What Did You Read Yesterday? @blrecs - Tumblr Blog

let's go to fanime. pt. 1: limited reader's viewpoint

This was originally going to be in the same post as my reflections on attending Fanime, but then I thought, you know what, I don't think it's fair to make people suffer through my maudlin ramblings if they're just interested in knowing how the doujin were.

So here are some reading notes on the doujin I bought at Manga Ichiba, loosely arranged by time slot! (The little red fujoshi octopus sometimes appears in pictures to hold a cover down. You can buy your own here.)

#manga ichiba #50 weeks 500 words adjacent

notebookdotca

Wow… happy 2026 everyone! My final list is either a day late or precisely on time.

For the final list of my favourite manga reads of 2025, I’m writing about the manga series that made me feel the worst. Made me feel bad, freak out, have to pace around the room, etc. You know. Everything written following this is an endorsement, I promise!

allthefujoshiunite

I apologize if this is a complicated question or if it kind of scatters everywhere and doesn’t have a coherent point.

I’m new to BL, but one thing I’ve noticed from people both within and outside the community is that a lot of people say BL as a demographic is generally catered toward romantic stories.

Obviously there are exceptions, but non-BL queer stories seem to cater more toward identity-based narratives, if that makes sense. I’ve also seen people criticize the fact that some BL uses internalized homophobia more as a plot device rather than really treating it as a narrative that gets deeply explored.

And also I’ve seen people critique BL for when it delves into a guy having a girlfriend and then suddenly liking a guy, and it doesn’t really explore the complicated feelings of discovering that for the first time.

That then leads to the whole “I’m not gay, I only like you” trope. But even that trope itself, I feel like, isn’t really delved into from a nuanced perspective. I feel like it could make sense and be written in depth, but a lot of the time it isn’t.

And this leads to people kind of using this as a way to discard the whole demographic as not really being queer, even though it involves two men, because it doesn’t seem to want to get involved with the actual queerness of the characters — like the in-depth, complicated feelings someone might experience.

I’m not trying to dismiss BL or attack it. I just want a nuanced perspective on this from someone who doesn’t completely dislike or discard BL as a demographic.

I apologize again if this is complicated or scattered.

Hello! Thank you for reaching out to me, and your message wasn't incoherent at all. As is always the case with online social media discussions, a lot gets lost between people trying to best one another and snappy one-liner gotchas. I also think there are certain aspects that people don't take into consideration when talking about BL/LGBTQ+ comics, their tropes, and structure. You asked for a nuanced perspective, so you're getting a lengthy post haha. I'll try to break them down and hopefully, there'll be a useful takeaway here somewhere.

You're right in noting the distinction, and that's also my very broad rule of thumb. I often say that BL focuses more on romance, while LGBTQ+ comics tend to focus more on identity. However, it's important to notice that this is a spectrum. On one hand of the spectrum, we have wish-fulfillment, on the other, interpersonal drama and identity politics. Works in both genres fall somewhere on this line. As the IRL LGBTQ+ movement pushes forward and the identity politics/allyship discussions gradually become a topic of everyday conversation, you will see its effects on the genre without a doubt. Just like how climate change and discussions around scarcity are topics that are increasingly delved into, like in Fool Night, or discussions around neurodivergency give way to works like Spacewalking With You, BL changes and evolves too.

blrecs

we are all enriched by having nora in our lives!! the amount of care and effort she puts into her asks and posts should make her eligible for canonization.

i just wanted to add that my first reaction to this ask was a combination of these two points:

... people read very little BL and the ones that they read are the handful of extremely popular series, then they go around and base their whole opinion on a genre on these titles. They are loud, and the algorithm amplifies divisive takes. Then it looks as if everyone thinks that way.

and

The second assumption is that BL is a silly genre. It is silly and whimsical at times, sure. That's the spirit of BL. But anything that focuses on romance is immediately put into the "not worth pondering on" box. Emotions are silly! Interpersonal relationships are silly! It's simply about, for example, two university students in the same club, and they fall in love. What kind of "deep thought" can you extract from that?

