It’s finally here! The first chapter of our seven chapter high-school yaoi comic Tough is now finished!

This will serve as the master post for Tough: Chapter One. Here is where readers should leave comments about what they thought about the comic and it’s also where I’ll be sharing the first 16 preview pages with you!

What’s this first chapter about?

Tough starts with 15-year-old Filipino-American Mike Castro being dragged into a fag bashing by a bunch of older, wilder boys. Mike knows it’s wrong and tries to stop it, but that just makes things worse; the older boys turn on him, forcing him to either beat the cute gay boy they’ve cornered or face the same fate. Can Mike figure out a way to save this guy and himself? And could this really be the start of a romance?! Read Tough: Chapter One to find out!

How do I read this comic?

This is another free download for Yaoi 911 News & Downloads subscribers. Subscribers to our mailing list get sent links to our free comics and this is the latest one. So if you want to read more, just sign up — a link will be sent right to you!

(You can also find and download Tough: Chapter One at our new store. If you’re a subscriber and haven’t gotten the Yaoi 911 News & Downloads email yet, you can create a new account at our store using your subscriber email address, Add To Cart a free comic and when you Checkout, you’ll be able to download it for free. It’s fast and easy — try it! Tough: Chapter One at The Yaoi 911 Store. )

Where can I talk about it?

Right here! The comments section’s of this post is the place to let me and other readers know what you thought. (And please do — you’re the whole reason we’re making these comics. And we love encouragement. )

What about spoilers?

So that folks are able to talk about the work without worrying about spoiling the story for others, I’ve added a new feature to the blog comments: spoiler protection! It works like this. Put the spoiler text into your comment between bracketed “spoiler” tags like this

to end up with this:

So, when does Chapter Two come out?

Chapter One is where we meet our heroes (and villains) and set things up. Chapter Two deals with the aftermath of what happens and it’s where the yaoi really gets cooking. If you want more kissing — and I know you do — I promise, you won’t have to wait long. The next chapter delivers the goods.

Chapter Two is already completely finished and will be sent out to subscribers on May 1, 2010.

Please tell me what you thought!

So that’s what you need to know about our latest comic. I really do hope you like the beginning of our story. Please take a moment and let me know what you thought!

Preview Pages

Tough: Chapter One written by Alex Woolfson. Pencils by Vitto. Colors by Vincent Lee.
© 2010 Alex Woolfson. All Rights Reserved.

Want to download the entire comic? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the link will be sent right to you!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911™ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Curious about the first comic we finished (and that we’re also giving away for free)? Then read all about our boys and sorcery story, “A Shot in the Dark”!
• Wondering why the heck I’m making a yaoi book? Check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

Folks are always asking me for more yaoi videos and these classic edited cutdowns (with amusing commentary by the clip’s editor) certainly deliver.

(Found the Karin video on sakurapassion’s The Yaoi Review while trying to use Google to find information on the Handley case which I knew was on my pal Jen’s site, also called The Yaoi Review. Oh, that wacky Google…)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

[AEP] Yaoi Moments in Anime Karin

Humor, gay tea time and vampire action — lots to like

[AEP] Yaoi Moments in Anime: Evangelion

Sadly dubbed and the commentary is full of typos, but Evangelion is a classic! (Spoilers, depressing drama & way over the top pseudo-philosophy)

Well, that was a bummer. How about some Yaoi Kisses (and, um, grungey Rock) to refresh the palate!

Best damn Yaoi Kisses!

That’s better. Now on to one of my favorite manga series ever–Genshiken! And my personal dream-boat, Sasahara! (Although he’s much cuter in the manga, IMHO…)

And finally, something completely different. The guys from Papa to Kiss in The Dark cut to that I Like To Move It song. So very wrong on so many levels. Yet strangely appropriate that my Handley search led me to it.

yaoi move

Hope these vids added a little something to your Valentine’s Day!

So on Saturday, TheYaoiReview (recently moved to San Francisco) took me to a BBQ at Deb Aoki’s house. It was a delightful time with tasty food (chicken and edamame rice!) and fun, geeky conversation that lasted several hours. Gia of AnimeVice was there — as vivacious and trenchant as I remember her being from previous YaoiCon encounters — as was Jason Thompson, author of the must-read Manga: The Complete Guide, who greeted everyone, including yours truly, with an enthusiastic and sincere “Wow! You’re the one responsible for (the Yaoi Review/Yaoi 911/Kasumi/etc.)?!” (Very flattering — must remember to invite Jason to all future BBQs I attend…)

The ride up with TheYaoiReview — quick-witted, insightful and stylish as ever — afforded the opportunity to deepen a friendship with my new neighbor while opening up my mind to stunningly novel uses of cream cheese (and I thought it was just for bagels!). Once arrived, I sat next to the delightful Surt Lim, writer of the Del Rey fantasy-shojo manga Kasumi, and swapped stories about the benefits and pitfalls of being a Western writer working with foreign artists — a rare and validating experience. And I finally got the pleasure of meeting About.com’s Deb Aoki in person and discovered she is a wonderful, generous host with a private manga library whose bookshelves rival those of Kinokuniya Bookstore in San Francisco’s Japantown. So generous a host, in fact, that she wouldn’t let any of us leave without placing some personally-selected manga choices into each of our hands and thus I wound up leaving the party four mangas richer than I came. (Thanks, Deb!) So, I thought I might take a few moments to give some quick reactions to a couple that I’ve read during my Sunday recovering from all the fun and food.

Once Upon A Glashma was the first book I sunk my teeth into — the tagline of “Before wizards or magic, the world was filled with girls. But one day, the girls disappeared and only wizards remained…” was intriguing and the art was just too adorable to resist. Alas, adorable art is all this book has to offer. First of all, despite a cover that screams taciturn seme and cuddly uke and a premise of “a world without girls”, this is not BL. Rather, it is what I what I like to call faux-BL: a completely slashable premise with no sex, no kissing (of other men, that is) and only the vaguest, most easily deniable innuendos that some guy-on-guy loving might be occurring somewhere far, far off-stage.

