Sleeps With Monsters: In Defence of Fanfiction, or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Trust Myself

A new column over at Tor.com:

I had a conversation in this last month about queerness and pairings in fanfic and other narratives. In the course of that conversation, Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart came up, with its portrayal of queer (and kinky) consensual female relationships. And I ended up admitting that the first time I read it, the female queer stuff went over my head. I was seventeen at the time: it was there, explicit, and on the page, and my reaction to reading it was I know something is going on here but I don’t understand what it is.