Set five years after K-On!, Afterschool Teatime is an international hit. However, during one concert in America, Yui notices something odd... where are the men in their audience?
Turns out the vast majority of their fanbase is made up of lesbians — who think the band is made of lesbians as well! So now the band members have to find some way to convince their fans that, no, they are not gay.
Tangled Up In Indigo is a K-On fic by that can be read here
. It revolves around the girls realizing their fanbase and questioning their own sexualities.
Tangled Up In Indigo provides examples of:
- Bifauxnen: The girls attempt to pass Yui and Ritsu (who both already have short hair) off as honorary boys for one concert.
- The Chessmaster: Miss Yamanaka intentionally orchestrated the girls being Mistaken for Gay, as a way of giving them a gimmick to help them stand out from the crowd.
- Deconstructive Parody: A number of yuri tropes are skewered for laughs. The main premise of the fic is one towards all the fanfics that have the cast be gay- here, the band has a huge
LGBT Fanbase that assumes this is the case, and the girls spend the fic trying to convince them that they are not lesbians- only for their every move to be taken as further proof of their lesbianism. - Foreshadowing: Near the end, Azusa is noticeably irritated by Mio's freakouts. The last chapter reveals that she's the one actual lesbian (or bisexual) in the group.
- Earlier in the story, while Ritsu is talking to Mio about the group's atrocious love lives, she mentions that she doesn't know what Azusa does with her free time.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Mio tries too hard to prove the band is straight.
- Insane Troll Logic: Mio's first plan to prove that the girls are straight runs on this - since yuri girls are attracted to girls, they must really be boys in their heads. Yui immediately points out the flaw in this logic.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Referenced. The girls decide to dress very girly in an attempt to dissuade their fans from assuming they're lesbians. Instead, they find a newsletter titled "Lesbian rockers go super-femme."
- LGBT Fanbase: The plot revolves around Afterschool Teatime realizing that their fanbase is predominantly queer women.
- Mistaken for Gay: The plot kicks off with Afterschool Teatime learning their fanbase outside of Japan thinks they're lesbians. Azusa actually is.
- Not Helping Your Case: Everyone except Azusa. Mio leans into Insane Troll Logic way too much to be convincing, Ritsu's still an incorrigible troll, Yui is not operating on the same plane of reality as the others, and while Tsumugi does very little damage, her implied Yuri Fan tendencies do not help in the slightest.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Miss Yamanaka notices that Azusa's message to her is surprisingly rude. Because Azusa has just figured out that she's behind everything.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: Mio goes into extreme freakouts over being Mistaken for Gay, and there's also her comment about "yuri girls" listed under Insane Troll Logic. Downplayed, as the author pointed out that Mio wasn't written as a full-on homophobe - she simply overreacts like she always does.
- Rainbow Lens: Reviewers think that the song "LISTEN!" is "a cry against the heteronormative paradigm." Mio wrote it about static on cell phones.
- Real-Person Fic: Afterschool Teatime's biggest fansite is named "After-School Gay Time". Their fans wonder which of the band is with each other. Some fans even believe that they're all with each other.
- Seme: Played for Laughs. Some fans theorize that Yui has a harem nicknamed "Hirasawa's Haremites".
- Shout-Out:
- The title references Indigo Girls, a duo known for their LGBT Fanbase.
- The band sung the theme for Neo Strawberry Panic!.
