documenting the BL fan experience
My first experience with BL was a NaruSasu fanfic I stumbled across very accidentally when I clicked a link in the comments. There wasn’t any feeling of immediate disgust, because I just never had any experience with LGBTQ representation before this due to my parents…
Fanart of Kakashi and Iruka from Naruto kissing in the hokage office on a break. It felt soft and warm. At the time I hadn’t dated anybody and was a known prude who kept my confusion to myself. But seeing them felt reassuring somehow. I…
My first BL experience is linked to fan work. I was around 8 and I actually through that Oscar from Versailles no Bara was a guy so I thought he/she was a gay couple with André. My first experience with “real BL” was from the anime Yuyu Hakusho. I was really into Hiei and Kurama together and looking on the family computer I found some doujinshis and fanfictions. At the beginning I was kind of grossed out by original BL, I only liked yaoi with characters I knew. But the sexual aspect in doujins and fanfic was really eye opening for me (I rarely consumed pornographic content before). I also liked that in the original work it was more serious stories that the shoujo I could find. Fandom was very welcoming and active (in french, not Arabic). I went on Livejournal and had multiple accounts on websites where people would post fanfic, fanart and talk about the show.
— 28, She/Her, Algeria
BL helped me learn about LGBT+ people and topics, along with helping me figure myself out. It’s the discussion about BL and it’s ‘controversial love’ that were super interesting to me. It kind of helped me with getting a grip on my sexuality. — 20,…
I don’t participate in many real-life fandom things, although a few of my closest friends are also BL fans. It’s still something that I largely interact with online. The past few years the fandom has gotten stranger as people are more quick to gatekeep, criticize,…
I’m very thankful for BL in the sense that it helped me figure out my gender, sexuality, and a lot of personal sexual preferences I have. The fandom has always been incredibly welcoming, and it’s filled with so many people of different backgrounds but similar experiences: to a lot of us, BL was the first step to finding out about queerness and figuring out who we were. (I do like having the little “leverage” of being a mlm BL fan/fudanshi, because I also get to tell people that policing sexuality isn’t protecting me, like they say it is.)
— 24, He/Him, Canada
Cleaning and analyzing the data from the BL Fan Interview Project has shown predictable results in some ways and surprising results in others. This is the first chart I wanted to share. Survey and Participants The question asked for this part of the survey: “Do…
