The Top Ten Things I Love About Yaoi
This is what I love about yaoi. Not what I think you should love about yaoi, because there's all sorts of other things to love besides these. This is what /I/ love about yaoi as an insider, as someone who likes and appreciates yaoi and reads the stuff in two languages and writes it in one, at any rate.
Technically, this could be "the top ten things I love about Western Yaoi, Shounen-ai (sic, because no-one over here writes shounen-ai. The Chinese, whom I can't read, do, but we don't), and Anime Slash fandom and how they write fanfic", but actually it's the stuff I like about the Japanese version as well, because it's pretty much the same in both.
The mutual attraction of male character for male character, or even the one-sided attraction of male c. for male c., is an arbitrary event. It's arbitrarily decided by guess who You the Almighty Fan, grabbing a little power for once and no longer at the mercy of your mangaka's settei. You, being God, have decided that two characters would look good whispering sweet nothings to each other, angsting for each other, having hot sex together. So that's what you write. No explanations, no apologies. It just happens, and it happens because you want it to happen.
You don't need an intrinsic justification from the canon text, naturally, because yaoi has nothing to do with the canon characters (see #9.) You don't need to provide a justification within your own text. It's the Romeo and Juliet eyes meet across a crowded room followed by 'Oh, he doth teach the torches to burn bright,' followed by a bucket-load of angst. Classic. If enough people do this with the same set of characters, you create an actual fanon amongst you, parallel to and independent of the canon, which you can go to for inspiration. It's nice to be with friends, I agree- though you'd best beware lest people then charge that your almighty fantasies aren't justified by the fanon. (shrug) Fantasies are born free and are everywhere in chains. It's sad, because either all fantasies are justified or none are.
I've said it before, but clearly it needs to be said again. Yaoi isn't about the characters having sex and romance. It's sexual and romantic fantasies about the characters. These aren't the canon guys with their canon girlfriends, snarly habits, touch phobias and refusal to say anything besides Korosuzo. These are the canon characters put into a fantasy universe, where by definition they screw guys, have long heart to hearts, reveal their innermost feelings, get married, get pregnant, and do other stuff like that. No point in criticizing the unlikeliness of all this. It's the nature of the genre. That's what they *do* in this world. It's the exact equivalent of gag. Gag also puts the guys in another universe, where they get take-out from the local Chinese restaurant, go bowling, produce doujinshis, and pick up skee-balls from Chuckie Cheese. (That's a stunning gag story, one of my favourites.) Does anyone bother to raise loud-voiced objections that Hiiro is *not really* a doujinshika- or a pussy-cat or a middle-school girl or a fashion model? No. In the gag world, he is. And in the yaoi world he's in love with Duo, end story, and nobody else gets a look-in. Unless he's in love with Quatre...
But what if you want to see the actual canon guys doing m/m sex and romance? Well, that one requires a trick with mirrors. You're making the canon guys do what the canon guys would never do and trying to convince the reader that it's still them. Good luck. Make them talk like themselves, that's the best way, I find. He can be feeling what he'd never feel ('Aishiteru, Duo'), but he can at least say it like himself ('Omae dake korosanai.' Pause. 'Tabun, ne.') If the canon girlfriend bothers you that much, make your guys poly-sexual and able to love more than one person at a time. Try not to kill the canon girlfriend off if you're only killing her off to get rid of her. It's clumsy and obvious. (It's different if you have it in for the canon girlfriend. See #5, below.) You're in the yaoi universe where canon doesn't matter, so why not just ignore her? You think your guys don't screw on the side or fall in love with other people? Not if they come from a shounen series, which I'm willing to bet they do.
But what if you want to read the canon characters doing m/m sex and romance and everyone's writing A/U versions and it's driving you bonkers? Simple. In three words: write it yourself. If you want to see a certain kind of story and it's not available, don't waste time complaining that it's not available-- go make it available. Life is much more satisfying when you cease to be a passive consumer and become an active producer.
Another one that we've been through and been through but must go through again. Are these guys real guys? Rarely if ever. Are they at least the quasi-male guys of the canon? Rarely if ever. Then what are they? Unreal fantasy characters that cater to the fantasies of (a majority of) the female readers. Psychological hermaphrodites aka Complete Human Beings. Going by the simple numbers alone, women don't want to read about real guys doing real guy things in the real guy way. And why would they? You want that, turn on whatever men's talk show it is that tells you guys feel more strongly about baseball than about relationships. Yabbut- these are m/m guys, gay guys, right, and so-- Wrong. Gay guys think more about cock than about relationships, just to judge by what they write. Not very many women want to think about cock first, last and mostly in-between. Most women want to read a guy who thinks and acts in what strikes a woman as a congenial fashion. That kind of guy will wind up thinking a lot like a woman, acting a lot like a woman, and having sex a lot like a woman. He feels like one of us, but he's still a guy.