Second, the story is a confusing mess with cliché relationships. The first chapters throw us in the middle of the action with little explanation — our heroes, magic-investigating government agents, are seen fighting a dragon, wrestling with an exploding man or fighting a trash monster with almost no set-up — and the resolutions that are offered to these crises feel rushed. The artwork, while beautiful, unfortunately makes the action difficult to follow and the characters’ behavior — mostly consisting of hot-tempered “sempai” Gotanda bullying wimpy underling Nippori — is consistently baffling. (Why exactly does Gotanda treat Nippori this way? He’s seems to have done nothing to deserve it. I constantly had to refer to previous, better written works in my head for an account of why these characters would treat each other as they did. ["Oh! I bet here she's going for an Roy x Ed dynamic but with a bit of Al thrown in..."]

This manga has a ton of great ideas and intriguing characters, but creator Kumiko Suekane just doesn’t take the time to flesh them out. Even the obligatory humor chapter — where a bunch of frat boys try to convert our heroes into beautiful girls complete with maid uniforms — feels perfunctory and rushed. Only in the second half, when we start to learn the reason why all the women have disappeared, does some form of coherent storytelling start to take hold — but even in these final pages, the answers feel hurried, one-dimensional and cliché. I would love to read a well-written fantasy-yaoi with clean-lined characters as cute as the ones depicted in these pages — and perhaps if this had been three volumes instead of one, that could have happened here — but I can only recommend this book to you if don’t have to pay for it and you are desperate for reading material. As one reviewer put it, “read it at Borders.” (For other takes, the author of MAYBE YOU’RE LOOKING FOR ANOTHER BLOG… finds the book “craptastic… in every sense of the word.” Otaku News has a bit more patience with it.)


Chocolate Surprise, on the other hand, is very much true BL where the seme is always the dark-haired one and the ukes always, always cry out “No!” during sex (no matter how much they were begging for it in the beginning). A collection of nine short comics, the character art is nowhere near as good as Suekane-sensei’s Once Upon A Glashma — not only is the linework somewhat dull and predictable, the ukes are very, very feminine, often chicks-with-dicks level feminine which kind of makes you wonder why Lily Hoshino bothered telling these as yaoi stories at all. (As one woman at the BBQ put it, “Hoshino-sensei should just throw a skirt on the uke and be done with it!”)

That said, the sex is as explicit as I have ever seen in yaoi, in all senses of that word — not only do you get hard-core activities, but what’s happening is always clear and almost nothing is obscured. You get to see it all — including pubic hair, a rarity in my yaoi journeys — while the sex still manages to hold on to the delicacy and sweetness we would expect from a yaoi work (with these tender first encounters, no one would ever mistake this for bara…) I have to admit it — despite the feminine (and often very young) depictions of some of the characters, I did find many of the sex scenes actually hot — and if it’s enough to get my motor running, I would imagine that hard-core yaoi fans will need to keep some extra heart medication on hand, just in case. Finally, the storytelling itself, while not especially memorable (each of these stories are first-time love encounters involving one very interested boy and one not-so-interested-oh-I-guess-I-really-am-interested boy) is solid with often quite satisfying endings (narratively as well as romantically).

I wouldn’t buy this book for a night of great literature, but if you can get past the feminine character art and are looking for a little one-handed meditation, it’s definitely worth your $12.95. Gay boy Alex says “Check it out.” (That said, while it got my boat afloat, Connie C. of Manga Recon was “singularly unimpressed” with the book, finding it “explicit in a way I was not comfortable with”. [Perhaps highlighting a gay boy/fangirl divide?] Read her short take for a different perspective.)

Ultimately, I found myself wanting the best of both books — the lovely artwork and cool ideas behind Kumiko Suekane’s Once Upon A Glashma coupled with the more accomplished restraint and actual guy-on-guy loving found in Lily Hoshino’s Chocolate Surprise. Who knows — perhaps I’ll find what I’m looking for in the other two books Deb lent me: Saemi Yorita’s Brilliant Blue and You Higuri’s Ludwig II.

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Learn More!

• Want to read about other guy-on-guy romance comics? Click on over to our list of Reviews!
• Looking to see how Japanese gay male creators depict hot man-on-man sex? Take a look at How To Find Bara In English!
• Wondering what some of our work looks like? See a selection by clicking on Yaoi 911™ Art!

Art and Character Design: Very skilled and compelling. While keeping true to yaoi conventions, Kunieda-sensei shows a very strong sense of anatomy and layout and moves from a semi-realistic shojo style to fun and cute super-deformed and chibi depicitons seamlessly. Her semes look convincingly masculine and handsome and her ukes have the expected bishonen feminine beauty while still looking like dudes. It’s always easy to follow the action and understand what the characters are feeling. And the sex looks believable and hot. This is top-notch yaoi art.

Characters: They’re definitely yaoi characters, so there is some simplification of motivation going on here (i.e. they want the gay sex and go all the way immediately and frequently) but despite that, in the first, much longer story, our heroes feel exceptionally believable. A big selling point of this book is the sensitivity and skill Kunieda-sensei uses in introducing us to two very different gay men: one is ostensibly straight and dreams of pleasing his grandparents by finding a wife and creating a traditional family; the other is moody, flamboyant and openly gay. Neither are angels, but they are very likable. And both have strong and weak points that complement each other. You could easily see meeting them in real life and thus the story itself feels credible and the plotting natural. Secondary characters likewise have depth and I’m happy to say that the female characters are consistently strong, wise and appealing.

