Sunlight-Colored Roses

Boy’s Love Manga Publishers

Iris Print

8/18/07

Mentions my stories The Soul of the Rose, Dark Virtue, The Last Romance RPG.

Why would a girl be interested in a love story between boys?

I think because it is something new and different. Conventional genres can become tired. Boy’s love romance stories have tropes and plot devices different from those of Western romance stories.

Plus, not everyone likes to put herself in a romance story. Western romance novels have become more like role-playing fantasy, with explicit cover art. I feel the market is targeting a demographic older than myself.

The lives and loves in boy’s love romances don’t have anything to do with me. They are windows into an entirely different kind of relationship. They are romantic fantasies.

I want to write my own boy’s love story after reading them, a story with a Japanese setting and characters.

The publisher Iris Print publishes these kinds of stories.

I feel like boy’s love stories are really different than (Western) gay romance novels. Gaywyck, by Vincent Virga (1980) had a more literary feel than boy’s love stories. Gaywyck didn’t have the same tropes.

It seems like the conventions and tropes in boy’s love stories have their roots in aspects of Japanese culture.

The stories I like best have a humorous tone. Dark moments will be lightened with a little joke. The characters themselves aren’t necessarily meant to be taken very seriously by the reader. Example: Until the Full Moon, by Sanami Matoh.

One thing I don’t like about the boy’s love stories is how women are often portrayed negatively. Mothers often have an important role in the stories, such as in Little Butterfly. Girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, and sisters are often foes. Perhaps the younger women add tension to the story because they could gain the love interest’s attention and steal him.

• The question of honor. Especially in an education setting, the characters engage in competition (not usually with each other, but to gain the other). This usually have comic or hyperbolic effect. To expound, also an honorable nature and formal manner, which has strong ties to Japanese tradition. One’s culture and mannerisms have impact in the boy’s love novel, and often characters are concerned to an annoying degree about how they measure up.
• The uke. This translates quite directly to a male/female dynamic and helps the female audience to identify. The story is told from the point of view of the uke, who is normally innocent and does not even consider himself gay. He is normally very uncomfortable with any expression of sexuality and with the feelings the seme provokes in him. Passionate moments are almost always truncated with the uke’s panic or hysteria with a humor effect. The uke insists upon a love commitment before sexual relations and normally feels quite insecure even after a commitment. The sexual act is equated with losing something irrevocable that goes much deeper than virginity, and obviously there is no risk of an unwanted pregnancy.
• The seme. More experienced, almost always bisexual. Conventionally an attitude of devil may care, and a marked lack of embarrassment about homosexuality. The seme does not display insecurity with himself, even if he can be moved to jealousy. The seme has a possessive attitude over the uke and takes the relationship for granted along the way, eliminating the opportunity for the specific words of commitment the uke so desperately needs. Problems result from noncommunication, especially as in Only the Ring Finger Knows, when I spent most of the book not understanding at all why they couldn’t have a simple conversation to resolve the book-long misunderstanding. As in straight romances, this can be considered a flaw that will not hold a reader’s interest more than once. The seme always dresses well, has a high status in society and is well-versed in culture and mannerism. While the uke trembles over which fork to use at dinner, the seme breezes through complex social situations with subconscious manners.
• Homosexuality and society. Gayness is never persecuted. Characters responding to the lovers are never flabbergasted to see two boys holding hands. This is very different from gay fiction, where societal issues are explored. In Gaywyck, they were mentioned somewhat less seriously as “society’s disapprobation,” always with a tragic feeling, but not insurmountable. The clear difference here is that unlike in Gaywyck, the lovers are not going to have to live in their own isolated paradise to be together. On the contrary, secondary characters are only too happy to interfere before and after a commitment. This is normally when female rivals are heartbroken, etc. to learn they have no hope of competing. There is some light discussion when the seme is a noble and needs an heir, but I have never seen a boy’s love really set up to handle that issue. That’s probably out of the genre’s league. Mothers and fathers might be a little disappointed, but they get over it quickly. In general the lovers do not live with a fear of embarrassment about “coming out.” Likewise, there is not the support network as in gay fiction, of other gay couples fighting “those battles.” The gay pair may be the only boy lovers in the novel.
Other ideas
• Stories by season. A series of four, one novella for each season. Historical stories in five parts or so.
o Autumn, names. Japan. The season of simplicity.
• He meets him at a festival, only to learn that he is noble, and engaged. Despite this dilemma, the noble takes a keen interest in the protagonist and finds some way to maintain contact with him. Tea ceremony. The Japanese season of simplicity and humility in autumn.
• Wabi sabi. Beauty of things imperfect, humble, incomplete. Autumn Equinox is a time for remembrance of the dead. October is the time to use up the last of the old things. November is the time to start anew.
• Research topics: wabi sabi; nineteenth-century Japan; tea ceremony; Japanese landscape and geography; Japanese culture and manners; Japanese flowers in autumn; Japanese architecture; kimono; flower arrangement; Japanese names, especially nineteenth-century; traditional foods; traditional holidays and festivals observed.
o Winter. Russia.
•
o Spring. China.
• The erhu. Cherry blossoms.
o Summer. India.
• Flower themes, to echo the flower drawings in manga.
Readability
• Short paragraphs
• Florid, enticing sentences
• Action, not exposition
• Maintain focus on romance