yuletide and Slashcentricity

[alixtii]

I counted the number of fandoms I offered for yuletide for [Bad username or site: the fourthvine @ livejournal.com]'s poll here, and it turns out that I offered 34 fandoms, with maybe a half-dozen of them limited by characters.

I don't know how to articulate my criterion for deciding whether to offer a fandom beyond the question ""Can I wrote a story in this fandom?" but it seems there was a counter-criterion as well: "Am I likely to get a request that will focus on an aspect of the universe which I'm not interesting in writing?" aka "I will get to write about women, right?" It's not that I have a problem with writing m/m, but there are canons which are constructed so that it'd be difficult to get outside a given relationship and make it my own. I could write Homer fanfic, but I didn't offer to write it because I know I'd totally get Achilles/Agemanon rather than Helen/Cassandra. Some of these may be totally my imagination, but I'm very conscious that we're not just talking about my flist here, but people whose tastes might be--gasp!--mainstream.

Although the slash overwhelms in other places, too, and ones where I'd totally never expect it. A lot of people seem to be assuming Carrisford/Crewe is the Little Princess paring, when there is totally Carrisford/Carmichael and Sara/Becky and Sara/Ermengarde and Sara/Donald(?) and Sara/Anne and--for the incest--totally Maria/Amelia. Not to mention the UC ship I shipped before I even knew what UC ships were, back when I was twelve: Carrisford/Amelia. And there was a perfectly good Carrisford/Crewe last year.

During the character suggestion phases I tried to put as many female characters who were missing back into their respective fandoms, but there were an awful lot missing, you know? And some who really should never have been left out in the first place.

Not that I really have that much of a problem with fandom's slashcentricity, not really. Unlike most of my fellow femslashers, I deal with privilege every day in the real world; I don't need it in fandom. But I do weep (okay, not literally) to see perfectly wonderful female characters being passed over.

Comments

[wisdomeagle]

...

I thought the Little Princess OTP was Crewe/Crewe. I must be confusing myself with fandom-at-large again.

I mostly said I could write anything in any fandom; I limited characters in only three fandoms, one because I couldn't write the canon het, one because I hate the fannishly favorite character, and a third because it was really multiple fandoms kind of squished together.

And yeah. I console myself about the possiblity of being forced to write boyslash by remembering that I will likely be forcing someone to write... hem... outside of their comfort zone... in my requests. Hee.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I thought the Little Princess OTP was Crewe/Crewe. I must be confusing myself with fandom-at-large again.

Yeah, that's just you, I'm afraid (although I totally see Crewe/Crewe). Although I think we'd both be totally down with Sara/Carrisford (it sorta has that Matilda/Miss Honey vibe to it).

And for the number of times that FHB calls Sara "queer," you'd think girlslash would write itself....

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Sigh, I definitely noticed that about female characters being left out.

You can limit what you're volunteering to write to the female characters, but even so, you might not get the requests.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

That's basically what I did for 2007. I'll tell you how it turned out in a couple weeks.

[franzeska]

When I entered one of the fandoms I was considering requesting or offering, I hadn't yet seen the movie, so I just added the entire character list from the imdb... I'm a bit nervous about what requests I'm going to get now.

--Franzi, wandering by from google blogsearch

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

How did it turn out?

[franzeska]

I got something much more obscure instead of that fandom.