documenting the BL fan experience
The representation in BL is generally good. Most fictional media shouldn’t, to me, be held up as a golden standard for representation because I’ve found in my experience that leads to extremely toxic fandom interactions. Representation in BL isn’t going to be every single gay…
When I first discovered BL fandom: “Glomp rawr XD Yaoi means stop my butt hurts”. Now fandom has chilled out, BL is more readily available for consumers and talking to people is a lot more easy. Though the fandom online is a lot more angry…
People saying I transitioned to become a gay man like the comics was a big reason I fell out with the community in my late teens/early 20s. It was only recently that I’ve been more comfortable with interacting with fandom again. BL helped me figure out the difference of sex to gender and gender identity to gender presentation. Usually people are accepting, in my experience. I tend to curate my experience so that if someone has negative viewpoints of LGBTQ+ issues I block them and move on.
— 27, He/Him, New Zealand
The quality of internet overtime made it easier to consume, relate to, and make content for. It’s easier to read on the go, talk about it to friends at the same time, live react, etc. There’s a lot more doujins that have been translated to…