the reality is that bl is like any other collection of work created by many diverse individuals with diverse experiences, subject to diverse editorial and publishing choices, sometimes separated by great swaths of time and even language. no one particular work can perfectly capture every issue, and queerness looks very different to everyone. "i'm not gay. i just like you!" may not be a nuanced depiction of queerness to one reader but could resonate with another. i feel this way with many works of fiction, including novels with main characters who have my background (asian-american, female, maybe even a lawyer). the characters often have what i consider shallow realizations about their identities or selfhood, but then i'll be talking to a friend and find out it resonated with them. i've accepted that i have idiosyncratic taste, and like nora says in the post, that requires me to dig deep and approach algorithmic recommendations with suspicion. we must!!! do the same with bl!!

i also think many readers tend to downplay that bl manga like all other manga is a visual medium first and foremost. maybe nora is too nice to say this, but bl mangaka are not exempt from the weakness that plagues their non-bl counterparts, or even their western comic artist colleagues: being a good artist does not make you a good or even coherent writer. it is not easy to write in-depth, complicated feelings. many times, romantic developments are plot devices, because this is a manga and we have to progress the story so there can be more excuses to draw things happening.

yet fans are willing to give, say, akutami gege the grace and (volume) space to write a story that is interpreted as having meaningful nuance even when his pacing and plot issues are at their nadir!! where is that grace for bl? it is like we are sitting around waiting for the perfect series that will tackle every feeling and every experience to land in our laps, instead of making like shounen manga fans and celebrating the works for what they are and even valorizing their failings. if i read too deeply into bl every week, it is because i think we have a right, and a need, and maybe even an obligation to do for bl what shounen manga twitter does for their series. we too can [gen z voice] glaze bl into legitimacy.

#anyway bless nora #i'm going to send her all the asks languishing in my inbox #homework she didn't ask for #no good dead goes unpunished

35/50: the loves of others ("gray to blue no aimade," "inu mo kuwanai," "manic love")

Itoi Nozo's "Gray to Blue no Aimade" begins with a red herring: its main character, Koutarou, meets a man. The man just so happens to be his father-in-law Koushi, and he just so happens to catch his father-in-law making out with another man, a sex partner who cruelly throws Koushi to the ground and then warns Koutarou to "give up on this geezer" who "likes weird sex play." Koushi begs Koutarou not to mention any of this to Haruka, his daughter and Koutarou's wife, and of course a shell-shocked Koutarou agrees. But, concerned about Koushi's wellbeing, and inspired by a rooftop conversation with one of his openly gay students, Koutarou shows up at his father-in-law's house the next evening with two convenience store bentos which they end up ignoring in favor of Koushi's homecooking. "It tastes the same as Haruka's," Koutarou says. Of course, Koushi scoffs. Who does Koutarou think taught Haruka how to cook? "This was the first homemade meal she made for me," Koutarou continues. "That's when I fell in love with her."

Well, in a bl manga, that kind of line is portentous. If you are genre savvy, you may think you know where this story is going. Haruka is working a busy job abroad, neglectful of Koutarou, seemingly uncaring of his day-to-day troubles, and Koushi is a good listener who lets a drunken Koutarou bother him at home. Koutarou is straight but an ally who watched movies with gay relationships just so he could better understand the difficulties gay people face, and though Koushi scoffs at Koutarou's naivete, he also finds himself thinking of his first love when Koutarou is around. It's unusual that a wife becomes a forerunner for her father as a romantic interest, but, well, a father-in-law and his son-in-law isn't exactly incest, is it?

#50 weeks 500 words #itoi nozo #gray to blue no aimade #psyche delico #inu mo kuwanai #yamagata satomi #manic love

34/50: friends with supernatural benefits ("yotsuya ghost knight," "my bad painkiller")

One thing about me is that I've never met an exorcism plot I won't at least try. Exorcists, shamans, onmyouji, priests and monks with a specialty in the supernatural—these are all catnip to me, a self-identified cat person. So "Yotsuya Ghost Knight" had two things going for it: (1) a main character who is an exorcist and (2) possibly one of the best cover designs I've seen in recent history.

What is that old adage about never judging a book by its cover? I've bought many things based on uninformed and purely aesthetic criteria. (Admittedly, most of those things have been bottles of wine to bring as housewarming gifts.) I'm afraid "Yotsuya Ghost Knight" proves the adage true. One shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and one shouldn't buy manga just because someone with amazing aesthetic sensibilities combined deco-boom with a graphic style that looks like a typography sample pack vomited all over a stack of talismans (positive). Alas, I probably will not learn any lessons from this.

