To be honest, I never thought I would be reading BL in my life but HEY!! here I am, it's become a part of my daily reading lists. At first, I just don't get why people love these kinds of stuff I mean I don't hate it but I'm just curious you know, I thought that it just doesn't feel right maybe these are the things that society doesn't talk about on daily life or accept, maybe these are the things that the school doesn't teach us so I feel kind of distance. Since curiosity got the best of me I decided to give it a shot and RIGHT THERE, RIGHT AT THAT MOMENT I FELT LIKE I HAD JUST OPENED MY THIRD F*CKING EYES *cough*cough* pardon me and that's also the start of losing my innocent eyes hahaha. Well, it's been 6 years since I fell into this abyss and I don't think I won't be climbing back up anytime soon LOL.
I started because I used to read my mom's bodice rippers from the 80s and 90s. You know, the ones where the maiden is tied up and held captive by the sheik/pirate/viking. These days, it's just not PC to have CNC, questionable consent, or highly dominant men in BG romances. But somehow it's okay to slap someone around if you're the same gender. Go figure. That's how I got started in BL.
I got into anime when I was like 10 and gay shipping and fugoshi culture was at its all time high. So I guess it was only a matter of time before I tried to read a story. Didn't read any gl until I realized that I'm a Lesbian because it would make me confused. Lol now I read it all the time.
Quite often I don’t like FLs or the way they are portrayed in many novels. From some personal experiences I also get along better (or used to) with guys than girls. And I was not interested in bl at all, but I really liked any novels or movies where there was pure bromance, in a best buddy way, not romantic way. Errr the bromance turned into shounen ai and then bl. Though if I’m completely honest I probably still like pure bromance more. I hate how in many bl stories they portray men (shou) as weak (same with the aforementioned FLs), or gongs as rapey and yandere. Not all mind you, some bl novels are really good, but bromance ones usually avoid those pitfalls. In my opinion.
Many posts would ask for BL stories and said they had better character building and romance so I tried one that many people recommended and found I enjoyed it. Now I read both BG and BL.
I'm straight but I'm addicted to reading. After I finished reading most of the popular straight stories, I started reading BL and yuri too because I was unable to find good stories anymore. After reading a few good ones I stopped caring about genders and started reading it all. Though I dont like the ones that are mostly porn with very little story.
What can I say, that's what it is, bro. Yeah, I agreed with the FL things too so lately I'm kinda picky when I read romance unless FL has the brain cells to handle things on her own without the ML to save her pretty little a**. Also, ppl like shipping weak, naive,shou X possessive, yandere, gongs things I don't know why(ppl have their own taste I guess). I tend to read about healthy relationships and bromance, yeah bromance is still the purest thing to read in between males though.
Skipping few things, I got into otome isekai and then after finishing off most of the novels/mangas in the genre started reading gender bender and when I thought of how cute two handsome guys together would be, I started preferring male MCs and then I started reading regular Isekai and fantasy like TFC and ORV and could not help digging deeper into the pit and now here I am. I read all genres from QT to Interstellar to School Life to E-sports to Cultivation! I personally am a really big fan of humor, fluff, cute stuff, slight dramatic flair, and when the leads work really well together as both comrades and lovers, like “I can do it” “Fog” “Accidental Mark” “Your Scandals Are Way Cuter Than You” “Transmigrating into the Male Lead’s Ex-Boyfriend” and “Non-human Seeking Re-Employment”! I’m not a big fan of the smutty novels(since most are really morally degrading), but I like spicy scenes in the regular novels Tl:dr I learned consenting hot guy + consenting hot guy = me likeky
i actually stay away from BL and formed a stigma on it. Then I watched Banana Fish without knowing it's shounen ai, and then yeah. got me down into the rabbit hole
In my case, I like BG romance stories. But after awhile I found most of the stories are just copy and paste in plot. For example, ‘oh she is so beautiful that i’m in love. I can die for her (even though this is the first time I met her). I peeked into BL krn novels and there are so many original ideas and brilliant authors~ Of course I still run into stories that are just, eh. But having more choices is better huhu.
