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Chicks On Anime - Fan Fiction (Part 2)

Anime World Order wrote:

Then again, I must re-ask: why does the supermajority of fan fiction writers want to write about every character being gay or otherwise engaged in some sort of romantic and/or sexual pursuit? Is it really as simple as "because the supermajority of fanfic authors are interested in this sort of thing because they're teenage girls...only it's also true when they're in their 20s-30s...and especially in their 30s-40s and up"? Because I must say that if I was a card-carrying misogynist--AND I AM, WOOP WOOP WOOP--that sounds like exactly the answer I would provide.

I think it's a culture thing. This is all pure speculation with nothing to back it up, but hey, where would we be without thinking outloud, eh?

fuuma_monou wrote:

Cait wrote: Should people in some third world nation on the other side of the planet really be expected to know who Abraham Lincoln was? Given that I used to know how to transliterate "Lincoln" into Chinese, I'd say YES. Honest Abe isn't exactly a famous in America only type. Not as famous Mickey Mouse, but who is?

Are you suggesting that China is some backwater third-world nation? You know they are a world power, right? And that they have a vested interest in America, considering we are a major trade partner with a considerable debt to them? It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they knew about one of our presidents. My reference was specific to countries whose awareness of America might not be such that they would have heard of Abraham Lincoln. My argument is that no one outside of our culture should be expected to know who he was.

Abraham Lincoln is probably not the best example, I knew about Abe as a child of 7 in Malaysia.
Try something more obscure like ... Hershey's kisses.. I think everyone in the US would know what they are, but I first encountered them on a flight to the US when they were served up with coffee. Dark chocolate kisses - yummmm.

Natalie wrote:

I was a Gundam Wing [fan fiction] fan long before I watched the DVDs and got all the pencil boards and such. Then, of course, I watched the series and thought, "Wow, there is so much politics in it. Where was that? That was cool."

The implication of this statement is that of all the Gundam Wing fan fiction out there that Natalie Baan--a self-professed huge fan fiction enthusiast--read, none of them placed any significant focus on the political aspect of the series, which happens to be its fundamental narrative element! That entire fan fiction communities will handily and gladly jettison wholesale entire aspects of a series en masse, no matter how essential they may be, begs the question: "do they even actually WANT the show itself?" If so many are THAT willing to collectively change/ignore the actual storyline and characterizations present within a given series in order to write "they're all gay!" wouldn't they be equally (if not BETTER) served by simply being handed some drawings of a bunch of characters in various outfits and poses plus some short biographies/vital stats?

I stand by my choice. I still contend that knowing who Abraham Lincoln was is not something that anyone outside of the US should be expected to know and I would never hold it against anyone outside of this country for not knowing who he was. I wouldn't have used a chocolate snack food as an example, mostly considering it is not a person (and therefore not exactly comparable to the discussion).

I always thought it was because the english language fanfic communities started as slash-fic communities back before there was a legitimate outlet for yaoi style stories (which I'm starting to think holds a deep seated instinctive attraction for significant numbers of women ) - and just carried on from there.

The United States is really one of the few educated countries in the world whose citizens don't really know about foreign matters and history. Hell, a big chunk of American-born citizens probably don't even know who the current Secretary of State is. Just because we're not expected to know every historical figure from France in our schooling system doesn't mean that French children don't know historical figures from our past.

That's the nature of our citizens, though. I bet almost every French citizen knows who's running for US president, but you couldn't find even 50% of this country who knows who's running their country.

CCSYueh wrote:

There's also the fact some of these are hinted at so blatantly, it's not even funny. What was that 3 pages of a naked Matsumoto in Orihime's face in a recent Viz release of Bleach (was it 23?) A last page shot of Kenpachi & Mayuri. Aren't these just planting the seeds?

While I've never read or seen any of Bleach, the scenario you've described sounds like a fine example of neo-shonen pandering at its most obvious.

Ed Chavez is absolutely right about Shonen Jump after about 1987. What's been running in that magazine for the past 20+ years is by and large not "shonen." It's "neo-shonen" since they're specifically engineered to appeal to female readers too. The Shonen Jump tables at Comiket you mentioned being constantly swarmed almost entirely by girls is proof. But where Ed and I potentially differ is that I'm not saying neo-shonen is intrinsically inferior to shonen. I am just saying that the spirit embodied by Hitman Reborn is not the same spirit embodied by Violence Jack or Fist of the North Star.

CCSYueh wrote:

lord_darkseid wrote: I just have one question: why does every character HAVE to be gay? Because that's what the person writing the fanfic wants to write?

Then again, I must re-ask: why does the supermajority of fan fiction writers want to write about every character being gay or otherwise engaged in some sort of romantic and/or sexual pursuit? Is it really as simple as "because the supermajority of fanfic authors are interested in this sort of thing because they're teenage girls...only it's also true when they're in their 20s-30s...and especially in their 30s-40s and up"? Because I must say that if I was a card-carrying misogynist--AND I AM, WOOP WOOP WOOP--that sounds like exactly the answer I would provide.

The most telling excerpt from this column was probably this:

Natalie wrote:

I was a Gundam Wing [fan fiction] fan long before I watched the DVDs and got all the pencil boards and such. Then, of course, I watched the series and thought, "Wow, there is so much politics in it. Where was that? That was cool."

