Why should girlslash be more like boyslash? No, seriously, why?
This post was inspired by this comment on twtd's The State of Femslash: January 2009.
However, for anyone not wanting to click, let me c&p the pertinent parts of the comment by lysachan, whom I don't know at all:
In my opinion, pretty much all the problems within the femslash fandom in general can be explained by its fairly small size when compared to, say, the slash fadom. Because of the fairly small number of writers & fics, there is no hierarchy or a pecking order of sorts which the slash fandoms most certainly have. I think it's exactly this hierarchy which a) makes criticism (constructive & otherwise) more common in the slash fadom, and b) decreases the amount of badfic as authors considered "bad" are quickly banished from fandom (whether that's a good thing, though, deserves a meta post of its own).
My first reaction: WTF? (I made a more verbose reply, which you can see if you click the link.)
Right, so. Let me elaborate. Why does the answer to "how does femslash change and grow bigger and better" invariably turn into "be more like boyslash?" Because, really, femslash is nothing like boyslash fic-wise (and while there are elements of boyslash fics I would really like femslash to steal, like the cracked out insane stuff), why do we need to become a clone of something else?
Femslash isn't boyslash, and that's okay. What boyslash has works for them, it seems from a mostly-outsider perspective, and I'm glad of that. But femslash doesn't necessarily need the same things boyslash does.
Why do we need a pecking order? I don't consider femslash to be an especially nurturing environment to beginners, and that should certainly change, but why do we need a hierarchy of femslash fen? For one, there are plenty of bad boyslash authors out there. No one has the power to banish bad writers of any genre, and while there are people I would love to say "you, out of my fandom!" to, there are others who aren't good writers, but will, eventually, develop into them. Those writers need to be nurtured, or at least left to find their niche, not to be henpecked at by BNF.
Pecking orders to banish bad writers? Bad. (I'm not a fan of fannish pecking orders in general, admittedly.) I'm willing to put up with gobs of bad writers in order to find the gems. Mostly because I have to put up with bad writers. (There's one prolific and awful author in particular whom I've been warned about repeatedly by people who don't even know each other, which I find to be HILARIOUS and sad at the same time.)
All that said, I don't have the time or the energy to nurture newbies to femslash. I have a pretty busy RL. But then again, I'm willing to read the newbies, and I leap at anyone who writes something different than the femslash norm.
I think this is why I often feel insulated from femslash fandom at large. I'm not, really, that insulated from it. I know. But I feel that way sometimes, because, for example, I don't OTP, not the way that some femslashers do.
To use the Gateverse as an example, there are some people who will not ever read or write anything other than Sam/Janet, period, end of story. That's their OTP. OTPs to that level are the norm for femslash. I, on the other hand, am going to read that Sam/Vala fic, or the Sam/Elizabeth fic, and when someone posts the rare Janet/Vala? I'm all over that, because those two would be scary together. But fun. (But, really, if you write Elizabeth/Vala or Teyla/Vala, I promise to love you forever.)
Are there even femslash BNFs? Do we need femslash BNFs? You have some people who run comms, and archives, and generally more well-known femslashers, but I don't know. What do you guys think? Are femslash BNFs, such as we have them, the same as boyslash (or het or gen) BNFs? Should they be?
Plus how do femslashers break out of the OTP and same-kinds-of-stories mold that a lot of us are stuck in? (No, not all of us, I know.)
What I want femslash to do is to find its own way of developing, not to take the same model that boyslash does, and then try to apply it to femslash. Why not take what works, and then discard what doesn't apply to us?
However, for anyone not wanting to click, let me c&p the pertinent parts of the comment by lysachan, whom I don't know at all:
In my opinion, pretty much all the problems within the femslash fandom in general can be explained by its fairly small size when compared to, say, the slash fadom. Because of the fairly small number of writers & fics, there is no hierarchy or a pecking order of sorts which the slash fandoms most certainly have. I think it's exactly this hierarchy which a) makes criticism (constructive & otherwise) more common in the slash fadom, and b) decreases the amount of badfic as authors considered "bad" are quickly banished from fandom (whether that's a good thing, though, deserves a meta post of its own).
My first reaction: WTF? (I made a more verbose reply, which you can see if you click the link.)
Right, so. Let me elaborate. Why does the answer to "how does femslash change and grow bigger and better" invariably turn into "be more like boyslash?" Because, really, femslash is nothing like boyslash fic-wise (and while there are elements of boyslash fics I would really like femslash to steal, like the cracked out insane stuff), why do we need to become a clone of something else?
Femslash isn't boyslash, and that's okay. What boyslash has works for them, it seems from a mostly-outsider perspective, and I'm glad of that. But femslash doesn't necessarily need the same things boyslash does.
Why do we need a pecking order? I don't consider femslash to be an especially nurturing environment to beginners, and that should certainly change, but why do we need a hierarchy of femslash fen? For one, there are plenty of bad boyslash authors out there. No one has the power to banish bad writers of any genre, and while there are people I would love to say "you, out of my fandom!" to, there are others who aren't good writers, but will, eventually, develop into them. Those writers need to be nurtured, or at least left to find their niche, not to be henpecked at by BNF.
Pecking orders to banish bad writers? Bad. (I'm not a fan of fannish pecking orders in general, admittedly.) I'm willing to put up with gobs of bad writers in order to find the gems. Mostly because I have to put up with bad writers. (There's one prolific and awful author in particular whom I've been warned about repeatedly by people who don't even know each other, which I find to be HILARIOUS and sad at the same time.)
All that said, I don't have the time or the energy to nurture newbies to femslash. I have a pretty busy RL. But then again, I'm willing to read the newbies, and I leap at anyone who writes something different than the femslash norm.
I think this is why I often feel insulated from femslash fandom at large. I'm not, really, that insulated from it. I know. But I feel that way sometimes, because, for example, I don't OTP, not the way that some femslashers do.
To use the Gateverse as an example, there are some people who will not ever read or write anything other than Sam/Janet, period, end of story. That's their OTP. OTPs to that level are the norm for femslash. I, on the other hand, am going to read that Sam/Vala fic, or the Sam/Elizabeth fic, and when someone posts the rare Janet/Vala? I'm all over that, because those two would be scary together. But fun. (But, really, if you write Elizabeth/Vala or Teyla/Vala, I promise to love you forever.)
Are there even femslash BNFs? Do we need femslash BNFs? You have some people who run comms, and archives, and generally more well-known femslashers, but I don't know. What do you guys think? Are femslash BNFs, such as we have them, the same as boyslash (or het or gen) BNFs? Should they be?
Plus how do femslashers break out of the OTP and same-kinds-of-stories mold that a lot of us are stuck in? (No, not all of us, I know.)
What I want femslash to do is to find its own way of developing, not to take the same model that boyslash does, and then try to apply it to femslash. Why not take what works, and then discard what doesn't apply to us?