So is there any reason why real things that exist cannot be wish fulfilment?
On one hand, no. On the other hand, if there's a real thing that's been elevated to the level of wish fulfillment, it usually doesn't line up with what people think you mean by talking about the real thing.
To pick the example I think you were referring to (for some reason you didn't quote the person you were posting at), while wish-fulfillment-y gay relationships can be written, they're not what people imagine when you say "gay relationship".
I'm just tired of people going 'wish fulfilment = bad'. It isn't. It's good! More people should have their wishes fulfilled via the medium of writing.
The problem is, wish fulfillment usually goes in the opposite direction. It's all fulfilling the same wishes of the same people. While "wish fulfillment" technically refers to any wish being fulfilled for anyone, it's generally understood to refer to the most frustratingly common forms of wish fulfillment: A lowest-common-denominator power fantasy for adolescent men.
Personal example:
The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent is a kind of wish fulfillment story, but it's a half-step away from the typical wish fulfillment isekai (the heroine has a bunch of hot
guys interested in her, and she doesn't immediately get involved in a magical conflict), so it took me a few episodes to realize it. Maybe straight women would catch on faster than aro dudes, I dunno, but I don't think I've ever seen someone call
Saint's Magic Power "wish fulfillment"—at least, not in a derogatory manner.
And it shouldn't be denigrated for fulfilling that wish! As with so many problematic plotlines, the problem isn't with any individual example so much as it is with the genre as a whole. The isekai light novel market is flooded with stories about lonely guys who get to leave all their problems behind, get incredible magic power, beat up a bunch of bad guys, and make 2d6-1 hot girls fall in love with them. The sheer
volume of stories fulfilling those specific wishes makes each individual story which uses them more boring, frustrating, and generic.
Pet peeves for myself include fics that are written in English, and the characters in the story will speak English, but then on occasion they will randomly throw in -san, -hime, and the like for a single paragraph.
Isn't that just the general suffix dilemma? Or are you talking about when they otherwise use Mr., Lady, Captain, etc. but suddenly switch to using suffixes?
Point 1: The term is "honorific". Which technically also covers "Mr," "Captain," "Dr," etc, but in an anime fandom context most people will understand that you're referring to Japanese honorifics.
Point 2: My
gosh does this get on my nerves. Yes, I get it; the characters would use Japanese honorifics because they're Japanese and speaking Japanese in Japan. But they would also speak Japanese instead of English, for the same reason! If you're going to translate 95% of the dialogue, why are you leaving the last 5% untranslated?
Point 2.5: It's even
worse when the characters
aren't Japanese! I might not have commented about it here if it wasn't for a Spy×Family fic I commented on—trying to be nice, complimenting the fic, but also noting that it's weird that Yor uses -san all the time and Anya's one line is 100% Japanese for some reason, which is especially weird because Ostantania is not remotely Japanese. And multiple people told me off for it, said that the fic clearly wasn't for me, even though as far as I can tell the fic was about Loid putting makeup on Yor and not Anya speaking Japanese.
If the setting is Japanese, I disagree. Many of the suffixes denote social concepts that either don't exist, or don't have a value of the same level in the Anglosphere.
Example: A character using nii vs aniki changes the meaning very much, but both in english would be "bro". Despite the fact that one has connotations with regards to organized crime and the other doesn't.
I will acknowledge this is the case, but I would also like to posit that conveying the exact same connotation
in the exact same way is not always necessary. Like, yeah, it would be convenient if there was a specific English word that conveyed both "you are my brother" and "we do crime together," but you can convey both of those ideas other ways. For instance, if two guys have different last names, are in the yakuza, and call each other "bro," they're probably not blood-related.
(It's not like organized crime = family is an unfamiliar conceit to the Anglosphere. Or anywhere with organized crime.)
On one hand, a professional translator going the simple route and just leaving a tricky phrase untranslated feels lazy and uncreative; if we ignore the economics of anime translation*, they should. On the other hand, a fanfic writer doesn't need to translate those kinds of complex concepts, because A. most readers are going to understand the dynamics between the anikis and B.
they're writing their story in English. I'm not sure there's anywhere between those hands where including the honorifics is the best translation choice, from a creative perspective.
*Those economics being "translators are usually paid per episode, and nowhere near enough to justify finding just the right translation". Not ragging on anime subtitlers who leave in honorifics—or, for that matter, ones who leave them out and don't replace them with anything.
