notes on terms and format
Jan. 25th, 2020 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fujoshireviewsDoing this may be a tad redundant, but fandom is scattered across the cosmos these days, with a wide range of ages, backgrounds, and ingrained baptist guilt even in slash/BL/male-centered moe fandoms. The closest thing to a place everyone goes is AO3, which is where I'll be linking this blog so as to cast the widest net for like-minded thirst demons as possible. Second closest is tumblr, which has banned thirst and is now only a place I go to harvest memes. When I was a wee bairn on Livejournal, you could pretty easily just stumble upon a write-up of why Gundam Wing or something was a good source of cute boy content. Now you can type 'sexy anime boys please' into the twitter search bar and somehow still end up with some weirdo's tweet about the degeneracy of western women. It's tough. But I gotchu fam. Do people still say that?
Here are some things I'm gonna go ahead and assume about you. You know what a fujoshi is, or can otherwise read context clues. You have seen at least one entire anime, and like. Enjoy it as a concept. Even if you came from western slash fandoms in search of Content, I would at least watch a thing and make sure you can hang with it. You are horny. Emotion is a large component of arousal, and shows that inject those feelings into your veins are what I'm gonna be focusing on. But don't get me wrong. This is about fuck. If you find good anime it's entirely on accident.
Perhaps most importantly, I need you to know the difference between fiction and reality, and the proportionate role that each plays in our lives. If you're looking for a series that's morally right, like with good anime, I'll only include it on accident. I enjoy violence, unhealthy relationships, and pain specifically. I'm not, in principle, opposed to bad ends. Part of this blog's purpose is to inform you on potentially upsetting content in things you might not have expected it in. That includes things like racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. I'll try my best not to spoil anything, but if there's something wildly fucked up, I'mma let you know, because I would want to.
Anime is almost entirely about teens, so a lot of the shipping I'm going to be talking about is gonna be about pretend high schoolers. If you're not okay with that, or that's not your thing, that's fine! Please do not send me messages to tell me I'm a bad person! I'm not interested in justifying myself to strangers. If you are a high schooler, I would honestly rather you not be here!
Now that that's out of the way, let's define some terms!
Moe - Moe is moe. There are various theories on the origin and definition of the word, but for my purposes it describes content that makes you feel a certain way. What content that is and how that feels is kind of up to you, but it's generally a feeling you want more of. I'll talk about it more on my first review post.
CV - Character Voice, aka voice actors. I'm gonna talk about voices a lot here. In animation, the voice is a pretty essential part of a character's appeal, and your takeaway as the audience. I also just. Know a lot about them? I'm pretty faceblind so I can't always recognize live-action actors, but I'm good at recognizing voices.
BL - Boys Love, also known as Shounen Ai, if you're gonna get Japanese with it. The term has a long history in Japanese fandom that I won't go over, here it just means MLM content.
Shoujo - lit. 'girl'. In Japan, refers to manga and anime marketed to young women and girls. In western fandom it's come to describe romance stuff and its tropes more than anything. Things that might be marketed as Josei (for adult women) in Japan often fall under the western shoujo umbrella. Most BL is marketed as Josei. It may also be used to describe the kind of big, glittery-eyed art style that's common in those anime and manga.
Shounen - lit. 'boy'. Same kind of thing, animanga for boys. Like its parallel term has come to mean something more specific in the west. Generally describes anime with a lot of cool fights, training, and big, tough, boss-type characters. Is way more violent than what gets marketed toward young boys in America. A lot of shounen series are unexpectedly popular with BL fans due to their emphasis on intense and heartwarming male friendship, with just as intense male rivalries. Tends to be a BL gateway drug. Come for the punching, stay for the tearful hug after.
Slice of Life - What it sounds like. Secretly my favorite anime genre. Mostly about high schoolers, pretty much always comedy. Used to just be known for cute girls doing cute things, but recently, cute boys doing cute things has been popular as well.
Doujinshi - In Japan, describes self-published works, fancomics or otherwise. Their word for zine, pretty much. In western fandom, and here, will almost exclusively be used to describe fanmade manga. You can get a good idea of how popular a pairing is by how many doujinshi get made. You can also see which top/bottom alignment is most popular, and how wrong everyone else is about your OTP.
Pixiv - This website. Japanese Deviantart, if Deviantart hadn't been continuously ruined by bad web design from 2008 onward. Much easier to use now that there's an English version. You'll still most likely have to search tags in Japanese, though. Might cover that later.