In the second story, though, while the characters are certainly cute — and I’ll admit I’m a sucker for little lost lamb ukes — the sense of realism suffered from the shortness of the story and perhaps some timidity in showing us what a relationship between two teenage brothers would actually be like. The interactions rarely felt honest. Unlike in the first story, I had a hard time believing these boys were anything other than figments of Kunieda-sensei’s (skilled) imagination.

Plot: The first and longest story follows the relationship of two high-school teachers who find themselves co-workers after a drunken, anonymous night of sex. The central question is: can these two overcome their differences and find love?

One of the great pleasures of this book is that Kunieda-sensei avoids false drama. (O.K. — there is one huge scene of false drama, but it’s essentially a practical joke on the reader, so we’ll forgive it.) When the characters are in conflict, their actions and reactions are completely believable for guys their age — nowhere does it feel like a character is freaking out just for the sake of the plot. This lends a feeling of realism to the work that’s refreshing and keeps you from feeling like your time is being wasted with contrived misunderstandings and hurt feelings just to fill pages. This is the story of two guys with very different personalities who fall in love and the conflicts they have with each other stem believably from those differences. Overall, their love story kept me wanting to turn pages to see what would happen.

The second story in the book feels much more pedestrian and familiar. It concerns two teenage brothers (one’s adopted, thus offering the obligatory “real incest” escape clause, though technically they are at least half-cousins — phew!), three years apart, who fall in love and hide their feelings until eventually everything comes out one night when they are forced to spend time alone. While their chibi versions do summon up the adorable, I found their actions not very believable, especially the younger uke, who is calmly and casually aggressive about wanting sex with his older brother. Unlike the first story, this felt more like fetish yaoi (albeit very sweet fetish yaoi) than an honest take on their relationship. There are some clever bits — including a baby rabbit made out of snow theme — but it all felt fairly contrived after enjoying the natural arc of the previous story. And there’s some false drama about an abortion of all things. Pity…

Romance: In the first comic, you like the characters, they seem right for each other and yet nothing is a foregone conclusion — this is a fun, believable love story.

The second story is definitely high on the adorableness factor — had the characters been believable, it might have moved me more than the first. But as I said, things feel rushed and contrived and, seeing as the heroes have been living as brothers since they were very small, it’s hard to believe that they really have any chance of living happily ever after now that they are acting on their feelings. Some sweet scenes to inspire your fantasy life, sure, but little more.

Sex: A few brief but definitely hot encounters. Despite the glowing cones of light (sorry ladies, no actual weenies here), I found the posing of the sex more realistic than what one usually sees in yaoi and, more importantly, the passion of the encounters felt palpable. Also unlike a lot of yaoi, nothing was confusing — you always knew what these guys were doing — without the sex ever becoming truly explicit. I personally need more than a few pages of sex — and a fair amount of set-up — to really get my motor running, but since 7-page-and-under sex encounters seem to be de rigeur for yaoi books, if you usually find yaoi hot, this book definitely delivers.

Overall: Likable, non-cliché characters with real depth, great art and an exceptionally solid and credible love story make for a great read. Despite a somewhat weaker, more conventional B-story, this book is definitely worth your $12.95.

Rated 18+ Mature.

Plot summary from the publisher’s website:

Kento Kumagaya wishes for just one simple thing: to have a happy family with the ideal housewife, loving kids, and kind grandparents all living together, happily ever after. Life, however, has other plans. Enter Akira Kazuki, a smart, beautiful and unrestrained gay man who shatters Kento’s dream with a single night of wild and passionate homosexual sex. This is a romantic, sweet and funny story between two different people (in more ways than one) who unexpectedly find the same future together.

So I picked up this book because it has an excellent reputation for being great yaoi storytelling and I’m pleased to say it didn’t disappoint. Yes, I might be hating on the second story a bit in my summaries up above, but that’s mainly because it pales in comparison to the first story. (And, like other “brother” yaoi stories I’ve read, it felt like it failed to live up to the potential of its provocative set-up. That said, unlike Brother which used the sibling relationship as purely fetish, Kunieda-sensei mostly uses it as a vehicle for a type of sweet protector-innocent dynamic which is actually far more compelling.)

The first story, “Memories of the Future”, starts out with a straight-guy seduction scene which certainly has the feel of traditional yaoi — the guy is swept away with the gay passion nearly immediately which as we know from (very NSFW!) amateur porn ain’t really how such things happen. (It actually takes more than a few great kisses to overcome years of internalized homophobia.) But that nod to convention aside, from a gay male perspective, these characters felt quite real to me as did their sex and romance. The openly gay character, Akira, utters the occasional self-loathing statement such as “A gay man like me can’t even dream of a normal family” but such bitter words make sense based on who he is and what he’s experienced and I never felt like they expressed the author’s personal view.

Also, as I said above, the women and girls in this book, while being secondary characters, don’t get short shrift. Kento’s “girlfriend” Yukie, while only seen in a few scenes, is nobody’s fool; his grandmother is as wise as we’d expect for her years — even the high-school student “rival” is at least as put together and level-headed as our heroes while still having an independent and vulnerable emotional life. It’s refreshing to find female characters in yaoi who are more than obstacles or set-dressing, but rather feel like real people.

Finally, I found the creator’s little “Assorted Ramblings” comic at the end to be charming and funny. She apologizes to the reader for her “shortcomings” in Boys Love art — not at all necessary, of course — and then goes on to discuss the challenges of drawing pubic hair and underwear. Cute! Despite her “inexperience” in the Boys Love genre, she seems very likable. That little peek into her psychology alone makes me want to read more of her work.

All in all, this book is definitely one of the good ones and thus joins Little Butterfly, Rin and Seduce Me After the Show as yaoi books I would recommend without hesitation. If you haven’t already read it, it should be the next book on your list.

