Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2006-06-09]
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bluepita
 Posts: 465 |
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These are the way I tend to refer to male homosexual manga, although I still use shounen-ai instead of BL because of the traditional American meaning of the phrase. However, although these are the Japanese usages, have you ever tried to talk to a yaoi fan using those terms?? Ouch, did I ever get corrected. I have come to the conclusion that everybody has their own definitions and the mainstream American are commonly completely different than the Japanese. Which, I have to say, falls into one of my own pet peeves. When I started watched anime, I was the only person I knew who did. Not because it was long ago (only about 4 years), but because none of my social circle has ever even heard of it. Therefore, I spent a lot of time reading about it. I figured the more I knew, the easier it would be to find things I was interested in. While reading, of course, I came across a whole new vocabulary that led to more reading to find out what the heck these terms meant. Just like my first meeting with yaoi fans, my first meeting with anime fans was very painful (not literally). No one here uses the terms in the same way as the Japanese. Why is that? And why is it that we don't have standard definitions?? Talking to two anime fans requires two extremely different sets of definitions of the same terms. Not because one uses the Japanese and one the American, although that is possible, but because there are apparently ten different American meanings for each term. How did the meanings change so much, and do the variances drive anyone else nuts?? |
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Kamon
 Posts: 70 Location: Procrastinating |
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Fine, fine, but your long-winded reply is avoiding the question. Can you provide a single example or not? |
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astra
Posts: 131 |
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I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the remix doujinshi. They were created by the author of Gravitation. Ie, the comic leads straight (hah) to porn. Porn with sex between every combination imaginable. You don't find Shuichi girly? Well, Murakami sure does because in her hentai version of gravi, he turns into one. This actually reminds me of alot of crappy series like Sister Princess. Seriously, why kid (double hah) yourself watching the anime when its just a teasing version of porn with a shitty plot?
**I really like both gravi and Sister Princess 
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minakichan
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I really liked the rant.
I love series like Death Note--things that can be read on so many levels, that can be analyzed microscopically like literature, that can MEAN something and change our way of thinking on life and society. But when the 12-year-old fangirl majority starts with the "I love Death Note because Light and L make such good yaoi!" I kind of want to melt in misery. I know I sound elitist, but I think the fangirl/fanboy one-track-mind can seriously hurt. It undermines the possibility that those series that have the possible potential to be recognized as literature are labelled as "fangirl fluff" and looked over. How can the medium overcome the stereotype that manga is worthless trash with no artistic or literary value if the main audiences propogated the stereotypes themselves and actively degrade its value? I expect a response telling me that Death Note really hasn't reached "classic & literature" standards yet. Of course it hasn't, because the creators had to cater to those audiences, just as Gravitation just had to cater to the 12-year-old yaoi fangirls. If we could ditch this hindrance--the necessity for anime and manga to be a mass-produced product satisfying rabid fan desires--I think the mediums could really take off. |
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hanachan01
 Posts: 504 |
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Note that not all yaoi fans aren't all girls(and maybe boys) who slash everything. I'm into yaoi, but I'm not going aroung slashing everything. My favorite manga currently are FullMetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa(a shonen drama/action), Monster by Naoki Urasawa(a serious 'gekiga' medical drama), xxxHOLiC by Clamp(fantasy with a little phylosophy), Antique Bakery by Yumi Fushinaga(heartwarming fluff), and Almost Crying by Maki Takahashi(a cutesy yaoi short story collection). And my 'all ways in my heart' favorites for all time manga are Sailor Moon, Mermalade Boy, DragonBall Z and Gravitation. I'm pretty diverse in all my choices.
I also don't feel a need to slash everything. I love Monster, but I'm not gonna slash it up. I mean, it was clearly not meant for that! I als olike straight pairings- UsagixMamoru and MikixYuu will always be in my heart, and I'm also a fan of het pairings such as AlxWinry of FMA and YukarixGeorge from ParaKiss. Not all yaoi fans think that every must be slashed! They are jus tdrawn to slash more than het. Of course, the idiotic fangirls are out there, but they're just an outspoken minority 
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Dargonxtc
 Posts: 4463 Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋 |
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Ok let me ask the stupid question of the day. What is slashing?
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Wolverine Princess
 Posts: 1100 |
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Coupling up characters in fanfiction, fanart, ect, who aren't in really love, or homosexual, in the canon. The term is only used for gay couples, and m/m slash and manslash are interchangeable words for boyxboy couples, and f/f slash and femslash are for girlxgirl. Heterosexual coupling is just called "het". (And coupling is also known as "shipping".) |
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scortia
 Posts: 174 |
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For a long while back in the 90's I was a big sucker for extremely melodramatic shojo dramadies, like Marmalade Boy and Hana Yori Dango; I also caught myself watching all of Please Teacher! and Please Twins!, even though both of those were creepy as hell.
I couldn't honestly recommend any of those titles to anyone but at the time they hit that spot where I didn't really care what I was watching so long as it wasn't dull and didn't require a lot of brain function Awww... Hana Yori Dango is a great series... I recommend it all the time and know numerous males and females that love it. It is good enough to have run for 36 volumes, 51 episodes, a movie, a live action movie, a weird live action Taiwanese series that ran forever, and the new live action series in Japan. Shoujo romance is a genre I typically despise but it has something special that really makes it step above the rest of the series in that genre. It's smushy romance stuff but it's done exceptionally well by throwing in excellent humor and unusual barriers for the characters to overcome. |
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Wakaiba
 Posts: 62 |
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Thanks for bowdlerizing the "help me break into the industry!" segments this week!
