haitangkitty

Akumade Amai Watashi No Kanojo

I talked about this earlier here how I originally only read/watched BL because I had misconceptions about GL as a genre (+smaller fandom, less recommendations). This year I've been actually reading and watching much more GL. I only own 2 GL mangas and I really want to get more but a lot of the published GLs dont interest me that much (except the sexy ones like Asumi-Chan is interested in lesbian brothels and Does it count if you lose your virginity to an android?) I'm wondering if my taste in GL was shaped how much sexy BL I was reading and expecting to find similar stories with GL. That being said I've been getting into classical school girl yuri like Hoshikuzu Telepath and Cocoon Entwined and to my suprise I really like them!

Every now and then there's a discussion on how there's less licensed GL, less f/f fanfiction and how people in fandoms say women in stories just aren't interesting. I think for me personally a turning point from disinterest in women's media was horror films starring women. The Handmaiden was also a big thing for me and I consider it my favorite lesbian work. I also feel that lot of the more popular f/f fics are about kpop idols than fictional characters. At least personally I've read (and written) f/f fanfiction only about kpop idols. Last autumn I watched two female-centered works that made a huge impact on me: Madoka Magica anime and the k-drama Mask Girl which instantly became my favorites.

Some himefujo problems:

1. Too much content and I want to watch and read everything! I really need to prioritize what I want to watch right now opposed to watch what is trending at the moment. Also looking into shows/manga that are not as popular (especially GL).
2. Fujoshis who hate himejoshis: they claim that himejoshis are all prude terfs. There was this big proship account on fujo twitter who makes these claims all the time. As someone who has been in both fandom circles I can say that in general fujoshis consume and are more acceptable of sexier and kinkier works but there are prudes/antis twith fujos too(allthough they do not call themselves fujos). Overall I think women are more critical how women are portrayed in media and when it comes to sex and kinks there is another layer of shame about it.
3. Himejoshis who hate fujoshis: I've seen so many viral posts about big himejoshi accounts hating on fujoshis and BL. It's so weird to me because I feel like these communities should be supporting each other. I partly understand where the hatred from these himejoshis come from and how they do not want to consume media with men (which is not a terf thing like some people claim.) Sure BL gets more licensed but this has also happened only recently and there are just overall less himejoshis. BUT I think it's good to pressure big publishers to publish more GL since I believe it could get a bigger audience since lot of BL fans like GL too. Now that Thailand is releasing so many GL dramas for the first time and they are getting popular I have a belief that GL manga and baihe can become popular too.

I watched the whole 4 hours of hbomberguy's video on plagiarism on Youtube.

Plagiarism is the point of the video and Somerton is one of the youtubers' works he analyzes but what I want to focues on Somerton is because he did queer analysis on his channel. I talk from a point of view of a Toxic Queer Media enjoyer (aka Yaoi). Before this video, I only remember him as the guy who made the Killing Stalking hate video.Others have pointed out how he has managed to dismiss the whole BL genre and act racist with his dismissal and misunderstanding of Asian Queer media.

Hbomberguy's video on James Somerton actually made me understand why so many people online have such shitty takes on queer media like the focus on Disney, hating women in fandom spaces, hating on "dark topics", and focusing on "good representation". It's become so mainstream online and everyone just posts the same takes no wonder his work was popular. Where are queer arthouse films? Where are non-American films? Where are BL and GL? And even though the topic of the essay was a popular western work, where is the originality of work and nuance in opinion? I guess it's so much easier to be unoriginal and take whatever view on queer media is now popular on twitter and consider it the right opinion.

Sadly his misogynistic views on women in general and in MLM fandom spaces are prevalent as well. Although I think this is slowly changing. BL is getting more popular now and it's challenging the western mainstream view on wholesome queer media.

As someone queer myself I've always been very much interested in queer media and how I relate to it. Queer people want to create a world for themselves were we are the focus.Queer media has so much more gravity as we are a marginalized group. So I find it important to examine the popular voices in our community.

Luckily there are academic sources online for BL.
I found this interesting video linked where scholars discuss the history of BL.
I'm also be going thorugh some of the smaller queer video essayists hbomberguy recommends.