Kensakuyoke
| Synonyms: | 検索避け, 検索よけ |
| See also: | Fandom and the Underground, Fandom and Visibility, Searching for Fanworks on the Internet |
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Kensakuyoke (検索避け) (lit. "search evasion") in Japanese refers to various ways of obfuscation practiced by fan artists and writers in order to make it difficult for outsiders to discover their content. They may use non-obvious nicknames, partially masked words (fuseji (伏せ字)) or non-standard and creative spellings.[1] Personal website owners may use robots.txt to keep web search engines from indexing their websites.
Fans may do this because:
- they fear that their fanworks might offend the original creator and other right-holders (who might then try to impose tighter restrictions to fan activities)
- they fear that their sexually explicit fanworks might be accidentally discovered by minors. This fear is considered more real when the source material is primarily intended to be consumed by young audience.
Some may use the term kensakuyoke more broadly to also refer to trigger warnings that help other fans who prefer not seeing certain types of material.
A similar practice is common in Korean-speaking Fandom, particularly in RPF fandoms.
Examples
Kensakuyoke was commonly practiced by Boys' Love (BL) creators who published their works on personal sites in 2007 and before, pre-Pixiv, and more recently by Reader-Insert (夢小説) writers.[2]
Johnny's Entertainment is known for having tight control of their own materials and fan activities. When publishing RPF works, the fans avoid mentioning the names of musicians and groups they describe verbatim.[4]
References & Notes
- ^ Think "V**demort", "V-old-emo-rt" or "vldmrt".
- ^ 吉田栞・文屋敬, 腐女子と夢女子の立ち位置の相違 (2014)
- ^ 西原麻里, Chapter 10: 男性アイドルとBL in BLの教科書 (2020), p.181
- ^ アイドル本人や事務所関係者に「迷惑」がかかることを避けるため、ウェブや同人誌でグループ名や人物名をそのまま出すことをタブーとする不文律が、ファン同士のコミュニケーションのなかで形成されてきた
西原麻里 [3]
In order not to be "nuisance" to the idol [celebrity] and staff in concern, fans have discussed among themselves to develop an unspoken rule of self-censoring unaltered group names and individual names in web pages and doujinshi.