"Yotsuya Ghost Knight" despite the modern aesthetics of its cover design, is a very old-fashioned story, to the point where I was surprised to learn that it was not from the extra porny early-2000s but was first published in Japan in 2023, apparently as Shiroi Choco's debut work. Exorcist Yotsuya Okuru is the most gifted and powerful ghostbuster of his generation, but a combination of past family trauma and isolation from ordinary people due to his line of work have made him a shy, awkward introvert. This isn't a problem, except that someone has unleashed an incredible evil spirit, and the only way Okuru can properly exorcise it is to squirt. Yes, from his dick. For, you see, spirits can be overcome with bodily fluids rich in life energy, and in the ranking of available bodily fluids, squirting is even more powerful than semen, and certainly more powerful than the tears Okuru has been using so far. Okuru is, however, a virgin, with absolutely no sexual experience in anything but vanilla masturbation. A chance encounter with AV star Fukase Naito, also known as the Squirting Squire, may just be the key to his troubles.

#50 weeks 500 words #yotsuya ghost knight #my bad painkiller #shiroi choco

33/50: don't stop believin' (dayoo, "lovers on the last train")

Hello. I know it has been a long time since I last posted. I wish I had a good excuse, but the reality is that I skipped a week, and then one week became two, and then two weeks became close to two months, and I found myself simply unable to write. Yes, the holidays happened in between, and yes, I did do some travel, some friend-seeing, some rest and relaxation. I watched "Heated Rivalry." I held my friends captive to watch "100 Meters." I went to a Korean spa, and ate Yemeni food for the first time, and spent New Year's Eve in an overly-warm New York apartment bathed in the smell of raclette singing Auld Lang Syne and watching our host open a blind box that was supposed to oracularly represent what was in store for us in 2026. (We got the Butterfly Dream Skullpanda, which I understand to be very rare and thus portentous.) And then I came home to my apartment, and went back to work, and simply did not write anything about bl.

I've thought a lot about how writing is a discipline, a practice, and a ritual. To me, it is as much, maybe even more, these things than it is a hobby, the result being that what enjoyment I get from it is delayed, sometimes purely hypothetical. I have to want it, and I have to want wanting it. And even though it is something I can do, am even sometimes good at, and am recognized as having some small talent for, I frequently do not want to do it, and do not want to want to do it. What gets me sitting in front of a keyboard to do it is either (1) blacking out in the grips of a new obsession or (2) shame. In this case, I made a commitment to do fifty posts on bl manga, and by god, I will see it through.

Well, I told myself all this three weeks ago. And as you can clearly see, nothing happened. When one week becomes two, and two weeks become close to two months, it is hard to get back on track. Writing is a discipline, a practice, a ritual, but unfortunately, so is not-writing.

At a certain age, inertia becomes a driving force, sometimes the only driving force. If you are a stable, pragmatic person, and nothing tragic has happened to you yet, it is very easy to decide, "This Is Fine." Your life has been long, but hopefully, it will be longer still, and in light of that, any dissatisfactions in your life suddenly seem immaterial. What is imperative is to keep going. To give voice to discontent, to struggle for something different, threatens to derail all the progress you believe you've made. Might as well keep going down the same track. Might as well stay on the same train.

#dayoo #lovers on the last train #50 weeks 500 words

hi there! i recently got a mangaplanet subscription bc of the futekiya news and i was wondering if you had a thread on twit with ur recs before it ultimately goes down? or am i hallucinating? if so.... would you still be open to listing some recs i (and anyone else!) should check out? and thank u for all that u do!! my bl reading has been so enriched with ur musings and recommendations

hello! i had a very old notion site where i was collecting brief reviews that i did for futekiya: today in futekiya it is many years out of date, but they are rich in my stupid musings if that's what you wanted lmao

other than that, i'm so sorry, i didn't list out the blrecs weekly posts by publisher. but if you search my tumblr for "futekiya" as a term, they should come up!

i would be remiss if i did not include @allthefujoshiunite's very well curated rec list, some of which are lesser mentioned futekiya stories! if you have not read her accompanying post, please do! FAREWELL TO THE GOLDEN AGE OF BL – IT'S YOUR FAULT THAT I'M NOT POPULAR!

