fem_thoughts | Comment Meta

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Comment Meta

Femslash Mini Meta fest was an utter fail this year. And I'm still not in a place where I could do it, so I purpose Comment Meta. And let's have it cover all things female and fannish. However you define those.

How it works

1. Post a meta topic in a top level comment. Use the subject line for the meta subject and expand as you want in the body of the comment. Or don't.

2. Repeat Step 1 for as many meta ideas as you have.

3. Comment on other meta topics.

It's kinda like a kink meme, only with meta. Feel free to browse the mini meta tag for ideas.

This is meant to be about as low pressure as it comes. Feel free to write on your own journal/Tumblr/blog and link back here. Respond with as little or as much as you want. This post will remain open indefinitely, so please track it if that makes things easier for you.

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How is this show so amazing? And where can I get some icons?

I love that OUaT has so many awesome women in it. But the show frustrates me to no end with it's conventional love/good conquer evil/scorned women become baddies/everyone who is anyone is straight tropes.

Hi, can we link this at

metanews?

I watched and loved Top of the Lake and see lots of feminist themes in it, but I'm finding it hard to find a place to discuss it. Anyone else watch? What did you think of the way the show dealt with gender issues and its multiple female characters (especially Robin and Tui)? (If anyone wants to tie its rugged sort of setting to the rugged feminism of Winter's Bone, I would not be averse, but that is a super specific topic so feel free to ignore. :D)

(Top of the Lake comes with a trigger warning for basically everything, including sexual assault, including assault involving children).

You know you want to! Pretty please!

All right -- let's do this. *g*

Vulva, cunt, pussy, vagina, slit, entrance, wet, moist, damp, breasts, boobs, tits... okay, you get the picture. Which words do you use? Do you use the same words no matter what, or do you like to vary it depending on the fandom, pairing, characters, or even mood you're writing? Ever swear you wouldn't use a term but then use it because it seemed right for that particular moment? When it comes to penises, it seems like fandom has pretty much embraced cock a a go-to term... do we have or are we trending toward any generally-accepted, widely-used terms? Is that something you'd even want, or do you kind of enjoy the debates and the search for the right word?

Edited (IDK what happened... I wanted my 'ship in my icon.) 2013-06-07 06:53 (UTC)

I've long been wondering why there's not as many femslash vids and other fanworks. Obviously it's a numbers game, but what would increase the production of femslash? I'm primarily a vidder and I wonder what would compel more the making of more femslash vids. Is it the lack of content from which to vid? The addition of sometimes needing to manipulate footage to create a femslash vid? The perceived lack of audience for a femslash vid? I'm sure it's a question that's been raised many places, many times.

There's already been a thread on "Top of the Lake"- I thought we might want to discuss the other mystery series headed by a female lead (and also currently available on Netflix). They make a good comparison- because both center on female investigators and crimes of sexual abuse against women. But as amazing as Gillian Anderson is as sexy, competent, take no prisoners D.S. Gisbon, there is something super creepy going on with the way I think violence against women is eroticized in this story. I really think the (male) creator wants to have it both ways, with the obviously feminist heroine and then these women as victims of a sadistic serial killer. And I'm torn about whether i will watch series 2 because of it. Thoughts?

Is anyone else watching Defiance? This amazing show with a prostitute as a regular and her place of business NeedWant being a main setting? I love the way the show presents Kenya as a legitimate business woman running a legitimate business. A business that caters to both men and women. And is a good bar on top of everything else and people like the Town Council hang out there.

Which, I'm enjoying just the many, many, casual ways that the show is showing queer characters. I would like them to have some of the main characters being queer, but so many background characters are just casually shown. They could do a lot more here, but what they are doing is more than most shows would.

Oh, and the recent revelation that polygamy is not only perfectly normal it's just as normal for a women to have multiple husbands as it is for a man to have multiple wives.

This show is doing many interesting things and almost all of them are in the background and just accepted as part of the way the world is.

How they're awesome and why they're so underused in fandom.

As far as I can tell, most of the SG1 and SGA femslashers moved to Legend of the Seeker fandom. Where did they all go after that series was cancelled too soon?

For that matter, can anyone trace the path of femslash fandom migrations? I know many Xena shippers went to West Wing and Buffy, and some on to Sam/Janet in SG1, but I lost track of them after that.