(Other reviews of Future Lovers: Deb Aoki over at About.com is less charmed than I was by the first story, but still finds it to be fairly solid and superior to the second story. Julie over at Manga Maniac Cafe loved the book [but gives some spoilers in her review]. Kuriosity’s Lissa Pattillo, writing for Comic Village, found the book “refreshing” and a “pleasant surprise” and especially liked the humor and pacing [and she does an excellent job of explaining what's great about the art]. Finally, Melinda Beasi writing for There It Is, Plain As Daylight blog, finds Future Lovers to be “one of the most engagingly natural boys’ love stories I’ve read” and offers some nice insights into the characters.)

Want to read more reviews like this? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get them emailed right to you — for free!

Psst! Want to get one of our free full-color guy-on-guy comics? Just sign up over at our Free Comics page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Want to read about other guy-on-guy romance comics? Click on over to our list of Reviews!
• Looking to see how Japanese gay male creators depict hot man-on-man sex? Take a look at How To Find Bara In English!
• Wondering what some of our work looks like? See a selection by clicking on Yaoi 911™ Art!

So, things are coming together nicely for the release of our next free comic, the 35 page High School romance-and-rescue story, “Tough”.

And now I have something very exciting to show you. As I’ve mentioned before, “Tough” is the first chapter in a two volume, seven chapter graphic novel also called Tough (it gets its title from this first chapter). We’ve been working hard on it and it should be ready for download shortly. Well, in the meantime, our artist Winona Nelson has just finished painting the cover art for the book and here it is! (Click on it for a larger view.)

Now, I asked Winona to create an image with our heroes combining the themes of “romance” and “danger” with the specific plot elements of the first chapter and I think she did a fantastic job. Totally nailed it.

(And I especially like the fact that there are layers of meaning to it — at first you see the kissing, and then you see the dangerous shadows and then you see that one of the boys himself (Mike) is also carrying a bat!)

IMHO, it’s intriguing and beautiful, just like a book cover should be… (I’m of course biased, but if I saw a book on the shelf in a bookstore with Winona’s art on it, I’d definitely pick it up and give it a look!)

Having this artwork finished also marks the first time we have an actual item for sale. (Woo hoo!) If you like this painting, you can get a very high-quality print (poster) made of it over at Imagekind. (A perfect way to show off your love of yaoi and style up your crib!)

While there are more flashy sites out there, the thing I like about Imagekind is that in addition to having the best quality paper and printing in the business, they also have very high quality framing. (I’ve bought four prints from them framed, and Imagekind’s framing was superior to what I got here in San Francisco for my other prints.) So, even though I have this art up with other places for sale, Imagekind is the printer I’d recommend if you’d like a really beautiful, very high-quality print for your wall (and especially if you’d like it nicely framed). In addition, they offer a 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee — which also earns my respect.

And another nice thing about Imagekind is that you have the option of getting a “greeting card” of the print where you can actually resize the art — and thus focus directly in on the boys kissing. For just $4.99, greeting cards are the easiest, most affordable way to own this art.

EDIT: And now, due to popular demand, we’ve created a version of the art with just the kissing — for those who want to focus on the romance without any distractions. You can find that image here:

If mousepads, mugs and postcards are more your thing, we also have a Zazzle store. And Zazzle goes out of their way to make things easy to find and buy on their site with all the bells and whistles an independent creator like me could want. Just check out their crazy flash panel:

You can pretty much get anything you can think of made into a product with your art at Zazzle. Personally, I want the skateboard!

Anyway, that’s the latest on the Yaoi 911 comics front. I hope you like what you see. If you have a moment, please let me know in the comments what you think of Winona’s work!

Hey! Wondering what happens in this story? No problem — we’ll be giving away this comic for free! (When it’s done, that is!) Want to make sure you get the free download links to this comic when it’s finished? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the link will be sent right to you!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911™ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Curious about the first comic we finished (and that we’re also giving away for free)? Then read all about our boys and sorcery story, “A Shot in the Dark”!
• Wondering why the heck I’m making a yaoi book? Check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

A lot of folks I showed this video to — both straight and gay — found it to be perfect to show to their friends who don’t quite “get it”. It certainly helps bring home the subtler forms of prejudice and ignorance that are hard for all of us to shake. Since cool people come to this blog, I decided it was worth sharing here. And let’s face it -- he’s a cutie.

Check it out and pass it on.

Are You Straight?

(Found on Colin Thornby’s blog Conservatio Morum: Conversion of Life)

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Hey! Want to read a full-color guy-on-guy action-romance comic? You can download it from us for free! Just sign up over at our Free Comics page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Want to look at some other videos, including ones with the boys kissing? Click on over to our Videos section!
• Wondering what some of our comics are like? See a selection by clicking on Yaoi 911™ Art!

©iStockphoto.com/pixelbrat

Aliens, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the Dutch version of The Vanishing, Firefly — just because something is a genre story doesn’t mean it can’t be great storytelling. But as someone who loves genre work – sci-fi, fantasy, police procedurals, film noir, yaoi, you name it — I’ve often noticed that there seems to be this general, unspoken acceptance of lazy technique, of bad writing. The opinion seems to be “Hey, it’s just a sci-fi story, what do you expect?”

Well, I say “No more!” There are enough examples of quality writing in genre work that there is no excuse for writing stories that can’t stand toe-to-toe with more “mainstream” work. And I believe the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. Thus this series of posts on “How To Write Badly” – because knowing is half the battle.

The first shameful technique we’ll discuss is something I like to call “The Idiot Plot Device”.

What Is It?

Especially common in horror films, The Idiot Plot device is when a character or characters do something incredibly stupid merely (or mostly) to further the plot. Bobby and Susie know there’s a killer in the woods but decide to sneak out for a little heavy petting between the pines anyway – thus allowing the killer to claim his next victims and allowing the story to move forward.

