aron_kristina

In my quest to get people to write more yummy porn for me to read I hereby present the first part of my guide to writing femslash. This part focuses on the actual acts of sex between women and not the writing of it. That comes in part two.

So without further ado I present:


( This way to education )

So, if you're in Sherlock fandom you probably haven't missed this fic (link goes to the anon comment version).

Now, there's nothing wrong with it, certainly, the process of coding it alone must have been really time consuming (though I wonder how it works with a screen reader), the fascinating hing about it is the fandom response.

It seems that what fandom really wants isn't well written fic about the characters, isn't deep meta or people having brilliant theories, no, it's fic about ourselves. And not really ourselves either. We want fic about men in fandom, because apparently our own experience as women in fandom just isn't enough. And yes, I am judging you.

The fic I really want written about fandom is meta fic about femslash, and female characters, and how it feels to find a safe space only to realize that you're a fucking freak here too. Not that I mind that much, I've been a fucking freak my entire life, it's just strange that in an environment that is supposedly composed mostly of smart, brilliant women we don't care about out own stories, and when we do we use male characters to tell them. Because men are apparently just that much more interesting.

I will never stop finding this strange. And maybe I should take a break from fandom since it just pisses me off.

Written for the second annual mini meta fest at fem_thoughts.

The thing is, I'm probably not the right person to write this, but I will anyway. For me, fanfic is divided first and foremost by fandom. I know some people will read things for fandoms they don't know if they like the writer enough, but I can't do this.

Secondly, it's divided into shippy and not shippy. Fic can of course be very plot driven but still have romance or an established relationship in the background, and then it will still be considered not shippy by me. Shippy fic is the kind where romance or sex is the point of the fic.

Last comes the distinction of het, guyslash or femslash. It's not a really important distinction for me, since I will read and write fic of all kinds, but I know it is to others, and in some way I think marking something as femslash is important, to show that we exist, that femslash exists. I've recently begun tagging my femslash on AO3 to make it easier to find, and to help the statistics (if someone was going to make such statistics). But to me personally it doesn't mean a lot in terms of reading.

If we're just going to look at the word, femslash to me is fic in which two (or more) characters who see themselves as female are in a romantic or sexual relationship, or are on the verge of entering into such a relationship, or if one character pines after (for?) the other. If one or both (or more) of the characters are in a straight relationship at the time, or have been, or will be, or indeed any other kind of relationship that can't easily be labeled as lesbian it will still be femslash. Sure, if it focuses a lot on the straight relationship it might not be very good femslash, but still.

The only exception is poly relationships, at least if the focus is on that aspect of the relationship and not the characters as they relate in twosomes within the poly relationship. And this only applies if the characters are of two (or more) different genders.

All in all, I do think it's inherently problematic to divide things according to sex or gender, but while I wait, and work for, a society in which sex and gender is irrelevant I will continue to label things when appropriate.