I'd expect there's not much you can get out of the Pixiv numbers, for a number of reasons. First, one artist can just produce a lot of individual images, which aren't really the same sort of thing as producing many doujins or stories.

Gender balance of the actual artists matters too. Let's face it, women are socialized to appreciate women as well as men, but men are definitely not encouraged to find two men together an attractive prospect. So if a lot of the artists on Pixiv are male, that'll drive the numbers down even more.

It's not just the image count, the overall views is more than double, point being that it generally reaches a wider audience there. I don't actually see why a Yuri artist being a male is a problem though?

I'd like more shows like Crownies, Wentworth or Orphan Black, where the gay characters are clearly gay, but are not defined only by their bi/homosexuality.

This is off topic, but if that's the case, I'm most definitely sure you'll enjoy Person of Interest. The canon gayship actually happened because of the fandom's shipping. The actresses and the writers all agreed that it's a good thing, so they wrote them into canon in season four. The most notable thing about these characters are not that they're gay, but rather they're highly capable, strong, interesting and complex female characters. On the contrary, as much as I enjoyed watching it, Sense8's transgender couple was really hard to watch. As much as I loved the idea of a great transgender character, I feel like the show didn't do her justice as most of the scenes with her were either being tortured in the hospital or having sex with her gf.

Sometimes I feel like there's this internal conflict where I'm enjoying the exposure of more lgbt characters, but at the same time cringe at the horrible portrayal/writing of them.

P.S. Delphine is my precious gay puppy ;_______; I weep for cophine every freaking season finale

last edited at Nov 9, 2015 11:19PM

It's not just the image count, the overall views is more than double, point being that it generally reaches a wider audience there. I don't actually see why a Yuri artist being a male is a problem though?

Males are MUCH less likely to draw/write yaoi, where women often will draw/write yuri just fine. There's a lot of social stigma against guys doing M/M stuff that doesn't necessarily apply to F/F stuff. Which also applies to views, the gender balance will likely be affected by the same social forces.

It's not just the image count, the overall views is more than double, point being that it generally reaches a wider audience there. I don't actually see why a Yuri artist being a male is a problem though?

Following up, it's not a problem, per se. It just means the numbers don't necessarily mean much because there are more variables affecting them.

Yaoi is definitely more popular in Japan, I searched Mangaupdates exclusively for doujins and Yuri returned 17 pages, 8 when I excluded smut and Hentai, while yaoi returned 118 pages, 109 excluding Hentai and Smut.

Kouhai:
Definitely have that on my list but I'll wait till it's finished because I heard scary things about the ending.
I actually don't remember that much about Sense8 since it's been a while, but I do remember Nomi getting into the actual like, collective story quite late, Amanita's hair made up for everything though. And I do remember prefering Lito and Hernando over the lesbian couple.

OriginalGengar, maybe it's a stupid question, but you made search only for yuri and yaoi or made search for shoujo ai and shounen ai too?

And yeah yaoi have way more content, but pretty much all of it is made by woman for woman just to satisfy their desires, apparently gay man in japan hates most yaoi for being unrealistic and not made for them, sure yuri have a lot less content, but compared to yaoi most yuri the quality is a lot higher and thanks to that anyone can read and like it, while yaoi most of it only fujoshis will like, more yuri would be wonderful that is obvious, but compared to yaoi it's better if we continue having quality over quantity if we have to chose between them.

And now I find that most of BL isn't actually tagged BL but rather tagged '腐向け' meaning, very liberally, 'Fujoshi stuff'. That explains a lot, I was thinking it shouldn't deviate this much from source to source. I really don't understand why it's tagged like that, though I guess it clears up any doubts on the target audience.
http://dic.pixiv.net/a/%E8%85%90%E5%90%91%E3%81%91

^Yeah, the percentage of female writers even went down from 2013. It does seem to get better, at least in TV shows though, you're right about that.

And to add to LGBT characters without being gay as only defining trait, I actually do like LGBT specific stuff as plot, there just has to be more to the chartacter. I think one of the best shows to do that was Sense8 with Hernando and Lito. Their sexuality was a very big part of their story but they still stood on their own as awesome characters.

Edit: It's kinda weird that I pick the gay guys as example in this topic, so I just want to add Nomi and Amanita too.

Given Lana Wachowski was involved, I'd be a bit surprised if it didn't handle LGBT issues better than most.

Maybe thats why the female characters in Jupiter Ascending were so horribly bland written, she gave zero input contrary to what Wikipedia says :D

I bet my Counter Strike knife that it was J. Michael Straczynski

OriginalGengar, maybe it's a stupid question, but you made search only for yuri and yaoi or made search for shoujo ai and shounen ai too?

Only yuri and yaoi. Including two genres in the search only shows entries that are tagged both, not ones that are tagged one or the other.

last edited at Nov 10, 2015 12:01AM

Yeah but as some are tagged only yuri/yaoi, only shoujo ai/shounen ai or both, so to get better number you need to make three searchs:

• Yuri/yaoi excluding shoujo ai/shounen ai

• Shoujo ai/shounen ai excluding yuri/yaoi

• Yuri/yaoi + shoujo ai/shounen ai

At least is how I remember making searchs on Mangaupdates.

last edited at Nov 10, 2015 12:16AM

I think the numbers are clear enough, didn't mean to be ultra accurate. Shoujo ai's not a genre anyways.

Kouhai:
Definitely have that on my list but I'll wait till it's finished because I heard scary things about the ending.
I actually don't remember that much about Sense8 since it's been a while, but I do remember Nomi getting into the actual like, collective story quite late, Amanita's hair made up for everything though. And I do remember prefering Lito and Hernando over the lesbian couple.

