Whereas women artists are more likely to extract beloved characters out of their favourite manga, and develop love stories around them, often as beautiful gay boy couplings wholly unrelated to the originals. This approach, called yaoi -yamanashi “no climax,” ochinachi “no punchline,” iminashi “no meaning”- has since given rise to a new commercial genre known as “boys’ love comics.” (Largely simultaneous to yaoi, a similar vein of fan fiction called “slash” has emerged among American science fiction fandom, indicating that this taste is not an isolated phenomenon peculiar to Japanese women, but has a more universal appeal.)