Merging Yaoi + Shounen Ai and Yuri + Shoujo Ai into BL and GL

I know these terms aren't genres either, but I've seen or heard "Male Love" before, which is why I mentioned it (the rest I applied, based on this term).
While Love vs Romance might also be confusing for some (or at first), that's kinda what genre descriptions are for.
Sure, we have descriptions for shounen ai and yaoi too, but they're not next to one another on the list, making people less likely to want to find out the difference. First, they'll have to find at least one of these terms, let alone both...

In any case, like I said in my first post, it doesn't have to be these terms specifically. Just something different that what we have now.
We can surely come up with our own. That's how terms come to be. IIRC, "harem" genre didn't even exist before 2005 or so, and we're still fighting about series it should include.

*edit*
I'm not for the merge, because using "Adult" genre to find explicit series seems unnecessary (another click? will everyone know to use it?), and more importantly this genre doesn't exist just for sexual content.

IDK... if we were to use Gay/Lesbian and not merge, then perhaps we could call them Gay/Lesbian (R18) for Yaoi/Yuri and Gay/Lesbian (Non-Explicit*) for Shounen/Shoujo Ai?
*Is there a better term for that? Not my first language. Platonic means something different. IDK, chaste? Not really that either, right?
And using plain terms just seems a bit wrong... Actually when I think about people using these terms at all on the forums instead of BL/GL (does anybody ask for GL?), it seems kinda cringy...

Than again, using the full terms Boys' Love and Girls' Love seems kinda cringy as well.
I mean, boy/girl sound kinda underage to me, so seeing it associated with sex, ugh...

Maybe we could just use the shortnames?

BL, BL (R18), GL, GL (R18)?

Damn... this is a difficult topic.

 

I just wanted to say that this choice of terms is pretty bad IMO (yes, I do know you said that the terms could be changed), because like... I'd genuinely have no clue what they meant at first glance. I'd need to check the definition and stuff.

If the terms were changed to english language ones, I'd rather have them changed to something that is intuitive... Like Gay Romance and Lesbian Romance (assuming a merge, since I feel like a merge would be a good thing).

Even if they were to still be kept apart, I'd rather have something like Gay Literotica and Lesbian Literotica for the R-18 stuff or something.

 

Yeah, these sound quite good.
But I'm not sure how the "erotica" part will play with NU's ad providers, which we'll, unfortunately, need to consider.

 

I still think Boys' Love and Girls' Love is the best. If your point if to get rid of the JP terms because most of the novels on NU are not JP, and instead Chinese... well, I can say that the CN terms are not "Male Love/Romance" and "Female Love/Romance".

It's "Pure Love" and "Lily". That probably wouldn't make any more sense to English readers than the Boys' Love/Girls' Love (in fact, BL and GL would make more sense).

So, I don't think that using the CN novels in your argument is a very valid point.

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BL and GL are also way more commonly used. In the whole community basically, everyone either uses just BL or GL. I can understand wanting newbies who don't know to be able to know easier. But really, if it's merged, it's literally just two terms. Easy definitions, too- is it boyxboy or girlxgirl? Super simple. It's not really going to be a matter of "JP term or not".

Besides, as a relatively newer member (I've only been here for about a year), I can still remember when I first joined, I didn't know what shounen ai/yaoi/shoujo ai/yuri/BL/GL was. But it was pretty easy to remember and learn. There is literally a genre definition place, so... it's not even that hard to remember. Not only that, I literally did not know what gay/lesbian romance were either (and I grew up in America), so imo, that's not going to be any better.

Female/Male romance/love seems kind of confusing due to all the tags surrounding female/male. For example, "female protagonist", "female lead", etc. It doesn't give off the feeling of... BL/GL. To me, at least. But you would almost never see "boy protagonist". So Boys' Love and Girls' Love seems way more... exclusive as a genre, I guess. Not quite sure how to explain it, but yeah.

And actually, I think that changing the terms to something other than BL and GL would be even more counterproductive than before. Because to newbies, it'd pretty much be the same either way. But to the already existing vast majority of NU members... changing that is going to force everyone to adjust. Newbies and existing members. Which seems way more counterproductive than changing it so newbies who don't know the terms will learn... easier, when that's not even true.

If the options are to merge the genres into Gay/Male Romance and Lesbian/Female Romance, rather than BL and GL, I'd rather vote to keep the genres the same as now.

 

Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of merging, though? To clean up number of genres and stuff?

I know you aren't for merging, but still... seems like a kind of pointless change...?

Lots of people ask for GL though... just look at the Novel Pickup Requests sub-forums. I remember that at a certain point in time, every single CN novel thread was GL.

