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

That wouldn't have mattered, really. If it has gay romance, then it's gay romance, even if the gay romance is late. As long as the story is about love between two men, even if they're hostile to each other at start, it's still gay romance.

Can say the same about every romance. It doesn't become not romance if the romance is slow in the making. Can say the same about every genre really. A movie does not become not horror if nobody dies.

 

There's a straight seme and straight uke tag~

 

I did not know o.o

 

Agree.

 

Make tags and genres simple, explicit, and universal, IMO.

Genre: Gay Romance or Lesbian Romance or Intersex Romance, Etc.

Tags:
Platonic Romance, Explicit Sex, Implicit Sex, Graphic Sex, Underage Sexual Participant, Etc.

Those apply equally to Chinese, Japanese, or any other source. They are immediately understood. There's no room for argument. Additional, localized tags could also be added, like R-18 or R-15 to ensure that those who are looking for those specific things can continue to find them.

 

That's just dumb though. All 'straight seme and straight uke' ultimately end up bent in yaoi, danmei, or whatever we are arguing about calling it now because apparently we've evolved into beings who can't even use Google anymore.

I like using the term 'yaoi' because it prevents me from having to search through endless Western novels I don't want to read. If it wasn't for NU index, it'd be a dead end search because some translators won't put gay Japanese/Chinese/Korean novels on their website. It's the same reason why I add hentai when I don't want to look at Westerner porn. Google is so handy now that all you have to do is highlight and left click word searches. No help for people who can't even do that. Don't be surprised when they find something new to be confused about later.

 

I think the change would be good if there are comments to explain how all the previous terms have been combined behind the BL or GL term.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't BL shounen ai? And yaoi is the "hentai" level of shounen ai. That's how I understood it.

If I'm going to drag my friends to BL hell recommend my friends this genre and it's their first time, I'm pretty sure I'll give them the one tagged with shounen ai. Otherwise, they might get shocked with the intensity of the yaoi ones.

 

Supposedly, yes.

But if you look at the raws, shounen ai actually means BL between underage partners.

Also, the raws just use the term BL instead of yaoi or shounen ai.

Also, we have the Mature, Adult and Smut genres to show that a novel had R-18 content or them or not.

Also, people misuse the genres all the time and we end up having tons of novels with both yaoi and shounen ai on them.


So... It is a mostly useless category, we can just use BL for the "shounen-ai" novels, and BL + Mature/Adult/Smut for the "yaoi" ones.

The existence of both tags is quite unnecessary...

 

BL refers to both shounen ai and yaoi, it encompasses both.

Yaoi being gay "hentai" is actually a very common and very incorrect misconception. If hentai is 9 pages of sexual content out of 10, yaoi would be 1 out of 10. In fact, in many yaoi, the sexual content is only implied and utilizes a "fade to black" scene change. This is just speaking of manga - novels often have even less sexual content, sometimes going hundreds of chapters before the characters so much as start dating.

Male and female readers generally want different things in regards to sexual content. Hentai, aimed at men, emphasizes graphic content and an erotic female body, with the viewpoint being from an invisible man's gaze that represents the male reader. In contrast, sexual content in stories aimed at women is only a secondary aspect - romance is the primary focus, with sexual content only being used to intensify the emotional closeness of the two characters.

While there is "yaoi hentai", it is uncommon and ironically targeted at hentai readers rather than yaoi ones. For example, Boku no Pico which every guy seems to know about and "jokingly" recommends. Boku no Pico is often used by men to mock female fans of yaoi and their weird tastes, but I've never encountered a girl who had any interest in it, let alone liked it.

There is also "bara", which is graphic sexual content in the same vein as hentai, except once again it is aimed at men. Bara is created by and for gay men, and generally does not attract the interests of female readers either.

Anyhow, as has been mentioned, the problem on NU is one of context. People keep tagging yaoi as shounen ai and shounen ai as yaoi because no one knows what either tag means. Thus, even if you wanted to recommend a nice soft shounen ai to your friends, they might end up with something rather nsfw. Merging the two into one "BL" would force people to remember the R-18 tag exists, and that tag is understandable enough that no one's gonna put a R-18 tag on a cute fluffy romance.

Context is what I feel like the majority of people who voted "Disagree" are missing entirely.

 

That's what shounen ai likely would mean if it was used in Japan, but it would be more accurate to say that it simply isn't used (at least currently; in the 70s and 80s it was used to refer to a very specific genre of manga/literature, which usually involved relationships between older men and young boys).

 

Well, I did say the raws use BL instead of yaoi/shounen ai.

I think that just because it isn't used anymore, it doesn't mean it lost its meaning, did it?

 

Basically yes because that's how language works, but even if it didn't lose its meaning, the genre it's referring to isn't really being produced any more, since the early 90s. There are probably no novels on NU in that genre since it had basically died out before light novels existed.

 

*nod nod*

Yeah, that's part of my point in that post, the term isn't used on the raws anymore, and even then, the use it had was actually different from the use we are giving to it.

Reason why I feel it is so pointless to have this difference on NU.

 

If there is a problem with using terms like BL or GL because of the historical/traditional definitions, then it might be worth considering other terms like M/M F/F, and F/M? I've seen that used in other places and it seems straightforward.

However, I would still encourage the use of comments to explain all the genre's included under each new term. i.e. M/M = Yaoi, Shonnen Ai, BL. Mainly I think readers come to expect these terms and it would hopefully slow down the stampede of people confused by not seeing the more traditional concepts displayed in search criteria.

 

BL and GL have no problem whatsoever due to hystorical definitions, the ones that are weird are shounen ai and shoujo ai.

 

You have very strong opinions. It seems like you are a follower of the genres? I come from a layman's perspective as I don't really follow the genre and have learned the concepts off the cuff so to speak. When all the concepts get bantered back and forwards it is way confusing for beginners, I was trying to take those people into consideration.

It is easier for people to learn a new concept, than to try to appropriate a concept that already exists.

 

And this is why the tag merge is a good idea.

The novel is clearly tagged as shounen-ai already
*sighs*