Why I love femslash!
Oh my, let me count out the reasons!
If you look at the shows getting so much attention from the femslash community these days (Women's Murder Club, Criminal Minds, Bionic Woman, etc), you'll notice some striking similarities: tough, strong women that are quite feminine in appearance but boarder on androgynous in their mannerisms. The show writers will throw in a CQW (cute guy of the week) to appease the hetero audience members but play up the "eyeshagging" between the ladies to keep the queer girls hanging on.
In spite of the fact that it is now 2008, gay folks are still looking for kernels of anything gay on TV shows. Go to say WMC's message board and suggest the utter insanity of there possibly being a lesbian in a group of female crimefighters living in San Francisco (queers? in San Fran? never heard of such a thing), and you'll be soundly and unanimously shot down. A lesbian love interest on a show will be the death of the show according to these folks, but they'll be the first to buy a Girl's Gone Wild video for a glimpse of girl-on-girl action.
There's also a collective cry from the hetero viewers about why we simply MUST make everything gay. Well, when everything is straight, sometimes you need to do what's necessary to save your mind from frazzeling into a heap of mindless goo. Seriously, everything in our world is SOOOO straight! Over the holidays, I watched mind-numbing after mind-numbing show about "family" and yet none reflected MY family. Every commercial, every show, every event, every outing, EVERYTHING is hetero!!!!
That's where Femslash fanfiction comes in. Thank God for FEMSLASH!!!! I think of femslash as a way of getting even of sorts. Let 'em have their straight San Fran crime fighters. We'll give these shows the spice they need and have them screaming like banshees with each other in the bedroom (and numerous other places). They'll be doing things that wouldn't even be shown on the L Word (the unedited director's cut, at that!).
This is similar to another show from years back (drum roll please): Xena. A look, a touch, a quipped line and suddenly the fanfic writers let out a collective *squee* of delight. The tap, tap, tap of keyboards could be heard around the world. :)
The Lindsay/Cindy interplay on WMC has been likened to the delicate tension between Xena and Gabrielle. Come on, don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about! Both have an older, more sophisticated woman taking a shine to a younger, more naive woman. Cindy follows Lindsay all over, insisting that Lindsay needs her, much like Gabrielle did. Cindy is ALWAYS getting into trouble that Lindsay has to get her out of. Lindsay is definitely the dark, brooding, emotionally distant type that pushes Cindy away (or tries to) in order to protect herself from getting hurt. Cindy is so cute that she's annoying, just sugar sweet and too good to be true. AND she's a talker...like our lovely Gabrielle. I tell ya, ABC could have a good thing here if they don't blow it.
BUT, they probably will blow it. If they listen to the idiocy on those message boards, they probably won't follow the tried and true methods discovered through Xena. The producers and writers could easily have the best of both worlds and both sets of viewers, but they'll probably give in to fear.
This all makes me wonder one thing: Xena gave us the first real femslashable story and created an underworld of fabulous writing, correct? After years of fans, especially lesbian fans, hounding Xena's producers and writers for a love story to the point that we got it (in a manner of speaking), and after years of creating wonderful fanfiction, did we unknowingly acquiesce the world of TV to the hetero viewers? In other words, did our own creativity to design a world we understand and would like to live in actually make us less likely to challenge the PTB (powers that be) for storylines that represent us?
Whatever the answer, LONG LIVE FEMSLASH!!!
If you look at the shows getting so much attention from the femslash community these days (Women's Murder Club, Criminal Minds, Bionic Woman, etc), you'll notice some striking similarities: tough, strong women that are quite feminine in appearance but boarder on androgynous in their mannerisms. The show writers will throw in a CQW (cute guy of the week) to appease the hetero audience members but play up the "eyeshagging" between the ladies to keep the queer girls hanging on.
In spite of the fact that it is now 2008, gay folks are still looking for kernels of anything gay on TV shows. Go to say WMC's message board and suggest the utter insanity of there possibly being a lesbian in a group of female crimefighters living in San Francisco (queers? in San Fran? never heard of such a thing), and you'll be soundly and unanimously shot down. A lesbian love interest on a show will be the death of the show according to these folks, but they'll be the first to buy a Girl's Gone Wild video for a glimpse of girl-on-girl action.
There's also a collective cry from the hetero viewers about why we simply MUST make everything gay. Well, when everything is straight, sometimes you need to do what's necessary to save your mind from frazzeling into a heap of mindless goo. Seriously, everything in our world is SOOOO straight! Over the holidays, I watched mind-numbing after mind-numbing show about "family" and yet none reflected MY family. Every commercial, every show, every event, every outing, EVERYTHING is hetero!!!!
That's where Femslash fanfiction comes in. Thank God for FEMSLASH!!!! I think of femslash as a way of getting even of sorts. Let 'em have their straight San Fran crime fighters. We'll give these shows the spice they need and have them screaming like banshees with each other in the bedroom (and numerous other places). They'll be doing things that wouldn't even be shown on the L Word (the unedited director's cut, at that!).
This is similar to another show from years back (drum roll please): Xena. A look, a touch, a quipped line and suddenly the fanfic writers let out a collective *squee* of delight. The tap, tap, tap of keyboards could be heard around the world. :)
The Lindsay/Cindy interplay on WMC has been likened to the delicate tension between Xena and Gabrielle. Come on, don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about! Both have an older, more sophisticated woman taking a shine to a younger, more naive woman. Cindy follows Lindsay all over, insisting that Lindsay needs her, much like Gabrielle did. Cindy is ALWAYS getting into trouble that Lindsay has to get her out of. Lindsay is definitely the dark, brooding, emotionally distant type that pushes Cindy away (or tries to) in order to protect herself from getting hurt. Cindy is so cute that she's annoying, just sugar sweet and too good to be true. AND she's a talker...like our lovely Gabrielle. I tell ya, ABC could have a good thing here if they don't blow it.
BUT, they probably will blow it. If they listen to the idiocy on those message boards, they probably won't follow the tried and true methods discovered through Xena. The producers and writers could easily have the best of both worlds and both sets of viewers, but they'll probably give in to fear.
This all makes me wonder one thing: Xena gave us the first real femslashable story and created an underworld of fabulous writing, correct? After years of fans, especially lesbian fans, hounding Xena's producers and writers for a love story to the point that we got it (in a manner of speaking), and after years of creating wonderful fanfiction, did we unknowingly acquiesce the world of TV to the hetero viewers? In other words, did our own creativity to design a world we understand and would like to live in actually make us less likely to challenge the PTB (powers that be) for storylines that represent us?
Whatever the answer, LONG LIVE FEMSLASH!!!