Lito and Hernando are so much more well written it's so sad. They're not only just a gay couple, I feel like with Dani they go into a little bit of the polyamory type of deal. I also think Lito made more of an impact on me than Nomi did even though Nomi quite literally almost died in the most horrifying way possible. Lito's struggle with the true acceptance of his own sexuality was more resonating than anything Nomi ever did for me.

Spoilers below for Orphan Black:

Also since the article talked about how male characters were written more interesting than female characters, I wanted to say that fandoms are also pretty much just as bad. I recently realized part of the Orphan Black fandom has been hating on Delphine and don't see her as a heroic character. While that's okay to have as an opinion, I'm quite unsatisfied with the fact that Paul or Donnie were treated as heroic characters. I feel like they do both have quite heroic moments, with Paul's sacrifice and unfortunate death and Donnie's whole family thing with Helena, but they also did have to do very shitty things to get to where they are right now. Paul was a flip flopping character for all three seasons and became an enemy for the most part of season 3. Donnie was quite an irrelevant character and was pretty much a comedic relief until he accidentally shot and killed Dr. Leekie. But most fans are hating on Delphine's choices, especially in season 3 where Cosima was most probably hurt the most by. At a glance, yes, Delphine's choices were really shitty. She really was painted as a huge villain more so than before in season 3, but I feel like most people just sort of either forget or overlook the reasons as to why Delphine did the things she did. The treatment of these characters are almost night and day within the fandom. Some female characters are being written as complex and realistic people, but the fans are just not recognizing it and I think that's a really really sad thing.

Shoujo ai/shounen ai are not genres, but any site that uses them tags a lot of yuri/yaoi as shoujo ai/shounen ai instead.

But of course that will not make difference, yaoi will continue to have way more works, but theres definitely more pages with yuri on Mangaupdates, they're just tagged as shoujo ai.

Shoujo ai's not a genre anyways.

Burn this into your minds, wouldn't want to go around publicly declaring you're a pedophile in Japan.

last edited at Nov 10, 2015 12:21AM

Shoujo ai's not a genre anyways.

Burn this into your minds, wouldn't want to go around publicly declaring you're a pedophile in Japan.

except that literally isn't a word they use in japan it's a word invented by western fans

Actually shoujo ai and shounen ai do exist but they're for pedophiles, we had a discussion about yuri vs shoujo ai and someone even posted link for shoujo ai/shounen ai in japanese wikipedia, it's some retarded in the west that decided to use it wrong and now most people do the same.

Shoujo ai vs Yuri discussion thread.

last edited at Nov 10, 2015 12:36AM

Paul or Donnie were treated as heroic characters

Oh my god yes. I do like Donnie exactly because he was/is comedic relief.
But I never really read anything about Orphan Black except for stuff about Cosima and how awesome Tatiana Maslany is, so when I read a few comments a while back where people said how awesome Paul was I just couldn't understand why. From the monitors he definitely was my least favorite one.
Yuri bias aside, I feel like Colphine was the best written romance in the series, Only flaw was the part where they broke up because Delphine has to love the clones equally, that felt a little cheap. Delphine definitely did a lot of bad things and season 3 did make me at least accept Shay as Cosima's new girlfriend but in that situation pretty much everyone would have broken down. I mean, you break up with the love of your life so you can safe her life (if I remember correctly) and she finds a new girlfriend like 2 weeks later. Who wouldn't be a bit possessive/stalkery and hostile towards the new girl?
Also, I will live with the delusion of Delphine coming back until the last season is over.

Actually shoujo ai and shounen ai do exist but they're for pedophiles, we had a discussion about yuri vs shoujo ai and someone even posted link for shoujo ai/shounen ai in japanese wikipedia, it's some retarded in the west that decided to use it wrong and now most people do the same.

Shoujo ai vs Yuri discussion thread.

You linked a thread that literally was nothing but "it's a word made up by westerners" so what is your point
nobody says shoujo ai in japan it's always GL or girls love if not yuri

OriginalGengar let's be best fucking friends we can cry together over cophine every fucking season finale and refuse to believe delphine is gone

last edited at Nov 10, 2015 12:57AM

nobody says shoujo ai in japan it's always GL or girls love if not yuri

That's kind of what we're saying though, I think you're misunderstanding?
The term Shoujo Ai in Japan refers to pedophilia, it's not commonly used afaik.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%91%E5%A5%B3%E6%84%9B

Let's just leave it at that before we digress more?

nobody says shoujo ai in japan it's always GL or girls love if not yuri

That's kind of what we're saying though, I think you're misunderstanding?
The term Shoujo Ai in Japan refers to pedophilia, it's not commonly used afaik.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%91%E5%A5%B3%E6%84%9B

Let's just leave it at that before we digress more?

Sure is not used on Japan but some western sites like MAL or Baka Updates consider it a genre so it has to be considered as such when looking through their databases.

last edited at Nov 10, 2015 1:25AM

nobody says shoujo ai in japan it's always GL or girls love if not yuri

That's kind of what we're saying though, I think you're misunderstanding?
The term Shoujo Ai in Japan refers to pedophilia, it's not commonly used afaik.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%91%E5%A5%B3%E6%84%9B

Let's just leave it at that before we digress more?

Yup I did misunderstood. I apologize.

OriginalGengar

Yaoi is definitely more popular in Japan, I searched Mangaupdates exclusively for doujins and Yuri returned 17 pages, 8 when I excluded smut and Hentai, while yaoi returned 118 pages, 109 excluding Hentai and Smut.

It's actually kinda interesting that despite having 6x as many pages there's apparently an equal amount of hentai/smut for both genres.