All Entries in the "Community" Category

Webcomic: Go Read OGLAF (NSFW)

So, I just spent the most awesome hour reading through an online webcomic called OGLAF.COM. You should too.

Yaoi Review: Party Favors

Alex brings a yummy chocolate cake to a manga BBQ and leaves with a bag full of yaoi to review. Read on to find out whether Kumiko Suekane’s “world without girls” fantasy Once Upon A Glashma or Lily Hoshino’s virgin-sacrificing Chocolate Surprise are worth dipping your chips into.

Straight Friends Don’t Get It? Show Them: “Are You Straight?”

A lot of folks I showed this video to — both straight and gay — found it to be perfect to show to their friends who don’t quite “get it”. It certainly helps bring home the subtler forms of prejudice and ignorance that are hard for all of us to shake. Since cool people come to this blog, I decided it was worth sharing here. And let’s face it – he’s a cutie.

Amazon excluding LGBT material from searches!

Amazon seemed to have decided to unilaterally exclude LGBT books from their internal searches. So… what’s going on?

Alex on Twitter

You can follow Alex on Twitter now, if you’d like. His username is alexwoolfson. Just don’t expect him to only talk about yaoi — Alex gets his geek on in a variety of ways.

Who Really Reads Yaoi in English?

Communications professor and literary author Dru Pagliassotti has written a scholarly paper about Western yaoi fandom revealing the results of a 2005 online survey. Alex links and shares some of her provocative findings– with a few caveats.

Thoughts on Proposition 8

As many of you know, Proposition 8 was a successful ballot measure that amended the California State constitution to exclude gay couples from civil marriage. I don’t usually talk about general political things on this blog, but I responded to a comment from russketeer with enough detail that I thought it might be worth it’s own post.

How To Keep Manga Fans Out Of Jail

A manga fan is arrested in his own home for owning manga for personal use. The next time it could be you. Here are the details of the case and one thing you can do right now to help change the law.

How To Find Bara In English

Like any blogger, I keep an eye on my Web site’s stats and visitors and I’ve discovered that a significant number of readers come here though search engines looking for “bara” — that is, Japanese gay male romance manga written by gay men for gay men (referred to by some as “muscle yaoi” due to the fact that the character design often is fairly muscular — particularly compared to traditional yaoi-style bishonen.)

Should Yaoi Creators Fight Sexism?

My very good friend Bill S. recently sent me a link to an article by creator Joss Whedon (whom I greatly admire and occasionally take to task) titled “Let’s Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death.”

You should read it. It’s a well-written piece and fits nicely into a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately:

By creating this book, am I making the world less safe for women?

How To Avoid Getting Screwed As A New Freelance Artist

I’ve just discovered this great article over at Painter Creativity called “Top 10 Lies told to Naive Artists and Designers.” It basically sums up on one page the first half of the “welcome to the business” speech I give to new freelance filmmakers.

Go Check Out MangaBlog

So, I’m hard at work on a new script right now, which gives me a great excuse to refer my Gentle Readers to some of my favorite blogs (to make up for my lack of any new 72 page articles this week, of course. ) And near the top of my list has to be MangaBlog, written with wit and style by Brigid Alverson. A general manga site (but yaoi friendly), it keeps me up to date on the latest happenings both in the general manga scene and the manga blogosphere in particular. I especially like Brigid’s manga reviews which are pithy, helpful and often very funny.

What is Bara?

In online discussions about yaoi and gay men appreciating yaoi, the subject of bara — Japanese gay male comics targeted at a gay male audience — invariably gets mentioned, but rarely does anyone seem to have much information to offer. I myself have often been curious about finding out more about this genre, but as the big publishers here seem to have taken little notice of it, I’ve had difficulty finding out anything of substance. (Let’s face it, even my ever-trusty Wikipedia draws a blank.)

Well, Tina Anderson again comes to our rescue with her excellent overview of the topic in Bara is Not BL…but it Could Be?

Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi

Recently, in private correspondence, a woman asked me this question:

You want to make Yaoi? Why? I think I’d like to see you make something by a gay man for a gay man that might appeal to me on my level. 0_0.

Even though I’ve tried to address the larger issue of this in previous posts, this question brings up a specific point that I feel is worth responding to.

Should Yaoi Be Just For Women?

Yaoi is written predominantly by and for women — but is it “just for women”? Yaoi works feature guys falling in love, guys kissing and guys having sex — but is it actually “not homosexual”?

Who “owns” yaoi and why this is important is the subject of this article.