#i agree that portrayal of platonic male friendship is important

[milogoestogreendale]

i think one of the things that is so refreshing to me about trobed is that a lot of slash ships in fandom are admittedly based around stereotypes. there’s kind of a cookie cutter pattern for how people accept gay couples, but none of that is really seen with troy/abed. the openly weird, film obsessed autistic nerd is seen as the more confident and experienced one in his sexuality. meanwhile, the popular and masculine jock is allowed to be overly emotional and sometimes insecure in his feelings.

this isn’t done just to subvert expectations though, it’s all in keeping with their characters. abed is sometimes perceived by his friends as a nerdy virgin, but the show goes out of the way to say that this isn’t the case, with a character that is very self-assured (in what is hinted at in canon and commonly accepted in fanon as his bisexuality.) troy, on the other hand, who works to portray a macho heterosexual persona, comes to realize it’s okay to get rid of those barriers and explore himself now that high school is over. it all comes off as a very authentic portrayal of queer identity, and the chemistry between troy and abed makes for a very real portrayal of a gay couple, whether it was intentional on the writers’ part or not.

[sapphicyanli]

some of the loud thoughts that i have after finally watching the devil judge is about how they handle and write soohyun's character, especially in relation to gaon and yohan's relationship. trigger warning for the conversation about her death in the latest part of this post.

i think it has been agreed upon collectively that basically TDJ's love triangle is between yohan and soohyun competing for gaon's heart and we were supposed to root for gaon and yohan to end up together, that's obvious imo. thus, the way they portrayed soohyun was, uhm, a choice.

they wrote her that she joined the police academy to basically so she can protect gaon more because god forbid women can have a genuine, personal ambition without it being about a man(side not, its rare to see the main male character framed as someone who needs protection that much. further proof that gaon is literally the "female" character that soohyun & yohan fighting over), always worrying over gaon, willing to put up with more works as long as its for gaon, willing to always be there for gaon when he's overwhelmed with the kind of sorrow that he's only comfortable to show to soohyun, his best friend that has seen him broke down so many times.

even when after those times, gaon choose yohan over her again and again.

in a mainstream het drama context, she's usually the "side, nice guy who actually treat the main girl better but the main girl is somehow fall for the abusive & annoying male lead"(except yohan is not abusive ofc).

basically a lot of her actions, always have something to do with gaon and its makes me raise my eyebrow. there shouldn't even be a "romance" between gaon & soohyun in the first place imo, if that's how they did ber character. her and gaon's friendship could be a powerful representation that platonic relationship is just as precious as the romantic one. gaon too didn't need to always choose between two of the most important people in his life which is cruel btw, yohan and soohyun could get to know each other and be friends, elijah also could get a sister if yohan and soohyun get along, its a win-win for everybody. the amount of traumas that gaon already have and troubles coming his way is enough to supply that boy for a lifetime already, and gaon's love for soohyun and yohan run deeply, albeit in a different way for each of them. if he can have his best friend soohyun and his lover yohan by his side without tearing himself apart into two, why not?

yohan and gaon get pulled to each other like they have their own gravitation even since their first encounter, and i think soohyun knew that. she's gaon's best friend after all, she knew how gaon is when he's in love with someone else and she can tell it is different than how gaon's feelings towards her. all this time it has always been her and gaon only, and now suddenly there's this charming guy who's winning gaon's heart in a short amount of time, soohyun didn't stand a chance to be gaon's lover.

thus, the portrayal of her devensife and suspicios behavior towards yohan could also be linked/&translated to jealousy. to see her best friend that she loved for years being swept away off of his feet by this new, cooler, richer, older guy... well what a way to then made her character seemed desperate to prove to gaon that "no yohan is a bad guy he just manipulate you gaon you cant trust him ever i'm the only one you have and can lean on to gaon-ah" and even made us the audience can't help but wonder too; is kang yohan really a monster? is he capable to love gaon like that?

not to mention throughout the drama her one sided romantic feeling towards gaon is often being brought upon which made me like,,, what was the point?? once or twice is enough. like tell me about her favorite movies, her favorite season, her memorable stories as a police, tell me about HER that isn't about gaon like damn even her affectionate actions towards gaon all this time was also used to paralleled a lot of yohan's caring and loving behaviour towards gaon to literally show that yohan is gaon's "new" love

her death is so dissapointing too in my opinion. she died protecting gaon, she died for him. at the end, she lived and existed FOR gaon, that's it and that's not fair. she should and could be so much more than that. she didn't even have a little background story of her own life being shown, all we knew that she was a gaon's best friend since they were kids and a cop, that's it.

what a waste for a potentional absolute girlboss character in this drama tbh.

[telehxhtrash]

I know its a big debate but I am not a dudebro for thinking killua and gon are platonic. I have no problem with people who do at all, but I honestly just think they have a strong friendship, and I am for encouraging boys to have these types of bonds with each other ~screw toxic masculinity~ I like following your blog btw

Hi ! First of all, thank you for liking my blog! I’m glad you’re enjoying my content even though I’m killugon trash HAHAH

Oh lord, it really is a big debate. I’m not calling everyone who doesnt like a romantic reading of killugon a dudebro, only the people who are vehemently against it because they say people are projecting and that there is no basis to our claims that hxh is queer work.

This is gonna be me ranting for a bit because it’s a subject that’s very dear to me so i’m very sorry in advance, it’s not against you, just a general statement !

I totally agree that fuck toxic masculinity. It’s so fucking toxic and men should be allowed to show emotions, affection and care openly without fearing for repercussions. And having portrayals of friendships where the characters are not afraid of sharing their love with the other in a totally platonic way is amazing.

However. 

There’s been countless representations of this type of relationship in media over the years. In every media, not only anime. I always cite the same example, but take Naruto who is the example that speaks to me the most. (ive never seen it so dont flame me if i say dumb shit). But from my understanding, Naruto and Sasuke’s relationship was a full on middle finger in the face of toxic masculinity. They shared a deep bond, pretty much like Killua and Gon’s. I know a lot of people shipped them because their relationship was borderline homoerotic, but in the end it was just a beautiful representation of a very deep platonic friendship. 

And when you’re queer, it’s heartbreaking. Because you’ve been projecting this entire time, for the work to tease you, to literally bait you into showing you inherent queer behavior only for it to say “haha lol jk” at the end is fucking rough. Especially when you’re young and questioning your sexuality, looking at relationships between two best friends and thinking “oh, this feels like I feel when I’m with my best friend, is this romantic love?” and then the work saying nope haha its purely platonic ! its rough. trust me. 

