[Sol Falling]

Originally Posted by musouka

The only one that seems personally interested in Akitsu is Yaichi. The rest are just doing some high pressure recruitment tactics. I don't think they dislike him, but all their focus on him inevitably ends up being "so, are you going to join us yet?"

Yeah, and so what I was saying is that Akitsu's characterization for the immediate future will pretty much consist of him giving in to that pressure, moral objections or no. Not that interesting (of course, I am entirely up for seeing what happens to him when that pressure forces him to make a real decision eventually).

This only makes sense if you assume that those vague "elements of yaoi" (whatever they are) aren't based in reality as well. That there is no way a guy could evidence interest in what another guy does without it falling under the heading of "fantasy." That's pretty ridiculous.

Do you seriously not get what I'm saying? You just did it again. Ono has done far more works based for adult men than she ever has male/male manga under her pen name. Your insistence on pigeonholing her by her gender and the minority of what she's written is irritating, because it implies that a woman can't write about men or for men without this "seeping in". Ono is not a "yaoi-authoress", full stop.

I've read and enjoyed plenty of works by female authors that don't feature any yaoi fantasies. There is no 'pigeonholing' or negative gender-generalization going on here. Like I said, my initial impression was based on no part on any assumptions of her other work. I came into this anime with no idea who the mangaka was; male, female, whatever. The accusation that yaoi had 'seeped into' this work was yours, not mine. Rather, the hints from this show which I percieved independantly allowed me to extrapolate that this author enjoyed the constructs of yaoi fantasy, which was validated when I later saw that she had indeed written for the genre. I don't need to assume that the yaoi constructs echoed here are not reflected in reality, because the fact is that the audience for yaoi as a body of work is overwhelmingly women rather than gay men. The resemblances I saw here, not to Ono's own yaoi work (which I was not aware of) but rather the other works of female fantasy I have seen, were the basis of my conclusion.

If it's just as emotionally valid for you, then why were you so dismissive in your initial post? I mean, beyond the fine sounding vocabulary, you do realize that you basically posted the grammatically proper equivalent of "lol this show so gay, should be lesbians instead!", right?

'Emotionally valid' in the objective sense, the sense that female fantasies of gender-equal relationships are just as valid as male ones of the same. That nevertheless doesn't change the fact that it's not as accessible to me, not being the target for it. The fact that I'm staying on for this show is rather the opposite of dismissive, don't you think? Because I see enough value in the rest of the show and indeed even this example of a foreign female fantasy to see it through. That I prefer lesbians isn't an indictment of this show, it's simply a statement of personal regret that this show doesn't appeal to me on that inherent level (and again, I'm not talking sexually here).


edit:

Ah, I see you've edited your post, negating most of mine...:P I took most of this as a misunderstanding, rather than rudeness on your part, so I didn't really mind. If you prefer, I could delete this though.