Well this is very sweet. <3 Thanks for the nice words on HTMCIS.
To some of the larger questions on this thread: I wrote a long piece (now archived on AO3 but originally posted to @femslashrevolution on Tumblr) about some possible explanations for the tendency to shy away from meaty, morally grey characters, or substantive conflict more generally, in f/f stories. As with people who write about other marginalized groups, I think there's a pressure of tokenism on f/f writers: writing about women is perceived as inherently political in a way that writing about men is not. And there's this idea that when you write about queer women—ESPECIALLY non-white queer women, holy smokes—your queer female characters (of color) are representations of All Queer Women (of Color) Everywhere, and therefore can't be assholes (or poor communicators, or kinky sex fiends, or whatever) because if they were assholes/inarticulate/kinky then you would be implicitly arguing that Queer Women (of Color) Are All Assholes(/Inarticulate/Oversexed), and what are you, a misogynist racist? Writing about white men is perceived as easier because white male characters are able to be perceived, accurately or not, as complex individuals, rather than politicized representatives of their demographics.
Unsurprisingly, given that writing lady-lovin' kinky female assholes (sometimes of color) is one of my favorite things to do, I argued in the above essay that that line of thought is bullshit and that we should all try to write all characters as individuals, albeit individuals informed by their political and personal contexts. (This goes for male characters as well as female, and white characters as well as POC—whiteness and maleness are not actually neutral, "default" categories; we're just conditioned to process them this way!) But putting that into practice is, you know, difficult! I don't think it's surprising that a lot of people who set out to write f/f shy away from taking risks that could expose them to criticisms of misogyny, even if reducing all female characters to "unproblematic" cardboard cutouts is KIND OF UNDENIABLY also sexist. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Frankly I also feel like I've been able to read and write as much good f/f as I have because I've done the work of looking outside the big fandom juggernaut media sources and sought out ones that do have complex female representation. Like, doing the heavy lifting of building a female Sherlock character into a fully-rounded person as you write her is not the only game in town: there are actually shows that care about giving their female characters flawed humanity right there on the screen! In addition to Killing Eve, which was mentioned above: Jessica Jones, Black Sails, Grace and Frankie, GLOW, The Hour, The Fall, Penny Dreadful, Person of Interest, Bomb Girls, Call the Midwife; even, for all their faults, Buffy or the first season of Agent Carter; comedy fandoms like Archer, Heathers, Spy, Brooklyn 99 and the The Good Place, book fandoms like Carmilla, Dangerous Liaisons and basically anything by Sarah Waters (Fingersmith; Affinity)... the list goes on. But as noted above, these fandoms are smaller and there is less reader response to works written in them.
I've also cultivated a small cadre of writers who often produce f/f or stories involving women, whose stuff I'll read regardless of the unfamiliar fandoms they may write in: because I know them, I trust them, and I know I'll like what they make. I'm thinking of holyfant, kathryne, lbmisscharlie, tiltedsyllogism, thatyourefuse, peninsulam, undoubtedly other folks I'm forgetting. But again, this is a more expansive reading strategy than most people in fandom have: it's more work and more of a leap of faith than just going into the tag for a given pairing.
This response is getting long, but to the points about f/f sex writing not matching up with how people's bodies work in real life: I actually feel like I encounter a lot more sexual realism in the f/f stories I read than in the m/m ones? This could be a function of the stuff I personally read, but overall, the VAST majority of the time when I'm reading m/m, even if it's super hot, my reaction tends to be "this author has read a lot of fanfic sex scenes." Whereas a lot more often, when I'm reading f/f, my reaction is "this author fucks women." That said, I do think, like... the majority of erotica is written in a heightened register, and involves a good deal of fantasy. Think of how often one encounters male characters in fanfic who can come from prostate stimulation alone: not statistically probable. It's an interesting reflection—though not super surprising, given how many women have trouble getting out from under body anxieties enough to enjoy sex in real life—that for a lot of female readers, that fantasy register might become a distraction when applied to bodies like theirs, even though it's a plus when it's applied to bodies that differ.
no subject
To some of the larger questions on this thread: I wrote a long piece (now archived on AO3 but originally posted to @femslashrevolution on Tumblr) about some possible explanations for the tendency to shy away from meaty, morally grey characters, or substantive conflict more generally, in f/f stories. As with people who write about other marginalized groups, I think there's a pressure of tokenism on f/f writers: writing about women is perceived as inherently political in a way that writing about men is not. And there's this idea that when you write about queer women—ESPECIALLY non-white queer women, holy smokes—your queer female characters (of color) are representations of All Queer Women (of Color) Everywhere, and therefore can't be assholes (or poor communicators, or kinky sex fiends, or whatever) because if they were assholes/inarticulate/kinky then you would be implicitly arguing that Queer Women (of Color) Are All Assholes(/Inarticulate/Oversexed), and what are you, a misogynist racist? Writing about white men is perceived as easier because white male characters are able to be perceived, accurately or not, as complex individuals, rather than politicized representatives of their demographics.
Unsurprisingly, given that writing lady-lovin' kinky female assholes (sometimes of color) is one of my favorite things to do, I argued in the above essay that that line of thought is bullshit and that we should all try to write all characters as individuals, albeit individuals informed by their political and personal contexts. (This goes for male characters as well as female, and white characters as well as POC—whiteness and maleness are not actually neutral, "default" categories; we're just conditioned to process them this way!) But putting that into practice is, you know, difficult! I don't think it's surprising that a lot of people who set out to write f/f shy away from taking risks that could expose them to criticisms of misogyny, even if reducing all female characters to "unproblematic" cardboard cutouts is KIND OF UNDENIABLY also sexist. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Frankly I also feel like I've been able to read and write as much good f/f as I have because I've done the work of looking outside the big fandom juggernaut media sources and sought out ones that do have complex female representation. Like, doing the heavy lifting of building a female Sherlock character into a fully-rounded person as you write her is not the only game in town: there are actually shows that care about giving their female characters flawed humanity right there on the screen! In addition to Killing Eve, which was mentioned above: Jessica Jones, Black Sails, Grace and Frankie, GLOW, The Hour, The Fall, Penny Dreadful, Person of Interest, Bomb Girls, Call the Midwife; even, for all their faults, Buffy or the first season of Agent Carter; comedy fandoms like Archer, Heathers, Spy, Brooklyn 99 and the The Good Place, book fandoms like Carmilla, Dangerous Liaisons and basically anything by Sarah Waters (Fingersmith; Affinity)... the list goes on. But as noted above, these fandoms are smaller and there is less reader response to works written in them.
I've also cultivated a small cadre of writers who often produce f/f or stories involving women, whose stuff I'll read regardless of the unfamiliar fandoms they may write in: because I know them, I trust them, and I know I'll like what they make. I'm thinking of holyfant, kathryne, lbmisscharlie, tiltedsyllogism, thatyourefuse, peninsulam, undoubtedly other folks I'm forgetting. But again, this is a more expansive reading strategy than most people in fandom have: it's more work and more of a leap of faith than just going into the tag for a given pairing.
This response is getting long, but to the points about f/f sex writing not matching up with how people's bodies work in real life: I actually feel like I encounter a lot more sexual realism in the f/f stories I read than in the m/m ones? This could be a function of the stuff I personally read, but overall, the VAST majority of the time when I'm reading m/m, even if it's super hot, my reaction tends to be "this author has read a lot of fanfic sex scenes." Whereas a lot more often, when I'm reading f/f, my reaction is "this author fucks women." That said, I do think, like... the majority of erotica is written in a heightened register, and involves a good deal of fantasy. Think of how often one encounters male characters in fanfic who can come from prostate stimulation alone: not statistically probable. It's an interesting reflection—though not super surprising, given how many women have trouble getting out from under body anxieties enough to enjoy sex in real life—that for a lot of female readers, that fantasy register might become a distraction when applied to bodies like theirs, even though it's a plus when it's applied to bodies that differ.