Bomb Girls

Fandom
Name:	Bomb Girls
Abbreviation(s):
Creator:	Michael MacLennan, Adrienne Mitchell
Date(s):	January 4, 2012 – April 29, 2013
Medium:	Live Action Television
Country of Origin:	Canada
External Links:	Wikipedia IMDb
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Bomb Girls is a Canadian drama set during World War II and following the stories of four women working in a munitions factory during the war.

Canon

Bomb Girls focuses on the lives of four women at the munitions factory: Betty McRae, Gladys Witham, Kate Andrews, and Lorna Corbett. Lorna is the floor shift matron at the factory, and gets involved in an extra-marital affair with one of the men working at the factory (after trying to get him fired, it's complicated). Betty is one of the best workers on the factory floor, but is hiding both her German ancestry and the fact she is a lesbian, neither of which would be accepted. Gladys is the only daughter of a wealthy family, who starts work at the factory, then shortly after has her entire life turned upside down. Finally, Kate is on the run from her abusive, religious father, and desperate to make sure that no-one figures out who she really is.

With other supporting cast, primarily from the factory, most of the story-lines focus around these four characters, how they cope during the war with the work they do, and how they connect with others within and outside of the factory.

Cancellation

In April 2013, it was announced that Bomb Girls was being cancelled after its second season. Fans of the show were hugely disappointed and felt that the show had been failed by the scheduling regulations which saw Canadian broadcasters having to prioritise U.S. programming over Canadian shows. The show often fell into scheduling slots where it had to compete against much larger or more established franchises like Bones, Hawaii Five-O, and Murdoch Mysteries.

Due to campaigning from fans, a two hour made-for-TV movie, Bomb Girls: Facing the Enemy, was made to wrap up the story-lines of the Bomb Girls characters. It aired in 2014. .

Fandom

The show was reasonably popular, especially for a Canadian series at the time, given the difficulties they often faced with viewer numbers considering the aforementioned scheduling regulations. It also gathered a fairly small, but enthusiastic, fandom online, primarily amongst fans of femslash, with much of the focus being on canonical lesbian character, Betty McRae. As of November 2023, there are 141 works on Fanfiction.net and 155 works on Archive of Our Own. In the 2020s, the fandom still has works uploaded from time-to-time, and it was requested in some of the femslash challenges over the years, as well as during Yuletide.

When the show was originally cancelled, the fans pushed back on the cancellation, starting the Save Bomb Girls campaign online. This campaign was ultimately successful in convincing Global TV to create the 2-hour TV movie to wrap up the series. While most fans were pleased to see the characters again, there were mixed feelings about how story-lines played out. This included the death of one of a popular secondary character, and with how Betty's story-line eventually played out.

When A League of Their Own came out, also set during World War II, and fans realised that co-lead Abbie Jacobson, who played Carson Shaw, was in a relationship with Jodie Balfour, who had played Gladys in Bomb Girls, discussions about crossover works drew a little more attention to the Bomb Girls fandom in 2022/23.

Fan Commentary

it's 2020, everything is a mess, and Betty McRae still owns my entire heart #teresa was right to hold her that tenderly god DAMN #bomb girls #ali liebert

beautifulscreaminglady 

So, Abbi Jacobson co creating & exec producing (and starring in) a series about women’s baseball team, which also has women working in a factory during the 40s WWII in “A League of Their Own”. Her fiancée, Jodi Balfour was in “Bomb Girls” (Gladys), working in a factory making bombs during WWII. My brain sorta went to cross-over possibilities. Because I can see Betty trying to get on a baseball team if she could.

ceridwyn2 

Connections with Other Fandoms

Ali Liebert, who played Betty, went on to star in multiple episodes of Strange Empire, Family Law, and One of Us Is Lying as well as the first lesbian Hallmark Christmas movie, Friends & Family Christmas; Jodi Balfour, who played Gladys, appeared in the finale season of Ted Lasso, and also appeared in episodes of The Crown, Supernatural, Primeval: New World, and Sanctuary.

Shipping

The fandom on both AO3 and Fanfiction.net leans mostly sapphic, with 133 of the 155 works on AO3 marked as F/F. Fanfiction.net contains a few more F/M works, particularly works involving Lorna's character. M/M works seem to either be non-existent or vanishingly rare.

The most common ships are:

Sapphic

• Kate Andrews/Betty McRae
• Betty McRae/Gladys Witham
• Betty McRae/Teresa
• Kate Andrews/Betty McRae/Gladys Witham

Duaric

• Vera Burr/Marco Moretti
• Bob Corbett/Lorna Corbett
• Lorna Corbett/Marco Moretti

Example Fanworks

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

Fanfiction

• Paint Over It All by JulieVerne - Betty muses over the changes in Kate since she killed her father. Things are different, and that's not always bad. (Kate Andrews/Betty McRae)
• Above the passion quivering by lbmisscharlie - Finding a place in the world can be a lonely endeavor. (Kate Andrews/Betty McRae, Betty McRae/Theresa)

Fan vids

• Wartime Women - Bomb Girls & League of Their Own [1] - A 22 minute cross-over video of Bomb Girls and A League of Their Own, creating the story of a Carson Shaw/Gladys Witham pairing.

Archives and Communities

• Bomb Girls tag at Archive of Our Own
• Bomb Girls at Fanfiction.net
• Bomb Girls search, ^{Archived version} at Tumblr