get recommended a lot a the top of lists, trying it, and then immediately running into the rape tropes and being like "What the hell? Why would people just casually recommend this as gay anime with no warning?"

People who are used to consuming gay-targeted art on tumblr or wherever are going to have completely different expectations for "gay anime" or "yaoi romance" or whatever compared to people who chug usual yaoi anime etc aimed at het women and dont even think to mention how extremely warped most of that genre is.

Anyway, not saying that anime like Sekaiichi Hatsukoi shouldnt exist or anything(i wont ever act like "gross" stuff or fetishistic stuff or unrealistic stuff shouldnt exist, i only have problems with lack of communication or when that type of stuff dominates genres/spaces where other needs arent met), but "you dont know what youre getting into" is an easily predictable situation given the usage situation of gay media terms and how these media get casually pitched.

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frenemymine
@frenemymine

That's completely reasonable, your view makes a lot of sense. I'm probably very tunnel-visioned on what people's expectations are for this type of media just because I didn't really come up in that tumblr sphere at all, I suppose it's inevitable that I project my own expectations onto other people who have been primed to perceive this type of work as something different.

The AniFem thing is legitimately surprising to me though lol, did they sugarcoat it like that to try to push back against the Crunchyroll backlash? Speaking of the backlash and these reactions being two sides of the same coin, maybe it was Crunchyroll's aggressive promotion of this title to "mainstream" audiences with less genre knowledge that set the scene for both negative responses. Obviously one is VERY BAD while the other is exasperating at worst; I'm just considering how they kicked off to begin with when so many titles that are far more controversial-- and high-profile-- go unremarked upon outside of the existing fanbase.

Thanks again for your reply, I enjoyed the read! Much to think about

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Mightfo
@Mightfo

Heres what animefeminist said fwiw: https://www.animefeminist.com/2024-summer-three-episode-check-in/ Maybe I misunderstood part of it or had the wrong takeaway or something?? idk. I usually use animefeminist as a nice way to be aware of stuff like this before I go into a show...

Also fwiw i didnt come up in the tumblr space either, but certainly spaces that focused on mlm content for various queer people(certainly including unrealistic things or highly pornographic things, just not stuff inundated in the exact same tropes/assumptions that yaoi anime are flooded with), tumblr is just an example of a space that can be distant from those things

Yeah, maybe the amount of this type of unexpecting comment is due to crunchyroll's marketing, that seems plausible.

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frenemymine
@frenemymine

Oh.... that's an odd review when compared with the other, you're right! It doesn't come off as directly reactive to the controversy, either. Maybe someone who watches/reads enough of the stuff that they did not consider it worth remarking upon? But it's perplexing either way; I honestly don't quite know what to make of it. I do consider it a pretty tame series overall but only by genre standards.

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in reply to @neckspike's post:

frenemymine
@frenemymine

Playing Lkyt. right now and Parade is always interesting to me because it has so many male staff and even though their stuff is squarely BL you can see they keep one foot just barely in bara type stuff, not enough to (usually) turn the rest of their fans off especially since you can choose your route and turn off body hair etc., but it’s not surprising to me their audience is a little more mixed. Some people do hate that they always do seme protagonists, it’s not my fav either but the quality of the stories is so high I can put up with it no problem

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neckspike
@neckspike

There's honestly a fair amount of works with crossover appeal to both BL and geicomi audiences now. I love academic presentations about my interests and Citrus Con was practically wall to wall with them this year, I saw so many good panels. The diversification of the genre over the last two decades is both fascinating and fantastic.

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frenemymine
@frenemymine

I’ve never done a virtual con! It’s a strange idea to me but could be a lot of fun and a good way to meet people. Maybe next year if I manage to get myself back in my own place again haha

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neckspike
@neckspike

I recommend it! I've done it 2 years in a row now and they've managed to pull off a really good experience with very little money. Any time a real organization says they can't make their conference a hybrid experience they should be shamed because a bunch of fujos can fucking do it! Are you telling me your American Academy of Whatevers is less resourceful than a dozen fujoshi?

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