38, SHE/HER, USA

My first experience with a “boy x boy” pairing was Kunzite and Zoisite in Sailor Moon. I started watching Sailor Moon (the DiC/USA network version) in 1996, and became obsessed with it. The internet was very young at this point, and the “World Wide Web” was a new feature in America Online, one I had been cautious to avoid because it wasn’t a moderated, approved service like those in AOL. (This was back when everyone online was an axe murderer until you knew otherwise.)

Well, come to find out that the ‘girl’ Zoisite that was peddled on American televisions was actually a boy. God, that did something to me, to see a man be both effeminate and devoted to someone who protected and cherished him. There was something in me that saw Kunzite killed by his own weapons after Zoisite died, and I read his death as the last act of a desperate man with nothing to lose. How could anyone go on after losing the one that was important to them? How could anyone look at them and think that they didn’t mean everything to each other? It made Sailor Moon so much more brutal, to have people who were clearly fighting for everything dear to them on either side of the battlefield.

Online, I discovered the Anime Web Turnpike, and there were a few pages about the Dark Kingdom, including some with ideas and fanfiction about shipping these two together, even without official canon material. From there, it was a very short leap to CLAMP, and we all know what CLAMP does. My next stop after that was Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears, then FF8, and later Gundam Wing. That was when I discovered doujinshi available on a small site called eBay. That was really when I started to embrace BL.

— 38, She/Her, USA