The Place for Purging Porn and Pedo-Pandering (AKA P5 flag evaluations)

It just my mind. Whenever I come across something tagged as "yaoi" on anime and manga sites, it is nearly always porn. "shounen-ai" tends to get used for romance more. Maybe it's just my luck with what I've been reading, although I must admit I haven't been looking for that sort of stuff recently, so it may have changed in the last two years. By "gay sex" I meant "gay porn." I should have been clearer.

Still, some of those pages may be cut no matter what P5 decides.

edited 8th Jan '15 11:18:20 AM by TheOneWhoTropes

The genres. Shounen-ai (lit. "Boys' Love") genre is about romance with little sex while yaoi includes sex much more often.

Yes they're on the same page here because our wiki doesn't go into finer distinctions of them, but it's a thing.

edited 8th Jan '15 11:31:20 AM by Adannor

Gosh, I take a break for a week or later, and everything done change on me! It seems we also got a substantial queue again, too—our purpose is still very much relevant.

"Some of those pages may be cut no matter what P5 decides?" What do you mean by that? I'm legitimately curious.

That said, I'm getting to work here - I'll read the manga I reported tonight (at least a couple of them) and share my thoughts on at least two of them tonight. The stuff I didn't report is legitimately no worse than any other work given a pass by P5, because despite having gay sex in it (and some of what I didn't see as reportable actually doesn't have sex in it, or has a very limited plot-relevant sex scene - example there being Fake, which is, aside from the last volume, "buddy romance," and only features vanilla sex between consenting adults in that last volume that would, were it a hetero couple, be no worse than anything in any given R-rated movie) it has some degree of plot (even if Slice of Life or boilerplate romance novel plot, that counts as a plot, IMO) and there is no glorification of pedophilia. That's what I've heard the "porn or pedo" cut standard is (and I assume it to be, from reading the Content Policy and these discussions).

@Komodin I'll be posting reviews on some of the stuff I added to the report queue tonight. Going to go read some of it now. Also need clarification on rules regarding scan links.

edited 8th Jan '15 8:25:55 PM by RevolutionStone

I assume he means that Fast Eddie had exercised executive privilege to just purge pages on his own.

However, given the fact the new admins 1) are not Fast Eddie and 2) are really busy right now with moving the site over to the new code and patching the horde of bugs, I doubt there's going to be an admin override of any P5 decisions in the near future.

No, he meant that some of those pages are stubs with no material on them.

That's probably it. It doesn't matter if it's about Winnie-the-Pooh -if it's a stub, and doesn't get up to snuff within a few days, it gets cut.

I suspect some people are just itching to put some works up for review that were cut by previous-admin fiat. I suggest it would be best for them to wait until the whole site revamp has the bugs ironed out or squashed, and I suspect that there's some that would get the triple devil anyway. (And now I'm thinking of the Black Widowers stories.) But even when new shiny things work perfectly, it takes time to get used to the new shiny things.

Acid Town:

So far, at the fifth chapter of volume 1, no one's having sex yet and most of the content referred to in the trope page is just being foreshadowed. Page 30, Yuki/Yukio (dependent on translation, I'm using the mangahere one) has his age established at "16-17" in present time. Page 36, he refers vaguely to having been a child prostitute (more foreshadowing) but nothing is shown on page.

The plot is pretty much a classic "Yakuza story," e.g. the Japanese take on a gangster flick, with the B plot being the Trauma Conga Line everyone seems to be walking in, set in an After the End or Just Before the End Japan.

At this point, with Yuki's age being established in present, both the potential pairings involving him don't qualify as glorifying pedophilia, even the May–December Romance one, though it just barely skirts the rule because of the Wife Husbandry component, but since Hyodo does do the Jail Bait Wait, that pairing is within the rules. Creepy, but within parameters so to speak. If he's paired with Tetsu, they're roughly the same age and a Victorious Childhood Friend setup, so the creep factor isn't there at all.

