Women in fanfiction (or not)

[auronlu]

Apparently, discussions are happening around fandom about the lack of female characters in fanfiction and a similar problem in original (published) fiction. They're also discussing the problem that one may become hyper-sensitive about making women too strong, too flawed, too anything because one is too self-conscious about perpetrating stereotypes. (Something I am not always careful enough about, la.)

I've only seen a few of these posts. I am flitting at the edges of the discussion, since (a) I use fanfiction and LJ  as a brain break (b) most of the discussion seems to be about lack of women in the m/m slash fanfiction community, where I'm not active. When I do speak up in those discussions, I'm afraid I sound too smug/preachy/insensitive. ("Well, just write them!" or "Hey, read some of ours, then...I know some authors who can show you how it's done!")

So I don't have many insightful things to say on that discussion, other than the fact that I'm very glad that people are having it.

Here's what I want to say.

Dear Flist.

I love you folks. Never do I have to look far to find stories with plausible and interesting women of many kinds. Yuri, het, gen, whatever -- women are an integral part of the stories you tell, and it would never occur to you to excise them. Those folks on my flist who write m/m also have many stories with well-developed female characters.

Because of you, I didn't realize that we might be existing in a somewhat atypical bubble of fandom/fanfiction where *gasp* women exist. (Although I'm not quite sure of that -- a wide-angle view of fandom is very dependent on vantage point).

I just wanna say...thank you for being! Keep writing! 

 

Comments

(frozen)

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

Xena/Gabrielle is canon, not fanon, as far as many fans of the show are concerned.

A lesbian family I know up in Camarillo has the biggest collection of Xena props in the U.S.

I never watched more than a couple episodes, and heard that it had a severe endingFAIL, but it was a great dynamic between those two whether you see it as a women buddy story (doesn't have to be sex) or the best lesbian couple on TV in the 90s.

Alas, I haven't seen DS9 since 1993, and don't think I could write Dax anymore!

(frozen)

[trekqueen.livejournal.com]

yea, I missed out on a lot of the show because I was in the middle of finishing up my final years in high school and lots of AP classes, doing homework, etc... so that was right around the same time I also missed out on the final season of DS9. I didn't see the last two seasons of Xena but I did hear about what happened and I was a bit sad about that. Bah, my two fave shows at the time having serious ending FAILS.

and agreed on the Xena/Gabrielle thing, one of my favorite parts was when Xena lived in Bruce Campbell's character's body after she had a death thing going on. She was talking with Gabrielle and went to kiss her and that's when Campbell 'came back to his body' and was kissing Gabrielle. He had this moment of... um... guess you girls worked it out? in a "whatever floats your boat" sort of way. *snerk*