/ot/ - Off-Topic

>>7914
They're always like that lel. I have genuinely never seen male fans shipping anything or caring the slightest about dynamics.

90% is just waifu wars and they lose interest in the ship the second it's confirmed because they "won". They might shitpost for a day maybe to embarrass the losers but that's it.
The other 10% are either cringe self-shipping greentexts ala ">tfw she will never step on you/>tfw she's your gf, she cooks for you, she wakes up with a kiss in the morning saying 'Hi anon' blah blah" OR posts about tradwifing a girl with 0 tradwife qualities, basically erasing her whole personality because otaku shipping doesn't care about that.

>>7918
Sometimes I wonder if men actually like women or the idea of one.

>>7920
I mean I have that with sexuality and romance as well as other things, but I enjoy the concept of it through fiction. I think they don't care about the concept of romantic relationships in the first place so all that's left is the vessel of some generic designed anime girl.

The problem is that many men (and especially those that engage with anime) categorize love as some entirely different thing from friendship instead of an extension of it. This is why "friendzoning" is the opposite of love to them and the most radical "no" they can imagine while many men are friends with at least one tomboy but don't consider them female and therefore not a potential romantic interest (some do, but many won't).

For many it's either one or the other. But if you take the friendship aspect away from the romance all that's left is an empty hull of a relationship that is solely based on sex and "belonging". You cannot create anything with this, it's like writing a fic about the relationship between you and a price you've won.

>>7921
idk, I think treating your lover as a friend makes friends sort of redundant? It still needs something to work but once it starts feeling like you're buddies, is this serious? Like, I see art posted on here where the boys are hanging out but I can't seem understand the appeal besides cute boys doing cute things. I want romance happen, I want sex to happen, but friendship should be kept separate.

>>7922
Makes no sense to me. I don't like fluff BL either, but sex happens on top of friendships IMO.
You do things together that you both have fun with, you share and pursue a goal together and you fight together and help or back each other up in wars and sometimes maybe punch each other. And because both depend on, respect and like each other they are attracted too and also have sex.

If you take the friendship out of a romance what's even left? Assuming it isn't hate sex between the MC and the villain. I can only think of boomer relationships where each part considers the other one alien because the woman only likes "woman" things and the man only likes "man" things but they still stick together because of a mix of sexual attraction and routine.

i didn’t want to bump the fic thread just for this so into random thoughts it goes. anyway, i’ve had this lingering plot bunny for a threesome fic for a while but i’m too overwhelmed with the prospect of writing it. and i don’t want to debate irl threesome politics or morality or anything like that, i’m just a filthy multishipper and i want to throw my three faves together at the same time. however, i’m stressed by the logistics. i don’t want to accidentally forget where one character is or lose track of the positioning of limbs or make it read totally awkwardly. what am i supposed to do?? make a fucking spreadsheet to keep up with this?? write it anyways in all its self-indulgent, incoherent glory and then bury it in my word docs forever?? i’ve been humiliated.

It's always lovely to see artists gaining new skills and learning to draw different types of men thanks to the guys they get obsessed with.
I myself experienced this. First with DBZ when I learned to draw muscles, then I learned to draw odd faces and noses when I got into Kaiji, then I learned to draw mecha thanks to Transformers and right now I love three old weirdos so I learned how to draw that too.
>>7924
Personally I would first focus on two of them, like the topping front guy and what he's doing with the sandwiched dude. Like how he kisses or holds him and how he starts rubbing his dick or something and sandwich-kun's reaction to that while I would reduce the third guy that fucks him from behind do a dildo first. So the middle dude reacts to first guy and to a penetration or whatever is going on and after that part is done I would define what else the other dude is doing and how he's touching him. After you have both it's easier to combine into a proper story I think. I should actually try it myself, I my current "OTP" is kind of a threesome as well.

>>7924
Might be a little weird or awkward, but I know some people use dolls or stuffed animals to act out their sex scene positioning so they don't lose track of where everyone's limbs are. It's silly when you do it, but at least you won't run into situations where a third arm spouts from nowhere.

