The "BL" in BL comics is the abbreviation of "Boy' s Love" (or sometimes it is called "Boy Love" without paying attention to grammar). But does this mean "gay men" or "gay men"? Generally speaking, it may be acceptable, but it is not accurate. A better translation is Man and Man Comics. The name "BL" does not mean that it reflects, discusses and presents the real gay world. BL comics are aimed at female readers and belong to a branch of girls' comics.
The Rise of BL Comics
To talk about the origin and development of BL comics, many people will start with the fan story meeting in the mid-1970s. This argument is well founded. In the early 1970s, the division of labor between teenagers and girls in Japanese cartoons was steadily established. Female cartoonists in "24 Years Group" (including Wang Du Xu, Keiko Takemiya, Ryouko Yamagishi, Yumiko Ooshima, etc. ) broke the dominant system of male cartoonists, established a new style in painting, character modeling, stories, etc., and created a "new romantic school" characterized by undifferentiated teenagers. "Juvenile love" refers to the strong relationship between boys and girls in adolescence or before puberty. The story is characterized by uneasiness, romantic imagination and platonic style. Today, people no longer use the word "juvenile love" to promote and address a work. Most of the girls' cartoons are characterized by cute characters and slender lines, which emphasize inner play and compete with teenagers' cartoons. At this time, the output of girl comics is very huge.
By the middle and late 1970s, Fan Zhi's instant sales would appear. Fan Zhizhi refers to books published by like-minded people, mainly comics (see Animation Line for details of Fan Zhizhi, August 2004). Because local chronicles are divorced from the commercial structure, with few restrictions and great freedom, the author can draw many themes and adapt the original works.
In this free environment, readers who love to read girls' comics can't resist their itchy curiosity and try to pick up the pen automatically. After the delicate character modeling and subtle baptism of character relationship in girls' cartoons, this model has penetrated into girls' hearts. In fact, this is a relationship model built by many girls, and this construction project is the responsibility of female cartoonists. However, from another perspective, young cartoons were only young at that time, and women mostly put them in as vases and running places (and still do).
Ok, here, try to imagine what you will get if you put the characters, personalities and relationship patterns in girls' cartoons into teenagers' cartoons. This is a "BL" mode. This model, which began in Japan in the early 1980s, has mushroomed. For example, Saint saint seiya's Saint and A Man Should Become a WTO Member naturally become the object of adaptation into BL fans' chronicles. These early chronicles of BL fans were not mainly pornographic and lacked explicit descriptions, but mainly portrayed inner feelings. Even if the plot develops, the purpose is to write the inner feelings of the characters.
The Japanese fan circle has a great influence on the business circle. Their "big hand" can leap into the ranks of professional cartoonists, and professional cartoonists will also be influenced by their works. 1989, Ozaki Nan, a fellow painter who entered the professional world, published BL comic book Desperate Love ~ 1989~. BL comics officially entered the mainstream market, and the boy-boy love world constructed by girls officially developed into one of the girl comics, and continued to flourish in the early and middle 1990s.
BL comics take the love between men and women as the main line, which can have a background stage such as campus, family and office, or a fictional time and space. Most of the relationships between people are friends, classmates, teachers and students, colleagues, superiors and subordinates, and even brothers or cousins who have known each other since childhood, developing a super-friendship relationship. The narrative of the story is mostly from inner contradictions to misunderstandings. Some stories contain subtle sexual hints or focus on sexual behavior (this is BL-H). The sex in these works is also similar to the opposite sex comics, and is regarded as the relationship between two people's permanent love. There are also some stories that only express the relationship between two people in pure love, and the emotional description is delicate in an ambiguous, warm and implicit way.
Introduction to Hong Kong
BL comics were first introduced to Hong Kong at the junction of1970s and1980s. However, at that time, BL comics were just a few marginal comics. There are not many people who care, and pure love is the main thing. In the mid-1980s, it began to increase gradually, and quietly stepped onto the popular trend. From the mid-1990s to 2000, especially in the late 1990s, it was the hottest. Some students who study Japanese pop culture have done a survey and found that most people who read BL comics in Hong Kong have been reading BL comics since the 1990s.
