Something has to give: Yaoi Guys

Editing this before it gets thumped

edited 4th Oct '11 4:25:23 PM by Auxdarastrix

At any rate, relationships are a trope. Hetrosexual or otherwise. They always serve a story telling purpose. This trope was intended to refer to a particular type of relationship being used for a particular purpose. Clearly it was written and titled in a way to make it appear to be broader than it was intended.

This trope is simple: "Gay guys as fanservice for the girls." It seems like its being used as "gay guys," though its hard to tell. It needs a bit of a description rewrite. How's this?

edited 4th Oct '11 7:23:49 PM by Discar

Enormous improvement. I agree that that concept is very much a trope. This honestly did read like "gay guys" before.

Pretty good write up, I don't know if Keet really needs to be in there but if it must stay if anything it should after Seme, and Uke not in-between them (not a good place to be ) probably want to add a thing about if the series features a Yaoi Fan Girl she will probably attempt to make one of these in-universe or will have Raving Imagine Spots imaging this at the slightest provocation.

edited 4th Oct '11 6:11:51 PM by Raso

I like it—much more to the point, and it works well for disambiguation. If we don't allow examples and put up links to the respective ykktws for the two different types once they launch, it should work pretty tidily.

And I agree with Raso. Keet can definitely be dropped.

Like it a lot.

edited 4th Oct '11 7:25:32 PM by Falco

Edited to reflect Raso's ideas. I just copypasted the related line from the old description, so problems were to be expected.

I'm not sure about the creation of subtropes, though. What's the reasoning behind that, again?

Is this a trope or a genre?

It's a trope. It's when gay guys are used as a fan service element in a work not focused on gay men.

Okay. Lots of bad examples though. Young Wizards? Oz? A Song of Ice and Fire, which, according to the example, needed Word of Gay to even reveal that the characters were gay? Glee whose gay plot carried a whole season, and which, apparently, left fangirls going "awwww" or "{{squee}" rather than "fap"?

Glee is an example. It was a subplot. It wasn't the genre of the whole show.

So "focused on gay men" means the genre of "gay"? And any couple that fans like in any other genre qualifies as Yao Guai?

I have no idea what you're talking about, but this trope is "Using gay men as Fanservice in a work that isn't entirely based around gay men."

Would "based around gay men" mean it needs to be romance or pornographic in nature?

I'm saying that outside Japan, works "based entirely on gay men" aimed at straight women are near unknown, rendering that definition equivalent to "Using gay men as Fanservice."

I'm saying further that this page's examples suggests a misinterpretation of "fanservice". "Fanservice," according to this site, is the gratuitous display of characters undressed or in skimpy clothing. That does not apply to, say, gay characters in Glee. Some people use "fanservice" to mean anything that pleases fans, but this site does not. We assume that works of entertainment seek to please fans and make money; the aversion of that is a trope.

Okay, I get it now. Yeah, this is a trope. Horrible name, but I'll leave off for now.

Routerie's right about one thing: a lot of the examples aren't "gay guys in a show not about gays, used as fanservice", but rather are just "gay guys in a show". Which might have been where the problem came from in the first place.

That's completely incorrect. Have you ever seen Queer As Folk? Latter Days? Anything on the Logo channel? There's a lot of Western media focused around Gay men.

As for Fanservice, nothing about it requires skimpy dress. There are a lot of ways to have fan service even with all your clothes on.

edited 4th Oct '11 10:30:19 PM by shimaspawn

Those aren't "gay shows aimed at straight women". They're gay-themed shows and movies. If anything, their target audience is gay men and women.

And as for fanservice - yes, gratuitous revealing clothing / lack of clothing is fanservice, according to our definition. Works can aim to please fans in other ways, but we have assigned "fanservice" that specific deifinition. A subplot about a gay couple is probably not gratuitous, if it's significant enough to form a subplot, and in many of these examples, it doesn't involve any kind of display of flesh. "Gay couple are adorable together" is not fanservice. "Gay couple just are" is not fanservice.

edited 4th Oct '11 10:42:01 PM by Routerie

@ Routerie and Worldmaker: That's why this thread was opened at all. The current examples are for all different things, many of which the description didn't cover. So the subtroping part is to sort the examples by the two types actually intended by "gay subplots for female audience appeal in works that aren't Queer Romance" and then bad examples can go outright or be moved to a better place (some examples are Ho Yay or Ho Yay Shipping etc, some are just Semes and Ukes from Boys' Love works).

edited 5th Oct '11 7:59:50 AM by whereismytea

Good. Once we've weeded out the bad examples, will this be pretty much an Anime-only trope?

Doesn't the description point out it's becoming more widespread? That isn't going to be helped by claiming it is anime only.

Is it becoming more widespread?

A little bit. Mostly on the internet, not in more mainstream stuff like movies. Though it is showing up there a little too.

Mostly, this is an anime only trope. It's slowly evolving away from that, but it definitely started in anime, and most of the correct examples are going to be there. I just added that part to the description to make sure that if people saw correct examples from other mediums, they didn't think they couldn't add them.

It is becoming more wide spread especially as gays are becoming more accepted. Torchwood would be a good example of this trope in a Western work. It's aimed at straight people, but it has gay men as fan service.

edited 5th Oct '11 12:02:06 PM by shimaspawn