#I've been told I should play dramatical murder and I might just for the giggles

[siflshonen]

Omg, could you tell us more about your experience at the con? how did they find out about the manga development?

Uh, okay, so some context is necessary here. lemme just copy-paste what I told my friend in the chat real quick.

This weekend I had the pleasure of being a guest handler for the cosplay contest judges at Tora-Con this year (look them up - they're all incredible!) and after the awards ceremonies, me and one of the judges hit up the day-ending Yaoi for 300 panel, which was hosted by the cheerily gay cosplay contest emcee dressed as Alfred Fire Emblem - er, mostly. The panel began with him kicking up his feet, looking to his co-host, ripping off his wig and saying, "It's been a day. Pass me the yaoi!"

Basically, the panelists had organized BL, yaoi, and “yaoi” titles and popular ships into goofy categories (wholesome, doomed, toxic, Baby's First Yaoi, divorced, old man, rivals, toxic and doomed, Komaeda, musical, etc.) with a different pairing (fanon, canon, whatever) per slide. As each popped up, the audience laughed, cheered, booed, whatever-ed in response. “Yaoi” was used loosely and of course there were slides for stuff like Supernatural, Sherlock, the red and yellow M&Ms, Bert and Ernie, Metal Gear Solid, Homestuck, Genshin Impact... Very broad and meant to garner reactions. In many ways it was a retrospective of the Greatest Hits of popular guyxguy ships on Tumblr, so for a lot of attendees it was really more like a walk down memory lane.

So like. They had several “My Hero yaoi” items in there like DabiHawks (which got a big reaction! The people love HotWings!), TodoDeku (got a polite reaction), KiriBaku (a mild reaction and some awwwwwws.) (The guest with whom I was attending with politely claps but shakes their head at TodoDeku, so after I was polite and was like, “I just like Todoroki to be included”, I then was more honestly like, “but dude it’s BakuDeku or nothin’!” and they were like, “Thank you. Thank goodness.” I didn't realize it then, but this moment heralded what was to come.)

Finally, near the end of the panel, BakuDeku comes up (with the anime still of Izuku as Katsuki's cane, of course) and the room FUCKING ROARS.

Our hosts (who evidently don't closely follow the series) go wide-eyed and then, after a pause, wigless Alfred Fire Emblem tries to take back the energy and goes, “Oh, so you make a big reaction for THAT?!” and it turns out I am not the only manga reader in attendance because then like half the room - myself, my escorted guest, and two other folks at our table at the center-front of the room included - scream in perfect synchronicity, “THAT ONE’S REAL!!!!!!!!!"

A person at my table - clearly also an anime-only - says with the playful innocence only an individual with a kind and sugar-sweet romantic heart can possess, “No! They were right with the KiriBaku! :)” and then turns to meet me and my guest's and another girl's eyes, and I watched as theirs widened in fear as we all looked them dead-on and said, “No, you don’t understand. THIS one is real.”

And the room got REAL quiet until the hosts changed slides to, like, I dunno, Gravitation or Yugioh or something and the energy picked back up.