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

shounen-ai (plural shounen-ai)(slang, anime, manga) An outdated term used to refer to works of fiction (doujinshi) with a focus on two male characters. It was dropped in Japan due to its implications of pederasty, in western meaning Shonen-ai is non-explicit, focussing on drama, romance, and/or angst rather than sex. following the pattern of shounen-ai, Western fans coined the term shoujo-ai (also rendered shōjo-ai) to describe yuri without the depiction of sex.[5] In Japan, the term shōjo-ai (少女愛; lit. "girl love") is not used with this meaning,[5] and instead tends to denote pedophilia (actual or perceived), with a similar meaning to the term lolicon (Lolita complex).[6] The Western use of yuri has broadened in the 2000s, picking up connotations from the Japanese use
From Japanese やおい (yaoi), an acronym of Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi (ヤマなし、オチなし、意味なし), "no climax, no point, no meaning". the "no climax" would it mean no sex? or the in fact no pregnancy? where would that leave Omergavese or Mpreg just thought this was interesting and see if this helps

 

It means that there's no real story, it's just sex. It's porn without plot.

 

ahh like PWP in fanfic again it's original meaning still applies to some but a lot of yaoi can have an interesting plot where the sex is almost secondary to the story

 

No, it's because gay relationships can't produce children and (in the popular opinion at the time) gay sex isn't "real" sex. It had nothing to do with whether or not the story was pornographic. In both Japan and the US, "yaoi" has always from the very beginning included manga with no sex at all.

 

I say yes. Boys Love and Girls Love umbrella tag/genre whichever is better for the site, I think it'll be easier for non target audience to avoid it too later if it's a Genre? Tag in mature/adult/smut to the novel page if there is adult content. This wording will fit all asian novels, Yaoi is a specific japanese book genre. I don't really mind it. But if we're going to have Shounen Ai, Shoujo Ai, Yuri, Yaoi as separate tags, then arguably we need another tag for Danmei, no?

I think like most things it means differently colloquially now it just started like that. It sounds to me like defiance to people saying the early yaois is pointless and meaningless, then they say, yes it's pointless and meaningless but we're still gonna make it.

 

I frequently use both tags in order to find things I'm in the mood for; they are distinct in that yaoi is anything with smut and shounen is not smut. Sometimes I'm in the mood for one over the other and I go to look for those specific tags; I think we should keep the status quo. If it's not broken don't fix it, and if people have a problem they need to get over it. Everyone is too sensitive nowadays.

 

BL + Adult is the exact same thing as Yaoi.

They are not distinct because most people don't even know Shounen Ai exists and use Yaoi for everything.

 

They are distinct; if people aren't looking in the shounen section because they only look at yaoi then they are missing out on an entirely different (and amazing) section. BL is the collective smut and non-smut. Yaoi and Shounen Ai separates it. So they are, in fact, different. Not only that but the vibes I get from shounen are different from the yaoi vibes (most of the time).

 

First things first, Shonen Ai and Shounen are two completely different things, don't use them interchangeably.

The vibes are the same because they are basically the same thing. In theory one is erotic and one is not, but people have no idea what that means and misstag them all the time, giving trouble to the mods to fix their mistagging, not to mention the plethora of people that don't know the existence of the Shounen Ai term and simply miss out on all the non-erotic BL stories because of that.

Also, NU already has the adult genre for erotic content, so BL + Adult is the exact same as Yaoi anyways. And BL without Adult is the exact same as Shounen Ai, so the separation is pointless.

Not to mention that Shounen Ai isn't even used in Japan anymore, and back there it used to mean underage romance between boys, so we don't even use the words properly. There is no point in using it.

 

Yaoi and shounen ai is a dead term in Japan so there's no point in using it. Readers should make sure to read the tags instead (as every picky reader should!). For example, if it has an "omegaverse" tag, be prepared for some intense sexual tension between the leads. Genres with Adult, Smut, Mature added with BL are things a BL reader should be wary about if they don't like below the neck scenes.

BL translators put a nsfw warning in the chapter and some even put warning for light sexual tension scenes anyways. Most danmeis do the fade-to-black with the almighty censorship so its all good.

 

First things first, *I literally said yaoi and shounen ai are two distinctly different things*. I did not use them interchangeably.

Secondly, if people don't know there is that tag then tell them. If they're not listening, that's not our problem.

Thirdly, if people mistakenly mistag something, it is the mod's job to fix it. That's what they're there for. I have a question for you, is this site non-profit, or are they making a profit off of it? (Honest question, I don't know, and I don't want to assume.)

Fourthly, As I said, you might as well not fix what already works. People are dumb. It doesn't matter what tags it has, or what tags something is under, it *will* be mistagged, bc people are, in some cases, stupid or oblivious. Separation is not pointless, because there are some people who do not enjoy smut at all, like asexual people, and some are purely there for the romance. I personally think it reinforces a romantic relationship, but as an ace myself, I have met many of my brethren who were extremely uncomfortable with it. If you put it all under the same tag, you might make a portion of the community uncomfortable.

Finally, there is such a thing as language and culture drift. Culture and language in themselves are ever-changing, multifaceted things. They are age-old dialogical exchanges between different groups of people. Due to this, it is quite normal for another culture to take a word from another, sometimes shifting the meaning. With access to large amounts of information in this new technology-driven age, we are seeing this process documented and sped up. We have shifted the meaning of 'Shounen Ai' to mean something different from it's original intended meaning, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that, it happens a lot.

