Sapphic Fandom
Tropes and genres | |
---|---|
Synonym(s) | wlw Fandom |
Related tropes/genres | Representation, Lesbianism, Bisexuality, Pansexuality |
See also | Mspec Fandom, Queer Fandom, Sappho (poetress) |
Related articles on Fanlore. | |
This article or section needs expansion. |
Sapphic Fandom is a term for fandom communities composed of or focusing on sapphics, most notably lesbians and mspec women and nonbinary people. Fans within these spaces may use a variety of terms to describe their identities and experiences, including lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, wlw, sapphic, queer, and others.
The term derives fom Sappho who was a poetress in ancient Greece.
Sapphic fandom is differentiated from femslash fandom in that the latter focuses on pairings between or involving queer women, while the former not only involves the characters themselves, but also includes the distinct ways that a person's sapphic identity, whatever that might be, informs, impacts, or influences how they engage with fandom.
There is, however, a large overlap between the two, as sapphic fandom incorporates a lot of femslash. Many sapphics also ship slash, m/f, and ships between non-sapphic nonbinary characters, with some not shipping femslash at all.
Fandom
Sapphic Fandom and Femslash
See also: History of Femslash Fandom, Timeline of Femslash, and Timeline of Femslash Meta
Writing From Experience or For Representation
Sapphic fandom has a strong presence in femslash fandom, and it is often assumed that most femslash creators are sapphic in some way.
Since the early 2000’s, meta on writing femslash as a sapphic creator has discussed a number of different approaches and attitudes. For some sapphics who read or write femslash, the primary draw is interest in depictions of women’s experiences, and specifically queer women’s experiences.[note 1]
A number of sapphic fans through the years have discussed writing femslash as a way to represent their own experiences. Sometimes this includes a feeling that no one else will write femslash if they (the creator) doesn’t:
The glib answer to this question [Why do you write femslash] is that I’m a queer woman myself, of course I write/read female characters and especially romance between them.[snipped] So the answer here is, I mostly write and read female characters and femslash relationships because it’s what’s most relevant to my interests but also because a lot of the time I feel like if I don’t, nobody will. (I’ve also written in a majority of the popular f/f relationship tags, while I’ve written in a whole two of the popular m/m ones.) I’m consistently unsatisfied with how little there is to read for what I’m into (healthy f/f relationships with a variety of variables, including elaborate AUs an pleasantly kinky sex) so I write it myself. My wife and I write together to fill this need. It’s what we do
[snipped] We figure if we want it, at least some others might, and it seems to be that way (we have some fans, although we’ve also had a hilarious incident with someone angry that our fic was “too political” and also that it didn’t feature enough canon [white heterosexual] relationships). But mostly we do it because it’s important to us. Additionally, we do go out of our way to highlight and make up for canonical and fandom treatment of POC characters and relationships they’re in.[1]
Some specifically highlight the sense of hope it gives them, especially in light of mainstream portrayals of sapphic relationships considered inadequate or harmful (including those subject to Dead Lesbian Syndrome):
The overwhelming answer of a community composed of predominantly lesbian and bisexual women to, “How do you feel about mainstream media’s portrayal of lesbians?” was that lesbians are flatly underrepresented, and poorly represented when they are.[snipped] As a teenager struggling with my own sexual identity in the 1990s, I was keenly aware of my options according to those rare mainstream lesbian portrayals: kill myself, be killed for being myself, or die of natural causes but alone and desperately unhappy.
