Quietly tragic femslash
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|---|---|
| Title: | Quietly tragic femslash |
| Creator: | alias_sqbr |
| Date(s): | 2009-08-04 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | Fanfiction, Femslash |
| External Links: | Quietly tragic femslash |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Quietly tragic femslash is a meta piece by alias_sqbr, posted in the girlwank Livejournal community, on the use of "tragic" tropes in femslash.
It has 64 responses.
Post
It's hard to make generalisations about what sorts of fic are common(*). But would people agree that there is a disproportionate amount of femslash (compared to het and boyslash) about characters who have a passionate secret affair before or during their canon relationships, angst about it, and then go on living their canon lives with a sense of bittersweet sorrow, pining but trapped by conventionality? (I'm not sure if that quite captures the pattern)The most recent example I've come across: Grounded (This Is Not My Beautiful Life Mix) by kyuuketsukirui. Harry Potter :: Ginny/Luna, Ginny/Harry. (EDIT: apparently kyuuketsukirui meant it as a happy ending! So don't let my interpretation put you off the story :))
Bu I've encountered this plot a bunch of other places, especially in Anne of Green Gables fic.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, though I'll admit I prefer happy endings myself. I just find it interesting, since I can't think of much(**) non-femslash fic I've read with that plot. Instead there's bittersweet unrequited love, or one of the character will die, or they are kept apart by personality clashes etc.
Maybe people are less comfortable writing men quietly cheating on their wives (if only in their hearts) without it turning into a Major Tragedy, and quietly sad passivity is more believable and sympathetic from women?
And I don't know, I have this feeling that in general femslash is rather prone to bittersweet and understated endings where the pairing aren't together at the end. And maybe less prone to big dramatic Shakespearean tragedy type endings where lots of people die or become evil or whatever.
Am I imagining things? Have I just had bad luck in choosing what fic to read, or find it easier to avoid het/boyslash with sad endings because there's more to choose from? If I'm right what do you think is behind it?
(*)unless you're willing to read a really large random sample, and I'm only willing to go so far for science :)
(**)Off the top of my head I can't think of any, but I'm sure there is some
Responses
[mammothluv]: This is an interesting question. I have trouble making comparisons to other types of fic. I honestly don't read much het or boyslash but I have noticed the trend in a few femslash fandoms. I read most Meredith/Addison fics (Grey's Anatomy). They seem to have a fair amount of fics like this where one of them stays with Derek but they have a secret affair or just one night stand.Is "quietly sad passivity is more believable and sympathetic from women?" I think it is. I think in general, men are expected to go after what they want while women are expected to sacrifice for their families or to keep other people happy. A lot of shows/movies/books reflect that expectation.
If the female characters are portrayed as self-sacrificing in canon, author's may find it's easier to be true to the character by writing a situation like the one you outlined above than by having her leave her husband/boyfriend/whoever for a woman.
In fact, I just wrote a fic that ended with the impression that one of the characters would probably stay with her husband and children. I ended it that way because she's someone who has been shown in canon as very dedicated to her family and especially her children and I had trouble imagining her leaving them even though she's obviously very in love with her best friend.
I'm like you, I prefer happy endings too. And I do read a lot of femslash that has a happy ending or at least ends up with the femslash pairing still together but, in some fandoms, I do think the secret affairs can often seem more true to the characters. At the very least, it sometimes takes a much longer and in-depth fic to make a long-term relationship between the femslash pairing more believable.
I may come back and comment again once I've had a chance to think about this some more but those are my initial thoughts. I'm looking forward to seeing other replies.
[furikku]:[Note that this is 100% me pulling ideas from thin air, so I am possibly-likely off the mark.]I think it might have something to do with the authors or something- since most slashfic (and a lot of hetfic... OK, most fic, period) I've seen is by gals, it seems likely that there's some combination of Knowing the Story more, plus internalized messages.
For one, I think many of the people writing girlslash are gay- or bi-identified, so they have more of a perspective on how that kind of thing is viewed by Society, and therefore can probably extrapolate better: "I can't exactly tell Grandma that I'm into/dating girls; here, let's use that feeling to write out a load of angst. Woo, catharsis!"
As an extension of that, despite the general homophobic Thing in many English-speaking cultures, there's still a sense that guys can do what they want, and also there's less cultural pressure of "You NEED an opposite sex person to survive!"
I suspect also that guyslash (and het, possibly to a lesser extent) may be more likely to be written as a kind of wish fulfillment or fantasy thing, so the author wouldn't feel the need to conform as strictly to, say, historical tropes.
Overall, I think the main culprit is probably the cultural idea that a woman is incomplete without a husband, plus all the societal shunning of a single woman and all that, so there's probably some internalized pressure to have a gal stay on the DL about being into the vag.
[sailorptah]:I've noticed the exact same pattern, but I don't get to read a lot of femslash - it isn't very prevalent in any of my fandoms - so I was wondering if it was just me. Or if I'd had bad luck.It's actually been a bit of a turnoff in terms of seeking out femslash, at least on LJ :/ It's not like I won't read Quietly Tragic, but I can only take so much of it, be it het, slash, or femslash. I love a good energetic fic with wacky adventures and a happy ending...or a heartwrenching tragic fic that descends to crashing depths before clawing its way out into the light.
(And thus why I love the comforting variety of daily_yuri...)