BL comics are mainly translated and published by Taiwan Province Publishing House. The main publishing houses are Dongli, John Lone's Glass Hall series and elegant Funny Heart series (B&; B comics), generation convergence. In addition, the Huayin series and Linli of Daran culture have published quite a few BL cartoons, but Daran culture and Linli have closed down or reorganized. Comic book stores in Hong Kong usually order Taiwanese comics through the Hong Kong agent "Haoxin".
BL comics popular in Hong Kong are generally based on singles. There are not many BL comics in the form of comic magazines. The early BL comics were quite long, with more than a dozen episodes. Strong story, focusing on pure love, describing the feelings of men and women. In the later period, more and more BL cartoons appeared in the form of short clips and one episode. The plot described is simple, but the subject matter is diverse. There are also mixed sexual descriptions and pornographic scenes, and some works even add concepts such as rape, incest and SM. This branch can be called "BL-H" (H means pornography), and even the category of "exciting H" is divided. Because even if you love reading BL comics, you may not be able to accept "exciting H" and "H", so it is necessary to classify them. Readers of BL comics mainly get reading opportunities in the form of renting, and relatively few people often buy them. Comic-book shops generally don't buy more goods unless a guest requests to order them on their behalf. However, the supply of BL comics is also limited.
In Hong Kong, the readers of BL comics are almost all women, mainly female high school students and preparatory students. However, BL comics are not very popular, but a subculture with certain supporters. The popularity of BL comics is hard to compare with that of ordinary teenagers. Even people who love reading comics, many people can't understand BL comics and even express disgust. The laws of Hong Kong also stipulate that all BL cartoons should be banned as 18, requiring a cover and warning.
A mirror of the mind without taboos.
If you ask a "rotten woman"-that is, a loyal reader who likes reading BL comics-why she likes reading BL comics, usually you will touch the doornail and get only "like is like", "no annoying woman" and "I think it looks good". This is normal. How can a person who likes something give you a systematic and rational analysis and explanation when his thoughts are immersed in a dreamy emotional bath?
It can be seen that it is difficult to study BL culture by interview. If you change some social organizations or media that stand on the moral high ground, you will come to the "poison theory" and criticize it in a way that defends morality. However, if we look at the development of BL comics, we will find that it is not so "deviant" for rotten women to like BL.
First of all, the main line of the story is the development of love between men. This development is not so much from the plot of the character as the product of being controlled by a female author. Stories such as "The Story of Two Martyrs" are always so touching that they fall in love beyond these boundaries under the chains and curses that cannot be loved. However, today's social environment has become more and more open, and the love between men and women no longer has such great resistance. If a girl comes out with a pair of tearful and shining pearl eyes like Britney Spears again, she will feel hypocritical and powerless when she scatters boys' jiao. "Beating a weak willow to win children's love, no progress", even women themselves look down upon it. On the contrary, homosexuals who are still discriminated against have become the venue for testing true love.
However, the rotten girl is just a girl living a normal life. As long as the private BL comics are put away (most city people always have a private side), it is no different from the "standard human" in society. Therefore, what is presented in comics is not necessarily as real as BL in reality, but only extracts the stereotypes I have heard and adds my own fantasies. Otherwise, if rotten women really understand gay men, they will not understand and construct the system of "attacking the monarch" and "accepting the monarch" with heterosexual thinking such as "heterosexual men", "heterosexual women", "liking the initiative of the man" and "liking the passivity of the woman", but can directly use the more accurate language in the gay world. When a boy is a "gentleman", he doesn't have to become a "girl with a penis", even his appearance, personality and psychology are feminine.
This is one of the examples. It can be seen that a love arranged by a female author is often obviously different from a real gay man, and it is also inseparable from a typical heterosexual male-female model. The woman writer arranged the story of the development of love between men and women. The author's greater purpose is to praise all forbidden and broken love than to praise gay men. This kind of love can transcend gender, identity and body ... so, even if it is necessary to make a bloody sacrifice from the body or a sacred extinction, the character will move forward at all costs. True gay men often have a lot of attachment and sacrifice, but the sacrifices in BL cartoons are often decorated and carefully arranged by literary techniques.
