since i can’t seem to comment on this post, i’ll just answer in this way.
first, i’d like to say thank you for answering the ask, because i have genuinely been curious. i’ve seen your posts popping up on my dash/for you page, and i wanted to understand where you were coming from rather than just assume bad faith.
i also want to clarify something before anything else: i am not trying to tell you that you have to like li x li ships. i am not trying to convince you to ship them, read them, tolerate them on your dash, or pretend they appeal to you if they don’t. you are absolutely allowed to dislike them. you are allowed to find them immersion-breaking. you are allowed to block, mute, avoid, and curate your fandom experience however you need.
where i disagree is with the idea that your way of engaging with otome is the only legitimate way, and that everyone else is somehow trespassing in the genre.
yes, otome games have a target audience. yes, otome is built around romantic routes between the protagonist/player and male love interests. i don’t disagree with that. that is the foundation of the genre.
but a genre having a foundation does not mean the fandom around it must only engage with it in one approved way.
people can understand the intended structure of something and still make fanworks, headcanons, meta, aus, ships, jokes, analysis, and alternate readings around it. that's not new, that's fandom. it happens in every genre, including romance, horror, shounen, visual novels, novels, games, dramas, everything. engaging with fiction beyond its primary mechanic does not erase the primary mechanic.
someone shipping two love interests does not mean they believe the game itself is secretly BL, someone treating MC as her own character does not mean they are trying to destroy self-insert players, someone saying “MC and Sylus are cute” instead of “me and Sylus” is not an attack on people who prefer first-person immersion. these are just different languages people use around the same material.
and this is where the keyboard analogy falls apart for me.
a keyboard is a tool. fiction is not just a tool. fiction invites reaction, interpretation, projection, fantasy, analysis, transformation. yes, there may be an intended use. but once a story exists in a fandom space, people will inevitably respond to it in ways that are personal, strange, romantic, analytical, unserious, intense, canon-faithful, canon-breaking, self-inserted, detached, devotional, or completely unhinged.
that does not mean the original genre has stopped existing.
on the developer point, i do understand the fear of otome becoming less immersive or less centred on the female player. genuinely, i do. if the game you love starts moving away from the experience you paid for, you are allowed to criticise that. you are allowed to say, “i want this game to remain focused on player x LI romance.” that is a fair consumer concern.
but i don’t think it is fair to put that blame on individual fans writing fic, making art, posting ships, or discussing characters differently.
developers make choices based on many things: money, audience size, writing direction, market trends, platform demands, internal creative decisions. reducing all of that to “BL fans and people who see MC as a character are ruining otome” feels too simple, and honestly unfair.
because a fan shipping li x li on tumblr is not sitting in the developer’s office removing your first-person perspective, a fan writing an au is not stealing your route, a person seeing MC as a character is not preventing you from seeing MC as yourself.
you asked why people who like li x li don’t just go play BL games. many do. but people can like more than one thing. someone can enjoy otome, love the MC/LI dynamic, self-insert sometimes, treat MC as a character other times, and also think two male characters have an interesting dynamic. those things are not mutually exclusive.
and that is where it starts to feel less like genre protection and more like gatekeeping.
because the argument becomes: you may only be here if you love the game in the correct way. you may only speak if you use the correct perspective. you may only post if your desire follows the approved route.
that is what i meant by “immersion police.”
not because you personally dislike something. dislike is fine. boundaries are fine. curation is fine.
but saying “the law of otome is you and the LI” and therefore everyone else’s interpretation is invalid is where you lose me. that may be the law of the game’s main romantic structure. it is not the law of fandom. (this is what i want to stress. game mechanics, does not equal fandom).
i also agree that people should tag properly. i agree that people should not shove content into unrelated tags. i agree that official comment sections can become exhausting when people start fighting or derailing everything. basic fandom etiquette matters. if someone is going into self-ship spaces, MC/LI spaces, or official posts specifically to mock immersion players or force li x li content onto people, then yes, that is rude.
but the reverse is also true.
people who ship li x li, analyse MC as a character, or engage less immersively should also be able to exist without being called invaders, walls, cameras, genre-ruiners, or people who should leave otome entirely.
curation has to go both ways.
you are allowed to protect your space. you're not entitled to make the entire fandom space identical to yours.
and to be very clear, i am not saying this with hostility. i do understand that otome is precious to many women because it gives them a romantic space centred on them, their fantasy, their desire, their gaze. i would never want that erased. i don’t want otome to stop being for women. i don’t want the female player/protagonist to become irrelevant. i don’t want female desire pushed aside in its own genre.
but i also don’t think women all engage with desire in the same way.
that is all i was trying to say.
thanks again for the answer. i genuinely appreciate you taking the time to explain where you’re coming from, even if we disagree.
also, i did see the comment in the comment section implying that it is useless to explain anything to “such people.” i’m going to set that aside and answer in good faith, because i do think conversations like this can happen respectfully.