The community doesn’t have a lot of positive, healthy queer relationships to identify with. Especially in anime. Most queer relationships are labeled under the special genres “shounen ai” and “yuri” (both of these categories painting queer relationships in the worst possible ways ever btw, but thats a whole other subject). But it’s fucking sad. Because we deserve to see queer representation in works that are not classified as those genre. We shouldn’t have to dig into a particular genre to identify with characters : there should be queer representation no matter the genre, whether it be a shoujo, a seinen, or for example, a shounen battle manga.

And that’s why HxH is so important to the queer community. Because it displays just that. That you can have good queer representation in non shounen-ai genres. That queer relationships are normal and should not have to be classified under a certain category. 

A lot of queer people identify and recognize HxH as queer work, because of a few reasons. Togashi has always been interested in queer representation, having put queer characters in every single one of his works. There was a trans girl in YYH, a trans man in Level E, Alluka in HxH. Togashi also wrote several gay characters in both of these works. I always repeat myself on this, but Togashi also wanted to write a gay sports manga, but was turned down. His favorite manga when he was younger was a shounen-ai. So yes, Togashi has deep history and is very involved in queer representation.

Togashi is also very fucking smart. Just look at all the metas people are producing every day about hxh and understand how much effort togashi has put into his work : he’s a smart man, who makes conscious choices about everything he puts in his manga. So when you see the way he portrayed Killua and Gon’s relationship, and for now most importantly Killua, you know it’s not accidental. Togashi has put SO much subtext in his work about Killua in general, from his birthday being Tanabata to him wanting to commit a lovers’ suicide with Gon, and Togashi KNOWS how it comes across, he’s not dumb. He knows what those things mean, he knows that a shinjuu is a heavily connotated word, and that people, ESPECIALLY JAPANESE PEOPLE who have the cultural context, are gonna think “oh, maybe Killua is gay”. Because that subtext is intentional. And there’s a lot of it. If you haven’t read my post on the subtext of HxH, I invite you to do so because there’s a LOT of it. 

In short, HxH has the subtext, has the potential and has the one author that is not afraid of putting queer stuff in his work. That’s why Killugon is so important to the community, and that’s why a lot of people, especially queer folks, insist on the romantic reading of their relationship. 

Because it’s extremely important to queer people. Positive representation of queer relationships in anime is hard to come by, ESPECIALLY in the shounen genre. And sadly, because our society is drowning in deep internalized homophobia, people easily dismiss queer behavior in media as platonic actions.

How many times have I seen people assess that two people of opposite genders in an anime are in love only because they looked at each other once (take Ponzu and Pokkle for example). Or because they held hands. Our society is so quick to romanticize interactions between two people of different genders, but fail to do the same when it’s same-gender pairings. 

Straight people hand holding, kissing, blushing around each other, admitting their love out loud, looking at each other’s eyes deeply are immediately categorized as in love. But when it’s people of the same gender, people immediately say “it can be platonic”. And whether you’re aware of it or not, that’s internalized homophobia.

That’s why it’s infuriating to see people dismiss the subtext that Togashi has tried SO HARD to plant throughout his story. Because it’s there, and if Killua was a girl, there’d be way less people opposed to a romantic reading of their relationship. Because it’d be widely accepted that Togashi is writing them as a developing couple, no questions asked. 

Which brings me to my final point (promise, I’ll stop ranting after this). Sadly, the voices of the people who assert a platonic reading of a relationship are often louder than the voices of queer people who identify with the work. When confronted with an ambiguous relationship between a same-gender pairing, people unconsciously tend to choose a platonic reading of the relationship. Which is harmful to the queer community, because the voices of the queer people who identify with the work are silenced. 

In conclusion, yes, representations of deep platonic friendships without toxic masculinity are good, and very much encouraged. We’ve just had a shitton of those over the years, and queer people are craving for proper representation. Togashi is deeply invested in positive queer representation, has planted a lot of conscious subtext in HxH, and he’s the one author that would NOT queerbait. So people being insistent that Killua is pretty much canonically gay, and that it’s likely that Killugon will be a romantic pairing is not for the sake of mindless shipping. It’s because there are a lot of reasons to believe that this is Togashi’s intention.

And like I said, sadly, people insisting on a platonic reading of their relationship is unintentionally harmful to the queer community, because people are so quick to dismiss elements that make queer people identify with the work as platonic behavior, dismissing queer people as “wishful shippers”. 

There are plenty of reasons to believe that HxH is queer work, and while platonic readings of killugon’s relationship are valid, it sucks that it’s become overbearing in the anime community, to the point where outside of tumblr, people literally bully you for thinking that there’s a possibility Killua might be gay and in love with Gon. (trust me, i’ve faced a lot of people saying that it’s disgusting to label killua as gay)

So yes ! Killugon can be read as platonic. The queer community is just very adamant about people not dismissing Togashi’s subtext because HxH is the healthy, positive representation we need. It’s a beautiful piece of work that has the full potential (and who is most likely headed this way) to display a healthy, loving, positive canon gay relationship between two of its main characters. 

Showing that a shounen battle manga can feature a canon gay relationship, showing that you can be young and gay and what you thought was best friend behavior was maybe romantic and that it’s okay because feelings change and are hard to figure out especially when you’re young and queer !! 

And most importantly showing that unlike every portrayal of deep male best friends relationships in shounen anime that turn out to be painted as purely platonic, sometimes behaviors that queer people identify with ARE queer behavior, and not just platonic love, but romantic, homosexual love. 

[thecursedhellblazer]

Boxing Day and Mistletoe for the December meme!

December Positivity meme || Accepting !

★ Boxing Day: tag someone whose writing style you love

(( Uuuh, I definitely have quite a few people to tag for this one. I had the luck to meet a fair number of very talented people on this hellsite, and being able to write with them is a blessing! And please consider this as a (alphabetical) list of recommendations! ))

@adventurepunks : ‘cause in this lair we love and cherish Bianca (who, aside from a great RP partner, has also found the will to become friends with me, something I am very grateful for). She honestly can write almost any sort of thread, from the silly or fluffy one, to action based threads, to heavy ones with introspection, and make each of them a great ride. Also, we allow each other to indulge in our macabre streak, which is a huge added bonus. And she’s a gal who knows her lore (so a rare kind).

