My first BL introduction was around 2000. The Internet was still pretty limited in my country and my family was one fortunate enough to have access. I was around 10 years old snooping around the web, where I was able to find a closed group on LiveJournal who shared doujin scans. At that time I was not yet familiar with manga terms. I thought doujin was just an indie published original manga (instead of fanworks of existing IP). I binge-read almost all the scans available, where mostly were ‘yaoi’ doujinshi. I just rolled with whatever I could get for free from the internet, as I didn’t have my own money to buy regular shoujo or shounen manga in bookstores. Indonesia was (still is) very wary about homosexual relationships, and this was one of my first exposures to that aspect of sexuality, where the younger me could accept that BL can be just as nuanced and deep as heterosexual romance manga. (Haha) I have some memorable BL titles that I still hold dear even now that made me cry while I was reading it. Then it snowballed as I dove deep into fandom, reading fanfic, etc. I mostly joined the shounen manga fandom, so with an abundance of male characters, alot of the popular pairings are also M/M.

While certainly I recognize that some people were apprehensive about people’s first contact with homosexual relationship was through BL, I think it’s still better to be able to access something that conveys homosexual relationship not in hateful light. I was able to learn about the LGBTQ movement later because I had seen BL first and enjoyed it. A better understanding can be gained by having desire to know more and being open-minded, instead of instantly judging as it is in the current fandom climate.

— 23, She/Her, Indonesia

The first mlm ships I started shipping came from Homestuck, which came with lots of fanart and fanfic. Then I got into the Free! fandom and started reading BL. I remember people kept talking about Junjou Romantica and the likes, although it did feel like those things were out of style at the time. There was also Love Stage, but I don’t remember if it occurred around the time I first discovered BL. I mostly used tumblr back then when it came to non-original BL fandoms, and also occasionally searched for BL art.

— 25, They/Them, Vietnam

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