I hope you don't mind a comment from a random stranger, but your description of what draws you to femslash sounds really similar to my experience.
But, well...I don't like porn. The sex part of my brain and fiction part of my brain are not really on speaking terms and prefer to live separate lives. Unless they're important to the plot I just skip sex scenes and they're certainly not why I read fic.
Yes! That's very much true for me as well. If there's going to be sex in fanfic, I prefer that it advance the plot/develop the characters somehow, or, in the alternative, I want the sex to really be a metaphor for something else. Otherwise, I skip/skim it, because, well, it generally bores me.
However, femslash gives me something that no other fic genre does: a *guarantee* that the story is going to be female character-centric. And because I think I have the same kind of character identification style that you do -- as much as I like men in real life (I live with one whom I adore!), and can even enjoy male characters in fiction and mass media, I *never* identify with them. Or at least not in the fannish kind of way that would compel me to seek out or write fic. For me, it's always driven by an interest in a female OTC.
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Wandering in via girlwank
But, well...I don't like porn. The sex part of my brain and fiction part of my brain are not really on speaking terms and prefer to live separate lives. Unless they're important to the plot I just skip sex scenes and they're certainly not why I read fic.
Yes! That's very much true for me as well. If there's going to be sex in fanfic, I prefer that it advance the plot/develop the characters somehow, or, in the alternative, I want the sex to really be a metaphor for something else. Otherwise, I skip/skim it, because, well, it generally bores me.
However, femslash gives me something that no other fic genre does: a *guarantee* that the story is going to be female character-centric. And because I think I have the same kind of character identification style that you do -- as much as I like men in real life (I live with one whom I adore!), and can even enjoy male characters in fiction and mass media, I *never* identify with them. Or at least not in the fannish kind of way that would compel me to seek out or write fic. For me, it's always driven by an interest in a female OTC.