Lovers in a Dangerous Time (femslash meta)
| Meta | |
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| Title: | Lovers in a Dangerous Time |
| Creator: | sqbr |
| Date(s): | April 29th, 2012 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | Fanfiction, Femslash |
| External Links: | Lovers in a Dangerous Time |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Lovers in a Dangerous Time is an essay by sqbr wirtten for 3rd Annual Femslash Mini Meta Fest in response to the prompt "What's your approach to writing femslash in times and places that are notoriously unfriendly for f/f relationships, especially historical settings?"
Excerpts
The very first femslash fic I ever wrote (and also my first fanfic at all) is about Mary Bennet and Anne de Bourgh from Pride and Prejudice. One of my motivations was annoyance at the fact that pretty much all the femslash fic I've read set in historical fandoms is full of bittersweet angst, or experimentation before marriage. There's nothing wrong with these sorts of stories, but I yearned for "and then they lived together happily forever and ever".
So, my relatively small focus is the world of Jane Austen: upper class women in England in the late 18th/early 19th century. There are many obstacles to a f/f happily ever after set in this world (and many others): Women were expected to marry, and unless independently wealthy would probably have to unless they wanted to spend their life relying on the charity of others. While two "spinsters" living as housemates was just barely acceptable they could never admit to the true nature of their relationship. There was no support network or easy way for queer women to meet each other or even a general conception of queerness existing. And of course there was internalised homophobia: few women would be comfortable admitting same sex desires to themselves, let alone each other.
I do sometimes think about writing f/f for different, more tractable women from that era, but have yet to have an idea occur to me that doesn't hit one obstacle or another. The closest I can come up with is a cheerful Isabela/Katherine/Henry threesome for Northanger Abbey.It can certainly be done, see for example Sarah Waters brilliant original novel "Fingersmith". But for now I find it easier to write for settings where I don't always have to wrestle with such intense homophobia in the characters or the world. It helps that two of my main fandoms are Dragon Age and Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, both of which have fantasy settings based loosely on real historical periods, but minus a lot of the repressive social attitudes.
Comments
[hl]: I totally see this. I've the cake with poison (i.e. Emma/Jane femmeslash with zombies) which I've never been able to really write beyond a couple of chapters (for mostly other reasons having to do with benign a crap plotter of adventure stories) and the internalized homophobia trips me up, too (see my only attempt in the Persuasion slash story, with which I'm not entirely happy, and the new ending of NEG, which is still more manageable for Reasons). And Emma and Jane would be waaaay easier than Mary -- I think almost any character would be easier than Mary. I still want to see you try more, though. That story is awesome.
[dharma_slut]: This is a great problem for so many of us. And it's compounded by the many ways one can make a gay male relationship work when one cannot fit a lesbian one into the historic slot. Nothing like it to foster an ever-increasing resentment of male privilege.
[levitsa]: I've written some medieval fantasy (Tolkien) f/f relationships in a collaborative writing project. Our "happy" resolution was for our lady-loving heroine to marry a man who did not much care she had a female lover, as that was preferable to her sleeping with another man. Happy? Depends on what you mean by 'happy'.I think different periods experience this pressure differently. While the overwhelming majority of women marry men through most of history, there are definitely periods where this is an exception. We also know the medieval world was mostly indifferent to women loving other women, as they "couldn't have sex" (sex being penetration in medieval law) up until the point where it involved "simulating" heterosexual sex through use of sex toys! (Really, this is documented in the western world). So for those writing in that period we have the possibility of long-term female friendships with sexual behaviors.
I've seen femslash written in Narnia fandom (Aravis/Susan or Aravis/Lucy is a known quantity) which isn't exactly historical, but closer, and for lots of reasons doesn't usually end in happiness (namely the fact that Susan and/or Lucy will vanish in about a year after meeting Aravis, according to canon). In such a context, a pass is often given to nobility or fics don't delve into the long-term consequences of such engagements.
I wonder that more historical fics do not make use of one woman crossdressing or keeping a public appearance of being male in order to protect her lover or even marry her under her assumed male identity. We know this scenario happened with the rise of post-medieval armies, with women going to far lengths to maintain a male identity, including having female companions, who presumably knew their secret. This seems like an excellent way to support historical femslash that offers the possibility of a "happy ending" in a romantic sense, though like any other ending it is complicated in its own way.