Also:

If I'm being honest, BL and GL are just my exclusive go-to terms for the fiction/novel world. That's why changing it to Gay/Lesbian Romance feels cringy to me (and I'm super against it!!!). Gay/Lesbian are just associated with so many real world problems and issues and things and I'd rather not have to see it everywhere in my fictional retreat. Besides, it's literally an Western/English term. So... if I wanted to read Western novels, I'd go to Wattpad or something, thank you. NU is my Asian novel haven. Imo, that makes the JP terms more qualified than the Western terms. Since they're actually Asian terms? So... I'd actually prefer shounen ai and yaoi in that case.

And basically, to me, it's all about association. When I see BL/Boys' Love, I don't think "little kids doing it". I think of all the BL novels I read. And they're wonderful!! A great, happy fictional world~ And it's honestly already just a term on its own to me already... so I don't even really separate it to "Boys" + "Love", it's literally just "Boys Love".

When I see Gay/Lesbian Romance, I think of all the mean little jokes people make and all those protests and overly righteous people who'll just go after you because something you say is misconstrued as sexist/racist/homophobic/against affirmative action, etc. It leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. Real life, you know. Just saying.

Maybe that's not true for everyone else, but that's how I personally feel.

 

My point was that since the wast majority of people here do not understand the difference between Yaoi and Shounen Ai, and are thus misusing them, the terms are clearly wrong.
I added that I find it ridiculous that we're using Japanese terms for these genres when, in fact, JP novels don't even account for 20% of their content.

That's cool, but I was speaking from a stance of not wanting the merge.

That's quite funny. Not everyone is you. If it was that easy for everybody to learn, this thread (and the previous one/s) wouldn't have existed.

Really? You're telling me you had trouble grasping what "gay romance" would mean as a genre? You've never heard of "romance" genre before and are thus incapable of guessing what adding a sexual orientation to it would actually stand for?

Yeah, I at first used Boys' Love/Romance, but edited it later after Parth's reply he'd rather just use "Gay".
The only reason it doesn't "give off that feeling" is because you already got used to other terms.
BL/GL are widely used, and I'm fine with the abbreviations, but I cringe at the full terms for two reasons:
1. Like I already mentioned, boy/girl sounds underage and shouldn't really be associated with sex.
2. Simply s' is hard too look at. I know it's correct and I do use it myself, but as much as I do like the English language, this has always been the thing that annoyed me about it.

In any case, I clearly wrote I'm fine with other terms and would just like to abolish the JP ones.

Yeah, these were not the options.

Getting rid of two genres is not the purpose of merging. The purpose is to stop misusing genres. People add both or one instead of the other.
The problem is they don't know or care to know the difference.
Having similar terms with a clear distinction would surely help people make the correct decision.

Oh, they do? All I ever see is BL this BL that... That's cool, then.

I don't see why you'd have a problem with the name itself when the content is just as close to reality, but okay - you're entitled to feeling whatever you're feeling.

To quote the home page NU is a "Directory of Asian Translated Novels", and we're required to only speak English here, so it makes sense to use western terms.

It's not. Using two English words doesn't make it a western/English term. That's like saying Pokemon is an English term.
It's a Japanese term made by combining two English words and it has been later adapted by Western markets. That's it.

Personally, I'm able to separate reality and fiction, but like I already said, I can't really do anything about how you're feeling.

Besides, I also mentioned in my first message, that it's technically possible to use different locales for the terms and let people choose whichever ones they'd like. There's plenty of websites that do that.

 

Okie-doke~ That's a bunch of stuff! So I guess I'll just respond to it line by line...? This is going to be a long post, ugh.

Yup, got that! I'm just saying even so, with JP novels not accounting for 20% of the content, I still feel like that doesn't qualify just swapping them out for other terms.

Yup, I realized that later. I guess I wasn't entirely on the same page as you there, since I'm pro-merge.

Yeah, great. I know not everyone's me. I get that there is a problem with mistagging and everything... which is also why I am pro-merge. Personally, I think that would actually solve the problem, so I don't get why you aren't for it... you don't want the JP terms, but you want whether it's R-18 or not to be in the genre name... when there's already TWO genres that talk about that (Adult and Mature) + some tags (R-18, R-15, etc.).

Uh... I didn't say that though??? I'll have you know, that before NU, all I read was BG. So either would be the same to me in terms of learning difficulty (wasn't that difficult either way): hence the "that's not going to be any better." Didn't say I would have trouble grasping the meaning. That was all you.