[snipped] More than any other genre of fanfiction, femslash is a place where the sex is always good and the endings are always happy. In response to the categoric lack of happy endings for lesbians in mainstream media, femslash stories exist as a place where, while perhaps a relationship might begin with misunderstandings and strife, and surrounding characters may respond to the main ship’s romance with derision and violence, the end is idyllic and accepting.[2]
Looking back, it’s perfectly natural that I was processing my own experiences and identity crises through fictional characters, especially when I was the one in control of their fates. I couldn’t find enough lesbians in the media who actually got the girl and came out on top and didn’t kill themselves, but on the Internet, femslash was giving me more than just a queer character who made it to the end of the story. Femslash characters got to thrive and survive and have messy beautiful love. I finally saw the happy endings I didn’t know I was allowed to have.[3]
Others focus on the opportunity femslash gives them to explore nuanced and complex relationships and sexuality:
I feel a kind of—bone-deep lack, in the culture I live in, around the unacknowledged urgency of female sexuality. I am a woman who overwhelmingly prefers to sleep with other women; and I am also a woman whose primary reason for leaving a thirteen-year partnership, was that I was sexually unfulfilled; and I am also a woman who dislikes children; and I am also a woman whose first instinct is generally to challenge rather than to nurture; and I am also a woman who craves solitude and artistic expression above human company. And in all of these things I feel a just—starving lack of fellowship with the vast majority of female media portrayals. [snipped] So I feel a bone-deep compulsion to write, not just fiction about women, but sexually explicit fiction about women; and sexually explicit fiction about complicated, sharp-edged, not-necessarily-good-people women; and sexually explicit fiction about women who want sex, like—not women who are putting up with sex because they’re in love and it’s what the other person wants; not women who do want sex but only because it’s this special True Love partner (not that there’s anything inaccurate about either portrayal, they’re just not what I particularly want to write); but women who, in the presence of emotional connection or no, are sexually drawn to other women and act on that desire. Women whose lusts and infatuations are viewed as equally strong and compelling as mens’; because that’s been my experience, that’s been my—passionate and forcibly life-changing experience; but it’s not what I see reflected in mainstream media, or in peoples’ assumptions about me as a woman in the real world.[4]
For additional meta or articles on the subject of representation and writing to one’s experience, see for instance:
- Why smart lesbians read and write fanfiction, Archived version, 2012 article (archived from the original)
- The I Am Femslash essays (2017)
- There Are Secret Butch Lesbian Characters Hidden in Every Movie and TV Show, Archived version. Slate, written by Lena Wilson, June 28, 2018 (Accessed November 9 2021).
Quality and Themes of Femslash Content
Some sapphics through the decades have felt frustrated by what they feel is a lack of diversity, complexity, or variety in the topics and themes given focus in femslash.[note 2]
Sometimes the frustration seems directed at the source material fans are responding to:
The most sexist and exhausting thing in wlw content is how fucking soft it always is and how it must be perfect and completely soft with no rough edges otherwise its toxic and bad but nothing is perfect and wlw and women in general arent some perfect useless angels who do nothing but blush and braid each other hair like all wlw are different with layers and problems and im fucking starving for some actually interesting enjoyable wlw content with actual fucking emotions realness roughness mistakes complexity development and raw non conforming beauty[5]
Sapphic Fandom and Slash
Sapphics have written extensively through the decades about their interest and participation in slash fandom.
Some fans directly contrast their interest in slash to a hesitance in writing femslash; for instance, while discussing the assumption that if you’re writing femslash you must be a queer woman.[note 3]
A number of fans describe wanting some distance from writing their own experiences:
I realized that my distance from the material is different in female slash. I have all of that equipment, I have sex with women -- I wasn't able to go with the flow so much. There was an intermediate level doing the rather stupid job of checking each piece of action and thinking, 'would I like this,' 'have I done this,' 'would I do this with (Jenna (Y), Beverly (Maybe), Gina (Y), Trudy (Y), Cally (Y), Dayna (YES, YES, YES), Servalan (not unless I had someone holding a gun on her at the same time). I don't know what this means, but I'd love to hear from other women about it--queer and straight.[6]
