/report!: yaoi, yaoi everywhere

[rageprufrock]

Come one, come all (no, seriously), /reporters! After several geologic eras of my incubating whatever disease killed Gwyneth Paltrow in Contagion, we're finally back to Sunday evening posting! This week mklutz and I are joined by Lianne Sentar of Sleep Is For The Weak to talk about yaoi, boys love, some of its history, some of its many questionable and delightful facets, to give the curious or the nostalgic recommendations, and then we spend some time advocating mklutz's future career in audio porn.

(Fair warning to listeners, as a natural result of the subject matter, we talk quite a bit about dubious consent and nonconsensual sex.)

Right-click here to download or click here to stream online to listen. And, as always, you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.



• Read Bukiyou na Silent here. (NC-17)

• Read Haru wo Daite Ita online here or here. (Exuberantly NC-17; attempted non-con later in the series.)

• Buy Wild Rock here.

• To purchase FAKE, go here, to buy Eerie Queerie, click this, pick up Antique Bakery here.

• mklutz's manga-ka of choice is Naono Bohra.

• To check out manga-ka Toko Kawai, click here. Specific titles of Toko Kawai: Cut (dark but satisfying); Cafe Latte Rhapsody (super sweet); In the Walnut (amazingly classy)

• Check out Tyrant Falls in Love here and Little Butterfly (by same mangaka as Tyrant and Bukiyou na Silent, super sweet) here.

• Approach Maiden Rose with caution here.

• For those ready to try Japanese Drama CDs, here's the SUPER BEST OMG English-language sharing forum and community for BL drama CDs.

And! Last but definitely note least: to look into these Tokyo Demons shenanigans, click here.

Comments

[ravelqueen]

it's set in a boys school with a culture where the 'princess' gets raped a lot by everyone and the protagonist finds out his older brother was one of the student council that started it or something.

Is it horrible that I instantly could think of two seperate different yaoi titles with this cross-dressing princess in high school idea, XD (they were quite cute though, those two, so obviously three with this premise exist?!)

honestly I read nearly everything of zetsuai and in retrospective I don't know how I managed (aside from basically crying my eyes out at the bookstore) because it has these moments of levity only for everything to be utterly horrible shortly after.

I think the reason in the end was because the uke was at least generally positive and nice, so it made the utter angst of everything else more bearable, but then SPOILER!!!




he gets hit by a car or something, which causes him to not be able to walk anymore, taking away his personal passion, soccer, forever, reducing him to a shell of his former self (complete with suicide attempts and depression) and his boyfriend leaves him (I think because he blamed himself for the accident? or he used to be jealous at soccer? jesus its been a long time) which was the point I just couldn't take it anymore

[unjapanologist]

SPOILERS





he gets hit by a car or something (...) which was the point I just couldn't take it anymore

He did get hit by a car, on purpose. Behind the wheel was his boyfriend K's elder brother A, who wanted to eliminate him (the soccer player). Brother A is in love with/unhealthily attached to other brother H, who had earlier in the story raped the soccer player in a complicated ploy to get back at brother K, but managed to emotionally screw up himself instead of his victim. Brother A got mad at the soccer player (the rape victim) for causing his rapist such anguish, so he ran him over, managing to seriously injure himself in the resulting crash. In the finale of the manga, Brother A killed himself in a horribly bloody way with everyone there, which was supposed to be helpful in some way to brother H. Everyone else survived, to my considerable amazement.

Zetsuai 1989/BRONZE was my introduction to BL, and everything seemed tame and nice after it.

[ravelqueen]

jesus that is even more needlessly complicated than I remember....wait a second K is that white haired rock star person, right? So actually his brother raped soccer boy? Then I actually remembered it to be even more fucked up than it really was XD

Zetsuai 1989/BRONZE was my introduction to BL, and everything seemed tame and nice after it.

right? I'm only happy that I discovered things like Kizuna shortly after (even though the infamous rape scene was like in the first volume...I guess I was still desentized) so I didn't think BL had to be doom and gloom only^^

[unjapanologist]

K is the white-haired rock star, yes. His brother raped the soccer player somewhere in BRONZE. K, on the other hand, raped the then-girlfriend of the soccer player back in Zetsuai. I don't even remember if he had a reason for it, or if he was just mad at her for existing. (This is the character who cut off his own arm because he didn't want to do kendo anymore and he wanted his family to stop whining at him to take it up again.)

It's... not really fun to realize how screwed up that stuff I used to love as a teenager really was. I have very fond memories of Kizuna (Kai and Masa mmm), so I'm kind of afraid to revisit it and discover it was actually all sorts of terrifying or something.

[ravelqueen]

I don't even remember if he had a reason for it, or if he was just mad at her for existing.

If I remember his obsessive behaviour correctly her existing was a totally valid reason.

I really think though that you can re-visit Kizuna without fear. The first volumes are a bit wonky, so those ones can be skipped. I think the only really fucked up thing was the rape scene which is just WTH Kodaka, why did you think that is a good way to introduce a character that we are supposed to like?!

She took a big break between I think vol. 3 and 4 to work on Kusatta and it shows in the art style and the story, because then we get our first major arc with Yakuzas and everything.

I don't know how far you've read, if you remember reading it as a teenager, but you know she finished, right? And it's a totally cute way to end it, absolutely worth it (and especially if you like Kai and Masa the last volumes are a must read!)

[unjapanologist]

Yeah, I know she finished and I remember at least paging through the magazine with the last chapter, but I don't think I ever got around to really reading the last couple of volumes all the way through. I'd dropped out of reading a lot of BL by that time, and the urge has come back only fairly recently.

Right. Shopping time!

(Oh goody, KKH. Funniest thing in forever.)