User:Katsumi 1020/sandbox

this is my sandbox

Yaoi (やおい ), otherwise known as boys love (BL) (ボーイズ ラブ), refers to 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 gay male audiences, such as bara. Currently, it spans a wide range of media platforms, including manga, anime, drama CDs, games, and fan production. In Japan, BL and boys love are the more prevalent generic terms for this kind of media and have, in recent years, also become more commonly used in English, particularly in Western academic scholarship on the topic. However, yaoi remains more generally prevalent in English.

Yaoi finds its origins in both fan culture and commercial publishing. As James Welker has summarized, the term yaoi dates back to dōjinshi culture of the late-70s to early-80s where, as a portmanteau of "yamanashi ochinashi iminashi" (no climax, no point, no meaning), it was a self-deprecating way to refer to amateur fan works that parodied mainstream manga and anime by depicting the male characters from popular series in vaguely or explicitly sexual situations. This is still the primary understanding of yaoi in Japan. In commercial publishing, the genre is usually traced back to shōnen ai, a genre of beautiful boy manga that began to appear in shōjo manga magazines of the early 1970s. The 1990s commercialization of male-male homoerotic media under the label of BL draws from a mixture of both source contexts.

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A defining characteristic of yaoi which distinguishes it from Western slash fiction is a commitment to pairing characters according to the roles of seme, the sexual top or active pursuer, and uke, the sexual bottom or passive pursuant. Common themes in yaoi include forbidden relationships, depictions of non-consensual sex, tragedy, and humor. Yaoi and BL stories cover a diverse range of genres such as high school love comedy, period drama, science fiction and fantasy, detective fiction and include sub-genres such as omegaverse and shotacon.

While originating in Japan, this genre has grown popular among

[Paragraph on its demographics and reach][look into source on when it came into US and its relationship, if any, to slash] More research has been done on how sexuality intersects with yaoi readership in various contexts. The genre spread beyond Japan, and both translated and original yaoi works are now available in many countries and languages. [Consider adding what it is called in select other languages, such as Chinese...]

Contentious aspects of the genre include its relationship to gay populations...its homophobic aspects...misogyny.... It has also been praised for being a vehicle of self-discovery and sexual liberation.