For me, the primary thing I look for is a reflection of the gay experience that I can identify with, and those issues are pretty much the same for gay men as they are for Lesbians, especially boiled down to their essentials. (For example, most homosexuals of either sex question their own gender identity. Whether characters decide that their natural inclination is to follow tradition – i.e., be a feminine woman or a masculine man – or that the opposite sex's traditional identity works best for them or that they're somewhere in between, doesn't matter to me. What matters is, I asked these questions of myself and learned what worked for me as an individual, and I sympathize with this journey regardless of where it leads for the individual in question.) So either kind of slash works for me. But I don't really want to write about feminist issues. And I don't think many other contemporary women do either. I think we're ready for the equality of the sexes to be taken for granted. We're tired of having to argue about it. We want to bypass the whole issue.[7]
Slash fanfiction transgresses by revolving around a queer couple. This appeals to me because it better reflects my life than does het fiction. However, considering the queer couple in question is generally male/male, slash also has the benefit of *not* being a reflection of my life. There is no character to whom I have to compare myself, nor one with whom I would hypothetically be competing… The stories aren’t about me and aren’t supposed to be about me, which I find freeing. In some ways, I think that allows me to explore issues I might otherwise steer clear from – complexities of life and imperfections of character that aren’t all lovely and happy and easy to handle, but make the character and/or the story ring true.[8]
Other fans have shared that they feel writing slash allows them to escape sexism or negative experiences that women have. For instance, this fannish essay argues that slash allows women to avoid objectification and the heterosexual gaze:
I argue that slash’s sweeping popularity has to do with women’s shared experience. No woman, gay, straight, bi, demi, pan, queer or ace, can completely escape the narrow paradigms of female sexuality that are imposed on her. Our sexualities are reflected to us through the lens of gendered stereotypes, with its assumptions of female passivity to the man’s agency, of woman as conquered, dominated, objectified and demeaned by the heterosexual sex act. By using two male bodies, slash does away with these paradigms and offers women a chance to explore their sexual desires freely. In addition, it gives women the means to escape from the “forced identification” that necessarily follows from using a heterosexual pairing, and allows them to identify into the sex scene as much or as little as they are comfortable. And lastly, the world of slash is one that is completely free of female sexual objectification.[9]
Another fan on Tumblr wrote in 2019, on the topic of tropes she enjoyed in slash but not het fic:
[snipped]… it’s much more difficult for me, and I think for many women, to relax and enjoy romantic and sexual stories when they involve female characters. We’ve been burned too many times by shitty depictions, by shallow role models, by abuse portrayed as romantic. We have developed a stress response, a trauma response to heterosexual romance. We are hyper-reactive to a wide variety of triggers in regards to it. But removing women from the equation makes stories safer for us. And maybe it shouldn’t? In an ideal world? But for many of us, that’s the truth.[10]
The post, which has over 49,000 notes on Tumblr as of December 2021, contained a fair amount of commentary and critique from other fans, either on the topics raised by the OP or about how the concepts raised related to femslash content.
Sapphic Fandom and M/F
Male Characters and the Sapphics Who Love Them
Non-Sapphic Characters
Some characters popular within sapphic fandom are not sapphic themselves:
- Thor - For some time, Thor was dubbed the "God of Lesbians." Fanworks of him setting up and being the wingman for Valkyrie, who is canonically bi and a het man's wet dream, emerged.
Specific Fandoms
Some fandoms are known for having a larger sapphic following than others, whether intentionally or not. Many of these are known to be key examples of lesbian media or an important part of sapphic fandom culture:
Subfandoms
Western Animated Sapphics
Western animated TV series have a somewhat surprising reputation among fandom for producing canon femslash ships. Sapphic fandom often congegates around several of these ships, with fans frequently shipping multiple after learning about them through fandom osmosis. The following ships consistently feature: Korrasami, Rupphire, Catradora, Lumity, CaitVi, Bubbline, Bumbleby, and Harlivy. These ships are not the only sapphic representation in Western animated media, but they're the ones seemingly most often grouped together, nor will every fan of animated sapphic media ship every one of these ships.
- Korrasami and Rupphire are regarded as two of the pioneers of animated sapphic representation, though the latter is sometimes criticised for its association with Steven Universe.
- Some of the ships originate from queer-centred shows, created by queer creators, such as Rupphire, Catradora, and Lumity. Fans of She-ra and the Princesses of Power and The Owl House in particular share a lot of overlap, and the showrunner of the former is married to a writer for the latter.