#asks

32/50: stray cat blues (sunmyeong/chub, "stranger")

I am writing this week about "Stranger," but I am not too proud to admit that this is not the post it deserves. It needs someone who has the time and energy to dive deeply into all the ways it is similar and different from other "older man picks up a young man in dire straits" stories, what its limitations say about our ability to talk about poverty and socioeconomic conditions in fiction and specifically in the manhwa form, and maybe (if I had the time) how it differs from the novel.

But I don't have the time, and more importantly, on December 18, "Stranger" is leaving Manta, where it is currently free to read for premium users.

So here is the tl;dr: read "Stranger" now, before its license with Manta expires. It is meditative and quiet in the places where other stories are loud and demonstrative. It is about taking ownership of yourself, but more than that, it shows its characters practicing that self-ownership in their ordinary, everyday lives. Though it begins with a big splashy action, it understands that love—and life—is demonstrated through little repeated ones. And occasionally, especially in seasons 1 and 2, the artist Chub frees themselves from the workaday competence of drawing handsome men in sterile environs and pulls out a dream or metaphor image that stops you in your tracks with its outlandish beauty. If you like stories about unexpected age gap relationships, a man taking in a stray cat of a younger top, breaking the cycle of violence and victimization, you owe it to yourself to read "Stranger."

#50 weeks 500 words #stranger #sungmyeong #chub

hiiii! this will probs sound vague but i wanted to ask: can you recommend 5 movies you think a fujin must watch? they don't need to focus on the sexual identity itself explicitly or be about romance but maybe sth about the vibe, the dynamic, or the flavor that makes u go "omg that's so bl". idk where i'm goin with this, but maybe you get me. u can ignore the msg if it's silly. thanks either way!

anon i would never ignore a silly message, and this is far from silly!

based on what you are asking ("the vibe, the dynamic, the flavor"), i think you are not asking for movies that are important to bl as a genre, but instead movies that i personally love and think everyone should watch and feel like bl. so i tried to think of movies that are not clearly about gay/queer romances or the gay/queer longing of one man for another man and have excluded obvious ones like "brokeback mountain" or the luca guadagnino double feature of "call me by your name" and "queer." i also realized there was a whole subset of movies here that were categorized in my head as "straight movies that feel like bl" ("decision to leave" came to mind immediately, but also something like "comrades: almost a love story"/"tian mi mi"), but i understand not everyone loves asking for "things that feel like bl" only to receive a het romance. what does this leave us with? a lot of very homoerotic films from across the ages!!

in vague chronological order:

1. "maurice" (1987)

immediately i violated my rule of "no movies explicitly about queer characters," but the reality is that every fujin has to watch this movie and no list of "important bl movies" would be complete without this one. it comes up over and over again in the history of bl as a genre and inspired more than one member of magnificent 49ers. the original book (by e.m. forster) is perfectly serviceable, but if i had to hazard a guess, it is really young hugh grant's face, stunningly charming and then slowly cooling into terrified heterosexuality, that launched a thousand fujo ships, just as timothee chalamet would later do (rather in reverse) in "call me by your name."

2. "lawrence of arabia" (1962) / "becket "(1964) / " the lion in winter" (1968)

the unofficial "peter o'toole is caught in some unacknowledged gay shenanigans" trilogy. you don't have to watch all three, but you should watch at least one of them. if you want the most cinematically important one, it's "lawrence of arabia." if you want the most toxically gay one, it's "becket." with "lawrence," there is some debate as to whether the real historical figure himself was gay, but the director even admitted that one of the central relationships (lawrence and ali) was written as gay, so it's hard not to see the way the whole movie functions as a metaphor for a man struggling with self-hate and unbelongness, including with respect to his sexuality. with "becket" and "lion in winter," well, if you like old man yaoi where men desperately and despondently sublimate their feelings into their work (monarchy is a job!), you will like this. o'toole and burton in "becket" have such palpable, overpowering, and tragic chemistry that the movie simply splutters to a feeble end when they're no longer together, a complaint i have made about many a bl. as for "lion in winter," it is the most straight-passing of this group of three, but it does also imply that philip ii was fucking richard just to later blackmail richard's father (henry), and i eat those fucking scenes up with a spoon.

