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

You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[kmo]

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. ;)

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[erinptah]

I have no idea what my first f/f fic was, but it definitely would've been a Sailor Moon fic. This was before any canon about Haruka and Michiru was available in English, so it was probably Rei/Usagi or some Inner Senshi pairing.

A few specific plots I remember from those days:
--Rei and Makoto (I think?) discover they've each been writing about their secret feelings for the other
--Michiru takes Haruka home to meet her family as a "friend", only to have their real relationship found out by her obnoxious-but-ultimately-supportive brother
--Princess Rei has angsty sex with a nervous Princess Serenity right before the latter's wedding

And plenty of ensemble fics where Haruka/Michiru was a taken-for-granted part of the team dynamic. (The team-babysitting one where 3-year-old Chibi-Usa walks in on the couple, and a frantic Minako has to try and give her The Talk, was priceless.)

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[kmo]

This was before any canon about Haruka and Michiru was available in English

oh i remember watching the english dub with my brother on Cartoon Network in high school. whenever Haruka and Michiru showed up on the screen we'd just turn to each other and go "they're gay, right?" "cousins." my ass. i don't know who they thought they were fooling!

lol, Haruka/Michiru inspiring "the talk" sounds hilarious. :)

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[hebethen]

I remember the first fandom in which I started reading femslash -- actually, I think it was even the first fandom in which I even discovered there was such a thing as femslash, and I believe the number of out and vocal bisexual fen in the fandom-corner I stumbled into was what allowed me to admit to myself that yeah, not so straight. So even though it's ignominious and has a fair well deserved bad rep, I can't entirely distance myself from Baby's First Megafandom, Hetalia. (It was also, of course, the site of Baby's First F/F Fic.)

Thus your conclusion is entirely warranted ;) Not only the fic, but even just being vocal about GSM identities in fandom, and anyone who whinges about "don't shove it in my face" can go eat lint-scrapings.

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[kmo]

i'm not entirely familiar with Hetalia, but it sounds cool from the descriptions I've read. i think fic is a safe place for people to explore their sexuality and be exposed to new ideas, not just about femslash, but all kinds of sexuality. and as hard as it is sometimes to find well-written femslash, it's even harder for kids to get their hands on canons that have positive portrayals of queer characters. i think it's getting better- and technologies like kindle and amazon probably make it easier to read lgbt friendly books without your parents knowing than it was in my day. but there's something subversive and different that happens when beloved characters from familiar stories are portrayed as queer in fic.

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[hebethen]

Well, it's an interesting but very sensitive premise with actual execution that ranges from so-so to actively terrible, and it gives the obligatory terrible fans -- every fandom yadda yadda -- room to limit break and be extra special terrible. Hence the rep.

Other than the purely biological aspects, I pretty much got my sex ed from the internet, lol. So definitely. And I think that element of familiarity is crucial -- for baby queers, anyway; I'm sure entrenched straight/in-denial bigots would just view it as double perversion, haha.

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[havocthecat]

Terrible fans. Limit break. Cannot. Stop. Laughing. (Mostly in amusement, partly in horror, because the description of the extra-terrible fans is so apt for any fandom.)

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[havocthecat]

I wish I could remember! I think maybe Star Trek: The Next Generation? (I had to go back and type that out, because I didn't know for sure if everyone knew what TNG stood for. Or ST:TNG.) I used to browse the archives of alt.tv.star-trek.creative looking for Crusher/Troi. But it could just as easily have been X-Files femslash. Early XF, when there were no significant non-related women on the show for Scully to sleep with other than Mulder's ex from that one ep, which I don't think anyone ever did anyway. It was all crossovers.

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[kmo]

ah, X-Files fandom and the lack of anyone to slash Scully with. ;) your post reminds me of how fandom was much more insular back in the day. as hard as it is now to find good femslash, it was a lot harder then. and if you were the one person who wrote one of a handful of femslash stories *everyone* in that fandom would know it was you. and depending on how open and accepting your fandom was of slash and femslash, you could really be sticking your neck out there by creating that kind of fanwork. nowadays, i don't even worry about getting flamed for writing femslash. but that might be different on places like tumblr, which seem more flame-y.

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[havocthecat]

I remember being very concerned in Forever Knight fandom, with its dearth of female characters and approximate total of three femslashers. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have worried so much. But! There you go. I did.

