Comment Meta

[amaresu]

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.

Comments

femslash production

[kiki_miserychic]

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.

Re: femslash production

[frayadjacent]

I'm curious to know what kinds of things people have tried in the past and if they've been (at least temporarily) successful at encouraging more femslash? Like a femslash vid exchange or challenge of some sort? I know you tried to do a femslash vidshow at VVC this year, and it didn't work out. What other things have been attempted in the past, that folk know of? Have they worked?

I always have a dozen or so vid ideas in the queue (some of them are femslash!), and I know things like that really affect what gets priority.

Re: femslash production

[erinptah]

Fic-wise, there were weekly prompt posts going on in girlgay for a while. They all got a couple of responses; I was having a lot of fun with them. Then they sort of petered out :/

Any kind of challenge like that seems like good f/f encouragement. As long as it strikes the right balance between "specific enough to give people ideas" and "not so restrictive that people don't have room to be creative."

Re: femslash production

[amaresu]

There was a femslash big bang at one point, but that seems to have disappeared. I know there's the yearly femslash exchange, but I usually have to push outside my comfort zone in regards to fandoms in order to participate and last year I defaulted.

ladiesbigbang seemed to be going good for a bit, but then it just kinda died. I'd like to see something along those lines resurrected. I liked that you could do anything your heart desired for a bang. But maybe combined with the way ante_up_losers runs in that people create teams? So rather than working in a void you have a group of people working together and making fun projects.

Re: femslash production

[havocthecat]

Yeah, I was working on one for a while, but then SURPRISE SURGERY and all the fun that came from that meant I had to cut back on a whole lot. And I think my co-mod got bit by life. And I know there were other femslash big bangs, but low participation plus mods getting busy? It's bad for big bangs, totally.

Re: femslash production

[lyssie]

I can't speak for all femslashers, but I find the lack of audience (measured in feedback) the biggest reason I don't write more femslash.

People might talk about wanting femslash, but the lack of interest and comments is pretty disheartening.

Vids, though, I don't know. I am not a vidder, and I don't really follow vid-coms or go looking for vids. It's not laziness, so much as apathy, probably.

But I'd watch femslash vids--for pairings I'm interested in, at least. I don't watch vids for fandoms I have no interest in, either.

Re: femslash production

[havocthecat]

The lack of audience measured in feedback is really a bitch to deal with, honestly. It's one of the reasons I don't much bother to write any femslash in and around all the other stuff I'm doing. I write what I like, and I've managed to carve out a niche, but the lack of feedback is pretty disheartening.

On the other hand, I've been pretty guilty lately of not leaving feedback on anything I read. Other than hitting the kudos button on the ao3, because with full time work and part time school, I figure it's better than nothing.

Is there someplace femslash fandom has gone? Please don't tell me Tumblr. I don't have time to follow much on Tumblr.

Re: femslash production

[sqbr]

I'm an artist and writer, I love vids but their construction baffles me.

The main thing that stops me making more femslash is the heteronormativity of canon: I tend to be a canon or almost-canon shipper. Not much we can do about canon though, asides from reccing each other femslashy fandoms. Other than that...

I am a weirdo hitwise in that my most popular works tend to be femslash and gen, with my het and (much rarer) slash not doing quite as well. However I am still put off by the lack of general enthusiasm for femslash in fandom: I'm moderately likely to get get feedback once I make a work but there usually isn't as much general fannish excitement about my f/f OTPs in comms etc, which can make it harder to feel inspired. And when fandom as a whole is excited about a femslash pairing I like (Rose/Kanaya from Homestuck for example) I am more likely to make fanworks about it even if I'm not a diehard shipper, buoyed by the general buzz. Plus I do a lot of art prompts, and if noone prompts femslash it's not going to get drawn!

So I guess more of a sense of happy "yay femslash!" community around the ships and fandoms I like would be inspiring. I have got a bit of this by slowly finding and friending people with similar tastes on tumblr/dreamwidth etc. Maybe a friending meme? Have we had one of those?

