On Defining The "BL" Genre

[Moonpearl]

I’m almost tempted to argue that the differences are purely regional/geographic in nature rather than fundamentally different genres. (I.E. the difference between women’s fiction in the Philippines vs. US)

I can only speak Chinese, but when I see Josei manga (“女性漫画”) in Japanese kanji, the translation is just women’s manga — and the characters are identical in Chinese.

Like 女性 just means “women’s” (at least in Chinese), and I’ve walked around in bookstores in China without really really consciously realizing that it’s the same as “josei” — rather it’s the exact analogy of the women’s section in a bookstore in the US except that the subject matter is sometimes a little different due to regional cultural differences.

I think when the term was anglicized in the anime/manga community, it probably adopted a new meaning (similar to yaoi/shounenai)... in the sense that 女性漫画 (josei manga) probably also has some stylistic differences from 女性 (more generally).

Regardless, I still find it odd that in SH we would basically classify Pride and Prejudice as “josei”. It’s a really weird series of cultural adaptations of language that I doubt would exist anywhere other than here.

Sometimes I think about how some of my favorite western web novels would be classified.

Wandering Inn - shoujo?
Practical Guide to Evil - seinen?

Frankly these genre categories simply fall apart. YA is a much broader genre in Western Fiction (which would definitely satisfy most of the popular western web novels), but doesn’t translate as well to the anime/manga categories.

I think that Josei and Seinen really tend not to be used here all that much anyway, unless someone's really trying to make a point about their work.

They would definitely be the last genre tags I reached for, even if I was writing non-LGBT+ fiction.

I'd also be pretty put off by tagging anything I wrote as "Young Adult", though...

 

[bafflinghaze]

OMG so many good and interesting points while I was gone!!

M/M romance and gay romantic fiction are basically synonyms to BL OTOH, so adding them would be pointless. It's not happening.

yansusustories: In regard to this, I have been wondering if this might not be because of stereotypes more than anything. Like, there are certainly stereotyped relationships in BL stories but I think on the other hand people also have a stereotype of what BL is. I think lots of BL novels nowadays are more varied than the older ones but that isn't really wide-spread yet and the ones who come across these novels are the people who have read BL for quite some time. The readers that just start will be pointed to the 'classics' which often, unfortunately, means the stereotypical stuff with often even unhealthy dynamics in the relationships.

In the end, I guess my resistance stems from the fact that we’re basically asking Western LGBT authors to classify themselves under the Japanese term that carries a lot of historical baggage — which frankly I think some gay authors might be particularly reluctant to use since their idea of the BL genre means different things to them. (at least, based on the gay men I’ve talked to)

It definitely won't be happening on a place like SH, that's for sure. Even though the terms are technically same (denotation is same), their connotation is different. Combined with the discussions beforehand, it would REALLY NICE if we could use a more neutral (western) term, but...is that ever going to happen.............................

That said, I do kind of wish we had an LGBT genre, for fiction that addresses LGBT themes more seriously or is targeted to an LGBT audience.

I know Tapas has an LGBT, a GL, and a BL genre. And since we can put up to 9 (I think it was?) different genres for each story, I'm not sure where the problem is with one additional one.

I AGREE! I think this is one thing that Tapas did right. I know people keep saying "LGBT" isn't a genre. But LGBT+ as a writing label should be considered as shorthand for "including and considering LGBT+ characters in a major/important way".

For good gay fantasy romance? I don't know any aimed at queer men, but...

Try "Wicked Gentlemen" by Ginn Hale.....

Thank you

You can't really judge LGBT+ fiction based on coming out stories, though. Everyone knows those are like the worst kind.

Most people I know are dying for other stories to be told, other genres to be explored, just anything but the same old tired misery story played on repeat.

Once you go back into normal LGBT+ fiction, you'll find the fantasy and the idealism coming straight back.

It seems to a BL-only problem, though. Creating a tag like that would put pressure on GL to try and differentiate between works for real LGBT+ people and works for everyone and, well... Everyone reads everything really, so it would be extremely weird and forced.

Ah... They're not for me, personally. I find them to be condescending, since they insist on trapping us in this teenage-like "coming out" experience forever, and they just don't reflect my experiences as a queer woman. My life is about much, much more than just gaining the approval of straight people.

I read these kinds of stories too. They're nice at first, but after a while, you just want to skip the coming out and get into the super queerness that is living queer. At this point, I basically write all my (main) characters as already knowing their gender identity and orientation. I just want to get to the action of a queer character doing stuff!!!

That's because yuri brings world peace.

Honestly, though, this is the first site I've found (outside of yuri dedicated sites) where yuri is more popular than BL. Usually BL dwarves GL.

It's kind of refreshing.

It's super refreshing!!!

... You know, the one I thing I always hate about the "yuri vs yaoi" debate is the judgy, nasty crap fujoshi say about queer women under the guise of talking about a genre.

Relationships between women are plenty adorable, deep and passionate, thank you very much.

Yeah. I agree that there is definitely this kind of thing. I only entered fandom past +18, and my curation of what I read and follow is very strong so I don't get the super-overt "yuri vs yaoi" and dislike for queer women. However, you can see the...say, microaggressions. Of course there are authors and writers in M/M fandom [AO3 fandom, because this is where I'm coming from] that are support of queer women, are queer women, write about queer women. But there are also a lot of work that...completely disses women, not to even mention queer women. I've read so many stories...without women in them at all. Or all the women die (MDZS, anyone?). Given how many gay couples there are, can these authors even think about adding one (1) lesbian couple??? I've heard stories of women who consume M/M...and turn around and are homophobic in real life. (This kind of thing shouldn't surprise me, but it does...)

