snowynight (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
snowynight) wrote2011-05-08 02:58 pm
snowynight) wrote2011-05-08 02:58 pm
Entry tags:
Where 're the femslash little black dress
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.
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.
no subject
Sometimes it feels like you have to be into TV/movie fandom to find femslash. For someone like me, whose fandoms are all video games, there really doesn't seem to be much opportunity to find femslash.
I'm not sure if I'm coherent, just wanted to point out that the different types of fandoms can have a large influence on what femslash is around. Since I don't really watch TV or movies and I don't read comics, femslash pretty much doesn't exist for me.
no subject
I've found some femslash for Mass Effect and Dragon Age (which are the only game series' I'm very fannish about) but I agree that there's very little given how much canon and semi-canon f/f the games have. It's hard to even find much m/f involving the female love interests in the parts of fandom I hang out in :/
no subject
It makes me wish I wrote fic because there are certain pairings I love that don't get much attention (Paine/Rikku from Final Fantasy, Maya/Virginia from Wild ARMS, Chie/Yukiko from Persona, just to name a few).
Female characters just don't get a lot of love. It sucks. :'(
no subject
no subject
here from metafandom
Dragon Age fandom is especially weird and frustrating to me, because the 'verse is so very female and queer-friendly, but the same tired heteronormative tropes keep coming up over and over again in the fandom, especially wrt Wardenshipping. I tend more towards queer polyshipping than straight up femslash in all my fandoms and DA is no different, but it gets really facepalmy to feel like some kind of wacky maverick just because my Warden isn't a) a fucking fem!Cousland b) in a monogamous het ship with Alistair (sorry, I've been flamed by one too many obnoxious fem!Cousland fans, can you tell? lolsob). Apparently a city elf mage in a quad with Alistair, Zev and Leliana is too much for some people to deal with, much less garden variety femslash. I'm an Anora/Cauthrien shipper and the general reaction I get to that is "whoa, I never thought of that, interesting!" Which frankly baffles me. Yeah, they don't really share any on-screen time, but Big Bad's Daughter/Big Bad's right-hand knight is a no-brainer to me, people slash dudes for much less all the time. But when it's two women, the ship is so weird and unusual to people. This in a fandom where dudes with little to no screen time/plot importance have whole fanclubs devoted to them (I'm looking at you, Cullen). I just don't get it.
And you would THINK it would have gotten better with DA2, since it's much less heteronormative in terms of the plot-centric romances, but everything I've seen is all LadyHawke/Anders all the time (with the occasional Anders!slash and Fenris creeping in second with either gender). I've been shipping the shit out of LadyHawke/Fenris/Isabela and it seems like I'm the only one--the only Isabela-centric fics I've seen have been male!Hawke/Isabela. And what about Aveline/Isabela? If they were guys, they would probably be the most popular slash pairing, the way they fuss and fight but are secretly best buds who are fond of each other. I've heard people say it's because of Aveline/Donnic being canon, but again, I don't see canon het ships getting in the way of dudeslash pairings. Makes my head hurt, it does.
In my experience, it really depends on the game/fandom though. I'm a YuRiPa shipper and I've never had trouble finding good fic for it. And in Tomb Raider fandom, femslash seems to be way more prevalent than het especially since the Crystal Dynamics reboot (Lara/Natla seems to be hella popular since Anniversary, and Lara/Amanda is also really popular, both ships are heavy on FoeYay which helps), but I think that's because it's one of those rare series where there's a comparative lack of compelling dude characters. In most cases though, video games seem to be worse off than traditional western media fandoms where femslash is concerned. Which makes me a sad panda.
Re: here from metafandom
Aha, I agree with you on nearly every point. I only ship Aveline with Isabela if she doesn't marry Donnic (which requires missing out on the funniest quest, sob). I can't imagine Aveline being anything other than monogamous.
AHHHH I also love LadyHawke/Isabela/Fenris! And I love f!Tabris/Leliana/Zevran. I never thought about Anora/Cauthrien, but that's probably because I'm too busy shipping Anora with my f!Cousland. Oh lordy, now I'm gonna ship Anora/Cauthrien like burning.
Re: here from metafandom
I love any sort of polyshipping involving Zev and Leliana, though, just on the grounds it's adorable. I'll spare you my ranting about the enforced monogamy in the games, but suffice it to say it pisses me off considering the characters themselves seem like they're poly friendly. And I totally grok what you're saying about Aveline, because I don't think she'd be anything but monogamous either, but it just strikes me as weird that it never even occurs to people given the amount of "slapslapkiss" chemistry she has with Isabela. I mean, she doesn't *have* to end up with Donnic, you know? At least it only strikes me as "weird", when my brain doesn't go to that sad, ragey place of "Aveline's not conventionally pretty and people never want to ship women like that, much less with the sexbomb women". tl;dr: these games are so queer and so full of strong awesome women, where is my femslash? It's not like we have the "lol ~agency~" excuse.