Page Restoration Petitions

I'm the one who petitioned for Bara Genre to remain a locked stub page with an Example Sectionectomy, but I think one example of plot (though it has explicit sex and gorn) from what I've heard from friends (though I haven't gotten the chance to watch it myself yet) is Legend Of The Blue Wolves.

That said, I am totally for an example-free page for Bara Genre - just as long as the page isn't deleted while yaoi stay with examples. That is the Unfortunate Implications territory.

(As an aside, I can't believe that I'm defending Bara Genre - overly muscled bodybuilders, unshaven, and incredibly overweight is major No Yay to me - though I do like that it avoids or subverts the seme and uke tropes etc - but I still think it is major UI to cut and salt even the definition page with no examples, while we don't do the same to yaoi because it suffers the same issues. Melodramatic soap opera plot is still Excuse Plot if we want to think that way...)

Also, keep the Bara Genre top picture. It was decided on after a very meticulous discussion, and is the compromise picture of choice. If Boys' Love Genre can have two boys kissing, then Bara Genre can have two Manly Gay men kissing. And bonus points that the artist is actually Japanese. Don't think they're being indecent because they're not wearing shirts — you can still do something like that at a gay beach. Hell, at the many existing clothing-optional beaches, two men can do that and be naked, as the original image implied but did not show with explicitness.

edited 27th Apr '12 5:09:12 PM by Gilgameshkun

There, there, I know that feeling. I was the one who posted a defense for Morenatsu on the Pages Pending For Perusal By P 5 page by saying that it has a substantial plot according to the page and that we can't discriminate against Furry Bara. As a die-hard Yuri Fan, it was only done for the sake of fairness.

edited 27th Apr '12 5:06:37 PM by encrypted12345

I just read Pages Pending For Perusal By P 5 for the first time after you mentioned it, and wanted to post some defenses, but the page is locked. So I posted them in the discussion page.

Especially, one work is listed there that has no porn in it — Grant. It includes sex, but in an R-rated context only. No Male Frontal Nudity at all.

edited 27th Apr '12 5:39:32 PM by Gilgameshkun

Yeah, "Grant" should definitely stay and go up as one of the examples of "plot" Bara Genre then.

off topic aside that might be more apt for the fetish thread, so I'm sorry if it is: I like Slash Fic, and even though I'm not a huge anime and manga fan per se, I am a yaoi fan and like the biseinen design - it plays into my love for aestheticism and genderbending. FAKE and Kizuna and similar. In a bit of shallowness, I like the pretty (though not the shotacons, ewww) for looks, which is where me and Bara Genre split ;) Nevertheless, I'm defending it because even though the art style is subjectively kind of bleh to me, it's not all "plotless porn" any more than all Slash Fic or all yaoi is just because 90% of it is exactly that. Remove the 90%, keep the page and the 10%.

I also wrote most of the articles for Chub Pan and Roommates 2009. And though they contain porn, they have a huge amount of Character Development. In fact, though Roommates chapter 1 was almost pure porn, chapter 2 didn't even have a sex scene, and chapter 3 seems to be fully-clothed character development around a card game. And the associated backstories Roommates Gians First and Roommates These Are My Reflections have more character development than porn — especially in the latter, which is maybe 1% porn, 99% story, and the porn is only part of the story and not its nucleus. Anyone can write an Excuse Plot. It takes a great deal of literary thought to write an engaging plot-driven story. See, sometimes erotica isn't the nucleus — sometimes it's a fanservicy framing element for what is actually a well-rounded story with its own merits.

edited 27th Apr '12 6:03:08 PM by Gilgameshkun

I'm starting to think we should rename Bara to keep it from getting used for works like Grant, which isn't Japanese and as far as I can tell isn't Japanese-influenced either. Why don't we have a Gay Comics index?

Well, we do have Queer Media, which Grant is listed in. Queer Media is rather strict in that it's mainly for gay people. Brokeback Mountain doesn't even qualify, as it's made by straight people, for straight people, about gay people in a sympathetic light.

In the unresolved trope repair discussion for Fan Yay where Bara Genre was discussed, I proposed Homoeroticism, which is a step above Homoerotic Subtext, and may or may not include pornography, but is certainly erotic. Homoeroticism is everything from 1950s beefcake magazines to homoerotic Grecian art to hardcore gay pornography.

edited 27th Apr '12 6:06:59 PM by Gilgameshkun

Brokeback Mountain would fall under Queer Romance, but that's getting way off topic. If we have to rework Bara we might as well separate the two things it's used for, since they're only partially overlapping.

Indeed. As I also said, the problem seems to be different definitions by continent. The original application of barazoku is what is now Japanese gei komi. The Western internet slang definition is basically closer to Queer Media, but more usually of a niche interest Manly Gay erotic variety (with or without pornography). The top picture at Bara Genre is appropriate for the latter, though drawn by someone who makes the former, though the picture itself is not from a gei komi — it came from the artist's oekaki journal.

edited 27th Apr '12 6:10:46 PM by Gilgameshkun

@Totemic Hero - I'm talking about the page for the entire genre/demographic/whateverthefuckitis. Not individual works. Read my post again.