I always find it really enlightening when the anti-fujoshi rhetoric starts, and everyone starts talking about the "evil straight women who fetishize the gays", when self-reported surveys reveal that cishets are a minority among fujin. We had long heard from academics working in Japan that BL spaces are queer, we know that English-speaking fujin are overwhelmingly queer, and yet, this perception of BL as something for 'straight women' continues... hmm.....

For anyone interested, these are the AO3 demographics a few years ago: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16988199/chapters/39932529


edit: a quote by from yansusustories was accidentally unquoted

 

[bafflinghaze]

Because of the popularity of BL everywhere else, GL is assumed to be just like BL, but the opposite. That means GL gets accused of being by men and for men, of fetishishing lesbians, of being full of rape and other horrors, and a whole baloney of stuff that isn't really true.
BL fans also spread this misinformation whenever asked about GL, many times even after people try to correct them.

My impression of GL is that it's a lot more nice and varied than BL, and doesn't have a lot of the...hetero-codedness....that BL has. Or should I say, passerby readers are typically more aware of the range of LGBT+ people in existence.

And then I was excommunicated from the BL fandom because I liked GL too much and had become "the Other" to them. Good times.

Awww, I bet the GL community has cookies

Most of the time, the ideas are shut down vehemently or ignored completely. So far, none of these tags have been added. I'm not sure how adding tags to the list of available ones works but I'd tend to think it was much easier than implementing an actually new feature. If that's the case but nothing has happened after almost a year of pointing these issues out repeatedly, that tells me that SH isn't that interested in actually accommodating us.
So I'm afraid no matter how much we argue here, it won't change anything.

To be honest, I wonder if Tony ever even looks at the suggestions...like, has there been any new suggestions implemented? Or one or two???

For NU, it makes sense since almost all novels fall under an East Asian scheme, but this isn’t quite the case for SH.

Although they formulate a minority, there are indeed a significant number of western-style stories on SH with zero connection to Eastern tropes. We are a more diverse community on SH than on NU, the stories generally reflect that.

The analogy is like running a bookstore in the US. Someone might come in looking for comics, but the receptionist points them to the “anime” section. Anime that... generally speaking is written by Western authors mimicking a Japanese style, although there are plenty of others authors with stories on SH that wouldn’t ordinarily be classified as “anime” if it were posted anywhere else.

I guess it’s a philosophical question — about the choice to leave out “Young Adult” fiction as a genre and force authors to choose between seinen/josei/shoujo/shounen...

This is probably due to that fact that SH seems to have directly copied/ported over code from NU, and the background of the developer (i.e., Tony) is skewed to that side...

Though I do agree that it's not a terrible thing that SH gets known for certain types of fiction, just like how Wattpad and RoyalRoad are known for certain types. It would be nice if someone could compile a list of different writing sites and describe the main communities there for readers to go to. (Would be nice if different websites were Friends who linked together but that's never going to happen, especially with the monetised heavy ones)

 

[Moonpearl]

Yeah. I agree that there is definitely this kind of thing. I only entered fandom past +18, and my curation of what I read and follow is very strong so I don't get the super-overt "yuri vs yaoi" and dislike for queer women. However, you can see the...say, microaggressions. Of course there are authors and writers in M/M fandom [AO3 fandom, because this is where I'm coming from] that are support of queer women, are queer women, write about queer women. But there are also a lot of work that...completely disses women, not to even mention queer women. I've read so many stories...without women in them at all. Or all the women die (MDZS, anyone?). Given how many gay couples there are, can these authors even think about adding one (1) lesbian couple??? I've heard stories of women who consume M/M...and turn around and are homophobic in real life. (This kind of thing shouldn't surprise me, but it does...)

There are actually people in the BL fandom (a lot when I was younger, not sure how openly they'll admit to this mindset now) that believe that just liking BL makes them allies to queer men.
I remember people making digital badges showing off that they were fujoshi and so weren't homophobic.

These people also don't consider themselves to hate women or queer women. They've just never examined themselves long enough to realise that they do.

To be honest, I wonder if Tony ever even looks at the suggestions...like, has there been any new suggestions implemented? Or one or two???

All of these: https://forum.scribblehub.com/forums/feature-requests.26/?prefix_id=9

He's busy working on the mobile app right now, as well as trying to run two websites more or less by himself, so... RIP. Do have mercy on the man.

 

[yansusustories]

I AGREE! I think this is one thing that Tapas did right. I know people keep saying "LGBT" isn't a genre. But LGBT+ as a writing label should be considered as shorthand for "including and considering LGBT+ characters in a major/important way".

Yes, that's how I understand it as well. Honestly, I would be happy with just having it as a tag but then again, the genre labels are clearly visible already when you filter for stories. So it would be nice to make the LGBT+ one available there so it can jump out at readers.

I've read so many stories...without women in them at all. Or all the women die (MDZS, anyone?). Given how many gay couples there are, can these authors even think about adding one (1) lesbian couple???

So this isn't just in regards to what you said here but more in regard to the general direction the thread seems to be taking. It's something I've been thinking about since several messages ago and just wanted to mention a few thoughts before this goes on.

So, I have been thinking about the role of women in my stories recently because I know that I often have several gay couples but not that many female characters overall. I was thinking that they can often be defined as 'relative of x' where x is a male character of the main cast. Upon thinking a bit further, I realized that this is also the case with most of the male cast though, just because the story hinges on pretty close relationships. I admit to not focusing on the women as much though.
For me, it's really that I enjoy not having the women in certain places and being able to focus on the male-male relationships. There are some very important relationships with female characters as well (I do love exploring child-parent relationships, for example, so I have some very lovely mother and son relationships, also male-female sibling relationships) but it's honestly not as many. There are even lesbian relationships in the background of my main story (e.g. the main ML's grandparents were a lesbian couple or when one of the MC's visits a capital for the first time, one of the lesbian couples is pointed out there) but they definitely aren't part of the main part. I also have some women in positions of power, so they're not just a note at the side even if they aren't necessarily the focal point of the story.
I absolutely admit to this. And I know that I've seen similar things in lots of BL novels so I really understand what you mean.