@blizzardmuses : I love Bea and I love her portrayals. So far, I have RPed only with her female muses, but I’m sure that she can write her male muses just as well. I love how she’s able to give the right amount of personality and energy said muses deserve (which is rare considering that it’s much harder to find female muses in the rpc), both in what she has them do and in how she writes them (body language and dialogues). The vitality you can find in her writing is refreshing.

@cosmosfated : Yet another great writer. I’m not even sure where to start from. Their character is one of the most complex I’ve met so far and their writing style adapts perfectly to Fleur’s quirks and moods. They also manage to hint things in between the lines, without telling you all you’d like to know and leaving you wonder (much like their character does). Their replies are always so very lively, it’s a pleasure to receive them.

@rapxir : Katie is another amazing writer I have the luck to write with and a very good friend. Writing is her thing and it shows. Not only in her writing style, but also in the complexity of her character. She’s a very adaptable writer, so she can easily shift between different themes and fandoms too, no matter how different they are. Also, she manages to put a lot of attention in the psychology of her character, through writing small details of her reactions, and that’s a delightful way to learn about Ruby every time a bit more.

@thedemonconstantine : I’m pretty sure that a lot of people who follow this blog (and more) follow K’s too, so that doesn’t leave me much to say I guess. I’ll just quote something that someone said and on which I totally agree: K is the best when it comes to quick actions scenes. That’s pretty much almost set in stone xD

(( A special mention for @darkdabbling , whom I’m just starting to discover. I already love how detailed their writing is, full of introspection and elegant! I’m really looking forward to write with them properly! ))

★ Mistletoe: tag your shipping partners

(( I’ll be tagging again the people I mentioned in the other question, don’t mind me! Also, I’m including platonic ships too, ‘cause they are as important as the romantic ones! ))

@thedemonconstantine : John & Demon John are my bloody guilty pleasure and I’m so not getting over them any time soon (which is both a good and a very bad thing). I can’t remember the last time I got so invested in a ship, in all its shades. Besides those two twats, I have two of my fave platonic ships: Tim & John (and I have to thank K for allowing me to discover both them as a pair, full of parallels and with that mentor/pupil dynamic where you can’t tell who is what, and Timmy as a character) and Chas & John (love them in canon, love the additional we have created in our interactions. They deepened even more their not always healthy bond and I love their shenanigans). Special mention: John & Yoyo.

@adventurepunks : John & Nick are...complicated xD Under some points of view they are still sniffing each other and I love the slow burn we are building, with a step forward and then a few steps backwards. Seeing them getting to know each other, learning how to deal with their differences, bonding...and we all know how it ends (sweet tragedy). Also, John & Zee! We still haven’t developed them as much as the blokes, but I already enjoy their bantering and soft friendship. I can’t wait to work on them too. And of course, the thruple dynamics (which is still a work in progress). Special mention: Francis.

@thegreenxrcher : John & Oliver are another of my main ships on this blog. They are my fault, I’ll confess it, but it seems that all has turned out well, so I’m proud of it xD They really compliment each other, with both their differences and similarities. John also has an odd dynamic with Shar’s demon OC...and I’m curious to see where that will go.

@rapxir : Ah, Ruby, John’s other unofficially adopted kid. I love the parallels between them and how protective they are of each other, even if they bicker a lot and poke each other, hiding their real shared affection. They are just...so good for each other. And they totally deserve each other xD Special mention; Bump.

@blizzardmuses : John & Kori make me crying in all the possible sense of the term. She is the sort of friend John needs, with her unshakable hope and all her efforts to see the bright side. At the same time, John can definitely teach her how to see and deal with the darkest sides of life. Plus, they have a lot trauma in common and that alone is fated to bring them together.

@paradiseturnedhell : John & T’s Nick are quite the odd pair. Enemies and friends, adversaries and lovers, hunter and prey (and this last two roles get switched often). I enjoy the different dynamics they have and how their relationship slowly shift towards one side or the other. It opens a lot of interesting doors!

@obsessionsarenotforheroes : Miss T again, this time John & Jessica. They got so close and so...soft with each other, and I was not expecting it. They found in each other the kind of friend they needed and that makes me so happy, tbh. I might have a preference for angst (which these two offer in abundance), but it’s nice to see them helping each other out of their respective abysses too.

@cosmosfated : John & Fleur are...something else. I wouldn’t know how to describe their relationship and it’s pretty clear that they don’t know for sure either...which makes things even more interesting. I absolutely love how they can go from being complete idiots to completely serious, and all there’s in-between. They are unpredictable and that’s all part of the fun.

@xstabcastx : John & Ava are definitely my fave BrOTP from the Arrowverse adaptation. As much as I love John & Sara’s friendship, Lina made me fall in love with our two idiots. They are such an unlikely pair of friends and that makes them perfect x3

@laughter-in-white : I honestly don’t know what to say about John & Croptop!J aside from the fact that they are fuckin’ hilarious x'D They are yet another unlikely pair, perhaps the most unlikely, and yet, at the same time, they have more in common than they realise. And the fact that the mun’s portrayal is a delight in general just make it all much, much better!

[cometomecosette]

Marius and a Shakespearean trope (warning: long and rambling)

I've been listening to the podcasts of Dr. Emma Smith’s Approaching Shakespeare lectures from the University of Oxford. In the lecture on Much Ado About Nothing, she points out an interesting trope found in Shakespeare’s comedies – as well as a wider cultural idea – that I had never really thought of before, at least not in depth. The trope is this: that in a man’s youth, male friendships and social bonds are his most important relationships, but that as he matures, those bonds “must” lose importance in favor of romance and marriage to a woman.

Smith cites this trope in Much Ado About Nothing to explain just why Claudio trusts Don John and not Hero (in his culture and stage of life, male “friends” are inherently placed above women; in the end he matures by learning John’s deceit and reconciling with Hero) and to interpret Benedick’s character arc too (moving from a misogynistic, male friendship-centered life, to embracing his love for Beatrice, and to choosing that love over male friendship by agreeing to kill Claudio). She also discusses the similar “love vs. friendship” themes in Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Love’s Labour’s Lost, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, and in a tragic variation, Othello. While she doesn’t mention this theme in Romeo and Juliet, I thought instantly of two essays I’d read in the past that highlighted Romeo’s dilemma of “Juliet vs. Mercutio.” This is definitely a recurring Shakespearean theme.