Yeah. I've gotten used to it. And so has pretty much everyone else. So... why can't you, is my question. If you don't like looking at the s' (which is a really weird point... that's just proper English?? If you hate it so much, then just don't put the apostrophe there. No one will care.), then I'll just stop typing them... whatever. Honestly, I usually don't type it out anyway. I just figured at that time that typing it all out would be better because I was responding to you and that's how you did it.

Most people wouldn't bother wasting their time typing out the full word anyway.

I usually type just BL/GL. So... problem solved! That's the whole point of acronyms, anyway. That way, you don't have to look at the s' or the full word, if it makes you so uncomfortable... which I feel like while your point is kinda valid (underage children shouldn't be having sex), it's also not. Because when "boys love" is put together as one term, the meaning changes. Kind of like all the other words with multiple meanings, and especially those whose meanings change when combined with other words.

And since you're fine with the abbreviations, that's good too! At least we agree on this one point!

Great then. I was just saying I'm not fine with some terms and neutral with the JP terms.

Thank goodness then. Because I read a LOT of posts asking for a merge + term change. Which is why I said what I said. I voted yes to the current post's topic.

Yeah... well, getting rid of as in reducing the number of genres for pretty much the same thing. So... why not just be pro-merge then? That way, when everything is wrapped under just BL/GL, it's nearly impossible for people to misuse them- because it'll all be correct! Especially if they don't care to read the difference, well... it's not like it's going to be incorrect and bother everyone else?

I get your point about the similar terms, but I still feel like we may as well just merge it all, since it's both simpler for the mods and there are tags for adult stuff.

Yeah!! When I first started translating and looking for a novel... all I saw was GL (which was a little sad for me since I don't read GL)! Basically... no BL. That was a few months ago, though (towards the end of summer).

Thanks, I am. And... well, I don't really see a bunch of people righteously defending the LGBTQ+ community in overbearing ways when the content has absolutely nothing to do with LGBTQ+... it gets on my nerves. I don't really see that in novels (or at least the CN novels I read), and if I did, I'd drop it right away, if that was a character who appeared frequently in the novel.

So, no, the content isn't really that close to reality.

No, it doesn't. There's a difference between English and Western. Western =/= English. Get it right, please.

Great, so amazing. So... what are you trying to say? That "Gay/Lesbian Romance" is not Western? Because I certainly don't see it in any of the novels I read. Granted, I usually just read CN, but at least that's 1 out of the big 3 Asian languages on here, so... what'd you know~

Yeah, you can't. I can't do much about what you're feeling either, so... I'm not going to comment on this one.

Yeah, I think that was a good idea (not disagreeing with you there). Though, not sure if Tony and the mods would be up for that? Seems like a bit of work. If there was a poll for that, I'd vote for it!

 

I'm personally more used to the term "boys' love" and "girls' love". I support merging these terms.
It's used in japan, korea, taiwan and china (beside danmei). I can't say much for thailand or indian or other asian countries, but most novels I see in this site come from these countries. By majority rule there are more translated chinese novels in Yaoi genre, if you want to be correct, they should be tagged as Danmei, a term even less people know the meaning of.

@Typhe , I guess what AliceShiki is saying is japanese people don't really use this term anymore. They use Boys Love and Adult genre when there's smut in their works. So tagging it with yaoi or shonen ai will be decided by translator and readers. Everyone has different milleage for what is Shounen Ai what is Yaoi, but why bother when there's a term you can use for both and is used by authors now? Don't fix what's not broken, okay, but surely you gotta update the terms as they become obselete? I do know that korean webtoon and novel sites uses BL and japanese book rental and reading sites uses BL. That way at least the translators will have easier way of categorising their entries and it is english words... It also doesn't have the stigma from boku no pico in the west, for example.... Wow, boku no pico is actually technically Shounen Ai, I just realised.

Spoiler: images

If you want a more straight forward term, Male x Male(M/M), Female x Female(F/F). Like I said I'm more used to seeing BG(BoyxGirl), BL(Boys' Love), GL(Girls' Love). History of BL; Strictly, Yaoi will only apply to BL works between 1970s to early 2000 because from then it starts to evolve beyond the yaoi bracket. If you insist on keeping it, there should be other genres for Otome, Bara(uncles romance), etc.

I personally don't like the term 'gay romance' and 'lesbian romance' because what comes to my mind is HBO and Netflix gay and lesbian romances that feels very different from the asian counterpart. Sounds like one of those novels or shows that put too much emphasis on defining sexuality when BL and GL is not like that.... BL and GL are more about their lives but they end up with male/female partner. IMO. But if you want to use 'Gay' or 'Lesbian'... I feel better about those, ah maybe I don't like the 'romance/erotica' tacked on it instead. But in this case, will you have to add a 'Straight' genre too? I am also against 'erotica' as this is also a specific term for only smut/literary smut works. edit: lol. that reminds me, often danmei authors has ace, poly, aro, bi, pan characters, "I don't like guys, I just like you." which can be other sexuality than just Gay and Lesbian, so Gay and Lesb can't function as umbrella term for those novels.

