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

[…] I’m in my inner world, and I have means to disconnect
from the people of the outer world and from myself.
As we went deeper in our conversation, Red explicated these feelings of an
“inner world” in which she could disconnect from all of her “real-life”; she
explained that slash creates almost a “glitch in time,” in which the reader finds
a harbor, a safe haven where she/he can just be. For those of us who have had
the experience of living a book, while reading it, this illumination may sound
very familiar. The differences are that the source is one of a new genre one
finds, as if picking up one’s very first mystery novel, and then another one,
and yet another. Additionally, as explained before, it does not nearly involve
as much in terms of actively moving oneself physically from one place to
another. The sole movement carried out, though very real in terms of online
movement, is “surfing” the web.
The one factor nearly always associated with addiction is that of a lack
of control. Since one does not usually describe “bookworms” as “addicts,” the
question whether this “addiction” to slash fanfiction is truly that begs to be
asked. Looking superficially at my narratives of Red’s current situation and of
my own first stages as an online fan, one could maybe make this statement.
But, for me, this stage of frenzied escapism and reading has passed, though it
comes back in spurts, something, which I observed in many other friends,
such as Yuri or Eiko. The latest spurt for me was being gripped by a historical
anime this last month. Peacemaker Kurogane (USA 2003) is an anime set in
the late Tokugawa era of Japan, and its main characters are based on the
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