Separated BG (Boy/Girl aka M/F) romance genre or tag

[bafflinghaze]

Given that Boys Love and Girls Love are their own separate genres, it would make sense to have BG (Boy/Girl) Love as a separate genre, or at least tag, so that readers can include or filter out as necessary.

[It would also be neat to have a "no romance" tag too]

edit: alternate names include Male-Female Relationship

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I don't even know what BG love stands for. But more tags are always better than fewer tags. The only problem here is the definition of these tags and usage. There are tags for male or female protagonist, yet not everyone uses them. I guess the problem you all are talking about would still be there, just in fewer numbers, which is good.

 

[Queenfisher]

Romance will become a filler genre when there is GL/BL/BG genre. We have GL/BL genres because they are niches big enough to be separated from the normal romance (I would argue that the way is to make GL, BL, and BG tags instead, but technical problems).

Are you telling me that Boy LOVE and Girl LOVE aren't romance? What?

The way they have branched out due to there being no other alternative, yes. Alas. Like I said above, BL and GL oftentimes can feature homoerotic (but not actually romantic/sexual) storylines, as well as homosociality. See, I write a BL about two dudes who are not specifically lovers (one of them is aro/ace, for crhssakes). Why I tag it BL? Because I have nowhere else to put it in!

Boys Love is an umbrella term that has long outgrown its initial definition. The "love" inside it is a calque from Japanese that has lost its original meaning. For example, we also call Peanut a nut, but it isn't.

Most commonly, BL and GL would take the label literally, but not always. Again, where do I put my hypothetical story if I don't want it to conform to Romance genre tropes? If I, in fact, want to write the opposite of it?

Those are tags, not genres. They are complements to the big genres. (Which is also why I want BL/GL to be tags instead of genre. I won't mind BG tag, but if GL and BL are still genres, then BG tag is redundant.)

I would not say no to that. I actually agree, especially if BL "tag" expands into Yaoi, Bara, LGBTQ+ because it SHOULD. BL is a specific subgenre and it gives me migraine trying to find Bara or LGBTQ+ on SH...

@SailusGebel

I don't even know what BG love stands for. But more tags are always better than fewer tags. The only problem here is the definition of these tags and usage. There are tags for male or female protagonist, yet not everyone uses them. I guess the problem you all are talking about would still be there, just in fewer numbers, which is good.

Boy x Girl ^^

 

[GDLiZy]

The way they have branched out due to there being no other alternative, yes. Alas. Like I said above, BL and GL oftentimes can feature homoerotic (but not actually romantic/sexual) storylines, as well as homosociality. See, I write a BL about two dudes who are not specifically lovers (one of them is aro/ace, for crhssakes). Why I tag it BL? Because I have nowhere else to put it in!

Boys Love is an umbrella term that has long outgrown its initial definition. The "love" inside it is a calque from Japanese that has lost its original meaning. For example, we also call Peanut a nut, but it isn't.

Most commonly, BL and GL would take the label literally, but not always. Again, where do I put my hypothetical story if I don't want it to conform to Romance genre tropes? If I, in fact, want to write the opposite of it?

Why would you tag it as boy love if there is no boy love? (Well, if it is one-sided love then it is Boy Love.)

Boy Love is about two male romance. That's how the mass knows about them. They are English words and not Japanese words (yaoi or yuri or whatever).

If it is romance, then it is romance, if it is not romance then it is not. Tropes aren't the indication of the genre.

Having too many will harm both the authors and the readers. If you keep adding more and more extremely niche tags, then they will just be abandoned because most people just don't know what they mean. (Also tags limit.)

 

[Queenfisher]

Why would you tag it as boy love if there is no boy love? (Well, if it is one-sided love then it is Boy Love.)

Boy Love is about two male romance. That's how the mass knows about them.

If it is romance, then it is romance, if it is not romance then it is not. Tropes aren't the indication of the genre.

Having too many will harm both the authors and the readers. If you keep adding more and more extremely niche tags, then they will just be abandoned because most people just don't know what they mean. (Also tags limit.)

Like I said above -- homosocial/homoerotic.

The issue is -- I wanted it to be NON-BL originally, but then I got scared by all the mentions of how people hate homoeroticism that doesn't have BL tag on it. Like, they would leave my book angry that I "hoodwinked" them into reading m/m even though it might not be one.

So I added BL genre tag (because it deals with the MC and the antagonist relationship and a lot of it is based on cultural concepts around homosociality, homoeroticism, etc, thus is not a Subplot, but one of the main points).

But tagging it [BL] summoned BL readers (obviously) who now started poking me with "okay, so when's the... you know? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)"). Thus, I ended up on a very fishy crossroads where I now hoodwinked BL readers into my book just because I was so scared of non-BL readers hating the heavy homoerotic undertones.

...long story short, I restructured and redrafted the entire thing to artificially feature BL tropes in it to not let down my readers. -___-

It is now BL (through my sweat and blood and tears of redrafting things, lol), so the tag is warranted. But I wanted it to be ~normalization of close m/m that does not NEED to be romance. Oh well.

Tropes aren't the indication of the genre.

Sometimes debatable. Some genres are very strict like BL vs LGBTQ+ vs Bara. You can only distinguish them from one another because of their tropes.

They are English words and not Japanese words (yaoi or yuri or whatever).

Boys Love comes from Shounen Ai, not from Yaoi. Yaoi is a separate genre ^^. See? There IS more than one type of M/M even in Japan (excluding other distinctions that I talk above). It's confusing when all get lumped together in one huge mess.

