#a point :')

[the-bloody-sadist]

Do you mind if I ask you some random thing? I used to love shounen and shoujo manga equally....But ever since I found BL manga 3 years ago, my interest in shoujosei (especially het romance) decrese a lot, and what I search for is just the dynamic between mc (male) and male lead...I don't want to read mc (female) and male lead or mc (male) and female lead...And what I want to read mostly are just mlm or wlw stories....

What do you think is happening to me? Is it really weird?

Ooooooooo I LOVE YOU FOR ASKING ME THIS QUESTION!! THAT'S SO FASCINATING! THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING ME! If my friends know anything about me it's that I LOVE to psychoanalyze, so let's see what I can do here *cracks every knuckle*---

I'll preface by saying I have NOT read any het romance in the MANGA world at least--or otherwise japanese/chinese/korean sources--but did grow up only reading/watching/writing that and thinking I hated romance in general because it was so fucking boring LMAO. If I can compare any het media to non-American BL media, I would have to say anime is my only reference!

With that said, I came through the same arc you did. I tried het romance my whole life, suddenly fell upon BL, said WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS AND WHY IS IT SO GOOD COMPARED TO THE SHIT I'VE BEEN READING, never went back to het romance, and now do BL in all shapes and forms full-time.

What seems to be the big factor in BL/yaoi being so much more enjoyable is that there's an inherent difference in the dynamic of male/male vs. male/female--as portrayed by media, at least. And there's just something about that dynamic that makes it more gripping. It's easier to feel that line of tension between the characters, not to mention the fact that most male/male couples' conflict is far more relatable than the ones I see in female/male. In het media, I tend to see incredibly petty choices of conflict, whereas a LOT of BL chooses trauma, mental illness, and sometimes the acceptance of being gay as the reasons the couples struggle.

I identify far more with those issues than I do with the more stupid conflicts I see in het media like "HE'S WITH ANOTHER GIRL WHATEVER SHALL I DO!" (and it's just his sister) or "HOW DO I KNOW IF I ACTUALLY LIKE HIM? MAYBE I DON'T! LET ME THROW HIM FOR LOOPS AND GO BACK AND FORTH!" and other common, annoying tropes. Especially the jealousy and love triangles. BL does some love triangles, but it's just less...petty? There are usually more founded issues for the conflict that comes from those situations.

I say this with hesitation, but I also feel that BL/yaoi tends to have more creative and unseen concepts than het media. Actually--erase that hesitation. I believe that wholeheartedly. They tend to choose traumatic situations more often than het media--and this is the important part--THEY PORTRAY THEM IN A MORE REALISTIC MANNER.

This doesn't go for all BL because of course it doesn't. An entire genre of different writers--many good and many bad--can never have a singular good trait shared between all of them. But the majority of BL that I've read that include scenes of rape, child abuse, or sex trafficking keeps some sense of terror and gravity to the situation. That's something I tend to see less of in het media. Instead, things often feel more exploitative or voyeuristic. Suffering as a spectacle, as they say. However, it may just have something to do with the female gender being the victim, which we've all seen countless times in all shapes and forms. It feels fresh and new to see a male character going through those issues, instead.

On that topic, I would add that the main audience for romance as a whole has always been dominated by women, so women are more likely to be the consumers of both het and queer romance. When it comes to yaoi, the automatic power balance of male/female is gone, leaving only male/male and opening the option for different ways to imbalance that power--automatically feeling more creative and new than the age old female-victim-male-aggressor-but-he's-kinda-hot trope. In addition to this, so many het romances have unapologetic portrayals of romanticized abuse (The Notebook, 50 Shades of Grey, Blade Runner [speaking to the romance PLOT, sorry, more obscure], the After series, The Kissing Booth, and so on) that never get brought up, never seem to affect the female lead negatively, and always get the couple together in the end. This is endlessly infuriating to me and I've never enjoyed the popular het romances for this reason. It feels like gaslighting--gaslighting of the audience--to see harsh moments of outright abuse and then see the female lead react as if it's sexy, and to feel nothing but gut-freezing disgust as a viewer. It's even more painful when the audience around you also reacts in that way because they're so used to seeing it in your everyday het romance.