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[coneyislandbaby]

I remember one threesome with Scully/Phoebe/Mulder but it was marked as "insignificant f/f interaction" which iirc was correct and was more Mulder/Scully and Mulder/Phoebe.

Why can I remember this and not how to do spreadsheets? :D

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[lyssie]

I feel as though I should go dig out that episode just so I can write Scully/Phoebe (ok, and also, I think I shipped it the last time I watched it. But I'm easy for girls with British accents)

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[fenellaevangela]

I do remember my first femslash fic, although the title escapes me. The Disney cartoon Gargoyles was my first online fandom 10ish years ago and I distinctly remember a Demona/Elisa fic being the first smutfic I ever read. I recall the fandom being heavy on the het and femslash; it wasn't until I moved on to Harry Potter that dudeslash became a common sight for me.

The pairing did definitely open my eyes to the joys of non-canon ships, but I can't say it was as informative as your experience!

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[sarken]

My first was a Voyager J/7 uber by Angelina Vansen. I'd read and enjoyed her Janeway/Chakotay stories so much that I figured I'd try the J/7 despite not particularly liking Seven. I... don't actually remember that much about it. /o\ Not a very interesting or inspiring experience, but I already knew I was gay and was cool with it, and I'd been reading fic for years, so really the only thing that had stopped me from reading femslash before was the lack of a 'ship.

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[coneyislandbaby]

I know the first f/f story I read was X-Files and involved Scully, because all of my fic firsts, down to RPF, were in XF. I think it was a series that was very PWP and there was Mulder/Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks), Mulder/Scully, Mulder/OMC, Scully/OFC and I think there was Scully/OMC and Mulder/OFC but can't swear to that last part. So not only was it my first girlslash, but also my first boyslash. On which (both) I was hooked immediately.

Re: You Never Forget Your First Femslash Fic

[lyssie]

Oh, man.

So, I'm pretty sure my very first femslash reading experience was Kitty Pryde/Rachel Summers fic on Luba Kmetyk's Fonts of Wisdom. And I betaed some femslash fic for comic fic writers, not that I remember what the pairing was (it was dude-written and... meh)

But for me, while I sort of thought femslash was 'all right', I didn't really write it. My first attempt was Storm/Mystique, and I really do still ship that (and probably Storm/Yukio, too). I may have written it on a dare, or just because it was what I felt needed to be written.

I don't think I really got into writing femslash until Kara Thrace, though. Because she was hot, and I was falling out of love with certain het fandoms, and I'd decided Sam Carter needed something better, and--honestly, I'd say 90% of all the Sam Carter/Kara Thrace fic I wrote was completely id-tastic.

But it was so fun, and I loved the very idea of them. And then my love of femslash just sort of exploded everywhere, and now I ship just about everything (It's easier to ask me what I don't ship, these days).

I'm not sure that it's really affect my view of sexuality--I'd already had the "gay is ok" realization years before (Mercedes Lackey and Gael Baudino will do that--especially Baudino's Gossamer Axe, where sexuality is fluid and all over the place and there is an all-girl rock band taking on elves for the lead's lover, but I'm digressing).

Then, too, femslash is a lot more difficult--I shipped Sam Carter/Kara Thrace knowing they'd never ever meet, but I shipped it because I loved the idea of it (and the canon didn't give me any blonde astrophysicists). But I still end up wanting to ship it and coming up with crossover pairings because women don't really interact in a lot of canons. BSG was better about that, sometimes, but it still wasn't the best. SG-1? SGA? Sometimes, they managed.

But if I want to femslash someone, I'm frequently having to think outside the box (Carter from Person of Interest, for instance), or just ship het (not that het is a bad thing! I would be throwing stones at myself, not to mention being a hypocrite, if I said it was a bad/awful/stupid thing).

Which is hard. A lot of people need that canon interaction to ship.

So while I can, say, happily ship Leela of the Sevateem with Cally of Auron, or Alex Eames with Susan Taylor, or (ok, this is hard, a LOT of the stuff I watch has multiple women) Miss Parker with Brigitte Dana Scully... Not many people seem to follow the idea that it's possible.

Or don't want to. idk.

I think I've completely lost the plot now.