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

The debate still exists because people keep necroing the thread.

As for why Tony never merged them? Because merging genres is actually pretty complicated on the database side of things. And he ended up deciding that the effort it would take to merge them was not worth the benefit it would bring. At least not at the current moment, he might change his mind later.

 

Oh, wasn't aware of that. Well everyone will have to stick with it until Tony feels it's worth it.

 

Rather than just using yuri/shoujo ai or shounen ai/yaoi as catch all genres could we have overarching tags like BL and GL for general usage and then differentiate between japanese works or chinese works by using yuri/shoujo ai vs baihe and yaoi/shounen ai vs danmei?

 

Already requested multiple times, it's probably not happening because the effort it would take to do the merge on the database side of things is not worth the payoff.

Not happening, we don't need redundant tags.

 

Wouldn't it be better to change remove Shoujo Ai entirely, and keep only Yuri in, or remove both (or only Shoujo Ai), and change it to Girl's Love instead? Since the actual use for Shoujo Ai is pedophilia, and using it for F/F is something the western community did without researching first. Yuri is supposed to be used for all category of F/F in the first place, so nothing much would change.

If the problem is differentiating implied from explicit romantic relationship, there's also the option of changing only Shoujo Ai to Girl's Love and keeping Yuri in.

 

See those: https://forum.novelupdates.com/thre...-love-shoujo-ai-and-yuri-to-girls-love.51398/ and https://forum.novelupdates.com/thre...n-ai-and-yuri-shoujo-ai-into-bl-and-gl.58486/

The resume is: Most mods agree that it is a good idea, but the dev time needed to merge both on the database and not mess anything up is probably not worth the effort for a site that is developed by a single person (who happens to own 2 websites that he needs to develop and maintain).

 

It's been discussed before. The community is torn about it, iirc.

Btw. Girls'

 

It's been bugging me for a bit how the Novel Updates site still only provides the genre tags shounen-ai, yaoi, shoujo-ai, and yuri for BL/GL stories. Plenty of people now know that using these terms to mean non-explicit/explicit BL/GL is an inaccurate distortion of the actual terms from Japanese fandom (this post elaborates on basically everything I could bring up), and I think updating them accordingly would be a great way for NU to show a commitment to accuracy and respect to the Japanese language. BL and GL (possibly split into an 18+ and a general category) work well as umbrella terms without using any inaccurate language.

Thanks!

 

In-depth Discussion thread
https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/merging-yaoi-shounen-ai-and-yuri-shoujo-ai-into-bl-and-gl.58486

In general everyone agrees it's a good idea but basically

 

Would it be too difficult to just rename them to BL (nonexplicit) and BL (explicit) or something of the like instead of merging them entirely?

 

Thought this was interesting to share. MyAnimeList has changed their genres so Shoujo Ai and Yuri are now Girls Love, and Yaoi and Shounen Ai are now Boys Love. Shows that were tagged Yaoi or Yuri get an extra Erotica tag added on.

Their official announcement here:
https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1956762

Considering MAL is huge, that seems to indicate that this is the direction we're heading in now.

 

I'm used to Yaoi being Yaoi and Shounen Ai being Shounen Ai and I don't want to change anything. In my picture of the world, Erotica is only heterosexual relationships.

 

I don't know how the backend of NU is like, but SH has a single BL genre and it would be nice if we drop the old "yaoi" and "shounen ai" terms for BL instead. (Not to mention a lot of "yaoi/shounen-ai" content is now danmei on NU!)

 

I feel you are kicking a hornets nest my dude... careful

 

See this: https://forum.novelupdates.com/thre...n-ai-and-yuri-shoujo-ai-into-bl-and-gl.58486/

TL; DR: The mods also think Yaoi/Shounen Ai/Yuri/Shoujo Ai should be merged into BL/GL, but the amount of work it would take Tony to actually merge them is a bit too much, so he hasn't done it because he doesn't think it's worth the effort, or because he hasn't found the time to do it.

If you look at Scribblehub, NU's sister site, you see that the genres are already merged over there, but that's because the website was already made with the merged genres in the first place.

So, basically, this has been suggested before, but it's unlikely to happen any time soon (if ever), because Tony is busy with other stuff.