#femslash history

[femslashhistorian]

Katie McGrath: Anatomy of a Lesbian Icon (Part 2)

Paging Dr. Lesbian by Kira Deshler (on substack)

"Intentional or not, the addition of Katie McGrath to any cast is a foolproof strategy for attracting a deliriously thirsty fanbase. McGrath’s gay ducklings will continue to follow her around for as long as she’s working, regardless of whether she ever gets cast as the bossy power lesbian of our dreams."

This is part 2 and here is a link to part 1 : Katie McGrath: Anatomy of a Lesbian Icon

#katie mcgrath #femslash history #femslash #history

[booasaur]

Harlan Coben's Shelter - 1x03

#shelteredit #shelter on prime #harlan coben's shelter #shira bolitar #hannah taylor #constance zimmer #missi pyle #shelter 1x03 #hannah x shira #femslash related stuff #hehehe #I hadn't expected THIS quite so soon #the really fun part of their arc has been how we have to keep rewriting it the more we learn #not just in the later eps but even here we know there's clearly a history #the way shira's smiling #and just the fact that hannah did it at all #swooping in SO sexily like that #and then kind of waiting for shira's response #it's not out of nowhere

[frillyfacefins]

A constructive approach to building a solid Femslash Subculture in a new fandom, a thread (+ anecdotal “Case Study”)

(I posted this as a thread on twitter a week ago in response to some pretty old arguments getting thrown around again; the situation has cooled down now, but somebody asked me to put this thread on tumblr, and I thought it could help some people, so here we go.)

In 2013 I was in the Silmarillion fandom when the Hobbit movies brought in a giant influx of new fans.

I was not one of the people who had been into the Silmarillion for ages, I only just read the book too, and the fandom at the time was very much in flux.

Since Baldur’s Gate is in a similar situation - a very old fandom with a new influx of fans and new characters - I think it might be helpful for me to explain how we created a space for fanwriters and -artists to explore and celebrate femslash ships.

Here are my recommendations for femslash fans who want more f/f fanworks in the Baldur’s Gate 3 fandom, sectioned off in

“3 Warnings”

“3 Ways forward”

and a “””Case Study””” of what happened in the Silmarillion fandom.

Warning 1: Be aware that your fandom is a baby.

Nominally, the game has been out for less than a month. Most people who will write amazing fanfics for your favorite characters maybe don’t even have the game yet because they can’t afford it until the Christmas sales, or they just haven’t finished it yet (like me). Most people don’t want to write for a fandom until they have consumed all available canon. You don’t know how the fandom will look like yet, but you can start building a solid foundation to influence it.

Warning 2: Don’t alienate the Astarion-fans.

Astarion is fandom-bait. He is the exact kind of character people who ‘don’t get it’ have been fuming over for decades, and who people who ‘do get it’ get obsessed with. He is the exact formula that has been working since at least the 80s: A morally grey bad boy with slightly edgy good looks who is also - and this is THE key for this kind of fandom-bait - very vulnerable and can absolutely be made into a better person/ be healed by his love interest.

This is why most heroes in (especially older) romance novels work. This is why Lestat worked. This is why Kylo Ren worked.

The thing is - the people who go gaga over him now? A lot of them will grow bored at some point. Either they will leave the fandom, or they will become invested in other characters from this fandom.

So the worst thing you can do is make them feel like the femslash community is rude, confrontational, whiny. Sorry, but that is how fandom works.

Fanwriters write fanfics for 2 reasons: 1. They have fun while writing something specific. 2. They get great interactions because they write something specific. If they look at the f/f corner and see people constantly fighting or complaining, guess what? They won’t be as interested in writing about their favorite female characters. And especially in Baldur’s Gate 3, the female characters are not easy to love, but once you do, they have potential to make you into absolute stans. I disliked Lae’zel a lot during Act 1, but by now I honestly think she’s the absolutely cutest. And Shadowheart is definitely intriguing, but I want to know how her story ends before I get really invested in her. (And we don’t even have to talk about Karlach…)

Warning 3: Lurkers have no voice in fandom.

Sorry, but this is a fact. If you don’t write fanfic or draw fanart, you don’t get to complain about what other people draw/write about. We create fanworks because we are enjoying them, not because of some social obligation. We are giving you free labor, and if you keep complaining about the things we write because it’s not what you want to see, we will just be less likely to write the things you want to see. So if you don’t create your own fandom content, you can whine as much as you want, but you will just make those who actually do create look at your whole niche of fandom with way less interest than they might have had.

Now, what can you actually do to build the basis for a solid femslash subfandom?

Measure 1: For lurkers: Support those who create fanworks you like.