As for my personal reason for this, I think part of it is my own healing process. I just don't really want to or can't write much about women right now. It doesn't mean I have anything against women or queer women in real life though (I am actually really surprised that not including them would cause that assumption). Personally, I'm sure that sometime in the future, I'll include more women. But that'll be when I'm ready for that and interested in doing so. That moment just hasn't come yet.
I also feel that there is so much to explore on the male side of things, that I don't really need to focus on the rest right now. We still have way too few actual male-male friendships in BL novels that don't turn into romance, for example. It's a pet-peeve of mine, certainly also something I sometimes do wrong but I have managed to feature a few very good friends in several stories that won't end up together at all, no matter how much readers might clamor. We also don't have much representation of other identities on the male side (other than the absolutely gay guys and the 'but he was always straight until he met that one, irresistible person') either which is something I'm slowly trying to include.
I think it's pretty much impossible to cover every single issue we want to explore at once without losing the red thread and every single one of us chooses what to include and what not to at any moment in time for as long as we write. For me, not focusing on women was such a decision. Focusing on other issues that I could see in the general community (both the BL one, the LGBT+ one, and even the 'mainstream') was another one.

I honestly think that there are others out there who are the same as me in this regard because I've seen some people mention similar thoughts in discussions. Yes, maybe that's not the gross of the BL writers but I think it's important to acknowledge that there may very well be reasons as to why somebody chooses to write a story the way they do and not to include other things. And while those reasons might seem nefarious at first glance or while there might be the idea that there aren't any conscious decisions behind what or how we write, I don't think it's right to assume that for everyone.
I am absolutely not trying to say that you guys are wrong in that there are toxic elements in the community and that not everyone who reads BL is supportive of the actual LGBT+ community. I'm not trying to invalidate anything of what you've experienced. I just want to point out that there is another side to this.
For some of us, reading BL is really what let us start learning about the LGBT+ community, become an ally, or even realize we have been a member of the community ourselves all along. Some of us write the way we do because there are issues we want to tackle, either for us personally or for the community as a whole. So, not everyone in the community is bad, just like not everyone in the community is good. Just like in every other community as well. And I'd just like it if we could all acknowledge this and not generalize because this is otherwise going to become hurtful.

Though I do agree that it's not a terrible thing that SH gets known for certain types of fiction, just like how Wattpad and RoyalRoad are known for certain types.

I don't think it's bad either to have a main audience that they target. The problem I see though is that on other sites (can't speak for RR but it's definitely true for Wattpad and Tapas), there were at least workarounds. Before there was an LGBT+ genre on Tapas, you were able to add LGBT+ (or whatever it was you needed, really) as a tag and still be found under that.
But SH only allows us to choose from a list. If we want to include LGBT+ or something else that we think of as central to our story, we can't. On the other hand, this also means that readers that would be interested in stories like this can't find them by the series finder.
I generally like that there's a list to choose from because it allows you to know what can be searched (and how exactly, e.g. is it LGBT, LGBT+, LGBTQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIA+, GLBT?). But if important tags are missing from our list on SH (e.g. I'll always be bitching until we get an ace and aro tag because that is the focal point of some of my stories and it's difficult to find anywhere), we really don't have any instruments at hand to work with to reach even the small amount of people that might be interested in this kind of niche thing. That is a real downside to the way things are set up.

 

[Aoibh]

Someone on this thread already tried to imply that queer women had less passionate relationships.

I never implied that queer women had less passionate relationships I said that Yuri lacked passion and was tasteless, I've actually read non-tasteless, and passionate queer novels (with female protagonists) that I have enjoyed but they were western, the Yuri/GL that I have come across which were majorly Asian styled. So don't try a twist my words for your own convenience.

In case you forget what I wrote down again, I said ”yuri” not ”queer women”, as you can see, they are spelt differently.

 

[CL]

This is slightly on/off topic: do any of you notice a difference between authors writing about their characters (those that are their IRL counterparts) in a same sex relationships? If so, do you have examples of this difference?

 

[Moonpearl]

So this isn't just in regards to what you said here but more in regard to the general direction the thread seems to be taking. It's something I've been thinking about since several messages ago and just wanted to mention a few thoughts before this goes on.

So, I have been thinking about the role of women in my stories recently because I know that I often have several gay couples but not that many female characters overall. I was thinking that they can often be defined as 'relative of x' where x is a male character of the main cast. Upon thinking a bit further, I realized that this is also the case with most of the male cast though, just because the story hinges on pretty close relationships. I admit to not focusing on the women as much though.
For me, it's really that I enjoy not having the women in certain places and being able to focus on the male-male relationships. There are some very important relationships with female characters as well (I do love exploring child-parent relationships, for example, so I have some very lovely mother and son relationships, also male-female sibling relationships) but it's honestly not as many. There are even lesbian relationships in the background of my main story (e.g. the main ML's grandparents were a lesbian couple or when one of the MC's visits a capital for the first time, one of the lesbian couples is pointed out there) but they definitely aren't part of the main part. I also have some women in positions of power, so they're not just a note at the side even if they aren't necessarily the focal point of the story.
I absolutely admit to this. And I know that I've seen similar things in lots of BL novels so I really understand what you mean.

