#bl discourse

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Good news for those who aren’t fans of the monopolization of BL by one company

*cough cough* One Enterprise *cough cough*

I know @respectthepetty has talked about the issue before and @clairedaring knows a bit more than most about the industry info!

[doublel27]

you know someone has invalid opinion when their fav show is my stubborn

No, I really don’t, Anon. I don’t think that loving one particular show over another makes anyone’s opinion invalid (that’s the TLDR answer.)

The longer answer, and I have no idea why you came into my inbox with this ask (and no idea who TF you’re trying to shade and if you just spammed it to as many BL blogs as possible trying to get someone to agree) but in my little house for hermit crab, we don’t value judge people’s favorites or their enjoyment of things.

See, I’m a fandom old. My fandom existence predates the existence of tumblr by a decade. And we have a saying: YKINMKATO - or your kink is not my kink and that’s okay.

Or to phrase it another way:

“It’s just not for me” - Jocelyn Schitt

See, things can be something you dislike and other people really like. Or vice versa! You may love something and someone else thinks it’s the worst! This does not make either of you wrong or bad, and I think that the wish to ascribe value judgement to someone’s enjoyment or dislike of a show is one of the worst things about modern fandom.

So you don’t enjoy My Stubborn? That’s great. It’s just not for you. And it being for someone else, it’s FOR them.

I’m also a BL fan that says: there’s so much cake why not eat it all?

Currently I’m watching: The Ex Morning, Pit Babe 2, My Sweetheart Jom, The Next Prince, Boys in Love, My Stubborn and Reset (and back watching Until We Meet Again) and I enjoy them all for different reasons. They all bring something different to the table! And I am sure if I polled the greater BL fandom there would be a very diverse selection for favorite show currently airing (there’s stuff airing right now that I’m not watching, which may be someone else’s current favorite thing airing.) If you did it out of BLs of all time! Even wider! And that doesn’t make anyone’s opinions invalid.

So…nope. Invalidating opinions are like: you can still fuck around with Joanne’s work in this day and age when she’s actively funding anti-trans legislation. Or: there’s only one right way to enjoy BL and it’s mine. That’s also not cool.

[bird-inacage]

Fortpeat Deserve Respect - Thoughts on Recent Events

Admittedly, I have been out of the loop with Fortpeat as of late, so my apologies if I'm not fully clued in on all the nuances. I assume most FP fans will have caught wind of this news. This was brought to my attention via MeMindY's recent public announcement, and Magic Cube have since also issued an apology.

To briefly recap: at FP's recent event 'Magic Snack Party' (8 March), hosted by Magic Cube, a few fans demanded an apology from FP due to alleged grievances and dissatisfaction from the event and others prior. Another group of fans were seeking an apology from the event staff, not FP. Fortpeat were present and apologised at the time.

For context, I am a Chinese speaker and have listened to the audio a few times. A fairly accurate translation is circulating on the internet but I would flag that we don't see which individuals made which comments. Individuals are heard to say 'they' a number of times and it's not absolutely clear in some cases if references are being made to FP, the event staff or both as 'they'.

The main issues I see being raised by the fandom are as follows:

The fans in question acted inappropriately by demanding a personal and private apology from FP.

FP should not have been put in such a position if the complaints or grievances were due to the fault of poor management via event organisers (Magic Cube) or MeMindY, and not misconduct from FP as individuals.

MeMindY have shown a concerning lack of support and protection in acting as FP's agent and facilitator. They have a poor track record in preventing such instances from happening.

I do fear the discourse will get very heated, and I'd like to emphasise that in the audio, there were also fans audibly protesting against this behaviour. Let's please focus on the fact that the instigators were a minority and refrain from any potentially xenophobic comments.

Ultimately, FP were in a really vulnerable position. As the incident mainly involved Chinese-speaking fans, they could only rely on their translator to gauge what was going on. Based on what is generally known of FP's characters as people, it doesn't surprise me that they felt compelled to apologise regardless of whether they were at fault or not. They take their fans very seriously.

A huge degree of responsibility lies with MMY. As their agent, this interaction should have never occurred. They should have acted as the mediator between all involved parties to prevent escalation. One, to protect their artists from any form of intimidation from fans, and two, to maintain a code of conduct amongst the fanbase with due process as to how to raise complaints in a suitable manner.

