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History

In February 2006, Jen Parker realized that her collections of yaoi reviews were outgrowing her anime review site, Nante Ne (site no longer around). From this realization came the birth of YaoiSuki, an English review- and news-oriented website based around all things Boy's Love.

With a name that roughly translates to 'I Like Yaoi', the interests of the duo behind the site were clearly evident. With Jen Parker at the reigns and Jordan, the "independently wealthy weirdo" with "a clear obsession with all things BL", backing her up with a variety of reviews, the two put together a conglomeration of content with the goal of presenting their visitors with a diverse and honest view of the market: manga and anime, Japanese and global, slashed and slash-able.

Yaoi/suki was launched on February 23rd, 2006, and the first post posted on the site:

"Welcome to Yaoi Suki, (future) home to all sorts of dirty boy/boy action. In order to view reviews of NC-17 items, you must register for the site and be legally allowed to view pornographic materials where you live. Sorry, but this is to cover our own butts, legally-speaking. That said: welcome, and enjoy!"

From that point on, it didn't take long for YaoiSuki to snowball into a community of like-minded individuals who, together with Jen Parker and Jordan, made up one of the leading sources for up-to-date Boy's Love information and commentary.

A notable bump in YaoiSuki's short history was its move to a new host in September 2007, which, while losing their database of users, offered the beginnings of the site's YaoiWiki and more user-friendly forums. It also offered visitors faster loading times, something that occasionally plagued the site before its upgrade.

"You may have noticed a few changes around here at YaoiSuki. That's because we've moved to a new host, and in the process upgraded and altered a bunch of our features (most notably: embedded wiki and better forums). Unfortunately, we lost our user database in the move, so those of you who were signed up will unfortunately need to sign up again. It's a pretty painless process though!"

On March 1, 2008, Jen Parker announced that updates on the site would be suspended. While the site remains up, its future remains in the air. Though only active for two years, YaoiSuki was quickly embraced by fans and the industry, playing a memorable role in the genre's history for English-speaking fans.

The full "Farewell" post:

It's sad for me to have to make this announcement in the midst of such exciting times for BL fans-- the number of BL manga in the US just keeps rising, as does the number of anime adaptations in Japan, and did I mention ANTIQUE BAKERY ANIME?! --but make it I must.

After much discussion, Jordan and I have decided to suspend our BL coverage at YaoiSuki indefinitely. Between my new job and apartment, and a score of complications for Jordan, we simply no longer have the time to dedicate to our regular news and reviews lineup (a fact no doubt noticed by many of you).

The site will continue to be here for those who wish to go through our past reviews, check on some news item that happened, con coverage, forums, etc. But neither of us will be updating for the foreseeable future.

Will we ever come back? That I don't know. We've loved running this site for the last two years (we even missed our 2nd birthday this year-- that's how bad we are now!), and we're sad that we have to set it aside now. So it's certainly not impossible that we'll be back! But for the time being, the site will remain silent.

That said, we ourselves will certainly still be around, even if we're not updating. You can contact me (Jen) at jen@yaoisuki.net and you can contact Jordan at jordan@yaoisuki.net, and you can contact us both at once at yaoisuki@yaoisuki.netThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

If you want to keep up on yaoi-related news, I've extracted a promise from our oft-mentioned friend gia to cover the BL news as much as possible, both on her current site at giapet.net and at her upcoming site (I *will* make a quick post when that's going). She does a fantastic job with news coverage in general and I know she follows BL as well, so I'm sure she'll do a boffo job.

I also want to make a quick shout-out to the publishers, especially Digital Manga Publishing, DramaQueen, Yaoi Press, Central Park Media, Deux Publishing, Iris Print, Boysenberry, Yen Press, Kitty Media, Blu Manga...oh wait, that's pretty much all of them, isn't it? Each and every company embraced us and offered information and review copies and we were continually (and pleasantly) surprised by their support.

...Well, I guess that's about it, so...thanks for all the good times, guys. You are the ones who made all the work we've done over the last two years fun and worthwhile, and we'll miss you. So don't be a stranger, ok?

♥ Jen and Jordan

YaoiSuki was officially closed on March 3rd, 2008.

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