Boy Love is about two male romance.

Please read my first post in this thread. I listed at least 5 genres that are "about two male romance". Boys Love is just ONE of them and excludes both the tropes and the target audiences of the others.

That BL is the only genre tag used on SH doesn't mean that genre-savvy people on other sites (WebNovel or Tapas come to mind) wouldn't be confused with the specific definition of "BL" on this site. It is confusing because we have to group all the subgenres of M/M under BL.

Think of it like this:

All Cuisines = M/M

Italian = BL, Chinese = LGBTQ+ m/m, Indian = Bara, American = Yaoi, etc.

Scribble Hub offers its customers All Cuisines, but for some reason calls it all "Italian".

Confusion ensues when you get in your "Italian" order Kung-Pao Chicken or Kashew Masala. Or if you know how SH's genre labeling sucks, so you are willing to dig and find your coveted Hamburger there, but you die of starvation before you can succeed

 

[Sabruness]

i very much agree with OP. SH has been around long enough that the flaws in having such a generalist tagging system are now obvious andcould use refining and tweaking. A b/g tag is one thing. "no romance" tag is another.

Some of these would be genre tags (like b/g) while others would fall into the subtags. On top of tweaking and refining tags to improve searchability, there would be a need to increase the genre tag limit potentially.

i do, though, think that there will be a limit as to how specific they need to be. i disagree with Queenfisher about needing a tag for each of the 7 different sub-groups that most people would just categorize as BL.

 

[Queenfisher]

i do, though, think that there will be a limit as to how specific they need to be. i disagree with Queenfisher about needing a tag for each of the 7 different sub-groups that most people would just categorize as BL.

Not each. LGBTQ+ vs BL mainly. The others may come later when there is more content on site and if there is need to separate them. But BL and LGBTQ+ tags would make wonders for actual fans of M/M because they are like Josei vs Seinen.

They are DIFFERENT demographics.

The way it's casually* viewed is:

BL = more eastern tropes (Japan/China) + targeted for women. Thus is more about idealization, escapism, romantization and exploration of female narratives and tastes outside of heteronormativity and gender stereotypes.

LGBTQ+ = more western tropes (Anglosphere) + targeted for everyone but specifically for LGBTQ+ people. Thus it leans more toward Lived experience, how to deal with your own LGBTQ+ issues without being fetishized (as many anti-BL fans think BL does, which is not really true), something that gay men would like to read about themselves outside of female narratives of BL.

Or at least just call it M/M and be done with it. It IS M/M, and I have no idea why it's called only Boys' Love when it offers many subgenres that can be very different from BL but nobody will ever find them because BL tag can be confusing to non-BL M/M fans.

 

[GDLiZy]

Like I said above -- homosocial/homoerotic.

The issue is -- I wanted it to be NON-BL originally, but then I got scared by all the mentions of how people hate homoeroticism that doesn't have BL tag on it. Like, they would leave my book angry that I "hoodwinked" them into reading m/m even though it might not be one.

So I added BL genre tag (because it deals with the MC and the antagonist relationship and a lot of it is based on cultural concepts around homosociality, homoeroticism, etc, thus is not a Subplot, but one of the main points).

But tagging it [BL] summoned BL readers (obviously) who now started poking me with "okay, so when's the... you know? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)"). Thus, I ended up on a very fishy crossroads where I now hoodwinked BL readers into my book just because I was so scared of non-BL readers hating the heavy homoerotic undertones.

...long story short, I restructured and redrafted the entire thing to artificially feature BL tropes in it to not let down my readers. -___-

It is now BL (through my sweat and blood and tears of redrafting things, lol), so the tag is warranted. But I wanted it to be ~normalization of close m/m that does not NEED to be romance. Oh well.



Sometimes debatable. Some genres are very strict like BL vs LGBTQ+ vs Bara. You can only distinguish them from one another because of their tropes.



Boys Love comes from Shounen Ai, not from Yaoi. Yaoi is a separate genre ^^. See? There IS more than one type of M/M even in Japan (excluding other distinctions that I talk above). It's confusing when all get lumped together in one huge mess.



Please read my first post in this thread. I listed at least 5 genres that are "about two male romance". Boys Love is just ONE of them and excludes both the tropes and the target audiences of the others.

That BL is the only genre tag used on SH doesn't mean that genre-savvy people on other sites (WebNovel or Tapas come to mind) wouldn't be confused with the specific definition of "BL" on this site. It is confusing because we have to group all the subgenres of M/M under BL.

Think of it like this:

All Cuisines = M/M

Italian = BL, Chinese = LGBTQ+ m/m, Indian = Bara, American = Yaoi, etc.

Scribble Hub offers its customers All Cuisines, but for some reason calls it all "Italian".

Confusion ensues when you get in your "Italian" order Kung-Pao Chicken or Kashew Masala. Or if you know how SH's genre labeling sucks, so you are willing to dig and find your coveted Hamburger there, but you die of starvation before you can succeed

Homoerotic is a weird word, but still is Boy Love, even if temporary or whatever. Homosocial is literally just friendship and companion. I think we also have undertone tags too. (But if there is no romantic feeling involved then why do you still tag it as BL?)

You seem to think you need to please every fan by following their comments or the tropes associate with the genres. I fundamentally disagree with that mindset. I write with no concern for the usual tropes except for a rare occasion for deconstructing. You aren't lying to your readers if you have Boy Love but there is little to no sex/kiss, as long as romance/relationship is a big thing for the story. It is if you add smut but don't deliver.

