Came across these photos of a girl who took a cardboard cutout of Rin from Free! to prom and I have mad respect for her. Look at this beautiful girl! She could have taken anyone, but she wanted to show her nerdy side.
I would never have had the guts to do this.
I mean, the comments are pretty positive. But what if they weren’t?
A fujoshi, for the 5% of you reading this who are not fujoshi yourselves, literally means “rotten girl,” and is a self deprecating term for a girl who is not only an anime fan, but a fan with a preference for the boy’s love genre of romantic anime and manga.
I mean, that’s not all I watch. But I’m not watching Free! for the swimming.
So I like BL. A lot of girls do. Most of us are quiet about it. It’s bad enough that we have to constantly convince people that if we like anime that doesn’t mean we’re pedophiles, so I don’t get close enough to most people to have the “I find 2D men attractive” conversation.
I wasn’t very open about liking this kind of thing until I got married. I feel like now that I have a husband, nobody can say I’m some developmentally stunted cartoon freak. Even if I write tweets about buying doujinshi and wanting to see anime boys shirtless.
Most of the people reading this are anime fans who are like, “Yeah duh, of course anyone who gets emotionally invested in a show ends up having a crush on a few of the characters.” But have you tried talking to your normal friends about anime? It’s bad enough explaining the G-rated parts without getting into your crushes and ships and fanfiction.
Also this skirts into dangerously TMI territory. Nobody wants to know what you fangirl over, anyway! Except other fangirls. And those relationships with other fangirls take risk. You risk embarrassing yourself in order to achieve those rare “I ship that too” interactions. And so if you’re completely silent about it, like I was for years, you won’t be able to talk with anybody.
The title of this post is a little misleading because I’ve agonized over publishing this for a while. It’s one thing not to hide it; it’s another thing to declare it to the world.
But it’s certainly not as gutsy as bringing a cartoon Rin to prom.
11 Comments.
Fangirls unite!? I think so.
I find Tumblr to be a very open place to discuss BL and shippings of all kinds.
My niece in her early teens actually confided in me like it was the hugest secret in the world that she and her friends watch BL and do yaoi shipping and write fanfiction shipping guys together. I just told her, “Join the club.” :)
Most of my closer friends know that I’m into anime and that I find the characters attractive, but they probably don’t know to what degree :P It is indeed something that we tend to keep to ourselves, which doesn’t have to be a bad thing. As already mentioned, and you already know, tumblr is a great place for expressing our niche interests. Other than that there’s deviantart and 4chan, and probably many other forums across the net. It’s a good thing we can find these places, because it can get lonely walking around irl carrying this secret love for “drawings”.
@blackragdoll:disqus By now I think most of my friends know about my intense longings for 2D men. I think it’s because I’m married now so I can be like, “see you can be a fujoshi and not a sexual deviant!” and I feel like a less creepy (but still creepy) ambassador to it.
Yes yes yes. Im married too and feel this exact way.
Makes me remember my first day on high school. We had to talk with the person sitting next to us about ourselves so the other person could present us to the rest of the class. I told the guy “…and I like Inuyasha, Sailor Moon and japanese cartoons!!” so he could add that to my description but he just smiled with a face like saying “are you serious?” and when he presented me he only said “and she likes Inuyasha” in such a lower voice.
Of course that was important to me so I stood up and said “yeah, I like japanese cartoons in general and videogames like Pokémon so if anyone else does then let’s be friends!!” which made the teacher angry xD
Now it did work out in the end because I met my best friends because of that but it also gained my little geeky group the nickname “the pokémons” (yeah, not the brightest), not that I disliked it though :P
I have no shame, everyone knows I’m into anime guys.
[…] remembered I have this blog after watching a few episodes of Free Eternal Summer and reading this interesting article. I sure as hell am running out of people to talk to about anime and especially about the fujoshi […]
I have one friend, and she’s also a fujoshi, and that’s all I need.
Everybody knows am a fujoshi.
am an open minded otaku; i love all genres yaoi, yuri doesnt matter to me as long as its animeee
i met a senpai today and she too loves BL. i was so happy that i let out a really really loud squeal infront of the college cafeteria. a few of my classmates saw me jumping up n down and blabbering stuff they dont wanna hear. now i gotta hide whenver i see those people. its been long since i ever met an actual fujoshi so i could talk stuff with them so i guess this incident got me a bit too excited XD!! of course senpai was acting crazier.