#I'm in love with Nicole Haught

[c-nv-s07]

Top 10 WLW ships ranked based on how much I like em (coz no one is stopping me)

1. Bea Smith & Allie Novak (Ballie from Wentworth) - they were so special and sweet, their story was tragic but well written and portrayed and I'm still not over it.

2. Waverly Earp & Nicole Haught (Wayhaught from Wynonna Earp) - very cute, very gay, 12/10.

3. Ava Sharpe & Sara Lance (Avalance from Legends of tomorrow) - their relationship was actually central to the show quite a bit, they made a lot of human mistakes and fixed them, got married, very nice.

4. Alex Vause & Piper Chapman (Vauseman from Orange is the new black) - super toxic, would not recommend this relationship irl BUT on tv it works. Pragmatic Morticia Adams x annoying golden retriever combo slaps.

5. Scylla Ramshorn & Raelle Collar (Raella from Motherland fort salem) - the lovers to enemies to lovers is always fun. Plus they got gay married which is bonus points in this arbitrary system.

6. Eve & Villanelle (Villaneve from Killing Eve) - They'd be higher up if they had more time together. Unique relationship though, they were in love. Shite ending.

7. Clarke Griffin & Lexa (Clexa from The 100) - what can I say, they were good but the show was bad.

8. Ava & Beatrice (Avatrice from Warrior Nun) - we deserved more of them :( they were a really sweet couple though, both equally fucked in the cosmic sense and now they get to be together wahoo.

9. Alex Danvers & Kello Olsen (Dansen from Supergirl) - well written couple, finally giving Alex a nice plotline, family and all.

10. Lena Luthor & Kara Danvers (Supercorp from Supergirl) - Not canon why question mark. The fandom made this ship good but it definitely deserved to happen on screen.

Edit: Warrior Nun got renewed (!!!!) so they're in 7th and Clexa in 8th

[spyridonya]

Lots of People You Want to Know Better

I was tagged by @arendaes, @yunessa, and @dujour13!

Three ships:

I'm going for canon ships! Even if I love my OCs, I don't want anyone to feel left out!

Clarice Starling/Hannibal Lecter - NOT THE TV SERIES!! Regardless of Hannigram aside, Clarice would probably stab TV!Hannibal five thousand times for the shit he pulled on every woman in that damn show. But in the books and in the movies? Their angst an UST is absolutely fantastic and treating down the Good Girl trope in Hannibal the novel is excellent in it's problematic glory.

Dispater/Erecura - Pathfinder did the funniest damn thing and made a goddamn Hades/Persephone love story. No, listen. Dispater is the Roman adaption of Hades. Erecura was an association for Proserpina, the Roman adaption for Persephone. They meet through work after Erecura is a goddamn badass and gets booted to hell, have a casual romance, and get married, and he is absolutely smitten with her. This isn't head canon, Paizo goes 'HE SINCERELY LOVES HIS WIFE'.

Nicole Haught/Waverly Earp - No, Wynonna and Doc Holliday were not the main romantic ship. It was Nicole and Waverly. It was love that began with flirting and grew, and grew, Nicole and Waverly overcame so goddamn much together and was the glue that kept everyone sane. Also, they were hot. Really hot. Oh my gosh were they hot.

Last Song:

RIELL - Wrecking Ball (Original Lyrics)

Last Movie:

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once - My second time seeing it but I wanted to watch it with my dad. The vibe fits.

Currently Reading:

Authority – Jeff VanderMeer

This is the toughest book in the Area X series, with Annihilation being the most accessible (Acceptance is a pretty accessible read but you need to get through Authority to not get overly lost). However, it's a great audiobook and it has two of the most horrific moments I've read in a while. The plot is good, but the way how it's written means you need to pay attention, and reading along with audio is absolutely worth it.

Currently Watching:

I've got so many series, but I'm trying some older TV series. Person of Interest has been my favorite so far due to Michael Emerson being opposite of what he is in Evil.

Currently Eating:

Nothing at the moment, but dinner should be pasta.

Currently Craving:

Jeans and cheesecake.

Favorite Color:

Purple

Favorite Flavor:

Lavender has recently become my favorite.

Current Obsession:

Baldur's Gate 3, though WotR isn't too far behind.

Last thing I googled:

'middle ages trapping'

Favorite season:

Mid-Fall, when the weather is nice and not ruining my skin, when it's not too cold, and there's a few fun holidays making the time go quicker!

Skill I’d like to learn:

I'd love to get back into painting and one day I want to take an anatomy class for drawing so I can do something other than portrait.

Best advice:

"Compete against yourself, not against others."

I am tagging (with no pressure!) - @chaosteddybear, @cassynite, @amatres, @tenmillionbees, @serenbach86 - Though if you've already done this, I wouldn't mind a link to see!

[girl4music]

NICOLE: “Waverly! Waverly!”

