#male characters over female characters the fact that more fans gravitate towards women is literally so great to see

[yoggybloggy]

hate this fucking post so much fucking get drinked. there isn't a lack of hot guy npcs or whatever the fuck, those were literally polls. (not to mention the stupidness of basing this off a "fuckability tourney".) the top characters happened to have more women not because there weren't enough men, it's because THE FANS LIKED THE WOMEN. people really don't know how to act once male characters are less centered within fandom discussions. you know you can just say you hate women and go right

[soleminisanction]

I'm currently reading through tim's history chronologically and haven't gotten super far yet, but there's a question knocking around inside my head, so: how do you think tim views his own masculinity? from previous unorganized readings, I got a bit of a impression that both jack and tim can somewhat old fashioned and conservative in some of the ways they think and yet, tim is both pretty boyish but doesn't always appreciate what jack values as masculine interests and view points... so, how do you think tim views himself in that regard? how do you view him in that regard? does him being queer now change some of those interpretations?

Just to put my cards on the table here, my take on this is very much colored by the fact that I read Jack Drake as a direct parallel for Chuck Dixon.

Chuck is, notoriously at this point, a reactionary conservative, specifically of the racist, sexist and homophobic variety who thinks "I was fired for being a homophobe" is a relatable sob story and who's spent the last ten years of his professional career writing literal Q-anon propaganda and self-published Turner Diaries fan fiction. And his politics often got involved in his stories, especially in the form of throwing female love interests at young men like Tim and Connor Hawke to discourage the reading that they might be gay.

So while Jack is never (to my knowledge) shown to be openly homophobic in the comics, his tendency for conservative opinions and a heavy-handed, sometimes borderline abusive or neglectful parenting style makes me think that it makes sense for him to be a source of similar influence in-universe. I like this reading because it partially recontextualizes the conflict between Tim and his father into a metaphorical conflict between Dixon as a writer and the character he only thinks he has total control over.

As for how that affects Tim's views on masculinity... I guess the simplest way to put it is, it's complicated? A part of me is always tempted to filter out the moments when he's clearly being used as a mouthpiece for Dixon's Opinions; which, TBF, I do with other characters as well, even Steph. So I mostly tend to skim over his more Conservative moments as just Dixon Being Dixon.

My general perception is that Tim's natural personality gravitates towards the center of the sliding scale of gender, in that space where queerness intermingles with the punk, nerd and goth subcultures. Like he's fully a man (cis in the comics, trans in my heart) but he's also comfortable painting his nails and isn't really bothered by people considering him pretty rather than handsome. But, while his father was alive, Tim felt pressured to live up to Jack's expectations of masculinity, so he'd somewhat overcompensate by posturing with the positive aspects of masculinity he approved of: being a protector and a provider, especially of women, being brave in the face of opposition, being disciplined enough to choose celibacy until he's older, that sort of thing.

And then after Jack died, he was more free to just... let that go and be himself, because for as much as Bruce (and Jason, and many other adult male superheroes) is a Towering Symbol of Masculinity, none of them expect Tim to be that way if he doesn't want to be, and he's got plenty of other role models like Dick, Alfred and Ted Kord who clearly show that there are other ways of being a man that are just fine.

That this roughly corresponds with Dixon leaving the company and Tim fully changing hands to various writers, many of whom -- as we now know according to various testimonies since he came out -- always thought of him as some variety of queer, is simply narrative synergy.

Him coming out hasn't really changed my perception in that regard. I always read him as queer. That DC let him actually come out was just a pleasant surprise.

[praisetheaxolotl]

I’d like to get your thoughts on this, hope this is okay!

Look at this quote from this article:

“It’s easy to pick on the “this wouldn’t be happening if these characters were coded as male,” but it’s nonetheless true—as a fan of the unrepentantly (gloriously) awful Bill Cipher, among others, I can promise you I see it regularly.”

I immediately thought of this blog when I read this. 

Not saying you’re misogynist, of course. This blog is just so fascinating, and for someone to dismiss it all like that is frustrating. 

I mean, of course they weren’t referring to you directly, but still. 

For someone to brush off people’s interesting, thought-provoking theories as nothing but misogyny is kind of close-minded, in my opinion. 

