Mills and Boon is a reference to the publishers of cheesy ‘romantic’ novels - where a rugged man with a heart of gold sweeps a woman off her feet. Around here, you can find them in cheap department stores, and many used-book stores carry a lot (I assume because you can trade in your old ones for fresh ones - the fantasy wears out if you read it too often?)
These novels usually conform to the conventional, stereotypical ideas of women’s sexuality and are strictly male/female. The characterisation and plots are formulaic, and forgettable at best.
I’m suprised that people didn’t get the reference, but maybe these books aren’t as pervasive as I thought, and I’m just living in a crappy area for bookshops Or maybe they go by different names in different parts of the world.
Forgot to add: I’m guessing that the readers who are addicted to Mills & Boon style novels would be very interested in reading some of the less explicitly sexual slash. But since slash is more of an underground phenomenon, it’s unlikely they’ll come across any.
As was mentioned above, “good girls” don’t buy porn. But they can buy romance novels without anyone batting an eyelid. Until attitudes to women’s sexuality are different than they are now, slash will remain on the internet and not in the stores.
I bring to you the case of the Western version of Slash called YAOI. (by Americans and such, in Japan it is refered to as “boys love”). YAOI is extremely popular among Japanese girls. The most popular male artist in Japan (as evidenced by most searches on google) Gackt, will hump, kiss and fondle his male band members while on stage to the delight of his (mostly) female fans. There are countless comic books (manga), animated tv shows (anime) and movies devoted to YAOI. There are shops in Japan devoted entirely to the subject (often men are not allowed in such shops) and homoeroticness is featured in almost every single TV show that comes out of Japan, including many that are shown on TV here. In fact, the show “Gundam Wing” which was shown on Cartoon Network was written to entice the “YAOI” audience.
Even here in America, there is a rather large audience for YAOI. My friend makes a living selling comics of YAOI and she has made a large sum of money doing this.
stringy there is slash available in stores. Here is a list of such works and the number is likely to grow. The “manga” section also has plenty of works that feature male/male love. I’ve heard that various YAOI manga have been picked up by American groups and are set to be released soon.
As I look at the titles released byTokyo Pop I count 8 that have homoeroticness. And these are just the ones that I know of. Petshop of Horrors, Fake and Gravitation all center around male/male relationships.
As for why I like it… it’s the same as pepperlandgirl. Two hot guys are better than one.
Here’s a lesbian who likes m/m slash and has a pretty hearty doujinshi (fancomic) collection with a lot of slash themes. Why? Well, for one thing, I can count on one hand how many female anime characters I really like. Male characters usually have better personalities and more interesting backstories and purposes.
Also, I’m a lesbian because I’m not attracted to the male body as realistically drawn. I don’t really get into the recent trend of realistic-style slash photoshop images, for instance. But in most comic slash the bodies are feminine and the penis (when portrayed) is usually a vague glowing slightly phallic tube shape. And most written slash is also unrealistic to sex and vague enough that it doesn’t give me “Ew, penis” vibes. Just “Hey, I love that character! Yeah! Go and get laid, character I love! I’ll cheer you on from a distance!”
Yaoi is HUGE in the anime fangirl community, straight gay and bi. I can’t think of any female fans I know who aren’t into yaoi a little bit. I can even think of straight male fans who are, just because they like the writing style in the romantic, non-sexual stories.
I’ve tried collecting female/female slash stories or doujinshi, but it truly isn’t written for females in most cases, and so it disappoints. Yaoi offers me romance and vague sexual undertones.
Hmm, I am a little confused now.
Where does this Yaoi fit in? Slash does not, as far as I am aware, only mean m/m erotica written by women? Is the key definition point of slash not that it is using characters “owned” by someone else, in storylines that do not gel with their “on screen” sexuality?
For example, I mentioned ER slash earlier, and there is a lot of Kerry/Sandy stuff, but since Kerry and Sandy are dykes in the series, I consider that fanfiction, not slash. Not saying we can’t talk about Yaoi as well, but I think it’s something slightly different, although perhaps closer to the OPs question than slash per se actually is.
Ack, too late to recall my stupid comment above. Having read a little more seems Yaoi is indeed slash, or rather perhaps Yaoi includes slash as well as ‘non-slash’ woman written m/m content.
As far as I know, and I’ll admit I’m not as much of an expert as some fans, yaoi is almost completely used to describe non-canon m/m fan pairings in comics, fanart, and fanfiction (yeah, there’s Japanese fanfics too.) “Translated” (it’s an acronym) yaoi basically stands for plotless and pointless. It’s PWP, but always used for m/m. At least, I’ve never seen anyone try to use it otherwise. NA fandom does play a little loose with “yaoi” to describe any m/m pairing, though. The f/f equivalent is yuri.
Different words are used for series that are created in the first place strictly to have homosexual couples. (Series that are created with fans making their own pairings in mind, like Gundam Wing, wouldn’t count.)
I’m sure someone will come along later with a more thorough explaination…
Thanks for the explanation of Mills & Boon. Here we have Harlequin Romances - same thing.
Yaoi… I am pretty new to anime so I have not yet ventured into this. I have a friend who pointed out the heavy slash vibe in Rouroni Kenshin (on Cartoon Network - sorry if I spelled it wrong). Kenshin lives with a cute girl (who has to point out she’s cute to everyone… yeesh) and he has no interest in her but when the other samurai comes along he gets all starry eyed. Normally I’d say its us reading into the situation but knowing how popular yaoi is, I know we’re not. We were cracking jokes about how he MUST be gay because he cooks and cleans for her - a stereotype, we know, but it was just too silly. Good thing he’s cute and deadly, otherwise he’d hold no interest to me. And as can probably be assumed, any yaoi recommendations are appreciated (I really love X, I’d bet there’s a ton of X yaoi out there).
