Your biggest pet peeve about BL?

[Kalchi]

Just a question to satisfy my curiosity as a writer, what's your pet peeve when it comes to BL? For both mangas and novels. You can give multiple answers too.

[BlairFujin]

The amount of negative attention its subjects tends to gather online...

As for tropes I'm not too fond of (luckily I'm stumbling across them less and less often)
-"I'm so in love with him that I can't stop myself from sexually harassing him" ekhem Love stage ekhem
-characters not being able to decide if they want to be together even though it's obvious from the start that they are meant to be with each other (it was so tiring in koisuru boukun...)

[NickRowler]

I think the one that annoys people the most is relationships built on noncon. Or stuff where the sub/bottom is pressured into a relationship. I really don’t like when one guy is established as straight and forced into a gay relationship against his will and somehow turns gay over the course of the story. This feeds into predatory stereotypes about gay men. It’s better to have both guys consent to liking each other.

I am also sort of bothered by BL creators who are straight who have little interest in supporting LGBTQ people IRL.

[cherrystark]

A lot of it is fetishization and predatory, imo. I've seen a lot of stories where the first lead is written pretty much like any female lead protagonist in a romance novel. They are weak and need their partners' protection for whatever reason. They are almost always either naive or poor, abused babies. The rest are the same pet peeves I have for MF romances. It's just toxic. Their partners are almost always predatory or possessive. They usually don't get a say in the relationship and are just forced to go along withi whatever their partner wants or else.

[Flios]

I tend to stay away from BL or just LGBTQ stories in general, because... well, I'm just a bit uncomfortable reading them (I usually like fantasy with a splash of action/comedy)

Anyways, I have tried a few, and I have to say, so many of the relationships seem downright silly or toxic. I mean, I just can't understand how one person can have UNREQUITED love for someone else. Like, if Person B completely hates Person A at first, how can Person A keep loving Person B? It's just really unrealistic, and somehow, that just bothers me

Through that, I do respect all the creators who write/draw LGBTQ stories. It's great to see representation for their community.

[DarkSena]

Exactly Nick! You put it together so well. I've started being fond of BL ever since I turned like 15 when I was first introduced to it I was so many mixed feelings. There are so many stereotypes which should be dodged at any cost. I've seen and read so many of them....

1) "raep is great" Please? Since when? Way too many, at some point I felt like every second manga I have seen did contain non-consensual forced intercourse. Stockholm syndrome feels like a absolutely normal thing... C'mon!

2) Toxic relationship. I smack you one time, sleep with you next time and someone else some other time.... then we have a drama and get back together? It doesn't need to be more commented, it's just simply ridiculous...

3) Terribly badly written. Out of many mangas I have read I must say I barely remember any of those....

4) Cliché is my 2nd name. Bear with that or just trash it....

5) Cute guy has to be the bottom. Please don't.... I hate this dynamics... To me males in relationship are equal or should be...

6) You are not gay? Then you're gonna be turned gay in the first few pages of the manga... because that's how it works out usually, riiiiight.

Still now I do love BL as a genre however there so SO VERY little titles I actually do remember from the hundreds of titles I have seen throughout these year. In my own comic, which is my very first solo one I'm trying to push in a healthy relationship which evolves over time, a mature and believable romance.

[darthmongoose]

I've warmed to BL over time because I feel like as the genre matures, and more LGBTQ+ creators have stepped into creating it (rather than...just cishet women all the time...aaaaghh....) some of the more toxic elements have been getting less common, and the relationships depicted are starting to feel a bit more real.

My main peeves with bad BL stories are things like:

• Misogyny: There's only one woman and she exists solely to be an annoyance or to try to stop the two guys getting together because she's jealous, OR women in general are presented as annoying, shallow, petty and jealous in contrast to the deep and soulful men. Bleh. ......Though admittedly this is only one little bit worse than a lot of het romance where every female character except the main heroine (she's not like other girls!) is petty, jealous and maybe antagonistic, so....Yeah.