((did I use it right?)) Hey, Dargonxtc, don't feel alone - I didn't know either. Look, I learned 2 new words today! |
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Joichi
 Posts: 12 Location: Canada |
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Hahaha funny thing is... i have a spilt personailty of between a 'rabid yaoi fangirl' and a 'childish fangirl'... i can feel guilt mental stabs in my brain at the moment ... I didn't think Gravitation should be bashed to the point that you wish the show didn't exist, i mean sure there's those overly crazy fangirls that would scream their lungs out at even Gravi cosplayers acting out and ones that wanna collect everything... i mean if you had a really big interest in something, you would tend to act that way but what i feel was important that shows like Gravi exist is... Imagine not too long ago, homosexuality was considered a crime and now its appreciated all the way to obsession! I honestly admit that Gravitation was ALSO the first shonen-ai show that opened my eyes to a topic on homosexuality (even if it could be rather awkward that almost EVERY guy there is homo) Almost two years ago, i was a COMPLETE Homophobe just because i always followed my strict parents and them telling me that gay was bad... etc. then one day, i was introduced to Gravitation. It gave me a mix of uneasiness and yet it somehow turn me into a better person. Now i even turned other friends into accepting this new type of 'relationship' so i am really happy that anime like this had changed me into a better person. 
P.S: Gravi's a good 'classic' but i love Kyou Kara Maou better for the more 'manly' bishies heh... 
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MeggieMay
 Posts: 607 |
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It's not a stupid question but to try to simplfy it more than the other poster did - slash is a alternative term used for same sex couples. It comes from Kirk/Spock couplings in Star Trek fanfiction back in the late 1960/early 1970s and was used to cover most same sex fanfiction couplings up through the 1990s, when Anime fandoms terminology started taking over via the online fans. BTW, the Slash in question is this one -> / . Basically, IMO if you use the term Slash for same sex fanfiction (it usually does pertain to male/male but can cover female/female) you are either A) come from another fandom than Anime (i.e. your first Fandom isn't Anime) that uses the term Slash B) you are over a certain age and thus know the term and are more familier with it than Yaoi/Yuri/Shoujo-ai/Shounen-ai or C) All of the above 
Personally I'm C. My problems are usually when I run into a word I don't know from Anime fandom and I have to look it up. The Anime Lexicon here is good but is missing words (like Shota, the word used for the male version of Loli - I had to hunt for another Lexicon to find that word out). I also have fun when my IRC group of friends gets lost. I tend to be the one who has to ask questions and/or look up terms because I don't mind if people think I'm dumb or not (if I have a question, I'm going ask!). [I should explain the group are Doctor Who fans who've been together for a long time. Over the last few years some of us have moved into Anime but not everyone, so we now have a situation where half of us will start babbling in anime jargon and the other seem to be looking at us like deer in the proverbal headlights  ]
So I don't find people asking question as dumb, as long as they are seriously asking a question . BTW, the funniest misunderstanding I can remember on this subect was when I saw someone use the word "slash" on a message board a few years ago and another person thought they were talking about people slashing each other up (like hack and slash) and couldn't figure out how that fit into the context of errotic fanfiction. They were thinking something a bit more kinky than the original poster was actually saying, to say the least .
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Dargonxtc
Posts: 4463 Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋 |
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Now that I know the context of the word I totally understand why I didn't know what it meant. Also I asked the question tongue and cheek so I should have put I smile face or something. So slashing is basically fictional pairing's(usually male) where the terms like Kirk/Spock come up, hence the term being slashed. Thanks for the info, learn something everyday. I don't read hardly any fanfiction(really I read to much as it is) so that is why it is so new.
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hanachan01
Posts: 504 |
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Slash is my favorite term! I tend to use that one a lot, since me and some of my friends are into slash for other things than anime(I'm also a huge Teen Titans fan, and I was into Rent fanfiction for awhile). Plus, more people know what slash is than yaoi or shonen-ai, so I don't have to explain slash/yao ito as many people.
One things that's really bugged me is non-anime slash being called yaoi or shonen-ai. I've heard 'Harry Potter yaoi' or 'Teen Titans shonen-ai!' being thrown aroung, and it's annoying. Don't use Japanese terms just because they're 'hip'. They mean something different than what you're trying to say! |
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Wolverine Princess
Posts: 1100 |
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What really irks me is when kids use those terms when talking about real people. I was in another forum, and there were some kids talking about "real life yaoi couples" they met. Lots of, "OMG I lyk saw these guys in, like, a McDonalds, and they wuz all lyk, feeding eachudder wit sporks! Just Like Kyo Kara Maoh! SPORKS LOL! KAWAIIIIII!!!" and "OMG I was in a park and thar was men smooching, and I wanted to yell 'KAWAIIIIII' at dem, only they wuz ugly. I wud of, tho, if they wuz cuter." |
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Patachu
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 1325 Location: San Diego |
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hmmm... So where does that put Japanese artists who create, say, male-male Harry Potter doujinshi? Are they creating "slash" because the original work is Western or "yaoi/BL" because the artist is Japanese? I don't really care that much what it's called ... just wondering what happens when the lines cross. |
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