On a slightly different topic, many people have asked for transparency in the voting process. Well, I've tried to be as transparent as possible, and all I've gotten for it is people (some of the same people) fighting me for every square pixel I vote to cut, questioning my judgment in general, and arguing over petty semantics on what constitutes porn or pedoshit or a demographic or a genre or whatever. I'm done with explaining this to you guys. If I really feel I need input, I'll make a thread. For pretty much everything else, I'm going to continue voting without any discussion.

@Gilgameshkun - I get it, you're a bara fan. Your Wall of Text posts aren't doing anything for me here. I'm going to open a new thread on Bara Genre tomorrow for just the 5P to decide what exactly needs to be done with it since our votes are split and Fast Eddie hasn't thrown in on that one yet. Tonight's Friday, so I'm offline for the rest of the night.

edited 27th Apr '12 8:00:36 PM by Martello

Deviating a bit form. The Bara Genre discussões a bit,

Of course my only real experience with V Ns is Ace Attorney, but from what I've heard that's actually heavier on the gameplay than most V Ns. I would like a troper who knows about V Ns to comment to be sure.

I confirm that. I actually tend to think Ace Attorney to be closer to an Adventure game instead. Most Visual Novels don't really have any gameplay at all. Only a few choices here and there to define the story. It is frenquently awkard to call them "games" even.

(sorry any mistake. Typing from an iPad is hard.

So what does everyone else think about giving non-VN games with explicit sex a page for the sake of gameplay tropes?

I think we should leave them to 5P, because if you make that a set guideline, stuff like Rapelay and Custer's Revenge would end up being put back. And we really don't need pages devoted to either of those.

True. But I hope they're a bit more lax in games with sex and gameplay that aren't despicable (Though Rapeplay breaks the "no pedo" rule so it's not coming back either way).

In theory, the difference between what we do and don't want on the wiki should be the difference between Mass Effect (if Mass Effect showed more than they actually do), and one of those puzzle games that reveal a picture of a naked woman once you complete it.

And anything involving kids is right out. That's not even up for debate.

edited 27th Apr '12 8:18:40 PM by BadWolf21

I can't say that I shouldn't have expected this situation to occur.

Martello, you're completely right; there isn't much buy-in for what you or the panel are doing in the first place. Many tropers are opposed to the new policy in the first place, and among the rest, the consensus (such as it is) appears to be that purging should be limited to the most egregious examples. Your position is far less inclusionist, obviously, so there won't be any meeting of the minds.

The thing is why does the fact that the puzzle game has a picture of a naked woman in make it any less tropeable than a puzzle game without an Excuse Plot. I thought the argument against porn was that true porn didn't have enough tropes to justify having a page on it.

Porn is tropeable, but the wiki doesn't want to be a porn index. Ergo, thinking "Having it reveal a naked picture doesn't make it any less tropable" is rather missing the point of the cleanup crew.

The Wiki wants to be family friendly.

Clearly that's not true, because we had an index called "Porn Tropes". Porn isn't out because it's not tropable, it's out because it's porn.

Whether or not you agree with that is your prerogative. But it's no one's choice but Eddie's (and Janitor's, but they seem to be in agreement on this).

edited 27th Apr '12 8:23:37 PM by BadWolf21

Friendly to whose family, and where? Mine? Where I'm from? Or Mr. Santorum's from Pennsylvania? There's a huge cultural crevasse here. Fairly tame and moderate in delivery, I can understand. But I never hear "family-friendly" except as a euphemism for what the more reactionary Moral Guardians disapprove of, and it's almost never quite in respect of diverse families as they exist around the world.

Back when we put up the NSFG curtain, one of our biggest concerns was that the Moral Guardians would incessantly nitpick at our legitimate articles, and we were assured that would never happen. And that's exactly what's happening now.

edited 27th Apr '12 8:33:32 PM by Gilgameshkun

No, it's not what is happening now. What is happening now is that Fast Eddie, the man whose site this is, has decided that he does not want to feature pornography, or works that showcase prepubescent/early adolescent characters in sexual situations, and has created a panel to help decide what does and does not fit into those categories. Something that it is well within his right to do. If you don't like that, you are more than welcome to start your own wiki (in fact, people have done that exact thing, before).

Yes, I realize it's his site, and you're right about that.

What I'm talking about is the side effect of his decision. It's inviting an avalanche of Moral Guardian petitions, including for works that aren't even pornographic (Grant) or only feature a relatively small amount of pornography in an otherwise solid literary work (Morenatsu). This is creating an enormous amount of unnecessary grief.

edited 27th Apr '12 8:39:39 PM by Gilgameshkun

I don't know why you keep throwing Moral Guardians around like this has something to do with them. It's true that this started because someone took issue with the Naughty Tentacles page. But that only extends as far as Eddie started looking around and realized that there was a lot of stuff he wasn't cool with hanging about. What is currently going on is an internal effort alone.

Wasn't everything behind the wall autoflagged or something?