fandom culture & women

i think a lot of the drama that goes on in fandoms is super ridiculous. generalizing a whole type of media into inherently better than another type with f/f and m/m shippers is really incredibly stupid since neither are associated with anything inherently. it's literally just a marker of what kind of relationship is featured most. it's wholly dependent on the work and the author to decide if it's going to be superior to another specific work. just insane and pointless chatter. even if you read into it as the perspective of "oh, yuri's better than yaoi, we're supporting women" & etc. that really makes no sense at all. the fiction you read doesn't say anything about your beliefs as a person, or at least not substantially enough to make this kind of holier than thou claim. obviously, this is talking about fandom discourse rather seriously, which could totally be interpreted as strange and quite pointless given that it's not harming me personally. to that, i say that lots of the behavior in fandom discourse does reflect their actual values.

for an example, i'm not partial to the yuri v yaoi debate and couldn't care less, but it does get to a point where you clearly see people treating women as nothing more than plot devices. this kinda toes a fine line for me, personally. i think people can write what they like, and i don't think that the abundance of yaoi especially in fanfiction is as horrific as some people online make it to be (as if writing a yuri fanfiction is some kind of giant leap for feminism). that's not really what i hate. what i hate is that specific genre of posts about women that either relegate them to "lesbian best friend" (or, god forbid, aroace best friend) or as the wingman that gets them together or both. it just gets to a point, especially when the assigned queer (notably not interested in men, though!!!) label isn't backed by anything substantial (for the record, headcanons are great. think whatever you like to think, but when it's too common, it's clear there's something more to it). even worse, sometimes these women are actually into men in canon, too. that's when it just becomes abundantly clear that they don't actually care about the character they're making all these headcanons for. it's just a way to remove the woman from the equation, to place her as a supporting character for the two main guys. that's the sort of behavior i really dislike.

as for what i was discussing in the first paragraph about the lack of stigmas and inherent qualities to each type, that's sort of wrong and i can admit that, but it's wrong in a way where it's got basically the same effect. yuri and yaoi are both regarded as pretty, i don't know what to say, grotesque in a certain manner? people online make jokes about being fujos alllll the time but if there's anything to be said about fandom spaces, it's that the people on them are far cries from who they are in person. there's a bad-wrong kind of feel to both yuri and yaoi that i think has lessened for the latter in recent years but has stayed fairly stagnant for the former. as for inside the fandoms, there's this idea of yaoi being usually toxic, usually very heteronormative in their portrayals of the (again, don't really want to say this, but whatever) submissive ones in the relationship. that's true enough for certain things out there, but i find this notion to be relegated to fandoms. yuri sort of swings the opposite direction. rather than bad-wrong, it becomes this sort of pure and unblemished idea. like wow, if this was yuri, it'd be fixed. no the hell it wouldn't be fixed? just because the most popular yuri out there isn't, i don't know, flat out abusive doesn't mean the entire Genre (though, again, this isn't so much a genre as it is just a type of relationship, clearly) doesn't have anything like that and should be portrayed in the way this singular series is. my point here is just to say that both have certain inherent qualities attached, but that those qualities aren't deserved and are oftentimes just poor generalizations based on one popular work and nothing else.

following with that, that also belies another trend of things you like being representative of your in-world values, which i find super startling to spread. i've read lolita and i liked the prose. just because i read it doesn't make me a "nymphet"-seeking predator like humbert humbert. that'd be horrific. fiction should tackle these sorts of issues. why wait until it's in reality that you confront the nature of these terrible issues? besides the total falsity in claiming that yuri should be associated with purity and yaoi's all abusive and toxic or whatever, it's just a crazy annoyance to see people claim superiority for liking yuri for those reasons. the logic follows through the train that "oh, yuri's pure, thus i'm better than those people who like that thing". isn't it just ridiculous to assume that you're better for reading something like that, nevermind the fact that it's really not like that? i think this is a real annoyance to me, so this'll probably get a post of its own some time. i just hate virtue signaling is all