But this makes me curious. Do you think you’d still feel the same way about Bill if he was more feminine-coded? Would it matter?

And what do you think about that statement? Are you as annoyed by it as I am?

It’s always alright to get my thoughts on certain subjects, Anon! And lucky for you, I have lots of thoughts on this.

First of all, thank you for liking my blog! I put a lot of work into it, and I still look back on everything I’ve done here fondly. This blog is my only fandom-specific blog that’s still semi-active even after I’ve left the fandom. 

And, about what you said about misogyny... I don’t actually think that’s what the article is talking about. It’s not misogyny for someone to pick apart Bill Cipher, but it’s misogyny if someone offers that level of potential depth to a male character while instantly condemning a female character. 

But... honestly, from my experience? These two groups of people are different groups. 

I used to run in those “anti” circles, back in 2015? 2016? Before the whole “SU criti/cal” thing started to become popular. But I could still kinda see hints of it? It was back when SU was hailed as THE perfect show, before people knocked it off the pedestal they put it on. 

Anyway. These people hated redemption arcs. They saw Bill as this irredeemable monolith of a character, and any alternate interpretations were met with outright malice. I got called out once for, and I am not joking, headcanoning Bill as an abuse victim. They claimed I was “excusing his actions,” but when I asked to please show a screenshot of where I said that this excused him, they couldn’t. Because I never said that. 

(I ended up publishing the whole headcanon on my main blog, and people loved it. That reception is what pushed me to create this blog.)

I don’t doubt at least some of those people became the type to nitpick SU. So I feel that the same people that nitpick male characters are also the type to nitpick female ones. They’re just nitpickers with a black-and-white sense of morality.

But there are always exceptions to the rule- people who love morally gray male characters but hate morally grey female characters. Yes, some of these motivations may be spurred on by misogyny. But what frustrates me is the initial assumption of malice. I’m not saying the article itself is guilty of this, as it seems to be speaking to a general problem, but more those tumblr posts or tweets trying to “call people out” if they gravitate towards more morally gray male characters than female ones.

Which brings me to my answer to your question: No, I don’t think I would like Bill as much, had he been a woman.

But please let me explain first. 

First, you need to know some facts about me:

I am transmasculine. (Not a trans man- I’m nonbinary.)

I have a personality disorder. I’m not comfortable disclosing which one, but it’s one of the cluster B ones.

I was abused, and my reaction to the abuse was extreme anger and irritability. (Hence the PD.)

Another important fact is that my abuser was a woman. She’s my mother. I had to live with constant emotional abuse, gaslighting, neglect and other forms of malice for my whole life. I’m still not free yet, and I’m turning 20 in a month. (No, literally, exactly one month to the day.)

I was abused my whole life by a vindictive, manipulative shit of a woman, and it made me into a vindictive, manipulative shit of a person. The key difference is that I am actively trying not to be a vindictive, manipulative shit.

When I pick apart asshole male characters, I see myself in them. I do a deep dive into the whys, the hows the whos of why they ended up the way that they did, because it makes me feel liberated. It’s personally liberating to see someone like me, whom everyone sees as a monster, have a backstory that shows that monsters aren’t born, they’re made. It’s liberating to see them try and change, it’s liberating to give them someone to help them change no matter what, it’s liberating to look harder. Because that’s what I wanted. I wanted someone to look at me and see past the violent, angry 15 year old that I was, and actually help me. I wanted someone to see I was a victim, that I didn’t like being the way that I was. I wanted someone to help me and be there for me, even though I was messed up and awful.

(But don’t feel too bad for me- A few years ago I met someone wonderful through this very fandom who was exactly the kind of person I needed. And last November I proposed to him and he said yes!)

When I see a morally grey female character... all I can see is my abuser. I see in them the person that hurt me. I don’t want to look deeper, just as I don’t care about my mother’s long rambles about how shitty her childhood was. Was she also abused? Yes. Do I care? Nope! I don’t feel that same drive to pick apart female characters that act like the male ones I like, because of my trauma.

