My Yaoi/Slash Journey

My journey began right before Yaoi became as "mainstream" as it has today.  


I was first introduced to it by Clamp's CCS (or Card Captor Sakura for those of you who don't speak anime/manga acronyms) when i was 6. Of course, being that age, I didn't really think much about  Touya and Yuki's relationship (I think i completely missed it to be honest), and just concentrated on Syaoran (Oh Syaoran <3 how I love you so) and Sakura (whom I admire, she's one of the few female characters that don't annoy the heck out of me). 


But when the CCS anime started airing in Hong Kong, that's when I first got into shonen-ai.  I became completely obsessed with the series and discovered the joys of fanfiction.  Fanfiction allowed me to discover a whole new world besides the canon.  I know that BL first came to being in the form of dojin manga but i could never really get into that, to me AU really only works in fanfiction. Perhaps its because it doesn't stifle your imagination?  Anyway, back to the point, it is then where i found ffs that focused on TxY and for some reason, most of these were much better written than the ffs with other canon couples. Not only did they have better grammar, they were more emotional, more angsty, with better plots  lines and just stirred something deep inside of me.  Buuuuut~ since TECHNICALLY, Yuki isn't human, and doesn't have a gender, so its not reaaaally bl...unless we're talking Tsubasa or xxxHolic, but we're not =w= Clamp mind-fucks all~~ X3

Though, what converted me from reading anything other than Slash was actually, oddly enough, Beyblade.  Remember that kiddie's show with monkey like characters, spinning tops and creatures flying out of them? Yeah, that one. At around 2001(I was 12 i believe at the time), I became impossibly obsessed with the character Kai; that cold, stoic bastard who's actually just damaged and misunderstood (kyaaaaa >w< so moe) and has a warm warm heart <3. You can probably guess what happened next: went onto ff.net, found a few fics where Kai would end up with a girl and/or the reader, cringed, and THEN... magic happened.  I accidentally clicked on a fic that was a Kai/Rei pairing and... well, lets just say they've been my OTP since.

But this isn't where my journey ends!  I continued to read dozens and dozens of Beyblade ffs (I've now read at least 700 beyblade ffs, no joke), and in year 2003, I stumbled upon the yaoi section of the manga store i frequented, had a nosebleed moment when i saw the cover, held onto it and rushed to the cashier, paid for it before they changed their minds and decided to I.D. me, and rushed on home to read it. My first BL manga ever <3.  This manga is really only Shonen-ai, you never see any actual sex, just a few kisses here and there, some snuggling, and hinted sex. (Hong Kong has, for some reason, decided no matter how tame/explicit a BL manga is, they'll be rated NC-17, homophobic much?) This tankobon in particular is a collection of short stories, the artist somehow managed to tell every single story in such detail with such limited page count, the characters were pretty well developed considering, and let me tell you, this book is so. freaking. moe.. *faints* there're cute couples, twisted couples, couples that aren't even really couples, there're uniforms, suits and  Boss/worker relationships *Q* . There's something in here for everyone =w=

Ai no kusabi

Between this manga and  my graduating high school, I started to write my own fanfiction, got into some editing/beta-ing for other ff writers, even did some translating.  I also started building my BL manga collection, and by the time i was in year 13 (this is sometime between 2007 and 2008), not only have i watched virtually all existing BL/Yaoi anime that was out there at the time, my collection of BL mangas grew to the point where i had no more shelf space for them; I now own over 300 yaoi mangas, in an actual, material book form o_o. 

腐女子万歳！♥
Long Live Fujoshis <3

During this time, not only did I manage to convert a few friends (and my brother apparently) into becoming fujo/danshis and/or Otakus,  I also discovered aff.net, fanfiction.net made their sister site fictionpress.com, I joined nanowrimo and attempted to write 2 yaoi novels (failing of course, i'm a slow writer @_@) and found many, many friends just based on the fact that they were also fujoshis. 


Basically, what i'm trying to say is, Yaoi changed my life for the better, and I regret nothing =w= 


p.s. Ai no Kusabi (that picture way up there somewhere) is a classic! its one of the first purely BL novels that was in the market, and the animation of the adaption was pretty well done considering how old it is and the plot line is pretty awesome too~sci-fi yaoi ftw!