Roji Akira – rentaBLog

Happy Twink(ie) Day!: a Discussion of BL Twinks by Two Passionate Twink Enthusiasts

Did you know that April 6th is National Twinkie Day? Well, now you do!! Perhaps only Americans will understand the nostalgic, sickly-sweet sensation that is a Hostess Twinkie (everyone else we tried to explain the iconic junkfood to seemed baffled yet fascinated at the concept).

While many would argue that aside from the hit of dopamine thanks to the intense sugar content of the phallic snack, it has little to offer, I’d disagree — it is rumored to have been partly responsible for the slang term “twink” that is well-known in LGBTQ+ circles, and even mainstream pop culture today. (Why Twinkies, you ask? Well, uhm, you might have to do some of your own research to get to the bottom of that one )

Because of that association, we decided to use this opportunity to show our love for the twinks that are so prevalent in — and do so much for — Boys Love.

In celebration of twinks, BLog authors and pretty boi connoisseurs Ames and Sou sat down for a nice, long chat (via DM) about twinks in BL. What is a twink? What kinds of twinks are we most drawn to personally? And, what is the appeal of twinks in the broader BL culture?? Read on for our extremely big-brained, candid, and (mostly) unfiltered fujin thoughts.

Conversation timestamps have been kept intact so that you can see for yourself just how much (or how little) time we spent poring over our thoughtful discussion of this dazzling aspect of BL

Renta! Staff BL Awards 2023

New Years is the perfect time to look back on the last twelve months and think to yourself… “What was the best BL manga I read in 2023?” Best-of lists are common this time of year, so we wanted to get in on the action and make a list of our staff’s favorite BL titles a la Chill Chill’s BL Awards. However, our list is less a ranking of the absolute top popular titles as voted by our users (you can find that by checking the “best sellers” list), and more just us—as a team of BL fans—wanting to celebrate some of our favorite titles that were added to the Renta! site this year. (The 2024 Chill Chill BL Awards should be happening again in march, with people already discussing the nominees, so let’s look forward to that in the coming months!)

Without further ado, the categories are…

Favorite New Series
Favorite Continuing Series
Favorite Seme
Favorite Uke
Favorite Up-And-Coming Author
Amazing Art
Favorite Renta! Title
Favorite Cover
Favorite Couple

To make sure it wasn’t just our main blog team pushing our favs we’ve already talked about at length, we also invited Nan, Agedashi, Anne, and Snow from our Japanese side to share some of their favorite titles they got to work with this year!

For each category there’s a good mix of responses, showing just how varied BL fans are in their tastes. However, in the spirit of not making this post too ridiculously long, we’ll just highlight two or three staff comments for each and then list the rest of the choices below.

J.GARDEN: The Eden of BL

J.GARDEN didn’t start until 11AM, but the thing you learn fast with attending events is that you have to get there early. While the staff try to make it fair by holding lottos and raffles to randomize how and when people enter the venue regardless of when you actually show up, etc. you still get there early. There are more than 13 million people living in Tokyo, and even if just a small fraction of them care enough about original BL to want to attend J.GARDEN, you want to up the odds of getting in and getting the books you want as much as you humanly can.

There’s a reason many otaku refer to event days as “war”—you need to go in with a game plan, or you’re going to lose. And Sou and I were already at a rough start, because we’d missed the chance to pick up a pamphlet on pre-order. They’d sold out within the first four days of release, and we hadn’t been given the okay to attend until the fifth day. So we were kind of screwed. Nonetheless, we did what we could with what we had—which was Twitter’s #J庭54 hashtag, the official J.GARDEN site, and tons of passion for BL—and decided we’d torture ourselves getting up at 5AM day-of, come down early, get a pamphlet, and do our best to plan in the time between obtaining it and when doors opened.

A Love Letter to the Dumb Boys of BL

We all have our preferences regarding the type of characters we like. For instance, sadistic seme characters have been a mainstay in BL for a long time, presumably because they’re popular. So have tsundere uke characters, or super shy, virginal, naïve uke. You might like sweet boys or soft boys or badass boys or buff boys. But one character type I find enduringly wonderful in BL is simply: incredibly dumb boys.

And thankfully, there’s a wealth of them.

While chatting it over with the rest of the BL team, we decided on five categories of Dumb Boys (TM): dick for brains, beefcakes, naïve boys, school boys, and guys who’re just… really stupid. I put together some recommendations in each category, so if you, too, are a connoisseur of Dumb Boys (TM), please read on.