documenting the BL fan experience
To put it as simply as I can: I experienced gender dysphoria when I was young in a society that heavily prioritized gender roles. As a result I rejected everything feminine, which included “fujoshi tendencies” aka yaoi shipping (yes, it was homophobia). As I grew…
There was a time when most cons were cancelled and merch wouldn’t ship due to some trade b.s. Not to mention I was a queer child with secret interests that I didn’t want my family to know about (still is that way). So the internet…
BL gives me solace but as a person who needs to recharge from ALL real life things and people. From the very beginning, I separated myself from fiction very strictly and BL is simply one of the art forms I enjoy. Fujoshi are so stigmatized but my best fandom and real life friends have always been fujoshi. No exception. They’re all warm and tend to be very accepting and lend their ears to my issues. Back when I was a teen a trans fujoshi helped me a lot with my issues and helped me calm my anxiety about transition etc.
— 21, They/Them, Cambodia
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…
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.…
The only ship wars were like “Naruto is married to Hinata, how can you ship him with Sasuke, that is cheating!!1!1” but ship wars were strictly between groups that preferred X ship over Y ship. Omegaverse was something exciting and scary, not grounds for trans discourse (I am trans and I love omegaverse.) There was drama but never SJW puritan flavored. People called Orochimaru pedobear and moved on, didn’t harass Orochimaru stans (like me) for “condoning” pedophilia or whatever. AH I MISS THAT.
— 21, They/Them, Cambodia
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…
I use BL as a good litmus test to find out if my acquaintances are homophobic or not because these are well written stories with well written smut and there’s no reason to be dismissive of it unless you’re homophobic, at least in Asia. I…
Everyone has been crazy about danmei for a long, long time. Sometimes it feels like people prefer danmei to Japanese BL here. They are also very vocal about LGBTQ rights, although the fujoshi phenomenon does come up with reference to younger fans. That being said, BL fans are still placed in a box and pretty much silenced in common fandom spaces (some male-oriented fanpages are quite dismissive of mlm shipping and BL fans tend to scatter around smaller, queer specific fandom spaces).
— 25, They/Them, Vietnam
I think of BL like a big mirror. BL content in order to be popular at the time of its creation is going to mirror society at that same time. No one in non-Japanese BL fan spaces ever considers when the series was created. Problematic…