 And honestly? Just because I gravitate towards male characters more doesn’t make me a misogynist. How I treat actual real life women does. I do examine my behavior to make sure I’m not being misogynistic- in fact, it was worry that I was being misogynistic in my dislike of these characters that made me think hard enough to have such a long answer to your question. 

Maybe someone liking only male characters is an indicator of misogyny. Maybe it isn’t. I’m not shy about talking about what happened to me but people should not have to disclose their traumas in order to be “allowed” to consume fiction in a way some stranger doesn’t like. 

And there actually is a specific subset of morally grey female characters I like: my own OCs. 

I guess it’s the fact that I created them and thus can control how they act? They’re all assholes and I love them so much, but I don’t feel that same aversion as I do with characters that aren’t mine. Because the lack of control I had over my own abusive situation is what fucked me up so hard, but now I do have the control. If I watch a TV show, I don’t have any control over what the characters do, they’re not mine. But I do have control over my OCs.

(Psst- if you wanna see those OCs, I’ve since moved to the Invader Zim fandom, and am working on a HUGE fic series for it. (It’s not published yet- I’m working on it behind the scenes.) Those OCs I’m talking about star heavily. Here’s my blog, if you’re interested. I kinda wanna do some metaposting for that fandom, too, but I’ve no idea where to start. I love the Irkens, though, haha. Anyway if any of you happen to like IZ and have a meta-question for me... the askbox IS open!)

Anyway. This got really long. But misogyny in fandom is a thing, and the article does call it out well. I just get frustrated that people immediately assume malice. The statement does annoy me, but because it does happen if the characters are coded as male, too. I see it all the time. People just tend to either be fans of the morally grey, or... not.

[immaculate-benediction-batch]

Sorry this is so long......How TV Creators Are Handling Subtext And Shipping

TV series creators have a hard time not tailoring content towards a strictly heteronormative audience, refusing to lean in to queer context, no matter howlarge an LGBTQ following a show may have.

Once a fictional character is put out for public consumption, it ceases to be the one thing it’s described as on paper. This is especially the case with TV and film, where said character goes through so many hands before hitting the screen and becoming public property.

There are three kinds of creators when it comes to queer content on TV. The first (and sadly, most typical) is the creator who will deny any intention of creating queer content, and who will also refuse to acknowledge a queer audience’s interpretation., This often results in an instant backlash, as the Supergirlcast and creators experienced after an embarrassing interview with MTV last summer. When prompted to recap the latest season, the cast broke into a cringeworthy song that mocked fans’ interest in the Supergirl/Lena Luthor pairing, with Jeremy Jordan repeatedly exclaiming that the two will never get together. It continued despite Katie McGrath’s attempt to save the interview saying, “The great thing about what we do is, like any art, anyone can read into it what they want.” Chris Wood then chimed in with “Sexuality is all about others’ perception of yours, right?”

Supergirl is a show with a large female following that from the beginning has gravitated toward the female relationships it portrays, with emphasis on those relationships with strong queer energy. At first, there was a group of internet fans that were drawn to the chemistry between Melissa Benoist and Calista Flockhart, which was maximized due to the characters’ intense mentor/mentee relationship, and that was fine, and for the most part went unacknowledged by the show.

However, upon Flockhart’s exit, Lena Luthor was introduced, played by Katie McGrath. Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor became fast friends, and fans’ fascination with Supergirl’s queer vibes grew strong enough for the the cast to take notice. One would think that by having Alex Danvers and Maggie Sawyer, two queer characters already in their orbit, fan speculation about others wouldn’t be such an inconvenience that it would have to be addressed by aggressively singing “They’re only friends!” over and over, as if the pairing were unfathomable.

But Supergirl hasn’t been the only show to outright reject queer interpretations. In fact, a few years back, the long-running series Supernatural was called out by its fans for purposefully inserting homoerotic subtext within storylines pertaining to male characters Dean and Castiel, and for rather indirectly addressing said subtext in interviews. In one of them, Misha Collins (Castiel) stated that in certain scenes with Jensen Ackles (Dean) he was directed to portray his character as a “jilted lover.”

