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

emotionally speaking, I wavered between visceral happiness and the need to
remove myself at large into a different world. It seemed to me to be an
addiction, the escape yaoi fic provided was something that I would crave at
every moment that I could, to the point of neglecting my sleep, or my social
activities. This has passed, as other modes of my identity re-established
themselves in priority, and my fan-mode took a backseat when it needed to. In
a way, I have become more open-minded, as I expanded my fandoms beyond
the “serial monogamy” I had gone through for about two years to an
interesting polyamory. The gender-bending qualities of slash/yaoi are still
there, as is my own particular brand of penis-envy, but as I have grown into
the culture – as we all do, in any culture – it has become more than simple
external factors and internal visceral reactions (or psychological motivators);
though these still exist, more important are the cultural factors which
established a sense of slash-fan in me, a fan-mode with all its accompanying
rules, languages, and codes that has become as much part of me, as every
other mode I could label.
Red has only recently come in touch with slash/yaoi, but has already
developed reading slash fic into an obsession. She came in contact with the
genre through my research on it: She had seen some Harry Potter slash
pictures I was preparing for a presentation. After I left, she looked for more,
and she liked them. One of the links she found led her to a story, not a picture,
and though it was very short, it was apparently very good.
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