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femslashrevolution · 8 years

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Femslash and Finding Ourselves in Fiction

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

Femslash ships aren’t usually the first choice of someone entering fandom for the first time. When I first wandered into the internet communities for book series like Harry Potter, twelve years and grateful for a few stolen hours on shoddy dial-up internet, I didn’t even know what a ship was. I was just there to share my poetry - verse after verse written from the perspective of Hermione Granger. I was ready to move behind the narrative (and narrator) of these stories and find the motivations and feelings of a heroine, complete with all her strengths and flaws. There was time and room enough to be sad that she wasn’t our main character from the start, but there was also the relief and comfort of filling the spaces left open with my own thoughts.

It took several more years of time on and offline to realize that I was attracted to girls. In fact, I remember my first reaction to finding F/F fic to be one of pointed discomfort. Living in the rural south of the US, it was upsetting enough to be noticing things that I hadn’t before about myself. My friendships, my adoration of particular celebrities and characters, and the growing gap between my own experience and those around me were beginning to be troubling. Stumbling into this world of people - mostly women and girls - writing, drawing, and simply discussing these ships seemed to cross a line that I’d drawn for myself in my everyday life. Over months, I grew from peeking meekly into femslash threads and tags to introducing myself to other fans who’d already been through the process I was navigating. For most of them, they felt that they were the only ones willing to make fan content that looked like their own life, or what they wished their life could be. They were giving all they could to show these established characters coming from their own perspective, because no one else seemed to care.

As femslash fans, all of us still feel the frustration over lack of content, both canon and fan-made. We’re almost always considered a niche demographic from the start in most popular fandoms, since so few of them focus on women and their relationships at all, much less through a lens that resonates for sapphic women. For years, I grasped at straws in the Supernatural fandom and other, similar corners of the web to find ships I could care about. Women were dying or being put on a bus left and right, at best relegated to plot points or a brief interest for one the main characters. Desperate, I scrounged pairings from the bottom of the barrel and clung to them. Some of them were women who had never shared the screen or page. Some of them were already dead or forgotten. All of them, though, were important to me, and I was learning the very necessary skill of piecing together the scraps that were given to me. Interesting, three-dimensional characters were being wasted, and through fandom I was learning to appreciate them in new and beautiful ways.

The rarity of F/F ships in fandom works against consumers and creators alike, but I don’t think being seen as a small in-group has proven to be all bad. What I’ve seen instead is that our creators are given more room to reach beyond what’s common to portray. If you’re already working within a tiny corner, mostly populated by like-minded people, why not explore other areas of real life that we don’t often see in media? The more I looked into femslash, barreling into new fandoms and making friends who wanted vibrant, varying content, the more I began to see things that fandom and media at large desperately need. Respectful, well-written racial and cultural diversity, transgender and nonbinary experiences, and an openness to non-traditional relationships may not dominate our content, but it’s plentiful enough to be seen and shared, to get our own gears turning on what to address in our own work. One trans girl headcanon turns into a handful of stories written by the people who saw and encouraged it; one gifset highlighting a neglected woman of color from canon stokes a dozen conversations about how she may have added to the story, or how she may have fared in a story that was her own. We find facets of ourselves and others that often go unseen inside the lines of someone else’s art. Femslash is opening doors in fandom that may have gone unnoticed.

As a queer, nonbinary writer, I’ve been increasingly pleased with seeing femslash fandoms - and when we’re lucky, the surrounding fandom with it - become more conscientious and inclusive. There are still, though, a lot of experiences falling by the wayside. Even when the text contains a disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, or mentally ill character, we rarely see these differences acknowledged and handled well, whether in canon or the resulting fan content. Women categorized by Western society as unattractive as a group - whether it be for age, weight, skin color, visible disability, or otherwise - are often neglected as well. Fandom makes some great efforts to fill these gaps, with focused events and prompts that lead us to consider and celebrate the breadth of experiences encompassed by womanhood and how it colors relationships with other women. I’d like to see even more of that atmosphere moving forward, embracing ships that challenge us, reflecting back not just ourselves but the full spectrum of women loving women, each in their own way.

Every femslash fan has their doors to open, if they want to. Keep showing us your hijabi girlfriends. Your lesbians growing old together. Fat women shooing strangers away from the service animals of their wives and partners. Genderqueer characters struggling to find where and how they fit into the community around them. Keep opening your doors and stepping through those opened to you. Femslash is a beautiful community that can continue to grow and thrive as long as we nurture it.

About the Author

Ellis S. is a queer, genderfluid writer and witch with a stunning but grouchy cat and a wonderful girlfriend. Together, they run an exchange for polyamorous fanworks and cry about fandoms. Beyond femslash, Ellis spends their time cooking, consuming horror media, and competing in tournaments with their trivia team. They can be found at derekslaura or coyoteshunter on Tumblr and at rjosettes on Archive of Our Own.

#derekslaura #Type: Meta #I Am Femslash #Femslash February #Femslash February 2017 #submission

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