The Trouble With Fangirls

Sometimes you can have too many actual life-affecting feels about fictional characters, ladies.

A lot of my favourite shows, especially those with prominent LGBT themes/characters, have extremely devoted fanbases, filled with people who adore the shows with all their fannish hearts and let the whole world know about it. There's nothing wrong with that; I consider myself to be a fangirl for all sorts of stuff (Mass Effect, BtVS, Angel, Lost Girl etc), and I enjoy the jokes and japes and sense of community that goes with it.

But, as with everything, there should be boundaries. When people start deciding actors' sexual identities, just because they played a gay/bi character once in their lives or aren't currently married to someone of the opposite gender, that boundary has been crossed. When people start shouting at writers through Twitter because they decided not to ship the same ships the fans do, that boundary has been crossed. And worst of all: when fangirls turn on each other and initiate stupid slanging matches, guess what? Boundary = crossed.

I couldn't give a shit about either side in Lost Girl's Great Doccubus/Valkubus Divide. Swan Queen became less and less interesting to me because Once Upon a Time got stuck in the mud at the beginning of season 2, and has been spinning its wheels ever since. I would never, ever ask the lead actor in a new show (which was the case when this interview was done) if she "identified as bisexual at all". And guess what? Despite all this, I let people get on with saying what they want and liking what they want because everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I'm entitled to agree or not - but if you even think about having a pop at the Great Ms. Snarker, I will have your little gay guts for garters.

OMG THE FEEEEEEEELLLSSS :'(

When I was a teenager, Willow and Tara were the first lesbians I ever saw on mainstream TV (Brookside was a bit before my time, before you ask...). Right now we have Lost Girl, Orange is the New Black, Orphan Black, Wentworth, Grey's Anatomy, Pretty Little Liars...that's a hell of a lot more lesbian/bi representation than I could have dreamed of as a slightly confused, weirded-out-by-myself teenager, even if it's not completely perfect. Rather than demand this or that from the writers and showrunners, shouldn't we be sending rainbows and unicorns and muffin baskets (oh my!) their way? Shouldn't we celebrate, discuss, study, analyse these shows and give them the attention they deserve? Maybe if we focused on all the awesome stuff we get to see at the moment, and let the whole world and the crazy internets know about how much we care about our favourite shows, someone would eventually listen and we'd get what we so desperately need - better, more well-rounded shows featuring female LGBT characters that represent the people we are and, hey, the fact that we bloody exist.

Fangirlish bickering about one ship vs. another just won't cut it. Adult conversations, in-depth discussions, curiosity and excitement are the things writers and showrunners dream of - who doesn't like to know that their work is appreciated?

(And assuming that an actor is a lesbian because they totes made out with a girl on The L Word is just fucking weird. THEY'RE ACTORS. STOP IT.)

Shipping Will Be The Death Of My Work Ethic

I used to write a fair bit of fanfiction - much of which didn't make it to the interwebs due to a failure to be any good - and though I've had to put it on the backburner for a while, I still love to trawl the archives of fanfiction.net, LiveJournal and Twice Bitten (a lovely fanfiction archive specifically for cancelled Canadian show Blood Ties) to get my escapism fix.

I like most things really, so long as it's not PWP or too fluffy, but recently I've taken to reading shippers like some sort of lovestruck teenager, and the only explanation I currently have is that there are so many awesome couples being shipped out there at the moment that it's difficult not to get all swept up and swoony about them. I used to read general fics; now I'm a complete shipster. Someone please shoot me before I start waxing lyrical about Lost Girl's Doccubus, Once Upon a Time's Regina/Emma (for all the ihateyouiloveyouifancyyouKISSME! scenes), Rizzoli & Isles' Rizzles, Legend of the Seeker's Kahlan/Cara and The Secret Circle's Cassie/Faye, because I could literally be here all evening - and all I would do is talk you to a very femslash-y, often subtexty death. I love it so much that I even ship Katherine/Caroline though I don't watch The Vampire Diaries - it was basically a case of 'ooooh, they are somewhat attractive, are both vampires and a little badass. Why not?!'

The only problem with ship/femslash fics - and this is a big problem - is the sex scenes. I don't know why, but I've always been funny about how sex scenes are written, mainly because most of what you see on TV, for example the adpsjsglkasjghOMFG factor of Doccubus as of LG 2.06, is impossible to translate into language hot enough, unless said language was actually sizzling. It just loses something on translation, and is not helped by fanfic authors either a) getting a little too creative when describing various, um, parts (thus causing unintended hilarity) or b) just getting it WRONG.

You know what's sometimes a little sexier than writing about everything that happens in the bedroom? Writing about the events that lead up to it, creating a bit of reader tension, and letting your characters go into the bedroom - without you. A fair amount of fanfiction is, arguably, based on the escapist fantasies of its fans (not always in a sex-type way, of course), but the key to good fic writing in this regard is knowing how much flesh to flash. There's nothing that kills the magic of a romantic moment more than a poorly chosen word; you can have that one for free...