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In fact it is great fun to try to pry apart the musical and lyrical inspirations and underpinnings of all the great songs, or better yet to stumble upon what is obviously an immediate genetic predecessor of an “original” song that you love.

None of this takes into account that songs can also get their genetic material from movies, books, poems, even paintings.

Perhaps what I do should be called “song-composting,” “song-mulching,” “song-smoothie-ing,” something like that. Or you could just call it “ripping off” and take me to court. I’d probably lose.

And therein lies the rub. The image of girls getting out of hand is hard for some to swallow.

Experts predict that Japan’s population will shrink to 108 million by 2030, and critics of the otaku phenomenon blame men and women who can now live meaningful lives without human companionship. One analyst says that the rampant creativity of otaku is rivaled only by their stunted emotional growth. Journalist Yumiko Sugiura, who literally wrote the book on fujoshi (2006’s The Fujoshi-izing World: The Female Otaku of East Ikebukuro), says women who indulge fantasies of queer love rather than finding boyfriends face an even greater backlash than their male counterparts. She believes that, via yaoi, fujoshi demonstrate dissatisfaction with traditional Japanese expectations of what a woman’s life should be.

i said in my comment to cimorene that it kind of boggles my mind to think that in fifty or a hundred years we could actually have a genre movie where the studly captain and his stalwart first officer would be each other's love interests-- that some day we could have movies about two guys or two girls falling in love while also being chased by zombies or flying through space or having duels with magic. that maybe some day we'll have books, movies, tv shows and comics where "omfg, i'm gay!" isn't the issue that takes over the entire story.

which brings me to the point, what i love about trek fandom. every fic i've read so far has played right into this amazing assumption, which i haven't seen discussed anywhere but which seems to be one of those understated understood fandom constructs-- that in two hundred years there won't be much to fuss about for gay relationships or same-sex attraction.