You can literally normalize stuff by not following the blind tropes to let the readers know that "oh wait, BL can be written in the other way outside of tropes."

Also, Boy Love isn't yaoi nor shounen ai. Those two are terms in Japanese and the former are English words. Stop applying niche into a vague term when the term itself is sufficient to cover all the niches you're trying to make.

Boy Love is just that. Boy Love: two males in a relationship, be it for romantic love or for sex or forced (add smut if it's really sex-filled). We don't need five tags that can be called boy love because it's just a little different from the others. We aren't a novel site specifically for these kinds of niches. Most of the authors and readers won't even know what their meanings are.

Bottom line is, we don't need that many specific tags when they are too niche. People won't be using them, and they'll clutter the tags. The system are for layman, not super specific groups of niches loving peeps. Go to heavy BL site for that.

I actually dislike demographic genres, but I digress.

 

[bafflinghaze]

This is why there should be a dictionary/clarifying information about what each genre (and tag) means...

 

[Moonpearl]

Are you telling me that Boy LOVE and Girl LOVE aren't romance? What?

You can have sex without feelings. Friends with benefits aren't romance, but they could still be BL or GL.

You could also have an abusive relationship as the centre stage, without wanting to mark that as "romantic".

Honestly, we're writers. We can do a great deal outside the box with just a little creativity.

Like I said above -- homosocial/homoerotic.

The issue is -- I wanted it to be NON-BL originally, but then I got scared by all the mentions of how people hate homoeroticism that doesn't have BL tag on it. Like, they would leave my book angry that I "hoodwinked" them into reading m/m even though it might not be one.

So I added BL genre tag (because it deals with the MC and the antagonist relationship and a lot of it is based on cultural concepts around homosociality, homoeroticism, etc, thus is not a Subplot, but one of the main points).

But tagging it [BL] summoned BL readers (obviously) who now started poking me with "okay, so when's the... you know? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)"). Thus, I ended up on a very fishy crossroads where I now hoodwinked BL readers into my book just because I was so scared of non-BL readers hating the heavy homoerotic undertones.

...long story short, I restructured and redrafted the entire thing to artificially feature BL tropes in it to not let down my readers. -___-

It is now BL (through my sweat and blood and tears of redrafting things, lol), so the tag is warranted. But I wanted it to be ~normalization of close m/m that does not NEED to be romance. Oh well.



Sometimes debatable. Some genres are very strict like BL vs LGBTQ+ vs Bara. You can only distinguish them from one another because of their tropes.



Boys Love comes from Shounen Ai, not from Yaoi. Yaoi is a separate genre ^^. See? There IS more than one type of M/M even in Japan (excluding other distinctions that I talk above). It's confusing when all get lumped together in one huge mess.



Please read my first post in this thread. I listed at least 5 genres that are "about two male romance". Boys Love is just ONE of them and excludes both the tropes and the target audiences of the others.

That BL is the only genre tag used on SH doesn't mean that genre-savvy people on other sites (WebNovel or Tapas come to mind) wouldn't be confused with the specific definition of "BL" on this site. It is confusing because we have to group all the subgenres of M/M under BL.

Think of it like this:

All Cuisines = M/M

Italian = BL, Chinese = LGBTQ+ m/m, Indian = Bara, American = Yaoi, etc.

Scribble Hub offers its customers All Cuisines, but for some reason calls it all "Italian".

Confusion ensues when you get in your "Italian" order Kung-Pao Chicken or Kashew Masala. Or if you know how SH's genre labeling sucks, so you are willing to dig and find your coveted Hamburger there, but you die of starvation before you can succeed

The answer to this would be to have flagged up in your story's bio what sort of relationship it was going to be. If the angry BL haters can't understand after reading that, just tell them to go back to school.

Not each. LGBTQ+ vs BL mainly. The others may come later when there is more content on site and if there is need to separate them. But BL and LGBTQ+ tags would make wonders for actual fans of M/M because they are like Josei vs Seinen.

They are DIFFERENT demographics.

The way it's casually* viewed is:

BL = more eastern tropes (Japan/China) + targeted for women. Thus is more about idealization, escapism, romantization and exploration of female narratives and tastes outside of heteronormativity and gender stereotypes.

LGBTQ+ = more western tropes (Anglosphere) + targeted for everyone but specifically for LGBTQ+ people. Thus it leans more toward Lived experience, how to deal with your own LGBTQ+ issues without being fetishized (as many anti-BL fans think BL does, which is not really true), something that gay men would like to read about themselves outside of female narratives of BL.

Or at least just call it M/M and be done with it. It IS M/M, and I have no idea why it's called only Boys' Love when it offers many subgenres that can be very different from BL but nobody will ever find them because BL tag can be confusing to non-BL M/M fans.

The problem with an LGBT+ tag is that it would start having to apply to GL as well, and GL's just a different kettle of fish.

Unlike BL, its audience is very mixed and is made up of a large portion of LGBT+ women.
Although different GL may have a certain target audience on mind at times, all yuri fans will generally read all types with no problem, with little exception.

So having to decide whether or not to add an LGBT+ tag would be troublesome, and it might just end up creating an artificial divide in our yuri readership.

 

[yansusustories]

Bottom line is, we don't need that many specific tags when they are too niche. People won't be using them, and they'll clutter the tags. The system are for layman, not super specific groups of niches loving peeps. Go to heavy BL site for that.

