it’s funny when people say “even in female-centric fandoms there’s no F/F and people would rather pair up dudes!” both because I’ve been in several of those and that’s never been the case – there’s always a lot of it in any show where there are multiple relationships b/w women who matter, let alone a mostly-female cast – but i feel like the people who complain about this, you look at their fandoms and it’s bunch a shows where there is technically more than one woman, and they interact somewhat, but the cast is still majority dudes. and their ships are all these rarepairs of women who barely interact. which is a totally legit way to do fandom, don’t get me wrong, but it does make me wonder if some of these people are aware of what a female centric show really *is*. like you just want to lead them gently to the sailor moon or yellowjackets or madoka or killing eve or xena tags and be like, look, this is what we’re talking about. and look how much of it is femslash, and how little of it is slash (even in sailor moon, with its canonical M/M couple, it’s still femslash and het predominantly IME). like, i’m glad you’re trying to make it happen for shows where the women are interesting but underexplored, or where they have brief glances of fascinating dynamics with women that we don’t learn much of but could wonder what could have been. but when you have like 7 men in a main cast and only 2 women, you cannot be shocked when most of the fic is slash and/or het. like, avatar the last airbender is not a “female centric” show people just because it has women in it or doctor who (except mayyyyybe the seasons with a female doctor). that’s not what we’re talking about. i mean, even in ensemble shows where there are women whose relationships with other women matter, even if it’s not the focus and there are more men overall in the cast or an equal amount, you will get a substantial femslash fandom. it might not be the main event, but it will be there. glee was a badly-written mess of a show, but it had plot-relevant relationships between female characters. and so people were shipping rachel/quinn and santana/brittany even long before the latter couple was anywhere close to becoming canon. it was one of the biggest (and most drama-filled) femslash fandoms of the early 10s, even if the slash and het corners of glee fandom were bigger. but there was enough femslash that you absolutely could corral yourself in that corner of the fandom and ignore the rest of it. if you build it, they really will come (in more ways than one, heh)
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Yup.
Glee literally had an offline con for one f/f ship. When canon provides, by and large, fans will respond.
People are terrible about going “But I love my blorbo! Surely, everyone else should!” in contexts where basic logic will tell you that ship or character is probably not going to launch a juggernaut fandom.
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