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Femslash (also known as "f/f slash", "f/f", "femmeslash", "altfic" and "saffic") [1] is a genre which focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between female fictional characters. [2]
Typically, characters featured in femslash are heterosexual in the canon universe; however, similar fan fiction about lesbian or bisexual female characters is commonly labeled as femslash for convenience. [3] The term is generally applied only to fanworks based on Western fandoms; the nearest anime/manga equivalents are more often called yuri and shōjo-ai fanfiction. [4] "Saffic" is a portmanteau of Sapphic from the term Sapphic love and fiction. [5] "Altfic" as a term for fanfiction about loving relationships between women was popularized by Xena fans. [2]
There is less femslash than there is slash based on male couples; [6] for example, in The Lord of the Rings fandom, only a small number of femslash stories are written about the Arwen/Éowyn pairing in comparison to slash between the male characters. [7] It has been suggested that heterosexual female slash authors generally do not write femslash, [6] and that it is rare to find a fandom with two sufficiently engaging female characters. [2] Janeway/Seven is the main Star Trek femslash pairing, as only they have "an on-screen relationship fraught with deep emotional connection and conflict". [8] Although it is debated whether fanfiction about canon lesbians such as Willow and Tara of Buffy the Vampire Slayer counts as "slash", their relationship storylines are more coy than heterosexual ones, which entices Willow/Tara femslash authors to fill in the gaps in the known relationship storyline. [2] It is "relatively recently" that male writers have begun writing femslash, and this entry of males into femslash has occurred within Buffy femslash. The femslash authorship is mostly female. [9] As of 2006, femslash is enjoying increasing popularity and is the "dominant form" of slash in some fandoms. [10]
Femslash was relatively rare in fanfiction communities until the 1990s. The show Xena: Warrior Princess served as one of the first major femslash fandoms, with the relationship Xena/Gabrielle, and also served as one of the first major fandoms where alternative universe fics were widely written. [11]
The television show The L Word set up a contest at the website FanLib.com where fans could submit a femme slash fanfic. The winner's story was incorporated into a scene of a third-season episode. [12] [13]
For more recent TV series, femslash fans have focused on shows with significant platonic female relationships such as Once Upon a Time , or with canonical queer women in Orange Is the New Black and The 100 . [11]
Xena is a fictional character from the Xena: Warrior Princess franchise, portrayed by New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless and co-created by Robert Tapert and John Schulian. She first appeared as a villain in the 1995–1999 television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys before joining forces with Hercules. Xena was popular with fans, so the producers decided to create a spin-off with the character in the starring role. She later appeared in the subsequent comic book of the same name, as well as the spin-off animated film The Battle for Mount Olympus, and non-canon expanded universe material, such as books and video games.
Willow Rosenberg is a fictional character created for the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003). She was developed by Joss Whedon and portrayed throughout the TV series by Alyson Hannigan.
Yuri, also known by the wasei-eigo construction girls' love, is a genre of Japanese media focusing on intimate relationships between female characters. While lesbian relationships are a commonly associated theme, the genre is also inclusive of works depicting emotional and spiritual relationships between women that are not necessarily romantic or sexual in nature. Yuri is most commonly associated with anime and manga, though the term has also been used to describe video games, light novels, and literature.
Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex. While the term "slash" originally referred only to stories in which male characters are involved in an explicit sexual relationship as a primary plot element, it is now also used to refer to any fan story containing a romantic pairing between same-sex characters. Many fans distinguish slash with female characters as a separate genre, commonly referred to as femslash.
Tara Maclay is a fictional character created for the action-horror/fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003). She was developed by Joss Whedon and portrayed by Amber Benson. Tara is a shy young woman with magical talents who falls in love with Willow Rosenberg, one of the core characters. Together, they help Buffy Summers, who has been given superhuman powers, to defeat evil forces in the fictional town of Sunnydale.
"Once More, with Feeling" is the seventh episode of the sixth season of the supernatural drama television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), and the only one in the series that is a musical. It was written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon and originally aired on UPN in the United States on November 6, 2001.
LGBT themes in speculative fiction include lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBTQ) themes in science fiction, fantasy, horror fiction and related genres.[a] Such elements may include an LGBT character as the protagonist or a major character, or explorations of sexuality or gender that deviate from the heteronormative.
Shipping is the term for the desire by followers of a fandom for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters, to be in a romantic relationship. Shipping often takes the form of unofficial creative works, including fanfiction and fan art.