I mean, I would almost agree with you on that. But then when I look at the list of tags we already have ... Why do we have 'ancient China' if there's 'ancient times' which should include that? Why do we have 'polysandy' tag if there's 'polygamy' already since the former is just a form of the latter? Why are there 'dao companion' and 'dao comprehension' if there is already a 'dao' tag which should encompass the former two? Why do we have so many tags just to describe the appearance of the MC and/or love interest (average-looking, fat, glasses-wearing, ugly protagonist - strangely enough the love interest can only be 'glasses-wearing' but apparently never fat, ugly, or average-looking)?
Also, I have no idea what 'netorare', 'netori', and 'netorase' are but I'm darn sure they mean something to the people who either actually read whatever the fuck that is or are enough into Japenese stuff to have come across it. I think it would be the same with any kind of BL/GL/LGBT+ specific tags: They don't mean shit to the people who don't read the genre(s) but they are well-known to the people who do.

I think the main problem here is actually:
We still don't have an official tag list with descriptions on SH. We should have one, it's been suggested, and it's definitely needed because authors need to know what the fuck these things are to choose the right ones.
Other than that, the organization of the tags is still god-awful. There are so many but we have an alphabetical list to choose from that will collapse and start back at the beginning as soon as you choose one. That's been mentioned as a problem on the forums as well and I think different approaches were suggested (like grouping them). So, why the fuck aren't there sub-categories for them like a protagonist category for the MC's appearance and personality or a sub-category for smut where you can put all the tags from handjob to - what did I just see? - 'paizuri'. In that approach, we could have a bl genre with a subset of BL tags where the people who want to can branch out as far as they want to without cluttering the list for everyone else. Just make that a list of categories with their own drop-down menus goddammit. With that kind of organization, more tags would hurt absolutely no one.

I think overall, a BG tag (I guess I agree that it isn't necessarily needed as a genre) would allow us to counter the problems that were already mentioned here (the filtering) while not complicating things for others. Like, GL (or BL) authors can use the tag if it includes that and make it easier for GL readers to find what they want. On the other hand, nobody forces het romance authors to use a BG tag (actually, I'd make it a 'hetero' tag which would be easier understandable and fit in nicely with bi-, pan- etc tags - I still want that asexual tag, btw). They can still assume they're the default (they likely are anyway) and just ignore it. readers who solely read GL (or BL) won't look at their stuff anyway.
So, if the tag is able to solve a problem for some readers while not hurting others, what is the argument against having it? Aesthetics? Then yeah, re-organize the way tags are shown. We badly need it anyway.

 

[Maple-Leaf]

Honestly, is there really any harm to including it?

It'd be a little redundant as a genre, but as a tag there shouldn't be any issue.

When I see the romance genre, I'd expect a story mostly about the romance between two or more characters. Boys love as a genre implies (at least to me) that the story is mostly about the love between two or more males. Boys love as a tag, however, comes off to me like a gay couple that isn't the main focus of the story, and rather, a side piece.
Yes, the romance genre on it's own is generally assumed to be straight romance, thus we already have our "BG Love" genre right there. Adding the "boys love" or "girls love" genres/tags clarifies it. Adding "BG love" tag would only do the same thing, clarify it.
To put it in one way, different tags used together mean different things to the readers. Like action and tragedy would paint a hopeless and dangerous struggle, for me.
"BG love" as a tag would help people filter out(or in) the specific kinds of romance, or even non romantic, type of books they'd like to read.

Also, cluttering the tags? Really? I don't think adding one tag could really make that mess any worse, not to mention, tags are made for readers to be extra specific on what type of books they'd like to read, and for authors to specify what type of book they're writing. To halt the tags' growth just because we want to keep them "uncluttered" is counterintuitive. Though a tag dictionary would be ridiculously helpful, as things are going now I don't think a little more cluttering is that great of a loss when looking at the precision it's exchanged for.

 

[BenJepheneT]

I mean, unless we enforce all these rules with harsh consequences this entire thread would fall apart pretty fucken fast if no one decides to use these tags accordingly. We already have a problem where people use tags on things that aren't in the story at all. Even if they claim to add those soon, some stories might get dropped and discontinued and there's no possible guarantee that they might edit it back.

Case in point, the GL/BL tags. Didn't we have a massive back and forth between members just because some guys aren't happy with major straight romance in supposedly GL titles?

I don't know what BG is but what I do know is that we better fix the chefs' habits before we fix the menu. Having new options is cool and all but what's the point if people don't use it correctly?

I realize this doesn't send the discussion anywhere but really, is adding the new tag really gonna help in any considerable way?

 

[Maple-Leaf]

I mean, unless we enforce all these rules with harsh consequences this entire thread would fall apart pretty fucken fast if no one decides to use these tags accordingly. We already have a problem where people use tags on things that aren't in the story at all. Even if they claim to add those soon, some stories might get dropped and discontinued and there's no possible guarantee that they might edit it back.

Case in point, the GL/BL tags. Didn't we have a massive back and forth between members just because some guys aren't happy with major straight romance in supposedly GL titles?

I don't know what BG is but what I do know is that we better fix the chefs' habits before we fix the menu. Having new options is cool and all but what's the point if people don't use it correctly?

I realize this doesn't send the discussion anywhere but really, is adding the new tag really gonna help in any considerable way?

It really all depends on whether the people who want it and plan on using it, want it more than the people who wouldn't care or wouldn't know how to use it.

 

[yansusustories]

When I see the romance genre, I'd expect a story mostly about the romance between two or more characters. Boys love as a genre implies (at least to me) that the story is mostly about the love between two or more males. Boys love as a tag, however, comes off to me like a gay couple that isn't the main focus of the story, and rather, a side piece.

