All of this talk about older femslash fandoms has made me wonder, do you remember the first femslash fic you read? Or pairing that you got into? What made you decide to give femslash a chance? Was it something specific about the characters or pairing that drew you in? How did the fic make you feel- about sexuality, femslash, female characters, etc?

I ask this because I *do* remember the first femslash fic I ever read. It was called Hermione's Heart, and featured Hermione crushing on McGonagall but ending up with girl jock!Cho. I was pleased to discover you can still find it online. And ten years later- it's actually still really good! This story was actually really important to me when I read it as a high schooler. I was raised very conservatively (I had a lot of interalized homophobia) and the story helped me understand that girls loving other girls wasn't something unnatural or scary...but very attractive to me. In fact, i realized that some of the feelings I was having for a friend of mine mirrored those of the girls in the story.

So there you go. We never know what effect our stories have on other people. Write some femslash, help some kid come out of the closet. ;)