How To Tell It’s In Play

If you’re watching a character about to do something and you find yourself mouthing the words “Oh, my God – what a dumbass!” that’s a pretty good sign.

But it’s not enough in itself. Good creators write about all aspects of the human condition — even those moments when people are not being very bright and even about folks who are just downright dumb. No, for it to be The Idiot Plot Device, the idiocy has to be necessary to further the plot: meaning when it’s clear that if Bobby and Susie just did the smart thing, stayed inside and saved their heavy petting for a day when they aren’t being stalked by a maniacal killer, the plot wouldn’t move forward and the writer would be stuck. (Or, at least, the writer would have to be a bit clever to figure out how to put the characters into danger again.)

In addition, The Idiot Plot Device usually requires a character to act in a way that stretches credibility – the action is just so dumb, so incompetent, so inappropriate based on everything the character’s seen that the only possible explanation is that the writer had painted themselves into a corner and didn’t know (or couldn’t be bothered to find) any other way to amp up the tension or move things forward.

A variation of The Idiot Plot Device is the I’m So Upset/Freaked Out/Scared I’m Going To Act Like An Idiot Plot Device where characters under duress do something incredibly stupid (such as when Lambert just stands in front of the monster in Alien doing nothing, thus getting herself and the character trying to rescue her killed.) More sympathetic to an audience than The Idiot Plot Device — after all, we’ve all had moments when we’ve been overwhelmed and made bad choices — this technique still suffers from the same problems as its Idiot brother, namely that it uses lazy writing to move the plot forward.

Some Examples From The Wild

Keeping with our Alien references, the first time I ever truly noticed this cop-out was while watching the movie Alien 3 when a character, working with buckets of explosive accelerant he and his buddies were using to trap the monster, chooses to carry a bucket of the accelerant and a flare at the same time (!) which, of course, soon causes an explosion that blows their entire plan (and several cast members) all to hell. If he hadn’t done that, the plan would have succeeded and the movie would have been over some 45 minutes early.

Another example from the world of sci-fi comes from the popular series Battlestar Galactica (a frequent offender) where much-maligned Vice President Baltar chooses to secretly hand over a nuclear bomb to an abused Cylon as a “token of his good will” which then soon after leads to her blowing up several ships, thousands of people and alerting the rest of the enemy Cylons to the few surviving humans’ location. Yes, he was feeling a bit insulted at that moment by the President of the Colonies, yes “Head 6″ encouraged him to give her the device, but willingly handing over a nuclear bomb to an angry enemy of the human race? Really? Really? Yes, really — otherwise Season 3 would not have been possible.

(And yes, temporary insanity definitely falls under The Idiot Plot Device, in case you think Head 6’s encouragement offers that excuse…)

Why It’s Bad Writing

It’s bad writing because it breaks audience identification with the characters, it breaks realism but mostly, it’s just incredibly lazy.

It creates distance between the audience and your work

The best stories are the ones where you can put yourself in the character’s shoes, where you get to experience their successes and failures right along with them. The character doesn’t have to be exactly like you — in fact, it’s even better when you get a chance to identify with a character you would ordinarily think of as an “other” — but the character should exhibit enough universal and compelling elements so you can really feel that, if you were in the same situation, you’d be making at least some of the same choices. You’re immersed and engaged because it could just as easily be you in the situation the creator is portraying.

But The Idiot Plot Device breaks that. The character is taking an action so stupid, so inappropriate, all you can do is sit there and shake your head. In that moment, you aren’t identifying with the character — you are standing apart in judgment, thus creating distance between you and the work.

It’s not very realistic

In addition, your suspension of disbelief is also put into question. Sure, we all do stupid things, but for almost all of us, the self-preservation instinct is very strong. When characters act against that — or against their own interests in general — there needs to be a very good reason, otherwise audience members wind up consoling themselves with “Well, it’s a just a movie (TV show, book, etc.), it’s not supposed to be realistic.” And woe be to any writer who wants their audience thinking that while experiencing their story.

It’s just downright lazy

Mostly, though, The Idiot Plot Device is just lazy writing. It’s relying on the darker, more cynical parts of human nature to hide an author’s lack of imagination. As a writer, you know that at least some of your audience will give you a free pass for such shortcuts, with apologies like “Well, in ‘real life’, people do lots of stupid things when the shit hits the fan, so I guess they might do this too.”

But it really takes no intelligence at all to move the plot forward this way. It’s easy to have someone do something dumb that creates trouble — it’s a much tougher assignment to have everyone be smart, act smart, make good decisions and still keep your story from getting resolved right away. In order to pull that off, you need to be at least as smart as the characters you’re writing and probably a lot smarter.

This becomes clearest when a writer has created (or is including) a really smart, capable hero, like Ripley from the Alien series. She’s fought dozens of these aliens before, she’s tough and decisive and she’s smart. Left to her own devices, she should be able to handily destroy the alien in Alien 3 in the first act. But that would make for an awfully short movie so the author has a choice — make the alien as smart as (or smarter than) Ripley foiling her brilliant plans with equally brilliant countermoves…. or have her surrounded by idiots who won’t help her despite overwhelming evidence that she’s credible and then actively foil her plans against their own interest through their own stupidity.

Which choice do you think requires more effort, more skill, more creative thinking, thus increasing the odds for a more satisfying story?

A major reason that The Idiot Plot Device is so unsatisfying is that it is a form of cheating, of stalling — if people were making smart choices, the story would resolve quickly. But the author has to fill 90 minutes of screen time (or 44 minutes of TV time, 24 pages of comics, whatever…), so they keep their characters in jeopardy through a series of stupid choices and bonehead moves.

Yes, some people might find those stupid choices believable — but satisfying, engaging? Not likely.

How To Transcend

The fact that this technique is used so often, though, gives a special advantage to the writer who’s willing to put in a little more effort. Audiences have been trained to accept this form of laziness, so when you subvert that expectation, you earn strong credibility in their eyes. Have your character actually be smarter, more rational, more capable than your audience might expect and suddenly things get a lot more interesting!

