Maybe spend some time outside of manga fandoms then.
The terms yaoi and yuri have certain connotations, you have to know that. Tweenage girls obsessing over and fetishising relationships between two men because it's taboo. Or straight men fetishising lesbians because it turns them on.
I'm not saying that there aren't queer people involved in those fandoms or that they can't enjoy the genres, quite the opposite. But those terms have developed a certain reputation within fandom when you're not talking about anime or manga, and it feels accusatory for you to label all of these ships that way.
And it seems like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how fandom as a whole has evolved (or how it started)
First, shipping has been around since livejournal was a popular thing. Second, there has been gaycentric in Comic book fandom for a while. OP maybe you didnt seem them but this stuff has been around for a while. Especially in the early 2000s when X men fanfic was quite popular. Wolvie/Ckye,Prof X/Magneto, Gambit/ Iceman had tons of stories written about them. A lot of those sites are gone now. But before fanfiction.net.. there were individual community sites that folks made for straight, gay, and unusual couples.
^ This is actually right. It doesn't diminish that there are great and sincere yaoi/yuri titles, but it's right for the simple reason that manga works that way: it is compartmentalized in multiple genres which are targeted to very clearly defined audiences.
Of course, afterwards each one read what (s)he wants.
welcome to the internet.
Ships are what we do to deal with the lack of our own love lives
Captain, in Order to build a better world, sometimes means tearing the old one down... And that makes enemies.
The reason X-fandom has so many gay/lesbian ships is due to influence of one man Chris Claremont.
Can't say I ever "got" the idea of shipping in general; I can comprehend it, I can certainly get invested in characters' personal stories like this, this isn't my thing. My guess is simply that the internet allows a larger cross section of the audience to interact, so more exposure to more ideas, including less mainstream ones.
I especially don't "get" ones that contradict the franchise in question, like those two examples in question. Guess I'm wired to fit fan ideas and theories within the "facts" of the source material?
How's that work?
Doctor Strange: "You are the right person to replace Logan."
X-23: "I know there are people who disapprove... Guys on the Internet mainly."
(All-New Wolverine #4)
Most believe that he wrote every character that he ever wrote as being something other than straight...whether it was outright or very strongly hinted at...
Yeah, stuff like this:
Is exactly why the LGBTQ+ community resents terms like that. Uaing yuri/yaoi is nothing more than dehumanizing fetishization because str8 men and women are obsessed with W/W and M/M, respectively.
I'm genuinely surprised that you have not seen people shipping gay and lesbian pairings before this board. I've been in the fandom since the 90s (I'm so old), and they've been the bread and butter of fanfiction since then. I saw so many Gambit/Wolverine and Gambit/Sabretooth hurt-comfort fics alone at one point. You could have set up whole archives of them. I think people may have done so.
I'm not sure that I see those two examples as contradicting the franchise. They're both cases where the pairs have a strong homosocial bond. In cinema at least, homosocial bonds are often shown using similar tropes to romances. Watch this scene from Wrath of Khan, where Spock sacrifices himself and Kirk reacts. If it were a man and a woman, almost everyone would see romantic undertones in their interactions. Kirk has to be held back because he is so moved; they gaze into each other's eyes; they touch hands through the glass.
So, I don't think it's much of a leap to reading homosocial relationships as homosexual ones. I don't ship Kirk and Spock myself, but I can see why people do.
Claremont wrote in heaps of gay and lesbian subtext, or at least introduced enough ambiguity around friendships that it created space for those readings. He's suggested it was his intent: https://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/103202508.html
OP may not be familiar with some of the fanfiction sites, and so never saw the shipping done. And when it comes to X-Forums, this site has the most active board. The other X-Forums & Comic forums I see are all mostly dead with a few replies every month or so.
Some are late to the parties. lol I was myself, and didn't see yaoi ships until I got into Harry Potter, and it's very popular within that fandom.
Gay Ships get the same treatment as Straight ships. You pair up characters who you think have good chemistry, or if you just like both characters & want them together. It's a form of crack shipping in some cases.
Though not gay, a popular crack ship with the respective fans here has been Monet x Sunspot. The two have never spoken or interacted. But some like them because of the numerous similarities and how they'd both be on the same level, compared to previous love interests they've had who were seen as duds, unappealing, beneath them, or just horrible in general. lol
I tend to read Yuri because I like the characters and the story, if you think that romance is unrealistic I got news for you, most romance fiction is unrealistic. Liking those genres doesn't mean I stop seeing them as human, and if anything stuff like 50 shades or twilight is real fetishism... As far as I know the Yuri community is at least composed of half (lesbian) females and half straight males, altough both sides have different tastes in content. one Yuri currently airing is "Bloom into you", give it a try and lemme know
IMHO, the "problem" with that idea is that it only looks at one aspect of the characters through a specific lens while ignoring the larger picture. One only needs to watch the TV show to confirm that this premise only exists in the realm of fan fiction and is not factual, canonical, or whatever.
Not sure I'd consider that admissible as evidence, so to speak, esp. if later writers ignored what he did put in.
Doctor Strange: "You are the right person to replace Logan."
X-23: "I know there are people who disapprove... Guys on the Internet mainly."
(All-New Wolverine #4)