Kirk/Spock, commonly abbreviated as K/S or Spirk and referring to James T. Kirk and Spock from Star Trek, is a popular pair in slash fiction, possibly the first slash pairing, according to Henry Jenkins, an early slash fiction scholar. Early in the history of Star Trek fan fiction, a few fan writers started writing about a romantic and sexual relationship between Kirk and Spock, highlighting a romantic or sexual element to the friendship between the men. As of 1998, most academic studies on slash fiction focused on Kirk/Spock, as Star Trek was by that point one of the longest-lived and most prosperous subjects of slash fiction, while its mainstream popularity made it one of the most accessible titles for academics and their audience. As the first slash pairing, K/S was created and developed largely independently from the influence of other slash fiction, with most of the conventions of the slash genre seeing their debut first in K/S slash.
"Seeing Red" is the 19th episode of season 6 of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode aired on May 7, 2002, on UPN. In North America, this episode was somehow syndicated onto UPN affiliates a week early by accident. Although none of them broadcast the episode by mistake, the episode was leaked onto the internet more than a week before it was slated to air. The episode was also noted for its drastic and controversial content, being the only episode of the series to air at an alternate time on the Canadian family network YTV.
Uberfic or simply uber, über, or ueber is a genre of alternate universe fan fiction in which characters or events are portrayed somewhat closely to original canon but usually in a different time period, place, or reality, many times featuring the ancestors, descendants, or reincarnations of canon characters, known as uber-characters. The uber-characters' names are never canon. The term originated in the Xena: Warrior Princess fandom, coined in 1997 by Kym Taborn, the webmaster of the fansite Whoosh.org. This sort of story was used by the series itself, beginning with the second season episode "The Xena Scrolls". A common trend in Xena fanfics was to write Uber stories in which the characters' analogues discover that they are soulmates.
Boys' love (BL), a genre of male-male homoerotic media originating in Japan that is created primarily by and for women, has a robust global fandom. Individuals in the BL fandom may attend conventions, maintain/post to fansites, create fanfiction/fanart, etc. In the mid-1990s, estimates of the size of the Japanese BL fandom were at 100,000 to 500,000 people. Despite increased knowledge of the genre among the general public, readership remained limited in 2008.
Xena: Warrior Princess has been referred to as a pop cultural phenomenon and feminist and lesbian icon. The television series, which employed pop culture references as a frequent humorous device, has itself become a frequent pop culture reference in video games, comics and television shows, and has been frequently parodied and spoofed.
Fan fiction or fanfiction, also known as fan fic, fanfic, fic or FF, is fiction written in an amateur capacity by fans as a form of fan labor, unauthorized by, but based on, an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, settings, or other intellectual properties from the original creator(s) as a basis for their writing and can retain the original characters and settings, add their own, or both. Fan fiction ranges in length from a few sentences to novel-length and can be based on fictional and non-fictional media, including novels, movies, comics, television shows, musical groups, cartoons, anime and manga, and video games.
Satsu is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, a comic book continuation of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Introduced as one of the strongest Slayers, she has a close relationship with her mentor Buffy Summers. Satsu develops romantic feelings for Buffy, and the two have a brief sexual relationship. She becomes the leader of her own Slayer squadron in Tokyo, and forms a friendship with fellow Slayer Kennedy during her performance review. She also makes a minor appearance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Ten.
The following outline offers an overview and guide to LGBTQ topics:
Archive of Our Own (AO3) is a nonprofit open source repository for fanfiction and other fanworks contributed by users. The site was created in 2008 by the Organization for Transformative Works and went into open beta in 2009 and continues to be in beta. As of 1 September 2024, Archive of Our Own hosts 13,530,000 works in over 67,060 fandoms including those related to real people. The site has received generally positive reception for its curation, organization, and design, mostly done by readers and writers of fanfiction.
Omegaverse, also known as A/B/O, is a subgenre of speculative erotic fiction, and originally a subgenre of erotic slash fan fiction. Its premise is that a dominance hierarchy exists in humans, which are divided into dominant "alphas", neutral "betas", and submissive "omegas". This hierarchy determines how people interact with one another in romantic, erotic and sexual contexts.
Kristina Dorothea Busse is a professor in the Philosophy department at the University of South Alabama. As the co-editor of Transformative Works and Cultures, her research focuses on fanfiction communities and fan culture. Alongside fandom academics Alexis Lothian and Robin Anne Reid, she coined the term "queer female space" in 2007.
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