The question of just where along the spectrum of behaviours 'congenial' falls will vary by who you are. Doubtless some women would rather read Hiiro eyeing the crotch of Duo's peculiar trousers and estimating the size of their contents than Hiiro enraptured by Duo's long braid and dreaming eyes. Most don't. The majority sets the tone of a genre, and that's the way it goes. Which is why you'll see more stories of Hiiro running his fingers through Duo's hair than of Hiiro groping Duo's crotch.
Yaoi sex is penetration virtually by definition, just like m/f in real life. One set person gets penetrated, just like m/f in real life. One person gets a cock inside him, no question and very little discussion about it, and it's the uke. That's the way it is. Your guys can argue who the uke's going to be, if you like, but once that salient point has been decided it's on with the show. Is this real-life? No. Is it what gay men do? No. Is it what yaoi men do? By and very large, yes. (Mochiron reigai mo arimasu, the first sentence they taught us in Japanese language school in Tokyo- Of course there are exceptions.) Does it reproduce set heterosexual roles? You betcha. Isn't that a reason not to do it? No, precisely the opposite. It makes the sex and the sexual partners more familiar and congenial (and titillating). Gives a woman an identification point. Allows her to feel along with the uke if so desired. And has the guy getting screwed in the bum, which a lot of us think is the hottest thing there is.
Mapping m/f roles onto two guys turns a lot of women on. Hence the fantasy sex also reproduces female physical sexual experience in a way that's familiar and congenial to women. Doesn't *have* to, but often enough does. (Because it's a hot fantasy, to save people asking again, and all fantasies are created equal.) So we have two guys where one naturally gets fucked, wants to be fucked, derives his sexual pleasure from being fucked, lubricates while he does it, and comes, several times, long before his seme. It's a very pleasant way to have sex, and for many women it's the most familiar way (bar the coming first part, maybe.) Naturally one wants one's beloved characters to share one's own happy moments. Are there yaoi ukes who need lube, cry in pain, bleed from the anus, and feel a little sore, physically and emotionally, about it afterwards? There are indeed. I write them. But I'm not writing realistic guys. I'm writing a variant on the standard seme x uke theme, a little sprinkling of reality to heighten the romance. There are many variants. That's another joy of yaoi. We are large. We contain multitudes.
So what's the attraction of the 'male is quasi-female' model? Several I've already touched on, and there are probably more. It's an insertion point, no pun intended, for the female reader. It turns the guy from a guy into a human being. (gr) It makes things nicer by us. Real men have lousy sex by female standards. Boring. In-pump-out-sleep. Maybe wake up in ten minutes in-pump-out-sleep again, if they're really young. What's the fun of experiencing that, in reality or as a reader? No, give the poor dears a female sexual response at least. Let them have their fun the way we do it- long, protracted, repeated, focussing on more than just the genital experience. And you'll notice that we extend the same privileges to the seme as to the uke. Semes may take the 'male' role, but they still aren't guys having sex- or else all these guys suffer from a pathological inability to achieve orgasm that may require medical attention. They can even talk perfectly rationally about totally unrelated matters right in the middle of sex- none of what a gay man described as 'the firestorm in the brain' for them, poor sweeties. They don't come, or if they do seem to come they're still hard afterwards and able to turn the uke over to do it in a new position. They behave like us, and they behave the way I bet a lot of straight women wish their guys could. Which makes the seme both a woman *and* a female fantasy of maleness at the same time. Neat trick, huh?
Why's there all that rape in yaoi, the newbies used to ask when this first hit the shores. Why's there all that rape in yaoi, I asked myself on first meeting the thing. There's a bunch of answers. It's not rape. Or, rape is hot. Or, it's catharsis. You're doing awful things to your characters and enjoying every sadistic and/or masochistic minute of it. Ah yes- note that 'and/or' there. What's the pleasure of torturing a character? Inflicting pain on the hated Other? Or inflicting pain on the hated Self?
Mmm...
