Shounen ai OUT, yaoi IN
What I felt in many stories with shounen ai and just boom suddenly there was seggs
fr it's like seeing my own kids grow up and do grown up stuff
shounen ai is not even a thing its all BL guys
BL is the board global term for all romance featuring exclusively men
Shounen Ai and yaoi are jp terms with shounen ai lit js meaning "boys love" usually features very little sexual themes/no smut whereas yaoi originated from a slang to describe doujins that were "no plot, just porn" so... Self-explanatory
you have some incorrect information- yaoi is a term that emerged from doujin circles, yes, but shounen ai was never a thing in japan like it is in western bl spaces (somehow). it is a japanese word, but if you ask any japanese fujoshi about "shounen ai" they would just look at you confused; shounen ai could at most be referring to bishounen manga (precursor of current bl) that were published in shojo magazines at a very specific time around the 1970s. yaoi then emerged with comiket & doujin culture in 1980s. then, as the stories started becoming more varied and grew beyond being just pointless smut, the authors wanted to break free of the stigma of the word yaoi and so they started using the word BL as early as the mid 1990s. today, pretty much all commercial boy x boy manga is marketed (and called) under the BL label, no matter if its family friendly or sexually explicit (except for geicomi- yes, "gay comic" (that is incidentally also called by its dated term "bara" in the western spaces)); the word "yaoi" is also somewhat of a relic to jp fujoshis and they get surprised when they see foreigners use it unironically lol well i do also use it sometimes bc it sounds funnier is some contexts & memes; actually younger jp fujos today might even not even know word altogether, which is shocking considering its widespread use & resurgence in the west. overall, i do see a trend of dated terms persisting outside of japan for some reason, perhaps bc back then the otaku subculture was more niche and slightly more "authentic" with the prevalence of fandubs & such that prioritised "pure" translation of information, as opposed to the current time where the mainstream culture prioritises mass appeal & palatability which doesn't require deep connection with the subculture itself...? just a theory, i don't really know. but the fact that there are more people calling themselves "weebs" (but ironically, there's an irony epidemic too) rather than "otaku" these days makes you think...
if you actually read until here gg, i'm sorry for the insane rambles; i am a bit interested in the history of subcultures. plus as a fujoshi of around 11 years, i was there when this yaoi-shounen ai misinformation started spreading a lot around 2016 (?) to the point even i believed it for a bit as a green fujo lol
Lok preah b, woah thank you, wow, you're actually quite nice and knowledgeable, thank you fujo senpai lolololol
hehe you're welcome, the more you know :D
Aside from the crazy side character... My kids are now adults and reading this feels so wrong holy shit