fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2142 ]

[ SECRET POST #2142 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2142 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Sorry it's late!

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 066 secrets from Secret Submission Post #306.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Question for slashers! Do you notice a lot of difference between slash from Japanese fandoms and slash from western fandoms?

Asking because I have a friend who only ships m/m and insists that all anime/manga slashfic is horrible and full of offensive stereotypes. In my experience the goodfic to badfic ratio doesn't seem that different, but I read mostly gen and femmeslash so I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

They are different, but not as different as many people seem to think. Good m/m fic for anime/manga fandoms is not hard to find.

There's a certain subset of anime/manga slash that is pretty terrible, but that can honestly be said for all fandoms. I think it depends partially on the specific anime/manga fandom in question - some are worse than others. I've been in both western fandoms and J-fandoms, though, and I think the ratio of bad to good is relatively equal.

I think it depends on the author more than the source material, because you CAN find each of the kinds of tropes (or the lack thereof that you generally find in one in the other. Like if someone started in anime/manga fandom, no matter what their current fandom is, it seems they're more likely to go with a definite seme/uke, top/bottom kind of dynamic and feminize one of the guys, follow things like the height rule or the hair color rule. Whereas western fandom doesn't (as far as I know) start off with those as "the norm", so people who started writing with western fandoms don't tend to pick up the seme/uke rules when they move to an anime fandom.

At least, that's the kind of trope I seem to notice most often as a difference between the two, but maybe that's because they irritate the crap out of me.

...There's a hair colour rule?

Is it 'blond guys top' because if it is I'll probably laugh forever.

It's generally blond guys bottom, actually, but this gets trumped by the "the more emotional/flirtatious one bottoms" rule.

Weird, most yaoi manga I've heard of use the 'aggressive blond seme' trope. Huh. Learn something new every day.

Re: But what are your thoughts on yaoi?

kallanda_lee - 2012-11-14 02:31 (UTC) - Expand

I've found it tends to vary more depending on the size of the fandom than it does based on the origin of the original work.

You get the same badfic types and tropes in pretty much every fandom ever though, and anyone claiming otherwise is just exhibiting fan-snobbery on behalf of their chosen fandom type/against their disliked fandom type.

IMO, that's confirmation bias rather than an actual quality difference. I do feel like I've had more trouble finding good slashfic lately, but I think that has more to do with the fact that I'm not actively in any big animanga fandoms at the moment than anything else; I just don't know where to look anymore.

I've read anime slash and western fandom slash and sometimes it's not too different in how bad the stereotypes can get. But I have been picky and mostly read good fics for both/don't remember the bad ones.

Honestly I've seen the same negative stereotypes in slash from both animanga and tv/film/comics/etc fandom a lot of the time. (Which is probably at least in part because that stuff is bleeding from one fandom to the other--I've definitely seen some seme/uke type stuff in the Harry Potter fandom for example.) And I've read good fic in both.

I think it's mostly just the case that the majority of fanfic out there is going to be pretty bad, regardless of fandom. Each fandom, regardless of the source, also has its own quirks and "culture" to it.

I don't think either on is better than the other, but I think a lot of the more offensive things that show up in Western fandom come from Japanese fandoms. Western fandoms have their share of terrible, don't get me wrong, but the uke/seme thing and the rape = love are straight out of bad yaoi manga.

That stuff is pretty popular in animanga fandoms and a lot of people do bring those tropes with them when switching over the western fandoms, but you can't blame those tropes solely on anime and manga fans. Look at old-school Star Trek fic and you'll find plenty of rape = love and top/bottom dynamics (which are slightly different from the seme/uke thing, but still closely related).

But rape = love is a common trope in Western romance novels too, so I don't bad yaoi is the only one to be blamed for it.

Do you mean original work or fanwork?

I think if you get down to a lot of yaoi manga/anime, then yes it does have a lot of old tropes and clichés - but even that is overestimated.

However, if you're talking about fanfic for Western Fandom vs. Manga, I think the difference is smaller, and it depends on the author. Like, I feel that an author who has the tendency to write clichés will do so regardless of the fandom, while with an author who doesn't it will also be noticeable in all their fandoms.

I FIND THAT THE BEST WAY TO CONVEY HOW MUCH THE TOP REALLY LOVES THE BOTTOM (SWITCHING IS FOR LOSERS) IS RAPE FOLLOWED BY APOLOGIES/ACCUSATIONS OF FRIGIDNESS

I DEMAND THAT THE FEMININE ARTIST-INSERT CHARACTER BE BOTH HAIRLESS AND ANALLY ELASTIC

I FEEL THE BEST WAY TO DEPICT A HIGHLY EMOTIONAL POST LOVERAPE SCENE IS ANGRY CHIBIS

Are you new?

Re: Ignore the troll, folks.

(Anonymous) - 2012-11-14 03:50 (UTC) - Expand

You're just jealous you didn't save teahouse with one photomanip.

Re: Ignore the troll, folks.

(Anonymous) - 2012-11-14 04:59 (UTC) - Expand

Aaaaaannnnd I had completely forgotten those existed. Thanks for bringing them up again. I'm trying not to spit m&ms onto my laptop.

Incidentally by the same person.

http://manifestoonmoralmansex.tumblr.com/

http://cry-some-more.demon-sushi.com/ (Yaoi webcomic parody edits)

A serious answer from someone who's spent a considerable amount of time in Japanese fandoms (not fandoms for Japanese material, but fandoms in Japan) and asked around about this very subject:

It's not, I don't think, the usual suspects - i.e. rape is love, highly masculine "top" partner and stereotypically effeminate "bottom". As others have rightly pointed out, those tropes are as old as time in the West as well. That said, we're not the only ones that have this misapprehension. I knew more than one doujinshika who viewed more masculine, assertive ukes as the result of Western influences. That said, there are differences.

