What is the appeal of BL?

[calitart]

Hi beautiful people! So, I was wondering... Why BL? It's yaoi, boys love, gay smut, you name it. What started this whole craze? I mean, I myself has quite a bit of BL comics simply because I'm a fan. Out of all the genre: girlxgirl, Herero relationship, action, drama; why is BL so popular? I'm just mainly talking about webcomics nowadays; excluding well known manga and American comic.

[epiale]

I think it primarily has to do with the fact a massive portion of webcomic fans are straight (or at least bi) teenage girls, and it's also quite difficult to find an equivilent to bl anywhere else.

If you've read bl you probably already know that the vast majority of the time it stars a super handsome guy (at least by the authors standards) and a very small, feminine guy who is pretty obviously a female stand-in. So what you get is a gay porno with some semblance of romance or a plot that women can relate to and even imagine themselves participating in. Of course that's going to be popular. : P

I'm also gonna throw it out there that it is absolutely the equivilent of straight men watching lesbian porn. Have yet to meet a gay man who finds a dude fucking a gir- another dude in the weird manga style most bl uses appealing or even mildly accurate to what a gay relationship is like.

As for the origin of the trend in webcomics I'm fairly certain it started over on smackjeeves, the land of badly written yaoiz. A few bl comics got popular, and, with a mostly younger straight female audience, it just kind of exploded.

(Also gonna throw it out there that I've got nothing against comics about dudes loving dudes, I'm just not fond of how fetishistic most bl is)

[MylCreates]

I'm actually wondering that myself :-/
I don't search for it in particular, but if the storyline and art is good, like any comic, I'll read it. Everyone I know personally who read BL comics though are female. It makes me wonder what the demographics are for that. I'm assuming it must be partly like a kink they find fascinating or that usually at least one of the boys in the relationship exposes a lot of emotion or inner feelings, almost feminine like? And I assume girls like a guy that doesn't hide his thoughts and emotions?
Something makes me think it could also partly be related to like how many girls might find it fascinating to have a gay friend. Like in Draareg's comic: http://tapastic.com/episode/100775

The only thing I could think of is like "You're physically like from the 'other side' but you're so relatable to me. You must be like the bridge between these two definitions." So boy love could also be kind of like a fantasy ideal of jumping into a world that they're not exactly directly involved innnn?
o_o okay, I think I'm botching this up. \Q_Q/ I'm so sorry if I come off as offensive! I'm trying not to be! /Q~Q/ I'd love to hear if anyone's got any theories on this~ =3=''''

[tsukin]

yeah see what you point out are the main reasons I tend to avoid a lot of yaoi and BL stories. A lot of times I find their reasoning and plots sort of almost offensive in their depiction of homosexuality.

Granted I've still read some, and I'm subscribed to some, but usually the ones I read either are more focused on the story and less on the romance, or the characters aren't acting like standins. There were a few that I read on here that I was actually sort of surprised by how they ended. Idk if I was just slow or not but if you haven't you should definitely check out Honeydew Syndrome, Reversion there are some others buuuut ironically Tapastic is now down for maintenance LOL

[tsukin]

I agree with you to some extent. Like I personally identify somewhere on the spectrum of being attracted to the same gender, and like lowkey I've had people straight up say like "Oh sweet you're perfect! You're our token gay and black friend all in one!" and it's sort of like "Errrr.... thanks? -.- Glad my sexuality and race mean that much to you on the whole friendship scale" So i totally can relate to that' guys expression.

Honestly I'm all for gay rights and such, but at the same time the hype is sort of annoying. I feel like often times people find out you're gay or bi or pan or whatever and suddenly you become "the gay one" and that's like all people see you for. Which is really REALLY frustrating. I think part of the whole BL/Yaoi craze, stems from that fascination of the unknown. It's like on one hand girls totally love you cause they're like "Omg I have a dude who can totally get what I'm going through" and then on the other it's like (and this is a slight exaggeration I'm not saying all guys are like this) "Oh look that dude's gay, he's totally gonna be checking me out" or "Man this one chick's being a dick blah blah blah -- oh hey didn't see you there, ah don't worry bout it you won't get it #youdontlikegirls"

It's a double edged sword and I feel like I sort of.... deviated from what I was trying to say but Idk how to get back to it LOL.

[Zannen00]

My friend said the same thing. Its like these gay dude can relate and be sympathetic to girl problem.
I don't know. I'm a straight guy. And dense.... I'll be going now HURRAY FOR MY WORTHLESS 2 CENTS!!!

[noctuidae]

From what I remember, early BL from 60s-70s Japan was a way for young girls to discover or express their sexuality -- there probably wasn't very much heavily sensual content geared towards them at that time. Even though the protagonists weren't of their gender, they could still relate to the usually delicate nature of one side of the couple. Given the time period, they may not have seen the sensitive sides of their boy classmates very much, so it was something new for them.

[MylCreates]

I'd agree to that. >3> I have noticed the whole craze going on, I don't know what to think of it, I doubt that the over-attention to the is doing the community 100% positivity if there's comic strips like that showing some backfire of the hype.

[AnnaLandin]

There is no one answer to this question, but here are my two cents on what SOME of the answers might be, beyond what has already been said by others.

