/report!: yaoi, yaoi everywhere
Oct. 23rd, 2011 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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slashreport
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.
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 12:25 am (UTC)On another note, if you don't mind, I'd actually like to toss in two recs that I feel people should check out because I just love them so much.
1. Boku wa Kimi no Tori ni Naritai "I want to Become Your Bird" by Homerun Ken, completed - 1 volume, about a boy (who is kinnndda the school slut, but not in the dub-con or non-con way) who falls in love with his sister's boyfriend. And there are FEELINGS. It sounds kinda dubious and depressing, but it really works in the context of the story.
2. Vassalord by Nanae Chrono, WIP about 4 completed books according to wikipedia, which is about vampire robot priests, but wait come back! They are totally in love, but there's so much drama and pining. This is not in the yaoi or even BL category, but things are heavily implied. HEAVILY. Warnings for violence and gore, though, if you're triggered by that kind of thing.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 12:53 am (UTC)FAKE! Omg, the 7th manga, which was the shrink wrapped one, I was so excited about and so embarrassed about as well. I don't remember if I bought it Borders or bought it online, but good times, especially as I eased in with random CLAMP offerings.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 12:55 am (UTC)OH YEAH, I TOTALLY USED THAT AND IT MADE SENSE IN CONTEXT. omg, this week should have been called "Our thoughts on yaoi". BEST. BEST.
OT: Pru, you listen to a lot of podcasts? Um, can you rec anything? I've always wanted to get into podcasts but couldn't because there is so much. Just. Wondering, yanno.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 01:32 am (UTC)I remember that HP was my first foray into Western slash since I was much more of an anime nerd and that was my limited teen worldview and being confused by Harry/Draco or Draco/Harry because where was the 'x' or '+'? How do I know who's the top right away?
I remember thinking... Argh, this slash is inefficient; where be my plus or multiplication symbol?
Also. Might be my favorite podcast not just because that amazing discussion of the female gaze but also it hit so many nostalgia points with me.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 02:18 am (UTC)Forever I will remember Youko Kurama's VA saying "bang" and my tween heart going AFLUTTER. I wanna say it was during his tournament fight with Karasu.
Jesus, last time I saw it was over a decade ago.
webcomics
Date: 2011-10-24 02:19 am (UTC):D
I adore your podcast! Thanks for making all these wonderful episodes~
-anon
Re: webcomics
Date: 2011-10-24 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 02:28 am (UTC)This podcast definitely brought back memories of furtively reading smut fic on the family computer, mouse hovering over the minimise button. Stressful times, man, stressful times. And I may have had a shoe box of yaoi manga to go along with my shelf of manga...
Re: webcomics
Date: 2011-10-24 02:42 am (UTC)I'll stop lurking, sorry.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 04:03 am (UTC)Hot Gimmick is the epitome of everything terrible about shoujo that makes me want to chuck manga across the room. The heroines so rarely have enough sass to interest me, though this is true in a lot of other media as well - it's just super blindingly obvious in manga due to how fast you can read through a series and how entrenched the tropes are. Ugh, give me Gokusen any day.
The story about Hey Class President reminds me of the bl & shoujo mangaka Eiki Eiki and how she used both of her brothers' names for the leads in her first bl manga, Color. It's especially hilarious because one of her brothers is now a Japanese rock star and tv personality, so she gets mentioned all the time (but only the shoujo stuff, never the bl).
ANTIQUE BAKERY. I love Yoshinaga Fumi so much. The jdrama does kind of suck because they stripped out all of the gay (and thus THE PLOT), but it was yet another example of my favorite Japanese idols being in every series ever. The Korean adaptation made up for everything though; I still go into raptures over how perfect the casting is and how well the Tachibana character pulls off the facial hair and the magical gayness and- I have to stop or I'll gush forever. The Antique doujinshi is amazing, and also full of porn, but it's also bittersweet. My heart still twinges whenever I think of that line about how "I no longer even have the right to like him." Good news is that the first 12 or so are scanlated! I don't think even the Chinese got around to translating the last few though.
