I Am Femslash: Am I Femslash?

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Title:	Am I Femslash?
Creator:	solrosan
Date(s):	February 26, 2017
Medium:	Tumblr post
Fandom:
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External Links:	I Am Femslash, Archived version (scroll down)
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Am I Femslash? is a 2017 essay by solrosan.

It is part of the I Am Femslash essay series sponsored by Femslash Revolution.

Excerpts

I think a lot about my reasons for running @sherlockladylove because a few times last year that blog was the only reason I didn’t delete my Tumblr all together. So there’s something there. It means something to me, even though I’m not sure what. I want to say that I run the blog because it’s so much fun and that it brings me joy, but in reality I mainly run it because I feel there’s a need for it. And some days, just because I’m petty. I sometimes like to think that I run the blog as an act of open defiance and it makes me proud even though I’m not 100% sure what I’m defiant against. Other times it just saddens me that using my time to creating femslash feels like an act of rebellion, because it shouldn’t. In a fandom so centred round That One Dudeslash Ship it’s easy to feel that way though.

Working with the blog, the “I would create femslash if the writers just gave us something good to work with”-argument is one I hear far too often. It might be an understandable one (because you need backstories and fully developed characters to ship and the canon doesn’t always deliver) if you ignore all the male characters with no background story and/or character development who are shipped left and right. The hypocrisy can make me see red some days, but if there’s one thing I try really hard to do in fandom then it’s Praise What You Love, Don’t Shit On What You Hate.

So let’s do that.

Yes, the female characters have little backstory to talk about, and they are not given much room for character development. It’s a sad fact of canon. That makes shipping them hard, because it takes commitment to do it. It doesn’t just “jump off the page”, so to speak. You have to think about the characters more when so little is there to begin with. You have to be the one giving them background, motives, hopes, dreams… The largest femslash ship in the BBC Sherlock fandom has never met on screen, but it’s not impossible to imagine them meeting off-screen. It’s just a question of “What if she goes there after this happens and meets her when…” And that, for me, is what femslash in this fandom boils down to. It is the history and backstories and lives and depths that the creators give to the female characters I love. That I adore. That I do feel very strongly and passionately about.