*groaning in pain*

DARK ANGEL WAVERLY: “Go home, Nicole Haught. This is none of your concern.”

NICOLE: “None of my concern? You're gonna be my wife.”

DARK ANGEL WAVERLY: “The gate must close, once and for all. And I must be the one to do it.”

NICOLE: “I got left behind before, and I'm not doing that again. Where you go, I go, remember?”

DARK ANGEL WAVERLY: “The Garden is not for your kind. Human.”

NICOLE: “No.”

DARK ANGEL WAVERLY: “I am the Guardian. I am the fail-safe. I must protect the Ghost River Triangle.”

NICOLE: “What about Wynonna?”

DARK ANGEL WAVERLY: “The Champion. The only one who can wield the sword. But she has served enough.”

NICOLE: “Okay, okay, let’s figure this out. I am the Sheriff of Purgatory. Let me extend my watch over all the Ghost River Triangle, in every realm. Let me be the Guardian for all of us, supernatural and human.”

DARK ANGEL WAVERLY: “You’d sacrifice your life to become the Shield?”

NICOLE: “Every day until the end of eternity if it meant keeping you safe.”

DARK ANGEL WAVERLY: “Well, I have already broken the rules once… for John Henry Holliday.”

NICOLE: “Yeah, see? It feels kind of good now and then, right? So what’s one more? Look in the book. Your story is my story.”

DARK ANGEL WAVERLY: “The book was ill begotten. It belongs to the Garden, as do I.”

NICOLE: “Please, just look.

*Dark Angel Waverly looks in the book and gasps*

Am I in there? Are we?”

DARK ANGEL WAVERLY: “It would be a steep price to pay. You’d be bound to the Ghost River Triangle. You could never leave.”

NICOLE: “Everything I love is already here.

*Nicole gets zapped*

I swear to be bound to the Ghost River Triangle for all of my days. I swear to be patient and just, for there is no other way. I swear my life to protecting the Ghost River Triangle. I am the Angel’s Shield.”

*Nicole gets zapped away and falls hard to the ground. Dark Angel Waverly transforms into Waverly and throws the book into the gate to the Garden*

WAVERLY: “NICOLE!

*rushes to her*

Nicole! Baby. Nicole. Come on, Nicole, please. Hey.

*Waverly kisses her. Nicole awakens to kiss her back. Suddenly feels a searing pain in the back of her neck*

What’s wrong?

*checks her neck and sees the mark of the Angel’s Shield branded on her skin like an unhealed tattoo*

Oh, sweetheart. You sacrificed yourself for me.”

NICOLE: “Don’t oversell it, baby. I only committed to a permanent staycation with my girl.”

*they kiss*

I am literally bawling my eyes out right now. That was so beautiful and powerful and just exceptional writing. I don’t even know what to say to express myself but I know one thing’s for sure… This is the greatest WLW relationship that I have seen since Xena and Gabrielle. The declarations of love were just as strong and substantial. The chemistry was off the fucking charts. The emotional connection was really significant. And because Xena and Gabrielle weren’t allowed to be physically intimate - I dare to say that this would be what I would see between them if they were. Because I have never seen any other two actresses depict such a strong, realistic and raw dynamic between them since. But I guess I can’t truly say that anymore because DomKat are really something special.

This was a really beautiful moment between them. I’d take emotional intimacy any day over sexual intimacy. But it’s certainly an achievement that they have both because Xena and Gabrielle didn’t and couldn’t have it even though you could feel the passion between them. Therefore knew that it was right for them to be lovers.

And I never ever want to see Dark Angel Waverly again. She was fucking terrifying as a celestial being. And it wasn’t like Dark Willow. It wasn’t born out of grief or loss or death (thank god) but it was disturbing. This… thing… had absolutely no empathy in her/it. All she/it cared about was her/its responsibility to Guard. But yeah, fuck destiny if the humanity is destroyed. For the greater good or for the greater evil. Fuck off. Dark Willow might have been a villain but least you could still tell that it was Willow under that costume. Someone that could be reached because there was still humanity in her. Still somebody that felt emotion. With Dark Angel Waverly it was like Waverly’s entire personality had been wiped over. All we love about her. It actually took Nicole sacrificing herself to bring her back. To make her get off those stairs and care again.

I suppose that is the price you pay for being an angel and an angel’s lover. Where Waverly goes, Nicole goes.

I am so glad that I decided to take a chance on this show. I have found WLW representation worth my time and attention. And now my undying support.

Consider me part of the WayHaught shipper fandom from this point onwards and WayHaught an additional OTP along with Xabrielle, Tillow and Calliette. And if you know anymore supernatural genre shows with significant WLW representation in them where they last for the whole or a majority of the show - tell me. I don’t mind if it’s not maintext. Subtext is more my thing anyway. But if it’s subtext - no queerbaiting! Don’t recommend non-canon ships like the overrated SuperCorp or SwanQueen. I am really not interested!