I actually agree. I think that right now, we have tags for 'romance' subplot, 'GL subplot', and 'BL subplot'. What we are actually missing is something for stories like @Queenfisher 's: A story with something of a gay couple that isn't really romance. Once upon a time, I suggested a 'gay' tag for that (either protagonist or something similar) but people shot that down with the argument that we had the BL genre for that.
I think this is actually the problem: It's somehow expected that having a gay protagonist directly translates to having a romance story which isn't necessarily true. So I think there is actually a row of tags we'd need to make this work.

Case in point, the GL/BL tags. Didn't we have a massive back and forth between members just because some guys aren't happy with major straight romance in supposedly GL titles?

I think that is actually what kicked this thread off: People were unhappy with the het romance in GL stories. A BG (that's basically synonymous to het, meaning boy-girl) genre or tag (I think everyone more or less agrees that a tag might be better?) would mitigate that problem because the GL authors that want to have het romance in there as well could tag accordingly. Right now, they don't have that opportunity, making it a hassle for GL readers to find exactly what they are looking for.

Edit: @bafflinghaze Seeing as several people mentioned they have no idea what BG even means, maybe you could clarify that in your OP?

 

[AliceShiki]

No, it doesn't, because that filters out perfectly good GL that have bi protagonists with only girlfriends or multiple GL characters.

If you're reading a story with a bisexual protagonist, I think it would be really weird for you as a reader to not expect the author to play into that aspect of the protagonist.

If you're specifically looking for a bisexual protagonist story that only has romance with girls, then you're looking for way too much of a specific niche, you should expect to have a hard time finding it.

Sorry, but Romance is not BG by default.

Yes it is. Ask your parents if they thought you'd marry someone of the opposite gender or of the same gender when you were born.

BG is the norm. LGBTQ+ are the exception, even if our numbers are much bigger nowadays, we're still the minority by a pretty big margin.

Excluding bi or multiple protagonists ignores the issue of wanting to find BG specifically or to exclude it specifically. What do bi people have to do with it? What if I want to read about romance between two AIs without gender/sex? About alien creatures with 20 genders? About non-binary people? About girl romancing a Sim in a video game? About a boy romancing a planet that takes shape of a dinosaur most of the time and a flower only sometimes?

Then you're looking for a bunch of very specific things that you probably need very specific tags to find them.

I'm sorry but we have separate fandom tags for:

僕のヒーローアカデミア
My Hero Academia
My hero academia
Boku no my hero academia
Boku no Hiro Academia
Boku no Hero Academia
MHA

Then tell Tony to merge them because they're the same thing. He is probably able to.

and probably others which causes people to kinda wander in all of them because they're so incoherently compartmentalized. But the overarching category of BG that actually gets rid of most complications and genre confusion is too utopic?

I never said the category of BG was utopic. I said putting BL and GL in the same standing as BG is utopic. BG is and will always be the default, no matter how much anyone in the LGBTQ+ spectrum may want otherwise.

Bara has to do with homosexual romance between men.
Yaoi has to do with homosexual romance between men.
BL has to do with homosexual romance between men.
Shounen Ai as a used term has to do with homosexual romance between men.
Slash has to do with homosexual romance between men.
LGBTQ+ m/m has to do with homosexual romance between men.
Tanbi/danmei has to do with homosexual romance between men.

Bara, yaoi, shounen ai, slash, LGBTQ+ m/m, Tanbi and Danmei are not genres in Scribblehub, BL is. And BL means homosexual romance between men.

Some of these subgenres have kinda bad relationships with others. As a person who is somewhat educated with tropes of each of them, it's often super hard to find anything on SH because it makes no distinction between any of these. BL and LGBTQ+ m/m subgenre tropes are ones found most commonly on this site, and even between these two, you have no idea which of these two subgenre tropes you are going to meet in the book you pick on SH.

And LGBTQ+ m/m and BL actually do have conflicting tropes, so a lot of people in LGBTQ+ community are actually turned off from SH because they think it's all BL since that is officially claimed as the ONLY genre tag for the target audience. (Yes, even without giving it a chance to see that a lot of "what gets called BL here" incorporates LGBTQ+ tropes instead).

Because BL means nothing more and nothing less than Homosexual Romance between men. It encompasses both stories aimed at people in the LGBTQ+ spectrum and stories aimed at straight women.

And your definition is also missing these:

Homoromantic relationships between men,
Homoerotic relationships between men,
And lastly, ~normalization that writes about couples assumed to be m/m but makes zero focus on what you called "Homosexual romance between men".

If your story has a homosexual couple that are men, then you are writing about a homosexual relationship between men. Rather that involves sex or not depends on other tags and genres.

It doesn't matter if it's homoromantic, homoerotic or just a couple doing couple things. It's still a homosexual relationship between men.

Now, I struggle with this personally because I actually find both BL and LGBTQ+ m/m genre tropes too restrictive -- but I would not demand any of these subgenres to be recognized by SH for now. In the future, it might benefit from AT LEAST the BL/LGBTQ+ distinction. But to say that BL Genre (subgenre, actually) has nothing to do with tropes is just... .

BL Does not have anything to do with tropes. It's just homosexual romance between men.

"BL -- common term used by the publishing industry to categorize works focusing on male/male relationships marketed at women" (Urban Dictionary)
"BL is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan that features homoerotic relationships between male characters. It is typically created by women for women and is distinct from homoerotic media marketed to male audiences" (Wikipedia)
"Boys' love (BL) is the common term used by the publishing industry to categorize works focusing on male/male relationships marketed at women. " (Yaoifandom.com)

And also, just for the sake of it,

"1: dialectal, England : SOUTHERNWOOD
2: WORMWOOD" (Merriam-Webster definition of Boys' Love) And one I stand by, personally!

