Meg Gets Her Own Femslash Page

I've been struggling with the huge number of videos that are currently on the Disney Femslash page for a while now, and the new ones that keep appearing are getting hard to keep up with. I'm pretty sure I found almost all of them that existed at the time, but there are now at least three times the number that were there when I first created it!

I'll keep the original giant page, but I might start winnowing down the videos a bit - I'm not sure yet. It's not impossible to load when you visit it (...yet, since I split it up with pagebreaks and moved all the lesbian books and films onto their own page), but editing it is getting very difficult. So I needed move the content off it into other pages. But how?

Splitting them off by pairing was too messy, and trying to make a 'part one, two, three' would require never-ending juggling or else no actual categorisation. But I think I've figured out a way, and of course, it's blindingly obvious.

Split them up by character.

So I started with Meg, and here it is.
I used my old (and crappy *cringes* ) painting of Meg and Esmeralda for the intro image, and I found an awesome mock-Greek font called Ancient Geek (cause she's Greek).

I like the result - it's a lot easier to load and read through than the main page. There'll be some repetition (on the other half of the pairing) but I think this is the best way to manage it, and I can use the main page as an index.


Edit: And because I'm on a roll, I finished one for Pocahontas too.
DOUBLE EDIT: And because I apparently hate myself and am trying to see how long I can last without sleep, here's Esmeralda's page.

Aaaaand because this blog post is becoming the index blog anyway, here's all of them so far:
Ariel
Belle
Esmeralda
Jasmine
Meg
Mulan
Odette
Pocahontas

Four Arty Lesbian Speck Cases on Zazzle

Following on from my previous post on Monstrous Regiment, I noticed that the artist I linked to at the end had a nice iPhone design up in their Zazzle store. So I figured I'd do a quick round-up of girl-on-girl themed speckcases as an excuse to feature it.

There are actually a few good speck cases available, or at least interesting ones. But not that many. I only found four arty enough, nice enough to look at, and generally interesting enough, that I'd want to ever own (according to a critical and terribly picky artist). Yeah, yeah, a gap in the market, so I should get moving and paint something, right. Sadly I have a slight artblock at the moment.

There are plenty of the generic rainbow theme designs of course (some of which are very well done, but really, they're just different combinations of rainbows) ...

...and then there's the few that stand out.

1

Another Girl's Paradise iPhone 4 Speck Case by Kivitasku

Here's the one that started me off Another Girl's Paradise by Kivitasku- it's a cropped version of a picture I've liked before. Very art nouveau in style, it's that rare object; art for the sake of it. Also, I am impressed by the hair on the girls; bouncy golden curls and the long flowing brown hair. It's a nice picture, the composition of design is very well composed, the colours are muted but work well, and the girls are actually doing something other than 'being lesbian icons'

2

Grimm Fairy Tales: Halloween Special #2 Vampire

by zenescope

I'm an avid reader of graphic novels, so the comic-book-style Grimm Fairy Tales: Halloween Special #2 Vampire snagged my attention, as did the colours and art quality. The distorted proportions of women (and men, actually) in this style of comic book art usually annoy me a fair bit, but that isn't very obvious in this design, so it made it into a higher spot on my list.

It's lurid, romantic (in the most cliched term, being laden with symbolism and popular culture appeal), and garishly coloured, with the mysterious vampire embracing the heroine and sinking her teeth into the heroine's perfect neck. And of course, both are scantily clad, and posed perfectly for maximum fanservice. This is quite standard for Zenescope Entertainment, though! (think Twisted Disney and so forth - J. Scott Campbell is one of their main artists).

3

No More Secrets 4G Case by daplayhouse

No More Secrets is the next - a nice, simple, somewhat cliched but very effective photographic style speckcase. The black and white works well to set off the alluring red of their lips, and they are pretty enough to make the picture worth looking at. Overall, it's an intimate yet classy little cover. The other photographic speckcase worth mentioning is Kiss by dgdzines, which features a backlit black and white kiss between two girls, but it isn't as good as it could be. The image is unclear, and the lighting too subtle to make up for the vagueness of what is going on.