Think this fits okay in here:
Went digging through ExH last night, one of the doujins I read (Teach Us, Mazo-sensei! for the curious) was driving me to madness. Considering how raunchy the art itself was maybe it was just keeping in line with the original JP but PLEASE I don't need to have the mental image of 'farting cunts' while watching dudes do the funny. I was going haywire, so damn goofy.

>>7876
>don't create a billion good characters and ideas that you'll eventually abandon or turn to shit because they're just seen as stepping stone for MC's awesome rise to fame.

Exactly, thank you for saying it. It’s even worst when the main characters are just some ordinary high school students with few minor tweaks and generic designs and then there’s this amazing cool side character with great design and interesting origin only for them to be thrown aside as either villain or a joke so the mc gets the spotlight yet again.

is negative positive angler any good?

>>7934
It's magnificent and healing. if you watch with fujogoggles, it feels like shounen-ai.

Casually joining discords since the late 10 has made me reevaluate not only my own skills but even those of many fic writers, official book/manga writers and artists I only considered mediocre before.

I guess sometimes the twitter algorithm DOES protect me from seeing the dumbest shit imaginable. I am not even talking about trannification, genderbending and god awful OCs uncreative fans are coming up with in their free time. Even if they stick to the canon characters the "ideas" most people have are just so goddam awful I wouldn't be able to come up with them even if I tried for parody reasons.

It's crazy how I spend weeks on story concepts for own series or fics and rewrite, overhaul over and over again and ponder over one scene for days because I don't know which version would be the best and then see pure unfiltered out-of-character garbage in discords and other people overreacting with OMG SOO GOOD and FEWZTDAGCX I WANT TO SEE THIS AS COMIC as if it was Shakespeare. The same people realise that nobody but their few discord yes-men even like their shit when they post it on twitter or something but they don't draw conclusions from this. At best they might non-mention ME for not approving of it even though I talk to them lol

As a fan of a series that involves both canon gay and canon het I try to make sense of the conundrum of the unromantic love that male fans keep bringing up.

They always bitch when they fear a new relationship might be gay because "this is an action series, not a fucking romance". So they apparently dislike the romantic aspect of it.
But they only call gay ships romantic, which is why they are fine with het ships since in their heads they apparently aren't and introducing a het ship won't (strangely) not make the series "romantic", unlike a gay ship.
To add to the confusion: if the series talks about "love" without defining the gender it must be het, because gay ships aren't love, despite being corny romance. Further it annoys them because romance (aka m/m) erases friendships. In their head. They get angry because two males were good friends and now they aren't because they made them boyfriends, meaning it cannot be friendship anymore?

So assuming they aren't retarded and know what they're saying it means that to them hetero love is:
- love, but not romantic
- incompatible with friendship and friendly behavior
Whereas gay love seems to be:
- romantic, but not love (and therefore not real)
- also incompatible with friendship and friendly behavior and denying it, but bearing a lot of similarities to it (if it was real)

This is weird and makes no sense unless you genuinely assume that they view love as nothing but a necessity for the sole purpose of sex and procreation neither tied to romance nor friendship. And romance a misguided, surreal understanding of friendship and something that isn't real but forced. Only this definition explains the reactions without contradiction.

I wish it was possible for twitter to mute retweets from particular users alone because there are some very few people that I follow for the art that manage to flood my timeline by retweeting every sort of bullshit.
My add-on allows me to see original tweets and retweets in a separate timeline already, but it still means that those few people are flooding a timeline of mine. In the end I always end up unfollowing them in the hope that one of the others I follow might retweet their arts.

I will never understand why some people retweet and reblog so fucking much. Why isn't "liking" enough?
I feel like this is another country related issue. Because the Japanese I follow all stick to fandom posts related and only casually post a single other theme like food or their pet which is fine in my book. But I don't care about shitty memes or the newest tranny fanarts for a series I don't even watch or something.

>>7942
If you still want to see retweets from some individuals, how about muting the problem people before opening the retweet timeline? You can unmute them before looking at the original tweets timeline the next day.

