General ENT femslash discussion

[Aquarius]

So, I had some thoughts about the subject and I thought I'd put them out there, see what people think.

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but I see femslash stories getting plenty of hits, but little in the way of acknowledgement from the people who read it. I'm a little surprised by this, because out in the "mundane" (translation: non-fannish) world, girl-on-girl sex is considered pretty heteronormative. Just look at the porn industry. Just about any porn movie out there aimed at guys contains at least one scene featuring two women. So while some segments of our population may have the reaction that this is chauvinistic -- and maybe it is -- my point is, it's at least common enough that I wouldn't think that it's that big of a deal, especially here in the fannish world of Star Trek, where it goes with the assumption that fans are likely to be a bit more open-minded.

By contrast, out in the mundane world, male/male sex still carries taboos in the heteronormative world view, yet it seems to be way more eagerly embraced in fandom than female/female sex.

So I'm wondering, am I missing something and it's all down to the places I'm hanging out? Or is there a fannish-related reason for this inversion that I'm not aware of? Is femslash being tacitly rejected by some *because* there's less of a stigma on it out in the regular world?

Or am I the only person who's given this any thought at all?

[Honeybee]

There does seem to be a dearth of femslash in ENT fandom. Meanwhile, I have gotten the impression it thrives in Voyager fandom.

I must confess I don't see much girl/girl subtext in ENT, and that could be it. There's not even much of a friendship between the two female leads. T'Pol in particular, seems both monogamous and straight. Although, canon has never stopped slash writers before.

I'm glad we've got some stories in the archive (Thanks ME) for those who want to read them. It is curious that while guy/guy slash seems to be huge and vocal in ENT fandom (although still less than het fics in numbers) there just isn't much talk of the possibility of female on female relationships.

[Brandyjane]

I must confess I don't see much girl/girl subtext in ENT, and that could be it. There's not even much of a friendship between the two female leads.

I think it's this. Malcolm, Trip, and Jon are all pretty close. There's just an intensity among the men's relationships that makes it so much more plausible. I've never been into slash before, but even I can see the possibility for all the different possible slash pairings. Hoshi, T'Pol, and Cutler don't have nearly as many scenes together, and the ones they do have tend to be less intimate. The scene in "Sleeping Dogs" where T'Pol takes Hoshi's hand and leads her in a mental exercise is just about the most intimate scene between them. Even the decon scene at the end of that one seems more Hoshi/Reed than Hoshi/T'Pol since there is a definite physical distance between the two. I think there's just not as much to catch a fanfic writer's attention. Outside the MU, it's hard to think of ways to pair up the women of Ent and still keep them in character. It's probably doable, but it's going to be hard. I ran across a few stories that attempted this on another site, but they were either wildly out of character or the result of alien pollen, alien alcohol, etc. I'm curious about where Mistress Euclid's "Girls' Club" is going, because I think she might be able to pull this off.

I'm not that into Voyager, but I know there are a lot of Janeway/Seven stories out there, and I think I heard that there are some Crusher/Troy TNG stories, too.

[Aquarius]

Right. I understand why there isn't a lot of Hoshi/T'Pol out there. RU, it would be borderline crack!ship at best...and MU, while there was more subtext, most would infer that it would be a relationship based on sex alone -- Mistress E's wonderful "Shakiak" notwithstading.

But my question is more about why people do/don't embrace what *is* out there. And not necessarily limited to just Hoshi/T'Pol. I mean, okay, so it's hard to think up a plausible way to bring them together in the RU, so maybe they're not a prime choice for hardcore 'shipping. But PWP has its place, too -- plausibility doesn't factor in there, so what about the people who aren't 'shipping so much as they just want to see two beautiful women hook up? I haven't really seen so much as a "Oh, hell YEAH!" from straight men responding to it as a heteronormative fantasy.

So I'm just sort of wondering how/why the ENT femslash that does exist out there gets read, but not openly embraced by one crowd or the other.

[Brandyjane]

But PWP has its place, too -- plausibility doesn't factor in there, so what about the people who aren't 'shipping so much as they just want to see two beautiful women hook up? I haven't really seen so much as a "Oh, hell YEAH!" from straight men responding to it as a heteronormative fantasy.

I've seen a lot of guys broach the subject on TrekBBS, but they aren't really talking about fanfiction, just the idea of the two characters being together. I think a lot of straight men would find it hot, but how many are actually reading and commenting on Ent fanfiction? I know of several, but the ones I know are mostly Trip/T'Pol 'shippers, so it could be that they just aren't looking for it.

Speaking just for myself, I don't read a lot of NC-17 stuff unless I'm already comfortable with the author and the sex is part of a larger story. Since an in-character femslash story that's not PWP is probably a rare thing in Ent fanfiction, I haven't read much of it. I have read and enjoyed some slash stories involving the men, though. Mainly it's because the conversations we've had on this site have really helped me see the potential of some of those relationships, and I want to see how some of the authors I like handle them. Maybe if there was more "chatter" about the femslash possibilities there would be more interest in reading them, too. The problem is, there's just not all that subtext to analyze with the female characters like there is with the men, so it's kind of hard to keep that conversation going.

There's also a bit of reticence among many people to comment on NC-17 stories, especially if they're PWP.

Just out of curiosity, I just did a little experiment. I went on fanfiction.net and searched for rated M stories with Hoshi and T'Pol. There are four. In contrast, there are 110 for Janeway and Seven of Nine. While maybe not all of them are femslash, I quickly scanned the first page and repeatedly saw the word femslash. Maybe it's just this fandom.

[Mistress Euclid]

There was speculation while Voyager aired the there would be a Seven/Janeway relationship - as there was a definite spark in their scenes and that certainly inspired a lot of writers.

I've written two femslash stories - the first was in the MU and evolved out of a friendship story that seemed to call for it being more of a friendship - both versions of Shakaik work for me within context. It's a stretch of course, to imagine the animosity between Hoshi and T'Pol was fabricated but I was inspired by the 1950s film Diabolique, where there was a secret friendship between a man's wife and mistress with all sorts of sexual overtones.

For Girls' Club, which I just wrote, I was inspired by the rewatch of ANIS as well as a few members of the forum who requested RU femslash (who are not writers). When watching ANIS I couldn't help noticing that Hoshi seemed completely relaxed and not "tense" at all. She was this way in 2D2N - the irony being that she was the one who had sex on the trip. And I thought that wouldn't it be fun if the ship's females just knew how to take care of things without getting all hung up on it? Is this pretty absurd when it comes to canon? Yes, indeed. But it was fun to imagine. Normally, my slash interests lean toward boy and boy - but I like writing whatever mood strikes me.

And if anyone is reticent to read these - Shakaik comes in a PG-13 version and the first chapter of Girls' Club is smut free and - as amazing as it sounds - I considered that just being the story and having it end with the scene in the mess hall.

[Mistress Euclid]

For good measure, I put a PG-13 version of Girls' Club up at ff.net. It is really just the first chapter, presented as stand alone!

[entkayjay]

As an active slasher, and as someone who has followed -- although not always subscribed to in toto -- the circular and often feminist debates of "Why do we slash?" for many years... the answers are about as varied as the people in fandom. (Kind of like "Two economists, three opinions". )

My default position is that slash isn't about sex. No matter what the majority of people in the world have been conditioned to think. And despite some slash circles where that opinion is their first response (two d*cks are better than one, what's not to like!)

While the straight mundane world is more "accepting" of girl-on-girl action, that's sex, bottom line. It's titillation of The Male Gaze. IMHO, most men aren't going to read lesbian fiction, or f/f fanfiction, because it's not "about them," whereas images of two girls getting it on most definitely is about them. Likewise, you won't find them watching Lifetime movies about adult female relationships, because again, while there may (or may not) be a kiss or implied/nonexplicit bedroom scenes, it's not about them. Very few relationship stories are about The Male Gaze, and very few men really, really like relationship stories (or "Chick Flicks").

Why is m/m slash apparently more popular than f/f slash even among women? You got a few years to catch up on reams of discussion? And no, there's no definitive answer to that, yet.

[Aquarius]

Well, the thing is...if you look at the hit counts...somebody's reading... #justsayin*

*This hashtag abuse brought to you by DayQuil, the stuffy head sneezing OMG please kill me now I can't get through my day medicine.

[mareel]

I think part of it very likely stems from the lack of much f/f subtext in Enterprise. As a m/m slash writer, I can't write without believing in the pairing. (I know this isn't universal, but I can only speak for myself.) This isn't to say that the moments that exist can't be expanded upon, or even that OFC's couldn't be introduced as partners. I'm not really a reader or writer of PWP outside of a deeper relationship, but I really don't see slash as being about sex. Of course it can be, but it isn't necessary.

In Voyager, there is ample subtext for Janeway/Seven and there has been quite a bit written. There's also some Janeway/Torres out there. From TNG, there is Crusher/Troi fic, though it's my feeling that this is pretty lightly supported; I see more of friendship between them, but it's plausible.

From a wider view, one of the recurring lapses in many science fiction shows (including Trek) is that there are relatively few female characters who get much screen time. Obviously, VOY is an exception, but most of the others tend not to have a lot of episodes featuring more than one woman. There is a whole community on LiveJournal (Where-No-Woman) dedicated to fiction about the women of all of the Treks. Some of it is femmeslash, some is het where the focus is on the female character, some is simply friendship, but it seems to have found a strong niche of fans.