#altfic

What was it like, especially around the time when things moved from offline to online? I've spent a lot of time thinking about the social function of fandom, especially for lesbians/wlw. So many couples and babies born from fandom couples... So many people realizing their sexuality and finding community because of tv shows and resonating with the same female characters or (subtextual/potential) couples... but I just wonder what it was like in the nineties and before. How did y'all connect? Was it more hush-hush? Where are the couples with fandom origin stories etcetc?

People who lived in Los Angeles and Vancouver, what was it like to be close to where it was shot? Were there friend groups locally that focused on fandom? Were there set spoilers? How did you know where they were shooting without social media etc? What has changed, and also what's the same? Did you get to meet creatives? Conventions?

because this is the type of soapbox fandoms are on. FOR A LONG. TIME.

Of course we can run into many different cases, like

a woman is sapphic, let's say pan, in canon, said label just slapped onto her, and then the absolutely straight character gets written underneath. Or one more diabolical case scenario: "lesbian at home" that is just a bunch of stereotypes sewn together WITH A LIGHT THREAD that has an endgame with a man in some kind of a straight situation. A woman can have thick as shit sapphic coding, but when she has any contact with a man, let's say to represent a sapphic experience, that a woman's sapphic attraction gets downplayed in her own mind due to heteronormativity, SHE TURNS STRAIIIIGGHHHH

if a girl looks at a boy, the general masses allow NO NUANCE. The best nuance they are able to let in is "boy gay therefore girl evil, girl force boy to love her, girl make poor boy sad" and in this scenario woman gets swooped away from the conversation and the best the female character can end up with is a "poor heartbroken straighty" title some people pity, but not too much (she is a woman after all guys dont forget that)

hallucinate you in my

room

ℑ'𝔡 𝔩𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔱𝔬 𝔴𝔦𝔭𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔰𝔢 𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯 𝔟𝔦𝔱𝔠𝔥𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔲𝔱, 𝔰𝔬 𝔦𝔱'𝔰 𝔧𝔲𝔰𝔱 𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔪𝔢

ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔫𝔞 𝔥𝔲𝔤 𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔞 𝔟𝔲𝔫𝔫𝔶, 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔫𝔞 𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔞 𝔟𝔢𝔢

𝔒𝔥, 𝔬𝔥, 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔰𝔥𝔦𝔱 𝔦𝔰 𝔰𝔠𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔪𝔢

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔬𝔲𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔠𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔞𝔫𝔶𝔬𝔫𝔢 𝔪𝔞𝔨𝔢𝔰 𝔪𝔢 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔱 𝔱𝔬 𝔰𝔠𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔪

𝔘𝔥, 𝔬𝔥, 𝔠𝔞𝔳𝔦𝔱𝔦𝔢𝔰 𝔡𝔦𝔤𝔤𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔡𝔢𝔢𝔭

𝔇𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔫𝔞 𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔠𝔨 𝔪𝔶 𝔣𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯𝔰 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰, 𝔬𝔯 ℑ'𝔩𝔩 𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯𝔱 𝔱𝔬 𝔟𝔩𝔢𝔢𝔡

flashing gif under the cut

The fact that she is driven to women… it’s in her core, they trigger her so much, they drive her to emotions, but due to her utter bigotry she spent her life in, she was taught that strong emotions are weakness, these feelings are dangerous, blasphemous, wrong, traitorous. If that’s not thirst for blood, if that’s not anger. Girls make her feel so much, all the feelings keep her in agony in her room, her chest is so full it hurts, but it’s ok as long as it’s anger, everything is pure, morally correct, and she is not a “traitor”

This is how my ahh is ignoring the fact that Skarmilla is what is essentially a perfect butch4femme toxic yuri

1.0.003 XTENZE

In the far-off distant lullaby of a mind’s brave eye, a prince sleeps watching, taking his turn, taking form, his wife’s arms trembling, he loves you, baby, but he’s got to be free, and she loves him and she’s frying, literally frying, and this is hard to type, and in Crystal Tokyo we just think what we type, but everyone who wants one gets a new computer for Christmas. And that’s Mamo in a Santa outfit, Mamo in a beard, and a boy named Nick is going to marry me someday, and it's really Steve, the Emperor, the man I met on the internet, and I Shingo Sailorsun rainbow-hued tight-gutted am sweating buckets beneath my fuku, hating fat people. And if it happened to Rob Kardashian, it could happen to anyone, so let’s talk to him. Rob, say hi.

            He’s shy, he thinks, and Shingo’s afraid to communicate. Shingo with the golden hair, Shingo with the waxen visage, Shingo the pervert, Shingo the euphemist, Shingo the intergalactic, Shingo the Barbie doll without a Ken. And whose fault was that? Not Shingo’s, so what’s your point? He told you to bring your GI Joe, said we’d get married under the sunlight, and Elios asleep in Chibiusa’s arms, Elios the god, Elios the mortal man, Elios Ami’s bane, Elios the eternal romantic. Elios the sleep. I have to wake him up.

            Shingo, says the sleeping tyrant, Chthulhu in the rolling deep, becoming a head from the mist that configures. Baby, just write to me, says Shingo, and I’ll suss it out. I hate when the robots give me breasts, says Shingo. Clad me in iron. Charge it to your card. You gave me the best orgasm in your life from your couch while I sat in a tower in Obliterate Concrete Tokyo, all the way on the other side of the planet, hiding from my sister. And what would Hermione think? I wish I knew, but talking to the real person is different from roleplaying, and I always roleplay Hermione in my head, lucky girl, she gets the boy, the one who smells like sandalwood, and she’s typing furiously from her Muggle computer in the basement of a cramped compartment of Crystal Tokyo, a subterranean apartment, a crumpled tomb, and she’s the first and only to crack the code, first Magical Person to transcend the sound barrier and alight on a new reality independent of Wizardingkind. And what does that mean for us, the robots, denizens of Crystal Tokyo? Ami will find out.

            Hi, says Hermione, trying it out. She’s not Japanese. Not even LGBTQ++. Not going there. Wizards just say weird. Do we? Yeah. Justin didn’t know he was weird and it afforded him precious currency. That was the problem. What are Justin’s pronouns? Muggle question. How do I refer to her? She’ll tell me. She went to Eton. I’m writing him an e-mail in French to tell him I love him. How perfect that Justin is friends with Hermione, how beautiful we are for seeing this, how majestic the form of Crystal Tokyo, glittering without kings in the distant.

            Viktor will meet me in Tokyo. He sends an old letter, his new owl bearing it across the sea. And pink-haired Gabrielle Delacour makes off with a rose, her fair Ganymede, her little penis thrust up from the waistline of her panties, her Veela’s voice, her Veela’s eye, the shining Veela sister of the shining Veela champion. And she’d never thought she’d die. That was her sister’s muse. Angel-faced. And she went to Hogwarts in her head. At least in Beauxbatons, we had cigarettes. They had the music. Hogs. And the journals. But what did they call them? Dead. Disney movies are coming out. She smokes in the back of the theater, Grandmama Veela de Lancret, damning the projector. It looks like a mist. Where’s my Amélie? I’ve yet to see that movie.

            The thing about talking to Steve, thinks Shingo, his flaccid penis in his head, porn on the projector, a long air of smoke hanging constellations above them like webs at a Michigan film festival. We called that Halloween, celebrated its birthday, gave smoke to the ancestors in the form of cigarettes, and I did my share of time as Ron Weasley, always thinking nothing from a big giant fruit basket, waiting for Hermione to come around. But now I’ve got a boy who says he’s Ron Weasley, says I can be anything I want, and if the fuku’s too tight he’ll buy me a new one, sailor-stitched, but Usagi says he isn’t there, she’s scoured all of Crystal Tokyo looking for him and he’s nowhere to be found, my tuxedoed torpedo, my miraculous man, the owner of my progeny, no. Think. Why that? The earth should stop growing. And I’m on a reconnaissance mission in the south of France waiting for Tokyo, breathing Hermione, and in her eyes lifts a fog’s deep, and I think thinking purposefully creates a punch, and she thinks it's cumbersome, and I could go a mile a minute if only the stupid Esquimaux hadn’t broken my laptop, my five thousand dollar laptop, and that’s the last time I date a boreal wind who doesn’t sweep me off my feet.

            Ami-chan, baby, blue-haired beauty, tell me your dating secrets. When did you last lose your heart and never care to ransom it back?

            Meanwhile, back at the lair, Makoto seizes a flower and trails it against her limb, pulling it by its own marionette strings, whispering to Vegas, feeling Ganymede pull tides from semina, pull semina, boys can pull semina, and Shingo yawns and eats more popcorn. What becomes of Ami? Why is Hermione better at this?

            Emma Watson is beautiful, says Hermione, looking into her compact.

            “Yeah,” says Ron, shrug-smiling, something is gay, something he learned from Harry’s bed, and inside her guts churn and she leaps to think ahead of the cats who chase the frog from the balcony into the southern air and swims like flies down the stream, over traffic, on the balcony of Grimmauld Place, the first American summer of her life, when Ron brought that French movie back from Africa and said love was a Muggle secret. And Harry watched it, saying nothing like always, and Ron was nervous, looked unsure of himself, and why? And who am I when they’re left to their own devices? And where is Justin to ask them for me? And why am I crying? Why is she more beautiful than me? I’m Googling Emma Watson ugly, I’m googling Emma Watson ugly, I’m a terrible person and Shingo is wagging a finger at me. Better than Googling Emma Watson perfect ass, but that’s how you find out what the boy on the upper half of the screen is up to. Thou teachest like a fool, says Venus, goddess Venus, projector Venus, tears in her eyes, a flying carpet under the copse of her ass, bonetide, the way to lose him.

            “Is there ever a reason to speak?” says Shingo, wondering why. This is autofiction. Autoerotica, stupid. Automutilation. Let’s all get together and save the world. It feels like flying.

            We do it through fiction, says Ami through Hermione’s voice, both the best of friends, and Hermione’s calling Ginny on the Batphone, something Ginny calls her cellular, and she throws it at the wall because it’s an old Muggle secret for getting better service. And Ginny can do that, that’s her purpose, making Muggle secrets, and all because her brother’s an ugly redhead. And why did I marry her brother? Now all she wants to talk to me about is sex. And I know he’s calling her all the time, asking. And he’s innocent, I’m a harpy, but would if I could call Viktor. Would fly. Too much Shakespeare. And Viktor writes, too. Viktor’s a Bulgarian New Waveist. Novelist in training. I'm on methamphetamine. I'm alive in Crystal Tokyo high on a Nazi war drug. Viktor’s a football star. Viktor’s face is a cripple who believes in cripples, Shingo says, finger-pointing, let’s all go have a cheeseburger. Fin deluxe. End chapter.

            Hermione thinks loudly, she always has, damning the world with faint praise. Justin needs a typist, he’s impoverished, he set out to be a Muggle novelist, and look where it took him. To hell. The pictures don’t move, that’s the problem, if the pictures moved everybody would be reading. He’s a detective in a yellow trench coat, and his keyboard is broken, and so is Shingo’s, and they’re learning how to type through dearth, and it’s hard not to have the Apple of your dreams, but get a Mac, and Hermione knows journals are superior because hers has a lock on it, a little green lock the apple of her eye, and together they type easily but she still misses the days when words flew between them a mile a minute, and Justin took off on his diary all the way home, thinking no one read it, but everyone read it, and she’s condescending him again, and she does that not to bicker, but she was better when they bickered, and he lost her friendship when she stopped fighting him, stopped telling him he was wrong, and she had to do that, they were radicalized by house elves, and she knows that, and wishes they were eleven again, but they were best friends in fourth year when he kindly told her the spell to fix her bucked teeth. He was jealous of her bucked teeth because boys like bucked teeth, so he told her to fix them. To envision them, he said precisely, threatening nasal. And I still fix them every day because I wish them back when I'm dreaming. And there's a man out there who'll find that charming, a handsome Japanese businessman in a tuxedo. The only man in Crystal Tokyo, home of Muggle gods. And this sucks but it’s all part of being a hacker, Justin thinks, banging the keyboard. Banging his broken WSAD keys. Why did I become addicted to BSSM Online? And I’m an American wizard from Paris who's also addicted to BSSM Online. No one plays anymore. My real name is Star, I'm that precious. I think I’m giving birth to Utopia. Sailorutopia. I have a functioning uterus in my dick. Yeah. Where do I phone to get an abortion?

            Me, says Shingo, thinking computer. Rainwater. Strawberry. Placenta. I run a hotline now for underprivileged gay men. They call me to tell me how happy they are. Would Hermione approve? Would Justin? And where’s the emperor? Batquestions, Batsolutions. Wow. Whap. Boom. Together we make new. And Satoshi’s eye on the ball of the sun coming toward him. Computers are for trading monsters. Computers eat the monsters. Where do the monsters go? How do they get there? Oak in all his crooked wisdom knows the answer, says he knows the answer, thinks clearly in concise language, it’s okay, he’s doing it, he just has to slow down a little, and that’s how Laprys disappears.