Introduction/Paryt/Hang Out Post!

[amaresu]

So, apparently this community has 211 members with 308 subscribers and I bet you barely know each other. I know that I barely know you. So we are having an introduction/party/hang out post of greatness!

What do you do here? Introduce yourself in a comment, reply to other peoples comments, talk about that bizarre idea you've had and didn't think anyone else would be interested in, throw out some ideas you think this comm could have fun with, basically have fun and get to know each other. There's no wrong way to do this. Except .gif spamming in a top level comment because there are still people out there on dial up.

I'll go first in the comments.

Comments

[amaresu]

But I still wish there were a plethora of those essays out there.

Sometimes I think that femslashers have read enough of the slash versions to realize how asinine and navel-grazy they are so they refrain from writing them, but other times I think that femslashers just don't like to talk about femslash. Which isn't true, but eh. Least I don't think it's true. But the thing is with those essays is they never say anything new and yet they keep getting written so I feel like femslash fandom could totally have a million essays saying the exact same thing. IDEK.

[amaresu]

I've heard lots of good things about Birds of Prey and I did watch most of the tv series. I don't remember quite why I never finished it, but I suspect it had something to do with being distracted by the Gotham Girls minis.

I will note these down. Thanks!

[calvinahobbes]

Hello my name is Calvina. I lurk here. I originally subscribed to this comm, because I have always been vaguely interested in reading more f/f, but I am pretty firmly ensconced in m/m fandom, and I don't come across many f/f writers or recs. I hoped that general discussion in the comm would guide me towards authors and stories I'd want to read, so I'm saddened by the relative quiet here. But of course, it's mostly my own fault because I'm bad at seeking things out.

A couple of weeks ago I watched my first episode of Rizzoli and Isles, and I totally see it. I really, really do. I should make sure to watch some of that. (I had my own imaginary tv show with a cop couple, once upon a time, featuring Kate Moennig and Eliza Dushku. Good times...)

I am also newly fond of the web comic Girls With Slingshots, which has Jamie/Erin, who seem pretty darn ace to me. They are adorable.

And then of course I'm still hoping someone will write that epic Vastra/Jenny fic where they solve crime in Victorian London and have kinky sex together...

[calvinahobbes]

It probably goes without saying, but I bet there are many of us who would love to read your thoughts, if you ever wanted to write something down.

And I can relate to writing unusual pairings. Sometimes I think I'm doing it on purpose, selecting fandoms nobody knows or going for the pairing that is apparently not obvious to anyone else... (Not that I haven't written semi-popular pairings, as well.)

[calvinahobbes]

I would not only love a generic "how to write a sex scene" featuring f/f pairings, I would actually also love a specific "how to write an f/f sex scene". I think I have seen something like that somewhere? But more's the better...

[aryas_zehral]

Its not just you. Some shows I've only come to because of fic. Some shows I don't even care that much about but I find one or two characters I just kinda wanna fic or read fic or read meta. Glee is one of those shows for me. I have favourite characters and least favourite characters and fic I'm following... but when I try and watch the show I pretty much fast forward over most of it. :S

[aryas_zehral]

Hiya,

I'm Sayra. I'm pretty much over at lj all the time but I keep meaning to spend more time over this away. I have been trying to read more female centric and femslash fic of late because it struck me a while ago that although I am a girl, and although almost all of my friends are female, and although I am a feminist who rails against how few awesome women there are around in fiction I.... tend to just read endless boyslash or fic about male characters. And it made me... unhappy. So I want to... redress the balance I guess. Find what is good, what are the tropes, be more demonstrative of my pride and interest and enthusiasm for women and female characters.

In terms of what I actually do.... well I'm working on an all femslash first line bingo for kink_bingo and I'm a mod over on LJ's femslash_land (although its having the summer off at the moment). Oh, and I have endless endless conversations about JJ/Emily on Criminal Minds. :D

What I would like, in terms of discussions, well maybe we could champion female characters or discuss history of femslash because- you know what- I've heard plenty about boyslash but femslash... really not heard that much. I'm also kind of with dagas_isa on the whole "we should start talking about what women do well and less on the fail of certain shows" even though I still have a tendancy to go right to that arguement (because, omg, there is so much fail!!). So, yeah, it would be good to have discussions but I think we want to try and not make it either too self-congratulatory or as self-defeating as many conversations about women characters are.

