BL writers, what inspired you?

NickRowler 2024-10-09 19:24:20 UTC #21

I have zero issues with women writing gay love stories. I guess my issue was a lot of them made the boys young and attractive for women readers.

Not all gay men look like young supermodels. Maybe I just want more variety. And maybe more facial hair.

Emalie 2024-10-10 12:27:53 UTC #22

I agree with that point. Personally, I know it's a matter of taste, but I personally prefer to draw a relationship between two men and have them have facial hair and even beards, and not be so attractive just because.

Selfmaiden 2024-10-10 19:53:38 UTC #23

I am a transman, but wasn't that openly for the longest part of my life.
Soooo... My characters are always male, since I really cannot stand writing from a female gaze. (Feels like getting back into the closet honestly)
I have a wife and my marriage is considered homosexual by most people. So ... to say it frankly I do not feel like I can confidentially write about heterosexual relationships, because socially speaking I was never in a heterosexual relationship and often when my friends talk about their problems and such I cannot really relate:
Thus --- male main character, gay relationship ---- BL it is.

Oh... and right now I took the first homosexual book (presumably by Oscar Wilde) in history as an inspiration to write my own story. Here it is.

TinaAnderson 2024-10-10 22:52:04 UTC #24

I'm going to show my age with this one - what got me writing male homoeotic fiction was movies like The Outsiders and Taps. As a masc queer woman, dabbling in stories with those characters was lit-erotic for me. I moved on to GL fics with the Facts of Life ... but that's for a different thread. 0__0

I didn't discover Japanese homoeroticism until I got my hands on the twisted tanbi titles of Tanizaki Junichiro in the late 80s. After college, it was anthologies like BeBoy Gold and Kinniku-Otoko. K-Ot had so many great stories; anything written by Matsu Takeshi was a favorite because of how unserious those stories were. They were gei-komi, though marketed as BL (remember, bara is not a genre, it is a slur.) When I began writing pro in the mid-2000s, all the pubs wanted traditional BL stuff. So, I fell back on my favorites from that genre, Moduru Motoni and Mika Sadahiro.

Sorry to ramble... I had too much ice cream after dinner and it makes me chatty.
--T

megumibex 2024-10-26 23:00:43 UTC #25

Thanks for sharing your perspective!! I"m very happy you mentioned that female BL fans are not necessarily straight. I feel like that's a very common misconception about the BL fandom. I think most people outside the community would be surprised how many lesbians enjoy BL, too. Even as a queer woman myself, I took the "BL is for straight women" mantra for fact for a long time, and assumed I was the only one. It took a long time before I realised that BL is for everyone: male, female, straight, queer, it doesn't matter.