Spoiler: Meaningless story So I read a novel with a pretty cool premise, but it only has a few chapters. Oh look, there's a tag of exactly what I enjoyed in the story. Awesome. *Clicks the tag that has nothing to do with romance whatsoever*. Okay, sort by highest rated, let's see... oh, this looks cool. *Reads synopsis*. Oh great, this novel sounds amazing! High rating, intense sounding plot with lot's of action and a little power fantasy, but wait, what's this? Oh great, this novel also has a shounen ai/yaoi tag. Some time later Might as well look at a romance novel. Okay, sort by highest rated. Oh this looks cool, something about a wife, not exactly my favorite concept, but the plot sounds nice. Wait, why are they using male pronouns? Oh great, another shounen ai/yaoi novel. Spoiler: Stupid rant So, nothing against yaoi stories or whatever, but i'm frankly tired of the large amounts of yaoi novels in the top rated novels of basically every tag. I know there's a filter to exclude them, but i'm too lazy to do so, and I know the plot may be good, but sometimes the synopsis sometimes puts me off, or I just want to read about a hetero couple for once, or I just don't want any romance whatsoever in my psychological survival horror action number 13. It just gets so annoying when I find either an action novel with a good premise, but the presence of BL practically guarantees that a large focus of the story will be moved from the cool fights and mystery towards developing a romance that i'm frankly not interested in, or when I find a story with the word "wife" or "empress" or something in the title and for some reason that refers to a guy? I know I shouldn't be forcing my own opinions onto people with actual talent who take the time to write interesting stories, but having to sift through literally an entire page of a certain tag that had nothing whatsoever to do with romance but somehow had only novels about gay superstars and gay videogamers and gay whatever has honestly been quite the experience. Again, no offence to yaoi fans and stuff, it's just that there's so much of it I had to rant a bit
Not sure what to say when you provided the solution yourself, just don't be lazy with excluding the BL tags.
Can anyone tell me how many times this kind of thread appeared because TS is too lazy to do anything to help himself/herself? And thinks posting it in a thread to let everyone see how stu.. lazy they are is good?
Okay, so maybe I am lazy. I admit I am stupid. I definitely didn't phrase myself properly in the rant. I know there is a function to exclude tags, but as far as I know you have to go to the series finder function to use it. It's just that I search by tags individually using the ones shown on the sides of each novel, which, correct me if i'm wrong, do not let you exclude tags. However that's not what I was most annoyed about. I do not mind trawling through multiple pages of things I don't want, but what I was trying to say at the end was that I was annoyed by the way these BL stories played with my expectations, like I read a story for the action, was promised a story with action as the main pull, and got a random romance halfway through. And then when it seems like all the top rated stories are like that, it gets a little annoying. In the first few pages, I found like 5-6 stories with interesting plots but got pushed away because I didn't want a BL. That is what i'm complaining about. I titled this "stupid meaningless rant" because like you said, I am stupid and lazy, but I just wanted to complain a bit, which is again why I titled it "stupid meaningless rant" so if you don't want to read a stupid meaningless rant, you don't have to. Sorry if I wasted your time
I can understand the frustration because I usually avoid BL for similar reasons. Hetero romance is mainstream enough that there is a good amount of writers that are fine with it being a subplot to a wider story, while BL is more of a niche so the ones writing it are more likely to be passionate about that and wanting to make it the main plot, even when it don't need to be. Though this really is the case for many niche sub-genres, and it isn't as if there isn't tons of hetero romance with the same problems.
I highlighted it mainly because I like to sort by highest ratings, and as I don't exclude by tag, almost every other novel with around 4.6 to 4.8 stars feels like a BL. In particular, I might have just been salty cause I was reading a cool thriller survival game novel hoping the yaoi would only be a subplot, except out of the blue, in one chapter halfway through an intense arc the main character is revealed to be gay, in love with his secret mentor, and uses that as the method to solve his current predicament, which was a bit immersion breaking and made me look at the rest of the highly rated novels with BL with a sceptical eye. Which sucks cause some of those stories have very attractive plots, I just don't want to suffer the same whiplash after becoming invested
To start off with, I'm a big fan of BL or yaoi. There's some good shit. I do believe that Nimroth explains pretty well why the romance in a BL usually becomes the main plot. Hetero is main stream, on almost everything but maybe this site if that. I find it funny because I have this issue with a lot of hetero stories. I find a cool premise and they go on and on about the girl or the harem or the reverse harem. Ummmmm, idk like people said use the tags or like read more stories? When I want to read BL, I can find an abundance. When I wanna read hetero, I can find an abundance as well. Also if you want the gay shit to be a subplot, go for more shounen ai. After lots of data point and a quick google search, yaoi will almost for sure have gay sex and that usually comes with like a development of romance. shounen ai does not usually portray gay sex but more like feeling type stuff which might help if the only thing you are interested is the premise or plot. Also no shade, i'm a plot girl myself, the porn is just extra spice.
As an active BL reader, I can relate somehow. I don't mind the romance but its kinda tiring by now tbh. I like reading horror novels but I tend to avoid BL horror novels. The romance ruins the story honestly. I've dropped a lot of thriller stories because of the romance. Instead of a mystery-solving novel, my mouth was filled with dog food. The ML usually ruins the experience for me. ML is a big boss who saves MC from every death flag. If there's a romance tag in a survival novel, I drop it immediately. It really sucks when the plot is immersing, but the two leads are still busy doing God knows what.