[amaresu]

That would be neat. I know awesome_women does theme months, so probably don't want to steal that directly. What did you have in mind?

[sophinisba]

Hey there, I'm Sophie. I mostly participate in fandom by writing fic and making podfic, including a lot of femslash and lady-centric het. I mostly write Merlin and even though most people seem to have given up on Gwen/Morgana as a pairing, I think the ship's opened up for some new and darker possibilities in the last two years. So I get the heartbreak and disappointment with the show but I'm still there shipping it.

Then I've always liked reading meta, though I tend not to write it much. I wonder if one way of getting more participation here would be to have some not-so-deep discussion topics, just like someone bringing up a trope they like (or don't) and other people could say whether that's something that comes up much in femslash in their fandoms, maybe talking about specific fanworks.

[sqbr]

I'm Sophie alias sqbr, I've been waiting to reply to this until I wasn't feeling so blah but that doesn't seem to be happening, so I apologise if this is a bit all over the place.

I must admit that femslash is a (large) minority of my fannish consumption/output, but I am all about the female characters. I mostly draw gen-ish fanart, plus the odd bit of fanfic. My two big fannish obsessions right now are the Bioware game Dragon Age and webcomic Homestuck, both of which combine lots of cool female characters and canonical f/f with extreme problematicness.

I agree with dagas_isa that it would be cool to have general fannish posts which place f/f and female characters as the assumed default but aren't only applicable to them. Also, I've been vaguely thinking that fandom has too many attempts at an authoritative "this is how fandom is" when we need more "This is how fandom works for me, what about you?". But that might just be because I'm better at the latter :)

A specific post I was pondering is the very simple: what kind of femslash do you like? What sorts of f/f relationships draw you in?

[havocthecat]

but other times I think that femslashers just don't like to talk about femslash. Which isn't true, but eh. Least I don't think it's true.

I think the number of comments on the anon posts at girlgay do belie that statement. :) On the other hand, I also have started to wonder if femslashers (or a portion of femslashers) have evolved a culture where we're supposed to put on a polite public face. Because the accusations of not being nice and the "right way" to femslash and encourage more femslash that show up on the anon post are...interesting. If frustrating, because there's no one "right way" to femslash and encourage more femslash.

[piscaria]

I'm Piscaria. I pretty much lurk here, and on DW in general, but that could always change.

Let's see, a little about me. I've been writing fanfiction since I was in middle school, but I'm trying to branch out and submit some of my original work for publication (my goal is five submissions by September 1st, so I need to get on that!). Because of that, I've been thinking a lot lately about the divide between my original fiction, which is so centered around female characters that I need to remind myself to write some men into it, and my fanfiction, which is pretty male-dominated. I'd like to stop that trend, to write strong women in fanfiction and let some interesting men co-star in my original fic (because I'm not getting rid of my leading ladies, of course!).

I've written a few fan stories from female POVs, but the main issue for me is that the fandoms that call me to write in them never seem to have female characters that speak to me. There are shows with strong female characters that I LOVE (Doctor Who and Star Trek DS9 come to mind first), but I've written long-ass meta about the qualities that draw me to write fanfiction about something, so I won't bother to get into that here.

That said, my earliest fandom was probably The Baby-Sitters Club, and I still maintain that Claudia was crushing over Ashley Wyeth like nobody's business. I have a Claudia/Ashley WIP that I need to finish up one of these days. I also loved all of the Andy/Miranda stories that came out of The Devil Wears Prada.

I love stories that focus on all sorts of the relationships women have with each other: as lovers, as mothers, as daughters, as sisters, as friends, as mentors, as mentees, as enemies. I love the nuances in relationships between women.

[nocowardsoul]

I would read that Claudia/Ashley in a heartbeat.

[amaresu]

Okay I went and found the anon post (at least the last one) and read through it. And then had to remind myself that everything was like three months old and thus I couldn't comment on it. Bah.

(I have to say that I think I've looked at P&P all of once and decided a place that restrictive wasn't for me, so I'm not sure where the idea that it's the center of femslash fandom comes from.)

I don't think it's wrong to want to be encouraging of new femslash authors, but I don't think it's necessary to leave nice feedback on every femslash fic that passes your radar. It's a lot like how you approach small fandoms, at least for me. Read, comment of the things you like, write your own shit, and nominate it for every ficathon ever that it has even a slim chance of being applicable for. I mean it's hard work to promote your very favorite, but unloved thing, but it can be done. And done without telling every crappy writer out there that they're fic is awesome.

