Archiving Queer Desire

growing up AFAB, i had some sort of connection to masculinity that transcended "tomboyhood" which i couldn't explain at the time. i knew i liked boys and masculine people but always felt like it was in a different way than "other (straight) girls." i didnt really get it until i started watching and reading naruto, which was the first ever anime/manga i had ever watched/read. early on in the show, the two main characters (naruto and sasuke) accidentally kissed as a gag, but when i watched it i was like "........... i wanna be like them.........." and that was how i learned about "yaoi/BL (boys' love) " aka the japanese term for media featuring homosexual relationships between two men. i learned that shipping sasuke and naruto together was really popular (and honestly, the entire series is basically SasuNaru: the show even if the creator didnt specifically intend it to be that way, he's just misogynistic enough to make the only meaningful relationships between men only LOL) and that there was a lot of fanart featuring them together, and that there are a bunch of manga and ships out there that were yaoi too, and i found comfort in SasuNaru, BL media, and yaoi ships in the other shows i grew to like. thank you naruto for teaching me that i liked boys in a "boy way" HAHAHAHAH

n harmonia from pokemon black and white changed the trajectory of my life. i strongly believe that it was because of him that i am transmasc LMAO. i dont really know now what exactly about him made me want to be him so badly, but i remember when i was 11 i ended up making him my entire identity… i used him as a faceclaim on tumblr and saying he was literally me, i used his name as mine, and started using he/they pronouns for the first time. i also identified as agender at the time. something about him changed pokemon gays forever because i know im not the only one who was affected by him LOL

it got a bit more complicated in terms of gender identity when i realized that, although feeling like "boy" i didnt believe i was a "man" and didnt feel comfortable seeing myself as explicitly male. i found comfort in characters like haruhi fujioka from ouran high school host club and naoto shirogane from persona 4, who are both afab but gender nonconforming with more "boyish" looks and mannerisms rather than "manly" ones. their character arcs also specifically addressed gender and gender expression and opened up my mind to the idea of gender as a performance. they helped me realize i am nonbinary and that i could be both, neither, any, in between, whatever and that it both didnt have to matter and that it could be everything to be nothing or anything

the character archetype of “bishounen” aka “beautiful boy,” depicting men of androgynous/feminine beauty, also brought me a lot of clarity in terms of the way i felt transmasc. howl from howl’s moving castle, kurama from yu yu hakusho, kurapika from hunter x hunter, marth from fire emblem, and most importantly ciel phantomhive from black butler (who has been canonically depicted in drag multiple times) are characters that have made me scream “I WANT HIS GENDERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR."  they helped me realize that the way i wanted to be masculine and what masculinity meant to ME, regardless of what other people define as masculine, was different, and that i could express masculinity in a way that wasn’t typical

Saiyuki was my first ever manga to ever read growing up. There's this character, Genjo Sanzo, who is a priest in the series. Always thought he was a cool guy. The way he composes himself, his badass gun and how he takes care of Son Goku. There was this one part in the manga in Saiyuki Reload. Don't remember the chapter specifically, but there was a scene of him in the shower. There it was, just right in my face. Full round booty cheeks. It was in my face like "pow!" and I went "wow!"

Watching sinbad as a kid, with all of its sexual innuendo and implied sexuality was confusing and arousing to me. In addition to all of the half naked pirates and homoerotic camaraderie between Sinbad and his child best friend, the scenes in which water sirens seduced the men to their graves cracked open a desire in me that i couldn't interpret at the time. The power that was wielded through being an irresistible object of desire, able to hypnotize and lure the horny men to their deaths, was very exciting to me for reasons I was oblivious to. This movie remains an early sign of my budding sexuality, especially with the short Sinbad asscheek cameo

I am looking for submissions to my archival project that documents the experiences with media related to 'trans-' and 'gay-awakenings'. Please check out the description in the 'submission information' tab on my blog for my information if you are interested in submitting. And please consider sharing this post! Im making this a poll and tagging it a bunch to hopefully get more traction. Thank you!

I read a fantasy book series called The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan. It primarily follows a female protagonist, but somewhere in the second book it also starts adopting the viewpoint of a male character in the story, Dannyl, and his interactions with another man who is attracted to him and is a "lad" (the admittedly hilarious term for a gay man in the world).

This intrigued me because male-male attraction had never featured in any of the other dozen or more fantasy series I had read. I couldn't put my finger on why I was so absorbed into this little side-plot at the time, but now it's clear I was in the desert of heteronormativity and craving queer media and stories wherever I could find them. The character Dannyl originally presents as straight, politely rejecting the attraction of the other man while also sympathizing with his plight (as Dannyl himself had been teased along similar lines in school). However, it turns out that Dannyl had actually been subconsciously using his magic to suppress his homosexual attraction to avoid ridicule and persecution, and he only realizes this after a dreadful ordeal leaves him drained of all his magic. I had barely seen any portrayals of the psychological toll of being in the closet, let alone one in a fantasy world, and this really stuck with me.