I also know female anime fans who are totally and entirely squicked by the idea of yaoi, but they’re very serious Catholics, so that explains it.
I have a story about Gravitation - I was with a friend at Shoujocon and we were watching Gravitation in a viewing room. Even though the con said only those 18+ could go into the room the place was filled with squealing teenage girls. Like 150 of them. Now keep in mind, this is suburban New Jersey we’re talking about, so this is totally seeping into the mainstream pop culture. Friend and I shall not be going this year because of all those squealing girlies… we are both twice these girls ages and we just wanna watch our anime in peace, thankyouverymuch.
Thanks so much everyone for the education! I have so much to read and watch and learn…
There are of course yaoi fans in Japan, but I don’t believe it’s anywhere near as big or mainstream of a thing as your description above implies. And as for Gackt, the only people I’ve ever met who like him are American anime fans. I have a lot of female Japanese friends in the 17-23 age range, and they all seem to think of Gackt as just one of those mildly irritating celebrities who’ll do anything to get attention.
Much of what is perceived by Americans as homoeroticism in Japanese entertainment is not seen as such by the Japanese. I recently watched Ping-Pong with the campus Asian film club, and while all the American girls present thought it was obvious that the two young male leads were in love the Japanese girls considered it to be a touching tale of masculine friendship with no romantic element at all. One of them even said, “This is a good movie, but it’s strange that there is no love story!”
ava, I hate to be a pain in the bum, but AFAIK, you don’t need to capitalize yaoi like that. You’re hurting my head. Unless it’s an acronym, and I missed something…
Yaoi is an acronym. Don’t remember the exact words, though. I don’t bother capitalizing it myself.
I’d say about half of the anime fans I know are female, Asian, and into yaoi or shonen ai (boy’s love, another common phrase.) The other half are a wider mix of races and genders and interests. The only major Gackt fans I know are Chinese-American, which isn’t white American OR Japanese… Personally, I can’t stand the guy, but whatever works.
It doesn’t seem super-mainstream to me but I also think it’s a recognized subculture. In a relatively small city called Fujieda, I walked into a grocery store/supermart with a small bookstore and flower shop contained within, and picked up the latest Be X Boy Gold, an explicit boy’s love comic. Granted, it isn’t slash since the stories are written for gay male love stories, but still. It wasn’t as though this was a comic-specific store, aimed at helping fans find obscure stuff. It was right out there by all the other comics and magazines. So it’s far more mainstream and less taboo than it would be in America, anyway. (Yes, the ladies behind the counter giggled when I bought the book. Heh…)
Bet? I’d guarantee…and as I’ve read a great deal of it and barely scratched the surface as a not-really fan (I was a big Tokyo Babylon fan there for a while, so I read TB and X fics, but mostly TB), I’m fairly familiar with the amount. CLAMP does, after all, write that sort of subtext in their manga on purpose, seeing as they were a doujinshi group originally and it’s practically required for such fanworks. But I have some good fanfics saved in my favorites, if you want the links.
You’re right, I got somewhat off-topic. Be X Boy isn’t slash, it’s canon homoerotica. But what I mean is that the fanbase for that kind of story is substantial enough that this grocery store had that magazine. Usually I find canon homoerotic works in manga format to be very, very similar to doujinshi slash works. And many artists got their start doing slash doujinshi before the mainstream audience was enough that they could make whole original series dedicated to that type of story. Although there is a slash fandom in the United States, you’d be harder pressed to find fancomics or fan published novels with that theme outside of the Internet, and I guarantee you wouldn’t find professionally published comics aimed at that audience in a grocery store. Or even most comic book stores.
A comic book artist, writer, or novel writer getting her start in slash fanfiction to go on to write homoerotica or a professionally published artist doing fanworks on the side seems like an unusual circumstance to me, but it’s not uncommon in the Japanese comic industry. Along with CLAMP which JessEnigma mentioned, I know Yuu Watase has done doujinshi, as well as Shamneko. (And probably plenty of others I just don’t know.)
I don’t agree that slash is always fanfiction. (Granted, you said ‘almost always,’ not always.) Although that is probably the majority, I’ve also seen plenty of slash fanart and short slash comic strips. Many of my friends who are artistically inclined draw slash fanart and don’t write fanfics. And I’d say any fan work which involves m/m non-canon pairing would count as slash, even if it’s a fancomic or fanart instead of fanfic.
Wedge Antilles, the only Rebel pilot to survive Star Wars Episodes IV, V and VI (besides, of course, the main characters), portrayed by Denis Lawson (who, BTW, is Ewan McGregor’s uncle! :eek: )
Its interesting, the cultural differences. Am I correct in thinking that Japanese are much more allowing of a sort of “youthful sowing of ones oats” as far as having romantic relationships with the same sex? I don’t mean physical romance, but a deep almost romantic friendship. And then you’re supposed to grow out of that sort of thing and settle down to a “regular” relationship (IOW heterosexual).
I think that’s why there’s such a slashy subtext to these things, its totally acceptable. Here in the US … not so much.
Of course they have. I’ve seen descriptions of them… never read one. I learned a while back - any pairing you can think of, no matter how weird, has been done.
Or maybe they go by different names in different parts of the world.