Confessions of a frustrated femslasher
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | confessions of a frustrated femslasher |
| Creator: | ar |
| Date(s): | May 31, 2010 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | Fanfiction, Femslash |
| External Links: | confessions of a frustrated femslasher |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
confessions of a frustrated femslasher is a meta post by ar.
It has 121 responses.
Excerpts
During Three Weeks For Dreamwidth, I promised to write a Jane/Harcourt Temeraire fic for the ladyslash comment fest and am ashamed to say that I still haven't written it. And since it's for a prompt I myself posted, I don't feel particularly bad talking in detail about why I kind of hate the prompt, nota bene. I agonized over what to write, told myself that it really shouldn't be this hard, considering that A) I've written Jane/Harcourt before and B) I have a scenario I'd be interested in seeing them in (it involves crossdressing /o/), and generally chewed on my fingernails. And at some point when trying desperately to get myself to do the honourable thing and write the damned fic, I realized what was keeping me from actually doing it:I don't actually like Jane/Harcourt.
They're both awesome characters. If you've never read the books (and you should), Jane Roland is a woman with a badass scar on her face and a penchant for cigars who loves her dragon and her daughter and doesn't take shit from anyone. And Catherine Harcourt is awkward but determined to prove herself and likewise doesn't take shit from anyone. She once poured a pot of hot coffee on a guy who was coming on to her at a concert when she was sixteen, because getting up to punch him would've meant having to rearrange her skirts again upon sitting down. These women are awesome. They are completely bamf, and they're well-realized characters--they come off as women who happen to kick ass rather than as Ass-Kicking Women.
If this was a problem I was having solely with writing in the Temeraire fandom, I'd get over it. But it just. keeps. happening., to the point where surely this can't be something that only happens to me, can it? Tell me, internets, do you come to a point where you say to yourself, "This woman is really awesome, and I would totally read her kissing other girls! But there is literally only one easily-viable femslash ship, and it doesn't do anything for me! Exclamation points of dismay!"
I know I'm picky with ships, especially femslash ships, but in most fandoms with a lot of Awesome Female Characters, I manage to find a ship I like. (Hell, I have multiple pet femslash ships for The Babysitters Club, and I don't even like shipping any of the baby-sitters with each other.) But in a multitude of my fandoms, I'm finding that one or two Awesome Female Characters simply isn't enough. The chance of liking both of them is pretty good, on my end; the chance of liking them together is rather less so. Passing the Bechdel Test simply isn't enough for me--I want more than two women who talk, especially to each other. I want options.
Comments
[sqbr]: Yeah I definitely have this problem too. I mean I guess it "helps" that I prefer canons with lots of female characters, but sometimes that just means I am frustrated by the canon's lack of female characters AND the lack of femslashy options for the ones there are (See: Temeraire). I must admit, in such circumstances I fall back to het *is a dirty multishipper*Plus I am easily swayed by canon ships (which are of course almost all het) and so the women need to not only pass the Bechdel test and be awesome and get along and suit my shippy tastes but be single...*sighs for my abandoned Amy/River fic*
[llei]: You are so very not alone in this.I think the problem becomes even more irksome if you also tend to be into characters who aren't slim young white women.
In my case, the extra dimension is age. For whatever reason (just how I kink, I guess), what I really want from my femslash is pairings of women who are that bit older and more experienced. In that case, even a canon with a healthier-than-average ration of female characters isn't necessarily going to save you. Hardly anybody seems to sell stories where older women have anything to say to each other.
So yes, I have rather a large collection of favourite female characters for whom I can find no satisfying partner from their canon. Vexing.
[veleda_k]: I'm here via metafandom, and I definitely sympathize. I have one canon with a female character who is described as a "sapphic witch" which all but demands femslash... except that of the two other recurring characters, one is 110% obsessed with a male character (and she only barely fits the definition of recurring seeing as how she shows up twice and then dies) and the other is ten years old.For femslash friendly fandoms, I would recommend Revolutionary Girl Utena, which has a lot of women characters, who frequently have close and/or sexually charged relationships. There's also the anime Noir, which has four truly important characters, all women, most of whom can be shipped together to some degree.