Until then, I will consume as much WayHaught and DomKat official media or fan creations as possible.

Please excuse me. I now have a wedding to watch.

[cantsayidont]

WYNONNA EARP: Cheerfully derivative supernatural Western based on a Beau Smith comic book, originally aired from 2016 to 2018 with a fourth season in 2021, about the bad girl descendant of Wyatt Earp (Melanie Scrofano), who's inherited the family curse of battling white trash demons in the small town of Purgatory with a magical revolver called Peacemaker, aided by the cynical but handsome Marshal Xavier Dolls (Schamier Anderson), her adorable younger sister Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), the mysteriously immortal Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon), and cute local sheriff's deputy Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell), who eventually becomes Waverly's girlfriend.

Created by Emily Andras, this by-the-numbers nerd show is a great improvement on the original 1996–1997 incarnation of the comic (above left), but it's a sloppy goulash of ideas obviously lifted from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, ANGEL, SUPERNATURAL, CHARMED, and TRUEBLOOD, executed with the expected allotment of self-consciously quippy dialogue, cheesy special effects, convoluted internal mythology (little of which makes any sense), adolescent love triangles, and cute but rather one-note characters who act like high school kids regardless of their actual ages.

It remains watchable mostly on the strength of its attractive leads and sensible reluctance to take itself too seriously, although if you're not a connoisseur, I'm not convinced it would pass a blind taste test comparison with SUPERGIRL, LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, or other such nerd media. Also, like far too many of its nerd show ilk, its treatment of its Black characters is consistently appalling. (The Shamier Anderson character, positioned in the first season as a co-lead and romantic interest, is marginalized in a deplorable way in the second season before being abruptly written out midway through the third.) CONTAINS LESBIANS? Indeed — many were watching mostly for the Waverly-Nicole romance. VERDICT: Dopey fun if you like this sort of thing.

[piratekane]

8 and 13

Ooo, good ones.

8. is there a character you love writing for the most? the least? why? I think it fluctuates over the years. Right now, it's Ava Silva, but that's because I'm down into it for her. I also really enjoy Lucy Tara, Emily Prentiss (rip to my youth that woman had a chokehold on me), Beca Mitchell, oh! Charity Dingle! Nicole Haught! They all have distinctive voices, and are seemingly different characters so I'm not sure why they all appeal to me, but they just do. I think it's that they're all just so earnest in what they do. I love a character who throws themself all in because that's just who they are. I know this is many characters and not answering the question, but it's my ask box and I can do what I want LOL.

13. who are your favorite writers? Unfair question, I can't list them all. But let me list a few.

@dealanexmachina, @fiddleabout, @karatam, @thegirl20, @simplyavatrice, @birgittesilverbae, @smokestarrules, @belikebumblebee, and @iamthegaysmurf - that's just a few

[wayhaughtprompts]

"oh god- why are you half-naked?" you throw a pillow at their bare chest, "nothing you haven't seen before, love" you fumble to move away, "it's freezing, go put on a shirt-" "nah, you can warm me up." and they hug you from behind!

"Oh god- why are you half-naked?" Waverly exclaimed as she throws a pillow at Nicole's bare chest.

"Nothing you haven't seen before, love" Nicole mutters as she fumbles to move away.

"It's freezing, go put on a shirt-" Waverly replied, blushing as Nicole walked past her to the dresser.

"Nah, you can warm me up." Nicole chuckled as she came up to Waverly and hugs Waverly from behind.

"Nic, you're gonna get sick if you don't get dressed!" Waverly muttered as she relaxed in Nicole's arms.

"Your body heat is gonna warm me up. Besides I'm always Haught" Nicole replied with a smile.

"I know you're Haught but that doesn't excuse you from wearing close!" Waverly giggled as Nicole shifted away.

"If I wear a shirt will you be happy?" Nicole teased as she grabbed a shirt from the bottom drawer.

"Yes," Waverly replied as she watched Nicole put on a shirt, "however, I do enjoy watching you take off clothes more than watching you put them on"

"Miss Earp, you're a tease," Nicole said before leaning in for a kiss.

"You're a bigger tease" Waverly whispered as she pulled away, "You're always causing us to be late for class"

"But it's worth it" Nicole chuckled before grabbing her bag and following Waverly out the door.

[englishstrawbie]

Character edition: Carina DeLuca or Lucy Tara? Kai Holman or Jesse Boone? Nicole Haught or Waverly Earp? Travis Montgomery or Ernie Malik?

Carina DeLuca or Lucy Tara?

Honestly, it depends on which version of Carina. Pre-S19 season 5 Carina, she'd win, because she was awesome. But if I'm choosing right now, I'd pick Lucy - she's such an interesting character and I feel like they're slowly exploring her layers, which I love.