4

Woman Missing Woman Silhouette

by LovesMe_LovesMeNot

Lastly, a very simple design, of a black silhouette of a woman, and her two shadows. It's simple and well done.

Finally, there are a range of clever designs that use captions and icons to get their message across, rather than artwork. Not to my taste, but interesting to browse through, and these are my favourites.

Captioned/iconic lesbian graphic design

Generic, if nice, rainbow-LGBTQ themed iPhone cases

Femslash and DADT in the Discworld: Monstrous Regiment

Monstrous Regiment
A Discworld Novel by Terry Pratchett

A femslashy Discworld book about war, gender and religion, and the power of socks.

I love, adore, worship and laugh endlessly at the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. So I'm delighted to be able to include one title on my list of (good) lesbian books and films. Luckily, it's also a good stand-alone book, that introduces new readers quite gently to the madly realistic satire of the Discworld. Sorry, USA, you get the awful cover again. It's worth having a quick look at the Book Depository to see if you can find a UK version (the shipping is free!)

Pterry is a gay friendly author, and does cover issues of gender with his dwarves, and refers to the existence of certain gentlemen (e.g. Mr Harris of the Blue Cat Club). However, there's only one book that focuses almost exclusively on gender and sexuality as its theme. And that is Monstrous Regiment. (EDIT: I'm a bad person and forgot about Equal Rites - an obvious play on 'equal rights' - about a girlchild who becomes a Wizard by chance and has to persuade the all-male University to let her in. This girl was Esk - Eskarina Smith - who many years later made an appearance in I Shall Wear Midnight (my review of which can be found here) Thanks to Innerbrat for the reminder, I tend to confuse it with Sourcery).

Monstrous Regiment is the story of a country locked in an endless, draining and ridiculous war. And all the men have been used up. Polly disguises herself as a boy and signs up among the last recruits of the entire war, on a mission to find her brother. Along the way, she discovers that her fellow recruits are all... hiding their own secrets. It ends with a Joan of Arc storyline, but not from Polly.

This book is the favourite target for Discworld femslash, and has a lot of potential subtext. There's also one definite lesbian pairing, but the main focus is on ...well, feminism, rather than lesbianism. It also parodies the 'Dont Ask, Don't Tell" rules of the US Army.

The title is a reference to the 1558 pamphlet The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, written by John Knox . This pamphlet complained about the sudden appearance of female monarchs such as Elizabeth of England and Mary of Scotland pre-empting the natural position and authority of men.

Random linkage:
A Most Curious Thing is a blog run by one of the people who created most of the Disney/LBGT fan art I encounter
Top Lesbian Media: books, films, graphic novels, manga

Top Five Most Popular Disney Femslash Images of the Month

Looking For Disney Femslash? Head on over to Fandom Femslash!

It's interesting keeping an eye on the traffic through my Squidoo lenses - and the one that's really taken off lately, in a scary way (Google is finally bringing it up in search results) is the Disney Femslash lens.

So I thought I'd just post up the most popular clickouts of the last month.

Unsurprisingly, the comics were waaaay up there with ~120 clicks each. X-Arielle is pretty much the definitive Disney femslash artist on DA and Nana-51 is right up there with her.

I'll just post them in order here - first two on the left are the original comics from Nana-51, in which Megara decides to try an online... sorry, a magic mirror dating service and calls up Ariel for ...well, some fun. The third is X-Arielle's rather fun response, in which Meg teases Melody (Ariel's daughter in the sequel)

The final two were much less popular with 69 and 52 respectively. They BOTH feature Snow White and the Evil Queen, interestingly.

Number four is a short manga comic about apples, wishes and tricks turning out to be treats...

...while Number five pairs up the Evil Queen with Snow White in chains at her feet, in a nicely contrasting sombre theme (compared to the generally very happy and Disney-bright fan art)



Looking For Disney Femslash? Head on over to Fandom Femslash!

Nicola Griffith: *Good* Feminism, science fiction, and self defence

Nicola Griffith is a fantastic science fiction and detective story writer. Most of her stories centre around very strong feminist characters (this is a plus - she pulls it all off without rubbing your nose in). 
This review is ancient, but was rewritten 12th January, 2010. 