Okay, my turn. From NU's Genre Explanation, since Scribbly doesn't have definition for genres yet.

Yaoi: This work usually involves intimate relationships between men. Mutually exclusive with shounen ai.
Shounen Ai: Often synonymous with Yaoi, this can be thought of as somewhat less extreme and only hints at a relationship between two males. [Boy's Love], so to speak.

BL is the fusion of those two that the mods of NU requested many times, but it never got done because the work to rewrite NU's code to merge those two wasn't worth it. Scribbly didn't have those restrictions, so it was done with the definitions merged.

As I took my definition from Scribbly's sister site, I'm pretty sure it's the one that matters for Scribbly.

If we add bg love genre, then romance genre needs to be removed, and that would cause a huge technical problem to the site.

Ah, I disagree with this one actually. If you have BL, but don't have romance, I assume that your protagonist is homosexual, but that the story doesn't focus on the romance aspect of the relationship, and instead focuses on anything else.

So even if we had a BG genre, Romance would still have a purpose.

I don't even know what BG love stands for. But more tags are always better than fewer tags. The only problem here is the definition of these tags and usage. There are tags for male or female protagonist, yet not everyone uses them. I guess the problem you all are talking about would still be there, just in fewer numbers, which is good.

Wrong. More tags makes it harder to find the tags you want. We already have over 700 tags, more tags should only be added as needed. Redundant stuff is useless.

Most commonly, BL and GL would take the label literally, but not always. Again, where do I put my hypothetical story if I don't want it to conform to Romance genre tropes? If I, in fact, want to write the opposite of it?

Use the BL genre. It encompasses that.

I would not say no to that. I actually agree, especially if BL "tag" expands into Yaoi, Bara, LGBTQ+ because it SHOULD. BL is a specific subgenre and it gives me migraine trying to find Bara or LGBTQ+ on SH...

Bara is specific enough that might warrant a tag if there is enough demand for it. You can make a separate thread for it if you want.

LGBTQ+ romance is under BL.

Like I said above -- homosocial/homoerotic.

The issue is -- I wanted it to be NON-BL originally, but then I got scared by all the mentions of how people hate homoeroticism that doesn't have BL tag on it. Like, they would leave my book angry that I "hoodwinked" them into reading m/m even though it might not be one.

So I added BL genre tag (because it deals with the MC and the antagonist relationship and a lot of it is based on cultural concepts around homosociality, homoeroticism, etc, thus is not a Subplot, but one of the main points).

But tagging it [BL] summoned BL readers (obviously) who now started poking me with "okay, so when's the... you know? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)"). Thus, I ended up on a very fishy crossroads where I now hoodwinked BL readers into my book just because I was so scared of non-BL readers hating the heavy homoerotic undertones.

...long story short, I restructured and redrafted the entire thing to artificially feature BL tropes in it to not let down my readers. -___-

It is now BL (through my sweat and blood and tears of redrafting things, lol), so the tag is warranted. But I wanted it to be ~normalization of close m/m that does not NEED to be romance. Oh well.

Use the Shounen Ai Subplot tag instead of the BL genre then. And since you're at it, might as well make a thread requesting it to be changed to BL subplot, since it was just ported over as is from NU.

Boys Love comes from Shounen Ai, not from Yaoi. Yaoi is a separate genre ^^. See? There IS more than one type of M/M even in Japan (excluding other distinctions that I talk above). It's confusing when all get lumped together in one huge mess.

It doesn't. Shounen Ai isn't even used in Japan anymore (It was used in the past to mean romance between underage charaters). Yaoi and Boys' Love are often times used as synonyms there though.

If you try searching on Syosetu for any story with two men in love in it, you'll use the Boys Love tag for it.

Please read my first post in this thread. I listed at least 5 genres that are "about two male romance". Boys Love is just ONE of them and excludes both the tropes and the target audiences of the others.

That BL is the only genre tag used on SH doesn't mean that genre-savvy people on other sites (WebNovel or Tapas come to mind) wouldn't be confused with the specific definition of "BL" on this site. It is confusing because we have to group all the subgenres of M/M under BL.

Think of it like this:

All Cuisines = M/M

Italian = BL, Chinese = LGBTQ+ m/m, Indian = Bara, American = Yaoi, etc.

Scribble Hub offers its customers All Cuisines, but for some reason calls it all "Italian".

Confusion ensues when you get in your "Italian" order Kung-Pao Chicken or Kashew Masala. Or if you know how SH's genre labeling sucks, so you are willing to dig and find your coveted Hamburger there, but you die of starvation before you can succeed

You are the one that doesn't know the definition of BL in Scribbly. It's just homosexual romance.

You're trying to define the genre by tropes that do not define it. That's on you, not on Scribbly.

Also, cluttering the tags? Really? I don't think adding one tag could really make that mess any worse, not to mention, tags are made for readers to be extra specific on what type of books they'd like to read, and for authors to specify what type of book they're writing. To halt the tags' growth just because we want to keep them "uncluttered" is counterintuitive. Though a tag dictionary would be ridiculously helpful, as things are going now I don't think a little more cluttering is that great of a loss when looking at the precision it's exchanged for.

Redundant tags are useless and only make it harder for you to find the thing you want.

I didn't help the mods get rid of about 400 tags on NU for no reason. There is no point in adding tons of tags that are already covered by something else. Redundancy is useless and only gets in the way.