I started reading novels around one or two years ago. It started with how much I liked a manhwa, got no idea which, and wanted to know what will happen later. Afterwards I read novels sometimes but not a lot. Now I'm addicted to novels, BL novels if you want more details. But before I got there I was addicted to manga, manhwa and I sometimes read manhua when I had nothing to read. Most of the time I read BG, and I don't know how but I read more and more isekai and such things. I remember how I once wanted to just read something because I didn't have anything to do and I just accindentally read a BL. You didn't know how shocked I was. First time reading a BL, without even knowing, and there was a bed scene. Oh boy. I felt so flustered. I didn't dare to read anything for a while. Afterwards I didn't open that manga again for fear of something I didn't know back then. But I couldn't help but think about how much I actually liked the story line and how sad I became from not knowing how it ended. So yeah, you maybe already guessed what happened later. I read it and became addicted. Later I did read some cute BLs to clean my mind of the hot sh*t I read, but it couldn't help me from reading hot sh*t again. I think about half a year after I began reading novels, I started to read BL because there was always one BL novel that I wanted to read and it was worth it! More and more good BL novels were found and now I read them each freaking day. So yeah, that's basically how I got in BL I guess.
When I was 15 I wrote a fanfic of Goku and Vegeta living together (punished by their wives for always fighting, breaking stuff and not helping with chores, if I remember correctly) and it was supposed to be a humorous piece, but I didn't yet realize why it was so fun to write about two men being together with the women away from the picture. Back then, I had no idea yaoi was a thing, the Internet and manga sharing were in their infancy. Accidentally, I downloaded an ugly art father/son yaoi oneshot and it was the most morally bankrupt thing my somewhat innocent eyes had seen till then. I was disgusted for a good month or so. Then I went to find a nicely drawn fujoshi bait like Angel Sanctuary, then some Harry Potter BL fanfics, more yaoi manga with more acceptable settings, and so on. There was a short while where I substituted the uke for a girl in my head, but my brain quickly got used to the idea of two men together, and it became my alternative read for when I got bored or annoyed with the tiresome shoujo tropes. Well, it's been a while since then. When I started, my country had a very small community that knew what anime and manga was. Now, we have manga sold in bookstores and anime on TV. I feel like I was robbed of a decent youth, sigh. I had to watch anime on German and Polish channels with the dictionaries beside me. Forum friends sent anime CDs, so I had to work on my English to read the subtitles. And some didn't even have subs -_-. I'm in a ranty mood it seems.
I dont remeber anymore how I got to read BL. Maybe from manga, no other media that would expose me back then to BL other than manga. Romance is good story but when you read so many straight romance with all kinds of side element to spice, at the end of the day it's still just that.
I wouldn't say my taste completely changed to BL, I still read BG mangas and k-dramas a lot but a lot of their plots are quite the same so i lean more towards BL. I'm not sure how i got into BL... i think it was because of one manga and its fanfics I really liked Saiyuuki so i wanted to read other mangas by Kazuya Minekura sensei, and it happened to be Wild Adapter. I was oblivious it was classified as BL (quite subtle) and read it anyways, the next thing i knew i was on fanfiction,,net and reading fanfics, tbh i was quite weirded and disgusted out at first, but still i was persistent and curious so i kept reading, and then i just got sucked in
I like the part of the chase, probably the first 40 chaps, but after that is just too much smut. The story progression would be way too slow for me, and I don't enjoy those scenes that much, at least in written form.
I stopped reading romance after seeing the tropes get overturned a few times (I mean there's only so many versions of 'hot guy falls for strong independent woman' I can read) and then after that a lot of what I read wasn't focused on romance. Then after, I realised I kinda like reading the 'oh shit' perspective that comes from the protagonist figuring their way out of the closet and having to give up rank, family ties, social acceptance etc. just to be with the person they love. Now I'm back to reading a mix, it's just that 3/4 of the good novels I chance across have a mix of BL pairings along with BG side pairings.
UH I saw a YouTube ad and it kept reappearing So I read it And here I am Spiraling down the bl rabbit hole lmao