The Like

[kiki_eng]

(I'm doing what I inaccurately refer to as "Femslash February" again this year. It's a month where all of the fannish content I consume and produce is focused on female characters, either gen or femslash.)

The Right Music by harborshore
Rating: PG-13; 675 words; Z Berg/Tennessee Thomas
Tennessee and Z have had a lot of firsts together.
It's this really sweet story about Z and Tennessee's first kiss. It's a short piece and the more I read it the more I like it. It has all of these little pieces in it sketching out their lives and their friendship and longing and it's just really wonderful.

The Staircase Scene by cest_what
Rating: PG-13; 450 words; Z Berg/Charlotte Froom
Charlotte has always hated that scene in every teen movie where the heroine comes down the stairs in her prom dress and the music swells and her date loses the ability to form words.
It's that scene from the teen movie and it's handled really well; it's very them. I love the kind of edge that both of them have in this.

Wearing Her Colors by inlovewithnight
Rating: NC-17; 1,723 words; Z Berg/Annie Monroe
It's a photoshoot thing, at first, and Annie assumes it's just Z being bossy.
This is a wonderfully kinky story wherein Z dresses Annie, and it's kind of incredibly awesome because there are a number of different permutations of that clothing kink embedded in it. There's the power dynamic of Z telling Annie what to wear and Annie doing it and there's wearing someone else's clothing and matching someone and wearing gendered clothing and appreciating the details of clothing, and, basically, if you're interested in clothing hie thee hither.

Bend Toward Joy by softlyforgotten
Rating: NC-17; 3,259 words; Z Berg/Laena Geronimo/Annie Monroe/Tennessee Thomas
"It has come to our attention," Laena said, "that you might need a little more looking after than first realised."
This is another story with some kink in it, with Z being fenced in and held in place and those currents running through the story. There's also a tentativeness contrasting that and tied in with it being GSF and them getting together.

If you're interested in primers and rundowns of who people are 6degreesforbandfemslash, a project aimed at encouraging bandom femslash, is really great for that. They have pages for all of The Like's members, past and present: Z Berg, Tennessee Thomas, Charlotte Froom, Laena Geronimo, Annie Monroe and Reni Lane. I'd also recommend I like The Like - a primer/picspam by tanisafan, especially if you're familiar with Panic! at the Disco.

Comments

[calvinahobbes]

Z Berg and Tennessee did that 'butch' photoshoot! So, I have probably watched at least one The Like music video. Still, I know absolutely nothing about this band. So thanks for the primers -- it's like you anticipated my request or something :oP

How does it work for you to read only female-centric stuff for a set time period? My reading is usually so id-influenced, I'm not sure if I could suddenly stop reading one thing in favor of another...

[kiki_eng]

Oh, I didn't know they'd done that. That's really interesting. I was having a conversation recently about women in media and female protagonists and how they present and (this is making it sound a lot more detailed than it actually was, but) I ended up bringing up bandom, because I think a lot of the women in bandom have a tendency to present as very female. I mean, The Like have a very specific look - they tend to be very coordinated - and for much of the time that look has been very 60s, with heavy eyeliner and very mod or feminine dresses. Greta Morgan (formerly Salpeter) doesn't have that same rigid aesthetic, but the first images that come to my mind of her are sun-drenched photos of her in dresses with kind of fifties proportions, lines that work like that, and she tends to wear her hair down, so she's another person I think of as presenting in a very female way. ..and I think Vicky-T and Lyn-Z tend to wear dresses or skirts onstage. It's interesting, because I think there is an element of I am a woman in music, and I am going to present as that and that being a statement and I also flash to Anita O'Day who was a singer in the big-band era and was like, Dude. These evening gowns are an expensive hassle; I am wearing a band jacket and a skirt. You can all fuck off. and basically, people talk about the role of women in the big-band era being a very visual one, with them as dancers or singers in very female-emphasising clothing, rather than being musicians. So, yeah: how people present is interesting.

What do you mean about your reading being id-influenced?

[calvinahobbes]

I love this whole comment. I did think the whole 50s-60s style was striking when I first saw pictures of the band. Now I'm wondering what it is about our time that seems to be bringing than brand of high-femme back into style. I can't help thinking about the whole Zooey Deschanel debacle, and that claim some people made that you can't be girly and promote gender equality at the same time, and yet it seems like that's the new tack the - somewhat - younger generation is taking. The old, I can be professional and wear heels at the same time-mentality. Yes, I think it's interesting.

What I mean by id-readin is that I don't know how well it would work for me to say, This month I will read femslash! Or, SGA. Or, anything. Because I might want to read something that didn't fit the category, and I wouldn't necessarily be good at putting it off...

[kiki_eng]

I think there's a really stong kind of backdraw happening right now, I think we're seeing more rock musicians in suits and there are other bands in bandom that also have a very past-era-influenced style and clear aesthetic right now. I've been seeing more younger guys with mustaches recently, but I also feel like women's hair is really interesting right now, just in terms of there being a number of shorter and sometimes edgy haircuts around, so I think maybe the high-femme thing you're talking about is part of a kind of gender awareness and performance that's happening. I mean, I'm thinking of some of the terrible television I've watched over the years and now, this guy will be wearing pink has been a thing and a recurring thing, and like, with bandom there's been stage gay, so I think there's a trend and has been a trend of I guess awareness of gender and sexuality? ...and that that's getting played out in a number of different ways? (I don't know.)

I think I missed the whole Zooey Deschanel debacle.

Okay, so with the reading only female-centric things for a set time I scan over a lot of stuff that comes up on my reading list, and it's like, There's a coffeeshop AU! ...about dudes. I WILL GET BACK TO YOU IN MARCH. or I see people are getting into this fandom that I read and ...is pretty much entirely about men. Okay. I will get back to that later.. So there's a lot of stuff that I scroll past, but remember for later. This year I've actually bookmarked a couple things for later, which I hadn't done in the past, and it's a little weird. I mean, February is the month in which I do not read about dudes, but I still read summaries so that I can check the content, and I do read stuff with het in it, because it's a side pairing or it's not labelled or whatever, and there is grey area, basically, and it's not like I cease being a slasher, but I started doing this because I wanted to be reading more about women on a regular basis and I thought immersion was the way to go, since I felt like I was immersed in slash fandom, and I think it's worked for me or been part of that change happening, anyway.

ETA: Okay. So I actually made it that far back into my bookmarks today and apparently I did bookmark things for later the first year I did this.

[sophia_sol]

Oh, your femslash february thing is really fascinating and cool! I would not be able to do that; but I love the idea of immersing yourself like that for a whole month. Do you find that at the end of a month of reading solely female-centric fic your mindset is noticeably different?

[kiki_eng]

No. I'm actually really confused by this question. I think I might be taking it too literally, or something; what do you mean?

[sophia_sol]

Sorry! Um, okay, I know that the things I read have a large effect on the way I think, whether intentional or not -- my mind falls into habits of thinking based on the things it spends a lot of time on. Like, I know that reading a hell of a lot of slash means that I find it a lot easier to not blink an eye at references to queerness in real life, because I've spent so much time in a collective universe where being queer is vastly common. I find myself occasionally, in fact, being surprised that people are surprised about something and then I need to remind myself that the real world isn't as cool about this stuff. So I was just wondering if you notice any similar sort of effect, only to do with gender and perceptions thereof, from immersing yourself in fic about women.

Does that make sense?

[kiki_eng]

No worries; thanks for explaining!

I think the thing for me with femslash and this I want to read about women! thing is that I go looking for women, so I might get more into the habit of doing that and am perhaps a little more likely to notice things because of that. Like, here's this giant list of characters... there are no women on it or- I found a single Hockey RPF fic on the AO3 that meets my requirements for this month, and you know, I'm not really a sports person, but What is going on with women's sports? Seriously.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, that's the kind of thing I was thinking about. Thanks!

And...huh! I have been hanging out in hockey fandom a bit lately and I have definitely seen fic about ladies? I haven't read it, because I'm too busy being confused about the core people of interest in hockey fandom and working on getting them figured out, but at least one person is writing fic about women's hockey, and I've also seen some genderswitch stuff (does that count for you under your rules?)

(Hah, yes, here's one women's hockey fic at least; I haven't read it but it seems well-received? Last Word. And it didn't take me long to find it, so it makes me hopeful that there's more out there too!)

I think a lot of the problem, though, is that the world in general pays way more attention to men's sports than women's sports. Things like the Stanley Cup are for men's teams only, as far as I know. So they're the ones that have the huge celebrity status, and thus are the ones people write about.

[kiki_eng]

Yeah, that was the fic that I found. I hadn't looked beyond the AO3 for Hockey RPF about women yet, because I'm not really into hockey itself and I'm apparently really, really multifannish in February. I started looking just now and I have a terrible flaily web of links (and subscriptions to three new-to-me comms!) but I haven't pulled up any other fic focusing on a female hockey player yet. I have this terrible determination now, though.

(My focus is female characters in canon, so male Brittany/Santana fits my reqs, but not canonically male characters as female ones.)

There's a Canadian Women's Hockey League (one of the teams is Boston; it makes me happy) as of 2007 (to stand in for the National Women's Hockey League that no longer exists), and there are international competitions, but I can't remember ever having seen any media coverage. I am a really bad person to be talking about this, though, because I don't follow sports.

Though, possibly the following is good for perspective? from the CWHL site:
"The Canadian Women's Hockey League is the most premier, professionally run women's hockey league in the world. The CWHL is a centrally funded league meaning that all participating teams in the CWHL receive equal access to funding and are given the same opportunities to succeed. Every dollar goes towards building a league that is dedicated to raising the profile of women's hockey while providing a place where the best female hockey players in the World can come to train and compete."
There are six teams. Alberta apparently plays half as many games as anyone else because of transit issues and they adjust the stats. Donations to the CWHL get a tax receipt.

...and now I have more tabs. Apparently Hazel McCallion played hockey professionally when she was at university in Montreal.

[sophia_sol]

Hah, I am ALSO a very bad person to be talking about this because I don't follow sports either.

I just looked through all the pages of hockey rpf on ao3. I found a couple EXTREMELY short fics about canon het pairings (hockey player plus his wife/girlfriend), but that one fic appears to be the only fic about actual female hockey players on the whole of ao3. It's possible there might be some in other parts of the fandom, but this fandom seems to be pretty dedicated to the ao3, on the whole. So. It is possible that that is the only one there is....

The only women's hockey games I can ever remember being talked about are olympic hockey. And even there it seems like everyone cares about it FAR less than the men's hockey.

[kiki_eng]

I tend to think of hockey fandom being more on lj, so I went looking for it there, and haven't found any yet. I've found femslash for snowboarding, speedskating, soccer, gymnastics, figure skating, basketball, wrestling and tennis- that might be it. I have been skimming by a lot of fic and through a lot of tags. I found the names of mailing lists from 2004! While I've seen hockey listed as an interest on femslash rpf comms and, basically, there are places to post hockey femslash, I haven't found fic. Things are starting to blur together a little. I mean, I refuse to believe that there is only one rpf fic about a canonically female hockey player in existence, but that's all I've found.

When the NWHL went on hiatus or whatever they had a line about needing to figure out how to make women's hockey profitable, so I think that they weren't succeeding in building the fanbase they wanted, and I wonder a little bit about it. They mentioned the Tournament of Hearts last time I watched the news, but I've never caught anything about the CWHL season, and that's on right now.

[sophia_sol]

Wow, that is impressive how much stuff you've skimmed by, in the search!

I went poking around impertinence's journal, since she's the one that wrote the one fic we found, and in the comments to this post she wrote a whole bunch of commentfics, of which some definitely appear to be of female hockey players! So THERE IS MORE. But apparently only one author interested in writing it. But there IS other interest out there, given that some people prompted for it! So maybe with impertinence's influence, a little more will appear?

[kiki_eng]

...I think maybe I was focusing on finding a community space at that stage or something. In conclusion: yay, thank you.