Selective Squick

The major danger of being a Periphery Demographic is the jarring effect when the story pulls a trope or situation that severely annoys or creeps you out, either knocking you out of the lull or simply reminding you that the major target Demographics probably doesn't include you. Meanwhile, this does not seem to bother the other demographic in the least, much to your confusion.

Sometimes it's just that the other fan segment is too old or too young to pick up on specific themes, or are simply so used to such devices that it doesn't bother these 'veterans'. Maybe the wish-fulfillment aspect of the series is just very specific and you're overthinking it to creepier conclusions.

Whatever the reason, be careful if you're new to the genre, because whining about it on the Internet can earn you a sharp dismissal for complaining about a show that's not really for you. This is not to say being a side-fandom is bad, just that it often requires you to take things with a slightly bigger grain of salt.

Occasionally, if a genre becomes popular enough with the side fandom, a premise more or less exclusive to the original one is made just for them, naturally remedying any Selective Squicks... for them, anyway.


 * Male Frontal Nudity, or any form of male nudity really, is the definitve example of this. On this very wiki, count just how many times this is counted as Fan Disservice. Did anyone actually ask female viewers their opinion about male nudity? No. Most denouncers of Male Frontal Nudity believe that it's gross pandering to gay males. Because, apparently, women only watch Chick Flicks and aren't interested in the male body. Yeah...
 * Likewise, many male viewers who think Girl-On-Girl Is Hot will quite vocally denounce Yaoi fandom. The reverse can obviously occur as well, but it seems to do so less often, as Yuri Genre comes significantly closer to gender parity in its fandom than Yaoi.
 * Fan Service in video games is a...touchy subject, to say the least. When it's aimed at men, female gamers complain. When it's aimed at women, male gamers complain. And in franchises in which the fanservice is more or less equal-opportunity (Soul Calibur, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, etc.), half the fanbase will inevitably complain about those parts of the game intended as fanservice for the other half.
 * This is part of the reason why a very vocal female Star Control II fan created the Secret Theater. If you can have virtual sex with the gorgeous, humanoid, initially strictly platonic (or so she pretends) Commander Talana, why can't you do the same with Admiral ZEX, who's not attractive by most human standards but is smitten with you immediately? Or, put another way: Talana Squicks almost no one, unless you consider the Unfortunate Implications that she may be sleeping with the captain because he is able to save her people; ZEX is a Squick factory to most fans but a trans-human lust object to others.
 * Gravitation's fantastic soundtrack attracted a lot of fans who'd rather you didn't mention the gay.
 * The (90% female) Western fandom for ×××HOLiC is known to complain about the manga's focus on female characters and the relative lack of focus on the subtext between the male leads, though this becomes rather silly once you realize that in Japan the series is classified as Seinen—as in, targeted at young men—so of course the focus will be on girls and much less on the subtext between the males.
 * Similarly, the wave of Periphery Demographic Yaoi Fangirls who joined the Mobile Suit Gundam fandom in Gundam Wing have an intense dislike for Relena and similar characters who "get in the way" of the slash.
 * Axis Powers Hetalia: Having people who are countries: okay. Having them be gay? TOO MUCH!
 * Cardcaptor Sakura was mostly okay on the relationships until you get to the adult teacher who gets engaged to his third grade student, and this is viewed as healthy.
 * This is CLAMP. Love is love in pretty much any way, according to them.
 * Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha:
 * Any viewer who was attracted to its Les Yay, characters, Action Girls, different approach to the Magical Girl theme, and/or status as the Humongous Mecha genre's adopted sister, will first have to go through a trial by Lolicon Fan Service in Season 1, which had the original sales pitch of starring the Token Mini-Moe of the hentai game Triangle Heart 3 ～sweet songs forever～, and it really showed.
 * Inversely, anyone who liked the loli appeal will be very angry when they get to StrikerS, which comes after a time skip (after yet another time skip at the end of the previous series) that makes the girls adults. Not even teens, adults. The introduction of new lolis may have mollified their concerns... to the chagrin of the non-lolicon fandom.
 * Kaori Yuki may very well be the queen of Author Appeal. We learn through her different series and short stories about her appreciation for tomboys, cross dressers, androgynous men, nicely endowed women, underage boys, and BDSM. The one thing she's said she thinks is disturbing is Lolicon. Her Lolicon characters so far have been portrayed as fat, old perverts, creepy Otaku, and a college student who attempts rape.
 * A Dance With Rogues, the Neverwinter Nights module. As the page on this wiki says, it's both Darker and Edgier and Hotter and Sexier. It's also very well made, being the mature rather than silly kind of Darker and Edgier (except where that overlaps with the other thing). So you can play it plausibly as an unusually poignant and immersive role-playing experience where you get to experience, not being a generic, powerful game protagonist who's guaranteed to beat any aggressor of your own level, but a lone woman in a dangerous and sexist environment where, initially, even walking the streets is threatening. But then you may find you're not the intended audience after all, because the module likes to feast with sexual situations you may be forced into (not if you're really being molested, presumably because not even the author would like that), and apparently thinks that when you're being harassed at every turn, you'll definitely want your armour to be totally Stripperific.