As for my personal reason for this, I think part of it is my own healing process. I just don't really want to or can't write much about women right now. It doesn't mean I have anything against women or queer women in real life though (I am actually really surprised that not including them would cause that assumption). Personally, I'm sure that sometime in the future, I'll include more women. But that'll be when I'm ready for that and interested in doing so. That moment just hasn't come yet.
I also feel that there is so much to explore on the male side of things, that I don't really need to focus on the rest right now. We still have way too few actual male-male friendships in BL novels that don't turn into romance, for example. It's a pet-peeve of mine, certainly also something I sometimes do wrong but I have managed to feature a few very good friends in several stories that won't end up together at all, no matter how much readers might clamor. We also don't have much representation of other identities on the male side (other than the absolutely gay guys and the 'but he was always straight until he met that one, irresistible person') either which is something I'm slowly trying to include.
I think it's pretty much impossible to cover every single issue we want to explore at once without losing the red thread and every single one of us chooses what to include and what not to at any moment in time for as long as we write. For me, not focusing on women was such a decision. Focusing on other issues that I could see in the general community (both the BL one, the LGBT+ one, and even the 'mainstream') was another one.

I honestly think that there are others out there who are the same as me in this regard because I've seen some people mention similar thoughts in discussions. Yes, maybe that's not the gross of the BL writers but I think it's important to acknowledge that there may very well be reasons as to why somebody chooses to write a story the way they do and not to include other things. And while those reasons might seem nefarious at first glance or while there might be the idea that there aren't any conscious decisions behind what or how we write, I don't think it's right to assume that for everyone.
I am absolutely not trying to say that you guys are wrong in that there are toxic elements in the community and that not everyone who reads BL is supportive of the actual LGBT+ community. I'm not trying to invalidate anything of what you've experienced. I just want to point out that there is another side to this.
For some of us, reading BL is really what let us start learning about the LGBT+ community, become an ally, or even realize we have been a member of the community ourselves all along. Some of us write the way we do because there are issues we want to tackle, either for us personally or for the community as a whole. So, not everyone in the community is bad, just like not everyone in the community is good. Just like in every other community as well. And I'd just like it if we could all acknowledge this and not generalize because this is otherwise going to become hurtful.

I apologise for getting heated and potentially making people feel like they're being attacked. This is not the case. I want to reinforce the fact that, although many BL fans try to view me as someone who doesn't belong in the fandom anymore, I am still here as a part of it, as I have always been, and my criticism comes from inside, not outside.

I'm not saying that the whole BL fandom is bad. I'm just saying that I've never been anywhere that this wasn't a problem. Problems aren't problems if they get addressed - it's just that nobody really ends up doing it, and it snowballs.
My examples are drawn only from how fans act and aren't based on what's being written.

(And I'm angry because I resent being dismissed when I talk about these problems and being more or less told to fuck off back to GL land. I belong here, goddammit! Stop trying to avoid the problem by pretending I'm an outsider! (not aimed at you, sorry))

 

[bafflinghaze]

For me, it's really that I enjoy not having the women in certain places and being able to focus on the male-male relationships. There are some very important relationships with female characters as well (I do love exploring child-parent relationships, for example, so I have some very lovely mother and son relationships, also male-female sibling relationships) but it's honestly not as many. There are even lesbian relationships in the background of my main story (e.g. the main ML's grandparents were a lesbian couple or when one of the MC's visits a capital for the first time, one of the lesbian couples is pointed out there) but they definitely aren't part of the main part. I also have some women in positions of power, so they're not just a note at the side even if they aren't necessarily the focal point of the story.

This is really all I ask in M/M centered stories, actually, because as you say, in an M/M fic, the two men are the focus. When I want to read a F/F centered story, I'll go and read an F/F centered story, lol.

(Like, in a fic with M/M, I like to know that there also exists background F/F couples; this is my gripe with some, probably old, genderbender stories that completely ignore the serious existence of trans people, for example. But I haven't read genderbender stories in a long, long time so it's got to be better now, especially all the stories that also include the Transgender tag on SH.)

As for my personal reason for this, I think part of it is my own healing process. I just don't really want to or can't write much about women right now. It doesn't mean I have anything against women or queer women in real life though (I am actually really surprised that not including them would cause that assumption). Personally, I'm sure that sometime in the future, I'll include more women. But that'll be when I'm ready for that and interested in doing so. That moment just hasn't come yet.

For me, it's not a single fic (usually) that is the ""problem"" but rather the trend that makes me feel like this. As someone from fandoms (again), it used to be that female characters were very disliked when they "got in the way" of the dominant M/M ship.

I actually completely understand not wanting to write much about women, though my reasons are likely different from yours. As someone, personally, who gets misgendered a lot, I still need to put in extra effort to separate the experience of women vs my experience of dysphoria with the concept of "women"......

I also feel that there is so much to explore on the male side of things, that I don't really need to focus on the rest right now. We still have way too few actual male-male friendships in BL novels that don't turn into romance, for example. It's a pet-peeve of mine, certainly also something I sometimes do wrong but I have managed to feature a few very good friends in several stories that won't end up together at all, no matter how much readers might clamor. We also don't have much representation of other identities on the male side (other than the absolutely gay guys and the 'but he was always straight until he met that one, irresistible person') either which is something I'm slowly trying to include.
I think it's pretty much impossible to cover every single issue we want to explore at once without losing the red thread and every single one of us chooses what to include and what not to at any moment in time for as long as we write. For me, not focusing on women was such a decision. Focusing on other issues that I could see in the general community (both the BL one, the LGBT+ one, and even the 'mainstream') was another one.

yesssss. Maybe the answer for me to curate my reading experience even more to gather a wider range of stories that deal with a wider range of issues One story can't have it all, after all.