Kai Holman or Jesse Boone?

They're both sweethearts, but Kai wins. Sometimes I think Jesse is just a little bit too perfect, you know?

Nicole Haught or Waverly Earp?

Nicole Haught, I love her confidence and sass but also vulnerable side.

Travis Montgomery or Ernie Malik?

Ernie! He's a good friend, he's funny and he's smart.

make me choose

[chicleeblair]

The mad white supremicists in the notes, though. Y'all, the Black names we consider "weird" are often based on African/Muslim names, and also having the freedom to name in a previously enslaved culture is a Huge Deal. Yes, there are non-American white people who pronounce the Roman alphabet differently, but this is not that.

This is colonialist, British, Christian superiority in addition to the Need to be Special. English has, like, four girls names everything is a variant of.--Elizabeth, Anne, Jane, Catherine, basically Henry VIII's wives, with a hat-tilt to Jennifer in the past few decades.-- Add in some biblical names--which Rachels, Marys (take Margaret* to get it and you have everything from Maggie to Peggy), Rebeccas and Sarahs, maybe a Christina, and you have GENERATIONS of Germanic American Whites who got really tired of sharing a name, but are mostly pulling from nicknames of the above.

Names with meaning (adjectives/nouns) are associated with Actual Puritans (as opposed to our puritanical culture which is very Victorian). I think that (the nicknaming--oh, hey, Nicole**) is why we have an idea of what Looks Like a Name. There hasn't been really a generation that would've named that child Rifle directly.

This is a girl whose grandmother Barbara (b. 1960)*** named her daughter Jennifer B. (b. 1980) (to differentiate from Jennifer K. down the street) who then named her Kaycee (b 2000). (There's something in here re:phonics I'm sure, but I'm not a linguist.)

There are other names these days, of course. A lot of traditional male names or surnames became feminine' names and vice versa. I think more boys got those initially, but they didn't have many more first names--Peter, Paul, John, James, Henry, William--. I say all this as someone who loves having a uniquely spelled name. I'm a Chelsey--a very British name-- who would've been Chelsea, except my birth mother, a teenager in 1989, spelled it Chelsia and my parents dealt with it being pronounced "Chel-see-uh" for my first year, which I think is a product of said phonics thing. Four years later the first daughter stole my name ensured that didn't happen. I've never been able to find my name on a keychain, but I'd argue that shouldn't be possible in a country that's supposedly a melting pot (ha.)

I don't know what this is tbh, except to say this has NOTHING to do with the Northern European native populations being mentioned in replies, wtf, people?

*name people, tell me, does Martha come from Margaret??

**and it's how Wynonna Earp gave us Nicole Rayleigh Haught, so I'm not against it. Just aware.

***known as Babs!

stop saying white people don’t have their own culture this belongs to no one else

[spideyboyz]

Bit of an out there theory but...

At the end of 209 of Wynonna Earp Widow Mercedes has decided to go after Nicole (pls don’t hurt my love) and while I also theorise that it’s to get to Waverly to get to Wynonna to get to Doc’s ring, I do have another theory. What if Nicole has the third seal and Doc’s ring is just a red herring? Throughout season 1 there are many shots of Nicole wearing a ring

As seen in the first scene we get of Nicole, and the first WayHaught scene (<3)

It’s also seen in the episode where she tells Wynonna that her ass is top shelf (So if Wynonna’s ass is top shelf, what about our dear Waves?) but I couldn’t find a decent picture to show (it’s the scene where Wynonna is asking Nicole why she’s at the station instead of being social like everyone else)

And there it is again

And again (sorry for the poor quality)

So basically more or less throughout the whole first season she’s often seen wearing this green ring. Last year so many of the Earpers were questioning why Nicole ALWAYS seemed to be wearing this particular ring. I was in the party of she just simply likes the ring and a part of me still thinks that but now I’m having a what if moment.

Now we know that Doc’s ring is believed to the last seal but, like I said, could potentially be a red herring. What if the last seal was Nicole’s ring? It is a little bit of an out there theory but it would be one hell of a plot twist, eh? Also has anyone else noticed she hasn’t been wearing it (as far as I can see) at all this second season? What are your thoughts? 

[haughttopics]

4.04 | 4.12    ↳ request for anon

[avassharpe]

Wynonna Earp Challenge 1/2 Favorite things ↳ Nicole being a badass

[olderthannetfic]

@marzipanandminutiae mentioned at least one canon that totally was catnip for fanworks fandom.

Wynonna Earp's big ship starts with Waverly getting beer all over herself and getting caught in her shirt. Deputy Hotass Haught helps her with it and Waverly is all "Ahaha. This would be super awkward if you were a man..." as Nicole oggles her.