Gap Moe - slightly advanced moe term. Refers to the moe feelings one gets when a character does something unexpected for them or their character type. Tsundere are a good example of this. They’re rude most of the time, so when something happens to make them reveal their gooey center, the payoff is very nice.
More terms will be defined as they come up in posts, because I know I'm gonna have to get waist deep in some obscure term for a type of horny appeal that shows up everywhere or something.
I'll be back later this week with something that can be roughly defined as content!
Here are some things I'm gonna go ahead and assume about you. You know what a fujoshi is, or can otherwise read context clues. You have seen at least one entire anime, and like. Enjoy it as a concept. Even if you came from western slash fandoms in search of Content, I would at least watch a thing and make sure you can hang with it. You are horny. Emotion is a large component of arousal, and shows that inject those feelings into your veins are what I'm gonna be focusing on. But don't get me wrong. This is about fuck. If you find good anime it's entirely on accident.
Perhaps most importantly, I need you to know the difference between fiction and reality, and the proportionate role that each plays in our lives. If you're looking for a series that's morally right, like with good anime, I'll only include it on accident. I enjoy violence, unhealthy relationships, and pain specifically. I'm not, in principle, opposed to bad ends. Part of this blog's purpose is to inform you on potentially upsetting content in things you might not have expected it in. That includes things like racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. I'll try my best not to spoil anything, but if there's something wildly fucked up, I'mma let you know, because I would want to.
Anime is almost entirely about teens, so a lot of the shipping I'm going to be talking about is gonna be about pretend high schoolers. If you're not okay with that, or that's not your thing, that's fine! Please do not send me messages to tell me I'm a bad person! I'm not interested in justifying myself to strangers. If you are a high schooler, I would honestly rather you not be here!
Now that that's out of the way, let's define some terms!
Moe - Moe is moe. There are various theories on the origin and definition of the word, but for my purposes it describes content that makes you feel a certain way. What content that is and how that feels is kind of up to you, but it's generally a feeling you want more of. I'll talk about it more on my first review post.
CV - Character Voice, aka voice actors. I'm gonna talk about voices a lot here. In animation, the voice is a pretty essential part of a character's appeal, and your takeaway as the audience. I also just. Know a lot about them? I'm pretty faceblind so I can't always recognize live-action actors, but I'm good at recognizing voices.
BL - Boys Love, also known as Shounen Ai, if you're gonna get Japanese with it. The term has a long history in Japanese fandom that I won't go over, here it just means MLM content.
Shoujo - lit. 'girl'. In Japan, refers to manga and anime marketed to young women and girls. In western fandom it's come to describe romance stuff and its tropes more than anything. Things that might be marketed as Josei (for adult women) in Japan often fall under the western shoujo umbrella. Most BL is marketed as Josei. It may also be used to describe the kind of big, glittery-eyed art style that's common in those anime and manga.
Shounen - lit. 'boy'. Same kind of thing, animanga for boys. Like its parallel term has come to mean something more specific in the west. Generally describes anime with a lot of cool fights, training, and big, tough, boss-type characters. Is way more violent than what gets marketed toward young boys in America. A lot of shounen series are unexpectedly popular with BL fans due to their emphasis on intense and heartwarming male friendship, with just as intense male rivalries. Tends to be a BL gateway drug. Come for the punching, stay for the tearful hug after.
Slice of Life - What it sounds like. Secretly my favorite anime genre. Mostly about high schoolers, pretty much always comedy. Used to just be known for cute girls doing cute things, but recently, cute boys doing cute things has been popular as well.
Doujinshi - In Japan, describes self-published works, fancomics or otherwise. Their word for zine, pretty much. In western fandom, and here, will almost exclusively be used to describe fanmade manga. You can get a good idea of how popular a pairing is by how many doujinshi get made. You can also see which top/bottom alignment is most popular, and how wrong everyone else is about your OTP.
Pixiv - This website. Japanese Deviantart, if Deviantart hadn't been continuously ruined by bad web design from 2008 onward. Much easier to use now that there's an English version. You'll still most likely have to search tags in Japanese, though. Might cover that later.
Gap Moe - slightly advanced moe term. Refers to the moe feelings one gets when a character does something unexpected for them or their character type. Tsundere are a good example of this. They’re rude most of the time, so when something happens to make them reveal their gooey center, the payoff is very nice.
More terms will be defined as they come up in posts, because I know I'm gonna have to get waist deep in some obscure term for a type of horny appeal that shows up everywhere or something.
I'll be back later this week with something that can be roughly defined as content!
