Hey! This thread looks really interesting. I've been working on several BL novels on and off for a couple of years now, but I keep failing to finish them. (And, tbh, they're all kinda bad anyway.) I have a good feeling about my current WIP, though. It's mainly inspired by The Husky and His White Cat Shizun, and I'm hoping that being around other writers will influence me to finally finish and publish!
Looks like I'm too late for the first anthology, but I'd love to join the next one. I'll do my best to follow along and comment on the current anthology when it starts updating.
Uh wow, oh man, I'm going to have to show my age. It was the 2000s. I didn't have a great access to the internet. For some reason, all the BL I could find was pretty depressing: Ai no Kusabi, Kaze to Ki no Uta, Tokyo Babylon. Even the Western online m/m novels had similarly dark themes:
In the Company of Shadows,
The Administration, and
Captive Prince (yeah, I read that when it was still a free webnovel). As a teen, I liked darkness, so I didn't have a problem with it back then. Plus, before I got into BL, I read all sorts of awful bodice rippers from the 80s (and trust me, the romance genres have improved a
lot since then).
At that age, the main attraction for me was how passionate and intense the BL relationships seemed to be. The entire world would be against them, but all they could see was each other, and they'd be obsessed with their love to the point of mutual destruction. Extreme highs and extreme lows. And unlike most het romances, both parties could be equally aggressive when it came to displaying their desire. It all seemed really romantic and mystical to me, back then. But when I got older -- particularly after I got into my own passionate and intense, yet humiliating and stressful relationship -- the mystique faded. For a long time, I stopped reading romances... and started bingeing self-help books instead, lol! I think I've found a good balance now.
My first Chinese BL was probably the manhua for
Feng Yu Jiu Tian. While I loved the art, I didn't like the direction the story was going so I couldn't finish it. I avoided danmei for a long time until I watched Spirit Pact, which was just adorable. And then I discovered MDZS early 2019 and fell head over heels in love.
I like how there are so many varieties and flavors of BL nowadays. My favorites are the ones where the relationship inspires the main characters to be better versions of themselves and/or where the power couple ends up saving the world together. I still enjoy a touch of darkness, but mostly I enjoy the beautiful aesthetics, the supportive relationships, the funny moments, and the unapologetic use of tropes and tags. I turned to Scribblehub after I exhausted the completed "Yaoi" and "Shounen Ai" genres in Novelupdates!
Omg, I'm sorry that turned into a wall of text. Normally, I don't even talk much.
Anyway, I will probably be a lurker, but I will do my best to comment and support from the sidelines whenever I can.