And by people I mean Luke Peemsan

💯

—which has historically been difficult because it’s often felt to define the parameters for something is to limit it. That’s why I’ve always gone with whether a creator considers their work BL regardless of content or origin

—which makes sense as that’s a cultural thing. But what I’m curious about is how the BL label is chosen to be applied here and why some get it by not others. I guess it boils down to “are we using BL as a marketing label or as a genre one” which then means we have to define what makes a BL—

BL & yaoi aren’t interchangeable in Japan at least (BL is more for original works while Yaoi refers to doujin) but what’s cool is the Western usage that does use them interchangeably is slowly influencing terminology in Japan

As marketing terms, “BL” doesn’t have the same weight here as MMR—

Is Brokeback Mountain BL? It’s gay, the movie has conventionally attractive pale men, and the original was written by a woman.

Is Love, Simon? Noah’s Ark? Pose? (You see where I’m going with this?)

I’m not a BL purist but it’s interesting to see what gets the label and what doesn’t

It’s the same thing as Heartstopper. The author used to complain about how problematic and bad BL was but people call their work BL. It’s also marketed that way in Japan bc who else would a story about soft first love between students appeal to?

People did the same to Young Royals and RWRB

Specifically, it’s gay and centers on conventionally attractive pale men (Hockey RPF/books 🤝 BL in that regard). But where’s the line?

In Asia things are labeled BL to market it to the right audience and it’s less about actual content. I haven’t seen Rachel Reid mention anything about BL yet

I wonder why that is? M/M Romance as a label has been around for ages. Is that too long to tag on socials? Is it because it started as pseudo-Stucky fanfic and we’re more likely to call fanmade things “yaoi”? Because it shares common BL tropes and was made by a woman? Because it’s gay at all?

I went down a whole research rabbit hole on sniffing in BL and the correlation with the rise and ero BL and I came to the conclusion authors were watching more porn for inspo than ever lmao