Must be STRONG..

...by which I'm referring to not caving in to my unyielding love for BL (especially yaoi) manga. I discovered this awesome world about a year ago and have since then, with great effort of will, managed to cut down on my yaoi time to just a few hours a day. It was officially a problem because I was reading it whenever I was on my own... i.e. when I was supposed to be studying. Or attending classes. Or sleeping. Or eating. Or reading something else.

(Is it going too far if I liken my situation to that of Chief Hokutos...??)

However, there is no way I can regret falling in love with the genre. Buried within the giant mountain of BL literature - novels and manga, there are some truly amazing and touching stories. And it is such a pleasure to realize, while I'm reading a story, that it one of those gems. .

The me from 2 years ago scorned most romance for being 'pink fluff' that makes you gag. I think that 21 year-old Rimjhim would be angry with Rimjhim today -- a complete convert.

A massive thank you to mangakas and their publishers for creating such amazing work and to all scanlators for their efforts in bringing it to the rest of the world. I wish the manga market would pick up in India so I could buy them. It is far too expensive for an unemployed-law-graduate-preparing-for-various-exams to order them from abroad. Idle hopes of learning the languages are crushed as soon as I look at the vast syllabus for my exams later this year, but perhaps I'll get the chance to change this someday.

A note of caution though: Reading BL has given me an entirely new perspective on the male of our species. There are times when I'm looking at a person but only seeing the butt or thinking, "This guy is totally an uke." or "Imagine the two of them together." And so on...

*Sigh* As Haru puts it... Mom, Dad, I've become...