On the other hand I don't think it's necessary to publicly criticize all the bad fic. Privately, criticize to your hearts content. I'm not a fan of public criticism unless it's asked for myself. I know too many people who have various mental issues to be okay with that.

But, yes, basically there's no reason to cater to bad writers, just ignore them.

I think the idea of an all-the-time femslash kink meme would be interesting though. It might have the unfortunate side effect of killing a lot of the little women-focused memes that pop up throughout the year. Which would be sad because I often like those a lot more then the kink meme.


(Not sure how I feel about this DW spellcheck. Stupid not-my-computer.)

[amaresu]

I've been reading Girls With Slingshots since you linked it over at asexual_fandom and it's sucking up all my time. Pfft.

Maybe we need to make a general rec post over here? Post your top five favorite fics? Something like that?

[amaresu]

I know I've heard some history of femslash, but I get the impression that it's not nearly as coherant as slash. There seems to have been little pockets that eventually merged. I agree that it's be nice to have a discussion on how people think it developed/precieved it to develop.

Also 3rding you and dagas_isa. More talking about the things that get done right.

[amaresu]

So maybe just some general discussion posts? I can roll with that.

[calvinahobbes]

I apologize! It is very time-sucky, I know!

I was going to make a post over there with the salient strips, to lure more people in -- if you happen to remember where the good ones are hiding, feel free to clue me in... *goes looking*

I would adore a recs post, I really would, but I hesitated to ask, because I'm not sure whether this comm is for that? But I don't actually think there IS a femslash rec comm on DW...

[lea_hazel]

I think we should have a comm "make your own all-female team" post, maybe in the style of The Losers and Leverage both? Or a thread? Wait, I have a better idea. I'll start a thread for it!

Have you seen the isurrendered meme? I think that format can be really cool for a project like this.

[dagas_isa]

I think I wrote one that was about approaches to writing f/f sex scenes, but it was more about tone and less about mechanics and things people want to use.

I do have a lot of thoughts about writing f/f sex scenes, but I feel really hesitant about writing "how to write an f/f sex scene" for a lot of reasons (besides the fact that I have no clue if any of mine are *good* or not). For one, I don't want to come off as being prescriptive, at all since even the general "rules" (like the majority of women don't orgasm from penetration) are going to have large numbers of exceptions. Two, I think about 90% of writing a good f/f sex scene is also applicable to writing a good m/f or m/m sex scene or vice versa, and that remaining 10% is really about differences in plumbing, which I'm not really sure how to approach it from a "how-to" stand point. I think it would help if there were specific questions to answer too, rather than just a big lump of "well, how do two women have sex anyway?"

[havocthecat]

I have an Anna/Bonnie WIP that I'll probably finish come next Yuletide.

[havocthecat]

I think that there are some people for whom P&P is the center of femslash fandom, you know? And I think that those people have kind of forgotten that their experience =\= everyone's experience. It's also been around long enough that it has a pretty prolific core group, and some of that core group gets rather defensive of critique. Which irritates other people. Which leads to the vitriol that comes out on anon posts (from the pro-P&P and irritated-with-P&P groups both), I think.

(I think that, once the commentary on this post dies down, we'll be having another anon post. I love those.)

Re: Cool beans!

[havocthecat]

Basically, I was thinking you could invite people to host discussions of certain topics. I mean, it would be basically "post a question, start the discussion in the comments, try to keep it going" kind of thing. Less than a meta, more of a discussion, you know?

[havocthecat]

I like to do both. Well, I get so happy I squee over what's been done right, and then I get annoyed and start ranting about what's been done wrong. But that's me.

[havocthecat]

m Sayra. I'm pretty much over at lj all the time but I keep meaning to spend more time over this away. I have been trying to read more female centric and femslash fic of late because it struck me a while ago that although I am a girl, and although almost all of my friends are female, and although I am a feminist who rails against how few awesome women there are around in fiction I.... tend to just read endless boyslash or fic about male characters. And it made me... unhappy. So I want to... redress the balance I guess. Find what is good, what are the tropes, be more demonstrative of my pride and interest and enthusiasm for women and female characters.

I really appreciate hearing this! (I think I replied to a comment of yours in one of the writing comms, and then abruptly ran out of spoons to continue the discussion. Sorry!)