Don't agree with "people can't learn" or "they will be confused forever" either. People learnt what yaoi (essentially) is. There is also ecchi, mecha, josei, seinen, smut, wuxia, slice of life genres in NU. Not present in english publishing terms, but people in NU understand it anyway. We come to Novelupdates to read asian translated novels, so in the end you will be exposed to these things, if not then why not just read the english novels? ... Also NU is a fan community by fans for fans, NU is not an english publisher site.

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TLDR: I support merging the terms and changing to BL, GL, BG or MM, MF, FF. Gay and Lesbian terms are from western which is not in line with that NU does with other terms (ecchi, wuxia, josei, mecha). Why can't we use the term the authors use in Korea/Taiwan/Japan/China?

 

hmm there no equivalent before the term on western counter part

ecchi, flirting lot of skin show panty shot ect now what is western counterpart? smut adult mature.... nay~ blame japan~
Wuxia, one of most dammed misuses or misunderstand genre on NU~ imo no single western counterpart can accommodate it~ special commodity from china~ there are martial art story from korea the style imo influenced by wuxia style such as Emperor Sword ....... damn that old one~ oh btw there seem variant or transformation or evolution of classification of wuxia. @ToastedRossi and @Wu Jizun expertise (cuz they can read moonrunes) [yes this cat drag you to join this stuff beside ji zun if ya fail with Almighty BL is good way to roaming cuz it fierce fanbase]
mecha, giant robot.... transformers? that just wrong.... blame japan~

imo unless it specific term product there is western counterpart~ or~ the term is exported~ so the term used on eastern asia author may have it counterpart on western~

ever read fanwei? that extra story~ it may epilogue, what if, side story~

now
don't mind me go on with pro and contra stuff~

 

lol, I've never seen myself in a thread with these tags before, but what do you know.

To hijack the thread for a second, yeah, old-school wuxia and old-school wuxia (the genre Jin Yong, Gu Long, Wolong Sheng, Liang Yusheng etc. popularised and gave rise to the inaccurately translated "martial heroes" translation) are very different. I haven't seen a single old-school one translated. I can't imagine anyone translating one at the moment when new-school wuxia is already difficult for translators at present.

True story: I listen to a lot of songs from BL stories.

 

No hijack ' x '

But to bring these points to the discussion... I can't think of a single word that can replace yaoi/shounen ai/BL in western community
LGBT(IA) will be too wide, and from what I've read, that label sometimes focuses on finding out one's sexuality/identity rather than story of other things where they just end up with homosex partner. The characters will also use these label on themselves, when the translated novels I read rarely touch on issues of labelling.

 

Definitely agree with combining!

As someone who came from the japanese fandom side, when I first came on NU, seeing "yaoi" and "shounen-ai" tags on danmei really confused me. Especially since yaoi is mainly for explicit & usually somewhat plotless stories vs shounen-ai which is usually the gay version of shoujo cute fluffy romance. After reading the novel I realise that most of the time they're mistagged or don't even make sense??

When I'm searching for BL there's no overall genre/tag either since it can be either yaoi or shounen-ai and usually I'm searching based on what the plot is, rather than whether there is s*x in it...

Not sure if the same can be said for yuri vs shoujo-ai but like many has said before, there are other tags already in place to make up for the difference, and since these tags are not only used for Japanese novels but site-wide, it doesn't make sense to use Japanese-fandom terms as overall tags or genre either. Just my 2 cents.

 

The genre labels for lesbian stories is even worse because the two are used completely interchangeably and no one even cares what they actually mean. I think that not only should the genres be merged, but that genres in general should be overhauled. Specifically, none of the Japanese-titled genres really make any sense so they'd be better off merged, eliminated, or demoted to tags instead. Maybe adding a genre for all the Isekai novels out there would make sense but it'd still be really hard to get right.

The Chinese genres are pretty good in general but the users on NU do a terrible job of applying them properly so it'd make sense for someone to clean them up. Also, the genres based on film genres don't make any sense so it'd be better to just get rid of them. I mean, why bother with genres like Action or Adventure or Drama - does anyone even know what they hell they're supposed to mean or how they're supposed to be applied? I think that Tragedy makes sense as a genre but it's so willfully misused that it's basically useless.