One of the best examples of this again comes from the Alien series, this time from the second movie, Aliens.

Here’s the scene: the marines have just gotten their asses handed to them by the aliens. They are demoralized and at a loss of what to do — how do they fight these seemingly unstoppable monsters? Well, Ripley suggests dropping a whole lot of nuclear bombs on the critters from orbit. (Which in itself puts this movie in a special category — I don’t care how badass a monster is, no beastie of flesh and blood is going to stand up against an H-Bomb and this was something that scif-fi movies, particularly from the 70s and 80s, would always seem to conveniently forget…)

So, there we have it, problem solved! Ah, but the “company man” nixes the idea — there’s lots of expensive equipment on the planet, you see — “This installation has a substantial dollar value” — and he forbids the use of nuclear weapons. And, at this point, we in the audience are prepared to accept this — it seems at least somewhat plausible and really, how else is the writer going to keep everyone in jeopardy? Thank you for remembering that nukes exist, filmmakers, but even though these monsters have just taken out 80% of their platoon and every adult man and woman in the colony, we’ll accept that those puppies are not an option!

But then, Ripley says the words you and I would actually say if we were in that situation. She looks that company man right in the eye with an incredulous sneer and exclaims ‘They can BILL me!” And then manages to convince the Marines to overrule the company man and nuke the entire site from orbit.

Now we as the audience don’t have any idea what’s going to happen next! The movie’s not even half done and our heroes are going to do exactly what we would do with their technology and in their situation — fly the heck out of there and nuke the monsters from the safety of space! How is the writer going to keep things going from here? He’s just painted himself in a corner, right?! We’re now completely engaged — and in no small part because, despite not knowing how things are going to continue, we’re convinced that this creator isn’t going to foist lazy cop outs on us. It turns out we’re watching a movie where characters are going to make smart choices yet still get in trouble because the monsters are just as smart and so, once the shit hits the fan again, our own brains start to work in overdrive to try to figure a way out — as if we were there ourselves.

We’re engaged. We trust the creator. We know we’re in good hands and in for a good ride. And that’s exactly how you want your audience to feel.

Suffer No Fools!

Sure, you can get away with lazy writing techniques like The Idiot Plot Device, but if you choose the harder path, you will create a far better experience for your audience… and a far more memorable work. Make things hard for yourself — have all your characters, both heroes and villains, consistently make smart, self-interested choices — for every move, take the time to think of a brilliant countermove; for every strategy, think of a really smart way for the other side to foil it!

If you can do that, you will find your work being remembered not for its genre, but rather for what an awesome, compelling story was told.

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EDIT: Amazon responds to my email! See below.

In his Livejournal post today, Mark R. Probst revealed this shocking news:

On Amazon.com two days ago, mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: “Transgressions” by Erastes and “False Colors” by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book “The Filly.”

Now “sales rankings disappearing” might not mean a lot to the average reader. What matters is the result — that hundreds of LGBT books were now no longer showing up in Amazon.com searches!

After writing Amazon customer service, Probst got this response:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

Yes, you read that right: Amazon is now classifying LGBT books as “adult material” and excluding them from searches. Remember Manly, the book I reviewed last fall? Back in September, when I reviewed it I was able to find that book on Amazon by typing in the name of the book and the author’s name in the Amazon.com search box. Now when I type in that information, this is what I get:

Ah but, you say, Manly actually is an explicitly sexual comic — that’s not so strange to label as “adult”, no?

Well, it’s not just the sexy books that are being hidden from search. Here’s Pete Cashmore from Mashable:

In the comments of that post, and elsewhere on LiveJournal, readers have been searching Amazon to find bias in the books removed from the rankings. The examples found do appear to hold water: for instance, the aforementioned post claims that the raciest section in The Well of Loneliness, one of the novels no longer ranked, is the phrase “And that night they were not divided.” Another, False Colours is a historical novel about a gay relationship with a single, non-explicit sex scene, explains the same source. The classic novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover has also been removed from rankings.

(Cashmore somewhat misleadingly uses words like “accused” and “alleged” in his post, I assume in an attempt to appear balanced – the reality is that these results are easy to confirm for yourself and have been confirmed by others online. More on the broad brush Amazon is painting with at Queers United.)

As it turns out, Young Adult books with gay characters, prominent romance novels and many other titles have been made inaccessible via Amazon’s main search function. It would be one thing to give customers the option to have their Amazon searches be “child safe” – certainly giving readers the option to be shielded from explicit sexual material seems reasonable. But to paint with so wide a brush (including what seems to be ALL GLBT fiction as “adult”) and to take the choice out of the customer’s hands. Well, that’s just wrong.

Here is the email I sent to Amazon customer support:

Hello,

I’ve been a very frequent Amazon customer for many years and am an Amazon Prime customer as well. I am horrified by the hamhanded new policy you have of excluding LGBT books from search and sales ranking. I use Amazon search to find nearly everything I buy on Amazon and to have that limited is insane. In a regular bookstore, if I was looking for a book, I could just ask the shopkeeper and she would bring it to me – but if you are limiting your search based on LGBT content, you are effectively hiding those books from me and keeping me from buying them.

Even using the author’s name in a search box with the name of the title gets me no results!

Instead of this: http://ow.ly/2GkG This is what my Amazon search for “Manly Dale Lazarov” returns: http://twitpic.com/388qk

And you’re even excluding gay classics with no sex at all! http://ow.ly/2Ggj

This is awful! What were you guys thinking?!

I buy nearly everything from Amazon and now I’m going to have to rethink whether I want to be your customer at all. It’d be one thing if you instituted a safe search provision that gave people the option for a “child safe” search – but just to make these changes for everyone with a sweep of your mouse… This is hateful!