Where are people looking for the next big femslash fandom?

Where do femslashers go when their pairing dies or their show ends?

Everyone has their favorite fandom tropes. What are your favorites when applied to femslash? Do you have a pairing or a type you prefer them with?

I tend to be fond of AMTDI and its various iterations, like Magic Made Them Do it. I'm aware of the extreme dubiousness of the consent involved, but it hits my fandom kinks hard and so I go there anyway.

There's also soulbonding. The world needs more femslash soulbonding fic, don't you think?

I'm so out of date with anime and manga releases that it's not funny, but I thought I'd start up a thread for us anime fans. Feel free to recommend anime/manga with f/f content/subtext. Here's a tiny list to get us started.

Anime/manga with canon f/f pairings:

Sailor Moon. Haruka and Michiru are up there with Xena and Gabrielle in terms of classic f/f pairings.

Loveless. Yamato and Kouya only appear in one volume of the manga/a few episodes of the series, but they are so awesome.

Revolutionary Girl Utena. Juri/Shiori is quite canon, though tragic. The main pairing in fandom is Anthy/Utena, which has heavy subtext, even if it never quite croesses the lines into canon.

Tetragrammaton Labyrinth. Not a manga for everyone. For one thing, while Angela is Really 700 Years Old, she looks twelve, and the mangaka has an unnerving habit of drawing her naked. This could definitely be a squicky one for some. I enjoy it despite the icky bits. I may just be desperate.

Voiceless. Sweet little story. Unfortunately, there's only 1 volume available in English, and it appears that it will remain that way. I haven't checked for fan translations.

First Love Sisters. Another sweet story. Despite the name, there is no incest. Rather, both sisters are going through first love. Another one that seems doomed to never see a full English language release.

Strawberry Panic. Girls love in a super fancy boarding school. The manga is partially available in English. I'm not sure if the light novels have been completely released or not.

In case you're seeing a pattern here, Seven Seas bought up a lot of f/f titles which then fell through. I don't know whether they couldn't get licensing for future volumes, or if sales were low, or what.

Others to consider:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Some pretty intense subtext between Homura and Madoka, and Sayaka and Kyoko.

Venus Versus Virus. I haven't kept up with this one, but there was definitely subtext between Sumire and Lucia. However, when I dropped off Sumire was getting something of romance arc with a boy, but I don't know what happened with that.

Maria-sama Ga Miteru (Maria Watches Over Us). I'm not clear on whether this series has canon f/f of just a lot of subtext, but it's one off the classics. (That I, uh, have yet to watch.)

Noir. Lots of subtext between Mireille and Kiriki. Any who denies the canon status of (one-sided) Chloe/Kirika is fooling themselves, in my not so humble opinion. (Chloe kisses Kirika. What more do you need?)

So, feel free recommend others, or discuss the ones I've listed here.

Hi! Saw this rec'd by

havocthecat. Thank you!

I am reading a bunch of Avengers these days, and although Maria Hill and Natasha Romanov have hardly any appearances when they are on screen together, I have been looking for more fic pairing them.

I just really see sparks flying between the two of them and I think they would have a lot of interesting things to say to each other.

Anybody else love them? Any recs?

The women of White Collar. Discuss why they are awesome.

While I admit that I'm more sensitive to grammatical errors than many (marking undergrad essays will do that - though I'm sure that won't save me from making at least one error in this post), I've found a dramatic upswing lately in the number of fics that I have to backbutton out of because the commas, dear god, won't someone please think of the commas. Also, best recent malapropism I've read: blue colour workers. So these are things that having another set of eyes would largely fix.

Have we reached a point following the Just Be Nice kerfuffles where we cannot point out minor errors in reviews etc? Will those days ever come back? I miss people who would tell me when I made a typo; I'm not talking flaming, but wondering whether concrit has been buried by the like/kudos buttons.

And are betas out of style now? Is this another thing brought to us by the immediacy of tumblr - people who write-and-post being more accessible and more prevalent?

I have some nebulous thoughts inspired by other threads (including what seem to be some unspoken assumptions about our priorities), let's see if I can articulate them...

I love getting recommendations for femslashy sources and femslash friendly fannish spaces. Femslash and femslashers are in the minority in fandom and it can be lonely sometimes, it makes sense for us to stick together and help each other out. Sharing the femslashy squee is super fun, too.