And I’m not saying financially. I’m coming from an old-school-fandom perspective here. You know what will absolutely make me want to write another fic for a pairing that maybe doesn’t have as much works about them as the big ships? Really, really nice people who either write detailed comments on my fics, or who engage with me on social media - like, actively comment on my post or even hop in my DMs and tell me how much they liked something I have written.

Complaining about people who don’t write your ships is the worst thing you can do. Celebrating people who do write your ships is the best thing you can do.

Measure 2: For most writers: Kind of logical, but - write.

Write long-fic, short-fic, flash-fic about your favorites. Plaster your social media profiles with it. Do monthly challenges, request your pairings in cross-fandom exchanges, write long rambly threads about how awesome they are. Right now, YOU get to potentially create the fanon. You get to sway people’s opinions of characters. And you get to actively build this community.

And please, try not to get discouraged if it’s hard at first. Like I said - this fandom is a tiny baby that only just started screaming its little red head off. New fans will come. And they will do the same as the person in the screenshot, and maybe if they actually look through the ‘other tag’ bar or by filtering for F/F, they will find your works and be super happy about it.

Measure 3: For fans who want to invest more time and effort: Organize cool stuff for your community.

Fests, exchanges, challenges, discord servers, tags on tumblr or mastodon - there are tons of things you can make happen that will inspire people to create. Make a femslash month with themed weeks and prompts every day, for example, both for fanfic, fanart, edits, fanvids, whatever kind of fan-work anybody wants to contribute. Or make a challenge with a list of prompts, or a generator, or anything else you personally are able to do. Invite people to participate. Make it easy. Make it fun and welcoming.

And now to my “”case study”” which is completely anecdotal but which definitely left an expression on me.

The situation: The winter of  2013/2014. The second Hobbit movie has come out, Elrond is hot, Galadriel is hot, Tauriel is polarizing, Legolas looks weird. A ton of new people come into the Tolkien fandom, and discover the Silmarillion.

The Silmarillion-fandom has to deal with a new influx of people like it never has since the LotR-films. These are new fans who are used to new fandoms, not the LJ-survivors who make up a lot of the fandom. The new fans glom onto the usual suspects - Maedhros/Fingon, especially. But with Galadriel and Tauriel being so prominent in the Hobbit movies, the few fans who were already trying to put some femslash flavor in this fandom suddenly get a trickle of new people. Not that many. But some.

And then somebody decides to try and build a little bed for that trickle. Tumblr-User Elleth (not sure if she’s still around) creates the (by now defunct) archive “Textual Ghosts” to register all 600 unnamed wife characters in Tolkien’s work. A labor of extreme love for a fandom, and a big stepping stone for a developing femslash-subfandom. Soon afterward, tumblr-user Elleth and I start the first Legendarium Ladies April Event (legendariumladiesapril.tumblr.com) which would - without my continued support because I’m a fickle bitch and I’m still sorry about that - continue until 2020 and fill the event archives on AO3 with 150 new fics - which doesn’t seem a lot, but it also leaves out a lot of fanfics, fanart, fanpoems, fanedits etc. that were only ever posted on tumblr.

Meanwhile, I - always a multi-shipper and not devoted only to femslash, but VERY devoted to kinky smut which is also not really such a big thing in the Silmarillion fandom at this time - open a kink meme for the fandom. It creates a few new smuttier fanworks, but it also creates a few handful of female-centric works when I make a mini-event for world women’s day.

I am sorry to say that I abandoned this one too after about a year or two, but the kink meme is still there. (It would take another 8 years for somebody to be like “Hey so maybe you have incapacitating adhd, would you like to try ritalin?”)

Anyway, in this way, that trickle did become a brook. The M/M and even M/F works still outnumbered the F/F ones by miles, but F/F fans (and fans of female-centric works) WERE fed. And maybe more importantly - we built a community of people interested in the stories of women who were treated extremely badly by their source material. We made friends, we wrote stories for one another, we had fun. And that’s how you make a community within a fandom - you find some way to make it FUN.

(If Elleth should read this, I’m sorry for being an absolute flake, you’re wonderful.)

Oh also this is when I realized I’m not straight. So there’s that, too.

So if really love a fandom and you want to have more femslash works in this fandom? Start working towards it. You don't have to do it alone, there are other people out there who want to help you. But you need to find each other.

And you REALLY need to encourage each other.

(And also, stop making people outside of the femslash space associate you with nothing but complaints. That's not going to bring anybody into the fold. Be inviting, welcoming, have fun, be a positive community people WANT to join.)

And just to make my own position a little clearer:

#femslash #wlw ships #f/f fanfic #fandom culture #fandom history #baldur‘s gate 3 #bg3 #text

[queerquaintrelle]

Femslash February 2024: Georgiana Cavendish/Elizabeth Christiana (later Cavendish) - the Duchesses of Devonshire

“writers have suggested that the two women had a relationship which was closer than their individual relationship with the Duke.” (Porter, 2016, p.196.)

