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Tag: shounen-ai

Why do the Men in Yaoi not Want Sex?

Christie Gordon 6 Comments

Sakai Ichi Hatsukoi - World's Greatest First Love - YaoiI’m watching this yaoi anime on Crunchyroll (finally, Yaoi on Crunchyroll!), Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi – World’s Greatest First Love, and I realized that in so many Yaoi anime and manga, the guys don’t seem to actually want to have sex, at least the ukes don’t. Why is that? Don’t all men want to have sex all the time? If so, shouldn’t it hold true that in our gay male stories, there’s lots of man sex and they’re loving it?

So, I was putting dishes away, because God knows I have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning;) and I’m thinking to myself about why we as straight women like this sort of thing. I mean, we must, right? Or why would the Yaoi powers that be put this stuff out? And why would we watch it so religiously?

In the typical Yaoi manga or anime, you have these two dudes that are attracted to each other, maybe even confess their love for each other, but invariably one chases after the other for sex (usually the seme), while the other runs from it (usually the uke). Then when the seme actually gets the uke, the uke does the, “Oh, stop… please stop”, thing while at the same time obviously getting off on what the seme’s doing.

My question is – could this be a hold over from the traditional romance story days when the heroine in our romance books loved, but hated, but didn’t want to tarnish her reputation by having sex, but got really hot and bothered by the hero? As women, we’re supposed to make guys chase us, guys we like, but we can’t show them we like them or we won’t get chased. Whew, what a wild game, huh? And what a mess… And this does resemble the typical Yaoi story arc, does it not? Hmmm…

Maybe in these stories, since they’re written largely for a straight female audience, this dynamic exists in order to give some sort of semblance of a traditional male/female role that women recognize immediately. And we eat it up, don’t we? It’s that whole forbidden thing. The “I want you, but I shouldn’t, can’t” thing. The whole reason why we love our Yaoi and M/M Romance – forbidden love.

And so the poor uke has to go on wanting sex with his seme, but pretending like he doesn’t. I wonder, what would happen if we made stories that were more true to gay male life? Would we still devour them so hungrily? What do you like?

And now, the trailer:

 

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Hot Anime Men in the Spotlight

Christie Gordon 2 Comments

Okay, so the question today is, who is your favorite hot anime guy and why?

Off the top of my head I’m thinking about all the Gundam series, starting with Wing and ending with 00, just because I have yet to find a place that is streaming Gundam Unicorn online (but if I find one, I’ll let y’all know.). In Wing, we have Duo, Heero, Trowa, Quatre and Wufei. I think I like Due and Heero most, of course the dude with the long hair and the silent strong type;) I believe they are my favorite yaoi pairing from this series, too. As far as the Gundam Seeds go, I love Kira and Athrun. Kira is just so… well angsty and Athrun is the sensitive type that I wish more dudes had in them. And then of Gundam 00, my favorites are Neil Dylandy (first only to his twin brother Lyle) and Allelujah Haptism. Setsuna, though very angsty, just seems too young to me and I’m sorry, Tieria is really a girl with a male voice, isn’t he? LOL

         

This... is Hugue. O.O

I could name so many, like Kira and L from Death Note, Ichigo and Renji from Bleach(I just recorded the Bleach movies they showed on Adult Swim last night), Cain, Able and Hugue from Trinity Blood(love, love, Hugue), Hagi from Blood +, Amon from Witch Hunter Robin, Cloud and Vincent from Final Fantasy and Edward Elric and Roy Mustang from FMA (you didn’t think I’d forget them, did you?)  and so on.

Let’s get on to why these characters appeal to us. First and foremost for me, artwork in the anime is of utmost importance. I’m thinking Death Note, Blood Trinity, Final Fantasy and Gundam 00 here. I think everything in these series is beautifully drawn, let alone the characters. And they always have cool hair. What’s up withe free flowing, long and gorgeous hair in anime guys? Why can’t real guys look like that? Oh wait, JRockers pretty much do;) I’ve always liked dudes with long hair and I don’t know why. Maybe someday I’ll have to examine this more with a therapist, LOL. But even when I was a teenager, I always went for the dude with the longest hair and bonus if he had dark hair (black preferable). Of course, I dated a lot of musicians (and still do). Hair is my favorite part to draw when I do my own artwork and notice, not many dudes with short hair.