Finally, I hesitate to rec this, but every fandom needs its classic examples of ridiculousness, yes? I thus submit to you all: Chintsubu (http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=482). Possessed talking cocks with glasses. That's all you need to know.
Ooh, random question - why do CIA agents always have British accents? Is that even possible in real life? Yeah, so that's my main quibble with the "This Means War" trailer - not the part where Tom Hardy and Chris Pine are bros, but are somehow fighting over Reese Witherspoon and not, y'know, JGL or Zachary Quinto. I'm probably going to watch that movie. Ugh, my fandoms lead me to dangerous places. I successfully avoided Fright Night, but my love for Star Trek, Kirk/Spock, and by extension Pine and Quinto, is making me think I should watch "Margin Call" which is well-reviewed, but surely devoid of all the happy shiny fluffy things I like. I did just blitz through all the pre-Avengers movies so I could fully enjoy some (ALL THE) Steve/Tony though, so I don't know what that says about my priorities in entertainment.
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Date: 2011-10-24 04:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 10:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 05:55 pm (UTC)After I so aptly demonstrated my impeccable taste, have recomendations!
I'm going to rec works of two authors who very uncharacteristically write graphic stuff AND it's really long AND has actually quite amusing plots, in general nearly consensual sex (or at least has not a lot of dub-con stuff in it).Also because of the lenghts it is nearly all established relationship stuff (which I have such a weakness for)
Because this got really, really long, if you don't care about the actual plot I included a tl;dr of why you should pick their stuff up after the mangaka name
Kazuma Kodaka
tl;dr of why you should pick up her stuff: She is one of the grand ladys of the genres, quite profilic and her two main series exceed 10 volumes. Her artwork is really beautiful and she tends to write really likeable characters, engaging plots and really kick-ass ukes, that are not horribly feminized. Her earlier stuff (and earlier volumes of kizuna) are not as smooth art, story and consent wise, but I would still say to get through that for the awesome later.
Kizuna is about a gay couple living together and while the first three volumes are very episodic slice of life stuff, the later stuff has volume-long arcs with Yakuza, intrigue, personal growth (and gay sex^^).Also a few side-couples, including an uke who spends the whole time trying to get his love-interest into bed with him^^
There is one scene of dub-con (origin story of the main couple) and very early clear instance of rape-a-drugged-person (of the category rape as drama), that ends up being not relevant to the character interactions later on, so fair warning, even though I would still recommend picking it up, because you can very easily skip it and she really stops using all the cliched yaoi stuff pretty soon
Kusatta Kyōshi no Hōteishiki (translated "Kiss me teacher" I think) is about a boy, who had a horrible childhood crush on his tutor, gets into a high school to meet him again(because he is employed there as the school nurse/teacher), is horrible disillusioned that he apparently turned into an acerbic womanizer, soon realizes that he is actually awesome, professes his love and finds out that the guy is actually the brother of his childhood crush.
That happens in like the first two chapter and the rest 10 volumes is hilarious high school drama in which he tries to get his new crush to go out with him.
It's really funny and ridicilously cute, but sexy timez actually only happen in the epilogue, when he is out of school so that there isn't a power imbalance (you do not know how rare this is in yaoi)
(Also A Sex Therapist for really hot, sex one-shots and Border for recent Oceans Eleven type shenanigans)
Nakamura Shungiku
Tl;dr of why you should pick her up: One of the writers I really love to read, because her stuff is just really funny and though her characters seem really stereotypical at first glance they are all quirky and different in a wonderful way. Kind of realisitc depiction of relationship and a rather big cast, which gets developed quite well, round it up and it is my go-to happy place in yaoi-fandom
Side-note: What I know turns a lot of people off her stuff is the style, which is, especially at the beginning, kind of crude, with huge hands and her proportions in general are a bit off, but it does get better and I think everything else makes up for it.
