A question for BL authors

[georgelee5786]

...why do so many of yall seem to be female? Like all the BL authors I know off the top of my head are female. Why?

 

[HelloHound]

They neglected to sign up for yuri duty

 

[Cipiteca396]

Someone has to do it.

 

[LilRora]

I think it's pretty logical. If anyone is going to write boy's love, it's gonna be someone who likes them, with rare exceptions. Men are liked mostly by straight women and gay men, and it's obvious who's more numerous.

Also I'm fairly sure many women write BL because it's just a fun distraction. People can be roughly split into two groups, one that reads what they like that's related to their situation, and the other that treats reading as a way to distance themselves from their problems, or even just daily life. Not necessarily with problems, just to take their minds off things. Many authors do the same thing.

And for the record, I wouldn't call myself a BL author, but I considered writing one for that exact reason. It's just something different.

 

[tiaf]

If more males would read BL, then there would naturally be more male authors too.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Because real men write bara.

 

[Corty]

Why is it that most of my male readers ship my female characters with other females? Probably the same reason.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

I think it's pretty logical. If anyone is going to write boy's love, it's gonna be someone who likes them, with rare exceptions. Men are liked mostly by straight women and gay men, and it's obvious who's more numerous.

Also I'm fairly sure many women write BL because it's just a fun distraction. People can be roughly split into two groups, one that reads what they like that's related to their situation, and the other that treats reading as a way to distance themselves from their problems, or even just daily life. Not necessarily with problems, just to take their minds off things. Many authors do the same thing.

And for the record, I wouldn't call myself a BL author, but I considered writing one for that exact reason. It's just something different.

What LilRora said. I’ve thought on the subject and believe it to be for the same reason. I am interested in yuri, BL, and straight romance equally and if I ever do more than one page of one smut oneshot, I’ll probably alternate between the three.

 

[AliceShiki]

The main target audience for BL are straight women, so the authors tend to also be straight women.

There are BL works whose target audience are gay men, but those often feel very different from the standard BL you see.

I should also note that the same does not apply to GL, as GL has girls as the target audience often, as many GL stories are simply shoujo stories involving two girls (there are GL aimed at men too though, it's just that those aren't the majority).

But yeah, it's basically a target audience thing. BL stories are not aimed at gay men as a rule of thumb, so they aren't written by gay men usually.

 

[AnonUnlimited]

The main target audience for BL are straight women, so the authors tend to also be straight women.

There are BL works whose target audience are gay men, but those often feel very different from the standard BL you see.

I should also note that the same does not apply to GL, as GL has girls as the target audience often, as many GL stories are simply shoujo stories involving two girls (there are GL aimed at men too though, it's just that those aren't the majority).

But yeah, it's basically a target audience thing. BL stories are not aimed at gay men as a rule of thumb, so they aren't written by gay men usually.

Yuri is aimed at men.

 

[AliceShiki]

Yuri is aimed at men.

No.

A portion of GL is aimed at men, yes.

A bigger portion of GL is aimed at women where it is basically a variant of shoujo.

Both GL aimed at women and GL aimed at men are popular. There is a common misconception that this is not the case, but it's just a misconception.

The bigger portion of GL is aimed at women, but there is plenty of GL aimed at men too. Both portions are quite big, even if the portion aimed at women is bigger.

It's very different from BL that has the vast majority of the stories aimed at straight women, and only a small minority aimed at gay men.

The misconception exists because people apply their knowledge of BL to GL and assume both genres are the same, but their origins are completely different and the way they were developed is also completely different.

 

[AnonUnlimited]

I think I’ll be going home now… bye…

 

[Lodur]

The misconception exists because people apply their knowledge of BL to GL and assume both genres are the same, but their origins are completely different and the way they were developed is also completely different.

How can I apply my knowledge of BL, if I haven't read a single BL story? I've read a decent amount of GL stories, and can't quite say, which were aimed on men, and which one on women. (GB complicates things even more... it's not a secret, that the lion's share of stories with MtF GB are also accompanied by GL. But what is their TA?)