For some of us, reading BL is really what let us start learning about the LGBT+ community, become an ally, or even realize we have been a member of the community ourselves all along. Some of us write the way we do because there are issues we want to tackle, either for us personally or for the community as a whole. So, not everyone in the community is bad, just like not everyone in the community is good. Just like in every other community as well. And I'd just like it if we could all acknowledge this and not generalize because this is otherwise going to become hurtful.

This feels like a pretty common experience, i.e. BL as the first opening door to the LGBT+ community~

I never implied that queer women had less passionate relationships I said that Yuri lacked passion and was tasteless, I've actually read non-tasteless, and passionate queer novels (with female protagonists) that I have enjoyed but they were western, the Yuri/GL that I have come across which were majorly Asian styled. So don't try a twist my words for your own convenience.

In case you forget what I wrote down again, I said ”yuri” not ”queer women”, as you can see, they are spelt differently.

Ahh, I think you've missed the thread of the discussion that "yuri" literally means women loving women, and GL literally means girls love and on SH, refers to all F/F relationships. Your clarification is very important, but I also think you're missing out on good yuri smut

This is slightly on/off topic: do any of you notice a difference between authors writing about their characters (those that are their IRL counterparts) in a same sex relationships? If so, do you have examples of this difference?

Do you mean do authors writing self-insert-ish characters in same sex relationships?

 

[bafflinghaze]

He's busy working on the mobile app right now, as well as trying to run two websites more or less by himself, so... RIP. Do have mercy on the man.

all hail hard working Tony!!

 

[minacia]

This is slightly on/off topic: do any of you notice a difference between authors writing about their characters (those that are their IRL counterparts) in a same sex relationships? If so, do you have examples of this difference?

By any chance could you elaborate a little more? I’m not totally sure I understand.

 

[minacia]

Ahh, I think you've missed the thread of the discussion that "yuri" literally means women loving women, and GL literally means girls love and on SH, refers to all F/F relationships. Your clarification is very important, but I also think you're missing out on good yuri smut

The continued resurgence of this issue still leaves me to consider all the negative stigma surrounding GL and BL as terms.

Wouldn’t the western term provide less stigma?

I know somebody in this thread mentioned that everyone reads everything anyways, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. If you have negative bias to certain Asian variants of these genres, you’re far less likely to check something out even if the stories on SH are less stereotyped.

Like for me personally, when I see a GB and GL tag... (without a transgender tag)... usually I instantly ignore the novel even if the synopsis is kind of interesting... mostly because I probably have a bias against a certain kind of GL.

On the other hand, the f/f romance that I have liked generally trends along directions that aren’t so clearly waifu material stories... tamendegushi among others...

I mean, maybe it’s bad that I judge GL novels on the basis of two tags (there are probably GB GL novels that maybe I would like), but I don’t really know how else to narrow down the kind of novels I would prefer to read.

 

[yansusustories]

I apologise for getting heated and potentially making people feel like they're being attacked. This is not the case. I want to reinforce the fact that, although many BL fans try to view me as someone who doesn't belong in the fandom anymore, I am still here as a part of it, as I have always been, and my criticism comes from inside, not outside.

I'm not saying that the whole BL fandom is bad. I'm just saying that I've never been anywhere that this wasn't a problem. Problems aren't problems if they get addressed - it's just that nobody really ends up doing it, and it snowballs.
My examples are drawn only from how fans act and aren't based on what's being written.

(And I'm angry because I resent being dismissed when I talk about these problems and being more or less told to fuck off back to GL land. I belong here, goddammit! Stop trying to avoid the problem by pretending I'm an outsider! (not aimed at you, sorry))

It's alright. I've seen you around the forums a lot already, I love seeing the points you make and as I said, I don't want to say that you weren't right with what you said here at all. I was just seeing that you were being a bit upset and things seemed to be getting heated so I just wanted to look at it from the other side in the hope that we can all calm down a bit and get back to discussing things constructively before it's too late. I really love the discussions on here, after all. And no matter what others say, from my point of view at least, you're extremely welcome in the BL community. Don't let anybody tell you you aren't. As long as somebody likes BL or wants to know more, they're all welcome

And now I'm going to read what everyone else wrote

 

[CL]

Do you mean do authors writing self-insert-ish characters in same sex relationships?

By any chance could you elaborate a little more? I’m not totally sure I understand.

I apologize for not being clear. I will simplify this question: A boy writes about GL and a lady writing about BL as opposed to a boy writing a novel on BL and a lady writing a novel on GL; is there a noticeable difference for us readers to pick up on?

I want to explain why I ask: I've read TG fiction and noticed from CIS authors that they tend to focus on different aspects of a relationship (some more sexually psychological) as opposed from transitioned authors writing on relationships (being more empathically psychological). This made me curious if there was a noticeably different treatment coming from authors writing characters of the opposing gender in a same sex relationship.

 

[Aoibh]

Ahh, I think you've missed the thread of the discussion that "yuri" literally means women loving women, and GL literally means girls love and on SH, refers to all F/F relationships. Your clarification is very important, but I also think you're missing out on good yuri smut

Ah, I see. In future, I will just use GL for what I'm talking ng about. I normally just lump yuri/GL/shoujo-ai together, I thought they were just different ways of saying the tag, same with Yaoi/BL/shounen-ai. Sorry for the misunderstandings. @Moonpearl

 

[yansusustories]

This is really all I ask in M/M centered stories, actually, because as you say, in an M/M fic, the two men are the focus. When I want to read a F/F centered story, I'll go and read an F/F centered story, lol.

I'm actually really happy that you're saying this. As I mentioned, I was already thinking about this issue several weeks ago. Looking at it from different perspectives really helped but hearing some confirmation from outside that this is something other people are also looking for and would expect does help a bit more

For me, it's not a single fic (usually) that is the ""problem"" but rather the trend that makes me feel like this. As someone from fandoms (again), it used to be that female characters were very disliked when they "got in the way" of the dominant M/M ship.