Junjou Romantica which is the actually about three main couples, which stories are kind of intertwined, but seperate:
Romantica: Kind of the "main couple" as far as screen time goes, is about a young boy who needs a tutor to get into university(because he is kind of a spaz, but very good at housework) and because he is horrible in love with the boys older brother the award-winning author and all around genius Usami Akihiko gets the job. And then they fall in love. And move in with each other. And the rest 14 volumes and counting are about their relationship (and drama and Usami's families reaction and fun!)
This one is the only relationship that can be kind of triggery, because their first interaction is basically Usami forcibly giving Misaki a hand-job. And all in all he is the kind of crying, saying-no, can't-spit-it-out-uke that I normally can't stand, but because he is adorkable and we actually get the story narrated by him and know that he kind of fell in love first (and he does participate more and more later on)
Egoist: Is about Usamis best friend, who is a literature grad student(later professor) with a horrible temper and grouchy disposition who gets snatched by a really honest, clueless younger guy
Terrorist: Is about another literature professor, who a boy nearly 20 years younger and also the brother of his ex-wife tries desperately to seduce
Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi her more recent work, about a guy changing publishing companies to make it on his own in editing, getting shelved into the shojo department and his epic, tragic love story with his boss, who was also his tragic childhood sweetheart
Last but not least for the straight up porn needs is Ayane Amano, who does beautiful, beautiful art (one of the best in the business if you ask me) and really hot sex, but SHOULD NOT BE READ BY THE FAINT OF HEART! I mean it, if she ever heard of any problems with consent issues, you can not see it in her stuff.
Her most known work (You're my love prize Viewfinder) has basically only rape scenes (of the rape-is-love type) between the main couple in the first chapters (including bondage and sex-toy games) that then turn into the uke being kidnapped and raped by another guy and then later being I think trained as a sex-slave for a while? and her most recent one (Crimson Spell) has a prince who got cursed by a demon sword, transforms in a kind of beast in the night and has to be soothed by magically taking it up the arse by his magician companion (really, that happens).
This has all inspired me to give you my horrible yaoi-origin story even though I'm a total stranger to you all oh my god, but its not like anyone read till here anyway^^
So basically its a miracle that I continued to read yaoi/slash because thinking back I must have picked up the most horrible fucked-up stuff this genre has ever produced.
The first was Zetsuai, which is the most depressing thing ever and basically about a rock star (or something) who obsessively falls in love with this one high school boy, stalks him, rapes him and then spends the rest of the time trying to make up for that, while the uke is basically going through all kinds of trauma, because he was raped, but still enters a relationship with that other guy, which is horrible and full of drama and hatred and obsessive love/stalking and basically I couldn't read the last volume because I thought I might have to kill myself after this.
I continued to read one which name thankfully got lost in time, but was about a society that had weird (sex) dolls which were made addicted to some kind of drug, that they needed to live and a guy picking up that one kid, because he was thrown away and I think trading sex for the drug he needed to not liquify and really terrible shota, were the cock of the seme of roughly the size of the uke.
So, I think all the slash I read after that seemed really tame for me XD (I grinned so hard at your mention of GW, cause so true god I read all the terrible stuff this fandom used to churn out )
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 06:57 pm (UTC)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
no subject
Date: 2011-10-25 01:12 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-25 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-25 03:25 am (UTC)Cue protagnist - new female student that is given the same 'power role' as the norm for males and her dream is being a knight and it's all really fucked up and terrible and men try to beat the shit out of her all the time as she tries to protect the female population. She views all girls as princesses.
Wow, I had totaly forgot this actually existed until this weird memory flash.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-25 04:08 am (UTC)Do any of you guys read manga on a kindle/Ipad? Or even read fanfic on your Ipod/cellphone? (sorry if you mentioned it already) And have you also branched out to doujinshi of your favorite fandoms? It was also another way I fell down the rabbit hole of fanfic...