fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4444 ]

[ SECRET POST #4444 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4444 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom]

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03.

[Mary Skelter]

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04.

[The Final Table, Charles and Rodrigo]

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05.

[Altered Carbon]

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06.

[Katie Perry/Orlando Bloom engagement]

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07.

[Fandom: Fruits Basket]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 17 secrets from Secret Submission Post #636.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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In before "queerbaiting!!1!1" anon still not getting it.

I agree with you though. The manga got boring after the anime ended, and I liked the open ending of the anime.

Multiple people have argued against you and your dumb assertion that "it's not queerbaiting!!", anon. Maybe accept that you're wrong rather than carry on this bizarre paranoid vendetta against this one person.

I mean, if you wanna get pedantic and insist it's not queerbaiting on the basis that it was clear (to you) that no gay ships would happen, the author still shoved a shit ton of gay bait (implications that Kyo and Yuki have UST - noted by characters in universe no less, Haru admitting Yuki was his first love and telling him - in our introduction to his character - that "today, you will be mine", Ayame being flamboyant and flirting with Shigure, Shigure's love and obsession for Akito until the author decided to make him a woman at the last minute, Rin's everything, I don't remember too well but I'm pretty sure there were even shoujo ai implications from Tohru's friend, etc.) in order to gain traction among fujoshi and slash fans. Only to not only shit all over that, but pair literally every single character into a het ship. Whatever argument you're trying to make in favour of Takaya, it's pretty flimsy fam.

nayrt

That does sound pretty shitty. It'd be one thing if the ships were just left unresolved but to neatly het everyone up at the end, boo..

DA but anon is exaggerating greatly. First of all, there was no way there was ever going to be anything between Kyo and Yuki because they were the two male parts of the love triangle with the heroine and it was obvious that one of them was going to end up with her at the end. Second, Haru and Rin being a ship was something that was made clear (and canon) fairly early on, so them being endgame was hardly a surprise. Third, Ayame and Shigure do flirt playfully... as a joke. Ayame has a live-in girlfriend throughout the entire series so again, there's was never any chance of a gay ship there.

Akito and Shigure I'll sort of give you, but yeah, the rest was very clearly never meant to give any sort of implication that anything was going to happen.

Well, the fact that there is deliberate homosexual innuendo by the author is hardly nothing, though, if you frequently make use of it with multiple characters yet not a single one ends up gay (or even ambiguous). That does seem like queerbaiting, since it's specifically aiming for BL points but bait-and-switches into a neat heterosexual package.

That's... not what queerbaiting is, though. Queerbaiting is when the creator builds up a potential queer relationship and makes it seem like it's legitimately going to become canon, and then pulls a "WELL ACTUALLY" and backs away from it. None of the subtext in Furuba save for possibly Akito and Shigure was ever given any sort of implication that it was anything more than just that: subtext. It wasn't bait-and-switch because there was never any chance that it was going to be canon, and in fact two of the het ships I mentioned (Haru/Rin and Ayame/Mine) were made canon fairly early on, as was the Kyo-Tohru-Yuki love triangle.

You can keep insisting that "putting in gay bait isn't bait because het ships were the intention all along!!", reaching-diehard-furuba-fan anon, that doesn't make it any less fujobait. Nor does it make it any less problematic or irritating. There's a reason many are frustrated with Fruits Basket for doing this and it's entirely justifiable.

You say 'fairly early on' but Rin doesn't even /appear/ until volume 8, by which point Hatsuharu had shown interest in Yuki from his very first appearance. Mine isn't confirmed to be Ayame's girlfriend until volume 19, well into the series and after multiple instances of the series teasing that he might like men. That is not 'fairly early on.' The series teases Ayame being possibly gay for at least 19 volumes before deciding nope he's straight.

And honestly even if it wasn't queerbaiting, using 'ha ha this male character says things about loving this other male character but not like serious romantic love' as a joke doesn't make the series look any better, frankly.

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(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 04:14 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 04:24 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 03:05 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 04:26 (UTC) - Expand

From what I recall, there was no indication at all that Mine was anything more than Ayame's assistant and friend until around volume 18 or so. Up until that point the series had pretty clearly played the 'flamboyantly gay -- but not too gay' card with him, only to eventually reassure the audience that don't worry he's just as straight as the rest of the cast. Furuba may be a shoujo series but I heavily disagree that the author didn't know exactly what she was doing when she had moments like teenage Ayame suggesting all the boys in the school turn their affections towards him. Yes it was a joke, but it was also a pretty deliberate tease to the fujoshi who would eat it up and give the series more sales.

