Pidgin Guide

Otome = Maiden, a game genre geared towards girls with the goal of furthering a relationship with one or more male characters, often shortened to GxB (Girl x Boy). Contrast Bishoujo (Beautiful Girl) which is a male player character furthering a relationship with one or more female characters (BxG). The reason the otome game genre is not referred to as Bishounen is because of the BL game genre (Boy's Love), which also involves furthering a relationship with one or more male characters, except the player character is a guy (BxB). GL (Girl's Love) also exists, but it's very uncommon, and GxG romantic options are mostly female bonus love interests in otome games.

Speaking of same-sex romance in fiction, while yuri and GL can be used more or less interchangeably, yaoi and BL have different connotations. Like Hanacker said, "yaoi" comes from "yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi," or "no climax, no resolution, no meaning." It's used to refer to more explicit works. BL, on the other hand, focuses more on the romance or emotional aspect. Not to say that a work can't be yaoi and BL at the same time, though.

By the way, you've probably figured out by now that the terms "yuri" and "yaoi" aren't exact counterparts even though they sound vaguely similar. The male version of the yuri (lily) genre would be bara (rose). Yaoi/BL is usually drawn by females, while bara is usually drawn by actual men. As such, bara guys tend to look much less like flat-chested girls and more like regular men or macho men. Bara is also normally, but not always, explicit.

On common character types, the tsundere is a character who is at first rude and dismissive towards the other person, but gradually warms up. Compare it to the kuudere, who is less outright dismissive and more cool and detached. A dandere is also a quiet person who gradually warms up, but it's not to be confused with the kuudere. If a kuudere was a big block of ice so cold that you have to stop every once in a while to warm your hands, then a dandere would be a clean pile of snow that you have to be careful not to ruin. A Yamato Nadeshiko is more or less an ideal Japanese woman-- beautiful, sensitive, loyal, and courageous. Yamato Nadeshikos aren't terribly common anymore. The tsundere character type actually came into being when authors wanted to subvert the Yamato Nadeshiko archetype, if I recall correctly. Just a little trivia.

The childhood friend, sometimes called an osananajimi even though that's a really long and confusing word to those unfamiliar with Japanese, is, of course, a friend from childhood. Usually they're the sweet and patient type, it's not uncommon for them to be tsundere, though they are 99% guaranteed to secretly be in love with the main character. They might also be the princely idol type, a.k.a. that guy at school who has a gigantic fan club for doing nothing but looking pretty.

As for supporting characters: In otome games, there aren't normally many female characters besides the protagonist. There can be a female best friend who gives you helpful (?) advice every once in a while. There can be an insufferable bitch who tries to steal your man in the dirtiest ways possible. Occasionally, these two can be the same person. Occasionally, these two can be four people. Yes.

By the way, even though "otome" means "maiden" or "maidenly" like pure and chaste or whatever, the otome genre also includes R18+ games and whatnot. Otome referring to people, however, are still all chaste and maidenly. More perverted girls can be referred to as fujoshi. Just in case you ever need to know~

Edit: ... Oh peanut butter did I seriously just spend fifteen minutes writing an explanation of weeaboo terminology that's longer than my economics homework whoopwhoop good job Donmai

Aeon221 Oh man, I was going to save a post for placeholding (because it's just my shit luck but I seem to be the go to idjit when it comes to explaining concepts and easing someone that's newly arrived into the madhouse; I've honestly made more posts that I can count on the subject of "Your Guide to X" with recommendations, injokes, BNFs and etc depending on what fandom I was dabbling in) but I am just newly returned to Broken Forum after a two month absence so not sure when I'll possibly get to this.

/kind of doesn't help that I have my own brand of uh, slapdash shorthand which shouldn't at all be taken for the known and more widely accepted variants that people indulge in

Er, run that by me again? Not quite sure I understand this bit. What have I done wrong?

*Aside note but keyboard smashing is also known as typerventilating.

Oi, Donmai. Might want to break up that wall o' text into a few more paragraphs. My eyes began to glaze over by the time I hit "yuri".

More like your mind started wandering am i rite

>.>

I ain't admittin' nothin'

I see ^^, ^-^, ^_^, etc. as someone smiling so widely that their eyes close. Kind of like XD, where someone is laughing really hard, or smiling with an open mouth.

Another way to say "One True Pairing" is saying "I ship X and Y". I'm guessing that it's some sort of short form for "relationship" that somehow became a verb.

People play around with it, such as "The ship is sinking!": Things happen that make the prospect of a particular pairing unlikely.
"I'm going down with this ship!": Even though the relationship is unlikely or being flamed, the person isn't giving up on it.
Ships and shipping don't have to be romantic, although that is the popular definition. You could "ship" Holmes and Watson as really good friends.

