For the Lovers: Gay Panic and Lifelong Revelations Via Yaoi

The Wonder of Anime Presents: For the Lovers is a love themed collection on The Wonder of Anime, including guest essays. This essay is by Lauren Hill.

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A love letter to my younger self and the period I discovered not just Boys’ Love, but queer love in general and also learned a lot about myself and the world outside my conservative little Texas hometown. 

Anime and manga have had a significant impact on my life. From becoming my obsession as a pre-teen through to…well, now, and also becoming my career, it’s safe to say that I’ve stayed a lifelong weeb. Proud of it too! But not only did anime/manga impact my creativity, my passions, and my work ethic, but it also helped me learn so much about myself. Most importantly, I learned about queer love. It wasn’t the most realistic way to learn, of course, but it was what allowed me to understand so much about myself. Like, why I never really had a proper crush on boys (I legit just picked a random guy when pressured by my friends about a crush, sorry Chad), or why I was so fascinated by the beauty of bishounen, and why I thought it was so odd that Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune were so handsy when they were supposed to be cousins. 

I often get asked how I first got into anime and manga, specifically Boys’ Love/yaoi. After all, I grew up in a small, conservative, college town in Texas that was, honestly, pretty cut off from international entertainment. Thankfully, I had unmonitored and practically unlimited access to the internet. Dangerous? Yeah. Surprisingly, though, I never wound up on anything too dark or dastardly. Mostly because my main go-to websites were: Fanfiction.net, DeviantArt, LiveJournal, SailorMoon.com, Neopets, GaiaOnline, and KH-2.net. (And yes, it was necessary to shout them all out!) Ah, the good ol’ days before social media platforms. If you also visited any of those sites, don’t forget to reapply the IcyHot for your back pain btw. 

As for how I got into anime, it was a combination of Toonami, Pokémon, my Korean friend who befriended me after seeing me doodle Sailor Moon, and a few boys in school letting me borrow their VHS tapes of anime movies. Did that mean I watched Perfect Blue, X, and Ninja Scrolls at a woefully inappropriate age (11)? Yup. But I turned out fine. Mostly. Admittedly, Perfect Blue did traumatize me a little bit. Also, word of advice, don’t try to watch Vampire Hunter D or Akira on the family TV when your parents are home. You will have to pause and turn things down sooooo often. 

Once I was obsessed with anime, it was only a matter of time before I dove into the fandoms and learned what other fans did with their passion. While spreading the love to my local friends, I would search endlessly for art and pictures to print out and plaster all over my binders and locker, which led me to many fan sites, and eventually, led me to finding doujinshi. It started with Gundam Wing. Well, ok, technically it was Sailor Moon, but if I can be vulnerable, I must admit that when I read my very first SM fanfic, I legitimately thought it was canon content and probably thought the same with any doujinshi scans I came across in those first few months of learning the internet. But I digress. When I got into Gundam Wing, I was madly in love with Duo Maxwell. I didn’t know why I was so captivated by a cartoon character that everyone immediately thought was a girl when they saw him all over my binders, but don’t worry, realization would hit…eventually.

My friend group and I split all the boys up, each claiming one as our favorite (yes, on a dibs basis) and sharing any content we found with one another. Seeing as this was around late Middle School/Junior High, there was some serious mean girl energy between this one girl and me—and before you assume, no, this is not an enemies-to-lovers story; she can still kick rocks. And she was actually the one who came upon doujinshi first. In some bizarre power play, whenever I annoyed her, she would send me Duo/Quatre doujinshi and mock me (for some reason, she HATED Quatre) that Duo was gay. Now, I would like to remind you that I grew up in a small, conservative town in Texas. We had all been raised that gay = bad. So yes, at first, I would get annoyed about this, offended even. My beloved Duo wasn’t gay!!! We were totally destined for each other, after all. 

Hey, hey. Shut up. I was like 12. 

One day, while going through the links, I discovered a ton of other comics featuring all the characters in different pairings. I was, of course, preparing to send all the Trowa/Quatre content her way when I stumbled on the collection that was Heero/Duo. 

Holy cow, was it a lot. 