 

[AliceShiki]

How can I apply my knowledge of BL, if I haven't read a single BL story? I've read a decent amount of GL stories, and can't quite say, which were aimed on men, and which one on women. (GB complicates things even more... it's not a secret, that the lion's share of stories with MtF GB are also accompanied by GL. But what is their TA?)

Gender bender certainly changes things around. No denying that.

The target audience of Gender Bender varies a lot based on the type of gender bender it is (fanservicy; comedic; serious; psychological...), so it's hard to make a simple rule for it... If I were to try, I'd say the more comedic gender benders that go on the GL route are probably aimed at men, while the more serious ones that go into the Gender Issues aspect might be aimed at transgenders to some extent, and to a broader public that wants more introspective stories to another extent, without a specific gender in mind when making the story... Probably. I'm doing some guessing here.

As for knowing which of the non-Gender-Bender ones are aimed at men and which at women... In a very oversimplified manner, the ones that talk more about feelings and feel like shoujo tend to be aimed at women; the ones that are more fanservicy tend to be aimed at men.

There's more nuance to this, but that's an oversimplification.

As for the part of people applying knowledge of BL... That was more of a generic statement because BL is more popular than GL and many people who don't read BL are also aware of its target audience, so they make the assumption that GL works in the same way, when reality isn't exactly like that.

Individual people seeing things by themselves and making their own judgement won't necessarily fit onto these generic statements though~

 

[georgelee5786]

So what I've gathered from this is that women love seeing men together more than men love seeing men together. Strange.

 

[AnonUnlimited]

So what I've gathered from this is that women love seeing men together more than men love seeing men together. Strange.

Men love seeing women together (doing sexy things) than women love seeing it too.

I think gay men like seeing men doing sexy things together more than women do too.

based on what I’ve read.. women like the emotional connection in GL and BL more while men (gay or straight) seem to prefer the physical.

Though that’s just anecdotal.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Though that’s just anecdotal.

Yes.

 

[Lodur]

As for the part of people applying knowledge of BL... That was more of a generic statement because BL is more popular than GL and many people who don't read BL are also aware of its target audience, so they make the assumption that GL works in the same way, when reality isn't exactly like that.

Ah, if you meant just general knowlege. Definitely, I'm aware that BL is mostly written by straight women for straight women.

As for knowing which of the non-Gender-Bender ones are aimed at men and which at women... In a very oversimplified manner, the ones that talk more about feelings and feel like shoujo tend to be aimed at women; the ones that are more fanservicy tend to be aimed at men.

I'd say, that then they all aimed for women (those I've read, of course). Fanservicy were only occasional scenes in Harem stories, but it's overly obvious, those type of stories don't, usually, even have GL tag.

 

[AliceShiki]

Men love seeing women together (doing sexy things) than women love seeing it too.

I think gay men like seeing men doing sexy things together more than women do too.

based on what I’ve read.. women like the emotional connection in GL and BL more while men (gay or straight) seem to prefer the physical.

Though that’s just anecdotal.

For the record, on the R-18 side of things, GL is indeed more targeted towards men.

I was talking about the more seiso stuff in my reply to you, since R-18 stuff is a very different can of worms and should be looked at separately IMO.

I'd say, that then they all aimed for women (those I've read, of course). Fanservicy were only occasional scenes in Harem stories, but it's overly obvious, those type of stories don't, usually, even have GL tag.

I've seen a few more fanservicy ones, but mostly on the manga end of things, and it becomes really obvious after a while that I'm not the audience for a certain story after a while trying it out~

Interestingly enough though, the whole trope of "Cute Girls Doing Cute Things" seems to have a mostly adult male target audience, and it often has some GL undertones (or sometimes the GL is actually a main part of the story)... I remember being really surprised at that when I found it out, as I tend to really dislike seinen stuff, but I love CGDCT~

 

[AnonUnlimited]

-_-