(no subject)

[reenka]

Since I just finished rereading Saika Kunieda's Memory of the Future (prequel to the arguably even better Kaze no Yukue), petronia's yaoi in general vs. the Administration series essay makes me sad. People who read mostly mainstream yaoi still tend to think of it as the land of weepy uber-subby ukes with self-lubricating bottoms and girlish mannerisms. I guess there are always going to be such generalizations-- like 'fantasy is all multivolume dungeons and dragons' (which isn't untrue these days), but... things like Kaze no Yukue are so different and beautiful and I wonder if they're really so rare and hard to find as to be irrelevant to current definitions of what 'yaoi' is like.

I don't think yaoi/BL as a genre still works as "99.5% of the time top/bottom also corresponds to dom/sub, at least on a surface level. (The .5% are clever-clever gender deconstructionists.)" There are too many exceptions now that are more about human stories & not about gender deconstruction at all. More and more mangakas who just want to explore characterization I writing it; Saika Kunieda, Kisaragi Hirotaka, Fujii Mitori, Kano Shiuko, Hinako Takanaga, Bohra Naono, Abe Miyuki, Aoi Kujio, Sakura Haiji, Shiho Sugiura, Shungiku Nakamura, Sumomo Yumeka, Yamada Yugi, Yaya Sakuragi, Touko Kawai, Honjou Rie, Mizukami Shin, Motoni Modoru, Mika Sadahiro, Minase Masara, Konno Keiko-- if you recognize any of these, you know they don't write 'typical' girly ukes and uber-macho semes. They just write good stories, and most of them are kickass artists, too.

When people say 'this is what X field is like', I always wonder just what and why and how they read what they do, 'cause I've yet to hear any soundbyte description of any genre that I know well that's spot-on about the field as -I've- experienced it. Maybe it's that I have the questionable luck of not watching fighting shows in anime; not reading Harlequin-brand books in romance; not reading Loveless, Gravitation, Fake, Bronze or Viewfinder in yaoi; just generally not liking the popular things in H/D fanfiction, etc :P

If you read only Yamane Amano and Youka Nitta, you wouldn't see how they deviate from the meta 'norm' and try to make their ukes interesting & feisty, especially in their better works. It's not all about ironclad roles, or Japanese readers would be bored to tears, wouldn't they? The secret to mass success isn't just a formula; it's a formula that's constantly in flux & development, isn't it?
    Somehow, the constant media article referencing of yaoi 'classics' like Kizuna & Gravitation and such seems ridiculous in current circumstances. Just about 99% of all yaoi I read that's more than a PWP is nothing like Gravitation, even if I see a superficial resemblance in some cliches. If you think the yaoi being scanlated now is like that, you must not be reading the stuff, basically.

Comments

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Eh, but to 'deviate from the norm' means that a norm exists that you can deviate from, doesn't it? I don't know too much about the BL genre as it stands now, but I suspect the essay is more to explain the Western BL fandom and its formative works.

[meril.livejournal.com]

That, and the essay is over three years old at this point. Fandom at the speed of Internet--well, a lot has changed.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Whoa, that old? Yeah, I think the essay might not describe BL fandom today, but in those days, there was fewer translated BL out there, and so what was out there was much more influential in forming tastes.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It is quite that old, thank you - the proportion nowadays is more like 85%. *g*

A quick scan of lunacy's list tells me I've read at least 2/3 of the mangaka she names; some of them fall well outside the norm (IIRC I was specifically thinking of Motoni Modoru when I wrote "0.5% are deconstructionists"), some of them I consider fairly stereotypical, although the stereotype is not always uber-subby uke etc. I do hold to my finding that the vast statistic majority of yaoi/BL features a power disparity in the relationship, although it frustrates me a little that people immediately assume I'm saying no further nuance could exist in the characterisation to balance that in any way - especially since in the essay itself I go on to theorize that the "real", emotional power is slanted in favor of the stereotypically "weaker" uke!

