Someone working on a thesis

about fujoshi

[pleuvoire]

once you notice how many people complaining about trends in western fandom do so by being like “this is just like yaoi, the pinnacle of homophobic top/bottom stereotyping” it gets really annoying

[pleuvoire]

one time i saw a long post complaining about top/bottom stereotyping in western m/m fanwork that started right off by negatively calling it “yaoification” and then today i saw a post about like being unimaginative in assigning fursonas to horror characters that compared it to seme/uke and the thing is in all these cases there’s never any elaboration on the actual bl tropes being invoked. it’s just assumed that by bringing it up everyone is going to understand you mean, like, the homophobic foreign platonic ideal of whatever bad thing you’re talking about. come onnnn

[pleuvoire]

it really is just like, americans seeing american homophobia happen in american fandom americanly: what are we, a bunch of ASIANS????

[hagiomoto]

[a-titty-ninja]

[aroedmundpevensie]

[melonteee]

"women don't understand the deep bond of male friendships" wrong YOU will never understand the deep bond of a fujo with her fellow fujo sisters

[iriluu]

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/800374102479224832/as-someone-who-tends-not-to-read-subtext-into

Same anon as this post. What would you say the difference is between gay and slash subtext?

--

Gay subtext is gay subculture subtext. It's villains who resemble drag queens on purpose. It's inserting the hankie code into something seemingly innocent. It's getting shit past the censors to signal to one's fellow queer community in times where being open is hard.

Even when it's possible to have gay text, subtext lingers in arch references to 1940s films tumblr youth have never heard of.

Or insert your local gay or queer culture of choice.

The key is that it's signalling either "I am secretly queer. Hello, queers." or "You can tell this villain is Extra Bad because they're gaaaaay, but we can't say 'gay' because the censors would faint." The latter gets repurposed and reclaimed.

--

Slash subtext is epic male friendship that cishet dudes litter their adventure fiction and buddy stories with.

This is what the often socialized-female audience of BL/danmei/slash finds romantic or sexy. It's about a dynamic between two or more people in a potential ship.

Romcoms have a meet cute and buddy cops have a meet cute; therefore, buddy cops are romantic. Buddy cops are each other's most important person, and couples in romance novels, at least ones where the hero has a personality, are like that, so buddy cops are romantic.

--

Meanwhile, a lot of people more used to normie culture will joke about how buddy cop movies and romcoms have identical plot structures. They'll notice that adventure fiction dudes are each other's most important person. But they won't feel like it's romantic or like it's going somewhere.

Within slash fandom, there are huge cultural expectations that something that looks like Steve and Bucky in that first Captain America movie is progressing towards a ship.

On a fanfic level, it is. That's exactly what I like as a ship setup.

But with my mainstream media goggles on, zero things about that movie read as gay subculture subtext or as how mainstream action movies set up ships. (That's usually someone being awesome and then getting a token reward at the end or someone chasing someone else, not epic bros.)

If one applies one's understanding of foreshadowing in slash fanfic or a danmei novel to things that are not that, one is in for a rude awakening. This is how we get fandom positive that Sherlock was going gay for real and wasn't just full of homophobic jokes. A gay guy made it! He must think like us! But of course that's not the case. The mainstream strains of cis gay dude culture and slash fanfic culture are not similar.

--

Anyway, if you're used to applying a more mainstream lens to media, even a mainstream gay lens, you won't be primed to expect slash fanfic foreshadowing to mean anything.

Also, you're probably hanging out with fans whose "foreshadowing" is better described as "wishful thinking".

[the-fujoshi-thesis]

Omegaverse, mpreg, hockey thing.

When your wife reads a certain kind of fic (or book) while you're soundly asleep just to subject you to that fic (or book) once you're awake.

[sambuchito]

[cranbery]

Some of the first fujoshis were probably at like old timey 1800s boxing matches like this

[hip-eponymous-poor-boy]

funniest reactions to the new junjou romantica art style reveal

[the-fujoshi-thesis]

Who even is the guy on the right????

[boobieteriat]

Can men read yaoi?

yes

no

Voting ended onFeb 3, 2025

[pallasinine]

of course men CAN read yaoi. that's not the issue. however, as Lenin pointed out, socialist consciousness could not have arisen solely from within the working-class movement but needed the contributions of intellectuals - even bourgeois academics! - in order to reach beyond trade unionism. similarly, true yaoi cannot be achieved by men alone. we need the contributions of fujoshis to synthesize gay experiences into a theory of revolutionary faggotry

[postpostirony]

men can't read

[the-fujoshi-thesis]

Men can only read yaoi if they pretend to be women.