I actually completely understand not wanting to write much about women, though my reasons are likely different from yours. As someone, personally, who gets misgendered a lot, I still need to put in extra effort to separate the experience of women vs my experience of dysphoria with the concept of "women"......

I do understand that feeling. I think a big problem is that the female characters are often very one-dimensional and only used as props. They are a hindrance that needs to be overcome (which is often laughable if both the MC and ML are unmistakably gay) or otherwise often non-existent. Sometimes, there are women that are helpful or just in a 'neutral' category but those latter two are often rarer. I think that the larger the cast is, the more diversity there is though in what type of women we see. With a shorter novel that only features a handful of characters, it's more difficult to find that variety.

yesssss. Maybe the answer for me to curate my reading experience even more to gather a wider range of stories that deal with a wider range of issues One story can't have it all, after all.

I actually thought that Moonpearl's thread asking for unconventional BL was a really good starting point. It would be interesting to make lists for more niche stories so we'll have an easier time because, really, there is some stuff you just can't find just by going through tags.

This feels like a pretty common experience, i.e. BL as the first opening door to the LGBT+ community~

I think so too. For me, it was really a long process. I think I originally started with some Chinese BL drama series (I later realized I read some yaoi manga before but it was more like 'oh, nice story, nice art' and then I didn't think further about it). Then I somehow ended up writing more eastern-inspired stories so I ended up on webnovel, later on Tapas because webnovel is a shithole and I was looking for something new, and then I came to the forums and bam! now I know I'm ace, did research on the LGBT+ community in university, and have generally learned a lot

 

[bafflinghaze]

I apologize for not being clear. I will simplify this question: A boy writes about GL and a lady writing about BL as opposed to a boy writing a novel on BL and a lady writing a novel on GL; is there a noticeable difference for us readers to pick up on?

I want to explain why I ask: I've read TG fiction and noticed from CIS authors that they tend to focus on different aspects of a relationship (some more sexually psychological) as opposed from transitioned authors writing on relationships (being more empathically psychological). This made me curious if there was a noticeably different treatment coming from authors writing characters of the opposing gender in a same sex relationship.

Ah I might leave that for Moonpearl [edit: and others!] to answer. I've only read GL written by women and nonbinary people but I suspect that male gaze vs female gaze, as well as author experiences leads to different focuses (and different story topics and settings, for example) that are detectable.

 

[Queenfisher]

I always find it really enlightening when the anti-fujoshi rhetoric starts, and everyone starts talking about the "evil straight women who fetishize the gays", when self-reported surveys reveal that cishets are a minority among fujin. We had long heard from academics working in Japan that BL spaces are queer, we know that English-speaking fujin are overwhelmingly queer, and yet, this perception of BL as something for 'straight women' continues... hmm.....

omg where???

Sorry, couldn't help myself. I don't know if you were referring to me -- but if you were, then if you see any rhetoric in my words, that's on you, not on me.

If I say "ABO, mpreg, uke/seme are fetishization" -- for me that's exactly the same as to say "strawberries, tomatoes, and rubies are all red", or "this patient has a concussion", sorry. Ivory Tower research and science, not a negative judgment in any way. I even acknowledge that I participate in the fetishization as well, so... am I calling myself out or what? NO. I am categorizing by this label because it is the best scientifically concise and descriptive way to call the phenomenon I am talking about.

Not sure if you meant that I was talking about "evil straight women" or anything, so I am sorry if I made such an impression on anyone -- but just in case for the future and for any discussions further on this forum, I probably need to warn people that I am that lady obsessed with rainbow sponges from this video, only my "rainbow sponges" are for overanalyzing stuff and categorizing everything and "PATTERNS OMG"!

Call me infinitely curious and naive. As I am and will always be. But do not put anything offensive/negative into my mouth because it doesn't belong there ^^.

---

@Moonpearl

I am sorry you felt attacked! SHF is a good place to sort this kind of stuff out because I feel we are generally less toxic than other places and if people are making misjudgments in here, it's because of ignorance rather than ill intent (mostly -__-). Discussions like these have to happen to define and theorize about this kind of stuff, and SHF so far is one of the best places for civilized and educated wonderings out-loud ^^. That I have personally found, at least.

And I'm so sorry your experience in BL fandom has been so toxic... Myself, I am luckily introverted enough that I had sat most of the fandom noises out for the longest time. SHF is really one of the first places I finally am starting to get a bit exploratory around...

All in all, in my last message to you -- I never implied or meant that GL has to free the room for BL. Why would I??? I like it that GL has its own unique audience and influence on SH. The more the better!

All I meant is that -- just adding something like "queer m/m" tag to our BL side would not force or take anything from GL unless someone on GL front would want to have such a labeled tag as well. (It's their choice to do, but it doesn't need to be correlated for all instances of what BL adds or takes away. Like, we have ABO and mpreg tags that are just BL-focused already. I don't see how adding another one would change anything drastically).

Adding more tags would just separate the BL that is currently drowning in very specific preferences and mainstream tastes into niches that can have their own rankings.

Like with ABO and Mpreg -- they have their own rankings because they have their own tags. Why not have a "queer m/m" tag and see it finally have its own ranking here? The point would be -- the BL at large wouldn't have to change. (And GL especially). But both readers and authors of the BL niches would finally have an efficient way to find each other outside of the mainstream that completely suffocates them atm.

Oh, and I forgot about the seinen and josei tags.

EWWWWW.

I had seinen + BL at first in my novel. Stupidest mistake I ever made with tags .

---

@yansusustories & @bafflinghaze

You two wrote a lot that resonates with me about the female characters and stereotypes and I agree with almost everything .