PARASOCIAL FANS: WHEN ADMIRATION VEERS INTO OWNERSHIP

Sadly, this is yet another example of the underlying risk and side-effect of the BL industry and unhealthy parasocial expectations. With the opportunity to get up close to these artists via a slew of events, promotions, fanmeets, and concerts - inevitably, the fan/artist dynamic can become blurry for some. More so for those who have the finance and means to pay for more exclusive interactions.

One could argue that the BL industry is transactional. The success of these artists rely on fans paying to support and see them. They do a job, they perform a service, fans pay for that entertainment which can eventually harbour a sense of entitlement. What becomes increasingly lost with this mentality is that artists are not being considered as human beings.

I worked in customer service for years and it's a similar story. Customers feel entitled to direct their frustration towards you simply because you represent the goods/services they pay for. The majority of the time the complaints aren't due to anything you've personally done. Yet you are the receiving end of that negativity and aggression.

Now I'd be cautious about making any definitive claims in regards to the fans involved in this particular altercation. For most of us, we weren't present and we are relying on secondhand accounts and just audio to ascertain what happened. As fans, what we can do is our darned best to advocate for better terms and values of respect both within the fandom and to our beloved artists.

AGENT RESPONSIBILITY & ACCOUNTABILITY

There have been rumblings for a long time now about MMY's treatment of FP. I don't know too much about the ins or outs in that respect, but I do believe it's in FP's benefit to consider other options. It's likely they feel indebted to MAME and how their first job with MMY skyrocketed them into such popularity. I imagine this makes it very difficult to consider moving on.

Many are requesting for these particular individuals to be blacklisted from attending events again. If this has been a repeated pattern of behaviour, MMY need to issue adequate consequences. It may even be sensible for agents/companies to have some form of legal code of conduct that fans have to sign before any 1-2-1 or face-to-face activities, so if any violation of these terms do occur, then due action can immediately be taken.

It's worth highlighting that event organisers do also have a duty of care and safety to fans attending (many of which could be travelling long distances or don't speak the local language). Therefore the responsibility is twofold - both to the artists and the fans - to manage that dynamic robustly. I don't want us to overlook any poor handling and mistreatment that the fans with genuine complaints may have been attempting to raise to the organisers.

After all, it's often the agents and event organisers who get the biggest cut of the profits, whereas it's either the artists themselves or the fans who get the brunt of the fallout. Many artists are bound and locked into complex contractual parameters with their companies and any other parties they collaborate with, and actually have very little say in terms of how these things operate.

We need to remind ourselves of who we should be holding accountable in order to raise standards of practice within the industry, to the benefit of all. We can all strive to do better.

[ladycamdens]

sorry, but some BL fans wild me up. a video just came across my TT feed of Joss and Gawin talking about their celeb crushes. they listed both men and women. and a comment with like a hundred up-votes was like "they really are straight 😭". their reasoning? because one of their answers was ryan gosling 💀 and only straight men like him... apparently.

A. that was right after they mentioned watching brokeback mountain and their joint crushes on heath ledger and jake gyllenhaal

B. this weird obsession some stans have with "proving" these actors are all secretly straight is so perverse? like if they are, who tf cares? unless they're heinously homophobic, that doesn't impact their ability to do their job. but also, it never feels enough to just take them at their word. this isn't some giant conspiracy theory, GMMTV isn't making them say they have crushes on men. plenty of their actors are in happy, hetero-facing relationships. i'm reminded of when everyone tried to say win metawin was straight bc they didn't like his acting in 2gether. like no, my man is a bicon, he just can't act!!! or sing. everyone said mew was queerbaiting and now he's engaged to a fucking man.

but lbr, these fans are often super homophobic and deem anyone who isn't Cooheart fruity a homophobic liar.

TLDR; stop pissing me off, it's fuckin pride month

[overthinkthis]

15 Day BL Challenge

Day 59: What's a hill you're willing to die on when it comes to BL?

Variety is good!

We are getting so many different shows at the moment and there are many that I don't watch because they're not my thing, but I still love that they exist. And of course it's fair to sometimes be disappointed when a show is different from what we hoped it would be, but I am very tired of people turning that personal disappointment into an attitude of 'this show shouldn't exist or shouldn't have been made this way' when it really is just one show among many.