During a Toronto Con panel in 2013, it was revealed that a line was changed by Ackles — who last year specifically requested no questions about the popular pairing be allowed during the Q portion of a panel for the show at New Jersey Con–from “I love you” to “We’re family. I need you” because the Actor didn’t think it suited his character. Despite fandom’s interest in the pairing, it hasn’t been enough for Supernaturalto follow through with an actual queer storyline, aside from the one recurring lesbian character, Charlie, who was ultimately killed off. It turns out our tolerance for queerbaiting does have its limits.

Another show that failed to address the sapphic energy between its leads, in effect rejecting a great opportunity to add a bonus layer to an already complex relationship between two women, was Damages. The thriller starred Glenn Close as powerhouse prosecutor Patty Hewes, and Rose Byrne as her protégée, Ellen Parsons. The series went on for five seasons and throughout, though it benefitted from incredible writing, its highlight was clearly the tension and undecipherable relationship between Patty and Ellen.

While there was never any doubt that their connection was what kept the the show’s palpable tension dial at a 10, anytime the subject was brought up to either cast or creators it was denied or waved off as “wishful thinking,” as Glenn Close put it. When pressed further, she added, “I think there’s something seductive about Patty and she just seduces people and she’ll lead people on. I think that can come across as pure seduction.”

With Person of Interest, Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi) and Root (Amy Acker) first connected under very unique, very dark circumstances in which one was holding the other against their will in a life threatening situation. But there was a sizzle there that the audience immediately responded to, and while both cast and writers admitted that was not their intention, something amazing happenedthey took that audience reaction and ran with it. In the end, Shaw and Root’s romance became one of the show’s more compelling storylines.

Jane the Virgin did the same. When a character, Petra, who wasn’t intentionally written as queer read queer to LGBTQ viewers, the writers saw no problem taking the interpretation and adopting it as canon. After years of keeping Petra as a sort of peripheral player within Jane/Rafael storylines, the character of Jane Ramos was introduced as Petra’s defense attorney and eventual love interest.

The third type of creator is everyone’s favorite. This is the one that takes whatever gay subtext or context there is, embraces it, and expands upon it, recognizing that it’s there from the beginning. In the Flesh and Killing Eve are true representatives of queer entertainment that isn’t trying to steer its characters toward a path they weren’t organically wanting to go.

In the Flesh, a BAFTA-award winning series from BBC 3, was easily one of the best shows that no one watched; a zombie show with depth, which isn’t easy to accomplish. The story takes place years after a virus epidemic that turned the infected into flesh-eating monsters is cured, and the rehabilitated are returning home. Its main character is Luke, one of the former infected, suffering from memories of the terrible things he did while sick, and tortured by his own suicide, which was prompted by the loss of love interest, Rick.

The series ran for only two seasons, with a total of nine episodes. It was inventive and creative and stands as one of the greats right next to shows like Hannibal and The Exorcist, which was unfortunately canceled by Fox this year after only two seasons of sacrilege, beautiful cinematography, Alfonso Herrera (Sense8) and a bisexual Father Marcus, played by Ben Daniels.

Killing Eve is a female-led thriller that proves that the secret to making great TV is treating characters like human beings with the capacity to change. Eve, who, when we meet her, is living a life that doesn’t seem particularly terrible, whose marriage appears to be solid, her job secure, is lured into potentially life threatening situations for the sake of following her inexplicable attraction to a female assassin. As if beneath the surface there is a dormant unrest that is awakened with the arrival of Villanelle in her life, and though she does not stop to examine exactly what she expects to get from it, she craves and wants more of these moments that have stirred her awake. She’s both excited and frightened by Villanelle’s audaciousness, by the intrusion into her life,

both figuratively and literally.

The season’s got a few episodes left, yet the most compelling, and most attentively queer moment is part of the fifth episode, in which the two women finally come face to face in Eve’s home. Eve is sopping wet in a gorgeous dress Villanelle’s purchased for her, she’s cold and visibly uncomfortable, therefore Villanelle suggests Eve should change, before proceeding to peel the dress off her herself. It is a scene that doesn’t downplay the very real danger Eve is in by having Villanelle in her home. However there is also an erotic aspect to it that is very purposeful, and as series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge points out, the attraction is definitely mutual, “I knew that the first moment they see each other. I labeled that moment as ‘love at first sight.’ But I didn’t want it to be constrained to romance, or to lust, or anything like that. There’s something waking in Eve every day that she spends imagining what this woman is doing.”

