Where 're the femslash little black dress

[snowynight]

Some anecdotes

I love Sherlock Holmes, so I can't resist the lure of the 2009 Sherlock Holmes film. It has Mary and Irene in a greater role than in the book, but the movie's never about them, never told in their POV. They pretty much respond to the action. I return from the cinema with a vague thought that I would like a gun-swinging Mary partnered with Irene in a steampunk Victorian London, but I don't really get the characters enough. Because the movie doesn't give me this.

When I watch the earlier season of Stargate: Atlantis, there are only two female favourite characters. They are shown as friends, and the fandom pretty much pair them as the spare. Later in the season there were more female characters introduced and filmed interaction between Teyla and them. While the amount of fic produced is not much as far as I know, Teyla launched several ships, Teyla/Kate, Teyla/Keller, Teyla/Sam.  While the canon is not good enough, it at least gives a starting point to write and passes the Bechdel's test in some episodes.

My hypothesis about the lack of femslash little black dress is thus:
There're just not enough female characters. Even nowadays a show can be without one female major character. Supernatural, for example  is a big offender.

When there are finally some, the writers often screw up on the female characters. The stories are often not about them, the story not told in their POV, they often go without agency or sacrificed for some dramatic effect. These combined don't encourage fans of female characters. When the show finally pass Bechdel's Test, there are usually no multiple female relationships, not to mention multiple female friendships.

And when there are such examples, people don't know about it.

In conclusion, with the current trend, we're less likely to see femslash little black dress.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I think you're onto something with the idea of female characters not being written with agency. People often say "but the female characters are written badly!" and this may be true, but badly written male characters still get plenty of fic. The difference, though, is that a badly written male character still usually has agency - he will have a goal, a personality and a reason for existing in the plot. So many female characters, though, are there to be reacted to by men (viewers or characters). And yes, definitely the lower numbers of women in most canons are an issue. While male slash fandoms spring up around anything with two or more male characters who spend time together, some of the liveliest femslash fandoms seem to have either *just* two major female characters who have a strong onscreen relationship of some kind (e.g. Legend of the Seeker, The Devil Wears Prada) or an enormous cast gathered over many years (Harry Potter, DCU and Marvel comics, soap operas). An exception to this rule might be The Good Wife - while most of the fic fits the first category (Alicia/Kalinda have a strong onscreen relationship) there's a lot of other female characters around, mostly written with agency.

Last night I was watching a crappy movie (I won't say what it is as not to spoil people) and this post made me think of the femslash options. For male slash, there's four attractive, fit men who spend a lot of time together. For femslash, there's one attractive, fit woman...and two female ghosts. One has no agency and the other is a child. While it does pass the Bechdel test (the living woman and the girl ghost talk about various things) there isn't a femslash opportunity; the opposite is true for the men.

[snowynight]

I agree. Characters with agency are easier to get into and write.

[havocthecat]

I think you're onto something with the idea of female characters not being written with agency. People often say "but the female characters are written badly!" and this may be true, but badly written male characters still get plenty of fic. The difference, though, is that a badly written male character still usually has agency - he will have a goal, a personality and a reason for existing in the plot. So many female characters, though, are there to be reacted to by men (viewers or characters).

I'm really hoping this hasn't turned into the latest excuse (not from you, that's clear, but from other people) as to why they don't want to put any time into developing the female characters.

Because, tbh, I am so tired of the excuses from people who don't want to write women. I just want them to own up to a lack of interest instead of trying to allow the misogyny on screen (i.e., the large numbers of women lacking agency) to be their excuse.

[lilacsigil]

Oh, I don't think it's a new excuse at all - but it is one way in which media producers and media viewers collude in excluding and ignoring female characters. I just think snowynight's distinction between "number of women on screen" and "number of women with agency" is a useful distinction in teasing out why people feel this way. It's not all on the viewers' side.

[havocthecat]

I think that maybe I didn't explain myself clearly, partly because I went on a bit of a tangent from "femslash" to "writing women in general."

Well, usually when the "why does no one write the women" comes up again, people will say, "Oh, but it's just that the women are written poorly!" To which most of us point out that the poorly written, inconsistently characterized men are also written in vastly more quantities than the women.

The thing is, if someone replies and adds in the excuse, on top of what I just said, "I write Figwit because he has more agency than Arwen does," or "I write Lorne/Parrish because they have more agency than Elizabeth/Teyla," then that's...just another excuse. (Parrish has agency? Figwit? Compared to Arwen, Elizabeth, and Teyla?)

So. I agree that it's not all on the viewers' side. But. When the debate comes up again that there's internalized misogyny in fandom, and that one of the main expression of internalized misogyny in fandom is the lack of fanworks centering on women, the excuses come out to play. If I hear "well, it's not my fault I don't write any women; it's the fault of the PTB because they never create female characters with any agency," I will scream.

We already get enough excuses about how it's not their ~fault~ they don't write women, it's not their problem, it's all on the networks and creators' ends, that's why.

(I am not, and in no way irritated with you, or with the OP of this meta. I want to make that clear.)

[katta]

I think maybe romantic attachment is more relevant than agency? Because while it is completely possible to write a love interest out of a ship fic, it's still harder than writing ship fic for someone who is unattached or casually dating. And female characters tend to be romantically attached quite a lot, and more "seriously" than many male ones.

IDK, I do find it very hard to write femslash for the most part, in the sense that I have to go out and actively look for slashable characters to find them, since movies/shows tend to not want too many women in a room together. None of that is an excuse to avoid het or gen, though, since that only requires one woman, and most movies/shows can manage that.

[aron_kristina]

I think The Good Wife is one of the few, if not the only, tv series (of the ones I have seen, mind) where female characters actually have goals of their own, where both male and female characters are painted in shades of grey, and where even older women are allowed to be interesting. Which is, I mean, it's a good show, but I shouldn't have to be THIS excited about it...

[lilacsigil]

Yeah, The Good Wife is an especially interesting example because it does so well networking all the female characters in really complex ways...then totally fails to do the same with people of colour or disabled people. Louis Canning never speaks to another disabled person; the black lawyers never work together (except to trick) and the one time Kalinda could speak to another South Asian person she literally can't. Not that many other shows are better, but it's so odd to see a show that totally gets the importance of all-female interaction but cannot see any further.

[aron_kristina]

Yes, they clearly haven't gotten to the intersectional bit in the 'how to make your show not fail' guidebook :p I live in hope that someone will at some point get there though.

[halfshellvenus]

I was going to mention this one too, because Kalinda IS the femmeslash little black dress!

But I suspect that the show's fandom is rather small, at least at the moment, so that's fairly self-limiting. :(