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To Shounen Ai or Not to Shounen Ai…

by Mina

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All right. ::Mina cracks her knuckles and prepares to tackle this interesting subject:: Now, I have a lot of friends that will give me an odd look or three when I tell them that I write fanfiction.

That I write shounen ai fanfiction.

Once I explain to them what shounen ai means, their eyes get a little big and they blink at me. Half the time I’m not sure if they’re blinking in surprise or fear. Given that it’s me we’re talking about, it was probably a combination of the two.

‘Why?!’ they ask, completely taken aback by my admission. ‘You’re a wonderful writer…why would you want to write something like that?!’

I always smile then, laughing a little to myself. See, I’m the kind of person that can dress in leather pants and a halter-top, do their hair and make up for a night out, and still look cute. Part of it’s because I’m small and fairly unassuming (I’m your typical A blood type person). It’s a little annoying sometimes, but I’ve learned to live with it. I mean, ten years down the road I’ll be glad that I don’t look my age, right?

Anyway, back on track. Once things have quieted down and they’re ready to listen to my explanation, I put on my best sensei expression and the lesson begins.

Anyone can write a heterosexual relationship, I explain. It’s the one that we’re all familiar with because society states that it’s the “norm.” Now, within heterosexual relationships, you have a wide variety of possibilities. You have a bad relationship, where one member physically/mentally/verbally/sexually abuses the other. You have your ‘mushy, so-syrupy-you’re-sticking-to-everything’ relationship. You have your ‘we’re just sex buddies’ relationship. You have your ‘we’re friends and the family pushed us together’ relationship. You have your ‘I’m lusting after him/her but I’m in extreme denial’ relationship. You have your ‘I’m so in love with you that I’d push you off the train tracks and let myself get hit instead’ relationship. You have your ‘quiet, loving couple’ relationship. You have your ‘how the hell have they managed to stay together without killing each other’ relationship.

There are a hell of a lot of relationship types, aren’t there?

Now, I explain to my friends, just because one is homosexual doesn’t mean they can’t have the same relationship types as someone who is heterosexual. And that’s why I choose to write shounen ai fanfiction. I’ve also begun to write a bit of shoujo ai fanfiction as well. As an author, I write to make people *real*. I want to show my readers that my characters aren’t so different from the average person.

Even if they prefer to sleep with people of their own gender.

A good storyteller can make anything believable—but they first have to believe it themselves. And another reason that I can write my fiction the way I do is because of how fiercely I believe in the human condition. I believe in emotion, that which powers every human being through life and death. I want my characters to think, but I also want them to feel…because it’s in feeling that people find understanding, eventually.

Some men find the idea of two beautiful women, together, a turn-on. I admit that I happen to find the idea of two beautiful men, together, a turn-on.

I stress the word *beauty* here, because I’m not just referring to physical beauty in my case. I mean beauty of the heart and soul, the beauty of emotion. I’m not above a good, smutty plot-what-plot, but I prefer to write things with a plot, with depth, with emotion, because that is what I’m trying to convey to my readers.

Not that you didn’t know that, right? Considering the fact I’m the only person I know who calls a fifty-plus page story a “oneshot”….

And it’s not just in fanfiction that I do this. I wrote a short story for an English class in the spring of 2001 that deals with a quiet, standoffish main character who can’t remember the first twelve years of his life. That short story has since ballooned into a novel. And while he’s an intriguing character to write, it’s actually the second main character after him that’s the most interesting to write. Why?

I present to you, the conflict:

The main character, Dai, is on the run from the authorities. He makes his way to a remote settlement on an even more remote planet, and needs a place to stay.

Enter Tide and Rosa.

Now, Tide is a streetwise thief a few years younger than Dai. Rosa is a young girl who recently lost her parents, and because Tide inadvertently had something to do with it, he took her in.

My weird trio has many odd and deadly adventures along the way, but they manage to come out on top (sometimes barely) every time.

Flash forward to ten years in the future.

A lot of things have happened to the weird trio, but they have come to consider themselves something of a family. Now, Dai and Rosa have a “thing” for each other—and they’re rather open in their affection. And Tide, who is but recently coming into his maturity, find himself in an odd fix. He has feelings for both Dai and Rosa, but he isn’t sure what those feelings are.

This is the kind of writing I revel in, complexity at its best, with people that are *real* to me, that I can sit down and talk with and feel as though I were talking to a friend. Now, my dear Tide eventually does get the guy, but not without extensive trials and tribulations. But the point of it is that while he was “in lust” with Dai, he also ended up “in love” with him.

And there’s the crux, isn’t it? We call it “shounen ai”—“boy’s love.”

If you have a passion, write about. Passion translates rather well from the heart onto paper. And my passion?

My passion is love, in any form. So for me…it’s shounen/shoujo ai for as long as I can write.