Why do so many GL novels exist?

[BlueJeanius]

I'm just curious, ut every other novel has GL in it. So I'm just wondering why? Cause I see it everywhere man. Then there's also the gender bender GL stories. Where from what I understand, the MC is still acting like a guy mentally and thus goes for women. Of course this is excluding persona preference. As that blows this entire question out of the water. Idk, just curious why.

 

[FluffyGura]

Idk about you, but for me it's because the interaction between girls is very wholesome so it usually heals my weary heart.

Genderbend because well boys usually like girls so even if they are genderbend they naturally still like girl and which then equal to more gl :3

 

[BigBadBoi]

To strike balance in the force. Novelupdates is filled with yaoi so scribblehub is filled with yuri to compensate. Tipping this balance will result in the universe imploding.

 

[Daitengu]

For the GL, it's the second most acceptable form of romance. As both men and women are fine with or like it.

The gb, my take is too many peeps drunk the DEI Kool aid in college where men got hated on for years and created this romanticized version on women. Giving peeps a complex.

 

[BearlyAlive]

Cute girls doing cute (no)things has always been a genre, GL is just the degens taking it a step further.

 

[esThr]

It attracts people (degens) and makes views... that's pretty much it in my eyes

 

[Enkiari]

Cute girls doing cute (no)things has always been a genre, GL is just the degens taking it a step further.

Hey! I resent this statement!
Some of us are perfectly normal authors.

I'm just curious, ut every other novel has GL in it. So I'm just wondering why? Cause I see it everywhere man. Then there's also the gender bender GL stories. Where from what I understand, the MC is still acting like a guy mentally and thus goes for women. Of course this is excluding persona preference. As that blows this entire question out of the water. Idk, just curious why.

Apart from other reasons mentioned above, it is because SH is accepting of them.
Generally speaking, only RR is a larger Western web-novel site. And that place has no tags for LGBTQ+ content.

 

[LilRora]

If you are asking in general, not just on Scribble, then short answer is market demand. People like it, so people write it and people read it.

As for why people like it, that's complicated. Many people will have different reasons, but putting aside the obvious which is personal tastes and preferences, I think a lot of it has to do with various preconceptions about straight romance, especially on the authors' side, which causes many people to be dissatisfied with it and search for something else. It might be bias, but I think Girl's Love has a significantly greater diversity in character dynamics just as well as individual characters than straight romance, which really often falls into fairly narrow patterns.

As for why Scribble, well, similar people gather together. Scribble Hub is a bit infamous for having a large amount of smut, GL, and gender bender (whether it's true or not, a lot of people have that idea), while other sites have communities centered around different stories. RoyalRoad has a lot of progression and systems, Webnovel has a lot of romance.

 

[Voidiris]

I'm just curious, ut every other novel has GL in it. So I'm just wondering why? Cause I see it everywhere man. Then there's also the gender bender GL stories. Where from what I understand, the MC is still acting like a guy mentally and thus goes for women. Of course this is excluding persona preference. As that blows this entire question out of the water. Idk, just curious why.

I just see them as lesbian novels or rather sapphic novels depending on the gender bender aspect.
Love is love to me but I have a female protagonist bias when it comes to novels.

 

[TsuruI_am_a_bot]

I'm just curious, ut every other novel has GL in it. So I'm just wondering why? Cause I see it everywhere man. Then there's also the gender bender GL stories. Where from what I understand, the MC is still acting like a guy mentally and thus goes for women. Of course this is excluding persona preference. As that blows this entire question out of the water. Idk, just curious why.

Because BEFORE, it was the trend when GENDER BENDER, the "guy" fall for the guy friend. (the barely 2-3 genderbender series in manga period, when isekai wasnt even popular yet and NTR didnt even exist yet)
And welllllllll it wasnt quite a well accepted trend.



It was already niche (genderbender) but this plot of "guy->girl love men", It turned the genderbender niche into mega-niche.
Because from the get-go you have a DUDE-mc (hence giving the feeling it catters for men) that have a crush on a girl. Everything normal. But then "Gender Bender" happens. So for readers at that time "oh wow that is new, interesting...I feel read this series". And you get MC despite a girl try to get the "heroine".
BUT THEN, for SOME REASONS (likely hormones of body), the genderbent MC begins to fall for the "male best friend".
And well, i guess the "male demography/readers" that constituted 90% at that time, it was a major turn off.
It gave a "yaoi" vibes to it.
And it didnt help the fact, that AT VERY BEGINNING and bunch of plot-arcs the MC kept trying to get the "heroine". Only to end with "another dude".
It was and still is annoying as the shoujo plot of : Boy and girl have respective crush and help each other, only to fall for each other.


So GL is now the mainstream for genderbender bc like a chinese author once said : [Seeing pretty girls is always nice. For men but even women like it]
But even GL itself without genderbender, is popular for same reason (Pretty girl with pretty girl). And well.....male Vtubers industry is not popular for same reason.




------Encyclopedia Tsuru out----------

 

[Sabruness]

And it didnt help the fact, that AT VERY BEGINNING and bunch of plot-arcs the MC kept trying to get the "heroine". Only to end with "another dude".

gah, that's bringing back nightmares of a manga series that did exactly that and drove most readers mad. fortunately, the mental purge my brain did after that series was very thorough so that i remember that there was a manga like that but cant remember anything else about it.

---------------------------------------------------
as an aside, GL is also the easiest genre to get crap past the radar when necessary.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

I'm just curious, ut every other novel has GL in it. So I'm just wondering why? Cause I see it everywhere man. Then there's also the gender bender GL stories. Where from what I understand, the MC is still acting like a guy mentally and thus goes for women. Of course this is excluding persona preference. As that blows this entire question out of the water. Idk, just curious why.

Your working set of books is... SH? The Planet? I assume SH.

So, why do car dealerships all wind up next to each other? The real estate is cheap and if all the car dealerships are next to each other, it makes it easier to comparison shop. Therefore you are likely to go where there is 4 dealerships, not one. Yes, increased competition, but improved foot traffic.

Same thing.

 

[Succubiome]

It might be bias, but I think Girl's Love has a significantly greater diversity in character dynamics just as well as individual characters than straight romance, which really often falls into fairly narrow patterns.

I absolutely agree on this-- straight romance is the most formulaic, because there's like, a standard social structure/kink/whatever you call it right there, and deviating too far from it can mean some people will get annoyed you're betraying their (relatively narrow) expectations.

Same for masculinity in general, it's a pretty narrow band of expectations.

Gay male/male romance tends to be just slightly less formulaic for the romance part, but it's not as acceptable for men to exist in as wide an emotional space as women in general, and very often I see one of the parties taking on the "man" role while the other takes on the "woman" role, or maybe somewhere between the "man" and the "woman" role.

Therefore, lesbian romance is what people tend to be the most open to the wide variety of characters and dynamics in.

Theoretically nonbinary romance would be at least as wide as lesbian romance too, come to think of it, but nonbinary romance is relatively rare and doesn't even have genre names that I'm aware of.

 

[Yati]

There are still way too few yuri novels...

 

[Enkiari]

There are still way too few yuri novels...

We need to pump those numbers up. To the typing machine!

 

[CarburetorThompson]

Supply and demand