13 years ago I was a freshman at Iowa State University. 18 years old, it was my first time away from home, from the friends I knew, my family, and my boyfriend. Over the summer I had joined a Gundam Wing yaoi mailing list and had been making some online friends through it, so I at least had that while I was away. I was the baby of the list, the youngest one on it, since I was only 18, but we all got along well and had a lot of fun writing fics and sharing fanart of Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell.
One day, on the list, I inadvertently started a “war” of sorts with one of the other ladies. It was all in good fun, to this day this is the only fandom I was a part of where “ship wars” weren’t terrible. We were debating who was on top: Heero or Duo, and we started a war where we all took sides and wrote fic/did fanart to “fire shots” at the other side. In the end we all won because, huzzah for more fanworks of our OTP! Anyhow, while taking sides, I was all Heero x Duo and this other lady was all Duo x Heero, and surprisingly, someone by the name of Snow Tigra took my side. It was odd because she geared more towards Duo x Heero, but she decided for a change of pace.
Neither of us knew that, 13 years later, we’d be living together, cosplaying together, writing books together, and planning a Mortal Kombat wedding.
Once Snow joined my side we started talking. It was mostly about fandom stuff, geeky things, ect. We even wrote a terrible fic where the Gundam Wing boys had to deal with the T-virus from Resident Evil (omg you haven’t lived until you write a scene of Trowa shooting a zombie dog who tries to bite Quatre) I learned about anime conventions through her, cosplay, and even about canon boy’s love series like Gravitation and such (she even burned cds of it and mailed it out to everyone on the list so we could all watch, which is how you watched anime before streaming was a thing). At some point, my boyfriend and I broke up. He stopped talking to me while I was away and I was pretty depressed. Snow sent me a white tiger to keep me company, and I actually still have her and sleep with her every night. During all this we also sent each other pictures of ourselves (through actual mail, lol, because phones that took pictures whut are the things?). I remember being really anxious and hoping that she thought I was cute, which was odd because she’s a girl, and I had had a boyfriend once upon a time. But anyway… we kept talking and one day she told me about this girl in her class that she had a crush on. And… I got jealous. Which, again, odd right? I had had a boyfriend and girls were supposed to like boys.
Unless…
… no.
No!
So then I proceeded to ignore her for about a week. No chatting online. No emails. No nothing. Because there was no way in hell I could like a girl. That’s not the sort of thing that happened! Don’t get me wrong I had no issue with gay people, I just knew damn well that that wasn’t me. It couldn’t be. All of my friends at home either had boyfriends or were boy crazy. And forget telling my parents, I still remember to this day a conversation one of my aunts had with my dad about, “What if she were gay?” And he was like, “She’s not. No.” This was before I met Snow and during the movie “In and Out” where the guy gets called gay by one of his students who was a celebrity at the time, and he goes down the alter with his wifey and just blurts out that he is, in fact, gay. But that movie spurred on that conversation where my dad was like, “Nope, not even a possibility,” and I stuck with that mentality. No. No. No!
But after a week I started to miss her. She was sending me emails asking if I was o.k., if something had happened because I wasn’t online, and finally I just said… tell her. So I stood in my campus library and wrote this long email about how I was jealous of the girl she had a crush on, that I never had feelings like this before for a girl, and that I liked her.
Again, 13 years later, who knew?
She said it would be best if we stayed friends until we met in person, which would be at Anime Central 2002 in April, and we did try, but just… there was a connection, and we just gave up. We were dating, plain and simple. Our online conversations were our ways of communication, and it turned into roleplaying with anime characters which, oddly enough, would give birth to the book series we have going now. When we finally met at Anime Central that was it, it just added to the love we had for each other, and we knew that we’d be together for a long time.
We’ve been through a lot along the way. Learning about each other, dealing with telling our families. It didn’t go well at first. My dad and I fought during my Christmas break. Her parents flat out denied it. My mom could care less, honestly, so we at least had that going. There were many holidays with her family where I was just a roommate. My dad slowly got used to the idea and finally came around. We’ve had months of struggling financially because I moved up here after college with no job. We had to deal with me losing said job 6 years later. We’ve had to deal with losing two cats. We’ve had to deal with being broken into. There’s been a lot of hurdles, you know? But I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so determined to keep me happy. She takes on so much, and I do the same, too. We work together to make our dreams come true. These dreams have been festering over time and now we’re working together to make them happen. Writing, going to conventions, all of that. We’re a team, and I don’t think either of us imagined that we’d have so much support going into this. Cosplay was a flat out accident, honestly, I’m still in awe over the people we meet who say we’re an inspiration. But if you ever want to know how I can keep going, it’s because of her. She works her ass off doing these costumes, and she’s always encouraging the second I feel insecure. If too many negatives try to bring me down she’s always my positive. She’s everything, really.
As for her parents? They’ve turned around completely. Not only did they help us pay for our house a couple years back, but they helped us repair it and even announce us as being together when we’re over at their house and new people are coming over. My mother has met them and she even talks with Snow’s mom online. It took some time, but everything clicks now, and neither of us could be happier.
So happy anniversary to the love of my life. 13 years and still going <3
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