Forum - View topicNEWS: Boston Globe on Yaoi
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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I HATE the yaoi craze, especially at cons. Shonen-ai, is alright. Not really into it, but at least that has merit and romance even. Unforunately, it often gets called yaoi like this article does in spades. Thankfully, they do clarify it at the end and state how us morons in the US toss around the Y label even at the company level.
At Anime Boston, the Gravitation mock concert, the yaoi paddles, and all the girls dresses as guys kissing just was beyond lame and childish. Yaoi is meaningless and tacky. It's taking characters and slashing them for slash sake and shock value. Having dozens of screaming fans makes it worse. It's the lameness of the slobby geeky guy cherring about panty shots. Or the guy oggling and cheering a girl in a skimpy costume to take it off. Yet here it's magnified in a legion of fangirls. It's just not classy and just plain childish. I think it is degrading conventions with incresing levels of immaturity. Hell I have wanted to cosplay as Duo from Gundam Wing for a while, but the increasing yaoi fangirls scare me too much. Even a simple Wolfwood to join a friend with a Trigun group is out of the question. Hopefully Griffith, if I don't do another costume instead anyway, and Berserk has a more mature audience. Again, I don't mind Shonen-ai titles. Our club showed Fake and once we got over the surpise of the subject, it wasn't bad. I do have some interest in Decendents of Darkness. Plus stuff like Fruits Basket does have overtones of it. Yet yaoi, by definition is quite meaningless and all these screaming fans need to grow the hell up. You are ruining cons. -Xenos |
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Advent_Nebula
Posts: 932 Location: Colorado |
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Wow someone else had the guts to say what I never would.
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msi435
 Posts: 465 Location: Behind you! |
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I had to work next to the booth of the guy who was selling those yaoi (and yuri) paddles. You would be amazed how many people were crowed around his booth all day as he was preaching the gospel of yaoi. It was sickening; mothers and sons would go up to this guy not knowing what yaoi was and be tricked into buying paddles and what not. It's a sick world out there... |
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Trunks
Posts: 43 |
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Heh, that reminds me of this Penny Arcade strip from a few weeks back. |
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Captain Crotchspike
 Posts: 355 Location: Phoenix, AZ |
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If you expect classy and not childish from any anime fandom at this point, you deserve to be disappointed.
As much as I dislike it, I can't really go crazy and bash yaoi myself, since I know someone else could easily come along and pick apart just about anything that I like. Obnoxious yaoi fans are, indeed, a real pain though. I'm talking about those who try to shove it in your face and who call you a bigot if you dislike the genre for whatever reason. Naturally, there are people like this in every fandom imaginable (although this one is among the especially rabid), and you've just got to learn to deal with them. Which can be difficult, especially given how big it's getting. Doable, but difficult. |
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Haru to Ashura
 Posts: 617 Location: Termina |
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As annoying as rabid yaoi fangirls can get, I consider it karma-esque payback for the years of us having to put up with obnoxious fanboyism. (I myself am a mild fan of Gravitation and Yami no Mastuei.) I remember when I was at AX a few years ago, huge groups of grown men were actually throwing girl's panties around the dealer's room, and just generally being loud and obnoxious. That's not right, that's not mature, and that most definitley is obnoxious. Fanboys have been acting like that for years, whereas 'yaoi' is a pretty young concept in America. So you'll just have to get used to it. :)
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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The only problem I can see with this is that the general public see it and then label all anime as "gay porn" with all the homophobia attached to that. It just adds fuel to the "it's the spawn of satan" evangelical bolox. That article couldn't even discribe the term "yaoi" in it's proper meaning.
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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Amen! For some reason fandom does tend to attract folks (including me) who have, shall we say, social skill shortcomings. Now it's got more girls who act stupid in public to match the boys who act stupid in public (including me.) It may not be a healthy development, but it's fair. I'm not worried about the yaoi thing feeding into anti-gay hysteria in any major way since it's a bit fringy anyway, and it doesn't have much to do with actual homosexual people. At this point I think the anti-gay crowd would actually welcome anything that makes homosexuality look crazy and fringe; it's the increasing mainstreaming of homosexuality that's got them worried. |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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If you want to cosplay as Duo, do it. If someone acts stupid, put them in their place. If you're that worried, have several snappy retorts already thought up. Humiliation works well on teens. My nephew drove his mom & grandmother crazy saying lewd comments about any hot chick he saw. When he came down to visit us I informed him if he said anything like that in my presence, I'd walk over & inform the girl he was talking of--"See that geek over there? he said---". Boy never said a thing out of line in my presence. My daughter knows I won't think twice of making her want to crawl into a hole & die. I don't care. I don't know most of those people. I'll likely never see them again. Do I care what they think of me as long as I'm not hurting them? So what if my daughter & I screamed when Akabane showed up on the screen at the ADV booth--didn't hurt anyone & it was fun.
I only go to the San Diego Comic-con & haven't seen this behavior in the 4 yrs I've gone. It's one of the biggest fantasy conventions in the US so maybe they police it better, or maybe it's just so darned big I always manage to be far away from any such insanity. They did just celebrate 35 yrs, so maybe it's also a lot of experience. the cons you're going to need to decide where to draw the line & if your experience is being affected so severely, then they aren't doing that job. According to Animerica's Girl Power issue (9/03) Shonen Ai had fallen out of use & Yaoi was being used to describe all of the titles.The website for Yaoi-con also states Shonen Ai isn't used any longer Yaoi is no more pointless than any of the porno movies I've seen. All the refs I've seen denoting it as pointless simply refer to it's doujinshi origin when the stories were pointless. There's as much or more of a plot than the afore-mentioned porn. There's as much of a plot as the average soap opera at least in the titles I've read. It's like looking at the first Superman story & saying the title is as simplistic today. Guys get their stuff all the time, yet wail like they're being murdered over yaoi. I have never seen the reason for female nudity in shojo, yet it's there all the time. Oh, well. I don't get all bent over it. I just figure they throw it in to try to suck in a male audience. (I also don't understand male nudity in shonen, but I do apprecieate it, thank you.) Do I want to see 2 guys having sex? not really. Do I want to see naked guys? Yea, to a point. So 2 guys in bed in yaoi means one will see a lot of skin. I'm very fond of shower scenes since they afford us such a nice view of the guy's bod. Manga is art as is anime. One can't appreciatre well-done art? |
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s_j
Posts: 162 |
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Geez, can't girls have a little fun too? Us guys have been pulling the same crap at their expense for years.
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beelzebozo
 Posts: 308 Location: Aurora, Colorado |
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Just because boys have been doing it for years doesn't make it right for girls to act the same stupid way. If male anime fans acted in some of the ways that I've seen female yaoi fans act, they'd be arrested, locked up, and charged with sexual harrassment and creating an unsafe environment.
That said, there is nothing wrong with yaoi, just as much as any other section of ecchi anime. But what needs to happen is that fans need to say that certain behavior, male or female, should not be condoned or allowed. Or, if it is allowed, it should be equal for male and female. The girls who stand around trying to get two boys to kiss shouldn't get their thongs in a twist when guys hoot and holler to get two women to kiss, and visa versa. |
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