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

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

[thingswithwings]

I think something like ship_manifesto would be great, exclusively for femslash - people sign up for their favourite pairing and provide picspam, recs for the best episodes/comics/moments in canon, recs for awesome fanworks, etc. I know ship_manifesto has gotten me into plenty of fandoms, just because I wanted to find the cool pairing I'd seen described in loving detail.

If someone wanted to set up and run such a comm, I would volunteer to write about one or more of my favourite femslash ships. :)

Re: femslash production

[cantarina]

Speaking personally, ship_manisfesto is not usually a resource I ever use unless I'm looking for a specific primer that's *already* gotten me hooked. I feel like asking regular manifesto-length docs out of f/f fandom is maybe asking a lot?

That said I've been talking about setting up a women-centric recs comm for a while. Maybe it's time, with space made in it for reccing/promoting source materials?

Re: femslash production

[intransitive]

I wonder what the ratio of canon vs. non-canon fans tends to be, and if it's different for different fandoms or for femslash in particular? So if we want to engage the fans who need to be more invested in particular characters or canon sources in order to interact with them/it fannishly, are we trying to get them to see the appeal of the less canonically involved type of fannish interaction, or get them excited about the source canon, or a mixture of both? I think of fandom as my actual fandom, and read everything that even slightly appeals to me no matter where it's from, but I think I'm in the minority with that.

I think reccing would be a big help, and I would totally be on board for helping with that if you'd like. And I think it would be pretty easy to incorporate promoting source materials into recs. Eventually maybe we could get a sort of primer for femslash for particular fandoms? I'm thinking of the one cherie_morte did for SPN/SPN RPF at spnroundtable a few months ago, which recced particular works, but also sort of gave an overview of the fandom, characters, and resources. It really did a great job of the ship_manifesto type of info without being quite as involved, but also (I think) engaged people who might not have thought about femslash in that fandom before.

Re: femslash production

[cantarina]

I'd expect that for the f/f shippers I know, the ratio is highly skewed toward non-canon fans, but other femslash communities are likely to be different? I know that there are people who cross between the different f/f metafandoms, but I've never been able to be one of them. Maybe the canon vs non-canon shipping is a part of that? Hm.

Willing to help = willing to co-mod or willing to contribute?

Re: femslash production

[intransitive]

I think both - I've never co-modded or modded anything before, so I might not be amazing at it, but I'm definitely willing to try, and certainly happy to contribute!

I was also thinking about what someone downthread (or in another thread? I can't find it now) said, about how people engage with fandom as they're inspired to and it's something of an inexplicable process as to what draws people to what characters or fandoms. I do think that's mostly true, and that maybe folks who aren't into femslash can't really be "persuaded" into it. And the canon vs non-canon shipping is probably similar...

But I also think that creating more femslash (fic, podfic, meta, comms, etc) makes it more likely that people will find something they like. Plus, I know there are some people who just haven't seen awesome woman-centered fanworks promoted, who will love it and get into once they do. And I think that creating and reccing femslash fanworks/fandom is, like podfic, its own reward. Not something I do because I like the feedback or download counts (I do, but that ground's been covered well), but because I love it on its own and find value in the act itself.

Re: femslash production

[tamsin]

A women-centric recs comm sounds like an awesome idea and I'd be happy to help if you want.

Re: femslash production

[tellitslant]

LJ has a het_recs comm - I would love a femslash_recs comm. Because let's face it, I think as femslashers we are pretty damn multifannish. Speaking personally, I read femslash in fandoms I don't even watch (most of my fannishness lately is tv/movie), so it would be great to have those pre-screened for me by someone who is enthusiastic about the source. And then I might get around to doing my Warehouse 13 recs! :P

Re: femslash production

[amaresu]

There is ff_showcase which has gone through several attempts to spark interest. With little success.

Re: femslash production

[twtd]

If someone wants to take over ff_showcase and spark some life back into it, I would be thrilled. I don't think

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Re: femslash production

[erinptah]

I've made some effort to rec f/f (and/or my favorite small fandoms) at list50 and fancake. I'd love to see more people jumping in with that! Especially since they have a multifannish audience already built up, whereas it takes some effort to get more specific rec comms off the ground.

Re: femslash production

[sarken]

A ship_manifesto thing would be fun! I was going to suggest doing it as a one-off event in an existing community instead, but, actually, yeah, a separate community would probably be better, since there wouldn't be a time limit (that is, if a really femslashy show starts in the fall, it's not like "too bad, the event is over, you have to find somewhere else to post your pic spam").

I tend to be a monofannish multishipper, so I probably wouldn't pick up a new canon, but I'd also be among those happy to write about one or more of my favorite femslash ships if someone wanted to run such a community.

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

[amaresu]

Fearless Defenders would be a good book to try and get people to read. The art is a bit hit or miss, but it's very open to new readers. I'll I knew was that I liked what I'd seen of Valkyrie in Secret Avengers and now it's one of my favorite books. So far it seems to have a lot going for it. Angsty backstories, canon femslash, lots of ladies, Hippolyta. (I love Hippolyta so much. I love her arrogance and her superiority and how she's going to end up so damn protective of everyone.)

It seems like a good book to jump in with. Especially if you don't care about what else is going on in 616. What is Age of Ultron even about? Why should I care? Can we be done with events now?