Re: femslash production

[zvi]

I think part of it is that the types of shows that tend to have multiple important female characters are not the type of sci-fi/fantasy or procedural shows that fandom tends to enjoy watching collectively. And if you do get multiple main female characters in a sci fi show, they often fail the Bechdel test, episode to episode. So, you either have to convince people to pay attention to pairings where at least one of the characters is a minor character, or you have to convince people to watch shows that aren't the sort they tend to watch fannishly, or you have to convince people that they should ship two characters who don't have much canonical interaction.

Any one of these can be overcome for some of the people some of the time, but I think it makes it difficult to have really big femslash pairings, and, in fact, the one really huge femslash pairing I can think of (Xena/Buffy) had none of these strikes against it.

Re: femslash production

[havocthecat]

This is true! Trying to get femslashers to watch Bunheads or Scandal, for example, has been an exercise in futility. (Or anyone, for that matter. Even most people who love female characters.) Though I really do need to watch the rest of this season of Scandal, I know. I think part of the main problem is that canon will often hand fandom everything it asks for when it comes to het ships, and even give the m/m shippers all the juicy subtext that they can get their hands on. Most shows require a little more creativity when it comes to femslash, and a lot more flexibility when it comes to canon. That's why SGA had a mass exodus of femslashers (to Legend of the Seeker, which had some serious femslash even with the canon het ship) once Elizabeth was killed off and Sam got shipped back to Earth.

So I guess the next question, at least for me, is this: How do we convince more femslashers to break free from canon?

Re: femslash production

[kmo]

i love female characters and femslash and for the life of me i will never be able to get into Scandal. i just don't like Shonda Rimes as a storyteller. Bunheads...you might be able to convince me there. ;)

How do we convince more femslashers to break free from canon?

you know, this has never actually been my problem as a femslash fan. i often tend to prefer non-canon pairings whether het, femslash or boyslash to canon ones. i think what is required are interesting female characters and a canon that is capacious enough to allow for femslash pairings. one of my current favorite femslash pairings is Irene/Molly from BBC Sherlock- and they don't actually even share a scene in canon! so i'm not sure why i'm so into them, other than it makes sense in my imagination. ;) and with such a limited canon and a long hiatus, it seems like there is enough "room" in the canon to allow for the pairing.

Re: femslash production

[cantarina]

How do we convince more femslashers to break free from canon?

you know, this has never actually been my problem as a femslash fan. i often tend to prefer non-canon pairings whether het, femslash or boyslash to canon ones.
I think that this is actually a part of the problem? I know an awful lot of shippers who canon or at the very least, a very, very well-developed fanon (I'm looking at you, temporarily huge movie ships) to get invested and that's just the way some people do fandom. I was never in the Buffy fandom so I don't know how it compares to the rest for f/f content, but so many people just aren't all that interested in the blank spaces the way most femslashers are.

Re: femslash production

[zvi]

I find it really interesting that you're finding it hard to get people to watch Scandal, because everyone in that cast can be viewed through a misunderstood woobie lens, if you want to. (Even Fitz, who is, in fact, THE WORST.) But I really, really want Olivia/Melly fic, because they could do a 100000% better job of being the ruler of the free world than Fitz (because they would actually try to do it, sometimes), and also it would be hot and pretty.

As far as trying to convince femslashers to break free of canon, I don't know, man. I mean, I feel like an overinvestment in canon is sort of the starting point for a lot of us coming in the door, even if it's a negative overinvestment, where you want to list ALL OF THE WAYS THIS SHOW IS WRONG. I think the more crucial thing is to find the canons that do the things we want. I mean, I'm sure that there are predominately female/lesbian scifi shows out there (like a Buffy, like Legend of the Seeker, stuff I don't even know about as webseries) and we need to promote the hell out of them to one another.

Re: femslash production

[cantarina]

Hm. Maybe we ought to start a weekly or monthly "CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME FEMSLASHABLE SCI-FI/FANTASY" post? I'd suggest a new community but I'm not sure that that's what we actually need when we already have multi-fandom rallying spaces.

Re: femslash production

[erinptah]

Eh, be careful about saying "most shows" when you mean "most Western live-action TV shows".

And it seems pretty natural that someone who was femslashing in SGA (sci-fi adventures on another planet with tech so advanced it's practically magical) isn't necessarily going to come to Bunheads (mundane real-world story of a bunch of ballerinas) just for the femslash potential, you know? Whereas I bet you wouldn't have much trouble getting them to check out Doctor Who.

I've sure never been hooked by the summary of Bunheads. Whereas if you tell me the ballerinas are magical shapeshifters, they do dance-offs over the fate of someone's soul, and it's the kind of universe where the narrator sometimes drops into the story to yell at the characters, and the two main female characters have this amazing tragic rivalshipping potential, well! Sign me up and show me where to buy the box set.

Re: femslash production

[cantarina]

Everything you said about Princess Tutu: TRUTH

Re: femslash production

[elspethdixon]

the types of shows that tend to have multiple important female characters are not the type of sci-fi/fantasy or procedural shows that fandom tends to enjoy watching collectively.

I feel like this point in particular can't be emphasized enough. I'm not a big fan of mundane-setting television shows unless they're law-enforcement related (my interest in Glee begins and ends with listening to the soundtrack, for example), and that means that a significant number of the canons people write femslash for are just not fannishly interesting or inspiring to me.

I've also noticed that when canons that are already the type of thing that has wide fannish appeal do have a lot of important female characters who interact a lot, there tends to be a lot more femslash produced for them. The het and slash in Homestuck fandom still outweigh the femslash by a substantial margin, but it probably has at least ten times the amount of f/f art, squee, and fanfic that SPN or Sherlock do.

(sadly, thanks to the fact that they apparently wouldn't let Joss have more than one female Avenger, most of Marvel's really good f/f potential is in the mostly-ignored 616 canon rather than the movies, or Marvel would have been a really good candidate to become the next "large popular fandom with decent amounts of femslash." Maybe if they add the Scarlet Witch and Ms. Marvel or She-Hulk to the cast it will still happen)

Re: femslash production

[zvi]

I think the thing to do for 616 is to get all of the femslashers fixed on one book (like Fearless Defenders, or X Men, or even Captain Marvel) so that people who have no intention of following the larger comics universe (Age of Ultron, I fundamentally do not care, even though the issues for the books I follow were good) can keep up.

But I don't know how we'd get everybody to agree on one.

Re: femslash production

[havocthecat]

I don't generally vid, for one thing. But it might just be the sheer numbers game of it all. The small number of vidders compared to fic in general, and then reduced further due to the small number of femslashers when compared to everything else.

Honestly, I'd love more femslash vids, and I would watch and comment if there was some sort of a recs list post made to, for example, girlgay or another central femslash comm. But I don't even have time to write fanfic, much less re-learn my atrophied vidding skills. (Which is unfortunate. There are so many possibilities!)

Re: femslash production

[cantarina]

So, the interesting thing about being a femslash podficcer is that while I don't really get a lot of feedback, that's generally true even when I record m/m or dude-centric gen. It's too simplistic to say that fanworkers who work in other media only do it for the comments, but podficcers don't record for that reason. If we did, the Audiofic Archive would be significantly smaller!

f/f is a sizeable portion of what I record (bigger than m/m, which tends to only pop up in collabs), but not as common as het or gen and I think a lot of that is down to the numbers game. I don't often write and when I do, it's almost always slice-of-life gen, so I rely pretty exclusively on what other people have written to get me by. Personally, I might record more f/f if there were more of it to read and subsequently, more of it to twig my "MUST RECORD" buttons. Other people making more f/f podfic is always a joy, but I was doing it consistently before there was really anyone else doing the same.

I run an f/f (and another f+f) podfic fest every year around IDF. We had poor turnout our first year and a solid turnout the second. We'll see if we can keep growing this year! I think that most of us keep at it because much like making the decision to podfic in the first place, we do it out of sheer joy and love for the fanworks and characters.

Re: femslash production

[croissantkatie]

I love f/f podfic a ridiculous amount. I don't know what amount I record is f/f compared to m/m or gen though. But the feedback aspect has nothing to do with what I record. I record stuff because something about it makes me want to go "yes, I need to read this *now.*" And, conversely, I think I might actually get more feedback on my f/f podfic? This might not be true, but it feels that way. There's a small but very dedicated femslash podfic listening group.