>>7942
>I wish it was possible for twitter to mute retweets from particular users alone
It's possible, you have to go to that person's profile and check the settings.

to the girl who posts detective conan yaoi: i finally see the vision. the series is full of bishies and they're all extremely charismatic too.
to be honest, my actual otp from detective conan is het (conan x ai) because i grew up with it before fujoing out. regardless, we're all doomed because of aoyama's terrible taste in ships

>xxxholic returns (again)
Oh for fuck's sake come on, I made jokes about that.
I am not saying it's a bad series by any means but I am waiting for a new CLAMP manga for like 15 years now and the only one they made got cancelled soon. I wish they would stop milking the same two series already.

>>7948
Glad you can see my vision lol. Imo the fujo potential is overflowing like milk and honey for this series amd there are a lot of interesting angles you can take especially when factoring in both Kudo and Conan. I wish more fanworks revolved around characters who know the secret and had to deal with that fact.

>>7949
>I wish they would stop milking the same two series already.
I agree. As much as Card Captor Sakura is my favorite series (nostalgia), I wish they drew new series with new characters. Especially one with a male cast. Last year I read Angelic Layer and I wish they made something like that but with mostly dudes. They need to return to their origins a bit, for a change of pace. I wonder if it's a money thing or a contract thing for them to stick to the same series.

>>7952
Yeah, the only old series I want them to return to are the few unfinished ones like X.
It's a shame because CLAMP was known for their creativity and the diversity of their series. Rayearth, Clover, RG Veda, Chobits, Legal Drug, RG Veda and others couldn't be more different from each other. And now they are glued to xxxholic and CCS and its spin-offs since the mid 00s with Kobato being the only exception of a new other series that they have actually concluded ever since.

>>7949
xxxholic is my personal favorite Clamp series so I'm pretty happy, my biggest fear is them dropping it and it winding up like Clover or X. I get the frustration though, I wish they had more ongoing series like in the 2000s again. They used to be such a powerhouse and it's a shame they just seemingly stopped making new works it 2010.

>>7954
Why do they keep working on it anyway, I heard they never ended xxxholix properly? This is the third time or something they're returning to it. I was sure they concluded it last time but recently I heard that wasn't the case either.
If that's true then I seriously hope they'll actually finish is this time to give the fans a proper ending. I might actually pick it up again if that happens.

>>7956
Yes the original run of xxxholic never properly concluded. xxxholic Rei picks up after the run but there are clearly events missing between the two of them which I'm (cross my fingers) hoping will be revealed in due time. We'll see if it properly conludes this time, if it doesn't it will be very Clamp-like and I'll just be greatful it's not Legal Drug which I'm not optimistic will ever come out of hiatus.

Oldfags, what was the height of /cm/ like and why did it drop off? I know it was always one of the slower boards but according to 4stats (if accurate), it used to be way more active in the mid to late 2000s. Was it because mods curbed discussion, rise of Tumblr, etc.?

>>7958
I have nothing to cite but my fuzzy memories, but it think all of the actual girls/fandom inclined anons hopped to Tumblr starting in the early 2010s. There was cross pollination with /co/mblr but for whatever reason (speed? autism?) the weeb boards never got what I would call their worthwhile discussion back, then gamergate+2016 happened and the site has been irradiated since.

The height of the board for me was back when you could rightfully assume you were talking to another girl. To me shipping and fanfic talk signified this and when it began to be met with hostility I stopped browsing.

>>7958
>>7959
I'd like to know why it's practically anti-discussion now.

Mouthwashing thread is on-off fighting but outside of /trash/ there wasn't really a place to discuss the game free of hetshit, so it thrives. Other threads like- say, older titles are just image dumps and I can just hop through JP twitter to find most if not all of what they post anyway.

I would love to talk about new games I've played in dedicated threads where I know players hang out, but my posts go unanswered for image dumping.

/u/ is somehow doing the job of /y/ and /cm/ by itself with constant discussion, porn, and no one derailing to slap fight over smaller tops

>>7959
I hopped off the site in 2015-2016ish but my memories are similar as well. /co/ was always more discussion-based towards shipping than /cm/ which has always slanted imagedumps. I feel like most people jumped ship in the mid-2010s due to the site in general gaining more hostile users.

>>7960
I'm so jealous of /u/. Who woulda thunk the yuri board with 99% maleposters would have more discussion then the yaoi one.

