Catch Smile!

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Yaoi authors do omnibus stuff with a bunch of oneshots all the time... so why is it that the standalone oneshots like this so often feel so rushed?

Is it just me? Does the anthology format actually help cover for this flaw in ways I'm not realizing? Is there something I'm missing here?
 
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@viridescentlights:

To be clear, I'm contrasting "collections of oneshots" and "standalone oneshots" here.

The reasons for longer stories being more complete are, I think, self-evident XD Though yaoi does indeed tend way towards the short side for stories, and I could certainly stand for there to be longer ones with nice big plot arcs.

I always assumed that half the reason was that somewhere between a third to two-thirds of yaoi is basically just slightly flowery pornography and not meant to be good storytelling nor dwelt upon much—which in turn influences the story lengths and format conventions the editors pick for everything else. Though it's quite likely I'm completely wrong.

Thinking about it more, there might still be some unfair things in my comparison, like that those "collections of yaoi oneshots" can go and add their "chapter 5.5 (extra)" at the end that ties up the most blatant loose ends and missing bits from the individual stories if they want, which probably helps some.
 
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@Pokari

That does make it clearer now.

Very much so, I agree.

About this, I think the same can be observed in some shoujou and josei manga - the flowery visual and light plot. That being said, it does appear more apparent in yaoi, so I believe you. It's probably got to do with the writing style of the mangaka, too - although the popularity of mangakas or yaoi mangas that offer this kind of stories play a large part as well.

That is true. It's just, hmm, lovely to see more BL characters fleshed out and stuff, I guess. Like I'm only new with it, so reading well-developed characters and stories would be really cool.
 

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