Evolving Opinions

[FudanshiDream]

It's been seven years since I've began reading yaoi. At first I was like everyone else. "Forbidden Love" "OMG SO CUTE!" I used to love really pretty boys and constantly looked at slash pairings. Now, I am more for masculine characters, gay love isn't forbidden...it's normal...something society fails to understand, and I hardly look at slash pairings (except for One Piece...I slash the hell out of that anime. I could make a blog post just about how many male/male couples I ship, but that's beside that point).

 

What I'm trying to say is...my opinions on yaoi changed drastically overtime. I'm not a sucker for certain plot points. I look at things really realistically and can't "fangirl" (never could...well kinda? I'm trans-male). Yaoi is still more appealing than shoujo to me. I don't like objectifying the characters though. Sometimes I read yaoi and wonder why. Why are certain things in there?

 

 

-Straight to gay characters (cause that happens a lot *sarcasm*), I like my openly gay characters

 

-When characters hide their relationship, shame their relationship, constantly point out "but I'm a guy", etc. (This pisses me off a whole lot. Especially as someone who came out to their family. Coming out is hard. However I've come to understand that Yaoi hardly ever addresses the reality of being gay and living life as a gay person. It's mainly for fantasizing. Yeah there are gay characters and openly gay characters in yaoi, but how often do you see them? When do you ever see them come out? Do they come out on their jobs, to their family? Whenever they're going out with someone, everyone assumes they have a "girlfriend". They never correct them. Like ever. Except if they're openly gay, then people know, but...you know. I've seen a few manga like Konbini-kun tackle a character's struggle after being discovered by others that they like someone of the same gender. I wish there were more like that. There really is no genre in manga for LGBTQ+ people where it's based off of reality and the issues of being part of the community are addressed. Yaoi is "for women" and Bara is "for gay men" however there is hardly ever any real plot and the art is an acquired taste. Don't even get me started on the lack of Transgender Manga out there.)

 

-Overly sensitive uke (sensitive to touch I mean, not crybabies although I hate them too)

 

-Uke so feminine uke, that I doubt I'm looking at a male. I mean they make Andrej Pejic and Josh Harwood look macho men. Androgyny doesn't describe them at all. And also uke with no d*ck or one so small it makes my pinkie look like a colossal p*nis. Sometimes, it's invisible...oooo, ghost d*ck!!

 

-This may throw you for a loop, but the whole idea of a "seme" and "uke". They're too stereotypical and frankly annoys me at times. Sadahiro Mika I love because her characters are a lot of times reversible. There's no "dominant" person and "submissive" person. I might was well read shoujo if I want that. What I'm pissed off at is not positions in bed, but out of bed. Seme = masculine, strong, dominant, confident. Uke = feminine, weak, submissive, no confidence. (Isn't that what some of you hate in Shoujo? Weak females? How is it acceptable when it's a male? It's just as annoying. They cry all the time and they flustered and usually tsundere, and just....) Not all yaoi does this, but the ones that do...I'm looking at you Minami Haruka, Yamato Nase, and Itsuki Kaname....get on my nerves.

 

 

 

I love Sadahiro Mika, Yamane Ayano, Ike Reibun and Akira Norikazu's art partially for the fact that their men are more masculine. I mean women like masculine men too. I still like bishounen, but I find myself more attracted to older men and more masculine men in yaoi. It takes a lot more to give me "the feels" too (no wait, who am I kidding, I'm an emotional wreck, that hasn't changed). Maybe I've grown. I'm more into the LGBT+ community due to my identity. That has to have given me a better perspective on things.

 

 

I believe a lot of it has to do with the fact that Japan still hasn't legalized gay marriage. It's funny how a country that once encouraged homosexuality (look up Samurai, etc.), doesn't have any laws for gay people. They have Ni Chrome, I guess.

 

 

How have your opinions changed over time or have they? Have your views on certain aspects in yaoi changed? Has your tasted in art styles, types of men changed? It's not attack on yaoi. However sometimes your view can shift and while you may still like it, you may feel differently about it. Please give me your input. I respect everyone's opinions. Just wanted to start a discussion.

 

**Sorry for the long post. I ramble and diverge from the topic sometimes. I've shortened by putting chunks in "spoiler" things.

