This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.
I started reading fanfic at around ten mostly due to my sister leaving websites open on the computer, at twelve I got into slash fiction because again my sister left it open on the computer, and at thirteen I got into femslash. This time though it was because I went looking for it, for a little while I did have the attitude that slash and femslash were gross, and then that changed to just femslash was gross, and then while watching Xena I had to stop and think. It was just another way of looking at pairings, and more importantly to thirteen year old me: more fanfics to read.
I didn’t start writing until about three years ago however, when I discovered a lack of fanfics for a femslash pairing I wanted to see in a relatively tiny fandom. At the time I had only just figured out my bisexuality and writing these characters felt like some relief in me getting to explore my own sexuality through them. Now a days writing femslash is one of my favourite things to do because I find female characters more interesting to write and I love writing fluff where they get to fall in love.
That being said, writing femslash can be tough. Unless you’re in a fandom with predominately lady characters or there’s a canon femslash pairing (and sometimes not even those two factors help), femslash doesn’t get as much of a draw in as other pairings do. Out of all the fics I’ve written on ao3 only three out one hundred of my femslash fics are in the top twenty most kudos. (at my time of writing this) Which honestly at times is very disheartening to me, it makes it harder for me to write without buy in from others.
But at the same time I’m driven by spite and my love of the characters and my love of the ship, which is really my recommendation for any writers who want to get into femslash. Not the spite thing, though personally it helps me, but remembering how much you love the characters both individually and together. Fandom might ignore it, or not pay too attention, but if you’re really loving them enough to try to write for them, believe me that is one hell of an achievement on its own.
While I do love writing those characters bouncing ideas of their friends when it comes to an evolving relationship, I started writing femslash with just those two characters I wanted to fall in love and no one else. It was easier for me to ignore the rest of the characters until I got to the point where I felt secure enough in my writing to bring them in for other interactions while still have the story revolve around the central femslash pairing. It’d be my advice to anyone starting out, figure out those two first, how you want to write them and how you want them to interact and then from there evolve.
Of course that might not work for everybody and I can only speak from personal experience but then I guess that’s what this essay is about. Because my personal experience with femslash and figuring out my writing has gotten me some of the best fandom friends I ever could have asked for. It’s helped me figure out parts of my own life and choices and made me think a lot about fandom as a whole and where I fit into it.
At the end of the day, writing femslash is just fun for me (well unless I’m making it angsty but that’s once in blue moon anyway), it’s about making up situations and picturing how the characters react to them all while trying to keep it in the realm of believability for those characters. It’s a challenge to be sure but no more than one that I found while writing slash or het pairings, it was just more enjoyable to me because it meant more to me. It had helped me in a time I needed it.
I know the fandoms can be scary and writing for the first time can be tough, but I hope that anyone trying out for writing femslash gets to have as much fun as I have.
About the Author: Beej is a multifandom bisexual fangirl who’s main goal is to write for rare pairs and all the femslash she can. She keeps her fics here on Ao3 and here on Tumblr and is open to prompts for those pairings.