I absolutely shipped it. I just didn't get back into the show after first season and so never talked about it much on here. I made a pimp vid of all the different things I shipped on that show after S1 to try to get other fans into it, but that was about the extent of my participation. Dolls was my favorite though, so that soured the show for me later.

I'm not usually into canon pairings, which is tricky because a lot of the really good stuff for female characters is canon f/f ships, often ones with a very different vibe from the m/m that gets big in fandom and that I tend to prefer.

What I appreciated about the setup at the beginning of Wynonna Earp is that one of them was all "I'm straight! OH NO!" in a more comedic than self-hating way. (Catnip!) The other one leered at her and gave off horny vibes. (Catnip!) Both actresses were super hot to me, which is just about never true on TV. And it's an urban fantasy trash show full of stupid monster of the week shit and other things I like, not a prestige drama that I'll never care about fanfic of because the canon writing is what I'm drawn to.

Would I have written f/f fic for it if I'd stuck around? Hard to say. My output is pretty minimal at the best of times. I might have been satisfied with canon. I'd probably have read some fic and made a couple more vids.

(At 6k+, that ship is in the top 250 or so on AO3 if you go by tag search. It's just not top for new works in 2023. Only half of them are otp:true, but that's still more fic for this ship than most fandoms have total.)

My big exception to not liking canon ships is that I like a fair amount of BL, indie "m/m romance", etc. I've pondered why that is, and I think it's a number of specific vibe things that I find regularly there. There's a disconnect where this stuff isn't literal representation by and for the same group. Even when the author is possibly a cis man, there's still that assumed audience. In the ones I like, the ships often have a fucked up element even if the ending is happy. Some of them are goofy comedy and it's comedy that works for me, which is always so subjective. I recently finally got around to Scum Villain, and I loved the meta shit and humor, but it was really LBH being such an obsessed little creep that sold me on it. Clueless senior + stalkertastic junior is my catnip.

When I've tried indie f/f fiction, it has often been extremely serious, featured rather blandly wholesome ships, and put lesbian identity front and center. But checking or not checking those tickyboxes isn't the issue: it's a vibe thing. I was looking forward to Gideon the Ninth since it sounded a lot more interesting and messy, but I ended up getting distracted before it came out. (This happens often. I still haven't seen KinnPorsche on the m/m side of things. If I find out about it too long before release, I often never end up getting the canon.)

The most recent queer female character I can remember making me go "Ooh!" is the protagonist of Knife+Heart. She's a violent creep and a total mess, and the movie is a bloody art film horror nobody saw outside of film festivals. It's about a lesbian director of m/m porno movies in the 70s trying to track down a serial killer who is preying on her actors. There is constant meta in her increasingly artsy porn films and in the narrative overall. There are 57 layers of identity bullshit going on at all times, but none of them are just about orientation qua orientation. They're about the closet and violence and parents and fans and voyeurs and projection. I don't know if I'm really rooting for Anne to get back with her ex. She's so terrible and the ex deserves better. But it's apparently possible to write a lesbian character I am all over... if you're a dude who makes gay art films.

--

Of course, just asking for f/f that is exactly like the m/m I enjoy is silly. I'm always going to have slightly different standards for what bugs me in a sex scene or what hits to close to home and all of that.

What I want is f/f that makes me feel like the m/m I enjoy does.

And I've virtually never found that. I've found canon m/m and f/f Western live action media that I like and that give me similar feelings, and I'll vid those ships but not usually write them. I have not found female buddy or enemy relationships with the subtext I like that would inspire me to write fic. Well... Xena. If it were on now and I were watching it for the first time now, Xena would probably inspire me like this.

--

This started with people finding an older post where I spent months hand-compiling shipping stats for FFN and Wattpad to show how het they are and coming away with the idea that m/m is the problem.

And I'm not saying it was TERFy because it was a stupid response. I'm saying it was radfemmy in that I got reblogs from open radfems who had worse shit to say than "fandom hates women" within one or two reblogs down that chain. There's a certain "It is the duty of all queer women to support the movement by ___" vibe that pops up constantly on posts like these. Whether you agree that the subtext is there, it attracts accounts with blatant radfem stuff in their headers and then a wave of nonsense hits my inbox. That's just the practical reality.

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/746553097204203521/the-fandom-hates-women-response-to-lack-of-ff

The "fandom hates women" part of it comes from the fact that fandom as an entity just doesn't watch the kind of media that draws femslash, even if it ticks all of the boxes of things those very same people say they like. There are so many times I've watched a show that I've seen mega-popular Tumblr posts wishing existed, and then the fandom is so, so small comparatively and often in general. There have been superheroes, vampire/supernatural shows, fantasy shows, movies, books, the list goes on, that feel like they were generated out of Tumblr's desires for ideal fandom media, and everyone knows they're never going to attract anywhere near the same attention for fandom and fanworks because the common denominator just tends to be that if there isn't a full ensemble of attractive men to ship either with each other or with the women, fandom's not interested.

