documenting the BL fan experience
I think most of the people that like BL that surround me are also part of the LGBTAQ+ community, and we are pretty chill about it. I just have two friends that are really involved with original BL stories. Most of my friends like reading…
I guess being into BL was my way of exploring my sexuality for years without really noticing I was doing it. I had a very late “gay awakening” (at 21), which also helped me open up in terms of sexual acceptance, but it didn’t really…
No, I don’t use fujin terms personally, but I tag my accounts as fumuke, since I usually only focus on mlm.
— 22, He/Him, Venezuela
On one side, it was because of piracy that I was able to find BL content in the first place (downloading anime and manga, and later on doujinshi). When I got into online fandom, nobody debated where the content had come from, we never stopped…
When I first started, it was mostly stuff available only in Japanese, and nowadays there’s a lot of translations, and also different source material. Also I have a lot of friends in the world that make fanmade stuff, so it’s cool we can connect by…
I’ve lost connection with local fandom years ago. My only reference is when I table at local cons, and I interact a bit with the attendees. What I noticed, though, is that the BL public is way younger than when I got into BL. I was 15 years old when I watched Loveless and I was one of the youngest. But recently I’ve met girls as young as 10 years old, accompanied by their parents, asking for TodoDeku stickers, for example. That absolutely didn’t happen in my time (hahaha). Even the concept of parents being in cons was alien back then. As for what this generation consumes or acts like, I suppose it’s quite globalized thanks to social media. They’re up to date with the newest releases and have a lot of access to BL original content and fan-content.
— 28, She/They, Argentina
I may be Latin American but BL is quite accurate to what my life is. So I think they’re pretty good, even the ones written by “supposedly cishet women”. (I don’t like assuming, hence the quotes.) — 22, He/Him, Venezuela
I feel like officially published BL is better since it supports translators and artists. But on the other hand, it’s really hard to find/get them here in Latin America, especially in Venezuela, since we can’t even buy stuff on the Internet. — 22, He/Him, Venezuela
Around the beginning, fandom was mostly my friends, the other people in the local anime forum/community, and some people on Deviantart. Social media didn’t exist yet. Instead of drawing for strangers on the internet, I filled up pages of drawings in my notebooks and brought it to the weekend meetings to show my friends. Despite differences among the guys in the local community, everyone mostly respected each other’s preferences, I guess.
The internet was already a thing, but since it was pre-social media, communities used to be hosted in forums. In the case of our local anime community, despite meeting through a forum, the weekly meetings to just spend a nice time with everyone in a park while talking about games and manga and playing with cards, were the most important part of the dynamics.
— 28, She/They, Argentina
My friend used to talk with other BL fans via forums. When I started liking it, on the internet, I was mostly by myself, liking and reblogging stuff on tumblr, not really interacting with anyone. In real life though I was a member of a…