Contrasting this with yaoi/BL media--this issue is completely flipped. Countless stories show abuse, address the abuse, portray the male lead suffering from the effects of that abuse, and proceed with a motivation to fix, endure, or to run away from that abuse. To claim that yaoi/BL has less romanticization of said abuse is not wholly true, but the problem for me has always been that het romance PRETENDED THE ABUSE DID NOT EXIST AND/OR IS SEXY AND NORMAL. Whereas yaoi seemed more self-aware that they were writing abuse, and--if they chose to romanticize it--more often did so because the abuse was being experienced through the eyes of the victim. This is important because victims of abuse in reality DO this to cope and survive, so the romanticization is a direct result of a trauma response, and it's made far more clear in yaoi that this is the case.

This is why the kidnapping, Stockholm syndrome romances (Killing Stalking at the top), and toxic relationship themes in BL are far more attractive and validating to read.

Say, for instance, the romances that include themes of kidnapping, sexual assault, and captivity in het media. What have we got for that that's good and actually explores the nature of abuse? What I tend to see that meets that criteria (possibly) isn't really included in the romance category at all--it's either listed as horror or it's a lightened romcom version of that event (kidnapping, specifically)--unless you think of the more popular ones like 365 Days where it's supposed to be sexy and everyone has no brain. I might be flimsy on my point here, since this is the first time I've tried to pick apart this subject, so I apologize. But in addition to these het romances with the themes that I'd like to see not really existing in a way that's been done WELL--I also personally can't watch a woman getting hurt the way I can watch a man getting hurt.

We've seen enough women suffering onscreen, and most of the times the way it gets filmed ends up feeling sexualized in some way--especially if it's a horror movie or a thriller romance. I personally don't enjoy the lack of emotional depth in these types--and clearly they're most often written to be sexy or shock horror more than serious. Trauma doesn't feel real in these stories, so it's intensely triggering to watch it happen onscreen without a resolution to that trauma.

Going back to yaoi/BL, their romances include and very often feature abusive relationships or straight-up hostage romances. But the way they're handled is the big difference. Even though some treat the abuse like sexy porn scenes and I find myself dropping them for the same triggers that set me off in het media, this is much less of a problem, and you can get your thrills without the invalidation of watching trauma happen without being treated like trauma. There's often an arc of learning for the abuser, the relationship healing/improving (and I don't care that it's not morally correct or realistic for this to happen because it's fiction and we all need our coping mechanisms for reality), and a satisfying end where both the characters learn how to love each other. In their own way.

This makes the trauma feel raw and the healing feel rewarding, which is what I come to see. It feels like more BL writers get this and have actually been through some shit.

Lastly, it's not weird that you feel this way, and I'm worried that the discourse on social media about people who exclusively enjoy yaoi/BL has influenced that belief in a lot of people. It shouldn't be that way, and I hope people come around to the actual logic instead of copy-pasting what everyone else says to fit in!

IN ANY CASE, I HAVE RAMBLED FAR TOO LONG ON PRETTY MUCH THE SAME POINT, BUT I HOPE THIS HELPED!! That's the main difference that I'm drawn to yaoi for and I hope it might have helped you see why you are, too!!

Much love to you, and again, thank you SO MUCH FOR ASKING ME THIS QUESTION!! I loved getting to answer that.