This type of storytelling allows characters to evolve the way that they want to evolve as opposed to forcing them into a first page description. There is loyalty to the authenticity of the story, which comes from meticulous attention paid to the writing, which Waller-Green explains is all about going against cliché: “The moment something feels predictable, there’s a roar in me to just go to the most surprising place. I don’t want to bore myself.”

Often times, when female queer characters are introduced, it is done in order to titillate, and their storylines are the product of a male gaze fantasy. Killing Eve manages to avoid all of that with Villanelle, a character who seems to have no specific preference when it comes to sexual partners, and yet doesn’t feel the need to use her sexuality to get what she wants. In addition to that and the meaty tension between the two leads (Villanelle and the titular Eve, played by Sandra Oh), the attention paid to the very queer theme of the show is evident in backstories of characters that would normally go without one, like that of Eve’s former boss and best friend Bill, an older man in a heterosexual relationship who casually reveals he’s loved “hundreds” of men, much to Eve’s surprise, and further reveals he is in an open relationship, and happily so.

The series proves not only that queer characters are marketablethe BBC series was renewed for a second season before the first even airedbut that straight creators are capable of writing queer content that isn’t offensive or over-sexualized. Phoebe Waller-Bridge credits the authenticity of the series to a collaborative effort, stating, “Because it’s all about the characters, the little details that link the two worlds, everyone’s really made it a psychological piece rather than just an artistic painting of two different people’s worlds,” but it really just goes to show that that negative aspects of queer representation that include the dreaded male gaze perspective can be avoided as long as the bar is set high enough by the showrunner.

It only takes a little bit of creativity and imagination, and a willingness to challenge the idea that heterosexual-based television makes for the best and most successful stories.

Alex Velazquez is a writer, photographer, and queer Mexican living in Los Angeles, CA.

[colorisbyshe]

Honest question here: I'm a lesbian and I enjoy writing wlw in fic. I pair even the most one dimensional characters together because I just fucking love writing about women loving other women and I think we need that, after all fandom is supposed to be transformative and give us what we don't see in media (happy endings, cute stuff, sex about/for/by women...). I'm not judging but I don't get why so many women are writing fic and even original fiction about mlm. Is it internalized misogyny?

That’s definitely a part of it. I think there’s a lot of different components at play.

One is that there’s just more male characters with better writing behind them who get more screen time. Or we’ve been raised to think of it as better writing. So, y’unno, we gravitate towards that. Even when you’re not watching something critically, I think it’s easy to subtly pick up on which characters are written with more care, given more nuanced roles, and are treated as more human.

And when male characters are given smaller, flatter roles, it becomes almost instinctual to want to fill in the gap (which is how we get fucking TRAVESTIES like Coulson/Clint from Avengers. We were given flat/boring/frankly ugly characters and suddenly people were headcanoning and trying to fix how dull they were, meanwhile Natasha being sidelined just felt normal and ignorable).

And then there’s the fact that male characters are seen to be for everyone while female characters are JUST for girls--like men can think they’re hot and bangable but the FANS will be women. So, there’s that “well, I’m not like other girls!” thing going on. So women will gravitate towards men for that reason.

So, yeah, with those two things... there’s this huge element of internalized misogyny. Male characters are presented to be more interesting and relatable and when they aren’t... well we’ll write and fantasize about them until they are.

And for straight women it’s extra easy because then there’s the “wanna bang them” factor. Not always but like... it’s there

But for wlw... I think there’s more at play. Being gay/bi is already reaching across the gender spectrum in away. You can relate maybe more to masculinity (or at least breaking gender norms) and you want to play with gender expectations and sexuality. And doing it through men makes more sense because it’s kinda an escape for your own gender/sexuality stuff?

Like I know SO many women/woman-aligned people who shipped m/m stuff and all that shit before they ever realized they were gay/bi themselves. So you can kinda just dive in headfirst to gay content without it hitting too close to home.

Because a woman caring about gay men is more par for the course. You can still do that and be straight.

But if you’re a woman who cares a lot about two women together, well, it’s harder to get away with still thinking you’re straight, y’unno?