So it's not about prioritizing women in that sense, it's about people witnessing hypocrisy over and over again the second a show doesn't have a mostly-male ensemble. The people who are in these fandoms are frustrated that good faith attempts to get people interested are met with every excuse in the book that all eventually boils down to "I don't like watching stuff with women in it as much as I like watching stuff with men in it." And if that's how people feel about it... sometimes the conclusions are going to turn into the more uncharitable take of "fandom hates women."

--

Maybe, but whenever I see a "fandom hates women" reblog of my stuff, one or two reblogs further down the chain I get an overt TERF. I just had to go block several people today, in fact.

The first person to reblog with a comment like that is usually subtle, but their friends and friends of friends are not. The rhetoric that very quickly starts is the fandom equivalent of that "All the butches are becoming trans men! We're losing lesbians!" stuff.

Here's the thing: I've been in ten billion fandoms that were so awesome and fit fandom's supposed tastes to a T and yet no amount of promoting them could get anyone to try the canon. This goes for canons that are all men or all white men or all majority ethnicity men or whatever else.

The default state of media is to not engender a big fic fandom.

I agree that the rare outliers mostly follow certain patterns, but we extrapolate too far when we say that a lack of those patterns is why a fandom is small.

A fandom is small because that's the near-universal default.

--

Yes, a small slice of fandom consists of guilt-ridden queer fujoshi who say they want more f/f but don't make much of a move to make that happen. I tend to run into that a lot because of my own tastes and having friends who share those tastes.

Far more of fandom is people talking generally about how representation matters without saying they would personally join these fandoms if they existed.

Neither group is large enough to be the real reason some woman-heavy canon fails to take off to HP levels.

The real reason is not hypocrisy but the fact that most things don't take off like that. Most things without massive, massive audiences especially don't take off like that. And the very few things that do are flukes and don't actually predict that another similar thing will take off in the future.

--

Go to AO3's tag search. Search for all canonical fandom tags. Sort by uses and descending order.

Right now, I get 64,390 tags.

The first page, 50 tags, goes from HP with 497,845 works to the Thor movies with 59,266 works. By page 6, we're below 10 thousand works.

By the end of page 10, we're down to Labyrinth with 3,906.

Somewhere in the top 500 AO3 fandom tags (many of which are just franchise metatags for each other), we go all the way from megafandoms to medium size and down to relatively modest ones.

That's not a lot of room for a big f/f-heavy fandom given the trends in mainstream media and that mainstream media is where most really big fandoms come from.

--

I also notice that you're conflating a lack of desire to watch something that's primarily about women with a lack of desire to watch something that includes women.

There are tons of fans who want something more like The Mummy with a leading man and leading woman they love.

Granted, that's not me and that's not a lot of my fujoshi/slasher audience, but it's extraordinarily common. I know plenty of people who don't like canons that are only dudes, but since they also don't like canons that are only ladies and they don't ship f/f, this gets spun into "fandom hates women".

--

Let me be clear:

Conflating "lesbians" and "women" is a radfem position.

[girl4music]

WYNONNA: “Out already? Didn't even have time to send flowers.”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “It was just a fancy faint.”

WYNONNA: “Yeah, the cat made a bed in your ass crack.”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “The doctor said I'm fine. I'm as healthy as an ox.”

WYNONNA: “With the cankles to match.”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “Listen. I am just here to tell Officer Haught that despite the day's events, she will not be getting my support.”

WYNONNA: “She saved your life, you incorrigible bitch.”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “Perhaps. But she does not belong here in Purgatory. She is not our... people.”

WYNONNA: “Are you a xenophobe or a homophobe?”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “Why pick just one?”

WYNONNA: “Even though it was against her best interest, Nicole did the right thing. She always does the right thing, no matter what. That's the kind of person who should be Sheriff.”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “I'll keep that in mind.”

WYNONNA: “No. Bunny... shouldn't we talk about what really happened today? What's really got your pearls all twisted?”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “I don't know what you're talking about.”

WYNONNA: “What you saw. Because you saw something, didn't you, Bun Bun?”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “It was just a dream, a terrible dream. Like the one where I'm on the cruise ship with all the shirtless... Portuguese sailors.”

WYNONNA: “Okay, there's a lot to unpack there. But no... you weren't dreaming. See, you think you want to know the things Nedley's been keeping secret. You don't. That monster you saw today, it's just... the tip of the iceberg.”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “Iceberg?”

WYNONNA: “If you don't back Nicole for Sheriff, I am sending that monster and all of his demon friends... to your house.”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “You can't and you won't.”

WYNONNA: “Oh, bless your cold, withered heart. You think you could handle another "fancy faint"? Then Nicole Haught's gonna be the next Sheriff. Okay? Have a lovely day.”

