#What's your Love Live! Story?

I still remember the time very clearly. It was back in 2014, LoveLive was at a popularity high and almost every artist drew fanart. One of my favorites at the time drew Kotori and I suddenly was in awe. Never before had I seen an anime character with greyish dark-blonde hair, which is my natural hair color most of the year (it's lighter in summer). After my discovery I started to look up what exactly LoveLive is and I came across the newly released english server of LLSIF and I found the anime.

I started my first account but after my phone died that account died with it. Which wasn't that bad because at that point I didn't even play the game that much. But while watching the anime I found a character I related to so much that it almost hurt. Rin. I always liked genki characters so right from the start she was a character that catched my attention. Seeing her support her best friend and even becoming an idol with her was something that I thought was very admirable. But after the Love Wing Bell episode the whole thing struck me as even more impressive.

A girl who was bullied for wearing girly clothes to the point where she was scared to wear it but she still does it for her best friend so they can be idols? Amazing. And seeing everyone support her as much as they did encouraged me to also start wearing girly clothes again, because just like Rin I was heavily bullied because of that. I liked everything princessy, sparkly, cute and pink but when I was in primary school, that was seen as uncool. So I, too, was bullied and stopped wearing things like that. Only after seeing the Love Wing Bell episode I realized that I shouldn't live in fear all the time and enjoy what I like. So after 7 years of hiding my real self, Love Live and especially Rin helped me to express myself again.

So after all of that, I started a new account in LLSIF which I still have to this day. 5 years of playing this game as often as I can resulted in quite an amount of cards that I all cherish a lot. In these years a lot of things happened and changed, I suffered a lot but also had many great days. But this game has always been with me. I'm not gonna lie, I've also been frustrated and sad many times because of the game thanks to the unfair gacha but that's just how it works haha!

I'm just extremely happy that I found this franchise and the fandom because it helped me so much over all these years. I probably wouldn't be who I am right now if I haven't found Love Live! It truly changed my life and I'm so grateful for that.