I wish I were taking a literature course, because I want to write an essay about Les Misérables’s use of this trope in Marius’s character arc. Particularly in the musical, where Marius is much more “as one” with his friends than in the novel and “love vs. revolution” (which is implicitly “love vs. friendship” too) becomes a central dilemma for him. I already have so many thoughts on the subject, but no definitive conclusions.

I suppose we could argue that, tragic though it is to watch the Amis die and for Marius to lose all his friends, on some level they “need” to die so Marius can fully devote himself to Cosette. I also find myself thinking of Combeferre’s speech in the novel about women – how Hugo highlights the moral grayness of choosing to die for a cause (and for male friendship) when there are female loved ones and dependents left behind. We could discuss how Enjolras’s single-minded, woman-excluding devotion to the masculine world of revolution is framed as both a virtue and a flaw. We could observe that all the doomed revolutionaries are either those who have no female loved ones or those who value the cause, and the male friendships associated with it, more than their mistresses, mothers, etc.; whereas the survivors (Marius, Valjean, and the unnamed husbands and fathers who leave) are the ones who can prioritize female loved ones and live for their sake. We could argue that the Amis are ultimately “forever young” in death, while Marius’s maturing and moving forward are tied to his love for Cosette.

This trope is played even more straight in the musical, because the musical’s Marius is so strongly defined by his relationship with his friends and by the conflict between his new feelings for Cosette and those masculine bonds. We might argue that the musical’s “schoolboys, never held a gun” portrayal of the Amis (i.e. Boublil and Schönberg’s projection of 1968 onto 1832 – that constant annoyance for Hugophiles) implicitly ties their cause to “youth,” particularly “naive youth,” and suggests that Marius can only really grow up by leaving it behind to build a life with Cosette. We could think back to Romeo and Juliet and argue that just as Romeo’s friendship with Mercutio lures him back into the feud while his love for Juliet leads him away from it, Marius’s bond with his friends also leads him to violence (albeit idealistic violence against oppressive forces, very different from street brawls and honor killings) while his love for Cosette leads him to peace. We might notice a parallel between Romeo’s choice to avenge Mercutio’s death by killing Tybalt and Marius’s choice to fight at the barricade rather than follow Cosette to England: sadly for Juliet and Cosette, neither boy can fully place his female beloved above the ties of male friendship. And in both cases, this (immature?) choice of friendship over love leads to disaster: for Romeo it causes the tragic downward spiral that ends in his death and Juliet’s, while it nearly costs Marius his life at the barricade, with only his love for Cosette saving him (via Valjean) and healing his grief after his friends’ deaths.

Of course both the novel and the musical’s uses of this trope are complicated. If Marius’s coming-of-age journey “must” involve losing his friends and leaving their cause behind, it’s impossible to fully approve of that fact. After all, we love the Amis and we love their cause. They’re the characters who fight against all the social injustice the story speaks out against: we root for them to win, are devastated when they lose, and in the musical we admire Marius for being one of them. So much of the fandom’s unfair disdain for Marius and Cosette comes from the fact that he lets their love distract him from his friends’ noble fight. It’s nothing like the brawling youth culture or sexist military culture of Shakespeare’s Verona or Messina, which the young heroes more clearly need to grow beyond. Yet Cosette’s status as the story’s living symbol of hope makes musical-Marius’s dilemma even grayer.

Then of course there’s the question of how to feel about this trope of “female love replaces male friendship” in the first place. On the one hand, it feels empowering for a straight woman to be told that her man “must” eventually place her at the center of his life, above all platonic “competition.” Especially when (as in several of the Shakespeare examples) his male friendships are associated with violence and misogyny. The fact that women in Western culture have traditionally been dependent on men also makes it feel right that adult male responsibility should equal learning to prioritize women.

But on the other hand, it’s a bit of a heterosexist idea. It implies that adulthood is incomplete without marriage, devalues platonic love next to romantic love, and since it associates manhood with leaving other men behind in favor of a woman, it leaves no room for same-sex romance. If we do view the Amis as needing to die to “make room” for Marius and Cosette’s marriage, the implications regarding Enjolras and Grantaire are especially unfortunate. (Ditto for Shakespeare’s Mercutio, if we view him as queer-coded.) I’ve also seen what a burden this trope can be for women in real life; how much pressure is placed on a wife to be everything to her husband – romantic partner, caregiver, and best friend – because he’s drifted apart from all his old male friends and emotionally depends on her.

I still don’t have a coherent thesis about Hugo’s use of this trope, or the musical’s, but I’d love to find one. If I ever do take a literature course that lets me examine this topic, I will.

[mild-lunacy]

Sherlock, Kingsman and the Necessity of Slash

So I saw the new Kingsman movie and as I told my mom: this is why slash happens. It remains odd to me sometimes, because as I just wrote recently, I have a strong bias to not ignore canon in terms of characterization and even the underlying philosophy of any given work. And yet I'm into transformative works, reading against the grain enough to love slash. Even times when I don't ship a popular pairing-- and Harry/Eggsy is not my thing at all-- I can frequently see it (though this doesn't happen with random pairings at all). And Kingsman: The Golden Circle shows why even a canon-whore like me could see why people go for it, basically.

It wasn't so obvious in the first movie, but even my mother had to admit that the dynamic between Harry and Eggsy is literally the only emotional anchor in the film. Their scenes are intense when nothing else rings true. There are attempted moments of angst and romance between Eggsy and his devoted girlfriend, but they fall totally flat, whether due to the acting or writing or both. The scene where his girlfriend was about to kiss him after his trip through the sewers is about as subtle as a sledgehammer: Eggsy declared that this is 'true love', and we're supposed to believe, except there was no emotional punch and zero chemistry. Compare this to the scene where Eggsy tells an amnesia stricken Harry that he needs him: BOOM! Eggsy was shining with sincerity, with intensity. And this is the problem, right there.

It becomes completely ridiculous in Kingsman in a way it isn't in BBC Sherlock with John and Mary (as opposed to his relationship with Sherlock) because Kingsman is a farce, and the only really good acting is in Colin Firth's role as Harry. Firth really makes Taron Egerton shine in their scenes together. By contrast, Sherlock is consistently well-made, almost always strongly acted. And yet the huge divergence between the things we're asked to believe about the heterosexual couple ('true love'!) and the attention the relationship gets and its emotional intensity is still staggering.