(source) (romantic female friendship: 18th century)

#meeraedits #femslash february #Femslash February 2024 #Georgiana Cavendish #keira knightley #hayley atwell #the duchess 2008 #bisexual #lesbian #my edit #perioddramaedit #mine #18th century #18th century history #queer history #period drama #period dramas #femslash #bi4bi #queer #lgbtq+ #queue are absolutely unpredictable

[shinhatisgirlfriend]

Won't Go Down in History | Act One - Mandalore | read on ao3

Chapter: 18/?? - Shin POV

Pairing: Shin Hati/Sabine Wren

Word Count: 3,352 (Ch. 18) / 54,413 (full fic)

Rating: Mature

Chapter Warnings: Canon-Typical Violence

Fic Summary:

The next thing she knew, she had been slammed into the wall, Shin’s body flush against hers. Shin’s lightsaber hilt was pressed into her neck, one moment away from igniting and killing her instantly. She should’ve felt afraid - terrified, really - but she felt exhilarated. Her heart pounding, her palms sweaty, her thoughts racing - every sensation was amplified a thousand fold. “What are we doing here, Wren?” A confrontation in a Dathomiri temple on Peridea leaves Sabine Wren and Shin Hati stranded in the past. Thrown into the midst of the Clone Wars on Mandalore, Sabine and Shin have to set aside their differences to find a way to get home - and just maybe change the fate of the galaxy in the process...

Chapter 18 Summary:

Obi-Wan asks for the truth.

@starwarstoxicfemslash @swsapphics-ao3feed

#shin hati #sabine wren #wolfwren #my writing #star wars #wont go down in history #obi-wan kenobi #star wars women #star wars wlw #sapphic star wars #star wars femslash #star wars lesbians #time travel au

[thesunwillart]

femslash february 9/?

shout out to the billie/kacey truthers out there. 

stream national treasure edge of history <3

#why yes my first fanart for this show was billie/kacey what ABOUT IT #national treasure: edge of history #nteoh #national treasure #billie pearce #kacey hasler #billie x kacey #billkace #femslash february #my art #dont take to me abt the last ep (except pls do)

[luaminesce]

Not to vaguepost on main; but for a slightly-known Bayo fan to say that "they don't know why people think she is queer", call BayoJeanne shippers "deluded", and BayoJeanne "a mere headcanon" is rather... mean.

#GURL LET ME TELL YOU THE HISTORY OF FEMSLASH #bayonetta #bayojeanne #femslash

[nostalgia-tblr]

#yeah it would have been very convenient for his brother robert #but - oh no! - it was also convenient for his other brother who immediately set off for the treasury and then a hasty coronation #(robert had fucked off on the first crusade that's why he wasn't in the right place at the right time) #(he later ends up imprisoned by his bro in a castle where he learns welsh and writes some poems) #(say what you will about henry 1st he was at least VERY good at getting things from his older brothers) #okay it might have been an actual genuine hunting accident but i only read about dead monarchs for THE DRAMA let me have this #i always enjoy when a history book gets to this point and you find out if the author thinks it was an accident or an “accident” #the normans are french vikings and i've yet to come across one whose name is actually norman #idk if that name existed then but *I* would have named at least one son 'Norman of Normandy' just for giggles #btw every famous woman of this era is called Matilda. all of them. there's battles between competing English queens called Matilda. #i have yet to come across any explanation of why this is. i assume there's an OG Matilda who's famous maybe? possibly a saint? #(there *is* one called Edith too... but then she changes her name to Matilda) (no really) (and it's her husband's mother's name) #idk how you're supposed to write Norman Monarchy Femslash when all the women have the same name #what if i want to read about Queen Matilda's epic forbidden love for her husband's arch-enemy Queen Matilda? eh? eh? EH??? #i should probably come up with a tag for my history-related nonsense i wouldn't want people to find it who seek Sensible Thoughts #history fandom #(there that'll do for a tag)

[silmarillionwritersguild]

Fans who have been reading and writing Tolkien-based fanfiction for more than ten years quite possibly remember a time when "femslash" wasn't even a term. While slash sites nominally accepted it, it really wasn't being written, and it's no wonder: As the last several Cultus Dispatches columns in our series on writing about women in fanfiction have detailed, the Tolkien fandom went through a pair of phases where writing about women and writing slash were controversial acts. Caught in the crosshairs of this dual intolerance (it was about ladies! and it was gay!!!), femslash really didn't stand a chance.