[weirdplutoprince]

Always respect a fujoshi's dedication to writing yaoi even in the most romance hostile settings. A story could be called "the torture cube with four walls" and every fic would just open with 'it was common knowledge that the top left corner of the torture cube was reserved for love making ' like ok. of course.

[olderthannetfic]

/olderthannetfic/769334704445997057/another-fandometrics-year-in-review-another-bevy

I am - genuinely - very sympathetic to the frustrations of solely f/f shippers and I DO think some people are a little too quick to shrug off the lack of f/f in fandom spaces with “lack of representation in media what can you do” when fandom is all about assigning personalities and backstories to one-line characters. HOWEVER. As someone who likes all kinds of ships, the experiences I have had across many MANY fandoms with solely f/f shippers treating people who also liked the main m/m ship as traitors and bad feminists, not to mention the number of people who have told me, a trans man, that I HAVE to write more f/f and less m/m For The Sisterhood, has made me LESS likely to engage in f/f, not more. Some of y’all are your own worst enemy when it comes to this stuff I swear. (Hashtag not all femslashers, hashtag some of my best friends are femslashers, etc)

--

Demands that people defend and explain perfectly commonplace things always end up generating dumber and dumber explanations.

I agree that that explanation by itself is kind of weak, but "Why are you asking only about AO3?" (as people often are) plus representation problems plus the other commonly cited reasons add up to a perfectly sufficient explanation. People just don't like what they're hearing.

--

The kind of f/f fandom people are often looking for—a by cis wlw, for cis wlw one—is not that different in size from the by cis mlm, for cis mlm one. They are both small.

Yes, I know they pretend that's not what they mean. They are lying. Possibly to themselves. Just look at the bawwwwing over the idea that cis men liking f/f could add to the amount of f/f art or the audience for the same.

Many AO3 slashers are better compared to transbian catgirls making lesbian furry porn or cis dudes horny for Buffy/Faith or something. There are plenty of people who care about f/f. They're just not necessarily the ~right~ people in the right spaces making the right art to count in some wanker's statistics.

Part of the reason our explanations and discussions always sound so bonkers is that we constantly compare apples to oranges.

--

And while we're at it, let's talk about that hoary old ~one-line character~ thing.

The reality is that we like to talk about how we elevate random walk-on characters, but the vast majority of shippy AO3 fanfic is about fairly major characters. Clint/Coulson was bizarrely popular in 2012. It has been twelve years. It is time to get over it.

On top of most things focusing on leads, the focus is often on characters who are given a lot of interiority. The audience is invited to be in their head and care about their feelings. People aren't usually good at analyzing film, so they use more familiar metrics involving text: how many lines do they have in the script? How many minutes does that translate to on screen? They don't know how to quantify a character being treated as an object to be looked at beyond "Booty shorts bad". But it's not general sex appeal or amount of skin on display that matters here.

As audiences, we respond to film grammar and "Just happen to like" or not like some character as a result of it, but we aren't aware of the mechanics, so we can't explain why beyond vague spluttering and "How dare you! Everyone should think this because it's the natural response!"

In general, media with multiple central women who have intense relationships with each other and who are conventionally attractive generate plenty of interest in f/f. Media with one hot girl who has the camera trained on her ass all the time while the men do everything interesting usually don't.

It's a no brainer and the harebrained explanations come from trying to look deeper to find the secret conspiracy where there is none.

--

The biggest mistake of most of this dumb discourse is "But I see all these queer women here. Why isn't there more f/f?"

This presupposes some default "normal" level of f/f without any actual justification for why that would be expected. You see the same nonsense from people going "Why is there so much m/m?"

What's the default? 10% because of the fake statistic that 10% of people are gay? 75% because action movies are sausagefests and all the important relationships are between men? What's the "normal" level of femslash? 25% because f/f, f/m, m/m, and gen are all equally valid? 80% because lots of fanfic writers are women?

Chasing one precise number is a fool's errand, but building a whole theory on the idea that there's an implicit number without even digging into that assumption is more foolish still.

When you look at the fanfic (or art!) spaces that are full of dudes, they often look like a bit of a mirror of AO3. Lots of het still. Lots of f/f. Lots of lady blorbos people are obsessed with. Limited m/m. Depending on the space, there might be a lot more gen. It's not perfectly 1:1, but then AO3 isn't precisely like other chick-heavy fanfic spaces anyway.

--

In my experience, the thing that makes a blorbo take off is that they're fairly major in canon, often driving the narrative even if they aren't the main protagonist, and they show up early.