- Most of these ships are from family-friendly animated media, with Harlivy being the consistent outlier.
Non-western animated sapphic ships will also sometimes be included, such as legendary anime couples Haruka/Michiru and Anthy/Utena. Both of these canon ships predate the proliferation of sapphic ships in western animation by two decades. The latter's show, Revolutionary Girl Utena, was an inspiration for both Steven Universe and S:PoP.
- give me six gal pals to make fanart of! (Nov 2022) by lettuccine
Popular & Influential Ships
- Xena/Gabrielle from Xena: Warrior Princess
- Very well known and influencial ship that straddled the line between canonicity.
- Tibette from The L Word
- Ship from a very well known and influencial piece of sapphic media.
- Willow/Tara from Buffy
- Very well known canon ship, if a notorious example, and one of the earliest for fandom, of the Bury Your Gays trope for women.
- Swan Queen from OUAT
- For a time, the juggernaut pairing of SQ was the most popular femslash ship on Ao3.
- Supercorp from Supergirl
- According to Ao3 Ship Stats, the non-canonical ship Supercorp has the highest number of fanworks for a femslash ship on Ao3. Its popularity has at least been partially influenced by one half being played by frequent sapphic crush Katie McGrath. There seems to be an overlap with Swan Queen, with many SQers seeming to move to SC after feeling disappointed by OUAT. The canon ship Sanvers was also popular, though Dansen less so.
- Clexa from The 100
- Arguably the most infamous example of the Bury Your Gays trope, so much so that it significantly contributed to the formation of the LGBT Fans Deserve Better movement.
- Brittana and Faberry from Glee
- Hollstein from Carmilla
- Often an overlap with Wayhaught and Wynonna Earp after one half of the pairing, Dom P-C, appeared in The Carmilla Movie.
- Wayhaught from Wynonna Earp
- First appeared in the notorious year of 2016, and was known at the time for actively subverting the Bury Your Gays trope, allowing it to stand out in said year.
- Catradora - She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
- Korrasami - The Legend of Korra
- Bubbline - Adventure Time
- Root/Shaw from Person of Interest
- Kanaya/Rose from Homestuck
- Uranus/Neptune from Sailor Moon
- Utena/Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena
- Numerous pairings from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, including Madoka/Homura, Kyouko/Sayaka, and Mami/Homura, as well as pairings from the spin-offs
- Ryuko/Mako from Kill la Kill
- Villaneve
- Lumity - The Owl House
- Choni from Riverdale
- Thasmin from Doctor Who
- Though the Doctor Who fandom had had sapphic ships prior, Thasmin was by far its most well known in sapphic spaces. For instance, the ship Vastra/Jenny previously had had a much lower level of popularity around the time of the show's popularity in the early to mid 2010's.
Popular & Influential Characters
Canon
Lesbian
- Alex Danvers on Supergirl
- Elena Alvarez from One Day at a Time
- Anissa Pierce on Black Lightning
- Willow Rosenberg on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Alex Vause, Nicky Nichols, Poussey Washington, Suzanne Warren, Sophia Burset and Carrie Black on Orange Is the New Black
- Irene Adler on Sherlock (TV series)
- Santana Lopez on Glee
- Cheryl Blossom on Riverdale
- Amity Blight on The Owl House
- Villanelle on Killing Eve
- Adora and Catra on She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
- Charlie Bradbury on Supernatural
- America Chavez in Marvel Comics
- Bill Potts in Doctor who
Bi
- Rosa Diaz on Brooklyn Nine-Nine
- Avatar Korra and Asami Sato on The Legend of Korra
- Callie Torres on Grey's Anatomy
- Luz Noceda on The Owl House
- Piper Chapman on Orange is the New Black
- Brittany S. Pierce on Glee
- Clarke Griffin on The 100
- Annalise Keating on How To Get Away With Murder
- Tina Kennard on The L Word
- Kyoshi on Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Harley Quinn from DC Comics
Other
- Velma Dinkley from Scooby Doo
- Canon lesbian in Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!, Word of God lesbian in both Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated, ambiguous in other media.