1.) The continued lack of male/male relationships in mainstream pop culture (at least in the west; Japan has a seemingly robust comics market for it, be it yaoi, shounen ai and gay*-manga) creates a space where the supply does not meet the demand, and so webcomics and fandom culture in general rises up to fill that space. Thus, the rise of BL comics, and all the shipper-posts on Tumblr that ship every male character who has ever been in the same room as another male character - and sometimes even if they haven't.

*) I write "gay manga" instead of "bara", as I have been told that "bara" is considered a slur by some people.

2.) A pop cultural landscape where we as readers/watchers/consumers in general are usually given stories where it's mainly the male characters who get to have deep, meaningful personalities, motivations and relationships with one another. There are deep, meaningful female characters as well, of course, but most of the stage has - for a very long time now - been dominated by male characters. So we're all used to relating to male characters, and how those characters relate to each other. Female characters have a greater tendency to be shallower, or relegated to playing second fiddle to the male characters. So fandom culture - and creators steeped in that fandom culture - tend to favour male characters, and from there, the step to male/male relationships isn't very far.

The same goes for original webcomics, and not just for fandom culture; a lot of creators of BL comics are involved in various fandoms as well.

[Kura]

It is just a fetish that is popular for the same reason other fetishes and fan service is popular.

[joannekwan]

I'm just gonna speak from my own experience here...

For me, when I was reading a lot of manga, I read more BL than your usual shojo romances. Actually I don't think I've read any shojo romances past the first chapter. This was mostly because I never identified with the main girl and never saw the appeal of her love interest. Then when my friend introduced me to her yaoi/BL collection, I remembered thinking, "ooh, naked guys. nice." So yeah, I'll admit it, that's what initially grabbed my attention. But on another level, sometimes I find myself identifying with males more (at least the fictitious ones). I dunno, that's just me on a personal level, anyway...

As I read through her collection, I found charm and humor in one series (Sex Pistols, called Love Pistols in the North American translation), and this pretty much set me on a path to read other BL titles. And as I found more series to read and as I got older, I found flaws (over-usage of the feminine/masculine pairing, other tropes, shallowness in story and character, etc.) and I started to wonder if all of it was just fluff or smut. It wasn't until I came across the works of Est Em, and to a lesser extent, Natsume Ono, that I learned BL/yaoi can be very deep. (I fecking love their work, btw, and they are huge influences in my art) So it's because of them that I am now very picky with my BL and romance in general. Their work also led to the creation of my own male x male romance series. It's not cutesy, it's slow-going, both guys are very masculine, but I love it nonetheless.

So TL:DR version: BL appealed to me because I (used to/sometimes/usually) identify more with fictitious males in a romance than the females, I've found really good BL/yaoi stories and they've set a bar to compare all romance stories I come across, and the basest one of all which I'm not ashamed to admit, I like looking at handsome men.

[AnnaLandin]

Natsume Ono, that I learned BL/yaoi can be very deep.

Natsume Ono's work is amazing, even the non-BL ones! Ristorante Paradiso is brilliant, for example. There's a sense of depth to all the characters, and a complexity in their relationships with each other, that I really appreciate.

[joannekwan]

Right? I loved House of Five Leaves too!

[AnnaLandin]

@joannekwan I've only read the first volume of House of Five Leaves, but I am definitely getting my grubby hands on the rest of it. <3 So great!

[cheeznh]

not to be that person but I very much dislike BL/yaoi. It's just a fetishization. I think it's rude to people who are actually gay!
Also, have any of the artists ever seen a real gay couple before? Take a walk in the Castro and I well bet you five bucks that none of them look like a BL couple. Sheesh.

That said, I think Yoshinaga Fumi's Kinou Nani Tabeta? is a real-life representation of a gay couple. One is a lawyer hiding it from his coworkers, another a flamboyant hairstylist. It's mainly about food but it also tackles the issues of gay stereotypes in Japan, gay discrimination in the legal system, and other societal issues. And the characters look like normal people!!!

EDIT: Here's the preview episode (in Japanese tough) if any of you are interested!

[joannekwan]

Looks like a good realistic series that I can appreciate! I wish I could read Japanese.

[tsukin]

my Japanese is so rusty. I'll probably only get a couple words here and there

[infectedbloodcomics]

I tend to think the worst. I Think it's just glorified porn - that is, porn trying to pass as something with an actual plot.

[joannekwan]

To shift gears a little here (since that's where some of the replies seem to be heading), there was a whole topic discussing the BL label itself, interesting convos in there.

What do you think about thumbnails with "bl" label?

I think the general consensus was yeah, it's bad to fetishize and unfortunately the label has been dragged towards that end of the spectrum, rather than just showcasing a different kind of relationship in a positive light. Ideally, any story about a romance between people should just be labeled as romance.

[SandraMJ]

Well for me the appeal started when I ran out of straight fanfiction to read about Persona 3. So I began reading yaoi (and yuri) fanfiction and it was then when I was faced with the fact that they, in a sad majority, misrepresented homosexual relationships, making everything a world where being gay is super and everyone is happy and/or assholes who hate them are punished, and more often than not, writers just change completley the personality of the characters to make them fit their fantasy. And that's where the appeal ended for me.

However I, being bisexual myself, love playing with the Kinsey scale with my characters as I don't believe anyone's truly completely heterosexual or homosexual, but I try to keep them believable.