 * Google "Watchmen" and "Blue Penis" or some synonym thereof. People went nuts over the non-sexual display of Doc Manhattan's nudity. Most comic fans are male, or that's at least the usual assumption. Combine that with pre-existing film nudity double standards... Note that a lot of it comes from Doctor Manhattan having a much larger penis in the film than the deliberately understated equipment shown in the graphic novel.
 * Visual Kei:
 * It's assumed that most fans are either female or men who appreciate or are at the very least not offended by ambiguous gender, male-male Fan Service, and many other things that would send most homophobes into a frothing rage. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, leading to squicked homophobic fans of the genre or the band in question lashing out at not only the fanficcers and fanartists, but occasionally at an innocent comment to "defend the band members' honor", (since in their view honor = straightness) or even at the band itself.
 * The latter variety has actually been made somewhat less common with Youtube and other video sources, by allowing fans to see a band along with hearing it, along with somewhat increased recognition that homophobia and transphobia aren't cool. This sort of reduces the amount of "I can't believe such an ugly gay can play like that-" type of reactions from everyone other than outright Trolls for newer bands...
 * Suzumiya Haruhi's treatment of Mikuru is:
 * a) Fan Service
 * b) a hilarious satire of Fan Service
 * c) deeply disturbing
 * d) all of the above
 * Some parody this by adopting an exaggerated Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today? stance.
 * The Shumacher Batman movies: The fans threw fits about the Bat-nipple suits, but "nobody" complains about the catsuit. Well, it doesn't have nipples.
 * Twilight. Some people are creeped out because Edward's 100, some people don't like the abusive undertones, some people don't like that S. Meyer claims to be a feminist when Bella does nothing proactive, and some people put pictures of Edward on the ceiling above their bed.
 * The Buffy/Angel relationship in the early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was creepy for the same reasons as the Bella/Edward relationship in Twilight . He's obviously a lot older and more experienced than she is, and—unlike Edward—has also tortured and raped a number of women (albeit in his soulless form) . Pretending to be divided on the subject on the morality about the matter seems a little manipulative and creepy, since he's the one who has had centuries to practice relationships. Also, the whole tortured-soul-who-needs-to-be-rescued-by-romance-and-sex seems like too good a way to get naive girls into bed. The old "Anne Rice Routine", as another character described it in-universe.
 * As noted on the Double Standard Rape (Female on Female) page, a popular Double Standard is the idea that the rape of a woman by another woman is not "real" rape, and so it becomes Selective Squick. Women don't have penises to rape with so it "doesn't count", so regardless of how one might feel about rape scenes in general, female-on-female rape is the exception.
 * Magick Chicks fandom is split on Faith's behaviour (she was shown to use mind control in some "conquests", and have a whole crowd of strangely non-jealous followers eager to serve her in any way) all the way from "gross" to "yay" to "yay, and let's pretend it's not here because she didn't say it herself".
 * For many people, horrific violence at a young age is just fine, but sex is not. For instance, in the setting of Naruto, twelve-year-olds have to deal with potentially life-threatening missions, and can participate in an exam that involves a survival test where people are expected to die (by the participants killing each other, yet), followed by a tournament where more people may die. And on passing said exam they'll have to take responsibility for their teammates' lives. Lots of fanfic writers don't seem to find any issue with writing about that, but balk at the idea of the characters having consensual sex (sometimes explicitly made clear in the author's comments) and resort to reaching the timeskip as quickly as possible, or just inexplicably bumping the characters up in age.
 * This also happens in Real Life: It is remarkable how many men can be squicked out of their minds by merely mentioning that something resembles a penis (state of arousal not important) or mentioning the word "menstruation" with no gory details given at all. What makes it even more amusing is that they often get much more annoyed than a woman would ever get from similar remarks made by a guy about women.
 * Foreign Queasine in general—some foods that are commonplace or only slightly unusual in one culture can be repulsive members of another. For example, Iron Chef fans on both sides of the Pacific can name examples from the various versions of the show.
 * Naruto Veangance Revelaitons has this evident on the author's part. The author finds many heterosexual and lesbiam sex acts hot, such as those involving drinking breast milk, urinating, defecating, farting, genital mutilation and even rape, while he's disgusted by two men merely kissing.
 * This (The Customer is) Not Always Right post. For some people, the method of braining zombies matters.
 * A few people claim to be shocked by the discovery that most societies of the Forgotten Realms do not have Victorian morals (not even starting on the casually polyamorous Elves, and various divine or semidivine characters). It doesn't help that TSR/WotC approach was thrashing all the way between hands-off and rather childish censorship policies, and even beyond that, the editors included not only those who remix whole books because they think they know how to write better, but also deeply disturbed people, if an attempt to hide Queen Guinevere's marital infidelity from the general public is any example (and it is).