It's especially ridiculous when the two men have a vulnerability with each other, an emotional intimacy that is all but taken for granted, while the heterosexual couple gets married... for much less of an apparent connection. Again, it's much more obvious in Kingsman, but the problem is the underlying understanding of women and relationships by the men predominantly writing these stories. Of course, the Kingsman movies were co-written by Jane Goldman, just as Sherlock was co-written by Mark Gatiss, so there are attempts to break the mold at multiple points. It's just not enough. In Kingsman, Eggsy calls his girlfriend to ask her permission to have sex for a mission. This is some next level feminist-friendly behavior, in my opinion. Except then she tried to say it's only all right if he married her, gave her that commitment-- proved he was on a leash. This is extremely manipulative, stereotypical female behavior to the point I'd consider using marriage in an ultimatum this way to be a misogynist trope. And Eggsy looked queasy and completely unprepared, just as John was at the idea of Mary's pregnancy. These are not things that they wanted, not the life these men wanted to lead. And yet both ultimately fell in line after the inevitable break to adjust and/or 'man up', I suppose. After all, this is 'true love'.

Essentially, the problem is that the relationship with the love interest is taken for granted and often uses multiple sexist tropes or stereotypes as short-cuts, including behavior that should be unforgivable in Mary Morstan's case. It's not as well-acted, not as important. Understandably, since it's not part of the plot. The real issue is that the story nevertheless treats the male friendship which it's actually focused on as subordinate, as less vital. In the end, Eggsy seemingly quits his job as an undercover agent to marry a princess, and John becomes a family man (though at least we know he still helps out on cases). On one level, this can be seen as the natural end of a Hero's Journey, or the natural progression of a heterosexual man's life... except then there's Harry (or Sherlock), and Harry doesn't fit. And Harry has a problem. Harry is a problem.

The thing is, we're not supposed to care. It's supposed to be normal, or at least acceptable. Like Sherlock, Harry is a man who consciously chose to be alone, though unlike Sherlock, he regrets it. However, there's nothing to be done, and we see Harry at Eggsy's wedding, just as John and Sherlock obviously remain very close. The thing is, though, to get back to my original point: Eggsy and Harry (or Sherlock and John) are real in a way the heterosexual couple can't begin to match. That's where the emotional intimacy is. That moment when Harry tells Eggsy he didn't think of anyone in the moments after he was shot, and he wants more for Eggsy: in my opinion, that's what romance is actually made of. That's where the actual story is. It just seems deeply unnatural to give the happy ending to someone else (though with Sherlock, this is more fudged, and you can argue John and Sherlock have their happy ending after all). Kingsman is more classic in that regard.

It's not that I personally ship Harry/Eggsy and think they should literally be together instead. I agree with my mom that their relationship is a lot more like father/son than lovers. That's my point: that's why it's transformative, that's why it's slash and not a reading of canon. It's not that I think Eggsy wants Harry that way or even should, which clarifies my thought processes in a way Sherlock has muddled. It's the contrast between the natural and central platonic dynamics and the forced and unnatural heterosexual couple which is given way too much primacy and respect by the narrative. This had long been seen as the foundation for slash, and it's going strong. It's not simply about heteronormativity, because it's all right to say 'Eggsy is straight' or even 'John isn't gay' and take it at face value, in the end. It's all about the toxic concept of masculinity in these sort of action-adventure heroic narratives. That's behind the way heteronormativity intertwines with the portrayal of women and the sidelined yet pumped up heterosexual relationships in these types of action-adventure stories. That is what's simply unnatural.

A story's emotional center shouldn't be muddled for a check point or a plot convenience, let alone a mirror for the male lead, like in Sherlock. Straight relationships--and female love interests-- deserve some of the attention and vulnerability and intensity of the platonic relationships in the narrative if they're going to work. Action-adventure with a real romance subplot can and does work, and I've read plenty of it (mostly written by women). The only reason not to, to maintain a focus on a 'harmless', no-homo vulnerability in male friendships at the expense of any actual believability in the main character's female love interests is a fixation on toxic masculinity. And that is something that richly deserves to continue to be challenged and transformed.

[toraonice]

I don't think you're homophobic, a bad person, or any of that and am sorry you're getting outright hate BUT I think you're missing a lot of the point. I am not going to presume that you aren't LGBT, but I am unsure if you understand how LGBT people are irritated at how het pairings as "overt" as v*****ri are typically accepted as they are (/cont)

(cont) yet so many gay pairings portrayed in the same vein are “ambiguous” or argue that it isn’t canon. The “they’re DEEPER than romantic love” is also hurtful as people aren’t discriminated against for friendships and erases what makes them so special to LGBT fans.

(cont 3/3) Essentially, I think although you have good intentions in trying to be objective, with what I said in mind when you add separate commentary such as pointing out that soulmates can be platonic or the late night drama thing it does deeply hurt people, because it sounds like you’re trying to downplay them—intentionally or otherwise

Hello! First of all, thank you for making a concrete example and articulating your point logically!

I’m taking this occasion to write a long reply that encompasses my view of Victor and Yuuri’s relationship also with regard to heterocentricity. It’s long, but hopefully it’s exhaustive… 

I think some people may be a bit wary about this topic and interpret my words in a negative way. For example, by saying that their bond is “deeper than romantic love” I am not trying to say that romantic love is a bad thing or that they cannot be or become lovers. I actually see it as something positive, not negative. There are people who know each other, start dating, have a passionate love story and then break up within a year. I believe that, since the bond between Victor and Yuuri is not limited to romantic love (which can be included) but also includes respect, friendship and other feelings, this makes their relationship deeper than two people only bound by romantic feelings.

Also, when I said that soulmates can be platonic and that the Japanese Monday dramas are not necessarily centered on love stories, I was trying to be fair to all interpretations. I don’t mean “so this proves that Victor and Yuuri cannot be in a romantic relationship”; it just isn’t something that proves either theory.

