Regarding BL games...

[Crocosquirrel]

I've never been big on the idea of gay relationships(not that I have anything against them, I don't find them entertaining), although I will agree Papillon on this one. A BxG game with a shot at a BxB thing would likely hold my attention(maybe with a skip the H switch?), although unlike most games, I might take a pass on that ending.

That said, you're very likely to find a wide audience here regardless of the project. Surely, someone will play it just for that content. It's a polite and friendly community.

[HotLimit]

(1)BL overcomes these problems by allowing the female reader to identify with a male character - the uke, feminine and submissive, but by virtue of his maleness, is allowed to be equals, and thus friends, with the male love interest, and also to be sexual. People who don't like girly ukes are missing the point - the point of BL is not to accurately portray gay men in real life - (2) BL is targeted firmly towards the female demographic, and girly ukes are there for the female audience to identify with.


(3)...And therefore, girls who have a longing for equality, or to be in a relationship of equals, can only fulfill that longing through identifying with a male character (the uke in BL).

(4)And yet the uke is still girly and submissive and feminine and weak because girls have internalized the idea that THAT is what girls are like, and that THAT is what they are like, and THAT is what they should be like. And so if the uke is not all these things, he cannot be recognized as female and thus prevents the female readers from identifying with him. And that is why there is a seme-uke dynamic - it's simply a conventional, patriarchal heterosexual relationship with the sting of inequality taken off by the fact that the "female" in the relationship is actually a man.

This is all very profound, at least to me, because I'm unfamiliar with all of these terms (GxB/Yuri/Yaoi/ etc.), insofar as what they actually represent (aside from hetero, lesbian, gay-)

Assuming Evangaline is still around, so I have a few questions,

1. (regarding 4) Do you consider BL comics and games to be perpetuating patriarchal relationships (or what I would refer to as the hetero-normative binary), or are they just a bi-product of them? And in either case, do you think it should be done away with? I mean, if it's just reinforcing stereotypes, it's counterproductive isn't it?

2. (regarding (2) and (3)) What about guys who like BL? Is there any analysis of them, or are they neglected because they aren't the target audience?

3. (regarding (1)) So, in a perfect world where there wasn't this unbalance in relationships, what would the ideal fantasy for would-be fans of BL look like? Would BL even be necessary? Is there some way to deconstruct the genre (say, with two feminine characters that are both male, or two masculine, rather than the hetero-normative relationship)?