• Everyone's super skinny, young, hairless and pale.... But this is an annoying issue in a lot of cishet romance and GL too. You can often spot the ones made by real LGBTQ+ people because there'll be a guy with some bodyhair or a bit of chub or somebody who actually looks like they might be over 25 in there. GL by men tends to do the same thing where both characters are skinny white femmes with long hair who look barely legal.

• Cutesy little blonde bottom who looks like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music gets groped by towering 7 foot tall dark-haired top with a chin like a chisel and hands like money spiders and after squealing like "kyaa-!" is immediately in love with him. Pretty tired of the prevalence of stories where there's a tiny little submissive feminine twink bottom and a tall domineering, masculine top who's also the one with all the money and power. It's overdone and boring, and kinda forces weird masculine-feminine relationship dynamics onto queer relationships that don't necessarily have to conform to them (there isn't always a "man" and a "woman" in a relationship...)

• Bad sexual health! Nobody uses lube, nobody uses protection, nobody does aftercare after kinky stuff... Nope, it's just clothes off and in they go! (owch).

Again, want to stress, it does seem like over time there are more good BL stories that don't do the above tropes. Not all BL is like this, and definitely not all LGBTQ+ media (in fact a lot of the better BL stories are in the LGBTQ+ section on Tapas).

[Freemints30]

My peeve is when the people who dont read much of it dunking on it cus that's cool. Okay salt time over, serious time

Honestly though I get the more common pet peevs. Until I was in a group for more professional writers group and learnt there is a whole genre called straight to gay erotica in the LBGTQ section. So I understand alot of it an appeal. I just wish like alot of fiction it was actually labled so people into that stuff can find it and people not into can avoid. But that is a whole other discussion.

Honestly 99% of the complaints I have seen Ive seen worse in het stories or really just iskai power fantasy but people have double standards.

My main peeve (not deal breaker) Its more the you either straight or gay dichotomy. Honestly that is in alot of fiction and in alot of work even older stuff that consider them LGBTQ+ fiction (less common now but holy hell when I still see it I cringe). Its like guy dates alot of women, falls in love with guy. Now he's gay and all his other relationships were shams

Like.. Bi/Pan people exist... Like.. Yeah sometimes a person turns out gay even after dating most the opposite gender but like Bi isnt a bad word... Bi people gets the short of the stick.

I was happy and surprised when I read a BL manga recently that openly just called one of the guys Bi. (Every lead in that was intentionally a shitty person. So I would reccommend if you enjoy a sex comedy where the leads are at some level funny tool bags)

[harlan]

Just hopping in to echo:

1. Nonconsensual and abusive stuff. If it's labelled as such from the outset and on the title page, that's fine, I can avoid it.

2. Bisexual erasure.

I agree that crushes can be based on looks alone to start with but usually if the person being crushed on is a total jerk with no redeeming qualities, the crush will die. I'm fine with slow burns on enemy to friends arcs, but there have to be moments along the way where the cold/distant/angry one shows something more. Idiots Don't Catch Colds is a fantastic example of how to do this right.

Also, more empowered females like Yiwha in Together With Me (tv series), please!

[Enthriex]

One of my peeves is when the story starts and they immediately fall for each other cause yolo xD

I wouldn't mind but many times they just want to draw them having sex right away >_> I once ran into a comic in where literally the plot was that, sex in every page and I was like daaaamn stop with the repetitivenesss XD

I like reading BL that has some sort of plot not just sex, and I feel scammed when they make me feel there is but there's not lmao I wonder if anyone can relate.

Another is the toxicity, toxicity is real in relationships but people often romanticize it. It would be cool to read a realistic portrayal of a toxic relationship and see the real consequences it has on a couple. How that affects their inner worlds, how it affects their self esteem or anything else (just stop it with the romance).