 

That's because the way NU uses them isn't what they actually mean, so people using yuri for SFW things are using it correctly but it doesn't match NU's terminology. Even more so for yaoi; there was a period of time (10+ years ago, it's rare now) when "yuri = explicit" was the usual usage in the west, but that was never the case for yaoi. Back in 2005/6 when it first started getting official translations, everyone used "yaoi" to refer to the entire genre of gay manga, whether there was sex or not. There has never been a time where "yaoi = explicit" was standard in the west, only certain sites/communities started using that for tagging.

 

The main problem is that there's a use case mismatch. Should the terms be accepted to mean what Western fans think they mean, even when there's no consensus on what that is? Should we go by the Japanese definitions even when these are sometimes nebulous? Should we use a mix of these? Or should we use a completely different definition altogether? There's no way to say for sure so these terms end up being an impediment to communication when they're supposed to facilitate it. And that's why it's better to just trash them altogether and just use something that's a lot more useful.

 

In my opinion, in the present day with so much intermixing between cultures and foreign words being spread so easily among fans thanks to the internet, it's generally best to stick to the terms used in the country of origin. It's not like the old days where anime was something new and Japan was a world away, with the two cultures developing semi-independently. Now millions of American anime/manga fans are talking to millions of Japanese anime/manga fans every single day, and culture spreads much more quickly between the two, so maintaining the old separate terms makes less sense when they can be easily unified. Because of that, "just trash them altogether and just use something that's a lot more useful" would be a huge impediment to communication and just make the problem worse, it would be a step backwards towards the way things were before the internet and before anime/manga took off in the west, back in the day where translations were often more like complete rewrites and the anime we got were multiple different series chopped together and remixed.

Now in the case of yuri/GL it's pretty easy regardless, the consensus in both Japan and the west is the same: "yuri" and "GL" are interchangeable and both refer to absolutely any relationship between girls that is romantic, quasi-romantic, sexual, or subtextually/implied romantic or sexual (rather than "nebulous", they're just pretty broad terms). Yuri is the more common term in the west and GL is more common in Japan, but both words mean pretty much the same thing in both places, and shoujo ai is no longer used much in either case. And I would suggest going with GL instead of yuri here at NU, since it's more appropriate for the non-Japanese novels.

Yaoi is a bit more complicated since it's still a common term in the west (though far, far less common than it used to be, among fans; it's still predominant among non-fans in many places) but not used much anymore in Japan, and it was also a much more specific term in Japan (yaoi is one particular genre of gay manga/doujins, among other gay genres such as bara, while all the genres get thrown under yaoi here) whereas it was a lot broader in the west. Still, while there's a bit more of a mismatch here and not a global consensus like with yuri, BL easily makes the most sense if you want to refer to gay manga broadly in the west (or on NU).

BL/GL are probably going to have the broadest understanding among the languages/cultures represented on NU (primarily English/western, Japanese, and Chinese), broader than any western term you could use and probably much broader than any term we make up ourselves (people searching NU are generally going to be looking for some existing term, using unique terms that aren't used elsewhere doesn't benefit anyone).

 

And those are exactly the terms I'd use. Everyone can figure out what they mean so there's no confusion no fuss.

 

There really is just a fine line between the two regarding novels, so why not just merge it into BL and GL - and maybe BG(boyxgirl) for the straight ones? Then an R-16/18 tag (?) of some sort would be added for those with sexual content would be very much appealing and convenient haha. I mean, reading manga or watching things with those genres would be very different, however, with novels, if I see the genres, I immediately see it as 'BL' or 'GL' hahahaha So why not add these genres? hahaha

I agree on the merging of genres. Plus a suggestion for BG too haha.

 

I agree with the above poster.

To make it easier, we should make the BL/GL tags, and then mark if it's explicit or not. Translators can add the explicit tag if the need arises, instead of switching out the shounen-ai/shoujo-ai tag for yaoi/yuri. Or maybe make a "BL/GL" tag, and then instead of the 'explicit' tag they could add a shounen-ai/shoujo-ai or yaoi/yuri tag as needed.

And also, not sure if it's been said before, but from my understanding: If it's mlm content then it's BL. Yaoi (sexual content) and shounen-ai (no sexual content) are just subcategories under BL. Same with wlw. The whole genre is GL, and within the whole genre are subcategories of yuri and shoujo-ai.

 

I don't read any of the genres but from what I can glean Yaoi and Shounen Ai is differentiated by the inclusion or exclusion of mature content. Which technically the mature tag, R-15 and R-18 tags fully cover.

Seriously this is a no-brainer question. It's straight forward. There's alternative to the only reason the dumb tags are still around.

Shounen Ai and Yaoi into BL and BL R-18

Edit: New information came in and earlier words are invalid.