Girls who like Boys who like Boys – Ethnography of ... - Yuuyami.com

(hurt/comfort, incest slash), it is not that she looks to a specific fandom for a
specific genre, but rather she will be in the mood for a specific fandom, such
as Smallville, or Sentinel, or be in the mood for specific characters – in other
words, “I’ll read what I wanna read when I feel like reading it.” This is a
sentence which, in a way, aptly describes Barb’s initial involvement with
fandom, as well as her current view of it as a text-appropriating medium a la
Jenkins.
Eiko’s reading habits are quite different from Barb’s and Yuri’s, but
somehow manage to synthesize aspects of both. Eiko reads fics depending on
her mood, but believes that there is an atmosphere fics have in each fandom
that is very different. She explains that popslash fics tend to have a more
lighthearted character, whereas Harry Potter fics have a darker and heavier
atmosphere. The question for me was whether that was what she ended up
looking for or whether most authors would produce fics with such a specific
tone in general in each fandom. She explained:
Well it is what’s out there and what I look for. It’s a
chicken and egg thing: I look for that kind of thing, because
I’ve read it before, but I think it’s what the fandom is
conducive to… So, the threat of Voldemort and the otherworldliness
of magic and that kind of thing. Whereas
popslash is this [our] universe, but a different lifestyle – but
there isn’t anything conducive to big drama other than
things about the characters themselves.
Eiko doesn’t read death fics, and usually reads fics for certain pairings,
so she will read mostly Harry/Draco fics for example, or Justin/Chris (from
the boy group Nsync) in popslash. Sometimes, she mentions, she will have “a
104