And that includes stuff that gets problematic if it becomes a pattern!

Like, gay people not kissing? In countries where gay people never get to kiss on screen while all the hetero couples do - yeah, that's clearly censorship! But if we get a lot of BLs with kissing and sex scenes and then there's also one couple from one of them that doesn't kiss at all - that's a good thing! You know, asexual people exist! And they should get more representation than one character every blue moon who looks straight into the camera to explain asexuality.

That trope of 'I don't love men, I only love this one man' - yeah, not great when that is all we ever get. But some people genuinely feel like that, so it's fair when we still get representation for that too sometimes.

Tragic endings - same thing. When all queer love stories get tragic endings, that's a problematic pattern. When once in a while in the midst of all the happy BLs there is a tragic one, that is actually good!

This also holds for the future. Do I want more BLs where the mains are non-monogamous? Yes, of course. But I also want to keep the ones where the main couple desperately only wants each other. Do I want QLs that have a more even gender distribution? Yes! But I also want to keep the ones where the majority of the cast is either male or female.

And none of these shows will ever capture the queer experience. Because there is no 'the queer experience'. There are as many queer experiences as there are queer people and we all deserve to find parts of ourselves in the media we watch.

Okay, last rant for the BL challenge over. (Is it even a rant? It comes from a place of love for QL more than anything else.)

15 Day BL Challenge: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

[the-bloody-sadist]

Can I ask, why do you love BL romance better than het romance? What makes them better? I did not mean anything negative, and I know everyone have their own like and dislike but I want to know your thoughts....

Also what do you think that made Asian MLM (BL manga/manhwa/manhua/books) romances better than western MLM romances?

Hello! I have already answered this question before in GREAT detail, so hopefully this will answer it, but if you have any further questions, feel free to send me another ask! I love talking about this topic. I think a lot of casual viewers need to hear the reason why BL and specifically Asian MLM content is so much better than other categories of romance and western romance as a whole. A certain group of people love to misconstrue that with widespread lies that use buzz words like fetishization, homophobia, and racism, which are entirely untrue, unfounded, and unbelievable.

There's a psychology to it!

Anyway, here's that post where I talk about it in depth!!

[skepwith]

Fujojocast No. 16: Confronting BL Misconceptions

This is a really good podcast episode about the backlash against BL media—and by extension slash fic—in the Anglosphere (e.g. the "fetishization" claim), which is mostly driven by anti-trans views and purity culture. I love that this pod presents an East Asian perspective and how that broadens the discussion. Also, the episode summary (at punkednoodle.com) includes a link to some great resources at fujoshi.info.

In this podcast, I talk with Sam Aburime, an independent scholar, and Thomas Baudinette, Senior Lecturer from Macquarie University, about this growing vitriol on BL media and culture, its prevalence in Anglophone discourse, the various feminist and queer studies from all over the globe that are lost in this discourse, and how different communities are using BL as a tool to deepen and broaden their understanding of queer identities and media. —Khursten Santos

(I haven't included links for fear of messing up search results. I don't know if that's still a Tumblr problem.)

[shreysiwrites]

‘Love Is Love’ Until We Like It: How BL/GL Makes You Uncomfortable Because It Doesn’t Hurt Enough for You

“You should read real Indian queer literature.” The visibly queer man on instagram book review account with a carefully curated bookshelf in the back and a fully developed american accent says. 

I sigh, close my Japanese BL manga tab on google and go to good reads. Trying to prepare myself for the attack. 

There are roughly 100 books in the goodreads “Indian queer books” list and as you browse through it you get confused between them. Because somehow all book descriptions look the same. 

“Nobeen Mukherjee escaped from his abusive family in Kolkata” Okay relatable, “To start fresh, he moved to England.” What the hell? Anyways scroll.

“Kriti Sharma has a complicated relationship with her mother, the societal norms of her community and her growing attraction with Isabella, her classmate.” Sounds like diaspora, I cannot relate.

“Akriti Nair lives in Bangalore and is taking therapy to undo her generational trauma. To cope with her sexuality she writes about a British woman living in colonial India.” POC woman coping by presenting herself as a white woman yeah so so poetic, never been done before.