But, as we also detailed in last month's interview with Elleth, a concerted effort by fans to not just normalize but celebrate writing about women—and femslash in particular—has pushed back the tides of intolerance and introduced a whole new genre to the fandom. This month's column Femslash Is a Political Act (and Other Observations of Tolkien Fandom's Genre Non Grata) by @dawnfelagund looks at Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data about femslash: how many people write it, how many people read it, and who exactly are among those groups. The results show that femslash has skyrocketed in popularity among readers in recent years, portending that maybe it won't always be the new genre on the block (much less a "genre non grata"), possibly due to its use as a political expression by fans who feel marginalized based on gender, sexual orientation, or both.

#cultus dispatches #tolkien #tolkien fanfiction #femslash #tolkien fandom history #tolkien fanfiction survey

[rhfffas]

i need that bi history major ASAP

#toh #the owl house #luz nuceda #lgbt #wlw #queer #lgbtqia #tv show #sapphic #femslash #bisexual #bi history

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

Femslash February Celebrates Black Women

Are y’all still using the  “Femslash February Celebrates Black Women” tag? Because, that is so helpful when I’m trying to specifically find us. Them people put “Black” in ANY post, making searches virtually impossible to do easily. It’s Black History Month. I deserve to be able to see hella Black wlw content when I try to search. Help a sista find the things.

At any rate. Never hesitate to send me things. Sometimes people try to tag me to things, but I can’t express enough to y’all that I have a long history on this site and have been blocked by many people. 

#Femslash February Celebrates Black Women #Femslash February #Femslash #for tagging purposes #black women #black wlw #wlw #february #BFCD Black History Month #FFCBW

[femslashhistorian]

🎉 Best AO3 fanfic titles / tags - part 1  👍

The S in "Malira" Stands For "Straight"

The S in "Malira" Stands For "Straight" series by solarfyn (Teen Wolf)

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1971934

#ao3 #best ao3 titles and tags #malia tate x kira yukimura #teen wolf femslash fic rec #femslash history #femslash

[booasaur]

Harlan Coben's Shelter - 1x06

#shelteredit #shelter on prime #harlan coben's shelter #shira bolitar #hannah taylor #constance zimmer #missi pyle #shelter 1x06 #shelter spoilers #hannah x shira #femslash related stuff #they have me in such a stranglehold #like they're not the main story--at all #but the amount of depth and history they've given them #and these two actors! they're just so good #and this dynamic they've fully brought to life #the ease and humor and familiarity

[carelesscuriosity]

TUMBLR DYKES!!! GO VOTE FOR TILLOW!!! It’s being beaten by Bubbline in a most influential ships poll

https://x.com/dykejedis/status/1777528149594472889

#calling upon the lesbians who know their history to vote in this stupid twitter poll lol #tillow #lesbian #wlw ship #femslash #buffy the vampire slayer #willow rosenberg #tara mclay #it already beat Xena and I refuse to let it stomp another actually influential ship

[classicsapphicships]

Why do you cling to the whole classic thing when everyone keeps telling you it doesn't fit? Just pick a different name or something at this point and get over it.

Well, anon, now I can never change it. You've underestimated how much sheer spite I am fueled by each and every day.

But just for argument's sake, since people still disagree. Based on the criteria for the polls and the ships included, what would you call the blog and bracket? What username would you use for the blog? I am genuinely curious at this point, because I did not anticipate so much pushback on 'classic' instead of ships included and general ship wars. I fully expected a dozen messages about 'but where is my ship' or 'why that ship from this fandom instead of this one" instead.

#not polls #no changing the criteria #Because if we stick to 'classic is at least 20 years' definition from cars and movies we get like 10 ships #maybe 15 if we don't stick to 1 per fandom #I think how far fandom has come in the last 5-10 years makes people forget how small and recent widespread femslash really is #As it is 5-8 years covers the same percentage of femslash history as 25 years does for 'classic' cars and films #if we go much earlier than 2010 we're in 'antique' area for the same percentage of history

[shinhatisgirlfriend]

“I swore myself to my house, to Pre,” Rook scowled. “I did not swear to a blade. My oath is yours, Bo-Katan Kryze.” Bo-Katan’s heart pounded. “Then swear it now. Both of you.”

As Death Watch’s leadership changes in the wake of the disastrous events on Concordia, Bo-Katan Kryze, Ursa Wren, and Rook Kast swear new vows.

Happy Femslash February!! Here's some UrsaBoRook for day 5, vows~

@starwarssapphicweek

#ursaborook #ursa x bo-katan x rook #ursa wren #bo-katan kryze #rook kast #star wars wlw #star wars femslash #star wars sapphics #my writing #star wars #ao3 link #fanfiction #swfsf2024 #wont go down in history #its can be read as a standalone but is part of WGDIH