Why is BL more popular than LGBT comics in tapas

[mariamyakubu767]

So..you don't see a problem with the whole..top and bottom dynamic where one of the men is feminine and fragile and the other is masculine and strong..it's very..stupid.. and it gives people the impression that gay romance works the same way as straight romance..I've seen many gay men including myself complain about that in bl..I mean if this straight women want to write a gay story at least be respectful enough to make it realistic..and right..

[mariamyakubu767]

That's different..bl is written by women for women..and the authors are mostly very uneducated on how gay stuff works..

[BlairFujin]

It could be more popular here because despite being stories about gay guys, these stories seem to be more for women. Straight women rather than actual gay guys. The same way les pron is popular among straight guys, BL stories are popular among Straight women.

Some polls online have shown that it's mostly queer not straight women (straight women are more interested in... straight romances)
fun fact, sometimes you may come across terms neko and tachi in jp BLs when referencing top and bottom - those are terms used by lesbians about each other and tend to come up in BL when the author is... lesbian herself
There's also kinda well knows in some online spaces fujoshi - trans gay man pipeline...
Straight women being most of bl fans and authors is pretty much a myth coming from many of those people living in places where they can't be out and open about their gender and orientation
Plus even when there are male BL authors, at least in Japan, they'll often create under a feminine sounding pseudonym as it is simple more accepted for women to create romance.

[BOMB]

I get your point but the unrealistic aspects your talking about would be fine for me in BL stories. Suddenly falling in love. Meeting and dating a billionaire, all of that is unrealistic fantasy yes, but that's not what the problem is.

In a lot of gay fiction it's always the same, either the gay characters are loud, over, sexual, deviants, or they are neutered, soft, saints who don't seem to have any real sex drive or treat a kiss like it's full blown sex.

Then there's the constant top and bottom stuff where every gay relationship has to have a clear cut guy in the relationship and a girl in the relationship.

I straight fantasy sure the girl might find herself dating an unrealistic perfect hot guy, but at least the girl can have a personality. At least she can be two or three dimensional.

[mariamyakubu767]

I think it's so popular because somehow..the world has normalized the fetishisisation of gay men by straight women..it's sad..

[BOMB]

I haven't seen those polls. But the ones I have seen and commentary I've seen would contradict it. However I won't pretend to be an expert, I could be right or wrong.

In either case, as a bi guy, I've read BL and LGBT stories for a while and one of the main reasons i started writing is because every story i came across, before my own work, seemed to be the same. It felt like it was written a certain way for a certain group of people that wasn't me. And I was tired of it.

[BlairFujin]

To be perfectly honest, apart from some characters having set in stone preferences in this matter (as some real people tend to have) I haven't really seen the overly feminine bottom x overly masculine top trope in a long while - which tells me you know nothing about what you're talking about and maybe saw a single bl anime in early 2000s
Here are covers from some bl mangas from my collection, can you tell me which character is which of the tropes you mentioned?

[mariamyakubu767]

Really..? Lady I have read LOTS of bl and only a FEW didn't have the whole bottom and top trope..you think because you just pulled up some few examples that makes you right..well you're not..also..why are you so defensive..chill..

[BOMB]

I think that's kind of a shallow point. No one is saying there aren't any comics or media that break the norms he's talking about. It's kinda disingenuous to say "well I have all these in my personal collection that don't do that stuff, so you are wrong" when it only takes a single Google search to bring up hundreds upon hundreds if not thousands of other stories comics and media that speaks to the contrary.

And I say this because I struggle to find media that breaks the norm. There isn't nearly as much of it as the stuff mariamyakubu is referring to.

[BlairFujin]

Please, don't call me a "lady"
And as a BL author myself I'm just tired of people going "BL = evil fetishization, unlike our pure, unproblematic, realistic (most often western) LGBT stories"

[mariamyakubu767]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[BlairFujin]

I mean, that's just part of what's been traditionally published in a homophobic hellhole of my country so if you're struggling to find anything decent... I don't know what to tell you, don't know where you've been looking
From my perspective those tropes are pretty much a thing of the past but it's a past that people not wanting to give a genre a chance really like to cling to and focus on few works that are equivalent to 50 shades of gray and judging whole genre based on those : /

[mariamyakubu767]

You were saying..? Oh..look what I found..🤢🤢

[mariamyakubu767]

You were saying..? Oh..look what I found..also they were in the recent category..Lol..so..yeah..proved you wrong..

[BlairFujin]

What about those? Apart from looking like fluffy romances - what's wrong with this? As for "heteronormativity" in couples... maybe two out of these fall into feminine x masculine... but are you saying that more femme presenting gay gays can't date more masc presenting ones?
Are you just against anime artstyle? Is that it?

And how are those works any different that those under the LGBTQ+ genre posted on tapas?

[mariamyakubu767]

Dude..that's not the point..the point IS straight bl authors need to educate themselves and stop pushing these type of tropes and stereotypes because it gives a false impression and misinforms people how gay relationships works..it's like a white author writing a black story and putting harmful stereotypes..I have no problem with straight women writing gay stuff but..please at least do it right damn..

[BOMB]

And you just hit the nail on the head, what mariamyakubu is talking about is what has been traditionally published. And pushed out. At least I think that's what they are talking about.

Maybe the genre is moving away from that stuff, but if it is (in my opinion from what i see) it's a new move, and it's a slow one.

I won't say I can't find stuff that breaks the norm, but it takes a lot of effort. For every 10 comics or books that play on the old stuff, there may be 1 (if I'm lucky) that doesn't, and it's a scavenger hunt to find it. Either it's a soft cuddly love story or its basically pron, anything in the middle is like a Unicorn, (in my experience)

[BlairFujin]

Ehm... some of the stuff I've shown is nearly 10 years old
I mean... is there loads of crap? Yes, but that's the case is every single fiction genre but it really feels like when it comes to BL people tend to have some unrealistic standards or just base their opinion on whole genre on some piece of random niche porn someone's posting to their pixiv and ended up on a pirate translation website...

[Lensing]

Opinion:

The majority of readers is not interested in realism

[BOMB]

24 books (from your collection) over the past 10 years....vs how many of the stuff were talking about that has also come out over the past 10 years.