Volume 2 chapter 7 (in the mangahere translation) has the most questionable scenes so far - page 21, from the flashback voice of Yuki's Abusive Parent Ashiei) states Yuki's age when sold into prostitution as being 11 or 12, and shows a panel of him from that age chained, page 22 shows a panel (with no genitalia visible, and no actual nudity) implying he's about to be abused, and page 23 shows him being assaulted but with ghost-images and no visible genitals, and the next pages involve the Complete Monster basically bragging about it, then on page 25 bragging about raping him into it.

That said, this really doesn't come off to me as pedopandering any more than Law And Order SVU or Berserk or the manga scene depicting the backstory of Legato Bluesummers in Trigun does. It's roughly on the level of all of those - Rape as Backstory (or prostitution as backstory, but same difference). As in, at least from my perspective, I'm wanting to see Ashiei get Killed Mid-Sentence right about now, and this pretty much establishes him as a Complete Monster. Nothing about the above scenes is played for "look at the sexy 12 year old," it's played straight up for establishing Ashiei as the character that you want to see dead, and making the reader wish that Tetsu had been able to kill him.

At the end of Chapter 7 of volume 2, the Victorious Childhood Friend relationship starts - Tetsu and Yuki. Both same age, as I mentioned earlier, around 17.

Chapter 8 volume 2 page 8, Yuki describes being abused and raped, and there's a horror flashback where you can barely see what is where and who is where - the next page puts it into context with his obviously having been severely traumatized, and telling his childhood friend that wants to be in a relationship "how can you possibly understand?"

As chapter 8 goes on, the story takes on a Rape and Revenge twist - Yuki wants to "finish the job" of killing Ashiei - which he almost did when he escaped him. They confront each other, and Ashiei pulls an Assassin Outclassin', then tries to attempt to rape Yuki again - nothing is actually seen on panel, though, and again, it's played for the creep factor/the "I want this fucker dead" factor as opposed to titillation.

Chapter 10 begins with Yuki still trying to fight Ashiei off. He escapes, makes one more attempt at killing him that fails, then the gang Ashiei is with shows up. Its leader, Wang, reveals himself that he as well as Ashiei sold Yuki into being a Sex Slave, and then claims to want him for himself - then shoots Ashiei and offers the gun to Yuki, then when he refuses, fires the final shot himself. Which could establish him as somewhat sympathetic in the Evil Versus Evil world of this story, until he pulls the "you're mine." At this point, though, Yuki is of age so, while creepy and sick, the gangster's "claiming" him for his own isn't pedo. Creepy, gross, sick, not pedo. (And off topic, I'm laughing despite the drama and sadness - about a guy in a yaoi story named Wang. Call me immature.)

There's a sex scene between them in Chapter 12 that is pretty much played for drama, and that definitely goes under Sexual Coercion, but again, no visible genitalia, both of their bodies obscure the other.

Plot really, really picks up in Chapter 14 and 15 of volume 2 - now the story is building into a complex Mob War, catching everyone involved up in it. And as chapter 15 continues, Tetsu and Hyodo begin to work together to save Yuki.

Chapter 19 begins with Reiji and Masatsugu as lovers, but there's nothing really graphically shown (no penises, no penetration) and both are of age.

There's pretty much no sex after that at all, and the rest of the story is developing the characters, fleshing out the Mob War and the backstory for Reiji and for the others, and actually really, truly interesting beyond the sex.

In my opinion, this is a KEEP. It's definitely got a plot and storyline that goes well beyond the limited sex shown, and the sex shown isn't even that graphic (and anytime it goes into the Sex Slave thing or similar, it's fairly obviously not glorified - the relationships that ARE glorified are the mutually loving ones, and that's even an explicitly stated aesop of the story, that love drives one to protect those one loves). It's yaoi - but it's got a very intricate story beyond sex and the sex isn't worse than anything you'd see on a cable TV show.

edited 8th Jan '15 11:25:23 PM by RevolutionStone

In this post, I explain that the Manga's mentioned have trope lists consisting of less than three explained examples. It is wiki policy to cut such pages unless they are improved upon.

1) That's for cutlisting or Wiki Magic, not P5.
2) Plurals don't have apostrophes. :/ (To say nothing on whether "manga" is its own plural or not already.)

