You’re correct, but some people are just ignorant and misinformed on this.
OKAY THANKS FOR THE CLARIFICATION. I'VE ALWAYS WONDERED THIS BUT NEVER ACTUALLY ASKED A QUESTION CAUSE AT ONE POINT I JUST DECIDED I WAS WRONG ABOUT IT AND LET IT GO BUT JUST A FEW MINUTES AGO I STARTED THINKING ABOUT IT AND THOUGHT "But this makes more sense...."
I actually have information about this on my account if you’re interested. Anyway, I always say BL, and if they want specifics, I say smutt or fluff.
*smut
It’s 3am.
LOL Not judging your typo(s) dw
But wow that is something new I learned today!
And I do like the "system" implemented.
It definitely makes finding specific BLs easier.
Yaoi/Shounen Ai
I will also confirm that you are correct. I think other people just don’t realize the difference or even know that there is one.
But I still think you have some misconceptions… here’s a little more info for you.
Shounen Ai actually translates exactly to “boys love” and it’s really just a subgenre of manga that focuses on the emotional and romantic relationships between male characters. So, this doesn’t necessarily mean no smut. It just means that the story will focus more of emotional love rather than physical. But, I do agree that this tends to mean that there are very little to no sex scenes in Shounen Ai, and if there are they are heavily filtered.
Also, the word “smut” can mean more than just sex. There can be many things that could be considered smut. Smut is basically just erotic writing, pictures, images, videos, etc. this can involve sex, kissing, touching, language, etc. Plain and simple, it’s anything sexual and physical.
Lastly is Yaoi, which is also known as “boys love” and focuses on romantic relationships between male characters, which often involves NSFW content. This doesn’t mean it necessarily has to contain smut. Basically, it usually just doesn’t focus on emotional aspects as much as Shounen Ai would.
Furthermore, the two terms can be used almost interchangeably because there are many factors that could affect whether a manga or anime is called BL, Yaoi, or Shounen Ai. And they could be called more than one too. I think this is why many people mix them up a lot even when it may be obvious for a certain manga.
One example of this would be when characters are younger (high school age) and are not 18+. The author may wait to do smut scenes until later in the characters lives. This can result in a manga being Shounen Ai and Yaoi, which I have seen before many times.
I hope this is helpful! Lmk if you have any questions.
Okay, thanks haha yeah, lots of people don’t know about it! The two genres are definitely helpful. I always feel weird saying “shounen ai” though :3
OKAY
I'm probably gonna try to ask this question again later cause most people arent active around this time but what do yall refer to these mangas as??
Like me personally I've always thought the general term was BL (Boys' Love)
And then inside the BL genre there's sub genres, yaoi and shounen ai
Yaoi stood for smut and shounen ai stood for boys love with no smut.
But on this site I just see people calling it all yaoi. I see mangas titled as yaoi even though they're shounen ai
I know for sure shounen ai means BL no smut but do yall just call it all yaoi??
Is the right way to refer to them as actually what I'm thinking?
I feel like the BL and sub genre thing makes more sense