I also struggle with: 1) having intense issues with my Internalized Misogyny that prohibits me from feeling adequate in even attempting to seriously write about women, 2) having met a LOT of resistance and even hatred from readers for trying to write female characters in new, subversive roles. Frankly, it just scared me away.

Personally, I like seeing both F and M characters in BL, but that's just me because I like depictions of relationships between men and women that are distinctly non-romantic/non-sexual. I want to make it the new norm, so I work for that myself and usually have big supporting F casts ^^.

What bothers me in this question and the one about stereotypes and fetishes like I said somewhere above is -- the market demands.

I am going to be pretty honest here and please everyone do not take it too seriously , but I am a market whore . If I feel intimidated by my reader base or my audience into succumbing to what the dynamic between my characters should be -- I will likely follow it.

Lol, even right now -- I am writing another BL that is much more conventional than my current published book. Why? Because the reader base demands and outright ignoring and/or dismissing of my work really gets to me. I don't know about others -- but I do feel compelled and threatened to write what I would call "a more appropriate BL". Because if I don't, I might as well never get read or only find my readers by luck or friendships from the SHF. Which I am intensely grateful for -- but at the same time, it literally means that my BL writing cannot appeal to its target demographic if I have to rely on luck and friends to get reads!

(Like, is it a bit concerning that the most vocal of the people who read me IRL and online are straight men? Who also often tell me they do not consider my work BL at all? Or that the BL label is the only thing that keeps the book down??? (Yes, the label, not the content). Add to this the fact that my book is the ONLY BL they've ever read so I am very unsure of what they think BL even is................. I sometimes feel like I am a kind of a gaslighted BL author who is unaware if she's even writing BL or not, lol.
Makes me a bit paranoid in that regard )

Does anybody have such troubles or something similar? Do you ever feel compelled or intimidated by what you think the mainstream BL audience wants and how it's divorced from what you try to do? That your writing is like... too niche or not satisfying/appealing to the market enough? I am just very confused about it, so sorry if I can't explain it well enough...

 

[AliceShiki]

Mhhh I think on most western sites, LGBT fiction is genuinely classified differently from BL. I think it’s only in the bubble of Asian novels (specifically NU) that people would think it’s the same thing.

Ordinarily, we would say that BL is actually the more niche term that is imported from Japanese. Over the years, it has primarily been characterized by yaoi and shounen ai, later merged with danmei for the similarity of content.

In contrast, in the Western world, gay fiction has just been called gay fiction (or slash in the context of fanfiction), which is plainly visible on Amazon and other booksellers. The subject matter tends to be more targeted towards LGBT audiences. “Boys Love” isn’t a term that is used, and is largely taken to be something else entirely.

The difference between the two is about as different as “cartoons” and “anime”.

If you went to someone and said that Spongebob or Marvel comics is an “anime”, you would definitely get a lot of strange looks.

In the end, I guess my resistance stems from the fact that we’re basically asking Western LGBT authors to classify themselves under the Japanese term that carries a lot of historical baggage — which frankly I think some gay authors might be particularly reluctant to use since their idea of the BL genre means different things to them. (at least, based on the gay men I’ve talked to)

To use an extreme analogy, it’s sort of like asking transgender authors to classify their work as “Trap” on an anime website... which a lot of authors may be unwilling to do.

I don't think there would be any problems with changing BL to Gay Fiction, Gay Romance or whatever other name you'd want to call it. I'd only have a problem with having both BL and Gay Fiction in the same site as they're synonyms.

I'm aware that BL isn't really used outside of anime communities, but... Scribbly is a direct descendant of NU. The audience here are the anime audience, so I don't think the argument of BL not being a thing outside of anime communities makes sense.

As for the Trap argument... Apples to oranges. Traps specifically refer to men that look like women. It has nothing to do with transgender.
BL on the other hand means romance between men. Nothing more nothing less. The perceived notion that it has to do with specific tropes is something that a portion of the readers/authors of the genre decided upon.

As for the Spongebob argument... Anime just means animation, so if you ask someone in Japan rather or not Spongebob is an anime, you'd probably get an affirmative answer.
We're not in Japan though, so we look at anime as a different form of media... Which is fine, but when you ask someone to define anime the definition starts getting a bit blurry, since they probably won't know rather to classify stuff done in China or Korea as anime, or even if Avatar the Last Airbender counts as an Anime... So yeah, the definition of Anime is blurry and not everyone can agree on it... But if you wanna just use the dictionary definition, Spongebob is totally an anime.

BL isn't very comparable to that though... It's just homosexual romance between men. The assumption that it has to has some tropes is just... Well, an assumption. And quite frankly, a somewhat dumb assumption, because even in Asian novels those tropes are hardly the only existing ones. They just happen to be the more mainstream ones that most people know BL for, but there is a lot more to the genre than that.

Saying that BL has to have the Uke/Seme dynamic and that they're all about unhealthy possessive relationships is the same as saying that all shoujo has a dumb protagonist that is as dense as a blackhole and is completely unable to have a healthy relationship, even when the perfect ML of her dreams is right in front of her eyes and in love with her... Which is just not true, it's just a popular Shoujo trope.

In regard to this, I have been wondering if this might not be because of stereotypes more than anything. Like, there are certainly stereotyped relationships in BL stories but I think on the other hand people also have a stereotype of what BL is. I think lots of BL novels nowadays are more varied than the older ones but that isn't really wide-spread yet and the ones who come across these novels are the people who have read BL for quite some time. The readers that just start will be pointed to the 'classics' which often, unfortunately, means the stereotypical stuff with often even unhealthy dynamics in the relationships.