The Safe Distance of Female Writers/Readers
Since it's so unrealistic, it's no wonder that BL comics are popular in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but not necessarily any girl became gay because she saw BL comics at that time. However, it is the normal "influence" of BL comics to show greater sympathy for homosexuals and reduce discrimination against homosexuals.
Seeing girls in BL cartoons and praising the love of "surpassing everything and sacrificing everything" is the first level. Especially Fan Zhi adapted from BL, the surging friendship that can overcome all difficulties in the original work should be unstoppable after it becomes love, which conforms to the expectation and longing of female authors for creating "beyond everything" love. But why "male"? Can't "female"?
This explanation may be controversial, or different people have different understandings. I think one of the main reasons for drawing "men" instead of "women" is that it provides a sense of distance and security for female writers and readers. Don't forget, no matter how the story in the comic develops, the real audience is the girl who is not at the scene, the author or the reader. It's safer to watch a woman with lingering love than to watch the opposite sex. There are usually no important girls in stories, and if there are, they mostly play the role of assisting two "men and women" protagonists.
Even if some readers put sexual fantasies on one of the protagonists, because of the obvious gender difference (the characters have penises, but they don't), even projective fantasies can maintain a sense of security, and there is no danger of chaos in daily life.
In addition, men watch and kill more women's bodies, but the opposite is rare. In BL comics, women can look at handsome men. If you belong to the H department (porn department), you have a better chance to vent the sex that is suppressed by society on weekdays. At the same time, it is also a small rebellion to say the opposite to men looking at women. Let's balance it. Of course, this kind of resistance is incomplete, and the world in BL comics is still based on the "offensive and passive" view of the opposite sex.
Decadent female minority culture
Knowing the world and ideology behind BL comics can help us understand why there are a group of "rotten women". By reading BL cartoons, rotten women can really relieve the sexual desire tightly suppressed by society and have the opportunity to talk about sex in a dogmatic society. Although the rotten woman may not agree with this, she may even say, "I don't think this has anything to do with sex!" " It's just beautiful! "However, BL comics provide this small vent gap and create an opportunity to secretly counter the hegemony of men and women, which is psychologically understandable.
Therefore, the reading of rotten women is a minority culture or "subculture" that will normally appear in this social environment. Under the heavy restrictions of this society, of course, it can only be a minority; But it is precisely because of social restrictions and sexual hegemony (including male hegemony and heterosexual hegemony) that the reading of rotten women will appear.
The more you stand on the moral high ground and criticize like the "Guangming Society", the more you can't see and solve the problem. The culture of rotten women is not necessarily the so-called "health", nor does it necessarily have a "negative" impact on people. However, the more condescending you scold, the more you don't understand their reality and their core, the more you will start from misunderstanding, and the more dissatisfied the rotten women will be, the more they will rebound. Rotten women willingly call themselves "rotten women", but it doesn't mean that they want to be further discriminated against and distorted and further suppressed by prejudice.
Nowadays, the craze for BL comics has receded from its heyday. The problem of eroticism is not unique to BL comics. Understanding is another topic, which should be dealt with together with H culture of other popular Japanese cultures. However, there are indeed many rotten women who are disgusted with BL cartoons that "stimulate H" and "sexually abuse children". Even if they don't dislike it, even if they like to watch it, it doesn't mean they are "bad". Maybe they just strengthened the catharsis of sexual fantasies (not real) in addition to the above. Then, the "rotten girl" saw the BL of "H". Of course, she shouldn't blame herself. As a "university line", she thought it was necessary.
Finally, let's briefly talk about gay attitudes towards BL comics. I know less about homosexuality than rotten women. In my opinion, homosexuals, especially gay men, really don't devote themselves to BL comics. Perhaps comics are full of heterosexual love patterns, which are not in line with the personal experience and taste of homosexuals? However, they also welcome the positive view of gay works. There is too little room for homosexuals in this society.
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