Please, rethink this policy. I want to stay your customer but if you continue to discriminate against LGBT work, then I won’t be able to do so.

Sincerely,

Alex Woolfson

If you would like to express your thoughts to Amazon about their actions, their Executive Customer Service email address is ecr@amazon.com and their U.S. Customer Support number is 1-800-201-7575. This won’t change unless people speak up. If it matter to you at all, you should take the 5 minutes to let them know your thoughts!

(Amazon Customer Support reps apparently also encourage you to log in your Amazon account and use their internal email to complain as the best way to get their attention. I agree as is shows you are an Amazon customer and I did this as well. To send them an email, go to their home page http://www.amazon.com/ click Help (upper right), click Contact Us (yellow button, middle right), enter your username and password, click Email and choose “Other Questions & Comments” as the Issue in the dropdown menu. Then let them know exactly what you think of this change.)

For more on this, I recommend reading this excellent article at Dear Author and this smart business focused article from the net.effect blog of foreignpolicy.com on the growing reaction on the Internet and how Amazon must respond. And now, the always excellent Simon Jones of Icaraus Publishing discusses the bigger picture of having companies like Amazon.com be the monopoly gatekeepers of digital content.)

Please, don’t just sit there shaking your head. Let Amazon know how this choice will effect their business now!

EDIT 1 (Monday morning): Amazon is now claiming it’s all just “a glitch”. The Dear Author blog responds with some very compelling evidence that it was clearly targeted against LGBT, making a “glitch” seem unlikely. (And in that same link offers a good explanation why A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality was spared the axe and thus became the #1 search result for the word “homosexuality” in Amazon.) Also, writer-superstar Neil Gaiman, of Sandman and Coraline fame, weighs in.

EDIT 2 (4/13 5:00 P.M.): Amazon just responded to my email from yesterday, stating there was an “embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error”. Well, more of a mea culpa than a “glitch” at least…

Here’s the text of their email:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.

Sincerely,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com

EDIT 3: And now here’s a plausible account of what happened — about what I figured, user error lead to painting with too broad a brush. That said, I still think search filters for “adult material” should be in the hands on the individual customers. And the response of the Internet community still speaks volumes to how far we’ve come in the last decade.

EDIT 4 (4/14/09 12:30PM): And now that the dust settles, editor Cheryl Morgan offers this excellent re-cap and commentary on the whole thing. (Although while I do think that if “WH Smith or Waterstone’s decided to put gay literature on more obscure shelves” it wouldn’t have been as big a deal, a more analogous example to items not appearing in the main search would be if shopkeepers acted like the gay books you were looking for weren’t on the shelves at all — and I do think that would have gotten noticed! ) And a link from that article gives the blow-by-blow of what was happening inside of Amazon as the problem got noticed.

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Art and Character Design: Not surprisingly for a book that arose from the “zine” movement, the art is very, very indie. While occasionally there are some panels that look accomplished (notably by creators such like Steve MacIsaac and Craig Bostick), most of the art in these strips look like something your best friend in High School could’ve come up with when he was working on his comic, with only a cursory understanding of anatomy and perspective. While I tend to prefer more naturalism and polish, I found this style actually made the stories more approachable and believable. Because most are essentially first person accounts of what it’s like to be young and gay, the raw art style added a layer of authenticity. I often found myself believing that the person who was drawing the story actually experienced it — or, at least, could have.

The character designs, while often simplistic, depict young boy-next-door types, most between the ages of 16 and 25. No hyper-masculinity or femininity here, just a bunch of regular guys leading regular lives — which also lends authenticity to the stories we are reading.

Characters: Believable and compelling. I found myself surprised at how accomplished the writing was in this book (especially being written by a number of different authors — kudos to editors Kirby and Kelly!) — and how refreshing that was in a gay comic. We meet guys just coming out, young punks at their first job, a guy crushing out on the Jamba Juice boy, a boy who tricks with a cherub and many other boys experiencing their first, requited love. With only a few exceptions, I found myself identifying with all the characters and most definitely cared about them and what they wanted.

Plot: These are all short comics (I think the longest is 10 pages) so the stories are more vignettes than anything else. But again, the writing is exceptionally strong and insightful. Even though I myself came out some time ago, I still found myself engaged in these young men’s stories and feeling like I was learning more about the human condition. From the first story (written in the 2nd person, revealing its intended audience) about an underage guy’s first experience in a sex shop back room to the (next to) last story about a young punk who gets stalked and used by an older photographer (and is kinda flattered by it) – the motivations of the characters are complex and human, so none of what I read felt trivial. And even though some of these comics come from the 90s, the writing still feels fresh and exciting. The book is engaging from start to finish.

Romance: Interestingly for a collection of comics with a punk, indie pedigree, most of the stories revolve around sweet, requited love. (I suppose even at the beginning of the 21st century, two boys loving each other for real is the most transgressive act of storytelling there is.) Even the one drama-couple gets interrupted mid-fight by an older man with his own very romantic story involving the love of a Middle Eastern king. While there are a few stories of love-from-afar pining, the impression you’re left with is of one of sweetness… and the possibility that you too could find real love.

Sex: Often quite explicit but rarely prolonged. And, of course, a bit hampered by the artists’ own limitations in linework. There were moments that were kinda hot, but they were so brief, it’s unlikely you’ll find the need to read this book one-handed. Food for future fantasy at best.

Overall: This is a great book of short comics — especially for young guys in the early stages of coming out. It pulls no punches when it comes to the realities of sex and drugs and feels totally real, but the overall tone is light, hopeful and full of energy. You aren’t going to hang any of the art on your wall, but you will definitely want to read each of these stories more than once. Even more authentic than Max & Sven, it should be part of every gay youth’s library. If you like comics of guys who fall in love with other guys, you should buy this book.