I actually agree. I think that right now, we have tags for 'romance' subplot, 'GL subplot', and 'BL subplot'. What we are actually missing is something for stories like @Queenfisher 's: A story with something of a gay couple that isn't really romance. Once upon a time, I suggested a 'gay' tag for that (either protagonist or something similar) but people shot that down with the argument that we had the BL genre for that.
I think this is actually the problem: It's somehow expected that having a gay protagonist directly translates to having a romance story which isn't necessarily true. So I think there is actually a row of tags we'd need to make this work.

BL genre without Romance genre is exactly what you want. It's already covered by the current genres.

 

[yansusustories]

BL genre without Romance genre is exactly what you want. It's already covered by the current genres.

Now, that is actually very questionable considering that in this very thread someone (I'm too lazy to look up who) said that it's "Boys' Love because it's about romance". So, which is it? Is BL inherently romance and thus, doesn't cover something like what @Queenfisher described, or is it not inherently romantic and thus needs the added 'romance' genre to express being about love? In my eyes, this absolutely isn't clear from what we have seen on this thread.

I mean, personally, I always use BL and romance together because, to me, BL is a subgenre of the romance genre. I interpret it as gay romance, never as not having romance. But I've seen it at least mentioned twice that others have a completely different interpretation of that. So in short: We really need official definitions for all genres and tags. Otherwise, this whole discussion can lead nowhere because people will make up stuff in their heads about what is or isn't meant based on their own understanding of genres/tags which helps nobody.

Also, while it is nice that we can refer to NU for the tags, for one, they aren't exactly the same, and two, they aren't linked on SH anywhere near the tags/genres and we always have to search for them. This should not be the case. Make that shit accessible or it's obvious that people will get stuff wrong because they'll just assume what the tags might mean.

In regard to this:

Use the Shounen Ai Subplot tag instead of the BL genre then. And since you're at it, might as well make a thread requesting it to be changed to BL subplot, since it was just ported over as is from NU.

The official tag on here actually is 'BL subplot', not shounen ai subplot. Just thought I should throw this in here.

 

[Moonpearl]

If you're reading a story with a bisexual protagonist, I think it would be really weird for you as a reader to not expect the author to play into that aspect of the protagonist.

If you're specifically looking for a bisexual protagonist story that only has romance with girls, then you're looking for way too much of a specific niche, you should expect to have a hard time finding it.

I would expect them to maybe mention past male lovers or crushes, or have the bi character appreciate attractive men, or even take into account a bi person's different experiences and perspectives on life and dating. Even better, if you're dealing with magic and fantasy lands, bisexuality is rife for a lot of fun, like "making your MC twice as suspectible to the traps laid by your enemies, since there are both succubi and incubi to fight through".

Honestly, we're writers. We should be able to think of way more "uses" for bisexuality than just "ha ha, character bangs both men and women".

Also, it's not that niche when I can find plenty of published f/f works that feature bisexual characters and don't have them go off cheating with men or whatever.

Wrong. More tags makes it harder to find the tags you want. We already have over 700 tags, more tags should only be added as needed. Redundant stuff is useless.

Then we should remove the genuinely useless and redundant tags and add truly helpful things in their place. We really don't need "Writers", "Wishes", and "Sleeping", but that doesn't mean that every tag is disposable or a bad idea.

If BG/Male-Female Romance is a tag that people want because it's going to help them communicate to their readers and/or help readers find definite cases of what they want, then that serves the community and shouldn't be considered on the same level as "Sleeping" by any means.

Also, I'm going to goddamn categorise those things, if it's causing this much trouble. Maybe then we can all stop stressing about the number of tags and start talking about what to do with them.

Use the Shounen Ai Subplot tag instead of the BL genre then. And since you're at it, might as well make a thread requesting it to be changed to BL subplot, since it was just ported over as is from NU.

This has already been changed.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

If you're reading a story with a bisexual protagonist, I think it would be really weird for you as a reader to not expect the author to play into that aspect of the protagonist.

If you're specifically looking for a bisexual protagonist story that only has romance with girls, then you're looking for way too much of a specific niche, you should expect to have a hard time finding it.

Yes it is. Ask your parents if they thought you'd marry someone of the opposite gender or of the same gender when you were born.

BG is the norm. LGBTQ+ are the exception, even if our numbers are much bigger nowadays, we're still the minority by a pretty big margin.

Then you're looking for a bunch of very specific things that you probably need very specific tags to find them.

Then tell Tony to merge them because they're the same thing. He is probably able to.

I never said the category of BG was utopic. I said putting BL and GL in the same standing as BG is utopic. BG is and will always be the default, no matter how much anyone in the LGBTQ+ spectrum may want otherwise.

Bara, yaoi, shounen ai, slash, LGBTQ+ m/m, Tanbi and Danmei are not genres in Scribblehub, BL is. And BL means homosexual romance between men.

Because BL means nothing more and nothing less than Homosexual Romance between men. It encompasses both stories aimed at people in the LGBTQ+ spectrum and stories aimed at straight women.

If your story has a homosexual couple that are men, then you are writing about a homosexual relationship between men. Rather that involves sex or not depends on other tags and genres.

It doesn't matter if it's homoromantic, homoerotic or just a couple doing couple things. It's still a homosexual relationship between men.

BL Does not have anything to do with tropes. It's just homosexual romance between men.

Okay, my turn. From NU's Genre Explanation, since Scribbly doesn't have definition for genres yet.

