Picking the Collective Femslash Brain: Femslash as a Fandom

[dagas_isa]

If there is in fact, a collective brain, I'd like to ask it a few questions. I've recently been wondering about Femslash fandom as a whole and thinking about whether it exists and how it manifests.

• Does femslash fandom (as a larger entity) exist?
  
• If it does, what, other than the obvious (having at least one f/f ship), are the central features of femslash fandom?
  
• How is femslash fandom culture different from (or the same as?) het fandom/guyslash fandom?
  
• What are the main fannish interactions in femslash fandom?
  
• Are there any femslash fans who are exclusively into femslash?
  
• 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)?
  
• What are your personal experiences being a femslasher in a (small/large/eastern/western/etc) fandom?
  

Tell me, what are your thoughts on femslash?

(I have thoughts, but it's easier to ask questions than give a hazy reply based on a limited sample and my experiences in small fandoms.)

Comments

[summerstorm]

I do feel like femslash fandom as a larger entity exists, but I don't consider myself a part of it, not even close, so everything I say here is based on vague perceptions and not any kind of legitimate knowledge or experience.

Okay, while guyslash fandom, which I don't see as a larger entity the way I do femslash fandom, usually latches onto fandoms where there are strong male friendships/rivalries, I find femslash fandom seems to shift a lot towards fandoms where there are canonical f/f pairings. For instance, Grey's Anatomy had all these variations of Meredith/Cristina/Izzie/Addison possibilities from the start, but the femslashy side of the fandom didn't truly take off until Callie started dating Erica. Which I find funny because Erica is pretty widely disliked - except in femslash fandom, where people seem to love her, or at least write her a lot in many different pairings. She's not even on the show anymore, and now Callie's dating Arizona, who I absolutely love (though I'm half a season behind), but people are still all about the Erica/Callie and occasionally those two shipped with Addison. So even when it comes to canonical f/f couples, I don't understand how fandom picks and chooses.

Another example of ships/fandoms whose massive femslash presence I don't get: Devil Wears Prada. Huge fandom presence based on a one-shot movie from 200...5? which didn't even get that much hype in the first place (the way, say, Inception has). And the main ship is Andi/Miranda, i.e. Adorable Young Assistant/Fifty-Year-Old Boss. Which... is super random, because, okay, I like age differences (I have a ridiculous teacher/student kink), but it's so unusual for that kind of pairing to be the main one in a fandom, and even more so when you could also be shipping Andi/Emily, i.e. Adorable Young Assistant/Cold, Distant, Jealous Previous Assistant. They interact a lot. They're both gorgeous. I'm pretty sure if this were a slash fandom, Andi/Emily would be the most popular ship. But I digress.

Surprisingly for me, though, last year Glee fandom took off firstly with a f/f rivalry pairing, Rachel/Quinn, and then this summer Rizzoli & Isles seems to have gotten a lot of femslash presence, and I understand that's a cop show and Rizzoli and Isles are work partners/friends, so maybe (hopefully) those tendencies are changing.

Femslash fans who are exclusively into femslash: from what I see on femslash_today? There seem to be a lot. It's like that early slash hivemind where, when people moved fandoms, they moved to the next one with the big slashable m/m friendship (or Queer as Folk, but QaF always seemed to be kind of insular to me, in its own way, with a lot of fans who were, coincidentally, exclusively into QaF). That's what seems to be happening to femslash fandom as a collective entity.

This is actually one of the reasons I can't get into femslash fandom as such: I get into fandoms, and within those fandoms, I happen to like femslash pairings, as well as het pairings and m/m slash pairings and the occasional threesome. The thing is, I have a fair amount of people on my LJ flist who write femslash almost exclusively, sometimes in fandoms with canonical f/f pairings, but it never feels like they're part of that femslash fandom entity we're talking about. Maybe because I know them better and don't see them as part of a group, or because they have other interests that they talk about where I can see it.

I guess my point here is that I don't like that femslash fandom entity, because it doesn't make sense to me as a fannish collective. I'm not going to like a pairing just because it's femslash and that's somewhat rare. I'm not going to be interested in a fandom just because it has a strong femslash presence, or a canonical f/f ship. It can be a selling point, but not the only selling point. I liked the general idea of Emily/Naomi in season 3 of Skins, but I was so burned out by the show by that point that I had zero willingness to watch it. I'm glad there's a lesbian in Pretty Little Liars, but it's not even close to my favorite part of the show. I actually ship femslash pairings in it that "femslash fandom" seems to ignore solely because they're not Emily/one of her canonical love interests.

As to my experience shipping femslash (I wouldn't call myself a femslasher) in larger Western media fandoms: I feel alone. Not in a woe is me way, but in a "I'm going to write this pairing and out of the ten people, tops, who read it, four will read it because they're my friends, four out of curiosity/multishippiness/open-mindedness, and two because they're actually interested in the pairing." I don't feel alone in those fandoms, but I always feel a little bit like I'm the only one who cares and even thinks about my pairings. I had a great experience with Glee (before I lost interest in the show), but every other fandom where I ship femslash is taken over by het or slash or combinations of both. I recently got into The Vampire Diaries and there are so many female characters who regularly interact with each other, but almost no femslash fic. Bones fandom is OTP-ish to a fault, which means out of three women, two are basically taken, including the canonically bisexual one. (That said, I'm bound to be alone in my Bones ships, because I don't ship one of those OTPs—Angela/Hodgins—, and the character femslash fandom focuses on for Bones—Brennan—is a character who hits my embarrassment squick too painfully to read fic about her.)

This is such a long, disjointed comment. Sorry about that. And, again, disclaimer: this is all based on perceptions. I've been a lurker in many fandoms for a long time, but I could easily be way off about everything.

[dagas_isa]

Wow, thank you for this.

No, I know what you mean. I'm not really into western media type of fandoms at all (most of my experience with femslash as more than an isolated just-me entity actually comes from the Final Fantasy pan-fandom, and most of the rest comes from other Japanese media) so it's interesting to see what's going on with the sort of more concrete and insular western media Femslash fandom.

I can also sympathize with the feeling alone in writing femslash. I sort of liken the circle I run in is that we play alongside each other, as opposed to playing with each other. ^^;; Like no one necessarily cares about my pet pairings, but on the other hand, I don't feel so alone when I talk about f/f subtext, yuri goggles, or liking femslash, which can be nice in and of itself.

[summerstorm]

Oh, I like that description. My circle is sort of like that too—nobody looks at me weird for liking the pairings I like, and many people have their own pet pairings, though they're not usually f/f ones (but sometimes we'll write each other's pairings, anyway). I'm really happy with my friendslist.

[alixtii]

I'm pretty sure if this were a slash fandom, Andi/Emily would be the most popular ship.

Hell, if I were the King of DWP famdom, Andy/Emily would probably be the most popular ship. Which, I think, speaks to a central point: the typed of fantasies one enacts when one was is writing the opposite sex can be very different than when one is writing one's own.

What I think your analysis is missing, though, is Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Also all femslash written prior to Xena.) These are both polyshipper femslash fandoms, which makes something like femslash_minis possible: there are literally people who are willing to throw any two female characters together. I discuss this further here. (I actually have a list of different femslash meta posts I've written here, too.)