Regarding Japanese dramas.. Not sure how many people are familiar with it, but in the 2nd Tiger & Bunny movie there is a scene with the 2 protagonists on the roof of a building that is commonly referred to by fans as “gekku” (the same kind of drama as the scene of Victor and Yuuri at the airport). Usually this kind of scenes, in the TV dramas, feature a man and a woman, but when “gekku” is used to describe something unrelated to dramas, like scenes from an anime, it often includes a slightly humorous nuance, very similar to when two people are fighting and someone tells them “you look like a married couple”. (The scene itself is usually serious and when fans use “gekku” they don’t mean to make fun of it, but at the same time they don’t seriously mean to imply that the characters are romantically involved)

I agree on the fact that if Victor and Yuuri had been a man and a woman everyone and their dog would think that they’re in love with each other, while part of the reason some people are skeptical about it is that they are both men. I myself don’t really it like when, especially in series where the sexuality of characters is not clear, two characters of opposite sexes are seen as more likely to fall in love with each other than characters of the same sex. This happens because some people think that unless a character is declared as homosexual they must be heterosexual because “that is the standard” (these people in many cases are not even trying to be homophobic, they just do not realize that what they are implying is heterocentric). I don’t think that there is a standard, and of course there are many more possibilities than just “heterosexual” and “homosexual”, therefore if a character’s sexuality is unconfirmed I am usually open to any possibility.

I will stray a little from YOI. I was an enthusiastic X-Files fan at the time the series was still airing and the protagonists weren’t officially lovers yet (yeah it’s a long time ago but I might not be as old as this makes you think lol). I was also a member of the official forum and identified myself as “intellishipper”, fans who shipped the protagonists but didn’t necessarily want them to become romantically involved in the series unless it was relevant to the story (normal “shippers” just wanted them to get together). This is because I liked X-Files for what it was — a sci-fi thriller drama — and I didn’t want it to suddenly become a love story or focus too much on the romantic relationship of the characters. In fact, to this day I still don’t really like how their romantic relationship was handled in the series… (even though I’m a shipper!) X-Files taught me that sometimes, even if the characters you ship officially get together, depending on how it’s portrayed it might be disappointing, and in that case maybe it’s better that everything is left vague and that you keep on fantasizing on your own… (Sorry if someone disagrees about the protagonists’ relationship in X-Files, this is just my opinion)

The reason of this digression is to explain that the way I view Victor and Yuuri’s relationship and its portrayal within the series is very similar to my experience with X-Files. I personally like them together, but since the series is fundamentally a sport anime about figure skating, to me it’s fine if they don’t confirm whether they are romantically involved or not, because either way there are enough hints to be perfectly able to perceive them as in love with each other even if it’s not stated out loud. At the same time, I respect people who want them to officially get together and people who prefer to see their relationship as platonic too, because in the end everything is open to interpretations and therefore I don’t think it’s correct to force one interpretation on others.

I understand that people who see this anime as important for the LGBT+ community would prefer that they are confirmed as lovers because we would have a “regular” (non-BL) anime featuring an official homosexual couple with a strong, healthy relationship, which would be a step forward in the portrayal of LGBT characters in Japanese anime too. However, exactly because it’s a Japanese anime, as I tried to explain in a previous post a few months ago, the local cultural background is an obstacle to that, therefore I wouldn’t be surprised if even in future works they never confirm anything. Also, what Yamamoto said about “relationships without a name” too makes me think that maybe she doesn’t find it important to give a name to their relationship but she just wants to portray a very strong bond between two characters which viewers can interpret how they prefer. Kubo too made a few tweets last August that suggest how one of the reasons they didn’t use a man and a woman is that they did not want people to automatically interpret their relationship as romantic “just because they’re a man and a woman”. If you read that negatively you might think “does she mean that if they are both guys they cannot be seen as romantically involved?”. I don’t know what she meant in detail of course, because I’m not inside her mind, but I also think it can be interpreted in a positive way: if the characters are a man and a woman people will see them as automatically in love only because of their genders, regardless of the deepness of their relationship; however, if they are guys the average viewer cannot apply their heterocentric point of view to them and they will only see them as in love because their relationship really suggests that.

By the way, I still think that YOI, even without confirming anything, is an important step forward for the portrayal of LGBT+ characters in Japanese anime because it shows two male characters having an intimate relationship (however you want to interpret it) without their surroundings going “eww gross” or making jokes about them. In the series, no one says anything or questions Yuuri’s sexuality when he decides to interpret the role of a woman in his early version of Eros, no one ever makes fun of Yuuri and Victor’s relationship, no one looks grossed out when they see them with wedding rings (Phichit even congratulates them for their “wedding”). As Kubo said, within the world of YOI no one is discriminated for what (or who) they like. Everything is just portrayed as normal. In a way, the fact that any possibility is viewed as normal might also be the reason why they don’t feel the need to declare anyone’s sexuality or whether they are romantically involved or not, also because in the end whether Yuuri and Victor are engaged or not, or are having sex or not, is not really relevant to their performance as figure skaters. The aspects of their relationship that are relevant to the story are what has already been shown to us.

To sum it up… I understand the various points of views, including the fact that a part of the fans would prefer to see Victor and Yuuri in a confirmed romantic relationship (be it because of their personal liking or because they would like more outspoken LGBT+ representation), but as long as the creators don’t confirm anything I will stay open to any possibility. I’m sorry if some of the things I said were taken the wrong way and I hope that what I wrote above was enough to explain that they weren’t meant as something offensive or negative but were just my attempt to be unbiased toward any possible interpretation. I myself am generally annoyed by the heterocentric view of the world (which in Japan is oh so popular..) and to me whether a pairing is het or homo makes no difference, therefore in my mind Victor and Yuuri in their current stage are very much like Mulder and Scully when their romantic relationship wasn’t confirmed in the series: no matter how you look at them they must be in love with each other, but it’s not confirmed, therefore fans who think their relationship is platonic have the right to think so (in the X-Files fandom too there were fans who didn’t ship them or were indifferent, but this didn’t stop the creators from making them a couple later on).

As a translator, I’m striving to be unbiased toward any interpretation and therefore to translate official material so that the original meaning/nuance is preserved and in English it doesn’t end up sounding more/less suggestive than it was in Japanese. Since they are very different languages, sometimes it’s hard to keep the exact same nuances as the original text, and of course if you ask 10 people to translate a line they will translate it in 10 different ways, but I’m trying to be careful especially with parts that might be easily misread (I mean, it’s useless that I translate something as sounding shippy when the original doesn’t… If the original does, of course I would keep that nuance).

In any case, if anyone ever thinks that one of my translations doesn’t sound right or that something I said sounds homophobic or hurtful, please let me know and I will explain more in detail what I meant. I always try to write my opinion without being offensive to anyone, but sometimes it’s impossible to write something so that all the people who read it will interpret it the exact same way, especially when talking about topics where readers have contrastive views. I respect all opinions (people who like Victuuri, people who dislike Victuuri, people who are indifferent, etc) and I just wish for everyone to live in peace without attacking each other.

