[Blogging on demand] My thoughts on Yaoi
Of course agonistes had to ask:...what are your thoughts on yaoi?
When answering the question "what are [my] thoughts on yaoi?", there are various things that need to be defined. What is Yaoi; what are thoughts on it; what are my thoughts, and why are they so frequently linked with Quasars?
What is yaoi?
Wikipedia says:Yaoi (やおい) is a publishing genre which focuses on male/male relationships and is marketed at females. The genre originated in Japan and encompasses manga, anime, novels and dōjinshi. In Japan, this genre is called "Boys' Love" or simply "BL", and "yaoi" as a genre name is mostly used by western fans. Yaoi has spread beyond Japan; yaoi material is available in the United States, as well as other Western and Eastern nations worldwide.
Last month, akai_senshi over on InsaneJournal posted a fairly informative post on the genre, as a split from young lesbian fiction in the 1970s. Because yaoi is a substitute for lesbianism/began as a substitute for lesbianism, the boys involved are supernaturally thin, lanky, and pretty, a practice that keeps on going to this day. The only difference, it seems, between BL and GL is the power a girl may experience identifying with a boy in a BL manga, in a very patriarchal culture like Japan
It's a very interesting post. If you're interested in Yaoi in a meta sense, I recommend you read it.
It appears to be a bit of a varied-use term, but maybe that's because I've never quite figured out what it was before I explored it just for this post. I always considered it more or less synonymous with 'slash' - the fanfic genre which focuses on male characters having romantic and/or sexual relationships with each other. Apparently I'm wrong, but I think some people do just assume Yaoi is male/male fiction written by women for women (with the occasional man, of course).
What are "Thoughts on yaoi"?
It's perhaps the most successful internet meme to have originated at fandom_wank. Apparently there was some wank or something about an antiyaoi community over here on LJ. What the wank was about is unimportant really, but someone used it as an excuse to post several tl;dr comments with the subject line my thoughts on yaoi .The primary use of the phrase now is to indicate where anyone (OP, Wanka or Wanker) is heading into long-winded way off-topicness that no one cares about, or because someone is indeed talking about yaoi.
So, yeah.
What are my thoughts on it?
Iiiiiii don't really have them? Well, it's not my thing, so why should I care? I don't think it dangerously perpetrates stereotypes. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanted to read porn about boys. I don't really get it, but I like my porn gritty, dirty and highly charged, and I like my romances sweet and patient and relatively believable. I like my menfolk hairy and butch and mannish, though also pretty. Also, I don't like reading right-to-left.
Maybe if I'd actually read any I'd have an opinion, but honestly? I don't care enough to try it out.
And that's as much teal as I chose to paint this particular deer.
When answering the question "what are [my] thoughts on yaoi?", there are various things that need to be defined. What is Yaoi; what are thoughts on it; what are my thoughts, and why are they so frequently linked with Quasars?
What is yaoi?
Wikipedia says:Yaoi (やおい) is a publishing genre which focuses on male/male relationships and is marketed at females. The genre originated in Japan and encompasses manga, anime, novels and dōjinshi. In Japan, this genre is called "Boys' Love" or simply "BL", and "yaoi" as a genre name is mostly used by western fans. Yaoi has spread beyond Japan; yaoi material is available in the United States, as well as other Western and Eastern nations worldwide.
Last month, akai_senshi over on InsaneJournal posted a fairly informative post on the genre, as a split from young lesbian fiction in the 1970s. Because yaoi is a substitute for lesbianism/began as a substitute for lesbianism, the boys involved are supernaturally thin, lanky, and pretty, a practice that keeps on going to this day. The only difference, it seems, between BL and GL is the power a girl may experience identifying with a boy in a BL manga, in a very patriarchal culture like Japan
It's a very interesting post. If you're interested in Yaoi in a meta sense, I recommend you read it.
It appears to be a bit of a varied-use term, but maybe that's because I've never quite figured out what it was before I explored it just for this post. I always considered it more or less synonymous with 'slash' - the fanfic genre which focuses on male characters having romantic and/or sexual relationships with each other. Apparently I'm wrong, but I think some people do just assume Yaoi is male/male fiction written by women for women (with the occasional man, of course).
What are "Thoughts on yaoi"?
It's perhaps the most successful internet meme to have originated at fandom_wank. Apparently there was some wank or something about an antiyaoi community over here on LJ. What the wank was about is unimportant really, but someone used it as an excuse to post several tl;dr comments with the subject line my thoughts on yaoi .The primary use of the phrase now is to indicate where anyone (OP, Wanka or Wanker) is heading into long-winded way off-topicness that no one cares about, or because someone is indeed talking about yaoi.
So, yeah.
What are my thoughts on it?
Iiiiiii don't really have them? Well, it's not my thing, so why should I care? I don't think it dangerously perpetrates stereotypes. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanted to read porn about boys. I don't really get it, but I like my porn gritty, dirty and highly charged, and I like my romances sweet and patient and relatively believable. I like my menfolk hairy and butch and mannish, though also pretty. Also, I don't like reading right-to-left.
Maybe if I'd actually read any I'd have an opinion, but honestly? I don't care enough to try it out.
And that's as much teal as I chose to paint this particular deer.