TW: Sexual Assault, Abuse
I don’t remember how I became so involved in the world of Boy’s Love, or yaoi. One moment, I was in the public library near my middle school, on the ground with my back to a bookshelf, leafing through the Bone comic series. The next thing I knew, I was sprinting marathons and reading fifty chapters of Blue Sky Complex or Love Stage in one night.
I’m still sprinting marathons, just more expensive versions (as in, I read the entirety of BJ Alex in two nights, spending all my coins on Lezhin to do so). I feel like it’s more acceptable now to show that one has an interest in BL; it’s like a rite of passage as a young (Asian) woman, and anima and manga have become more accepted in general. I now follow accounts on Instagram that post screenshots and images from various yaoi. Usually in the caption, there’s the title of the manhwa. And occasionally in the comments, there is someone asking, ‘Is this toxic?’.
Reading these comments has made me reflect on my own tastes in BL manga. Even as a middle schooler, I knew how idealistic these BL stories were. Families of the love interests were typically accepting, and somehow people were openly gay, despite the fact that Japan has been known to be quite conservative about sexuality (keep in mind that some of the OG BL’s were produced back in the 2010s). I wanted to immerse myself in this beautiful, ideal, romantic world. Again and again, I found myself returning to the question of ‘is this problematic? To try and read these stories of LGBTQ+ that are unrealistic, told by a straight woman? Am I somehow fetishizing gay relationships and gay men?’
If stories of two men happily falling in love in an ideal, unrealistic world portrayed through the ‘heterosexual gaze’ gave me such a headache, imagine my feelings when I first read Killing Stalking. I remember reading thirty chapters, because it was all that was available, and then never having the desire to return to it again. I only finished it years later, not exactly enthusiastically, but it was such a fad, and I wanted to be in the know. To this day, I still find Instagram accounts of fan art of Oh Sangwoo, portrayed as an attractive, well-liked character in the manhwa. People publicly fantasize about this character on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr. Did I mention that he’s a killer with a heart of ice, and purposely broke the legs of the ‘love interest’, Yoon Bum, to keep him trapped? The artist’s intent was not to popularize this type of abusive relationship; her intent was to display trauma and abuse, and how it affects both of her main characters, and (speculating here) to also write a Boy’s Love psychological thriller — an uncommon blend of genres.
Ever since Killing Stalking, there has been a slew of toxic webtoons and manhwa: Yours to Claim, Painter of the Night, Blind Play, just to name a few. In my opinion, these are toxic because it shows a relationship where it is okay to abuse a difference in power, manipulate your partner, use violence to create tension and thrill, and clearly one partner in the relationship is in pain, or disturbed. In Yours to Claim, I have a strong feeling that Yahwi will be picked as the ‘final partner’ in the love triangle, even after how Yahwi treated Jooin. He slapped Jooin out of anger, and didn’t really stand up for Jooin when he was being shunned for his sexuality, despite the fact that Yahwi had social influence to do so. I’m sure Yahwi will go through a whole character arc of becoming a better person and win Jooin back. Still, I will be extremely disappointed if Yahwi and Jooin end up together, especially when Cain, the other side of the love triangle, has been nothing but a good partner (supportive, empathetic, caring). Painter of the Night shows a clear power imbalance between Lord Seungho and Na-kyum, a peasant. Na-kyum is clearly intimidated and scared of Lord Seungho and his erratic outbursts. Lord Seungho sexually assaults Na-kyum at any opportunity. Yet in Season 2 of Painter of the Night, we find Na-kyum wanting to get closer to Lord Seungho and starting to have affectionate feelings towards him.
Yaoi has always been toxic in certain niches; you can find abusive, manipulative partners and poor portrayals of gay relationships in the undercurrents of the most popular publications as well as doujins since the early 2000s. Toxic yaoi just has never been so trendy. When something is trendy, not only does that thing become acceptable and normalized, but it becomes popular and adopted without second thought. The focus becomes not on how toxicity moves the plot and character development along; instead, the plot and character development centers around toxicity. Instead of seeing how abuse shapes a person and drives them to change and fight for a better life, we instead follow a story of how an unfortunate soul gets manipulated to get back together with his hunky but abusive ex. And that’s the whole story.
To expand further, creators use the idea of abuse and manipulation as a substitute for character development, and to create tension (which includes sexual tension). In a good story, there can be toxic elements that add nuance instead of being this overpowering, brute force machine that drives the plot into the ground. Toxic elements, such as setting, does not make for a toxic story. The omegaverse is where I’ve seen most of the sexual assault, abuse, and manipulation. This is because the omegaverse world creates greatly imbalanced power dynamics between the alphas, betas, and omegas. Yet, there are still wonderful, sweet relationships that take place in this world, because characters have overcome this societal power dynamic and built a relationship on trying to understand each other.
Like any trend, I believe this will pass. If these types of ‘thriller’, manipulative, abusive, tense storylines are your cup of tea, and you recognize that the relationships in these stories are not normal, more power to you. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
