Word of the Week: Yaoi

Although I briefly covered this in a previous entry, I felt it necessary to bring it back from the dead. Yaoi refers to the genre of sexually explicit material aimed at women about male on male relationships. All yaoi is pornographic. In other words, it's guy on guy HENTAI for women. There's no plot (that flimsy storyline porn has is not plot!), just sex between guys.

In one story I made the mistake of reading, a guy walked by a fence everyday and noticed another guy always sitting there. Then something along the lines of "I've always been watching you and wanting you," was spoken....and you can guess what happens next. 4 pages of setup, 8 pages of porn. They didn't even give the characters names! *Let that be a lesson to you: If a manga is sitting somewhere, innocently placed on a table, read the back before you read the inside.

Since yaoi is confused for so many different things, here is what yaoi is not:

Rated 18+

Yaoi is not Boy's Love:
The genre of media focusing simply on non-pornographic male on male relationships is Boys' Love, not yaoi. Boys' love has canon relationships, and not just implied romantic undertones. The term "Boys' Love" has replaced "Shounen Ai".

Yaoi is not Homoerotic Shoujo:
 Homoerotic shoujo is shoujo manga featuring a homosexual couple (or homosexual undertones) but does not focus on the relationship. Examples are Loveless and  Gravitation.
 
Yaoi is not Slash:
Too many people confuse yaoi for slash. Slash, named after the “/” symbol denoting pairings is a fan created pairing of two same-sex characters from an existing story, anime, movie, etc. Common anime examples of this are Sasuke/Naruto, every guy in Hetalia/every guy in Hetalia, or Izaya/Shizuo. Slash fan-art or fan-fiction (user written stories) may or may not be pornographic in nature. There are many slash stories that do not involve explicit elements.