>>13165264I never experienced autogynephilia outright, but when I was younger I did have a strong tendency to be attracted to things women and characters I found "relateable", and later on I also realized these characters reminded me of my relationship with my mother,. which also became an aspect of how I related to myself. For example I watched Eva and was a Reifag and also like Misato because she was essentially a symbol and allegory of me, but was also how my mother was. Cold, very disconnected, she will never truly see you, nor connect with you, nor take any initiative, all very internal. With a bit of Misato mixed in. My mother, like me, is messed up however. So she is incomplete and lacks (access to and manifestation of) the parts of tjhe self which Asuka represents. Characters and people were just proxies, vessels to experience myself through. Because I couldn't handle my own existence or reflection, it had been far too painful, I had to blind myself, and so on.
Now Lain specifically. As I said, I have a diminished ego and fragmented dissociative sense of self. Lain was so similar to me and my childhood that I just merged outright, I couldn't differentiate between me and a character and so I basically experienced the story through her. It's hard to describe. It was not sexual nor is it treating everyone as a mirror abnd getting attached to your own reflection, Lain was a sort of controlled environment, a narrative, where I could merge and allow the character to speak for my "inner child" or "core self", which I had suppressed and actually completely divorced from. So it was an escape, helped me find self beyond sel;f and showed me the world through another lens, but it was also therapeutic in a way. I suppose I can't really describe it.
Anyway, autogynephilia is not really the right word. There is something to be outlined and described here, but you're oversimplifying and not quite on the right track. Lain was my mirror, the mirror I needed.
