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This chapter discusses the emergence of fujoshi culture in Japan as a controversial and contested figure in popular culture, arguing that the fujoshi is not necessarily in control of her own image, and a variety of discourses have emerged in the media seeking to explain these “rotten” women. It notes that fujoshi are represented in the media as a kind of otaku, but until the emergence of the fujoshi in popular discourse, female otaku were only ever “a derivative and misty presence.” In recent years, however, the fujoshi, characterized by her interest in male homoerotic has, through online and print media coverage, been given a solid and accessible social presence without precedent. The chapter focuses analysis on three popular multimedia BL narratives: Fantasizing Girl, Otaku-Style (Mōsō shōjo otaku-kei), My Neighbor Yaoi-chan (Tonari no 801-chan), and Fujoshi Girlfriend (Fujoshi kanojo). All three of them involve fujoshi as the protagonist.

The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the localization of Fujoshi culture in Taiwan by situating it within the context of Japanophilia. By examining the Japanophilia phenomenon and interviewing twelve Taiwanese Fujoshi, the author argues that the role Japaneseness plays in Taiwanese Fujoshi’s BL fantasies, which facilitates their desire for confluent intimacy, is heavily related to the historical, political, and social context in which both the familiarity and foreignness of Japaneseness have been gradually shaped. It shows how gender, sexuality, and national and cultural practices intersect with each other, resulting in the creation of fantasies and pleasures, in the sense that the construction of Taiwanese Fujoshi BL fantasies contains a range of women’s attitudes toward male homoerotism and their desire for Japaneseness. It not only explores how Fujoshi cultures are practiced and localized under different social contexts, but also suggests a situating of Taiwan as an exemplary mediator within the East Asian cultural sphere by indicating how the complicated historical, political, and cultural relation with Japan has contributed to shape a kind of hybrid cultural practice.

This chapter continues the discussion of Boys Love (BL) studies by interrogating BL narratives as feminist-utopian pornographic fantasies, with an analysis of the works of Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Michael Foucault. It looks at feminist theories of how fantasy works in women's pornography in order to challenge the common perception that pornographic imagery is necessarily degrading or demeaning. The study relates to the false perception that participating writers and readers of BL are fujoshi, the “rotten girls,” who are sexually deprived in real life. To highlight this reading, it also contrasts the essentially narcissistic autoeroticism of Modernist writer Mishima Yukio's obsession with three-dimensional male bodies with female BL artists/readers' fascination with the flat, two-dimensional bodies of fantasized male BL characters. The absence of female characters in the BL text entails the negation of their own female bodies, and thus enables an erotic autonomy that is not tied to any specific viewpoint or sexual identity.

This chapter explores how female fans of Boys Love (BL) manga in Japan talk to one another about relationships between fictional male characters, which they find not only pleasurable, but also productive of new ways of interacting with the world of everyday reality. It offers a fascinating glimpse into the fujoshi world by presenting information gathered from BL consumers. The bulk of their discussion is devoted to moe-banashi or “moe” talk), where they converse affective relationships between not only fictional male characters, but also animate and inanimate objects. A term literally meaning “to bud,” moe refers to the erotically charged interest that manga and animation fans feel for fictional characters. The chapter notes how the informants are constantly on the lookout for moe moments inspired by real and fictional people and events, and the shared nature of these moments means they are transforming the relations they see in the world around them.