“Darshan Srivastav goes to Oxford but most of the time he spends cruising in the men’s bathroom of the university.” Okay god what the actual fuck?? 

I keep reading and reach the end of the page somehow none of the blurbs are interesting enough to appeal to me, a dalit queer woman born in the suburbs of west bengal with an atrocious bengali-english accent and a bengali medium education. 

Below the blurbs there are praises after praises, “This book won this prize” “This book is thought provoking, gritty, real and talks about urban queer lives of india.” I tell myself these critics forgot, to tell the story of indian queers, you need to show indian queers and not indian immigrants in other western, liberal countries. 

I close the tab, exhausted already after only 10 minutes of browsing. I go back to the Japanese BL I was reading and now shift to Chinese BL. One of the descriptions of the novel reads, “Luo Wenzhou was a police officer and he met Fei Du 5 years ago when he was rookie, the bright young man had just taken over his father’s company. Now 5 years later when they meet for a case again sparks fly. Amidst the high demand case, can they love each other over suspicion?”

I start reading and keep reading. The novel is translated from chinese and the english translation is written in a non profit website with gazillions advertisements but I gulp down the two character’s chemistry, their love and their journey as they solve cases together. They fall in love and confess with flowers in the battlefield, then walk off by defeating the enemies. In the epilogue they start living together, their colleagues congratulate them. 

It’s short, perhaps two days worth reading but it stays in my mind and I log into twitter, mingle with the same people that read the book and write pages after pages of fanfiction about them meeting again in another setting in my style. 

This would happen once every month. 

I would watch some video about some critique talking about indian queer fiction, then go to the list feel defeated because I don’t understand whatever the fuck was written on the blurb and then beat myself up because I am not reading real queer indian literature. I don’t know anything about real, gritty, thought provoking books or how it is to be a gay indian. 

After years of beating myself up for liking “problematic content” AKA BL manga AKA “fetish content” I have decided to give up on “real indian queer literature” and remain on the “fetish” side of the internet. 

Because guess what, if these fetish manga did not exist, I probably would never come into the terms on my sexuality. Be happy about it or be unapologetic for it. 

However, I wanted to know what made me not want to read the “real gritty booker prize winning” queer fiction and want to read those foreign people falling in love and still relatable and satisfying?

The answer is ‘Suffering”.

The long list of critically acclaimed novels that I abandoned had one recurring theme. “Suffering.” 

It was not only suffering. It was suffering aesthetically. Suffering in a foreign university, suffering in a thirty five thousands per month apartment in an expensive neighbourhood of Bangalore, suffering in a private school hostel where the monthly fees is 1.5 lakhs. 

It gets tiring really quickly, trust me. 

Even that I could forgive, maybe ignore. Because, granted, I have read mangas where the main character is a filthy rich mafia and liked it. The fantasy of being poor and being picked by a billionaire for no reason is not new nor a crime no matter how much these virtue signaling youtube critiques tell you.

It gets tiring when you realise there is no plot. The plot is them being gay and struggling for 200 something pages to come to terms with their sexuality and writing monologues after monologues justifying them being gay. 

The characters are also not much different from each other. No matter how much the writer tries to make them different, all of their characterisation boils into them being gay. Even in the blurb it’s pretty obvious that it’s their lives’ only concern because that’s the only thing that makes them marginalised among all the privileges. 

The characters have no aspirations in life, they have no dream they want to conquer, no exams they want to crack, no dream job whose interview is keeping them up at night. 

Just I am gay and I am fucking sad about it. 

Also the characters, they are either sexually repressed, scared of sex or they are overtly sexual cruising in the men’s bathroom of oxford university. This is a very real blurb I read by the way and this was the only thing that was mentioned in about that queer character and nothing else. 

Now, being repressed or being overtly sexual is not a crime. Cis-Het people are also like that but the in-between people also exist. Who don’t run the moment they feel slight attraction or don’t seek sex in their university bathroom. 

Reading all these, I am kind of glad my introduction to queer media was through these atrocious 90’s yaoi manga. Otherwise I would go through 50 stages of grief and internalised homophobia that would potentially ruin my life because I have no such privilege like these characters. 

