Facebook's a great tool for stalking keeping in touch with people you don't get to talk to very often, what with the busyness of everyday life. I was cruising my FB feed today, and I found a status from one of my cousins that brought me back to when she and my other cousin and my aunt and uncle came to visit when I was fourteen.

They live in Edmonton, so I can count the number of times I've seen them on one hand. When they came to visit in 2002 it had been about five years since I'd last seen my cousins. And at first there was some general uncertainty; what should we talk about when it's been that long? Do we actually have anything in common?

Well, as it turned out, my cousin Ali and I had a great deal in common with each other. Her and I quickly discovered a shared love of Harry Potter, and bonded over that -- as did my sister and her sister. But even more than that, we discovered a much more interesting common interest.

Fourteen was about the age I began to read and write slashfic with some regularity, but I hadn't told very many people because... well, you can imagine. Fourteen and heavily involved in reading and writing erotic gay fanfiction? Wasn't something I was quick to share! However, I saw she had a binder in her purse (which she had made herself; sewn them out of a pair of jean shorts -- so fucking cool!), and when I asked about it she admitted she was in the process of writing a Gundam Wing slash story.

I wasn't into Gundam Wing, but hearing that my cousin also read/wrote slashfic was undeniably awesome. We spent several hours talking about Harry Potter slash in general and the stories we'd read in particular. She was actually the person to introduce me to the infamous Draco Series (of which I was unimpressed, to be honest, but I never said that to her), and we spent the next year exchanging regular emails and occasional phone conversations.

Our friendship kind of fizzled out for a while, though it was reestablished when she visited Montreal a few years ago with her dad. We added each other on Facebook and started exchanging messages again for a little while. She was especially helpful after my painful break-up. We talked about more grown-up things this time around, and yet it was astounding to see, once again, how much we had in common. It's just so neat. We're definitely related!

The relationship I developed with my cousin was actually really helpful to me. It made me much more open to revealing my obsession with interest in slash to the people I felt I could trust. I told my friends, who were very supportive of it and even went out of their ways to read my fiction. It also made me more willing to talk about it sooner in a developing relationship. As a matter of fact, I've found a surprising number of slash loving friends by being open about it. There was a girl who came to my school about halfway through high school, and we ended up going to a movie, and I slept over at her house. We found, not unlike Ali and I, that we both loved Harry Potter and subsequently found ourselves squeeing over our adoration of H/D slash. This was awesome for me, but especially cool for her because she'd never told anyone that she secretly read slashfic. To this day we still see each other occasionally, and that bond that was created over slash will never be forgotten. A couple of years ago I dad a classmate over for lunch, and I happened to have livejournal open on my computer when I took it out of sleep mode. We became fast friends over our shared slash history.

It's these brushes with synchronization that make me feel like I was supposed to be in precisely those places at precisely those times. Who knows how my life would be different if I hadn't had those experiences and strengthened those relationships with such important common interests?

Basically, slash is fucking badass. It doesn't just turn us ladies on, it helps us to forge wonderful friendships, sometimes life-long. I think that's extremely powerful. We're such a big group of - for the most part :D - diverse, wordy, sex-positive, supportive, loving ladies; how cool is it that we've created these great communities in our internet pockets? How amazing is it that we can provide each other with a safe, fun place to talk about and dish out our porny fanfiction, share our gripes about fandom and the world, and even talk about what's really on our hearts? We're building each other up in a way that's not often present in the rest of society, or visible to your regular Jane or Joe. We're good friends. And we're taking over the internet ;)

I just think all of it is really fucking special!

And I love you all so much!