1.) I was clarifying, there was rather a big discussion about it under my last post. The problem is some of these manga fail the test of "does it have three examples that are fully explained?" I've cutlisted some that may have been P5 worthy, because they were stubs.

2.) you're right, it probably should be Manga since it seems to be its own plural, like sheep.

It seems to be policy now to message people who make a page without three examples and tell them to expand, and then it gets cut if not expanded upon.

edited 9th Jan '15 2:31:39 AM by TheOneWhoTropes

OK, understood. Sorry for misunderstanding - I was assuming with the jump to immediately cut over "try to get some Wiki Magic to this from someone who's read it," that it was a workaround for "getting rid of stuff I don't like."

Which, yeah. That way just doesn't work. I mean, I may seem a bit not like someone who has any kind of standards sometimes, but I absolutely, utterly loathe some things Gorn especially when it starts getting into guro territory, religiously evangelical works, and most country music. So if I announced that, say, I had major issues with pointlessly graphic violence for the sake of violence or "pop with Patriotic Fervor and twang," and/or I piled every horror or war or gangster or revenge movie ever no matter what its artistic merit under "pointlessly graphic violence" or generalized that religious works suck, or every artist who dares to use a steel guitar under "crappy country stuff," then mentioned that I was going to look for articles in those categories or that listed those tropes and hold them to higher quality standards than anything else is, with an immediate jump to cutting before any attempt at even trying to get someone who could fix them to do so... that would seem like I was doing an end-run around There Is No Such Thing As Notability and that those things are allowed here, to act on a personal pet peeve.

I know you're not doing the equivalent of that for gay-themed works, now, and it's all cool. (And yes, I'm a bit paranoid here - maybe properly, maybe not, but I've been in a few fandom communities over time that have literally been torn apart in flames over whether slash/yaoi works and their writers were "appropriate" for the fandom, or needed to be somehow hidden or "shown the error of their ways." It all started really innocuously - someone would raise their objections like "all slash writers are concerned with is sex," or "you only see this if you have yaoi goggles on" - which were valid points, ones that some writers -including myself- do try to address. Then het fans wanting Ship-to-Ship Combat, self-appointed Moral Guardians, and outright homophobes jumped in for the dogpile and the flamewar.)

I'm a bisexual in a gay relationship that has gone on for over 8 years, If I had the money, I'd marry him.

The standard is Three examples explained fully or it's gone.

For the record, I tend not to read ANY fanfiction, I've only read "The shape of the Nightmare to come" and it's sequel fully, and that was a WH 40 K one about, well, the future of the WH 40 K universe. (set in 50K and 60K respectively.)

edited 9th Jan '15 3:11:39 AM by TheOneWhoTropes

Yeah, like I said, once you explained I got that it wasn't you trying to start one of those type of "wars."

Thumped my own off-topicness

edited 9th Jan '15 5:37:46 AM by RevolutionStone

A friend of mine who worked in Japan for five years has a pretty good handle on the language. They don't have plural word forms (mice, paws, etc.) They add numbers to the word. And which number-word-form gets added to which word varies.

Yes, it's complicated.

But the plural of any Japanese word will never end in an S. It's ninja, kimono, manga, etc. Although sometimes the possessive S is added in English...

As for whether a potentially P5-issue work with a stubby work page should be examined, I say only if it's specifically reported OR the page gets fleshed out, particularly if the trope examples hang out a sign the work should be checked. Since stub pages that stay that way get cut, reviewing the work shouldn't be necessary otherwise.

The "cut destined" pages here are gone.

I know enough Japanese to know that they don't pluralize like we do, but as time has gone on, it has become acceptable to add an s for loanwords; for example "tycoon" or "honcho". The longer the word is in our language, the more acceptable it becomes; whether or not "manga" has reached that point was the matter I was not-raising.

Is this really the place for that discussion, though?

Sorry for dropping off for a bit. Anyway, I'm thinking of reviewing another one of the manga I reported, and will likely do that tomorrow night or so.

