but I was responding to this:
...which assumes the media in question does have interesting female characters.
Oh, sorry. No objections then.
I won't give specific examples since you said you've never heard of them, but in my experience, a lot of media I grew up with did have great female characters that I liked and admired.
I actually do want examples, for personal reasons. Soviet media has never managed to develop fandoms, and I don't believe it's possible to raise children
on Spess Train Three Nines and Secret Valley analog tv rips without fandom fodder media in Current Year, they're going to fall in with
something and sperg about it. I was lucky to have been a fan of (A)D&D and videogames as a kid, they didn't have sex when I was growing up (inb4 slovenly trull), which got my hopes up.
"Nerd paradise! The future is awesome! Great American games will defeat Russian capitalist porn slop!" Of course IRL at the time, pornified
Vampire: the Masquerade was wiping the floor with chaste and mismanaged
AD&D. Now "the" D&D game is
Baldur's Gate 3, and even kiddie shooter games have characters with specified sexual orientations.
They self-insert into the "uke" and basically write "him" as the overly stereotypical ideal girl because for some reason they can't do that with M/F ships because their weird brand of self-hate and NLOGery is just that strong.
I hate this!
I've seen explanations of the fujo phenomenon and even some examples in favor of said explanation that I more or less buy:
- "awesome" (Japanese "boys" demographic) content with male characters
- marketing said content to "young adults" with disposable incomes
- real life is fake and gay, more incentive to stick to children's content
- real life is expensive, more incentive to stick to content than to touch grass
- can't be a protagonist of your own life, stick to fiction
- internalized sexism and fandom infighting
- an idealized relationship between equals, untarnished by modern sexist background radiation
- star-crossed lovers + fag rights propaganda
- these days in the media, there are few obstacles to a male and a female marrying if they happen to fall in love
I absolutely see how this gives rise to the fujo fandom and its particularly nasty excesses (reeee "normative heterosexuality" getting in the way of true wuv). I'm
almost prepared to see them as victims of a corrupt media landscape.
And then they do this yaoi hole shit. No no no no, they can't have it both ways. They can't go "these men are equals, they're soulmates, they're exploring their feelings, how byuoooootiful" but then turn around and say "but this one is `submissive` and was destined to have his rectum drilled".
I don't understand developing some kind of parasocial relationship with fictional characters and then making them fuck.
^ partially explained above, and: prestige "adult" fiction is
also mostly about making the characters fuck. When the serious adult world tells teenagers "stop playing with robots, get your bits out and fap to middle managers having midlife crises", "ok, I'll fap to robots" is a valid response.
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