The whole s/m thing in yaoi, *and* the abuse of the feminized uke, *and* the trashing of female characters, is a really murky end of the world when you start diving below the surface. In Japan where sex roles and behaviours and language are much more codified than over here, I could see the tortured weepy uke in two lights. One is as an epitome of Them, the guys, being made to act as We have to, a comedown for Them right there. They have to suffer because of a role imposed from the outside- passive, forbidden to act, weak- the way We do, except that the suffering is translated into physical as well as psychological terms. And other times it looked like an expression of rage at the role itself. Sweet loving weepy trusting stupid ideal 'female', now you get yours. In Japan you keep your feelings inside. Even gaijin have an outward self that smiles and laughs politely and says the right things and is never annoyed. You get to hate the system that requires this, and itch to vent all your unacceptable feelings. Vent how? By focussing on the imposed ideal that dictates your external 'self' and doing horrible things to her. Her as a her, or her as a he. Not much difference. The satisfaction of expressing one's hatred of it is the same.
Granted the social restraints are slightly different on this side, I still see the same ethos at work. Trash the female character, the one I'm supposed to love and emulate. I don't want to be her. I want to be that Complete Human Being mentioned up in #8. *He's* the one to be admired and emulated (and the one who gets to have all the fun, my own peeve.) I don't like Miaka or Relena because she's what They think I should be, so now I'll demonstrate what a toad she is and how They're just wrong wrong wrong. Very healthy. If anime ever bothered to give us fully realized human beings who were females as well, we wouldn't have to spit at the false images they set up for us to admire. Does anyone ever trash Utena in order to get Touga and Saionji together?
I admit I have a bias. I'm gay. I like yaoi because it presents what looks like heaven to a gay person. Same sex and no second thoughts about it. Everyone naturally lusts after their own sex, and the problem is Can I get him or not, not Am I gay for wanting him? That's the doujinshi world, for sure. The pro stuff may do angsty riffs on My family doesn't approve or We can't ever get married, but it doesn't change the underlying message, that same-sex is intrinsically good. (The locus of true love and hot sex and personal satisfaction.) Now, the Japanese simply ignore canon het attachments, in line with #9 up there, or present them as the jealous girlfriend burning because her pash has a new object of affection. At times I admit it gets a little frustrating, that only the guys are allowed access to this wonderful same-sex world of true love and hot sex, and the girls have to wander in the wasteland of unrequited love or worse, hentai. So I think it very nice of westerners to give the women equal time. Since same sex is good, we find a proper same sex partner for the girls so they can enjoy themselves like the guys. Is the yuri partner arbitrary? Of course. Just like the yaoi partners. Back to You the Almighty Fan ordering the world in the way it should be. Satisfaction for everyone, and so, happily, to bed.
You know Plato? You know Plato's doctrine of the Forms? In Plato's doctrine of the Forms, what we see and feel and experience down here are distorted reflections of the pure Form of the thing. The cat asleep under the table is a bad imitation, an imperfect rendering, of the pure form of Catness. And the emotions are the same. Our everyday love, even at its best, is a debased and obstructed and deformed parody of the pure Form of love. Yaoi however attempts to represent that pure Form of love- Aphrodite Urania, Plato called it, the Heavenly Love. Yaoi love is pure in the sense that it's One- a seamless emotion, not the splintered and divisive Many that love is here (part need, part egotism, part lust, part insecurity, part selflessness.) It's certain. It's unchanging. It's absolute. It transcends other petty and fickle human emotions. Yer average yaoi guy suffereth long and is kind, vaunteth not himself and is not puffed up (indeed- oh those insecure ukes...); beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, etc etc, as St. Paul that closet Platonist put it. It's not realistic at all, of course, but it's certainly inspiring. You know it's not like that really, but it's a consolation at times to see a world where it can be like that.
Trouble for us westerners, with our obsession with novelty, is that happy-happy-joy-joy doesn't allow of much variation. The Japanese are content to see the Tried and True, but westerners, in spite of lining up for Friday the 13th part 39, have a cultural need for novelty and gripe when everything's the same. Now me, I think it's just an error in our thinking. Much yaoi is doing exactly what much porn does: hitting the right buttons in the right way to produce the right effect. Porn too is repetitive and one-pattern; and if it's not addressing your exact kinks, it's unreadable. If it is addressing your kinks, oddly enough it doesn't matter how repetitive it is. The right words, the right actions, and bingo. Porn is a kind of technical writing, and so is yaoi. To criticize yaoi for having the same scenario always is a little like criticizing the people who write labels for always saying 'Hold down and turn clockwise' or 'Press here and lift up' on their instructions. Useless to demand 'Tell me how to get the cap off a *different* way!!' Instructions and yaoi are written in the way that works for most people.