"Headcanon" are scenarios that people make up to replace the actual canon of some sort of media, or are things that a person in the audience includes in some sort of media that's never confirmed or denied because it's so innocuous. These usually have evidence from the text, but they might not.
You could headcanon your own ending into something, or you could headcanon that the main character likes tapioca due to such-and-such reason.

What else.... Oh. "Kira kira" means sparkle. So, someone saying "kira kira kyaaaa~" would be squeeing with sparkles, I guess.
I'm not even sure what a "squee" is. Is it like a squeal? It seems to have gone out of style, or at least I haven't seen it in a while.

Nothing wrong!

You've just pretty much defined that particular genre of LP commentary and other typerventilating commentators only suffer by the comparison. There is only one Soli; all others need their own schtick lest they be redundant.

A squee is represented in this gif


Often accompanied by high-pitched squealing that sounds suspiciously like 'squee', and may involve the flailing of arms.

"Squealing with glee", I'd imagine.

Ah, I see. I guess it's usage has been replaced with gifs.

Where does the godawful stuttering come in

See prior comments on camp and ironically exaggerated emotion! It's basically a parodic reference to manga/VNs in which authors lazily show that a character is sad or (more commonly) bashful by making them stutter.

Sample usage:

"B-but Adree! W-we thought you liii~ked us! (;-;)"

(the emoticon represents a torrent of tears)

OH FERDIELANCE, LET ME LOVE YOU <3 /you say the nicest things, un

Right so I'll make a note to throw together a post sometime after I get done catching up on things. I actually do kind of like making those, if it hadn't come across clear in that first bit. ^^;; (this emote in the way that I'm using it is kind of a sheepish expression; the repeating semicolons are 'sweatdrops' which are used when the person's feeling somewhat guilty or caught out)

Headcanon can also be considered as a theory or opinion that is widely accepted by the members of the community due to it's overwhelming sense of logic in the way that it fits the character's motivations. A person might fill out a sort of backstory for the gaps that the source material doesn't cover and as it becomes popular with many people they'll regard it almost as a fact or 'canon'

Very widely accepted headcanon may also be referred to as "fanon".

What about fluff fic? /brick'd

Naw but the fact that you had to make a distinction. Just what have I been missing out on~
/totes poking fun

Does it count as slashfic if we turn Elyscape into a girl?
... I'm sorry please don't hurt me now excuse me while I commit seppuku again yaaaay

Oh, by the way, seppuku/hara-kiri is Japanese ritual suicide to atone for deep shame and dishonor! You basically disembowel yourself while keeping a straight face, though you can also get a buddy to lop your head off with a sword while you disembowel yourself if you're worried you might lose your cool! And knowing is half the battle!

Not yet, but soon.

Dear Penthouse Forum:

I never thought this would happen to Lum...

Can someone please explain the appeal of slash? The common response seems to be to compare it to lesbian porn, but the appeal doesn't actually seem to be sexual in nature, and people seem compelled to ship 100% of the male characters with 100% of the male characters 100% of the time, no matter what. Even (sometimes especially) if they fucking hate each other.

Is shipping pulling for a relationship, or writing fanfiction about a relationship, or both?

Is there a difference between hara-kiri and seppuku? I have wondered this for literally years but never cared quite enough to look it up (just like now).

I usually don't get the appeal of slash so I'll just leave that to someone else.

Shipping is pulling for a relationship. You can write fanfiction about a pairing you ship.

That's just how any shipping works in fandom, whether it's slash or het (short for heterosexual relationships). Fandom is crazy, is the reason.

Shipping is supporting/liking a relationship. Fic writing is just one way to do that.

Given the amount of fanart featuring such pairings naked and in all sort of sexual interactions it does seem to be sexual in nature, at least to part of people who participate in it. Pairing characters who hate each other is associated with that sexual appeal, because hate sex.

Hara-kiri and seppuku are synonyms, I believe! Hara-kiri is just more widely used outside of Japan. Dunno why. Maybe because it sounds cooler.

As for the appeal of slash, shippers will ship anything. It's not so much that they genuinely hope that the author will derail the entire plot to put those two together so much as the two characters seem to have an interesting dynamic that under different circumstances can be poked and prodded and molded into *:･ﾟ✧love✧･ﾟ:*. I, for example, am really, really interested in the relationship between Yellow and Lance in Pokemon Special, what with them both [lalala spoilers] and in that if things turned out differently then maybe [spoiileeeers] and they're both pretty interesting people in their own rights (at least, during the Yellow arc they were). That's why I write really shitty fanfics hypothetical scenarios of questionable quality about them even though they have an age difference of ten years and kind of sort of tried to kill each other. ... That's my excuse, at least~ I kind of suck, so it's not like I can speak for others accurately~ There's also the "two is better than one!" mentality like you said! Yes!

