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 don’t like some kind of content I do like (for example, very dark fiction). 

Mexican fandom is very good, too, because they don’t care what you ship if it’s not harmless to real people.

— 26, She/They, Mexico

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

I would not have been exposed to the content that made me love BL so much if it weren’t for my easy internet access even at age 12. The largest difference in the way the internet has affected BL from the early 2000s to now is the availability of manga online. I used to buy physical BL manga from an incredibly limited selection in the store. Now websites like Lezhin have caused a huge boom in BL titles and seen BL become more international in subject and scope.

— 28, She/They, USA