Scary yaoi fangirls

I’ve recently come across this new species. They’re called: Scary yaoi girls.

Maybe it’s because I’m not an American anime fan, but I’ve never in my life encountered this otaku fan species. From reading bloggers and lurking around fanforums, the general consensus is that these yaoi fangirls are worse than irritating. Some come close to calling them abominable.

As this post on Tainted Blog says in her rant, I Hate Fangirls, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation Part I of II:

So stop writing your fanfics slashing every male character known to man together, stop acting like Gravitation is the pinnacle of genius (and if you honestly think this, then you are either lobotomized, under the influence of heroin, or a fucking retard), and sit down and shut the fuck up because you’re making all of the more subdued and discreet fans look like jackasses.

And from travels around the animeblogosphere, this species have the tendency to:

• Look longingly at actual gay guys and follow them around
• Slash every known canonical character (do not, for the love of God, tell me how much you love Roy heart Ed! Don’t touch my Roy!)
• Think you’re a homophobe if you don’t like yaoi
• Think you’re a loser if you don’t like yaoi
• Talk really loudly about yaoi and make sure you know that they are yaoi fans.

Wow, this makes me very reluctant to admit that I read yaoi. The fact that I’m not of ideal size would probably lump me in the “fat yaoi fangirl” category which would really suck.

So I read yaoi? Big deal. I read Monster and Black Cat too. In fact, I wouldn’t even really categorise myself as solely a yaoi fan because I read a wide variety of manga; the bookstore person where I buy my manga from even know what I’d like: deep, dark, and gloomy stuff. 😛

Yeah, yeah, I do find yaoi fascinating. But most of the time I find it quite stupid. 😉 I mean, hello? What’s with this constant “I like you,” remarks in the genre? And you love the guy after a night in the sack? Sure. I find it funny. But I enjoy it for what it is: Fantasy.

Slash fanfics? I hate it. I vehemently cannot read them. I suppose scary yaoi fangirls would start sending me hatemail when I say that. 😛

And no, I honestly don’t think Gravitation is the pinnacle of genius. I think the art sucks big time, but I find the relationship between Yuki and Souichi funny – touching even at some points. (Btw, there’s nothing pron-ish about Gravitation, honestly, but that’s just me.)

Fake is another widely-praised shonen-ai series, which I don’t understand why to be honest. Art was awful in my opinion and the little kids that tag around Ryo? I want to murder them. Bloody annoying creatures. And Ryo is way too much of a tease. Of course it does wonders to the Unresolved Sexual Tension. But it’s not all bad. You do want to see them hit it off. (cough cough)

The fangirls I’ve met in my country are rather … normal ones. Sure they love anime and stuff, but you wouldn’t guess it if they sat next to you. The ones I’ve met are successful career women while some are quiet, studious students (in Malaysia, smart people are generally more popular in school, not “losers”).

Or maybe us Asians are just generally more subdued. 😉

You know, I generally hold this principle: You can act however you want to celebrate your love for whatever fandom you’re in. However, when you tell me how I should love my fandom and the way I show my love of it is inadequate and on a loser scale? Stay away.

So I think this is the main reason why people dislike rabid fans of any genre be it yaoi, anime whatever: you just get this general impression that they think you suck because you don’t like the same things they do or do the same things they do to express their love for the genre.

This really makes me think twice about attending an anime convention in America. (Maybe British anime fans are less crazy.) I even cheekily suggested to my friend that we attend yaoi-con, but after reading about scary yaoi girls, maybe I should run.

They’d probably drive me ballistic.