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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I only ever saw the original anime and that was over a decade ago.. so what happened in the final chapter? And was there queerbaiting or something?

It’s been a while, but pretty much everyone got married and had babies.

No, there wasn't any queerbaiting, because it was very clear from the beginning that there weren't going to be any queer ships - it was a shoujo manga, for crying out loud. Shoujo is all about the het romances.

NAYRT and I have no dog in this fight, but... you can still bait even in a shoujo manga?

A lot of the interactions in Furuba were not just interpretations of fans between the characters, so even though it's shoujo and you're expecting the main characters to have a hettily ever after, the fact that there were implications that other characters might go a different route literally right up until the end is definitely some sort of baiting.

Shipteasing is not the same thing as queerbaiting, though. And shoujo manga is always full of het shipteasing that never goes anywhere (see: the million and one shoujo manga where there are multiple potential love interests, but it's always clear who the heroine is ultimately going to end up with), so I'm baffled as to why people thought the same-sex shipteasing would go anywhere either.

For one thing, most of the characters people are complaining about as far as queerbaiting had nothing to do with the main love triangle. It was always obvious that Yuki and Kyo weren't going to hook up, because one of them was getting with Tohru. On the other hand, Hatsuharu suddenly actually having a girlfriend that he loves more than Yuki, Ayame's assistant being revealed over half the series in to be his girlfriend, Shigure being in love with Akito who conveniently turns out to be a woman, Hana-chan who sure seemed awfully in love with Tohru suddenly having a thing for Kazuma (and ending up babies ever after with an unnamed person in the sequel)...sure reads like queerbaiting to me. Every single character who showed even the slightest hint of less-than-heterosexual interest neatly ends up in a proper het relationship at the end. No one gets to be ambiguous, or even unattached. None of that has anything to do with the main trio, or with ship tease -- that Hana couldn't end up with Tohru doesn't mean she needed a man by the end of the manga, but the author stuck that in there just in case you dared to hope she might be gay. That's queerbaiting.

Queerbaiting is about intent. The author of a very romance-focused and very Japanese shojo manga would not have had the faintest clue that gay relationships were something real people did in seriousness after middle school, much less put them in her story. It's ok for Haru and Hana to have Yuki and Tohru as first loves because they're just growing out of adolescence and will obviously find an opposite sex partner they love for real. Everyone reading the manga knew that unless they were a Westerner, and then they were never the target audience anyway. Your fault for viewing it through a progressive Western lens.

Because naturally no shoujo manga would ever really have one of their characters be gay! Like how in Cardcaptor Sakura, published in the same time frame as Furuba, Tomoyo seemed gay for Sakura but it was actually just a pha....wait, no, she really was canonically gay for Sakura. But then there was also high school age Touya who was ready to find the partner he loved for real...wait, that was Yukito, they're gay too, I forgot. (Also saying 'just a first love' still doesn't explain Ayame or the bait and switch with Shigure and Akito.) It's queerbaiting.

NAYRT

Yeah, the intent to draw in fujo readers. Like what the hell is this defense of the Japanese's whacko view of sexuality and school age crushes. That shit is homophobic, and a product of a homophobic society. We can criticize it.

The author of a very romance-focused and very Japanese shojo manga would not have had the faintest clue that gay relationships were something real people did in seriousness after middle school

Really?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 11:08 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 11:28 (UTC) - Expand

Ugh, please stop with this disgusting weeb "you'd ~get it~ if you weren't a ~westerner~" shit, because you're wrong. Like, you are 100% genuinely flat-out wrong about everything you're saying, and it's a trope that tons of fans in Japan actually hate. It's a completely old-fashioned and out-of-date way of looking at relationships, and it was then too.

Source: lived in Japan. Have Japanese friends that live in Japan. Engaged with Japanese media with Japanese people in Japan.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 06:04 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 06:13 (UTC) - Expand

Shoujo can have gay romance.

Read: Utena. Sailor Moon. Banana Fish. etc.

... banana fish wasn't a gay romance, anon. pretty sure the mangaka explicitly said that they weren't lovers.

Not true. The mangaka has implied that Ash and Eiji didn't have sex, but has conversely suggested that Ash is gay (or at least into men), joked he is a bottom, and explicitly said he is attracted to Eiji, who is his type (she gave this interview to a queer man with an LGBT publication).

But didn't she also flip it and said that Ash wasn't gay?? I specifically remember reading about that, because I will never forget how livid I was over it. I was absolutely incensed and felt quite betrayed. I was a huge, HUGE fan of Banana Fish, collected the manga when it was being published by Viz under their Pulp label, and was heartbroken by the ending. So, because I wanted some better closure, I went looking up all of the creator interviews and whatnot, and there was, of course, the one about River Phoenix's death affecting the ending of BF, and then another where she mentioned not thinking Ash was gay...

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 10:12 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2019-03-07 17:32 (UTC) - Expand

pretty sure the mangaka explicitly said that they weren't lovers.

that's not really evidence that it's not a gay romance

+1

literally everything CLAMP has ever made has That One Tragic Gay Ship and they're shoujo af

THIS

The Utena manga was much straighter than the anime. I don't think it had any canon gay characters. Juri was in love with Touga, and Utena and Anthy were a romantic friendship (Just like the anime, technically). Even the anime only had one-sided gay love.

It didn't, the enhanced level of gay in the anime was due to Ikuhara having control over it.

Other shoujo series simply didn't make use of queer tropes at all. Furuba did and gained a fans from that segment of the fandom. What's that thing called when you put out attractive content to draw in a particular target? Oh yeah. BAIT.

Did she do it on purpose tho, sounds like she turned Akito into a lady when it wasn't planned BECAUSE she didn't realize it would seem gay to so many people. Why y'all think a lady writing manga for little girls is the same as the Supernatural or Sherlock writers on fandom savviness, I'll never understand

Did she do it on purpose tho

Yes? Have you read the fucking manga? There's fujobait littered all over it, Akito/Shigure is just one of many examples.

What ARE you doing infantalizing the mangaka like she wasn’t an adult content creator capable of making the same marketing decisions as the ~evil men~ of Sherlock? Are you the same anon claiming a Japanese creator is incapable of fathoming the existence of gay people after middle school?

Fruits Basket didn’t have just one iffy instance, but at least half a dozen over the course of many chapters as many have pointed out all over this thread. Then it tried to course correct way too late and too hard, ending up with an extremely clingy PAIR ALL THE SPARES ending. That’s why it got and is getting so much heat. Other series might have pulled some of the similar stuff, but Furuba was one of the worst at it.

The very year after Takaya won her Kodansha for Furuba, the series that won in the shoujo category was Antique Bakery... a manga with NO het romance and a gay man as one of the main characters.

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