(I'm actually somewhat happily surprised by Acid Town - not that it's a happy story, because it's nonstop angst and incredibly dark, but because it's a yaoi manga that portrayed rape and sex slavery as unquestionably bad things that cause horrific trauma to their victims and are a part of a climate of violence, without dipping into the victim falling for the rapist(s) (or intense Stockholm Syndrome written badly enough to look like it), without pulling the "it's bad, but we're really focusing on every lavish detail so the people who have it as a kink can take it for that too," and averting the "rapist has a Freudian Excuse/is mentally ill/is on drugs so we have to feel bad for him too" thing by just having the two rapist characters as straight-up evil sociopaths with no redeeming qualities. Props to the author where they're due.)

edited 11th Jan '15 6:44:27 PM by RevolutionStone

Awkward Silence.

Before we get into it, this one is officially licensed by a US English-language publisher (Sublime, a BL imprint of Viz Media), and has an official rating of Mature by said publisher. And because of that, almost all the scanlations sites have taken it down.

I'd say this is likely a keep too, depending on one thing. Official licensing is a good sign for keeping it. The characters are high-schoolers but could be seen as 16, 17, or 18 because their age is ambiguous from the drawing - I've seen 20 year olds drawn like this and 14 year olds drawn like this - unless the story says they aren't in text, which I'm unable to find right now, so if anyone actually has this and can clarify that would be valuable as to the final determination. If they're over 16 it seems good for a keep - trope list shows some degree of plot, even if it's a boilerplate rom-com type plot. The only issue possible for P5 here is if they are officially under 16, because it is marketed to adult women as the audience. Needs clarification from someone who can access it, and that's why I reported it for review.

to add review of the next one up in the queue Breakfast Club:

No official release and hosted on mangahere, where I'm reading. Demographic is adult women.

It's set in a Japanese all-male high school dormitory, and Masamoto and Iizuka/Izuka (two of the characters coupling up) are officially mentioned as first-year high school students, which would put them at 15-16. Per volume 1, chapter 1, pages 6 and 8. This couple may or may not be problematic, depending on where exactly their ages are, but it's worth mentioning.

The more problematic relationship shows up for the first time on pages 16 and 17 of chapter one and volume one: Ootani (the teacher), who would have to be at least 20 to hold the job and his student Hiroki, who is 16 at most. The sex scene at this point is as graphic as you can get without anything visible (what they are doing is obvious from the text and where Hiroki is reaching, the bath water and Censor Steam obscures the actual penises). That said, this first scene arguably played for Cringe Comedy (with the Sorry to Interrupt and Caught with Your Pants Down) as much as for titillation. The ages are the only really P5 worthy thing at this point - if everyone was/is of age, this scene would qualify as Sex Comedy more than "something to rub one out to."

They have another, more graphic, scene on page 12 of chapter 2 of volume 1 - there, you can see some of one of their penises just barely obscured by the other's hand, and this scene is fairly short (one-page) but it's definitely not played for comedy or drama and it's not plot-relevant, which does make it seem a bit sketchy, especially with it being from the Teacher/Student Romance.

Pages 16-23 or so of chapter 2 feature the aforementioned Izuka being implied to be a willing prostitute to older men in his spare time outside the dorm. Nothing is shown on those pages, and it's all implied and text references only, and it does seem to be part of his angsty life story so, whether that matters or not really depends on how it's developed later on.

I'm getting a bit tired of reading this for now (to be honest, it's boring as hell - I hate school-themed stories for the most part personally), so I'll review more later.

edited 12th Jan '15 8:25:23 PM by RevolutionStone

Don't they basically have to be 16 or older for it to have an official US release?

Exactly. They do, so I think Awkward Silence should pass. Breakfast Club, that I added above with my edit before I saw your post and started reviewing, probably won't.

Popping in to give advance warning that there's at least one Eddie-fiat cut page I'm going to propose be reconsidered as soon as I find my copy and reread it: The Crosstime Engineer. When it came up the first time, Eddie fiat-nuked it because the hero ( a man in his 30s) marries a 15 or 16 year old girl. But he's in medieval Poland at the time, neither she nor her family see anything wrong with her being maried at that age, and I don't recall it being played for pandering; he doesn't seek her out, is rather squicked at first by the idea, and is more or less talked around to accepting that where and when he is, it's okay.

Er, Mads, that one was not an Eddie cut. It was a 5P cut.