BUNNY LOBLAW: “I need to get to church.”

WYNONNA: “You gotta book yourself that cruise.

*she turns around to see Nicole stood at the doorway*

How long have you been listening?”

NICOLE: “It would've been rude to interrupt.”

WYNONNA: “Naughty Haughty.”

NICOLE: “How's your head? Because... I feel like I can hear space and time. Hair of the dog?”

*opens two bottles of alcohol, hands one to Wynonna*

WYNONNA: “Officer Haught. At work?”

NICOLE: “Well, some rules are made to be broken.”

WYNONNA: “Huh. Maybe you would be a good wife.”

NICOLE: “Ah, thank you. But you're not my type. You cheat at drinking games.

*they laugh and Nicole holds out her bottle*

Truce?”

WYNONNA: “More than a truce. A win.

*they clink bottles*

You know, I used to think you were an outsider too. And that things would get too demony and you would... go and leave my sister with a broken heart.”

NICOLE: “Wynonna, I love her.”

WYNONNA: “Ew.

*smiles*

Also, you better.”

NICOLE: “And I love you, too. I mean, I know it's terribly unfair and sometimes I really get... jealous, because you get to be...”

WYNONNA: “Get to be what?”

NICOLE: “You.”

WYNONNA: “You know, you're staked to this land, same as me. You never had a choice.”

NICOLE: “What do you mean?”

WYNONNA: “It wasn't Black Badge who saved you from the Cult of Bulshar massacre, Nicole. It was an idealistic local cop.”

*pulls out a photograph of a younger Sheriff Nedley with his arm around a young girl - Nicole as a child*

I’ve said it before. While I really do not like that they had to blackmail Bunny to back Nicole for Sheriff when Bunny shouldn’t even be a part of what they do because she’s a discriminative asshole, I understand that it’s in character for Wynonna to do that for someone she cares about and will defend. So the sentiment of the latter outweighs the former. She could have just let Bunny make the remarks she did and sent her on her way, letting her believe whatever she wanted. But no, she layed into her because she knew that Nicole deserves to be Sheriff next election. And the fact Nicole was stood there watching the whole exchange and never made a move to intervene shows how much she appreciates the support from Wynonna even if that support was a threat towards Bunny and could land them in even more trouble.

It matters. It’s not something I would think of to do myself, but it matters because it’s Wynonna and Wynonna always does the crazy thing for love. Nicole understands that and knows this is just Wynonna’s way of helping her. So she doesn’t stop her and instead just lets her potentially create more chaos.

They’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.

If it comes to it.

Then there’s the other part to this conversation where they sit and drink and relate to each other, and Wynonna reveals that while she is cursed to stay in Purgatory to fight Wyatt’s revenant demons, Nicole also had no real choice about who she would end up becoming in Purgatory either. Meaning it’s not just because she’s dating Waverly why she’s in the show. And I really love that they included that because it simultaneously gives Nicole purpose as her own character within her own individual arc and gives her representation and development beyond just being a love interest but also tells us that she always was - is - meant to be with Waverly and as part of the team because she has ties to the supernatural life too that she can’t just leave behind because she’s “abnormal”.

Combined with the former scene and conversation - this is the creator and cast/crew basically telling us that being “abnormal” or an “outsider” isn’t something we ever choose to be. It chooses us. The only thing we choose is to accept and embrace it…

Or not.

Maybe it’s just me reading into the narratives and themes a bit more than I should with this episode but I think it’s clever that the writers combined a narrative about being unlucky and having to work through the hardships of that with someone else we don’t always have common ground with and a narrative about acceptance and support from that someone when we’re being discriminated against for being too “different” to belong in a place we had no real choice to be part of the social community of in the first place.

We get the hand that we are dealt and we deal with it because that’s the only thing we really can do to survive somewhere non-inclusive. And if we happen to find people within that social community that are just as much of an “outsider” as we are even if they were born and bred in it then we are lucky and we are worthy and we do deserve to be treated with respect no matter how “not our people” we are perceived as.

And this is how I interpret this episode and these couple of scenes. It might not be the intention. I could be entirely wrong about what the writer intends it to represent. But I’ve never been one for canon anyway.

I’ve always made up my own lore and narrative when watching TV art/entertainment and I really miss show creators that accepted and encouraged this and gave you enough room to interpret any of it any which way you want and choose so that it could be so much more meaningful to you each time you engaged with it. I didn’t think TV shows like this existed anymore. But I’ve been pleasantly and gratefully surprised with ‘Wynonna Earp’ and other stuff I’ve recently watched.

I hope that streak continues when I watch Arcane. Shows that put the storytelling first have my heart even if I might be entirely wrong what story that is. It doesn’t really matter because I don’t deal in canon. I never have and I never will. That’s how I watch shows.

Art is and should be in the eye of the beholder always.