I first discovered Nicola Griffith via the Bending the Landscape: Original Gay and Lesbian Writing: Science Fiction (she coedited this book with Stephen Pagel). Which I am now going to fan about a bit.

 I thought it would just be another rag-tag collection of Sci-Fi but it is REALLY REALLY good.This is one of those must-reads. It has a few let downs - especially near the beginning - where they belabour the 'gay' issue at the expense of much story. But the rest of it? Amazing. One of those multi-genre award winning masterpieces that one hopes for with every Anthology and rarely gets. It won the Lambda Literary Award, Lesbian and Gay Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror; Gaylactic Spectrum Award and Stonewall Book Award: Literature (finalist))

 I didn't expect to be 'good', just 'gay themed' so I was blown away (did I mention that?)  to find the actual stories were up with all the other amazing fantasy stories I've ever read.

I would rate this book up there with George RR Martin's Dreamsongs. It is mostly science fiction - time travel, robots, alternate realities, virtual worlds, space ships and the future - although it wavers over past the semi-illusionary edge of Fantasy, on occasion.

The Bending the Landscape: Fantasy  volume is good, but not as mindblowing; it also won two awards - Lambda Literary Award, Lesbian and Gay Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror and the World Fantasy Award, Best Anthology. I can't get the Horror anthology in New Zealand, but it did win a Gaylactic Spectrum Award .

The only downside of these anthologies is that while they all have gay themes, lesbians (or bisexual women) tend not to appear as often (one of the reasons I started compiling this list!).

I grew up with the notion that 'escapist' reading was intellectually inferior to coolly analytical text, but now I'm on the side of Tolkien: those most likely to be upset by the notion of escape are the jailers. Now I'll read anything, as long as it's good, as long as it gives me that sense of multiplication, of time travel and life extension.
NICOLA GRIFFITH

What else of hers have I read? Well, there's Ammonite, Slow River and Always.

Ammonite is very, very good - and very interesting... Sci-fi - woman going to study a planet that has been cut off for centuries; a virus killed off all the men (and some women) so many non-tech different cultures have sprung up; the women can self-induce diploid conceptions; the 'Company' has a base of soldiers/security but will probably kill them off (as it's cheaper) if the vaccine they're testing doesn't protect against the virus. It reminded me a bit of 'Brother's Price' by Wen Spencer - it's all women, they *assume* it's going to be a woman, and sometimes it isn't even mentioned that it is a woman, so you don't realize until later; and the interactions are fascinating. In a way, those stories are a lot simpler, because they don't have to include or adjust for or explain gender interactions - it's one less variable, unfortunately a significant one. The other side of this - the evolutionary issues of male and female roles and dual pregnancies, and the apparent uniform biological attraction of all women to other women is not addressed. This has been written up far better by Danielle L Parker in a previous Ammonite review.

Always is quite late in a series (after The Blue Place and Stay, which I can't find in NZ), and is running a dual timeline (flashbacks every other chapter) between the past - character running a self defence class for women, leading up to some drama, which is really interesting and includes a lot of real information (the best way to... injure, think, act. Characterisation, attitudes and how people can manipulate you... as well as ways to pop someone's eyeball, the old 'everything is a weapon' drill). The other timeline is sort-of a detective story, the character is both very intelligent, paranoid, and tough. Some kind of current or ex- police/detective (is late in series, as mentioned, so I don't quite know the backstory).

Slow River is a stand alone science fiction book. About a futuristic, decaying society, it has interesting realistic characters, dysfunctional families, and jumps about a lot - a real pain to start with but fascinating by the end, with the various timelines in the girl's life unfolding in parallel, and others - think Sheri S. Tepper-style/quality/philosophical level.

I'm annoyed because she's not very commonly found here in NZ, I only own Ammonite - actually, that is partly because I lean towards the sci-fi or fantasy when buying books I haven't read, and a lot of her books aren't.

For more  (good) lesbian books and films click here