*shrug* I'm not a fan of slash, so I can't really say. I've heard some people give you the reason that men give for liking lesbians, i.e. more guys to state at. I'm not wild about fetishizing gay relationships like that, though.

I found this discussed here.

Ah hell I really need to stop looking into this thread at the slightest alerts.

Right so let me just be up front about this. My intention in this thread is more along the lines to edumucate, as opposed to influence. I'd hope that whatever information I post is made in a decently unbiased stance so that you yourself can form your own opinions on what you like or will take from this. I'm just making this captain obvious statement clear because it can otherwise be worrying.

So that being said, on the appeal of shipping or in a better turn of phrase, Soli's Personal Shipping Manifesto:
Now I might be something of an odd ducky but I honestly don't ship for the sexual chemistry. I don't care if the smutty bits are as frenzied or exciting as fighting a jaguar while falling off a cliff, if your pairing is not at all concerned with the relationship dynamics then it's going to leave me politely disinterested. See, I'm a story kind of person and what I'm into, is how real the characters are to each other. I'm not looking for happiness and fairy tales, really. I don't care about endings all that much. I'm a bit greedy, I'll dig into the flesh and soul of two people and torture them. I'll set them against each other to experiment and see how the cracks hold up. I want passion and rage and reaction. I want the journey, the learning of each others quirks and differences. I want to be convinced, seduced and betrayed by the depth and weight of their feelings for each other.

And you can see now, how fitting my avatar is in the wake of all this. XD

It's basically the same word, except the kanji are inverted. The first is the Japanese reading, and the other is the Chinese-derived one (within Japanese, I mean, not in actual Chinese), which is usually preferred when, like in this case, a word is composed of 2 or more kanji.

That would be true to expectation. Tsundere characters like Adree-senpai always have the saddest backstories.

Background music:

I've said it before and I'll say it again; I love you, Ferdie.

I have no idea who your avatar is, but I am now convinced that you are the fandom equivalent of Jigsaw.

No one will ever believe you, mufufufu~ <3

Read through all of this and I realize that I knew all of this terminology by middle school. Everything seems to be reminding me of middle school recently.

OH, so this was actually brought up by someone and I feel like I should explain it here.

so some of you may have noticed
that
sometimes
i'll type like this
usually when i'm reacting to a thing

Usually, this is because, were I to say this out loud, I'd be pausing or halting wherever a new line starts.
Also important to note that it started with lower-case. Most of the time, if it's starting with lower-case, my "voice" is flat. Normally used when making a joke or poking fun at something/someone. I felt like I should bring this up because someone (who shall remaaaain unnaaaamed) said that they were bothered when I typed that way.
I-it was for a reason. And this is the reason.
can i go now.

EDIT: I figured I would post this just so grammar people don't freak out thinking the board is full of incompetent people. If there's no punctuation, no capitalization, etc., chances are it's not a serious post.
CHANCES ARE; some people simply don't speak English as their first language and don't know all of the grammar rules and they can't be faulted for that. C:

I'd always assumed that people online typing in all lowercase was the opposite of CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL. Which is to say, an affectation of projected shyness - which always seemed contradictory. "I'm going to present myself as being quiet and unobtrusive by... doing something different to call attention to myself?"

As for the line breaks, I just assumed you were a liberal arts major (well, that and the working in food service).

Well yeah, that too. It depends on the situation, I guess.
You understand me better than I understand myself.

oh i hadn't seen it that way before. interesting. for me, typing in all lowercase is either:

a) laziness
b) the effect of imbibing alcohol etc
c) combination of the two

MulMizu a'yup same here although sometimes i like to /format/ things so they look pretty

I don't know if I'd say I was a real fan of slash, given the extent of my knowledge is mostly me thinking "I bet there are REAMS of slashfic out there for <pair of dudes>" and/or thinking "Those dudes should TOTALLY HOOK UP because C'MON." Most of the appeal to me is the just the boring ol' appeal of any ol' romantic 'ship. If I think two dudes would be good together, GET TOGETHER, DUDES. Yeah, I like that there's more man on tap that way, but it's not the focus for me. I also don't especially like shipping people who clearly hate each other ... except for Alistair and Morrigan from DA:O. I ... I don't know why.

Because they're adorable. That's why.

They totally are! <3

For me, typing in lowercase can indicate a whisper, a careless aside, or that I'm making some kind of mock poetry. Random line breaks are something I'll use in an instant messenger, but I don't really use them when posting in forums, even if I want to convey a sense of breathlessness. I usually interpret them as implying that one is overwhelmed with the feels.