Bl vs gl?

So after years of pestering my adult children i finally got two of them to check out viki (yeah). but they asked me a question i could not answer so i come to the community for possible answers. One of my kids is part of the LGBTQ+ community and noticed in the korean drama section there were seveal BL dramas but not a single GL drama. she asked why this was. is it because The BL drama genre is more popular then GL in korea or is it a culture thing and GL is more taboo than BL and isnt addressed? since i didn’t have the answer to this i come to you guys for what to tell her. thanks for any info in advance.

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BL - Well BL tends to be geared actually towards straight women.

According to Thai BL director Aam Anusorn, who is responsible for popular titles like… the fanbase for BL is typically straight women, who like the dramas because they see a “sensitive” side of men

A lot of BL comes from Manga!
I’m not an expert just someone who actually does like the BL dramas!
To My STAR is my favorite!

@sweetybirdtoo
Any help explaining I’m not doing a very good job!!!

I’m not sure if that is why GL is not a big drama pull for the industry.

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Here’s a list of Asian GL dramas:
https://mydramalist.com/list/1zEG8MZ4

Simply put, BL dramas bring in more money because a lot of straight women like watching two pretty boys kiss.

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Well - Well said!!! LOL
Actually I love To My Star for the story - the love story is really good!
That is my TOP rated review on VIKI is To My STAR

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Well… ooh!

Money speaks.

Straight girls like boys, what’s better than one boy? Two boys. So that’s why you get more BLs as compared to GLs.

These are the GLs at Viki



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Thanks for the input. so basically its not about representation as much as it is about money in korea. here in america it tends to be more about representation and since she is gay and not into “pretty boys” this doesn’t help lol. and yes i was aware of the other countries having some GL material for her but she did notice that even in other countries it was still geared more toward BL. maybe it is an asian thing as i am not sure if american women watch BL since there are very few shows either way here in america .short of some racy shows on hbo or showtime. but thanks for the input i will pass it on.

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In general lesbians are even more invisible unless in porn for straight males who think it’s cool to have sex with 2 girls.

In European shows it sometimes happens that a side character says something like “oh btw i’m not interested in dating guys” but I don’t remember a lesbian character with any important role.

The best representation about and for lesbian characters I’ve seen so far was in South American shows, usually from Mexico, once from Brazil.

ControlZ is a very good show that includes different aspects of the lgtb+ community, Who murdered Sarah has an interesting gay character who has a way more meaningful storyline appearance than the typical gay alibi character of US shows.

In Asia women have less rights, they’re still very focused on marriage and giving birth to kids. In South Korea women are expected to dress nicely, use Make-up all the time, 2/3 of Korean females below age 25 already got plastic surgery … the sexism is terrible there. Young Koreans who don’t want to live like a doll often feel the need to cut their hair and wear men’s clothes which could end in comments by their own parents that they have a “son” now.

Although today the BL genre in Asia has usually females as fans you should consider that gay lovers are a very traditional thing in Asia, probably more than in Europe because they weren’t Christs like Europeans and the ancient emperors also had gay concubines and the opera too (in a different way/context than European actors because the Christian religion removed the idealistic view of ancient Greeks who also said gay males are the “top” of a human being. Different to ancient Asian emperors the ancient Greeks had to choose between an either straight or gay life while the Asian emperors could have women for their heirs and male concubines at once, so in reality they were bi and not gay…)

If society wasn’t focused only on male needs and perspectives there probably would be (more) lesbian and old women in TV stories but both rarely exist because they’re not a “birth giver” anymore so storywriters exclude them.

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I apologize if I miss understood your question and really gave you no good information. I hope that maybe the list on MDL that @vivi_1485 found might help.

I tried to see if there was a thread here for people to post GL - Maybe change your title and maybe you can find more of the genre that way??? Not sure if there really isn’t any good content. This is not my wheelhouse so I don’t know…

It would be nice for your daughter to have good nice love stories to watch hopefully some of those listed on VIKI might be - hopefully this will change for better content in the future.

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Who doesn’t? :sweat_smile: :heart:

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In games, there are nowadays more lesbians. E.g. “The last of us 2” or “Life is Strange” for example. On the other hand, there isn’t as much “Yuri” as “Yaoi” (male counterpart). But there have been Anime such as Utena or “Maria-sama ga miteru”. If there were as many people that watch Yuri/Girl’s love as there are for Yaoi/BL/Shounen Ai there might’ve been more, but I suppose men or a majority of the women rather go for other stuff.

Here in Germany they released for example “Queer as folk” or “The L World” quite a few years ago which as well covered these topics though. However, not exactly as shown in BL or GL.

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It’s not my cup of tea :sweat_smile:

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deleting this

Homosexuality is not widely accepted in South Korea and many other Asian countries and the LGBT community faces discrimination. As a result, there are very few films and dramas that explore the issues of the LGBT community or feature LGBT characters. It is a very small percentage. I would not say that GL is more taboo than BL. Homosexuality in general is taboo.

The BL genre target audience is not gay men but straight women. The roots of BL are from the Yaoi Mangas. These mangas are written by straight women for straight women. The BL dramas are the same-the target audience is straight women and many of the writers are women. So the BL dramas are more popular and commercially successful than the GL dramas. This is why there are more BL dramas than GL dramas- BL dramas make more money.

That being said, there are 2 Asian GL dramas that might interest your daughter. Unfortunately, not available here at Viki.

Out of Breath is short Korean webseries available with English subtitles at YouTube,
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuUQH5CiOw6n9Z0O5ytuQY2EFuvbF_7DX

Fragrance of the First Flower is from Taiwan.
This drama is ongoing and final episode airs Dec. 10th. It’s available with English subtitles at Gagaoolala. Here is more information from MDL:
https://mydramalist.com/700737-fragrance-of-the-first-flower

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That’s not true at all. But I’m too sick to expand on the topic right now.

Depends on the location and time.

I wrote it in a more simplified way. For detailed history @dale_seymour196220 can check scientific sources.

Anyway there was no “big” time for lesbians anywhere as it used to be for gays in closer past (with that I mean also the art aspect that was popular in a way earlier, later and now. If anyone has seen something similar related to lesbians please tell us about it). In this article the aspect I already mentioned - the lower rank of women within society - is also mentioned.

https://www.aventinus-online.de/altertum/allgemeines/art/Homosexualitaet/html/ca/28916eeb3e1bfbe29ecae6adc939868a/indexee27.html

PS:

I was thinking about certain stereotypes of yaoi manga and certain aspects of ancient times that have some aspects in common, but maybe you’d need to know many yaoi stories to notice them. (And I didn’t find the article about it yet. I’ve read about that topic some time ago and didn’t save the article).

I hope your health gets better soon :blossom:

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and the explanations above are also very detailed

Btw, it reminds me of

And I have a weird feeling to see how much is currently produced in SK, just not to leave the field open to others.

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@spaufler_89

Auf Wikipedia hatte ich es nicht gelesen, da könnte man es leicht wiederfinden.

Das, was ich meine, war länger ausgeführt mit verschiedenen Zeiträumen innerhalb der Antike und den Entwicklungen/Gebräuchen.

Wenn man nicht so viel lesen/lange suchen will, ist Wikipedia gut als Überblick :slightly_smiling_face:

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That’s perfectly fine. Lots of other genres from which to choose on Viki. :grin:

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Just Asia, you think? Try Eastern Europe. Try the Russian Federation. Try the Southern U.S. States. Just because same-sex marriages are now legal in a couple of places, it means very little. Plenty of folks still living in the Stone Age who judge and hate… :pensive:

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