Final notes:

1) Sorry for mentioning series unrelated to YOI, but since X-Files contains a het pairing I thought it would make a good comparison to show that my view of YOI isn’t influenced by the fact that Victor and Yuuri are both guys.

2) I was trying to be very neutral when I wrote my short review of the original drama at the YOI event, but to be honest some parts sounded just like a BL drama and it would take a genius to manage to “no homo” all of that… Of course the scriptwriter made it so that if you want to see their relationship as platonic you can still justify everything with “they were drunk”, but yeah…

3) Adding sources: 1) “What Yamamoto said” comes from the May Febri interview which I’m currently translating; 2) Kubo’s tweets from last August are something that wasn’t explicitly related to YOI but were definitely referring to YOI; 3) What Kubo said about no one being discriminated in YOI’s world is also a tweet from the end of last year, I made a post about it too.

[thefloatingpoem]

I don't want to be disrespectful, but I don't understand your issue with sherlock and "queerbaiting." I'm all for representation in media, however, realistically not everyone is gay. John has said multiple times in the show that he isn't gay, and he was married to a woman. Two men are allowed to be close friends without having to satisfy a tumblr-worthy homoerotic fantasy. As I said, I fully support representation, but just because two characters aren't gay for each other doesn't make a show bad

There are many things I’d like to unpack in your ask, nonny.

It’s difficult to know where to begin. I’ll start by saying I’m glad you agree that queer representation is important. So let’s start there, with the textual representation of queer people in Sherlock.

The characters who are textually queer in Sherlock include: 

-Moriarty (confirmed most recently in TFP when he jokes about his bodyguard having ‘more stamina, but is less caring in the afterglow’), -Irene Adler (established as gay during the Battersea scene with John, in which to his assertion that he’s not gay, she replies, “well I am. Look at us both.” More on John later. She also nonconsensually drugs and whips Sherlock, which I think is extremely out of character for a professional in the kink community) -Culverton Smith (who has an honest to god hard on when he’s suffocating Sherlock and breathes his fear of death in and says in the most rapturous voice, “lovely”), -Eurus, (who suggests that the victim of her brutal rape could have been a man or a woman and she wouldn’t have noticed)-and to some extent Magnussen (who creepily kisses Sherlock’s hands, among other weird bodily power things he does, like flicking John’s face).

Perhaps you’ve noticed that this is a list of villains, all of whom are queer coded, and most of whom to some extent have the hots for Sherlock and violate Sherlock’s bodily autonomy when he is otherwise incapacitated (other than Eurus, because equating queerness with incest would be a little much even for this show).

So for our queer representation on this show we get 6, count em, 6 queer monsters, 6 queer psychopaths.

Forgive me if I’m less than thrilled about this.

BUT I was willing to overlook this, I was willing to forgive this, because to my view, the plot was inching forward towards a realistic portrayal of queer love—a nuanced and hard won happy ending, a love narrative that would speak to the complexities of human nature and queer identity.

Let’s turn to that question for a while. Queerness does not exist in a vacuum. It exists within a highly oppressive heteronormative framework. And so when you tell me, John has said many times that he isn’t gay, I say unto you: so did I.

My only way of surviving a homophobic environment was to swallow whole the lie that I was straight, to try as hard as I could to believe I was straight. This is compulsory heterosexuality. The result of this doublethink was that I had no interest in romance or sex. But I publically feigned interest in men for many years. I worked hard to convince myself that I was straight and normative. I was trapped deep in a subconscious closet. We often talk about the closet being something that we know we’re in and we want to be out of it. But I tell you, I honest to god thought I was straight. I thought I would marry a man and have children and live in the suburbs. As it turns out, none of those things have happened, thank god. But I spent many years of my life telling people I wasn’t gay.

By the way re: John and his marriage to a woman, being married to someone of the opposite sex has virtually nothing to do with whether you’re gay or not in a world where visible gayness is met with violence, death threats (my gf has literally been chased with a knife), rape threats (this has happened at least three times that I can think of off the top of my head), judgment, discrimination, and hate. Also, many people, like a younger version of myself once did, believe that they are straight and do their best to act accordingly, including marrying someone and finding out later that they were wrong in doing so. All this being said, John could easily be bi or otherwise queer. Suggesting that his marriage to Mary should preclude any and all attraction to men or taking that as proof of straightness is frankly biphobic and erases the bi experience.

But let’s move away from the personal significancer of a John Watson coming out/discovering himself narrative, and towards addressing your other comments.

Regarding your comment, “Two men are allowed to be close friends without having to satisfy a tumblr-worthy homoerotic fantasy”: From my perspective, summing up what the Johnlock fandom does as “tumblr-worthy homoerotic fantasy” is infantilizing and doesn’t give full credit to the depth of thought and nuance that goes into these transformative works.

I can name on one hand the pieces of mainstream media that tell a story like mine. Blue is the warmest colour is one, Carol is another.

The work these fanfiction authors are doing for representation by taking mainstream stories and queeriung them is monumental. But it is still not mainstream media representation. And we deserve that.

And now we come to the queerbaiting portion of my response.

Tropes are what tell us what kinds of archetypal stories are being invoked in the telling of a new story. In TV, there are many different kinds of tropes: plot tropes, lighting tropes, musical tropes, dialogue tropes, camera angle tropes, etc. For example a long lingering gaze in television codes romance for us. It’s a romantic trope. 

For more on tropes, here are some useful resources: http://thorinlock.tumblr.com/post/132779606878/romantic-shots-in-bbc-sherlock

http://ifyouhaveenoughnerve.tumblr.com/post/76422437022/the-unabridged-dictionary-of-johnlock-tropes-157

http://tvtropes.org/

As a culture, we tell a lot of straight white love stories that end happily. Most of our romantic tv tropes come from these stories.

As a culture, we don’t tell many gay stories, and usually when we do, they are tragic and someone dies (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays). A common trope in stories about lesbians that I hate is that one woman leaves the other for a man—and that’s supposed to be a happy ending.

The point is, the filming and story telling tropes of romance are all over this show and these characters. Close shots of them gazing into each other’s eyes, the soft looks they give each other when they think the other won’t notice, the soft lighting accompanying these scenes, the dialogue, especially in the scene in ASiP at Angelo’s. As an exercise, try imagining that scene if Sherlock were a gorgeous woman.