And there's a third detail that needs addressing here. Fantasies are nothing if not personal. The yaoi writer is writing what turns her on- what satisfies her- what consoles her. A reader isn't really necessary. You didn't want to hear that, did you? But it's a fact. Yaoi is a personal fantasy, written primarily to satisfy the writer's kinks and those who share those kinks. Like porn. Other people can come and read it, no doubt, but if they don't share that kink, they might as well go away again. The story isn't written for them.
Yaoi isn't like other fictional writing. It's a private vision written for personal satisfaction, and to apply the standards by which we judge ordinary literature to yaoi is to willfully ignore this private element. You can say 'Male pregnancy stories don't do it for me' if you like, but to say 'Male pregnancy stories are stupid and childish and people should stop writing them' is not only arrogant, it's dangerous. All fantasies are legitimate or none are, and to discredit the male pregnancy fantasy is automatically to discredit your own fantasy of mutual empowerment and non-penetrative sex. As for trashing a fanwriter's style, it's like shooting the piano player. Chances are she's doing the best she can. The only way you get to play the piano better is by playing the piano more. And quite possibly she writes that way because she likes writing that way, typos and all, and belongs to that huge group of people (of whom Word's Spell-check is one) who really believe that its should be written it's on all occasions.
Yeah well- sad fact is that one of the guys has to have a cock, so that anal sex can take place. But you don't want a real cock, because real cocks are only fascinating to men (straight or gay, if the truth be told) and most women have other bits of a guy they prefer to think about. Now if my theory that the seme is a woman is true, the seme's cock is necessarily a latex strap-on, so it's no wonder if it's totally nerveless and always up. However I don't think most yaoi authors think in those depressingly realistic terms. They prefer the aesthetic. In picture yaoi the seme's cock is an elegant affair, drawn in simple lines to create a pleasing outline. No toner or cross-hatching to suggest purplish skin and engorged veins etc. And it can accommodate some really odd positions. In text yaoi the seme's cock is equally sketchily described and accommodates some equally odd sexual acts. And the reason for that is- need we say it again?- the seme as a person, and as a physical person, is a fantasy. It's a fantasy cock. It can do things real cocks can't (but fingers often enough can.) It's the ideal sex organ. It can ram or it can tickle. It can pierce through to the bowels or coyly play about the entrance. It's bloody *flexible*-- it bends. What's the use of fantasizing sex if you can't fantasize it with the ultimate sex toy, hmm?
Fantasy. Fantasy. He loves and he says so. Doesn't buy his loved one a vacuum cleaner as a sign of his affections, or season's tickets to the football game. Doesn't say 'Why do you keep asking if I love you? Of course I do. Now shut up.' Doesn't think that getting regular sex is *just* worth the pain of having to listen to Regular Sex Provider's conversation at breakfast. Doesn't believe in the 500 Mile Rule- if he screws someone more than 500 miles away from home, it doesn't count. He takes love seriously. He takes connection seriously. He takes fidelity seriously, even when he's being unfaithful. He has feelings and he takes them seriously even when he's lying to himself that he doesn't have feelings. And the universe justifies the way he feels, because that's the way the universe is constructed. In yaoi it's love that moves the sun and other stars. It's wonderful.
Note: People ask what's the difference between slash and yaoi. For a brief demonstration, go read this. The writer doesn't know it, but what the writer doesn't like about yaoi is that it's not slash. The things she valorizes- strict canonicity, realism, accuracy, thorough research- are the things slash theorists have valorized for decades. The things she decries- ignoring canon, physical unreality, repetitiveness, and arbitrarily doing just as you please with the characters- are the things slash theorists have decried for just as long. And still do, whatever their ages. I think it's an innate bias, one way or the other. There are those who have the spiritus naturaliter slash, with a set of values that make slash congenial and yaoi irritating; and those with the spiritus naturaliter yaoi, that make yaoi congenial and slash seem restrictive. In the best of all possible worlds, the slashers' more sensible and rational approach would serve to ground some of the airy-fairinesss of the yaoistas; and the yaoistas' good-humour and playfulness would take some of the puritan starch out of the slashers. This is not the best of all possible worlds, but I'm a yaoista and I like fantasy, so I'll cherish the fantasy of a world of mutual tolerance, and refrain from reading the rant sections on slashers' webpages.