Pretty much this. There are basically stereotypes that people assume to represent the whole genre... Which is just untrue, but they keep assuming it is anyways.

 

[Moonpearl]

The continued resurgence of this issue still leaves me to consider all the negative stigma surrounding GL and BL as terms.

Wouldn’t the western term provide less stigma?

I know somebody in this thread mentioned that everyone reads everything anyways, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. If you have negative bias to certain Asian variants of these genres, you’re far less likely to check something out even if the stories on SH are less stereotyped.

Like for me personally, when I see a GB and GL tag... (without a transgender tag)... usually I instantly ignore the novel even if the synopsis is kind of interesting... mostly because I probably have a bias against a certain kind of GL.

On the other hand, the f/f romance that I have liked generally trends along directions that aren’t so clearly waifu material stories... tamendegushi among others...

I mean, maybe it’s bad that I judge GL novels on the basis of two tags (there are probably GB GL novels that maybe I would like), but I don’t really know how else to narrow down the kind of novels I would prefer to read.

GB GL are always more GB than GL, so they have a totally different flavour. I also filter them out... Although I wrote one myself for an anthology, so it's a bit hypocritical now.

Anyway, changing GL and BL to f/f and m/m would definitely be a little helpful, if not necessarily the answer to all problems.
(But we'd need to set the standard that f/f needs to actually focus on queer women's relationships, and not, like... One fanservice kiss in one chapter. Peeps are desperate to tag their works as GL because it's so popular.)

I apologize for not being clear. I will simplify this question: A boy writes about GL and a lady writing about BL as opposed to a boy writing a novel on BL and a lady writing a novel on GL; is there a noticeable difference for us readers to pick up on?

I want to explain why I ask: I've read TG fiction and noticed from CIS authors that they tend to focus on different aspects of a relationship (some more sexually psychological) as opposed from transitioned authors writing on relationships (being more empathically psychological). This made me curious if there was a noticeably different treatment coming from authors writing characters of the opposing gender in a same sex relationship.

It's hard to say. Men generally struggle to write women at all so, when many of them try to write nothing but women, it kind of falls to pieces. There's a lot of "lesbian" novels out there by men that amount to nothing more than written "lesbian" porn for men.

For men who really love GL (whether that's f/f or Asian GL), they're invested in the romance and it can matter less. Sometimes they prefer the Japanese way of doing things, where it's a little cuter/shallower, but some women do too.
(Japanese GL written by men is sometimes awful, though. They only care about infantalising girls and having cute girls do cute things. Sometimes they prefer that they refuse to admit they're lesbians as well. Not every male author, of course, but you want to be careful.)

On the the upper scale of things, thedude3445 has an impressive amount of knowledge about real queer woman culture and makes a ton of references to our memes, so... I can't see much of a difference there.

I only know one man who writes BL, so I can't really comment on that either.

On the topic of trans authors versus cis authors, though... I'd say that's because we can't know for ourselves what dysphoria is like. We'll end up writing trans characters a bit differently no matter what.
It's kind of like how, in the Yuri Garden's first anthology, a lot of male Gardeners were put off by the "questioning their sexuality" prompt. They thought it was hard, because it's obviously not something they have experience with.

But if you want to compare GL written by men and women, you can try reading the collections over on the YuriGardenAllotment, here: https://www.scribblehub.com/profile/25779/theyurigardenallotment/
You'll need to check the gender of the author yourself, but every entry is by someone new (basically).

Ah, I see. In future, I will just use GL for what I'm talking ng about. I normally just lump yuri/GL/shoujo-ai together, I thought they were just different ways of saying the tag, some with Yaou/BL/shounen-ai. Sorry for the misunderstandings. @Moonpearl

They are used interchangeably but here, on Scribble Hub, Girls Love is used to refer to all f/f romance. So you can't say GL is passionless without saying that all f/f romance is.

I'm sorry for misunderstanding you.

(Also, if you want genuinely passionate GL, I can direct you towards some too. There are a lot of different types of GL compared to BL, which is really one thing (not in a bad way, it just goes like that). If you pick the wrong type for you, you won't be satisfied.)

I'm actually really happy that you're saying this. As I mentioned, I was already thinking about this issue several weeks ago. Looking at it from different perspectives really helped but hearing some confirmation from outside that this is something other people are also looking for and would expect does help a bit more

Then I'll add that this is all I want too, really. I don't read f/f and m/m fusions - if I'm reading them, it's because I'm in the mood for one and not the other. (Although I do play f/f and m/m fusions. But, when I'm writing those for a story, someone is going to have to take the "supporting couple" role.)

(Although I'm still kind of tempted to write a story where two men work together to try to help one of the men's sister get together with the woman she likes, and end up falling in love over the course of that...)

My real problem from the way BL treats women (and I do have one) is that it treats them badly, as an overall genre. As someone who also initially came to BL to escape gender roles, sexism, and other such problems, why are so many authors parading women in front of me just to call them whores and cut up their faces? Especially when male love rivals don't get treated like that? (Edit: Not all authors, not all stories. I just can't stop noticing it when it happens after being scarred by The Legendary Master's Wife.)

I just want less genuine sexism. I'll pay for BL authors to stop putting in the extra effort to be sexist.

(For the sake of balance, I'll also say that there is sometimes sexism in GL novels too. It's rarer, but it's absolutely mindblowing.)

Does anybody have such troubles or something similar? Do you ever feel compelled or intimidated by what you think the mainstream BL audience wants and how it's divorced from what you try to do? That your writing is like... too niche or not satisfying/appealing to the market enough? I am just very confused about it, so sorry if I can't explain it well enough...

I haven't yet, I guess. Although I did worry, back when I made my GL drafts for last year's Christmas trivia prizes, that people might be angry that there were important supporting BL couples in both of them.