I swear some anime fandoms are more toxic than the Steven Universe fandom. Yes I am going down this route and this will be a bit of a rant post about recent events in the Tokyo Ghoul fandom, but the message of this post goes to all shipper’s yaoi or not out there. If you do not like reading rant or opinion pieces then don’t read this post. We good? Let’s get started with Tokyo Ghouls latest chapter controversy and as I am talking about the latest chapter…
In case you have not heard it yet, a lot of Tokyo Ghoul fans are once again pissed and this time it has most definitely gone way too far. I’m not against dropping a manga series because you do not liking the direction the plot is going, heck I did it myself when I stopped reading and watching Naruto but to out right call a mangaka homophobic and to go kill themselves because the latest chapter ‘killed’ your favorite ship is down right disgusting in my opinion. Sui Ishida has never made any statements that would come across as homophobic in the past or present and at the end of the day the Tokyo Ghoul manga is his creation and as the creator will take the story in the direction they want to.
I know a lot of fans of the series were hoping that Kaneki would end up in a relationship with his best friend Hide, but i find myself needing to bring up the fact that a sexual relationship though wanted by many shippers in the fandom has never really been hinted at as much as what has happened in the recent chapter, heck Kaneki’s catalyst for becoming a ghoul at the start of the story all started with Rize who he was attracted to.
All this hate from the yaoi fans and or just shippers within the Tokyo Ghoul fandom honestly has me embarrassed as a yaoi fan. I try to share an opinion of loving what you love with this blog and with what I choose to review, if you love something that is great and if you hate something that is ok as well but please don’t hate because someone has a different opinion to you. As for the ship ‘dying’ with this chapter, it is only dead if the fandom let’s it die, just because your ship is not canon does not mean it is dead.
Yaoi Playground 
Some people just love to overreact. Yes it can be upsetting when a story doesn’t go they way you want, but ultimately, it is the author in control.
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Toxic shippers can really wreck a fandom. I’m not in the Tokyo Ghoul fandom, but I was in the Bleach fandom for years. So I feel I have some sense of what you’re talking about.
That being said, I think that, generally (and I say “generally” intentionally, becauseI don’t know the specifics of your fandom,) Western queer fans get the shaft a lot in all sorts of genres. There are starting to be more explicitly queer characters in books, movies and TV shows, but so often we have read ourselves into things that we start to get used to hanging all our queer fantasies and hopes on REALLY INTENSE FRIENDSHIPS. We also get queer baited a lot. That’s harsh sounding term, but taken at face value it’s when writers intentionally play up the sexual/romantic tension between two same sex characters with no intention of getting them together, but because those situations are seen to the outside (straight/cis readers) as FUNNY. “Ha, ha! People think they’re a couple! Oh, how awkward for them, teehee!”
You’ve seen this, I’m sure.
A good example, honestly, is “Free!” which I loved. None of those characters ever came out explicitly as queer. None of them ended up together. No relationships were canon. In fact, everyone went their separate ways at the end. Yet the whole time, there was a very INTENTIONAL UNDERCURRENT of _these guys are totally gay_ which the the “joke” that the audience was in on. And oh yes it was played for laughs, the whole crisis in the second season where Nagisa is forced to “come out” to his parents was 100& INTENTIONAL SUBTEXT. As a queer fan, I enjoyed that show, but the joke was on me. No one I wanted to see hook up, ever did in canon.
Outside of “Yuri on Ice!” there are almost no canon queer couples in things not written specifically for the queer community (yaoi, yuri, bara, etc.) I’m sure you’ll be able to think of exceptions, but if you compare those to how many shounen manga end with explicitly heterosexual pairings I think you can see why queer fans get riled up when their ships feel intentionally broken by the mangaka. (I feel like this is done to side characters often. Was there a reason to go “no homo” on Bertholdt and Reiner in the Attack on Titan manga? No, there really wasn’t, except, I’m sure that the mangaka got wind that they were a fan favorite gay couple.)
I’m a writer, so I absolutely agree that a writer has no obligation to write to fans. However, as a writer who sold professionally, I can also say that the reality is that the fans are under no obligation to BUY or otherwise consume what a writer writes, either. That’s the free market, kids.
I have also responded to fan criticism as a professional writer. In one of my books, some random reader on Amazon thought I was being anti-Catholic, so I made sure to be clear that wasn’t my intention, where I could, in the sequels. So, yes, your own vision, but sometimes what it is, is careless or unthinking writing that hurts people, not your artistic vision.
Again, I’m speaking generally here. I suspect your rant is specific not only to the Tokyo Ghoul fandom, but to specific people in it.
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an excellent point indeed and your right about aiming at a specific part of the fandom with my rant, it is aimed at the shippers and yaoi fans and not specifically the queer audience members. As for my thoughts on queer baiting, well perhaps that is a subject I should set aside for a future post. I mainly wrote this post to open up a conversation on recent events, I must admit I was tempted to write a similar piece after the backlash from some fans in the Samurai Jack fandom after the second to last and last episodes of the final season.
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Wow, I can’t believe the fandom is like this rn, I heard the end game and don’t understand it but considering m/m is hardly EVER the case, I understand it
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