If I haven’t already outed myself as a “fandom old” with the title, I’m about to right now: There was a point within the last 10 years when femslash was such a minority and so frequently dismissed by het and boyslash fans alike that ship wars within F/F fandom were actually rare. Likewise, femslash’s demographic was unique. It was mostly populated by queer women, whereas both M/M and M/F were populated by predominantly straight women.
As a result of the dynamics mentioned above, you had a lot of overlap between femslash ships, even within fandoms for a single show. People got along, and often multishipped, because 1) OMG more than two girls?? 2) social media hadn’t become the haven for trollish behavior that it is today, and 3) there was minimal investment in seeing their readings of the text reflected onscreen.
… fandom as the indefinite mass of people who gather around a piece of
media to share their enjoyment of it? Tell stories about it? Spin legends out of it?
That fandom’s real strength has always been its ability to not care
about whether or not the establishment thinks it’s legitimate; to give
the middle finger to canonicity.
Question of Smoke 