/bl/ - General BL

I like slowburn and don't like romance as much as a genre. Romance is especially boring when the characters get together. I want there to be a story and relationships and a world. Fandom BL is so much fucking fun. You have a sandbox of elements you already love and can build from there.

fpbp. I genuinely cannot stand romance series' because I know the end result and don't care about the journey because all those other ships that happen don't matter. The end goal's the end goal.

I'm aromantic too so, that adds to why I'm heavily romance series averse.

I tend to watch and play games with fujo thick fandoms because nothing is canon, everything is fanon, and what is canon is like the world's most dense sandbox with every tool you could think to use. I don't want to see a pairing I don't even care about get together. I want to see them both almost die and read a fanfic about life after their story is over

>>6219
>I'm aromantic
Not a thing. It is genuinely less cringe if you people just called yourselves forever alones instead of using these retarded nonsensical labels.

>>6219
>I'm aromantic too so, that adds to why I'm heavily romance series averse.
>I'm aromantic
No one cares nor wants to hear about your imaginary mental illness

>>6221
Oh shut up butthurt yume. Go whine about aidens in off topic if your thread isn't getting bombarded by cp again.

>>6224
How am I a yume for stating aromanticism is fake? And why would a yume even be in fujochan in the first place?

>All this arguing
>Nobody has answered the second part of the OP

It's been brought up before that Danmei tends to aquire a fandom that original Japanese BL works don't. Imo the difference is the ratio of plot to will-they-won't they BS.

>>6227
I never got into danmei but after seeing The Untamed (didn't read it) it's just a very well done drama that tells you the end first and throws all kinds of story at you that I find is missing from Japanese BL as a whole.

BL tends to be short, generally not more than a few hours of episodes, doesn't take risks, and is about as impactful as a mid tier Netflix series. You watch it for what it is or read it, and it's over.It's never so outstanding I go- wow where's the fanfiction. OP used loveless and I remember being obsessed at age 13 about it. But it was also pretty controversial in the way that danmei tend to just be from the beginning.

All the actual interesting BL is relegated to VNs from like 2004 that will never see more than a college student tier translation. Fandoms are easier to access, can come in any language you need, and can go as extreme as you can imagine without having to bend to the point of snapping for an editor or publisher just to be seen.

>>6218
Yeah, BL seldom has a plot outside of the romance (there are exceptions—I love Marginal and its wacky sci-fi glory). I'd much rather read a solid series with an action plot and shipping either non-existent or on the side, and write fanfic or draw fanart, than read a bland romance where the only thing going for it is the ship.

>>6227
>nobody reads bl
>they just like fanfiction
Doesn't that explain it all?

>>6217
For me personally as someone who has been nearly exclusively into fandom BL for 20 years now, I actually like worldbuilding and plot that exists outside of the romance between a main pairing.
I like genres like sci-fi, medieval fantasy, futuristic, or just simply what can be interesting and I care about there being an interesting plot and premise first, everything else kind of second.
But the type of 'fandom BL' i've gotten into aren't things like, sports anime for example. Because even though those shows aren't BL, the main premise of "sports" isn't appealing to me.
I've been into Fate for a long while, because I like historical chuuni shit and the characters are also appealing to me and so is the premise. I'm not super autistic to go in a sperg rampage by seeing a girl in a game or anime so I don't mind seeing them, so it's not a 'detriment' to me. But back into the main argument, I'm sure a lot of people likely feel the same. It's good to imagine some of the characters getting together or loving each other in a delulu kind of way, but what's interesting is the everything else that surrounds that particular media, 'omnipandering' or not.
I've liked some joseimuke too that have interesting premises (like touken ranbu) but there's only so much you can do with headcanons alone

I like both but I have a draw towards fandom BL because I enjoy multishipping and the community aspect towards creating fancontent. With original BL series, I seldom see any fan content or interpretations of the story, maybe some theorizing if the series is ongoing or discussion if lucky. Also it's fun to create crackpot theories, reading between the lines and imagining scenarios in canon that could be re-imagined as romantic development— in original BL the conclusion is rather straight forward, and most people are content with what's portrayed in canon. Of course there are always exceptions to this and I have seen a lot of fanart for original BLs such as killing stalking, mdzs, and heaven's official blessing, though this is an extremely small list compared to the fanships I follow lmao and most of the fanart are just redraws of existing scenes or smut.
As for the second question I think having an extremely drawn out story where fans have to make fanart to sustain themselves helps a lot in keeping a fandom's longevity. That makes me wonder if there's doujinshi culture for OG works or if its frowned apon because it goes against the author's vision (its different compared to established series like vidya, anime, shows because of the scale)

>>6228
>All the actual interesting BL is relegated to VNs from like 2004 that will never see more than a college student tier translation.
Yeah, my favourite actual BL media tends to be VNs. My tastes skew to the edgelord side so I enjoy how the prominent BLVNs tend to have dark stories alongside the romance content. I rarely read BL manga and the anime adaptations I've been watching never made any lasting impressions on me. The isekai BL currently airing is somewhat more interesting than your average office or high school romance but it still won't stick with me in the long run. I admit that I never tried that hard to seek out interesting BL manga but there's a lot of different media that draws my attention so I haven't made that effort yet. There's actually a western novel series I've been reading lately that I mentioned in /wes/ and I enjoy how the romance between the male leads is a slowburn and the plot revolves around political backstabbing and 4d chess. I'd probably enjoy chinese BL novels too.