[Dark Eden]

**Sorry for the long post.

 

Don't worry, it was interesting to read.

 

How have your opinions changed over time or have they? Have your views on certain aspects in yaoi changed? Has your tasted in art styles, types of men changed? It's not attack on yaoi. However sometimes your view can shift and while you may still like it, you may feel differently about it. Please give me your input. I respect everyone's opinions. Just wanted to start a discussion.

 

Mine have certainly changed a lot over the years. When I first started reading yaoi I loved the whole seme/uke thing. Now I hate it. I like stories to have a sort of equal levelling between the two characters, where they can challenge one other. Rather then one just dominating the other and them just taking it. I know yaoi is in no way real, but it has become a little to far fetched for me at times, that I just can not get into it.

 

My tastes in men have also changed a lot and with that what kind of yaoi I like. I am not sure if it is do with me getting older and liking male characters who I relate to what my current age is or that I have gained a lot more sexual experiences since starting to read/watch yaoi. What I thought, I 'may' of liked years ago, such as skinny, hairless men have now changed as I have experienced what it is like making love to that kind of build man, the more masculine man and the chubby man, I can honestly say the bag of furless bone type did not light my spark like the chucky type.

[xxkyutexx]

This post was really interesting to read and got me thinking,

When I first got into yaoi i never really unstood the whole uke, seme thingy and tbh I still don't. i mean i may understand it at first but when it happens all the time throughout the story I'm like wouldn't the dominance between you two be more equal? I don't know maybe that's just me.

(okay imma go slightly of topic and talk about drama's) It's just in some korean and some japanese drama's they make being gay a comedic element as long as its not real. like when a guy falls for a guy but the audience know its a girl so their all okay with it because they know its not real or i dont know, personal preference for eg. At first i liked all these story lines but now...sometimes it just kinda annoys me a little.

And when people ship idols coz they know its not real but if they actually come out (they may not be gay which i totally understand but still) they risk being abandoned by their fans- bad example i know just trying to point out some poeple love it if its fake but when its real they dont like it.

i know that in a lot of countries homosexuality is a big no no, so i guess im being arrogant

and im not sure if any of this makes sense..

 

(back on topic)

 

And rape, before i knew exactly what it was i used to think that rape in yaoi was hot and/or acceptable (my friend thought so too), but now i know what it is. its wrong, completely wrong.

i still slash the hell out of pairings everywhere.

i used only like the feminine guy with the masculine guy but now yeah that can happen but two masculine guys are good too- i don't really mind as long as i like the art and the plot.

[Ragne]

This is very interesting!

 

My opinions on yaoi changed too! I used to really love shounen ai, when I was around 15 and 16, and I read a lot of shounen ai and watched a lot of shounen ai anime with the usual uke/seme relationship. I really read everything I could and I liked most of it, there was so much material!

 

Then I started to get a bit tired with the uke/seme dynamics and I started to look for manga that could give me the reverse trope of this. I only could read those kinds of manga or manga where there was no clear dinstiction between uke and seme.

About other tropes, I agree, the whole 'gay for you' (where the straight character says that he likes girls but he loves a man) stopped being interesting. As a bisexual/pansexual myself I quite prefer an honest 'I just found out I am gay' or 'I am bisexual and I like both sexes'. I also couldn't stand anymore any kind of dub con or non consensual sex and this is, I think, the main reason why I left yaoi manga, because in the majority of manga I read there was this idea that being a bottom in gay sex was shameful and, well, I was quite offended by it because being a woman myself most of the sexual activities I can do are on the bottom and I can't understand why it should be shameful.

 

So I stopped reading yaoi and shounen ai and I gave myself to slash. Gay movies, slash, bromance in tv shows and movies. I am still mostly a slash fan (in books: arthuriana mostly and Les Mis, and various tv shows) because with slash I can write and read fanfiction that statistically have less probability of being influenced by the uke/seme and rape-then-fall-in-love dynamis.

I still read some yaoi and shounen ai manga but right now my tastes have become extremely picky. A part from the things I say I also stopped reading highschool manga, maybe because my high school times have passed and I feel a bit nostalgic reading them, and I started getting interesting in any kind of urban fantasy and fantasy manga more than RL settings.

[FudanshiDream]

I've been dead on these forums for a while and haven't gotten a chance to thank you all. Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it.