I really love the f/f and f+f podfic fest and really hope it grows more. Because more than anything it's such a fun thing to take part in and the created fanworks bring me such joy.

My main issue with regards f/f podfic at the moment is that the fandoms I seem to have fallen into mostly consist of dudes and the presence of ladies is definitely something I miss. So yeah, I am always up for people going "hey Katie! This show has awesome ladies! You might like it." Because even if I don't end up fannishly engaged with that media, it's still nice to see ladies around.

Re: femslash production

[sophinisba]

Yeah, I've also found that, within the generally sparse area of podfic feedback, I do tend to get recognition for femslash - maybe not for the individual podfics I put out but when someone's commenting on my podfic in general they often say thanks for recording femslash podfic, and that makes me feel great and want to do more of it.

Like cantarina said, a lot of it is a numbers game. Even once you make the decision that you want to make podfic about ladies (I've made it a tradition for myself at Christmas, as well as at audiofemme/IDF and other challenges) you still have to find it, and the fic you find is often small, and a lot of listeners don't like to bother downloading short podfics, and so on. It can be really rewarding though.

I haven't made any podfic in a couple months but gosh now I feel I should find something to record for IDF!

Re: femslash production

[cantarina]

No, I get what you're saying. The circle of f/f podfic makers and fans has absolutely exploded in size compared to what it was even three years ago, but for all its still small, it's *dedicated* and close-knit (hopefully not cliquey? It's hard to tell from the inside!)

audiofemme isn't going anywhere, never fear <3

Re: femslash production

[mfirefly10]

For starters, vidding fandom is small in general. When you cut it down to femslash vidders...there's not a lot of us, tbh and almost all the femslash vidders I know also vid het and gen so even if they vid a lot, they don't necessarily vid femslash a lot.



Personally, I'm not a consistent vidder and I don't vid that much. Or at least, I don't publish a lot because I tend to get frustrated with my vids very easily and only publish about 1/4 of the vids I start (half of which I never even finish.)

I've posted 12 vids to YT in the past year. 2 of them were exclusively femslash (multifandom) and 2 of them contained femslash ships (one was a multifandom ships vid, the other a Spartacus ships vid.) 10 of the vids were ship-centric, with 4 of them featuring at least one femslash ship. The year before that it seems like I had an 4/8 ratio, with 3 of the vids being exclusively femslash. So while I do vid femslash pairings, the number of femslash vids I publish each year is pretty minimal.



I don't know how my personal vidding pattern applies to femslash vidding in general, but I'd say the numbers game is at least part of why there isn't as much femslash in the vidding community. Obviously lack of source material, lack of feedback/interest and tricky editing to create non-canon ships also play a factor.

The last organized femslash thing I can remember for vidders was a femslash challenge NikkiMonique ran on YT. I can't find a link to that challenge on her page but I think there were about...8 vidders who participated? No more than 10, at any rate. I'm not sure if she advertised much outside of YT, though.

Re: femslash production

[elspethdixon]

I know charmax back in the day created some absolutely amazing Xena femslash vids. (Which reminds me - I need to check to make sure that my copy of "Boom Boom Bah" survived my most recent "transfer all files to a new computer" experience)

I'm not a vidder, so my $0.02 is probably worth more like $0.01, but my theory is that it's two things:

1) There are fewer vidders in general than there are writers/fanartists, so there are fewer vids overall.

and 2) F/f pairings can be harder to vid than most of the really popular m/m and m/f ones, because vidders are confined to working with actual canon footage most of the time, and many f/f pairings have less total screentime together than canon het pairings or than TV Show X's two intensely homoerotic male leads. It's possible to manipulate footage and edit shots together to make it look like characters are interacting when they're actually not, but that takes more time, effort, and technical skill than doing a pairing vid for a couple who have a lot of screentime gazing into one another's eyes and kissing and fighting off badguys back to back. It would be much easier to make a Tony/Pepper vid or Thor/Loki vid (for example) than a Natasha/Maria vid.

Anec-data: I've seen at least twice as many yuri AMVs over the years as I have live-action f/f vids, and most of those have been for characters that do have lots of onscreen interaction.