>>7958
Regular folder sharing threads to bypass /r/, Japanese fanart for western properties was fairly desirable because they were harder to track down pre-Pixiv and western fanart could be reported (whether it got deleted depended on the mod and how pretty it was). Board exclusive tripfags, a few people actually liked because they posted translations or shared rare collections. Some threads had their own IRC groups for fandoms and would use thread names like /vg/ does, and there was enough in thread chatter that people would say "this isn't your livejournal" to each other when they thought it was too off topic. There were known weirdos who would make fetish threads people hated and shitposted, and sometimes there'd be arguments about what belonged on /y/ or not. Manga recommendation threads popped up now and then discussing BL, but they didn't always last until bump limit. When Hetalia started picking up there was a problem with people making new threads for a country without checking the index pages, most users didn't use a third party catalog so they couldn't see an overview of threads quickly, and things moved to page 3-6 within a couple days so you could miss a thread if you didn't bother checking. The anti-Hetalia posters started demanding that Hetaliafags stick to one or two threads because the entire board was being taken up. Then two users in the useless brother trio thread got in a fight over the history of Spain or something? I've honestly forgotten what exactly but it involved real ships instead of the kind they were supposed to be posting, and a mod had to intervene. They then announced that because people kept getting into autistic /his/ fights anyone conversing would be banned on sight, and people actually did get banned for talking back. So everyone shut up and started trying to talk on /a/ instead. That's how I remember it.

The move to /a/ wasn't too hard because Code Geass threads already had homolust posting and sharing fanfiction. The sense of humor across 4chan was pretty similar and everyone used multiple boards back then so people didn't stick out any moving between boards - they were already /a/ users at the same time as /cm/.

>>7963
Oh yeah one of the board culture things that I swear is completely lost but is still ingrained in me is "polite sage for female". /cm/ had a hard rule that images had to contain only males, but sometimes you had a primarily fujo series group fanart and wanted to share it, so you would sage and explain why since sage was visible. My brain still says it sometimes, but technically saying "polite sage" is against global 4chan rules, because you're declaring a sage. The rule exists because saging used to be some big fuck you gesture before we had live archives.

>>7962
This is an oldish post but I remembered it instantly when I read yours.

>>7962
Sometimes in homothreads I'll see the occasional anon bitching about how 'you have your own board gtfo' when that only applies to the yuri posters and it's very annoying. Explaining that to every driveby poster would be a waste, of course.

>>7965
>not a single sentence is an exaggeration
The absolute state of things.

>>7962
It helps that they're not flooded with twitter/tumblr immigrants.

>>7960
>are just image dumps and I can just hop through JP twitter to find most if not all of what they post anyway
This even happens to most newer series and I hate it for that very reason. I can browse myself, we don't have to spend days rummaging through obscure angelfire fan shrines anymore, now fanart is all uploaded on the same place so dumping without talking is useless.
And saying "but it's a image dumping board reee" doesn't change anything because I am not saying that we should talk without posting images, I say we should talk while posting images.

The problem is that most users now are male and the dumps are the most obvious giveaway because only women want to talk about characters and relationships. I know fandoms with adult male characters, feminine shota and traps and only the fans of the adult dudes actually post shipping fanart and discuss. It's so fucking obvious that the trap and shota fans are men, holy shit. They never talk and they only post single boy art with ahoge or half-naked with provocative pose because they only care about cooming.

Sorry for samefagging, >>7972 I obviously meant ahegao kek
Also >>7965 might be correct I forgot about this. I saved this post as well because it's pretty on point. The lack of discussion on /cm/ as well as the lack of proper sentences on /a/ might very well be an issue coming from people that don't bother to learn English and only come to post a short phrase they memorized or textless pics.
I even see the textless art dumps happen on /a/ which makes me particularly mad because the series I like won't get more than one thread per week so I want that one to last instead of being autosaged and reaching the pic limit because some asshole keeps posting the same 50 images every time.

>>7972
>now fanart is all uploaded on the same place
Not anymore, though. Now it's split between Twitter, poipiku, bluesky, pixiv, and those other new sites/instances/whatever. And apparently some people want to go back to obscure fansites. So if anything, things are going back to how they used to be.