Same as above, when they don't use lube, its raw and there's no preparation whatsoever. I inwardly cringe imagining how that would hurt someone in real life >_<

Mysogyny, also stated above, when there's only one woman we are supposed to hate and that's her whole role in the story. I understand there can be annoying women, I've been in an all girls school in which the girls are bullies and well, nasty human beings... But having one woman in an entire story just to antagonize her doesn't feel right. If they're gonna do that at least balance it out with more women characters that are not there just to ruin the guys relationship. That and write the girl that is ruining the relationship in a more realistic/human way. Not everyone is fully good or fully bad, so it puts me off to see them in a black/white light.

When women don't exist at all lmao, it sounds weird but I watched an anime once in which this was a thing... I think it was called Sukysio? Something like that.

When rape is ignored or the character just forgets about their sexual assault/rape. It's okay to use this if the story is going to talk about how much this affected them, but its mostly used as a plot device for love and romance... Which is like ugh, nope. It's such a serious deal that it angers me when its not taken seriously. People tend to take it seriously when a woman goes through that, why not when its a man?

All in all, I just dislike when emotions such as jealousy are romanticized. Jealousy and possessiveness are a thing and though it can be used for character development, its in no way cute. I can see why a character would think thats cute but it depends on what the character has lived through and how they were brought up so they think jealousy is cute. I like when there's justification, when we get to understand where the character is coming from... Not when its simply normalized to the point every character thinks jealousy is endearing.

I guess the one thing I dislike the most is how much they are dehumanized and just used for sexual gratification.

I enjoy BL since its a fresh take to a relationship than just the normal heterosexual couple. I think they're cute, just like how a heterosexual couple in a movie can be cute (really, you can look at two persons and find them cute together, that sort of feel), but everything being flowers and rainbows is unrealistic.

I would like to find stories in where the relationship stuff is secondary to the actual plot cause, at least in my experience, it's rare to find a story in which the entire plot isn't about the romance.

Btw, the worst offenders I can come up with right now is Junjou romantica and Sekaiichi Hatsukoi xD I remember being sooo annoyed at Sekaiichi's countdown to the protagonist falling in love while he was repeating he didn't love him lmao (Dumb and annoying) and Junjou romantica was sexual harassment right at the beginning if I'm not misremembering.

Examples of animes in which characters ignore their own trauma would be "Gravitation" with the rape.

There's tons of examples of this, but I still have faith in that there are good stories out there waiting to be found and read ;-;

Ps. Forgot to mention but its also annoying when the couple doesn't break up after showing us how toxic it is. It's not cool to put up with that bs people, don't tolerate abusive partners >_<

Ps 2. I not only think this about BL, I complain about these sort of things happening in straight stories. I also hate women being used to antagonize a couple, I even read once how a gay couple was used to antagonize the Female lead and it was horrible.

[candiedcotton]

IMO there's a massive double-standard with this. People love to rag on BL for anything that isn't perfectly happy, flowery, healthy relationships, then they'll turn around and watch Game of Thrones, which has more pedophilia and rape than anything I've ever seen.

Ever since I started BL, I've been rate-bombed, review-bombed, called every name in the book, etc.

The hate for BL is stupid. It's truly stupid and IMO it's just pure bigotry. It's always a double-standard. It's thinly-veiled homophobia and nothing more.

Every thing that happens in BL happens in straight media too, but people gotta focus on BL because 'gays'.

[candiedcotton]

As a side note and I'll be real, topics like this do piss me off. Especially as a gay person.

Because I never see posts like "what do you hate about straight romance OMG". It's always BL.

Ugh.

[JoshRaed]

I also hate love stages use of childhood friend. You didn’t even know that your friend was a boy because you knew them that little, but you’re somehow genuinely in love with them after 10 years apart?

[Enthriex]

It would be nice to have a thread about that! And you're right, how come no one does a topic about it?

I personally took this thread as a "What's your biggest pet peeve about how people write BL" more than against the boy romance tbh

But it would be refreshing to read people complaining about straight romance for once.

