ONTD Original: Lesbians of Fandom

[imnotasquirrel]

ONTD University recently spearheaded the most comprehensive study of lesbian subcultures in fandom. A 1,398 page report was published in the academic journal Cultural Anthropology. This groundbreaking report contributed to US News ranking ONTD U #1 on its annual list of Best Livejournal Colleges.

Please see below for report highlights:

Lesbians

Comments

[latexana]

It IS a TERRIBLE book! I was horrified while reading it! Why people like it? Not only is in first person, there are parts of it that are in first person PRESENT!!!!!!!

I know the "Ive read better fanfic" is a cliche by now, but for a book that reads so fanfic-y thats especially relevant.

[ahkna]

All of them and none of them, I guess. Probably closest to Xena lesbians because no ship has ever topped XG for epicness. But I no longer do fandom of any kind because they're too tiring. The way fandom has moved away from longform social media to shortform social media just does not appeal to me.

I'm a soap lesbian now.

20+ years of Charity Dingle being a biconic trashbaby. Classic Emmerdale is up to 2001 now so we're neck deep in Charity's affair with the original soap lesbian Zoe Tate.

[itsme_eloise]

The way fandom has moved away from longform social media to shortform social media just does not appeal to me.

I agree with this wholeheartedly and think you've articulated a big reason why fandoms don't feel like a community anymore.

[ahkna]

You just can't get an in-depth character analysis on twitter. Tumblr doesn't have a way to have conversations like on LJ or a way to interact on forums.

Another that's made me drift away from fandom is that there are so many f/f ships on tv that a lot of lesbian fandom is watching clips of the characters kissing but not the rest of the show. Just dozens ships via only clips. I'm not interested in only seeing attractive women kissing, you know? I want to watch an actual show in which those women take part and I'd rather watch and discuss one or two than semi-watch parts of a bunch.

[mammary_glands]

lolbye also contributed, please correct the OP note 💅🏽

Also I wanna apologize on behalf of the research team for the lack of a creepy Christen Press/Tobin Heath shipper section. Part 2!

[crazylike_afox]

I fucking love these two.

[crazylike_afox]

And I do weirdly ship Roman/Gerri.

[ahkna]

the 50 year age gap weirds me out waaaay too much for romance.

[malorn]

Love them! But in a BFFsAF sort of way, not a sexy times ship way.

[tanglespiders]

Man, I've really gotta watch Yellowjackets

and idk, I feel like a lot of Korrasami and Bubbiline shippers moved into the Trashbian genus

[lolbye]

yellowjackets is pure dyke cinema

[bingobronson]

Yellowjackets was overrated imo. 😬