Headcanons
Some characters seem to be more commonly headcanoned as sapphic in some way than others:
- Kara Danvers & Lena Luthor
- Due to both Kara and Lena having canon male love interests, both are often headcanoned as being bi, though lesbian is also theorised. Lena's status as a sapphic icon is amplified by being played by Katie McGrath.
- Carol Danvers from Captain Marvel
- Jo March from Little Women
- Quinn Fabray from Glee
- Alice Cullen from Twilight
- Kelsi Nielsen and Sharpay Evans from High School Musical
Lesbian or AroAce?
- Elsa from Frozen
- So common that it spawned #GiveElsaAGirlfriend
- Merida from Brave
- Barbie from Barbie (2023)
Specific Actresses
For various reasons, certain actresses appear to have a much larger following of sapphic fans than others:
- Lucy Lawless
- Katie McGrath
- Katie's large sapphic following may go some ways to explain the popularity of Supercorp. Many of the earlier fans she gained through Merlin as Morgana Pendragon followed her to Supergirl and her character Lena Luthor, and many who watch the latter first go back to the former.
- Brie Larson
- Kristen Stewart
- Cate Blanchett
- Ruth Wilson
- Particularly through her character Marisa Coulter in His Dark Materials.
- Dianna Agron - Primarily fans of Glee who ship Faberry or headcanon Quinn Fabray as a lesbian.
- Naya Rivera - Primarily fans of Glee who like the character Santana Lopez and ship Brittana.
- Sandra Oh
- Sarah Paulson
- Aubrey Plaza
Other Real People
- Rose & Rosie - Youtubers
- Jojo Siwa - Youtubers
- Hayley Kiyoko - Singer (Lesbian Jesus)
- Taylor Swift - Singer
- Janelle Monáe - Singer
- girl in red - Singer
- Phoebe Bridges - Singer
- Kehlani - Singer
Common Themes & Tropes
- Lesbian & Himbo Dynamic
- Useless Lesbians: The phrase useless lesbians, spread as a meme on tumblr, refers to lesbians or bi women who miss obvious flirting from other women. The term is sometimes used in fanfiction and other fanworks and has over 3000 works in its canonized tag on Archive of Our Own.[11]
- Sword Lesbians: Lesbians who favour the sword as a weapon, such as Adora or Tanthamore.
Memes
Fanvid Songs
Intersectionality
Intersectional Representation
Issues of Racism
- I’m quitting Femslash Fandom - Tumblr post by hijadepavlov about the racism within femslash/sapphic fandom
Issues of Transphobia and TERFs
LGBT Fans Deserve Better
LGBT Fans Deserve Better is a fan-led movement that came about in 2016 in response to the death of Lexa on the television series The 100, as well as the disproportionately large number of queer female characters killed off on television around the same time. The movement garnered widespread media and industry support, and propelled the "Bury Your Gays" trope into a national talking point.
Writing about the movement in a 2017 editorial for the Transformative Works and Cultures, Dr. Eve Ng and Dr. Julie Levin Russo noted the unique position sapphic fandoms have with regards to fan activism:[12]
Male slashers have made similar interventions, for example regarding characters Derek and Stiles on the show Teen Wolf (MTV, 2011–), but they are less typical and arguably less effective than instances from femslash communities. The fusion that femslash presumes between fans and characters in terms of sexual and gender identities affords it this powerful platform for literal campaigns of resistance to heteronormative structures.
Fanworks
Fests & Exchanges
- See: Category:Femslash Challenges for a listing of Femslash exchanges documented on Fanlore
- sapphic hp Femmeslash Fanathon (2004-5)
Fanart
Ruby and Sapphire from Steven Universe with nonbinary pride wristbands and lesbian pride headbands. Sapphire is kissing Ruby's cheek and they are both blushing. (Moon, 2017)
Make Love, Not War - Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy by samarasketch (2019)
PrideToons 2/4 - Lesbian (June 2022) by wreckham, featuring the pairings of Vitani/Tiifu from The Lion King, April Spink/Miriam Forcible from Coraline, and Lyra Heartstring/Sweetie Drops from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
happy pride month!! friendly reminder that ctinarose in gay love <3 by soldierpoetprince, featuring the pairing of TinaRose from Dream SMP
Luz and Amity from The Owl House with bi and lesbian pride colors. (Art by Yakiti, 2022)
Zines
- See Category:Yuri Doujinshi and Category:Femslash Zines for a list of F/F zines and Doujinshi documented on Fanlore.
