Admittedly, I follow the Romance genre because of the interesting fanbase. They’re just cool people, as long as I remain outside, looking in. I guess there was some anon snark when it was announced this weekend when Caridad Ferrer’s book Adiós to my Old Life won the RITA™ for Best Contemporary Romance; the title is a YA romance title. 0_o. What bothered the bloggers at SB was the anonymous comments that sprang up expressing anger and frustration over a young-adult title wining for contemporary romance. It doesn’t shock me because my fandom is loaded with underage fen, or of age fen who are immature and have ZERO qualms about posting anonymously. It’s like clouds in the sky, it’s so common.

What I found interesting about all this was, that a YA romance novel won the award for Best Contemporary Romance. Poster Stephenie Doyle expressed her disappointment, not with the title itself, but the fact that YA romance won out over romance written for her age group:

My disappointment comes from the idea if that if the BEST that single title romance had to offer all year was a YA -then I think that reflects poorly on single-title romance. [...] Maybe I have to re-adjust my idea of romance – but when I think of teenagers – I don’t think of a HEA. Too much growing to do.

One wonders, why isn’t there a YA category? Obviously young women read romance books, right?

MY THOUGHTS ON MANGA, AND BL FOR TEENS…

I guess I always feel a bit weirded out when I see Global manga titles that are obviously written for younger audiences, placed into award categories with Global manga titles that are NOT for younger audiences. Should books written for different age groups, win an award meant for something more mature? That’s not a even a valid question is it–I mean, all this talk about manga for age groups, the truth is that no matter what age the manga reader, the mature reader will still regress and keep reading the YA works, and the young-adults will always transgress by reading the more mature manga. Each has it’s own crack-factor, and so no one feels shame for crossing the lines.

Will the best made Global-manga work be a YA title? And if so, what will that tell those outside the fandom about Global manga.

In regard to my own genre, I don’t like the idea of making Global BL for teens. I guess it has its purpose, but mainly because I don’t like what happens to the genre itself when young buyers dominate the market and publishers cater only to them; we get bookstores loaded with junk-food BL that’s really nothing short of softcore boring – I’m not saying the books have to be porn, but BL is mostly an erotic genre, sometimes [more often these days since the readership in Japan has tired of plotless sex] there’s more mature stories being licensed – but they’re still the minority. A portion of adult BL fen I’ve spoken to find mature [not porn] themes in other manga genres, so they often come to yaoi for the smut only; while another portion exclusively read BL, and want non-erotic maturity in their stories, and resent having works they feel are worth merit, go unlicensed because they’re not ‘cash in the pocket’ licenses.

All this catering to young adults is fine, but these girls are going to grow up… and I think the only company that’s addressed this is DMP. [Yeah I know...] I honestly don’t think 801 was even created to bring over ‘more explicit titles’. I know that was this was their sound-byte, and it was clever and got attention, but I don’t think that was their bottom line goal. I honestly feel 801 is there for the legion of June-Manga yaoi fans who are going to look for something more mature; they’re going to grow up and want something with a bit more substance–hey, here’s 801! The DMP message is, don’t leave ‘the Sanctuary.’

While I don’t like obvious attempts with Global BL to score young adult readers, [I won’t name the publisher, I don't need the drama] I do appreciate some Global BL publishers efforts to educate young fans about BL – it can be more than just porn comics. I think BL-Twist is trying this–nothing in their magazine will be R-rated. The comics will feature romance only, not sex; the articles will educate, and the reviews will enlighten. Rather than building a fan base, BL-Twist appears to want to ‘improve the quality of the fanbase’. I can’t argue with that I suppose, even if I’m incapable or writing for it.

Will companies like Dramaqueen ever be about softcore Global BL? Sure, some of their RUSH titles aren’t explicit at all, while others are out and out raunchy. Kitty Media has shown me that, with their only Global BL license [Incubus], they’re all about keeping it as close to the Japanese porn standard as possible. It’ll be interesting to see what some of these other publishers comes up with in terms of Global BL, some I can see all ready are going to the ‘money’, keeping it clean enough [and dumb enough] to access the youthful market. (=_=); I wonder if this is how it started in Japan?