#freshbrainss

Pride & Pussy: a femslash ficathon

For @freshbrainss, who asked for PepperMay. 

I’ve only watched one of the commentary episodes so far, episode 1. There’s three other episodes that have commentary, episode 5, 6 and 10. Mike will hopefully talk about Catherine during ep 10 because he is a huge fan of her and she really did an amazing job as Poppy.

I’m greedy and wish we got commentaries for every episode lol but I really do appreciate Mike doing commentary for the episodes that were chosen. This might sound weird but Mike has such a nice voice and it’s really nice to listen to him talk about the show lol.

dream stuff: nancy and kali kiss, stonathan kiss, car sex, the four of them taking a bath together, kali protecting will and el, kali and nancy beating up billy hargrove, steve and max bonding, jonathan and steve bonding, jonathan and el bonding, jonathan gets to talk to nancy and kali about his own emotions and anxieties and his depression, and they help him; steve and jonathan and nancy talk about their PTSD and comfort each other, kali and nancy comfort each other after opening up about their PTSD and kali about her abuse

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.

(Thank you so much to those who suggested my name. You’ve made my new year! I do want to give a TW for some discussion of my personality history of alcohol, disordered eating, and mental illness...don’t worry, I got a happy ending!)

There’s a movie called Gold Diggers: Secret of Bear Mountain that I watched about a thousand times as a little girl. I wore out two VHS tapes (one of which my mom stole from Parrot Video and Tanning Salon for me in 1995). It was about two girls, Beth (played by Christina Ricci) and Jody (played by Anna Chlumsky), who meet over the summer and go on a treasure hunt together. The first time I watched the movie, I was three or four years old, and I was immediately attracted to Jody.

The thing was, I had an Uncle Jody, so I thought that was only a boy’s name. So, to me, Jody was a boy, and he teased and got a rise out of Beth, and I adored it. Then my mom told me that Jody was actually a girl—she just had short hair and wore tomboy clothes. I was so upset, and I don’t know why!

I know now, of course, that I was frustrated that Jody couldn’t have been flirting with Beth, because they were girls, and girls only did that with boys. So why did they make me feel like that? What had gone wrong inside of me to make me want that?

Despite my love for this movie (which is now cited for it’s amazing lesbian subtext), I absolutely did not think I was a lesbian growing up. I had no idea. I was bookish and shy and very feminine. I assigned myself strategic crushes on quiet, distant boys who were so far out of my league that there was no chance of anything actually happening.

Even fandom was a pretty male-centric place starting out. My introduction to online fandom actually began in the mid-2000’s with the Fueled by Ramen “bandom”—emo/alternative/rock bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco. I crushed on boys with slim hips and long hair and fingernail polish, boys who weren’t afraid to be feminine. It wasn’t very friendly towards women, and femslash was quite a foreign concept. But…the more feminine an artist was, the more I was drawn to him. I became quite enamored with Adam Lambert during his American Idol season because of his makeup and hair, and because, though he wasn’t out yet, I knew he was gay. I only ever was attracted to gay men, and I think this was similar to my unattainable crushes in grade school—it’s not as if anything could ever happen with them. They were safe.

Then, a little show called Glee popped up out of nowhere.

It seems normal now to anticipate pairings like Clarke and Lexa or Alex and Maggie on network TV. They’re possible now. Sure, there was Tara/Willow, but they were a bit before my time, and Arizona/Callie, but Grey’s was a little above my age bracket. But then there was a slow pan upwards from two pairs of sneaker-clad feet, four legs entwined with matching red cheerleading skirts, and my heart began hammering, my breathing quickened, I got all sweaty and cold at the same time.

It was happening, it was happening. Brittany and Santana were queer girls, and they were kissing, and it wasn’t a joke. I was a freshman in high school and knew so little about the world.

From then on, I was in the femslash fandom, confined to our desktop computer in the kitchen. Brittany/Santana gave way to Quinn/Rachel, who became my OTP. Many of my favorite fandoms weren’t femslash juggernauts (Emily/JJ from Criminal Minds was a big one for a while), but I always found small spaces with other femslash lovers. However, I was in the middle of writing a Criminal Minds high school AU that featured both Emily/JJ and the smaller pairing of Hotch/Reid. I received a firm, angry review from someone who wondered why I wasted my time on femslash when people only read for my slash pairings. They said femslash wasn’t really a thing in fandom.

I quit fandom for three years after that.

In that time, I still identified as straight, and to this day, I don’t know why. I was only attracted to women; I was not attracted to men except in the abstract. I was growing bored with straight romance movies and books. I sought almost exclusively LGBT media and I still do today. But maybe I thought it was a phase. Maybe I thought I’d grow out of it. Maybe I just didn’t care, because I was anxious and depressed, I battled intrusive thoughts and dissociation every day, I binge ate and drank, and I had a wicked nicotine addiction.

I got into college, moved out, and I still identified as straight. I loved college and completely flourished creatively, academically, and socially. I quit smoking, changed my style from very feminine to relaxed and tomboyish, and stopped wearing makeup. I won several writing contests and read hundreds of books. But my drinking got worse and so did my anxiety, no matter how happy I thought I was. To make matters worse, I drank alone—I partied with my friends and had great times, but my drinking was a solitary thing. Because if I drank around my new friends, I might say something. I might admit something to them. I wasn’t ready for that. But it took me a long time to realize that when I drank alone and blacked out on my dorm room floor, I was just trying to hold off from admitting something to myself.

It took me a long time to come out. I won’t bore you with what is really a very boring story, but I will say it was very difficult but I received a lot of support from many people. Due to this, I can’t help but feel much of my high school and college experiences were wasted due to my being closeted.

Around this time, I got into the Teen Wolf fandom, which is still my biggest fandom experience. While there were no canon femslash pairings, there was still a thriving femslash fandom that I got involved in right away. I then found Once Upon a Time and Orphan Black years later—two fandoms that I joined mainly because of the main femslash ships.

And the only way I noticed those ships was through this awesome new blog I found called Femslash Revolution. I knew I had to get in on the action, so I contacted Lulu, the amazing person who made it all happen and guided me every step of the way. There would be no blog without her—that’s a given. She’s the woman behind the curtain, and we owe it all to her. Looking back, I can’t believe how small we were back then, and that was only a few years ago! Our pairing tags fit on one page, and we got the chance to spotlight fandoms with popular femslash content, including relatively new fandoms like Orange Is the New Black.

Now, I am out and proud. I’m a published writer. I have also written over 900 individual pieces of fan fiction. I live comfortably and easily. I started medication for my mental illness and by necessity stopped drinking, which was the best thing that I ever did. I am in recovery from my eating disorder. And through it all, this blog has been here. Clarke Griffin has been here. Alana Bloom has been here. Santana Lopez, Alex Danvers, Cosima Niehaus, Poussey Washington, and Amy Raudenfeld have all been here, smiling and laughing and crying along with me, filling me with their strength and inspiration and the idea that we exist, and we aren’t going anywhere.

And you guys have been right here, too. I hope you stick around for a long, long time.

About the Author: @freshbrainss