These fetish manga gave me the freedom I needed to like women and feel good about it and not cry a river every single day. The community that built around these mangas were the coolest people ever who accepted queerness like it was a walk in the park, literally.

These mangas didn’t go through 50 pages of monologues to justify that they like the same sex, they were just there and reading that made me feel like I belonged here too. That I was not broken like those booker prize winner books suggested. 

Now when I see so called academics call BL/GL especially BL, fetish content and “meant for straight girls”. I only laugh, because I was once a straight girl that read BL as well, until I was not. Like me there are probably thousands of straight girls that read BL and found they were not straight. 

Those who love to put them on moral high ground should know. The rows and rows of “critically acclaimed” books that are trying so hard to be the next “Maurice” or “The Picture of Dorian Grey” that are also fetish content. 

It is the fetish of queer suffering, queer pain, queers being tortured to death. So these self congratulatory people can read it, shed a tear or two and go back to their cishet family. Then post “love is love” in June on twitter. 

Peak activism. 

While the western culture has long moved on from this in the late 00’s, now they grace us with movies like “Red White & Royal Blue” where the conflict is not their sexuality rather their duties towards their countries. The Indian queer scene just cannot get out of the damn bathroom of the Oxford University. 

It’s exhausting, makes me want to never touch anything queer written by any Indian author because I know there will be pain and suffering and I would be miserable at the end of the book and not even in a good way. 

In conclusion, you keep your trauma literature and I keep my fetish content. 

The fetish content that liberated me, the disgusting, problematic content that made me unapologetically love women even living in the suburbs of west bengal with a bengal medium education. 

You keep that 50 pages of internal monologue about being gay about some guy that has no personality but is somehow rich and the only thing that makes them marginalised is that they like their same sex. 

[watchthisqqq]

I’ve been thinking a lot about criticism because of the discourse recently. Which really is all about criticism and how it should be done. Because everyone criticizes, even those that I’ve seen staunchly against voicing criticism, do it untagged or in some other way.

It’s also about what you prioritize and I think the people that are getting the most backlash care the most about narrative (don’t quote me on this just my perception). For me I have come to realize characters are probably the most important and I can forgive a lot as long as the characters are interesting and stay consistent. This might also be because I binge things I’m not sitting with an annoying episode for a week and can move on to the next. I do think if you are much more character focused you might get more attached and therefore more defensive. Though I’m not very attached to actors. (Tay Tawan is my fav but I stopped watching peaceful property)

Personally I see things I disagree with and sometimes I think the person is being harsh but I’m just not offended by it? For the most part I get where people are coming from even if I don't agree. Obviously we have our limits or sensitive points. For me if I see a female character being called a bitch numerous times or being hypercritical of women without the same scrutiny on men. Survivors of abuse also I feel are often misunderstood. I could probably go on.

I think criticism is actually vital in this bl ecosystem. How many posts would there be if you could never say anything bad about a show? That would ruin engagement. Also why can't you want and wish for things? "I wish the show had done this instead" and enough feedback like that can lead to that type of show existing. Criticism is effortful and start of a conversation and not someone spitting at your feet. Sometimes criticism has steered me away from shows but other times it’s oh you don’t like that? I like that I’m going to watch this.

This has also lead me to thinking about how I engage in criticism. I think I have been reactionary when I’ve seen the things I mentioned above which typically does not feel good and I’m not sure how productive that is. I am more likely to write a post when there are strong emotions involved and my previous goal was to post instead of overthinking it. But I want to shift focus.

I really want to work on my praise of shows. I have a difficult time saying anything meaningful about the shows I love and I want to get better at it. In my head it’s always I love it! I love it! what more can I say. I watched this Big joel video where he is reviewing Disney movies for 6 hours. This could have easily been a video about how trash these movies are but his reviews are somehow so compassionate and he tries to find emotional connections to them. The reviews are often humorous and kind. I want to go in that direction. Because in end I do want to make people aware the shows that I care about. But tbh this is a hobby I mostly just want to have fun.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

taking certain western ql fans by the shoulders and shouting YOUR QUEER EXPERIENCES ARE NOT UNIVERSAL

[please-someone-give-me-love]

What I mean with bl shonen is to plit center stories with different type of characters and plots and a proper development for them and their relationships.