In the cases where they weren't there at the very beginning, them showing up was the catalyst for fans who like this type of character to get into the canon at all. It's not just Castiel: you see it with Methos from Highlander and plenty of others. It's usually in a context where that fandom didn't have that much established for this type of fan. There wasn't a second dude to pair the lead with or the ship turned some people off or something. Highlander, for example, had fucktons of het shippers, both of canon het and of various OFCs and canon dudes. It was the slashers who stampeded over there when friends told them there was new ship potential for m/m. SPN... Sam/Dean was very popular on LJ, but I think it's obvious why a viable non-brother ship was of interest to people. I watched tons of people get pimped into Teen Wolf for Sterek. Of course they ended up liking it and not really caring about other ships: they were pre-selected to like that specific vibe. (And they are all wrong because Scott is the best and Derek has weird teeth.) The same thing happens with f/f. People get into media all the time because they're promised such-and-such a ship dynamic.

Wynonna Earp had plenty of people who were there for the women because the women are who matter for the most part. People were super into the canon f/f because it's hot and because it didn't seem like they were just going to get hit by a bus and shooed out of the narrative.

How many things that everybody and their sister saw have that many main women who matter? Some, definitely, but they're outnumbered by the sausagefests and by the things with very central het. Not everything with a huge audience gets a big fanfic fandom, but most things with big fanfic fandoms do have a big audience. You need critical mass to make a fandom happen.

Something like MCU has a variety of tasty shipping options, but the characters it spent all its time on first were the small selection of guys fandom cares the most about. When other characters were established very early, they also had an early spurt of fandom. I can't be the only one who remembers Pepperony fandom on LJ. It wasn't just people tagging canon ships in the background: Pepper/Tony shippers were a whole thing.

Yes, there are exceptions, but we make a big deal of them while ignoring the overall pattern.

Again, it is time to get over Clint/Coulson, Arthur/Eames, and people hallucinating that Hux had a personality in that first movie.

These are rare exceptions, and they're all snark-based at that. Darcy Lewis was also obnoxiously popular based solely on a few lines of snark, but that didn't count because she wasn't the correct and virtuous choice of favorite female character.

(Seriously, you should have seen the whining about all the people horny for Darcy who didn't give a fuck about boring Jane. Sorry, but your blorbo is a snooze and mine has amazing tits in addition to being funny.)

--

Let's go look at what's big on AO3 since it's easy and that's what other lazy statistics compilers do and then base their whining on:

Looking at the M/M tag, here's the sidebar:

Castiel/Dean Winchester (111856)

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter (70823)

Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski (70134)

Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (67796)

James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers (61397)

Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) (56548)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (55109)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (49179)

Bakugou Katsuki/Midoriya Izuku (46679)

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark (44754)

I'm seeing canons with huge audiences. Teen Wolf and SPN are way more popular in fanfic fandom, relatively speaking, but they're certainly not obscure media.

I'm seeing a lot of leads. Sirius/Remus does stand out a little: they aren't walk-ons, but fanon did elevate them. Same with Draco, but main protagonist/most obvious nemesis is hardly a surprising ship type.

Let's play with exclude filters and see what's next (numbers won't be exact since this is via excluding the previous batches):

Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson (43234)

Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian (40115)

Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung | V (38398)

Keith/Lance (Voltron) (32757)

Dazai Osamu/Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs) (32744)

Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester (31834)

Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV) (31527)

Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin) (31011)

Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter (30819)

Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood (30133)

Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson (27403)

Original Male Character/Original Male Character (26854)

Bakugou Katsuki/Kirishima Eijirou (26854)

Jeon Jungkook/Park Jimin (26454)

Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov (26453)

Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF) (21154)

Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion (20946)

James T. Kirk/Spock (20716)

Min Yoongi | Suga/Park Jimin (20561)

Blackbeard | Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet (20113)

Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru (20039)

Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio (18806)

Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel (18013)

Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier (17577)

Dan Howell/Phil Lester (17518)

Levi Ackerman/Eren Yeager (17404)

Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know (17390)

Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou (17141)

Tartaglia | Childe/Zhongli (Genshin Impact) (17041)

Harry Potter/Severus Snape (16773)

Oh look: more leads.

Sure, there are some little oddities, like the fact that taekook is obviously the worst BTS ship and it is a personal attack on me that it is that popular. But come the fuck on: this is a parade of some of the most famous musicians and most popular anime, shows that had huge audiences and particularly huge audiences of the type that like fanfic.

