True, I feel like nowadays authors are obsessed with turning men that think they’re straight into discovering they are bisexual and the only way they do that is by making them get raped, then even after they get raped or end up “liking it” the author still doesn’t say the character might be bisexual instead “straight man with an exception/only gay for you”
I feel like this has been the case since forever
Haven't read bl manhwa in a long time because they tend to get very cliché and typical. Mangas and manhuas are better for my sanity...
so many of them are like 80% smut and 10 chapters long
I miss niche bls
so many of them are just fetish works. no actual story, just 2 guys going at it. and often times the bottom looks like a child. really makes you wonder whats on these authors' hard drives..
Me 222 I miss it so much I feel some type of grief knowing that there could never be any of bl or manhwa that can be the same
the new bl that annoy me are doing a lot of the same things as the old bl (like okane ga nai, viewfinder old) so to me the problem isn't that new bl is failing to meet whatever standard the old bl had. it's that the same old plots, tropes and cliches are being recycled to hell and back. most obnoxious of these being the rape-to-love plot or the use of rape as a smut catalyst. sex sells, and what easier way to jump right into the action than having one party be taken by force? spares you the time and effort of establishing a mutual dynamic and all that. (eyeroll)
around 5 to 7 years ago it seemed that there was a surge in bl doing unusual or atypical things and rejecting standard plots and cliches for more unique plots. not that those were the majority or anything, it seemed like a significant undercurrent. so if you started reading bl around then, I could see how it seems like the new series feel worse than the older series.
i think there's more variety in certain ways now, but the trendy stuff that gets popular is all in a certain obnoxious mold. simplistic, easy to understand plots carried by decent to good art that trade time spent on character development for whatever yields the most smut scenes for the least effort, the more hardcore the better. or at least it feels that way. could be the current reactionary times. so people are retreating into a type of sexual conservatism that seems bold and subversive, but is really the same old nonsense.
there's an axiom somewhere that says that most of the output of any given genre or medium ranges from just okay, meh, mediocre, to downright trash. survivorship bias means the that the good stuff sticks around and carries the reputation of the genre, so it's easy to remember the past as better than it was.
What with the sudden new bl? Like most of them contain so much unnecessary rape and jealousy moment it genuinely make no sense. Even story without that it the fact the story or the plot is genuinely not that good. I feel so disappointed and sad that this is what end up being published and push rather than genuine story. Everytime a new bl is published i like to think it might be good but I get disappointed each time.