I like both original BL and fandom BL but for different reasons. I haven't read long manhwa or danmei stories yet so I can only speak for Japanese BL: they more often than not tend to be short or new chapters/volumes are released so slowly they seem never ending. I like when they have a specific plot or setting, I find simple romance between high school students or salarymen repetitive now. I bought the first volume of Heaven's Official Blessing months ago and haven't read it yet because I'm just focusing on other things but I'm looking forward to it.

As for fandom BL, I think most fujoshi just get into a story/video game/manga/tv show, etc. just because they seem fun without the shipping factor and they will organically get into one or several gay pairings if they like the characters and their dynamics enough. That's my case at least and I like plenty of stuff without shipping any of the characters together. In that case fans are more likely to share their love for these pairings with other fans especially if they're into an ongoing series and more "hints" and scenes are released in some episodes or chapters or volumes. While with BL manga since most of them are one-shots personally I just check new releases online, buy and read whatever I feel like reading and don't feel the need to look for a fandom to talk about it besides maybe saying I loved this manga or that manga in a few tweets or here.

>What does it take for original BL works to aquire a fandom?
It's not something you can predict as easily as with mainstream stories. I feel it either needs to be a massive viral success because it's different from what's usually released or it has the "factor" to become a classic that will influence other BL artists. Or it has to be made by a successful and proactive artist with an already established fanbase I guess, like Asada Nemui or Ogerestu Tanaka. Obviously long series are more likely to have a fanbase: if you release an office romcom BL in one volume you're less likely to have an online fanbase with fans trying to guess what's going to happen in the next chapter compared to longer and plot heavy BL stories like Lullaby of the Dawn or The Summer Hikaru died (I know it's technically not a BL but it's treated as such by most if its biggest fans). It's the same for Yuri on Ice. Everyone was trying to guess what kind of crazy shit the next episodes would pull off each week. So that led to plenty of discussions about it online. If it were just one shorter movie it could have also been popular but less so that it was back then.

>>6217
>What does it take for original BL works to aquire a fandom?
Being longer than 1-2 volumes, for starters. For anime, it has to be BL + plot/theme outside of BL. For VNs - either needs to be plot-heavy (Adelta VNs), edgy (N+C VNs) or a meme game (Hadaka Shitsuji).

Aside from the plot focus, MXTX novels have popped off so much because of the prominent side characters who are shippable but not in canon relationships, so there's a lot more to play around with.
It's pretty interesting how Heated Rivalry is so huge right now despite it seemingly being like the TV equivalent of a smutty BL manga, not having slow burn or super deep plot. Must be the novelty and mainstream visibility, as well as being baby's first canon gay for some.

>What does it take for original BL works to aquire a fandom?
By being what the fandom craves at the moment. That's how YoI got big.

>>6316
I never got into YoI since the characters designs and theme didn't speak to me. What would you say made it "What the Fandom craves?"

From an outsider perspective I assumed one of the only reasons it was big was because it had a decent budget.

>>6317
>it had a decent budget.
lol no. It was full of QUALITY scenes. I'm nta but back when the anime barely started, fujoshi started watching it without high expectations and almost all of us assumed we were just going to be baited. And at the time female weaboos were really into sports anime like Haikyuu or Kuroko no Basket on top of at least knowing a little bit about ice skating because of Yuzuru Hanyu's crazy popularity thanks to the previous olympic games. Plenty of fans expected some bullshit plot twist like Viktor conspiring to take down Yuuri before coming back or being a crazy yandere because the story seemed a bit too normal at first besides that scene in the first episode where the camera zooms on Viktor's ass in the onsen.

The appeal was the massive plot twists that just kept coming over and over again at the time, which was that it wasn't just bait after all, and that got ruined for almost everyone else because of gendies screaming about how it's queerbaiting when Viktor hugs and kisses Yuuri all of sudden in front of everyone just because we don't see their lips touching in 24fps and full HD, or screeching over muh queer lgbt+ representation which means they were posting untagged spoilers all over the internet to convince everyone to watch YOI. All of this means that the plot twist isn't really one anymore and that it's easy to just see YOI as an anime for fujoshi about two men in love with each other but it sure wasn't presented as such in 2016. Nearly 10 years ago. I'm gonna throw up.

>>6317
>What would you say made it "What the Fandom craves?"
A canon homo pairing in a sports show, which are all about bait and fanservice with no commitment, even Free!!.

>>6317
It followed through on the logical conclusion of all the bait it had. First and still only of its kind. Regrettably I did not and still do not give a fuck about it (can't into sports) but I'm really happy for everybody else and hope one day it will happen to me.

