Feeling Alone

I struggle to think of what my first yaoi was because I've almost always shipped guys together. My first time was probably with Yugioh. I realised I kept wanting to pair Yugi with Yami or a love/hate relationship between Yugi and Seto. I was maybe thirteen and rather terrified for it. This was the early 2000's and my family didn't have a computer anymore (we hadn't had one since the mid 90's) nor did I even know anyone else at school that even liked anime. It wouldn't be until about the age of fifteen or sixteen that we got a computer that I dared to dig deeper.

I was massively in love with Inuyasha (the anime...Sesshomaru was my crush from the show). I was getting into fanfiction and on a whim, I put in to look up M rated content. In that moment, a slew of stories shipping the male characters came up. I had always thought I was entirely alone in the way I felt, something to hide and never share. In that moment, I was so happy that there was an entire community who enjoyed the same things I did. I've been writing fanfiction ten years as of this year (2016) and while I mainly do comedy, I've finally begun to feel comfortable writing yaoi now that I'm an adult. The prominence of yaoi makes me feel so much more validated and it's the best thing ever to have others to share this interest with. Thank you to everyone that help to lift up the yaoi community :)