--But in reality, that essay had the specific purpose of explaining to msmanna why her slash epic with SM elements was reminiscent of Ai no Kusabi. XD lunacy, if you want we could talk about this in greater depth.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Ahh, sorry I didn't look into it further re: how old the essay was ^^;;; I wasn't disagreeing with the power-differential thing anyway, just the 'typical role-playing in most cases' thing... and I only made that list to exclude uber-subby-weepy-ukes, basically, not all stereotypes~:) Like, I don't think Youka Nitta's Haru wo Daiteita has a typical uke or dom/sub power-play relationship for yaoi, not like in Gravitation anyway, and it's really mainstream. But in many other ways, it definitely is 'typical'-- in terms of soap-operaishness and stuff, the types of stories, the emotional responses.

You know, in retrospect I feel pretty sheepish about this post and also including people like Motoni Modoru, 'cause yeah, you can see Koi wa Bokura as 'deconstructive', though I thought it deconstructed yaoi as a meta-genre more than gender-roles, per se, and that was merely one layer in what could also work as (an atypical) love-story. I was saying that in Yamada Yugi & Minase Masara & Saika Kunieda's work (etc), the power-disparity definitely isn't central, and in Mika Sadahiro and Kano Shiuko's (best work, at least), it's messed with to the point where it's not recognizably 'typical yaoi', and so on. It's not that no further nuance could exist even with typically power-differential works (like with Nitta), but I suppose I just don't read as much of those as other people...

Anyway, I did realize this had to do with explaining about the similarity between a certain kind of (old?) yaoi & Administration, which I actually thought was a totally valid comparison, I just got side-tracked into this 'cause I finished reading 'Kaze no Yukue' and I wish it was more representative to more people ^^;;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Koi no Bokura is on the normal, sane end of Motoni's body of work. XD

I'd actually say power disparity was pretty central to Minase Masara (not so much for Yamada Yugi, can't recollect having read Saika Kunieda), in the sense that the seme/uke roles are very set - in Sumomo Yumeka and Touko Kawai it's not, but this is also the reason these latter two read exactly like the better, edgier sort of het shoujo to me, rather than middle-of-the-road BL or middle-of-the-road shoujo. BL is a subgenre of shoujo/ladies, and most of its weaknesses and stereotypes recapitulate those of shoujo/ladies.

There's also a difference between the relational dynamic sort of power disparity, and the visual, superficial "weepy girly uke and tall macho seme" sort of disparity. Sometimes these elements go together, sometimes they don't at all. Hoshino Lily and Nekota Yonezou draw very girlish, even childish ukes, but the dynamic is no less "typical" than Naono Bohra. In Nekota even semes are weepy. *g*

It is pretty frustrating for the knowledgeable when the media picks up one or two catchphrases or descriptors and uses them ad nauseam in superficial descriptions (every fantasy novel nowadays gets compared to Harry Potter in some way, even if it's "unlike Harry Potter..."), but that's just what the media does - BL is the least of it. ^^; Heck, even if it were only Yamane Ayano and Nitta Youka being namechecked I'd be happy, they're both current and extremely popular and as representative as any other mangaka. Ai no Kusabi/Zetsuai/FAKE etc. haven't been BL flagships since the 90s, and Gravitation never was representative (most Japanese fans I know insist it's shoujo comedy that happens to contain m/m elements, not BL at all - same with Loveless). But the Western fandom has lagged behind the Japanese fandom for obvious reasons, and the media/scholarship has lagged even more.

Then again, as someone I know pointed out recently, "Japan Cool" has always been "something that was hip ten years ago in Japan is now mainstream hip outside Japan!"