3. "a better tomorrow" (1986) / "hard-boiled" (1992) / "infernal affairs" (2002)

action films with two important male characters are always bl-flavored (see also: "top gun," "john wick 4," "tinker tailor soldier spy") but i weeded out the masses to arrive at this hk-film-noir-ish-sometimes-tony-leung-is-in-it group of three. as above, if you had to watch one of them, the cinematically important one is "hard-boiled," though my heart lives and dies with "infernal affairs." (but not "the departed." fuck "the departed.") "a better tomorrow" is old-school loyalty-as-the-ultimate-romance, and chow yun-fat does such a good job portraying what it looks like for a man to yearn for another man (straightly). in "hard-boiled," he and tony leung are thrown into a marriage of (violent and criminal) convenience; it is less bl-flavored, but entertaining. and if you throw both of those two movies in a blender and add in some early-2000s economic and social anxiety, you might get "infernal affairs," which bravely asks, "can a cop ever be a good person?" and also "is there anything gayer than two men pointing guns at each other in a standoff?" as "john wick 4" will prove later, no, there is not.

4. "the talented mr. ripley" (1999)

if you define bl outside of its country-of-origin, its existence as a genre/marketing tool, its history and its niche, and try to define it purely based on vibes, then you would get "the talented mr. ripley." this was matt damon, jude law, and gwyneth paltrow before they became headline famous, and they are so young and beautiful and vibrant that they feel like manga characters come to life. peter seymour hoffman appears here as a side character so detestable and charming that you know if he were an anime character he'd have a solid contingent of dedicated fans with itabadges and shrines. of course the story is classic bl fare: adoration, jealousy, coveting the luxuries of the rich, a friendship that gets too close and cools too fast, violence. what explicit gayness the screenplay cuts out of the novel is more than adequately replaced by an original ending that is one of the most tragic toxic bl-flavored scenes that could ever be dreamed up, starring none other than a young pre-"pirates of the caribbean" jack davenport flashing the bedroom eyes of a golden retriever top. minghella sets it all in a lush fictional italian village fit for any 70s shoujo magazine. Now That's What I Call BL.

5. "inu-oh" (2021)

i thought long and hard about what to put here, and decided to go with "inu-oh," both because i think it is a monumentally fantastic work of storytelling and animation and adaptation (it adapts the "tales of the heike" into a psychedelic rock opera, by in fact creating a character who goes on to do stage shows that can only be described as "freddie mercury but in feudal japan") and because it is an entry on this list about two male characters coming together, supporting each other, fighting for each other, and making each other into the best versions of themselves. though it is not explicitly about any of these things, it feels like a movie about queerness, about being "born wrong" but turning that into your superpower, about self-acceptance and radical self-love turning into a transformative power. it is, also, about how the world will try to crush all of that. it is a film so wild and weird that it feels like only yuasa masaaki could have made it. but it is, without a doubt, one of the best anime films i've ever seen.

bonus 6. "and then we danced" (2019)

this is very, very explicitly about gay longing and homophobia and coming out and marginalization, so i excluded it from the list initially, but then i thought about it, and i thought about how netflix is going to release "ten dance" soon, and decided i needed more people to know about and watch this film, which is set in georgia and is about a young dancer who becomes enamored of a new dancer who joins their troupe. this film is imbued with so much specificity of place and culture and fear, and it is a film about dance (and i love films about dance!), but above all there is a moment where one character dances to robyn's "honey" for another character, and it is one of the most beautiful and honest depictions of trying to show someone you love them you'll ever see.

#asks

31/50: you can't always desire what you want ("ichigenme: the first class is civil law" and "don't blame me!")

