“Everyone in this BL Fandom is a Man” Manga Retrospective

This idea was too good for me.

Tapirclip

Jan 22, 2024

“Everyone in this BL fandom is a man” is a one-shot manga I made in 2021. Here it is in its entirety:

(*Reads right-to-left)

I was really happy with these character personalities, and thought carefully about how they would play off of each other for maximum 4koma hijinks.

Unfortunately when I showed this to one of my friends, they laughed in my face (directly, in real life) saying I just did AniApt with humans.

There’s the type-A square, the femme, the cute one, and the stinky one.

Skunk is too pure to call himself a misogynist and behave so aggressively, but I see the overlapping aesthetic. I was a little too focused inward to realize these parallels, because I really, in my heart, thought this BL crew was pretty original. I would love to make more stories with this colorful cast.

The fact that I’m just doing AniApt again wasn’t why I never made more (originality is overrated, anyway). I legitimately couldn’t think of any self-contained episodic stories for this premise. My favorite editor feedback said I was just setting up for a 4koma, but there’s no central conflict. I needed to think of something for them to do.

The biggest plot line I wanted to do with this would be about the main heroine and the trans woman (sorry, I’m bad at thinking of names)

Protag-chan realizes that one of her “male” coworkers is actually the “crossdresser” from her BL meetup
The coworker comes out as a trans woman to protag-chan, and has an arc about socially transitioning
The two eventually fall in love, therefore making the central romance in a BL manga a yuri (*this is a very high IQ subversion of expectations if I do say so myself)

And that was all I could think of. A romance, that would span multiple chapters. I wasn’t sure what purpose the rest of the cast would serve, and I feared the BL fandom gimmick would be abandoned immediately. It would go from “Check out this wacky cast of characters united by a common interest” to “Check out this adult yuri romance.” Total bait and switch.

Plenty of 4koma hangout manga have their ship teases and romance, but - if we think of series like “Comic Girls” “New Game” or even “Lucky Star” the yuri isn’t necessarily the backbone of the plot. The characters are still united by something bigger (making manga, being game devs, being classmates), and the shipping blooms from there.

Of course, you can do a 4koma where romance is the core thesis (please see “Jingai-San no Yome”). But in my mind, I wanted this to feel like Lucky Star. A light, funny hangout manga that centered around fandom culture.

And then, the imposter syndrome set in.

I don’t have that much experience in real-life “fandom culture”. But the people who regularly show up to manga clubs, presumably, also financially support manga. Could I risk such cultural appropriation? I’d be sniffed out for what a phony I am immediately.

The more I thought about how I haven’t experienced this, the more I felt like a real fuckin’ dork. What’s wrong with me if I’ve spent this much time on manga yet felt profoundly bored by every “anime club” I’ve attended? And when I’m in that mindset of dwelling on the worst traits of myself, it’s hard to brainstorm fun, novel scenarios for OC’s. If I was a little more stable, I’d find a way to push through.

I’ve also been gradually drifting away from the 4koma structure. I primarily used it as a crutch so I wouldn’t have to think about panel layout. I rarely executed a proper kishotenketsu in my 4koma manga and just did, like, whatever, man. Someday I’d like to return to it- and now that I write that out, I realize how badly I miss it.

Misc. thoughts:

Nyanko was supposed to be a placeholder name, since there’s already a famous Nyanko. I just forgot to change it. Oopsie.
This is even funnier when you read the storyboard and see its full of other anime placeholder names.
“Astral Fight Exia” is the same fictional anime that Skunk from AniApt is into. The pages in BL fandom were repurposed from a short Matsukaze/Ginro comic I did:

The Cute One relies on his iPad to live translate. If the story went on, I’d want to put in little relatable moments that come with relying on tech to communicate.
I’d want The Misogynist to eventually confront his misogyny. I have my suspicions he’s repressing some Gay Thoughts. But that’s boring, so I’d have to think of crazier reasons for his bad behavior (but still make him gay)
The incident of the Cute One mistaking the yaoi couple for a yuri couple is, tragically, based on real events. Not related to translation error, it was based on a friend horrendously misreading character designs.
Megane-kun’s selling Dr. Stone doujinshi since that was my main fandom at the time.
Megane-kun is my favorite character from this. Here’s a doodle I did of him back in 2021:

I’d like to reroll him into another series. I really like his design. He’s like Kinro (Dr. Stone) but fluffier. And he’s never rolling his eyes at Ginro (my beloved), so that makes him infinitely more attractive than Kinro.

When I joined LumeBento, I felt a new inspiration to revive this series- but ultimately decided it’s better I work towards PolyMonFur’s success before I add more to my plate. I updated Main Girl’s design for a hypothetical Lumebento serialization: