IS THERE HOPE FOR F/F IN FANDOM?

What is "the infantilized lesbian" and how is that connected to the birth of Christ? Why am I obsessed with lesbians hatef*cking in the mud and what does it take for a lesbian ship to take hold of the bisexual MM-loving girlies of Tumblr?
🗡️🏳️‍🌈
CHAPTERS
00:01 Intro
01:25 A Brief Outline of Queerness in Fandoms.
06:16 Lesbophobia, Popular Culture and Fandoms
06:38 The Evil/Dead Lesbian
10:28 Lesbian Sexualisation & Infantilization
21:05 Is There Hope for F/F in Fandoms?
23:29 The Aggressive Lesbian & Good Representation
37:46 The Importance of Non Canon Lesbians
42:52 Summary & Final Discussion
🗡️🏳️‍🌈
SIMILAR VIDEOS BY ME
The Popularity of MM:
• FETISHIZATION OR LIBER...
The Importance of Ellie and Teen Sexuality:
• PORTRAYING QUEER YOUTH...
Why Robin is Bad Representation:
• Problematic Representa...
🗡️🏳️‍🌈
MENTIONED VIDEOS BY OTHERS
Blue Order:
• Is There a Double Stan...
100% Shipper
• A History of Lesbian F...
🗡️🏳️‍🌈
MENTIONED LINKS
Centreoftheselights Archive of Our Own Stats:
archiveofourow...
🗡️🏳️‍🌈
You can find me at:
/ insingersfall
/ katjaoq
[e-mail]
🗡️🏳️‍🌈
Keywords: Arcane. The Locked Tomb. The Last of Us. Griddlehark. Gideon the Ninth. Clexa. Representation in animation. Lesbian history. Sapphic representation. Lesbian representation. LGBTQ representation. FF shipping. F/F. Femslash. Popular Culture Video Essay. Queer Video Essay.

[@thinkingoverthenight]

tbh im not a toxic f/f enjoyer nor am i a sanitized f/f enjoyer either. i just need f/f relationships where both characters are given depth and screentime.

[@quasalor1480]

Me too

[@leviadragon99]

@ville__ lolwut?

[@kelsian_smith03]

I think the UK where I’m from has much better Lesbian couple representation. In the UK we have TV soap operas like Eastenders with the couple Suki and Eve it’s has been going on since 2022 and it’s on 7:30pm-8:30pm Monday to Thursday nights. We also have other TV soap operas like Coronation Street with the character Sophie her lesbian coming out storyline happened in 2010 and she had a little over a year long relationship with a girl called Sian but they broke up but it’s miles better than the American lesbian representation. Sophie also had a relationship with another woman for a like 6 months and she had a relationship with Maddie for a year but unfortunately Maddie got killed off the TV soap. Then Sophie had a few months fling with an older woman. In another UK TV soap opera called Emmerdale we got the longest ever lesbian couple representation with the characters Charity and Vanessa they had a relationship from 2017-2020 that’s a 3 year long relationship. I think the UK has the best TV lesbian representation than American TV lesbian representation because the UK doesn’t sexualise or go over the top with lesbian representation.

[@lillianabright03]

thats such a cop out. theres SO much new media nowadays with well written women, yet when a man who has barely any screentime gets a little bit attention suddenly ppl wont stop talking about them. if u really care abt wheteher f/f is given depth and screentime then dont turn a blind eye to ACTUAL female characters with depth and screentime

[@thinkingoverthenight]

@@lillianabright03 this comment is so confusing to me are you addressing me? making assumptions about me? or are you addressing a general audience? because if you are making assumptions about me (which i realize by saying so is me making an assumption about your comment), chill. all i ever pay attention to is f/f. i don't even look at m/m relationships maybe ever. i genuinely like f/f which is why i said the comment in the first place....oh my god.

[@s1n_eater]

It’s so interesting that “lesbian villain” is now an underrepresented trope, a decade ago it was a negative trope because the only sapphic representation at the time were evil or negative, but now we’re drowning in inauthentic/sanitized marketable sludge designed by men in suits just to get us to stream their shows that they’re going to cancel anyway.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Exactly! And I think it's all connected. Like the villain-lesbian (portrayed as unlikable) where seen as homophobic. And even though gay male representation has worked its way away and then back to broad, complex characterization that sometimes includes villains, lesbians has (as you're saying) gotten stuck on sanitized.

[@falconeshield]

​@@obviouslyqueerI'm still sad for OOAT Mulan getting her heart broken on screen over and over. It was a fetish from the writers at some point. Who in their right mind would make someone go through such pain JUST for being queer?

[@AnkhAnanku]

Don’t mistake washed-out representation for being written by committee. Remember _everything_ queer on screen had to be aggressively fought for by passionate writers behind the scenes. I think it’s recently been easier to allow certain images of queerness through because the dam of censorship has cracked. I think we are seeing a rising torrent of specific kinds of representation because writers who want representation see this weak point and aren’t letting up. We see a torrent of same-same characters/plots/ships and taking that as pre-packaged for corporate. We lament the reduction of pressure behind the dam because what if we lose the strength to make new cracks. But then we denigrate the water flowing through that hard fought-for opening as an industry plants and “sanitized.” it’s all fucky no matter how you look at it

[@1da24]

You know, I think that Overly Sarcastic Productions talked about it in trope talks - about queer-coded villains

[@s1n_eater]

@@AnkhAnanku let’s hope they aggressively fight for good writing next.

[@LUPITHE0NZ]

so many people say that "the way women are written just isn't that interesting" while they take the most background male characters and make a giant list of headcanons and dynamics for them... even media with a dominant female cast somehow ends up overshadowed by the m/m and even m/f pairings (and art centered around the male characters on their own), and people even try to give aspects of a female character's to the male character that doesn't have any of those traits. the only way to really escape this hell is just entering a fandom where there are no male characters at all.

[@Redheart709]

touhou project if you want a fandom with no male characters at all. there's like one humanoid male character and most of the other characters canonically treat him like a joke LMAO

[@gocelotspice5766]

Oh 100% it annoys me so fucking much…. That’s why I’m big into like amphibia bevause it’s all girls in it lol

[@MariaLuisa-vv4ug]

Even just one male character can absolutely suck the air out of an entire fandom, it's really really really frustrating

[@maxkozak9702]

It doesn’t work that way ,look at my little pony. you sound like you think people are misogynists

[@gothgrape]

​@@Redheart709Ey touhou fan

[@alinaponce9090]

Gideon and Harrow are everything I’ve ever wanted in a ship. They’re complex, they’re enemies to lovers, they’re super toxic and codependent and they are canonically gender non-conforming lesbians and in love with each other. Their lives do not revolve around men, there’s barely men in the cast. Bonus points, they’re brown like me

[@falconeshield]

I'm still waiting for their show like how Vox Machina and soon Baldur's Gate got to be a thing

[@obviouslyqueer]

They're great!!

[@alvinsmith3894]

Daily reminder that Harrow was meant to be a twink with a few muscles, not a male with breasts.

[@kishwer]

Me shipping Ianthe with both Gideon and Harrow 😂 Also toxic, complex and hilarious as hell.

[@spacehootle309]

I do love them! But also, the men in the books are just as awesome. Let's not sound like the sexist aholes we despise, ey?

[@annem4655]

Another thing why "aggression" and "enemies to lovers" is so popular in fictional, sapphic relationships is that unlike friends-to-lovers, it gives no room for the audience to argue "they're just best pals," "that's how women are with each other," "just a sisterly bond." They can't say that when they literally hated each other's guts and their hatred was pretty much the premise of the plot. Moreovert often gives into the greater symbolic, meaning of the story as well when they do fall in love with each other.

[@JackieChan1199]

To add to the trend of 'aggressive' lesbian ships, Shadowheart & Laezel from Baldur's Gate 3 seems to be an incredibly popular ship

[@obviouslyqueer]

Yes! I actually stumbled across them really recently while looking at Griddlehark fanart (as one do) and many of the Locked Tomb- artist also portrayed this couple. They seem to fit into many of the "aggressive lesbian"-traits!

[@JordanJumpin]

It’s also potentially canon since u can play as either and romance the other

[@Gladissims]

​@@JordanJumpin But... By that logic any couple on BG3 involving origin characters is potentially canon... Which is true. Everything that happens in your playthrough *is* canon but... It's not like their romance specifically stands out from the rest of anything.

[@xaigoart]

If I take either of them into my party I keep dragging the other one along (even if I don't need her at the moment) hoping they'll interact with each other at least via passive-aggressive bickering. I usually hate the enemies-to-lovers trope, but with these two it somehow seems to work.🤷‍♀

[@walkblessed445]

yeah but it's no Mintharlach.

[@reachelglasser544]

For me it's not so much about being "toxic" it's about giving them some real conflict, we all have flaws, shows two opposite characters coming to a understanding, put sexual tension, make complex characters... the best f/f ships in big media are the involuntary ones because the dynamics are natural and have a lot of chemistry (wenclair, supercorp, wolfwren...), another thing is that non-canon ships are tremendously attacked, especially if there is a hetero ship in the middle. in the end they (media) give you the minimum representation and they don't want to canonize a good f/f ship because they are cowards of losing conservative viewers, like conservatives "fans" don't like these female characters anyway, so give them to the lesbians but no because bait works just fine for them. anyway, there is a quote from Leah Raeder, Black Iris that fits perfectly "Girls love each others like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ouselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each others. With girls is total vulnerability from the bigining. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral. And it's relentless"

[@obviouslyqueer]

Absolutely agree with you, very well put. And a wonderful quote? Thank you for that, and your comment!

[@rdpsysium7340]

That quote is *fantastic.* Reminds me of the U-Haul lesbian joke. I think it's an accurate stereotype for some lesbians because we're ready to be vulnerable from the start, and that vulnerability/intensity can light the fireworks immediately. The last girl I fell in love with could have run me over with a U-Haul and I would have cheered, lol.

[@mercedes4202]

yes ❤❤❤ the teeth, the blood 🔥 sudden, all-consuming lust and desire 🖤 these are rarely shown and celebrated in media *edit: for lesbians

[@salembookworm]

I got into Thai Girl's Love shows (Blank, Gap and Reverse 4 You) and the canon ships are mostly kinda toxic and have propblematic themes like age gaps/power dynamics etc. and people go up in arms about how "toxic" these ships are. I like both: the "toxic" and the "wholesome" f/f ships.

[@carolinekilmer4634]

One thing about the f/f ships on AO3 is they’re usually a side couple, especially if it’s a bigger fandom (like Ronance or that random lesbian maurders ship). It’s so annoying as someone who only reads f/f 😭

[@obviouslyqueer]

yeah 100%. I think, unfortunately, if the stats from AO3 only counted the main pairing (how on earth it would do that, but in theory) the gap would be even bigger. Especially Ronancy is a major sideship to Eddie/Steve

[@sosrslysydney168]

I love the marauders tho and there’s actually a ton of fics centered around f:f

[@iSleepinYourTeacups]

the maraudes have a shit ton of f/f ships honestly and as much as yeah they are very often background pairs they still have some very good f/f centric fanfics

[@allyli1718]

It’s a nightmare searching for f/f fics for this reason 😭😭😭

[@kaheivi]

i’m a lesbian and i wish there were more non fem4fem couples in media. i wanna see studs, butches, trans lesbians, non white lesbians, etc. gender non conforming/ non cis lesbians are treated so awfully. i just wanna see these lesbians praised and respected.

[@kaheivi]

i also need more old woman yuri 🙏

[@insertnamehere-sage]

Real, Sophie from OITNB is the only black transbian I could think from a popular show, and just in general

[@sophiaruizuvalle2523]

We had a great 1 episode of euphoria exploring Jules... And that was it for both seasons

[@balthasardenner5216]

​@@insertnamehere-sage "transbians" aren't lesbians, they're straight men with a fetish, stay out of lesbian/women's spaces

[@6Haunted-Days]

What TF us so wrong with lesbians who have always been women? That’s a disgusting way to look at it imo….so somehow that makes them ….what OVER represented? Christ always have WAH WAH WAH whine and gripe. Gotta be outraged.

[@heddathunstrom2805]

Now I'm not a lesbian myself but my sister and my cousin both are. My cousin only reads f/f and my sister only reads m/m. Thought that was interesting. One aspect my sister mentioned was that she didn't feel represented as someone who is more butch, whereas my cousin is more fem

[@Sara-uq6km]

As a butch lesbian i feel that! Mlm can kind of represent my queer masculinity but it doesnt represent my attraction and it sucks that the two often ate seperated in media because for my experience they are intrinsically connected.

[@randdiamond8090]

Also most butches are transing out of lesbianism irl. From the most in-demand in the dating pool, to the least desirable for straight women.

[@vic3041]

it's definitely just as frustrating as a lesbian who's usually atracted to butches, except i don't read M/M. one of my OTPs currently is Rhaenyra/Alicent from House of The Dragon, and i'm always retweeting tf out of butch Rhaenyra fanart or giving kudos to butchfemme works of them on AO3 🤣

[@matildebonariva]

The only good example of a f/f ship treated like a mlm one is the two Nanas from Nana, except with the prolific fanfictions on ao3. I think because the anime/manga ultimately centers around the two of them, showing how much they care for one another. They are both characterized extremely well, which is also pretty unusual for female characters in general-they are not perfect and boring at all, quite the opposite. Also, despite being non canon they are more canon than most lgbt couples imo. I genuinenly think that if writers/artists want to create a sapphic story, they should get insipired more by Nana.

[@SkyFlower-hn5wg]

I completely agree! Nana is such an amazing show

[@Ivy_1989_]

They are my roman empire

[@Gr95dc]

and with the state of the story at the beginning o this eternal hiatus it would just make sense for them two to end together, it would just be poetic and amazing

[@pashpashe]

You're forgetting supercorp and clexa and catradora.

[@SarkanaNightSong]

We have been STARVED for good lesbian commentary videos!! So excited about this, more please!!

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you!!

[@falconeshield]

It's been 3 years since Shera 2018 ended. At least Arcane is finally coming back

[@himb0fication]

I wouldn't be surprised if the fact that the most popular f/f ships predominantly come from children's entertainment coincides with the idea of lesbian infantilisation. Like, especially with the lack of m/m couples in the same shows, with gay men being considered inherently sexual and lesbians being considered inherently not, I wouldn't be shocked if lesbian relationships were considered more appropriate and safer for younger audiences due to that same infantilisation. And unfortunately it does seem to kind of be being proved correct cause those shows with heavy wlw themes for a younger audience really do maintain their place for longer than shows where lesbians are shown to be more sexual.

[@falconeshield]

Korrasami was supposed to be a start. Then Clexa just turned the dial back 10 years for live action couples.

[@kamijou-san1663]

Not only that but I find people more comfortable with f/f light intimacy and also open emotional vulnerability because a lot of people find it already normal in female friendships (not that is not normal, but due to toxic masculinity, men are kind of expected to not do it and when they do is "anormal"). While showing m/m relationships, the romance is already more obvious because people often don't expect men showing any kind of affection or emotional vulnerability. So showing f/f non sexual touch/intimacy relationships is something already more acceptable and not shocking to the media so easier to put on kid shows.

[@sawsawsuka]

@@kamijou-san1663yeah, i’ve been thinking about this exact thing too. men in intimate relationships is automatically seen as sexual and taboo while women in an intimate relationship can pass as “just two gal pals lol.” wlw relationships should be able to be mature and adult and mlm relationships should be able to be romantic and vulnerable!

[@obviouslyqueer]

I actually had a section in the original script that talked about this correlation. I can't help seeing it. But in the end I deleted it, cause I talked too much about media I haven't seen haha. But I think there is something really interesting (and a lil bit depressing) to talk about in the relationship between infantilized lesbians and the overrepresentation of sapphics in children's media.

[@paulgibbon5991]

@@sawsawsuka That also has negative consequences for men. One of the biggest inhibitors against straight men being emotionally open with each other is being accused of being gay, and when every male-male relationship with any closeness or vulnerability is labelled as romantic / sexual (with "yay, gay!" being almost as bad in this regard as "urgh, gay!") with no room for anything else to even be considered without accusations of homophobia or queer-baiting, that...doesn't exactly help. Of course, ideally there would be enough rep of all kinds of relationship that there would be no need to fight or argue about any given relationship.

[@evoregnar5354]

That's why I love the new Scott pilgrim takes off adaptation, they made Ramona accept her "gay phase" as part of her sexuality, they made her bisexual which is much better than when in the movie she wrote it off as just a phase that meant nothing; in the adaptation it meant a lot to her and was just as important as any other relationship

[@obviouslyqueer]

Yeah that was great!

[@asterismos5451]

I definately think there's a vicious cycle with relationships (romantic/sexual or otherwise) between women being poorly or blandly written -> fans not being invested in f/f ships (canon or otherwise) -> people involved in writing/producing/etc. on the show seeing there's no real enthusiasm for these ships/relationships -> continuing to not prioritize them, where if they'd been written well from the start people would more likely be interested and there would either be more focus on the ship/relationship moving forward in a show or book series, or the creators would understand this sort of thing can be a great selling point and would use that in their future projects to write good relationships between women. Like Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy became canon *because* they were so well-written as friends originally. Not that pandering to fans is always going to be a good thing, but it worked out nicely in this instance.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Yeah absolutely agree! It's a circle! And just like you say I'm generally not a fan of creators bending to the will of fandoms, it can easily feel like fanpleasing and ruin the vibe but with Ivy/Harley it also made sense for canon and then I think it's a very brave choice

[@radiosilence289]

This! I also think the problem is rooted even deeper, as most media is just lacking female characters overall and those few female characters are sometimes also poorly written (or at least they´re less well written or less important than their male counterparts). As a consequence f/f ships are often poorly written and i´d argue this is also why there are less non-canon f/f ships than m/m ones. I mean just look at harry potter ships, harry gets shipped with draco, ron, cedric, any weasley brother you can think of and some adults (which is a can of worms we´re not gonna open rn). But what female characters could you ship e.g. hermione with? The only ship with a fandom that i know of is pansy/hermione. You could still ship her with ginny but she gets mostly shipped with luna, and apart from those 2 you can pretty much only ship her with some minor female characters or ones she´s barely interacted with. Same with stranger things, in the younger kids group theres only 2 girls (max and eleven) and of course theyre cute and some people ship them but you can literally not ship them with any other female character, cause they´re all older (or younger) than them. And it´s probably the exact same reason why nancy/robin is the most popular f/f ship in the stranger things fandom. Because they´re pretty much the only female characters in their age group. With the guys there´s ships like eddie/steve, billy/steve, jonathan/steve, jonathan/argyle, billy/eddie, tommy/steve etc. With the girls that´s just not possible considering the lack of female characters (you might find the occasonal nancy/barb or robin/vicky but that´s it).

[@falconeshield]

Remember when the whole internet cheered when Ivy and Harls FINALLY kissed after 25 years? 2020 had its moments.

[@ZenobiaofPalmyra]

@@radiosilence289 I mean you can ship her with bellatrix.... probably the most common one after pansy? Most definitely toxic thou.

[@leviadragon99]

it's not tremendously surprising, media for women in general tends to be given less of a budget and be more cynical in its production because of the mutually interdependent intersection point between patriarchy and capitalism, you throw queerness into the mix and that's adding in a whole new layer of disinterest, laziness, cynicism and exploitation,.

[@kaitlynmorgan8097]

Ive been saying this for years, thank you. Not only for addressing the faults in lesbian rep but misogyny in fandom as well. Im in a fandom rn with a total of 20 characters, 4 guys and 16 girls. Guess how has the most fics on ao3, not the girls. It's not like the male characters are better written than the girls, they're all on par with each other.

[@waxnwan3]

@ville__you dont have videos? why are you replying to everybody w this?

[@gekkon___n3007]

Are you talking about ProSeka ¿? Because if so, i've noticed that too

[@kaitlynmorgan8097]

@@gekkon___n3007 yep

[@rowan4301]

Oh my god, I'm only on the periphery of the Proseka fandom and when I first checked the AO3 stats I had to laugh. It's such a blatant example of how, even when the original work is mostly about the female characters, people will bend over backwards to focus on the men.

[@rigveda13]

@@rowan4301 What is Proseka? I a haven't been on Ao3 as much recently. Most of my reads are from fandoms from a couple of years ago.

[@gingerdude]

I remember reading my first Yaoi Manga, created by a lesbian woman, in 2016 and her comment on the first page was "i originally wanted to make this manga a wlw but gays are just funnier. " That explains the underrepresentation.... I was literally speechless at that comment

[@obviouslyqueer]

hahaha thats wild

[@SprinkleMyDoughnuts]

Ah yes, internalized misogyny and lesbophobia

[@sannh]

I'm excited, there hasn't been a video essay on femslash in a long time.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you! I hope you enjoyed it!

[@willowarkan2263]

As someone who mostly watches animation, live action just isn't my preferred medium. Most of the shows with sapphic pairings, or really queer ones in general, had to fight or sneak them in there. Adventure time confirmed it in the then end of the series, same for Korra, steven universe lost a season to the weeding. As far as I remember ND Stevenson and company practically snuck Catradora into the show and this was before Netflix was burning shows down left and right, see Deadend paranormal park and so many more. The fact that Kipo made it to its last season, as far as i know it wasn't cut short, is also surprising. If queerness played a part in the decision of whatever disney exec deemed the owl house not suitable for disney and soft axed the last season, is unclear and will likely remain so.

[@mayaneff3728]

Disney straight up poofed Willow out of existence and it had a very explicit sapphic pairing of two of the main characters. Disney is not being subtle about it

[@falconeshield]

​@NotVille_So is being an ass and I'm not seeing you at your best behaviour

[@falconeshield]

​@@mayaneff3728Pls remind me, which Willow?

[@mayaneff3728]

The series that was a sequel to the movie Willow from 1988. @@falconeshield

[@willowarkan2263]

@@falconeshield pretty sure that's a bot. i reported for hate speech and moved on. My guess that account and the similarly named person in these replies, referring to videos on an empty channel, are both bots.

[@BrokenDarkFire]

You hit the nail on the head with lesbian infantilization and removing the sexual tension. I’m queer and that’s exactly why I don’t flock to every single wlw media, because I’m so tired of writers (sometimes even fanfic writers!) being unwilling to portray female desire. Killing Eve (other than its ending) was everything I wanted.

[@harukaru84]

this analysis is so on point. another thing I have noticed, is that with wlw ships, there is always "something wrong" with the ship, when there isn't really. it does go down to misogyny, and the most recent example is a video game someone else mentioned in the comments baldur's gate 3. three men and 3 women main character, ALL of them with exceptional stories, complex and ef-ed up, and the women I dare say have the most complete, life changing stories, and they are also bad bitches, and strong, and big, etc etc everything women characters have been accused of not being in every fiction over. if you look at the ao3 stats, they are ridiculous. like the one popular guy has like 50% of all fics, and he even has MORE FICS in the wlw as a side character than two of the 3 main women. just let that last fact sink in. all the characters can romance every gender and it's up to the player what they will do. that being said, one of the women, a big red buff, barbarian she was specifically written and performed as a sapphic( she is spectacular an universally loved). and even the sexual scenes she has with characters of any gender they point to that. and yet the way that one guy is so popular over all the women pretty much says everything we need to know, because it is not about the women being badly written in this case, as the women do have the best stories in the game. it's just plain bias against women.

[@caprichaos]

I very much agree with this, but since Larian has published their statistics (Karlach, Shart and Laezel being the most romanced) I started thinking about how distant fandom is from real life. This discrepancy is of course mainly explained by the different demografic interacting with games (cis men) and fandoms (women and queer ppl) respectively, but idk, I feel there must be something more to it. Maybe I'm just delusional and refuse to accept how ingrained in our minds misogyny is, but especially considering how in AO3 f/m pairings are more popular than m/m pairings (I'm talking about Astarion here) I think that a lot of straight women are self-inserting in a "I can fix him" romance bc they're not attracted to women and they get to create their own character, reflecting their irl preferences. Outside of the romantic perspective, the majority of women I've seen in bg3 fandom love the 3 main gals, just not in a romantic way.

[@caprichaos]

(what I wrote is not a counter-argument to the og comment. Misogyny is still the main culprit, but I think in this specific case there could be more than that at play)

[@harukaru84]

@@caprichaos you are correct, about fandom and real life absolutely correct that being said, to be honest it is hard to believe the 3 girlies got so much romance going on, when the steam achievement for Karlach act 3 romance is so damn low (3,6% or something) and more people have effed the squid that Karlach. so I would be reallly interested in an in depth numbers with player stats and the like.

[@caprichaos]

@@harukaru84 yeah the squid statistic was... Unexpected to say the least lol But I agree with you, misogyny is still rampant and I'm glad bg3 (with its limitations) took a step in the right direction. Also I think Astarion in and on himself is a "revolutionary" character, being a less traditionally masculine man that has all the girls in a chokehold. Just like Karlach having more "masculine" traits but keeping her soft and caring core intact. It's slow progress, but at least we're going somewhere I guess. Now let's hope Larian will publish more in-depth statistics, I need to know every single choice percentage lol

[@harukaru84]

@@caprichaos if anything Larian made the conscious choice, to hire queer people to write and perform the characters. that by and of itself, shows that the queer stories we see not just from the companions, but from NPCs all over the map (praise Dame Aylin lol, the gay gnomes, Alphira and Lacrissa being wives, etc etc) they were written in, they weren't accidental or an after thought.

[@sapphic.flower]

We definitely deserve a healthy balance of slow-burn and fluff romance and romance with spicy conflict!

[@pattamon9432]

Being gay is not a choice. Being Homophobic is. Appearently you made your choice@NotVille_

[@sunnisideup444]

You’re right, It’s the optimal one at this point

[@sapphic.flower]

@NotVille_ and that choice should be respected lol (I'm not actually agreeing with you)

[@longtoney]

episode 7 of the last of us is HANDS DOWN my favourite, it does not come close to deserving the lowest rating. it portrays ellie's relationship with her sexuality flawlessly!

[@troikas3353]

E7 was wonderful and cute and heartbreaking. I really think the main issue with E7 that hurt its reception was just its placement in the season. The cliff hanger E6 left off on left a lot of people chomping at the bit to find out how it would resolve. The show got the audience really invested in Joel and Ellie, so jumping from that E6 ending into a slower paced almost slice-of-life-esque flashback episode that didn’t answer the cliff hangar left people who otherwise would have enjoyed it a bit cold on it instead. I really think if they restructured things just a little to have episode 6 and 7 switch spots in the season order it would have been received significantly better (outside of the trolls and phobes of course). The events of the end of E5 could easily have been used as a framing catalyst to explain why Ellie is thinking about Riley

[@obviouslyqueer]

YES! AGREED! I made a whole video just about that episode, it was the best of the season.

[@schnapapoo]

The fact that Ellie’s actor irl is queer and gnc made it even more special 🥺 one of the few times I’ve really felt like I saw “someone like me” on screen

[@sophiekonigsberger8409]

In the The Untamed fandom (with a canonical mlm lead couple and basically 50 male vs. 5 female characters - of which 4 die even before half the series is finished), there's a considerable number of genderbending Fanfiction that changes the male gay couple to two lesbian women. It kind of makes me optimistic.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Yeah! That's cool!

[@codysmovingcastle]

Oh my god you touched on something I have been thinking about for the past few weeks. I've been mainly into M/M books the past few months and have been actively searching for F/F books to read that grasp me in the same way. So I have been staring at a wall trying to figure out of it's internalised misogyny or the content I'm looking for exists, but is hard to find - this was so well done and really helped me put my thoughts in order tbh. Turns out I think I just like the range that M/M is currently offering, but would go feral if F/F could offer it, too. Just as an aside: I love aggressive lesbian ships, so I really couldn't figure out *why* I was having trouble finding sapphic media that spoke to me. I think it does boil down to the types of characters being written. In my specific case, give me more [toxic] three dimensional lesbians that may or may not be tempted to commit murder and less like the ones that remind me of my ex-best friend who was Jennifer from Jennifer's Body personified.

[@willvandom5105]

I recommend the youtube channel Sappho's library for sapphic book recs! She isn't active on youtube anymore but through this channel I found SO many amazing sapphic books, they exist and are written by women to women, they're just not that talked about

[@schnapapoo]

I've been on a sapphic book quest this last year and I was facing the exact same issue. I ended up picking up the novella Carmilla at some point (I'm a vampire nerd and bi so naturally had to investigate) and was floored to discover that a story from 1872(!!) would have some of the gayest, most poetic and romantic passages I've ever read between the two female characters. It's not the greatest story of all time or anything and it is quite literally one of the earliest/most infamous iterations of the dead/evil lesbian trope but it kind of made me sad that I haven't found many modern F/F novels with similar writing styles or dynamics. Still, I refuse to give up. I'm really hoping that Gideon the Ninth will fill that yearning for me 🙏

[@allymac3000]

⁠​⁠@@schnapapooThey made a Carmilla re-telling web series on KZbin a few years back. I was obsessed obsessed with it in high school.

[@schnapapoo]

@@allymac3000 Yes I heard about that! I've been meaning to watch it at some point. I really wish we could get a cinematic movie adaptation though 🥲 it sucks that sapphic media rarely gets big budgets/releases

[@gocelotspice5766]

There’s a lot of amazing sapphic books out there! But they can be a little hard to find. Some of my favorites are: 1. Last night at the telegraph club 2. One last stop 3. I kissed Shara wheeler 4. The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo

[@theladynim2]

I'm really glad you brought up how the sanitation of lesbians can be prevalent even in queer media. I'm a big fan of the webseries Helluva Boss which is unapologetically queer and whose main character has a great messy, complicated, toxic sexual relationship with another male character. So I was so excited to learn that the creator has a new show out (Hazbin Hotel) with a lesbian couple as the two leads. But despite the show being an extremely adult show with tons of graphic violence and sexual content, the main couple is astonishingly sanitised and desexualised. The season finale comes out next week and these women (who have been an established couple since the beginning) have yet to even kiss onscreen. They're also the only two characters in the show who are unambiguously morally good. Hell, you could drag and drop them into a kid's show and they'd seem right at home (something which definitely can't be said for any other character) I love the show but the sapphic rep seems such a clear contrast to how the other characters and relationships are portrayed and it's beyond disappointing to me personally.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Really??? I've seen so much about that show (on Tumblr especially) and no one has mentioned this fact, which for me is wild (that they haven't kissed yet) considering the themes I've seen the show tackle. Thank you for the info (and you comments! 💞) I'm glad to enjoyed the video!

[@tardigradeColonies]

I find that so weird about Hazbin, too, and I've found it weird ever since the pilot was released on KZbin. Sometimes it's like the fact that they're even a couple in the first place can be a little blink and you miss it. I'm always on the lookout for intriguing f/f dynamics and flirty vibes, and the fact that they're a couple in the pilot totally did not register until I heard about it secondhand, which blew my mind because usually I see sapphic dynamics where other people don't. They're supposedly so lovey dovey and wholesome and supported, but they're barely ever even physically affectionate in an overtly romantic way. They hardly hold hands. They don't ever really cuddle. They don't ever give each other adorable little pecks on the cheek or forehead when they're happy to see each other. They hardly ever look at each other with passionate longing, let alone lustfully. I know couples express themselves in varied ways (and maybe I'm biased, as someone who is really big on physical affection with my partner and can't imagine not giving them little forehead kisses and nuzzles whenever I see them again), but it's so ODD to me in an animated universe where M/F pairings like Millie and Moxxie and M/M pairings like Stolas and Blitzo have crazy sexual moments and sloppy, tongue-wrapping, saliva spraying makeouts on screen multiple times. It's not just a difference in how wholesome vs. lecherous/problematic relationships are portrayed, because Helluva Boss loves to beat you over the head with how wholesomely and passionately in love Millie and Moxxie are, and they still get to be so physical and passionate with each other. Vaggie and Charlie are more reserved about PDA, but that doesn't have to mean every bit of romantic touch and affection between them needs to be so blink and you miss it, you know, and Hazbin doesn't show them acting or touching any differently when they're alone, not even in their room. Like for fuck's sake, we don't even get to see them cuddle up together at night and the one waking-up shot we have of them starts when they're already out of bed, so no romantic/cute emerging from their couple cocoon moments either. Like, it's not even the lack of sexuality that bothers me, it's the lack of physical intimacy in general. The one kiss we get of them in the finale is actually so bland and boring feeling, and so delayed compared to all the good narrative moments there would be for them, an ESTABLISHED COUPLE, to kiss or be really accectionate, that it almost felt anticlimactic. Like, cmon, these ladies have been dating for SO LONG, this isn't some exciting will they or won't they or the long-awaited CaitVi kiss everyone is waiting for, they literally sleep in the same bed every night and casually call each other babe, why can't they give each other quick little hello/goodbye/see ya/good luck kisses every so often?? Aaaaaaaargh, it drives me INSANE a little bit, kinda. The M/M ship bait with Angel Dust and the bartender guy has more romantic rizz and physical style/connection than Vaggie and Charlie, if I really think about the way characters physically interact.

[@MonsterMalino555]

the only thing i can say is that the creator is femmephobik all characters which shows femininity considered weak and without brain cells or outright evil I can only take from helluva boss as I don't want to support the creator anymore when I myself am lipstick lesbian and been bullied so many times for it I see femmephobia from a far

[@crashb800]

I am going to premise this by stating that I am male and am mostly into women. I state this incase I state something that could be wildly incorrect. I think the main thing underpinning all of this is the idea that masculinity is inherently sexual and unromantic and, importantly for this discussion, that femininity is inherently romantic and unsexual. Of course, this might seem confusing until one realizes that, while feminine bodies have been highly sexually valued and fetishized by current society, feminine sexuality has been pushed down and undervalued. This means that, for male/female relationships represented on screen or in fandom, that the male is almost always the sexual aggressor and seems to, in the eyes of a lot of consumers, bring the sexuality to the relationship. For same sex relationships of both the male/male and female/female variety found in media and fandom, the person that presents more masculinely is that one that brings that sexuality and, in a sense, heterosexualizes the relationship. This, of course doubly affects same sex pairings in the fact that male/male pairings are often portrayed as hypersexual and almost missing romance, and female/female pairings are seen as sexless and romantic unless their bodies can be commodified for a male gaze. I think this would explain some of the overrepresentation in children's media for female/female pairings and would partially explain the overrepresentation of male/male pairings in fandom. I think that a lot of male-loving female fans want a sense of sexuality in the fandom material that they create and read, and I think that they still see femininity as inherently unsexual despite the fact that many of these people are sexually turned-on women. It almost feels as if these women want to experience some sort of sexual fantasy, but they feel as though the need a male figure to, in short, bring the sexuality to the party. What I said also explains why is so necessary to portray female/female relationships where the characters are horny and depraved and why it's necessary to portray male/male relationships where they don't have sex and just have nice romantic kisses.

[@Gladissims]

While I can see where you are coming from, and there may be some truth to your take, there are two things I would like to bring up that may complicate it a little. The first is regarding lesbians in children's entertainment. According to my sister who is an animator, one of the reason we see so many lesbians in animation is because a lot of people that work in the industry these days are... well, queer women. And since gay men have a lot more representation in media overall compared to gay women, they see it as an opportunity to represent themselves. As for the appeal of m/m ships to women, I think there's definitely some truth to what you say. But it's not just that men "bring the sexuality to the relationship". I got into writing m/m stories when I was pretty young, and one of the main appeals to me was that it created a wall of separation between what the characters did and me, letting me explore my sexuality in a way that felt safe and comfortable. This could absolutely be related to the fact that it is ingrained in us women that we should not be sexual, because a part of what drew me to m/m over m/f was a certain discomfort with imagining myself in sexual situations. I've since grown out of that (and discovered that I'm actually more attracted to women than men) but I think this is something a lot of women who get into m/m erotica can relate to.

[@chaoticneutralsheep]

@NotVille_ Did you like your own comment? 🤣

[@owo4983]

@@chaoticneutralsheepi’m noticing a weird pattern with these trolls/bots. theres a ville_ and a notville_ now

[@fuzonzord9301]

@NotVille_ It's a very bisexual opinion.

[@renalanf0rd]

@NotVille_good for you or sorry that happened

[@martianpudding9522]

I think a really big factor is just the under representation of women in fiction in general. I also mostly read fanfiction about M/M ships, and most of them are from pieces of media that have far fewer women in them than men. I feel that makes it just statistically much less likely to find two women with chemistry that makes you want to ship them in those same stories, especially if those characters also often have smaller roles and are less well written. I also think romance in media isn't very well represented in general, or at least not in a way that appeals to the fanfiction community. After all I think the reason so many non canon M/M ships are popular is because often time friendships or rivalries will be written more interestingly and with more chemistry than actual romances, maybe particularly in media that isn't primarily about romance. (and again because men are overrepresented most of those friendships and rivalries tend to be between men)

[@alexoceanmeow]

I liked how you pointed out how animation vs live action is treated with fictional sapphics but pointedly toward lesbians. I love my animated sapphics but I'm so mad, so hurt over how live action has been handled. I loved Killing Eve and was heartbroken over experiencing that. I'm sad about Warrior Nun. I was sad about First Kill, it was a bit silly if you pulled at threads too hard but it had potential and now it's gone. It really hurts all the shows that get canned too early for just having lesbians in them.

[@jennifervasquez]

This video completely reframed my view on this issue. For years ive been frustrated with the fact that as a sapphic woman despite my best efforts to consume more sapphic media, most of the media i end up consuming is mlm. Its not like it comes from a lack of interest in it since im actively craving it n some of my favorite pieces of media are sapphic, the volume is just frustratingly low. I kinda figured it was bc of the low volume of sapphic media that exists comparatively n the few that we do get being cancelled immediately but it never occurred to me that the sanitization n lack of diversity of characterization of these sapphic characters n relationships was such a large part of it but it is. I too want to see lesbians fight fucking in mud n now im mad we havent gotten it yet.

[@falconeshield]

It's been 10 years since Yuri on Ice. Love, Simon will be 10 in 2028. Apart from Red, White and Blue finally getting a movie and feeding gay men starved for romance, is there another in your face romance for m|m that's not practically pron like Euphoria or any livr action show on Netflix where gay men take center stage? (Queer Eye is more reality tv and SC took 4 seasons for two openly queer men to finally kiss)

[@obviouslyqueer]

@ninab.4540 Just during say.... 2023 we've seen multiple series with gay men as MAIN characters, like - Young Royals, Heartstopper, Our Flag Means Death, What We do in the Shadows, Fellow Travelers... the list goes on.Thats not even going back longer than a year and focusing only streaming TV with gay men as leads.

[@obviouslyqueer]

@jennifervasquez Thank you so much!

[@Lindsay-Makes-Videos]

"Fandom is a safe space for problematic dynamics.." omg this. Got a wee story.... I grew up with abuse - but don't worry, that's not what this story is about. It's about me and a nerdy friend hanging out and talking about a TV show we both loved that puts a problematic couple front and center. Since trauma is a special interest of mine, I was rather lightheartedly pointing out the things about the relationship that were ridiculously not okay. My friend got defensive and spat out at me, "If you think THAT relationship is abusive, you have never experienced real abuse." Yeah. Ouch. It was probably the meanest thing that someone I would call a friend has ever said to me. (For the record, we're still great friends and there were lots of apologies and tears after this moment.) This exchange got too heated too fast for me to say this, but I think the problem was she thought I was knocking the show and the character she loves. I wasn't. I don't need the couples I watch on TV to live up to my real life standards. It's okay to WANT the drama on the screen and NOT want the drama in real life. TV should be responsible, but that's different than expecting people to only love characters they would also love in person. In this fucked up world people hold themselves to such insane moral standards that I think they're doing themselves a huge disservice if they don't allow themselves to just sit back and enjoy some TV melodrama. 😂😂

[@obviouslyqueer]

Amen!

[@ninanadine1185]

I'm from the Silmarillion fandom (I know you probably have never heard of it) where some of us write tens of thousands of words between female characters that never interact (me) and though we get little views, we are PASSIONATE! F/F may be that popular yet, but the fans are so very dedicated and I have so much hope for it

[@obviouslyqueer]

I know of Silmarillion! Haven't read it but I know it, glad to hear here there are some FF fighters ✊

[@moldypaw6134]

F/F shippers in the Tolkien fandom are the strongest breed, given how pathetically few women characters there are. Well written ones, but dramatically outnumbered by men. Out of curiosity, what are some (relatively) popular F/F pairs from the Silm? I only know of Galadriel/Melian.

[@ninanadine1185]

@@moldypaw6134 yeah sadly with the very little women in books- they are mostly rare pairs. But the most popular ones (in the silm) are Indis/Mirel, Nerandel/Elenwe/Anarie, Luthien/Thurigwethil And Nienor/Findulias. I have wrote a few fanfics that are more rare which is Amarie/Vana and Tar-Mirel/OFC. I’m actually organizing a Tolkien femslash event on tumblr soon so hopefully that goes well!

[@nomi9997]

i've been scanning the comments for recs, thank you!

[@albatrs]

this is so interesting, I could watch a three hour video in this

[@obviouslyqueer]

Oh thank you! Im always worried when I make videos that are over 40 min so that's really nice to hear

[@mercuresis]

@@obviouslyqueer please make more!!! love love love lesbian long form content

[@km.6862]

great video! so many good points! as a lesbian who has been in fandom spaces for YEARS, who mostly gravites towards f/f ships (and sometimes f/m, but rarely m/m ships), i have always been so frustrated with the lack of hype for f/f ships in fandoms. i think a lot of it stems from misogyny within popular media and also fandom spaces, there's just not a lot of space for women and so therefore not a lot of space for f/f ships. and people saying they want some fucked up/taboo/problematic aspect to be interested in fictional relationship (i personally don't feel that need, but i can see where they're coming from), and at the same time women in media are so often overhated for being "bad people" and "annoying" as soon they're nuanced and have intense feelings. women aren't allowed to be as raw and problematic and make mistakes as men. and when they don't get to be messy people, they also don't get to have the messy relationships that people are interested in. another thing. i know it was just an offhand comment, but i just wanna say that i disagree that no one cared about van and tai in yellowjackets. because i did. i very much did. still do. and i think one of the reasons that it isn't as hyped as some of the non-canon sapphic ships in the show, is related to van being butch and tai not being white. and also the fact that they're both out. i feel like repressed white femme4femmes are some of the most popular f/f ships.

[@guada2991]

I'm someone who mostly consumes m/m and m/f (shocker) content despite being an aroace lesbian myself, lol. It's something I've been thinking about lately, especially because when i first got into fandoms (as a 11 year old) I was mostly only into f/f ships, which has changed over the years. I'm guessing part of it is that a lot of the media I'm a fan of nowadays doesn't tend to feature a lot of women, which sounds bad but it's actually kind of impressive how underfeatured women are in a lot of media. But also, I think in a lot of media, even if it has a lot of women, the relationships tend not to feel as interesting? I don't really need a relationship to be canon, but I feel like often times the way relationships between women are writtten makes them a lot less appealing to me than relationships between men or between a woman and a man. I will say, one of my favorite f/f ships of all time is Elphaba and Glinda, SPECIFICALLY from the musical because I haven't read the book. But GOD how I love them, I get so passionate talking about them, whenever I listen to Defying Gravity I'm kicking my feet and rolling around in my bed because THEY'RE SO IN LOVE BUT SO UNABLE TO SAY IT AND IT'S SICKENING! They're not even that well written but I'm obsessed with them. I guess for me the problem is I don't consume a lot of media that focuses on relationships between women, and therefore I don't feel compelled to ship them, but I really want to be as passionate as I am about these two with other f/f pairings. Sorry for the long comment, but this was a very interesting video, especially seeing that a lot of other sapphics are feeling similarly about the media and pairings they consume!

[@ЕвгенияП-ю6т]

I'm a lesbian that doesn't ship f/f that often and. To me the main problem is usually the media itself or the female characters themselves. I just can't see in these girls neither myself, nor my girlfriend, nor other wlw I know, idk.

[@falconeshield]

But you do know you can just enjoy the story right? Representation is important but sometimes, you're not gonna get it. It sucks but it's part of being queer. Ask anyone who's bi or ace.

[@julius-ceasar]

i personally love evil lesbians (villanelle deserved better man) and i also love evil (or more accurately morally ambiguous) female characters over all, like carmilla from castlevania or hell even princess bubblegum, i wish that was more appreciated and explored, i see a majority of people love bad boy characters but hate on female characters who behave similarly. i feel like there is still in this day and age, a patriarchal and unfair standard that women should be better, more mature, less selfish, whilst men are allowed more leniency in their morality, especially when it comes to relationships and sexuality, even among a lot of seemingly woke crowds. we truly have a long way to go, but at the end of the day im also for what we already have and that it seems to be changing

[@falconeshield]

Yo a Catra fan! High five!

[@Jeetaruey]

Catra and Adora are my favorite lesbian couple in media because Catra is not this perfect sanitized portrayal of lesbians. She is erractic and possessive. She is written like so many lesbian villains who get killed at the end of the story, but instead of that happening, she is given love and room to heal. She is given another chance and gets the girl in the end. After growing up in the 90s and early 00's, it was so healing to finally see the lesbian villain be treated so kindly and not act like she is a lost cause. One of my favorite sapphic ships is Azula and Ty Lee from ATLA. Azula was only 14 and manipulated by her father that is only worthy of love based upon her usefulness. She was abused just like Zuko, but in a different way. She is written using lesbian queer coding and treated like a lost cause. I desired so much for her to be given help and to end up with Ty Lee, so to instead see it with Catra and Adora meant so much. I also adore Gideon and Harrow from TLT, Wednesday and Enid from Wednesday, and Madoka and Homura from Madoka Magica. I love toxic codependency lesbians and we just don't often get them where it feels like they are written for lesbians and not killed in the end. I also love Edelgard and F!Byleth from Fire Emblem 3H because of how unapologetically lesbian they are and how their stories are about helping each other and getting revenge on the person who wronged them both. PS You called Enid "Erin" throughout this video and it greatly pained me XD

[@falconeshield]

You have no idea how I much I cried when Glimmer was saved by Bow from the void of space and Adora was saved by Catra at the heart, perfectly mirroring their intro in S1 and their fallout in S3. Not to mention when Catra almost got the Vader redemption route and Adora just reset her life counter through sheet will. And magic that helps. And it takes ALOT to make me cry.

[@falconeshield]

And in any other show, Catra would've died and stayed dead on Darla. But she didn't. And that pissed alot of media illiterate folks.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you for your comment! And Im sorry about Enid

[@adeptdamage3669]

Nah they're relationship was super toxic and badly written.

[@Jeetaruey]

@@adeptdamage3669 Found a media illiterate person.

[@willvandom5105]

Great discussion! Yang Xiao Long & Blake Belladonna from RWBY (19 on tumblr) are one of my favorites because in a show full of characters this is by far the most popular ship since the beginning of the show yet they only became officially canon this year! Their popularity grew even more strong when their dynamic started being more complex and angsty - proving your point about us wanting complex and toxic dynamics Also the other ship on the fandom that comes close to Bumbleby's popularity is another wlw ship, which I find quite interesting

[@bigooft9521]

Ooh this was really interesting! I don't think I was the target for this video (I'm a bisexual transmasc rather than a queer woman), but it's got me thinking about the things I find frustrating about fandom spaces I'm in/adjacent to. Very sorry for slightly off topic comment haha, I am thinking as I type. So I think something I've felt for a long time is a lot of queer people, despite coming out and being open, still centre their lives around cis men? I definitely notice this particularly around transmasc/trans male fandom content - even written by transmascs, there is an absolutely dearth of anything that doesn't pair a trans male character up with a cis male character, and in particular ways that (imo) end up being somewhat bioessentialist and treating only the cis male part of the couple as the actual desirable one. People can write what they want, but it rubs me the wrong way that the transmasc fandom community is willing to uplift content that centers cis men to the detriment of basically anything else. I think that's why I read a lot of FF that specifically has butch characters (Griddlehark and CaitVi are the big ones for me). While I'm on the dude side of the transmasc spectrum, I feel a lot more seen in those kinds of works (particularly the ones that lean into the gender-y stuff - I religiously refresh the Stone Butch Gideon Nav tag) than I do more explicitly transmasc works that still center cis men?

[@caprichaos]

Super interesting addition to the video. I think the explicit focus on cis men has similar connotations to interracial couples represented in media, where it's almost always white person + poc person. It's like the only way we have to talk about what it's like to be part of a "minority" is to center and explain our identity around the (arbitrary) notion of default human being, which is a white, cis man. I wonder if we'll ever grow out of this mindset, I certainly hope so

[@bigooft9521]

@@caprichaos Ooh yeah, that's a great point of comparison, thanks for bringing it up! Only drawing from my own experiences/axes of marginalisation, another example I can think of is fatness. I'm fat and prefer to date other fat people, but the few representations of fat people in romantic media are always paired with a thin partner, in a way that I can feel comes across as 'look! they succeeded romantically! they're hot enough this thin person loves them!'. There are some exceptions (gay bear media leans fat4fat, and there's a handful of romance authors I follow because they specifically write fat/fat relationships), but that is the general pattern. I do sometimes wonder if it's because fantasies about being loved as a fat person and being seen as desired rely on less unpacking of fatphobia than ones about loving a fat person and seeing somebody worth desiring? And same again for trans people and unpacking transphobia.

[@obviouslyqueer]

You're absolutely a target for this video I could say, I would say this is a topic/issue that concerns all queer people that consume FF. Agree this was a very interesting addition. In media we are still in a time where there can only be one minority in a relationship(!) Probably because mainstream creators are afraid to create a relationship without one normie, for identification and afraid to provoke. This is also the same with butches for example. We see femme/femme quite often, because that's gender non-confirming so not that scary. Or we see femme/butch. But we neeeever see butch/butch.

[@whatthehellisthisname]

Damn, being in the F/F community I never noticed how little fanfictions we have. Reading femslash fanfics every now and then I never really felt like I was running out of stuff to read, but 5% is insane. As for enjoying non-canon pairings more, that's too real. I have to say most wlw stories are written so boringly. Whereas stories where it's just subtext have a lot more intriguing variation in dynamics that are usually not seen in actual wlw romances. I actually have the tendency to stop caring about a ship once it becomes canon, because it feels like I've seen everything there is now, now I need to move on to cheer on for the next ship.

[@Fanny_Tomato]

This video was really cool! despite me never really yearning for something inherently "fucked up" in a f/f ship, I have always been a bit frustrated that all my favorite f/f ships are so wholesome and sweet and tbh sometimes even childish, that I can´t read much fanfiction for it cause it always feels not quite fitting. I also think that the domination of m/m pairings in fan media is a reason why I have a hard time getting hugely into most fandoms. I just have a much harder time relating to that and if a specific fandom offers near to no female characters (and even less so f/f pairings) I´d rather go back to my children cartoons and cry about friendship- and family-struggles.

[@Idk24242]

xena is the best show of all time to me. it’s something I love so much I can’t put it into words. It’s a flawed show (the finale) and yet, it is the best wlw relationship I have ever seen on screen. I see this as a lesbian who tries to exclusively watch wlw media. xena had her and gabby kissing and confessing love and sensually dancing even around the censors of the late 90s- and yet it still got 6 seasons, thrived and is still widely loved. It is unbelievable how much has changed in so little time. When’s the last time a show based on women and their love for eachother got to 6 seasons or more? it makes me sad…

[@isabellasantopolo2487]

As a fun fact, y'all know what was two characters that left me feeling insane over the fact that the writers had made an amazing and engaging love story and then threw that over board never to be used? Diana and Barbara in Wonder Woman 1984. Diana being grief striken and unable to move on, meeting this sweet beautiful woman who everyone else seems to ignore and treat poorly. They went to dinner together, they talked about their loneliness, I know it probably wasn't intended like that but they flirted! And to the best part: Diana is an immortal superhero with a secret identity, and when Barbara was about to be assaulted she appeared out of nowhere and saved her! It was all so romantic!... And then they made the wish thing and the villain appears and seduces Barbara and then Trevor comes back and anyway. I know Barbara is an actual villain from the comics and stuff, but the missed potential made me want to scream!!

[@clockwork_mind]

I'm a lesbian who doesn’t engage basically at all in fandom spaces. I've just never really had the opportunity or know-how to leap in. I loved this video though, and it makes me want to read some of the things you mentioned, and maybe jump into fandom for the first time.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@camilafeitosa7743]

I will not tolerate the Ianthe erasure, go toxic lesbians (great video!!)

[@obviouslyqueer]

Yeah all my condolences to Ianthe for the erasure haha 😭 she would not approve

[@lizziard2230]

i love seeing these kind of videos, they always hit me right in the heart to hear discussions about why people treat mlm and wlw relationships so differently. i had a coworker ask me a few days ago if i was still a virgin (im a lesbian) and when i told her no, she clarified to ask if i was a virgin with men. i knew there was a deeper reason for that hurt that i couldn’t put my finger on at the time, but it took until about halfway through your video to come up with the question, “would she have asked me the same question if i were a gay man?” that realization hit, remembering its not the first time ive been asked those kind of questions, and knowing it’s far from the last. seriously though, that you for this video and the insight you bring

[@wwillls]

ive struggled for a while trying to figure out why i (as a lesbian) have always preferred toxic wlw relationships in media and get bored by the fluffy vanilla shit, but this has perfectly spelled out why that is. i have been enlightened by this video, thank you :)

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank YOU!

[@ht9434]

i think the reason lesbian villains are a rare breed nowadays is due to the big push in the 2010s to go against the "predatory/evil queer" stereotype that was so common. similar to how the pendulum swung so hard away from damsel in distress type female characters that it veered into pedestaling these inhuman "empowered" female characters who are just as shallow as their past counterparts, but they can fight good now. writers are still nervous about any depiction that could be taken as homophobic. the popularity of The Locked Tomb and other messy, flawed depictions of queer women is such a good sign to me. i remember the awful fandom puritanism of the Steven Universe days, when ANY character flaws were taken as homophobic or problematic. thank god i don't see that kind of drama much anymore.

[@lexa4160]

So glad that you made this video! As a bi woman I always crave for queer media and especially lesbians, but I do agree that most shows or movies about sapphics can miss the point. I haven't finished the video yet, actually I am writting this halfway but I wanted to share before I forget that the reasons you pointed out is why I usually gravitate to asian wlw media more, what is called GL or yuri. Both manga/manhwa and GL shows can have their little issues (just like BL), but I am drawn to the portrayal. One of my favorite ships last year was MonSam from the GL thai show "GAP the series", I think both actresses had tension and the story (while it turned a bit too silly at times) made me keep watching, I was entertained! Now I am looking forward to the next thai GL announced that will come out soon which is 23.5 degrees, I fell in love with the actresses as on screen couple from a previous show (a thai BL) and I feel like I found what I was looking for in asian wlw media. Hopefully we get more animation (currently watching In love with the villainess and I am loooving it), more shows and movies with great and complex portrayal of sapphics this and in future years :-). PS. Btw I also enjoy Yellowjackets, I thrive in media where the majority of the characters are women. I highly agree with Jackie and Shauna's dynamic having soo much more that could've been done with them, which is frustrating and sad, as someone who loves complicated and toxic dynamic between women 🙈

[@obviouslyqueer]

That's really interesting! I'm very unversed in the field of asian media. But as an engaged reader I've been interested to explore yuri or GL in manga/manhwa form. If you have any recommendations I would gladly take them! Thank you so much for your thoughts and comments!

[@sandmr257]

@@obviouslyqueer I'm sorry to come into the conversation. Just wanted to drop my personal favourite wlw manga/manhwa. Her Tale of Shim Chong (finished) and The guy she was inetrested in wasn't a guy at all (on going) (terrible name i now, but the art is sooo cooool). They are not the most famous or anything but i do like them a lot. In terms of live action GL I still couldn't love any atm even though i watched pretty much every GL i could find. But I'm too, as Lexa4160, soooooo hyped with the upcoming 23.5 series!!!

[@YuriAngyo]

​@@obviouslyqueer it depends on what you want, but i think i know a few good entry points! Revolutionary girl utena is free on youtube (uploaded by the official licensor) and great if you like biting into analysis. Also much of modern western animation took notes from utena, especially stuff like steven universe. A feminist satire (not the funny kind, but it is funny often) of fairy tales. The lesbianism only becomes fully fleshed out later on, but when it does it hits like a truck Revue starlight. It gets compared to utena a lot but don't fall for that, they're very different thematically. On hidive officially, it's technically considered subtext but like. It ain't subtle and at least 1 girl is explicitly textually queer. The series is an 8/10, but the movie is 10/10. "For heroes there are trials, for saints temptations, for me, you!" Hell yeah. Also a musical, kind of. Theater kids in a magical fight club refereed by a talking giraffe, flips a finger at bury your gays If you don't mind reading, the otherside picnic novels are great. College girls getting into sci fi horror antics, there's ninja cats. The anime and manga are okay, but the novels are best. Bloom into you, also on hidive. Often compared to heartstopper, but it's not going for wholesomeness. These lesbians got issues. Unfortunately no season 2, but the manga continues and is quite good. A take on the classic school girl romance where one girl hates herself but wants someone to love (and make out with) who will never like her back, while the other girl suffers under the expectation to never catch feelings. Gundam: witch from mercury, on Crunchyroll. They fumbled the ending but that's more about the themes than the lesbians. The lesbians were quite good. Giant robot fights go great with lesbians Bocchi the Rock! also on crunchyroll. Not about lesbian romance, but the characters are all casually sapphic alongside great animation and a good story about a girl overcoming social anxiety to join a band. Also got a great soundtrack. The manga is also good and recently got an official english release Also seconding her tale of shim cheong if webcomics interest you, it's amazing. Feminist retelling of the korean myth of shim cheong. I'm not well versed in manhwa though since the licensors making websites are incompetent at making them function normally. To learn more about japanese yuri erica friedman's website yuricon is a great resource. I made a video about a couple misconceptions about yuri, and the youtuber zeria made a good yuri misconceptions video a while back. I'm currently also watching N6LRO's video "Citrus is complicated..." Which while long also has some great info about the yuri genre while recontextualizing an often maligned yuri story. If you can't tell, my specialty is japanese yuri, so if someone who knows more on other asian gl stories could chip in that'd be greatly appreciated!

[@dizzykitteh]

​@@sandmr257agreeing with tgswiiwagaa. i think it's wonderful knowing that the mc has never been interested in men prior to the "man" she meets, thus her discovery of her sexuality. the art is amazing and it's adorable watching these two characters realize their love for one another. i have this manga up on my shelf, i love it so much.

[@saransa]

⁠​⁠​⁠@@YuriAngyo ty for all the good recs! don’t usually comment but will for a good cause lol. i quite liked run away with me, girl; it’s a story about 2 women who knew each other in high school and reunite later in life. i liked how it had a focus beyond high school, which is where a lot of gl leads are in in most manga/anime i’ve consumed, so this is refreshing! the manga is only 4 volumes so you can easily read it in one sitting :) there’s a korean webcomic called i love amy that is now completed also that has a less wholesome vibe but still has a queer cast which may be enjoyable for some? i haven’t finished reading it yet (when i started reading it it was only about halfway done?) but believe it is complete now which is nice :) also gotta back up your rec for the guy she was interested in wasn’t a guy at all, i love this series so much it’s adorable & the art is amaaazing!! if you can read japanese, you can just read it from the author’s twitter account @agu_knzm, but english translations are also available :)) may pop back in here and add some more if i think of any really good ones!

[@PinkNymphetamine22]

Great video! I think that for years fandom had a problem of something I call 'performative rep', which made tons of young people create discourse over a lack of wlw content and quickly shot down anything that wasn't 'good enough', which wound up with the creation of very boring lesbian fandom content or they were often relegated to the safety of being the 'side ship' in fanfiction or fanart along the mlm ship that was the real focus. I'm glad that it's slowly turning around, because lately there's been so much books, comics, games, shows and movies coming out with more complex and unapologetically messy women with messy relationships with other women, which, as you've already explained, is the recipe for fandom obsession with particular ships.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you!

[@shioramenrabbit]

Yeah you know what, you're right. I'm not a fanfic reader anymore per se, however I can definitely do my best in 2024 to include F/F in my romance book reads - there are plenty of amazing looking releases coming out (I've been obsessively following The Hades Calculus since I'm a sci/fi romance nut which is sometimes very lacking if you don't feel like being turned into a housewife by a blue barbarian in space or enslaved). I don't have any real defense of my usual reading preference which is slow burn (I mean, obvious reasons, I'm ace but not aro so like, I want the yearning) and trends towards cis relationships. It's more convenience I guess, and also I get much more offended by one-dimensional women than I do one-dimensional men in fiction, and I think it's because I have an easier time seeing the lack? Idk. Anyways: 2024, year of reading F/F romance.

[@minemarei768]

I'm only 13 minutes in, but ohhh do I have some thoughts. This may not be entirely coherent and turn out a bit rambly, but here we go (Also english is only my third language. Pls be nice to me): The whole "there is no sexuality without male sexuality"-thing... yes. That is one of the main reasons why I struggled for so long to realise I am not asexual, but a lesbian. My desire for women just feels so very different from how desire for women is portrayed in media or discussed in society. It is also why I and a lot of my queer female friends struggle with not performing, but just... being during intimate moments. To realise that there is no certain way to act in order to be desired or desire was painful and liberating at the same time. Liberating because it helped me to stop performing and painful, because it made me realise that even in moments that should be seperated from men and the male gaze and just be between my girlfriend and I, somehow men (as a concept not specific individuals) had still wormed their way inside. They still had an influence on me even after I stopped looking for male approval. I think we also see this pandering to and performing for the male gaze in a lot of lesbian media, like "Blue is the warmest colour". Women are so very often posed and draped in positions wholly unnatural, but asthetically pleasing. I think you could apply Foucaults panopticum theory here (even if it's one of his earlier theories and he elaborated and changed some of his viewpoints on power in modern societies later on). One could certainly make a point how in our patriarchal society male hegemony, gender roles, concepts of sexuality etc. sustain themselves by control through self-control. There is no king of the patriarchy that makes the rules and enforces them through violence. Instead we continously check ourselves and our peers if they adhere to the unwritten rules and regulations society is made up of (for example when Candace Owens loses her marbles because Harry Styles is wearing a dress). I don't remeber who said/wrote this, but wearing lingerie, even if it's not comfortable and there is no one around to see you, instead of just lounging about in comfortable clothing or well... naked, could still be considered part of this performing of sexuality. One could make the counter argument that it makes you feel sexy, but in that case I would like to ask "Why?". I think most reasons would circle back to this idea of control through self-control. One could therefore make the argument that our patriarchial societies constructed realities still infringe on spaces the public is not privy to. Like the bedroom of a lesbian couple. Judith Butler writes in "Gender Trouble" that meaning does not exists outside of our given societal framework. We do not have vocabulary to describe what's outside of our constructed reality. I would argue that lesbians and lesbianism in a phallogocentric society exist on the fringes of this framework. To make them palatable to a larger public they therefore have to still center around men and male desire. Even if there are no men on screen the camera lense still looks onto lesbians with make desire. There are, of course, a few exceptions to this like "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" (which is lovely). Those are my thoughts so far. I hope they make a least a little sense...

[@bijousurlalune]

A very interesting video, love it! I will say though that I disagree with a main point in your video. I think saying that most of fandom is composed of women/nonbinary people with sexualities other than straight and so the popularity of mlm instead of wlw can't be explained through demographics misses the point. I think most fandom *is* primarily sexually and romantically interested in men despite having sexualities other than straight and perhaps even being in relationships with other women or nonbinary people, and that is simply why mlm is more popular. Just because you aren't in a relationship with a man doesn't mean you are only, mostly or even primarily attracted to women. My observation from being in fandom for a very long time is that most of those who are really into fandom, shipping, fanfiction, etc. are primarily attracted to men even when they aren't straight. They also tend to be misfits and outsiders in many ways, surrounded with conventions and ways of life or expected male/female dynamics they don't identify with, or they aren't good at, or they outright reject. So their desires and longings are transferred into fandom and fiction. They also reject female characters because they tend to compare themselves to them, either by not relating to the character or by comparing themselves to the character and feeling threatened by her. A toxic part of most cultures to various degrees that is imposed on all women is that they are in constant competition with other women, or should feel threatened if they don't relate to other women, or should band together and either worship or destroy (or worship, then destroy) a woman preceived as somehow better. Now, if you are solely attracted to women that imposition will feel foreign. But if you are attracted to men at any level, and you are a misfit, and you have secret crushes on boys that you feel you can't fullfil either because you can't or don't want to fit into a box, while other 'conventional' women easily get your object of affection, you wouldn't want to replicate that negative feeling in your safe space. That means no female characters in mlm, or female characters that are either there as a side wlw pairing (that lacks depth and honeslty are there most of the time simply to 'represent'), or a sexless friend who supports the main characters. I'm sorry for the novel, I do agree with you that most wlw relationships in entertainment are lacking. I also think there is a problem with wlw spaces that tend to want to nitpick and criticize wlw pairings and create "politically correct" discourse around them for lack of a better term, which in turn makes independant creators walk on eggshells, and mainstream (who are already not good) be wary. I'm not sure if that is a big problem these days because I'm not involved in fandom these days. I will say that, for me for example, Blue is the Warmest Color, made by a man and with a lot of male gaze which was sometimes grimy to me, and which had self appointed queens of lesbians tell us was bad wlw representation (I disgree), was still 100000 times better than a movie like The Kids are Alright, where lesbians are portrayed as sexless when together and jumping at the chance to have sex with a man, and that movie was made by a queer woman. I think and agree that having the freedom to create problematic female characters lusting after each other is important. I don't think that will mean a mass conversion to wlw or that there will be a day when mlm and wlw are on par though. Because like I said, I believe the disparity is due to attraction, primarily.

[@alan_0009]

Best comment here. To say that most people in fandom aren't primarily attracted to men is a dellusion.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you! And I agree with you on many points. (expect that many bisexual women are primarily attracted to men, in my experience they are primarily attracted women in real life and fictional men) But, regardless - as said in the video the majority of fanfiction writers are bisexual women, followed by straight women, non-binary queer people and asexuals. So a lot of people attracted to men (or to none)! I've done a whole video on the popularity of MLM - in which I talk about many aspects of that. For example the freedom and safe space it is for a lot of women do explore male sexuality that way, as well as the constant self -comparison women often do with other women (and the freedom to be released of that). In this video I wanted to focus not on why people love mm, but why they (despise being attracted to women also) never get engaged in that as well.

[@n0emiette]

This video was soooooo good omg !! You touched on so many very important topics that i've been trying to put into words for a very long time. I liked how you specified that there is a specific recipe that makes a ship become a very active fandom. Doesnt mean the ship in itself isnt good, but it may not always provoke the hype to create fanarts and fanfictions. But as you said, it's all about the range because not everyone likes the same things. Even in the same "genre" of ship, I for example, didnt like the Mary/Anne Bonny ship from OFMD, but I adore Anne Bonny/Max from Black Sails or Rhaenycent. And at the same time, I also adore the sweetness of Tara and Darcy from Heartstopper. We want a buffet, a full buffet ! And yeah, it's important to also put some responsability on us, on the media we consume, and the ones we promote. I think that people quite often just wait to see something explode online, and then get interested by the thing. But sadly that's more often mlm ships, and less often flf. Sapphic medias do get less promotion from people online (outside of dedicated fandoms with fanfics and fanarts). But these hidden gems of books, movies, shows are out there. You just have to look for them a little, because quite often they arent gonna pop up on your social media timelines. Congrats on once again a fantastic video

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you so much for this comment! 💞

[@gocelotspice5766]

Aghhh I love f/f so much it makes me a little sad to see how underrepresented it is. My favorite f/f ship is probably Harlivy because I feel like it genuinely gets attention and while I don’t always love how it’s portrayed (and sometimes the joker stans try to get in the way) it feels like it’s really had an impact

[@HybridSpruce]

Love this video! You hit the nail on the head with a lot of points. I want toxic lesbians AND good lesbians. I want tabboo, crime, gritty smut, anger, emotions, etc. I LOVE Cait/Vi and Im soooo hopeful for season 2 that we'll at least get a kiss haha

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you!! I'm pretty sure we will get AT LEAST a kiss

[@DevoteaSings]

I feel like there's a lot of F/F shipping within anime and anime-related media. My best two examples would be Homura and Madoka from Puella Madoka Magica and basically the whole female cast of Genshin Impact, most notably: Amber and Eula, Raiden Shogun/Ei and Yae Miko, Ningguang and Beidou, Jean and Lisa, there are so many (non-canon) sapphic ships within that game.

[@nicholaswhaling7233]

Are you familiar with the cast of Touhou?

[@BakaAna]

This was very informative as Ive been away from big fandom spaces since the biggest f/f ship was, uh, faberry hahhahaha I often think about how, as a society, we value mens feelings more and view them as inherently "deeper". As such, its easier to visualize these interesting conflicted and complicated feelings when it comes to male characters while, for female ones, dismiss it and flatten it. I think the "agressive lesbian" makes more explicit how complicated and weird women can also be, thus creating new ideas and fun dynamics. Also, I think for a lot of people, m/m just feels comfortably distant, like writing in another language, which can make it "easier" to write some explicit stuff that fandoms so often love hahah Anyways, thank you for all the statistics!!!

[@Lionfrog13]

I didn’t really notice this problem because I often only watch media if I know it has lesbians in it or has a popular lesbian ship. Great video.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you!

[@estanceveyrac]

I can't watch Warrior Nun, I tried twice, I just can't get over how abelist it is. For people who have never experienced physical disability, I suppose they can't understand how offensive that show is, but I hate how no one told me that show has a disabled character being magically healed of their disability & like, being able to walk without physical therapy, instantly? Offensive every disabled person...

[@obviouslyqueer]

Oh really? I havent heard that perspective at all, that's a shame. I hate the "magically healed from disability" trope

[@t-t5047]

i tried watching it a while ago but if i remember correctly doesn’t she die and is revived with a magical device? i guess it would make sense that she would be completely healed. Great point tho, now i’m questioning if i should finish it

[@las9582]

🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 You clearly have inner work to do.

[@shaym.1372]

This also reminds me of Steven Universe and how, at the time, the final season of the show was HATED because Rose Quartz was kind of a bad person making selfish choices that set the plot of the whole show in motion. Even in the kid's show people at the time could not accept a flawed woman even though looking back she's such a wonderful morally grey messy sapphic

[@diminarchy]

I wanna add that cancelation of the show is a way to avoid paying actors more, maybe not that big a factor, but its a big factor for all but A list celebs

[@olivesusername]

I'm so glad someone finally said this! Nothing annoys me more than the trope that queer women are "faking it" or "going through a phase," but I could never figure out why M/M ships are so much more common in queer spaces, and why I was never interested in canon lesbian relationships. Gonna watch this a few more times while I work on my evil lesbian comic

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it! The comic sounds great, good luck 🙏

[@cesaralejandropintoleal8129]

The preference towards mlm over flf content is even witnessed within literature of the same author. The biggest example I can think of is Casey McQuiston, a queer writer, author of Red, White & Royal Blue. After the massive success that said debut had, she has now published (at the time this comment is being written) another three novels: One Last Stop, I've Kissed Sharah Wheeler and The Pairing. Since the last one was published early this month (august, 2024) and i've not read it yet, i'll coment what i've seen in social media about the flf ones. One Last Stop and I've Kissed Sharah Wheeler are both sapphics books.The first one is (kinda) a romcom with sci-fi touches; the second one, a young adult book with a very well executed enemies to lovers. Although both books have found their way to the hearts of queer people, they both would love the reception and acclamation the debut novel had. I saw a pretty amount of cishet women commenting of those books lacked of exciment, were slow or didn't content characters they could connect in a deeply way. And, i mean... they're valid critics. They're subjective. But i fiercly believe than that position comes from the dissapointment to not read two hot, heteronormative looking and wealthy men in a almost fantastic scenario (Prince of England and son of the U.S.A president...). Apparently, a lonely 22 years old girl with a complex relationship with her mother longing for deeper connections with people and queer teenagers studying in a catholic school while developing a very toxic relationship is not interesting or relatable enough to certain demographies.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Oh absolutely agreed! I don't doubt for a second that One Last Stop would have been loved if it was MM. People would have overlooked the literary aspects that were lacking, just like people did with RWRB.

[@Lyserg_]

I would also recommend YA novel Forget Me Not by Alyson Derrick. It is romance with the amnesia trope, which I love. I did think the thing with the parents was way too positive and undeserved, but who am I to deny some positivy?

[@rosier9036]

i also love jackie and shauna from yellowjackets but i don't think it's fair to say no one cares about tai and van - i personally find their relationship and storyline really interesting and know a lot of people who do in my own fandom circle, and tbh i think fandom racism whether conscious or not plays a big part into why taivan (and taissa as a character) aren't as popular

[@adrianmora6199]

i'm not in the yellowjackets fandom (i haven't seen the show) but when she said that your point did cross my mind, like i don't know the ship but i know ofc one of them being a Black woman means fans are less likely to appreciate/support them

[@caprichaos]

This is a very well written and thought-provoking video. I agree with everything you said, especially about asking ourselves what we like about m/m ships. I think the main problem can be summarized by the iconic "no women interacting in Lord of the Rings" discourse. As you said, the most popular ships aren't canon, because that's just the scenario that builds the most tension + has more possibilities for the fandom to explore. A ship becomes popular when the shipping precedes the characters romantic/sexual interactions, not the opposite. (1/2)

[@caprichaos]

This requires well written/interesting characters that stand on their own regardless of their eventual romantic involvement. I think the lack of such female characters in media is pretty evident, especially considering how women aren't granted the same lenency as men when exploring less palatable parts of themselves. I hope this new wave of interesting, complex and diverse female characters will eventually make people understand that women are human beings before being women, not just in fandom but also irl. Sorry for the essay, English isn't my first language so there will probably be a lot of errors😅

[@obviouslyqueer]

nah don't worry! Your english is good! Thank you!

[@Behold-my-brainworms]

This is incredible! You put words to everything I’ve been think about lately, and video essays on sapphic media are far rarer than they should be, imo. All this to say, I would watch a 5 hour version of this without complaint

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you so much! Im always a bit worried when publishing a video that's over 40 min, so that means a lot

[@annem4655]

I think in a lot of queer media, they try to squeeze in a side wlw ship to mirror the main mlm ship... But they are given very little screen time and are very bland in comparison... So recently, I don't feel much very into the mlm dominated media. Also, I've been getting into wlw manhwa's and more eastern media, I must say I've found some gems, as I've come to love many complex (even toxic) queer female characters written by queer women. While they really explores women's sexuality in depth, they still face the issue of male gaze or sanitization from time to time. They are also comparatively more niche like their western counterpart...

[@teapots_and]

hi, could you recommend some of the manga/manwha you've liked please?:> i kinda finished all shows i wanted to watch lately so yeah i've been thinking i could read some wlw instead:] also very much agreed on the first point!!

[@aarondubourg3706]

I'm an A-Spec AMAB folk, and GL/Yuri manga (F/F mang) etc, are kinda a comfort read in a way. GL manga tend to exist on two different extremes, first is "Class-S" which leans into the infantilisation and lesbian phase and Queerbaiting. But I can always headcanon them as a QueerPlatonic Relationship (QPR). And the other extreme is basically the sexual and fetishist side. When compared to BL/Yaoi Smut manga (M/M manga), Yuri Smut are often sensual or can be read as sensual (and I rather not be reminded of male parts either). This is more of an Ace thing, but sexual and sensual are two different things even if there is a correlation between them for Allo folks. On a side note, I also enjoy het smut manga for women as they're also often sensual focused too. I'll leave with a queer manga recommendation, "I want to be a Wall." It's about a AroAce woman who like BL/Yaoi who enters a Lavender marriage with a gay man. One of the chapters explores how M/M fiction can be a safe space for (queer) women (ex, women aren't sexualized).

[@ramafirmansyah9703]

Yuppp ❤ also definitely reccomend "The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy At All" totally F/F banger.

[@JordanSullivanadventures]

I think the point you make about the lack of real sexual tension in canon onscreen f/f relationships is one of the biggest things I feel as a queer enby watcher. I've seen it argued that you simply can't create the same kind of sexual tension as m/m relationships because female ones are just less taboo. But taboo about the sexuality of the characters isn't the only way to build tension; there are plenty of straight couples onscreen with sexual tension. To be fair I had to spend some time thinking about it bc I'm a big gay, but here's my list: - Elizabeth and Will Turner in Pirates 1 (where the tension is class) - Starbuck and Apollo in Battlestar Galactica (tension is the fact she used to date his deceased brother and blames herself for his death) - Spock and Chapel in Strange New Worlds (tension is due to Spock being torn between his human and Vulcan sides and unsure if they're better as friends or lovers) - Troi and Riker on Star Trek TNG (where the tension is their commitment to their jobs, the two of them not wanting to tie each other down, monogamy being less of a thing in the future) - Sookie and Eric on True Blood (tension is that he's the dangerous sexy bad boy who wants to drink her blood -- also why is no one ever talking about Pam and Tara on TB? I love that ship! f/f ftw!) I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones I can think of that do sexual tension effectively, none of which rely on the sexuality of the characters as a source of tension. My most recent favorite mm ships don't necessarily rely on it either, at least not entirely. Crowley and Aziraphale on Good Omens have this amazing energy and tension as an angel and a demon trying eat good food on earth while pining for each other for thousands of years; Stede and Ed on Our Flag Means Death have essentially opposite personalities, styles, and class backgrounds, but both crave to be treated with empathy and respect and seen for who they are; the boys in Heartstopper are indeed dealing with homophobia, but I would say the central conflict of S1 is about self-acceptance and opening yourself up to affection even if you think it's a long shot, and S2 about the ways in which it can be detrimental to always put your partner's feelings before your own.

[@barbararezei7065]

Also I think what makes the locked tomb so popular is not only griddlehark but the other Sapphic characters that are also well written too, like ianth ,pyra an wake, corona and Judith alecto , and more, they all are very complex and some very fucked up , and that’s what make this universe interesting

[@user-zl6fy4pw6r]

My favourite fanfiction trope is genderbent f/f East Asian BL, which is kind of niche but there's actually a super active small group of people who are into this sort of content. All I need are non-white, slightly androgynous girls with the "star-crossed lovers" trope where they are either enemies to lovers or save the world together. Like, give me a single f/f ship that has what sasunaru has. Or danmei ships, where it's stuff like "I'll wait for you for eight hundred years" or "you are the very reason of my existence." Many of the most popular f/f ships in fantasy are also from children's shows (not even young adult animated series), and there's just not that many adult fantasy (most of the top ships on AO3 are from fantasy franchises) stories with two well-developed female main characters who have insane chemistry with each other. As a result, shipping potential is low. Two other factors might be character vibrancy and "negative space." Character vibrancy (like visual differences between the two characters or personality starkness, binary opposition) makes the characters more memorable and easier to depict in fanfiction while also factoring into the "star-crossed lovers"-ness of it (e.g. RWBY ships, probably also why f/f ships in children's media are popular). "Negative space" (idk tbh it's 留白 in Chinese) is when parts of the story are "blank." One case of this is when two characters who have a lot of chemistry are not canonically together, where the shipping motivation is to make the characters get together romantically/sexually. Another case is when the characters are canonically together but parts of their story are incomplete whether accidentally or on purpose, where the shipping motivation is to complete their story, whether in the middle parts to fill in the blanks or writing the future story. There are many shows with complex female characters and f/f relationships, but it needs to be *a certain kind of "bad"* (like when shounen anime have terribly written female characters or when two characters are caricaturistically different) for it to be shippable. All this on top of the fact that most women (who make up the majority of fandom) are attracted to men and enjoy seeing hot men more than hot women.

[@nadjaredd246]

Breaking my neck from how hard I am nodding along to every point made in the video, and thank you for getting me excited about the future of f/f again!!

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you 🙏

[@ArtichokeHunter]

I'm curious about the idea that no one cares about Tai and Van. I'm not super involved in Yellowjackets fandom and I'm aware that Jackie and Shauna get a lot of attention, but I love Tai and Van and the people I talk about the show with also do. I assumed the over representation of Jackie & Shauna in fandom is partially the joy of the fix-it (not getting to see them together makes you want it more), partially racism (and possibly nb-phobia since teen Van's actor is nb), and partially just the focus on cannibalism in the show and the way the narrative builds to the cannibalism scene and centers Shauna's struggle over Jackie's death. The show puts more narrative weight on it, so I'm not surprised it's gotten attention, but I don't think that means Van and Tai don't have chemistry and a compelling story. Yellowjackets is the kind of show that can and should support both canon and non-canon f/f ships. (I don't know if people care about het ships in the show and any m/m ships would be quite a stretch.) I think Nat/Misty and Nat/Lottie are pretty popular too, among others. The idea that the f/f ships in Yellowjackets aren't fucked up enough is a WILD take. Are Van and Tai sweet, sure. But Tai's also losing control of her consciousness including during sex and being violent towards Van, and they are torn by their different allegiances within the group. As an adult, Tai literally abandons her wife and child in the hospital to go after Van. They're not sanitized good people. They're fucked up people who are drawn to each other and their trauma bond.

[@waxnwan3]

@NotVille_do u think people hear your in the comments and just turn straight? whats your motive?

[@silveryfeather208]

I PERSONALLY prefer f/f than m/m. Not saying m/m is bad. But lots of women like m/m/ I get it. For me I like f/f because I find f/f stories tend to focus less on the sex stuff. But maybe it's just me. I read manhwa/manhua/mangas that are f/f

[@nomi9997]

please lend me your wisdom, i need recommendations.

[@silveryfeather208]

@@nomi9997 Well the ones i read unfortunately got banned by china. ffs... but if you don't mind reading one that sort of got rushed then theres: xian chang nu ; tamen de gushi ; mage and her demon queen: webtoon. very good and not chinese so i think it's complete, thank goodness ; wildflowers and lilies ; doughnuts under a crescent moon : very cute :3 (I prefer fantasy so thats why i recommend xian chang nu and mage and her demon)

[@nomi9997]

@@silveryfeather208 aaa thank you so much, i hope your skin will be clear and your hands will be warm in winter. i happen to love fantasy btw, big W

[@silveryfeather208]

@@nomi9997 yeeessss I think f/f fantasy is rarer so its so hard to find a fellow friend who likes it :)

[@silveryfeather208]

@@nomi9997 tell me what you think if you get around to them

[@sylve2474]

4:02 i am so shocked by that ace showing,,, considering what a small fraction of people it is and how it feels like you hardly see aces outside of ace specific communities,,, its so intriguing its the highest demographic after bi people,,, i did not anticipate that in the slightest

[@mercedes4202]

one patch to the system that could possibly benefit lesbians (including me) is more gender swapping of m/m ships. i've read a couple that i enjoyed, some just ok or even straight-up bad, but i feel there aren't many to pick from to start with.

[@MariaLuisa-vv4ug]

This video is great, I also greatly appreciate the frequent use of the word lesbian, I just wanted to add something else: you say you personally struggle to care about f/f sometimes because there are not a lot of fucked up ships between women, i agree, fandom at large loves problematic shit, so in terms of bulk that is true. However, I'm not one of those people, I enjoy "wholesome", the thing though is that "wholesome" for lesbians doesnt mean the same as it does for m/m or f/f, and I actually think certain "wholesome" tropes are even *more* underepresented for F/F than enemies to lovers or codependency, etc. for example: friends to lovers (not in the toxic teenage girl friendship way like shaunajackie, but in the classic sitcom way). The only ship I can think of that fits that description is Harley/Ivy from the Harley Quinn animated series, but otherwise whenever two women are close friends people will refuse to read romance into it even more than when they're enemies or adversarial in other ways, which is not true for m/m and perhaps even less so for m/f. This drives me crazy 'cause I love slow burn friends to lovers.

[@KckJohanna]

Great video! Thanks for being the best teacher in all things queer 🙏🏳️‍🌈

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you ❤️

[@tylerbarnes972]

I’ve always felt like the lesbian outlier when it came to my taste in pairings. (I know my name is usually considered masculine, I’m assigned female and I flux in gender) I have literally no interest in m/m ships, while I feel so starved for anyone interested in f/f. Meanwhile, so many of my friends and former partners are obsessed with m/m; I think the majority of them would even say their favorite couple was m/m. And all the power to all of y’all who like it! I just hope to see the trend in f/f relationships in fiction continue to rise.

[@claraboe2755]

As someone who has watched warrior nun, i would put them in the aggressive lesbian category aswell. Theyre both badasses whose job is killing monsters, with beatrice being sworn to protect ava with her life and ava having to save the entire world (speaking of power imbalances). Also a lot of will they wont they where it is not clear what their intentions are while still having a lot of tension - which is both authentic to actual lesbian dynamics aswell as very engaging for fans. They are super sweet with each other tho

[@itspinebro]

As an autistic sapphic with a special interest in league of legends, arcane Vi was a godsent lol.

[@obviouslyqueer]

She was! 🙌

[@your_average_nerd6861]

11:20 this issue is also incredibly prevalent in the animation industry but I think that's another video 😅

[@kuroneko5390]

I personally don't like toxic ships! Regardless of their gender. Don't get me wrong I do love me some conplicated or messy Characters and a good Enemies to Lovers story, expecally if there are woman with swords involved, but for me there is a line between people being messy and imperfect and down right toxic! I hate the glorified abusive relationships where the power dynamics are way off and the Characters just being horrible to each other. I don't like any kind of what can be discribed as missery porn. I have been a toxic relationships before where we both got codepentent and we had to end it for us to get better and both be better people. I also had a relationship where my Partner was clearly abusing and gaslighting , like the kind of gaslighting to the point where I thought I must be insane. I have learned a few things from that. The most importent one. It's not romantic to feel miserable in a Relationship. It's not healthy to cling to that kind of "love". The most important one It's not exciting or inspiring to love like that. It's miserable, unhealthy, maddening and so so lonely. I'm in a healthy relationship right now and yes we do occasionally fight and we are both occasionally selfish and unfair, because we are flawed humans as we all are. But we own up to this, we never cross certain boundries and we take accountability. We talk about it, apologise and work on being better! And that's what I like to read about, maybe with a bit more drama and over the top stakes and a lot of spice, since it's fun as long as it isn't real live, but I also do love some wholesome ships and Stories, like Heartstopper for examples. I do love to read romance books with happy endings. I do read f/f, m/m and f/m and there are so many good ones, yes also F/F ones, though they are a bit harder to find. I know a lot of people are really into the toxic and unredeemable characters, and that's ok, but for me that's just triggering and maybe something that shouldn't be as glorified, ecpecially to younger people that then might get the wrong Idea's about how relationship work. I know I had those as a teenager because no one explained to me the difference between romance in media and what is healthy in real live 😂 Id like it if people would stop saying that wholesome queer representation is bad representaition because it is sencored. I don't think that's always true and some people just like to write a wholesome story.

[@crow6558]

Great video! Really well made and I appreciated a lot of your comments! It felt like such a fresh take on what can feel like a discussion that just goes around in circles and I felt myself nodding and smiling at several points throughout the video! Ao3 stats can be helpful for viewing broad trends, but I think ultimately the top ship stats are kinda useless. You touch on this a little bit, showing how sometimes ships with more fics can actually be less popular and prevalent on Tumblr and Tiktok, but I think the stats can really be totally misleading. The problem with measuring ship popularity simply by stats on Ao3 is that writers can tag multiple ships, with no way to tell which is the main pairing and which is just a side/background ship. Marlene and Dorcas is so high up on the Ao3 ship list, and at first it gave me a lot of hope that it seemed like people cared about these women and their relationship so much even though they were completely made up! Times are changing, right? But if you actually go through the tag (or better yet, filter out m/m entirely), almost none of those fics actually center Marlene and Dorcas. They're just side or background characters to a main m/m ship, nonthreatening irrelevant female characters to give your Mauraders fic a little spice. I think ultimately, deep down a lot of people just think woman are inherently less interesting than men, and thus their relationships are inherently less interesting. I'm not really hating on these people, because we live in a misogynist society and we are all taught that women are worth less than men. But my patience with these people is quickly running out, because no one wants to actually examine their behavior and seek out well written and interesting women and lesbian centric focused media (which DOES in fact exist!), they just want to bury their heads in the sand and hide behind the excuses you bring up in this vid. Loved your conclusion as well: what is just a preference and what is socially conditioned benevolent misogyny? It's so hard to tell and holding a gun to everyone's head and forcing them to read femslash isn't the answer, lol. But it's sad that so many people just seem to... not care at all.

[@obviouslyqueer]

Yeah I absolutely agree. In my original script for this I touched upon the "side pairing" issue with these stats. Like you say - the gap between MM and FF would be even bigger if the stats could take that in account. But I still think the existence of Marlene/Dorcas does show a change, even as a sidepairing. Thank you for your comment and kind words!

[@crow6558]

@@obviouslyqueer Oh totally, overall we are making (very slow) progress. I think fandom also has a "Pair the Spares" tendency and while that can be annoying, it gives me hope that now people will pair off multiple women instead of just whatever het couple is remaining. Like surely there was an equally irrelevant male background character that could have been shipped with Marlene or Dorcas but people decided to ship them together instead. Gotta take the wins we can get... Great vid again, I subscribed!

[@obviouslyqueer]

@@crow6558 thank you!

[@Lucifer-Riding]

Very good video, although I do wish there was something said about how attempting to bully people into writing the expression of queerness you personally want is a lousy thing to do to people who are just expressing themselves. It's not any one person's responsibility to "fix" fandom, and there's a genre of folks on tumblr and Twitter who act like the morality police because they think it gets them SJW points if they call other people racist/sexist/lesbophobic simply for not making content for X or Y ship. Btw also of note: be careful with centreoftheselights' stats. They're counted by machine using only publicly available data (because bots can no longer scrape the archive while logged in--gee, I wonder why?), and absolutely no manual effort is done to check and process the stats afterwards. Extremely popular ships are missing from the "top 100" entirely, and the way she references the previous year's numbers to create this year's numbers creates a snowballing effect which makes every year's numbers increasingly broken, and therefore boosts increasingly smaller, niche ships (as you saw).

[@isabellasantopolo2487]

The thing is that usually popular M/M ships ALSO have that forbidden/fucked up/morally questionable spice that seems to attract people! Kirk and Spock in TOS for example had a lot going on in a real life taboo sense, but also in universe since Spock is a half vulcan who is ashamed of his own emotions and kirk is seemingly unable to keep a long term relationship because of his duty and love for the enterprise. Hell, Stede and Ed in OFMD are a trainwreck through and through. I don't know wtf those guys from supernatural had going on but I bet they were pretty fucked too. And you can probably find the conflict, the tension, even the moral dubiousness in almost any popular M/M ship you can find! I bet the same is true for W/W too!

[@mooonblooom]

it has occurred to me that i might be the only lesbian who doesnt really like toxic relationships. my idea of a hot lesbian pairing is enemies for about 5 minutes before falling madly in love with each other. "amaliabaltodano" you might be getting shat on but damn i get where youre coming from. im very "plain" in my interests when it comes to love stories, or so online fandom would say

[@MonsterMalino555]

you are not alone i am also a lesbian and i am not at all into toxic relationships I'm just so happy when i even find a series that has lesbians since we are a minority anyway😅

[@fluffy_walrus]

Yeah, give me conflict, I love conflict, but if a pairing is too toxic, I lose interest. Like, I'll watch/read the Canon material, but it won't be something I'll engage in fandom for.

[@MonsterMalino555]

@@fluffy_walrus yes conflict or that relationships in general can be complicated it feels like if it's not downright toxic then it's not interesting and nothing against people who like that but it is so often shameful if you like vanilla especially in the LGBTQ world and it doesn't help that I myself am a lipstick lesbian😂

[@fluffy_walrus]

@MonsterMalino555 yeah, I'm in full agreement. I grew up inundated with toxic heterosexual media, and around toxic het relationships, it was exhausting. I typically don't find toxic relationships to be very interesting as a result, it's not novel to me. I'd rather a complex relationship, a relationship with conflict, but those don't need to be toxic. I get that a lot love those types of relationships, though (probably the same reasons people like the Real Housewives of X shows, or shows like Succession), so I don't begrudge their existence. I just wish there was more media that offered options aside from fully sanitized or wholly toxic, because the obes that do exist tend to involve cop characters and I just have zero interest in watching another wlw relationship involving a cop.

[@ArtOfShannonLee]

Ahhhh Willow 😭 I’m coming back to watch this. I just wanted to express my joy at seeing my girl on the thumbnail. Haha

[@nomadicreader]

Funny thing is, Gideon and Harrow aren't even the most toxic lesbians in The Locked Tomb by far. I mean, Ianthe is right there!

[@obviouslyqueer]

Haha yaas credit where credit is due

[@samanthadiaz2318]

Something tells me Alecto will go even harder like, "this is how meat loves meat" and she literally bites off harrow's mouth? absolute banger

[@anacecilia1387]

this made me remember how much i loved the non-canon couples of little witch academia: the teachers ursula and croix. especially because croix refused to give up on ursula even though it had been so long since they were actually friends, and despite all that ursula did.

[@willbyers_clizzy]

okay i only just started this video but the look at these graphs caught me off guard and i had to pause to laugh my ass off so congratulations, you have a new subscriber

[@obviouslyqueer]

Hahhaa it's one of my favorite vines, I was so happy when I realized I could put it in the video. Thank you for subscribing!

[@toastzombie18]

You articulated something I've been struggling with for the past 3 years. I'm a late bloomer queer woman who was deep in comp het, and I've had a really hard time finding wlw stories compelling. I'm a writer, and I want to explore my queerness in what I make, but anytime I think of a new romance, a het couple is just more appealing to my brain. And I think it heavily has to do with women not being allowed to be fucked up. There's nothing wrong with fluffy ships, but I am more attracted to Griddle Hark and Pearl/Pink Diamond from SU. Flawed relationships that have more meat to them than just 'will they kiss?' The fact that women are allowed to be more affectionate kills tension for me as well. Knowing that makes me want to explore how to subvert that or twist it into something interesting.

[@munstify]

Outside of what the actual content of this video is (not that the content isn't also excellent), i just want to point out and compliment that this a really well-made video essay. It's paced really well, has really good cut-away gags and clips, and understands how to grab and keep attention. Well done, you clearly have talent at doing this

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you so much. It means the world to get a comment like this! I watch a lot of video essays and put a lot of effort into my own, so it makes so glad that's showing

[@flaimita]

I think personally I’ve had problems in fandom where fans ignore the canon main character for his much less interesting little sister because she’s “more interesting” despite doing very little and being a basic archetype, and being just awful about the boys in love with her and her rival/girlfriend (especially the one who is a literal child soldier), and then the season after just declaring a female character a lesbian bc her wish is to find genuine love (which has never been about romance and always been about her parents’ abuse) and it literally killed so much of my interest in seeing these characters with women. To emphasize, I am sapphic. I just feel like another part is that f/f fandoms are incredibly aggressive and usually kill my interest quickly in their attempts to get more people on their side.

[@marinhianjo]

Agree!!!

[@freyapetersen6087]

This video made me a subscriber! :D As someone who mainly looks for interesting asexual rep in media (but LOVES some good written feral messy f/f ), i found this really fascinating, especially your point about infantilization of lesbian relationships ... because it kind of feels like a sibling to the infantilization of asexual characters in media. (like, lesbian characters: are infantilized and don't have sexual tension, often very very boring and blandly written. Asexuals: Don't have sexual tension and are thus infantilized, often very boring and blandly written). In both cases it feels like the writers are like "We can't sexualize them, so there is nothing to work with here and no interesting story to tell". Like ... stories about relationships that are not all about sex CAN BE VERY INTERESTING! There is so much to work with! But they are not even doing THAT right, because they don't make these relationships sexless to explore (f.e) asexuality and all it's nuances, they make them sexless because they DON'T want to portray f/f sexual tension

[@obviouslyqueer]

Very valid points with lesbians and aces getting similar treatment! Aces even worse ofc. Yet to see an asexual in a relationship in tv? When that starts to happen it will be a carcrash I'm sure. But one have to start somewhere. Thanks for subscribing! happy to have you here!

[@wandom2153]

Hope that we all get more representation in the future✨ even if toxic yuri or sexual ship is not my thing.

[@ann0nmusic_]

LMAO 8% I love your sarcasm. But seriously that number surprised even me as someone who write wlw fanfic

[@zoer7706]

I just watched Bottoms thanks to this video, it was really fun and such a refreshing representation of lesbians ! thank you for this

[@obviouslyqueer]

Thank you!!