Let's have a look at f/m:

Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug (33773)

Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy (33031)

Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s) (29586)

Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren (24192)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (21606)

James Potter/Lily Evans Potter (21088)

Kylo Ren/Rey (16028)

James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader (15922)

Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley (15635)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (15335)

Pepper Potts/Tony Stark (14552)

Fox Mulder/Dana Scully (14214)

Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin (13616)

Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson (11471)

Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak (11383)

Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan (11272)

Castiel/Dean Winchester (11187)

Other Relationship Tags to Be Added (10529)

Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov (9750)

Original Character(s)/Original Character(s) (9736)

Okay, it is AO3 after all, so some m/m ships have snuck in there, but the general trend is still leads, leads, leads, now with some readerfic. (For James/Lily, you can blame the insanity that is Marauders fandom on TikTok, or so I hear.)

And f/f:

Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (21520)

Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Character(s) (17873)

Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan (16168)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (13681)

Clarke Griffin/Lexa (12876)

Adora/Catra (She-Ra) (11532)

Amity Blight/Luz Noceda (10880)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (10532)

Caitlyn/Vi (League of Legends) (8925)

Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long (7766)

Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler (7369)

Korra/Asami Sato (7146)

Wednesday Addams/Enid Sinclair (6720)

Other Relationship Tags to Be Added (6684)

Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught (5764)

Original Character(s)/Original Character(s) (5529)

Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell (5347)

Laura Hollis/Carmilla Karnstein (4895)

Jirou Kyouka/Yaoyorozu Momo (4662)

Charlie Magne | Morningstar/Vaggie (4402)

Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan (4284)

Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer (4223)

Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam (3936)

Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova (3876)

Maya Bishop/Carina DeLuca (3700)

Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva (3689)

Castiel/Dean Winchester (3664)

Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price (3471)

Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs (3394)

Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee (3324)

Carmilla might be a little obscure compared to some media, and some other ships have snuck in here, but again, we're seeing some fairly prominent canons and the leads or at least main cast who have intense relationships in those canons. If most fantasy tv shows were Once Upon a Time, all of AO3 might be awash in nothing but swanqueen and captainswan.

The big thing that one sees is simply that f/f fandom often revolves around different media, while m/m and f/m are more likely to be into the same stuff that's full, full, full of main dudes getting to do things with one woman who matters.

We do not, in general, elevate anybody.

Not unless some very talented writer leads the way first with a juicy longfic that establishes all the fanon.

We repeat the myth that we do because it suits a certain narrative about how creative and transformative fandom is—and another equally popular narrative about how the lack of ship A/B is a ~conspiracy~ to rob one of one's rightful overflowing feed trough of fic.

It's bullshit.

We write about leads.

[the-fujoshi-thesis]

Not me watching Gigguk's latest video that begins with a new anime he calls "Canonically Straight Yaoi" and which his wife calls "Yaoi for Cowards".

Good times.

[olderthannetfic]

Today I learned that JJK's mangaka is a fudanshi 😂

Some things make so much sense now.

https://www.tumblr.com/runabout-river/764523387909554176/gege-akutami-is-a-what?source=share

--

[the-fujoshi-thesis]

I was watching one of Gigguk's videos again where he went through anime openings. At some point came Dragonball GT and the opening showed a full frontal of young Goku's penis (censored). Gigguk and his chat had some laughs and words about it.

That reminded me, however, that I and millions of other kids in Germany growing up on anime in the late 90's and early 00's saw plenty of child anime dick on the TV.

Yes, even child Son Goku's and Krilin's dick in Dragonball, Ranma's full tits, one scene with a boy pulling his pants down in front of Chibiusa in Sailor Moon and of course Shin-chan who did the same all the time.

Then of course there were the transformation sequences from Sailor Moon or Digimon 3 with lines giving the crotch areas a clear outline.

There basically wasn't any censoring in anime back then but even on normal TV programs you could and still find unclothed penises and breasts everywhere and that at 11 am.

Just wanted to write this down to show why I roll my eyes when (US American (cultural) Christian) people on the internet get half a heart attack when sth sth anime tiddies.

@olderthannetfic if you're interested in what others grew up with.

[satans-tiddies]

BL, “Okama”, and gay stereotypes in animanga

Since BL and fujoshi discourse is the hot topic du jour, let’s talk a bit about gay stereotypes in Japanese manga and anime.

I’m seeing a worrying number of people not only saying that all BL and fujoshi promote homophobic stereotypes, but that BL is the primary or sole instigator of homophobia in Japanese society (excuse me, I choked on drink there).