Yaoi: This work usually involves intimate relationships between men. Mutually exclusive with shounen ai.
Shounen Ai: Often synonymous with Yaoi, this can be thought of as somewhat less extreme and only hints at a relationship between two males. [Boy's Love], so to speak.

BL is the fusion of those two that the mods of NU requested many times, but it never got done because the work to rewrite NU's code to merge those two wasn't worth it. Scribbly didn't have those restrictions, so it was done with the definitions merged.

As I took my definition from Scribbly's sister site, I'm pretty sure it's the one that matters for Scribbly.

Ah, I disagree with this one actually. If you have BL, but don't have romance, I assume that your protagonist is homosexual, but that the story doesn't focus on the romance aspect of the relationship, and instead focuses on anything else.

So even if we had a BG genre, Romance would still have a purpose.

Wrong. More tags makes it harder to find the tags you want. We already have over 700 tags, more tags should only be added as needed. Redundant stuff is useless.

Use the BL genre. It encompasses that.

Bara is specific enough that might warrant a tag if there is enough demand for it. You can make a separate thread for it if you want.

LGBTQ+ romance is under BL.

Use the Shounen Ai Subplot tag instead of the BL genre then. And since you're at it, might as well make a thread requesting it to be changed to BL subplot, since it was just ported over as is from NU.

It doesn't. Shounen Ai isn't even used in Japan anymore (It was used in the past to mean romance between underage charaters). Yaoi and Boys' Love are often times used as synonyms there though.

If you try searching on Syosetu for any story with two men in love in it, you'll use the Boys Love tag for it.

You are the one that doesn't know the definition of BL in Scribbly. It's just homosexual romance.

You're trying to define the genre by tropes that do not define it. That's on you, not on Scribbly.

Redundant tags are useless and only make it harder for you to find the thing you want.

I didn't help the mods get rid of about 400 tags on NU for no reason. There is no point in adding tons of tags that are already covered by something else. Redundancy is useless and only gets in the way.

BL genre without Romance genre is exactly what you want. It's already covered by the current genres.

I'm sorry for being so stupid, but how does a large amount of tags makes it harder to find what you want? And who decides what is redundant stuff? Just in case there is no sarcasm, I'm genuinely interested.

 

[bafflinghaze]

LGBTQ+ romance is under BL.

I'm shocked...at how wrong this statement is. What about GL? What about pairings involving nonbinary characters? A Boy/Girl pairing with a trans character can also count as LGBTQ+

I also literally do not understand why you need to bring in the "utopia" argument, since adding a tag/genre is something that can be done straightforwardly enough on SH, it's not like we're asking all the world governments to legalise same-gender marriage.

 

[AliceShiki]

The official tag on here actually is 'BL subplot', not shounen ai subplot. Just thought I should throw this in here.

This has already been changed.

My bad, I forgot how to access the tag list on Scribbly, so I just looked at an old post that had them all listed out. And it was using the old name at that point.

Glad it was changed already~

I mean, personally, I always use BL and romance together because, to me, BL is a subgenre of the romance genre. I interpret it as gay romance, never as not having romance. But I've seen it at least mentioned twice that others have a completely different interpretation of that. So in short: We really need official definitions for all genres and tags. Otherwise, this whole discussion can lead nowhere because people will make up stuff in their heads about what is or isn't meant based on their own understanding of genres/tags which helps nobody.

I agree that we definitely need the definitions, but we need to wait until Tony has the time to implement them~

I was honestly a bit baffled when I found out that not even the genres have definitions.

Honestly, we're writers. We should be able to think of way more "uses" for bisexuality than just "ha ha, character bangs both men and women".

Also, it's not that niche when I can find plenty of published f/f works that feature bisexual characters and don't have them go off cheating with men or whatever.

I never said anything about having sex in the story nor cheating?

I just expect at the minimum a love triangle involving men and women though... I wouldn't really complain if I didn't find it though, I just don't see the point of adding remarkable characteristics to your protagonist if you aren't going to play into them.

Then we should remove the genuinely useless and redundant tags and add truly helpful things in their place. We really don't need "Writers", "Wishes", and "Sleeping", but that doesn't mean that every tag is disposable or a bad idea.

By all means make a thread about all tags you consider worthless and suggest their removal.

In NU I could just list all the pointless stuff directly in the tag cleaning threads and remove them myself once I got the approval of the mods, but over here the method is more convoluted because tags are used by the authors themselves instead of handled by users, so... I dunno how well that will work, but I don't see why not trying.

I'm sorry for being so stupid, but how does a large amount of tags makes it harder to find what you want?

Do you know by memory the name of all 700+ tags on Scribbly? I know I don't.

If I wanna search for a story with a given characteristic, I first need to find out rather or not a tag exists for it, and I need to search through 700+ tags to find that out... It's quite easy to scroll past through it by accident.

And who decides what is redundant stuff? Just in case there is no sarcasm, I'm genuinely interested.

Tony is the one with the final decision. Users can give their own two cents on what they consider redundant or not though, and I personally believe that a BG genre would indeed be redundant.

I'm shocked...at how wrong this statement is. What about GL? What about pairings involving nonbinary characters? A Boy/Girl pairing with a trans character can also count as LGBTQ+

You're trying to take my words out of context.

BL covers all homosexual relationships between men. I was replying to someone that wanted a separate tag for LGBTQ+ romance between men, which is unnecessary as that is covered by BL.

Similarly, you don't need a tag for LGBTQ+ romance between women because that is covered by GL.

And a romance involving a transgender character is also covered by the transgender tag.

I was not saying that BL covered the entirety of LGBTQ+. The context should have made that clear, I believe.