Not making a bl center anime that normalize and romantize pedophile and SA but is called shonen because it's published in a shonen magazine😭

[ladycamdens]

i know i waffle on about this a lot, but this response makes me want to address a greater attitude amongst Western BL fandom. i find that a lot of watchers of thai BL look at the industry through a very western-centric lens. and also a lens that's largely influenced by east asian media.

now i'll preface this by saying i'm not thai, but my family is from a Buddhist majority country in asia. but uniquely, even from my people, thailand was never colonised by any of the major abrahamic religions. therefore, their people tend to have a decolonised mindset towards sexuality and gender (hence the kathoey, as an example). you might have also seen their huge pride turnouts.

now that isn't to say straight people don't exist, but that we can not apply western statistics to their culture. it's a disservice to the fact that it is far more okay and accepted in thai culture not only to identify as queer, but to identify as sexually fluid. in theravada buddhism it is a core belief to treat all people with kindness and acceptance and that it's not one's place to dictate what another person does with their own physical vessel. sex is also not demonised the way it is in God fearing religions.

now that is to say there are A LOT of queer people in the entertainment industry - if not the majority, it's a large number. and whilst coming out is great, and we should support everyone who does, a lot aren't going to feel the need to clarify if they aren't dating someone publicly.

i get mighty sick of phobes thinking this has anything to do with shipping, when the core of this is xenophobia and queer erasure. i don't care who is or isn't queer/dating, i care that so many fans of queer media are comfortable diluting the very real identities of the people making it

from a brown, queer person respectfully fuck off and watch het kdramas if u can't swallow that pill 🖕

[specterthief]

my #1 elitist opinion is that if you are creating something that presents itself as a parody or subversion of a specific genre you should be thoroughly familiar with genuine examples of that genre

[overthinkthis]

I haven't been around in the BL fandom that long but I have been thinking about this question a lot and I think at least some of it has to do with the fear of being left out.

Queer people (or people drawn to queer stories) often struggle with isolation and loneliness at some point in our lives and we crave community. We want to find people who share our pain and our joy and maybe, when there were only ten BLs airing a year, it was easier to find that. Everyone watches the same shows, they are not perfect but we can have fun with them because we're together in this. Now there are too many shows to keep up with everything and the sense of community is more difficult to find because everyone watches something else.

And more variety also means that shows are constantly measured up against other shows, so it becomes a game of liking the right show at the right time to get that sense of belonging. And some people can feel isolated again for not liking the show that everyone seems to love right now, so they want to at least find community in sharing their criticism.

But idk... I also feel like there is a general lack of respect for art. Maybe everyone simply needs to create more and consume less. Writing fanfic definitely helped me appreciate creators even more.

a question for QL fandom at large: when did we start only wanting media that is perfectly suited to our standards?

there has never been a perfect show, and there never will be a perfect show, because everybody likes different things and QL is run on shoestring budgets. i thought this was something we made our peace with as viewers of the genre!

so i'm just wondering at what point fandom decided that a show is only worthy of praise/fandom if it has no problems?

at what point did we decide that talking about the problems of a show is more important than talking about what we did enjoy and what kept us watching? i don't know when it happened, but it definitely has. critique is treated more seriously and gets more interaction than people talking about what they like.

it seems like a really exhausting and slightly puritan way to do things, to be constantly finding imperfections and treating them as more important than the good parts. dunno about y'all but i don't want to be unintentionally enacting puritan shit.

i want joy, i want fun, i want the spirit of camaraderie in fandom.

so, why did fandom begin to snub any media that didn't fit very high standards? and how can we steer ourselves away from that impulse?

(i am genuinely curious about why this is happening and how those of us who don't enjoy it can change, so please feel free to jump in, even if you are 'late' or think you only have a very small contribution to make to the discussion.)

[gay-meowmeow]

me trying to explain to certain bl fans that a series with a sex scene that doesnt feature our gmmtv faves, is longer than 3 minutes, and has positions other than plain missionary, is not in fact "gay porn"

[thisautistic]

so I feel like if my stubborn plays this right it can open up a very important conversation about the fact that it is possible to violate consent in an ongoing sexual relationship.

like I hope they get to a point where jun is comfortable asserting his boundaries during sex.

because consent is ongoing. and it CAN be revoked at any time WHATSOEVER no matter what's happening.