One of the hardest parts about writing my 2008 Participations article on boys’ love manga fans was leaving out all the rich qualitative data that I received in my open-ended questions. Since the article is now long since published, and other scholars are continuing to research BL audiences, I thought it might be useful to…
What is yaoi research, anyway? Technically, yaoi research is research about Japanese male/male romantic and/or erotic manga, colloquially known in the West as yaoi or boys’ love, and in Japan as ビーエル (BL). These genres are most commonly written by women for a primarily female audience. However, in this blog we will be extending the…
50 Shades of Grey & Fanfic
CNN ran an article Friday placing the popularity of 50 Shades of Grey within an erotic fanfic context (the book grew out of what was originally a Twilight fanfic story). The article mentions the predominance of gay and lesbian fanfic, written, according to Dr. Francesca Coppa of Muhlenberg College, because in fanfic’s early ’60s-’70s heyday,…
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