The implication of this statement is that of all the Gundam Wing fan fiction out there that Natalie Baan--a self-professed huge fan fiction enthusiast--read, none of them placed any significant focus on the political aspect of the series, which happens to be its fundamental narrative element! That entire fan fiction communities will handily and gladly jettison wholesale entire aspects of a series en masse, no matter how essential they may be, begs the question: "do they even actually WANT the show itself?" If so many are THAT willing to collectively change/ignore the actual storyline and characterizations present within a given series in order to write "they're all gay!" wouldn't they be equally (if not BETTER) served by simply being handed some drawings of a bunch of characters in various outfits and poses plus some short biographies/vital stats? Perhaps include a drama CD if voice acting is important to the equation? Would this not accomplish the same task for fan fiction authors as the multiple anime for say, Weiss Kreuz?

musouka wrote:

I will never, ever understand the way people froth over the fact that someone, somewhere is [GASP] writing something about someone else's characters. Someone rewriting the ending of Romeo and Juliet so that they have a million babies and live happily ever after should have exactly zero impact on your enjoyment of the text.

As I mentioned in my response to last week's column, the problem at hand is that there's a disconnect between what should happen (it is exactly as you say; nothing should happen at all and there should be exactly zero impact) and what actually does happen.

There's a lot of feminist spin about how it's good to have masturbatory aids for women. Sex toys for men, however, have never seemed particularly socially acceptable, because real men get it on with real women.

Gay men don't seem to have any problem finding "gay for pay" male porn stars, so why aren't they being tapped to do gay porn for women?

Ed Chavez is absolutely right about Shonen Jump after about 1987. What's been running in that magazine for the past 20+ years is by and large not "shonen." It's "neo-shonen" since they're specifically engineered to appeal to female readers too. The Shonen Jump tables at Comiket you mentioned being constantly swarmed almost entirely by girls is proof. But where Ed and I potentially differ is that I'm not saying neo-shonen is intrinsically inferior to shonen. I am just saying that the spirit embodied by Hitman Reborn is not the same spirit embodied by Violence Jack or Fist of the North Star.

Gay men don't seem to have any problem finding "gay for pay" male porn stars, so why aren't they being tapped to do gay porn for women?

fuuma_monou wrote:

Gay men don't seem to have any problem finding "gay for pay" male porn stars, so why aren't they being tapped to do gay porn for women?

Actually, they are (for example, I'm pretty sure Japan's COAT WEST studio's target audience is women), but the live stuff isn't and will probably never be as popular as yaoi, simply because it lacks romance.

The line I bolded, however, seems to imply that the US stands out as some low-lying outlier in terms of general historical education, and I don't believe that case to be accurate. Can the average Japanese kid speak at length about the current administration of Peru? Can the typical Belgium kid lecture about the specifics of post-60's Kenyan politics? Can the average Australian in the street give an accurate run-down on Argentinian politics? Or can people in those places speak to more familiarity with the American scene than an American could vice-versa? As above, isn't that due to the prominence of America on the cultural, economic and political stage rather than a culturally superior love of history?

I've also seen (in public education) a relatively deeper knowledge of basic 'regional history' in places like Europe and Asia, but in fairness these are tightly connected geographical areas which share centuries of history and mixed cultural ancestry that don't have parallels in the US.

Anime World Order wrote:

Ed Chavez is absolutely right about Shonen Jump after about 1987. What's been running in that magazine for the past 20+ years is by and large not "shonen." It's "neo-shonen" since they're specifically engineered to appeal to female readers too. The Shonen Jump tables at Comiket you mentioned being constantly swarmed almost entirely by girls is proof. But where Ed and I potentially differ is that I'm not saying neo-shonen is intrinsically inferior to shonen. I am just saying that the spirit embodied by Hitman Reborn is not the same spirit embodied by Violence Jack or Fist of the North Star.

You ARE a misogynist believing that.

I'm 48 & have a large yaoi collection. I DETEST whiney shojo heroines. We get romance without the whiney shojo heroines in yaoi.
YEAH!

But where Ed and I potentially differ is that I'm not saying neo-shonen is intrinsically inferior to shonen.

Boo hoo! Stupid pandering to FEMALES has ruined our MANLY stories! Hollywood sure has caught onto the idea appealing to a wider audience sells better=more moolah but god forbid Japan try to make a profit on stories.
So Dragonball & Saint Seiya are neo-shonen since they're from that era? Such horrible stories, aren't they?

Yeah, it's about time to stop crying the manly tears into your beers and accept that "neo" shounen has been a Shounen Jump staple for longer than those good ole days you remember, pure fans. Don't worry, you'll still have seinen manga, until the people growing up on neo-shounen get older. :p

I therefore feel no obligation to defend myself for positions I don't actually hold and never actually stated.

In discussions relating to fan fiction and the prevalence of yaoi content as it pertains to the anime realm of things, a frequently asked question is "why is the fan base for yuri barely a fraction of that for yaoi?" Many reasons could potentially exist for this--a lot have already been mentioned--but I think a significant reason is that shojo editors never made any concerted efforts to also draw in male readers the way the shonen editors did for female readers. That is why the male readership of Shojo Beat is something like 4 or 5 percent compared to the 40 or so percent female readership for Shonen Jump.

Should such a change be made at some point in the future, I don't think it would be fair to insist that The Rose of Versailles be retroactively classified as josei rather than acknowledge the change being made.