>>7972
Funny thing. Elusive Samurai's thread actually has discussion but has flown so far under Western radar it doesn't attract your typical shota buldge addict. I might actually start to learn to read Japanese if only to engage with the historic anime fanclubs that will probably still thrive by the time I get to kanji.

>>7974
Not really the case for the stuff I like. There are like three artists that post on bluesky only now everybody else remained on twitter and pixiv is still the dead log dump place it already was 10 years ago. I only use pixiv for Japanese fics. Poipiku is always linked on twitter so I won't miss the fanart and just need an extra click to save it.

>>7949
>>7952
>>7954
I don't trust Clamp after that fucking awful ending, then made Rei which was unfinished, and also had that OVA where Doumeki married the loli character in order to have descendants to watch over Watanuki. Fuck those bitches and their horrible writing. Fooled me fucking once

>>7977
Wait what, they married off Doumeki?
I never finished the first series but from what I have seen it seemed like Doumeki and Watanuki were the classic CLAMP-typical homo pandering friends. Wasn't the loli like 8 at the beginning of the series while Doumeki was an adult?
I wonder why their newer works feel so different from their classics. At least to me. Well I cannot talk about CSS and its newer sequel since I didn't finish any of them but still.

>>7978
Yeah, he married Kohane, the spirit medium loli character that Watanuki befriended. Doumeki was 17 I believe since him and Watanuki were in high school together. Regardless that's abhorrent. I was so disgusted when I saw the ova movie. I can't believe Clamp would resort to such revolting misery porn like that

>>7975
The disinterest the west is displaying for NGWK/EluSam surprised me a bit. I was sure it would blow up, considering that it contains stuff you usually see resonating, be it some well directed, well-animated episodes, the ton of diverse dudes ranging from pretty shota to old gap moe men and menhera, action, fantasy elements, even fujo pandering and comedy.
My estimations either got worse during the last decade or the behavior of western fans has changed. It's not just NGWK, albeit it's a good example. I expected Bravern to take off too as it's basically the gay (and funnier) counterpiece to the yuri Gundam, but besides the few very dedicated anon fans it has it's pretty much ignored as well.

That said you are right, I casually visit the /cm/ threads and it was nice seeing some discussion, even if it's not much.
>I might actually start to learn to read Japanese if only to engage with the historic anime fanclubs
Currently trying to get better too because I post stuff for this series on twatter rn kek. Besides a few exceptions every fan is Japanese so I feel odd being the one posting in English like a pleb. I wish my language skills were good enough to draw a Japanese comic or join the group meetings fans are having, but for now I can at best type a short tweet in Japanese.

A Japanese brand of a fandom I am in is making merch for a ship that is not the "main" ship, and the latter fans are raiding the japanese pages for it lmao
It's hilarious that they think their western tactis will work on Japanese people, it's almost like companies don't decide based on their shipping preferences lol they decide based on the market and what sells the most.
All of this reminds me how Japanese fujos were consistently prioritized because they were the only ones financially supporting their favorite IPs.

>>7981
Wait so the raiders are westerners raiding Japanese merch selling websites because it makes merch of the most popular ship which they (the westerners) somehow don't consider the main ship?
I mean it IS rare that you get merch of side characters. I suffer from this. My series gets one pop up store after the other but they refuse to make merch of anybody but the five idiots that showed up first in the anime and most of the fans don't even care about them. They just happen to sell well enough so they make more, but they wouldn't even try to give other characters some merch to test whether they sell as well or maybe even better.

So making merch for ships that aren't the main one is pretty based IMO. Is the main one gay too? Anyway raiding is very retarded. The best you can do is to buy merch to show them that the series sells then they might actually make merch for the ship they like as well.

>>7982
it's not gay but and it's not even popular aside from one pretty talented artist only drawing fanart for it years ago, but the girl involved in is massively popular despite being side girl so main girl shippers are seething lol.
Strangely enough in a fujo magazine i got her poster and cherry magic poster too so I guess double win ahah

>>7980
>The disinterest the west is displaying for NGWK/EluSam surprised me a bit.
Wouldn't surprise me if episode 1 filtered people with that blushing Tokiyuki scene. I remember an instance where I recommended the anime and someone replied "Is this that show that pedos like?"

Oh hey we're at bumplimit. New thread time I guess.