We English-language bl manga fans have not always had it easy, but those of us who are Yoshinaga Fumi fans (and especially those among us who have been fans since at least the mid-2000s) have always eaten well. Most of her work has been licensed, which is unsurprising in the case of her award-winning non-bl series like Ooku and What Did You Eat Yesterday?, but is exceptionally surprising when it comes to her early explicitly bl work like "The Moon and the Sandals," "Truly Kindly," and "Solfege." For this I think we have "Antique Bakery" to thank. A shoujo series (with a prominently gay character) so popular it received an anime adaptation and Japanese, Korean, and Thai live action adaptations (none of which, in my opinion, ever fully captured Yoshinaga's particular charm and style), "Antique Bakery" was the first of Yoshinaga's series to be licensed in English, and for a while it remained understandably her most well-known. It is, as we all know, not enough to be good to make it in the English market; you must also be sellable, and when all else failed, you could always bill Yoshinaga Fumi in the mid-to-late-2000s as "the creator of Antique Bakery."

Which DMP did, when they licensed "Ichigenme: The First Class is Civil Law" under their 801 Media imprint. How else do you sell this two-volume manga, whose plot requires you to have, of all things, a passing understanding of the "zemi," a uniquely Japanese higher education tradition where undergraduates choose a small-group seminar that historically furthered both one's academic and social/professional lives? In this story, straight-laced and determinedly middle-class law student Tamiya joins a zemi purely based on his interest in the subject matter, only to find out that due to the professor's notoriously easy grading, it is The Gathering Place for his well-to-do classmates who don't care at all about studying. Among them is Tohdou, the son of a congressman, who despite his frivolous personality and appearance earnestly pursues first Tamiya's love—and when that fails, his friendship.

#50 weeks 500 words #yamada yugi #yoshinaga fumi #ichigenme #don't blame me #ore wa warukunai

30/50: the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach (tojitsuki hajime, "even just the tip")

In 2009, financial columnist Bruce Watson advanced a theory that has stayed with me ever since: that zombie films are popular during boom times and vampire films are popular during times of imminent recession. Zombies, he argued, represent mindless consumerism and consumption, while vampires represent an ambivalent posture towards decadence. From Watson's column to public radio to online platforms popular in the early-to-mid-2010s like Salon and Slate, the theory spread like wildfire. While the zombie half of Watson's thesis has gotten less love, "vampire films are a recession indicator" has since become a pop culture old wives' tale, with plenty of armchair economist analyses. (What that means for the recent adaptations of "Nosferatu" and GDT's "Frankenstein" both popping up, I will leave for proper film-and-finance columnists.)

I love taking a pop culture theory too seriously. I applaud Bruce Watson for putting a weird idea out there, and then doubling down on it. So I am here to propose a zombie-vampire duality of my own. In bl manga, there are two modes of expressing desire: cannibalism and portraiture.

As you can see in the table above, "cannibalism" need not always be an act of consuming another human's flesh, and "portraiture" need not always be the act of depicting another's likeness in a painting. But they represent two ends of a spectrum: the taking of the object of desire into your own body versus the creation of a separate object with which you imbue your desire.

#50 weeks 500 words #tojitsuki hajime #even just the tip #sakitcho dakedemo

is 50 weeks 500 words a challenge you made yourself? i was thinking of doing the same thing just so i can get myself to write more on my blog and ramble about my favorite media!

yes, i just made it up in my head one day!! i picked 500 words bc that seemed like the sweet spot in terms of giving enough space for me to ramble but not so long as to be a huge burden.... unfortunately with the exception of um possibly the first week, i have never stayed within the realm of 500 words.... oops....

please feel free to take the challenge up yourself! you don't have to limit/force yourself to do 50 weeks or 500 words! i say all the time that writing is a discipline, so i think challenges are an excellent way to force yourself to practice that discipline. it WILL be hard, there WILL be weeks where you just churn out trash, but trust me when i say that will teach you so much about yourself as a writer and a reader!!

#asks

cyberhag

abundance, absence, and everything in between

Hello, and welcome to the blog. It feels only fitting that my first post be dedicated to Boys’ Love – a genre that has given me immense joy, comfort, and meaning over the past few years of engaging deeply with it. And let’s be real: you probably wouldn’t even be here if not for BL… Fortunately, my affection for the genre remains unwavering! Yippee! Even without a main Twitter BL account (which existed initially just to follow BL mangaka and magazines), my love for this medium continues to transcend platforms, timelines, and algorithms.

Last October, I finally crossed off a long-standing item on my bucket list: attending J.Garden, a large-scale doujinshi convention devoted entirely to original BL works. While several well-known commercial mangaka were in attendance, what truly stunned me was the sheer number of independent circles participating. Even a month later, I still find myself in awe of the creative energy that filled that space.