For those who don’t know, Boy’s Love (BL) is a niche category of shoujo/josei manga that focuses on M/M relationships (commonly known in the west as “yaoi”, though that is a misnomer). It’s still frowned upon, both for being gay content and for being mainly romance aimed at women. The word “fujoshi” — used today to mean “female fan of BL” — even has seriously misogynistic origins.

So far, BL is published on specific magazines, and most anime adaptations are OVAs that aren’t aired on TV. Although it has a significant following, it’s definitely not popular enough to change the opinions on gay men of the entire anime fanbase, much less of Japanese society as a whole.

Homophobia in Japan has a long history, but one of the most impactful chapters was the Meiji Restoration (1867-68), when Japan’s isolationist foreign policy was abolished and rapid westernization began. Negative Christian views on homosexuality disseminated throughout the country and public opinion of practices such as nanshoku/wakashudou declined until they were practically criminalized and banned.

For reference, both BL and yuri had their origins more than a century later, in the 1970’s-80’s.

I find that a lot of criticism of stereotyping in BL is, unsurprising, very US-centric. The thin, androgynous, pretty and emotionally sensitive characters of BL may coincidentally fit western gay stereotypes, but this type of character just represents an East Asian beauty standard for men. Guys who fit these bishounen and ikemen types are considered desirable by Japanese women and are generally assumed to be straight. 

A handful of pretty boys from Touken Ranbu.

In the US, your idea of a stereotypical gay dude may be a metrosexual twink with a lisp and a limp wrist, but different countries have different stereotypes. In Japan, the appearance of イカホモ/イカニモ (“ikahomo” or “ikanimo”, a stereotypical gay man) is a heavy-set masculine guy with short haircut, strong face, and facial hair.

Sort of like the guys you see in geikomi, right?

Pin-ups by Jiraiya, long-time artist for G-men magazine.

But we’re talking about entertainment media, more specifically about animanga. We’ll get there soon.

Gay men in Japan are stereotyped by the general population as being camp, and using feminine clothes, language and pronouns. Those who present femininely are often referred to as オネエ (“onee”) because they use オネエ言葉 (“onee kotoba”, feminine speech), and may or may not identify as male. Many entertainers who are out use onee personas on TV to, well, entertain the audience. That may be the only exposure an average Japanese person has to a real-life openly gay or trans person.

As for fiction, media creators tend to fall back on archetypes based on prejudices for minority characters, and that includes gay men. A bit like how the US has the “fairy” archetype, Japan has the “okama”.

Now, オカマ (“okama”, lit. rice pot) is not a word used in polite conversation to refer to people. It’s a homophobic and transphobic slur, directed at people who fit the onee stereotype. If you’re not a Japanese queer man or transfem individual, you shouldn’t direct it at anyone, period. Not even yourself. Although there are some who reclaim the term, it’s still largely considered derogatory and insulting.

Japanese media has an okama character archetype, which reflects how society thinks a gay man looks and acts. You may be surprised to hear that it’s not the willowy, androgynous bishounen of shoujo manga.

It’s something more like this:

Keep reading

[quantumghosts]

Wanted to emphasize this part because it’s a long read, so I want to highlight the point because I think it opens up a more nuanced discussion about BL and fujoshi:

“Don’t fall into the trap of using a rather niche type of media as a scapegoat for a widespread and complex societal problem.

Don’t fall into the trap of viewing LGBTQ+ issues in other countries through a solely US-centric lens.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Japanese queer people are too dumb to criticize homophobia in their own society and need foreigners (cough cough Americans) to “enlighten” them on it.“

And I did some additional fact-checking on aniparo since the source linked to another tumblr post and found this text which is free to read online as a PDF.

Basically ani-paro was used to refer to anime parodies in general, and much like how a lot of fanfiction is just smut, women started making ani-paro that was just smut. 

Relevant excerpt:

During the 1980s, the popular genre of female-oriented narratives of male homosexuality expanded when what is called the ani-paro (anime-parody) culture developed. Certain Japanese women started recasting the male characters in popular animations, manga, and other genres in homosexual pairings (Nishimura 2002). 

The term yaoi emerged originally as a reference to amateur ani-paro productions. One hypothesis regarding the origin of the term yaoi is that it is an acronym of the phrase ‘yamanashi ochinashi iminashi’ (no climax, no ending, no meaning); this phrase is considered to have originally been a cynical remark, used to criticize works in which artists dedicated themselves to depicting pornographic sex scenes while ignoring narrative functions and structures. 

Emphasizing the last part because it sounds a lot like how people stereotype fanfiction, and how in turn fandoms will apply the same stereotype to BL.

[satans-tiddies]

This is a SUPERB addition, I can’t thank you enough!