I was in fandom spaces between 1995- 2002 or so. It's wild because slash/yaoi was considered edgy and you had to know how to find it. Heck, being in fandom was an "outsider" activity. There was a wall between fandom and real life and I've seen how the wall has crumbled. I wrote fanfic but I was a teenage girl. I have acquaintances almost 40 years old just like me that are still very teen girl fannish, I'm talking Inuyasha posters in the living room at age 38, so it's not just Gen Z being quirky. I have my moments because you can't banish fun just to be an adult, but I'm a great believer that there should be a wall between fannish pursuits and your real life.
I was involved in both yaoi and mainstream anime fandom in the late 90s and early 2000s and it wasn’t unusual for the women writing (and buying) yaoi to talk about how homosexuality was a sin but this was all fiction so that made it okay. The shift to slash becoming dominant—and adjusting to become “queer” instead of yaoi and slash—was noticeable! It altered the landscape so much
I was in fandom spaces between 1995- 2002 or so. It's wild because slash/yaoi was considered edgy and you had to know how to find it. Heck, being in fandom was an "outsider" activity. There was a wall between fandom and real life and I've seen how the wall has crumbled. I wrote fanfic but I was a teenage girl. I have acquaintances almost 40 years old just like me that are still very teen girl fannish, I'm talking Inuyasha posters in the living room at age 38, so it's not just Gen Z being quirky. I have my moments because you can't banish fun just to be an adult, but I'm a great believer that there should be a wall between fannish pursuits and your real life.
I was involved in both yaoi and mainstream anime fandom in the late 90s and early 2000s and it wasn’t unusual for the women writing (and buying) yaoi to talk about how homosexuality was a sin but this was all fiction so that made it okay. The shift to slash becoming dominant—and adjusting to become “queer” instead of yaoi and slash—was noticeable! It altered the landscape so much
Huge fan of your pieces! Keep em coming.
Thank you!