I Am Femslash: The Person Whose Calls You Always Take

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Title:	The Person Whose Calls You Always Take
Creator:	Telanu
Date(s):	February 25, 2017
Medium:	Tumblr post
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External Links:	I Am Femslash
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The Person Whose Calls You Always Take is a 2017 essay by Telanu. It is part of the I Am Femslash essay series sponsored by Femslash Revolution.

Excerpts

What does femslash mean to you?

It’s a concept that seems to me to be unique, or at least very unusual in fandom: a space for queer ladies, about queer ladies, produced (largely) by queer ladies.

That said, I’ve got a confession to make: though I myself am a queer lady, I’m not a lifelong femslasher. I began with m/m. When I was just starting out, femslash scared me. I had just begun to self-identify as queer, which was terrifying considering the environment I’d grown up in. Writing femslash seemed so personal, almost confessional. Would people be able to read me in my stories, when I hadn’t even figured myself out yet? I’ve seen other femslash authors saying that they found themselves through femslash, but I avoided it—which was easy to do.

I first investigated queerness through bodies that were not like mine.

Tell the story of your relationship with your favourite F/F pairing.

The first femslash I ever wrote was about Starfire and Raven in the New Teen Titans. I started and never finished a series about them; it’s probably no coincidence that I chickened out when the story was on the verge of getting steamy, and I retreated to the safe embrace of m/m.

Years later, in 2007, I was visiting my sister. A little movie called The Devil Wears Prada happened to be on basic cable. I started watching it in the middle of the infamous “benefit scene,” where Miranda’s wearing a daringly low-cut gown and Andy spends a lot of the time whispering into her ear. It was electrifying in a way that I couldn’t explain. I hadn’t thought seriously about femslash in years. Soon, it would become all I thought about.

The next day, I had to drive home for several hours from my sister’s place, and my first DWP story was already writing itself in my head. I hadn’t even seen the entire movie, though I corrected this ASAP when I got back home, and found that the first half of the movie made it somehow even better, even sexier, even more romantic and compelling.

Before I started writing, I started looking. I think I found two, maybe three other Andy/Miranda fics. This was unacceptable. At this point, I just had to get the hell over myself and write about clitorises.

“She Likes a Prizefight,” my first story in the fandom, wrote itself over just a couple of days. The story was post-canon, about how Miranda and Andy started their relationship after Andy left Runway. Then the stories just kept showing up in my head.

Here’s the best example I can think of that shows what femslash fandom is about. In 2007, I wrote a DWP fic titled Truth and Measure, which weighs in at over 250K words and to date stands as the longest single work I’ve ever written. By far. Nearly 9 years later, I still get comments and feedback on it, both from first time readers and readers who have read it multiple times. Femslash fandoms might not be big compared to some, but they’re dedicated, passionate, and close-knit.

Eventually, I ran out of steam, and wandered into other pairings that weren’t always f/f. Clearly, I’m bifictual. But that’s the story of my favorite fanfic pairing ever. :D

Some Responses

Bowing and genuflecting “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!” Telanu ROCKS.

– xvnot15 

Truth and Measure is still one of my favorite, most formative fics ever.

– inanimate-adventures