Picking the Collective Femslash Brain: Femslash as a Fandom
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| Title: | Picking the Collective Femslash Brain: Femslash as a Fandom |
| Creator: | runetraverse |
| Date(s): | Sep. 23, 2010 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | Fanfiction, Femslash |
| External Links: | Picking the Collective Femslash Brain: Femslash as a Fandom, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Picking the Collective Femslash Brain: Femslash as a Fandom is a post by dagas_isa in the fem_thoughts community.
It has 48 responses.
Post
If there is in fact, a collective brain, I'd like to ask it a few questions. I've recently been wondering about Femslash fandom as a whole and thinking about whether it exists and how it manifests.
- Does femslash fandom (as a larger entity) exist?
- If it does, what, other than the obvious (having at least one f/f ship), are the central features of femslash fandom?
- How is femslash fandom culture different from (or the same as?) het fandom/guyslash fandom?
- What are the main fannish interactions in femslash fandom?
- Are there any femslash fans who are exclusively into femslash?
- What are the canons that you think most femslash fans would (or should) know through osmosis (that is, they might never have experienced them, but would know through discussion/meta)?
- What are your personal experiences being a femslasher in a (small/large/eastern/western/etc) fandom?
Tell me, what are your thoughts on femslash?
(I have thoughts, but it's easier to ask questions than give a hazy reply based on a limited sample and my experiences in small fandoms.)
Comments
[ranrata]: Interesting questions! There's definitely a larger femslash fandom/culture. I can't help but notice it, as someone who likes quite a few femslash pairings, but finds larger femslash fandom...inaccessible? I just kind of flit around the edges, occasionally finding something I like, occasionally contributing.I've been trying to determine what causes certain ships/shows to become popular in femslash fandom. I can usually predict this for het and slash fandoms, even if I don't like said ship/pairing, but I'm continually baffled by what takes off (or doesn't) in femslash fandom. I've also noticed crossover pairings seem to be a lot more common.
I don't know if I've sampled a large enough selection, but there does seem to be a certain style to the fic that's quite distinct. I'm not sure how to describe it. I tend to prefer femslash that isn't written in this style, though.
This is regarding media fandom based on LJ/DW. I was heavily into Sailor Moon fandom for years, and the experience was completely different!
[pseudo_tsuga]: I dunno, I feel like my experience is really atypical in some ways. I read a lot of fic about anime/manga/video games and they all have way more femslash support if they aren't one of those canons where the majority of the cast are boys (like Oofuri). One on my main fandoms, Phoenix Wright, has a f/f couple as the second most popular pairing. It also seems like people are way more ready and willing to put girls together, especially as protest to big fandoms where they're both treated badly. In Naruto and Bleach, Orihimie/Rukia as well as Sakura/Ino or Sakura/Hinata have a sizable following from what I can tell. Of course the m/m and het pairings are more popular but there doesn't seem to be this drought that exists in Western media fandoms. Maybe I just know the wrong people for that though?
[saekhwa]: I'd like to think that femslash fandom exists as a larger entity because I believe in that collective fandom awesomeness that we come together to talk (maybe not always squee) about common interests. But then again, I seriously can't find it. Maybe I'm missing the pulse of it because while I enjoyed Xena and Buffy, I wasn't really into the fandom side of things while it exploded. I was very much in the animanga and comics camp and mostly squeeing with my friends about the ladies of Sailor Moon or the id-tastic greatness of Tank Girl.Having said all that, I can't really answer the follow up questions because I guess I don't feel that plugged into femslash fandom. I participate, but I always sort of feel like I'm on the outskirts, someone who enjoys it but isn't really included.
Me, personally? I'm into fantastic stories so I'll read anything: femslash, het, slash, gen. Not to say that I don't have my favorite pairings, but I don't have strict, hard boundaries either, so if a story has been recced or well-received or features a character that I love or seems like my bag of goodies, I'm there.
As to the last question, I often feel like I'm the only person who ships my teeny-tiny pairings. I watch some of the most obscure movies (e.g. Bitch Slap) and even for the not-so-obscure (e.g. Death Proof and maybe St Trinian's), I often feel like I'm playing in my own sandbox all by my little lonesome. I still write the stories I want to write, regardless, but I definitely feel like I'm missing something. Maybe the femslash fandom norms or culture? It's hard to pinpoint from where I'm standing.
[cleo]: Great questions. It's definitely interesting that these are the big questions that keep coming up in the little bit of femslash meta there is. That said, I do think femslash fandom as a larger entity thinks it exists, but there's definitely a an insularity overall and an insularity within. When it comes to the large fandoms or the new fandoms that create a lot of buzz, there's some community and a lot of visibility in the general femslash comms. But there are only a few large fandoms, and by comparison to slash or het heavy fandoms, they aren't really very large at all. It seems to me that femslash fandom as a whole is made up of a lot of small fandoms, incredibly fragmented and closed off to what else might be going on in other femslash fandoms/fandom as a whole.It's hard to generalize about anything. With femslash fandom overall there seems to be something of an uneven split between people who are exclusively into femslash in one or two fandoms and people who are into a little bit of everything. I'm not saying one camp is better than the other, and those lines are definitely not so definite. But sometimes it really seems that a lot of femslash fandom isn't in touch with trends within fandom as a whole, that if there's a guy lurking in the story or a het relationship or slash relationship on the side, it's not readable or whatever. And it seems that there tends to be a reluctance to explore and branch out or to keep up with other things that might be going on...that's one reason twtd and I started the femslash Kink Meme...but I won't go into that. There's not a profusion of meta, which I think is why the meta that does get written goes to the big questions you're asking--and omg they're great questions.
Your questions about canons that femslash fans would/should know by osmosis...hmm, it really strikes me. I think give or six years ago Xena, Voyager, and SVU would have been the definite answers. Now, I'm not so sure. Again...not a ton of discussion and meta (which maybe is changing...) to absorb a lot of that from.