Meta: Girlslash OTPs
Okay, I'm still thinking about femslash08 and related topics. One of the arguments I've made more than once in this journal is that femslash is more different than m/m slash than one might at first think, they each have their own histories (each within the greater history of media fandom, of course), tropes, conventions, and expectations. Some of these are fairly easy to make like the different role of genderswap or mpreg vs. fpreg. One "difference" that has never been quite so easy to demonstrate, however, has been my claim that femslash fandom is less OTP-oriented than m/m slash fandom. To me, girlslash is something one finds hiding in the interstices of a canon--and indeed, it's one of the things I really love about it. We manage to find the really interesting points of connection in canon, those that would be impossible to find if we weren't already actively searching, in a type of search which just isn't necessary if one is interested in male characters.
The exceptions are obvious: Law and Order, Xena: Warrior Princess, Wicked (although the RPF wing of such isn't nearly as OTP-oriented as it once was, as more and more actors take over the roles of Galinda and Elphaba), possibly Star Trek: Voyager. I always think of these fandoms being set up "like boyslash fandoms"; think of the way Xena, textually speaking, parallels a Starsky&Hutch or Due South--or, more obviously in its format. (People sometimes want to add BtVS, with Buffy/Faith, to the list of femslash OTPS, but I don't buy it--in my experience, Buffy femslash fandom embraces rarepairs like an embracing thing embraces an embraced thing with a vengeance.)
And there's a spattering of smaller (Yuletide-sized, but showing up on femslash_today with fair consistency nonetheless), mostly film, fandoms where activity, such as it is, is almost exclusively centered around an OTP: Devil Wears Prada, Ice Princess, D.E.B.S.
This last one has always astounded me as to just how little is written outside the pairing of Amy/Lucy. How is it that in a canon with rampant general female homosociality like D.E.B.S. has that general homosociality has so largely been ignored in favor of the single canonical OTP? Why are such wonderful female characters as the other D.E.B.S.--Max, Dominique, and my personal favorite, Janet--or Anne and Zoey from Ice Princess passed over? We do not have so many awesome female characters in this world that we can afford to squander them.
But so there are these canons with these highly cathective female/female relationships, and these tend to be OTP-centric. Which makes sense, I guess. (Bring It On does, I believe, have a decent amount of fic involving other characters such as Isis and Big Red, despite having this sort of cathective relationship at its core.)
Within the bigger picture, however, it may still be true--it still feels true to me, although my experience is limited--that girlslash isn't as OTP-heavy as m/m. After all, in order to have the sort of intense same-sex relationship which is a staple of the big m/m fandoms, a canon needs to, as a prerequisite, pass the Bechdel test--still not something that is always easy even in our day and age. Of the canons which do have well-developed female characters, most tend to be ensemble shows (or films or books). And they tend not to be genre shows: I can name shows which haved focused on pairs of sisters, but I think the very idea of a show about two sisters who travel the country hunting demons, with a very limited recurring cast, is still unthinkable even in this post-Buffy world. So Xena is still very much the exception
A quick look at femslash_today confirms this suspicion: while the OTP fandoms provide steady content and cannot be discounted, most femslash still comes from shows which are ensemble and/or genre in character: Battlestar Galactica, the Stargates (and the fic I'm looking at isn't Sam/Janet--I don't know who Janet is at all and only a vague sense of who Sam is, but I know this is sometimes brought up as a potential OTP), Doctor Who, The West Wing, House, Veronica Mars, Buffy, and so forth.
And yet I look at femslash08 and think about what I might offer--and the knowledge that if I'm assigned D.E.B.S., it won't be Janet/Max, and if I'm assigned Ice Princess, it won't be Zoey/Ann.
The exceptions are obvious: Law and Order, Xena: Warrior Princess, Wicked (although the RPF wing of such isn't nearly as OTP-oriented as it once was, as more and more actors take over the roles of Galinda and Elphaba), possibly Star Trek: Voyager. I always think of these fandoms being set up "like boyslash fandoms"; think of the way Xena, textually speaking, parallels a Starsky&Hutch or Due South--or, more obviously in its format. (People sometimes want to add BtVS, with Buffy/Faith, to the list of femslash OTPS, but I don't buy it--in my experience, Buffy femslash fandom embraces rarepairs like an embracing thing embraces an embraced thing with a vengeance.)
And there's a spattering of smaller (Yuletide-sized, but showing up on femslash_today with fair consistency nonetheless), mostly film, fandoms where activity, such as it is, is almost exclusively centered around an OTP: Devil Wears Prada, Ice Princess, D.E.B.S.
This last one has always astounded me as to just how little is written outside the pairing of Amy/Lucy. How is it that in a canon with rampant general female homosociality like D.E.B.S. has that general homosociality has so largely been ignored in favor of the single canonical OTP? Why are such wonderful female characters as the other D.E.B.S.--Max, Dominique, and my personal favorite, Janet--or Anne and Zoey from Ice Princess passed over? We do not have so many awesome female characters in this world that we can afford to squander them.
But so there are these canons with these highly cathective female/female relationships, and these tend to be OTP-centric. Which makes sense, I guess. (Bring It On does, I believe, have a decent amount of fic involving other characters such as Isis and Big Red, despite having this sort of cathective relationship at its core.)
Within the bigger picture, however, it may still be true--it still feels true to me, although my experience is limited--that girlslash isn't as OTP-heavy as m/m. After all, in order to have the sort of intense same-sex relationship which is a staple of the big m/m fandoms, a canon needs to, as a prerequisite, pass the Bechdel test--still not something that is always easy even in our day and age. Of the canons which do have well-developed female characters, most tend to be ensemble shows (or films or books). And they tend not to be genre shows: I can name shows which haved focused on pairs of sisters, but I think the very idea of a show about two sisters who travel the country hunting demons, with a very limited recurring cast, is still unthinkable even in this post-Buffy world. So Xena is still very much the exception
A quick look at femslash_today confirms this suspicion: while the OTP fandoms provide steady content and cannot be discounted, most femslash still comes from shows which are ensemble and/or genre in character: Battlestar Galactica, the Stargates (and the fic I'm looking at isn't Sam/Janet--I don't know who Janet is at all and only a vague sense of who Sam is, but I know this is sometimes brought up as a potential OTP), Doctor Who, The West Wing, House, Veronica Mars, Buffy, and so forth.
And yet I look at femslash08 and think about what I might offer--and the knowledge that if I'm assigned D.E.B.S., it won't be Janet/Max, and if I'm assigned Ice Princess, it won't be Zoey/Ann.