Moving on, how about how these guy’s bodies are drawn? Even the supposed high schoolers have a body to die for. We’re talking muscled hairless chests, six pack abs and long and lean. This is just my type as well. Not only do I like my men to have long hair, but I prefer them to have more of a lean body – none of this muscle bound, I can’t put my arms all the way down, types. And no, I do not like facial hair or a whole lot of chest hair and too bad. I like what I like and it happens to be just what anime dudes look like. Maybe this is why manga and anime appeal much more to me than Marvel Comics and  American cartoons (that was a whole other blog – “What’s up with American Animation?”)

With all the short haired, muscled dudes you see on romance novels and such and the types of guys my friends date (uh, that type), it makes me think that my taste is a little, well, eccentric. Or maybe I’m just out of the closet and there are legions of women who don’t really like the culture-driven, spoon-fed types of guys that are on television and romance novel book covers. Maybe there are hordes of us who really, secretly long for dudes who look like Lockon Stratos and Hugue. I mean, Fabio was pretty popular at one point, right? What happened to all those women? Did they all just go back in their closets?

What do you like and why?

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Harlequin at Yaoi Con – Really?

Christie Gordon 6 Comments

I don’t know what I have against this company, except that they’re known for producing sappy romance novels involving happy endings with heterosexual couples getting married and having babies. There’s always the stereotypical alpha male hero and the blushing – OMG, I hate him, but I love him, but I can’t have sex with him – heroine. I…HATE…THAT. In fact, I think this type of romance novel is the very reason I’ve never read one before I started writing fanfiction and the only type of romance novel I’ve ever read is M/M or Yaoi.

I don’t know, maybe I’m a bit jaded and I’m going to get a bit personal here. After two failed attempts at marriage and four miscarriages I just see this fairy tale as being a complete farce in today’s society. Now that I’m settled with my two boys, one adopted from Russia, and NOT tied down in a marriage anymore, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. And I know I’m not alone here. My therapist (think I haven’t had therapy with what I went through? LOL) said the average number of marriages today are three.

So this sort of thing doesn’t seem real to me and I don’t see it being real to the majority of younger readers – I’m talking Generation X or Y or whatever the heck anyone under the age of 40 or so is being called these days.

Now back to Harlequin, the book mecca of all things neat and orderly and in their place (love before sex, marriage before sex, marriage before baby, all babies and husbands are perfect, a woman can’t be happy without a husband and gay people don’t exist – oh, I could just scream). So I hear they have a manga line. I hear they’ve even hired mangakas to do the artwork for their manga line. And they even showed them off at Yaoi Con in San Francisco. BUT THEY STILL HAVE THE REDICULOUS STORIES ABOUT LITTLE BO PEEP FINDING HER PRINCE CHARMING IN THE LATE 1880’S.  *falls over with a seizure*

Okay, I’m better now.What retarded impulse led them to think women who like to see two beautiful, androgynous guys engage in ass-play would want to read that garbage? That sort of thing is like the anti-christ for a Yaoi fan! I mean, being in the industry, I’ve heard all sorts of things about not having any women at all on the book covers of M/M books (not even really tiny and in the background) or the girl-cooties will make it unsellable to M/M readers. AND THEY BRING THESE THINGS TO YAOI CON??? *falls over again*

Okay, I’m back. I think I’ve had too much coffee, LOL. I was thinking I should post an image here to prove my point of how stupid these things are, but I can’t stand the thought even having one of the book covers on my blog. So you’ll have to go look for yourself: http://manga.about.com/b/2009/12/14/8-harlequin-romance-comics-debut-on-emanga-com.htm

And yes, I know that by posting this I’m giving them publicity and even negative publicity is good publicity, but I just can’t help myself. If you find you like that sort of thing, have at it. I won’t judge you (okay, maybe a bit 😉 )

So what do you all think about this? Should Harlequin finally break out of their tiny little mold and face reality and make some real Yaoi titles? How about opening the door to the M/M genre? Just to combat all this hetero romance stuff, I need a Yoai pic (I love this pic, BTW):

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