[ameliafuckinjones]

On the one hand I love usuk (though interpret it as ukus) on the other I see the opposition toward and diminishment of the ship within the fandom at large as divine punishment for turning England into a whiny bottom twink who can do no wrong and America the big strong macho man with no sensitivity. In my eyes, the ship, which was once so popular in the fandom, simply lost the mandate of heaven. Where once the usuk fandom was as plentiful as the stars and beloved, it is now few in numbers and an outcast in comparison to other ships that only gained in popularity and eventually overwhelmed usuk in terms of content and adoration (rusame and fruk). Why? Because while usuk shippers succumbed to tired old yaoi fujoshi tropes from the mid 2010s, rusame and fruk shippers were creating Shakespearean ass soulmate doomed tragic lovers content with nuance and multitudes. That USED to be usuk, but not anymore. Cause of woke.

[dedummekrakene]

I KNEW HE WAS A SIEVE DEEP DOWN

[2d-dreams]

this is what they were doing while waiting for year 3000

[apoint]

To

The Inhabitants of SELF IN GENERAL

And N. W. IN PARTICULAR

[ineffablehunter]

look all the differences between Gracepoint and Broadchurch are stupid but the sunglasses

like what the actual fuck

[minniedeer]

.

[rupertholmes]

its the fact that i know my self worth and that i dont deserve to be abused everyday that everything here bothers me and im "so sensitive"

[astronnova]

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[charlesoberonn]

It's gonna be such a funny mess when Donald Trump dies of a stroke on April 1st, 2024.

Naturally everybody will think it's fake because of the date only to lose their minds (both positively and negatively based on their opinion of trump) when realizing it's real

There will be massive celebrations in the streets and on social media and lots of predictable "don't speak ill of the dead" discourse about those celebrations

Weird evangelicals will pull some weird number trick talking about how Jesus was conceived on April 1st and that makes Trump a sort of messiah and people will make fun of that

The Republicans (after they're done with the faux-sadness and faux-outrage) will stomp over each other to be his successor but none of them will succeed. They'll tear each other apart and have no single nominee for the November elections.

There will be discourse about if Biden and the living former presidents should go to his funeral (they won't, he was a traitor insurrectionist)

The Ukraine-Russia War immediately goes in favor of Ukraine as morale in the Kremlin is reduced. China similarly backs off from its threats on Taiwan.

Ten thousand new memes are made, some sticking around for years to come.

Not a month later a bunch of unofficial biographies of Trump hit the bookshelves, many with new details about just how awful he was.

[twinliches]

nearly had a medical emergency today because - and i cannot stress enough how little i am making this up - a helicopter landed in front of an open grain silo while i was getting off my ship and i am deathly allergic to the wheat that said helicopters rotor blades proceeded to blast in my face at full force. the cosmic forces are plotting against me ass situation to be in

[cuntylouis]

Ignoring the real possibility he intentionally let himself be caught from the little we know so far Luigi Mangione's case is a fascinating combination of astonishing brilliance and confusing stupidity. This young man plans and executes his assassination and escape with such a meticulous care and calmness that it's suspected that he's a professional hitman. He comes up with Riddler-sque moves like writing his manifesto poetically on the bullets and leaving his backpack behind full of Monopoly money. He carefully wears a mask to avoid being identified but removes it because a woman who was checking him into the hostel was flirting with him and wanted to see his smile. He still manages to escape the most surveilled city in the country in the midst of ongoing national manhunt only to get caught in the middle of bumfuck nowhere Pennsylvania while eating at the McDonalds. Because for some reason he had the same clothes and mask as in New York and was carrying the same gun and suppressor. And when the cops detained him he showed them the same fake id he used in New York. And oh yeah he's a frat bro gym rat who has a masters degree in computer science from Penn but reads stupid self-help books about being on the grind and is 'anti-woke' while being bisexual suffering from anxiety and wanting to end oppressive capitalism. Not even god himself could invent a person like this

[saszor]

Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

second way more important edit: How are people seeing this post where I specifically talk about burn survivors being normal, real people, and still tag this as "TW body horror"? Not a single one of these drawings or pictures is a fresh injury. All of them are healed. How the hell would you feel if someone tagged a photo of you as "trigger warning: gore"?

Disabled people are not your fucking body horror. Grow up.

[2d-dreams]

[apoint]