[BlairFujin]

Eh, I actually quite enjoyed it (just had to stomach that one scene early on, it was so unnecesarry...) it's just a cute, silly comedy and the crush on a kid he met once 10 years ago (I wouldn't call them childhood friends and I don't think they were ever called that in the manga) only cemented to me early on that I'm dealing with naive idiots xD (but I think it is something you need to go into with right expectations)

[candiedcotton]

Yeah. A lot of the complaints are valid, but they also happen in straight romance just as equally. Like, why is it that almost all straight romance media has exclusively straight people and you never seen a single bi/non-straight person, unless they're tokenized for humor? Or the "gay friend of the straight MC girl" nonsense.

I'm fine for analyzing things we don't like in romance, but when people target BL (which is all I ever see) I kind of feel personally offended. And a lot of the modern BL has done a much better job of realistic representation (not even just gay dudes, but POC and disabled and all kinds of different people). We don't get much representation in media as is, so it's annoying when people do target a genre we're represented in. And while it used to purely be a genre targeted to women, because it's gotten better over the last decade or so, I'd say the people who read it are half gay/bi men as well.

It's like, damn... can we just have our representation and be left alone? lol.

I admit I'm kind of bitter about it.

Edit: A really good example of a great BL is Semantic Error. One of the characters is clearly on the spectrum, and they're just two guys. One is bisexual, not outright gay. His best friend is also an awesome lesbian chick. It's a very popular BL.

[VibrantFox]

I think a good chunk of the above replies have covered some peeves I have but one that's really come to stick out is a sore absence of ace or aro folks. it's a bit more common in lgbtqia+ stories but i feel like i so rarely come across characters who are on the asexual or aromantic spectrum. if anything there's only one, maybe two, that comes to mind out of stories i've read that had a main character who was demiromantic but other than that it's next to nothing (if people know of any tho i'm open to suggestions )

I think dubcon or noncon in any story is a pet peeve and so seeing characters being too aggressive or forceful is usually an immediate turnoff

As for toxic relationship elements (lets be real these show in any romance) they can be annoying when they're mishandled but depending on how it's written or approached and how the characters work through it if at all is the deciding factor. Coz even normal human relationships get really messy and effed up but the way stuff is twisted for fiction can get.....ough

I'd also like to see a better mix of folks having healthy relationships with their parents because yes there's absolutely no denying the trials and tribulations folks go through outside of fiction (lord there's a hell of a lot) but i think that's why I'd like to see a balance of more supportive parents (tho without some of the weirder(?) portrayals like i've seen from certain works) but seeing them have healthy conversations and just talking things through would be nice

def just wanna see more aspec characters tho coz it's like where are my people

edit: this did make me think of another peeve tho but it's less bl centric and more just a general trope i hate where a character is presented as possibly being ace but oh they're afraid of sex or they're some innocent cinnamon roll or they're actually repressed or a freak in bed so like...well written aspec characters who don't end up in some weird box would be nice coz half the time the same stereotypes thrown at them are similar to things we have spat at us

[JoshRaed]

The one scene is way too hard to ignore though imo, because the story references it later, has the character spend a whole episode trying to atone for it in the worst possible way, has that character do similar things later, and has the character make it very clear that he’d probably do it again.

Too much of this story makes me think “yeah this was definitely written by the same person who wrote the scene and it shows” for me to overlook it really.

[Enthriex]

Yes, completely reasonable tbh. Indeed though, I'm tired of those tropes you mention, they do a huge disservice and feel like they're just laughing at people >_>

I really don't get what's up with using them as tokens, they are actually hurting others with the stereotypes. It's not bad for an mc to have a gay friend but the way they are used just for being "gay" as if that was their whole character is downright offensive.

Makes one wanna do a mc with their "straight" friend as a response >_>

[candiedcotton]

It's an actual thing in the gay community where straight women have this weird desire to get trophy "gay guy bestie" and I fully blame media for it. It's a genuine thing and it's so weird.

Or people just assume I'm good with fashion when my entire wardrobe is t-shirts, jeans and sweats. lol. I know nothing of fashion. But again, media convinces people all gays are like that. Or that we sleep around. I've been in a dedicated relationship for nearly 8 years.

Harmful tropes exist everywhere. But I do think it's gotten better over the years and people often seem to forget that.