Good question. 
I’m leaning towards picking a popular work by that mangaka if we can find evidence of it having either an official English release or a fan translation that, say, would have been at least half completed by end of 2010? (mangaupdates.com will likely be a good resource for this.)
(I’m all out of likes for the day 
)
The names that came up:
Sadahiro Mika
Nangoku Banana
Naono Bohra
Hoshino Lily
Yamane Ayano
Nase Yamato
Hinako Takanaga
Minekura Kazuya
I’ll probably have a look tomorrow for works that fit our criteria - if anyone has suggestions, feel free to share!
Banana Fish was also mentioned, but there was debate as to whether it’s considered BL.
A good source for a BL drama list (ordered by year, too!):
Her we can strike off the list for sure; her notable work of the time period is ファインダーの標的 (series) | L24??, which we’ve got on the List.
That’s a good thought… Maybe we should reorient our thinking? Was it definitely considered BL back in the day? My gut feeling would be “yes”; when you have a tiny pool of candidates, anything even remotely hinting at BL would’ve likely been considered BL.
Oh nice; I’ll have to check that out regardless of the list!
Perhaps it would be good to include “controversial” titles in lists generally, and include information pertaining to the discussion in the item description, for educational purposes.
I like that idea; textual +1 since my likes haven’t refilled yet. That also leads me to…
WILD ADAPTER (series) | L25?? might need to be the series listed for her, at least based off of a quick search. I think it’s another one of those borderline “this isn’t 100% BL, but has elements” cases, so it would be another good case for “this wouldn’t generally be considered BL today, but is still historically important to the genre’s Western perception”.
Man, I can’t believe Banana Fish was picked up so early in the NA market. I wonder if there are any other still notable BL licensed and localized pre-2000s in NA?
Added Banana Fish with a brief description - I feel like there’s a lot that could be said about it (copies sold, voted best manga of all time, BL/not BL), but I’ve never read it, so I’ll leave it up to somone else… 
Other list ideas:
)
)ETA:
I’ve got a few likes again! +1 Man, lists are so fun. I just like organizing things. :>
Sounds reasonable to me! (Turns out there’s a dumptruck full of early stuff we just never knew about x.x) I would definitely like to explore the earlier works.
I’d be very interested in seeing how many will turn up in our searches here. What would be the minimum to be considered “long-running”? 20 volumes? 15?
(Potential other titles to add to that potential list, with notes:)
Looking at all these, maybe we’d want a higher cut-off number? Or perhaps separate numbers for different types of media; 15 volumes of manga is comparatively less impressive than 15 volumes of LN, for instance.
Another list suggestion: novels with male-male romance. I.e., actual “literature” that would never be marketed as BL or as an LN.
This was what I was thinking - it might be better to have separate lists for manga and LNs, and list them from the most number of volumes to least. I think this is another one we can get started on, since it’s a straightforward idea.
I’d like a better title for the Non-fiction list, too.
I shall ponder it.
闇の末裔 (series) | L25?? - Maybe another one for the EWC list? It’s been a long time since I’ve read it, but I’m sure it had some BL content. Related: perhaps we should mention that before BL, shounen-ai and yaoi were the go-to terms and were quite distinct.
I haven’t read this one, sadly, so can’t comment.
Oooh, yes, for sure. Those terms had strict definitions at the time, and woe to you if you thought otherwise. 
so much stuff 
nostalgic BL (not necessarily good nostalgia 
)
Haru wo daiteita
Fish in the trap
that one with the teacher twins 腐った教師の方程式
zetsuai
kizuna
mirage of blaze (or something like that?)
something houkago something
the sexual harrassment one
Sukisho
ai no kusabi
fujimi orchestra
gakuen heaven
Watched the anime a loooooooooooong time ago. It was considered shonen-ai back then.
Hahaha. Anyway, good notes! I’m being at least a few of these will definitely be making their way into the list… 
Along the same lines: bara and material aimed at gay men. Along slightly different lines: male homosexuality in shounen/seinen manga.
僕のセクシャルハラスメント… But it could apply to so many more! 
Some good suggestions! 
Yes I was going to look those up later, just put a placeholder… but boy… that anime… it’s basically one r*pe after the other. 
More great suggestions. We’ll take over the lists section soon enough!!
Non-BL gay stuff:
and something I can’t remember the name of. Was it a manga? maybe. A highschooler is gay and finds a group of (fellow outcast?) friends in a restaurant after school. does that ring a bell for anyone?
I know which one you’re talking about; I can see the cover in my mind… But not the title. 
Edit: it’s not しまなみ誰そ彼 (series) | L24, is it?
Edit2- dang it, didn’t see you’d found it. >.<
