Shipping and AO3

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I wrote up something here in response to The Niche which was based on this on tumblr.

Feel free to respond here or there. Thought we could use a conversation starter.

Comments

[reinadefuego]

It's kinda the unfortunate downside to there being so few female characters in the source material to begin with, and is pretty representative of AO3 as a slash juggernaut.

[chelseagirl]

Yeah, I mean, I could list a few dozen female characters offhand who interest me a lot, beginning with Carol, Peggy, Jessica, Nat, Buffy, Willow, Scully, Wynonna, etc etc etc. But I do tend to seek out media with significant female representation, with some exceptions.

I find plenty of fic that's female-centered, whether gen, f/f or f/m. AO3 is large enough that there's room for us all. But then in lists like this or in memes or etc, I'm startled by how marginal all of that apparently is.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I don't really seek out media anymore--I used to watch a lot of tv and then I read a lot. Now, what I do mediawise tends to be predicated on fandom and access. Somethings I might be into will probably be gif set only.

My reaction may give an impression of my view.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

It is true that many sources are short female characters. I think I read that on average (which means some sources are much worse) there is one significant woman to every five men of note.

I was also around for how Samantha Carter was treated- sometimes the reasonable anger towards TPTB got directed at the character or in fact Amanda Tapping, and instead of critiquing the poor writing and directing choices of Canon (I'm staring right at Stalker Peter) fandom leaned into the vexing character beats.

AO3 is a slash juggernaut; many of the older zine fandoms that were het either never made transition to the internet or are still on private archives/author websites. Remington Steele and Scarecrow & Mrs. King are two I've read in, and I've written a little of the first.

In the wake of the excellent acceptance speech of the henceforth Astounding New Writer Award, I think we should examine Why and How we've got the media and fandom landscape that we do. Some of it is works that do have women in better proportions so satisfy their audience writing fanfiction isn't the itch that say The Sentinel was during original broadcast. I've not run any statistics but my gut sense (from mailing lists) is due South fandom produced fewer procedural stories than comparable media. The niggle that sent fans to their keyboards were relationship based, whether that was slash, het, gen, or the elusive femslash.

[chelseagirl]

I was around for the transition from zines to online posting, but my main fandoms then were Forever Knight and Buffy, which were pretty gender balanced and had plenty of het ships as well as slash -- and of course in Buffy, canon f/f.

After that I drifted in and out of fandoms, due to a change of where my energies were focused, and I stayed on LJ, then DW mostly to stay in touch with friends I'd made through fandom. I got back into writing fic through Yuletide maybe five years ago, and perhaps it's not surprising that in the smaller fandoms exchange, I've matched on requests for stories that were f/m or f/f oriented: The Hour, The Bletchley Circle, Halt & Catch Fire.

For whatever that's worth.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Ah! I came in post Perpetual September but frequently am the only non-digital native about.

I watched Forever Knight, but not the episode That Didn't Happen; read about that online. Buffy I only know by osmosis; it was on cable. SG-1 I didn't actually see until sometime after 2005 iirc.

I missed most of LJ, joining them possibly mere months before DW. Besides MCU I've done Wilby Wonderful and a book series and that's pretty much it for 21st century fandoms.