Unfortunately, it was all in Japanese. Scanlations were still pretty new for manga, let alone fanworks. So I turned to my one resource of all things fandom—LiveJournal. In a matter of moments, I learned a lot of things very quickly:

• They were referred to as 1×2/2×1 
• There was a LOT of fanfiction
• There was even more fanart 

I’d like to say that in the moment I had my full fujoshi awakening. Not yet. I quickly closed the window, my mind spiraling over what I just saw. Being gay was bad, wasn’t it? So why did so many people on the internet enjoy seeing Heero and Duo kissing? 

And most importantly, why had I kinda liked seeing the art of them doing that? 

I took a few days off from the internet, internally thinking about all of this, but saying nothing to my friends. I had been writing my own self-insert story because, duh, of course I was, but suddenly I was having trouble working on it. I kept wanting to know why people would think of all the characters in Gundam Wing, and why would they say Heero loved Duo? I mean, he punched him in the stomach and was so mean to my beautiful boy! 

Ever weak to my own curiosity, I found myself back in the search on LiveJournal. I felt nervous for some reason, unsure if what I was doing was actually wrong or not. I mean, how could it be wrong if there were so many results?

That’s when I stumbled upon an artist’s LJ, mbp (I think it stood for Mr. Bear’s Psychiatric but idk, it’s been a minute and I was focused on other things...) They were an amazing artist and had all sorts of fandoms featured on their blog. They also had their own fan comics, mostly drawn on notebook paper, and all of it carefully scanned so it could be shared online. I read through some of the shorter ones before stumbling upon one that was currently in progress. It was titled “The Laundromat.” 

In brief, this very hilarious comic was a modern!AU series where Heero and Duo have an incredibly awkward meet-cute in a laundromat and continue to run into each other until they’re suddenly forced on the most bizarre road trip ever. I read everything available in one sitting. 

I. Was. Hooked.

And that was when something awakened in me. 

Suddenly, everything made sense. Of course, Heero and Duo were meant to be together. They were opposites, they argued and bickered, they were perfect for each other. 

From that moment, I devoured anything and everything I could. Fanfiction, fanart, official images that had them right next to each other—ANYTHING. For a little while, I kept this new fascination to myself. I refreshed mbp’s LJ and website every day to see if a new page was up, while also reading everything else they had made, even if it wasn’t Gundam Wing. I even started writing my own fanfiction in my journal, completely abandoning my Mary Sue, self-insert story that I had worked on for months. No, I could never have Duo. But Heero could. And for some reason, that made sense. 

I kept my newly growing fujoshi habits to myself for a few years until access to manga and anime began to grow. As I entered High School, more manga seemed to be popping up on the bookshelves. Which also meant my online searching grew. I learned that there were entire books devoted to characters who actually were gay and wanted to kiss—and then some! I remember the very first Boys’ Love manga I read was Dear Myself, and I returned to that torrent file over and over again to reread it. And yes, once a physical copy was available, I had it. (Rip to June. They’re not dead, yet…) 

Then, one day, on the bookshelf of my local Walden’s, there was an honest-to-God yaoi manga for sale. Was I under 18 and not the appropriate demographic for Golden Cain? Absolutely. Did I still find a way to get it? Of course! It’s not like my parents really paid attention to the manga I was buying (thank god.) And yes, I became that nerd reading in the back of the class, with a book close to my blushing face, sometimes having to covertly hide the cover art. I began to find new ships (Tasuki/Chichiri is my forever OTP, iykyk) and unsurprisingly, yaoi led me to yuri. 

Girls kissing girls?! What??

Wait…

But what if…

It was absolutely a Sailor Uranus/Sailor Neptune doujin that finally flipped the switch on in my brain. Suddenly, I understood why I had felt so weird around girls I liked and admired, why I had been obsessed with Shania Twain to the point I was always daydreaming that she would bust open the doors and take me out of the horror that was Middle School.

I was bisexual. 

Looking back on things now, I probably would have figured it out without anime and manga. But it definitely would have been way later in life and honestly? The way anime and manga has shaped my life as a whole is so very special to me. Something I found comfort in as a kid not only opened my world but it taught me about myself, life, and the world around me. And also got me into a career I adore. So yeah, I’m a forever weeb, a cringe fujoshi, and I have an OG yaoi paddle. 

And I’m damn proud of it. 

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