Broken by the reality: the yumejoshi experience
I’ve been a yumejoshi my whole life. Since I was a child, I used to watch anime and cartoons but I couldn’t stop thinking how much fun would be if I can get along with my favorite characters. I passed hours creating my own and imagining a lot of possibilities for a single story, just for fun. I thought when I grew up I would not like to do it anymore but the truth is that I can’t stop imagining other realities to keep me alive, like Sara Crewe from A Little Princess.
It was until two years ago when I discovered the word “yumejoshi” as a term to indicate a certain group of female inside the Japanese popular media. The group isn’t recent inside Japan but for the foreign fans is a whole new universe to discover. I’ve written this article as a complement to this other: link which explains and labels the behaviors of this “new” kind of fans. But the explanation comes only from an outsider point of view without showing why we yumejoshi prefer this option instead of being a mere viewer. Also, is centered in the romantic part of being yumejo when there’s also something deeper. We aren’t just “dream girls” but also “broken” by our reality. So I want to explain the yumejoshi experience by myself.
What is a yumejoshi?
In general, yumejoshi (dreamer girl) is a female fan who likes to ship themselves with a fictional character. It could be from manga/anime/videogames, not necessary from Japanese media. It could be any character, even a female character if you want. Most of us are trully in love with these, as a Platonic love of course. We are in love with the idea of the perfect man/woman. But why being delusional? Simple: we are hurted by the reality in which we live and use this characters to keep going, (as Ayumi, a Japanese okatu girl mentions here: link) we heal and become a better person to match this perfect idea. Also, it feels better to love something instead of remain empty and hurted.
Faceless
Apart from the Platonic love there is the creative-funny part of yumejoshi. Most people think that a story can’t be a good without developed, super interesting characters. That’s false. A narrative consist in plot, characters, yes, but also dialogues, time and space. You can have pretty normal characters but if you can develop the other elements we still can have amazing stories, like Puella Magi Madoka Magica which one of its wonders lies not in the characters but in the changes of the narrative time and space. That’s why otome games and dream novels are so nice for yumejo, give the chance to play with the time and space elements to create lots of posibilities of the same “boring” reality and characters. Otome games are about the heroines too, of course, but that’s only one of the posibilities. We enjoy being the protagonist too. The funny part is not just watch but brake the canon reality of the story. It’s all a mental process, we enjoy filling the non said.
Heroines
I can’t believe this but I’ve discovered most people think yumejoshi hate all otome heroines by default. That’s false too. There’s a lot of yumejo who likes heroines and protect them from who really hate them. We like to brake the canon of stories but that doesn’t mean we disrespect all female characters. Without them we can do nothing, because until someone developes some technology that can change us into a 2D form and transports us into the story reality (lol) we need still need them to interact and know better the beloved character. Heroines are allies that help to reach the Platonic love. Of course there are always bad fans who really hate heroines or even avoid other fans with the same favorite character (the term used inside japanese fandoms is doutankyouhi “same fans aren’t welcome”) but I don’t take them into consideration, for me they aren’t yumejo, why? As I said before, being yumejoshi is about loving an ideal and becoming better, hate can’t be part of the formula.
Recently there are more developed heroines like Cardia from Code:Realize. It’s true, we can’t self-insert heroines like her but for a yumejo that’s no problem. Simply, we create another version of the story with us as a protagonist OR another protagonist if we don’t want to take away Cardia. That’s what I do with Nana from Prince of Stride. I adore her story and treasure her relationships with all the Honan boys but that doesn’t stop me to create my story towards my Platonic love Heath, without erasing Nana. I just imagine her in another role like a friend, it’s not like I want Heath all for myself but I want Nana as a friend too. This gives two posibilities of the same story, two parallel timelines of the same world. As I’ve said, is all a mental process. We doesn’t need to have it canon written to feel it real, all it’s a game and is fun. There’s no need to hate too.
Fan wars
This part will be very, very personal but overall, it’s true: most yumejo don’t like BL/yaoi content. There are female fans that can be both fujoshi and yumejoshi and that’s fine, but not all yumejoshi are fujoshi link. Are we homophobic? No, but like I’ve said, we are broken. In my opinion, there are two main reasons that explain why yumejo doesn’t like BL: one it’s about the circumstances inside fandoms and differences among world regions and the other is about personal experiences.
About fandoms, japanese fujoshi and yumejoshi tend to rivalize a lot but being objective it’s stupid because at the end they have all the media at first hand and there is content for both species. But, where I live, in Latin America contents aren’t equal. A great part of the female “otaku” consider themselves as fujoshi. The biggest event in Mexico for female fans is completely about yaoi, (with some yuri), REALLY. Otome games and dream novels aren’t easy to get, most otome girls and yumejo resign with the anime adaptations or shoujo manga. So when we finally get some quality otome/dream content… fujoshi arrive to make ships with the male characters and ignore the heroine. I know asking them to stop it’s arrogant but as a yumejo in a region with almost zero otome/dream content it turns very frustrating. What some yumejo don’t like is not BL itself but the “yaoization” of otome/dream male characters. From here parts the second reason: personal experiences.
Pain
For some yumejo remaining passive in front of any kind of ship hurts very much. We need to feel love towards us. In my case, I am one of that yumejoshi that really doesn’t like BL because I can’t identify myself with worlds where woman are almost inexistent. Because I was betrayed by the man I loved the most. I still feel it was my fault, so I can’t get along with men. I even feel real men hate us just because we are women. Having said that, BL doesn’t help me, I know it helps other fans but not me because my own life experiences. Instead, otome/dream helps because these contents shows me, in a real world full of misogyny, that a man can be nice and gentle with a girl for what she is, at least for once. A girl can trust a man instead of fear him. Being yumejo helps me to believe healthy relationships between women and men are possible. I’m not talking about sex, I’m talking about love, frienship, companionship. So, if any yumejo reacts like a crazy towards any “violation” of otome/dream is because they are really feeling pain from very deep, any of them have their reasons. For me is like repeating “no, men can’t love women, women don’t deserve love, you don’t deserve love”. I know that isn’t the intention of fujoshi or other fans, we can ignore that, most japanese do it with lots of rules among their fandoms. But sometimes the pain feeling even exceeds the dream.
Sanctuary
Fortunately, being yumejoshi has helped me, little by little. I’ve written this whole thing to explain yumejoshi from inside, what it really means for us. We are exactly like other female fans, we just want to enjoy popular media in our own weird way. It help us like a sanctuary from all the shit of real world. Even “yumedanshi” the male counterpart of yumejo have problems too, I met some of them and believe me…they can feel exactly what I described but towards women, then “waifus” help them to get better relationships with women. The main point to remember if you want to become a yumejoshi is, never, NEVER, forget the limits between fantasy and reality. For good or bad we still belong to this world.The bad fans exists because they crossed the limit (I know some rabid self-proclaimed yumejo that can be cruel as hell) but there always be good fans too wanting to share the best like in all fandoms.
P.S: I put this last article here, is in Spanish but was written for someone that in my opinion can be considered a yumedanshi, describes very well the Platonic love towards fictional characters and how it can’t be harmful if we don’t lost the connection with reality: link
Doubts, questions are very welcome!
Hello! Thanks for all your replies, I'm so happy this article reached more yumejo! 😍
I have some announces: The article will remain here, but I'm not active on Tumblr so you can contact me about it by Twitter: @tomoyohime111
Also I decided to start a yumejo community, you can found us on fb:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/590372658398501
The group is still small but we are doing our best! 😁
Thanks for all the support! 💖