 

You should read the thing you're quoting. I said Shounen and Shounen Ai. Not Yaoi and Shounen Ai.

You're assuming everyone uses the forum. That's not how it works, most people don't use the forums. You can't communicate with those outside your reach.

Tony (the site owner) earns from NU. The mods are volunteers.

And just because it is their job to fix issues, it doesn't mean that a certain thing that constantly causes issues isn't in need of a permanent fix.

It doesn't work, that's the problem.

Also, BL + Adult is literally the exact same as the current definition of Yaoi, so you just need to search for both in case they're merged. Saying that you don't want seeing erotic content when searching for BL is not an excuse because there is a genre that exists specifically to say that a story has erotic content in it.

 

I voted for the merge. It's just way more convenient to merge everything under the BL/GL genres, rather than having shounen ai, yaoi, shoujo ai, and yuri.

If there's explicit content, there's a tag for that, so there's no need to make it a genre difference. Having two different genres for almost the same thing (the only difference being explicit content or not) is both confusing and irritating to use. When I use Series Finder, if I want to read BL, I have to check shounen ai "or" yaoi. Which means I can't check any other genre at the same time, because then it might return something BG. It's kind of limiting and it's just an extra step when searching for novels.

As a reader and translator of CN novels, I'll also mention that there's pretty much no difference in the Chinese raws between shounen ai and yaoi. For example, on JJWXC, their romance genres are like this: "Romance (means BG), Pure Love (means BL), Lily (means GL), No Romance (no pairing)". That's simple, and it's easy to search for just BL. There's really no need for a genre distinction, really.

I don't know much about JP novels, but from what people are saying, shounen ai is obsolete or something... So it seems that it's not that necessary either for JP?

I'll also say, if there's a vote for this, I'd vote against changing it to "gay romance" and "lesbian romance". To me, those are western terms, and as this is a site for translated novels from Asian countries, not western novels, I'd much rather just use "BL" or "GL". That's what they are called here, and that's what they've been called here for ages (or at least as long as I've been here- I've only ever seen gay/lesbian romance on western novels sites- which I barely ever use, since I don't like reading them. It gives off a bad feel for me, because of the Western implication), so please don't change them, thanks.

 

Sorry, In that post it was a mistake in typing, I mean to say yaoi and shounen ai. (I hate using the computer for this lol, but I'm too lazy to log into my phone).

Is there not a way we can put the definitions of the term under the search? I've seen it on other sites before. It makes it easier to understand the other terms better as well.

It was an honest question, that why I asked if they were being paid for their work, please don't get snappy.

Is there erotic content in every story in the romance genre? No. I say this because there is no difference between a hetero relationship and a non-hetero relationship. I hate being surprised with that crap when I go into the regular novels. If its tagged yaoi versus shounen-ai, I can gear myself to be prepared for it when I'm looking in the yaoi section, or skip the parts with it there, because I'm expecting it. I have the same goddamn problem with the romance genre, and merging it would make it more difficult for people to navigate that. There are going to be ones where adult isn't tagged, and it will be, personally, more difficult for me to navigate. But it really seems like you don't really agree with my opinion, and I seem to be irritating you. I'm sorry and I hope you have a nice weekend! (Better than mine at least, I have two papers due, lmaoooo~)

 

If the novel lacks the adult genre and it should have it, add the adult genre to it. It's as simple as that. NU is an user-maintained site, if you don't do the job, nobody will.

 

Not many adult novels get mistagged as non-adult, people "mixing up" (not really mixing up because it's NU that's wrong) yaoi and shounen ai is much more common. Merging the tags would reduce mixups, not increase them, so it should be easier to navigate.

 

Instead of merging genres, can we not just replace them with some English terms instead?

I mean, there's only 5 pages worth of results on NU for real (JP) Yaoi and Shounen Ai, while there's 46 pages worth of results for Chinese stuff... That's a huuuge difference, so using JP terms seems rather counterproductive to me.

So my vote would to be change:

Yaoi -> Boys' Male Love
Shounen Ai -> Boys' Male Romance
Yuri -> GIrls' Female Love
Shoujo Ai -> Girls' Female Romance

Or to wherever terms you think are better. Just get rid of JP manga terms. Not all who come here arrive from m&a fandom.

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Another option would be for Tony to make these terms interchangeable (+ danmei and whatever the other terms are), set English default, but let people choose their preferred terms in their NU profiles.

 

I've never seen Gay or Lesbian used as a genre anywhere, so it'd look a bit strange to me (tags might be better - eg. "Gay MC"), but I guess your main point is that you're for the merge.

Then again "Boys' Love", etc. looks a bit strange too, so how about "Male/Female Love/Romance"? If we decide not to merge.

 

Using "romance" to mean SFW and "love" to mean NSFW is guaranteed to confuse a lot of people, it doesn't make a lot of sense, and "Male Love" and "Female Love" also doesn't give any hint that it's about homosexual relationships so it's doubly confusing.
And I'm reasonably certain those aren't used as a genre anywhere, so your objection to gay/lesbian applies even more to your own suggestion.