documenting the BL fan experience
BL (and GL) has always been a safe space for me since I was young— a space to explore kink and sensuality, love and romance, gender, and relationships. Having friends in the BL community was a guarantee of acceptance and that was a huge comfort…
There’s a lot to be said about availability privilege when it comes to media and content. We need to have a talk about people who live in places and countries without the privilege to access these things. The industry around distribution heavily affects all fans.…
First experiences with BL: Yu Yu Hakusho and Prince of Tennis doujinshi and fanart back in 2003-2004. The first BL manga I bought was “Only the Ring Finger Knows”— very silly and romantic. I liked so many things about BL and shipping— the distance from my own identity/lived experiences allowed me to explore ideas of sexuality, gender, and romance more easily, the coming out narratives were touching and acted like a guide for me, the community was so fun and completely open. Initially, I wasn’t part of the fandom as a whole, I suppose as I was quite young. But I often met other anime fans online and in real life who liked BL and I always got on really well with them. BL fans were often more creative, open-minded, and passionate in my opinion. I spent a lot of time on msn, yahoo, and gaiaonline. Mostly it was a pleasant surprise to learn that someone you met was also into BL (and usually Girl’s Love, too, at that time).
— 28, She/They, USA
I was in high-school and I had just realized I was LGBT+ and I was trying to figure out what that means for me in some way. I found the BL anime Gravitation on Comcast on Demand and so I watched and I fell in…
Queer content was not freely available in Brazil (it’s a very… complicated culture) so the internet (blogs and MSN groups and twitter and tumblr) was the only way I could find any of it, nowadays there’s a lot more queer content there, and here in…
I liked all of BL! The porn, the romance, etc. Only thing I didn’t really like was the yaoi hands but I got past it.
— 24, He/Him, Canada
While many fans may not know there is not a difference really between “shounen ai”, yaoi, or BL, numerous sites with translated scanlations categorize them that way. Even though we may know about the history of the BL industry and how some subgenres varied under…
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”…
BL, I liked everything I found to be honest. I discovered a lot from it, especially that people could love other people of their own gender. Ironically (or not), it made me discover GL and with GL I discovered my own sexuality. I’m more comfortable with f/f and m/m stories than with m/f ones. I even discovered my passion for writing and creating worlds for myself and I’m studying for a Creative Writing degree in my country and everything I write, it must have at least two m/m or f/f pairings.
— 26, She/They, Mexico
Spanish fandom is awesome. Like, there’s antis, sure, but there’s nothing like it compared to the North American/English fandom, because we’re still in the mindset of “don’t like, don’t read”. I do have friends from other Hispanic countries and they’re all supportive, even if they…
