I think that there is definitely a part of femslash fandom that wants to believe that it's all one entity, generally centralized around passion_perfect and the femslash_today newsletter, and there are efforts to inspire more pan-fandom community interaction though the online femslash con and things like that. So in that sense, there is a femslash fandom, though it isn't all encompassing.
In reality, everything is far too fragmented for that, and there are large swathes of fandom specific femslash communities that exist without any knowledge of a "wider" fandom being out there.
Are there any femslash fans who are exclusively into femslash?
This question actually strikes me as really funny, because I feel like femslash fandom, moreso than any other 'genre' can be incredibly insular. People read and write femslash without ever interacting with fandom outside of that, barely knowing it's out there. There's a reason that you don't see a lot of meta about femslash, why femslash is so profoundly under represented on the AO3, and it's because the community isn't as plugged into fandom at large as much as slash/het/gen fandom seems to be.
There was a discussion a couple of days ago (I forget whose journal it was on) about how people feel uncomfortable linking stories on f_t that involve het or slash relationships because they feel like the audience there isn't interested in anything that isn't exclusively femslash.
So, yeah, there are totally people out there who read femslash exclusively.
What are the canons that you think most femslash fans would (or should) know through osmosis (that is, they might never have experienced them, but would know through discussion/meta)?
I think Xean and Buffy are both big enough and pervasive enough that people get them through osmosis. And Xena did so much to establish the habits of femslash fandom. Maybe Star Trek: Voyager, as I think all of fandom gets Star Trek through osmosis and Voyager was the real outpost for femslash within the franchise.
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Does femslash fandom (as a larger entity) exist?
I think that there is definitely a part of femslash fandom that wants to believe that it's all one entity, generally centralized around
In reality, everything is far too fragmented for that, and there are large swathes of fandom specific femslash communities that exist without any knowledge of a "wider" fandom being out there.
Are there any femslash fans who are exclusively into femslash?
This question actually strikes me as really funny, because I feel like femslash fandom, moreso than any other 'genre' can be incredibly insular. People read and write femslash without ever interacting with fandom outside of that, barely knowing it's out there. There's a reason that you don't see a lot of meta about femslash, why femslash is so profoundly under represented on the AO3, and it's because the community isn't as plugged into fandom at large as much as slash/het/gen fandom seems to be.
There was a discussion a couple of days ago (I forget whose journal it was on) about how people feel uncomfortable linking stories on f_t that involve het or slash relationships because they feel like the audience there isn't interested in anything that isn't exclusively femslash.
So, yeah, there are totally people out there who read femslash exclusively.
What are the canons that you think most femslash fans would (or should) know through osmosis (that is, they might never have experienced them, but would know through discussion/meta)?
I think Xean and Buffy are both big enough and pervasive enough that people get them through osmosis. And Xena did so much to establish the habits of femslash fandom. Maybe Star Trek: Voyager, as I think all of fandom gets Star Trek through osmosis and Voyager was the real outpost for femslash within the franchise.