I'm not exagerrating, you diehard Takaya stan. Stop making excuses for her piss poor behavior.

Second, Haru and Rin being a ship was something that was made clear (and canon) fairly early on

Pretty sure Rin came into the picture rather late. Certainly not as early as Haru straight up saying he loves Yuki and likes Kyo within his fucking introduction, with there being no implication that Haru had a female love interest.

And Rin also had ship tease with Tohru after her appearance.

First of all, there was no way there was ever going to be anything between Kyo and Yuki because they were the two male parts of the love triangle with the heroine and it was obvious that one of them was going to end up with her at the end

This is the sort of "obvious" where it's only obvious as a result of the traditional normative status of heterosexuality. Of course, the reality is that - the world being what it is, or what it was at the time - that was going to be the outcome. But it's also not really a defense against the accusation of queerbaiting to say that the series was probably going to be straight because of heteronormativity.

and, y'know, the part where it's a shojo manga where love triangles/multiple guys vying for the lead girl is a staple of the genre...

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 04:46 (UTC) - Expand

I'm by no means an expert in the subject but it's a Japanese manga. And a rather old one at that. While other shoujo mangaka will and have taken the time to show m/m and f/f relationships in their work, I'm not surprised that Furuba didn't go there. It's not BL or GL. It's marketed as NL (or Normal Love, I know I hate that term but that's what it's called) and as a fujoshi myself I would never expect any m/m pairings to become canon for a manga that's sold as NL. We go to fanwork for that. Canon itself does what it wants.

Okay, but it's still queerbaiting.

AYRT I personally don't think it is and I don't think either one of us is going to change how we think so: agree to disagree.

No, it's not, it's fujoshi-baiting, which is a completely different thing. It has slashy subtext meant to appeal to fujoshi, but it's understood by both the creator and the fans that it will never actually go there and the fans aren't expecting it to go there because they're just reading it for the subtext.

Still a difference between "not going there" and "obsessively pairing up everyone in het relationships regardless of whether they make sense or not" though.

You're just gonna keep insisting this regardless of how many people prove you wrong till you're blue in the face, huh?

It's literally queerbaiting. Anon even posted the definition of it here, you dollop.

It's one thing to not actually include same sex ships, it's entirely another thing to obsessively make sure every single character who had even a whiff of queer potential ends up in a neat and tidy het ship, no exceptions.

AYRT I get what you mean, I was only pointing out that it's not necessarily queerbaiting. Most of the readers would have started reading Furuba not expecting canon gay couples, but still appreciate the little shippy scenes. I feel with manga the focus on what's canon isn't quite as rigid as with other fandoms like say, Marvel or DC comics: the anime is not always faithful to the manga and adaptations change details all the time. (What the fans think of that is another matter.) I guess my point is, it's easy enough to disregard canon if I want to keep on shipping my OTP given that the original content itself changes the lore depending on adaptation.

That said, I'm not saying Takaya was a good writer. I tend to like open-ended stories so I can imagine whatever I want, but I also like seeing more romance stories where some people are allowed to be happy without being in a romantic relationship.

NAYRT

I feel like you're making too much of the argument be about shipping when that doesn't have to be the issue of contention at all for some fans. Queerbaiting criticisms of Fruits Basket arise more from the confluence of the many poor depictions of gender and sexuality in the series, and the way the ending took a hard swerve to force everything back into traditional norms.

I only shipped Kyo/Tohru. By virtue of that fact, I should be happy with how the manga went, but I just can't ignore the other issues in the writing.

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(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 11:59 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 13:25 (UTC) - Expand

The whole "it's not queerbaiting if the author never intended for any same sex ships to be canon anyway" argument is such an odd one because queerbaiting almost always involves shows etc. where the authors absolutely never intended any canon same sex ships but strung people along with bait anyway, be it to cash in on the shipper hype or to mock them when they revealed that nope, not gonna happen lol (looking at you, Supernatural and BBC Sherlock respectively). Not intending to include same sex relationships but teasing it anyway is the very definition of queerbaiting.

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