And then this all snowballs to the fact that... because of all these things mlm content just generates larger fandoms, more meta, more content. So, even when you’re waking up to the fact that “jesus christ, I’ve been prioritizing men all this time,” that’s not much... to do at that point?

Because there’s no real fandom spaces for f/f content and when there are it’s either shit involving transmisogynists (see: Kate McKinnon) or it’s all white ships or there’s other fucked up shit going on (like Floriana, a white Italian woman, playing Maggie who is framed as being Latina). Ooooor you join a fandom and the actually canon WLW characters are killed off before the fandom can take off. Ooor you join a fandom and literally the women never, ever interact unless it’s about men.

But fandom doesn’t mobilize around f/f crack ships the way they do shit like Coulson/Clint or whatever the fuck else.

So you’re stuck WANTING more f/f content and only being able to get it through sideships to m/m stuff. Or maybe rare fanart but nothing substantial to work with or bond over.

And, like, while straight women, mlm, and wlw come to m/m content in DROVES, only wlw show up for f/f content. And it’s isolating and shitty. And then we watch straight women and mlm play lip service to supporting us--they’ll maybe make a single headcanon post or whatever to pretend they care but... they don’t.

And now mlm are spreading around the idea that if you’re one gender and ship gay content of a DIFFERENT gender, that’s inherently fetishizing. Straight women consuming mlm content is inherently fetishizing. Which means they’ve now completely justified straight women and mlm never consuming or creating wlw content because?? It’s fetishizing right?? They’re doing us a FAVOR by refusing to ever even consider that women might love women and want representation in the media and in fandom spaces.

I feel like WLW content is land that straight women and men in general built a moat around. And it’s just like... not all of us want to swim across this fucking moat to get to a dilapidated building that’s mostly just empty rooms or ships the cast sings about JUST BEING FRIENDS HAHA!!!

The effort it takes to find and make content just for wlw can be so fucking exhausting because you’re being shit on from every side, including the content creators. And it’s just... if you can consume content about being gay without having to deal with all that shit... maybe it’s just easier to ship mlm.

And I’m sure I’ll get an anon or two after this telling me “MLM AREN’T HERE TO EXPERIMENT WITH YOUR SEXUALITY WITH!!” or whatever but like mlm fandoms are made on the back of women and wlw especially so... you know... fucking deal with it.

[miasswier]

own voices and mlm fandom

I’ve been thinking a lot about mlm fandom and what an interesting phenomenon it is, and how that translates into original LGBTQ fiction. This is long and rambly and maybe not that coherent, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I just need to get it out.

For a very large amount of my fandom life, I exclusively shipped slash ships. I mean, my first big fandom was Glee, and Darren Criss joining was the reason that I started the show in the first place, so I sort of fell into the Klaine ship and the adjoining fandom pretty easily. They were my first official ship, and honestly, I’m still really fond of them. They’ll hold a special place in my heart forever.

The thing is, I never really realized it at the time, but for my first few years in fandom I always found myself gravitating toward mlm ships. Klaine, Wennet, Sterek, Fervid. I used to watch hours of clips on youtube detailing the storylines of mlm couples on TV shows. There were several shows I watched exclusively because I knew there were mlm couples on there (The Carrie Diaries is one example, where I only sought it out after seeing gifsets of Wennet on my dash). It wasn’t even a conscious thing, it just happened.

What’s interesting for me, thinking in retrospect about this all, is that I identified very strongly as straight at this point in my life. Oh, sure, I was questioning, but I was in a bit of a boy crazy period, and to me that implied that I had to be straight (there was also the fact that I didn’t think I could ever see myself dating a girl; I later realized that I couldn’t see myself dating a guy either, because I just couldn’t see myself dating anybody).

I used to say some really iffy things, which again, retrospect. I was a budding little feminist, and I was just becoming a sexual being (I was… fourteen or fifteen when I joined fandom?), so I was all about normalizing girls as agents of their own sexuality. A big thing for me was this totally false stereotype that women didn’t watch porn. I remember so many conversations I’d have with male friends that would always end up the same way – “but porn isn’t aimed at women, so why would they watch it?”. I, being completely self-taught and very young and naïve, always had the same response (which I thought was oh-so-clever): “gay porn. Porn aimed at women is gay porn.”