But I don't see much point in trying very hard to push other people into femslashy canons, or into creating femslash for canons they're into in an unfemslashy way, or to push themselves to create more femslash in general if they don't feel super enthusiastic about it. Encouraging people to push a little outside their comfort zone, sure, but personally I don't have a lot of choice about what I feel fannish or creatively inspired about and I get the feeling most other fans don't either.

Femslashiness in a canon and/or fandom is a major draw for me, so advertising femslashiness is more likely to make me want to try it out, but it's definitely not sufficient to guarantee my attention. And I find the assumption that people work that way annoying given that most of ""femslash fandom"" (eg live action femslash fandom) actively avoids the massive collection of video game/comic/anime etc fandoms with canon ff and lots of femslashers. Which is fair enough, you can't make yourself like video games/comics/anime, but alas I also can't make myself like The Devil Wears Prada. And even within the types of fandoms I tend to be drawn towards I can't make myself like, say, fShep/Liara even though it's the major canon f/f ship for Mass Effect.

I feel a certain solidarity with fellow femslashers and am more open minded about checking out f/f ships that don't jump out at me than f/m and m/m ships, but femslashiness does not define me as a fan. I prefer canon ships, and ensemble casts with lots of women, and speculative fiction, which means I'd rather read Dragon Age het or even slash than RPF femslash. And poking at the popular femslash fandoms on the AO3 there are lots I "should" like based on my general preferences but just...don't. That's just the way fannishness works.

So I guess I feel like pushing people towards femslash and femslashy canons (rather than just making it easier to get into) is a losing game for all concerned.

Do other people feel similarly? Or do you like being pushed to make more femslash/get into more femslashy sources etc when you wouldn't naturally? Have you had success pushing other people? Am I just misreading this talk of "pushing" and all you guys mean is "squeeing in an infectious manner"? Because I am totally down with squeeing in an infectious manner :D

I've been in online fandom for 17 years, and I've really noticed changing boundaries over that time, in a lot of ways, but particularly in terms of people who identify as "slashers" vs "femslashers" vs "het shippers" etc. Maybe this is just because of my personal trajectory through a narrow subset of fandoms? But I feel like nowadays you're much more likely to find people who write/vid/read/podfic various sexualities and pairings and groupings. It used to be that any given fan I knew was pretty likely to be JUST doing m/m, or JUST doing f/f, or JUST doing f/m, or JUST doing kinky f/m, etc., but over the last . . . five years? I feel like I know tons of people who do absolutely everything, boyslash femslash transfic het poly threesomes and so on. Does this match up with other peoples' experiences? Is it just that I've found friends who are better suited to me? Or am I projecting my own experience onto others?

Because I don't personally identify with anything called "femslash fandom," but I do write/vid a good amount of femslash, mixed up with everything else. And I really like it that way, I like that I can do femslash one day and boyslash another and I'll get the same people commenting on both stories/vids/posts, no big deal.

All of this talk about older femslash fandoms has made me wonder, do you remember the first femslash fic you read? Or pairing that you got into? What made you decide to give femslash a chance? Was it something specific about the characters or pairing that drew you in? How did the fic make you feel- about sexuality, femslash, female characters, etc?

I ask this because I *do* remember the first femslash fic I ever read. It was called Hermione's Heart, and featured Hermione crushing on McGonagall but ending up with girl jock!Cho. I was pleased to discover you can still find it online. And ten years later- it's actually still really good! This story was actually really important to me when I read it as a high schooler. I was raised very conservatively (I had a lot of interalized homophobia) and the story helped me understand that girls loving other girls wasn't something unnatural or scary...but very attractive to me. In fact, i realized that some of the feelings I was having for a friend of mine mirrored those of the girls in the story.

So there you go. We never know what effect our stories have on other people. Write some femslash, help some kid come out of the closet. ;)

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Orphan Black and the Bechdel Test

Once Upon a Time: Love/Hate relationship

no subject

femnism in Top of the Lake

In defense of Bella Swan

Word Choices in Smut

femslash production

Mixed Messages in "The Fall"?

Defiance and Sex

Lord of the Rings: Female Characters

Femslash Fandom Migration

Favorite Tropes as Applied to Femslash