Not age-rated by the publisher.

Plot summary from the publisher’s website:

From its first photocopied edition in 1994, Boy Trouble: Gay Boy Comics with a New Attitude emphasized personal stories and viewpoints outside the mainstream, with subject matter that ranged from sex, love, and longing to porn, drugs, and punk rock. The Book of Boy Trouble compiles the greatest hits from the zine’s first ten years, including favorites like Michael Fahy’s “Valentine’s Day Love Poem,” Andy Hartzell’s “Dinner at Achmed’s,” and Anonymous Boy’s “The Non-adventures of Wayne,” plus 24 pages of spanking new work from both regular contributors and up-and-coming talents.

Something you hear again and again in comic book retailing is that an anthology is only as good as the weakest story in the collection. After having read this book, I don’t think that’s true. Yes, there are a couple of stories in here that were perhaps less than engaging, but when 95% of the content is absolutely outstanding, the few minor misfires just don’t matter. Particularly when those misfires are 5 pages or less.

This book really shows the advantage of the democratizing “zine” movement — now living on in blogs throughout the Internet — and that advantage is authenticity. Stories about young gay men in search of love have an inherent marketing appeal — and established publishers like Class Comics and Bruno Gmünder certainly provide much more polished looking work — but those stories don’t have anywhere near the authenticity these stories do. The stories by pro-publishers show young men as objects of sexual appeal — these stories written by the young guys themselves show us what actually matters to young gay men — and because of that perspective, that honesty, they are 100 times more compelling.

And while the art in this book is amateurish, the writing is anything but. More is said in one of these short comics than in the entirety of a book like Side by Side — and it’s said eloquently, with wit, humor and poignancy. The publisher’s blurb says they took the “greatest hits” from the zine for this collection and all these stories do in fact feel quite well-chosen, truly the cream of any crop of short story writing. I tip my hat to editors Kirby and Kelly.

To be honest, I was surprised how solid a book this was — and how thoroughly I enjoyed reading every story. If you care about more than pretty pictures in your gay comics — or if you’re a young gay man trying to figure things out for yourself — you should absolutely buy this book. It gets my strongest recommendation.

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• Want to read about other guy-on-guy romance comics? Click on over to our list of Reviews!
• Looking to see how Japanese gay male creators depict beautiful men? Take a look at How To Find Bara In English!
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Howdy

I’ve gotten several requests for this, so I’ve decided to make my “tweets” public for anyone who might be interested. My Twitter username is “alexwoolfson“. And in the spirit of fellow self-publisher and all-around cool guy Wil Wheaton, I’m letting you know here what to expect from me on Twitter.

(Oh, and what is Twitter, you ask? Well, it’s one of those online things you actually have to try out to truly appreciate — I dragged my feet on joining my friends on it for over a year because I just didn’t get the point — but here is a pretty good introduction. You should also read that Wil Wheaton post, too, just to get a very experienced perspective. Basically, Twitter users write short 140 character messages that are broadcast to anyone who “follows” you. These “tweets” are, in theory, answering the question “What are you doing?” but are really used for anything you want to share with your friends and the world.)

I don’t tweet a lot about yaoi

For me, Twitter is mostly a quick way for me to share what I’m thinking about or find cool in a given moment to my friends (and you, Dear Reader, I certainly think of as a friend!) Whereas, I try to stay completely on-topic on this blog, Twitter is a chance for me to share and comment about all the other things that turn me on. I do tweet the milestones with our comics (such as receiving new art I’m excited about), but mostly I’m commenting about media I’m enjoying (usually sci-fi TV or movies), making comics in general, writing in general, social media in general, marketing ideas for book publishers, cool tech toys and sometimes just how I’m feeling. It’s like tiny samples of my mind shouted out to the universe two or three times a day.

It’s personal, baby

Now, I do my absolute best to make sure everything I write on this blog will have value to a lot of people and especially yaoi fans. I spend a lot of time on my posts here and think very hard about what I’m going to post about before hitting that Publish button. But for me, Twitter is best when it’s uncensored personal sharing — when I don’t spend a lot of time trying to make a tweet perfect or even really thinking about it much at all. If it’s on my mind, it’s sent out on Twitter.

This means that my signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter is going to be a lot lower than it is here. And what you’ll read about through my Twitter account is more about me, personally, than it is about yaoi or any of the other topics on this blog. If reading stuff like that appeals to you, definitely check me out on Twitter. If not, my feelings won’t be hurt — in fact, I’d totally understand. Stick with the blog.

(Oh, and you probably shouldn’t follow my tweets on your phone. I tweet at all hours, even very early in the morning. Save your sanity and save my Tweets for your Twitter homepage or your computer. )

I do read all of my @alexwoolfson replies

And if things aren’t too crazy, I will definitely respond back. I do read every one of those @alexwoolfson replies and your thoughts and interest in me and my work are much appreciated. In fact, the comments I have received on this blog and through that Feedback button (down in the lower right of every blog page) have really been awesome support and make all the hard work worthwhile. You, Dear Reader, are why I am making these comics — and your thoughts and opinions matter a lot to me. If I’m swamped with writing a script or notes for our artists, it might take me a bit to get back — but I will absolutely try my best!

So, why follow Alex on Twitter?

To recap, you should follow me:

• if you want to know more about me personally
• if you want to see sneak previews of Yaoi 911 art
• if you’d want to learn about writing, how to make comics, marketing your art/writing, smart ways to use social media (like Twitter and Facebook) or how to successfully publish your own work
• if you’d want to see videos and other topics that just tickle the geek in me
• if you like my sense of humor
• if you’d actually care what I’d have to say about sci-fi and fantasy TV shows and movies

Still undecided? You can see some of my most current tweets over in the sidebar on the right. And you can follow me (and/or read even more of my tweets) over at my Twitter page.

See you there!