YIKES. But as I’ve been thinking a lot about the issues I’ve only seen within mlm fandom since somewhat distancing myself from it, this is actually a really common thought for a lot of straight women. Because the thing is, a really strange thing has happened with mlm fandom, and it’s not something that I think anybody could have ever predicted.

Somehow, mlm fandom has become about women. To the point where it’s almost exclusively about women. I mean, think about it. I don’t know any major mlm fandom that isn’t at least 90% female. Even when I think about the Klaine fandom, I think I can think of… four? Maybe five? Klaine fans that aren’t female. And it’s one of those things where because so much of mlm fandom is female it begins to just be thought of as this female thing. I mean, geez, how many conversations have I had with people in fandom where I discuss whether Kurt or Blaine is the top in their relationship. All of those conversations happen amongst females. And honestly, most of the women in mlm fandom are straight.

It’s gotten to the point where mlm fans are almost excluded from mlm fandom spaces. I recently saw a post (which is what sort of formed the connection between several thoughts that I’d had floating around for a while) where a mlm fan was requesting that mlm authors specifically tag the fic they write with “mlm author” so that they could find stories written about mlm by mlm. I went on this person’s blog and they’d made a post that it was gaining traction, and thus far there were about 21 fics on AO3 tagged “mlm author”.

Let’s think about that. Twenty-one fics. That’s it. I know it’s a new tag and all, but jeez. Twenty-one fics. Out of how many fucking mlm stories out there? Like, holy shit. That is an infinitesimal number. It’s actually really embarrassing.

And it’s not mlm authors fault. How could it be? I mean, I remember reading one Klaine fic forever ago, and it really challenged the way I saw Kurt and Blaine. They weren’t written the way I, or most other authors wrote them. They were a lot more nuanced, a lot more complex, and the author explored issues within their gender and sexuality that I had never seen explored in fanfic before. And like, I remember reading that story and genuinely feeling like it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t the target audience for this story, because the target audience for it were mlm’s. It made me feel uncomfortable, and so I stopped reading it.

(A small side-note here, I did try and pick this particular fic back up a few months ago, but stopped once again because the author included several references to Kurt’s situation as a white gay male being worse off than Mercedes situation as a black female. The way it was written didn’t feel like “Kurt feels this way but he is uninformed”; it was more “Kurt is gay and Mercedes is straight and therefore she doesn’t understand oppression at all”, and it really felt like that was how the author felt. It was especially iffy since the story was set in like, the 1960’s.)

The point is, mlm fandom content has become this thing that is created by women for women. A lot of it comes from straight women, too.

The biggest issue with this is that it becomes inaccessible to actual mlm individuals. It’s been made so clear throughout years and years and years that mlm fandom isn’t for mlm. How fucked up is that? And like, I’m sure that anybody who may see this who is deep in mlm fandom would instantly protest. No it’s not!!!!!!!!! I am so accepting!!!!!!!! I am an Ally!!!!!!!!!! But really, think about it. In all your time in fandom, how many mlm people have you actually interacted with? And of those people, how many have you had positive interactions with? Because holy shit, I remember one mlm fan who got into so many fucking fights with straight fans, where the straight fans would shut him the fuck down. He criticized how they portrayed a mlm couple and they wouldn’t have it. They told him he knew nothing and blocked him. Let me repeat that: straight women told a mlm fan that they knew more about mlm relationships than he did. Like, what the literal fuck!!!

And like, here’s the thing. I actually know of quite a few wlw who are very deep in mlm fandom. In fact, a lot of the Klaine blogs I still follow are run by wlw because a lot of the ones run by straight women just make me too damn uncomfortable (I know I still follow a few, though). Most of these wlw do present more nuanced views of mlm relationships, in the way that only fellow queer people really can, but, I mean, at the end of the day we’re still wlw. We’re not mlm.

(Another side-note is how interesting I’ve found it to see all these wlw Klaine fans go from mlm fandom to mlm fandom. They’re just as deeply stuck in mlm fandom as women are, which absolutely blows my mind. I think there’s maybe two wlw run Klaine blogs that I follow that seem to have any interest at all in femslash. It’s honestly the weirdest phenomena.)

