Yaoi and Boy’s Love

About thirteen years ago I became heavy into the anime and manga world.  I was watching what I could find  I came across a book titled FAKE and discovered it was man on man love.  I was floored.  I’d never seen anything like this before.  Curious, I bought the book, not knowing this was going to become an obsession.

and reading books from Tokyo Pop (now out of business), eagerly anticipating when the next book in a series would get released.

I soon learned that FAKE was part of a type of book called Japanese Yaoi, or Boy’s Love.  Usually written by women, it was gay love depicted between beautifully drawn boys, pubescent or older, written in any aspect from sensual to down right erotic.  The pictures were hard core and no matter what the topic, Yaoi always had love front and foremost in its themes.  The main characters typically conform to a formula of a seme, or top, pursuing the uke, bottom.

Yaoi began in the fan fiction markets of Japan in the late Seventies and developed from the popular sub-genre of platonic relationships between pre-pubescent boys.  It emerged as a sexualized parody of popular manga stories and soon became a term for female oriented manga and anime.  It featured homosexual or homeromantic relationships and soon spilled over from Japan to become popular in many parts of the world.

The word Yaoi is actually an acronym coined in the Eighties from the words Yama nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi which means: "No peak (climax), no fall (punch line/denouement), no meaning".  Now, it is an umbrella term in the West for women’s manga or Japanese influenced comics with a M/M relationship.  It should also be noted that Yaoi is different from bara, which is written by and for gay men.  Yaoi is adhered to women only.

The terms seme and uke have connotation dating back through Japanese history, but usually the seme is the older man, the more dominate and masculine of the two while the bottom, the uke, is more feminine or androgynous.  Another interesting fact is that the characters in Yaoi will more than likely have sex facing each other, rather than doggy style, which tends to be more romantic to the female reader.  In older Yaoi stories, characters rarely ever claim they are gay.  Boy’s Love is simply loving another male.  With the popularity of Yaoi, however, more and more stories are coming out as homosexual.

Ten plus years ago, it wasn’t that easy to find translations.  FAKE had seven volumes plus an anime movie and was about a two cops brought together as partners.  Love grew between them.  From there I discovered Gravitation, about a guitarist and his growing love with a lyricist.  This also was developed into an anime.  Yaoi may have started out as a joke on romance, but like a wildfire, it spread rapidly. Over the years, more and more translations have become available, opening up the Yaoi genre and making it more accessible through distributors.

From my secret love of Yaoi, I grew to love male/male romances, moving onto films such as “Come Undone”, “Beautiful Thing” and “Shelter”.  This was before e-readers came into popularity and the rise of e-publishing, although it was right on the cusp.  Manga became too expensive a hobby and I had to stop buying so many books.  But they always stayed a passionate love of mine.

Soon, I read my first erotica romance and realized this was what all the stories I’d created lacked.  I went about rewriting my first novel, Black Leather Pants, and sent it off to four publishers in 2009.  Siren Bookstrand accepted.  Although most of my books have been MF or MFM, always in the back of my mind was my Yaoi.  I began experimenting with writing my own male/male stories and came out with a couple of MMF. 

Also at this time Paranormal romance had reached a crescendo with Vampires and Werewolves, and although I had thoughts about writing such a story, I wanted to do something different.  I began reading post apocalyptic novels with Yaoi always in the back of my mind.  By this time, e-readers and e-publishing had broken through traditional publishing molds to become of the dominant formats in publishing history.  So when I a tag line came into my mind, The world has changed, it left me wondering why and how the world has changed.

I actually pictured this world I was beginning to dream up through the eyes of a Yaoi character and soon had fleshed out two beautiful young men trying to survive in a desolate wasteland.  It took me a couple of years to write A Wanted Man, but I stuck to my vision of Kit and Atticus as they tried to survive a zombie like disease.  I have ideas for other Man Love stories that I hope to bring to life soon through Siren Bookstrand.

Yaoi, manga and anime played an integral part of my development as a writer since it often has the two male characters having to overcome immense obstacles for their love.   I still have my collection of Yaoi books and reread them often.  I find Boy’s Love quite beautiful.