>>6320
You made me think about how I enjoy homo sports but for me YoI didn't have the same vibes as homo sports usually does. It has to do with it taking itself seriously for the most part and it lacking the insane powerlevel shounen energy of something like Kuroko no basuke or Blue lock. I enjoyed YoI at the time and it aired during a period when tumblr was still fun for me but in the long run I found that it didn't keep my interest that long after it stopped airing. Lately I've been coming to terms with the fact that I really do find bait more exciting than canon homo because if it's canon there's not much for my imagination to latch on to.

2 things: fandom bl comes about because most people like the plot and characters first, and they like to see two realized characters get together. A lot of actual bl is too short or one of the characters in the main pair isn't fleshed out that much. Fandoms naturally pop up for popular series with a setting and plot to play around with, the fujo potential is merely a bonus. This is why certain danmei like mdzs blew up, because it has a plot and other characters in addition to the main pairing, so it got a huge fandom.
The second factor is sometimes fandom really likes a certain guy and wants that guy to either get dicked down or dick another guy down. People have to be really endeared with one of the characters. Look how popular Gojo is, for example.

I think everyone here provided good points and I don't have much to add on it. But I will say that I prefer to call it shipping, and I dislike that my OTPs are not canon and I need to rely on fanfic and fan art for them. I wish actual canon BL had a quality as good as my favorite OTPs and their series.

When I was a kid, and I first got into shipping and yaoi, looking up quality fan art and fanfics of your ships was easier and lots of the fan art looked good and the fanfics were alright. Although it could also be that kid me simply had shit taste, hence perceiving these fan works as good lol.

Now as an adult, looking at fan art and fanfics of my ships is disappointing at best, enraging and upsetting at worst thanks to all the ameritard political discourse getting in the way of fandom. All fan arts and fanfics have to be annoying gendie slop now and extremely ugly and low quality. I'm not even kidding when I say all the fan art of my childhood ships on Tumblr was deleted!!! I remember some of it vividly and it's not there anymore. There's still some on Twitter though but untagged and hidden so you gotta dig for it. Or archived on Pinterest.

The plague also hit real BL and now it's all cringe woke shit about coming out and old moid yaoi and ✨ realistic✨ art styles and designs (read sterilized) and even MORE boring slice of life stories.

Another annoying thing is all the fan artists and fanfic writers stopped doing it for the love of the game but instead do it for money or going viral and the chance to publish their own work one day, which killed their passion. Everything is tropey and safe AU bullshit now.

I still prefer shipping despite the negatives because as others said, the characters are written better with more interesting crazy stories around their bond to justify it and give it more weight, something about them being in danger and caring for each other's lives, or having positive impact on each other's lives in serious situations makes it more interesting and addictive.

I like Hikaru ga shinda natsu, but the childhood friends thing to justify their crushes is kinda boring since the supernatural stuff doesn't push them together. The real Hikaru died and now Yoshiki sees the monster as a mere replacement to cope. I like the monster falling in love with a human for treating him nicely thing, but it's still underwhelming and pales in comparison to my favorite OTPs now and from my childhood who had bigger longer arcs and stories getting them together sort of. Not the only BL I liked but none of them hit the way established series with 2 male leads with a strong bond do, idk. Maybe because I got exposed to shipping before BL so it's more interesting to me.

>>6334
Some examples, prepare to cringe:

I used to love Ninjago when I was a kid and would ship many characters together, my favorite was Kai x Lloyd despite the age gap. I didn't realize the older brother younger brother dynamic back then but still liked it anyways. Finding fan art for it was so easy back then and nobody cared that you shipped it that much. Nowadays it's all "um this is pedophilia!!!" moralfagging so the fan arts were wiped off the face of the internet or just hidden because of this. And are all replaced by quirk chungus family dynamic tumblr shit.

I used to ship Eli x Junjie from Slugterra because I liked their plot and dynamic. Basically Junjie was mind controlled by a zombie slug for 20 years since he was 16-18, and Eli freed him from it and helped him get back home. Junjie waa grateful to Eli and bonded with him over this and their shared love of slugs and the sport around it. And the two would have training scenes together and had a special move where they shoot together at the same time to merge their attacks. I was obsessed with them and browsing fan art back in the day was so easy. Now it's all deleted and Eli is either shipped with the new Mary Sue and Gary Stue characters, or with the designated female love interest, or worse, poly shipping bullshit. All because Junjie is physically 30 something while Eli is 15-16 and age gap bad. Even though mentally he's still a teenager and didn't get to actually properly grow up anyways. Found the only surviving fan art on Pinterest thankfully but in potato quality.

Another ship I enjoyed was Hawkeye x Hulk/Clint x Bruce, specifically the Avengers: Earth mightiest heros adaptation where the former is the latter's tardwrangler. They had a cute dynamic teasing and annoying each other while also caring for and helping each other and being glued to each other. I vividly remember some pencil and paper drawing from Tumblr of them on a fishing trip having sex in a boat but of course it's probably gone now. Sad times.

Point is all BL, whether original or shipping, became boring unfortunately. Things changed to the worst. It's especially painful that my current OTP is obscure. Was obscure when the show aired, sitll obscure now years later because nobody cares about this show. So I'm all alone in my autism.