-The relative rarity of switching. Here, it's relatively commonplace, and certainly doesn't raise eyebrows. In Japan, a "reversible" pairing (as it's called) warrants a page 1 warning, right up there with "this work contains rape/scat/guro". People do write it, but it's always warned for, and even when it is written it's generally a one-off, a single instance or a handful of aberrant instances of the "wrong" partner topping before things settle back into their rightful order. To be sure, there are arguments about who tops in a slash couple, but to decide that they both do is something else entirely. What is it that make switching such a rare (and to some) disturbing phenomenon? I was very curious about this - I love switching, myself and the best answer I got was that it's the result of the Japanese "tateshakai" (hierarchical - literally, "vertical" - society) in which everyone has their place. That includes the seme and the uke. It's not as oppressive as it seems at first to foreigners - the "superior" in a relationship has many reciprocal obligations to protect and help the "inferior". Like senpai/kouhai, or older and younger siblings, it's comforting and familiar. "Reversible" pairings are constantly overturning the established social order - it's as if, in the words of one of my Japanese friends, they don't really like each other at all.

-Drama is much less obvious, though every bit as a batty. Rarely on websites, blogs, or forums in the J-fandoms to you see as much wank as the Western fandoms. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist - I've heard horror stories of fanartists waiting until the people who drew pairings they didn't like got up from their tables to attend to something, then stealing all of their work and dumping it in the garbage - it's just kept out of public view. Again, this is just cultural. You'd lose face. Outwardly things should appear harmonious, even if on the inside you hate someone's guts.

-The lack of identity politics. Again, it's not that it doesn't exist, it's that it doesn't frame fandom discussions the same way it has come to in ours. Sure, academics have been a part of, and studying, fan culture for decades, but you won't hear Sociology 101 terms bandied about in your average fandom discussion, whereas that's quite common here.

-The lack of gender mixing. Yes, there are "boy" sides to fandom and "girl" sides to fandom here, but the division is less absolute. We aren't literally divided into different halls at conventions and our geeky hobby stores aren't in different parts of the city (Akihabara versus Ikebukuro). Even here in the "girl" fandom of DW/LJ, we've got dethtoll and insanenoodlyguy and what's his face the new British dude, etc. That would be almost unheard of in J-fandom. There are upsides (lack of the harassment that plagues our mixed conventions, camaraderie in an all-girl environment) and downsides (no insight from real gay males, lack of cool accepting straight dudes that restore our faith in humanity) ....That said, it's changing. Most obviously in my particular niche. Video games are, even in Japan (though less so), a "guy" thing, and the het/gen side of a fandom will be overwhelmingly male, while the slash/gen side will be overwhelmingly female. Over the past decade, I've noticed the two gen groups have been growing closer, actually ~talking~ to one another, and gradually, gay or gay-friendly dudes joining the "girl" side and women who draw femmeslash or gen being accepted in the "boy" side. In the extreme case of the Japanese fandoms of Western video games (e.g. mine, CoD) there are several gay male doujinshika who hang out with and draw with the ladies at every convention. (And one poor straight dude, who draws really waffy Assassin's Creed slash because there's no "guy" fandom for it in Japan and he wants somebody to read his stuff.)

-Crymaxing. So. Much. Crymaxing. I don't know why the Japanese love it, but they do. Unintentionally hilarious in something like CoD where you've got this superhumanly tough, ultra manly special forces soldier with a shaved head and a beard weeping crystalline tears when he comes.

-Finally, all of this is changing. And for the most part, it's the Japanese fandom that changing to more closely reflect Western fandom and not the other way around (as any sociological theory would predict - we're the dominant culture). This is true even for fandoms of domestic Japanese materials, though it's far more marked in Japanese fandoms of Western materials. You see Western fans of anime try to emulate the styles and conventions of the Japanese fandom, right? Well, the same happens for, say, the Japanese fans of Supernatural.

....Except the crymaxing. Why, Japan. Why.

Because the sex is soooooooooo goooooooooood ;___; they cry when they climax. Duh!

This was a FASCINATING read. I feel like I understand the seme/uke dynamic much better now. Thank you!

Also I had no idea that there was a COD fandom in Japan. The mental image I'm getting of the "crymaxing" is hilarious.

Oh wow, this is a fabulous comment. How completely fascinating! I found the explanation for top/bottom switching to be the most interesting. I'd have never considered it tied into the vertical society everyone-in-their-place aspect, but now it makes perfect sense.

Thank you for posting this. I'm going to be revisiting this comment in the future, I know it. :D

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2142 ]

But what are your thoughts on yaoi?

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Re: But what are your thoughts on yaoi?

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Re: But what are your thoughts on yaoi?

Re: But what are your thoughts on yaoi?

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Re: But what are your thoughts on yaoi?

I LOVE IT WHEN THE FEMININE ARTIST-INSERT CHARACTER IS RAPED

Ignore the troll, folks.

Re: Ignore the troll, folks.

Re: Ignore the troll, folks.

Re: Ignore the troll, folks.

Re: Ignore the troll, folks.

Re: I LOVE IT WHEN THE FEMININE ARTIST-INSERT CHARACTER IS RAPED

Serious answer: two blog suggestions

Re: But what are your thoughts on yaoi?

Re: But what are your thoughts on yaoi?

Re: But what are your thoughts on yaoi?

Re: But what are your thoughts on yaoi?