#june when I CATCH YOU #gonna put you in a jar and force you to write more #jk #or am i

Your BL reviews are all amazing!!🌈💐

Because of you, I started Beta off Not Dating, and normally I only want to read alpha x omega, destined lover trope. But I got interested after reading your review and turns out I love this BL manhwa, too 🤩

Have you read The Captive Prince books? It's not really subtext m/m, but I love it so much!! I'm not really a fan of western m/m media (sorry don't mean anything negative). But as I read Capri, somehow I felt like reading BL manga. And I was so surprised when finding out that the author loves Japanese BL (she is a fan of Saezuru) and got a little inspired by older BL, Ai no Kusabi.

Sorry for my rambling

SO glad that you gave "beta off not dating" a chance! there is a whole world out there of omegaverse pairings outside of the standard alpha x omega and i hope you get a chance to explore them!

as for captive prince, yes...! yes. my formative fandom years were spent on livejournal so having read captive prince was sort of a prerequisite. you're absolutely right that i think it owes a lot to jp bl, including bl novels at that time, or to the extent bl novels at the time made their way into the anglophone community. i would also say that as someone who has been online for a long time and always in a bl/slash adjacent capacity, there was a vibrant though small community of western m/m writers at the time, many of whom dabbled in fanfic and occasional art and in posting their own original m/m fic. (for example, manna francis' administration series, which i still love and recommend! i own the print versions!!) i remember one that got some moderate acclaim had many of the same elements of captive prince (ancient greece/roman vibes, a man is forced to pretend to be a slave for Reasons, court intrigue). not to say that c.s. pacat also read that series, but just that when i read captive prince it was all very familiar territory.

one of my favorite things fyi about captive prince are the japanese covers. bc captive prince has so much of the "smell" of japanese bl, it's funny to see the aesthetics come full circle. like yes that is exactly what i imagine captive prince would have looked like, as a bl manga! everyone involved read the syllabus, got the assignment, executed against the rubric, and got an A on the project.

#asks

29/50: three shots at revenge ("the perfect relationship," "cry of despair," and "a declaration of revenge")

In Akkang and Sam's "The Perfect Relationship," Shin Hyukjoon lives with his son Minjae, who is dutiful and loving towards his father, a perfect son in every way. The problem? Shin Hyukjoon's real son, Eunsung, died years ago, and Minjae was responsible for his death. Hyukjoon adopted Minjae with the sole design of one day inflicting on Minjae as much pain as he had to suffer losing Eunsung. But to do so will require Hyukjoon to realize, and come to terms with, the depth of Minjae's feelings for him.

I have a lot of bones to pick with "The Perfect Relationship," but it is deliciously, wickedly faultless in its initial setup. The opening chapter may be the strongest of all three series in this week's post, with the reader kept on edge and in the dark as to the ambiguities of Hyukjoon's double-faced relationship with Minjae and the kind and affectionate son of his monologue, who is revealed to be the dead Eunsung. Meanwhile, Minjae calls out for his father while sleeping with his friends-with-benefits partner Lee Taehyun, a classmate who is at his wit's end trying to woo Minjae and tolerates all kinds of terrible treatment as a result. Akkang plays us so carefully, letting their characters speak honestly while simultaneously lying through their teeth, as they will continue to do so throughout the story. "I love my dad," Minjae says, before jerking off in his father's bed. "I have a son anyone would be proud of," Hyukjoon muses before he vomits up the breakfast Minjae made for him. You could not ask for a better sleight of hand.

#50 weeks 500 words #the perfect relationship #cry of despair #a declaration of revenge

Hello. Do you mind if I give you BL rec for ideas of your BL reviews?

I hope you can find something that you like from here.

All of these BL are my beloved. Here they are :

These BL manga are more than 1 vol and are older works. Most of them are completed. Do you love any of them?

- Complex by Ringo Manda

- Itoshi no Nekokke by Haruko Kumota

- Tsuki to Sandal by Fumi Yoshinaga

- Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai by Kou Yoneda

- A Cruel God Reigns by Moto Hagio

These BL manhwa are all completed and in black and white style. Do you like any of them?