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, when I realized Motoni Modoru hadn't written anything else in that 'normal' vein, I was so stricken :( On the other hand, I feel like she did say everything there probably was to say for her about romance in that one manga. It's just so... definitive. But still, I am a fangirl, so there is never enough. :>

Also, you're right-- I realized this 'cause Saika Kunieda actually also writes a lot of shoujo (apparently unscanlated) as Sakai Kunie-- and this sort of clicks because her mangas are also like Touko Kawai's in that 'this reads like good/edgy shoujo' feeling, sort of how it went all the way in 'Adult's Problems'. Well, but maybe that just shows that unless you're dealing in cliches and stereotypes, you -are- writing female-style love-stories, so of course it'd resemble shoujo. Though there -is- stuff that seems 'boyish' in feel/attitude-- like some of Yamada Yugi's & Yuzuha Ougi's & Shiuko Kano's (and maybe Mika Sadahiro's?) work... ooorrr, it could be yet another subgenre.

I was just going for 'a lot more subtle & gradiented than Gravitation/Bronze-type yaoi' or whatever, with Minase Masara, because the uke/seme thing is everywhere you don't have switching (and that's leaving me with only Mika Sadahiro as any reliable source, and maybe someone else I'm forgetting). Like, in Touko Kawai's mangas the 'roles' aren't set, but there are still consistent sexual behavior types; perhaps not being sex-centric helps. You're also quite right about Hoshino Lily, because I had that exact same thought about her being 'out of the mainstream' even though she draws quite stereotypically... though this is less 'bucking the trend' (I think) and more being avant garde, magical realist, artsy, etc. It's like, the relationships themselves are generally somewhat on the abstract side, it seems like, but then Sumomo Yumeka is like that too.

I think at some point there's been growth everywhere, in terms of recombinations and variations on a theme ('cause I totally see what you mean about Nekota Yonezou, too)-- I just think that this is more evidence that yaoi as a whole isn't what it used to be, though. It started out with like, 4 colors and some different flavors (fluffy, silly, angsty, romantic), and now there's just 24 million colors or whatever. I can think of many different examples of different subtleties of relationship dynamics... and I don'tknow what the dominant one is, though I suppose it's still vaguely following along the model started around the beginning. My only quibble was that the alternatives aren't on the fringe but rather nudging into the inner circle of the mainstream now. Nearly -all- the popular mangakas have -some- twist to their dynamics one way or another, it seems like.

...You made me laugh when you said Gravi is 'shoujo comedy', especially since I've only watched it & most recently -read- the remixes... er... doujins... with the... ummmm.... bodily fluid & super-penetration-shot extravaganzas... *____* You're right that it's to be expected that anyone outside fandom, especially 'official' people wouldn't get the current trends as they happen, but the problem seems to be compounded by the fact that most yaoi fans don't seem aware of the range of stuff out there-- or just not interested 'cause it doesn't have catbois, salarymen being penetrated by vegetables or like, evil pretty semes. Haha, well, okay, this is why I'm not actually -in- the fandom per se, so I probably don't have the right to complain :>

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I realized there's some truth to the description-of-formative-works thing as I read it, I'm just somewhat tired of always seeing the old stereotypes carry on way past their sell-by date in actual media articles and other descriptions of any fandom or genre from the outside. People still refer to H/D fandom by mentioning Cassie Claire and Aja and Ivy's (and slightly more recent but equally stereotypically well-known-- and OOC & unflattering) fics, and still talk about fantasy as the province of Tolkien, etc. I guess it's the 'unflattering' aspect that concerns me.

I realize you must know the norm exists to know about deviations-- like I was saying there myself re: reading Youka Nitta & needing background. However, if you just dig deeper and read -more-, you'd also see a lot more diversity, and if you're like me and just don't read the stupid stuff (even if that means you read nothing), you -will- find stuff to fit your taste just through that filtering, given time. I suppose I think of it as 'my fandom'-- because though I'm aware of the formative works then and now (like, Loveless is current) I just don't seek them out because I know enough about them to know they're full of melodramatic cliches, bottom line.