[scarakasatan]

Me: I'm not in love with Nicole Haught, psh...

Me, starts to walk away: *tons of photos of her fall out of my coat* T-Those aren't mine!

Me: IM HOLDING THEM FOR A FRIEND!!!

[astrids-hideaway]

talking about the ‘monster mashing my wife’ scene  ft.  kat barrell

[mistyheartrbs]

now that i've got the initial meme out of the way i have to talk about this actually. because i'm someone who, despite being a fanfiction writer, actually don't entirely subscribe to death of the author as a school of thought. i think with tv especially it's super interesting to consider authorial intent because there's never just one creative voice (not only are there the writers episode-to-episode, there are also showrunners, networks, fans, and actors, all of which have varying degree of involvement in the story being told) and the long-running nature of it (in the pre-everything-streaming era anyway) allows for social changes to be...enacted in real time, so to speak. there's fascinating meta interplay between the fictional stories being told and the real-life people, relationships, and social moments that put them into context.

wynonna earp overall, but more specifically wayhaught and even more specifically nicole (waverly, being the deuteragonist, enjoyed some semblance of safety throughout the series), became emblematic of the 2016-2019 "clexacon era." cw's the 100 famously killed off lesbian character lexa for shock value in 2016, which set off a conversation about the bury your gays trope in hollywood and elsewhere (the washington post did an article about it for one). queer fans seeking lesbian characters who didn't die flocked to wynonna earp, which was airing at roughly the same time and had a wlw romance at its center - but people were (understandably) nervous about how long this would last before it ended in tragedy - this was a bloody, buffy-inspired show about demons, after all. nobody was safe, least of all the charming, saintly, sexy nicole haught, waverly's love interest who seemed practically slated for a tragic death that would further waverly's character development. right?

wrong! thankfully! fans watched the season one finale with bated breath, expecting yet another letdown when nicole was shot in the chest by the season's villain, but then: nicole, not bleeding, smiling a pained and relieved smile as she flicks away the bullet, revealing she was wearing a bulletproof vest. that scene (filmed several months before lexa's death aired on tv, and thus a complete coincidence) cemented wynonna earp's place as the anti-100, a show in which queerness wasn't punished but was in fact rewarded.

as the show went on, it leaned further and further into this reputation: unabashedly gay, increasingly silly, and with a literally unkillable lesbian romance at its center. and as that happened, the show seemed to delight in throwing nicole into situations that seemed to lead inevitably to her dying in waverly's arms, always with a sort of wink to the audience: we're not like those other shows that kill off their lesbians! to the point where in the show's final season, there was an episode that literally actually ended with nicole dying onscreen. and not a single fan was worried.

(sure enough, she comes back to life the following episode, after a brief stint in the body of a frog, should you wonder what kind of show wynonna earp is)

the series ends with nicole and waverly married, and the finale is unquestionably a love letter to the fans.

i like wynonna earp a lot, and i'm glad it was able to run as long as it did and tell the story emily andras wanted to tell (along with that tv movie coming this fall - who saw THAT coming?!), but i do wonder if it would've enjoyed the same success it did if it hadn't fallen on the heels of dead lesbian lexa. would nicole have been so invincible in future seasons if she wasn't the fictional-lesbian-survival-story of the year? we don't really know.

looking at van, on the other end of things - she's a character who was never supposed to live at all. according to melanie lynskey:

“Liv [Hewson, who plays Van], who is now a regular, was supposed to die in the first season. But they were so great, they were kept around.”

hewson was so charming they cheated death for their character - to the point where, again, it became a running plot point in yellowjackets that Van Cannot Die.

my point, in all of this, is that i think tv is a really unique medium where the interplay between real life, fiction, and society writ large all come together in entirely unexpected ways. and it makes for more compelling reads of the character than if you simply take everything in the show's world as completely without origin. nicole can't die or indeed have much of a life outside of waverly, lest she disappoint the vast audience of Earpers beyond her own grasp. van can't die, even as her friends around her succumb to the horrors of the wilderness and even as she's subjected to more and more trauma, that's her curse to bear. things that would not have been elements of their characters at all had lexa not been killed off on the 100. had hewson been less of a stellar actor. had the tumblrinas of 2016 not discovered wynonna earp in its tucked-away 10pm timeslot. had the yellowjackets writers not liked van so much.

the author is not dead. the author is alive, and the author is yanking van out of the fire, flicking the bullet out of nicole's chest. the author can be ignored as much as you wish; i would never begrudge anybody's interpretation of a character departing from canon, otherwise i would be a hypocrite.

but isn't it fun, too, when you can feel the author in the text. when the author's contempt pushes a character into the rain. when the author holds them close and wrests the knife away from their throat. opposite of doomed by the narrative. loved by the narrative. the narrative's very favorite.

the category is: redhead lesbians in canada who the narrative will not allow to die