- Dark Heaven by Juns

- To Take an Enemy's Heart by Yusa

- Let Dai by Sooyeon Won

- Unintentional Love Story by Pibi

- A Painter Behind the Curtain by Munamu

Now for the BL manhua, these are all not based on danmei novel, hope you don't mind. Do you like any of them?

- Here U Are by DJun

- Cocoon of the Heart by RosyStarling

- The Other Side of the Mirror by Wen Yuan

Feel free to ignore this. Also, sorry if you don't like any of my favorite BL above...

whew!! what a list!!

this is actually very funny because i was considering doing a "reader's choice" grab bag for the very last entry of "50 weeks 500 words." i may still do that, and there are certainly series on your list that i haven't read!

i've read all of the bl manga you've listed and only one of the bl manhwa, which probably tells you a lot about me lmao. i won't talk about them all, esp. since there is so much that has been written and recommended about "cruel god reigns" and "twittering birds." i am so surprised you brought up manda ringo's "complex." truly feeling like "(takes a drag from my cigarette) haven't heard that name in ages!" i would love to revisit that series at some point. it made me cry like a baby the first time i read it, and it's a very unusual story in that it follows the lives of two people from childhood to old age. i remember being annoyed with the opening volume which at times felt like pedophilia apologia, but towards the end i was so invested in the complicated lives of these two men that ends up being just so damned unsatisfactory. but it has been years, both since it was published (1996) and when i read it (maybe... 2006??) that i truly wouldn't feel comfortable talking about it now. i remember grouping it at the time with other manga like "new york, new york," a melodrama with very imperfect characters and a genre- and period-typical approach to queerness. ah... this makes me want to reread it!

as for the one manhwa on the list, it is "let dai," which was because my library (!) had the physical volumes (!!) when i was in high school (!!!) and then i collected the last volumes myself (!!!!). to be honest, this manhwa did turn me off of reading kr bl at the time; nowadays, i appreciate it as a product of its time and its author's sensibilities, and i think i would trade even the modern bangers of the genre to go back to the finely rendered black-and-white inking of the art. i think what i would compare "let dai" to the most is reading fanfic epics in second- and third-gen kpop fandom. there's an attempt to be psychological and to really get into the character's heads, and there is handwaving at a plot that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but you're really reading it for the high octane francesca lia block vibes. this is angst as art as perfected by moody teenagers who know no one will understand them, and it's true. no one can really understand them, except those who are--or once were, as i was-- moody, pretentious teenagers themselves.

based on your lists, anon, have you ever read yuki ringo's "tamayura," mizushiro setona's "1999 shanghai," or nishida higashi's "negai kanae tamae"? i think you might enjoy them!

#asks

28/50: my body is a cage (psyche delico, "tourou no ori")

Usually, a house is haunted because a presence will not leave it. But sometimes a house is haunted because it will not allow you to leave it. Sometimes a haunted house is a physical location, a tangible collection of rooms and walls and doors, which traps you. Suddenly you become the presence that will not—cannot—leave. Sometimes, the house that is haunted is not a house, but a single dark room, and when it haunts you, it crawls under your skin, takes up residence in your chest, until your heart becomes a door into that room, from which there is no escape. You are the house. The house is the presence. Neither of you can leave.

And so, Psyche Delico's "Tourou no Ori." Delico's eponymous cage of the praying mantis is all at once a concept, a person (or at least a concept of a person), and a physical location for her characters. We open on Ikurou, the second son of the Touma family, coming across his father consorting with a feral young man in the dark prison of a room. The feral young man's smile is predatory. His limbs, long and white, wrap around Ikurou's father's body. "It was as if he was being eaten," like a praying mantis consuming its prey, Ikurou thinks. Years later, Ikurou learns that the feral young man is his older brother Ranzou, kept hidden away and frozen in nonverbal infancy for over 20 years. When their father Touma Seiza dies, leaving behind a vindictive will that grants everything to Ranzou and gives Ikurou no hope of inheritance, not even upon Ranzou's death, Ikurou must decide what to do with Ranzou—whether he is able to free them both from that dark prison at the heart of the family house or whether he will drag them both down into further degradation.

(spoilers for all of "Tourou no Ori" below)

#50 weeks 500 words #psyche delico #tourou no ori

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