JOHN: So you’ve got a boyfriend then?


SHERLOCK: No.


JOHN: Right. Okay. You’re unattached. Like me.  Fine.  Good.(modified from this transcript )

And then John licks his lips.

This is where it becomes queerbaiting. When the BBC tweets “Sherlock’s in love, but with who?” in order to promote s4, in which Sherlock’s romantic life is not shown to be developing at all, that is queer baiting. And it’s cruel.

More on queerbaiting:

https://www.autostraddle.com/how-do-we-solve-a-problem-like-queerbaiting-on-tvs-not-so-subtle-gay-subtext-182718/

http://www.afterellen.com/tv/471593-lets-end-queerbaiting-2016

Basically, the idea of gayness between Sherlock and John is a running joke on the show, a joke which has no pay off. Perhaps your sexuality has never been thrown in your face, or laughed at. Perhaps you have never been threatened violence or stalked or whistled at. But I have experienced all of this, just for holding my girlfriend’s hand in public.

So in sum, we have a show using romantic film tropes in order to make a joke about my sexuality, a joke at the expense of the marginalized.

Of course I’m upset and angry.

If this is a show about an epic platonic male friendship, that’s fine.

(Epic platonic male friendship is the oldest, most done narrative in existence, by the way. This is an excellent if somewhat dry book about the cultural shift in the twelfth century from tales of epic brotherly love/devotion between knights to tales of chaste courtly love between men and aloof women).

But in that case, stop it with the romantic TV tropes, stop teasing queer fans on twitter, stop making homophobic “no homo” jokes for the straight audience to have a laugh at my expense, and for god’s sake, stop writing all of your villains as queer coded psychopathic monsters. Was that really necessary??? It’s homophobic and it’s bad, lazy writing, and we deserve better representation than that. We deserve more than psychotic gay villains and desperately unspoken hidden subtext and winks and nudges on twitter from the creators. We deserve real representation, no hinting, no winking, no implying. Real, textual queer representation.

My last comment to you, nonny, is this: Indeed, not everyone is gay. And neither is everyone straight. I’m tired of never seeing myself or any part of my identity reflected in mainstream media.

For more information about media’s skewed representation of the world, see this GLAAD report. 

[telehxhtrash]

I love how reddit dude bros will agree that Togashi loves to subvert expectations, but will simultaneously say that killugon is impossible. What better way to subvert expectations then make the two main protagonists gay for each other? What makes me laugh is when reddit then says that them remaining friends IS subverting expectations because ‘there aren’t enough close friendships in anime’. BULLSHIT there are HUNDREDS of close friendships but 0 relationships ft two boys. Sry just wanted to rant

Oh yeah, definitely, reddit dudebros are very contradictory on this matter. They praise HxH because it subverts shounen tropes (although i've seen a few die-hard hxh dudebros saying that they still wished Gon had faced Meruem) but yet when we talk about how Killua and Gon's relationship is probaby yet another shounen trope subversion they lose their shit. I totally agree with you, shounen revolves around the power of friendship. That's literally one of the main trope of the genre, there's always, ALWAYS the protagonist and his best friend sharing a very deep bond and being extremely close buddies who got each other's backs in any case. So like, yeah, we've had a shitton of portrayals of deep platonic friendship between two men. But literally 0 gay relationships between protagonists in the shounen genre. Which is infuriating. I made a post about this, about why Killua and Gon's relationship is so important to the queer community, if you want to read it here. (it was basically me going feral for like 20 paragraphs) 

It infuriates me that dudebros preach shounen subversion but can't imagine Killua and Gon's relationship being romantic because "it would ruin the show, it's better if they're just platonic friends because good friendship representation is important."

Killua and Gon's friendship is so deep because it's always been written with romantic undertones. The reason their relationship works so well is because they were always written as a romantic pairing. The subtext was there from the beginning, from the moment Togashi wrote Killua's character, and it's literally proven by the fact that he incorporated elements from the Tanabata legend. It's always been written as a love story. And that's why they're considered as having the best friendship in anime, and that people always say the fact that they're so close is adorable. It's romantic. It's always been portrayed as romantic. Togashi decided from the beginning to add romantic undertones to their relationship.

The argument that "it's better if they stay friends" is absolutely FUCKING bullshit and it infuriates me. If you're not looking for romance in your shounen battle manga, then okay, I get it, totally, 100%. Romantic tropes aren’t for everyone. But you can't say you'd rather not have romance thrown into HxH, because it's always been there. The romantic undertones were always there. Killua and Gon's relationship being canonized as romantic wouldn't ruin the show or change ANYTHING about it, because that's how it was always written. Internalized homophobia, heteronormativity and queerbaiting in anime are just a plague that make it hard to see when behavior between two men is romantic.

And I definitely believe that it's Togashi's intention to subvert those tropes of "very, very deep platonic best friends with gay subtext that never amounts to anything because in the end they're straight" and "character who has unrequited romantic feelings for his best friend".

In short, having two gay characters in a loving, open and healthy relationship, not played for laughs or jokes would be another of Togashi's shounen trope subversions. And I can't understand why the same people who praise the subversion of these tropes can't accept that maybe, just MAYBE there's another one of these subversions in the Killua and Gon's dynamic. Because deep platonic friendship is Shounen 101, it's been done millions of times, while a gay relationship in a shounen battle manga has never been done before.

Romance doesn’t ruin animes. Romance isn’t less than friendship, just as friendship isn’t less than romance. Having romance between two male protagonists in Hunter x Hunter wouldn’t ruin the show, because it doesn’t change anything about the beautiful, amazing bond they share. It’d be no more, no less. It’d just be romantic in nature. That’s all.

And sadly, people who think having gay romance in HxH would completely ruin the show are probably deeply plagued by internalized homophobia.

But yes ! we need more romantic gay relationships in anime. 

While doing research to reply to this, I stumbled onto this absolutely wonderful analysis on manga genre and why shounen readers are so vehemently against gay relationships in their manga : because the categorization of manga as “shounen”, “shoujo”, “shounen-ai” and “yuri” is harmful to proper representation. I quote : “That (the classification of manga genre) is also why homosexual hints in shônen are mostly mocked by male readers, who are very prone to answer (without any homophobia, of course) : “What are you saying ? It’s OK if you’re a fan of yaoi, but this is a shônen here.”

This post applies to what I just said above and is a very good read, I truly recommend it !!