JajaLala

On paper, I wanted to love Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall. A F/F regency romance with curses and fairies and magic, oh my! It sounded like it could be epic, or romantic, or scandalous... but mostly it was just silly.


( Concise complaints )

I still overall enjoyed the book, mostly for the fun writing style and silliness, but like... I can't lie and say it was a GREAT book, which sucks because I'd like to lift up F/F romances etc, but... I can't ignore/pretend I loved something where the romance was mediocre. It felt like it was trying to be several things, comedy, romance, but also OCCASIONALLY serious, and so it was hard to pin it into any straightforward expectation and I ended up disappointed on all counts (except maybe comedy).

I feel somewhat similarly to when I try searching up F/F fics on AO3, and so much of what I find is somehow missing that SPARK that makes me excited and invested and giggly the way so many M/M fics do. Like I'll see a fic that has all the things I want on the tin, but then when I go to read it I'm disappointed.

Oftentimes it's a certain toothlessness... a lack of willingness to grapple with true tension, to push the women to the same extremes men are pushed. In Mortal Follies, there were scenes where I couldn't help but be like "Oh she's SUPPOSED to be a rake, but all she does is SAY she's fucked a lot of women before, and once or twice she says scandalous things to the main character, but she's mostly perfectly respectful." I never felt my heart pound or felt like the main character was really chasing after someone DANGEROUS... The love interest never really lost control or really hurt the main character in any significant way, she was just... a sexy woman with a bad reputation. Which writing it out like that, it sounds like it should be hot! But aside from a fun BDSM sex scene, it was really just people SAYING she was dangerous without any meat to it.

It's hard to articulate what's missing, but it seems like F/F is more averse to risks/excitement. It's not always literal risks--I've read M/M fics about accidentally sending a nude to the wrong person that feel like higher and more exciting stakes than this F/F couple literally fighting curses that are intended to kill them. It's about the WAY it's written that the tension is provided, that the internality of the characters is given depth and the reader is given something to connect with in a real, authentic way.

I'm trying to parse if this is truly an issue where so many people are writing F/F in toothless ways, or if it's just/also me having higher expectations for them? Am I holding F/F to higher standards than M/M or M/F? Is there any F/F that could satisfy me? Well to that, I will say The Locked Tomb series absolutely blows it out of the water in terms of the F/F romance department, even though it's not really a romance series, the way the women are written and the depths/angst/drama they all get makes it finally fill that niche in my heart that tortured male characters easily waltz into. So I know it's possible to read a story where I am absolutely entranced by the women... So is it truly that most the F/F I've read is just "failing" in the way I want it to be?

To be fair, I've only gotten back into reading original books somewhat recently, so it may be a matter of not being well-rounded yet, and having my perceptions warped by my disappointment with F/F fics in male-centric fandoms. Still, I worry that in the romantic comedy department, I get more fraught and judgey of F/F than M/M or M/F. Like did I accept the toothlessness of the Love, Theoretically couple more blindly than Mortal Follies because I have more investment/expectations/standards in my F/F romance? Romantic comedies ARE meant to be somewhat lighthearted, but I will say the overall TENSION of Love, Theoretically felt much tighter and exciting (at least in the first half) than Mortal Follies, and I can't pretend I didn't feel that difference. I don't know. I don't know if there's a perfect way to parse out what the "truth" is when it comes to somewhat subjective opinions.

All of this makes me want to start writing my lesbian regency story... similar to when I read fic like "None of this is doing things the way I want to read! I gotta start a fic..." Until I find a regency F/F romance that satisfies my tastes, I may have to resort to making it myself.

I was writing a comment on pendulumscale's post on the subject of zines culture nowadays (thanks vriddy for sharing!) but the response got p long and specific to my experiences so I thought I ought to share here on my own journal lol.

I'm relatively new to fandom compared to some of the fandom elders hopping around DW, but I've been actively writing fic for several years and got into doing fandom events last year. I remember sort of stumbling onto an event focused on a niche of mine that's very hard to search for on AO3 (Boku No Hero Academia femslash), and being super excited like "!!! Wait!! These ppl all like the niche thing I do :D :D :D omg I wanna join!"

And so I did and it was fun and I still talk to some of the fellow creators I met there today, but it catapulted me into the world of bangs and events in the My Hero Academia fandom... but with each event and ending up on the twitter-sphere, even if mostly just to keep an eye on them and observe others, I've been seeing that sort of corporate-ization of fandom that pendulumscale describes.

( The Fandom Resume )

( The not-fan fan events )

( There is still passion out there! )

Of course it's easy to say "Just do things with your close fandom friends!" but at the same time, how do you meet those friends without those bigger events? How do u get to know them? What happens if u drift into different fandoms, and how do u meet new ones in ur new fandoms? etc etc... I guess that's the point of general social media, but that comes with its own wildness with 'the algorithm' and all that jazz.

As I get more entrenched it's clear fandoms are communities, but it's hard to control what a community is or will be, especially a huge one like BNHA, but it surprises how a big fandom can feel so lonesome/corporate sometimes.