- touched (multifandom zine) (1984-7)
- This zine was an early example of a more political fanzine, created by a lesbian and gay sci-fi fanclub and operated as a collective.
- Politically Incorrect (zine) (1986-7)
- Not primarily F/F focused, but the editor's named lesbians in the Star Trek universe as one of their priorities.
- Sapphic Overwatch Zine, edited by Hattersarts (2016)
- That But Lesbians, contains genderswapped het ships. Edited by hattersarts (2019)
- Kiss With a Fist!
- GL Zine
Meta
Communities & Websites
Discussion Boards
- The L Chat - a lesbian message board where many sapphic fandoms congregate
Archives
- SapphicVoices Fan Fiction, a Xena specific archive
- Passion and Perfection, one of the biggest archives devoted to F/F
- Sapphic HP
- Girls' Dormitory, a defunct Harry Potter femslash archive
- SapphicSlayer, a BtVS archive
Conventions
- ClexaCon - a multifandom procon geared towards queer female fans and creators
Resources & External Links
- Queer Female Fandom, Vol 24 (2017) of the Transformative Works and Cultures.
- See also Ng, Eve, and Julie Levin Russo. 2017. "Envisioning Queer Female Fandom" [editorial]. In "Queer Female Fandom," edited by Julie Levin Russo and Eve Ng, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.1168.
References
- ^ Response by unwind-myself to Why DO you write(/read) fanfic with female characters? or: Why DO you write(/read) femmeslash?, 2014
- ^ No Pairing Left Behind: The function of lesbian fanfiction in conversation with mainstream media, BooklandReeve, 2014
- ^ Femslash Can Save the World If We Let It, Kate, 2014
- ^ Response by havingbeenbreathedout to Why DO you write(/read) fanfic with female characters? or: Why DO you write(/read) femmeslash?, 2014
- ^ The most sexist and exhausting thing in wlw content is how fucking soft it always is, Archived version, Tumblr post by nbitchn, Apr 14th, 2019
- ^ Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking: Selections from The Terra Nostra Underground and Strange Bedfellows – Sandy Hereld, "T-shirt Slogans Are Intellectual Discourse," Terra Nostra Underground #12, November 1992
- ^ Some Thoughts on Femslash, Kadorienne, January 25th 2003}}
- ^ What's so compelling about slash fiction?, Alanna, March 10, 2003. There was a fair bit of discussion generated with some people disagreeing about the “identification with a character” element of the meta, or the “slash as a shared erotic experience on a lesbian continuum” aspect
- ^ Silly little girls: Slash Fanfiction and Female Sexuality, teresa-dances-in-sequins, 2005.
- ^ Tumblr post by three--rings, Archived version, Oct 27 2019, archived Dec 20 2021
- ^ Works tagged Useless Lesbians on AO3. (Accessed March 24, 2021)
- ^ Envisioning queer female fandom by Eve Ng and Julie Levin Russo. Published in Transformative Works and Cultures (2017).
Notes
- ^ See, for instance comments by Eska_rina, Snarkylightning, and [pit_chick666] in Why do femslash? (2006); various responses to Why DO you write(/read) fanfic with female characters? or: Why DO you write(/read) femmeslash?, 2014; The I Am Femslash essays (2017)
- ^ For example, Where’s all the good femslash? Does anybody know? (2003), archived from the original, or where are the femslash epics? (2010)
- ^ See for example M/M vs. F/F (2005), comments by cyberorganize or mrsfrankenstien in Why is there so little geeky academic discussion of femslash? (2007), or Is it a law that you have to be lesbian to write Femslash? (2007)