What’s interesting to me about all of this is how it plays into the writing of original fiction, which I know feels like I’m swerving a bit, but bare with me.

So, if you’ve been following me long enough, you’ll know that I’ve had some very serious issues with a publishing company called Interlude Press. I haven’t spoken about them a lot lately because the last time I made a post it garnered the attention of someone who informed me that the IP family had recently suffered a death, and this person believed that I was trying to “hit them while they’re down”. That wasn’t the case at all, as I am very removed from IP and don’t follow any of their authors, or people who buy their books (I think there may be a few that I still follow, but like with the straight female mlm fans, they’re rare). Still, I wanted to be respectful, so I backed off.

Why am I bringing up Interlude Press? Because they’ve come back into my radar recently in a totally different way than before.

See, over the past year or so I’ve started following several LGBTQ book blogs. I think I follow four or five. Recently, some of IP’s books have started to make appearances on these blogs.

Here’s the interesting thing about it: it’s only the books written by their wlw authors about wlw characters that make it onto these blogs.

My biggest issue with IP was that they called themselves an LGBTQ publisher, but only published books about cis gay mlm. I think it was a good year into their publishing career before they even published a book that featured a cis bi mlm protagonist. Like, it was really, really obvious that they were not an LGBTQ publisher; they were a cis mlm publisher.

The thing about that is that almost every single author they brought on board? Female.

I’m serious. That publishing company is filled to the brim with female authors. Yeah, some are wlw, but a lot of them aren’t. So, here you have an LGBTQ publishing company that only publishes novels about mlm couples, but all their writers are female. Do you see why I had issues with them?

In a way, though, they came by it honestly. IP started because the people who run it wanted to publish some of their favourite Klaine fanfictions as original novels. We’ve already established that mlm fandom is this woman-run operation that gets to the point where it almost excludes mlm fans. Is it really that surprising that all of their authors were female, and all of them wanted to write about mlm’s?

But now, here they are. They’ve finally started publishing wlw stories written by their wlw authors. And guess what? Those are the stories that are making it only LGBTQ book blogs. Those are the stories people are hearing about. I recently saw a post on one LGBTQ book blog about a talk some authors are doing, and several of IP authors were on there. The one the blog singled out? C.B. Lee, a wlw whose wlw story is the one that has put her back on my radar (she is also the one who wrote the first bisexual mlm character for IP).

What I’m getting at throughout all of this is – Own Voices. Although there are quite a few mlm original stories that are written by women, the one’s that I’ve found I enjoy the most, the ones that actually make me feel connected to the characters, are the ones I’ve read written by mlm authors. It’s the same with wlw original stories. Because here’s the thing -- mlm authors are always going to understand what being a mlm individual is like WAY more than female authors (even wlw ones) will.

Fandom is a strange place, a place where mlm content is produced and consumed almost entirely by women. But original content? That’s a different ball game. And sure, there are a lot of women who exclusively read and write mlm stories, but often those stories aren’t the ones that make splashes within the LGBTQ community. At least not as far as I’ve seen.

This is honestly such an incoherent mess, and I don’t know if I’m even trying to make a point with all this, but I just had to get it all written down.

One final note before I go to take a nap. For the past several years I’ve found myself drifting further and further into femslash fandom, to the point where I barely ship any mlm couples anymore (I think Klaine may be the only one atm). It’s been tough, since there’s a lot less content than there is for mlm couples; even the popular wlw couples get way less content (I know I bitch and whine about holtzbert a lot, but even they have an abysmally low amount of fic considering they’re the biggest ship in the GB fandom – especially when you compare them to popular mlm ships like Sterek or Johnlock or Destiel). But honestly? I feel so at home here. Almost every person I’ve met through femslash fandom is also a wlw. Do you know how wonderful it is to exist in a fandom where you’re writing about characters like you, and reading stories written by people who are also like those characters? You would not believe the difference it makes reading wlw fics written by wlw, as opposed to mlm fics written by wlw or straight women.

Own Voices, man. They’re important as fuck.